This unique book uses life cycle theory to focus on the person who ministers, providing a pastoral model consisting of three important dimensions. Instead of concentrating solely on the role of the pastor as personal comforter, Donald Capps also emphasizes the dimensions of the pastor's role as moral counselor and ritual coordinator. In addition to summarizing Erik Erikson's life cycle theory, Capps addresses topics rarely discussed in pastoral care literature. His discussion of the Book of Proverbs provides a biblical foundation for the model of pastoral care developed throughout the book.

This unique book uses life cycle theory to focus on the person who ministers, providing a pastoral model consisting of three important dimensions. Instead of concentrating solely on the role of the pastor as personal comforter, Donald Capps also emphasizes the dimensions of the pastor's role as moral counselor and ritual coordinator. In addition to summarizing Erik Erikson's life cycle theory, Capps addresses topics rarely discussed in pastoral care literature. His discussion of the Book of Proverbs provides a biblical foundation for the model of pastoral care developed throughout the book.

Updated with the latest research, this second edition approaches human development from a multidisciplinary perspective. Uniquely inclusive of the moral and faith dimensions of the life cycle, 'Human Development and Faith' examines the interplay of mind, body, family, community, and soul at every stage of development. (Back cover).

Understand the spiritual and psychological stages of human life! Life Cycle: Psychological and Theological Perceptions provides professors and students of religion, pastoral counselors, and parents with a description of human personality development from birth to death from both psychological and theological perspectives. You will examine how personalities develop and unfold as individuals grow and how they are influenced by family members and by God, helping you view the life cycle as a sacred journey. Life Cycle will help you, as a parent, to understand your children better, and as an individual, to gain a meaningful perspective of the unfolding of your own life. As a pastoral counselor, this book will help you to enlarge your comprehension of developmental problems and solutions, enabling you to better help your parishioners develop healthy spiritual identities. Through this insightful book, you will discover the natural process of development through life-stages such as the Age of Works, the Age of Friendships, and the Age of Discovery. This unique book will help you in your pursuit of self-discovery. Within these pages you will: examine the history and theories of personality development from such theorists as Freud, Erikson, and Sullivan to get a solid foundation for understanding the process of identity formation understand theological as well as psychological views of personality development. realize the impact of the family unit on the development of individuals learn to recognize the stages of human development and see how the integration of theology and psychology can clarify them Life Cycle includes a comprehensive bibliography on the subject of development, as well as beautiful and moving poems that depict personal growth to help describe new concepts and help you to better understand important identity issues. This informative book will help you clearly define the stage of life that you or the person you are trying to help is in and identify the stage where problems originated, giving you the necessary information to begin to problem solve and promote healthy spiritual and mental growth and balance.

'Pastoral Care: A Thematic Approach' offers a much needed development of the thematic approach in the study of personality as a theoretical basis for pastoral care. This approach, which includes the personality theories of Henry Murray, Robert W. White, Robert J. Lifton, and especially Erik H. Erikson, is notable for its emphasis on personal and institutional change. The book emphasizes the role that pastoral care can play as a change agent in the local parish, pastoral counseling as a model for change, and the role of pastoral care in effecting change through personal and institutional crises. Selected case studies illustrate how the thematic approach applies to pastoral care situations. Primarily a contribution to pastoral psychology, it also touches on problems and issues in pastoral theology.

Ritual can resonate to human need, and to this end there is much the ritualist can learn from the psychological insights into human development and personality familiar to those in the field of pastoral care.

The basic idea of this book derives from Paul Ricoeur's view that since texts and meaningful human actions are sufficiently similar, methods and theories developed for interpreting texts may also be used for interpreting human actions. Donald Capps applies this view to the broad range of pastoral actions and, in the process, formulates a unique and helpful hermeneutical model of pastoral care. Capps maintains that such a model can be extremely useful for understanding what a particular pastoral action means to those involved in it, and for evaluating its effects on these persons.

When the organization and structure of the church in America was altered in the early 1900s to meet modern demands, the role of the pastorate became more specialized to adapt to the burdens of the new, “efficient” structure. In 1920, Gaines Dobbins utilized the business efficiency model at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to formulate a distinct ecclesiology. Discontent with traditional methods of instruction in theological education, Dobbins sought to implement theories and methodologies from modern educationalists. He adopted a psychologized educational methodology and utilized the psychology of religion as an empirical measure of the soul, human nature, and human behavior. Use of the social sciences seemed to grant Dobbins, as a practitioner, academic respectability within the realm of theological education. Both the professionalization that resulted from Dobbins’s efficiency standards, and a working theory of human nature derived from psychological models, were synthesized into a specialized system of pastoral care. Dobbins followed the new shape of pastoral theology in America, adopting Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) as the model for pastoral training. As a result, CPE became an integral part of the curriculum at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for over sixty years, and spread to influence many other SBC entities.

Therapeutic counseling in a Christian context can be highly effective when it maintains narrowly focused goals in a time-limited setting. The details of this proven model of pastoral counseling are described in this practical guide. This second edition of Strategic Pastoral Counseling has been thoroughly revised and includes two new chapters. Benner includes helpful case studies, a new appendix on contemporary ethical issues, and updated chapter bibliographies. His study will continue to serve clergy and students well as a valued practical handbook on pastoral care and counseling.