Who Should Teach Pastors to Counsel?
Of the five questions I address in my Evangelical Theological Society presentation this morning on equipping pastors to counsel, perhaps the most controversial question is:
What credentials qualify a professor to equip pastors to counsel in the local church?
I address that question in several ways, including the following scenario…
Christian Evangelical Seminary and Preaching
Picture this scenario at “Christian Evangelical Seminary.”
The two or three homiletics courses (courses designed to equip pastors to preach) and all elective courses in that department are taught by the chair who earned his BA in Speech Therapy at Ohio State, his MA in Rhetoric’s at Brown, and his Ph.D. in Public Speaking at Indiana University.
His first vocational position was as a speech therapist for a five-county speech therapy center, his second position was training debaters for a political organization in Indiana, and his last position before his seminary role was as a speech teacher at Ball State.
He is a committed Christian, but he has never taken a homiletics course at a Bible college or seminary, has never received any Christian higher education, and has never taught or preached regularly to adults in the local church setting.
Now he is hired as the primary homiletics professor to fulfill the calling of equipping M.Div. students to learn how to preach in the local church.
Christian Evangelical Seminary and Principles of Bible Study
Or, imagine this scenario, also at “Christian Evangelical Seminary.
The two or three hermeneutics and principles of Bible study courses and all elective courses in that department are taught by the chair who earned her BA in English at a Christian liberal arts college, her MA in English Literature at a state university, and her Ph.D. in Literary History at a state university.
Her first position was as an English teacher at a public high school. Her second position was teaching English literature at a community college. She also has experience teaching TESEL.
She is a committed Christian, however, she only took one principles of Bible study class her sophomore year of college. She does not know the original biblical languages. She loves her Bible and as a lay person has taught classes for the young adults in her church for several years.
Now she is hired as the primary hermeneutics professor to fulfill the calling of equipping M.Div. students to learn hermeneutics and principles of Bible study.
A “Fit” or “Match”?
Would we consider the education and experience of these two primary professors to be a “fit” or “match” for those positions?
While these professors might be considered by some to be qualified to teach one course or a part of a course as an adjunct, would most consider them qualified to be the chair and/or primary professor in the homiletics or hermeneutics department in an Evangelical seminary M.Div. department?
Of course, these are outlier examples. Or are they? Are they that extreme compared to the current realities in some seminary pastoral counseling education?
Teaching Pastors to Counsel in the Church
In light of those hypothetical questions about a hypothetical Evangelical seminary with hypothetical chairs of the non-hypothetical homiletics and hermeneutics department, what location and type of education might be considered a good match for the chair or primary professor in the M.Div. pastoral counseling department?
We are not asking who might be qualified as an adjunct to teach one elective course or one section of one course. We are asking what educational background best equips the chair or primary professor in the M.Div. pastoral counseling department.
We are asking what work/ministry experience (the location of experience) best equips the chair or primary professor in the M.Div. pastoral counseling department to equip students for the local church personal ministry of the Word?
Would a person whose educational background is exclusively or predominantly outside the seminary setting and whose course of study is exclusively or predominantly outside the realm of Bible, theology, languages, hermeneutics, and pastoral ministry/theology be the best fit or match for equipping seminary M.Div. students for local church ministry in pastoral counseling?
Would a person whose work experience has been exclusively or predominantly outside the local church be the best match or fit for equipping students to be local church pastoral counselors involved in the personal ministry of God’s Word?
The preceding questions are more than rhetorical. They deserve an honest answer. It would appear that the primary professor assigned to equip the M.Div. pastoral counseling student would have qualifications such as:
• The ministry self-identity of a pastoral counselor;
• Past or current local church pastoral ministry experience including local church pastoral counseling experience;
• An educational background including advanced Bible, theology, hermeneutics, homiletics, pastoral theology, and original language studies, perhaps including the M.Div. degree;
• Being a theologian-practitioner with a biblically/theologically-informed view of the Bible that grounds pastoral counseling education in the Scripture’s authority, clarity, necessity, and sufficiency;
• A vision of pastoral counseling in the local church as ministry done in the name of God, founded on the Word of God, focused on the Gospel of Christ, and rooted in the Body of Christ; and
• The pedagogical training and experience to develop and teach pastoral counseling courses that creatively relate truth to life so students grow in biblical content, Christlike character, pastoral counseling competence, and Christian community.
Join the Conversation
What credentials do you believe a professor needs to have in order to equip pastors to counsel in the church?
RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth
personally, i come from a very difficult family of origin and entered into a difficult marriage at the ripe age of 19. now 47, daughter who is 22 and still married to a drug addict. there are no churches who can even assist with just going to my husband with me to confront him finally. i do know from experience that worldly counsel is generally opposed to god’s ways, h owever the facts and tests and organization gathered from the field has been useful info in dealing with situations. learning to deal with the facts and how the lord would want me to handle things is difficult many times to discern, because of the plethora of contradicting religious beliefs. (religious beliefs are not the real truth either and based on man) a pastor who is fit to counsel needs a faith based teaching to begin with. what i find is that christian faith does not have any teaching on this at all, like the world does. why is that? why not develop a field of christian psychology and become pioneers, because in my experience, christian religion is completely lost, because they haven’t been trained. they are not trained because their is no system to teach. facts from the world can aid in christina system but not direct it, the system needs to train in empathy, sympathy and how god would really like us to handle situations. doctrine on divorce and remarriage really needs to be finalized with the real truth. many pastors in churches won’t even discuss the subject with a congregant. these men who preach are doing the best they can because they haven’t been taught because there is no truth that they have been taught and are standing on. (divorce is one subject to look at to base what i am saying on) what about abuse, some churches don’t want the law of the land involved and other churches do and then those churches shirk all the responsibility onto the law of the land. god’s people are in bondage because they have no revelation or knowledge of gods’ ways in the matter. i say let christian education, teach the real truth about god, develop a christina counseling system and then teach that. you can’t expect people to teach something they haven’t been taught themselves. in the meantime, me, a layperson, who loves god, is still struggling, in pain with a husband who could have an opportunity to be free, but no one will talk to him in my church. and this is not the first church… most churches are like this. one church i went when i told them my husband is an addict and i would liek the assistance of the church to speak with my husband lovingly, said for me to get the log out of my eye. i told her, i don’t take drugs or drink my husband does. and of coujrse i am not perfect but my god is sanctifying me everyday. in the meantime people are suffering. my people suffer for a lack of knowledge. it seems like to me that men in churches are acting like adam. they stand by like adam did and don’t do a thing to lead. it was adam who sinned first, not eve. he did not stand up for what was right. that is my experience, but i continue to look homeward bound where i will eventually live in peace for eternity and hopefully with my husband there too. god can do anything. he saved my alcoholic, violent father before it was too late. so i leave my husband in god’s hands, while god’s men continue to fiddle around and not make decisions or take a stand. you probably won’t be happy i said all of this, but my experiences are real and they hurt me and my hubby everyday. god will come down and do everyone’s job for them, so i don’t have to worry about it. but wouldn’t you all like to do it? how can you teach something taht doesn’t have a system, how can you teach something when christian religion can’t even decide on what is god’s truth, from simple discipling your children to finances to marriage, dating and divorce. all of these easy subjects. now add violence, abuse, addictions. religioan can’t agree on simple theology to teach its lay people how can it teach or counsel on more complex matters. we are still addressing the same things from the bible, incest family problems and no one still knows how to counsel those issues because they don’t know what they believe. they come up with one plus one solutions to manipulate and control so things will look good, but they don’t get to the heart of the matter. that is my experience.
Janet, I deeply appreciate you sharing your heart and your convictions. My heart goes out to you and your family for the hurts caused by a Christian community that is not counseling you with the rich, robust, relevant truth of God’s Word. Your concerns are the same concerns that prompted this blog post and the ETS paper it is based on. In the ETS presentation, I document that for the past three decades pastors graduating from Evangelical seminaries feel poorly equipped to counsel their people. The point of the paper is to prompt a drastic change in how pastors are prepared for pastoral counseling. You speak of developing a Christian approach to counseling. That’s exactly what thousands of leaders in the biblical counseling field and hundreds of people connected with the Biblical Counseling Coalition (http://biblicalcounselingcoalition.org) are doing. We are using God’s Word to understand people, diagnosis problems, and prescribe care/cure–biblically. My books, Soul Phyisicians; Spiritual Friends; Anxiety; Equipping Counselors; and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses, are just a few examples among hundreds that have been written to teach pastors and people how to apply Christ’s changeless truth to change lives. Lambert and Scott’s book, Counseling the Hard Cases, is another great example, as are books by Tripp, Lane, Powlison, Viars, Holcomb, Wilkerson, Adams, Bigney, Welch, Emlet, and so many others. Again, thank you for sharing your heart. I pray that you will find a counselor who will help you biblically. The National Association of Noutehtic Counselors has a list of certified counselors collated by zip code. In Christ’s Grace, Bob