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Providing Christian care: The importance of spiritual practices

Lynne Baab • Friday August 24 2018

I am having a conversation at coffee hour with a woman who is struggling in her job. As she talks about her discouragement, I say, “Can I say a quick prayer for you?”

She says yes, and right there amid the people chatting over coffee, I put my hand on her shoulder and pray for God’s guidance, strength and mercy for her.

Pastoral care that is uniquely Christian must have a component of prayer. Sometimes we can pray aloud for the person we are caring for as I did at coffee hour that day. Other times, the prayer is silent within us, because...

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Providing Christian Care in Our Time: Skills for Pastoral Care

Lynne Baab • Friday August 17 2018

Stress is ramping up. I use the term “new/old” to describe the stress people today deal with. “Old” sources of stress include all sorts of stressors that have always been around, such as illness, grief, unemployment, and family discord. New sources of stress include political polarization, the tyranny of smart phones, and the rising cost of housing and education. Understanding the new/old sources of stress that people face today is a key skill for pastoral care.

In my previous post, I wrote about trends in pastoral care, and in the post before that, I introduced the idea that our understanding of Christian pastoral...

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Providing Christian care in our time: Seven trends in pastoral care today

Lynne Baab • Friday August 10 2018

In my post last week, I described a community dinner and a prayer support group as examples of patterns of Christian caring that are now being recognized as pastoral care. Those two stories illustrate several of the trends in pastoral care that I identify in my new book, Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care in the Twenty-First Century.

Here are the seven trends I think need to be in the front of our minds today in the area of Christian care today:

1. Pastoral care has many models. The model of pastoral care from 50 years ago, a minister sitting in an office having a...

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My new book on Christian caring: How I came to write it

Lynne Baab • Thursday July 26 2018

In mid January 2017, I was enjoying summer in New Zealand and slowly working through closets and drawers in preparation for our upcoming move back to Seattle in June. I was glad we hadn’t planned much travel for the summer, because I find it overwhelming to sort through possessions, and I was making very slow progress.

My friend Beth Gaede contacted me that January. Beth served as editor for five of my books, and over the course of working on those books, she and I became friends. In 2016, she had taken on the editor role for a series of books on...

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