ABSTRACT
At some point we are faced with questioning the very meaning of life itself. What is the purpose of it all? We live, we die, and time passes and all is forgotten. What is the meaning of this existence? Does it have any meaning in itself? What am I striving for? Is there any reason for the life I am living and the efforts I have somehow been programmed to make? It is the attempt to answer these questions which brings us into the realms of existential philosophy and its counterpart, existential psychology. The latter is, properly speaking, the study of the manner in which philosophical questions affect the behaviour of individuals. It is here in times of major crisis that the ministers of all the religious denominations find themselves challenged. Indeed, it might be said that it is their stock in trade-in their teaching and preaching, and in more specific terms in their pastoral work with those individuals who are faced with some crisis which has undermined their own personal existential (their individual and personal way of life) to such an extent that they can no longer find within it a reason-to-be.
