Richard L. Hester is co-director of the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence Project at Triangle Pastoral Counseling in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has previously served as a pastor and as a professor of pastoral theology in two theological schools. Kelli Walker-Jones, an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, is co-director of the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence project on which this book is based. She has also served as minister to several congregations and as associate director of field education and admissions at Duke University Divinity School.