Story and promise in pastoral care

Abstract

The writer describes the pastoral office and considers the difference his theological orientation makes in understanding its work. The gospel is described as narrative and as promise. As narrative it concerns a particular person, Jesus, and especially his passion and resurrection. Becoming Christian means allowing one's own story and that of one's communities to be shaped and reshaped by Jesus. As promise, the gospel comments on the final outcome of the human enterprise. Ministers are those to whom the community grants the burden of tending the life of the gospel in the church. Their temptation in pastoral care is to lose the specificity of the gospel in slogans that are temporary and partial, e.g., identifying health care with the liberation of the gospel. Pastoral care is described as sacramental and as eschatological.