On Teaching and Training Christian Counselors

Posted on August 27, 2008

[This is the 4th and final post by Dr. Sam Williams of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary]

Differences regarding how to teach Christian Counseling struck me about 2 years ago during a meeting with the chief counseling professor in an educational institution in which I had been teaching as an adjunctive professor. Leadership of this institution had changed hands and while I previously had carte blanche about what and how to teach, the new regime handed me a protocol, kind of a combination of curriculum and syllabus, from which they hoped I would teach. My initial reaction was a bit hurt, but still non-defensive and hopeful about being able to accommodate their approach.

How do we go about teaching Christian Counseling? What should the curriculum and syllabi look like? How much time, if any, should be devoted to biblical and theological training, to training in the secular psychologies, if any, and to practical nuts and bolts instruction and to discussion and supervision of real cases and real counseling?

And how much training in each of these domains is sufficient? Within each domain, what should be taught? What should the biblical/theological portion of the curriculum look like? Is systematics enough, or do they need OT and NT also. Do they need hermeneutics, so they can interpret and apply scripture in a systematic and intellectually defensible manner? How about Greek and Hebrew – are the original languages important? And then of course what about Christian ethics, church history, evangelism and missions? Are these relevant and important in assuring that the graduate in Christian Counseling has attained sufficient training and scholarship in those things distinctively Christian?

And then with respect to training in counseling or psychology, in a proper and maybe more accurately, secular sense? Do they need to study the metapsychologists – Freud, Jung, Rogers, Skinner, Beck, and Ellis? If so, how much? Is an overview sufficient, or should it be more extensive? Do they need to learn the theories and methods of various psychotherapies? How about research design and stats and experimental psychology, and developmental, and physiological or neuropsychological – how much of this do they need?

How do we provide practical hands-on training so that students complete our programs and are competent to care for souls? What is the best way to move from theory to practice, from the propositional to the personal? How do our students make the transition from case presentations to case wisdom? How do we teach students this particular form of Christian love that we call counseling?

The distinctiveness of Christian Psychology and Counseling is still in need of much development, and that won’t happen without an understanding not just of what CP (Christian Psychology) and CC (Christian Counseling) are, but also how to go about teaching it.

Our role as educators is one with great impact and not to be taken lightly, as we are reminded in James 3.1, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”

Christian Counseling as Good News

Posted on August 19, 2008

[This is the third blog entry this month by Dr. Sam Williams of SEBTS]

OK, picking up where we left off – CC, is distinctively Christian when it is properly related to and properly belongs to Christ, the person whose name it bears.

Maybe we could assert that Carl Rogers was not the originator of Person-centered counseling, God is.

Our definitive text, the Bible, is a collection of books and letters to persons, written by persons, from a Person, about a Person. And, as Christians we believe that lives are transformed, not by principles but by a Person.

We believe that a powerful Person greater than ourselves has come and can restore us to sanity. That’s good news.

Proposition: The Good News of God should be central to the process of Christian change and Christian counsel.

It would seem to me that Christian Counseling would bear the unique imprint of the Gospel of Christ.

How does the Gospel b/c an instinct, a style, an ever present vector in our counsel?
How do we b/c conduits, channels, means of grace?

Christian counselors, it seems to me, carefully think through the implications of the Gospel for any and every person and all types of problems.

If all of God’s promises are Yes in Jesus Christ then in what way does the Gospel meet this person at the point of their deepest need?

I am not saying that is all we should do, but I would say that is the most important thing we do.

Christ-ian counseling must, if it is to be worthy of the name of Christ, keep the main thing, the main thing. It should major on what the Bible and our faith majors on: Christ – risen, ruling and reigning, and in the process of redeeming you and me and our clients and our psychology and
counsel and everything else.

CC is a part of the Missio Dei, the mission of God.

Christian Counseling begins then, not with advice and guidance, but with an announcement of Good News.

CS Lewis, in a discussion about Christian apologetics once said that one need not defend a lion. What we must do however is “Let the Lion out of the Cage.” We must do the same thing in Christian Psychology and counseling.

This Lion would shock the mental health world, not only because of his power, but also because of his grace. He is not safe, but he is good.

Thus, it would seem to me that our particularly Christian worldview and the mega-narrative of the Gospel subverts and redeems the foundational narratives and metaphysical, epistemological, and anthropological presuppositions of the secular psychologies, rather than offering up junior versions of their systems.

Boxes and Labels: Part 2

Posted on August 11, 2008

by Sam R. Williams, Ph.D.

In my previous post, I posed a question about labels in Christian Counseling –integrated Christian counseling and biblical counseling, from my perspective anyway, being the most contemporary and popular.
In this post, I’d like to back the truck up a bit and ask another question that begs to be asked: What makes Christian counseling “Christian”? What is it that makes the adjective “Christian” an appropriate description of a given type of counseling?

The phrase CC is not copyrighted, so at the end of the day, it belongs to the public domain…every person will do what is right in their own eyes, and also coram Deo.

However, it does seem that simple respect for the fair and accurate use of words, not to mention respect for Christ and the root meaning of the word Christian – belonging to or resembling Christ; follower of Christ – makes this important.

AACC’s Christian Care Network provides a list of licensed or certified professional “offering care that is distinctively Christian” …so my question is what does, or should, make counseling “distinctively Christian?”
How is it that counseling might belong to or resemble or follow Christ?

Wade, Worthington, and Vogel (2007) in a recent Psychotherapy Research article, “Effectiveness of religiously tailored interventions in Christian therapy” acknowledged a lack of consensus in defining CC:

exploring Christian therapy empirically is complicated because there appears to be no clearly demarcated form of Christian therapy. It is defined variously as treatment offered by a therapist who is Christian, therapy using methods consistent with a Christian worldview, therapy using Christian practices such as prayer, or therapy that advertises itself as explicitly Christian. However, Christian therapy in general appears to share at least two characteristics: (a) It is labeled as explicitly Christian in orientation by the therapist or agency despite the fact that it may use many or a few techniques that are explicitly tailored to Christians (e.g., reading Scripture, praying), and (b) it attempts to provide clients who profess a commitment to Christianity with therapists who share that conviction. As a result, we have used these two characteristics to define Christian therapy for the purpose of this investigation. We note that, according to our definition, the therapists might or might not (a) self-identify as Christians (although it is reasonable to suspect that most will) or (b) use techniques that are explicitly tailored to Christians (e.g., quoting the Bible, praying).

So, in this study, W, W, and V settle for the least common denominator: CC is defined by the mere label (without regard for contents) and its recipients.

Is anyone happy with that definition??? Nonetheless, is this not the way it is, in vivo?

Houston, we have a problem here.

Boxes and Labels, Part 1

Posted on August 4, 2008

[This is the first post for August 2008 by guest blogger Dr. Sam Williams. Dr. Williams is Associate Professor of Counseling at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC and member of this Society. ]

It is interesting how often my own critical railings loop around and end up in my own front yard. I was recently taken to task by my friend Mike McGuire for using the terms “integrationism” and “biblical counseling” as a moniker for two of the more prominent types of Christian Counseling. (You can read more about that in the pending issue of Edification, the new journal for the Society for Christian Psychology.)

As a southwestern hippie (Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego), my own soul resonates reflexively with the “Don’t fence me in!” mentality. My default nature hates boxes and labels. I’m the kid on Christmas morning that tears boxes up to get at what’s inside – not the one who carefully detaches the ribbons and tape, gently removes the wrapping, and opens the box tidily to preserve it for future use. I don’t mean to tout that as a virtue – just as the way it is. As a Christian, semper reformandum is easier for me than the solas.

As I review my own course as a Christian psychologist, movement and transition are as prominent, and sometimes more so, than particular commitments. My transitions have been from pagan to Christian, and then within that worldview from perspectivalist to integrationist to biblical counselor to Christian psychology with biblical counseling as the preferred counseling mode.

I thought I would move the discussion toward two correlated topics:

1) Our journeys (sorry, I hate that word too…) as psychologists and counselors trying to practice/minister in such a way that our understanding of persons/problems/change becomes more accurate and our care for others more effective. How have you arrived at the point that you’re at now and what do you see God doing now as he chisels and molds your clay feet?

2) What about the boxes??? Should we do away with them? Are they helpful…or merely necessary evils? Do they create more problems than they solve? What label would you choose for yourself?

David Powlison once proposed two acronyms as a way around the liability of labels: VITEX (for Christian counseling models that believe that secular psychology makes vital external contributions) and COMPIN (for Christian counseling models that believe the Bible contains comprehensive or sufficient internal resources).

Others have proposed spectrums to describe the variety of Christian counseling models and counselors. Are the labels Christian Integration, Biblical Counseling, Christian Psychology legitimate and fair-minded ways to denominate what you’re up to? If so, how do they help?

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