Dayringer, The Heart of Pastoral Counseling

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Richard Dayringer, The Heart of Pastoral Counseling: Healing Through Relationship. Haworth Press, 1998.

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Referenced in: Pastoral Counseling

From the Publisher

The relationship between pastor and parishioner is the essence of pastoral counseling—a simple truth with profound implications. Dr. Richard Dayringer explores these implications in The Heart of Pastoral Counseling: Healing Through Relationship, Revised Edition to help pastoral counselors understand how to use the relationship to bring about the desired ends in the therapeutic process. Drawing on research from the disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, marriage counseling, family therapy, and pastoral counseling, this book lays the foundation for utilizing the pastoral counseling relationship to bring about positive change as it explores topics such as observation, listening, communication, handling transference, and termination of therapy.

Because the interpersonal relationship is the vehicle of therapy, it is critical that pastoral counselors understand the psychological assumptions that play a large part in the characteristics of relationships as well as the factors requiring attention in order to establish a secure counseling relationship.

The Heart of Pastoral Counseling brings a solid base of research to pastoral counselors, seminary students, graduate students in counseling, professors of counseling, and specialists in pastoral psychotherapy so that you might better understand the nature of pastoral counseling relationships and how they are helpful and constructive in people’s lives. You will be challenged to rethink your role in initiating and carrying out therapeutic change and realize why you should build your ministry on relationships, rather than on friendships.

About the Author

Richard Dayringer, ThD is an Adjunct Professor at the Oklahoma University College of Medicine-Tulsa in the Bioethics Center. He supervises a dozen pastoral counselors in Tulsa and teaches clinical pastoral education in Joplin. He is the Director of Care Ministry at the First United Methodist Church in Grove, OK.

He is also Professor Emeritus and for 23 years was Professor and Director of Psychosocial Care in the Department of Medical Humanities and Professor and Chief of Behavioral Science in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield.

A pastoral psychotherapist for over 30 years, Dr. Dayringer was Director of the Department of Pastoral Care and Counseling at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Kansas City for ten years before joining the faculty of the SIU School of Medicine in 1974. He has also served as a pastor in Missouri, Kansas, and Louisiana prior to beginning his academic career.

He has served as a consultant to various organizations including Texas A & M School of Medicine, the Department of Allied Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Ohio State University School of Medicine, the Cleveland Clinic, Walter Reed Army Hospital Department of Pastoral Care,and the American Correctional Chaplains Association.

He has given countless international, national, and regional lectures and workshops on topics such as ethical issues in medicine or pastoral care, depression, pastoral interventions for the sick or bereaved, and the spiritual and psychosocial aspects of AIDS.

Dr. Dayringer holds a Doctor of Theology degree from the New Orleans Theological Seminary. He has been certified as an Approved Supervisor in the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy; a Diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors; a Chaplain Supervisor in the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education; a Certified Sex Therapist in the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists; a Certified Hypnotist in the Society for Clinical Hypnosis; and has been a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society for Pastoral Theology, and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine.

He has written or edited six books and is the author of more than 70 journal articles in the fields of medicine and pastoral care and counseling.For ten years, he served as the Editor of the American Journal of Pastoral Counseling and is on the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Psychotherapy and the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling.

Dr. Dayringer served as a Red Cross chaplain supervisor at Ground Zero in New York City for three weeks during October 2001.

He and his wife, Janet, a nurse, have been married for 55 years and have five children and eight grandchildren.


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