African American Pastoral Care


Book Description

Respond to God's unfolding drama to bring healing and reconciliation. In this major revision of his classic book, Dr. Edward Wimberly updates his narrative methodology by examining current issues in African American pastoral care and counseling.




Recalling Our Own Stories


Book Description

How religious caregivers can find spiritual renewal in their own story Recalling Our Own Stories, which author Edward P. Wimberly describes as "a spiritual retreat in book form," is designed to help clergy and religious caregivers face the challenges of ministry. It is also a valuable resource for practitioners who assist these clergy and caregivers in meeting the challenges of their work. Wimberly enables caregivers to map out and come to grips with cultural expectations of their profession. He also helps readers explore and edit the mythologies that make up their self-image, attitudes toward others, expectations about their performance and role, and convictions about ministry. Finally, he provides a model for spiritual and emotional review grounded in narrative psychology and spiritual approaches. As Wimberly explains, this book offers a way to renew our motivation for ministry by reconnecting to our original call, visualizing again how God has acted and remains intricately involved in our lives. Wimberly demonstrates how religious caregivers, often facing burnout, can tap the sources of renewal that reside in the faith community.




The Edward Wimberly Reader


Book Description

"A collection highlighting Edward Wimberly's pastoral theology, featuring writings on pastoral, marital, and family counseling as well as social and political issues"--




Images of Pastoral Care


Book Description

This book is an edited volume of works that have predominated over the past several decades in contemporary pastoral theology. Through the writings of nineteen leading voices in the history of pastoral care, Dykstra shows how each contributor developed a metaphor for understanding pastoral care. Such metaphors include the solicitous shepherd, the wounded healer, the intimate stranger, the midwife, and other tangible images. Through these works, the reader gains a sense of the varied identities of pastoral care professionals, their struggles for recognition in this often controversial field, and insight into the history of the disciple. Includes readings by: Anton T. Boisen, Alastair V. Campbell, Donald Capps, James E. Dittes, Robert C. Dykstra, Heije Faber, Charles V. Gerkin, Brita L. Gill-Austern, Karen R. Hanson, Seward Hiltner, Margaret Zipse Kornfeld, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Jeanne Stevenson Moessner, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Gaylord Noyce, Paul W. Pruyser, Edward P. Wimberly.




Nested Ecology


Book Description

Nested Ecology provides a pragmatic and functional approach to realizing a sustainable environmental ethic. Edward T. Wimberley asserts that a practical ecological ethic must focus on human decision making within the context of larger social and environmental systems. Think of a set of mixing bowls, in which smaller bowls sit within larger ones. Wimberley sees the world in much the same way, with personal ecologies embedded in social ecologies that in turn are nested within natural ecologies. Wimberley urges a complete reconceptualization of the human place in the ecological hierarchy. Going beyond the physical realms in which people live and interact, he extends the concept of ecology to spirituality and the “ecology of the unknown.” In doing so, Wimberley defines a new environmental philosophy and a new ecological ethic.




Becoming Friends of Time


Book Description

In Becoming Friends of Time, John Swinton crafts a theology of time that draws us toward a perspective wherein time is a gift and a calling. Time is not a commodity nor is time to be mastered. Time is a gift of God to humans, but is also a gift given back to God by humans. Swinton wrestles with critical questions that emerge from theological reflection on time and disability: rethinking doctrine for those who can never grasp Jesus with their intellects; reimagining discipleship and vocation for those who have forgotten who Jesus is; reconsidering salvation for those who, due to neurological damage, can be one person at one time and then be someone else in an instant. In the end, Swinton invites the reader to spend time with the experiences of people with profound neurological disability, people who can change our perceptions of time, enable us to grasp the fruitful rhythms of God’s time, and help us learn to live in ways that are unimaginable within the boundaries of the time of the clock.




Caring Ministry


Book Description

The Caring Ministry program was developed by the Pastoral Care Team at St. John as Episcopal Cathedral in Denver, Colorado, to train lay people in basic pastoral skills. Its premise is that there is no better way to cultivate a receptive posture toward others than by practicing listening to God. The Caring Ministry Approach thus combines basic pastoral skills and guidelines along with an emphasis on being grounded in prayer. It invites both clergy and lay ministers to deepen the well of relationship with God as a means to developing a caring, listening heart. The text weds expertise with reflection and draws up the rich stories and lessons from scripture that add the spark of wisdom and grace to psychological programs. It is particularly suited for use in church-based pastoral care programs.




Teaching Global Theologies


Book Description

Theological education, like theology itself, is becoming a truly global enterprise. As such, theological education has to form, teach, and train leaders of faith communities prepared to lead in a transnational world. The teaching of theology with a global awareness has to wrestle with the nature and scope of the theological curriculum, teaching methods, and the context of learning. Teaching Global Theologies directly addresses both method and content by identifying local resources, successful pedagogies of inclusion, and best practices for teaching theology in a global context. The contributors to Teaching Global Theologies are Catholic, mainline Protestant, and evangelical scholars from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, each with sustained connections with other parts of the world. Teaching Global Theologies capitalizes on this diversity to uncover neglected sources for a global theology even as it does so in constructive conversation with the long tradition of Christian thought. Bringing missing voices and neglected theological sources into conversation with the historical tradition enriches that tradition even as it uncovers questions of power, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Teachers are offered successful pedagogies for bringing these questions into the classroom and best practices to promote students' global consciousness, shape them as ecclesial leaders, and form them as global citizens.




Old Testament Theology


Book Description

Old Testament Theology provides a foundational tool for a theological reading of the Old Testament. In the book's central chapters, John Kessler delineates six differing representations of the divine-human relationship, with special emphasis on the kind of response each one evokes from the people of God. He traces these representations through the Old Testament, into the New Testament, and reflects on their significance for the values and character formation of the people of God today. Old Testament Theology combines elements of Old Testament history, exegesis, hermeneutics, and theology, and situates them within the social, cultural, and intellectual world of ancient Israel and Israelite religious institutions. The result is a comprehensive and readable introduction to Old Testament theology for students in seminaries and colleges.




Cut in Stone


Book Description

Confederate monuments figure prominently as epicenters of social conflict. These stone and metal constructs resonate with the tensions of modern America, giving concrete definition to the ideologies that divide us. Confederate monuments alone did not generate these feelings of aggravation, but they are far from innocent. Rather than serving as neutral objects of public remembrance, Confederate monuments articulate a narration of the past that forms the basis for a normative vision of the future. The story, told through the character of a religious mythos, carries implicit sacred convictions; thus, these spires and statues are inherently theological. In Cut in Stone, Ryan Andrew Newson contends that we cannot fully understand or disrupt these statues without attending to the convictions that give them their power. With a careful overview of the historical contexts in which most Confederate monuments were constructed, Newson demonstrates that these "memorials" were part of a revisionary project intended to resist the social changes brought on by Reconstruction while maintaining a romanticized Southern identity. Confederate monuments thus reinforce a theology concerning the nature of sacrifice and the ultimacy of whiteness. Moreover, this underlying theology serves to conceal inherited collective wounds in the present. If Confederate monuments are theologically weighted in their allure, then it stands to reason that they must also be contested at this level--precisely as sacred symbols. Newson responds to these inherently theological objects with suggestions for action that are sensitive to the varying contexts within which monuments reside, showing that while all Confederate monuments must come under scrutiny, some monuments should remain standing, but in redefined contexts. Cut in Stone represents the first detailed theological investigation of Confederate monuments, a resource for the larger collective task of determining how to memorialize problematic pasts and how to shape public space amidst contested memory.