J. LeBron McBride, Living Faithfully With Disappointment in the Church. Haworth Pastoral Press, 2005.
Referenced in: Strengthening and Renewing the Ministry Call
LifeandLeadership.Com Summary
McBride is Director of Behavioral Medicine at Floyd Medical Center and Senior Minister of the First Christian Church in Rome, Georgia. He is also a medical educator at Mercer University School of Medicine, a licensed marriage and family therapist, a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and a Certified Family Life Educator. He has authored numerous journal articles, and this is his second book. The book includes ten chapters especially designed to provide substantive insight and genuine hope to faithful members of the church who face spiritual disillusionment during difficult congregational crises. Topics include idealism about the church; how churches function according to the dynamics of family systems; how a controlling family affects church dynamics; people who become codependent to the church; adjustment to belief structures within the church; addictive processes in organizations; the psychological danger zone of failed beliefs; how to recognize when to stay and when to move on to another church; considerations for someone in a denominational crisis; and the uses of spirituality and religion in psychologically healthy ways. This is an excellent resource.
From the Publisher
A practical approach to address spiritually crippling disappointment with the church!
Feeling disappointment with your church can be spiritually devastating. Living Faithfully with Disappointment in the Church gives you a theological and family therapy approach to disillusionment in the church that is practical and realistic. The author, an ordained minister and a psychotherapist, discusses with sensitivity and hope the problems and the ways to resolve issues of spiritual disappointment.
Living Faithfully with Disappointment in the Church uses a theological basis to lay a foundation of understanding, and then provides real strategies from a family therapy perspective to deal with personal disappointments in the church. The book sensitively discusses real problems with real examples of how church dynamics can unwittingly cause spiritual disillusionment within even the most faithful, even in diligent attempts to serve God. Honest, reverent, and from the perspective that each of us needs, the church to cultivate our faith, this book provides non-simplistic yet hopeful answers to the most difficult of problems. Find comfort in these pages.
About the Author
J. LeBron McBride PhD, an ordain minister is Coordinator of Behavioral Medicine at the Georgia Baptist Family Residency Program in Morrow, Georgia. He is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and a clinical member and approved supervisor in the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. A member of several other organizations and author of numerous articles, he served as a parish minister, pastoral counselor, and family therapist. His background in theology, medical education, and marriage and family therapy has given him a unique perspective from which to write many of his books.
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