This course offers an opportunity to learn and practice introductory pastoral counseling skills. The course will include lectures and class discussions about professional ethics, healthy boundary-setting, and counseling theories and practices, balanced with experiential learning activities including enactments and role-plays of situations often encountered in pastoral settings. Students will learn and practice skills in a safe, confidential, and supportive environment.
The course will foster multicultural awareness, and introduce students to culturally responsive counseling practices. We will examine intentional and unintentional oppressions and privilege, and become more aware of biases, prejudices, microaggressions, processes of intentional and unintentional oppression and discrimination, and other culturally supported behaviors that are detrimental to the growth of the human spirit.
