Pastoral Supervision and Refugee Care: Maintaining Complexity in a Causal-Reductive Environment

The phenomenon by which persons actually developnew positive qualities in response to adversity, which is a phenomenon often invisible to humanitarian assistance professionals due to the overwhelming systemic focus on what has been lost, is perhaps one of the world’s greatest miracles. It is my contention that this should be a primary aspect of the ministry of professional chaplains and pastoral caregivers active in crisis work and that the understanding of this phenomenon, which Papadopoulos calls “adversity-activated development,” can offer pastoral caregivers a primary role in understanding and caring for adversity survivors in a way that doesnot reduce them to what they have suffered