The Great Value of Pastoral Counseling

Pastoral counseling involves a helping relationship between a religiously affiliated counselor and an individual, couple, or family who seek assistance for coping with life. Pastoral counselors include ordained ministers and consecrated professionals licensed in the field of counseling and therapy.

The word “pastoral” indicates that services are provided which are sensitive to the spiritual viewpoints and values of counselees regardless of their faith affiliation. A respect for the faith dimension of human experience is an important contribution of the pastoral counseling movement to the mental health field. Pastoral counseling assumes that a counselee’s spiritual life has value in helping to heal emotional wounds, resolve conflicts, facilitate life transitions, and clarify values and purpose.

Pastoral counseling often takes the form of a specialized ministry within a church, where pastors or professional counselors offer pastoral counseling under the auspices of pastoral care. However, pastoral counseling can also function as an outreach ministry to a local hospital, homeless shelter, or independent counseling center; or it may serve persons through the chaplaincy in a prison, military base, or college campus.

I know of a pastor who has collaborated with the police department in his hometown for over twenty years. Early on they so valued his contributions that they gave him a badge with the title “Police Chaplain.” Over the decades his phone has rung regularly for calls involving domestic disputes.

Pastoral counselors meet a wide range of human needs. For instance, a counselee who is grieving the loss of a loved one; a couple who need premarital counseling or help raising step-children; an individual addicted to substances; a person dealing with adverse work conditions; a parent overwhelmed by young children or adolescents; a family being torn apart by forces they don’t understand; or a person searching for intimacy with God.

By transforming broken personalities and reconciling damaged relationships, pastoral counseling helps persons and communities to become living expressions of God’s redemptive love in the concreteness of daily life.

Most pastoral counselors have academic training in addition to religious credentials. These may include the Master of Divinity or Doctor of Ministry degrees, with a specialty in pastoral counseling. If a pastor has not had opportunity to study counseling in seminary, there are excellent Internet and external degree programs in pastoral counseling offered through credible institutions that strengthen competence in counseling. For instance, I offer an online course for 4 CE (Pastoral Counseling: The Intersection of Psychology and Spirituality) through the Zur Institute.

On the other hand, some pastoral counselors meet with counselees on the basis of their religious credentials alone; Biblical counseling, for example, emphasizes helping parishioners respond to a crisis primarily through empathetic listening, prayer, and biblical instruction.

  

Consecrated mental health workers who work in religious settings or private practice are often licensed as psychologists, professional counselors, or marriage and family therapists. They may work in private practice or band together to form a church-based counseling center.

Personally, I see pastoral counseling as hugely important to the life of the Church and the witness to the community, embodying the truth that God ministers compassionately and wisely to human need, and that anything human is worthy of understanding. 

As I approach seventy years of age, I realize I've carried on pastoral counseling for almost forty years. I wouldn't trade a moment of the enriching and inspiring conversations I've enjoyed with several thousand individuals and couples. Lord willing, I hope to keep these conversations going until the day I pass from this earthly life to eternal life with Christ. And then I'll talk over with him the things I learned and the prayers I shared with so many precious people.

For 25 therapeutic techniques that can be used in pastoral counseling, read:

Christian Counseling That Really Works:

Compass Therapy In Action

What's Unique About Pastoral Counseling?

By checking out this blog, I assume your interest and involvement in pastoral counseling, whether you are a pastor, seminary student, or full-fledged pastoral counselor with years of experience under your belt. In any case I extend you a warm welcome, for I see us as colleagues in the challenging enterprise of pastoral counseling.

Pastoral Counseling

Why does pastoral counseling hold a place of high regard in my heart? 

Pastoral counseling extends the saving work of the Holy Trinity into every new generation, adapting itself to people’s culture and lives in every nook of the globe. 

This means to me that the Father calls individuals into this vocation, the Son inspires his Word and inner power, and the Holy Spirit communicates creatively with those who are brought under their care. 

Christian Trinity

Not that pastoral counseling can’t be exasperating and exhausting at times, because it can. Counseling other human beings is emotionally intensive, intellectually demanding and spiritually draining, since it requires the processing of an immense amount of human pain and suffering. 

That said, something about working with the living God to care for those who are hurting strikes me as thrilling. There is always something new to learn about God, people, and ourselves, as we carry on the adventure of interfacing Christ’s fullness of redemption with pressing human needs.

Pastoral counseling is unique because there is no end point or final statement, but rather an ongoing engagement, every new insight adding to the pastoral counselor's resourcefulness and wisdom, every new technique bringing new possibilities for healing and helping.

I also hold a long-standing belief, held for forty-five years now, that Christian doctrine supports the ministry of counseling. The church is an extraordinary place for counseling to occur, since pastors witness lives unfolding across the generational boundaries. They enjoy the unique opportunity to guide individuals seeking one or more sessions of pastoral counseling into deeper dialogue with themselves, others, and God.

Growing in Christ

I'm sure you would agree that there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a person grow in Christ, in part as a consequence of your pastoral counseling. 

And I would add that I find an equal satisfaction in writing the Compass Series books, summing up a lifetime of counseling into principles and possibilities that might be of service to you.

 

Tips for Christian Counselors: The Book-Stacking Technique

For counselees who have difficulty standing up for themselves (especially those stuck in the Dependent personality disorder), the book-stacking technique is effective for strengthening a counselee’s courage to say “no” to other people’s undue requests or expectations.

You can help buttress their courage by asking them what they think Paul meant when he said, "I am not seeking to win the approval of people, but of God" (Gal 1:10).

The Book-Stacking Technique

Ask the counselee to stand in front of you with arms extended and palms up. You load them up one by one with several books, saying as you do so, “This represents all the burdens people lay on you without considering how heavy they are.” Once the counselee is loaded to capacity, you say, “Now while you are feeling the weight of these burdens, tell me what you are aware of.”

Book-stacking Technique

Compliment them on any descriptions they offer, and if they miss certain obvious qualities, prompt them with, “What about your body? How does it feel right now when you’ve accepted all of these jobs?” Or, “Can you form a plan in your mind to say ‘no’ to the next person who wants to add another book?”

After waiting for another minute so that the impact of the load can sink into the psyche, you reverse the process by saying, “Okay, each time you tell me to remove a book I will. This will represent you standing up to a person and telling them that you can no longer accept assignments that belong to them.”

Here you will hit a temporary therapeutic impasse, because the counselee will not want to disappoint anyone’s hope or risk their ire. But keep coaching them, so they can successfully assert themselves to remove the books. “Go ahead now, and tell me to remove the first book.”

Learning to Be Assertive

If the counselee complies in a mousey voice, you stop the technique and say something like, “I noticed that you barely whispered that request for me to take a book away. If I were a manipulative person I wouldn’t respond. Try putting some gusto into your voice and demand that I remove the book.”

The counselee does so, and you remove the book.

“That was good assertion. Now ask again and really mean it.”

The counselee does so with even more firmness and you remove another book. 

“Excellent,” you say, “I’m really starting to believe you. Now for the last two books, try actually enjoying your assertion and feeling the relief of not having to carry these books anymore.”

Feeling Relieved

The counselee does so and you remove both books. The two of you laugh and sit back in your seats.

“I want to compliment you for doing a great job asserting your reasonable rights,” you say.

“It was hard at first, but I think I’m getting the idea that the world doesn’t come apart at the seams if I say  ‘no.’”

“I wonder if for homework this week you might practice some assertion when you feel it is appropriate? Next week we can talk over what happens.”

“Yes, I’d like to. And I’m saying that because I mean it!”

For more, read:

Christian Counseling That Really Works

Christian Counseling

Helping People Experience God's Love

I have helped many people yield to God's love. It isn't nearly as complicated as you might think. The two factors that have to be overcome include fear of the unknown and lack of knowledge about how much God desires to manifest himself in our lives.

I remember as a young boy I went to bed at night feeling deeply frightened after turning out the lights. I would see creepy shadows on the wall formed by streetlights, and imagine all types of weird monsters in the closet or under my bed. Finally my mother suggested a solution. She brought a black Bible into my room and laid it on my nightstand. "Here Dan," she said. "Now you know that God will be here with you in your room." Her technique and confidence, along with my new feeling of God's assurance won the day.

As a pastoral counselor you have countless opportunities to assure people of God's love for them. You can say, "God is going to help you through this current crisis because we are trusting in Him." Or, "I wonder what creative way the Lord will use to help you out this week."

When people express fear at the prospect of feeling God's presence, it is often because they connect it with ghost stories or the loss of control to an invisible force. Here is where people need to realize that in Jesus we see the face and hear the voice of Almighty God. From a child born in a manger, we hear the Lord of Creation speaking to us, usually gently through the voice of the Holy Spirit, about how we are to live and what we are to believe. Understanding that Christ is resurrected and that it's perfectly normal to hear his voice really helps people relax and recognize the Good Shepherd when He guides them.

If a person still doesn't feel comfortable with God, you may need to probe for areas of willful sin, where they are not really surrendering their lives to him, or where they are disobeying what Scripture teaches. A woman revealed to me in pastoral counseling something she had never told anyone: that a local physician had her visit his home each month to handle his sexual needs. For this he helped her out with her monthly condo payment. She had been benefiting from this arrangement for a year, and at first seemed shocked when I reframed it as prostitution. This went against her self-image as a very moral person in other regards. It took her a couple of months to part ways with the doctor, but a new peace of Christ came into her heart when she made the break.
 
Once you have helped a person deal with their reservations about growing in Jesus Christ, this opens up many opportunities for a closer walk with God. Since the Holy Spirit now lives within them, they can talk to God as they would a best friend, any time day or night. They can approach God boldly, as His much loved sons and daughters. "Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Heb 4:16).

One day when President John Kennedy was in the Oval Office, a White House photographer caught little Jon-Jon, his three year old son, peeking out from under the desk, where he had been happily playing during a high level meeting.

But Kennedy acted like our Heavenly Father acts, making room for Jon-Jon in  his affairs of state. God loves us even more intensely. The Lord is never too busy to comfort us or give us a spiritual hug in the middle of the day.

Here are Scriptures that work well in pastoral counseling to drive this reality home:

"No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).

"May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God" (Ephesians 3:19).

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:7).

Most of all, persons in pastoral counseling learn from you, the pastoral counselor, that God is really there, and that He loves them as you love them.

Pastoral Counseling Using Compass Therapy for Brief Situational Support

In the Compass Therapy approach to pastoral counseling, brief situational support consists of one to three sessions aimed at strengthening counselees in life situations that have temporarily thrown them off course.

Let’s say a woman comes to you feeling stunned and confused because her husband died that weekend. Relatives are arriving from out-of-town to assist with the funeral. She tells you through tears that she doesn’t know how to act around them. Then she bites her lip, as though apologetic for her show of emotion.

Grief

“Andrea,” you say, “it’s okay to let your feelings come out here. Let yourself breathe and say whatever comes to you.” Here you are defining the counseling encounter as a safe place to contact emotions and let them pass through her. You are showing that while you are in charge of the session, she is free to express herself spontaneously. You are also implying trust in her, that as she discharges emotions and catches up with her thoughts, she will find a way through this situation.

After looking pensive for a minute, during which you relax your body and respectfully await her next communication, she takes a deep breath and says, “Should I be brave and make everyone comfortable? Or should I just cry when I feel how much I miss Brad?”

You explore this and find that her heart is aching terribly over the loss of her husband. She can barely even conceive of life without him. Yet she needs a way to behave in the midst of her many relatives.

“It’s like you are torn between concentrating on your feelings of loss and trying to watch after your visitors. Is that right?” Asking if your interpretation is on track lets counselees focus even more clearly on what they are experiencing. If they agree with you they will automatically move forward. If they disagree, they will add the nuance of thought or feeling that provides greater detail.

“Exactly,” she says. “I’m trying to make sure people have enough to eat and somewhere to sleep, and then suddenly I feel like I’ve been hit in the chest with a two-by-four.”

Now you want to expand the emotion behind the chest metaphor so that she can literally get the pressure off her chest.

“This deep emotion about Brad…what name would you give it?”

Her eyes grow distant, as though lost in thought. Then her shoulders slump and she sighs from her depths. “I feel…lost. Like there’s no ‘me’ inside me. Like I have tunnel vision and feel numb all over.”

Tunnel Vision

“This is perfectly understandable, Andrea. You are in shock. And your body is temporarily shutting down in order to protect you until you have time to sort things out.”

She tears up, a good sign that you’ve said the right thing, for her expression is no longer simply blank, but rather conveys the relief of expressing a core feeling and being understood. Aware that the session time is nearly over, you offer a tentative suggestion.

“Do you suppose it might work this week to go ahead and say when you’re feeling overwhelmed, so that you’re taking care of yourself as well as interacting with your relatives?”

Closing her eyes, she nods. “Yes, I think that’s what I need to do.”

Notice in this counseling transaction the sense of forward movement, even to the point of offering a creative plan. Counselees need more than having their feelings accepted; they need ideas to consider, perspectives to try on for size, tentative plans that steer them in a productive direction. In brief situational support the coaching dimension of pastoral counseling provides these elements.

You close the session with prayer, inviting Andrea to come back if she needs further support.

Other situations appropriate for brief situational support might include talking with a college student who is so homesick he’s considering dropping out of school; brainstorming with a counselee who has lost his job and feels submerged in a whirlpool of failure feelings; or comforting a woman who confides that she’s gone through the motions of religion for years without ever feeling close to God.

Brief situational support occurs most often within the faith community and reflects the heart-pulse of pastoral counseling and coaching. When parishioners speak transparently to a pastor, a church becomes a home. Pastoral counseling in this context helps to stabilize, nurture, guide, inspire, and lend a helping hand. The mere availability of pastoral counseling helps people feel the presence of a safety net underneath them, as the Psalmist recognized when he wrote: “Underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Long before I embarked on my counseling career I had a single session with a gifted pastoral counselor. I described how awkward I felt around people and how my way of emotionally blurting things out often backfired.

“So it seems like your impulsive style of speaking works against you more than you’d like,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied, amazed at the warmth that his eyes conveyed. “And I’m afraid that not even God can change me.”

He folded his hands together and looked thoughtful. Then he exhaled slowly and said, “Dan, I think the Lord is giving me a visual picture about you. If I understand it correctly, I see you as a boulder in a river filled with rapids. While you may seem rugged right now, in due time the Holy Spirit is going to rub off and polish your rough edges. I believe that someday you’re going to become a rock of support who helps other people know that God loves them.”

That visual metaphor has traveled with me these forty years. I hope I’ve become a source of God’s love to others as much as that pastoral counselor was for me.

Contemporary models that can strengthen your capability for providing brief situational support are found in books like: Strategies in Brief Pastoral Counseling, by Howard Stone (2001); Counseling: How to Counsel Biblically, by John MacArthur (2005); and Christian Counseling: An Introduction (2007), by H. Newton Malony and David Augsburger.

For more about the Compass Therapy approach to pastoral counseling, read:

Pastoral Counseling and Coaching: Compass Therapy in Churches

Pastoral Counseling Definition and Applications

Pastoral counseling involves a helping relationship between a religiously affiliated counselor and an individual, couple, or family who seek assistance for coping with life. Pastoral counselors include ordained ministers and consecrated professionals licensed in the field of counseling and therapy.

The word “pastoral” indicates that services are provided which are sensitive to the spiritual viewpoints and values of counselees regardless of their faith affiliation. A respect for the faith dimension of human experience is an important contribution of the pastoral counseling movement to the mental health field. Pastoral counseling assumes that a counselee’s spiritual life has value in helping to heal emotional wounds, resolve conflicts, facilitate life transitions, and clarify values and purpose.

Pastoral counseling often takes the form of a specialized ministry within a church, where pastors or professional counselors offer pastoral counseling under the auspices of pastoral care. However, pastoral counseling can also function as an outreach ministry to a local hospital, homeless shelter, or independent counseling center; or it may serve persons through the chaplaincy in a prison, military base, or college campus.

I know of a pastor who has collaborated with the police department in his hometown for over twenty years. Early on they so valued his contributions that they gave him a badge with the title “Police Chaplain.” Over the decades his phone has rung regularly for calls involving domestic disputes.

Pastoral counselors meet a wide range of human needs. For instance, a counselee who is grieving the loss of a loved one; a couple who need premarital counseling or help raising step-children; an individual addicted to substances; a person dealing with adverse work conditions; a parent overwhelmed by young children or adolescents; a family being torn apart by forces they don’t understand; or a person searching for intimacy with God.

By transforming broken personalities and reconciling damaged relationships, pastoral counseling helps persons and communities to become living expressions of God’s redemptive love in the concreteness of daily life.

Most pastoral counselors have academic training in addition to religious credentials. These may include the Master of Divinity or Doctor of Ministry degrees, with a specialty in pastoral counseling. If a pastor has not had opportunity to study counseling in seminary, there are excellent Internet and external degree programs in pastoral counseling offered through credible institutions that strengthen competence in counseling. For instance, I offer an online course for 4 CE (Pastoral Counseling: The Intersection of Psychology and Spirituality) through the Zur Institute.

On the other hand, some pastoral counselors meet with counselees on the basis of their religious credentials alone; Biblical counseling, for example, emphasizes helping parishioners respond to a crisis primarily through empathetic listening, prayer, and biblical instruction.

  

Consecrated mental health workers who work in religious settings or private practice are often licensed as psychologists, professional counselors, or marriage and family therapists. They may work in private practice or band together to form a church-based counseling center.

Personally, I see pastoral counseling as hugely important to the life of the Church and the witness to the community, embodying the truth that God ministers compassionately and wisely to human need, and that anything human is worthy of understanding. 

For 25 therapeutic techniques that can be used in pastoral counseling, read:

Christian Counseling That Really Works:

Compass Therapy In Action