Peer Counseling

Today Anna and I finished out first class of peer counseling and it was great. No exclamation point in my last sentence, but it really was a great class. We covered a few topics and even touched on good communication cross-culturally... which, of course, lit me on fire! (exclamation point needed).

One of the things that was very interesting was that pastor Denny (PhD) mentioned that a pastor can take good care of about 40-80 people. Any more than that and the pastor would be a workaholic. It made me start thinking about why Hispanic churches don't really grow past that number and it seems to me that it's because there is not enough lay leadership that the head pastor can delegate to for help. In my experience, most Hispanic pastors that are trained in leadership do not have a good supporting cast to help them out. Hence, churches stay at the healthy level of 40-80 people because that's how many people feel cared for in a good way. I'm sure that as I think about this one some more I will blog a bit more about this subject.

Another thing that hit my personal radar was that both Cheryl, MFT and Pastor Denny talked about how there are circles of how to deal with someone's illness/suffering etc. Let me explain a bit. The outer most circle is where people gather in community and worship and bible study. People that live healthy lives and have little emotional/spiritual problems can be healed at this level and don't need deeper counseling/therapy etc. However, the levels go deeper. The deepest is demonic possession and oppression. Again, as the levels of this onion get tougher and harder to deal with, we, as peer counselors, must realize that we should refer our friend/peer to a counselor/profession. In the case of demonic possession, Denny says, we should refer to him or another pastor. However, it is the opinion of Denny and his wife Cheryl that in charismatic circles, it's easier for people to go more directly to think that something is related to demonic oppression / possession. I agree. The thing is, however, that in my life, it was needed to say that someone had a demonic oppression or possession. Why? Because I feel that in Latino or African, or non-Western-world communities, the spiritual is something that is interactive in everyday life and, therefore, there is a lot more that can occur in a Latino's life that is indeed more related to the demonic. Again, I'll have more to say on this later. This blog is going to serve as a reminder for me.

The last part of the last paragraph also takes me to the last thing I want to mention before I go to sleep. And that is that Pastor Denny talked about how there are 3 main overarching cultures in the world. And those cultures are a culture of anxiety, guilt, and shame. I will write more on this in the blogs to come but Hispanics seemed to fall under the shame culture while Caucasians seemed to fall under the guilt culture. Both showed that problems in relating to my parents in law were text-book conflicts that would happen between these two cultures.

I can't wait to continue to write about what I learn!