ought to engender ethical practices. Contemporary pastoral ministry should function within community contexts with multiple existential threats. The realisation of any telic10 pastoral ministry model may foster individual piety instead. Heitink's (1979) bipolarity thesis is of significance in its ability to juxtapose complex and opposing issues, for example personal spirituality and contextual solidarity for liberation.The basic assumption of pastoral ministry is to change, comfort, sustain, guide, support and heal people as well as their communities (Louw 2004:7). Pastoral ministry as promissio therapy should not only focus on God's fulfilled promises (2004:7); it must also engage existential pathologies in terms of God's praxis for liberation. Promissio therapy distinguishes pastoral therapy from non-theological therapies and holds the potential to address critical existential human issues. Liberation therapy refers to liberation and transformation of existential and systemic pathologies. The uniqueness of pastoral ministry lies in its ability to provide transcendental and immanent hope for liberation (cf. Louw 2004:7). Promissio therapy offers meaning-imparting values. Liberation therapy seeks liberation practices and fosters values such as ethics, righteousness, reconciliation, reconstruction and the deconstruction of systemic pathologies. An eschatological, liberation and pneumatological perspective informs pastoral ministry (Louw 2004:8).The notion of cura vitae becomes important for any pastoral theology that seeks to offer meaning and liberation. Existential challenges, such as socio-economic oppression, crime, HIV and Aids and xenophobia could be addressed by a pastoral approach that acknowledges the liberation of pathological conditions from the perspective of the healing of life (Louw 2008:11). Cura vitae is a Christian spiritual and contextual embodiment of contemporary existential life for its liberation and the healing of life. Louw (2004:12) argues that the question in suffering is not whether you have suffering, but how you live your suffering. The mere 'experiencing' of suffering can be destructive and inhuman. Pathological socio-economic paradigms and practices render the notion to 'live your suffering' as an ideal. The ability to live suffering is a question of human and community dignity, or survival. There is no dignity in pathological socio-economic conditions (Ehrenreich 2007). The objective for pastoral theology in contemporary South African communities is to empower people with more than just 'a vivid hope that fosters meaning and significance in life' (Louw 2008:16). Louw attempts to correct his position by opting for a pastoral ministry of affirmation (2004:16, 30). However, the question remains as to how one can be affirmed within a pathological system that threatens and drains the very life and moral fibre of struggling families and communities.Louw (2008:18) applies ontology11 in informing meaning and significance to the being functions of persons. Socio-economic being-functions of poor families and communities should form part of such an ontological perspective! Jesus' incarnation of the word of God undergirds the essence of the pastor's concrete being for God in pathological realities of life (Simmons 1989:519). Pastoral ministry of affirmation as ontology reconstructs the being status, dignity and identity of human beings (Louw 2008:30-32). Pastoral ministry as empowerment should incorporate a Christological and reconstruction (Botman 1993) and fortological12 perspective (Louw 2008:31). The value of fortology lies in its redefinition or reconstruction of pathologies for transformational,