Drinking from the Same Well: Cross-Cultural Concerns in Pastoral Care and Counselling (review)

"More than ever before individuals and communities are today being confronted with the fact that we live in pluralistic societies where we are exposed to peoples and values of other cultures" (xi). In the field of pastoral care and counselling, this means that caregivers and care-seekers may come from different cultures and hold different world views. To address this issue, Lydia Johnson has crafted a guidebook that assists people involved in helping ministries understand concerns arising in cross-cultural caregiving.

Through this book, Johnson hopes to "stimulate open-ended conversation, honest self-examination, and proactive imagining about a 'way forward"' (xiii) in readers' cross-cultural encounters. She addresses how the convergence of different cultures affects issues in pastoral care settings and how Christian theology informs the caregiver's response to the culturally "other" care-seeker.

After outlining the purpose and need for the book, Johnson devotes two chapters to the topics of culture and world views and values, offering foundational information that grounds her discussion throughout the book. The remaining six chapters focus on issues that arise in pastoral care and counselling, particularly how they are complicated in cross-cultural situations and how caregivers can address them appropriately. These six issues are identity, empathy, communication, the family, conflict, and suffering and healing.

This broad approach evolved out of the author's frustration with "piecemeal" and "over-specialized" resources about cross-cultural caregiving. "What was needed was a kind of 'primer' which would provide a broad overview of the key issues and generative themes in cross-cultural pastoral care" (139). Johnson guides readers on an expansive journey through cross-cultural helping ministries, pausing to focus on key concerns, sharing stories, and inviting readers to enter the conversation.

The author maintains a common framework for each chapter, allowing readers to move throughout the book with ease and clarity. Each chapter includes definitions of the issue at hand, analyses of pertinent theories and caregiving models, concerns that arise in cross-cultural pastoral care, and theological perspectives on the issue, throughout which Johnson relies on the work of David Augsburger. She maintains a praxiological method by drawing wisdom from personal stories and concluding each chapter with a case study and commentary that concretizes the concern in focus. This allows her book to be "centered in the stories of real people and real situations which enflesh concepts, theories, models, and constructs" (139).

Johnson not only offers information to readers; she invites them into conversations that help them reflect on their experiences. After all, "every culturally sensitive pastoral counsellor or caregiver . . . must make a conscious effort to examine the value structures of his or her own culture, as well as the other cultures he or she encounters" (31). Readers join Johnson in her "reflection-on-practice" (xii) method by locating themselves and reflecting on their own experiences through focus and reflection questions that bookend each chapter.

Johnson discusses Christianity without acknowledging that the theologies she highlights are contextualized by cultures in which they emerged. The author's audience seems limited: many stories and examples focus on non-Western cultures, demonstrating that Johnson assumes an audience of people who are familiar with (and at home in) Western contexts and need their views to be broadened. Her use of we implies an audience of white North Americans, since this is the author's birth culture.

These criticisms, however, do not discount the book's merit. Drinking from the Same Well is engaging and thoughtful. The author invites readers to enter situations described in the book and bring their experiences to bear on ideas she offers. Through this approach, Johnson helps readers recognize the importance of sensitivity, awareness, appreciation, and understanding the culturally "other" care-seeker "on the other's terms" (38).

I recommend this book to professors, students, ministers, counsellors, and people in helping ministries. In particular, I urge readers to engage the book in group settings...