1995 – 2020 25 Years Seminar 1995 EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS Intercultural and interreligious Care and Counselling over more than 25 Years ISSN: 143-8962 Nr. 33 Interkulturelle Seelsorge EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS und Beratung Intercultural and interreligious Care and Intercultural Counselling over more than 25 Years Pastoral Care Short Introduction and Counselling BEGINNINGS Harald Bredt, Board of the Rhenish Association for Pastoral Schriftenreihe der Care, Pastoral Psychology and Supervision, Düsseldorf Gesellschaft für Ursula Riedel Pfäfflin, Dresden, Germany Interkulturelle Seelsorge und Helmut Weiß / Klaus Temme, SIPCC Beratung Ronaldo Sathler-Rosa, Sao Paulo, Brazil Solomon Victus, Madurai, India Magazine of the Society for Intercultural DEVELOPMENTS Pastoral Care and Counselling, SIPCC Kathleen Greider, Claremont, California, USA Mary Rute Gomes Esperandio , Curitiba, Brazil Nr. 33: Brenda Consuelo Ruiz, Managua, Nicaragua EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS Itumeleng Julius Pudule , South-Africa Intercultural and interreligious Daniel S. Schipani, Elkhart, Indiana, USA Care and Counselling in more Amnon Daniel Smith, London, UK than 25 Years Cemal Tosun, Ankara, Turkey Anniversary edition LEARNING COMMUNITIES AND COOPERATIONS Düsseldorf October 2020 Ronaldo Sathler-Rosa, Sao Paulo, Brazil Editor and Layout: Jean-Charles Kaiser – Martin Wehrung, AFfsp, France Helmut Weiß János Tódt, Gyökössy Institute, Budapest, Hungary Mercy Anna Saragih, GKPS, Indonesia SIPCC Rhoda Chamshama, SIPCC Branch Tanzania Friederike-Fliedner-Weg 72 Su Myat Thet and Team, YMCA Counselling Centre Yangon, D - 40489 Düsseldorf Myanmar Tel.: + 49 (0)211-4790525 John Joseph Masih, All Nation Churches, Karachi, Pakistan Fax: + 49 (0)211-4790526 Helmut Weiss, ICPCC and SIPCC Heike Komma, ECPCC, Bayreuth, Germany www.sipcc.org E-Mail: GOING INTO THE FUTURE [email protected] Daniel J. Louw, South-Africa ISSN: 1431- 8962 2 A short introduction When the "Society for Intercultural Pastoral Care and Counselling - SIPCC" was founded on 17 October 1995, nobody could have guessed how this association would develop. The vision, however, was to create opportunities for encounters and training and further education in pastoral care and counselling. People from all countries, cultures, religions worldviews were to be invited to work together how they themselves and their fellow human beings could keep hope in life-threatening and violent times and how they could help each other in times of need. Now, after 25 years, it is clear that SIPCC with its members and its activities has gone far beyond what was then a timid vision. For "intercultural pastoral care" was a complete novelty in the German-speaking world and it was often unclear what could be meant by it. However, when the first theoretical approaches were described in the International Seminars and then also in the "Handbook of Intercultural Pastoral Care", published in German by SIPCC in 2002, it became clear that pastoral care is usually intercultural, i.e. that in every pastoral contact, different "sign systems" come together which require special sensitivity. And then it also became clear that cultural and religious attitudes are so closely connected with each other that one cannot separate them - certainly not in care and counselling - even if they are always to be distinguished. In SIPCC we are indeed in the process of discovering "new horizons" again and again. If one reads the following contributions of very different kinds, which have also been deliberately left in their diversity, something stands out: SIPCC has the quality of forming community, and this on several levels. The people who come to our events from many different parts of the world feel that they are being received as human beings; SIPCC sees itself as a learning community for care, counselling and working for human well-being; in all religious and ideological diversity, there are connections among us as a spiritual community. SIPCC has been involved in pastoral education in several countries, some of which have been running for many years. SIPCC has created its own forms of work: time and again the differences between the Seminars and conferences are mentioned. But read for yourself, take part in the diversity and enjoy the colourfulness. The contributions are divided into the following different chapters: Beginnings / Developments / Learning communities and Cooperation. They are followed by an article by Daniel J. Louw with the title: “Towards a Spirituality of Acknowledgement (Anagnorisis) and Orthopathy in Pastoral Encounters and Intercultural Dialogues" which is giving us some directions how to find “Ways into the future" for SIPCC. Helmut Weiß Beginnings RASPuS and SIPCC - common beginnings Harald Bredt1 A Jubilee in times of Corona will not allow for person-to-person encounters at a large celebration. At the same time, encounter is one of the concepts that is of the utmost importance for our two associations - the "Rheinische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Seelsorge, Pastoral Psychologie und Supervision - RASPuS" (Association for Pastoral Care, Pastoral Psychology and Supervision in the Rhineland) and SIPCC - and so it is a real pity that we cannot come together for this anniversary meeting. Our two associations, which were both founded in Düsseldorf in 1995, have a common forerunner, RAKSA, the Rhenish Association for Clinical Pastoral Care Training, which had already existed for 25 years until our associations went their separate ways. After the demand arose in the USA in the first quarter of the last century that pastors should be trained in pastoral care, this idea was taken up in Germany after the Second World War, from the USA and via the Netherlands. And then it took a while until people came together in the Rhineland who made the importance of pastoral training their concern and demanded that their church provide training and further education in pastoral care. Among the church officials, there was first of all more reservation and scepticism than insight and breakup. That is why an association was needed, which worked constantly to ensure that pastoral education received its important place in the training of pastors in education and pastors in congregations. This was the birth of an association for Clinical Pastoral Education in the Rhineland (RAKSA). From then on, the motto was: drill thick planks. In retrospect, much of what is taken for granted today in pastoral care in our churches was difficult to achieve. It was a rocky road that nevertheless led to success. For many years, RAKSA and then following 1 Harald Bredt, RASPuS board-member and chairman from 2012-18, (teaching) supervisor, retired pastor 4 RASPuS took over the organization of further training for pastors in pastoral care through courses. Already with the foundation of RASPuS it was clear that there were also other pastoral trainings which were equal to the CPE and that the field of supervision should be established as an independent form of counselling, since the reflection of work in the church and its professional actors could be helpful for pastoral activities. Here again more work of conviction, support and encouragement was needed with regard to church-leading action. From today's point of view the reluctance of the church authorities is almost incomprehensible, since supervision has become a matter of course in the church now. Even though the CPE courses have not been organized by RASPuS for some years, it was necessary as an association to push again and again in this direction, to emphasize pastoral care as an important part of pastoral work and to promote training. Even if the slogan "Pastoral care is the mother tongue of the church" came from the Rhineland Regional Church, it must still be reminded again and again to this day to take pastoral care and the pastoral fields seriously, to promote and maintain training with clear and high standards and to establish places that stand for professionally qualified pastoral care in society. The fact that volunteers are also trained and working in this personnel-intensive pastoral work today is only due to the high value of professional pastoral care. The board of RASPuS 2020 Helmut Weiß, who was also the chairman of RASPuS for many years, and Klaus Temme were the ones who ensured close contact and constant information from SIPCC at RASPuS. This is the reason why the international pastoral work of the SIPCC has been supported financially for many years up to this day. Helmut Weiß was the pioneer, who often took the leading role and who, in addition to the pastoral topics, also pushed the form of organisation, so that our two associations can now look back on 25 years of existence. For this we thank him especially! The connection between RASPuS and SIPCC should be further strengthened due to the common history and the common task to promote pastoral care. In the Rhineland - i.e. on a local level - we can only learn from pastoral experiences in other areas of the world and reflect 5 on our own work again and again. We are primarily connected by the joy of and concern for good pastoral work. Pastoral care as the "mother tongue of the Church" - and perhaps even of the religions - also connects us across language barriers. In addition, there is also a purely legal connection through our statutes, which, in the event of dissolution of one association, allows the existing assets to benefit the other association. That is the way it is in families - also in our pastoral care association family! Even if we wish that neither RASPuS nor SIPCC will be dissolved in the next 25 years, the common interest in strengthening pastoral care remains of great value for the society we live in. Therefore: All the best - SIPCC! 25 years SIPCC - a success story of intercultural resonance experiences Ursula Riedel-Pfäfflin2 Complexity: how do we understand and process what we encounter? All over the world, we experience crises that manifest themselves alongside and in the midst of terrible dramas of war, movements of flight and dictatorial demonstrations of power, in illnesses which are experienced and their consequences.