Description: Meet Me at the Palaver makes the case for a particular
approach to pastoral counseling as a response to the destructive
impact of colonial Christianity on indigenous African communities.
The book opens with stories of destructive change brought to
indigenous contexts (such as Zimbabwe, Africa), wherein the
culture, values, religion, and humanity of African peoples were
often marginalized. Mucherera demonstrates that therapy or
counseling as taught in the West will not always suffice in such
contexts, since these approaches tend to promote and focus on
individuality, autonomy, and independence. Counselors in indigenous
contexts need to ""get off their couch or chair"" and into the
neighborhoods--into those places made vulnerable to disease and
poverty by the collapse of ""the palaver"" and other traditional
institutions of social stability. Since storytelling was at the
heart of the practices of the palaver and continues to be a way of
life in African cultures, Mucherera argues for a holistic narrative
pastoral counseling approach to assess and service the three basic
areas of human needs in indigenous African communities: body, mind,
and spirit. Endorsements: ""Mucherera tactfully captures the lost
art of storytelling as a mode of communication for therapy and
moral values. Though commonly used by indigenous Africans to
transmit oral traditions, the narrative approach is a unique tool
that creates safe distance for the care receiver and offers ample
opportunity to the caregiver to non-judgmentally form an uplifting
and therapeutic relationship. This book is a must read for all
pastoral caregivers, pastors, counselors, and ministry students,
since the narrative approach is an effective communication tool in
today's cross cultural world."" Anne Kiome Gatobu, Assistant
Professor of Pastoral Care, Asbury Theological Seminary ""The
impact of Western colonialism's attempt to extinguish indigenous
peoples' stories, communities, value systems, and
culture--recruiting them into negative identities through colonial
strategies--has crippled, for example, African people's ability to
face many contemporary problems such as poverty and the HIV/AIDS
pandemic. This book presents a hopeful strategy of recovering
stories, cultural traditions, and values that have been subjugated
in the past as effective means for dealing with contemporary life
in indigenous contexts such as Zimbabwe. This narrative pastoral
counseling approach is based on traditional African wisdom as well
as the knowledge growing out of the author's pastoral counseling
experience in Africa and the United States. The author challenges
dangerous traditional practices in the age of HIV/AIDS, and the
need for justice for the poor. A must read for those interested in
working with indigenous peoples."" Edward P. Wimberly, Academic
Dean & the Jarena Lee Professor of Pastoral Care at I. T. C. in
Atlanta. About the Contributor(s): Tapiwa N. Mucherera is Professor
of Pastoral Counseling at Asbury Theological Seminary and Assistant
Provost, Florida campus. He is the author of Pastoral Care from a
Third World Perspective. An ordained United Methodist pastor, he
has served churches in Zimbabwe, Iowa, and Denver.
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