INTERNATIONAL
PASTORAL
CARE
NETWORK
FOR
SOCIAL
RESPONSIBILITY
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INTERNATIONAL
PASTORAL
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See also two Reflections on the
History of the IPCNSR In 1982, at the
Annual Convention of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, Howard
Clinebell Since that time PCSR has grown to become the Pastoral Care Network for Social Responsibility, as persons from other pastoral care organizations were invited to affiliate - the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education, the Jewish Chaplains Association, the College of Chaplains, the National Association for Catholic Chaplains, the Canadian Association for Pastoral Education, the National Business Chaplains Association. Each organization selected persons from its membership to serve on the Board of PCNSR and conducted within its organization programs and conferences to promote caring for the earth and its inhabitants. John Thomas was the first chair of this organization. The Shalom Award has been the network's medium for celebrating the work of several persons. Recipients have included William Sloane Coffin, Newsletter editor and now Web content manager, Michael Cordner, our Canadian representative, Arch McCurdy, and in Germany, Horst Berger. In 1987, PCNSR became the International PCNSR in Melbourne, Australia, at the international pastoral counseling conference that occurred there, when persons from around the world formed their association and affiliated as national and multinational groups. Ronaldo Rosa, from Brazil, was the first chair of this new organization. A new issue of the newsletter celebrated the birth. The basic copy had been received just before the closing banquet at the international pastoral counseling conference and Ken Lindsay, from Australia, and the newsletter editor, Michael Cordner, spent the afternoon making copies so that each of person in attendance could have a copy. In the years following meetings of the international network took place in various places around the world -- first in Czechoslovakia, co-sponsored with the Christian Peace Conference, an organization whose offices were in Prague. Later conferences occurred in Santa Severa, Italy, the Netherlands, and as the first meeting in an underdeveloped country, in Ghana, Africa. Papers presented at the meetings in Italy and Czechoslovakia were edited and published. Begun by a small group, provoked and encouraged by one of the foremost leaders in pastoral counseling, Howard Clinebell, has led to the creation of an international network of several hundred persons throughout the world, while maintaining its special identity in North America. Throughout these years our members have communicated with one another and supported one another's efforts by our international meetings, by the workshops sponsored at meetings of the various professional organizations to which our members belong, and by the newsletter. In 1999 we entered the electronic age and communicated through our web site as well. As spoken by Margaret Mead, whom we quote loosely: "The only place where the great changes in the world have taken place is in the hearts and through the efforts of small groups of individuals." IPCNSR is one such group, bonded together by our concern, by our faith in God's plan for the world, and by our hope that God's plan can become a reality in our lives. Our hope and intent is that many of our members will contribute their memories to this written history. Send those to Michael Cordner so that they can be included. A history should be not a closed document, but a gathering place for the sharing of memories.
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met with a group of about 30 persons to share his concern about the
threats posed for God's Earth and the people of God's Earth by nuclear weapons
and the threat of nuclear conflict. Pastoral Counselors for Social
Responsibility was born. Howard and Dan Lord, Dan Jungkuntz, and Michael
Cordner sat up throughout the nights that followed typing up for distribution a
description of this new organization and its focused task - to preserve and
protect and maintain peace, justice, and the creation for all persons.
