Spiritual Care

As part of my responsibility at work I had to approve a document today that included in its resource list a link under 'spiritual' to an organisation called Spiritual Care.

No doubt you've checked it out yourself by now (link above). Nothing to do with Christ or his church, plenty to do with the sad facade of Tibetan Buddhism: either spooks or fakes, or maybe just dressing up observed wisdom in saffron robes.

Before I checked the link I had hoped that it might have lead to a Christian organisation that had managed to hit the marketing approach that clearly, as I discovered, the TBs had.

I approved the document because I didn't have time to contest the link (or suggest that my employer should not support a religion) and thought that some good may come. Some well read critically informed and loving Christian might attend one of the courses and open up a Christo-centric conversation. An organisation with Christian roots might be spawned to do a similar job...lots of other maybes zipped by.

From time to time important aspects of pastoral care or good living are packaged, marketed and publicised and make public headway. Kubler-Ross and her work on dying was one ages ago, this one is another...I suggested to a minister who was looking at developing ministry in the Sydney CBD that a 'work-spirituality' connection be built; he wasn't interested (leave it for some Buddhist, I guess).

I notice that while Christians talk about 'out-reach' they instantly convert it to 'in-drag' and don't in fact go out anywhere. At work we have some out-reach services, and that's what we do: go out. We send people to where the target group is, to become known and trusted, to merge with them and bring them the services they need. Some 'tougher' services are 'assertive' out-reach. They are more pointed at psycho-social 'rescue'. The church, which has a long tradition of out-reach seems to have forgotten it these days, and just wants to in-drag.

I hope we change before too many slip away.