5 Rubber-Meets-the-Road Questions for My Christian Integrative Counseling Friends and My Christian Psychology Friends
So…over the past week I’ve been interacting with some Christian Integrative Counseling (CIC) friends and some Christian Psychology (CP) friends. Here are the posts thus far:
• 5 Reasons It’s Past Time to End the Stereotypes about Biblical Counseling
• Christian Integrative Counseling and Biblical Counseling: Continuing the Conversation
• Christian Integrative Counseling and Biblical Counseling: The Conversation Continues
• Christian Integrative Counseling and Biblical Counseling: The Conversation Continues Forward
• How Should Biblical Counselors Grow?
• 6 Areas Where Biblical Counselors Are Growing
Tenor and TOV (Tone of Voice)
Having shared (here) that biblical counselors have been trying to be respectfully responsive to feedback from CIC and CP folks, I want to respectfully ask my CIC and CP friends some “rubber-meets-the-road” questions.
I believe that the conversation about integration, non-integration, continuum of integration, and sufficiency of Scripture sometimes goes “off the track” when the discussion remains hypothetical. I’m concerned with what actually happens in the counselor’s study, in the professor’s classroom, and in the counseling office. That says more about someone’s actual “model” than any philosophical discussion ever could (though I’m always open to having those, also).
As I ask, I hope the tenor of the questions will reflect my sincere desire to encourage my CIC/CP friends to further develop their scriptural foundation. My TOV: “tone of voice” is not accusatory or superior, but one of a friend desiring to engage in iron-sharpening conversations.
My questions are not meant as “Gotcha!” questions. I have a sincere concern about the practical outworking of theory development. And I have a sincere desire to understand how you do the work you do.
So…a few rubber-meets-the-road questions for my CIC/CP friends.
Question-Set # 1: The Role of Scripture Questions—What is the role of Scripture in how you have developed your counseling model related to understanding people, diagnosing problems, and prescribing solutions?
• You have a model of “psychology”—understanding the soul/people. Specifically, how did you go about studying/examining/exegeting God’s Word to develop your “biblical psychology model” (in theology parlance, a “biblical anthropology”/Creation)?
• You have a model of “psychopathlogy”—diagnosing what went wrong, the sin/pathology of the soul. Specifically, how did you go about studying/examining/exegeting God’s Word to develop your “biblical psychopathology model” (in theology parlance, a “biblical hamartiology”/the Fall)?
• You have a model of “psychotherapy”—prescribing solutions, counseling/care for the soul, moving toward soul health/holiness. Specifically, how did you go about studying/examining/exegeting God’s Word to develop your “biblical psychotherapy model”? (in theology parlance, a “biblical soteriology”/Redemption).
• What amount of time do you put into studying what the Scriptures say about people, problems, and solutions compared to the time you spend studying secular psychological theory (not descriptive research or scientific studies but secular philosophical and theoretical conclusions/perspectives about life)?
• When you do choose to study secular theory, what specific biblical process do you use to assess whether a secular theory is something you believe you should, or should not, “integrate” with your biblical findings?
• What specific biblical “grid” or “filter” or “map” do you use to discern whether any given aspect of a secular theory is something you believe you should integrate with your biblical understanding, rather than error that contradicts biblical teaching?
Question-Set # 2: The Role of Training Questions—What amount of training have you had in biblical exegesis/hermeneutics and theology (systematic theology, biblical theology, exegetical theology, spiritual theology, practical theology, pastoral theology, and historical theology?
• Larry Crabb has said that the problem at times is that some Christian counselors have a “Sunday school level knowledge of the Bible and a Ph.D. level knowledge of secular psychological theory.”
• To address that potential imbalance, what training have you pursued or reading/research have you done to develop an advanced level of expertise in examining God’s Word to develop a biblically-based model of people, problems, and solutions?
Question-Set # 3: The Teaching/Equipping/Educator/Professor Questions—Specifically, how does your curriculum and course work equip your CIC/CP students to be students of the Word—who relate Christ’s changeless truth to people’s lives ?
• Where in your curriculum do you teach your CIC/CP students hermeneutics/exegesis—principles of Bible study?
• Where in your curriculum do you teach your students the “big picture” redemptive narrative of the Bible—the redemptive/gospel/grace/cross movement of the Bible and how the gospel relates to everything in life?
• Where in your curriculum do you teach your CIC/CP students anthropology (God’s original design of our soul/Creation), hamartiology (Sin/Fall), and soteriology (Salvation/Sanctification/Redemption/Gospel/Grace)?
• Where in your curriculum do you teach your CIC/CP students ecclesiology (the Church, the role of the Body of Christ).
• Where in your curriculum do you teach your CIC/CP students historical theology and specifically the myriad of resources that teach how the church/pastors/believers have cared for one another through the personal ministry of the Word for 2,000 years?
• Where in your curriculum do you teach your CIC/CP students the “bridge” discipline of “spiritual theology”—learning how to study the Scriptures for truth-for-life, learning how to relate Scriptures to their lives, learning how to relate Scriptures to their ministries, learning how to use Scripture to build a cohesive model of people, problems, and solutions?
• When you are teaching a CIC/CP class, let’s say on anxiety, where do you focus your study/preparation for the class? How do you equip your students to understand and help the person struggling with anxiety—where do you focus their study/preparation? What role does Scripture have in the class?
*Specifically, how are students taught to go to the Scriptures to develop a robust, relevant, relational biblical understanding of anxiety?
*Specifically, how are students taught to use the Scriptures in such a way that they relate truth to life compassionately and competently?
*In this class on anxiety, what text books are required? Are any of them from a theological/biblical perspective? What authors are quoted—are any of them from church history? From the biblical counseling world?
*What texts are you writing or what texts are CIC/CP professors writing that address specific counseling issues from an in-depth biblical/exegetical/theological perspective?
Question-Set # 4: The Counseling Questions—When you are facing a new counseling issue, let’s say, someone who tells you they are struggling with OCD. Where do you focus your study/preparation to understand this issue and the person struggling with it? What role does Scripture play in your seeking to understand the person/issue/problem/solution?
• With that new counseling issue, what role does Scripture play in shaping how you interact with the person? What role does Scripture play in your actual interactions? How do you apply a scriptural understanding of people, problems (the root causes related to the OCD issue), and solutions in the counseling sessions?
• With this new counseling issue, what role does historical theology play in shaping your understanding of the modern term “OCD”? Do church history/pastoral care terms like “scrupulosity” play a role in your understanding?
• If you could not find any secular writings on OCD, would the Scriptures “be enough” for you to develop a comprehensive, compassionate approach to helping this person?
Question-Set # 5: The Location and Identity Questions—What is your focal point for ministry?
• What is the role of the local church in your practice of CIC/CP? What is the role of God’s people—the Body of Christ, the community of believers? What is the role of the pastor?
• What is your professional identity? Do you see yourself as a professional therapist? As a pastoral counselor? As a soul physician? As a spiritual friend? What difference does your professional identity make in how you prepare to counsel? In how you counsel?
• If there was no group or “guild” such as mental health workers or professional counselors or psychologists, would the church through the Word (the people of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God) be “enough” to help troubled people with their troubles? How did the church help troubled people with their troubles before the advent of modern secular talking cures?
Join the Conversation
How would you respond to any of these questions?
What additional questions would you add?
What impact might this dialogue have on the CIC/CP world?
RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth
Rob,
I’ve been enjoying the blog posts of this topic. As a seminar-trained pastor who also has a MA in counseling (from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary), I am a strong believer in Biblical Counseling. However, I do struggle with the anti-integrationist attitude I hear/read in the Nouthetic and other Biblical Counseling camps. My problem isn’t so much the fact that they are warning against the dangers of integration (there ARE dangers) as it is with the fact that the Nouthetic movement in particular doesn’t seem to be forthright about its own basis in secular theory. Adams clearly borrowed heavily from O. Hobart Mowrer, by his own admission. Yet most Nouthetic advocates are dismissive of Mowrer’s influence, though highly critical of other counselors who are influenced by Albert Ellis, etc. My resistance to openly aligning myself with the Nouthetic movement is my difficulty with this perceived double-standard.
I would greatly appreciate your thoughts. I certainly hope I am coming across as sounding too critical of the Nouthetic movement, which I find to be a faithful corrective to so-called “Christian counseling”. It brings much to the table.
Josh,
I’ve started, deleted, and re-started a response to your comment several times.
While I truly appreciate your question, I’m concerned that the focus of this post could be “hijacked” (I do not mean that you intended that). The focus is on encouraging CIC/CP friends (and all of us) to think practically and specifically about how they build their approach to counseling. In my previous posts, I addressed the fact the BCers need to learn, grow, and change, and that they have been open to doing that. So, I don’t want this particular comment string to become focused on a conversation about “Jay did or did not do this or that.”
That said, I’ll respond to your legitimate question in brief, but then ask folks to keep the focus of comments on responding to the questions in the post. I hope that makes sense.
As you’ve been reading this blog mini-series, you’ve picked up, I’m sure, that I don’t ever want to be focused on being “anti” this or that. So, like you, I don’t have much time for one-dimensional writings that only talk about what they are against, rather than building a positive message of what the Bible says about life/counseling.
As for Adams admitting he borrowed heavily from Mower…I’d have to see that quote in context. Did he quote Mower? Yes. Did he agree with Mower’s assessment of the failings of secular counseling? Yes. But did he say he built his model from him? Is Mower the “basis” of Adams model? I don’t think so.
Let me get to the gist of your concern.
You feel that it is hypocritical for BCers to say “don’t integrate” since BCers, in your view, end up doing some integration of counseling theory. I’ll admit that I likely “integrate” without knowing it because I am, like everyone, a product of the world and worldview I live within (and, as Mark Shaw correctly indicates, impacted by the noetic effect of sin). However, that’s far away, in my opinion, from a philosophical perspective that says I should integrate the world’s wisdom about people, problems, and solutions with scriptural truth about people, problems, and solutions (remember, my focus is on theory-building not on legitimate scientific/descriptive research which is another issue…). And it’s far away from a practical method that focuses on a cover-to-cover (Genesis to Revelation) exegesis and application of Scripture to life in order to develop a theory of people/problems/solutions.
The BC world has said that we want to build a comprehensive and compassionate model of counseling from God’s Word. That I may be less than 100% pristine in my actual outworking of that “model-building” is important to realize/consider, but quite different than an approach where I would consciously set out to build a theoretical model of counseling from Scripture + Albert Ellis, for instance.
(By the way, one of the reasons we launched the Biblical Counseling Coalition is so that we can have iron-sharpening relationships with one another where we “expose” areas where our approach may not be as biblically-founded as we thought. So, we are not unaware of the possibilities that you are raising.)
As this post indicates, I am focused on the foundational issues of where someone focuses their theory-building–Scripture or elsewhere or some admixture. And I’m focused on the rubber-meets-the-road evidence of the source of our model/theory-building.
While someone may not agree with everything about Jay Adams, it’s clear to me that his conscious, primary, predominant source of theory-building was the Word of God. Someone may disagree with the model he built from Scripture, but indicating that it was not focused on a scriptural foundation would be, in my opinion, inaccurate.
If we want to say that makes for a “continuum” of integration/non-integration, I’m okay with that…as long as we still highlight the type of core, practical questions that this post outlines. When someone answers the specifics of the questions in this post, then we can intelligently discuss where they are on the continuum.
But again, I’m praying that the primary result of today’s post will be iron-sharpening–where readers, from whatever approach, would be stretched to ponder how they truly go about theory-building and how much of a focus the Bible and biblical theology are in their theory-building.
Bob
Whoops, that line near the end should read: “I certainly hope I am NOT coming across as sounding too critical….”
Wow, GREAT questions, Bob! With probing questions like those, I bet you are a pretty good counselor. 😉
Josh,
The truth is that none of us are purely biblical in the nouthetic camp or in the world due to the noetic effects of sin. What is true is that we are all striving to begin with Scripture and maintain a genuinely biblical approach to address all of life’s problems (II Peter 1:3-4) believing that the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit work together to bring conviction, encouragement, and obedience to heart desires that need to be transformed (I Thess. 5:14; Rom. 12:2).
While Jay was impacted by Mowrer, he is open about that. I don’t want to speak for him yet I understand that while that might have influenced him some, he really developed a biblical counseling system based more on the Scriptures in totality, featuring Eph. 4:20-24 specifically. I really enjoy reading his NT translation and counseling insights/comments because he is thinking like someone who wants to help people to change and grow into Christ likeness based upon the Word and his fallible understanding of it.
What I appreciate is a man who is searching the Scriptures for answers from the start, in the middle, and at the end believing that they are sufficient to address matters of the heart (Heb. 4:12).
Thanks for your concerns and comments,
Mark
Robert,
Back to the main post, I think your questions hit the nail on the head. Even if I were to believe that the BC movement (particularly the earlier manifestations of the Nouthetic movement) did not fully stress all of Scripture in its basic counseling theory (e.g. encouragement, patience, gentleness, overly-simplistic concepts of ‘secular’, etc), I am even more convinced that the “integrationist counselor” (IC’er) fails to incorporate a Scriptural worldview consistently or comprehensively.
Like Adams (and many other BC’ers), my counseling/psychological training occurred after my theological training. While somewhat ‘accidental’ on my part, this did afford me the opportunity to approach Scripture for what it is: God’s word to mankind. It reveals who we were meant to be, what we became, how we became what we became, the consequences and dysfunctions that continue to arise from that experience (depravity, failed marriages, self-will, etc), how we can experience true change and healing, and who we can become in Christ. All of these are, by their nature, ‘psychological’ issues, not simply ‘spiritual’ or ‘theological’ issues.
Your questions certainly are challenging. I’ve asked versions of these myself to various Christian counselors over the years. As a pastor in a medium-sized church (400-ish), one of the greatest struggles I have is not having a network of Christian counselors who I’m convinced will be fully biblical in their approach. If I had counselors in the area that I knew were at least ASKING themselves these questions, I would be overjoyed.
Josh,
Finding counselors you can trust is difficult.
Of course, ideally, we have equipped pastoral and lay counselors in our churches.
A list of counselors who are certified by BC groups can be found here: http://biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/connect/find-a-biblical-counselor
Bob