Christic Heart
I'll be delivering the 2007 Boreham Lectures in Pastoral Care later this week at Sparks Regional Medical Center in Fort Smith, Arkansas.The title of the series is "Christic Heart: A Spiritual Theology for Pastoral Care," and the three lectures engage a close reading of the biblical "Song of Christ" from the second chapter of Philippians, exploring its implications for pastoral care and spiritual formation.
We'll start Thursday evening, May 3, with "Thickening Wisdom," a look at the type of practical, spiritual wisdom that is at the heart of the text.
On Friday morning, we'll turn to "Subverting the Emperor," which explores the social setting and rhetorical purpose of the text to propose how it can be used in spiritual and pastoral assessment.
Finally, on Friday afternoon we'll turn to "Evoking Majesty," which frames emptying, serving, and humbling as ways to help people identify and enrich their preferred ways of being and strengthen resistance to "the power of empire" in their lives in order to manifest the majesty that God intends for each person (and all of creation together).
So if you're around the south-central part of the country this week, and you'd like to spend some time exploring with others how spiritual theology can inform pastoral care, come join us. Registration and lunch are only $30.
For more information, contact the hospital's pastoral care department at 479-441-5452.
Labels: pastoral care, speaking, spiritual theology, teaching
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, April 30, 2007
New book release
I'm delighted to announce the release of The Formation of Pastoral Counselors: Challenges and Opportunities.Co-edited with Joretta Marshall of Eden Theological Seminary, the book arrived last week in both hard- and soft-cover.
It's the first comprehensive look at what it takes to nurture pastoral counselors for this day and time, paying special attention to the racial, ethnic, sexual, economic, theological, spiritual and theoretical diversities present in today's community of pastoral counselors in North America.
It takes a few months after finishing a project to get some critical distance on it, so I'm always a bit apprehensive the first time I see something I've written (or edited) in print.
But now that I've looked through the finished text, I can honestly say that the book feels like an important and substantial contribution to the future of our discipline.
(Of course, it's up to our peers to decide whether that's true. Many will get a first look at the text later this week during the annual meeting of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors in Portland, Oregon.)
Featuring essays by two dozen of the most prominent clinicians and scholars in the field, the book weaves critical scholarship with practical formation models already at work in pastoral counseling centers around the country.
Contributors include:
- Han van den Blink and Margaret Kornfeld, past presidents of AAPC
- Larry Graham and Jason Whitehead of Iliff School of Theology
- Loren Townsend of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
- Pamela Cooper-White of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia
- Joe Driskill of Pacific School of Religion
- Alice Graham of Hood Theological Seminary
- Tapiwa Mucherera of Asbury Theological Seminary
- Joretta Marshall of Eden Theological Seminary
- Zina Jacque of Community Church of Barrington, IL
- Duane Bidwell of Brite Divinity School
- Mark Watts and David Reynolds of Pastoral Counseling Services in New Hampshire
- Rebecca Radillo of New York Theological Seminary
- Kathleen Greider, Bill Clements, and Sam Lee of Claremont School of Theology
- Hunter Hill, Dennett Slemp, and Vic Maloy of the Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care and BonnaSue of Eastern Mennonite University
- Charles Mendenhall of Care and Counseling Center of Georgia and Doug Ronsheim of AAPC
Order a copy, take a look, and let me know what you think.
Labels: formation, pastoral counseling, Scholarship
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Sunday, April 22, 2007