What is Christian Counseling?
1. What is the difference between “Christian” counseling and secular counseling?
3. How can a Christian counseling center and church work together to serve God in meeting the needs of people?
God has chosen the church to be the primary agency by which He accomplishes His work in the world today. It is in the context of the local church that God teaches his children to worship, fellowship, grow in the faith, serve others and spread the good news of Jesus Christ. To be Biblical, a Christian counseling center must have a close working relationship with its supporting churches. Dr. Larry Crabb has developed a 3-level model of Christian counseling that illuminates how the church and the counseling center can work together:
Level 1: Friendship counseling (“counseling by encouragement”),
Level 2: Lay counseling (“counseling by exhortation”), and
Level 3: Clinical counseling (“counseling by enlightenment”).
The counseling center can help the church leadership train the congregation in the first two levels of counseling while providing the clinical level of counseling at its own facility.
Christian counseling is the discipline of one person assisting another person as they seek God's grace, insight and intervention in their life. Christian counseling is unique in at least four ways: (1) Christian counseling recognizes that the Holy Spirit of God is the true Counselor (John 14:26; 16:13). The Holy Spirit uses individuals to provide His counsel by gifting them and preparing them for ministry (1 Peter 4:10). (2) Christian counseling is
Christ-centered. It seeks to point out who Jesus Christ is, what He has done for us, what He is doing right now and what He will yet do for us in the future. (3) Christian counseling is Bible-based. It derives its understanding of who man is, the nature of his problems, why he has these problems and how to resolve them from the Scriptures and from psychological research that is compatible with Scripture. (4) Christian counseling ministers to the whole person: body, soul and spirit. Secular counseling, on the other hand, seeks to provide emotional healing through human agency. The counselor provides skills or insight to the client or attempts to draw skills and insight out of the client. This humanistic approach can often provide a measure of help, but it is unable to address the deepest needs of the soul and spirit.
2. What is the difference between a Christian counselor and any other kind of counselor?
There is a profound difference between a counselor who happens to also be a Christian and a "Christian counselor". A Christian counselor begins with a truly Biblical worldview, a worldview that has been formed by a firm grasp of Biblical theology. A Christian counselor develops his theory of personality and human behavior from this secure grounding. As the Christian counselor encounters new insights from his psychological studies, he will evaluate these insights against his theology and his Biblical worldview. A Christian counselor will keep what is useful and discard what is not. Secular theorists provide insights on human behavior as a result of their research and practice. These insights are helpful to the Christian counselor when they are compatible with the insights provided in God's Word. The insights discovered through the study of the principles and patterns found in nature are often useful tools and provide "pieces of the puzzle" in areas about which the Bible does not clearly and specifically speak. The Bible retains its position of authority throughout this process.
