Made Healthy In Ministry For Ministry [Hardcover]

Clarity of vocational practice is key to clergy health. The center of clergy practice is the ministry of Word and Sacrament. What takes place at the pulpit, font or pool, and table is the divine intent and extent of ministry. While this may sound in-house and parochial in the extreme, it is both priestly and prophetic. John Weborg's argument in this book is that the clergy can be made healthy in ministry for ministry by maintaining vocational clarity. The priestly and prophetic acts of Word and Sacrament address the clergy before they address the congregation. Hence what is offered here is a spirituality through practices-the clergy are hearers before preachers, baptized before baptizers, communicants before celebrants. Neither a how-to book nor a work of pastoral theology, Made Healthy in Ministry for Ministry is aimed toward helping clergy appropriate the gifts and graces of the practices they are called and authorized to carry out. --I first met John Weborg when we both arrived as students on the campus of North Park (then) Junior College in Chicago. It was apparent even then that John was gifted with unusual spiritual insight about the human condition. He has honed and developed that gift in remarkable manner during the past almost sixty years of pastoral ministry and teaching. I know of no one more qualified to speak of what he does-how to practice ministry in a healthy way. I have spent my life thinking about physical health, John about spiritual health. This book brings them together under God where they belong.-- -Dr. Tim Johnson Senior Medical Contributor, ABC News author of Finding God in the Questions --John Weborg has written a helpful and provocative book for all those serving in vocational ministry and for those discerning ministry as a vocational pathway. This is not a how-to book, but a how-to-be book. Dr. Weborg makes the crucial distinction that we cannot simply live for God while serving in this vocation, we must indeed live with God. In so doing l-