Narrative Counselling as Pastoral Care

This course is designed to introduce you to the foundations of narrative pastoral care and counselling. The aim is to ensure that you are equipped to journey alongside believers and unbelievers in their exploration of identity towards Christlikeness, through narrative pastoral practices in caring ministries, with individual clients (not groups). In this course you will explore the foundation of narrative Christian counselling principles theoretically and practically with a view of skill acquisition towards honours level graduation and professional practice. The course offers the theoretical constructs of narrative counselling as pastoral practice which are then explored through case studies, role plays, self-awareness, and practical experience in order to successfully and safely journey alongside hurting people towards wholeness.

This course is targeted at Christians called to counselling ministries in churches and communities, to work with believers and non-believers from brokenness to wellness.  By the end of this course you should be able to:

• Discern the implications of God’s metanarrative as a framework for Christian counselling.
• Critically analyse the compatibility of Narrative therapy for Christian counsellors.
• Understand problems alongside God’s unfolding story. 
• Use double listening to discern the Spirit’s counter-narrative in the client’s problem-saturated stories.
• Commit to the decentred-and-influential therapeutic posture.
• Apply the techniques of externalisation and deconstruction in your counselling practice. 
• Employ explorative practices to thicken alternative Spirit-led stories. 
• Create a narrative counselling praxis model for your own context. 

You will be required to purchase the following textbook in order to complete this course:

• Morgan, Alice. 2000. What is Narrative Therapy? Adelaide, South Australia: Dulwhich Centre Publications.