To begin, "The Pastor and the Patient" is poorly organized. The book begins on a firm footing by suggesting that there are three pastoral functions, healing, sustaining, and guiding It would have been more utilitarian if the authors had organized their material into three phases then explored the actual visit from the perspective of the three pastoral functions:

•Pre-visit
oChapter 1 - A Pastoral Theology
oChapter 3 - The Pastor's Homework
oChapter 4 - The Pastor's Bio-ethics
oChapter 7 - The Pastor's Spiritual Resources

•Visit
oChapter 2 - The Hospital Community
oChapter 5 - Finding Your Way in the Hospital

oChapter 9 - The Pastoral Visit
oChapter 6 - The Patient's Needs

•Post-visit
oChapter 8 - After Hospitalization
oChapter 10 - Follow-up

The Pastor and the Patient seeks to demystify hospital visitation and ease concerns on behalf of the Pastoral Visitor, however, the problem is, in doing so it is too general and too basic. The topics that it addresses are too broad; they range from pastoral theology to moral dilemmas associated with abortion and euthanasia. As such, none of the topics are, nor could be, adequately addressed. Such broad moral issues may have been better addressed by exploring their individual dilemmas more broadly. That is to say, it might have been more utilitarian to examine the gap between human pathos and divine ethos rather than to suppose the readership would agree with the authors' theological conclusions. Statements such as, "It seems clear that the fetus has no moral status" invite more debate than they are useful. In short, the authors' invite critical discussion with respect to their stand on moral issues which could have been avoided by limiting the discussion to the dynamics surrounding those issues and cautioning the Pastoral Visitor to be prepared for an open discussion of the issues with their patients and the patent's families.The Pastor and the Patient is at best a simple dialogue for the lay visitor. It lacks in depth, clarity and organization.

The book starts off strong with a quick look at a pastoral theology which could and should have been better fleshed out. There is sufficient material in The Pastor and the Patient to provide direction with respect to pastoral visitation, but it is not a road map. I personally appreciated chapters 7 and 9. Chapter 7, The Pastor's Spiritual Resources, provides limited insight into the ecumenical nature of Chaplaincy and is useful if only to introduce the idea of interfaith needs. In chapter 9 it was interesting to read the authors' approach to the pastoral dialogue by means of the verbatim.

Bottom Line
Save your money on this one, it's too shallow and lacks focus.

Learning a subject by deciphering grammatical mistakes and typographical errors, and debugging code is hard enough. Going to the publisher's website and discovering that there are no submissions for errata, and that the source code download is broken spills what motivation may be left to read the rest of the book right out of the sails.

After scanning the book's index and table of contents, I had high hopes for the knowledge that I'd gain by spending the 40 bucks or so for the book, but am now searching for the receipt because I don't have time to be an unpaid QC person for Wrox. The publisher should be embarrassed to pass off a book that was obviously not prepared for final print when the deadline came rolling around.

So much for marriage ministries. This book perpetrates the old shepherding movement heresy that "the man is all, the woman is nothing, so keep your place, little woman, and bow to your husband the king!" The Axtell's marriage went down the tubes a number of years ago; the wife wrote her own book during the divorce to confess that their wonderful marriage had been a sham for a long while, and shared how miserable she'd been. She also went into some detail describing the more bizarre aspects of their weird relationship which had centered around as odd spiritual theology that included an old boyfriend. To Boredom and Back and the other books this couple wrote are too wacked out to be taken seriously by any troubled marriage. Take my advice and go elsewhere for spiritual help.

What a silly little book. I didn't find it all that funny. There are some wacky recipes interspersed here and there, like Suffering Succo-Cash and Bloodless Turnips. Some of the recipes looked midly appealing, but this is not a book you pick up because you're interested in the recipes. There has to be funnier IRS-related humor out there!