Counseling the Hurt

Counseling has been one part of the ministry of pastoral care within Christianity since New Testament times and within Judaism for longer. More recently in America and then in Europe it has become explicitly recognized in the movement for pastoral care and counseling, and in the specific work of specialist pastoral counselors and psychotherapists. The American Association of Pastoral Counselors fosters the work of individual therapists and of counseling services and agencies throughout North America. In Britain, the Westminster Pastoral Foundation and its affiliate centers are most representative of specialist pastoral counseling. Furthermore, the theories of the human and social sciences and the techniques of counseling have spread widely amongst pastors of all persuasions, clerical and lay. The pastoral care and counseling associations in many countries, including African and Asian states, endeavor to relate the insights of relevant secular disciplines to those of theology in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the relationship between pastoral counseling and the communities it serves.

Pastoral counseling emphasizes the spiritual and emotional roots of love and concern that are at the heart of both sacred and secular humanism. On their appointment, Anglican clergy are given the cure or care of souls as their task. Care covers those helping acts that will `heal, sustain, guide and reconcile troubled persons in the context of ultimate meanings' (Best, 1999). Thus pastoral care includes many forms of ministry. Historians have demonstrated how this has often reflected the particular circumstances of the age: sustaining in the early years of church when the world was expected to end; reconciling in the times of persecution and apostasy; healing during the sacramental of the middle ages; and guiding as the pastoral expression of Victorian values. Pastoral care has always been shaped by contemporary needs and current secular as well as sacred knowledge.

Pastoral care is concerned with promoting personal and social development and fostering positive attitudes: through the quality of teaching and learning; through the nature of relationships amongst pupils, teachers and adults other than teachers (Best, 1999); through arrangements for monitoring overall progress, academic, personal and social; through specific pastoral and support systems; and through church and personal/family activities. In such a context it offers support for the learning, behavior and welfare of all people, and addresses the particular difficulties some individuals may be experiencing (Craig, 1991).

The mechanism through which faith conveys its protective effect has been variously conceived. One possibility suggests that it is the relational aspect of religious life that conveys psychosocial benefits or else moderates the impact of risk exposure (Best, 1999). It is well known that a supportive family environment, one characterized by cohesion, parental warmth, closeness, and the absence of chronic conflict, contributes to children's psychosocial resilience, as does the availability of relational supports outside the family.

It is now a truism in the developmental psychopathology literature to say that one good relationship, wherever it is found, offers strong protective possibilities. Clearly this mechanism is potentially active within communities of worship. Perhaps active participation in a cohesive religious community multiplies resources for problem solving and influences how one appraises negative life events and the propriety of certain modes of coping (Burggraf & Gold, 1998).

Yet another possibility suggests that it is one's felt relationship with