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The Future Landscape of Pastoral Care and Counseling in the Asia Pacific Region

Abstract In recent decades, pastoral care and counseling practitioners in the Asia Pacific region have identified various issues and concerns such as poverty, religion, and culture. While these issues continue to be important as the region enters into the new century, they are further exacerbated, and new issues are created, by the rapid and disorienting change that the region is going through. The dominant process of globalization has made persons, families and communities feel helpless against powerful global forces at work. While some good has been noted in this process, there is also cause for deep concern as traditional modes of pastoral care and social cohesion are eroded, and life is made increasingly stressful. This article argues for a community approach to pastoral care and counseling that would be relevant in these circumstances, and explores two examples of how the pastoral care of the community can be practiced: helping communities to cope with stressful change and to experience reconciliation and the healing of deep social fractures.