How We Lost Our Way

Yesterday’s post (http://tinyurl.com/m945pr) explained that the failure to integrate the African American comprehensive perspective of suffering and sin is one reason why White Evangelical biblical counselors lost their way.

Today we add another example of intercultural dearth: the failure to focus on the contribution of Christian women soul care-givers and spiritual directors.

This dearth is why RPM Ministries is so passionate about Christ-centered, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed biblical counseling. When our counseling is predominantly taught by one segment of one cultural group (in this case, White males like myself), we lose the comprehensive perspective.

In the new book released later this summer, Sacred Friendships: Celebrating the Legacy of Women Heroes of the Faith (http://tinyurl.com/ql8fqc), Susan Ellis and I share life-changing and ministry-altering narratives from 52 Christian women in Church history. Consistently they unite biblical ministry for suffering and sin.

Following Christian Women’s Historical Compass

The biblical counseling approach of women in Church history is holistic, comprehensive. They practice sustaining and healing soul care for suffering and reconciling and guiding spiritual direction for sin. As Susan and I show in our Introduction:

“Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of Wesleyan pioneers John and Charles, exemplifies in one breath these four interrelated callings. “We are to be instructed, because we are ignorant [guiding]; and healed, because we are sick [healing]; and disciplined, because so apt to wander and go astray [reconciling]; and succored and supported, because we are so often tempted [sustaining].”[i] Susanna Wesley and uncountable Christian women like her followed a spiritual compass. Instead of N-S-E-W, their soul care and spiritual direction compass points read S-H-R-G: Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding. Throughout Sacred Friendships, they will gift us with their wisdom—wisdom for ministry today to God’s glory forever.”

Don’t for a moment imagine that Christian women only focused on the “touchy-feely” area of suffering. Read Sacred Friendships and you will see that they out-confront the best male biblical counselor! It’s not that women provide the “softer side” of biblical counseling. It’s that women offer the comprehensive, non-compartmentalized “both sides” of biblical counseling.

Conclusion

Because we White Evangelical male biblical counselors pulled the pendulum back from a focus on self and because we did so with too little awareness of and connection with our sisters in Christ, we compartmentalized sin and suffering and minimized the development of biblical counseling approaches that produced comprehensive sacred friendships.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In our next post, we’ll explore additional reasons why some biblical counseling compartmentalized sin and suffering and focused too little on equipping God’s people to be a hospital for the hurting.

My Premise

Some modern biblical counseling considers the seriousness of sin—sinning, but spends much less time equipping people to minister to the gravity of grinding affliction—suffering. When we provide counseling for sin, but fail to provide counseling and counselor training for suffering, then such biblical counseling is only half biblical.

Why and How We Lost Our Way

So, why do I think biblical counseling lost its way? What historical, cultural, and personal realities help to explain why some modern biblical counseling is only half biblical?

E. Brooks Holifield, in his excellent study, A History of Pastoral Care in America (http://tinyurl.com/mo6ww8), demonstrates how pastoral ministry moved from a focus on salvation to a focus on self-realization. It moved from Christ to self, from Scripture to humanism.

In my own study of pastoral counseling in America, I’ve found that biblical counseling from the end of the Civil War (1865) to the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) moved from a focus on suffering and sin to a focus on self.

Interesting, isn’t it, that for these 100 years, framed by the Civil War and Civil Rights, we lost our way with Christian counseling and pastoral ministry.

In coming posts, I’ll share about the impact of liberalism and fundamentalism on pastoral ministry during this era. I’ll also describe how the modern biblical counseling movement pulled the pendulum back to a focus on sin, but not always to an equal focus on suffering.

Why White Biblical Counseling Needs the Black Church

Here’s my conviction about why pastoral ministry moved from suffering and sin to self, and why modern biblical counseling pulled the focus back to sin but not as much to suffering: church segregation.

From the end of the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act, and continuing to today, Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour in America. We lose so much by this church segregation.

White Evangelical biblical counselors lose the amazing, beautiful, biblical blending of suffering and sin that so characterizes the Black Evangelical Church from its inception in enslavement right up to our day.

In my book, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, readers enjoy 100s of lively narratives that consistently depict how the Evangelical Black Church never compartmentalized suffering and sin. Instead, the Black Church consistently integrated, mingled, blended, and kept united soul care for suffering and spiritual direction for sinning.

Samples and the Full Meal

If you want to read a free sample chapter on the Black Church’s personal ministry of the Word, go here: http://tinyurl.com/nykc3h.

If you want your own copy of the entire book in order to be equipped and empowered by African American biblical counselors, go here: http://tinyurl.com/cm96x6.

Conclusion

Because we White Evangelical biblical counselors pulled the pendulum back from a focus on self and because we did so in segregation from our Black brothers and sisters, we compartmentalized sin and suffering and ignored the development of biblical counseling approaches that help us to move beyond the suffering.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In my next post, I’ll share what White Evangelical male biblical counselors lost when we minimized the contribution of female soul care-givers and spiritual directors.

My Premise

Some modern biblical counseling considers the seriousness of sin—sinning, but spends much less time equipping people to minister to the gravity of grinding affliction—suffering. When we provide counseling for sin, but fail to provide counseling and counselor training for suffering, then such biblical counseling is only half biblical.

What To Do After the Hug

Some might conclude, “But there’s really no need to teach people how to comfort the suffering because they do that naturally.”

I’m sure Job would disagree with that as it relates to his “miserable counselors” who called his suffering “sin.”

So, today we ask and answer the question: “What might it look like to train pastors and lay people to be soul physicians and spiritual friends who deal with suffering?”

The Bible has a great deal to say not only about suffering, but also about how to comfort the suffering. Church history has highlighted two core biblical counseling competencies for suffering:

*Sustaining

*Healing

In Spiritual Friends (http://tinyurl.com/nxbxes), pages 39-214 teach lay people, pastors, and students the following ten biblical relational skills for sustaining and healing. Here’s your primer:

*Sustaining: “It’s Normal to Hurt.”

Using the acronym GRACE, we need to learn five biblical relational competencies if we are to be comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed soul care-givers who offer sustaining comfort:

1. G: Grace Connecting
2. R: Rich Soul Empathizing
3. A: Accurate/Active Spiritual Listening
4. C: Caring Spiritual Conversations
5. E: Empathetic Scriptural Explorations

*Healing: “It’s Possible to Hope.”

Using the acronym RESTS, we need to learn five biblical relational competencies if we are to be comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed soul care-givers who offer healing hope:

1. R: Relational Treatment Planning
2. E: Encouraging Communication
3. S: Story Reinterpreting
4. T: Thirsts Spiritual Conversations
5. S: Stretching Scriptural Explorations

How to Train Biblical “Sufferologists”

My point is not to say that I have cornered the market on equipping people how to offer biblical comfort for suffering. My point is that you can read many biblical counseling training manuals, attend many biblical counseling training seminars, and read many biblical counseling definitions, and find very little equipping for “sufferologists”—biblical counselors who offer sustaining empathy and healing encouragement.

Rather than assuming that we do this naturally, let’s do what the Bible and Church history do: let’s focus on biblical counseling and spiritual friendship equipping on how to train believers to deal both with sin and with suffering.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In my next post, I’ll share why I think biblical counseling lost its way. What historical, cultural, and personal realities help to explain why some modern biblical counseling is only half biblical?

*Note: Why I Am Addressing This Topic

All who have followed my ministry know that I am about bridge-building and not about wall-building. You might wonder then, “Bob, why blog about something that is surely to be controversial?”

Those who follow my ministry also know that I am about equipping God’s people to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth through comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed biblical counseling and spiritual formation.

Biblical counseling that fails to deal with suffering, fails the test of comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed biblical counseling. I would be a hypocrite to my calling if I remained silent.

Others might wonder, “Are you talking about a particular ‘model’ of modern biblical counseling, or about a particular person or persons who are writing today?”

No. I am not. This is not an attack against. These blogs are not directed toward any one person or group.

These blogs are directed to all of us—myself included—who love biblical counseling. They are for all of us—myself included—who need good Bereans to help us to assess how biblical or unbiblical our approaches to biblical counseling truly are.

I write to help, not to hurt. I write to equip, not to attack. I write to start a conversation, not to finish one.

Please join the conversation.