HUMAN DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF THE PASTORAL COUNSELOR
The purpose of this paper is to examine the human development needs of the pastoral counselor. Specifically, the paper will explore studies related to what the pastoral counselor needs to know and to have experienced in order to provide true therapeutic service?
Human Development Needs Of The Pastoral Counselor
Pastoral counseling, as with any form of counseling, requires therapeutic knowledge and skills. However, the question can be asked as to what is the importance of the human development experiences of the counselor himself? It needs to be noted here that human development experiences (how the counselor faces and deals with his own problems, crises, and difficulties in life) are considered very important for the secular counselor because these help the counselor to build the kind of character that is needed for effective therapy.
As Peterson and Nisenholz (1987) have put it, the professional (secular) counselor is expected to have a series of life experiences which have been used by him to become more self-actualized where self-actualized is defined as a person with fourteen specific personal characteristics. These characteristics are: effective and efficient perceptions of reality; acceptance of others, self, and nature; spontaneity; problem-centered rather than egocentric; autonomous rather than culture or environment dependent; deep sense of appreciation for others; able to experience mystic or transcendent experiences; good interpersonal relationship skills; non-discriminatory; ethical; philosophical with an unhostile sense of human; and creative.
While clearly some of these characteristics would be expected of the pastoral counselor as a result of dealing with his own personal life experiences, it cannot be said that all of these relate to the pastoral counselor. For example, a pastoral counselor would be expected to be dependent upon God and His Word r...