Customer Reviews

Short Term Spiritual Guidance (Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling) (Creative Pastoral Care & Counseling)

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Duane Bidwell has done an excellent job in identifying the realistic albeit challenging notion that spiritual care giving is necessarily short-term in duration. As a result, he identifies a clearly short term model, namely, solution focused brief therapy (SFBT), and adopts it for this type of pastoral care. The result is a richly thought out corrective to SFBT especially through insights from Philippians 2 or what is known as the Christ hymn. Bidwell develops the idea of respect as a central domain for integrating SFBT and pastoral guidance. Second, he provides excellent examples of pastoral work that provide the reader with concrete application of the model. He also provides an outline for the processes involved in this model. I highly recommend this work.

I purchased this book for a class on the Spirituality of Counseling in conjunction with work towards an MDiv Degree. It is an excellent resource for anyone interested in either short-term spiritual counseling, meaning folks who seek to discern God's presence at key points in their lives, or integration of spirtituality into discussion of normal life challenges. A great resource for clergy, laity, or anyone interested in this area or work.