Pastoral Care

CM.255 SPECIAL TOPICS The course explores a select topic in pastoral care, preaching, worship, music, Christian education, leadership, administration, mission, or evangelism. Students engage the topic through critical reading, discussion, and writing. Six credits. Faculty

IV. PASTORAL CARE

CM.104 MAYM: INTRODUCTION TO PASTORAL CARE AND COUNSELING Students explore pastoral care for adolescents with an eye toward the ends of psychological wholeness, Christian discipleship, and teens’ own advocacy for social justice. Loss, trauma, and self-destructive behaviors are addressed within a familycounseling context. The course teaches competent care for immigrant youth, African American youth, LGBT youth, and working class youth, with special attention to the distinctive struggles of adolescents in a technology-saturated culture. Six credits. Prof. P. Helsel

CM.150 GRAPHIC NOVELS AS PASTORAL CARE This course deals with themes of sin, justice, and redemption in graphic novels, a medium especially suited to exploring limit situations. Students learn to read graphic novels as multilayered documents, linking them to their everyday lives. Students examine the psychological and spiritual significance of graphic novels. Students reflect on how graphic novels make theological meaning, thus exploring the connection between image and text in sequential art. Six credits. Prof. P. Helsel

CM.238 PASTORAL CARE OF FAMILIES AND KIN NETWORKS This course explores theological, psychosocial, and cultural perspectives on family life and development as these inform pastoral work with families. Biblical and theological resources are placed in conversation with the human sciences as a means for reflecting on and practicing pastoral care and counseling with couples and families in contemporary contexts. Six credits. Prof. P. Helsel

CM.244 INTRODUCTION TO PASTORAL CARE AND COUNSELING: CARE FOR STORIES, SYSTEMS, AND SELF This course promotes a holistic vision of the person-in-context, indicating how to develop relationships of trust across differences with special attention to rural contexts. Students study the structural factors, including prejudice and poverty, that impact families and kin networks within congregational systems. The course examines special topics such as suicide, intimate partner violence, and addiction. Bringing practices of care and counseling to the minister’s self-care means prioritizing opportunities for reflection and savoring life. Six credits. Prof. P. Helsel; Fall

CM.246 PASTORAL CARE IN LOSS, DEATH, AND DYING This course familiarizes students with contemporary issues in death and dying so that they can better provide care for the dying and their loved ones, helping them to make narrative sense of their grief. Ministers are liminal figures who frequently meet death in their work and engage in care for the dying and their families. This course examines how the work of congregational ministers involves balancing the grief of individuals facing loss, communities in transition, and the unjust circumstances of loss brought about by social oppression. Six credits. Prof. P. Helsel

CM.254MINISTRY AND MENTAL ILLNESS This course examines how best to care for persons with mental illness and their families within the context of ministry focusing on pastoral care and ministerial leadership that reduces stigma and provides support. Students learn about the