Empowering Couples: A Narrative Approach to Spiritual Care
Author(s): Duane R. Bidwell (Author)
Publisher: Fortress Press
Publication Date: 1 Feb. 2013
Language: English
Print length: 144 pages
ISBN-10: 080066342X
ISBN-13: 9780800663421
Book Description
Couples can make significant progress toward resolving their own problems when they receive appropriate guidance from a caring person. This book outlines five tasks focused on identity, agency, and meaning that spiritual caregivers can use to empower couples for significant change in just three to five conversations. Critically integrating desert spiritual theology with empirical data about successful marriages, Bidwell advocates for mutuality and partnership within covenanted relationships, which allows partners to create an alliance strong enough to resist the forces that threaten relationshipsespecially the negative influences of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal.Pastors who adopt the approach outlined in the text will “travel lightly” in terms of pastoral power, decentering themselves so that couples can identify and build on their unique strengths and relationship with the divine.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Empowering Couples is an excellent text, one for which I have been waiting. Duane Bidwell has pulled together three powerful resources Narrative Therapy, John Gottman s long-term research on couples, and desert spirituality to create a comprehensive and practical model for spiritual care with couples experiencing struggles and challenges in their lives together. This book is uniquely valuable and is a must read for seminary students, pastoral counselors, and parish pastors. –Christie Cozad Neuger, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities
Duane Bidwell combines the unique understanding of passions from the desert mothers and fathers with the insights of marriage and family therapist John Gottman to create a consultative approach for spiritual care that aims to empower couples to reframe conflict as an external force and rewrite their narratives so that preferred meanings can emerge in order to refashion their relationship as a covenant friendship. –Herbert Anderson, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary
About the Author
Duane R. Bidwell is professor of practical theology, spiritual care, and counseling at Claremont School of Theology and a minister of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He is the author of Short-Term Spiritual Guidance, The Formation of Pastoral Counselors, and Empowering Couples.
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