levels as individuals lifted the standard of their education, also helping others to reach a higher understanding of God. In this process, many theologians attained very high levels of education and specialty. One could argue that these high levels of education and specialties have lifted the standard of care offered to people in need and, indeed, many would not dare to prove the opposite.However, we find this phenomenon of a fragmented faculty rather problematic, because theology has became fragmented to a point where theologians each aggressively protect their own specific area of specialty. Students are continuously cautioned not to overstep their area of study and research and, as such, they are often restricted to the boundaries of their specific theology department. This fragmentation has impoverished the richness and the holistic nature of theology because it limits its ability to affect the whole person, both the researched and researcher.In the context of the above, the reader needs to understand that we are very aware that the boundaries between the various theological departments serve a good purpose, heightening the level in which we engage in theology. Yet, as theologians in the Department of Practical Theology, we argue for a theology that will often test the boundaries of practical theology. Hence, for the purposes of this article, we will speak to the confined area of practical theology and its need to dwell in departments outside of its traditional parameters. The reader should also understand that we are not opposing other departments within theology; rather, we argue for a broadening of the practical theology student's horizons.Nevertheless, one could challenge our argument by asking why it is necessary to dwell in areas that are researched by other departments? Our presumptive answer would be to say that this broadening is necessary in order to provide a heightened energy for a sustained praxis of practical theology itself. However, without providing sound theological reasoning to substantiate this notion, it runs the danger of becoming an over-generalisation that will not help the aspirant student; hence the generation of this article. Practical theology: More than just praxisMany theologians would define study or research in practical theology primarily as procedural, as they consider this theological department only to be involved in the practical outworking of one's theology. Yet, through our personal research in practical theology, we came face to face with many more questions that we could not answer if operating only within parameters of the above definition. Gerkin (1986) argues for a practical theology that will also interpret, understanding that: ... pastors and pastoral care theorists must constantly have one ear open to the shifts that take place in the ways persons experience their needs and problems of living and the other open to the currents of change in ways of understanding and interpreting human needs. (Gerkin 1986:12)Practical theology should meet the praxis of pastoral care for the people it seeks to serve as it 'interprets human needs'. This understanding and interpretation of human needs points to a theological and hermeneutical analysis of a practical-pastoral problem. In this context, we mean that