POSTPONED! Practicing Presence – Pastoral Care Workshop

This event has been postponed! A new date to be determined. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

A Pastoral Care workshop facilitated by Rev. Ralph Carl Wushke.

In this workshop we will explore ways we can enter pastoral care visits with openness, presence, and flexibility. Knowing that we enter pastoral interactions with our own vulnerability, informed by personal feelings, history, and lived experience, we will discuss ways of being comfortable and confident in guiding a call or visit in a person-centred way. There is messiness in pastoral care – awkward moments, times when we feel a loss of connection, and situations when we are interacting with people who hold very different ideas, feelings, and opinions than we do – we will explore techniques for compassionately managing these scenarios.

Ralph Carl Wushke, Th. M., halftime Ecumenical Chaplain at U of T (2004-2018) and halftime minister at Bathurst United Church (2000-2018), retired on September 1, 2018. Ralph Carl has a Lutheran background and was ordained in 1978. He brings many years of experience of pastoral care in the county of community, worship and congregational life. He also worked in the HIV/AIDS sector for the decade of the 1990s and founded the interfaith Qu(e)erying Religion program at U of T In 2005.