The Formation of Pastoral Counselors

Challenges and Opportunities

Duane R. Bidwell, Joretta L. Marshall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780789032966
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136449598
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Asesoramiento psicoterapéutico

Explore the concept of formation in pastoral counseling from a variety of perspectives Two dozen of the most prominent clinicians and scholars in the field reflect on The Formation of Pastoral Counselors from clinical, theological and theoretical perspectives. This unique book explores the challenges to the personal and professional formation of pastoral counselors in a cultural and historic context that's radically different from the era when the profession first emerged as a specialized ministry. Contributors examine formation from a variety of contexts and perspectives, including spirituality and gender, address theological education and intercultural issues, and present emerging models for pastoral counselors. The Formation of Pastoral Counselors is a practical guide for educators working to shape curricula and training programs to the shifting context in which pastoral counselors are formed for ministry, service, and lifelong learning. This unique book examines ideas about appropriate content and processes for the formation of pastoral care professionals and looks at specialized contextual training models that form their emerging identities. The book's contributors call on extensive experience in pastoral theology, care, and counseling to explore the essential components of formation across different contexts; how those contextual realities change the delivery systems; the epistemological nature of formation; reasons for the limited roles that formal theological education and spiritual experience seem to play at the moment; and why formation is rarely formally addressed in pastoral counseling training. Topics discussed in The Formation of Pastoral Counselors include:

• the turn to formation
• the goals of theological education
• core elements of pastoral theology
• developing spiritual practices
• diversity
• pastoral counseling training programs
• race and ethnicity in the formation of pastoral counselors
• cultural identity
• intercultural contexts
• practical relevancy in training
• gender identity and sexual orientation
• economic disparity Models and practices examined in The Formation of Pastoral Counselors include:
• parallel charting
• clinician narratives
• group supervision
• Benedictine spirituality
• academic and clinical training at the Claremont School of Theology
• the model of formation at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care (VIPCare)
• and much more

The Formation of Pastoral Counselors is an essential guide for pastoral counselors, faculty in pastoral theological care and counseling, and training directors in pastoral counseling centers.

SECTION I:
CONTENT AND CONTEXT

The Role of Pastoral Theology in Theological Education for the Formation of Pastoral Counselors

Larry Kent Graham, PhD
Jason C. Whitehead, MDiv, MSW

SUMMARY. Formal theological education, as mediated through degree programs and specialized academic courses of study, provides the foundational outlook and breadth of religious knowledge and practices upon which are built personal beliefs, professional identity and skills, and vocational direction. To be a pastoral counselor, one is expected to be grounded in formal theological education as an essential ongoing resource for forming one’s identity and guiding one’s practice of counseling. Pastoral theology is the discipline within formal theological education that serves as a bridge between the broader theological milieu and the crucible of pastoral counseling education, supervision and practice in which the more particular elements of the identity, role, and skills necessary for becoming a pastoral counselor come together. doi: 10.1300/J062v08n03_02 [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS. Theological education, pastoral theology identity, integration, context, narrative, relational justice

WHAT IS A PASTORAL COUNSELOR?

A pastoral counselor is a suitably educated and clinically trained practitioner of the ministry of pastoral counseling and psychotherapy. This person operates on behalf of a religious community, providing psychotherapeutic care and religious guidance for those in need. The pastoral counselor utilizes various modes of engagement and reflection in the rigors of psychotherapeutic relationships. These modes of engagement and reflection include: (1) the personal and vocational, through continued pastoral identity development and commitment to one’s spiritual and psychological development, (2) the contextual, through careful analysis of the cultural and social milieu, including one’s own social location, (3) the theological, through critical, practical, and constructive engagement with the problems and strengths of clients as influenced by the various religious traditions affecting the counseling relationship, and (4) the clinical, in which therapeutic modes of interpretation and intervention are utilized to promote wholeness in personal and relational living. In brief, a pastoral counselor is a person who is involved in a life-long process of ministry in a psychotherapeutic setting on behalf of a religious community, utilizing a variety of complex modes of engagement, interpretation and intervention, in a context of ongoing accountability, education, and formation.

A pastoral counselor is formed out of the creative and constructive interplay of various influences and contexts. The central concern in the formation process for pastoral counselors is the creation of a coherent identity and a viable set of practices from a variety of influences and modes of interpretation. Formation is a complex and ongoing activity, unique for each pastoral counselor. Formation occurs by multiple means. It is never completed.

This chapter explores some of the salient elements in the formation of the pastoral counselor, especially the roles of formal theological education and the manner in which the discipline of pastoral theology links theological education to the formation of the pastoral counselor.¹ We begin our discussion with a brief description of some aspects of Jason’s formation as a pastoral counselor.

A PASTORAL COUNSELOR IS FORMED: JASON’S STORY

My journey toward becoming a pastoral counselor began with a sense that ministry was my vocation. However, I wanted my ministry to reflect my interest in psychology and the therapeutic world. As a youth director in a large congregation I found it necessary to utilize my psychological background when meeting with youth in pastoral care situations. I was not theologically trained at the time, but as my work and involvement in the congregation continued I felt pulled to try and connect these theological and pastoral situations with psychology and care. Fortunately, my future mother-in-law had some contacts with the pastoral counseling world and she thought that a dual masters program answered some of the questions I had about how to bring the therapeutic and ecclesial worlds together.

Today, I am dually trained as a Presbyterian minister and a social worker. I worked my way through a Master of Divinity program while concurrently completing the necessary coursework for a Master in Social Work with a specialization in clinical work. This dual masters program provided foundational pieces that helped me connect pastoral care, theology, and psychological sciences. Moreover, it added ongoing resources through which I would later be able to critically, clinically and theologically respond to the problems that clients brought into the room with them. These two programs were the starting points for an organic process of formation that grew from conflicts between my role as a youth director, my psychological understandings, my curiosity about my sense of vocation, and my sense of self. Some of the conflicts I dealt with were issues of ethics and justice as well as the relationship between psychological and theological constructions of the self. Ultimately, I was beginning to work through how I would construct my own sense of identity in relation to theology, pastoral care, and clinical social work understandings.

During my first two years in the Master of Divinity program I was a part of a community that struggled to articulate an interdependent relationship between scripture, theology, pastoral care, preaching, and teaching. The interrelatedness of the coursework, as well as the relationships formed with other struggling students, opened new ways of critically reflecting on what I was learning, and ultimately provided me a new way of viewing the world and my relationship with it. It was more than simple belief or faith; it was a way of constructing and conversing with the world and the situations it presented out of a coherent and dynamic theological framework. I carried this sense of connectedness into my clinical work in the final two years of my program and spent a great deal of time theologically reflecting on the clinical material I was learning. Without my time in seminary, in that crucible of theological construction, I wonder if I would have been able to build the necessary framework for sustained theological reflection needed when working as a pastoral counselor. For example, the case studies we presented during our training often involved theological reflection concerning a particular client. In order to fully engage in this process I had to have a working knowledge of theological themes and a sense of where I stood in relation to the themes as they were presented during case conferences. Without the sustained experience of theological reflection during seminary I would have been unable to productively reflect on these themes and how they might affect the worldview of the client and inform a therapeutic response to the client.

I joined the associate staff at the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care (VIPCare) in 2002. I was a 30-year-old therapist and the youngest member of the staff by about 20 years. My early time on the staff was marked by my sense of feeling paralyzed. It took about two years before my supervisor found the right moment to rip me from a rigid yet comfortable therapeutic existence and reignite my malleability. I remember the event to this day. I left her a voice mail that offered some excuse as to why I could not make it to supervision that week. I don’t remember her reply; I only remember that her words circumnavigated whatever depressive defense structure I had erected and made me angry. Instead of neglecting supervision that morning, I arose ready for a fight. When I arrived we didn’t fight; instead we processed my reaction and worked on ways to combat a depression that I had not acknowledged or addressed. Following that hour we began to focus more on my theological and psychological integration and formation. I entered into a therapeutic relationship to work on my depressive features. Finally, I began to intentionally reflect on where I was and the experiences that brought me to that point in my life.

Looking back, I realize my formation as a pastoral counselor began in two relatively safe places where people were valued, challenged, and accepted. They were patient atmospheres that sought to nurture me through constant attention and unrelenting care for the development of my pastoral identity. Union-Presbyterian School of Christian Eductaion (PSCE) and Virginia Commonwealth University were the places where I first tested the boundaries of faith, theology, and pastoral care. VIP-Care was the place where stories came alive as staff members shared their own struggles and growth throughout their years together. The staff members at VIPCare used their individual and relational histories to propel them into a continual state of incompleteness, seeking opportunities for growth that stretched their imaginations and experiences of life.

In the end, my formation process was one of self-discovery and awareness in the context of three particular communities attuned to the struggles and hopes of any growth process, but intensely focusing on the unique particularities of each person. I was nurtured by stories of success and failure and given the space to try new things and develop my own sense of creativity. The more I discovered about myself, the more open I became to the lives of the clients I saw.

Out of these experiences the concept of formation has come to have an organic feel. For me, it recalls visions of potters stretching their clay-crusted fingers over a lump of clay. My spouse and I spent one Saturday afternoon driving the Blue Ridge Parkway in western Virginia. Moments after we left the parkway, we happened upon a large house set off of the road with a large sign reading, “Pottery.” Having a soft spot for pottery we pulled off the road to take a look. After examining the polished pieces in the shop we ventured into a workshop where we found a man in his sixties sitting at a manual potting wheel. A moment after we entered he grabbed a lump of clay and slammed it into the smooth surface of the wheel. The wheel began to spin and his clay-crusted fingers moved knowingly over the lump, adding gentle pressure as if listening to what the clay wanted to become. I sensed that there was a moment when his mind and the clay decided what would be formed and he seized it, adding pressure and introducing shape. As clay walls began to form the potter spoke absent-mindedly about the different forms of clay, and the mishmash of soil, chemicals and water that went into the lump that sat before him. Clay is carefully crafted for the purpose of creating pottery. Pastoral counselors are not that different; we have carefully poured the right amount of chemicals and water into the soil of our lives, developing a mass of potential awaiting a potter to begin their work.

When I look back at the formative events from church work to seminary, and social work to supervision, I can see that there was a necessary willingness on my part to want to be more than just proficient. I had to claim who I was pastorally and embrace my strengths and weaknesses in order to ground who I was, where I was. I had already developed all of the language and reflective skills of a counselor, but formation meant utilizing myself-who I was and how I thought, felt and acted-as a partner with what I had learned through my theological and clinical training.

As I think further about my journey the elements necessary for the formation of a pastoral counselor come into focus. Many elements had to be pressed together and carefully crafted to form a pastoral counselor into something of beauty and usability. They include formal academic programs, clinical service and education, the supervisory context, and the pastoral counselor’s unique psycho-spiritual processes. In my case these coalesced creatively at a significant point in my life under the hands of a very astute supervisor. This event was one of many that helped me to expand and achieve a viable pastoral counselor identity and practice that was firmly integrated into my faith commitments and personal developmental history.

THE GOALS OF THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION

Theological education today has many expressions, especially in the context of the theological school. The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in the United States and Canada lists over two hundred degree-granting institutions as accredited member institutions. Some form of ministerial education comprises the lion’s share of the degrees offered by ATS member schools. For the purpose of this discussion, we take the general goals of ministerial education as our guide to interpreting formal theological education as a foundation for forming pastoral counselors. These goals are well described by the ATS (2005):

Curricula for programs oriented toward ministerial leadership have certain closely integrated, common features. First, they provide a structured opportunity to develop a thorough, discriminating understanding and personal appropriation of the heritage of the community of faith (e.g., its Scripture, tradition, doctrines, and practices) in its historical and contemporary expressions. Second, they assist students in understanding the cultural realities and social settings within which religious communities live and carry out their missions, as well as the institutional life of those communities themselves. The insights of cognate disciplines such as the social sciences, the natural sciences, philosophy, and the arts enable a knowledge and appreciation of the broader context of the religious tradition, including cross-cultural and global aspects. Third, they provide opportunities for formational experiences through which students may grow in those personal qualities essential for the practice of ministry, namely, emotional maturity, personal faith, moral integrity, and social concern. Fourth, they assist students to gain the capacities for entry into and growth in the practice of the particular form of ministry to which the program is oriented. Instruction in these various areas of theological study should be so conducted as to demonstrate their interdependence, their theological character, and their common orientation toward the goals of the degree program. The educational program in all its dimensions should be designed and carried out in such a way as to enable students to function constructively as ministerial leaders in the particular communities in which they intend to work, and to foster an awareness of the need for continuing education.

The curricula for preparing ministerial leadership in the context of formal theological education have many interlocking features. They emphasize critical thinking and personal appropriation of historical, contemporary, religious, and secular knowledges. They foreground contextual analysis and global perspectives. They provide occasion for interfaith and other forms of cross-cultural and intercultural exposure. They are concerned with practical skills for particular ministries and they place a large emphasis upon the way all of these elements come together in the spiritual and personal formation of the student. It is not possible to gain a formal theological education without some sustained and accountable exposure to all of these elements within a program designed to critically integrate them into one’s own personhood and to help students live out of them in the practices of their life and ministry.

We believe that two special characteristics necessary for the formation of ministerial leadership in general, and pastoral counselor formation in particular, result from the kind of comprehensive and integrated theological education available in seminaries and accredited programs. These characteristics are theological fluency and traveling theological knowledges.

The term, “theological fluency” was articulated by our colleague, Carrie Doehring, Associate Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. Doehring makes a distinction between “theological literacy (being able to read and write about theological ideas) and theological fluency (using theological ideals as a basis for practice),” noting that, “… we become fluent when we ‘inhabit’ our theology as a faith perspective that we use to understand and respond to spiritual and psychological needs. Whereas becoming theologically literate is part of learning how to think critically, becoming theologically fluent involves formation” (Petersen & Rourke, 2002, 311). As we use the term, theological fluency refers to the manner in which a pastoral counselor is able to internalize modes of thinking and relating derived from her formal theological education in such a manner that it becomes available for informing her pastoral counseling identity and practice.

The idea of “traveling theological knowledges,” was coined by Professor Sheila Greeve Davaney in a discussion of curriculum review at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. The concept of traveling theological knowledges refers to the manner in which the skills, capacities, and bodies of knowledge learned in one area of theological curriculum would be carried into other areas of the curriculum and eventually into the practice of ministry, continued academic and professional work, or other forms of religious leadership. For example, one question might concern how the capacity to examine a biblical, hist...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Frontmatter page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• About The Editors
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Formation Content, Context, Models and Practices
• Content and Context
• The Role of Pastoral Theology in Theological Education for the Formation of Pastoral Counselors
• Theological Reflection and the Formation of Pastoral Counselors
• Thick Theory Psychology, Theoretical Models, and the Formation of Pastoral Counselors
• Spirituality and the Formation of Pastoral Counselors
• Race and Ethnicity in the Formation of Pastoral Counselors
• Pastoral Formation of Counselors in Intercultural Societies
• Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and Pastoral Formation
• Formation in the Context of Economic Disparity
• Models and Practices
• Formation Through Parallel Charting Clinician Narratives and Group Supervision
• A Model for the Spiritual Formation of a Pastoral Counseling Center
• A Model of Formation in the Multi-cultural Urban Context for the Pastoral Care Specialist
• Formation for Care of Souls The Claremont Way
• A Model of Formation The Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care
• Expanding the Context of Care Formation from the Inside Out and the Outside In
• Index