Helping Relastionships

The Theology of Pastoral Counseling

The present dwells on the theology of being a pastoral helping presence . It articulates the theological stance in pastoral counseling that can also be defined as spiritual /soul counseling in the contemporary setting . The point of view chosen is the one of the person who is a helping professional . The traces the patterns in which counseling and theology are enmeshed in the process of conducting pastoral help : to be precise , the concept of counseling , the specifics of pastoral counseling , the place of religion in conducting and

receiving pastoral counseling , the dichotomy of body and soul spirituality , the processes that structure human perception in regard of counseling needs , and

For the goals of the it is important to define the basic concept of pastoral counseling . One may think that the process takes place in a church or some other religious environment exclusively . Judging from the examples of modernity , though , such point of view is hardly correct . As one may see , religion stopped being chained solely to the church as the place where sermons are served and other religious ceremonies are conducted

Once Ross stated that pastoral counseling helps each person tell their story in a faith context as well as within their personal context ' It means that the issues of religious faith and helping presence are important in any environment , be it the church , the clinic or home . To add , there is no suppression of the personal mode and value in the pastoral helping process the specific issue of a person being counseled is integrated into the rich theological system

By theology the research often means the narrow discipline of religious thought . Such a restriction prevents counseling (especially pastoral counseling ) to develop in full splendor . One of the arguments against the narrowing of theology '-concept is tolerance . Pastoral helping is of high value for both the believers and non-believers in terms of Christian or other faith

The situation of conflict (death , the change of state , loss , disruptive emotions or actions , etc ) is the common reason for a human being to seek help and clinical or pastoral counseling . Non-pastoral counseling enables a person to look for the conflict resolution but the effect may be unstable and incomplete meanwhile , pastoral presence makes a person to understand the chain of spirituality and the integrity of existence If to recall Jonah in the belly of the fish , non-pastoral counseling is the process of Jonah 's salvation from the perilous situation , whereas pastoral counseling makes a human being in crisis open-eyed to the Revelation

Ross after Abram called the pastoral counseling an arena or a `transitional space ' in which some revelatory understanding of experience can be developed . The revelation or discovery of God is better structured in the process of pastoral counseling because it comprises moral , ethical and metaphysical elements of a universal theological system and the necessities of everyday human life . The aforesaid necessities visibly echo to the religious concepts such as the one of Holy Trinity...