A recent TGC article claimed that many women are choosing to go to therapy rather than church. The article made some suggestions as to why that might be. It also went on to make some suggestions as to what the church might do to address this.
I think the article made some helpful comments. But I also think it made some missteps which led (in my view) to a poorly conceived piece. Ultimately, I think the article linked the roles of pastor and counsellor too tightly and failed to do justice to what both are designed to do. Further, I think it oversimplified the issues, failing to recognise that many seek the counsel of both pastors and therapists for different, yet perfectly biblical and complementary, reasons.
In my forthcoming book on eldership (pre-order here; delivery due any day now) I address this very issue. I specifically do not address it from the angle of people going to therapy as any sort of challenge to the church. I do not think it should be viewed as a challenge to the church but as two groups of people serving in different yet nevertheless beneficial roles. Instead, I address the matter from the perspective of a local church leader who is not trained to give the kind of therapeutic counsel many legitimately need and who struggles with the fact that quite a lot of Christians seem to expect this very thing from their pastor, no doubt in part because of articles like this TGC one.
By virtue of the fact that it is a small section in a much larger book on eldership, the little segment on counselling does not say everything it might on this topic. It doesn’t aim to do that. However, what it does try to do is (briefly) sketch out the differences between what pastors are called to do and what counsellors/therapists exist to do. It goes on to suggest that these are distinct roles that, thanks to common grace, may legitimately complement one another in the same way as those visiting a physician or enquiring of an archaeologist may find their respective areas of knowledge also complement what you receive from your pastor.
These things need not be held up as enemies or dangers. Of course, everything has dangers and there are good and bad practitioners in everything, pastoral ministry included! But where everybody sticks to their lanes and understands precisely what they are there to do, we may just find there is more to be gained than feared from these things.
Check out the section of pastoral ministry and counselling from my upcoming book by clicking the link below. I hope it is helpful in some measure.
I take your point. But isn’t there a fuzzy area where pastors/elders (or even Christian
friends) must be ‘reflective listeners?’
Before we try to help folk see and apply what God says to them about the issues they face, we have to listen reflectively to grasp how they see the situation themselves.
When someone helps us correctly apply God’s word to a problem, an issue, a situation, aren’t they actually giving us God’s counsel on the matter?
And as Christians we all constantly and always need God’s counsel, though we may not often ( or ever?) need the help of professional counsellors.
Yes, we are certainly seeking ‘God’s counsel’ but that is clearly quite a different task – with a very different way to find it and very much different aims/outcomes – than counselling understood as therapy.
I do think pastors need to be listeners, but their task is then to help people look into the scripture, understand them, and apply them to their lives. When they have done that well and we have ‘heard the voice of God’, it is binding on us – it’s not just an opinion among others, some good advice or something we can take or leave as suits us.
But it bears saying, the pastor’s job isn’t to tell us what to do with our lives in all its minutiae. And the pastor’s job isn’t to help us realise our own solutions. Their job is to point to Christ in scripture and tell us what the scriptures say about God to us, what God wants us to know and what he wants us to do with that knowledge.
I think that is distinctly different to what counselling aims to do and how/why it helps.
I largely agree with you…. But I do believe that real listening is reflective. We reflect on what we’re hearing to ensure we’ve understood. We may even reflect back to the speaker what we’ve heard to ensure we have understood.
And I do think that God’s counsel is genuinely therapeutic – when implemented it solves problems and it heals.
Professional counselling may sometimes, perhaps unwittingly, validate unhelpful or ungodly behaviour, simply by not challenging such. I think this is probably why some Christians are suspicious of it.
I am not wanting for one minute to deny the value of reflective listening and I am sure you are right that sometimes bad counselling can reinforce bad behaviours. But then, I think all we’re saying here (and it is true) is that there are bad practitioners in every field, including the pastorate!
I think many Christians are sceptical of secular counselling because they believe it is infused with worldly wisdom and unbiblical theory. For the most part, I think the case is overblown.
I think many Christians simply fail to accept common grace is a real thing and unbelievers can have incredibly lucid and helpful insights in spite of rejecting the scriptures. Unbelieving doctors can still makes us well without believing scripture, just as unbelieving archaeologists can support what we find in scripture, and I think the same goes for secular counselling.
I do take your point about common grace. It’s a most undervalued truth.
Thanks to the brilliance of a robotic surgeon, I had a cancerous prostate removed last year.
I suspect we are all more indebted to God’s common grace than we realise.
I read the TGC article a couple of days ago, and I also had considerable misgivings about it, so I totally agree with the points in this article.
I have benefitted greatly from professional (secular) psychotherapy to deal with the after-effects of what are now called ‘adverse childhood experiences’. I first tried talking to the minister of my church at his invitation, but got no benefit – no discredit to him, he just didn’t have the understanding – so went down the secular route, which I think I could describe as literally life-saving.
I would describe the process in therapy as being like emotional ‘open-heart’ surgery; you’d no more want to trust an amateur Christian wielding the Bible to do that than trust an amateur Christian to do physical open-heart surgery on you. The process requires a fully-trained and qualified professional, who is linked to supervision with a senior therapist, and undergoes continuing professional development, not a well-meaning solo amateur who has the potential to do a lot of harm.
I think this is absolutely right.
Pastors can do lots of things well and it is no discredit whatsoever to any of us to admit that we are simply not trained to do counselling and therapy. It should be no more discredit to us than admitting lots of pastors aren’t much good at maths or administration or whatever. It isn’t the essence of the role nor what we are specifically trained to do, helpful as any of that might be if we happen to have prior training in it.
We are not appointed as pastors to do it and we are not equipped necessarily for it. Our task is to care for the spiritual needs of the church, equipping them for works of service, through the teaching of the Word.
Counselling and therapy is an altogether different gig, aiming at different outcomes, requiring a completely different set of skills.
Stephen
Thank you for this post, and the link to the one you wrote previously.
It’s very well timed because as a relatively new Christian (about a year), I’ve been debating the idea of seeing a counsellor for a while now. 10 months on from a bereavement (my dad, who I lived with for the last 7 years of his life) and I feel worse, not better. To be honest the guilt of not being able to feel joy, in fact feeling the exact opposite, has really worn me down along with everything else.
In fact, for the first time since I’ve been attending my church, I’ve avoided it for a 4 week period over Christmas because the last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by happy couples and families in Christmas jumpers (I’m single),
I’ve read a few articles online and seen the likes of Ray Comfort even dismiss the idea of therapy with the “Do not be counselled by the ungodly” quote. All of this has made me feel as if I’m deficient and maybe leaning on my own understanding, rather than God’s.
But I did finally send a message to a counsellor yesterday because I simply can’t carry on like this, and it’s reassuring to hear someone like yourself show some understanding, which, as a long term sufferer of depression and anxiety, I have to say, most people don’t.
Thanks again
Mark
I’m so sorry to hear about your bereavement Mark. That must be very hard.
As both a pastor and fellow depressive, I can affirm the legitimacy of counselling. It has been very helpful to me in the past. As, it bears saying, are the antidepressants I continue to take (that are also not ungodly or problematic – they are as much medicine as anything else).
I edited a book a while ago with the stories of 7 pastors (I was one of them) sharing about their experiences of depression and what happened to help them. It may be helpful to you – you can find it by going to the publications page here if you sense it would be useful to you.
God’s blessings to you.