Non-Speech Based Pastoral Care: A Pastoral Care Program for Aged Care Residents with Little or No Ability to Speak

SUMMARY

Pastoral care depends on the ability to communicate, most commonly through the medium of speech. The aged person who has suffered illness or accident that has adversely affected their speech, is in great need of pastoral care. Yet chaplains and pastoral carers can feel helpless in the face of such a significant deficit and may not know what to do. At Tregenza Avenue Aged Care Service, the Chaplaincy service has developed helpful individual programs for non-speech based pastoral care. Using visual and tactile symbols, pictures, touch, and music, we have been able to minister to people with a variety of speech problems, with promising results.     

A Modest Proposal: A Pastoral Political Theology

A pastoral political theology, I contend, has four goals, namely, (a) critical, systemic examination of political governance, policies, programs, and structures vis-à-vis the concept of care—theologically understood, (b) facilitating cooperation and collaboration with diverse others in cultivating public spaces of appearances, (c) offering concrete plans in meeting the needs of particular others—citizen and non-citizen, and (d) assessing the implementation of these solutions. In this article, I offer an outline of and foundational theological premises for a pastoral political theology, indicating its distinctions from and contributions to political theologies that focus on justice and liberation. More specifically, I focus on the first goal, relying on the concept of care, theologically understood, as a hermeneutical framework for assessing the political milieu.     

Pastoral excellence and Pastoral Theology: A slight shift of paradigm and a modest polemic

The existence of Pastoral Theology as a discipline is problematic. The possibility of becoming a discipline is discussed as requiring a shift from a clinical/therapeutic to an ecclesial paradigm as its center. The shift would foster a valuing of the pastor as an interpreter of human existence, attention to the need for a pastoral hermeneutic, and an appreciation for particularity. The field needs to attend its intellectual tasks and to assess the debits/credits of its relations to secular disciplines.     

Pastoral conversation: A social construction view

The purpose of this article is to exhibit a clinical application of a social construction view of psychotherapy in the work of Goolishian and Anderson along with implications for pastoral conversation and for a postmodern pastoral theology.Glenn E. Boyd, M.A., M.Div., LPC, LMFT, is a pastoral counselor on the staff of Interface-Samaritan Counseling Center in Houston, TX. Additional information may be requested by writing him at 4803 San Felipe, Houston, TX 77056.     

Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) and Pastoral Counseling; A Reply to Richard Wessler

This is a reply to Wessler's (1983) contention that pure RET is atheistic and, therefore, is unsuited to serve as a bridge between pastoral counseling and psychotherapy     

Pastoral Conversation: A Postmodern View of Expertise

This article pursues the possibility of a changing conception of expertise following changing conceptions of knowledge. After a brief overview of some of the roots of postmodernism, it examines various postmodern ways of talking about knowledge and reality before suggesting implications for expertise in pastoral conversation. Expertise is a dialogical co-creation of knowledge relevant to the needs of the persons in the conversation and does not exist prior to the conversation.     

A Cross-Cultural Case for Convergence in Pastoral Thinking and Training

This article argues for convergence of pastoral training models as a consequence of the pluralistic nature of contemporary life. It proposes a more active partnership between pastoral disciplines in an attempt to bring wholeness to pastoral service and to pastoral education in a multicultural context. Pastoral counseling, pastoral care and pastoral ministry are presented as mutually complementary and as under girded by the same pastoral theological principle of genuine encounter. Since pastoral theology is informed by personal experience, the author illustrates his points by reference to personal cross-cultural experience. This article is an adaptation of a paper delivered at a multicultural conference in Seoul, Korea in November 2008.     

A Pastoral Model for Caring for Persons with Diminished Hope

An exegesis of the exchange between Jesus and the paralytic man at the pool in John 5:1-17 serves as the basis for a contemporary model for caring for persons with diminished hope.     

Listening to People with Dementia: A Pastoral Care Perspective

SUMMARY

Pastoral and Spiritual Care approaches to the reduction of depression in residential aged care facilities are considered. They are examined through specific one-to-one pastoral care, through a pastoral care person in the team approach to care and through a one-to-many relationship for group spiritual and religious activities. The suggestions in this article are offered as extensions to a manual, Challenge Depression, on managing depression in residential aged care as a way of including pastoral and spiritual care as part of an integrated approach and as part of a stand alone approach of pastoral care.     

Pastoral Counseling Down Under: A Survey of Australian Clergy

This survey research describes the attitudes and practices of Australian Christian clergy regarding counseling in their pastoral care roles. Data has been collected by use of a mail survey of 1954 Australian clergy residing in the state of Queensland from Dec 2007 until March 2008. 758 useable surveys were returned resulting in a return rate of 40.1%. The clergy’s (a) confidence in handling seven different counseling situations, (b) counseling preparation, (c) professional knowledge about counseling, (d) counseling modality, and (e) demographics were assessed. Australian Christian clergy are thus described with a discussion of a number of implications for training organisations such as Bible Colleges and Seminaries.