Implications For Pastoral Care Research Articles

African Christianity and healing: Implications for pastoral care

The rapid rise of Christianity in the developing world, and specifically in Africa, has asked renewed questions about pastoral theology and pastoral care. The African worldview, as a possible explanation for the increase in Christianity, is one of the most cited reasons for this growth. Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement are referred to as ‘new’ Christianity. The new Christianity is influenced by the practices and characteristics of the African worldview. Wholistic healing derives from the African worldview perspective that reduces the dichotomy between spiritual and science, or spirit and body. This approach to healing, differs from the Western worldview that approaches healing from a biomedical perspective. The disparity in worldviews and subsequent different approaches to healing, are assessed against the backdrop of the implications for pastoral theology and pastoral care.Contribution: The African worldview and ‘new’ Christianity contribute by engaging critically with the separation of the two worldviews, the narrow use of experience within the dialogical movement of theory and praxis, and the key concepts of pastoral theology such as illness and suffering, reconciliation, shepherding, and pastoring.

The Wounded Body of Christ, the Church and Perennial Escalation of Gender-Based Violence and Its Implications for Pastoral Care

It is a known fact that gender-based violence is an infringement on human rights. Gender-based violence takes place all over the world in almost every place. It is experienced in homes, workplaces, communities, and in the Church as well. Today, church members, as well as pastors are wounded, fragmented, and hurting as they suffer serious abuses in silence. Christian children have fallen victim to sexual abuse that is perpetrated by their parents. Parents too, have become victims of violence; sometimes maimed by children who have become violent enough to kill their Christian parents in their homes. Furthermore, many Christian couples have continued to experience intra gender violence in their families that is often attributed to marital infidelity. Beyond that, there is also a common secretive kind of abuse in the form of marital sexual violence which is a serious form of violence against women. This is a hidden type of abuse that has been perpetrated behind closed doors for too long by members of the body of Christ. Due to its prevalence sometimes the victims themselves, often pretend that the problem in not present by keeping a deafening silence. This article, therefore, makes an in-depth investigation into the causes of the pervasive forms of gender-based violence that occur in some Zambian Christian homes, with particular emphasis on the ways in which this multifaceted phenomenon is very much hidden. This article expounds on how Christian couples have continued to suffer silently as their voices are suppressed due to fear and shame. In the conclusion of the article, it is suggested that, unless the church, in its pastoral care role, awakens from its slumber and begins to address issues of gender-based violence in the church with sincerity, honesty, and openness by admitting that indeed, the body of Christ is yearning to be healed, gender-based violence shall remain a perennial occurrence.

Deconversion from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Quest for Identity.

Deconversion from the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is often an arduous process and can lead to a sense of losing one’s identity. This article describes the stories of people who deconvert from the LDS church while making sense of the link between deconversion and identity. The manuscript is based on 18 interviews with people leaving the LDS church. While some of the deconverts had achieved a stable sense of identity at the time of the interview, others were still struggling with this task. This article attempts to understand these differences while also paying attention to the role of gender. The study also has implications for pastoral care and social work practice.

‘Deliver us from patriarchy’: A gendered perspective of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa and implications for pastoral care

The church is a fertile ground for nurturing and protecting patriarchy. Within the Christian church, gender equality remains a theoretical notion, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) is no exception in this regard. Written from the perspective of African women’s theology, this article critically reflects on and interprets gender issues in ELCSA leadership structures by exploring the gender biases involved in the running of the church and the implications of these biases for gender questions about reformation and pastoral care in ELCSA congregations. Findings indicate that the gender gap in ELCSA structures is neither biblical nor constitutional but is protected by the presence of wives of bishops, deans and pastors who are placed strategically in women’s leagues, particularly the Prayer Women’s League (PWL). In addition, qualifying the bishops, deans and pastors as ex-officio members of these groups constitutes an obstacle to achieving gender equality in the Church’s leadership structures and has implications for pastoral care in the ELCSA.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article is written from a Christian-anthropological perspective. By reviewing literature from social sciences, practical and systematic theology, it integrates sociological and African traditional assumptions of gender and religion that hinder the African church’s reformation praxis, thereby affecting pastoral care.

An integrated African pastoral care approach to unaccompanied refugee minors based on Verryn’s Child interventions

The African proverb ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ has been compromised and exposed by the migration of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URMs) from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Written from African women’s perspective, this article explores the response and approach of Bishop Paul Verryn to URMs. The article theologises Verryn’s response to URMs in conversation with African values, themes or sayings that relate to childcare, mainly from a Zimbabwean Ndebele context, and through the lens of the African saying ‘It takes a village to raise a child’. In the findings, three crucial socio-ecclesial themes emerge from Verryn’s response which I refer to as the three Cs, namely, collaboration, consultation and contextuality. These are discussed through the lens of African women’s theology in relation to African values of childcare and its implications for pastoral care in a context of displaced children, and accompanied or unaccompanied minors (child migrants).

Happiness as a predictor of resilience in students at a further education college

ABSTRACTWhile the positive relationship between happiness and resilience amongst students is established, diversity in further education (FE) students warrants investigation into potential differences in the strength of this relationship. In respect of the multifaceted definition of the concept, two happiness measures were completed by respondents. This allowed investigation into the potential for the two measures to reflect differing features of happiness and allowed a more specific insight into the role happiness plays in the resilience of FE students. In this study, the predictive relationships of happiness with resilience among three level 3 populations – A-Level, BTEC and Access to HE at a further education college in the UK (N = 443) – are examined by means of self-report. Multiple regression analysis showed that happiness measures correlate with resilience, making independent contributions. Relative importance of happiness measures in predicting resilience also differs across pathways. Findings are discussed in terms of diversity of FE students and diversity of happiness within these populations. This research highlights a variation in significance of different facets of happiness on resilience, with implications for pastoral care in FE.

The Taboo of Retirement for Diocesan Catholic Priests.

This paper considers Catholic priests in the USA and their freedom to retire, the constraints that may restrain them from retirement, and the financial and psychological variables that impact them in ministry and in future retirement. Implications for pastoral care and counseling are considered.

긍정심리학에 대한 목회신학적 비평과 목회상담 활용가능성에 대한 연구

긍정심리학에 대한 목회신학적 비평과 목회상담 활용가능성에 대한 연구

Social pedagogy and pastoral care in schools

In the context of this paper, social pedagogy concerns how a person trained in social pedagogy can take up the role of a trusted and caring adult to help, support and empower troubled and vulnerable pupils to meet the demands they face in their lives so that they are better able to lead fulfilling and satisfying lives and can, in their turn, contribute to the betterment of society. This paper describes the nature of social pedagogy, highlights its origins and practice in mainland Europe, considers some key developments within the current context in England and outlines its implications for pastoral care in schools. There has been a marked growth in social pedagogy as an aspect of professional practice amongst the pastoral care community in England. Its further development will depend on an increasing recognition that pastoral care needs to follow the pupil into the different social settings they inhabit.

Pastors' Counseling Practices and Perceptions of Mental Health Services: Implications for African American Mental Health

The purpose of the current study was to investigate pastors' perceptions about and practice of mental health services within their churches. Thirty nine pastors completed an online survey. Results of the survey indicated that pastors who had more positive attitudes toward mental health services reported (1) counseling parishioners more times per month and (2) counseling parishioners on a greater variety of topics. Implications for pastoral care and counseling and future directions in training are discussed.

The Nexus of Stigma and Social Policy: Implications for Pastoral Care and Psychotherapy with Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Persons and Their Families

Dykstra (2006) explains the well weathered approach to homosexuality in the Christian community “love the sinner, hate the sin” may leave many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people feeling unloved and alienated from a community of faith. As clergy and therapists grapple with personal ethics and institutional policy when working with individuals of differing sexual orientations, they may avoid speaking directly about sexuality and may perpetuate the factors which contribute to internalized homophobia. Psychotherapy and pastoral care by nature is political, as decisions are made about which behavior is adaptive or dysfunctional. This article presents an integrated conceptual framework for clergy and clinicians to understand the impact internalized homophobia has on GLBT clients and their families from a person-in-environment perspective.

The absence of ‘e’: the role of the Internet in two distance learning programmes

Barely 30 years on from the advent of distance learning as we recognise it today, it has already become uncommon for a learner to embark on a programme of education that does not involve frequent access to the Internet; but if a course does not revolve around the Internet, is it in any way inferior and is the learner disadvantaged? Two of the purposes of this paper are to examine two distance learning programmes, one of which involves young offenders serving long sentences, and to explore whether or not learners with restricted Internet access are destined to lose out in an educational setting. In doing so, learner anxiety and organisational anxieties and the implications for pastoral care are also examined.

Negative Parental Influences on Religious Conversion: Implications for Pastoral Care

This essay discusses the contribution that psychoanalytic psychology has made to research on religious conversion and asks what implications it might have for pastoral practice. Some of conversion’s most dramatic manifestations occur amid familial instability, or negative parental influences, that stand to be misinterpreted by religious leaders if their full psycho-spiritual context is not understood. The Freudian tradition has provided some context as to why people with rocky upbringings might undergo dramatic change. The data supports the conclusion that these radical conversions are much less a sign of direct supernatural influence than they are of a need for the converts to receive pastoral care in working through a “crisis stage” of faith development.

Text and Tune, Speaking and Listening: Musical Resources in Pastoral Care

This article examines the power of music to help transform suffering. It draws on insights from the work of music theorist David Schwarz (1997) that bridges psychoanalysis, music, and culture; and from Daniel Levitin’s (2008) work on music and human nature, especially as it pertains to religion, ritual and songs. Schwarz describes listening to music as a process of retrospective fantasy and as a type of transference experience. If how we listen to music is shaped by traces of past experiences, then music as a resource in pastoral care has the potential to assist ministers in the process of guiding their parishioners to re-trace painful experiences in ways that “re-sound” with thoughts and feelings which have become an impediment to healing. A “case study” in which the author was a “player” (or more accurately performer) is briefly examined, and the role of music in the lives of Steve Lopez and Nathaniel Ayers (Lopez 2008) is explored to demonstrate how music—specifically religious music or song associated with religious ritual—is an overlooked resource for pastoral care. The article concludes with an illustration of how individuals’ personal associations with a hymn may have implications for pastoral care.

Liberation Psychological Implications for Pastoral Care of Korean Military Wives

Native Korean women frequently suffer poverty, sexual violence, and Confucian gender discrimination. Once in America Korean military wives also experience racial and sexual oppression, intercultural familial conflicts and violence, and identity crisis and lead to feelings of isolation and non-belonging, a sense of anomie. Korean American pastors tend to understate and oversimplify the complexity of psychological and spiritual suffering of Korean military wives and overemphasize individual faith development as a solution. Liberation psychology evolved from an awareness of similar dehumanizing realities. The context-based perspective of liberation psychology offers a model to interpret and assist in the psychological and spiritual healing of Korean military wives. The healing power of conscientization offered in Liberation psychology for oppressed individuals encourages self-awakening suggesting it as an ideal interventional model to help Korean military wives and would be a useful approach for Korean American pastors.

The Self-Psychological Understanding of Shame and Its Implications for Pastoral Care

The Self-Psychological Understanding of Shame and Its Implications for Pastoral Care

Living as a Burn Survivor: Implications for Pastoral Care

As chaplain serving a burn unit and trauma ICU, the author discusses common issues faced by burn survivors and their families. Writing from his personal experience, he also explains how recognition of his Shadow Gifts and incorporation of them into his ministry enable him to “pay it forward” to others who walk the path of healing from burn injuries. A reflection based on his experience as a burn survivor was published earlier this year. See “Called through Grace,” PlainViews 9, no. 23 [January 6, 2010]: Spiritual Development.

A Response to “Empire Matters: Implications for Pastoral Care”

A Response to “Empire Matters: Implications for Pastoral Care”

Forgiveness: Making Some Connections Between Theology and Psychology, Preaching and Pastoral Practice

This article explores forgiveness as a process, looking at and linking some of the psychological and theological features of that process. From this are drawn out some implications for pastoral care and preaching.

Response to “Empire Matters: Implications for Pastoral Care”

Response to “Empire Matters: Implications for Pastoral Care”