This book presents a unique blend of theological reflection on listening, new and tested research on listening as it relates to church leadership, and suggested forms of listening education and skills assessment in a continual effort to locate and understand listening as the heart of effective and faithful ministry.

This book explores the relationship between the practices of pastoral care and the practices of spiritual direction with the aim of enabling pastoral caregivers to draw upon the guiding principles, resources, and techniques of spiritual direction within the Christian tradition. With an emphasis on both "practice" and "presence", the book reclaims the tradition of "soul care" for the pastoral ministry, thereby complementing the medical, or crisis intervention, model of pastoral care with a wellness/growth model of pastoral care.

Listening for the Soul:
-- Challenges clergy to take...

Increasingly, pastoral counselors feel the need to integrate spirituality into their therapy. A therapist and theologian shows how much richer therapy is when it calls attention to spirituality in addressing human struggles. Written especially for those whose training tends toward the straightforwardly psychological, "Hidden Spring" offers a manual for richer, more meaningful counseling. (July)

Culbertson has built his text around the ideal of Christian wholeness and maturity-a healthy interconnectedness of self-within-community. The heart of the book lies in its presentation of the three schools of counseling theory that Culbertson finds most helpful: family systems theory, narrative counseling theory, and object relations theory. Each of these is explained in detail, and then applied to the most common and challenging of counseling situations: pre-marital counseling, marriage counseling, divorce counseling, counseling gay men and women, and grief counseling. Culbertson brings new...