Customer Reviews

Skilled Pastor the

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Professor Taylor combines remarkable theological insight with equally remarkable understanding of what's needed in real-life pastoral situations: theory and practice are interwoven. Taylor's main thesis is "The way to help persons deal with their problems is to help them change the beliefs that contribute to their distressing feelings and behaviors. Thus, the goal...is to help people change through hearing and responding to the gospel." (p. 137) Taylor presents three types of pastoral skills needed to accomplish this goal, and presents information on specific techniques that undergird each skill. His underlying theology is centered on the gospel. For the student pastor trying to serve God and his/her fellow humans, Taylor's logical, step-by-step analysis of pastoral encounters and appropriate helping strategies can be invaluable. Although the book is remarkably clearly written, this is not easy material to put into practice, and you'll benefit from practice with a peer group, supervisor, or classroom teaching.

One of Taylor's back cover commentators, Rodney J. Hunter of Chandler School of Theology wrote, "Charles Taylor has written a pioneering book, one that is bound to be controversial but undeniably creative and important." The book is not a pioneering work, nor is it all that creative and important. It's par for the course and similar to many other texts on pastoral care and counseling. It could have been controversial, in my opinion, had any of its reviewers paid attention to some of its details. I don't recommend it to my students or other chaplains with whom I come in contact. I've had Taylor's book in my CPE library since it came out and did CPE with one of the many persons footnoted in his preface. Since that time, I have used only small portions of it with just about every CPE group that I have supervised, with supervisory students I have worked with, and shared my observations with other CPE supervisors. One of those aforementioned details came out in a small portion of the book, about four pages from the beginning of Chapter 3 "Assessing". Taylor uses a two page verbatim encounter between a young widower, Patrick Wood, and Pastor Sandra Sherwood. His goal is to provide a crisp, clear example of good pastoral/counseling skills. Taylor's primary focus is on surface listening, paraphrasing, clarifying, summarizing, etc. However, he missed the sub-surface, other-than-conscious dialogue, which would be obvious to just about any entry level therapist; i.e., it's not about what it is about! If Taylor was aware of the double meanings, he should have footnoted his clever intentions, even in the choice of names for his characters. The dialogue clearly suggests Patrick's psychosexual anxiety and grief and problem of missing the warmth and companionship of his late wife and son (wife and son were killed in an auto accident one year ago). Patrick, on the surface, is seeking help with his 'prayer life.' "I used to get a warm feeling every time I prayed. It was like God was right in the room with me, with his arms around me. It was wonderful...I felt so comforted. Now when I pray...nothing. No warm feeling, no sense of God. It's awful." Pastor Sherwood responds, "You feel bad because you no longer experience God's presence the way you used to." All this is transpiring in the coffee/social hour after worship as Patrick pulls Pastor Sherwood aside. Taylor does not address the transference and counter-transference issues. Maybe Pastor Sherwood kept things clinical because her unconscious was warning her that Patrick may be interested in something other than prayer. Sadly, Taylor's other dialogue examples miss the mark for sub-surface communication. They do address his teaching points, but, and here's another detail, even a quick read of these sample dialogues indicate that the author is suggesting a clinical (distant) stance. He fails to adequately address interpersonal dynamics and communications, rapport, human anxiety, and the strengths and sources of human emotions and relationships. His clinical vignettes could have benefitted from the inclusion of reflective and affective commentaries. For example, such commentaries could have noted cognitive awareness of highly conserved biological drives for intimacy, bonding, and parenting and, equally important, recognition of the care giver's feelings during these encounters and afterwards.

I enjoyed Charles Taylor's book and learned a great deal. While based on Scripture, Taylor's book gives concrete examples of what to do and what to avoid when counseling. His use of this teaching method made things very clear for me.

This book give great insight to pastoral skills in counseling. A must for both new and experienced pastors and for laity who visit.

We used this book in our Lay / seminary training. It is Excellent. The tips on body language and listening skills is great

This book is very good for persons whose grasp of psychology and religious training tend to be basic in understanding. It can be a valuable help in this situation.