Without ones’ own understanding of the purpose of suffering, crisis responders cannot truly offer emotional and spiritual care in disasters and provide comfort and direction to others in their suffering and pain. With this thought in mind, compile an original paper of 8–10 pages of body text, in APA style, that begins by explaining your own personal theology of suffering. Use commentary and biblical references to support your position. In addition, explain how you would consult with a congregation to set up a plan of preparation for pre-incidence disasters. Utilizing information presented in your texts as well as theoretical and practical elements from academic and Christian sources, describe how you would foster resiliency in the pastor and the congregation. 1. As this class is about emotional and spiritual care in disasters be thinking not just the immediate physical recovery and safety but the emotional and spiritual care of individuals after everyone is safe.
2. You would want to think about first physical safety of members. What organizations, emergency personnel, churches, etc. could you partner with in the community to help make this happen?
3. Think about setting up an Incident Command. Who is your Incident Commander? Who is on the team?
4. What about emotional and spiritual care teams, or psychological first aid teams. Who would lead those, be on the team, etc. You would want to recruit and train willing and able members of the church as well as have a trained therapist and even emergency personnel on these teams. Look up the Critical Incident Stress Management system and techniques to help you.
5. It will probably be much more helpful to outline your paper into three main headings: Pre-incident (which includes developing teams, training individuals, partnering with organizations, etc.); Incident (which includes the plan carried as the incident is taking place. This really would cover the physical safety side primarily, with the emotional and spiritual care side coming into play within 8-24 hours following the event); and Post-Incident, which includes the crisis intervention strategies carried out within the 1-2 weeks following the incident and any follow up to long -term counseling that might occur months later for people who didn’t recover initially.
6. You’ll learn many of these things throughout the course, so as you go through the class and watch presentations, be sure to take notes on how you can build your final paper and plan for the church you attend.
A minimum of 10 scholarly sources (books and journal articles) is required in addition to your textbooks (if you choose to cite these). Grades will be assigned based on quality of content, how well APA guidelines are adhered to, the richness of citations utilized, quality of expression, and biblical integration presented
Koenig, In the wake of disaster: Religious responses to terrorism and catastrophe (2006).
Roberts & Ashley, Disaster spiritual care: Practical clergy responses to community, regional, and national tragedy (2008).
