By John and Oliver Drane
Handbooks of Pastoral Care
Series Editor: Marlene Cohen
Marshall Pickering. 194 pages. £7.99
This book belongs to a series designed for people who undertake pastoral care and counselling. It focuses on issues arising in families today.
The authors bring a range of practical experience to bear. They are well informed about contemporary trends in family life and do not duck the difficult issues that arise for families today both inside and outside the churches. Early chapters look beyond the glossy images of the 'ideal family' featured in TV ads or campaigns for 'family values' and set contemporary families in an economic, social and historical context. They review the rapidly changing patterns of family life in the Western world today, including childless families, single parent families, cohabiting families and 'blended families' following divorce and remarriage. Pressures on families are examined from the points of view of adults and children. Two particular problem areas - poverty and violence in families are highlighted.
So what can churches do to support families today, particularly families encountering changes of crises? An important question is raised: 'How can we use the Bible in a way that will inform and empower our own family relationships so as to reflect the abiding values of the Gospel?' The Drane's answer is to start from the Biblical narratives about families, which depict real people struggling with conflicts and temptations, and to discover how God met with them, challenged their preconceptions, comforted them in their pain and strengthened them to rebuild their lives. They are less confident about the ways in which some New Testament teaching about marriage and family life has been applied in the past. Some innovative and practical ideas are proposed for churches to support families at different stages, including parents' groups, homework clubs and pre-marriage education. If some of their approaches owe a good deal to contemporary humanistic psychology, others just require a willingness to commit time and energy to each other in the conviction that God cares about families and wants his people to care about them too.
