The Helping Relationship: Healing and Change in Community Context

X. The Pastorate as Helping Relationship

220 Spiritual care is rapidly replacing pastoral care in institutional settings . While the assumptions of spiritual counselling may be a better fit for hospitals, nursing homes, and counselling centres, the pastoral paradigm remains the better fit for congregational care. This chapter argues that the pastoral paradigm provides a productive framework for addressing developments in the field of pastoral care and congregational ministry. The chapter correlates the psychotherapy outcome research of the common factors model with features of the pastoral paradigm to identify the ways in which the pastoral paradigm leverages the relational and communal dimensions of congregational life. The pastorate is a helping relationship. Challenging the Pastoral Paradigm The newly expanded Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling (Hunter, 2005) includes a set of essays analyzing developments in the field since the dictionary’s publication 20 years ago. A major trend in clinical and institutional contexts has been to rename pastoral counselling, spiritual counselling (Association for Clinical X The Pastorate as Helping Relationship 1 Bradley T. Morrison Morrison 221 Pastoral Education, 2001). This trend recognizes that the word pastoral may not adequately describe the faith-based care offered in institutional contexts. Pastoral categories do not necessarily apply in institutional helping relationships. The helper or helpee may not belong to a pastorate. Even if one is pastor or parishioner, this fact may not inform the helping process. VanKatwyk (2002) argues that the turn to a spiritual paradigm creates an identity crisis in pastoral care and counselling. With the secularization of society, most people seek their care outside the church. The concept of a pastorate becomes irrelevant to the giving and receiving of faith-based care in institutional settings. Increasingly, pastoral counsellors are trained in non-congregational contexts with no operative pastoral relationship. Ironically, the ideal pastoral client is located apart from the congregational context—often in counselling centres or institutional settings. Consequently, the ideal pastoral helping relationship is framed in clinical or institutional terms. In addition to the fault lines developing between spiritual and pastoral care, the adequacy of individual-based interventions is being questioned. In her article in the expanded edition of the Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, Miller-McLemore warns that pastoral care and counselling “consume significant resources to reach a relatively small population in need” (2005, p. 1378). She is not alone in challenging our field to make pastoral theology “public theology” with societal interventions. Within this emerging model, training programs need to equip pastoral caregivers and counsellors for social and public policy ministry beyond the congregation’s walls. In the expanded dictionary, Townsend notes that formation and integration of pastoral identity are no longer limited to pastors or lay specialists. Rather, the move is away from “teaching basic clinical skills to ministers ... and instead [teaching] basic ministry and theological reflection skills to clinicians” (2005, p. 1411). Training and formation of pastoral caregivers and counsellors are described as an “integrative bridge discipline” (p. 1410) 222 Pastorate as Helping Relationship that holds together ministry and clinical practice. The art of theological reflection becomes a resource for anyone involved in care or social action. These challenges recognize the potential of congregations for ministry beyond the church’s walls. Even though pastoral care and counselling are increasingly located in clinical and institutional contexts, focusing on societal and public interventions, and equipping community leaders outside ecclesial structures, the health of congregations themselves must remain a priority or at least a consideration. The importance of congregations as an engine for pastoral theology cannot be underestimated or reduced to an auxiliary function or role. Pastoral theology must not overlook the congregation’s fundamental need for communal self-care to sustain it for broader ministry. The shift in pastoral care from private to public focus, individual to societal interventions, and clergy to laity-based training in a pluralistic society need not undermine congregational-based care and counselling. On the contrary, the pastoral paradigm offers theological and ethical resources necessary to satisfy these public, social, and lay shifts in our discipline— perhaps in ways inaccessible to the spirituality paradigm. The Pastoral Paradigm The pastoral paradigm arises from a well-established biblical narrative : the care of God’s children is assigned to a shepherd named David (1 Samuel 16). The image of shepherd and sheep describes the Hebrew people, and this image continues into the gospel narratives , where Jesus is described as shepherd to God’s children. The pastoral paradigm is the framework for biblical...