What to communicate: a new chapter in pastoral care and counseling?

Evaluates the dominant what to be focus on ministry in the history of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) and proposes a what to communicate focus as a better fit in accommodating current understandings of what is required "to be of help." Differentiates between three different roles in pastoral communication--representative, reflective, and reconstructive--in analyzing the linguistic structure of pastoral conversations, highlighting the distinctly pastoral function of meaning-making in reconstructive discourse.