Pastoral Identity Paper

The book was very well put together with principal concepts, but it was not always easy to follow and some sections had to be read twice for clear comprehension. The message could have been portrayed using straightforward writing that would enable undergraduates and others that are not seeking higher levels of education to process the information. In simpler terms, this book can be essential to pastors, for personal relationships, and other professions if the language is simplified and made more user-friendly.

This belief goes beyond one or two religions; it is prevalent across all religions. Keeping this in mind, it will be helpful to outline a method for witnessing to adherents of folk religions. Phillip Samaan lists six steps to Christian Witnessing in his book, “Christ’s Way of Making Disciples.” However, these six steps are designed to witness to other Christians. To better serve the purpose of this paper, only five steps will be mentioned. These five steps will serve as a basis for witnessing to adherents to folk religions. This method has been effective because it was not contrived from human thought. Rather, it models exactly what Christ did. The first step Jesus took was to mingle with others as one who desires their good. Before even

My faith tradition informs my theology of pastoral care as that a pastor has an authority in the pastoral care relationship. The pastor’s image in my faith tradition is an advisor, director, and guide. In my faith tradition, the lay people like to have the pastoral care, when they make important decisions. Since my culture is the hierarchal and patriarch system, the lay people believes that pastors are better to know about God’s will. Therefore, the lay people are too much depending on the pastor’s advices, and taking pastor’s perspective, rather than choosing what they want. There is no space to listen their inner voice in the pastoral care in my faith tradition. My theology of pastoral care in my faith tradition was that what Jesus did is what we should do. Because of my traditional ideal of pastoral care, I thought pastors have to know everything and be better than others until becoming like Jesus. However, I realized that the theology can be dangerous to look down the lay people and non-Christians, and is not helpful for the pastors and the lay people as well. I think it is important to remember in my tradition that the head of the church is the only one, Jesus, and we are all the body of Christ. There is the better part in the body of Christ. We are all the same and we need each other.

In today 's culture the congregational expectations on a pastor are quite different from the vocational spiritual disciplines required for faithful pastoral ministry. The office of the pastor, for the congregation, has become nothing more than a managerial position of running a religious organization. In response to this Eugene Peterson offers his take on the distinctive work of the pastor and the practices that shape pastoral integrity. In his book, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity, Peterson outlines the practices of prayer, Scripture and spiritual direction as the backbone of faithful pastoral ministry. The following will discuss these practice, there benefit to pastoral ministry and why Peterson call to these practice are important to pastors today.

The calling of a pastor for the Lord is a very high calling as well as position. God has granted the ability of the pastor to lead sheep and teach truth to people. A pastor also has certain convictions that he or she must live up to. These certain convictions keep him or her accountable to God, upholding the stature of being light and salt of this world. Through the content of this paper, every conviction a pastor must have will be discussed, why these convictions are important, and who compromised their convictions.

For this paper I decided to sit down with my childhood friend from my St. Thomas More Catholic School days. Katarina and I have known each other since we were 5 years old. I remember attending church with her family on Sunday morning, spending the night at her house, occasionally attending her family's BBQ's on Easter Sunday, and inviting her to all my birthday parties at Chuck E Cheese. Though we lost touch after high school we found each other again thanks to social media. We are both from Hispanic Catholic families so it was always assumed that we would grow up to be Catholic too. To my surprise I found that on Katie's social media page under religious views it did not say Catholic as I expected but rather Wicca. Turns out Katie decided that the Catholic faith wasn't for her and opted instead to convert to Wicca.

Pastoral Care provides the essentials to support the African Americans and is most vital to their experience in the United States in addition, providing survival and coping skills, leading to worship. Black worship provided slaves with valuable psychological and emotional remedies, which enabled them to combat slavery's annihilation of their sense of self-worth. Today, the "Balm in Gilead" is still the authentic comfort, which helps to maintain sanity and balance in the African Americans world of alienation, traditionalized, and incapability. To be concise, Black worship has always been associated with pastoral care, providing members with comfort and healing.

Pastor used many stories and examples to convince the congregation to agree with his message on faith tested. Pastor also used other scriptures as evidence to support his message • Pathos: arguments that appeal to the emotions. Pastors speaks with confidence and have the ability to control the audience with using comedy. As a speaker, Pastor has mastered the skill of tapping positive emotion, which allows the congregation to relax and enjoy the message. Write your own code of ethics for public speaking.

evangelical churches have had the largest growth. There are a number of reasons for the growth of evangelical churches in the last two decades of the twentieth century. First, Catholics were often targets of government repression for their "subversive" involvement in base Christian communities, while evangelicals were safe from government repression. Second, the evangelical emphasis on personal conversion is considered apolitical. Finally, small evangelical churches provide their members with a strong sense of community and family. During my whole life, my family and religion are the only ones that have helped me the most. My family have always encourage me in all types of situations and also religious because only God could guide me when I

Grace Chapel is a New Covenant Baptist church. Grace Chapel Baptist Church is located in Kingwood, West Virginia. The head pastor is Michael Argabrite, but the congregation calls him “Pastor Mike.” There are many whole church barbeques at the Pastors house that is just down the road. As all Baptists believe, they practice full emersion. They do not believe in infant baptism, only believers baptism. When the church was smaller, the Baptisms would take place at the Pastors house in the pool. Now they have a baptismal in the church. This individual church limits its song list to just hymnals. They also used to only have the piano playing. Now, the church allows a small drum box and they even have a choir now.

This is a process that a preacher must put effort into, especially if the preacher is a parish pastor. Tisdale writes that “preachers need to become amateur ethnographers—skilled in observing and in thickly describing the subculture signs and symbols of the congregation they serve.” Her overall point is that if the preacher fails to understand the congregation, then that preacher is missing a big part of the sermon preparation. From this understanding, I have come up with the phrase that was inspired by my previous career in the medical field: “You cannot feel their pulse if your fingers are not on their neck.” By this I mean that you cannot understand what members of a congregation are thinking and feeling unless you are engaged with them and their lives. Again I would emphasize the importance of this for parish preachers who are with a consistent group of individuals week in and week out. Overall, a preacher needs to know who he/she is preaching to and what content and style of preaching will be most effective for this particular group, and that process begins before the sermon writing even

In order to go forth with any counseling session; one needs to study the Bible passage carefully to discover biblical principles applicable to each person and what they are going through, then one will need to utilize said Godly principles. Consequently, one will need to be creative in how the Bible is used in each counseling session. One will need to ensure that they get to know the person that they are counseling, the issues that they face, and what their spiritual belief is.

The Protestant Reformation indicated that a human can “connect to God and can do so without the aid of a priest.” The ecclesiology behind this is basically what aids me in my ministry. Peterson, in his book Essential Church, explains “the primary affirmation is not that each person is his or her own priest but that each Christian can be a priest, advocate, intercessor, and evangelist to others.” William Willimon, Pastor: the Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, highlights a variety of ways in which a pastor functions. In this paper, I am going to explain the ways in which my current ministry setting connects with the concept of priest as pastor in relation to worship and the connect and context of pastoral care while teaching others that they are able to accomplish the same task.

We place great emphases with the horizontal relationship and we try to do our best to keep those relationships in a healthy zone, but our vertical relationship must be kept up with as well.

Christian Tradition course exposed me to the Christian Tradition based on Biblical and church history. The course taught me the differences and similarities of Christian Tradition from other major world religions. I learned about the significance of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and the Trinity based on the teachings of the Bible. The course also briefly covered 2,000 years of church history but with emphasis on the impact of the Council of Nicea, Council of Chalcedon, and John and Charles Wesley on Christianity. The professor emphasized the importance of the reformation that sparked a revolution in the church.