Customer Reviews

Cultivating Wholeness: A Guide to Care and Counseling in Faith Communities

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This book touches the roots of our being. It is a well-written guide for anyone interested in healing in religious communities.

All of us are surrounded by change. Some of the changes uproot us. They upset the body-mind-soul balance that is critical to our mental and physical health. Left to our own devices, Margaret Kornfeld says, this uprooting will manifest itself in more severe problems. Communities of care, she says, have stepped in to fill this void. These are groups that combine psychological with spiritual training to help individuals restore wholeness.

Kornfeld, a pastoral psychotherapist, an American Baptist pastor, faculty member at Union Theological Seminary, has written an encyclopedic treatment of caregiving. Thorough, engaging and well-written, this book will become dog-eared as you pull it off your shelf to consult. For all caregivers - professional, clergy and caring amateurs - this book is a must-read resource.

Margaret Kornfeld has done a marvelous job of integrating the kind of practical wisdom that develops in clinical supervision with interfaith religious tradition and practice. She has developed the knowledge in a format with the student in mind, at the same time as providing depth and breadth of resources for the teacher. And congratulations to the publisher for allowing the kinds of multiple citations--resources at the end of the chapter, endnotes, and bibliography--that makes "Cultivating Wholeness" into a true guide for continuing education. This really is a tremendously useful book. One really does get the sense that she has synthesized the knowledge of the therapeutic tradition that Blanton-Peale has represented and makes it available in an appropriate manner for the beginning general practitioner.

Kornfeld's book, Cultivating Wholeness, is an excellent primer for the parish pastor or lay counselor who does short term counseling. She gives a cursory overview of many mental health issues as well as a course of action (the five step solution-focused treatment model). Pastors will find this book enlightening and helpful. The only word of caution I would make is that no one thinks that because they have read this book, they are now equipped to perform counseling beyond basic pastor/parishioner, brief, solution-focused treatment.

All in all, this book is an excellent contribution to the care and counseling of individuals in faith communities. Her five appendices are very accommodating; they include forms and paperwork which will make the solution-focused treatment flow smoothly and provide thorough information-gathering instruments for the pastor or lay counselor.

Pastors and lay counselors must read chapter ten if nothing else, especially the portion which deals with professional boundaries and ethical responsibilities. It is excellent. Kornfeld discusses the position of power of the pastor or counselor and how it creates a power imbalance between pastor and parishioner. This power imbalance can be a subtle precursor to sexual entanglement and it needs to be thoroughly understood by the pastor or lay counselor.

I would highly recommend this book for faith communities, but as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. Kornfeld includes books and articles in her bibliography which are copious resources for further study.

What a privilege to read CULTIVATING WHOLENESS! I was both informed and awed. It is a 'tour de force' --- a comprehensive (virtually encyclopedic), concrete, pragmatic, and thematically held together work on change within the context of congregational/community life that takes account of sophisticated psychotherapeutic processes informed by biblical hermeneutic. The care-giver must be an expert, and is helped to be an expert, without being a specialist. In short, THIS IS THE BEST BOOK ON PASTORAL CARE AND COUNSELING IN SCOPE AND SPECIFICS WITH WHICH I AM ACQUAINTED.

Kornfeld has produced a comprehensive work regarding the care of souls in a congregational setting. For this I applaud her. However, at times I felt as though her attempts at being comprehensive minimized her ability to specifically outline congegational health. I do agree with her emphasis on Brief Counseling and the Solution-Focused Method as being most appropriate when counseling/care is done within the life of a congregation. However, she failed to carefully delineate how to use these approaches in the variety of comprehensive issues she raised regarding health needs in a congregation.

I appreciated her attempt to be inclusive of a variety of spiritualities. However, it is obvious that she is Christian and the limited times she embraced other spiritualities through illustrations or texts seemed more patronizing than sincere. I would have preferred she simply express her Christian bias without distracting me through failed attempts at inclusion.

Because I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) my interest was keen when she used the term OCD. However, I was quite troubled that she attributed OCD to areas of unhealthiness that I believe to be incorrect. Basically, I challenge her usage of OCD. This observation made me wonder if she was in error in other areas that she addressed. Pointedly, if she erred regarding OCD had she offered other misleading or uninformed information?

Overall, the work is a valuable tool for care givers in congregations. However, I am hesitant to recommend it as the primary tool for guiding that task. Rather, I would hope that the areas pointed toward in her work would prompt care givers to further explore sources that more adequately deal with specific areas of health.

I have had the privilege of accompanying Margaret Kornfeld's book, Cultivating Wholeness: A Guide to Care and Counseling in Faith Communities, in its birthing process over the past several years. I witnessed how Margaret brought together her many fields of experience and expertise: her teaching of psychodynamics to clergy psychotherapists at the Blanton Peale Graduate Institute and to the seminarians at Union Theological Seminary; her many years in an outstanding practice as therapist in individual, group and couples therapy, her pastoral experience at Judson Memorial Church; her work in AIDS ministry; her leadership roles both in the regional and national levels of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors; her prodigious study and reading in all areas pertinent to pastoral ministry and counseling. The result is a prudent and balanced guide to all the complex issues of pastoral counseling. This is the one book I would recommend as a vade mecum for anyone involved in pastoral ministry in a faith community.

The textbook Cultivating Wholeness is a literal reservoir of counseling knowledge, wisdom, and pragmatic applications from an author in the long line of Peale disciples. Community caregivers, including clergy and trained laity, will find this exhaustive resource helpful in both practice and presence. It offers a "cradle to grave" scope in its approach, and any counselor in the faith community can feel a deeper sense of training as a result of its perusal and study.
The focus of community is an appropriate one for the author's foundational statements regarding caregiving. The giving of care is most effective when it is couched within the environment of community. Hence, the discussion juxtaposing pseudo communities and authentic communities is insightful. Community care is also very relational, and healthy relationships are both the goal and apex of therapeutic counseling.
The title of the text lends itself well to the author's analogy of counseling as gardening. Wholeness (shalom) is given by God; however, as a gardener tends to plants to bring about growth and fruit, so also a caregiver tends to counselees to help facilitate growth and bear the fruit that the Creator desires to grow within them. Kornfeld is careful to include reminders that for counselors to tend properly to others, they must give attention to the care of self. Toward that end, I found the chapter entitled "Tending Yourself" to be an especial aid to the development of shalom in the caregiver's soul.
In sum, the end notes, case studies, appendices, and bibliographical references are ministry gold mines. For pastors, I feel that Chapter Six includes a resource that is very worthwhile and deserving of attention: The Five-Step Solution-Focused Treatment Model. May this tool help usher us out of the problem-solving mode and into the solution-offering mode - for the good of our congregants.

Kornfeld has written an excellent resource not just for clergy, but also for anyone in the helping professions, including mental health professionals. This is a work that can be used repeatedly, as it includes the specific topics and areas of concern, that healers (i.e., clergy, pastors, counselors, caregivers, etc.) need to be addressing within their communities.
Kornfeld's uses the metaphor of a Cultivator and a Gardener brilliantly to describe the caregiver and counselor who toil in "the soil community" (12). This metaphor is descriptive of a gardener testing the soil and nurturing it to produce a healthy crop. Similarly the clergy or pastor longs to have the healthiest flock and shepherds the flock in order to produce this health.
To Kornfeld one of the necessary points is "that you wait for people to ask for help" (77). This is called `earning the right to suggest' by many professionals in the mental health field. This is so important for those who come just to be heard. In our fast paced society, so many people do not feel "heard" and long to "be heard." Therefore, this is an excellent point, not just for clergy, but also for counselors or those in professional mental health career positions (i.e., social workers, school counselors, marriage and family therapists) or any one want to assist the hurting individual.
Kornfeld refers to the act of listening as "holy listening," (61) the most important act that can be done for the walking wounded.
In chapter five, the author articulates what I believe is the function of a counseling ministry. She writes, "Referral counseling is a ministry of holism. When you refer to those who are specialists in healing the body or the mind, you are acknowledging the mind-body-soul-team of which you are a member"(111). Doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists are finally starting to recognize the role of religion and spirituality in healing. Pastors in the communities have not acknowledged the help available from the medical and psychology communities. Meanwhile members of congregations have suffered needlessly, because of this opposition. In addition, Kornfeld insists that counselors should be staying abreast of new information so that they will have "a working knowledge of the current world of mental health" (112).
Furthermore, I found it interesting and scripturally sound that "the solution-focused method is discernment" (142). Usually, within the context of denominations, especially charismatic and/or Pentecostal traditions, only the counselor is empowered with that supernatural gift. Yet, Kornfeld states that it is both, the counselor and the counselee, "who are being given new perception" (142) as they are becoming more aware of the Presence of God.
In chapter ten Kornfeld discusses the one issue that is seen so much in our pulpits, congregations and society today-burnout. Kornfeld give clear, concise and practical steps to tending to oneself. She states that those who "do not believe they have the right to be filled," continue on empty until they realize that "position and status do not feed the soul" (282). She describes burnout as "spiritual malaise" which she believes can be treated only by not doing more of the same, and by recognizing that burnout is a form of self-abuse, related to acting out of one's past.
The healing comes as people will "let themselves be found by sitting still," instead of going "off in all directions" to alleviate the panicky feelings that are driving them. The key is to be still and listen to God as God finds and embraces you in the process of self-disclosure. Healing happens in the discovery of your own dreams, as you revise and live them out (284).
Kornfeld recommends a system that clergy, lay ministers, and counselors can put in place for support, protection, and nurture. This system consists of feeding your soul, finding others to observe you and your work, shifting your focus to home and your personal life, finding a balance of work, play, rest, and relationship, being connected to your body, as you learn to care for it; and asking yourself a Miracle question.
Lastly, Kornfeld makes a critical point for clergywomen when she writes, "Ministry should not be a `battlefield' where women are wounded in the course of action and must continue to work in a state of acute stress disorder" (299). For men as well as women "those who thrive in ministry stay out of power struggles with themselves and others" (303).

This book is a helpful analysis for care providers as they tend to the needs of hurting people. The garden metaphor of tending both the ground and plant helps paint a picture of how care providers can facilitate the process of change throughout a person's entire life cycle. The author describes change in two ways: First Order and Second Order. First Order changes deal with persons who have simply adapted to life despite problems. Second Order changes deal with persons who have made a systemic change in their entire way of living. The author is concerned about helping care providers counsel hurting people toward Second Order change that would bring wholeness.
Author Margaret Kornfield elevates the authentic religious community as a wonderful place where individuals could find wholeness. Kornfield maintains that this "wholeness" is only facilitated within a community where people are honest with each other, able to resolve conflicts, and willing to love each other. Beyond the religious community, the author relates the strategic position that a counselor holds as gardener and facilitator of change.
In addition to the religious community and the counselor, Kornfield supports preaching and prayer as dynamic resources that can facilitate change. Sometimes counseling takes place within the context of a group of people as they listen to preaching and partake in religious rituals. Religious traditions can bring help to people in need of spiritual wholeness.
From resources to methodology, Kornfield describes a helpful technique in counseling: the solution-focused method. Instead of evaluating people in terms of their problems, solution-focused counseling looks for and supports positive change that counselees are already incorporating into their lives. Using the garden metaphor, the author illustrates how counselors can apply too much help by over watering. Often in counseling, all that is needed is simple support for growth that is already taking place.
As the gardener plants the seed and tends to the plant, the entire cycle of life is experienced. With all the issues surrounding death and dying, society has made an attempt to ignore the end of life. Kornfield illustrates how counselors can work in the midst of community to bring wholeness to those who are experiencing traumatic loss. The ABC process of crisis management (Achieve contact, Boil down the problem, and Cope with the problem) is effectively illustrated for counselors as they work with difficult problems. Finally, the author, speaking to care providers, reinforces the importance of maintaining personal and spiritual well-being.
Kornfield's book provides the reader with useful insights and invaluable techniques to help people discover real change and wholeness throughout the cycle of life.

Cultivating Wholeness by Margaret Kornfeld
New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2001
A Review by Eric F. Newell
April 13, 2002

Seeking wholeness through community care facilitates change. In contrast to "brief" counseling, or that done with a professional counselor, Cultivating Wholeness proposes the healing that comes and as the community works together. Each part of the body contributing from his/her own frame of reference enables one to gain insight from a variety of sources. The analogy of the gardener is used for the way that one is to care for the community. Keeping in mind the aspects of balance and change, one is able to work with those around them. Balance helps one to be looking both within and without. Change then is the desire to be flexible with the desire of staying in harmony with one's surrounding.

Kornfeld balances the concern for the community or the one facing or needing change, with the facilitator or change agent. It is necessary to know situations and circumstances surrounding those in the midst of change. Just as important is the facilitator's understanding of his/her own circumstances. At times it would seem good to be able to use personal experiences for the sake of identifying with others. This should only be done as the facilitator has come to terms with the issues in his/her own life. A concern arises when the therapist personally identifies with the situation of a counselee if the counselee projects a problem on someone or some situation other than him/herself, thereby masking the real problem.

The solution-focused approach discussed is helpful for assisting the person in working toward their answer. The solution-focused therapist recognizes the possibility for change as one comes complaining about the situation as it is projected onto another person. By listening to this complainant telling of some else's problem, the therapist listens and works with the complainant as he/she discusses the "other" person. By listening and working through the solution in this projected situation, the therapist builds a relationship with the counselee. Having built this relation, the therapist is able to help the complainant develop goals for this troubling situation.

Being in community, specifically as related to a pastor and the congregation, Kornfeld speaks of the different opportunities that the minister has of seeing persons as they experience the changes in life. More than a counseling concern, the author's concern seems to be that of support to be offered as one finds the answers to their own questions. While this lends itself to helping persons to work to find solutions, there is something within me that seeks for a more purposeful direction for the questions of life.

In Appendix B, the "Wholeness Membership Network" inventory is a good concept. The networking of the different abilities and strengths within the community is a good resource. The form by itself leaves several questions. It does not seem to give space for

those who have other abilities, to share how they can be a resource. Also it would have been helpful to have a place where the one answering the inventory, though they might not have the skills requested, would be able to list other known resources.