Spiritual and pastoral needs in changing times

″The times, they are a–changing″. Bob Dylan released this song in 1964, addressing various upheavals, questions and challenges of the mid–1960ies. Indeed, the times were changing during that period; and it seemed as if this change did not appear to become a cheerful one. In fact, nobody seemed to be willing to throw a party to welcome the next stage of humankind. On the contrary, Dylan states in his song that the situation was about to get worse, waters had grown around everybody; and it had to be accepted that sooner or later everybody would be drenched to the bone. Truly, this is not an optimistic and cheerful perspective that in-vites people to embrace the new times showing up at the horizon.

Still, Bob Dylan offers some advice how to cope with this precarious situation of changing times; and his advice is simple and striking at the same time. Dylan says, ″If the water level rais-es, you simply have to learn how to swim.″ Otherwise you will drown like a stone. It is as simple as this.
Spiritual and pastoral needs in our contemporary and changing times – this is not Dylan′s topic, but I sense that he has something to say about this. So, I will take up the lyrics of his song from the 1960ies to walk you through the following thoughts concerning the spiritual and pastoral needs in changing times, because I think that Dylan invites us to try out new per-spectives that might differ from – let′s say – primarily churchy points of view we are so familiar with. Therefore, Dylan will help to broaden the perspective.

So, in the – quite brief – first part, I will address the changing times we are experi-encing right now, before I will turn to the special spiritual and pastoral needs I discover here. While doing this, Bob Dylan will accompany us, interposing questions and remarks now and then. Doing this, will lead us to concluding remarks, which try to sum up the reading of the signs of the times and the spiritual needs deriving from that. By following this path, I would like to show you almost timeless spiritual and pastoral needs. Nevertheless, these needs show up even today, thereby, suggesting that today′s churches, orders, communities and religious movements are invited to bring forward their timeless answers as well, which are – by no means – restricted in their charisma by, for instance, the small number or the higher age of religious people. Instead, I propose, that a stable minority is just fine to tackle the needs in changing times.