In Theological Context for Pastoral Caregiving, Howard W. Stone helps his fellow pastors and worship leaders provide effective and faithful pastoral care and counseling through the study of the correlation between pastoral care and theology. You will learn that in order for pastoral care to be effective it must have a theological base to shape the caregiving experience. At the same time, theology must be informed by the needs and experiences of the people being served and by the ministry of pastoral care. By relating these two issues, you gain a unique viewpoint not offered by books with simply a psychological focus.The author draws from his day-to-day clinical practice of pastoral care and counseling to show how pastoral care and theology can be brought together. Through Howard Stone's work, the reader learns of: an overview of pastoral care and counseling today how to provide a pastoral assessment of the persons served the author's theological understanding of the ministry of pastoral care and counseling methods for correlating theology and pastoral care how spiritual direction as a discipline can help pastoral care and counseling ministry regain a solid theological base theological themes that might be more explicitly and intentionally related to pastoral careTheological Context for Pastoral Caregiving provides useful information for parish pastors, people in training to be parish pastors, and specialists in the field of pastoral care counseling. As one of the easiest-to-read books on this subject, it can also be used as a text for graduate-level classes in courses such as Theology and Pastoral Care, Pastoral Theology, and Practical Theology. With this book, seminary students will finally be able to relate the practical things learned in pastoral counseling classes with what is learned in theology classes.

More and more professionals in ministry realized the benefits of brief pastoral counseling-typically three sessions-for addressing the real-life dilemmas of their congregants. In this very helpful resource, eleven leaders in pastoral counseling-both established leaders and new thinkers in the field-offer a convincing rationale. Based on reserach, case studies, and the latest thinking, they lay out (1) the dynamics of the pastor- parishioner relationship, including the need for collaborative, hospitable, future-oriented, and wholistic counseling, and (2) specific strategies, including brief counseling's solution-focused method, its relation to spiritual direction, its focus on people's strengths, and time limits. The volume concludes with a call for the whole field to recognize the contextual, practical character of effective, responsible pastoral counseling.

Crisis Counseling unites the historic skills of pastoral care and counseling with current methods of crisis intervention from the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. Like the original edition, the present book is written for ministers both clergy and lay who are called upon to care for those in crisis. Its concepts and methods will be of value to mental health professionals and crisis hot-line volunteers as well.

Crisis Counseling discusses the minister's role as a crisis intervener, incorporating the understanding of recent crisis intervention theory and exploring how the dynamics of crisis is vital for effective crisis management.

A no-nonsense guide to depression for pastoral counselors.

In Theological Context for Pastoral Caregiving, Howard W. Stone helps his fellow pastors and worship leaders provide effective and faithful pastoral care and counseling through the study of the correlation between pastoral care and theology. You will learn that in order for pastoral care to be effective it must have a theological base to shape the caregiving experience. At the same time, theology must be informed by the needs and experiences of the people being served and by the ministry of pastoral care. By relating these two issues, you gain a unique viewpoint not offered by books with simply a psychological focus.The author draws from his day-to-day clinical practice of pastoral care and counseling to show how pastoral care and theology can be brought together. Through Howard Stone's work, the reader learns of: an overview of pastoral care and counseling today how to provide a pastoral assessment of the persons served the author's theological understanding of the ministry of pastoral care and counseling methods for correlating theology and pastoral care how spiritual direction as a discipline can help pastoral care and counseling ministry regain a solid theological base theological themes that might be more explicitly and intentionally related to pastoral careTheological Context for Pastoral Caregiving provides useful information for parish pastors, people in training to be parish pastors, and specialists in the field of pastoral care counseling. As one of the easiest-to-read books on this subject, it can also be used as a text for graduate-level classes in courses such as Theology and Pastoral Care, Pastoral Theology, and Practical Theology. With this book, seminary students will finally be able to relate the practical things learned in pastoral counseling classes with what is learned in theology classes.

Most pastoral counselors, clergy, and psychotherapists assume that truly effective counseling requires months or even years. Research suggests otherwise. Studies have provided two startling findings. First, most persons come for four or fewer counseling sessions, whatever the counseling method employed. Second, the majority of any counseling's effectiveness occurs in the opening few sessions. Part One uses brief pastoral counseling as a framework for detailing specific issues and approaches: getting the problem clear, assigning homework between sessions, and focusing on strengths. Part Two connects many of the typical problems encountered in parish ministry to specific counseling interventions which work in only a few sessions. Using many examples formulated out of Stone's years of counseling experience, it allows the reader to visualize each approach and make use of it as a counseling strategy.

'Howard Stone has given a very useful gift to parish ministers and their congregations in this very concise, clearly written, practical, lucidly illustrated book. (His) contribution... grows out of the accumulation of practical experience, as well as scholarship.'---David K. Switzer, Journal of Pastoral Care

Ministers-both clergy and lay-are often the first recourse for people in crisis, and people expect them to navigate through emergency, tragedy, disaster, loss. Often these persons are paralyzed and they expect help to get in motion again. Crisis Counseling is written for persons who seek to provide such assistance, whether as ministers or hotline volunteers or pastoral counselors. Here, Howard W. Stone unites the historic skills of pastoral care and counseling with the recent methods of crisis intervention from the fields of psychology and psychotherapy. The insights of marriage and family systems also have been incorporated into this book, even though crisis intervention arose out of individual psychotherapeutic theory and practice. This thoroughly revised book includes new material on suicide, working with the family of Alzheimer patients, crisis counseling by telephone, intervention in volatile or hazardous situations, and the minister's personal safety.

About the Contributor(s): Tobias Brandner (PhD, University of Zurich, Switzerland) is a minister of the Swiss Reformed Church and of the Hong Kong Tsung Tsin Mission. For the past twenty years, he has been working in prisons in Europe and Asia--first in Switzerland and since 1997 in Hong Kong. He is also an Assistant Professor of Church History, Missiology, and Ecumenism at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.