Act For Clergy And Pastoral Counselors

For the first time ever, three pioneers in the field of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) present an edited volume that outlines how the core ACT processes can be applied to religious and spiritual care approaches. If you are a clergy leader or pastoral counselor, people struggling with difficult situations or life traumas frequently turn to you for guidance. And while you’re passionate about helping, you may be unprepared for counseling people with certain mental health challenges. On the other hand, if you are a psychotherapist, you may need guidance in supporting your client’s religious belief system in therapy. In either case, this book presents a powerful road map to help you provide the best care. In this book, you’ll find a complete overview of ACT, as well as strategies for integrating ACT and issues related to spirituality. You’ll also learn how the core processes of ACT—such as commitment to change and values-based living—can be seamlessly tied into spiritual and religious counseling, no matter your faith or therapeutic background. By teaching you how to fuse conceptual psychological and spiritual principles, this book will provide you with the tools needed to enhance your counseling skill set.

The relationship between pastor and parishioner is the essence of pastoral counseling--a simple truth with profound implications. Dr. Richard Dayringer explores these implications in The Heart of Pastoral Counseling: Healing Through Relationship, Revised Edition to help pastoral counselors understand how to use the relationship to bring about the desired ends in the therapeutic process. Drawing on research from the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, marriage counseling, family therapy, and pastoral counseling, this book lays the foundation for utilizing the pastoral counseling relationship to bring about positive change as it explores topics such as observation, listening, communication, handling transference, and termination of therapy. Because the interpersonal relationship is the vehicle of therapy, it is critical that pastoral counselors understand the psychological assumptions that play a large part in the characteristics of relationships as well as the factors requiring attention in order to establish a secure counseling relationship. The Heart of Pastoral Counseling will help you attain this understanding as you also improve your knowledge on: how pastoral relationships may be applied outside the therapeutic hour in general pastoral work eclectic methods for clarifying feelings, developing intellectual insight, interpreting, questioning, and assigning certain behavior employing the problem-oriented record in pastoral counseling distinguishing relationship from transference and countertransference the unique problem that counseling acquaintances presents personality traits that attract people to the minister/pastoral counselor counselor attitudes that foster relationship how a client’s view of the counselor has an impact on the effectiveness of therapy The Heart of Pastoral Counseling brings a solid base of research to pastoral counselors, seminary students, graduate students in counseling, professors of counseling, and specialists in pastoral psychotherapy so that you might better understand the nature of pastoral counseling relationships and how they are helpful and constructive in people’s lives. You will be challenged to rethink your role in initiating and carrying out therapeutic change and realize why you should build your ministry on relationships, rather than on friendships.

This much-needed book offers a current description of how religious counselors and clergy, as well as their local and national religious organizations, become legally vulnerable. The authors examine the three most litigated areas in clergy counseling: breaches of confidentiality; sexual misconduct; and the content and quality of counseling services. Glossary.

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Building on the groundbreaking original work with the same title, these articles focus on current issues, such as certain life stages, special populations, the devalued and abused, the addicted and special issues of the 1990's.

Most pastoral counselors, clergy, and psychotherapists assume that truly effective counseling requires months or even years. Studies have proven otherwise, showing that most people come for four or fewer sessions, and that the majority of any counseling's effectiveness occurs in the opening few sessions.

This book will assist pastors in their efforts to counsel parishioners by moving from a problem-focused approach to a solution-focused approach. Clergy members have historically sought ways to improve their counseling methods. The practice of contemporary pastoral counseling has been profoundly impacted by 20th century secular psychological principles. Pastoral counselors have adopted and adapted many of these principles in an attempt to improve their counseling efforts. Parish-based pastoral counselors have long been aware of the unique stressors and concerns that are associated with serving parishioners in a duality of professional roles. This book describes a research project that was initiated to introduce the clergy to the principles of a model of family therapy known as Solution-Focused. The Solution-Focused Family Therapy model was developed at the Brief Family Therapy Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[1] The utility of the solution - focused approach in family therapy is described. Of particular interest is the manner in which pastoral counselors may employ this unique variant of brief systemic therapy in parish-based settings. A pastoral counseling adaptation of solution-focused therapy emphasizes present and future solutions, while minimizing the attention directed toward problematic behavioral sequences that can create negativity, or stress for both pastor and client-member. A main goal of a parish-based pastoral usage of solution - focused therapy is to provide brief and effective assistance to members, while avoiding negativity, thereby maximizing the potential preservation of satisfactory ongoing clergy-member relations. This book features the research method of Interpersonal Process Recall (IPR), and a narrative analysis of exemplars.

A guide for people interested in the fascinating field of pastoral counselling. A mix of standard psychological counselling and religious teachings. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This very practical book offers no-nonsense instructions for pastors, chaplains, and ministers whose real specialty is the practice of relational wisdom. Patton provides a helpful, step-by-step template for pastoral counseling sessions and clear guidelines for understanding when to defer and how to refer—all while remaining faithful to the basic pastoral calling to connect persons seeking help with the relationships and resources they need to deal with their lives. "In a society of specialists, John Patton’s Pastor as Counselor is a bold reminder of the healing potential of 'care-full' attending to lost and separated persons through the unique relational wisdom of the generalist pastor. This is vintage Patton, written with gentle wisdom and generous counsel summarizing decades of practicing and teaching pastoral counseling."—Herbert Anderson, Emeritus Professor of Pastoral Theology, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago, IL, and Faculty in Practical Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA "John Patton wrote this 'how-to' book for ministers without specialized training in mental health issues. Ministers are good at developing and deepening human relationships, and that is exactly what they need in order to become skilled short-term pastoral counselors. Concrete, down-to-earth, and quintessentially practical, this is a book that should be on the syllabus of every seminary’s introduction to pastoral care and counseling. It is the fruit of a lifetime of reflection and embodied relational wisdom at its best." —Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, Charlotte W. Newcombe Professor of Pastoral Theology, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ "When it comes to counseling, our first port of call is often the mental health professions. In this book John Patton carefully draws out what is special about pastoral counseling. With theological depth and wise practical utility, he offers a clear guide for pastoral counselors as to what it is that gives them their identity and what that looks like in practice. This is a wise and deeply practical book that will inevitably be transformative." —John Swinton, Chair in Divinity and Religious Studies; School of Divinity, History and Philosophy; University of Aberdeen; Aberdeen, UK "John Patton has acquired unparalleled wisdom over decades of providing, supervising, teaching, and writing about pastoral care. This most gifted and deeply reflective thinker has crafted a primer that will become a classic, spelling out what’s central for those new to the vocation, reminding the more seasoned of what really matters."—Chris R. Schlauch, Associate Professor of Pastoral Psychology and Psychology of Religion, Boston University School of Theology, Boston, MA "Patton's book nicely parallels what he asks pastors to do in counseling others. Through a well-developed structure, he offers wise presence, spiritual conversation, and relational wisdom. His book would be a valuable resource in an advanced pastoral care course in a theological school. Similarly, a peer group of pastors would benefit from collective engagement with insights it provides as they assess their pastoral counseling relationships." Kenneth J. McFayden, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Va. (Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(4)