Pastoral Theology

Published by Harper & Row in 1983 (later HarperOne), a textbook of nearly four hundred pages that its publisher describes as integrating the principles of pastoral care, leadership and theology to restore to ministers a clearly defined pastoral identity. It moves from a critique of inadequate models of ministry, from community organiser to television evangelist, to a more classical model drawn from two millennia of ecumenical Christian thinking about what pastors are and do. The publisher presents it as a review of the key issues for those preparing for ordination and for ministers reviewing their work. It opened the decade of Oden's classical pastoral books, followed by Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition (1984) and the four volumes of Classical Pastoral Care. His later John Wesley's Teachings, Volume 3 (2013) is also titled Pastoral Theology and is a different book.