Scope and limitation of Pastoral Care

Scope ( applications) 

Elebsch and Jackle the church historians defined “pastoral ministry as helping acts done by representative Christian persons directed towards the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling of troubled persons whose trouble arises in the context of ultimate meaning and everyday concerns”. We also need to be involved in reconciliation. Pastoral ministry is done by representative Christian persons. Christian community must be trained to take care of each other. It is caring for everybody. Scope must be understood in line of functions and various scholars have identified functions. Seward Hittror (1958) came out with three terms healing, guiding and sustaining. Later Howard Clinebell (1984) added another line – nurturing to scope of pastoral ministry: 

1) Healing: It means Physical, physiological, emotional, and spiritual healing means wholeness. The O T word for wholeness is shalom which means you have been restored what you have lost

2) Guiding: It means advice. Pastor is expected to give advice only and not to take any final decisions for them. Pastors’ job is to clarify the issues.

3) Sustaining: To hold on. It comes in the context of emotions. A pastor is expected to care the church people in times of crisis.

4) Reconciliation – Reconciliation in two dimensions are 1) reconciliation with man and 2) reconciliation with God, and also inner conflict.

5) Nurturing: Nurturing essentially means helping a person to grow and develop the given potentials both for the edification of the church and for the progress of that person in order to give empowerment and liberation. 

The whole aspect of all these five functions is combined to one word - wholeness. 

Limitations of Pastoral care 

1. Knowledge: First thing that a pastor should identify is that there are certain areas that he is expert, familiar and also not expert and familiar. A pastor will have limited knowledge in child abuse, drug addict etc.

2 Time: Oftenly limited time and scheduled sessions are assigned for counseling. The alloted time may not suffice the needs of the counsellee. This becomes one factor for effective counsellling.

3. Conflicting rolls: In many occasions and in office, pastor is the boss. A Pastor should not create an atmosphere that a subordinate to tell you that you are the problem. Sometimes we cannot counsel our family members.

4. Relational Aspect

Sometimes counseling someone in the opposite sex is considered as limitation. In counseling there are transference and counter transference which may happen in negative way. This may lead to extra marital affair, so a counselor need to be cautious and take necessary precautions while counseling, like should have fixed counseling session or sittings. Never counsel anyone in the opposite sex in a closed room.