In Roots and Shoots (1986), Roger Hurding provided succinct accounts of the schools of twentieth century psychotherapy and discussed four pathways, advocated by Christians, through the forest of counselling. This book has a similar two-part structure but it paints on a much broader canvas of theology and philosophy, as well as psychology. The pathways have been rearranged and expanded to five. It reflects the growing self-confidence of pastoral theology as an academic discipline relating to the practice of pastoral care.

In Part I Hurding surveys the territory. How do we become mature or whole as human persons? The ultimate goal and the process are both important. Postmodern thinking has emphasised our stories as particular people in particular communities journeying through a landscape shaped by a variety of traditions of thought. Interpretations are important and Hurding tackles both the hermeneutics of the text and of ‘the living human documents’. He weaves in expositions of Biblical themes like completeness, pilgrimage or hope. He includes scenes from his own remarkable story of overcoming sickness and cameos from his casebook as a counsellor. In the main, however, this is the college lecturer, briefly alluding to an array of writers from Lao Tsu and Plato, through Schleiermacher, to Moltmann and Derrida. (The index of names occupies five pages of very small print.) Brueggemann is clearly his favourite biblical scholar. A crucial motif is, ‘a map is not the territory’. Our intellectualising can never fully represent life’s complexities. Between modernism’s autonomous knowing and Nietzsche’s rejection of objective knowledge, Hurding seeks a middle way. He is attracted to Ricoeur’s view of a revelation with multiple meanings and voices. Donald Capps has translated this into a pastoral hermeneutic in which the pastor’s actions may disclose more, or different, meanings than the pastor’s intentions.

The five pastoral strands in Part II are biblical counselling, healing ministries, pastoral counselling, spiritual direction and social transformation. Hurding is particularly well placed to give an account of these approaches, as they have been experienced in evangelical circles in Britain. A biennial conference at Swanwick has kept practitioners in conversation with each other for fifteen years. He avoids taking an adversarial approach and attempts to let the strengths of each stand, while indicating where others would want to probe a particular tradition. To biblical counsellors he wants to say that the Bible contains subversive ‘little stories’ as well as the overarching big picture. With charismatic healers he raises current dilemmas over true or false memories and questions about what can be attributed to demonic powers. He warns spiritual directors of a danger of a gnostic tendency where there is over reliance on the work of Jung. Evangelicals trained in pastoral or relational counselling may be alarmed at the extent to which he links their approach with the liberal tendency, though he protests he is not using his labels in a dismissive or stereotyping way. Hurding’s own background lies in this form of counselling and he welcomes the way writers like Oden and Atkinson have been bringing trinitarian and covenantal theology to bear on the practice.

Students at the start of a pastoral ministry may find that anxiety over which map to use hinders them from giving attention to the range of voices Hurding is offering for reflection. It is a book that will repay study by those who have engaged on some strand of the journey.