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Introduction
Promoting the wellbeing - even flourishing - of persons and their communities is one way to understand the orienting purpose and normative vision of pastoral theology. The underlying conviction of pastoral theology is that the Divine intends creation to flourish. Pastoral theology's attention to hurting people and its overriding concern for well-being is grounded in a theological vision of a loving God who wills that all participate in the divine life. This is a reasonable description of the project of pastoral theology: promoting the flourishing of all.2
A central pre-occupation of pastoral theology, then, has been the impediments to the full participation in the life of God. In short, pastoral theology seeks to address persons distress and the alienating dimensions of human life; to identify and overcome the challenges to human flourishing. In pastoral theology, attending to hurting persons has been a primary means by which this end is pursued.
This essay first takes up the theme of pastoral attention, reviewing its key foci over the course of Christian history. I contend that shifts in pastoral attention can reveal both the operative theological commitments and the relevant social realities that direct attention. Using this notion of attention as a heuristic, I analyze the current foci of attention in pastoral theology and suggest deeper attention to a dimension of human experience that has been relatively ignored by current practitioners and theologians: organizational life, or the "meso" level of human experience. In conclusion, I propose one model for effective pastoral intervention at the organizational level.
1. Pastoral Theology: The Art of Paying Attention
The term "attention" is not a central concept in pastoral theology. However, it is a word that nicely captures the concerns of pastoral theology and bears further examination. Attending is similar to, but distinct from, some of the more recognizable terms in our field. Listening, holding space, being a non-anxious presence, being with, and developing selfawareness are all venerable terms, as are the theological concepts of prayerfulness, meditation, and discernment. More recently, pastoral theology has borrowed concepts such as "mindfulness" from Buddhist practices.3 But attending is more than listening, and it designates something different or more than holding space or being a non-anxious presence. It is close to the notion of mindfulness,...