Pastoral Care and Counseling
Introduction
Pastoral care and Counseling is one of the important ministries in the Church at any place in the world. Our churches are filled with people who experience crisis, lost, loneliness, anxiety, depression, divorced, and family problems. Pastors have a huge opportunity to help people just by listening and encouraging those in household of faith. In some cases it is just enough to listen and teach biblical principles of living but in the other cases there is the need to be specifically train people for a specialized ministry of counseling with deeper problems.
In the context of my Country, Russia, I choose three issues which mostly need response in the churches. These issues are Premarital Counseling, Marriage Counseling and Crisis care and Counseling. Most of the times we do not feel comfortable to talk about these issues on the church but it do not mean that the problems do not exist. To have a healthy church these issues need to be addressed and pastors need to learn how to approach people because the people are not going to approach pastors first and ask for help.
Part I: Premarital Counseling
Psychologist Carl Rogers once gave a sobering perspective on marriage. "If 50-75 percent of Ford or General Motors cars completely fell apart within the early part of their lifetimes as automobiles," Rogers wrote, "the public outcry would be overwhelming and drastic steps would be taken to correct the situation." But this happens to many marriages and hardly anyone rises any complain. Divorce is fre¬quent, fewer than half of the marriages that persist could be considered successful, and often couples seem unable or unwilling to correct the situation.
The same situation and attitude to marriage we have in Russian, people usually get marry in age of 20 and mostly marriages fail after first three years. When I was getting my bachelor degree, 90% of my classmates were getting married at ages of 20 - 21 but 95% of them got divorced in the senior year of
Pastoral care and Counseling is one of the important ministries in the Church at any place in the world. Our churches are filled with people who experience crisis, lost, loneliness, anxiety, depression, divorced, and family problems. Pastors have a huge opportunity to help people just by listening and encouraging those in household of faith. In some cases it is just enough to listen and teach biblical principles of living but in the other cases there is the need to be specifically train people for a specialized ministry of counseling with deeper problems.
In the context of my Country, Russia, I choose three issues which mostly need response in the churches. These issues are Premarital Counseling, Marriage Counseling and Crisis care and Counseling. Most of the times we do not feel comfortable to talk about these issues on the church but it do not mean that the problems do not exist. To have a healthy church these issues need to be addressed and pastors need to learn how to approach people because the people are not going to approach pastors first and ask for help.
Part I: Premarital Counseling
Psychologist Carl Rogers once gave a sobering perspective on marriage. "If 50-75 percent of Ford or General Motors cars completely fell apart within the early part of their lifetimes as automobiles," Rogers wrote, "the public outcry would be overwhelming and drastic steps would be taken to correct the situation." But this happens to many marriages and hardly anyone rises any complain. Divorce is fre¬quent, fewer than half of the marriages that persist could be considered successful, and often couples seem unable or unwilling to correct the situation.
The same situation and attitude to marriage we have in Russian, people usually get marry in age of 20 and mostly marriages fail after first three years. When I was getting my bachelor degree, 90% of my classmates were getting married at ages of 20 - 21 but 95% of them got divorced in the senior year of
Bibliography: Benner, David. Strategic Pastoral counseling. Michigan: Baker Book House,1998; Barister C.W . Pastoral care in the church. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1992; Cavanagh, John. Fundamental Pastoral Counseling. Ireland: The mergier press, 1963; Cobb, John. Theology and Pastoral Care. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979; Collins, Gary. Christian Counseling . Dallas: Word Publishing, 1988; Clinebell Haward. Basic Types of Pastoral care and Counseling. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992; Hamilton, James. The ministry of Pastoral Counseling. Michigan: Baker Book House 1975.