Making meaning, empowering life: Pastoral guidance as the practice of pastoral counseling in Sarawak Chinese Annual Conference

This dissertation employed qualitative ethnographic research with twelve human subjects, five female Chinese pastors and seven male Chinese pastors from the Sarawak Chinese Annual Conference, the Methodist Church in Malaysia (SCAC). The research seeks to appropriate a postmodern narrative therapy of Michael White and David Epston, Jill Freedman and Gene Combs in the pastoral guidance as a practice of pastoral counseling in SCAC. Wesleyan theology and Chinese cultural construct of SCAC were employed to critically reconstruct this therapeutic approach for its contextual application. This dissertation examines the theoretical, philosophical and ethical constructs of narrative therapy. It argued that narrative therapy may have the risk of propagating a postmodern individualism and emphasized personal agency of a customized self based on personal taste. Instead, the dissertation proposed a reconstruction affirming personal agency as giftedness of humanity with the telos of loving God and neighbor, seeking life fulfillment in the infinite possibility of God. Pastoral guidance taking this frame of reference could be considered as a means of grace empowering persons seeking help toward the telos. This research also suggested that externalizing of problems offers a possible platform for the deconstruction of shame faced by Chinese persons seeking help. It further argued that a narrative approach of pastoral guidance must seriously consider the Chinese cultural specifics of SCAC such as collectivistic-familial aspects, qing and guanxi (generally understood as relationship), of the Sarawak Chinese Methodists in order to be relevant for the local practice. This work foresees some challenges in the area of dealing with the systemic issues which persons seeking help continue to experience as they move beyond the counseling room. It is in this reconstruction and awareness that the practice of pastoral guidance taking the narrative frame of reference is made possible.