From Pastoral Care and Counselling to Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy: A Growing Web

Lutheran Seminary describes pastoral care and counselling in her book The Practice of Pastoral Care as a “web of being”. Drawing on the feminist thought of Nancy Ramsay (1998) and Bonnie Miller-McLemore (1996), Doehring underlines the organic quality of this web of being and contrasts it with the hierarchical notion of the ladder of authority. This image of the web articulated by Doehring captures the growth of the pastoral care and counselling program to spiritual care and psychotherapy at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. This web began in the early 1960’s with the vision and dream of Delton Glebe. The program has grown and shrunk and grown again fostering many partnerships with new and old ideas. This chapter will describe the history of this web through three eras.1 The chapter will mention the key figures (spiders) and the various ideas from both theology and social sciences that form the web A theological reflection will be offered on this development and some possibilities are considered for the future in terms of remembering for the future. First Era: 1960-1977 The seeds for the pastoral care and counselling program were planted in the early 1960’s