Pastoral care and narrative: Towards a narrative pastoral care approach in intercultural communities

Abstract

Narrative therapy, or narrative pastoral care, is one of the approaches of the last three decades that has attempted to address care for our current fluid communities. Stories and narratives play an important role in the meaning making of personhood and identity. Narratives and stories are becoming more used and recognised as an indispensable part of the healing of vulnerable persons within Psychology, Literature, Sociology and Theology. This contribution is an attempt to add to the growing scholarship of story and narrative approaches in Pastoral Care and Counselling by providing markers for a developing model of pastoral care within intercultural contexts. I will give a brief overview of pastoral care within four different contexts. The narrative approaches of Muller and Ganzevoort will be analysed and critically engaged because of their extensive and elaborative research of narrative for pastoral care and counselling. After a brief overview and critique of Muller and Ganzevoort, I will identify additional markers for narrative pastoral care in intercultural contexts.

Keywords

• narrative
• pastoral care
• interculturality
• muller
• ganzevoort
• meaning making
• healing.