Counseling Books - Page 3

Released from Shame: Moving Beyond the Pain of the Past

Sandra D. Wilson

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Do you feel

• that your problem is not what you do but who you are?
• caught in patterns of destructive relationships?
• that you never get enough affirmation?
• afraid you'll pass bad patterns along to your children?
• that God probably loves you less than others?

If these questions fit you, you may be experiencing shame. Often shame comes from being raised in a family that has an impaired ability to provide its members with healthy nurturing. As a result, you carry emotional scars into adult life, longing for happiness but feeling unworthy of it.Sandra Wilson knows much about "shame-based" families--both from personal experience and from her years as a family therapist. Drawing from this background, she teaches you biblical principles that have helped her and many others work through painful issues and learn new, healthier ways to live. In this revised edition, Wilson also includes help for parents who want to break the intergenerational cycle of shame and give their children a "grace-based" foundation for life.

Tired of Trying to Measure Up: Getting Free from the Demands, Expectations, and Intimidation of Well-Meaning People

Jeff, VanVonderen

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Are you always trying hard, but feel like it's never good enough? Tired of Trying to Measure Up is written for Christians who live under a deeply ingrained code of expectations and rules that shame them and drain them of spiritual strength. Do you wonder: * Why do I feel so guilty? * Why is it so hard to rest, even when I know I need to? * Why does my religious activity leave me unfulfilled? * Where's the "abundant life" God promised? If these questions sound familiar, this book is for you. It won't teach you how to change your behavior or try harder. If trying hard was the key to the victorious Christian life, you'd probably be in the hall of fame by now, don't you think? This is a message to help you unmask the lies that keep you on the works treadmill and to help you discover the liberation of the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ and the rest that comes through the cross. When there's more emphasis on doing right than knowing God and His grace, this book points the way to freedom.

Desires in Conflict: Hope for Men Who Struggle with Sexual Identity

Joe Dallas

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Dallas book an excellent resource 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 24 people found this review helpful.

For those interested in understanding the underlying dynamics of homosexual attractions, this book will be a necessary part of your library. The author, Joe Dallas, overcame his homosexual attractions and has been a professional counselor, author and speaker for years on this issue. He is well-educated and compassionate in his approach. No one book explains everything on the issue of homosexuality but I recommend his book first to anyone interested because it gives a great overview in discussion of the general issues. A must read!

Editorial Review:

For more than a decade, Desires in Conflict has been the definitive “must–read” for those who wonder “Can a homosexual change?” This new edition with updated information offers more compelling reasons why the answer is “yes!”

“I read Desires in Conflict for the first time when I was 19...More than a decade later, I am free of desires that once held me captive, strong in my faith, married to my amazing wife, Leslie, and currently the Executive Director of Exodus International, North America. The Lord used Desires in Conflict to help guide me out of homosexuality. Joe Dallas has eternally impacted a generation of young people like me.”

Alan Chambers
Executive Director
Exodus International

The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything

Mike Mason

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Sufferology 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Mike Mason's "The Gospel According to Job" creates a biblical sufferology: a theology of suffering. Point by point, or, more accurately, verse by verse, Mason guides readers, like an ancient spiritual director, into the depth of human suffering. His co-guide is the greatest human sufferer of all time--Job.

As Mason explains in his preface, "The Gospel According to Job" is not a commentary but a devotional. Those looking for an exegetical commentary will, therefore, be disappointed. However, those looking for an accurate, unique, refreshing, practical explanation of the life of Job, will be encouraged.

Mason is a skilled wordsmith which makes this rather lenghty book an easy read, as does the two-to-three page "chapters." Many of the insights, in particular that Job is about Job, more than it is about God, are startling. In fact, readers of this review are likely saying, "What!? How can Job NOT be about God?" Oh, it is. But it is MORE about God's view of Job than it is about Job's view of God. If I say more, I'll ruin the suspense . . .

Not every "chapter" provides the same depth of insight, with some more provocative and perhaps more exegetically grounded than others. But, isn't that the way with a "devotional book." More than enough chapters are "dead on" to make "The Gospel According to Job" a powerful addition to your arsenal in the battle for your soul when Satan assaults.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming "Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Women Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors."

Editorial Review:

Anyone who has suffered knows that there is no such thing as getting a grip on oneself or pulling oneself up by the bootstraps. The only bootstrap in the Christian life is the Cross, says Mason. Sometimes laying hold of the cross can be comforting, but other times it is like picking up a snake.
Job knew this firsthand. From him we learn that there are no easy answers to suffering. That the mark of true faith is not happiness, but rather, having one's deepest passions be engaged by the enormity of God. And through Job we learn the secret of the gospel: that mercy is the permission to be human. The Lord never gave Job an explanation for all he had been through. His only answer was Himself. But as Job discovered, that was enough.

How People Grow Workbook

Henry Cloud, John Townsend

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Superb! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book's practical truths delivered with such love have changed my life. Cloud and Townsend are the two best authors on this subject ever. This book will help you begin to deeply experience change just how our God always wanted it for us.

Life-Changing!! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Everyone needs to read this book - I just finished it and it has radically changed the way I view the process of spiritual growth in my life and in the lives of others - IT IS A MUST READ - I can't believe I haven't heard more about it!!

How People Grow 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The product was received in excellent condition and in a timely manner.
Thank you!

great workbook 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I used this workbook to facilitate class discussions. Great questions and meditations in here. Good resource if you're wanting to think more about the content of the book

How People Grow Workbook 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The workbook was in excellent condition. It was shipped in a timely manner.

Editorial Review:

This companion workbook to How People Grow helps people work through issues of relationships, maturity, emotional problems, and overall spiritual growth.

Cultivating Wholeness: A Guide to Care and Counseling in Faith Communities

Margaret Zipse Kornfeld

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Counselor In Community 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Cultivating Wholeness
Margaret Kornfield


Pastoral Care is a very important function of today's church. Pastors much choose how much of their time and energy they can put into this vital ministry. Margaret Kornfield wrote Cultivating Wholeness from her extensive training and experience with this subject. She provides a comprehensive textbook for pastors, rabbis, priests, and others seeking to understand themselves and the community they minister in.
Kornfield is more than qualified to write about any one of the many subjects she integrates in this text. She is a psychologist, theologian, sociologist, as well as an able educator and practitioner. She writes in a clear and intelligible style. She includes a very helpful bibliography as well as an extensive appendix, including charts and forms for the counselor.
In place of pastor or rabbi Kornfield uses the term "counselor in community". That is a very good description what a pastoral counselor should be involved with. It also sends a clear message for what Kornfield believes the counselor should be about.
In the opening chapter Kornfield discusses change, its various components and how it effects those who need the "counselor in community". She introduces us to the analogy that outlines the book when the comparison is made with the gardener. The closing chapter comes back to this theme of change, only now she wants to discuss the effect of change on "the gardener" In fact the last section is Our Changing Way, the first section deals with Tending Yourself This section is particularly helpful to the "counselor in community". Kornfield reveals her own heart and concern when she makes the following statement, "Maybe you are unaware of your personal condition because you have become absorbed in the lives of others." In order to be whole, she recommends that the pastor, lay minister and counselor in community be well connected to a community. That is where your best work can be done. Margaret Kornfield has given us an excellent work I highly recommend to pastors and ministers especially.

Editorial Review:

Designed for religious or lay people involved in counselling, this text provides a practical, comprehensive and contemporary guide to community care and counselling in religious contexts. It emphasizes the dynamics of change, on wholeness, and on community as not only the context for healing but the means by which healing happens.

Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse (AACC Counseling Library)

Diane Langberg

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This powerful book deals with the issue of how Christians, especially those called to counsel, can help survivors of sexual abuse find healing and hope. From 20 years of experience, the author demonstrates how counselors can walk alongside people deeply wounded by sexual abuse as they face the truth about who they are, who their abuser was, and who God is as the Savior and Redeemer of all life. Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse issues a strong call to the church at large to walk with survivors through the long dark nights of their healing.

Diane Mandt Langberg, Ph.D., has been a licensed psychologist in private practice for nearly 25 years. She is a speaker at local and national conferences for clergy, women, couples, students, and professionals. Dr. Langberg writes the counselor column in Today's Christian Woman magazine. Her books include Feeling Good, Feeling Bad and Counsel for Pastor's Wives. Diane lives in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two teenage sons.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model

David G., Benner

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

A helpful book providing a realistic model 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

Benner begins this book by discussing the context in which Pastoral Counseling is to take place. He maintains that the challenge for pastors has "been to find a model of counseling that is both distinctively pastoral and psychologically responsible" (p. 13). This is so because Pastoral Counseling (counseling which is genuinely pastoral) must be subsumed under the general rubric of the Pastoral Ministry. In other words, the pastor is not a clinical psychologist and he should not counsel like one. He is a pastor and he must counsel those in his congregation with the selfless, caring nurture which is to characterize those who are responsible to look after the spiritual well-being of Christ's flock.
In the chapter entitled The Uniqueness of Pastoral Counseling, Benner provides what I believe to be the most useful information in the entire book. Here, in addition to defining what he means by Pastoral Counseling, he explores the training, the role, the context, the goals, and the resources of Pastoral Counseling. As I will only be able to touch on one of these elements, let it be known that Benner remarks that "pastoral counseling is unique in its use of religious resources. Prayer, Scripture, the sacraments, anointing with oil or laying on of hands, and devotional or religious literature are all...available as potential resources for the counseling process. The failure ever to employ any of them suggests an erosion of the distinctively pastoral aspects of one's counseling" (p. 29). Lest there is any question of Benner's commitment to Christianity, see his comments under the heading, Explicitly Christian Counseling, on pages 57-61.
It is obvious that Benner wants to be able to provide real-life pastors with a Pastoral Counseling model that will work in real-life situations. In fact, this seems to be the main thrust behind the whole idea of a strategic short-term model. He realizes that most pastors are either too busy, or not properly equipped to undertake a massive, long-term counseling approach. Besides, he explains that a counseling session need not be excessively long in order to be effective. A key to undertaking the short-term approach is for the pastor to be up front with the parishioner about the nature of the counseling model. Benner suggests that an individual be seen over the course of five sessions..."The limit of five sessions should be communicated no later than the first session and preferably in the prior conversation when the time is set for the first session" (p. 45). This is absolutely crucial to the short-term model.
The body of the short-term model is composed of three stages, each with their respective tasks (see Table 4, p. 64). In the encounter stage (1 session), the boundaries of the sessions are set, the central concern and any relevant history is explored, a pastoral diagnosis is conducted, and both the Pastoral counselor and the parishioner agree upon a focus for the counseling. In the engagement stage (3 sessions), the feelings, thoughts, and behavior of the parishioner are examined. As well, resources for coping and/or change are sought after and explored. In the disengagement stage (1 session), the progress of the meetings is evaluated and any remaining concerns are assessed. At this time, a referral is given (if one is needed), and the counseling session is terminated. It must be kept in mind, as Benner points out, that "the person seeking help may be back again at some point in the future for further help. There is no assumption that Strategic Pastoral Counseling fixes people up for life" (p. 45).
Towards the end of the book (chapter 5), Benner provides a case study where we are given opportunity to see this short-term model in action. This is valuable in that it provides opportunity to see this model fleshed-out. The Appendix includes the results from a survey of Pastoral Counseling practices giving opportunity to see the pulse of those involved in counseling.

Editorial Review:

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.

The Heart of Mentoring: Ten Proven Principles for Developing People to Their Fullest Potential

Robert Tamasy, David A. Stoddard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Life changing principles that lead to a true legacy 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

This book really captures the essense of a successful mentoring relationship. Anyone who leads, coaches, manages or influences others should read this book - a few times. The principles have literally changed my life and have given me the understanding and confidence to now help others. After all, the legacy any of us can hope to leave can only be measured in the lives of other people.

Disappointed 1 out of 5 stars.
13 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I was looking for a book to describe a structure, do's and don'ts, and general guidance for developing a business oriented mentoring relationship/program. I found the book lacked any specificity to the business world as opposed to general living. Worse, I found that by reading the first sentence of each paragraph, I got the idea, rather than spending time going into each repetitive example. On the chance I was too negative about the text, I loaned it to an associate who is heavily involved with mentoring and he also found the book to be redundant with rather obvious recommendations. Purchase another text if you are looking for a guide to mentoring in the business world.

Editorial Review:

Author David Stoddard has discovered that in mentoring, giving often involves receiving, and receiving involves giving. By sharing your life with others, you will help them develop their values and priorities--not with a rigid formula or agenda, but in the natural course of a meaningful relationship.

In The Heart of Mentoring, you will see that sharing your life with others is the most rewarding gift you can give--and the most satisfying gift you can receive.

Discipleship Counseling

Neil T. Anderson

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A rookie 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book. It is reader friendly and really is discriptive. I am learning so very much by reading this book. It is also a chosen book to read by our pastor. He is teaching a class and chose this book to teach from.

Editorial Review:

Help People Walk Free in Christ Building on the concepts found in Victory over the Darkness and The Bondage Breaker, Neil Anderson's counseling ministry guide provides clear information and excellent models to help you understand what discipleship counseling is all about. If you're a pastor, counselor or lay leader, this resource will make you more comfortable, confident and competent in your role as encourager. In turn, this will help you free people from their emotinal pain and spiritual conflicts, as you guide them to a more complete understanding of who they are in Christ. Specific Counseling Areas Covered in Depth Include: € Defining mental health and understanding how biblical counseling addresses the whole person-body, soul and spirit € Counseling the spiritually oppressed and counseling in Christ to resolve the root issues € Overcoming false guidance, deception, bitterness and rebellion € Helping others experience freedom in Christ