Pastoral Identity Research Articles

Perceptions of Burnout Among Black Pastors of Small Churches: A Phenomenological Study

The purpose of this study was to explore the roles and responsibilities of Black pastors and how they might contribute to burnout. Five participants (four men, one woman) were selected from a sample of 25 Black pastors who completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS) and agreed to be interviewed. Transcendental phenomenology, a qualitative analysis, was used to understand the essence of meaning of burnout among the five interview participants. Four themes were identified from the data, which allowed the essence of meaning of burnout to be constructed: (1) Burnout is Emotionally Tiring; (2) Ministerial Demands and Rewards; (3) Cultural Aspects; and (4) Personal Before Professional. Findings suggest that Black pastors are subject to experiencing emotional, physical, and spiritual fatigue; that denomination-specific tasks and cultural factors (i.e., age, race, and gender) add to the uniqueness and challenges of their pastoral identity; and that the choice to prioritize personal life over professional life ensures the stability in their personal relationships with God and their families.

«ГОСПОДСТВЕННАЯ ВЛАСТЬ» VS ДУШЕПОПЕЧЕНИЕ: ПРАКТИКА ИСПОВЕДИ В РУССКОЙ ДУХОВНОЙ ТРАДИЦИИ СИНОДАЛЬНОГО ПЕРИОДА

The article attempts to reconstruct various pastoral models that appeared in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church over several centuries. The author identifies several "images" of confession, which are very different, among them: the realization of "despotical" power in a "confessional" family of the sixteenth century, the fulfillment of conscription, deeply personal interaction based on mutual trust and the value of a hierarchical aspect, counseling under the guidance of a "parish elder". The state, depending on the circumstances, either embeds the pastor in itself as a necessary part of its own mechanism, or considers the priesthood as a foreign element, or completely distances itself from religious affairs. The author suggests that the “types” of confession presented in the article can be compared with the forms of pastoral self-consciousness to be found in the modern life of the church. This in turn suggests that in the Russian Church today is characterized by the search for pastoral identity, in which the priesthood plays a key role.

Repair: Mongolian Art as Reimagination of the Pastoral Identity

Repair: Mongolian Art as Reimagination of the Pastoral Identity

The Sacrament of Confession as a Spiritual Event in the Lives of Children and Youth

The Holy Sacraments are works seen, established by Christ the Saviour and entrusted to the Church, by means of which they bestow the grace of the Holy Spirit upon the believer. The sacrament is Christ through His ministers: bishops and priests. The necessity of the Holy Sacraments is undeniable, as they communicate God’s grace, which is the compulsory condition for redemption. The Sacrament of Confession is required by the condition of our life in this world, subject to sin and error of all sorts. We particularly tackle the Sacrament of Confession (of Confession or of Penitence), because it represents the most efficient way of individual catechization, being the Sacrament through which man re-news himself, as it serves to practically re-build the connection between God’s grace and man. Rightfully so, this Holy Sacrament has always been considered as “a good opportunity for individual pastoral identity”. Sitting in the confession chair, the priest or the bishop is not only a sacramental manager, but also “a teacher, an educator and a guide in the lives of the believers” of all ages. Beside its sacramental-therapeutical value, the educational-catechized and formative value of confession is indisputable. That is why confession has been regarded as anefficient means and a good opportunity for individual catechization, which is part of the priest’s activity, providing the chance for a real and honest dialogue, from man to man, between confessor and believer of any age. With children, confession will not be a substitute for the advice of professors or parents, or for school education, but it will have its well-defined role in the child’s life as a beginning of self-awareness. The child’s individual confession is a unique opportunity to cement a lasting personal connection, from man to man, from man to God, where the child can open up spiritually with all his problems, without the stress caused by the relationship professor-student, parent-son.

Park, Samuel. Pastoral Identity as Social Construction: Pastoral Identity in Postmodern, Intercultural, and Multifaith Contexts

Park, Samuel. <i>Pastoral Identity as Social Construction: Pastoral Identity in Postmodern, Intercultural, and Multifaith Contexts</i>

Historical perspectives on pastoralism and land tenure transformation in Ngamiland, Botswana: What are the policy and institutional lessons?

Pastoral societies in dryland Africa continue to face changes to their systems. These systems are influenced by a range of historical factors, but little use is made of this information to design policies that suit pastoralists’ landscapes. This article provides a synthesis of historical perspectives on pastoral land use and tenure transformations in Ngamiland, south of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Little documentation of herders’ historical perspectives exists and less is known about how past experiences can be applied to sustainable pastoralism policies. In this article, current land use pressing issues are examined and analysed within the context of past experiences. We use a series of oral histories with key informants, focus group discussions, expert interviews and rangeland field observations. Results show that Nagamiland’s pastoral landscape has been shaped by a variety of factors: livestock diseases, human-wildlife conflicts, droughts, land tenure transformations associated with rangeland policies and the pastoral identity of the Ovaherero/Ovambanderu ethnic groups. Pastoralists have followed unique trajectories, specific to their rangeland conditions and socio-cultural context. Resilience to climate shocks and diseases has been weakened by inequitable patterns of control over rangeland resources. We recommend institutional diversity such that from experiences of the past, lessons can be drawn of processes and institutions required for pastoralism policies targeted pastoralists’ adaptations. Using pastoralists to provide information, especially in the area of indigenous knowledge, strategies can be developed to link conservation of wildlife and rangelands with pastoral production by developing ecologically sensitive low-volume tourism that pastoral communities can tap to diversify their livelihoods.

Respect, Challenges, and Stress among Protestant Pastors Closing a Church: Structural and Identity Theory Perspectives

The number of American churches has been declining at a rate of about 1 to 2% per year, but this statistic hides the reality that in liberal, moderate denominations the number of churches that close is nearly three or four times the number that open. Despite this trend of decline, no one has studied how closing churches affects the pastor. What challenges does the pastor face when closing a church, and how do these challenges affect the pastor’s level of stress and well-being? The study draws on structural and identity theories to further our understanding of pastoral identity threats and ways that congregational and denominational support may ease a pastor’s burden. This research used a mail survey to explore the experiences of pastors who have experienced the closing of a church in any of five Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ). The research adds to our understanding of the context of ministry by highlighting not only the effects of clergy age and experience but also the congregational context and middle administrative body (judicatory) respect and support in the challenge and in the affirmation of pastoral identity through the process of closure and church death.

In the robes of Christ

A pastoral sabbatical season is a significant commitment for both the pastor and the congregation. Accordingly, the good made possible by sabbaticals extends far beyond the few months during which the congregation absorbs the pastor’s typical ministerial responsibilities. Done well, these seasons are vital for pastoral longevity in just the way that sabbaticals give pastors the space and opportunity to reflect on their own vocational journeys and identities. This article reflects on one pastor’s sabbatical experience at Taizé, in the steps of St. Francis, and at a monastery while framing an evolving vocational identity through three stages in an adult life. It also reflects on George Herbert’s poem “Aaron,” in which Herbert traces the pastoral identity from its paucity in the face of the ideal image of priestly ministry toward Christ’s infusion of ministerial grace. He “lives in me” declares Herbert finally. This article also introduces a surfing monk, whose (apparently) grudging submission to authority is both the challenge and beauty of the pastoral vocation with the local church. Following a personal experience and George Herbert, the author employs “robes” as the image of pastoral vocational identity.

The cultural heritage of pastoralism - local knowledge, state identity and the global perspective: the example of local breeds in Morocco.

Over the past few decades, the heritage designation process has come to impact on the way of life of many nomadic pastoralists across the world. Since the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted in 1972, policies for the conservation of protected areas have been implemented under the aegis of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), especially in countries of the South, with a varying impact on the practices and perceptions of pastoral communities. Heritage policies were further extended by the establishment of the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage (the Convention was adopted by the UNESCO General Conference in October 2003 and came into force in 2006) and the list of Cultural Landscapes (adoption in 1992, with the first site listed in 1993). This enthusiasm for heritage, which is felt by States and local communities alike, provides an opportunity to study the contradictions and changing perceptions of the nomadic and pastoral identity. In this context of wholesale heritage designation, it is interesting to examine how local knowledge - especially that on hardy animal breeds - is promoted and safeguarded. The authors focus on the case of Morocco, where the national association of sheep and goat breeders (ANOC) oversees breed selection and health policy for local breeds, in order to demonstrate that greater recognition of farmers' knowledge and their ability to identify hardy animals can ensure the sustainability of farms in both South and North from a socio-economic, genetic and health standpoint.

“I Was a Muslim, But Now I Am a Christian”: Preaching, Legitimation, and Identity Management in a Southern Evangelical Church

Established in 2005, “Life” is a suburban, nondenominational, evangelical church in Charlotte, North Carolina, with an almost entirely white membership, yet the lead pastor is an immigrant from the Middle East. As an ex‐Muslim ethnic Pakistani who was born and raised in Kuwait, Pastor Sameer Khalid does not “fit” into southern culture, and he did not convert to Christianity until he was enrolled in college in the United States. Ethnographic data from 14 months of fieldwork reveal how Pastor Sameer uses weekly sermons to negotiate racialized stigmas, emphasize his common religious identity with the congregation, and make his immigrant background a distinctive religious resource for the church. More specifically, while all pastors require legitimation of their charismatic authority, this research focuses on the dynamics of performance through preaching within the Sunday morning services of this congregation, a performance that negotiates this lead pastor's ethnic and religious identities and accentuates his strategic use of institutionalized evangelical narratives to subvert Islamophobic threats and buttress legitimation of his pastoral identity.

Nostalgia and belonging

Henry George Lamond is no longer a household name, but he was once popular and widely known in Australia and overseas. An extremely prolific writer, he published fifteen books of fiction and non-fiction, and more than 900 essays and magazine articles in his lifetime. His essays and articles include writing in a wide range of subjects and genres, from romantic fiction to practical agricultural advice. This article concerns a small portion of Lamond’s lesser known writing, specifically his portrayals of the Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef tourism. Lamond is better known as a rural outback writer than an island writer, and this article explores how he maintained a strong outback pastoral identity even as he wrote from and about the tropical islands of the Whitsundays.

Pastoral ministry in a missional age: Towards a practical theological understanding of missional pastoral care

This article concerns itself with the development of a missional ecclesiology and the practices that may accept the challenge of conducting pastoral ministry in the context of South African, middleclass congregations adapting to a rapidly changing, post-apartheid environment. Some practical theological perspectives on pastoral counselling are investigated, whilst Narrative Therapy is explored as an emerging theory of deconstruction to enable the facilitating of congregational change towards a missional understanding of church life in local communities. Subsequently, the theological paradigm of missional ecclesiology is investigated before drawing the broad lines of a theory for pastoral ministry within missional ecclesiology.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: In this article, a missional base theory is proposed for pastoral counselling, consisting of interdisciplinary insights gained from the fields of Missiology, Practical Theology, Narrative Therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. The implications of this proposal for the development of a missional pastoral theory focus on the following three aspects:� re-establishing pastoral identity: exploring Christ� pastoral development: intentional faith formation� pastoral ministry: enabling Christ-centred lives.In such a missional pastoral theory four practices should be operationalised: first of all, a cognitive approach to increasing knowledge of the biblical narrative is necessary. This provides the hermeneutical skills necessary to enable people to internalise the biblical ethics and character traits ascribed to the Christian life. Secondly, a pastoral theory needs to pay close attention to development of emotional intelligence. Thirdly, this should be done in the context of small groups, where the focus falls on the personality development of members. Finally, missional pastoral theory should also include the acquisition of life coaching skills, where leaders can be adequately mentored in their roles as coaches of nonequipped people. In taking the research to a further level of normative reflection, attention should be turned to developing specific areas of pastoral care:� formal clinical education and subsequent accreditation of pastors (in the South African context pastoral care is not legally recognised as a valid area of psychological therapy) � specifically pertaining to Narrative Therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy� basic counselling skills for non-theologically trained congregational leaders� qualitative and quantitative research methods� organisational theory for congregational ministry� crisis counselling skills for congregation members serving in a community context� marriage and family therapy� emotional intelligence as outcome of a spiritual growth cycle� leadership development and personality assessment� personal growth by confronting and crossing emotional and cultural boundaries.

Relieving Mongols of Their Pastoral Identity: Disaster Management on the Eighteenth-Century Qing China Steppe

This article explores the contradictory effects of state disaster relief on the Inner Mongolian steppe borderland of China's last dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911). As a Manchu-dominated polity most noted for its unprecedented unification of vast Inner Asian territories with China proper, the Qing had to manage complex environmental dependencies between humans, climate, vegetation, water resources, and animals across diverse borderlands. In Inner Mongolia these dependencies, ordered under what I term imperial pastoralism, were based on sustaining connections between Mongol herders and their livestock, which were continuously disrupted by harsh steppe conditions. Imperial state adaptation to these largely uncontrollable conditions constrained central administrators to provide “agrarian” (grain and silver), rather than “pastoral” (livestock) forms of disaster relief. This assistance helped alienate Mongols from their herds and, consequently, from the pastoral identity on which the Qing northern borderland order was based. This process predates the emergence of more direct and conventional pressures from nineteenth-century ethnic Chinese agrarian steppe migration.

Pastoral Identity Constructed in Care-Giving Relationships

From developmental and training perspectives, previous studies have defined pastoral identity as an individual property of pastoral practitioners. Grounded on an empirical study of interviewing 20 pastoral counselors and chaplains, this paper presents pastoral identity as a social construction between pastoral caregivers and seekers (and God in the midst). Informed by a recent social-psychological approach to identity, the paper explores one possibility for an interactional, intersubjective, and constructive paradigm of pastoral identity.

A Shepherd's Journey — Final CPE Reflection

This article is a final reflection written by a first unit CPE student struggling to find his place within the walls of Level 1 Trauma Center in Detroit, Mi. It is an account of discovering one's pastoral identity in the midst of the chaos of pain and suffering.

End of Life Care and the Chaplain’s Role on the Medical Team

This article depicts a chaplain’s role in various learning and teaching situations, including end-of-life care and cases requiring cultural competency and gender preferences. The cases exemplify and underscore the difference between the role of a chaplain and the imam, as well as the necessity to have imams and both male and female chaplains in the hospital. It also describes the training, education, pastoral formation, pastoral identity, and roots of pastoral care in the Islamic tradition. The article explores the challenges of this new profession and advocates having a Muslim chaplain available in the hospital to serve Muslim patients, families, and the non-Muslim staff.

Research Report: A Grounded Theory Description of Pastoral Counseling

Historically, clerical paradigms of ordained ministry have defined pastoral counseling. However, these fail to describe pastoral counselors in the complex social, theological and medical contexts in which they now work. This study asks the question: How do pastoral counselors in clinical practice describe what is uniquely "pastoral" about the counseling they offer clients? Grounded theory was used to propose a preliminary description and an intermediate theory of how pastoral counselors interpret "pastoral." Eighty-five pastoral counselors were selected for the study over a four year period using criteria to assure maximum variation. Interviews and pastoral identity statements were collected and coded, and theoretical models were organized using NVIVO, a computer assisted qualitative design and analysis software (CAQDAS) package. Results suggest that pastoral counselors share some common ideas regarding "pastoral identity" and clinical practice. How pastoral counselors interpret "pastoral" is highly context sensitive and varies widely.

Resisting and Reconciling Big Wind: Middle Landscape Politics in the New American West

: While critical geographers have addressed how place politics impacts rural landscapes, less attention has been paid to the particular ways in which rural landscape identities are being impacted by the new energy economy. The nascent US wind energy opposition movement is evidence of broad, organized resistance to the landscape impacts associated with the re-sculpting of rural energy geographies. Drawing from cultural landscape and place theory, this article examines the shifting terrain of wind opposition in the “New American West”. The article argues that wind energy opposition is fundamentally about who speaks for and negotiates conflicting social commitments to technology, economic values and an imagined American pastoral identity. By examining a case study of wind development in Nevada, this article considers how renewable energy development can constructively acknowledge the important role the “middle landscape” continues to play in American constructions of rural space.

Gregory the Great’s Metaphor of the Physician of the Heart as a Model for Pastoral Identity

The identity of the Roman Catholic priesthood remains in serious crisis. Scholars have called for a return to traditional sources to find possible solutions, including the Early Church Fathers and the Hebrew Bible. Following Oden, this article further explores Pope Gregory the Great's The Book of Pastoral Rule and his ideals regarding pastoral identity. Of unique importance is his notion of the pastor as a "physician of the heart," unrecognized previously as central to his project.

From golden hills to sycamore trees: pastoral homelands and ethnic identity in Irish immigrant fiction, 1860–75

The prose fiction that remembers the trials of starvation and eviction of the Great Famine (1845–50) often juxtaposes representations of blasted, infertile land with images of a green, idyllic Erin. Through a discussion of Mary Anne Sadlier's Bessy Conway (1861), Elizabeth Hely Walshe's Golden Hills: A Tale of the Irish Famine (1865) and John McElgun's Annie Reilly (1873), this article reveals that immigrant writers of the Famine generation often negotiate depictions of Famine-stricken wasteland with evocations of a pastoral homeland. In the case of the two Catholic novels, Bessy Conway and Annie Reilly, the pastoral becomes a point of ethnic identification through which the immigrants can recollect and reconstruct a sense of Irishness in exile. By contrast, Golden Hills, which focuses on the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, does not lament the mass exodus of afflicted Irish: the novel rather envisions emigration as a way to regenerate Ireland as locus amoenus.