The Source of All Caring is God's Love

The source of all caring is God’s love. It is not God’s will that people should feel alone and trapped in their hurt. It is God’s will that in the midst of pain and struggle people will have hope for a better future and will discover resources in their faith that will enable them to learn and grow from their experiences. People who themselves have experienced God’s care in the midst of pain, become channels through which God’s love and care touch the lives of other people.

Spiritual practitioners are called to a ministry of caring. Most people receive the caring help they need to make it through life’s crisis times from friends. This resource has been developed to better prepare people for the challenge and the call to care for friends, neighbors, and all who cross their paths. This carefully laid out course provides a solid theological grounding for caring and pays close attention to developing the necessary listening and speaking skills that are essential for effective caregiving.

The purpose of this course is threefold: to describe what makes spiritual caregiving distinctive, to explain how that distinctive caregiving can become a way of life for individual people, and to function as a how-to manual. It is a resource for people who wonder, "What difference does my spirituality make in the caring and relating I do?"

Caregiving for the Spiritual Practitioner is practical; it deals with real-life issues in caring and relating. It serves as a skill-training course for individuals who desire to become more effective caregivers. Our intention is to help spiritual practitioners become acquainted with caring skills for their own ministry that they might begin to practice and to further develop through later training and experience. The emphasis is on caring for people, not on curing them. While the main emphasis of this course is person-to-person caregiving, the course also explores to the role of the spiritual community in providing care for hurting people.