Empowering Couples: A Narrative Approach to Spiritual Care

Couples can make significant progress toward resolving their own problems when they receive appropriate guidance from a caring person. This book outlines five tasks focused on identity, agency, and meaning that spiritual caregivers can use to empower couples for significant change in just three to five conversations. Critically integrating desert spiritual theology with empirical data about successful marriages, Bidwell advocates for mutuality and partnership within covenanted relationships, which allows partners to create an alliance strong enough to resist the forces that threaten relationships-especially the negative influences of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and withdrawal. Pastors who adopt the approach outlined in the text will "travel lightly" in terms of pastoral power, decentering themselves so that couples can identify and build on their unique strengths and relationship with the divine.