Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First Century
Lynne Baab discusses seven trends in pastoral care with stories about Christian caregivers meeting those challenges in creative ways. Baab also presents four practical skills pastoral carers need: to understand common stressors, to listen, to pray with others, and to nurture their personal resilience.
What are the roles, functions, and identities of pastoral counsellors today? What paradigms shape their understandings of the needs of others? How can pastoral counsellors serve the needs of diverse individuals in both religious and secular environments? This foundational text reflects the continued and unfolding work of pastoral counselling in ......
An acclaimed, influential work now available in paper for the first time, this bestselling book applies the concepts of systemic family therapy to the emotional life of congregations. Edwin H. Friedman shows how the same understanding of family process that can aid clergy in their pastoral role also has important ramifications for negotiating ......
In Storycraft: The Art of Spiritual Narrative, celebrated author Walter Wangerin Jr. illustrates the power of well-told stories and shows how important embracing story is as an essential tool for preaching and teaching the gospel. The book offers a theology of story that is profoundly incarnational as the Word takes on flesh in practiced speech.
Argues that practical theology has neglected deeper theological underpinnings, and seeks to create a practical theology that seeks to be fully post-postmodern, post-Aristotelian, and that in seeking to attend to doctrines such as divine action and justification, is properly and fully theological.
We live in a leadership crisis. "In an age when incompatible worlds collide and when scandals rock formerly stable institutions," says Walter Fluker, "what counts most is ethical leadership and the qualities of personal integrity, spiritual discipline, intellectual openness, and moral anchoring." Fluker finds these characteristics exemplified in ......
The book provides practical guidance for parish pastors, and other counselors, to deal with such issues as Alzheimer's disease, the chronically ill, relocation, health crises, grief, depression, anxiety, gender differences, poverty, and the issues faced by the children of older adults.
Leading Faithful Innovation offers a practical, hands-on approach to addressing the challenges of change in the church and our culture. This three-step process is not another program or add-on to what readers are already doing. It is an ongoing way of following God that allows the Spirit of God to drive the energy among the people of the church.
This volume examines crucial concerns in palliative care, including the proper balance between comfort and cure for the patient, the integration of spiritual well-being, and the challenges of providing care in the absence of basic medical services and supplies. In the first section, palliative-care pioneers Constance Dahlin, Eduardo Bruera, ......