Practice of Pastoral Care: a Post Modern Approach-Book Report

Practice of Pastoral Care: a Post Modern Approach-Book Report

The religious foundations of a person determines the direction of their lives in a planned and systematic way and separate him or her from those who do not follow a pattern of religious beliefs or thoughts structured in a definite manner. The book “The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Post Modern Approach” is written by Carrie Doehring. The author has discussed the importance of pastoral care and theological foundations with respect to the individual religious beliefs of people. This paper reflects on the ideas and concepts presented in the book and take a detailed view of the author's approach to theology, religion and pastoral care.

The book “The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach” is a comprehensive piece of work that integrates the psychological principles to the theological perspectives of the people that fits into a structure paradigm of examining the basis of religious concepts and it also focuses on caring for all people. The model of pastoral care presented by the author enables the caregivers and pastors to analyze their ministries that are being called as a trifocal lens in terms of the author in the book. The trifocal lens tends to involve three approaches towards the learning and knowledge. The approaches determined by the author in the book include modern, pre modern and post modern approach. The idea behind the pre modern approach is based on the assumption that the in order to access the God one can perform religious rituals, spiritual experiences and other traditions of praying and connecting to the God (pp.2) . Another approach is called as modern approach that involves the empirical evidences and rational knowledge of knowing and understanding the existence of God through the knowledge that is being acquired by the medical field, social sciences and some critical methods provided in the Bible. The last approach is the post modern approach that involves the provisional nature and the contextual approach towards knowledge and focuses on the knowledge of God (pp. 2) .

The first step considered by Doehring in providing the pastoral care is the communication process. The two way communication needs to be practices with having a more focus on the listening side. The pastoral caregiver needs to listen to the story of the care seeker with empathy. The empathy would lead him or her towards stepping into the shoes of the care seeker and would enable the pastoral care giver to view the world from the perspective of the care seeker (pp. 18) . The process of communication and empathy requires two skills one is the rational skills that are opposite and other is that they are simultaneous in nature. According to the author it is being suggested that the care giver or pastor should connect and involve with the care seeker through experiencing what it is like to become the same as them while maintaining the distance and ...