Restoring Hope

Practical Appreciative Inquiry based strategies to effectively resolve grief and resentment.

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About the Author

The Rev. Dr. Rob Voyle is a leader in the development and use of appreciative inquiry in church and coaching settings.

Rob's Approach to Writing and Training

Helpful: Training must provide practical, sustainable solutions for today's challenges.
Humorous: Creativity and humor go together as people enjoy new insights.
Healing: I create opportunities for people to experience transformational insights that lead to new ways of living, working, and being in the world.

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Helpful, Humorous, Healing
approach to training.

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Resources for
Restoring Hope

Blue Christmas Resources

For many, who have lost loved ones the Holiday Season can be painful rather joyful.

Below are a series of liturgies for "Blue Christmas" services.

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Blue Christmas Resources

Blue Christmas Meditation: How Shall We Remember

Using the understanding that it is not "what we remember" but "how we remember" that causes distress this meditation is designed to help people build a memory of their deceased loved one that evokes love and gratitude rather than misery. Materials include strategies to conduct the meditation.

This meditation has been used successfully at Blue Christmas Services and also at funerals involving suicide where people were having difficultlty knowing "how to think of their friend" who had suicided.

View: blueChristmasMeditation.pdf

A December Service of Remembrance

Order of service compiled by Dr. Jeffrey Sumner, Senior Pastor, Westminster By-The-Sea Presbyterian Church, Daytona Beach Shores, Florida.

View: Blue_Christmas_Service-JeffSumner.doc

Blue Christmas

A complete liturgy offered by Rev. Ann Fontaine of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Casper, Wyoming.

View: blue_christmas-AnnFontaine.doc

Blue Christmas: A Community Service at Christmas for Grieving, Praying, and Healing

A complete liturgy offered by Rev. Susan Bock of St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church, Eastpointe, Michigan

View: Blue-ChristmasSusanBock.doc

Blue Christmas Liturgy

A complete liturgy offered by Rev. Randall Day, Rector of St. Mark's-in-the-Valley Episcopal Church, Los Olivas, California. Offered in a Word Doc and pdf format.

View: Blue-Christmas-Liturgy-RandallDay.doc

View: Blue-Christmas-Liturgy-RandallDay.pdf

Blue Christmas Service

A complete liturgy offered by Rev. Jeannie Martz, Rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Orange, California.

View: BlueChristmasService-JeannieMartz.docx

Candle Light Memorial Candlelight memorial

A complete liturgy offered by Rev. Victor Li, Rector of the Anglican Church of St Cyprian, Toronoto.

Victor reports that he deliberately sets the candles in the same place that a casket would be during a funeral.

View: CandlelightMemorial-VictorLI.doc

In Times Of Sorrow

My sister Marilyn and her husband Don and their daughter Brie are my heros when it comes to dealing with grief. Marilyn and Don's son Zaan died when he was eight years old having lived most of his life with a brain tumor. Zaan was an amazing child, who, like many with a short life span seized what life he had and lived it to its fullest. When he died my sister wrote and recorded Child of the Angels as her tribute and farewell to Zaan.

Listen to: Child of the Angels:

Read Don's account of grief excepted from Restoring Hope.