INSTAGOS-Instant Logos

 PASTORAL CARE AND COUNSELING (Comparative Terminology). 

In contemporary American usage, "Pastoral Care" usually refers, in a broad and inclusive way, to all pastoral work concerned with the support and nurturance of persons and interpersonal relationships, including everyday expressions of care and concern that may occur in the midst of various pastoring activities and relationships. "Pastoral counseling" refers to caring ministries that are more structured and focused on specifically articulated need or concern. Counseling always involves some degree of "contract" in which a request for help is articulated and specific arrangements are agreed upon concerning time and place of meeting; in extended counseling a fee may also be agreed upon, depending on the institutional setting and other considerations. 

"Counseling" generally implies extended conversation focused on the needs and concerns of the one seeking help. "Care" in many of its expressions is also conversational, though briefer and less therapeutically complex than counseling, as in supportive or sustaining ministries like visiting the sick. The term is also applied to nonconversational ministries in which a significant caring dimension may be present, as in administering communion, conducting a funeral, or pastoral teaching. In earlier, postwar pastoral literature, "care" and "counseling" were often used synonymously; their gradual distinction no doubt reflects the emergence of pastoral counseling as a specialized ministry. Today there is a question as to what extent, and in what respects, the general ministry of care should be guided by the methods and principles of specialized counseling, which have heavily influenced its modern development.