AUTHOR'S FORWARD TO

THE CHINESE EDITION

It gives me joy to know that this book, an introduction to the arts of pastoral care and counseling, is now available to persons who read Chinese. It warms my heart to think of you reading my words in the language of one-fourth of all the people on planet earth. The book has now been translated into several other languages including German, Finnish, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean. As I think about this, the words of a hymn which I learned as a boy, come to my mind: "In Christ there is no East or West, In Him no South or North； But one great fellowship of love,Throughout the whole wide earth."

In one sense the theme of that hymn is true. It expresses our Christian commitment to the oneness of the Christian church and of the human family. The scientific marvels of the global communication network and jet travel draw us ever closer as human beings. But as we get closer it becomes clearly evident that there are deep differences among Christians resulting from the varied cultures in which they live in the East and the West, the North and the South. Coming to respect and learn from the profound differences among cultures and religions is a major challenge to all peoples, including Christians, in this nuclear age when the only alternative to God's dream of one world, is no world at all.

A friend of mine who is a leader in the ecumenical church and a minister in Zaire, tells about a wise saying from Southeast Asia,expressed in an image from that region. It says that a person who is only aware of his or her own culture is like a frog under a coconut shell. I am very pleased that this book may help to build bridges of dialogue and understanding between those of us who do pastoral care in a Western context, and those of you who do pastoral care in a Chinese cultural context.

As you know, this book was written within the frame of reference of North America. Its author has had the privilege of teaching and learning in some 30 countries during the last twenty-five years.I have learned more than I have taught in those countries. Dialogue with pastors, seminary students and teachers, and church leaders there, and with graduate students from other countries who have come to Claremont to study, has helped to broaden my cultural horizons. I am thankful to these persons who have helped me gain some understanding of the many differences in caring and helping methods in cultures other than my own. They have helped me be less like a frog under a coconut shell. Yet, in spite of this, I am keenly aware that this book mainly reflects the North American culture within which I was born and raised, have lived most of the time during more than sixty years, have done ministry, and taught pastoral psychology and counseling.

I say all this with the hope and expectation that you will evaluate carefully the counseling theories and methods described in the pages that follow. I hope that you will use whatever is relevant to helping troubled people in your situation, but disregard or adapt whatever is not relevant there. What is important in enabling God to work through your ministry to burdened people is that you develop your own style of caring and counseling, a style that utilizes your God-given personality resources and the helping resources of your culture. I hope and pray that reading this book may be of some inspiration and assistance in this task.

During the last few years, I have enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to spend a relatively short time in each of three different areas where Chinese is spoken -- Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the People's Republic of China. In those places I was impressed by some profound differences from Western cultures in the historical roots, the present societal dynamics, life in the churches, and the implicit pastoral psychology that undergirds caregiving in those cultures. I also have learned to appreciate the rich resources for caring ministries present in those differing Chinese cultural contexts.

Let me share my tentative understanding of some of the major differences between these contexts and the Western cultural contexts. In the Chinese societies there is a strong emphasis on the extended family (compared with the nuclear family emphasis in theWest)； the We-centered (compared with the I-centered) understanding of personality development and identity； the tendency to be shame-oriented (compared with a primary guilt-orientation in the West)； a stronger emphasis on community support and social controls (compared to more emphasis on individualism and autonomy in the West)； more emphasis on hierarchial and authority-centered relationships, including helping relationships (compared with more emphasis on egalitarian relationships, seeing the counselor-helper as enabler)； and an ancient holistic tradition (compared with the dominant dualistic tradition in the West which tends to compartmentalize body, mind and spirit).There are, of course, many strengths and resources for doing the ministry of caring in the contrasting characteristics of the cultures of the East and of the West. Certainly the ancient Chinese cultural heritage, covering more than forty centuries, has many riches that can be utilized today in developing and practicing an indigenous form of pastoral care and counseling in Chinese churches. This is an exciting challenge and opportunity you face – to develop and practice Chinese pastoral care and counseling that integrates the caring resources of your heritage and present culture,with whatever resources are relevant and useful from the contemporary Western models, such as the one described in this book.

Let me highlight one strength of the Chinese cultures which may make you feel more at home with the more holistic, interpersonal relationships model of caring and counseling described in this book. It is the ancient holistic heritage which understands persons as a unity of mind, body, and spirit in community. A Chinese pastor who was also a graduate student in pastoral counseling in Claremont, suggested to me that the holistic psychological and theological presuppositions underlying the approach to pastoral care and counseling described in these pages, may have some real affinities with your holistic heritage. I hope that this proves to be true.

As this Chinese translation is being published, I send my warmhearted wishes to you readers. I thank those who did the difficult task of translation. As Christians we try to walk in the footsteps of One called "Great Physician", a person who told a powerful story about how a foreigner helped a man find healing, after he had been beaten by robbers along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. I hope and pray that in this book you will find insights and helping methods that will be useful in your ministry of healing and caring with those beaten by the problems of living in today's complex and troubled world.

May this book, with all its limitations, be a channel through which you experience the healing and blessing of the Great Physician and are able to share that healing and blessing with those with whom you have the privilege of being in ministry.

SHALOM (meaning wholeness and peace),

Rev. Howard Clinebell, Ph.D.

Professor of Pastoral Psychology

and Counseling School of Theology

Claremont, California, USA