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Jaco Hamman

Professor of Pastoral Care and Counseling

B.A. University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa

B.Th., M.Th. Stellenbosch University Seminary School, South Africa

Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary

"Made in the image of God, we are relational beings. One can say that we are our relationships! Pastoral ministry occurs within and is determined by specific relationships, for it depends on the relational ties that empower its effectiveness: one's relationships with one's self, with God, with others, and one's relationship with nature. Furthermore, health, wholeness, and holiness are found in these relationships. I see my call as educating and empowering seminarians and clergy to redefine their core relationships so that they can support and guide individuals, families, and congregations to redefine their ways of being in the world."

  book-Playful-Life.jpgA Play-full Life: Slowing Down & Seeking Peace (The Pilgrim Press, 2011)
when_steeples_cry.jpg

When Steeples Cry: Leading through Loss and Change (The Pilgrim Press, 2005)

    • CM113 Pastor as Person Seminar
        This seminar explores the ways in which a minister’s life history, spiritual growth, and vocation intersect and shape his/her personal and professional identity. Students will reflect on their own psychological and spiritual development and their opportunities for personal growth. They will develop their own particular plans for self-care. Students must either have completed or be concurrently registered for CM115. 2 credits.
    • CM115 An Introduction to Counsel and Care
        In this introductory course, students explore giving counsel and offering care as ministers of Word and sacrament.They develop an understanding of the fundamental principles of pastoral care and acquire basic skills required for giving counsel and offer- ing care. Numerous pastoral themes are addressed in lectures, learning labs, and small group interaction. Students will be encouraged to develop their own pastoral presence in offering counsel and care.
    • CM498 Care and Counsel across Cultures
        How do different cultures view self, God, family, identity, gender, time ,crisis, control, vulnerability, healing, and mental health? Learn how to become a significant and facilitative presence to a person or persons from another culture and reflect upon how the Body of Christ engages different cultures. Students will learn perceptive attentiveness, openness, acceptance, trust, curiosity, culturally informed teaching and preaching, and theological reflection on counsel across cultures.
    • CM499 Family of Origin Seminar
        Teaches the theory of family relationships and assesses the very impact of those relationships on a pastor’s person and call to the ministry. This group, which meets weekly, will empower students to discover ways of being with people (rather than doing to people). Seeking both cognitive and emotional knowledge, the Family of Origin Group gives students the opportunity to carefully look at the relationships that formed them and the ways of being in relationship they bring to their ministry.
    • CM504 Play: In Life and Ministry
        This elective explores play in its diverse forms as a sign of God’s shalom (See Isaiah 11:9 & Zachariah 8:4b-5). Play is an activity that restores and rejuvenates as it facilitates emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being. Play is also a form of knowing. Students will explore the nature of playing alone, playing with others, and playing with God. Through inter-disciplinary readings, students will become knowledgeable about the neuroscience, the psychology, the sociology, as well as the theology of play. The seminar will be offered in a hybrid form with a significant online component.
    • CM528 Ministry as Grief Work
        Identifies the life-giving work of mourning and grieving as essential to any pastoral ministry. Embracing interdisciplinary, this course draws on biblical, theological, psychological, and sociological insights. It has three distinct foci: 1) Students will be empowered to grieve personal losses in their lives and disappointments experienced in ministry; 2) Students will be equipped to facilitate the work of mourning in the lives of individuals and families; 3) Students will be prepared to guide the grief process for a large group of people (such as a congregation).
    • CM578 Becoming a Pastor
        Addresses the relationship between a pastor’s personality (which includes the desire for healing, wholeness, and holiness) on the one hand, and a pastor’s conviction of being called by God to enter the ministry on the other. To highlight the dynamic relationship between the deeply personal and the grace-filled mystery, the class will look at the psychobiographies of pastors and prominent theologians (Luther, Bonhoeffer, and others).
    • CM584 Compassionate Resistance
        Explores the roles of the pastor and the Body of Christ as priest, prophet, and monarch in a world where suffering, injustice, economic and social inequality, and violence cause theodosic crises. This elective follows 2 Cor 1:3-4: “Praise be to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” In the seminar, special emphasis will be given to discern pastoral responses (“comfort”) to children, women, the elderly, the poor, persons who experience mental illness, persons who are not heterosexual, victims of violence, and persons or groups who find themselves marginalized by society and the church. We seek an answer to the question: How does one respond to the problem of evil? Together we will think theologically about the problem of evil and seek ways to promote compassion, distributive justice, restoration, reconciliation, forgiveness, and unity in Christ. We will explore the nature of a pastoral theodicy (distinguished from a philosophical theodicy). Compassionate Resistance seeks to affirm and reclaim the Imago Dei in every person. It is offered as a seminar where selected readings are discussed. There will be no lectures.
    • CM593 Embodiment
        Addresses the ambivalence the Christian faith portrays towards the human body. How can the Christian faith help individuals embrace their embodied existence? Themes include neuroscience, spirituality, the body and food, body image, cutting/self-mutilation, the abused/violated body, the body with disability, the body and aging, expressions and theological implications of human sexuality, and dying bodies.

Background

Born in South Africa, Jaco Hamman left his native country in 1993 to pursue further training in hospital chaplaincy with the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education. After two CPE residencies, his interest in the emotional, relational, and spiritual experiences of people became the focus of a Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Hamman's dissertation on the Book of Job argues that the book not only describes a major theological shift in the life of Job, but concomitant growth towards emotional and relational health.

Before coming to Western Seminary, Dr. Hamman spent three years in New York City as a pastoral psychotherapist at the Blanton-Peale Graduate Institute - a training institute for the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, of which Dr. Hamman is a member. He has clinical experience as a marriage, family, as well as a group therapist and was a hospital chaplain for the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa.

Dr. Hamman has a special interest in how individuals, families, and congregations do embodiment. He has served as a pastoral-theological consultant in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. He is also an ordained pastor in the Reformed Church in America.

Adult Education Courses

Dr. Hamman is prepared to lead the following Adult Education courses at your church:
  • Grace-filled Dysfunction: Families Then and Now (4 sessions)
  • Remembering the Future: Listening to the Body of Christ (4 sessions)
  • Living with Loss (4 sessions)
  • Understanding Clergy Sexual Misconduct (3 sessions)
  • Moving Toward Congregational Reconciliation (4 sessions)
  • When Steeples Cry: Leadership Through Loss and Change (5 sessions)
  • The Dark Side of Leadership (3 sessions)