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.

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.

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

Culbertson has built his text around the ideal of Christian wholeness and maturity-a healthy interconnectedness of self-within-community. Culbertson presents three schools of counseling theory: family systems theory, narrative counseling theory, and object relations theory. Each of these is explained and then applied to various counseling situations: pre-marital counseling, marriage counseling, divorce counseling, counseling gay men and women, and grief counseling. Culbertson addresses issues of gender, families, sexual orientation, the relationship of emotions to spirituality, and the relevance of the counselor's own self-understanding.--From publisher's description.

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.