IST2012-1-FA15 - Pastoral Theology & Care

IST2012 - Pastoral Theology and Care

Instructor: Rev. Dr. Jason C. Whitehead

jwhitehead@iliff.edu

Pastoral Theology and Care Fall 2015 (1).jpeg

Required Text:

Doehring, Carrie. Th e Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach, Expanded and Revised. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 2015. ISBN 978-0-664-23840-7

Book Review Options:

Bidwell, Duane (2013). Empowering Couples: A Narrative Approach to Spiritual Care. Minneapolis: Fortress. ASIN: B00C7EON1E

Cooper-White, Pamela. The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church’s Response . 2nd ed., 2012 Minneapolis: Fortress.

Creamer, Debbie. Disability and Christian Theology: Embodied Limits and Constructive Possibilities. New York : Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN-10: 0195369157

Fortune, Marie. Sexual Violence: The Sin Revisited . Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2005.

Leslie, Kristen Jane. When violence is no stranger: pastoral counseling with survivors of acquaintance rape . Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002. ASIN: B002SG7N72

Marshall, Joretta L. Counseling Lesbian Partners . Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997. ISBN-10: 0664255329

McGarrah Sharp, Melinda A. Misunderstanding Stories: Toward a Postcolonial Pastoral Theology , 2013 . Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications.

Montilla, R Esteban. Pastoral Care and Counseling with Latino/as . Augsburg: Fortress Press, May, 2006. ISBN-10: 0800638204

Moon, Zachary. Coming Home: Ministry that Matters with Veterans and Military Families. St. Louis, MI: 2015. ISBN-10: 9780827205383

Nelson, James. Thirst: God and the Alcoholic Experience . Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. ISBN-10: 0664226884

Neuger, Christie. Counseling Women: A Narrative, Pastoral Approach . Augsburg: Fortress, 2001. ASIN: B002SG6HVU

Watkins Ali, Carroll. Survival and Liberation: Pastoral Theology in African American Context. St. Louis, MI: Chalice Press, 1999. ISBN-10: 0827234430

Weiner, Nancy H. and Jo Hirschmann. Maps and Meaning: Levitical Models for Contemporary Care. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014

Whitehead, Jason. Redeeming Fear: A Constructive Theology for Living into Hope. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. ISBN-10: 0800699149

Wimberley, Edward. Counseling African American Marriages and Families . Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997. ISBN-10 : 0664256562

Course Overview

This course is an introduction to the practice of spiritual and pastoral care based upon spiritual, theological, psychological and ethical perspectives. Basic methods and skills of pastoral and spiritual care will be introduced, along with an intercultural contextual approach to care that draws upon postmodern approaches to religious knowledge. This course forms students to be pastoral and spiritual caregivers within a spiritually and socially complex world in ways that deeply engage religious and cultural traditions.

Three assumptions ground this course: 

  1. pastoral and spiritual care is a theological task;
  2. pastoral and spiritual care is an activity of the religious community and not solely the responsibility of the "ordained" clergy, clergy need to be equipped to provide crisis care and use their expertise to oversee the supportive spiritual care provided by the community;
  3. the social sciences help us articulate the medical, psychological, and social aspects of spiritual care, they need to be brought into dialogue with theological aspects of care in order to formulate the provisional faith claims that undergird plans of care.

The course will explore how pastoral and spiritual care is distinct from other kinds of care, like mental health care. Students will learn how to use the appropriate styles and skills of communication that are part of spiritual care conversation. They will think contextually about persons as part of bio-psycho-social systems. Upon completing this course, students should have a basic understanding of the theological foundations for pastoral care as well as strate­gies for approach­ing issues in care and counseling that are informed by social and ethical analysis.

Course Objectives

Course Objective: At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to

How your learning will be assessed using the following assessment questions and assignments

Articulate an understanding of the human person and humanity as interpreted in various religious traditions and various psychological, theological, and ethical theories

Are you doing the readings ahead of time so that you will be fully prepared to put theory into practice in spiritual care conversations with your learning partner and in plenary and group postings?

Are you drawing upon travelling knowledge from other courses to reflect critically upon the model of care we use in class, and models of care described in books you review?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignments and group discussions about these assignments.

Your book review will also demonstrate your ability to compare and critically evaluate methods of pastoral theology and care, which are based on varied understandings of humanity.

Learn how to establish professional contracts of care that reflect knowledge  of and accountability within the appropriate professional, ecclesiastical, and legal codes of ethical practice.  

 

Are you able to find and use your denomination’s and/or professional code of conduct?

Are you able to learn and apply codes of conduct and concepts about power dynamics and relational boundaries in reflections on spiritual care conversations?

Learning will be assessed using your first spiritual care conversation assignment and group discussions about these assignments.

Identify the ways in which your personal, religious, and cultural experiences, along with your activities in pastoral and spiritual care, shape your theology, moral orientation, and vocational formation.

Are you using readings and reflections from your experiences as a spiritual caregiver with your learning partner, as well as feedback from your instructors and your group, to reflect upon when and how your personal narratives and aspects of your social identity shape your theology, moral orientation, and vocational formation?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignments and group discussions about these assignments.

Use an engaged or clinical approach to spiritual care that will help you identify and work with the differences between your own religious/spiritual worlds and the spiritual/religious worlds of those receiving care.

Are you able to use lecture notes and lectures on intercultural spiritual care in your practice of spiritual care and in the feedback you give to group members about their spiritual care conversations?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignment and group discussions about these assignments.

Participate in an action –reflection model to learn core skills of pastoral and spiritual care:  (a) ability helpfully to respond to crises; (b) skill in making oneself emotionally available to others; (c) capacity to interpret pastoral situations religiously, spiritually, theolog­ically, and ethically.

Are you using readings and reflections from your spiritual care conversations, as well as feedback from your group, to practice the intercultural model of spiritual care taught in this course?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignments and group discussions about these assignments.

In addition, the book review will demonstrate your ability to understand a pastoral care approach to a particular population or issue.

Week 1

Introductions, Orientation, Pastoral Theology, Care, and Theological Anthropology (link to online version of prezi)

Link to Week 1.Theological Anthropology.pdf

Doehring Article on Moral Stress

 

Week 2

Pastoral Theology and Care 9.24.15

Link to Week 2 pdf

Link to Bernard Loomer article about relational power

 

Week 3

The Art and Science of Listening (pdf)

The Art and Science of Listening (jpeg)

 

Week 4

Healthy Relationships and Effective Limits (pdf)

Healthy Relationships and Effective Limits (jpeg)

Combs and Freedman Article (pdf)

 

Week 5

Susan Nelson - Facing Evil (pdf)

Prezi (online version)

Prezi (pdf)

 

Week 6

Assessment and Planning Care (pdf)

Assessment and Planning Care (jpeg)

 

Week 7 - Self-Care

Self-Care Assessment

The Sturdy Reliant Self-Destructing Pastor

Self-Care Post (Jamie Beachy)

Read one from the links below

Self-Compassion Research (pick one article or study)

Play as an antidote to depression and anxiety

Cultivating Curiosity and Courage

5 Myths about Burnout

 

Week 8 - Death, Dying, Grief, and Loss

Will we ever arrive at the good death?

When does death start?

How to best tell the stories of 3 short lives.

Good Grief

Death in the Internet Age

Talking early about how life should end

Death, Dying, Grief, and Loss (pdf)

Death, Dying, Grief, and Loss (jpeg)

 

Week 9 - Humor and Forgiveness

Humor Reconsidered: The cultivation of accurate perception as a contribution to the care of souls

The psychological benefits of humor

Being forgiven: Toward a thicker description of forgiveness

The will to forgive: A pastoral theological view of forgiving

Preaching forgiveness in a therapeutic age

Notes on diversity and working together across cultures on traumatization and forgiveness: Siblings by choice

 

Week 10 - Assets, Solutions, Narratives

The Power of Valuing (req.)

CHOOSE ONE BELOW

Narrative work

Solution-focused work

Participation (10%)

Much of this course will be taught in a mode of experiential pastoral learning, involving self-disclosure and self-awareness in relation to the task of pastoral care. This means that class members will be expected to become emotionally, intellectually and professionally engaged in doing spiritual care conversations and group discussions. Part of your grade will be based upon your capacity to participate in an experiential learning process in a timely way, and to incorporate what you are learning into your self-understanding and practice of care, especially in the feedback you give to each other where you comment on spiritual care conversation assignments.

Verbatim (50%)

Students will be assigned to a spiritual care giving learning group, where you will begin by writing a 300 word description of a situation involving moral stress, using Doehring, C. (2015). Using spiritual practices to explore moral stress. Group members will read each other’s written descriptions and use these as the basis for having spiritual care conversations.

You will each have two spiritual care conversations that will be digitally recorded (via a phone or other recording device): one in which you give care, another in which you receive care. In the role of caregiver you will basically play yourself, an advanced field education student at Iliff placed in a community of faith or nonprofit organization. You will need to have or construct either an affiliation with a denomination or faith community and/or with a vocation in spiritual care because you will locate and use professional codes of conduct for your denomination and/or certifying organization (for example, organizations that certify chaplains, spiritual directors, hospice care providers, etc.). 

Transcripts of your conversation as the caregiver serve as the basis for doing this verbatim assignment using all of the exercises at the end of chapters 2 – 8 in The Practice of Pastoral Care, Revised and Expanded (these questions will be copied so that you can cut and paste these into your assignment). The total grade for this assignment will be worth (50%).

Book Review (25%)

The book review gives you the opportunity to focus either on a specific crisis (for example, addictions or sexual assault) or a specific context of care (pastoral care to women, lesbian partners, African American women or couples, etc.). A list of possible choices are listed on the Canvas home page (any choices not appearing on the list must be cleared with professor. Note: these are not on reserve; they are available on a first come, first serve basis in the library or through interlibrary loan).

Since this is an introductory course, we will not have opportunity to cover many of the issues or varied contexts studied in the pastoral care elective courses. This assignment gives you a chance to explore your own interests and share them with others in the form of your book review.

Your review should incorporate a critical examination of the text as well as how this text might be utilized in your own pastoral work (see the assignment details on the Book Review Assignment page). You must use each question as a subheading, to ensure that each question is answered fully. The review will probably be 8-10 pages double-spaced.

Compassion Groups (15%)

This assignment runs throughout the quarter, beginning after students are assigned a partner for reflective conversations. A lot of research has been conducted around the need to teach compassion and practice it in our daily lives. Neurologists and others in the cognitive sciences have pointed out the ability to teach compassion and how it changes emotional and thought patterns in the brain over time.

This assignment involves each student developing a practice that embodies compassion towards ourselves and others.

  • Students are asked to research various methods for teaching compassion and decide on a particular practice they can commit to over the quarter (some sources can be found on the Assignment page).
  • Each dyad will have the opportunity to check-in with their partner at the end of each weekly class around the successes and challenges they are facing in carrying out their chosen course of action.
  • Once dyads are formed, you will be assigned to a private message board on Canvas.
  • After your conversations, I would like for one person in the group to post a 3-6 sentence summary of your conversations.
  • You might include:
    • roadblocks to your success
    • places where you felt like you were able to succeed
    • plans for the next week
    • reflections on the conversation that impact your thinking or practices
  • As you can guess, this is not just about individual meditation or practices; each dyad has the responsibility to challenge and support one another throughout the quarter. You also have the opportunity to embody for one another the compassion you are trying to engender in your own life and practices as a pastor, chaplain, care-giver, and human being.

All students must agree to abide by professional confidentiality in all matters, which means that they will preserve anonymity by disguising the identity of cases when seeking consultation and case reporting.  Student disclosures to one another and to the professor will remain confidential, unless the law requires otherwise.  In all cases, students must be aware of the mandatory reporting laws of the state in which they provide professional caregiving. If they are designated spiritual caregivers within their religious tradition, they need to also be aware of what their religious organization requires.  If students have reason to suspect or have first-hand knowledge of recent, current, or ongoing child abuse or neglect perpetrated on a child currently under the age of 18 years, elder abuse, sexual and domestic violence, or threats of homicide or suicide in any of the pastoral situations they use for fulfilling the requirements of this course they need to seek immediate consultation with supervisors, denominational leaders, and the professor of this course so that proper reporting procedures can be ascertained. We will work together to establish an appropriate pastoral relationship with all parties facing these crises. 

State laws on mandatory reporting are available at State Laws on Mandatory Clergy Reporting (Links to an external site.)  Colorado mandatory reporting requirements may be found at Colorado Revised Statutes (Links to an external site.)19-3-304, 1a, 2(aa, II, III); 13-90-107c.  

Degree Learning Goals: Please take some time to look over the Professional Degree Learning Goals (MDiv, MASC, MAPSC) and the Academic Degree Learning Goals (MTS, MA).

Incompletes:  If incompletes are allowed in this course, see the Master's Student Handbook for Policies and Procedures.

Pass/Fail:  Masters students wishing to take the class pass/fail should discuss this with the instructor by the second class session.

Academic Integrity and Community Covenant:  All students are expected to abide by Iliff’s statement on Academic Integrity, as published in the Masters Student Handbook, or the Joint PhD Statement on Academic Honesty, as published in the Joint PhD Student Handbook, as appropriate.  All participants in this class are expected to be familiar with Iliff’s Community Covenant.

Accommodations:  Iliff engages in a collaborative effort with students with disabilities to reasonably accommodate student needs.   Students are encouraged to contact their assigned advisor to initiate the process of requesting accommodations.  The advising center can be contacted at advising@iliff.edu or by phone at 303-765-1146. 

Writing Lab:  Grammar and organization are important for all written assignments.  Additional help is available from the Iliff Writing Lab, which is available for students of any level who need help beginning an assignment, organizing thoughts, or reviewing a final draft. 

Inclusive Language:  It is expected that all course participants will use inclusive language in speaking and writing, and will use terms that do not create barriers to classroom community. 

Course Overview

This course is an introduction to the practice of spiritual and pastoral care based upon spiritual, theological, psychological and ethical perspectives. Basic methods and skills of pastoral and spiritual care will be introduced, along with an intercultural contextual approach to care that draws upon postmodern approaches to religious knowledge. This course forms students to be pastoral and spiritual caregivers within a spiritually and socially complex world in ways that deeply engage religious and cultural traditions.

Three assumptions ground this course: 

  1. pastoral and spiritual care is a theological task;
  2. pastoral and spiritual care is an activity of the religious community and not solely the responsibility of the "ordained" clergy, clergy need to be equipped to provide crisis care and use their expertise to oversee the supportive spiritual care provided by the community;
  3. the social sciences help us articulate the medical, psychological, and social aspects of spiritual care, they need to be brought into dialogue with theological aspects of care in order to formulate the provisional faith claims that undergird plans of care.

The course will explore how pastoral and spiritual care is distinct from other kinds of care, like mental health care. Students will learn how to use the appropriate styles and skills of communication that are part of spiritual care conversation. They will think contextually about persons as part of bio-psycho-social systems. Upon completing this course, students should have a basic understanding of the theological foundations for pastoral care as well as strate­gies for approach­ing issues in care and counseling that are informed by social and ethical analysis.

Course Objectives

Course Objective: At the conclusion of this course, you will be able to

How your learning will be assessed using the following assessment questions and assignments

Articulate an understanding of the human person and humanity as interpreted in various religious traditions and various psychological, theological, and ethical theories

Are you doing the readings ahead of time so that you will be fully prepared to put theory into practice in spiritual care conversations with your learning partner and in plenary and group postings?

Are you drawing upon travelling knowledge from other courses to reflect critically upon the model of care we use in class, and models of care described in books you review?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignments and group discussions about these assignments.

Your book review will also demonstrate your ability to compare and critically evaluate methods of pastoral theology and care, which are based on varied understandings of humanity.

Learn how to establish professional contracts of care that reflect knowledge  of and accountability within the appropriate professional, ecclesiastical, and legal codes of ethical practice.  

 

Are you able to find and use your denomination’s and/or professional code of conduct?

Are you able to learn and apply codes of conduct and concepts about power dynamics and relational boundaries in reflections on spiritual care conversations?

Learning will be assessed using your first spiritual care conversation assignment and group discussions about these assignments.

Identify the ways in which your personal, religious, and cultural experiences, along with your activities in pastoral and spiritual care, shape your theology, moral orientation, and vocational formation.

Are you using readings and reflections from your experiences as a spiritual caregiver with your learning partner, as well as feedback from your instructors and your group, to reflect upon when and how your personal narratives and aspects of your social identity shape your theology, moral orientation, and vocational formation?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignments and group discussions about these assignments.

Use an engaged or clinical approach to spiritual care that will help you identify and work with the differences between your own religious/spiritual worlds and the spiritual/religious worlds of those receiving care.

Are you able to use lecture notes and lectures on intercultural spiritual care in your practice of spiritual care and in the feedback you give to group members about their spiritual care conversations?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignment and group discussions about these assignments.

Participate in an action –reflection model to learn core skills of pastoral and spiritual care:  (a) ability helpfully to respond to crises; (b) skill in making oneself emotionally available to others; (c) capacity to interpret pastoral situations religiously, spiritually, theolog­ically, and ethically.

Are you using readings and reflections from your spiritual care conversations, as well as feedback from your group, to practice the intercultural model of spiritual care taught in this course?

Learning will be assessed using your spiritual care conversation assignments and group discussions about these assignments.

In addition, the book review will demonstrate your ability to understand a pastoral care approach to a particular population or issue.

Degree Learning Goals: Please take some time to look over the Professional Degree Learning Goals (MDiv, MASC, MAPSC) and the Academic Degree Learning Goals (MTS, MA).

Incompletes:  If incompletes are allowed in this course, see the Master's Student Handbook for Policies and Procedures.

Pass/Fail:  Masters students wishing to take the class pass/fail should discuss this with the instructor by the second class session.

Academic Integrity and Community Covenant:  All students are expected to abide by Iliff’s statement on Academic Integrity, as published in the Masters Student Handbook, or the Joint PhD Statement on Academic Honesty, as published in the Joint PhD Student Handbook, as appropriate.  All participants in this class are expected to be familiar with Iliff’s Community Covenant.

Accommodations:  Iliff engages in a collaborative effort with students with disabilities to reasonably accommodate student needs.   Students are encouraged to contact their assigned advisor to initiate the process of requesting accommodations.  The advising center can be contacted at advising@iliff.edu or by phone at 303-765-1146. 

Writing Lab:  Grammar and organization are important for all written assignments.  Additional help is available from the Iliff Writing Lab, which is available for students of any level who need help beginning an assignment, organizing thoughts, or reviewing a final draft. 

Inclusive Language:  It is expected that all course participants will use inclusive language in speaking and writing, and will use terms that do not create barriers to classroom community. 

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