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.”

Psychology Words: Wisdom

Posted on June 8, 2008

by Eric Johnson, Director of the SCP. This is his second post for the month of June. Dr. Johnson teaches at Southern Seminary, Louisville, KY and is the author of a recent text, Foundations for Soul Care, available from InterVarsity Press.

This month we are considering how words function in a human science like psychology, where one’s interpretations are often necessarily shaped by one’s worldview beliefs. This week we shall consider two levels at which words (and concepts) operate: a generic level, where different worldview communities can share a general definition of a concept, and a community-specific level, where the same topic is viewed within one worldview community. Let us consider the subject of wisdom. Over the past 20 years, wisdom has been the focus of increasing interest in psychology, especially in positive psychology. Of special note is the Berlin wisdom paradigm, in which wisdom is defined as “an expertise in the conduct and meaning of life” (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000, p. 124). This is a fine, broad definition for the general category of wisdom, under which every worldview community’s understanding of wisdom could presumably fit.

However, most well-developed worldview communities will have a distinct understanding of wise conduct and the meaning of life. A Christian psychology, for example, will define the meaning of life in theocentric terms, emphasizing some features over others. So a definition of Christian wisdom might be that it consists of excellent knowledge and love of the triune God, of others, and of oneself in Christ, formed in Christian community through grace-based, skilled practice, that enables one to work at overcoming evil and suffering in oneself, others, and the world.

This Christian definition is more wordy, but it is just as psychological as is the more generic definition. Neither the general concept nor the community-specific concept is more scientific than the other; they simply refer to different levels of the concept—one is broader in its application, the other applies only to a specific community with certain worldview beliefs that shape its understanding of wisdom. But both kinds of definition are necessarily part of a comprehensive, pluralistic psychology that aims at describing the wisdom of all human beings. And a Christian psychology can affirm them both.

The mistake of modernism (and modern psychology) has been to think that only the general (universal?) kind of definition was scientific—implicitly supposing that psychological concepts that only applied to one community would not be scientific. But that bias was due to positivist assumptions, and was a result of insufficient awareness of how worldview beliefs shape the human sciences. From a postmodern standpoint, such assumptions are no longer valid.

Reference
Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. (2000). Wisdom: A metaheuristic (pragmatic) to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence. American Psychologist, 55 (1), 122-136.

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