This is the paper that I turned in for my final in Biblical Counseling. It is a paper that attempts to set up a framework for some practical steps that I believe are necessary for a biblical counseling ministry within in the local church in our emerging future.
What would it look like for a biblical counseling ministry to be implemented within a local community of believers? This paper will deal less with what a concrete biblical counseling ministry is supposed to look like and instead focus on laying down the groundwork for what I believe could be an effective counseling ministry in today�s emerging context. This paper will attempt to outline some �dreams� that I have for what this ministry would look like as a reality one day. I�m not sure of all the answers or exactly what form many of these �dreams� would take, but hopefully I will lay down a fresh vision for what a biblical counseling ministry can and might be. I truly believe that we are standing on the edge of a map. The map represents our old world, our past, and our old framework for doing things, a passing way of viewing reality. I believe the world that we grew up in is slowly transitioning into something that is yet to be defined and somewhere off the map. With this transition into new territory must come a new way of doing things.
However some fundamental questions supercede times and contexts and one of those questions that we must ask is �What is the aim of biblical counseling?� Larry Crabb poses this same question in his book Effective Biblical Counseling when he writes, �What are we hoping will result from the changes we produce? Or, what is our ultimate goal?� This is the fundamental question that must be asked in the quest to help people in their struggles. All of our methods of counseling are going to be so intertwined and connected with the answer to this question, that without answering it, the counselor and the subject will float around aimlessly without ever having set out in a direction to cure the problem. The biblical counselor believes that inward change must happen first in order to meet the �ultimate goal�. So the question then becomes �How do we bring about inward change?� I envision the biblical counseling ministry using three key principles in making inward change a reality for the individual being counseled. I believe that in order to do this, an effective biblical counseling ministry will 1) value the role of relationship, 2) help people find meaning within the story of God, and 3) serve as a catalyst for real solutions.
The Value of Relationship
An effective biblical counseling ministry in our churches of tomorrow must understand the importance of relationships. The value that relationships have in creating healthy individuals is of such importance that I believe that it is one of the greatest factors in producing healthy individuals. I believe in the vision laid out within this paper, that biblical counseling will be less about answers, information, and knowing and instead focus more on plugging the individual who is being counseled into a network of relationships with other people and by sharing with them the importance of the relational role that Christ plays in bringing about mental and spiritual health. We have to remember that God decided to do more than just send us verbal messages through the prophets. He decided, in a mysterious way, to show up, �in person�. Because of Christ showing up �in person�, a new dimension was added to God�s engagement with man. It became relational. Throughout the gospels I do not see a Christ of monologue, information, and constant teaching. Instead I see a Christ of dialogue, relationships, and friendships. God knew that for change to take place there would have to be more than answers, more than teaching. While these are of vital importance, He knew that for true inward change to take place, a relational side had to be introduced into His master plan.
As in the gospels, the hurting people of today are not in need of answers as their primary source of help. They instead are in need of relationships, vertically to God and horizontally with man. When it comes to helping hurting individuals, I think too often that our biblical counseling has resorted to generic answers and cardboard explanations. After giving our �counsel� we forget that we must offer an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on not only when we are �in the office� or �counseling�, but in the day to day grind of everyday life. Too many of us Christians are invisible, absent neighbors, always running to church, to Bible study, to committee meetings, never having time to play golf or go for a walk or catch a cup of coffee with a neighbor in order to build a relationship. But we�ve got answers. They are just void of substance without a relational aspect. If someone only gets answers for an hour period once a week and then they have no relationships to back them up, then our biblical counseling ministry will not be effective at producing long term inward change. People need to not only hear what a healthy Christian looks like (the answers part) but they also need to see what a healthy Christian looks like (the relational part). So how then can we move from the normal way of having a counseling ministry, where we move beyond just answers to relationships? One way that this could happen would be for the people of the church to become involved. Healthy, solid believers within the church could serve as spiritual friends or mentor the individual being counseled. Their job would be to serve alongside the professional counselor. In this way, a staff person could do the counseling and give the �answers� and a lay person could come alongside with the relational aspect of the ministry. I�m not sure of specific ways to do this in each church because each church is going to be working in a different context. However, I believe that a healthy web of relationships is essential to having healthy individuals.
Meaning within the Story
If we can somehow get the individual being counseled to find some meaning in life, I believe a good majority of their problems would go away. How then do we help them to find purpose? We can do this by helping them see that they are an intricate piece of the puzzle, a story within God�s unfolding story. Everyone in life has a story behind their face - where they have come from, where they are going and why, whom they love and who loves them, what they want and need and dream about, what drives them and draws them. We are a story in progress surrounded by stories in progress, and at any moment, our story could intersect with the story of someone else, and as a result, both of our stories will take a novel turn. And in the process, we will both find ourselves part of God's unfolding story too, because God's story intersects with ours at every turn, in every breath, pulsing in every heartbeat. If we can somehow connect those being counseled into God�s story, if we can illustrate to them how much value every facet of life has, how indispensable each relationship is, then we can begin to allow God to move people out of despair and into a life with fulfillment as they realize there is hope.
When you are introducing someone into God�s story, the best way is not always with rational argument or by reasoning with logic. To someone who is looking for hope, the best way to introduce him or her to God�s story is to invite them into a dance. In a dance, both parties listen to the music and try to move with it. When the person being counseled begins to hear the music of the gospel, the music to the story of God, they will begin to dance with it, to dance with God and dance in the story of God. I believe a role that biblical counselors must take is that of someone who turns the music on, someone who shows people how to dance, how they fit into the story. And when they find their place in the story and their role in the dance, they will find the meaning, hope, and purpose that is lacking in their lives. Without being in this unfolding story of God and dancing in it, it�s real hard to have hope. It is my desire to have a counseling ministry that clarifies God�s story and helps place people within it.
Real Solutions
A third thing that I think is essential for our emerging counseling ministries is to serve as a catalyst for real solutions instead of behavior modification. In the past and especially in the secular counseling profession, the emphasis has been placed on modifying what is wrong in order to go back into society as an �adjusted� member of the community. Because of this mindset, medication was and is used on a large scale to correct behaviors. However, real solutions are never found because real problems are never addressed. Biblical counseling should be different than secular counseling because biblical counseling attempts to solve the real problems. I�m afraid that sometimes, however, that some biblical counselors have failed to address the real issues and instead chosen to follow their secular counterparts in pushing behavior modification on those being counseled. They would never say they were doing that, but when biblical counselors simply tell their clients to get involved in church or to read their Bible, they are using a hybrid form of behavior modification that involves having clients adapt Christian behaviors. While Christian behaviors should be practiced, if these behaviors are not born out of a heart that has been invited into a relationship with Christ and plugged into the story of God, then their �behavior� is only a form of modification that the secular counselor claims to be the solution. Thus, biblical counseling should move past the point of trying to get people to adapt external behaviors and instead focus on internal changes. This is the essence of biblical counseling as I see it.
At the heart of this paper is my vision for what a biblical counseling ministry would look like in the church that I am a pastor of one day. This paper deals much with theory and less on concrete forms. I�m not sure what the ministry would look like. I�m not even sure if the vision I laid out in this paper will be a relevant model when I become a pastor. However, I do have a crystal clear picture of some practical steps that I would like to implement alongside the �answer� part of biblical counseling. I hope that I have laid out a framework for those practical steps within this paper. The world is changing and with it must come changes in the way we do ministry. I believe, or at least I hope, that some of the steps that I have outlined here will be beneficial to the local church and its biblical counseling ministry in the near future. This is my heart and this is my vision for a biblical counseling ministry.
