Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling (Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling)

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More and more professionals in ministry realized the benefits of brief pastoral counselingtypically three sessionsfor addressing the real-life dilemmas of their congregants. In this very helpful resource, eleven leaders in pastoral counselingboth established leaders and new thinkers in the fieldoffer a convincing rationale.

Based on reserach, case studies, and the latest thinking, they lay out (1) the dynamics of the pastor-parishioner relationship, including the need for collaborative, hospitable, future-oriented, and wholistic counseling, and (2) specific strategies, including brief counseling's solution-focused method, its relation to spiritual direction, its focus on people's strengths, and time limits. The volume concludes with a call for the whole field to recognize the contextual, practical character of effective, responsible pastoral counseling.

From the Publisher

From the Preface (pre-publication version): Context shapes action. It is a potent ingredient in our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. The times and places in which you do things influence how you do them, and circumstances shape your response to the words and actions of others. Services, products, professions, even avocations need to fit the context in which they are performed or consumed. I would not recommend sushi for a toddlers birthday party menunor would I dare serve hot dogs and red Jell-O brand gelatin to my wife for an anniversary dinner (but she would be happy with the sushi). A rural general practitioner would require a new set of skills to practice medicine in a large urban emergency ward. A university English professor would need retraining to teach writing for primary school children. Anglers, of course, are accustomed to adapting to their context: jigging for walleye in a Minnesota lake requires different tackle, technique, and mystique from fly-fishing for Atlantic salmon in a Scottish stream or setting out trot lines for monster catfish in a south Texas river. Pastoral counseling is no exception. Its usual context is not a professional office in a medical arts building or psychiatric hospital. The primary context of pastoral counselingindeed, its heartis the congregation. In the course of pastoral conversation with those they serve, parish pastors, rabbis, and priests daily offer counsel in some form: a late night visit with a worried parishioner in the waiting room of an intensive care unit, guidance given to parents troubled by their sons drug use, help for a married couple at the brink of divorce who have decided to give counseling a try for a session or two, spiritual direction with a widower experiencing an arid prayer life since his wifes death, and an infinite variety of other pastoral moments. Due to their contextthe many people they serve and multitude of functions they fulfill, as well as the wishes of their parishionersministers rarely see people in counseling for more than a few sessions and often only for one (see chapter 1).

In the congregational context, therefore, counseling inevitably is brief (brief in this volume designates a counseling duration of no more than ten sessions, but typically many fewer). Parish pastors have little choice in the matter; it is their reality. Like the doctors, teachers, and anglers in the illustrations above, if they are to minister effectively, they need to adopt strategies to suit that reality. As early as 1949, Seward Hiltner wrote that the time limitations of the parish suggest that most pastors counseling be brief. According to him, the principal benefit of brief counseling is to help a parishioner turn the corner, or change direction: Even brief counseling can often do just enough to bring a slightly new perspective, hence altering the approach to the situation and giving a chance for spontaneous successful handling of it by the parishioner. Generally Hiltner and his contemporaries favored an insight-oriented, long-term counseling approach. Brief pastoral counseling methods are much more finely tuned now than when he wrote these lines, and they are better designed to help people change direction in a few sessions. Turning the corner, in fact, is a primary goal of brief pastoral counseling, under the assumption that the other ministries of the church will continue to support people as they grow and move into the future. Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling is an attempt to synthesize the thinking of established and up-and-coming thinkers in the area of brief pastoral counseling. It follows up the work I began in Brief Pastoral Counseling and, much earlier, in Crisis Counseling. The book summarizes the literature in the brief pastoral counseling field and offers a new way, one that addresses the real, day-to-day context of pastoral counseling as it is practiced in local congregations among living, breathing, unique persons. The eleven authors of Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling propose an orientation toward pastoral counseling based upon short-term counseling theory and methodology, with the underlying assumption that the vast majority of counselees wish to deal expeditiously with their problems and are unable or unwilling to devote more than a few visits to the task. People seek help from religious professionals because they quickly want to address whatever is troubling them, and not necessarily to achieve insight or delve into their distant pasts. While the primary context of pastoral counseling is the congregation, the authors do not intend to exclude pastoral care and counseling specialists; indeed, it is my hope that many of them will read these chapters. Some may find themselves working once again in the parish setting as changes in insurance benefits and health care delivery cause a shift away from long-term therapy for troubled people. Indeed, a majority of the work of specialists, whether they are hospital chaplains, private practitioners in pastoral counseling, or military chaplains, is already brief in nature. Experiences and ideas of these professionals are needed in the conversation. It is my hope that the ministries of parish pastors and pastoral counseling specialists will inform and enrich each other.

About the Author

Howard W. Stone is professor emeritus of psychology and pastoral counseling at Brite Divinity School, Texas Christian University. He is the author of many influential books, including Depression and Hope, and editor of Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter One (pre-publication version):

The Changing Times: A Case for Brief Pastoral Counseling
Howard W. Stone

Tony Hillerman, best-selling author of mysteries set in the American southwest, tells the true tale of Black Jack Ketchum, the most successful train robber Folsom, New Mexico, had ever known. Black Jack figured out that, while chugging up the old horseshoe curve southeast of Folsom, the Colorado and Southern train had to slow down so much that a horseman could hop out of the stirrups and onto the train without even having to gallop his horse. It was, apparently, like snatching candy from a baby. The system worked for him over and over again, so brilliantly that he saw no reason to change it.

Eventually the Colorado and Southern Railroad management figured out what he was doing. They packed the train with guards. The next time Black Jack rode up in his usual style, they shot and captured him and quickly brought him to trial after which, Hillerman adds, he was consequently and subsequently hanged over at Clayton with such enthusiasm that his head came off. Ketchum had a method that worked perfectly for a time, but the times changed.

The times are changing for health care and pastoral care just as they changed for Black Jack Ketchum. Long-term therapy was the underpinning of pastoral counseling in the early days of the twentieth century, and remains so for some practitioners in the twenty-first century. It was appropriate then because it was based upon the best information available at the time. Today new information is available. This new data not only favors brief approaches but suggests that, except in a few select cases, long-term counseling is no longer practical. The medical profession has gotten the word. So have mental health researchers, the United States Department of Health and Education, insurance companies, and mental health providers. If the Colorado and Southern Railroad were still operating today, its managed health care organization most likely would mandate some version of brief counseling (in combination with pharmaceuticals, when appropriate) for the treatment of employees mental health problems.

The fact is, congregational ministers, priests, and rabbis traditionally have practiced brief counseling for many generations in the parishes they serve. As a variety of other helping professionals discover brief counseling with its many advantages it is effective, enduring, economical, and humane the time has come for parish pastors to reclaim it as the preferred strategy for helping troubled parishioners who come to them for guidance in resolving their difficulties.

The basic premise of this chapter is that brief pastoral counseling methods should be the primary mode of operation for pastoral caregivers parish pastors and chaplains as well as pastoral counseling specialists.

Focus on Research

When choosing methods to use in your counseling, what do you take into consideration? Your training? Readings in the field, amply illustrated with individual case studies? Past experience? How we go about counseling parishioners certainly grows out of our own experience, but it also needs to rely on the demonstrable experience of others and the outcomes of their counseling. Well-constructed research documents the work of others in a controlled way and helps to mitigate the unavoidable bias of the helper who is doing the counseling. Pastoral counseling needs to pay more attention to such research, especially to outcome studies, than the field traditionally has done.

My personal physician is a fine family practitioner named Joseph Cappel. When I go to see him, I expect him to have read all of the current journals and bulletins that apply to his area of medicine. If I have a physical ailment, I want him to use state-of-the-art procedures that are based on the best and latest research in the field. Let us say he has two choices of therapy for my condition, and both have been shown in research to be equally effective but one is more invasive, takes longer, and is more expensive than the other. I trust (and my HMO demands) that he will consider those findings when he prescribes my treatment.

Surely clergy have a similar obligation to their parishioners. We have been trained to give heed to revelatory personal experience; however, carefully designed qualitative and quantitative research may be equally revelatory. We need to stay abreast of sound research in our field, and to consider it in choosing how we offer care to those who trust us with their well-being.

Most people who come to us for help are not on a quest for self-discovery. They seek to resolve a specific problem and move on as quickly as possible, not to overhaul their personality. Even though many counselors who are in therapy themselves appreciate and value their personal journey of discovery, for the most part their counselees do not. After the first session, most people do not return for many additional sessions, if they return at all. The pastoral counseling process is by default if not by design a short one. People tell us by their actions that, along with alleviation of their troubles, in counseling they want brevity.

There was a time when insurance companies tacitly condoned the long-term therapy bias by at least partially covering its costs. That is no longer the case. Today many health maintenance organizations and insurers reimburse only the more cost-effective brief therapies. The change to short-term modalities has sent ripples throughout the mental health community and set off controversy between proponents of the two approaches.

Is brief counseling a sign of the times? In our fast food, instant coffee, crash diet, microwave age, have people lost their patience to work toward long-term solutions to their problems? Is the desire for a quick fix part of their pathology? Or is it a sign of health, of a willingness to tackle a problem head-on and promptly do what is needed to get on with the business of living?

Review:

4.9 out of 5

97.50% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable and Educational

A.H. · October 18, 2013

With the wisdom from several leaders in the pastoral care field, this book is laid out and edited in the most readable text book I've seen in a while. The concepts and suggested guides are clearly described, using examples of conversations and questions to ask. All is built on the relationship of care seeker and caregiver, acknowledging that both have busy lives with many responsibilities, neither of whom have a lot of time for ongoing therapy. Collaboration between care seeker and care giver, through brief counseling concepts and steps, allows for agreed upon goals to be reached in a minimum of counseling sessions.

5.0 out of 5 stars Brief is Great

C.S. · July 4, 2007

Many pastors do indeed provide brief pastoral counseling. I know I do. Often you don't even know you're providing counseling until your in the middle of it. Stone's book helps prepare pastors for this reality, even to embrace it. This is a great book to read if your idea of counseling has been primarily shaped by longer term forms of therapy and/or psychotherapy.

5.0 out of 5 stars A Pastoral Caregivers' Guide

m. · May 22, 2012

This book is a good read for pastoral care givers who do not have a background in counseling. It serves as a concise guide for those who have the burden but do not have much time to do long-term counseling.

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

A.W.o.C. · May 4, 2017

This was a great textbook assigned by my prof at FIU, Dr. J. Gibson.

4.0 out of 5 stars Reference Book Requirement

W.B.E. · February 23, 2011

This book has excellent information and was well written. It is a good source of information for anyone that has little or no experience in Pastoral Experience or training. The book was required for my continuing education.

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

M.A.E. · February 25, 2017

great

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent reference for those training in Pastoral

A. · September 26, 2014

excellent reference forthose training in Pastoral Counseling

5.0 out of 5 stars Rev. Scott

S.W.P. · March 11, 2008

Don't be misled into thinking that just because you counsel people briefly that you are practicing brief counseling. Brief Pastoral Counseling is a methodology for empowering others to create their own solutions, and in so doing, to begin to take charge of their own life. If you are tired of trying to give people answers and having overly dependent relationship with church members, then study this book.

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Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling (Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling)

Name: Strategies for Brief Pastoral Counseling (Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling)
Brand: Fortress Press
SKU: U0800632990
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