Pastoral/Parish Ministry

The author of the classic 12 Stupid Things That Mess Up Recovery offers a fresh list of "smart" things to do to attain and sustain emotional sobriety.

Whether it's called "dry drunk" or "white knuckle sobriety," it's that stage in recovery when we realize that "putting the plug in the jug" isn't enough. The next step is taking responsibility for the emotional immaturity that fuels our addictive personality and has a tremendous impact on ourselves and others.

Allen Berger, PhD, draws on the teachings of Bill W. and psychotherapy pioneers to offer twelve hallmarks of emotional sobriety that, when practiced, give people the confidence to be accountable for their behavior, ask for what they want and need, and grow and develop a deeper trust in the process of life. These smart things include: understanding who you are and what's important to you; learning not to take others' reactions personally; trusting your inner compass; and taking responsibility for your reactions to problematic situations.

It is in these practices that we find release from what Bill W. described as an "absolute dependency" on people or circumstances, and develop the tools to find prestige, security, and belonging within.

Concise advice on hunting down the personal culprits that sabotage sobriety and personal happiness.

To grow in recovery, we must grow up emotionally. This means getting honest with ourselves and facing up to the self-defeating thoughts and actions that put our sobriety at risk. Although there are as many ways to mess up recovery as there are alcoholics and addicts, some general themes exist, which include: confusing self-concern with selfishness; not making amends; using the program to try to become perfect; not getting help for relationship troubles; and believing that life should be easy.

In simple, down-to-earth language, Allen Berger explores the twelve most commonly confronted beliefs and attitudes that can sabotage recovery. He then provides tools for working through these problems in daily life. This useful guide offers fresh perspectives on how the process of change begins with basic self-awareness and a commitment to working a daily program.

Nationally recognized grief educator Harold Ivan Smith brings over twenty-five years of professional experience in grief recovery to ABCs of Healthy Grieving. Seventy-two brief suggestions for healthy grieving, each two-pages in length and titled starting with a letter of the alphabet followed by an "I Can" statement, encourage those suffering the loss of a loved one to grow through grief spiritually and emotionally. One particular aspect of living with grief day-to-day is introduced with relevant quotes and short excerpts. Readers can read ABCs of Healthy Grieving cover to cover, or choose a single topic to help them through their day.

A practical guidebook for the inquiring layperson seeking a holistic, intelligent look at the spiritual life, and for the pastor or religious professional seeking a systematic framework and spiritual practices to re-ignite the flame of faith. Groff explains what it means to believe and what to do after you say you believe-through a unique integration of spirituality and service, heart and mind, and various faith traditions. Explore five spiritual disciplines: community, solitude, learning, service, and vocation. Great for study groups.

Close-quarters and high-stress family life during the coronavirus pandemic may have you worried about a loved one's use or addictions, and what you can do to help. This book offers wisdom and insight from families who have walked this road.

With over 75,000 copies sold, Addict in the Family is a must-have, trusted resource for anyone coping with the addiction of a family member.

"When my eldest son became addicted to crystal meth and heroin, I could barely function. I would not have survived without Beverly Conyers's Addict in the Family, which provided guidance and hope. I realized I wasn't alone on my hellish journey. The book helped me get through interminable nights when I was terrified that his addiction would take his life. It offered a path to healing."

-David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy, now a major motion picture

With years of experience struggling with her daughter's addiction and recovery, Beverly Conyers has been where you are. In Addict in the Family, Conyers draws on research, experience, and compelling personal stories from others to explain what families should know about substance abuse, interventions, relapse, and more. Although families can't cure a loved one's addiction, they can provide support without enabling, set boundaries, prioritize self-care, and find healing through therapy, spirituality, Al Anon or Nar Anon, and countless other resources that show no one is alone on this journey.

Revised and updated in 2015, this classic recovery book is for anyone who has experienced the shame, anxiety, sleepless nights, and physical illness that often stem from loving someone who is struggling with addiction. These stories show that, no matter what is happening with your loved one, you have the power to control your own recovery.

A timely resource treating addiction holistically as both a spiritual and a pathological condition

Substance addictions present a unique set of challenges for pastoral care. In this book Sonia Waters weaves together personal stories, research, and theological reflection to offer helpful tools for ministers, counselors, chaplains, and anyone else called to care pastorally for those struggling with addiction.

Waters uses the story of the Gerasene demoniac in Mark's Gospel to reframe addiction as a "soul-sickness" that arises from a legion of individual and social vulnerabilities. She includes pastoral reflections on oppression, the War on Drugs, trauma, guilt, discipleship, and identity. The final chapters focus on practical-care skills that address the challenges of recovery, especially ambivalence and resistance to change.

An anthropologist looks at the new crack cocaine of high-tech gambling

Recent decades have seen a dramatic shift away from social forms of gambling played around roulette wheels and card tables to solitary gambling at electronic terminals. Slot machines, revamped by ever more compelling digital and video technology, have unseated traditional casino games as the gambling industry's revenue mainstay. Addiction by Design takes readers into the intriguing world of machine gambling, an increasingly popular and absorbing form of play that blurs the line between human and machine, compulsion and control, risk and reward.

Drawing on fifteen years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the machine zone, in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away. Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible--even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion. In continuous machine play, gamblers seek to lose themselves while the gambling industry seeks profit. Schüll describes the strategic calculations behind game algorithms and machine ergonomics, casino architecture and ambience management, player tracking and cash access systems--all designed to meet the market's desire for maximum time on device. Her account moves from casino floors into gamblers' everyday lives, from gambling industry conventions and Gamblers Anonymous meetings to regulatory debates over whether addiction to gambling machines stems from the consumer, the product, or the interplay between the two.

Addiction by Design is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life. At stake in Schüll's account of the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance is a blurring of the line between design and experience, profit and loss, control and compulsion.

A guide for therapists, designed to help them understand the multiplicity of cultural influences that work to form each of us. Pamela A. Hays offers the ADDRESSING framework for helping readers understand identity as a multidimensional combination of Age, Developmental and acquired Disabilities, Religion, Ethnicity, Socioeconomic status, Sexual orientation, Indigenous heritage, Native origin, and Gender. The book should be useful to counsellors, clinicians, and any professional working with clients from a variety of diverse backgrounds.

Using music, movement, games and art, Dorothy Furnish helps new and veteran teachers deepen their own relationship with the Bible. Furnish provides a teacher-training resource that features individual or group study options, flexible training schedules, tips for leading a successful training event, a guide for choosing age-appropriate Bible material, and instructions for tailoring stories to children ages 4-12.

Adventures with the Bible offers five unique training sessions: Explore the Territory: the Bible; Travelers on a Journey: the Children; Choosing the Road: Teaching Methods; Marking the Way: Guideposts; and Packing for the Trip: Preparation.

Aging is a fact of life, and issues surrounding it are hot. There are currently 35 million Americans over the age of sixty-five - more than ever. This demographic shift is noteworthy not only because the ranks of the elderly will continue to swell in coming years but also because it is taking place in what the editors of this book call an "ageist society," one that increasingly loathes every facet of aging. Indeed, the ethical issues associated with aging are among the thorniest in medicine and public policy today. Aging, Death, and the Quest for Immortality is a timely volume by physicians, health-care professionals, pastors, and ethicists who explore the experiences, dilemmas, and possibilities associated with aging. The book opens by offering three distinct perspectives on aging; this section includes practical suggestions for dealing with retirement, disability, healing, and death. Several contributors then analyze controversial ethical issues raised by aging and health care, including medical decision-making, the moral standing of patients with dementia, health-care rationing, and assisted suicide. A third group of essays applies a theology of care to ministry to and through older adults, the counseling of seniors, and the application of palliative care. The book closes by discussing some of the emerging technologies and interest groups aimed at achieving immortality, also asking, appropriately, what insights the Christian faith brings to the discussion. Reflecting much wisdom and sensitivity, this book will give welcome help to care providers and to those who are themselves in the later stages of life.

The sermon is the first and most enduring genre of American literature. The essential medium of the Puritan settlements, it continued in succeeding centuries to play a vital role - as public ritual, occasion for passion and reflection, and, not least, popular entertainment. The 58 sermons collected in this volume display the form's eloquence, intellectual rigor, and spiritual fervor. Ranging from the first New England settlements to mass-media evangelism and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, these texts reclaim a neglected aspect of American literature.