Frank Stalfa, D.Min.
The unique ethos of the Samaritan Counseling Center is part of the legacy of the Samaritan Institute which began at Elkhart, Indiana in 1972. At its inception, the Institute committed itself to a collaborative and interdisciplinary effort incorporating the fields of psychiatry, psychology and pastoral counseling as a holistic approach to healing. The special field of psychosomatic medicine had already begun to influence how we understood the dynamic interrelationship of mind, body and spirit. However, the initial promise of this approach never transcended the “medical model” with its primary focus on illness, diagnosis and treatment. Hence, the Samaritan Institute-- and the 500 Centers like ours nationwide-- found a novel way to break out of such a limited perspective: by intentionally staffing its centers with licensed and certified practitioners from the allied healing professions. While psychiatry and psychology had collaborated professionally for some time, the addition of pastoral counseling as a distinct and equivalent discipline was unprecedented.
Pastoral Counseling as a Profession
Pastors have always offered some form of care and counsel to their parishioners. However, until the late 1950s, most pastors were not well trained in specialized counseling skills. Although some were more naturally gifted than others in the arts of counseling, pastors tended to focus primarily on the spiritual and religious needs of those who sought their help. The advent of Clinical Pastoral Education offered pastors their most extensive exposure to persons in crisis, usually in a hospital setting. Such training provided an opportunity to learn clinical skills and become more self-aware in one’s pastoral role. In 1964 the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC) was formed to develop standards for the professional practice of counseling by pastors who served as congregational ministers and institutional chaplains. Gradually, the field of pastoral counseling became somewhat independent of church-related positions with pastoral counselors finding opportunities to serve more broadly in the mental health field as qualified therapists. This was a mixed blessing, however. Even though it brought recognition to the field and to the level of training required, most pastoral counselors functioned as “generic” therapists in whatever context they found themselves: addictions, couple and family therapy and bereavement counseling, for example. The pastoral dimension was often lost in the process.
What’s Pastoral about Pastoral Counseling?
Every discipline claims to be unique in some way. At one time it could be claimed that pastoral counseling was set apart by its context: counseling by a pastor serving as a leader of a faith community. This is no longer true in many cases. Either congregational pastors do not have the additional training or find it problematic to engage in therapeutic relationships with parishioners, even when qualified to do so. As pastoral counseling became independent from direct service to a congregation, it lost part of its former identity. In the purely clinical context, it is less clear what pastoral means. Here at the Samaritan Counseling Center we have seen a kind of evolution take place that is still in process and difficult to define. The following values may help us identify the spirit of the pastoral in the care all of us offer to our clients, regardless of our professional training, degrees or therapeutic orientation:
- Our primary connection to Lancaster County is through the faith communities that nurture the spiritual lives of our clients.
- Our commitment to the well-being of our clients is not defined by any single religious tradition. While our Center values may be rooted in a belief that all human beings are created in the image of God and are of infinite worth, those of any or no religious faith tradition are equally respected and welcomed.
- We seek to offer healing for the whole person—body, mind and spirit—and see each dimension as worthy of care.
- We take the moral and faith values our clients bring to their issues seriously and consider them a prime resource for the therapeutic process.
- We recognize that our clinical skills are never enough if the quality of the therapeutic relationship does not communicate respect, affirmation and honesty. In many ways, it is the relationship we develop with our clients that has the power bring about healing.
- Our concern for healing extends beyond the persons requesting help so that in their own personal healing they may also become healers themselves. We not only care about personal wholeness, but about justice and mercy extended out to the world beyond our clients and ourselves. True healing is political as well as personal.
- We believe in preventative approaches to well-being by offering educational opportunities
to learn about ourselves, thereby sustaining wholeness.
These are ambitious values and goals. However, they represent the original hopes in the founding vision of the Samaritan Institute. We are still cultivating and learning from that legacy. Perhaps the greatest contribution of pastoral counseling to our Center is that it no longer stands alone or apart, but works with and through all the other disciplines that serve to bring about a better world for us all.
Frank is a therapist and pastoral counselor at the Samaritan Counseling Center.
1803 Oregon Pike
Lancaster, PA 17601
717-560-9969 · 1-800-400-7789
Fax 717-560-9553