Frances Ward

Heather Walton's highly imaginative approach to theological thinking has led to significant developments in the field of autoethnography, creative writing within theology and theology through creative practice. Her theological work is rooted in deep engagement with lived experience. Over her thirty years in the University of Glasgow she has been a leading figure in the fields of literature, theology and the arts, practical theology, and most recently theology through creative practice. The chapters in this book reflect the remarkable range of her teaching and writing, her gift for new discoveries in religious reflection and her brave and deep humanity in the face of our present chaos in the world. Colleagues and former students celebrate and engage with her work through reflections, poetry, and chapters about practical theology, ecology, theopoetics, feminist theology and postcolonial literature.

Christians often find it difficult to talk or preach or engage with the possibility of climate catastrophe and an uninhabitable earth, for the questions are enormous. Faith in God needs to engage with the reality of the tragic loss of creation through anthropogenic impact.If we're living in the end times, then how should we live? Wracked with grief, anxiety and guilt, with foreboding deep as death? How is it possible to live hopefully, even as we face realistically the inevitability of the radical impact of an unpredictable climate, rising sea levels, the collapse of biodiversity? How do we remain faithful to God and loving to our neighbour, particularly if our neighbours are exiles and immigrants because their homes are no longer inhabitable? What do we tell our children and grandchildren, so they don't grow up completely overwhelmed by anxiety, such that mental illness levels continue to soar?Frances Ward attempts to think through some of these questions; to continue to have faith, hope, and love in response to God. It is a Christian response to eco-anxiety, a theological and contemplative reflection to sustain a fierce hope that hopes against hope. It is a deep lament that provokes a fierce hope to enable humanity to live life to the full, like there's no tomorrow.

This book offers a lens grounded in traditional Christian values. In a world focused on individualism, Frances Ward looks at the value of acting based on virtues like truthfulness, and for their own good, to find happiness as a result of becoming full of character.

Theological Reflections: Methods, offers a comprehensive collection of models of theological reflection. By bringing this diverse collection together in one place, the editors create a unique reference work that allows a clear and visible contrast and comparison as each model is treated formally and in a standard format. Throughout each chapter the distinguishing features of the model are examined, the geneology and origins are discussed, worked examples of the model applied to contemporary theology are provided, and critical commentary, future trends and exercises and questions are provided. Now firmly established as an essential text on theological reflection, this new edition has been revised and updated with a new introduction, updated examples, and refreshed bibliographies

Having spent decades in urban clinical practice while working simultaneously as an academic administrator, teacher, and writer, Frances Ward is especially well equipped to analyze the American health care system. In this memoir, she explores the practice of nurse practitioners through her experiences in Newark and Camden, New Jersey, and in north Philadelphia.Ward views nurse practitioners as important providers of primary health care (including the prevention of and attention to the root causes of ill health) in independent practice and as equal members of professional teams of physicians, registered nurses, and other health care personnel. She describes the education of nurse practitioners, their scope of practice, their abilities to prescribe medications and diagnostic tests, and their overall management of patients’ acute and chronic illnesses. Also explored are the battles that nurse practitioners have waged to win the right to practice—battles with physicians, health insurance companies, and even other nurses. The Door of Last Resort, though informed by Ward’s experiences, is not a traditional memoir. Rather, it explores issues in primary health care delivery to poor, urban populations from the perspective of nurse practitioners and is intended to be their voice. In doing so, it investigates the factors affecting health care delivery in the United States that have remained obscure throughout the current national debate

In 1886, Newark City Hospital opened a training school for nurses in New Jersey. With the dawn of a new century women began to demand rights that had been denied them, and nurses too demanded changes in health care and higher education. For the first time, On Duty offers a highly readable account of the struggle for professional autonomy by New Jersey nurses and reveals how their political and legislative battles mirrored the struggle of women throughout the country to redefine their roles in society.

This book on ministerial formation and supervision provides an accessible and thorough resource. It explores the nature of ministry and formation for 21st Century church and public life. It argues for the importance of supervision in the learning contexts of placement, parish and pastorate and presents an exciting model of supervision as reflective practice that draws on existing literature from different disciplines, including other helping professions, literature and practical theology and the methods and insights of Clinical Pastoral Education, interpreted within a British context. Chapters cover stimulating and useful areas for consideration by the theological educator and ministerial student, such as doing theological reflection in context; resistance to learning; coping with loss and failure; dynamics of power in ministry and issues of transculturalism in ministry and issues of gender and sexuality. It also offers ways in which the effectiveness of placement learning can be evaluated.