Counseling Men opens the way for men to discuss and discover their fears and losses in conversation with clergy, pastoral counselors, and lay caregivers.

Dying to old roles and rising again Sixteen men attempt to lay out what it means to be an adult male Christian. The authors move beyond old stereotypes of manliness and Christian identity to chart new identities, roles, and attitudes. They include men who are deeply in the Christian church and men barely in the church, straight and gay men, white men and African Americans, Protestant and Catholic, younger and older. Contributors include: Mike Bathum, Mark Muesse, Michael Battle, Stephen Boyd, David Livingston, Donald Capps, James Newton Poling, Merle Longwood, Marvin Ellison, Philip...

"Patristic theology is primarily pastoral. Yet often the study of writings from the first six centuries of the church is pursued in ways that make the polemical, philosophical, and political aspects stand out. But if one reads around those texts that are profiled in these ways, the pastoral concerns will emerge. Even contemporary interests in social, economic, and deconstructionist approaches locate much of the data for their questions within or near texts that also can be looked at for the descriptions of shepherding the flock. Thus it is likely that any who read ancient Christian literature...

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...