When a person experiences a specific problem, he/she may turn to the pastoral councillor for
guidance. The pastoral process may become a temptation to be used as an escape route
from the problem. In this way the potential of the problem for life formation is not accounted
for and may inhibit a growth process. This thesis advocates that a pastoral counselling
process takes into account the fact that suffering or problems are moments to facilitate being
a whole human being. Therefore, a problem should be dealt with, rather than trying to
escape from it.
To be a complete person, one has to be prepared to serve. The essence of service is
derived from the image of God: a healthy human being is a person who thrives on
relationships, is creative, behaves ethically, exists responsibly, recognizes need and see life
as eschatological. A life without service is reversal of the image of God and consequently
leads to an unfulfilled life. The recovering of the role of service in life is a healing experience
and can lead to a life of abundance. Events of suffering or the experiencing of problems
need an appropriate action. This reaction will shape each person in his/her unique way by
discovering the manner in which he/she can become a servant in the image of God. The
Biblical way of dealing with suffering and lifeâs problems is not merely explanation but
exploitation as well. God and man form a covenantal relationship to integrate suffering and
problems into being as life giving events. Man finds his unique place in life and God gives
healing. This utilisation of suffering and problems will subsequently be a healing process.
Existing pastoral counselling models were analysed and show that it is possible to integrate
serviceable life through pastoral guidance. However, most models also show that being of
service through utilising problems is not a specific aim in the process of healing. Three
participants in a qualitative research indicated that by ministering their specific events and
problems to other wrought healing. Their problems, alcoholism or dependency issues, rape
and cancer respectively, helped them to serve other people with the same problems. There
is a clear correlation shown between healing the problem and the associated controlling
thereof by being of service to other victims/sufferers. Therefore, the expectation that service
awareness of problems as a strategy for pastoral care will be a healing act on problems.
Pastoral markers who promote healing through being of service is a pastoral counselling that
takes image of God as a point of departure, strives to achieve holistic-existential goals, is
hermeneutical-pneumatological in character, moves from discipleship to apostleship and
progresses educational-covenantal.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-07192013-085159 |
| Date | 19 July 2013 |
| Creators | Els, Johannes Stephanus |
| Contributors | Prof J Janse van Rensburg |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-07192013-085159/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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