Pastoral Care
Pastoral care is a ministry of presence offering a unique relationship that honors your story, your psyche and your faith, providing consistent, caring support as you walk through the challenges of life.
Pastoral care meets you where you are and explores your past to illuminate how your story impacts life in the present. The focus is not on managing symptoms or behavior but on the story of your life and looking deeply into how your experiences have shaped you. It’s about examining your circumstances and relationships, exploring significant events, and how you cope with the struggles of your life.
Pastoral care is oriented to your relationship with God. It’s about finding God in your story, discerning meaning, and asking questions. Where is God in this? What might this season be shaping in me? How does this fit into the larger story of my life?
Pastoral care offers transformation through presence, reflection and shared discernment of God in your life story.
Interpreting God’s presence and movements can be hard to do alone, especially if you’re suffering. We all need a time of reflection and someone to help us see more fully who we are and what’s happening from a caring, non-judgmental perspective. As your companion, I’m here to reflect what I see when I read your story with you, sharing what I notice with kindness and compassion.
Benefits of Pastoral Care
Welcomes your story without trying to fix you
Increases the depth of your self-understanding including patterns, struggles or themes running through your story
Makes meaning of hardship and suffering exploring questions of faith and God
Develops spiritual awareness of grace, invitation, pruning and growth
Heals wounds in a human relationship that invites God to the conversation
Supports ongoing personal formation and conversion
In pastoral care, there are similarities to what is discussed in therapy, yet pastoral care is not therapy as it does not offer diagnosis or treatment of mental health diagnoses.
If you’re experiencing acute mental health symptoms impairing your ability to function in daily life, are suffering active addiction, or are seeking treatment for a mental health diagnosis, therapy is a better option.
