Who are we?
At the AAPC conference last weekend, I made a throwaway remark about "forming good clinicians."Immediately, Lee Butler of Chicago Theological Seminary said something like: "We're not about forming 'good clinicians.' We're about forming pastoral theologians who have good clinical skills."
I appreciate Lee's comment (made to the Association's working group of faculty in graduate programs), not only because I agree but because he has succinctly named a primary issue faced by pastoral counselors today:
- Are we primarily clinicians who also know how to reflect theologically and spiritually on the people and situations we encounter?
OR
- Are we primarily pastoral theologians who also have good clinical skills?
It's not an either/or issue, of course. But it's at the heart of the formation of pastoral counselors today, of my work as a theological educator, and of the crisis of identity faced by AAPC.
The tension between these two approaches was evident--but unnamed--in the comments at a two-part session on theological reflection (during which Lee responded to a case presented by another pastoral counselor) and during much informal conversation at the conference.
(By the way: Don't bother with Wikipedia's entry on pastoral theology--it's hopelessly out of date with the ways the discipline has evolved into the 21st century.)
Labels: AAPC, pastoral counseling, pastoral theology
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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