LC Block: LC 550, LC 552, and LC 554
Prerequesites
LC 520
Date
Friday, Jan. 16th – Sunday, Jan. 18th
Credit
2.0
Block
3
Course Description
LC 550 – Creating a Congregational Culture of Care
Creating a Congregational Culture of Care During this course, we will seek together to develop your role as a pastoral caregiver within the congregational context and to cultivate your gifts in equipping the entire congregation to be a community of care. To achieve this, we’ll investigate theories, methods and practices of pastoral care and counseling, and will explore the role of theological reflection within the contexts of congregational care. We will consider how our embedded and operative theologies impact our approach and role in care giving. We will also engage a diverse selection of scholars in theology, systems theory and organizational dynamics. All these areas will be examined through the varying lenses of gender, cultural, national, racial, ethnic, ability, class and sexual difference.
LC 552 – Diagnosis & Referral: Lost Art of Listening
This course is designed to introduce students to skills for effective pastoral care giving. Students will learn the art of pastoral listening through instruction, practice and feedback, thus helping to improve interpersonal self-awareness. This course introduces the topics of pastoral assessment/diagnosis and intervention, with specific attention to learning when and how to refer a person to additional sources of care.
LC 554 – The Art of Visitation
Visitation is one of many activities which fall under the larger heading of pastoral care. As such, this course builds on theories and practices covered in LC 520 Pastoral Care Modalities with the intent of aiding the student in becoming a more self-aware and effective pastoral care giver.
This course will not recommend any one method for visitation, but will facilitate reflection on the various advantages and disadvantages of different options for doing visits and implementing a visitation program. It will argue for and try to facilitate deep awareness of even the small decisions and moments in this incarnational ministry. The nature and work of God. We will look at ideas about creation and providence, God’s dual nature as both immanent and transcendent, theodicy and the nature of God as Trinity.
Professor
Beth Toler
Contingent Faculty
Education
ThD, Emory University, Candler School of Theology
MDiv, Duke University Divinity School
BA, Mercer University
Bio
Reverend Dr. Beth Toler, ThD, LMFT, is an ordained American Baptist minister and brings diverse experience from ministry, clinic, and classroom to Moravian Seminary. Her pastoral experience includes parish, campus ministry, and hospital chaplaincy. Beth’s clinical experience includes work in psychiatric recovery centers, college counseling centers, and over fifteen years of private practice counseling for individuals, couples, and families. Currently, Beth also co-facilitates clergy colleague groups for the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. Her active writing and research focus is on the methodological and practical implications of integrating religion and spirituality into the counseling process.
Professionally, Beth serves on the Psychotherapy Commission of the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education and is President of the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling.
Course Information
Course Goals & Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course, it is expected that students should have had the opportunity…
- To develop and articulate a theological framework for understanding their own pastoral identity, the meaning of care of persons, the pastoral role of Christian community (thinking critically and creatively about the Christian faith).
- To analyze and critique the larger social, economic, and political contexts in which individuals’ and families’ pain is addressed in the pastoral care situation (thinking critically and creatively about the Christian faith).
- To increase proficiency at basic communication and listening skills, pastoral diagnosis and assessment, appropriate pastoral responses, and the role of referral in pastoral care giving (gaining specific pastoral and leadership skills appropriate to ordained ministry).
- To evaluate decisions and skills utilized for their effectiveness in a given pastoral care situation (gaining specific pastoral and leadership skills appropriate to ordained ministry).
- To be introduced to elements of the field of psychology that have been utilized within the pastoral care discipline in order to make appropriate pastoral assessments. The emphasis will be on knowing when and how to refer to other professionals, and on building professional networks for more effective and holistic care (gaining skills and knowledge appropriate to ordained ministry).
- To be able to identify specific individuals, organizations, and resources within the wider community that contribute to the development of a caring congregation. (gaining skills and knowledge appropriate to ordained ministry).
- To be exposed to different models of lay ministry and of visitation programs in order to develop their own approaches particular to their ministerial setting (gaining skills and knowledge appropriate to ordained ministry).
- To be attentive to caring for one’s own self as one attends to care for others and of the community (integrate the spiritual, intellectual, and practical aspects of ministry).
- To be provided opportunity to explore feelings, questions, concerns, fears, desires, and dreams around their pastoral care, including the spiritual practices that sustain their work (integrate the spiritual, intellectual, and practical aspects of ministry).
- To receive feedback from professor and other students in a safe, constructive, manner about their work as it relates to the themes of the course (integrate the spiritual, intellectual, and practical aspects of ministry).
Required Textbooks
LC 550
Gregory C. Ellison II, Cut Dead but Still Alive: Caring for African American Young Men
Ch 1-3, 6: http://a.co/fKIlIXdinks to an external site.
Ronald Richardson, Creating a Healthier Church: Family Systems Theory, Leadership, and Congregational Life
Ch. 1-3, 5, 9,13: http://a.co/aTVIBl8inks to an external site.
LC 552
Robert Albers, William Meller, Steven Thurber (eds), Ministry with Persons with Mental Illness and their Families
Read the chapters on depression, anxiety, personality disorders, autism, and dementia (chapter numbers are different between the 1st and 2nd edition)
http://a.co/d/buz3KoEinks to an external site.
LC 554
Emma Justes, Hearing Beyond the Words: How to Become a Listening Pastor
Ch. 1-3: http://a.co/dan309Links to an external site.
Steve Nolan, Spiritual Care at the End of Life: Chaplain as a ‘Hopeful Presence’
Ch. 1, 3, 5: http://a.co/8jUASBginks to an external site.
Is there pre-course work?
What technology is required?
What will I need to bring to class?
Should I bring snacks?
What do I do if I have technical issues?
Contact your course professor and the LTS IT team as soon as possible.
Other Intensives Course Offerings
IF Block: Who Do We Say That I Am: Christology (IF 556) & God Save Us: Soteriology (IF 558)
Thomas Merton: His Life, Spirituality, and Social Consciousness (LF 673/873)
Building Cultural Frameworks for the Contemporary Contexts (DM 812)
Exegesis for the Church (IS 560)
Christian Political Ethics for Social Transformation (IB 678/878)
A Liberation Biblical Hermeneutics for Lent (IS 680/880)
Building Congregational/Ministerial Frameworks for the Contemporary Contexts (DM 813)
