In this extraordinarily helpful resource, eleven leaders in pastoral counseling offer a convincing rationale for and careful and smart instruction in brief pastoral counseling. Based on research, case studies, and the latest thinking they lay out: the dynamics of the pastor-parishoner relationship, including the need for collaborative, hospitable, future-oriented, and wholistic counseling specific strategies, including brief counseling's solution-focused method, its relation to spiritual direction, its focus on people's strengths, and time limits the major literature in the field of pastoral counseling in the past fifty years, offering ways in which it can speak more directly to the concerns of parish pastors as they offer counsel to those they serve