Biblical Grief Seminar

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

A Half-Day or Full-Day Seminar on Grieving and Growing

Have you experienced a loss and do you long to find God’s hope in your grief?

Do you desire to minister God’s healing to your grieving friends?

Then discover God’s healing for life’s losses.

Dr. Bob Kellemen, in God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, equips you to apply eight scriptural stages in your response to life’s losses—helping you to find hope when you’re hurting. Bob will also empower you to minister healing hope to others so that they can face suffering face-to-face with God.

Presented by Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC

Bob is a nationally-known speaker, author, consultant, educator, pastor, and counselor. He’s the author of Beyond the Suffering, Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. He has equipped thousands of lay people, pastors, and counselors as Chairman of the Master of Arts in Christian Counseling and Discipleship Department (Capital Bible Seminary), as Director of the Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation Network, and as Founder/CEO of RPM Ministries.

Attend and You Will Learn How To:

*Apply to your life a four-stage biblical model of facing life’s losses with courageous honesty.

*Apply to your life a four-stage biblical model of finding healing hope by finding God.

*Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical stages of hurting and grieving: candor, complaint, cry, and comfort.

*Apply proven biblical principles to help hurting people to move through the biblical stages of hope and growth: waiting, wailing, weaving, and worshipping.

*Practice skillfully the biblical counseling and soul care arts of sustaining and healing.

*Build healing communities where Christians find courage and comfort in God and each other.

Christ-Centered, Comprehensive, Compassionate, Culturally-Informed Biblical Grief Counseling

*Experience personal healing and biblical hope.

*Encounter God in the midst of your suffering.

*Empathize with hurting people more compassionately.

*Encourage suffering people more competently.

*Empower your congregation to become a “hospital for the hurting.”

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses Seminar Schedule

Session One: Launching the Journey of Grief: Honesty with Yourself and with God—Candor and Complaint

Session Two: Inviting God to Join Your Journey: Finding God Even When You Can’t Find Answers—Cry and Comfort

Session Three: Deepening Your Journey During the Dark Night of the Soul: On the Road to Hope—Waiting and Wailing

Session Four: Traveling with God on the Journey of Faith: Joining the Larger Story—Weaving and Worshipping

Endorsed by Pastor Steve Viars

Here are three reasons why I heartily and joyfully encourage you to learn from God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. It courageously faces the hard questions. You are probably fed up with pat answers and pious platitudes. Plastic smiles do not work, not when you are suffering. Bob writes with the seasoned wisdom of a winsome counselor who has spent many hours compassionately listening to people whose hearts are breaking. It skillfully takes you to God’s Word. Listening is wonderful but it is seldom enough. Bob is a careful student of the Bible. He believes that the living God has direction and answers for every hurting person who will humbly come to Him (Matthew 11:29). I went to college and seminary with Bob—I know that he is a diligent and accomplished student and scholar. Yet this book does not read like a distant theological treatise. It is more like a wise conversation with a spiritual friend. It passionately points you to the Savior. The Bible is less like an encyclopedia and more like a novel. Bob’s goal is not to give us a few verses that we simply memorize and recite when times get rough. He is inviting us to use suffering as an opportunity to grow more in love with the One who suffered supremely for us. That is why there is hope for life’s losses.

To Host or Attend a Seminar, Contact:

RPM Ministries, PO Box 270, Crown Point, IN 46308, 219-662-8138
http://www.rpmministries.org/, rpm.ministries@gmail.com

Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Christ-Centered, Comprehensive, Compassionate,
and Culturally-informed Biblical Counseling and Spiritual Formation

Creative Suffering or Destructive Suffering?

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 42: Conclusion—

Creative Suffering or Destructive Suffering?

It’s clear that there is a typical way to respond to suffering. That typical way does not typically factor God into the equation.

It’s equally and biblically clear that there’s a better way, God’s way to respond to suffering. We can face suffering face-to-face with God and we can empower our spiritual friends, parishioners, and counselees to do so if we will follow a biblical theology of suffering—a sufferology.

This biblical sufferology uses sustaining trialogues to help our spiritual friends to move from candor, to complaint, to cry, to comfort.

It uses healing trialogues to encourage our spiritual friends to move from waiting to wailing, to weaving, to worshipping.

Biblical sufferology helps us to find God in the midst of our suffering, to glorify God by how we respond to suffering, and to become more like Christ as we face our suffering.

Select Bibliography of Biblical Sufferology

Adams, Jay E. A Theology of Christian Counseling: More Than Redemption. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979.

Aden, L. “Comfort/Sustaining.” Pages 193-195 in The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Edited by R. J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.

Eyrich, Howard and William Hines. Curing the Heart: A Model for Biblical Counseling. Ross-shire UK: Christian Focus, 2002.

Graham, L. K. “Healing.” Pages 497-501 in The Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling. Edited by R. J. Hunter. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990.

Kellemen, Robert. Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. Soul Physicians: A Theology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Third revised edition. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. “Spiritual Care in Historical Perspective: Martin Luther as a Case Study in Christian Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Kent State University, 1997.

Kellemen, Robert. Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Revised third edition. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2007.

Kellemen, Robert. Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Soul Care Givers and Spiritual Directors. Winona Lake, IN: BMH Books, 2009.

Kellemen, Robert. What to Do After the Hug. Crown Point, IN: RPM Books, 2009.

Keller, Timothy. “Puritan Resources for Pastoral Counseling.” Journal of Pastoral Practice 9, no. 3 (1988): 11-44.

Lake, Frank. Clinical Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962.

Powlison, David. Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lens of Scripture. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2003.

Powlison, David. Speaking the Truth in Love: Counsel in Community. Winston-Salem, NC: Punch Bookstore, 2005.

Tripp, Paul David. Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002.

Waite, Terry. Taken on Trust. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1993.

Wangerin, Walter. Mourning Into Dancing. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992.