Reflect critically on the way Pastoral Care is done in communities. What`s good, what`s bad and what improvements could be made?

Pastoral Care

Being a pastor today has never been more difficult as it was in the New Testament times . This century looks at the barrage of attacks on Christianity and the work of ministers at all fronts -some subtle otherwise all have been critical of its impact on civilization today Noteworthy is the disintegration of the Christian consensus that cemented American culture together . It is the secularization of our culture that has shoved the churches to the periphery of this nation 's awareness . Moral relativism is the of the day and has

entrenched itself in the church and in its work . In a 1992 Christianity Today survey , sixty six percent of Americans do not believe in absolute truth (Russell , 1992-30 . Notably , seventy two percent however who likewise do not believe on this matter , belong to the 18 to 25 year old range . No faith can strongly claim to a number of absolutes as Christianity . This is the reason that work in the church today is as difficult a challenge when the culture it faces is as complex as it is now more than ever Pastors today have become threats in fact to the general public or considered at times as a spectacle

A review on several significant books on the work of the minister yields us a complete perspective on the kind of pastoral care we have today . The handiwork of Patton , Clinebell , Larley and Pattison share to us a multifaceted picture of what is actually going on today . The foregoing material assesses the whole work of church today in the light of information and knowledge posed to us by prominent critiques and minds in this generation . Given the fact that the church exists to fulfill its mandate to reach out to the world , there has to be benefits to the communities where churches are located . Pastoral care must be occurring within those villages . The church 's business is people , and people compose society

Paradigm shift ' is a term or phrase which is coined by John Patton in 1993 to describe a dramatic turn in the practice of pastoral care ' Today , as Patton pointed out in his book , pastoral care is focusing more and more on social and cultural concerns , moving from a clinical pastoral paradigm ' to one that Patton named communal-contextual ' John Patton by the way is a professor of pastoral theology at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur , Georgia He believes that pastoral care is to be expected from any community that claims to be Christian . It (pastoral care ) happens as the local church bothers to look and listen to its community , and remembering that it is God 's very own people , it chooses to extend God 's love in variety of ways . As the church makes pastoral care one of its primary tasks in its community , it renews and strengthens its relationships within its community

While pastoral care has long been the known duty of the Christian community in a given society , through the years it has...