As I have said before, one of my jobs in missions is administrator of a pastoral care center. So I have always been interested in the correlation, compatibility, and conflict between missions and counseling. This presentation utilizes the 7 benchmarks for pastoral diagnosis established by Paul Pruyser back in 1963. However, we put them in a logical order, as seen in the diagram, Looking at it, there is a correlation between this method of diagnosing and doing pastoral care, with evangelizing. The lowest tier is essentially “good talk” and understanding their beliefs, and social support system. One goes into tier two seeking to find out their felt needs, and connecting that with issues of faith and future. The top tier is exploring response, especially with regards to grace and repentance. I still need to think about how things correlate a bit more, since some of the terms are utilized differently in the pastoral care and evangelism camps.

An important thing that evangelists can (and frankly, must) learn from pastoral diagnosis is the need to understand the hearer, client, patient, recipient, help seeker. The agenda needs to be based, considerably, on their situation and their felt need.