Pastoral Care and Counseling



Pastoral Care and Counseling

Introduction

People working as ministers in the ministry of counseling are confused and doubtful about the place and importance of counseling in the current situation. Different churches have taken different approaches towards pastoral counseling which has made the situation of counseling more confusing for the ministers. Some churches take up counseling as something based on the concept of individualism and romanticism which has limited the effectiveness and main idea behind pastoral care. In other cases, there are many people who have ignored and denied the importance of shepherding or pastoral counseling. Such people assumed that with the help of exhortations and strong preaching of religion they will be easily given repentance. Both the scenarios presented with situation that suggested wrong positions in case of realizing the importance and role of pastoral counseling.

Discussion

Clebsch and Jaekle state “ Pastoral Care consists of helping acts done by representative Christianpersons, directed toward the healing, sustaining, guiding and reconciling of troubled persons whose troubles arise in the context of ultimate meaning and concern of troubled personsmeanings and concerns. (Lartey, 2003) in church the word counsel means to counsel or advise someone in relation to the Christ while outside church it means advising or guiding someone in relation to the situation that they are facing (Janetzki, 1998).

The above mentioned definition identifies four important aspects of pastoral care that are important and helpful in a providing better understanding of the terminology. The profession of pastoral care has been related to the helping acts which represent a pessimistic and pragmatic view that was related to the profession during 1960s. Secondly it has been very clearly mentioned that it is primarily related to the religion of Christianity. By Christian persons, the authors mean people who have Christian faith and who believe in Christian tradition. This definition fails to recognize the importance of any other religion and Jewish in particular which is rather surprising as the image of shepherd is a concept that has been adopted from the Jewish scriptures. The third important function as presented by the definition is that Pastoral counseling is based on the central idea that is solving problems or following a problems solving technique and approach when involved in pastoral counseling. This problems centered focus of pastoral counseling can be related to different types of management theories, philosophies and therapies that were gaining importance in education and profession in 1960s. The authors towards the end of definition make use of typical theological language that was used by Paul Tillich who was a very popular theologist of that era. They relate the problem solving approach or the troubles to the ultimate meanings and concerns. On the other hand another African American theologist by the name of Ed Wimberley defines Pastoral care as using the resources of church to solve the problems of the families in crisis situation. His model of pastoral care was the result and combination of crisis theories and traditional pastoral care of the black church (Lartey, ...