Pastoral Counseling In Africa And The West PDF Download

"Pastoral counseling in Africa and the West is a masterpiece but a simple read for anyone who wants to practice counseling across cultures. It enables you to understand the wide variety of cultures in which the discipline operates with their distinctiveness. It equips the readers to counsel people from different cultures in a practical manner. The findings are based on research I conducted to understand the wide gap between pastoral counseling in Africa and the West. The results describe what counselors do in both settings. Counseling in the African context operates within the African worldview, but in the West is informed by psychology as its basis of operation. Due to the vital role that the African worldview plays in pastoral counseling within that context, it has culture, prayer, spirituality elements of prophecy and deliverance embedded in its practices. Christians are aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit. They acknowledge him and invite the Holy Spirit to be a significant partner in their practice. On the other hand, pastoral counselling in the West is built on professionalism, with psychology as its backbone. At the onset of counseling in the West, it had a Christian foundation. However, the growth of psychology in the therapeutic profession means that it has gradually relegated scripture to the background in some practices. In contrast, psychology is promoted even in Christian based counseling. This book touches on various forms of counselling such as couple, family, intending couples, pre and post-marital counseling. Despite the different perspectives from which these practices are drawn and focus, they can still encourage and learn from each other. Therefore, pastoral counselling in Africa and the West calls on its readers to learn from each other and improve on this worthy call to counsel."--