Bøger i Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling serien

This book demonstrates how counselors can help people to use the resources they already have so they can address issues that come up in life. The authors show that most people have within themselves the strengths and resources to confront the issues positively that trouble their lives. The counseling method elicits resiliency, assets, and successful experiences from the client's past to foster positive change in the present. Case studies are included, drawn especially from marriage and family counseling.

Couples can make significant progress toward resolving their own problems when they receive appropriate guidance from a caring person. This book outlines five tasks focused on identity, agency, and meaning that spiritual caregivers can use to empower couples for significant change in just three to five conversations. This form of empowering guidance is a dimension of pastoral conversation rather than formal counseling. Critically integrating desert spiritual theology with empirical data about successful marriages, Bidwell advocates for mutuality and partnership within covenanted relationships, which allows partners to create an alliance strong enough to resist the forces that threaten relationshipsespecially the negative influences of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal.

This book, written by a pastoral theologian with years of experience in counseling gay and lesbian individuals and their families, assist both pastoral caregivers and congregations in examining and enhancing their pastoral care of homosexuals and their families. This thoughtful book provides factual information, theological and biblical insight, and practical counseling skills to help congregations become caring communities for gays and lesbians.