Strategic Pastoral Counseling A Short-Term Structured Model

Abstract

Eleven years ago when I offered the first edition of this book, I did so with quite modest expectations. Pastoral counseling was firmly wed to a traditional long term counseling model. I had long been convinced that pastors could much better fit counseling within their pastoral ministries as a whole by making it brief and focused. However, most pastors whom I encouraged to do so responded in a way that made it clear that a psychologist could never really understand the realities of pastoral life and practice and that the sort of problems they encountered simply demanded long-term counseling. All that has changed enormously in the past decade. Numerous models of short-term pastoral counseling now exist, and the argument has largely been won that short-term counseling best fits the mix of responsibilities encountered by pastors who counsel. Changes in this edition are based on feedback from pastors who have adopted Strategic Pastoral Counseling, many of whom have now used it for the past decade. Nigerian, Philippine, and Korean editions have provided helpful response from several cross-cultural applications, and the comments of a number of professors in seminaries who have been using the book as a text, as well as from students studying it, have also been invaluable.