Restoring the Supernatural to Pastoral Counseling

We live in a time when much that is precious to Christian faith and doctrine has been removed from some approaches to pastoral counseling. I know one reason for this development. 

One of the founders of the pastoral counseling movement in twentieth century America, Seward Hiltner, wanted to apply modern psychology to the work of the clergy. He sought and received help for doing this from humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers. The help Rogers provided turned traditional pastoral care into an extension of humanistic psychology.

Seward Hiltner

Hiltner and Rogers taught pastoral counselors how to show empathy instead of judgment toward counselees. They emphasized that each counselee is unique, and lives within a perceptual field can only be disclosed in an atmosphere of trust and positive regard. This helped pastoral counselors get out of the rut of offering superficial advice or moralist platitudes, and taught them how to listen more deeply and respond more humanly to their counselees.

Carl Rogers

As a psychologist, I too knew Carl Rogers. I read all of his works and had several memorable conversations with him. I asked him once if he believed in God. He said, "Dan, I am uncomfortable with the personal God that is presented in the Bible. I believe that the highest authority should be a person's own experience." When I asked why he had used the biblical term of "agape love" to describe the bond between people in his encounter groups, he said, "Perhaps it has to do with the Spirit of the Universe."

For all the good that Hiltner and Rogers brought to pastoral counseling, there was a downside.

My friend and colleague, theologian Donald Bloesch, a noted theologian of evangelical theology, knew Seward Hiltner at the University of Chicago. Don said he had felt very disheartened on hearing Hiltner discuss pastoral counseling. "He disallowed any sense of the supernatural, including any reference to Jesus' divine nature and miracles, or the activity of the Holy Spirit in pastoral care."

Donald Bloesch

Bloesch and I agreed, he as a theologian and me as a psychologist, that one of the distinctive elements of Christian pastoral counseling lies in the presence of Christ the Lord during sessions. There exists an unbroken continuity made possible by the Holy Spirit between the soul care offered by Peter and the disciples, and the pastoral counseling we offer to people today. Two months before he passed away, Don said, "Dan, I believe that God has called you to bring the supernatural back into pastoral counseling. My prayers are with you."

We can pray for supernatural intervention and expect the benefits of Christ's atonement to help heal personality conflicts, reconcile damaged relationships, and vitalize lost spiritual lives. We can use Scripture and biblical stories, including miraculous stories drawn from the Old or New Testament, as word pictures that inspire faith and hope. We can delight when the Holy Spirit moves through gifts of the word of knowledge or word of wisdom, in which our own knowledge is augmented by insights or interpretations that come from a higher power than ours. We can respect counselees' unique perceptual world, while inviting them into a larger world of God's in-breaking kingdom on earth.

Dan Montgomery

The Compass Therapy approach to pastoral counseling brings together the tools and principles of therapeutic psychology with a robust faith in the Word of God and Spirit of God to make Christ's presence real in counseling sessions.

For more about Christ's presence in pastoral counseling, see: 

Christian Counseling That Really Works

Contributors to Pastoral Care and Counseling

Who has come before you? Who has contributed to your identity?Your vision as a pastoral counselor? Who are the significant pioneers in the modern field of Pastoral Care and Counseling?

In a very real sense, Jesus Christ is the first Christian pastoral counselor. He held intimate conversations on life-changing topics with many, among them Mary Magdelene, Nicodemus, the rich young ruler, and the disciples, who needed transformation in many areas of their personality and behavior. Not for nothing did Isaiah foretell that the Messiah would be a mighty counselor!

At his Ascension, Christ passed this mantle of pastoral counseling from the Good Shepherd to the his pastoral shepherds, like Peter and the rest of us, whom the Holy Spirit would call and empower with gifts of healing, wisdom and discernment. Today innumerable servants of Christ bring pastoral care and counseling to millions.

Though pastoral counseling has existed for millennia in the form of “care for the soul,” its expression in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has intersected the development of clinical and counseling psychology, as well as marriage and family therapy.

Psychologist William James, one of the first American thinkers to envision the integration of behavioral science and religious faith, wrote Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) to place this topic on the agenda for future exploration in universities, churches and seminaries.

Beginning in the early twentieth century, pioneering pastors and priests began to integrate Freudian, Jungian, and Adlerian theories with their experiences in pastoral care. The aftermath of World War II provided a major impetus in the United States for the use of psychology by pastors, particularly through the development of Clinical Pastoral Education taught in interdisciplinary programs through colleges and universities.

Seward Hiltner (University of Chicago), discerning the rich connection between religion and mental health, wrote the influential book Pastoral Counseling (1949). Carroll Wise (Garrett) focused on the application of psychoanalytic theory in church counseling.  

Paul Johnson (Boston University) emphasized “responsive” counseling, drawing from Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory. Wayne Oates (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) sought to give pastoral counseling full standing in medical school training and chaplaincy programs.

The American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC) was founded in 1963.

In his classic Basic Types of Pastoral Counseling (1966), Howard Clinebell helped consolidate the field of pastoral counseling, advocating that pastoral counselors complement their ministerial credentials with competent training in psychological counseling theories.

Perhaps in reaction to this emphasis, Thomas Oden, fearing that pastoral counselors might err in becoming pseudo-psychologists instead of pastoral caregivers, encouraged the incorporation of pre-modern psychologies and traditional forms of spirituality in pastoral counseling (1983).

Charles Gerkin (1984) developed the theology of providence in relation to crisis experiences, presenting the pastoral counselor as a skilled “interpreter,” assisting in the integration of a counselee’s life story within their larger faith tradition. Similarly, John Patton emphasized the pastoral counselor’s use of “relational humanness” in dealing with issues of guilt, shame, and forgiveness (1985).

Contemporary contributors to the history and diversity of pastoral counseling include, among others, Jay Adams, Lawrence Crabb, Richard Dayringer, David Brenner, Gary Collins, John MacArthur, Rodney Hunter, Nancy Ramsay, Donald Capps, Robert Wicks, Howard Stone, Pamela Cooper-White, James Dittes, Carrie Doehring, Jeanne Stevenson Messner, Ray S. Anderson, Deborah Van Deusen Hunsinger, Raymond Pendleton, Abigail Rian Evans, Ann Ulanov, David Augsburger, Dan Montgomery, and H. Newton Malony.

The most ecumenical expression of pastoral counseling, the Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling by Rodney Hunter and Nancy Ramsay (1996; 2005), enlisted the participation of nearly 600 Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish contributors.

My own interpretation of this brief history on major contributors to pastoral counseling? That there are two potentially complementary tracks, one that is Christ-centered and emphasizes the supernatural energies of the Bible and the Trinity, and the other, humanistic and emphasizing secular therapeutic systems.

The supernatural track relies most deeply on the Bible as the revealed Word of God, and the Holy Spirit as an indwelling force for helping people find their way amidst life anxieties and crises. In this tradition the pastoral counselor views Jesus Christ as actively present and influential in the counseling process. Prayer, sacraments, and participation in church life are viewed as irreplaceable assets in psychological and spiritual healing.

The humanistic track emphasizes prevailing theories of counseling and therapy as the primary means of care-giving. There is relatively less concentration on intercessory prayer or seeking the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and more emphasis on methods derived from humanistic-existential, cognitive-behavioral, or psychoanalytic models. In some cases, this approach to counseling may closely resemble secular-based therapy, since that is the source that inspires it.

Here is the perspective that Compass Therapy offers.

For centuries, Christianity didn’t know quite know what to do with the Trinity, other than mention the Trinity during congregational recitation of orthodox creeds or at baptism. But in light of what we have learned in the study of interpersonal psychology, we can now grasp that the Trinity is actually the cosmological foundation of human personhood and interpersonal relationships.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons in one God who actualize their love through mutual indwelling, and who invite human beings to share in this Trinitarian intimacy. Compass Therapy is constructed on a Trinitarian foundation that illuminates the interconnections between personhood, personality, and interpersonal relationships -- in both their healthy and dysfunctional forms.

Thus, the compass approach to pastoral counseling invites the Trinity’s participation in the counseling process. This can take the form of prayers for counselee blessing, trust in divine guidance during sessions, and response to the Father’s desire to fashion persons into the image of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Wisdom from the Word of God commingles with empirical research from behavioral science to create a unified field theory of psychospiritual growth and fulfillment.

The counselee, then, experiences an integration that encompasses faith and reason, the supernatural and the humanistic. Compass Therapy suggests that the Trinity expresses an abiding presence in pastoral counseling, healing and transforming personality and relationships in Christlike directions, for the wellbeing of persons and the glory of God.