Larry VandeCreek, DMin, the author of A Research Primer for Pastoral Care and Counseling (now Part One of the current volume), is the retired Assistant Director in the Department of Pastoral Care, University Hospitals of The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He also served as Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Neurology. His research interests and publications focus on quantitative research that elucidates the religious/spiritual needs of hospital patients and the impact of pastoral care. Hilary Bender, PhD, STD, is a clinical and research psychologist in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is a Boston University Professor Emeritus and is on the faculty of the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology. His specialty in research and clinical work is the ""all-but-dissertation"" phenomenon and working with the many doctoral students who have completed all requirements for their degrees but the dissertation and become unable to make this final step. Merle R. Jordan, ThD, is the retired Albert V. Danielsen Professor of Pastoral Psychology at the Boston University School of Theology. He is a Diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and a Fellow and Approved Supervisor in the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. He is the author of Taking on the Gods: The Task of the Pastoral Counselor. Margot Hover, DMin, is an Association of Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor and the coordinator of pastoral research at Duke University Medical Center, Raleigh, North Carolina. She has received the ACPE Research of the Year Award and the Council on Ministry in Specialized Settings Research Paper of the Year Award. She is also the author of Caring for Yourself When Caring for Others.

Based on her twenty years of teaching and on her own experience in pastoral care, Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner has written a basic pastoral-care text to assist in the emotional and spiritual preparation of pastoral caregivers. Stevenson-Moessner expands on her key notion of pastoral care as seen through the interconnection and interplay of love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self. Her brief book is meant to engender "confidence and caring" in the initiate, and to assuage the fear and anxiety that naturally occur when one accompanies people in life-changing pain and travail. Through skilled use of the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Good Shepherd, along with stories from her own experience, Stevenson-Moessner imparts genuine wisdom and meaningful support to those who courageously dare to offer caregiving ministry in whatever situation or through whatever method or paradigm. Her work unfolds in six chapters: 1. Introduction: The One-Room Schoolhouse 2. Pointers and Precepts: The Grammar of Care 3. The Prism of Pastoral Care: Scripture Refracted 4. Paradigms in Pastoral Care: The Community as Classroom 5. The Open Classroom: Places of Care 6. Conclusion: An Alphabet of Grace

What do spiritual needs, health care, pastoral services, religious resources, statistics, and quantitative research methods have in common? Traditional literature in the pastoral care, counseling, and education movement probably would say, "Not a great deal." Indeed, the pastoral arts and sciences have tended to be high on art (especially praxis) but relatively low on science (especially quantitative research).That's too bad, claims Dr. Larry VandeCreek, who has gathered together a sample of previously published but widely scattered research reports which he hopes will inform hospital chaplains, congregational pastors, hospital personnel, and theological students on ways in which knowledge gained from carefully designed research can enhance their project of care.Selecting only quantitative research reports, the volume explores such topics as the role of spirituality in terminally ill hospitalized patients, the demonstrated helpfulness of prayer in health crisis, the possible impact of hope among women with breast cancer, the role and impact of chaplaincy services in general hospitals, as well as other studies demonstrating a variety of relationships between spirituality and health care.

Intended to be a simple, practical book on pastoral care and counseling. Included are insights into all sorts of problems and situations-from premarital counseling to divorce to death. Sample conversations are interspersed throught the book. Intended to help the reader become a more thoughtful and effective pastor and pastoral counselor.

In this ground-breaking book, pastoral counselor Andrew Lester demonstrates that pastoral theology (as well as social and behavioral sciences) has neglected to address effectively the predominant cause of human suffering: a lack of hope, a sense of futurelessness. Lester examines the reasons that pastoral theology and other social and behavioral sciences have overlooked the importance of hope and despair in the past. He then offers a starting point for the development of addressing these significant dimensions of human life. He provides clinical theories and methods for pastoral assessment of and intervention with those who despair. He also puts forth strategies for assessing the future stories of those who despair and offers a corrective to these stories through deconstruction, reframing, and reconstruction. This book will be invaluable to pastoral caregivers who are looking for a vantage point from which to provide care and to pastoral theologians who are seeking to develop a theological lens through which to understand the human condition.

The essentials of pastoral care involve the pastor's distinctive task of caring for those who are estranged--the lost sheep. Taken from the biblical image of the shepherd, the pastor by virtue of his or her professional calling cultivates wise judgment in order to hear the hurting and offer guidance, reconciliation, healing, sustaining presence, and empowerment to those in need. This book will outline the quintessential elements pastors need to wisely minister in today's context by discussing four major kinds of lostness: grief, illness, abuse, and family challenges. The purpose of the Abingdon Essential Guides is to fulfill the need for brief, substantive, yet highly accessible introductions to the core disciples in biblical, theological, and religious studies. Drawing on the best in current scholarship, written with the need of students foremost in mind, addressed to learners in a number of contexts, Essential Guides will be the first choice of those who wish to acquaint themselves or their students with the broad scope of issues, perspectives, and subject matters within biblical and religious studies.