"While Rev. Olds's outstanding book updates virtue ethics for pastors and those who come to them for spiritual care, it also addresses the heart as it proposes new practices for the ministries of grace--how to soothe contention and strife, staples of today's confusing times. This important work is broad and deep, and its applications compelling and spiritually obliging. Rev. Olds's book provides guideposts for my own Christian fellowship as well as for those theologically inclined from the church pulpit." --Mark Shaw, author of Beneath the Mask of Holiness "I thoroughly enjoyed this book's breadth and insight. Douglas Olds's poetic approach, highlighting companionship as a dance, balances his deep intellectual journey. Olds provides an elevated view of pastoral care brings in social issues and political concerns--very appropriate from my point of view.

" --John Anderson, Presbyterian Church (USA) minister, honorably retired "Douglas Olds's project is to challenge a model of pastoral care identified as Biblicist Counseling, which claims the counselor is a representative of God and so has hierarchical authority. Instead, Olds images pastoral care as companionship, in which the caregiver habituates the virtues of Christ's excellences, embodying grace, spreading shalom . His challenge to Biblicist Counseling is serious and worth savoring by caregivers as well as care seekers." --Carol S. Robb, professor emerita of Christian social ethics, San Francisco Theological Seminary "An extraordinary work that relates--with a breadth of integration I have never encountered--theology and scholarship for a better approach to pastoral care. To say this in another way: On each enjoyably read page the author inspired my curiosity to pursue further something he wrote! Well done!" --Daniel Christian, pastor, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.