How religious caregivers can find spiritual renewal in their own storyRecalling Our Own Stories, which author Edward P. Wimberly describes as "a spiritual retreat in book form," is designed to help clergy and religious caregivers face the challenges of ministry. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners who assist these clergy and caregivers in meeting the challenges of their work.Wimberly enables caregivers to map out and come to grips with cultural expectations of their profession. He also helps readers explore and edit the mythologies that make up their self-image, attitudes toward others, expectations about their performance and role, and convictions about ministry. Finally, he provides a model for spiritual and emotional review grounded in narrative psychology and spiritual approaches.As Wimberly explains, this book offers a way to renew our motivation for ministry by reconnecting to our original call, visualizing again how God has acted and remains intricately involved in our lives.Wimberly demonstrates how religious caregivers, often facing burnout, can tap the sources of renewal that reside in the faith community.
How religious caregivers can find spiritual renewal in their own story Recalling Our Own Stories, which author Edward P. Wimberly describes as "a spiritual retreat in book form," is designed to help clergy and religious caregivers face the challenges of ministry. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners who assist these clergy and caregivers in meeting the challenges of their work. Wimberly enables caregivers to map out and come to grips with cultural expectations of their profession. He also helps readers explore and edit the mythologies that make up their self-image, attitudes toward others, expectations about their performance and role, and convictions about ministry. Finally, he provides a model for spiritual and emotional review grounded in narrative psychology and spiritual approaches. As Wimberly explains, this book offers a way to renew our motivation for ministry by reconnecting to our original call, visualizing again how God has acted and remains intricately involved in our lives. Wimberly demonstrates how religious caregivers, often facing burnout, can tap the sources of renewal that reside in the faith community.
The Caring Ministry program was developed by the Pastoral Care Team at St. John as Episcopal Cathedral in Denver, Colorado, to train lay people in basic pastoral skills. Its premise is that there is no better way to cultivate a receptive posture toward others than by practicing listening to God. The Caring Ministry Approach thus combines basic pastoral skills and guidelines along with an emphasis on being grounded in prayer. It invites both clergy and lay ministers to deepen the well of relationship with God as a means to developing a caring, listening heart. The text weds expertise with reflection and draws up the rich stories and lessons from scripture that add the spark of wisdom and grace to psychological programs. It is particularly suited for use in church-based pastoral care programs.
The secret to leadership and transformation of a group--or of another person--is the quality of the relationship one person has with another. The effective group leader or counselor will be the person who learns how to listen to other people. By studying and employing listening skills, church leaders will engage others more compassionately, allowing them to feel that their needs are being met. These skills can be used with persons who are terminally ill, inactive at church, going through a divorce, in a family with a severely ill person, unemployed, seeking a new church, grieving, traumatized by catastrophe, going through teenage adolescence, in marriage counseling, or leading a ministry team. John Savage offers eleven specific and teachable listening skills for improving relationships among those who do ministry in small-group settings or when offering counsel to others. The skills are taught through oral exercises and unfailingly helpful examples from actual congregational situations. The skills include paraphrasing, productive questions, perception check, expression of feelings and emotions, fogging, negative inquiry, behavior description, and story listening.
This book is an edited volume of works that have predominated over the past several decades in contemporary pastoral theology. Through the writings of nineteen leading voices in the history of pastoral care, Dykstra shows how each contributor developed a metaphor for understanding pastoral care. Such metaphors include the solicitous shepherd, the wounded healer, the intimate stranger, the midwife, and other tangible images. Through these works, the reader gains a sense of the varied identities of pastoral care professionals, their struggles for recognition in this often controversial field, and insight into the history of the disciple. Includes readings by: Anton T. Boisen, Alastair V. Campbell, Donald Capps, James E. Dittes, Robert C. Dykstra, Heije Faber, Charles V. Gerkin, Brita L. Gill-Austern, Karen R. Hanson, Seward Hiltner, Margaret Zipse Kornfeld, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Gaylord Noyce, Paul W. Pruyser, Edward P. Wimberly.
Drawing on psychological, theological, and cultural studies on suffering, Carrie Doehring encourages counselors to view their ministry through trifocal lenses and include approaches that are premodern (apprehending God through religious rituals), modern (consulting rational and empirical sources), and postmodern (acknowledging the contextual nature of knowledge). Utilizing strategies from all three perspectives, Doehring describes the basic ingredients of a caregiving relationship, shows how to use the caregiver's life experience as a source of authority, and demonstrates how to develop the skill of listening and establish the actual relationship. She then explains the steps of psychological assessment, systemic assessment, and theological reflection, and finally she delineates the basic steps for plans of care: attending to the careseeker's safety, building trust, mourning losses, and reconnecting with the ordinariness of life.
A new articulation of pastoral theology, care, and counseling. Too often we think and teach in ways that reinforce a mind-body split. This can lead people to self-alienation, impeding holistic, healthy relationships between people, God, and each other. Body Connections takes a different approach, teaching us to see the connections between our embodied experience and faithful spiritual care. Author Michael Koppel focuses on the human body and its relationship to faith and spiritual care. He engages religious texts and traditions as well as scientific insights, offering accessible theology and spiritual practices for healing and care of the body. Our bodies are amazing resources, but we are too often unaware of their power, or unable to harness it in helpful ways for our own good. This remarkable book empowers pastors, counselors, chaplains, seminarians, and caregivers to understand and provide the ministry of care in an entirely new, life-giving way. This book is highly useful for individuals and groups. It is for clergy, chaplains, spiritual directors, seminarians, clinical educators, lay people in churches, and those who are institutionally unaffiliated but care deeply about fostering a holistic spiritual path. Praise for Body Connections Everything we think, feel, and do comes through the body. But practices of spiritual care tend to downplay the body as a source of knowledge and a tool for responding to others and to God. Koppel’s book reclaims that wisdom, coaching us to strengthen our abilities to read, listen, and think with the body. I can’t wait to teach this practical, wise, and convicting book, which addresses embodied emotion, grief, silence, trauma, and more. Koppel’s seasoned, pastoral voice offers a rich synthesis of sources and insights that demonstrate the body’s place at the center of ministry. --Duane Bidwell, professor of practical theology, spiritual care, and counseling, Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, CA Body Connections provides new insights into the voice and language of the body. Koppel crafts a "body theology" that encourages spiritual care practitioners to be proactive in their spiritual practices of listening, adapting and responding to our bodies and to the bodies of those to whom we offer care. Using the image of "body as storyteller" and other metaphors, Koppel captures and defines the healing power of the body in clear and profound ways. --Bishop Teresa Jefferson-Snorton, D.Min., Presiding Bishop, Fifth Episcopal District, The CME Church Michael Koppel returns the body to its rightful place at the center of each person’s story and the center of the Christian story. He calls readers home to their bodies and gently challenges escapes from the body into hasty fixing, detached rationalizing, anxious dithering, or addictive numbing. At a time when the COVID pandemic has underscored the vulnerability of bodies, Koppel’s focused, healing, deep body consciousness paints a portrait of health far beyond mere absence of disease. Don’t just read this book: absorb it, practice it, and let it heal you. --Douglas M. Thorpe, PhD, is Executive Director of the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care and a past president of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors It is surprisingly difficult, even confusing: to have a body; to be a body; to touch, talk and listen to, even read a sensing body; to honor and restore the body’s wounds, traumas, and shame while celebrating its healing and resilience... Koppel is a wise guide and caregiver for those seeking to embrace the sacredness of a human body and its unique story. Body Connections empowers a reader to discover body knowledge anew. It deepens trust in the most intimate relationship one has, the relationship with one’s body. --Jaco J. Hamman, professor of religion, psychology, and culture, and director of the Program iin Theology and Practice, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
Finding balance for your personal, spiritual, and professional life can seem daunting. "A Play-full Life: Slowing Down and Seeking Peace" explores the life-giving power of play. Through practices of solitude and hospitality, creativity and quiet, author Jaco J. Hamman empowers Christians to sense the fullness of life and to seek peace.
A practical guide to living your later years with wisdom and purpose, featuring inspiring stories and thought-provoking exercises. When we claim our place at the fire, we enter into the circle of vital elders who have been the source of wisdom in society since time immemorial. We do this by courageously reexamining and rediscovering who we are, where we belong, what we care about, and what our life's purpose is. Claim Your Place at the Fire invites you to approach the second half of your life as an empty canvas, ready to be filled with a new and vibrant sense of purpose. It shows you how to stoke the wisdom you’ve gained to burn more brightly to light the way for yourself and others. Through stories and exercises, you will learn to look at yourself with new eyes and answer four key questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What do I care about? and What is my purpose
Alexander Popper can't stop remembering. Four years old when his father tossed him into Lake Michigan, he was told, Sink or swim, kid. In his mind, he's still bobbing in that frigid water. The rest of this novel's vivid cast of characters also struggle to remain afloat: Popper's mother, stymied by an unhappy marriage, seeks solace in the relentless energy of Chicago; his brother, Leo, shadow boss of the family, retreats into books; paternal grandparents, Seymour and Bernice, once high fliers, now mourn for long lost days; his father, a lawyer and would-be politician obsessed with his own success, fails to see that the family is falling apart; and his college girlfriend, the fiercely independent Kat, wrestles with impossible choices. Covering four generations of the Popper family, Peter Orner illuminates the countless ways that love both makes us whole and completely unravels us. A comic and sorrowful tapestry of memory of connection and disconnection, Love and Shame and Love explores the universals with stunning originality and wisdom.
