Pastor’s Post #15: “BIBLICAL COUNSELING TODAY” (03/25’17)

It was nothing less than a revolution.

In 1970, Dr. Jay Adams, a professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, just outside of Philadelphia, PA, published his first of what would become over 100 books: Competent to Counsel. The book was nothing less than a revolution in the field of counseling.

Prior to the publication of Competent to Counsel, even most Christians regarded treating many personal problems as the responsibility of professional therapists, most of whom assumed the current findings of “mental health professionals” as the standard for “professional treatment”. Jay Adams, who had received his doctoral degree in the field of abnormal psychology studying under some of the leading secular psychologists of his day, challenged all of this:

  • The Scriptures, not ever-changing secular psychological theories, are to be our final authority in all matters pertaining to both faith and life. Secular psychology itself was a competing faith, and its approach to dealing with life’s problems was neither satisfactory nor effective in truly helping people in their inmost selves.
  • Not “mental illness” but SIN was the root of all the problems faced by men and women, boys and girls. And the only remedy for sin is the Gospel: The person and work of Christ received and honored by faith and repentance.
  • The church should not abandon its work of counseling to secular professionals. Christians, led by trained pastors, were “competent to counsel” according to the Word of God.

From then until today, the discussion (and sometimes heated debate) between “integrationists” – those who begin with the findings of secular psychology and then “integrate” these into more or less biblical categories for dealing with human problems, and “anti-integrationists” – those who begin their approach to the field of counseling by assuming well-developed biblical concepts of creation, humanity, sin, redemption, and the dynamics of true change, continues in periodicals, seminars, conferences, and private discussions.

The approach to counseling that you’ll find in the churches represented in A Visit to the Pastor’s Study would clearly be in the “anti-integrationist school”, or what is now commonly called “biblical counseling”. (Although Jay Adams popularized the term “nouthetic counseling”, which is based on a Greek term that means, essentially, “to train the mind, heart, and will by speaking to the ear.”). And this “biblical counseling model” has developed over the nearly half a century since Competent to Counsel was published.

The current generation of “biblical counselors” is led by people like Dr. David Powlison, Dr. Ed Welch, and Paul David Tripp, and an organization called CCEF: The Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. (And I hasten to add that there are many other organizations that promote biblical counseling and assist in training biblical counselors.) CCEF has led the way in this rapidly growing field of study and service. And while CCEF and others still hold the essential ideas put forth very powerfully by Dr. Jay Adams, there have been some changes over the years:

  • While sin is still regarded (very correctly!) as the root of humankind’s problems, more attention is being given to suffering and empathizing with those who, in so many ways, experience the painful and destructive fallout from sin.
  • While human behavior is addressed, there’s much more focus on the human heart and its motivations. Idolatry and the heart’s attraction to idols is explored and unmasked. Human change is far more than “putting off” one pattern of life and “putting on” another. It is, above all else, having a superior love for God that powerfully, over time, expels all lesser loves.
  • The Gospel is seen as the most important factor in all counseling. People must have honest dealings with Jesus Christ as He is displayed and freely offered throughout Holy Scripture. The one who turns from sin and self to Christ and His righteousness and is joined to Him by true faith becomes an adopted child of the living God. Living out of that status as an adopted child of the Father in Heaven brings a massive change in the way people view their obedience to God.
  • The biblical counselor is not seen so much as a professional, but as a fellow-sinner who knows the grace of God in Christ and, from that experience, ministers to others.

And I can attest from my personal pastoral experience (and nearly four decades of doing “biblical counseling”) that this biblical model really works. It’s the kind of counseling you should be familiar with as a Christian. And it’s the kind of counseling you need when you deal with the life-besetting problems that are so very common in our fallen world and in our eroding culture.

Today on A Visit to the Pastor’s Study we’re going to just open the door a crack as we look into this vast house of “biblical counseling.” I assure you that we’ll just open a little crack. But we’ll begin to see a lot!

My guest for today’s Visit to the Pastor’s Study is Rev. John Mallin, an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and a full time Christian counselor whose practice extends to many places, but originates in south central Pennsylvania where Pastor John lives. He’s been in the biblical counseling world right from its earliest years, and today he’ll just introduce the topic Biblical Counseling Today.

Pastor John, welcome to A Visit to the Pastor’s Study…

Yours in the King of Kings,
Pastor Bill