The issue of pastoral care and how a teacher effectively provides it is currently a topic of great debate in the media. With teachers increasingly bearing the brunt of their pupils' difficult personal lives, they feel under pressure to do the 'right thing' and to do it in an informed and professional manner. This book investigates how teachers can attempt to give good quality pastoral care, whether as a form tutor in the first instance or in a managerial role further along in their development. It uses practical case studies as examples of what can be achieved, and explores the theory of this subject, making is the perfect resource for teachers, counsellors and undergraduates on PGCE, BEd and BA courses.
This book presents a unique blend of theological reflection on listening, new and tested research on listening as it relates to church leadership, and suggested forms of listening education and skills assessment in a continual effort to locate and understand listening as the heart of effective and faithful ministry.
The condition of stuck is a condition well known by pastoral caregivers and leaders. In When All Else Fails, Wayne Menking argues that the way out of stuckness is not through the acquisition of faddish techniques, but through a deep rethinking of our pastoral vocation and what our pastoral work is to be about. Pastoral care and leadership are not indistinguishable, just as priestly work can never be separated from prophetic work. They are always one and the same. Pastoral care and leadership, then, are not about helping people relieve their anxiety through the offering of palliative comfort, but rather helping people to engage the powers that have hold of their life so as to leave what is old for what is new. In this engagement, the caregiver will always encounter powers against which niceness and unconditional love will not work. Using biblical images and narratives that depict God as a deeply empathic and compassionate God, yet one who is never adaptively sympathetic, Menking asserts that pastoral caregivers and leaders must shed their niceness and adaptivity so as to employ their God-given power if they are to help people effectively leave what is old for what is new.
Prophets have a reputation of changing, for the better, the relationship between people and God. Christianity has a long history of prophets who have directed the faithful towards more justice and righteousness. What can Christians learn from prophets for daily life, for contemporary theology, and for pastoral care? This book looks at prophetic action from a biblical, pastoral, and ethical perspective. The contributions - from both pastoral theologians and pastors from around the globe - make this study a unique exercise in maintaining the prophetic perspective in theological reflection and pastoral practice. (Series: International Practical Theology - Vol. 13)
Rethinking Pastoral Care ushers the reader into consideration of the pastoral care ministry in the context of the African American church. The racial context of the African American church is experiencing a change that affects the methodand development of ministry in the church. The issue of concern involves the mass of individuals in the African American church whoare involved in biracial relationships or are themselves of biracial heterogeneity. Does the African American church offer a ministry of pastoral care designed to meet the needs of a racially diverse group of people? What is the design of an approach to pastoral care suitable for a racially diversity family or individual in the church? These questions and others guide the discussion on this vital ministry in the African American and multi-cultural church. The reader will find helpful information for ministry in any raciallydiverse context. This book, examines the racially changing context in the American church and community. This book guides the readerin thoughtful reflection of the traditional approach of pastoral care, a reevaluation of its methods, challenge the reader to rethink his or her approach to pastoral care in the midst of the racially changing context.
Why is loss present but rarely spoken of in the hospital system? How does such silence carry over to the practices of chaplains who accompany dying patients and grieving families? Richard Coble critically examines his experiences as a hospital chaplain to analyze the place of spiritual care in wider trends vexing healthcare today, including its persistent disparities and its related inability to reckon with human decline. Simultaneously, he offers routes for chaplains to be a force of change.
Pastoral Care and Counseling has changed radically since the publication of "The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling." Rapid changes have occurred in theological, social, and medical contexts broadening the understanding of care. The shift from the "living human document" to the "living human web" both enriches and challenges the study and practice of pastoral theology. Just as the "Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling" defined the field of Pastoral Care, this volume brings the field current. Essays by Nancy J. Ramsay, Joretta L. Marshall, Emmanuel Y. Lartey, Christie C. Neuger, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, and Loren L. Townsend. Topics include: Pastoral Theology; Public Theology; Power and Difference; Globalization, Internationalization, and Indigentization; Training in Clinical Ministry; Methodology.
What can practical theology contribute to other theological disciplines and the church about the nature of God and the church's witness to Jesus Christ in the world? What can we learn about the love and power of God in Jesus Christ from the community of survivors of violence? Rethinking Faith urges all Christians to consider themselves practical theologians by drawing on their own experiences in making theological assertions. Poling couples his understanding of the tradition with his work with survivors of violence to demonstrate the resilience of Christianity.
Despite astute critiques and available resources for alternative modes of thinking and practicing, individualism continues to be a dominating and constraining ideology in the field of pastoral psychotherapy and counseling. Philip Rieff was one of the first to highlight the negative implications of individualism in psychotherapeutic theories and practices. As heirs and often enthusiasts of the Freudian tradition of which Rieff and others are critical, pastoral theologians have felt the sting of his charge, and yet the empirical research that McClure presents shows that pastoral-counseling practitioners resist change. Their attempts to overcome an individualistic perspective have been limited and ineffective because individualism is embedded in the field's dominant theological and theoretical resources, practices, and organizational arrangements. Only a radical reappraisal of these will make possible pastoral counseling practices in a post-individualistic mode. McClure proposes several critical transformations: broadening and deepening the operative theologies used to guide the healing practice, expanding the role of the pastoral counselor, reimagining the operative anthropology, reclaiming sin and judgment, nuancing the particular against the individual, rethinking the ideal outcome of the practices, and reimagining the organizational structures that support the practices. Only this level of revisioning will enable this ministry of the church to move beyond its individualistic limitations and offer healing in more complex, effective, and socially adequate ways.
