I have said on numerous occasions that there is a huge need for solid, Christian counselors. For individuals trained to address specific areas of the human condition, who are grounded in and led by God’s word and Spirit as the ultimate cure.
At the same time, I am absolutely convinced that the church community is the best source and location for most counseling. As a Christian who is led by God’s word, indwelt by God’s Spirit, and living out their life within a church community, you have what it takes to counsel others in both a breadth and depth of ways. Yes, there are specific issues and situations that may also benefit from a trained professional. But do not let these overshadow how God has equipped and called you to offer effective and necessary counsel to your brothers and sisters.
David Powlison wrote a short book (~one hour read) titled The Pastor as Counselor: The Call for Soul Care. Though it has pastors in mind specifically, it is relevant to the whole church. Here are a few quotes, specifically on this topic of counseling within the church community.
Powlison quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s great little book, Life Together:
“The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brothers knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.” (35)
With a similar conviction, Powlison writes:
“Though you have no privileged access into any soul, though every strategy or truth can be resisted, though you have no power to open blind eyes or to make deaf ears listen, God uses your ministry to cure souls. Human beings are idiosyncratic in every detail, yet there is no temptation that is not common to all; you can comfort others in any affliction with the comfort that you receive in your particular affliction (1 Cor. 10:13; 2 Cor. 1:4). Fundamental unities make us comprehensible enough to significantly help each other. These are things a mere Christian can do.” (34)
In this next quote, read the list of “key ingredients” slowly, and consider how you can demonstrate these in your church relationships.
“Counseling is not essentially a technical enterprise calling for technical expertise. It is a relational and pastoral enterprise engaging in care and cure for the soul…. The key ingredients in pastoring (and counseling) another human being are love, wisdom, humility, integrity, mercy, authority, clarity, truthspeaking, courage, candor, curiosity, hope, sane humanity, wide experience, much patience, careful listening, responsive immediacy, and willingness to live with uncertainty about process and outcome.” (19-20)
In considering how to be effective both in our counsel giving AND our counsel receiving, Powlison writes,
“In general, most counsel seekers come with defective goals: Change how I feel. Change my circumstances. Vindicate me. Give me a formula.
Counseling with any modicum of wisdom works patiently to change that agenda into ‘Help me to change.’ Christian faith and ministry fleshes out the change agenda in a particularly rich way:
Help me to change, both inwardly and outwardly. Let me see where I run astray. Let me grasp how Christ’s grace and truth actually connect to my struggles. Help me to learn how to turn to God, how to trust, how to love. Help me take refuge in the Lord. I need to set my hopes on what is indestructible rather than pursuing obsessive schemes for earthly joy. Help me see more clearly how I contribute to conflict and alienation. I need forgiveness. Help me to forgive and constructively love my enemies.” (48-49)
And one last quote, on how prayer (and the dependence on God it assumes) sets counseling within the church community apart from all secular counseling:
“Have you ever considered how significant it is that you pray as a matter of course, while other counselors don’t pray?… They and those they counsel presumably possess everything they might need for making sense of problems and choosing to live fruitfully…. You need and want available help. Therefore, you pray with and for others. Teaching others to voice honest believing prayers is one prime counseling goal. You pray because people need forgiveness for their sins—you cannot grant that. They need a shepherd who will never leave them—you are not that person. They need the power that raised Jesus from the dead—so do you. They need the hope of the resurrection, that one day all tears will be wiped away and all sins washed away—you share the same necessity. They need faith working through love to become truer in their lives, to run deeper, to take hold of everything.” (51-52)