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SOCI 644/A (Fall, 2020): SOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY

SOCI 660/A (Fall/Winter 2025-26): PROF DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR

Course description and objectives for THEO 402/2:  Pastoral Ministry

Prof: Brian McDonough, tel: 514-768-7801; e-mail: brian.mcdonough@concordia.ca

 Monday evenings, 17:45 to 20:15 – FG B080 SGW

All Christians are called to holiness, discipleship, and mission.  In this sense, any “service” offered to others can be seen as a share in the Church’s mission.  But more specifically, pastoral ministry refers to “service to others, performed in the name of Christ, and recognized by the Church as necessary to the fulfillment of its mission in the world.” This course will explore such questions as: What comprises Christian ministry?  What are its biblical foundations?  What are its theological and ecclesial foundations?  How does social context shape this ministry and its goals? What practical skills and formation are required for the exercise of ministry?   How is ministry nourished by the development of ethical virtue and spiritual maturity?  Why is it important that those engaged in ministry do so not as “lone rangers”, but collaboratively.

We will seek to answer these questions by considering the lives of six exemplars: Dorothy Stang, Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, and Pierre Claverie.  We will consider their corresponding models of pastoral ministry: stewardship (or care of creation), hospitality, compassion (including spiritual accompaniment), advocacy, solidarity, and witness (through dialogue & lifestyle choices). We will evaluate these different models, establish the rootedness of each one in the Bible, point to the potential for personal growth each one offers, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

Simultaneously, we will be considering the skills and requirements involved in pastoral ministry, especially in an intercultural setting. These include the radical respect for the other, trust-building and confidentiality, understanding processes of change, the significance of storytelling, theological reflexivity and accountability, struggling with suffering and evil, and coping with loss and violence.

The objective is for each student to build a foundation of intellectual, personal, and spiritual resources on which a meaningful pastoral ministry can be constructed.  To this end, students are expected to attend faithfully, participate actively, and do the reading assignments in anticipation of each class. 

 There are two textbooks required for this course: The Practice of Pastoral Care: A Postmodern Approach, by Carrie Doehring, (Westminster John Knox, 2015) Price (Indigo): $48.00. (To facilitate and accelerate students’ acquisition of this textbook, I have ordered 7 copies, which I will be selling in class.) This book considers caring relationships in intercultural settings, embodied listening, and narrative themes of loss, violence and coping. A Step Along the Way: Models of Christian Service, by Stephen J. Pope, (Orbis, 2015) Price (Amazon): $14.91 for the Kindle version. This book is especially written for students who want to think more clearly and deliberately about the meaning and significance of service in a Christian perspective. Some people find it difficult to talk about the connection between Christian faith and service. This book has been written to help overcome the gap between our language and our experience.

 Method of Evaluation:

Students will be required to submit four (4) short summaries of the excerpts from our textbook The Practice of Pastoral Care. Each summary must be submitted before the class when that particular excerpt will be discussed in class. Each summary (ideally a Word document, 1.5 spaced, 12-point) should not be longer than 3 pages. Each summary will be worth 20% of the final mark. The four summaries will amount to 80%.

For the final assignment (take-home, open book), students will submit a 6-to-8-page written report based upon an interview with a pastoral minister active in a particular area of Christian service. (I will provide a list of such pastoral ministers.) In their report, students will be expected to make connections with the exemplars they will have encountered in Stephen Pope’s A Step Along the Way and to draw upon the different models presented in that textbook. Students are strongly urged to refer to what they will have learned from Carrie Doehring’s The Practice of Pastoral Care. This assignment will give students the opportunity to understand the practical skills required when serving in an intercultural setting and the ways of dealing with difficult situations encountered in pastoral ministry. The date for submitting the final assignment has not yet been determined. This final assignment will be worth 20%.