The effective group leader or counselor will be the person who learns how to listen to other people. By studying and employing listening skills, church leaders will engage others more compassionately, allowing them to feel that their needs are being met. These skills can be used with persons who are terminally ill, inactive at church, going through a divorce, in a family with a severely ill person, unemployed, seeking a new church, grieving, traumatized by catastrophe, going through teenage adolescence, in marriage counseling, or leading a ministry team.John Savage offers eleven specific and teachable listening skills for improving relationships among those who do ministry in small-group settings or when offering counsel to others. The skills are taught through oral exercises and unfailingly helpful examples from actual congregational situations. The skills include paraphrasing, productive questions, perception check, expression of feelings and emotions, fogging, negative inquiry, behavior description, and story listening.

    One of the best known classics on the work of the Christian ministry.

    This third edition is enlarged and revised with updated resources, methods, exercises, and illustrations from actual counseling sessions. This book will help readers be sensitive to cultural diversity, ethical issues, and power dynamics as they practice holistic, growth-oriented pastoral care and counseling in the parish.

    Though it is intensely personal, he decided to publish it in the hope that some of those who sit on the mourning bench for children would find his words giving voice to their own honoring and grieving. What he learned, to his surprise, is that in its particularity there is universality. Many who have lost children have written him. But many who have lost other relatives have done so as well, along with many who have experienced loss in forms other than the death of relatives or friends. The sharply particular words of Lament, so he has learned, give voice to the pain of many forms of loss. This book, Lament For A Son, has become a love-song. Every lament, after all, is a love-song. Will love-songs one day no longer be laments?

    Humans–as Augustine noted–are "desiring agents," full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love.James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in "Desiring the Kingdom," the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome "Desiring the Kingdom," as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers.

    Picking up on the monastic tradition of creating a rule of life that allows for regular space for the practice of the spiritual disciplines, this book takes you more deeply into understanding seven key disciplines along with practical ideas for weaving them into everyday life. Each chapter includes exercises to help you begin the practices--individually and in a group context. The final chapter puts it all together in a way that will help you arrange your life for spiritual transformation. The choice to establish your own sacred rhythm is the most important choice you can make with your life.

    Instead, they spend their lives essentially disconnected from others, rushing through life content with brief visits and casual conversations. But what if one were to develop a community, a spiritual community, of people who walked with and supported each other through life's journey? A community of real friends who listened to each other's personal tragedies without merely trying to fix the problems, who encouraged and nurtured each other's strengths, and who accepted people for who they really are, instead of the image they try to portray. In Becoming a True Spiritual Community (formerly titled The Safest Place on Earth), Larry Crabb explores such a place, where God can heal disconnected people and allow them to reconnect with each other and, ultimately, with Him.

    Yet the issues in our lives and relationships that we wish would change often stay the same, even with our best efforts at spiritual growth. What does it take to experience increasing strength and depth in our spiritual walk, our marriages and family lives and friendships, our personal development--in everything life is about? And how can we help others move into growth that is profound and lasting?Unpacking the practical and passionate theology that forms the backbone of their counseling, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend shatter popular misconceptions about how God operates to reveal how growth really happens.You'll discover:What the essential processes are that make people grow.How those processes fit into a biblical understanding of spiritual growth and theology.How spiritual growth and real-life issues are one and the same.What the responsibilities are of pastors, counselors, and others who assist people in growingWhat your own responsibilities are in your personal growth.Shining focused light on the great doctrines and themes of Christianity, How People Grow helps you understand the Bible in a way that will help you head with confidence down the high road of growth in Christ.Workbook also available.

    James Fowler has asked these questions, and others like them, of nearly six hundred people. He has talked with men, women, and children of all ages, from four to eighty-eight, including Jews, Catholics, Protestants, agnostics, and atheists. In many cases, the interviews became in-depth conversations that provided rare, intimate glimpses into the various ways our lives have meaning and purpose, windows into what this books calls faith. Faith, as approached here, is not necessarily religious, nor is it to be equated with belief. Rather, faith is a person's way of leaning into and making sense of life. More verb that noun, faith is the dynamic system of images, values, and commitments that guide one's life. It is thus universal: everyone who chooses to go on living operated by some basic faith.Building on the contributions of such key thinkers as Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg, Fowler draws on a wide range of scholarship, literature, and firsthand research to present expertly and engagingly the six stages that emerge in working out the meaning of our lives--from the intuitive, imitative faith of childhood through conventional and then more independent faith to the universalizing, self-transcending faith of full maturity. Stages of Faith helps us to understand our own pilgrimage of faith, the passages of our own quest for meaning and value.

    He lifts up the enduring character of each tradition and shows how a variety of practices, from individual study and retreat to disciplines of service and community, are all essential elements of growth and maturity. Foster examines the unique contributions of each of these traditions and offers as examples the inspiring stories of faithful people whose lives defined each of these "streams."

    "The Complete Guide to Crisis and Trauma Counseling "is a biblical, practical guide to pastoral counseling written by one of the most respected Christian therapists of our time. Dr. H. Norman Wright brings more than 40 years of clinical and classroom experience to this topic, and shares real-life dialogs from his decades in private practice to demonstrate healthy, healing counseling sessions. Readers will learn how to counsel and coach both believers and non-believers who are in crisis, how to walk alongside them through the hours, weeks and months following their trauma and how to help them find the path to complete restoration.

    Guenther also discusses basic matters of Christian practice, such as making a confession, intercession, going on retreat, simplifying our lives, using a journal to pray, finding a spiritual director, and praying through times of desolation when God does not seem to be listening.

    Popular Dallas Theological Seminary professors make basic theology accessible for everyone, including key doctrines on Revelation, Scripture, and the triune God.

    Yet this book emanates with a special poignancy out of Peterson's own crisis experience as a pastor. Peterson tells about the "abyss," the "gaping crevasse," the "chasm" that he experienced, early in his ministry, between his Christian faith and his pastoral vocation. He was astonished and dismayed to find that his personal spirituality, his piety, was inadequate for his vocation -- and he argues that the same is true of pastors in general. In the book of Jonah -- a parable with a prayer at its center -- Peterson finds a subversive, captivating story that can help pastors recover their "vocational holiness." Using the Jonah story as a narrative structure, Peterson probes the spiritual dimensions of the pastoral calling and seeks to reclaim the ground taken over by those who are trying to enlist pastors in religious careers.

    In an instant, a tragic car accident claimed three generations of his family: his mother, his wife, and his young daughter. While most of us will not experience such a catastrophic loss in our lifetime, all of us will taste it. And we can, if we choose, know as well the grace that transforms it. A Grace Disguised plumbs the depths of sorrow, whether due to illness, divorce, or the loss of someone we love. The circumstances are not important; what we do with those circumstances is. In coming to the end of ourselves, we can come to the beginning of a new life one marked by spiritual depth, joy, compassion, and a deeper appreciation of simple blessings.