Read Me like a Book: Using Hermeneutics as a Guide to Pastoral Counseling
Overview
Many pastors feel overwhelmed and ill-equipped to deal with the counseling issues in their congregations. But pastors are actually better equipped for counseling than they realize. Hermeneutics, homiletics, pastoral care, and counseling all share a common foundation in the field of “interpretation.” With this book, pastors can learn to interpret people with the same expertise they use to interpret Scripture. Read Me Like a Book offers a simple, practical, and theoretically sound approach to help pastors leverage their exegetical skills to improve their pastoral counseling.
- Examines the connection between interpretive skills and pastoral ministry
- Provides a practical, hermeneutically-based approach to counseling
- Explores the idea of “reading people like books”
- Introduction: Reading Human Documents
- Who Am I? The Pre-Understanding of the Interpreter
- What Do You Mean? Listening for Authorial Intention
- Can I Get Some Background? History, Culture, and Circumstantial Context
- What Is the Big Idea? Interpreting Narrative Genre
- What Do We Do Now? Finding Meaning-full Applications
- Final Thoughts: Exegeting People
- Appendix: A Quick Reference Guide for Pastors
Seminaries often do a good job teaching biblical interpretation, but they often inadequately prepare students for pastoral counseling, even thought that work is crucial to healthy churches and lives. Jason Cusick rightly points out that interpretation skills that have already learned find application as they bring the biblical narratives to bear on the narrative of hurting human lives. This book understands the importance of not only reading the text, but also the soul.
—Tremper Longman III, Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies, Westmont College
What do interpreting a book and counseling have in common? A lot according to Jason Cusick’s Read Me Like a Book. With tons of practical advice, Cusick uses the metaphor of reading a book to think about counseling while helping a person understand what they are struggling with when they come for counseling. The result is a book filled with solid practical advice for pastors who counsel. Learning how to read people like a book will help you become a more sensitive counselor. So read on and become better equipped to shepherd others who are hurting.
—Darrell Bock, Executive Director of Cultural Engagement and Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary
This well-written book is a great resource for pastors who are skilled in biblical interpretation but who struggle when counseling members of their flock. Dr. Cusick makes an insightful connection between (a) principles of biblical hermeneutics taught in seminaries and (b) the ‘hermeneutic’ of reading people. Warmly recommended!
—Joseph Hellerman, Professor of New Testmant Language and Literature, Talbot School of Theology
- Title: Read Me like a Book: Using Hermeneutics as a Guide to Pastoral Counseling
- Author: Jason Cusick
- Publisher: Wipf & Stock
- Publication Date: 2014
- Pages: 138
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Counseling