A Qualitative Study on the Identity Formation Process of Pastors in Parallel with Professional Counseling

The purpose of this study is to examine the identity formation process of professional counseling pastors and to understand the characteristics and meaning of the identities they formed. The study participants are four pastors who have completed more than three years of training in the field of professional counseling and obtained credible private or national qualifications and are concurrently working as professional counselors. In order to deeply understand the identity of participants, a case study method was used, and as a result of this study, six areas were derived that show the identity formation process of the participants. Through this study, we found that the participants centered their identity as ‘pastors’ and supplemented and expanded their identity as counselors to form a new identity called ‘pastors in parallel with professional counseling’.