For years, the many books of Wayne Oates have served as invaluable field manuals for ministers and seminarians. Here, for the first time in one volume and by a minister who studied with him, are selected chapters from this distinguished author's fundamental works. This helpful new book reflects Oates's wisdom, clinical insight, and exhaustive search for scriptural understanding.

What do ministers do when they get depressed? Do they just work because "the show must go on"? Some ministers may, but C. Welton Gaddy did not. In this intensely personal book, described by Wayne E. Oates as "frank, considerate, and attention keeping," the author tells the story of how he "stopped the show," entered a well-organized, modern psychiatric unit, and received psychiatric care. He also tells of his discovery in the hospital of a more honest community than he had ever known in the church. Gaddy describes his experiences as a pastoral minister who went from good to bad health...