Pastoral care with homeless people in Sunnyside

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how pastors should pastorally intervene in addressing the street homelessness that is becoming a rampant issue, with a focus on Sunnyside, in the City of Tshwane. The study argued that street homeless people should not be considered abandoned people but full human beings who need to pastorally be cared for. Therefore, this study deployed Gerkin’s shepherding model and Pollard’s positive deconstruction as the theoretical framework and healing method. The relevance and significance of using Gerkin’s shepherding model are that it was an adequate tool to be used by the pastors to justify their leadership in intervening and journeying with troubled souls such as street homeless people. However, as Gerkin's model was only able to journey with homeless people and not able to enter their souls, therefore, the study recalled the intervention of Pollard's Model of positive deconstruction as it could enter the souls of the troubled homeless people who live under bridges in Sunnyside and to pastorally deconstruct and re-construct their lives.