The Biblical Counseling Movement after Adams (Foreword by David Powlison) E-Book

Heath Lambert

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 358

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

People inside and outside of the biblical counseling movement recognize differences between the foundational work of Jay Adams and that of current thought leaders such as David Powlison. But, as any student or teacher of the discipline can attest, those differences have been ill-defined and largely anecdotal until now. Heath Lambert, the first scholar to analyze the movement's development from within, shows how biblical counseling emerged from, and remains rooted in, a commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture and the need to give practical help to struggling people. He identifies contemporary leaders—including Powlison, Ed Welch, Paul Tripp, and Wayne Mack—who emphasize the sinner as sufferer, the heart as key to motivation, and the need to interact humbly with critics. Demonstrating how these refinements in framework, methodology, and engagement style are characteristic of a second generation of biblical counselors, Lambert contends this new wave of counselors is now increasingly balanced in their counseling methods. With a substantial foreword from David Powlison and strong support from prominent biblical counselors, this book will help all Christians interested in the fundamentally theological task of counseling to think carefully and biblically about how it is taught and practiced.

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“The rise of the biblical counseling movement has been one of the most important developments within evangelical Christianity—and one of the most promising. In this timely book, Heath Lambert documents both trajectory and theology, offering the most helpful book yet to appear on this movement. I am deeply thankful for the return to the sufficiency of Scripture as the foundation for all true biblical counsel. This book will serve generations to come as a guide to the biblical counseling movement and its significance.”

R. Albert Mohler Jr., President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Like any significant church movement throughout ecclesiastical history, the biblical counseling movement has been subject to many changes and considerable growth. It has become a worldwide, multicultural agent of change for the church of Jesus Christ. Heath Lambert has written an amazing account of key influences that God, in his perfect sovereignty, has brought about in this movement. This factual account is an important contribution to understanding how and why the biblical counseling movement has had such a profound and lasting impact. It is a must-read for anyone who desires to understand the movement.”

John D. Street, Chair, MABC Graduate Program, The Master’s College and Seminary

“Having been a part of biblical counseling for some twenty-five years, I greatly appreciate and wholeheartedly endorse Dr. Lambert’s incredible work. He informs the novice, the veteran, and the critic on how the great heroes of the biblical counseling movement have built upon one another. He shows how an understanding of the movement must proceed from both historical and biblical contexts. And, as he reflects on the past one hundred years of church history, Lambert contributes a clear perspective on present day biblical counseling by demonstrating its strengths and weaknesses. He does this work in a way that leaves readers challenged, more unified, and strengthened in their faith and resolve concerning the sufficiency of the Scriptures.”

Stuart W. Scott, Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling, The Southern Baptist Theolgical Seminary; author, The Exemplary Husband and Biblical Manhood

“A thoughtful analysis of the development of a growing discipline, Lambertoffers a careful assessment of the intriguing history of the biblical counseling movement. He goes to great lengths to help the reader understand the rich heritage of biblical counseling, transitions in its development, and wise recommendations for its future. Definitely an insightful read!”

Jeremy Lelek,President, Association of Biblical Counselors 

“I deeply appreciate the impact Jay Adams’s teaching has had on my life, writing, family, and ministry. His emphasis on progressive sanctification, of continually growing and changing as followers of Christ, has been especially meaningful. This volume is a fascinating story of how Jay’s students, building on his remarkable foundational work, have caused the biblical counseling movement to grow and change for God’s glory. Thanks, Heath!”

Randy Patten, President, TEAM Ministries; Director of Training Emeritus, Association of Certified Biblical Counselors

“This book is an excellent resource for explaining the history of the biblical counseling movement, including the successes and failures along the way. Lambert presents a great framework for all who want to grow in and advance biblical counseling.”

Dennis Lee, Program Manager, Hebron Center Addictions Recovery Program

The Biblical Counseling Movement after Adams Copyright © 2012 by Heath Lambert Published by Crossway                     1300 Crescent Street                     Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Quotations from Competent to Counsel by Jay E. Adams, used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com. Copyright © 1970 by Jay E. Adams.

Quotations from Christian Counselor’s Manual, The, by Jay E. Adams, used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com. Copyright © 1973 by Jay E. Adams.

Cover design: Studio Gearbox

First printing 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-2813-2 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-2814-9 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-2815-6 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2816-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataLambert, Heath, 1979–The biblical counseling movement after Adams / Heath Lambert ; foreword by David Powlison.                p. cm.        Originally presented as the author’s thesis (Ph.D.).        Includes bibliographical references and index.        ISBN 978-1-4335-2813-2 (tp)        1. Pastoral counseling—History. 2. Adams, Jay Edward. I. Title. BV4012.2.L245         2012 259—dc23                                                                  2011020714

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Jay Adams,

who reawakened generations

to the sufficiency of Scripture, and

to Norman and Belita,

whose kind and gracious care

Contents

Foreword by David Powlison

11

Acknowledgments

19

1

The Birth of a Biblical Counseling Movement and the Need for Growth

21

2

Advances in How Biblical Counselors Think about Counseling

49

3

Advances in How Biblical Counselors Do Counseling

81

4

Advances in How Biblical Counselors Talk about Counseling

101

5

Advances in How Biblical Counselors Think about the Bible?

121

6

An Area Still in Need of Advancement

139

Conclusion

157

Appendix

165

Bibliography

171

Notes

197

Foreword

The people of God have a huge stake in the issues captured by our word counseling.

What problems impel or compel a person to seek counseling help? The answer is simple, though the problems are complex. Emotions play in darkly minor keys: anxious, embittered, guilty, despairing, ashamed. Actions run in self-destructive ruts of compulsion and addiction. Thoughts proliferate internal chaos, obsessing fruitlessly. Sufferings hammer a person down until the experience seems unspeakable.

But something important often goes unmentioned in mentioning the obvious. Such life-disabling problems are complex intensifications of the utterly ordinary. The human condition intrudes brokenness into everyone and everything. Things go askew inside all of us. We live for good gifts, not the good Giver. Our instincts run to self-serving, even with the best of conscious intentions. We invest life energies in vanities and reap confusion. We addict ourselves to follies and reap pain. Relationships disappoint, and fragment, and alienate, and isolate. Others hurt you—and you hurt them. We find ourselves without resources to face suffering and feel crushed and overwhelmed. Young or old, you suffer a cascade of losses, and then, one way or another, you die. We are more like each other than different, when you look below the obvious differences.

It is a wonder that more people aren’t in continuous emotional lockdown, in the fatal grip of panic, despair, and bitterness. The apparent stability of “ordinary life” bears an eloquent triple witness. God’s providential goodness shines in all that’s fair—Thank you for all the blessings of this life. Humankind is fascinated lifelong by schemes for earthly joy, sowing seeds of self-destruction—Have mercy on us, Father of mercies. What appears stable and ordinary is extraordinarily fragile—You alone are the way, the truth, and the life.

Failure and fragility, whether ordinary or intensified, can open a person to seek help or force a person to need help.

So why should the people of God care about these things that impel and compel people to seek counseling help? Because as ordinary people, these troubles and struggles are ours. And as God’s people, in particular, such waywardness and woe is exactly what our Bible is about. This is what Jesus comes to do something about. This is what church and ministry are intended to tackle.

Or is it? Are the Bible, Jesus, church, and ministry about counseling problems? Or is our faith preoccupied with a religiously toned set of beliefs, activities, places, and experiences? Do counseling problems belong mainly to secular mental-health professionals? Make no mistake: according to Scripture, Christian faith and life are occupied with all the gritty, grimy, sad, or slimy things that make for human misery. Jesus came to start making right all that has gone wrong. And we are his living body put to work here on earth to keep making right whatever is wrong. And never forget: we are part of what is wrong. One and all, we need the give-and-take of wise counsel: Hebrews 3:12–14; Ephesians 4:15, 29; 2 Corinthians 1:4. In fact, we need Genesis 1 through Revelation 22 and the well-honed practical wisdom of brothers and sisters, both past and present, who have taken this God to heart.

We ought to be good at counseling, the very best at both receiving and giving. No one else’s explanation of human misery goes as wide and long or as high and deep as the Christian explanation. No one else can account for the complexity of factors while keeping the actual person clearly in mind and heart. Think about this. Other counseling models never notice that actual persons are made and sustained by God and are accountable to God, searched out and weighed moment by moment. They never mention that actual persons are sinful by instinct and by choice; that we suffer within a context of meaningfulness; that Jesus Christ entered our plight; that we are redeemable and transformable by intimate mercy and power. Every other supposed explanation and answer looks shriveled when juxtaposed with the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ.

We should be very good at counseling. After all, Christian faith invented the hands-on care and cure of souls (the root meaning of psychotherapy). Intentional, life-transforming discipleship is a Christian distinctive. That’s not to deny that many other intentional discipleships have arisen in the last one hundred years. But given their intrinsic and relentless secularity, other proposed psychotherapies cannot avoid “heal[ing] the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 8:11). They offer Band-Aids and analgesics by essentially seeking ways to augment self-reliance. But we can heal deeply, forming essential reliance on the God of life. They hope to shape happier, more constructive human beings, a bit less self-destructive and others-destructive. But we aim for the faith that works out into self-giving love, that drinks from the springs of joy, that finds peace and knows how to make peace.

We should be good at counseling—caring, skillful, thoughtful. We should become the very best—careful, helpful, practical. But more often than not, we have been poor and foolish, rigid or inept. The pat answer, snap judgment, brisk manner, and quick fix are too often characteristic. Where is the patient kindness? Where is the probing concern and hard thought? Where is the luminous, pertinent truthfulness? Where is the flexibility of well-tailored wisdom? Where is the unfolding process? Where is the humanity of Jesus enfleshed in humane, humble, sensible people? Have mercy upon us, Father of mercies.

You are reading a book about the people of God attempting to become good at counseling. Notice four things about this book.

Notice the significance of the fact that Heath Lambert traces a story. A good story develops, unfolds, and goes places. It is like life itself, never static, frozen in one time, place, and person. This book traces a good story: we, God’s people, can cooperate, building together to become good at counseling. We are becoming better at counseling. We will get better by far. Jesus is the best and wisest counselor. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when we see him, we will be like him. Such a hope gives us reasons to set out in his direction. The vision of Ephesians 3:14–5:2 will be realized in times, places, and persons. Wiser counseling will be realized in your life, in our lives, in the real-time-and-place story of the church of Jesus.

Notice the significance of the fact that Heath Lambert is in this story. He does not stand outside, pretending to dispassionate objectivity. He cares about what happens. How will this story go? Where will we end up? This is his story—and yours. You and your church have a part to play in what happens next.

Notice the significance of the fact that Heath Lambert treats other people well. Yes, he’s candid about the shortcomings he perceives; he is willing to disagree. But he notices strengths, too, and he is constructive in his candor. He wants us to rightly understand the points of essential continuity so that we all appreciate the organic nature of godly wisdom. He also wants us to rightly understand the significant points of difference so that we all appreciate the organic nature of growing in godly wisdom.

Notice the significance of the fact that Heath Lambert proposes some desirable next steps in the unfolding of our corporate wisdom. There are more chapters to be written in this story. Where are we heading? How can we go forward in a good direction?

Our trajectory into the future is the most important part of all this. As I look over the landscape that this book describes, I see a progression of six stages in the development of our collective wisdom. This is the process any one of us goes through in awakening and maturing into the wise love of good counseling. These six stages also describe the process all of us will go through as we grow up together.

First Stage. We each need to hear—some of us for the first time—that the church has a unique and significant counseling calling. The Lord interprets personal struggles and situational troubles through a very different set of eyes from how other counseling models see things. He engages us with a very different set of intentions from how other counseling models proceed. We, as his children, are meant to counsel according to how he sees and proceeds. The fruition of that vision may seem far off. Your church currently may be doing a poor job of counseling, or counseling through deviant eyes, or abdicating the task entirely. But as you come to realize that the Wonderful Counselor intends to form his people into, well, into pretty good counselors—and getting better all the time—it makes you stop and think. Until we know that something might exist, we can’t envision participating. Participation becomes a possibility when something rises above the horizon. I hope that you hear the call.

Second Stage. We need to agree that the vision is a desirable one. Not only could the church become good in counseling, but we should become wise and fruitful in counseling ministries. Our God calls us to grow up in this area of ministry. You might want to read Ephesians 3:14–5:2 through the eyes of the question, “What does this imply about mutual counseling ministry?” Every sentence has implications. Hearing that it is possible to counsel in biblical wisdom—that God wills us to do so—leads to assent and commitment. I hope that you say, “Yes, this should be so. I may not yet understand exactly what it will look like, but I agree it ought to happen.”

Third Stage. We need to personally embrace and embody the vision. This is the decisive step, the sine qua non. Scripture teaches you how to understand both your deepest struggles and your best gifts. God shows you how to face your heaviest troubles and how to respond to your greatest blessings. I believe that the Lord’s vision of my sins and sorrows, of my graces and felicities, is the true understanding. I believe that the Lord’s way of engaging broken people in a broken world is the only truly loving engagement. I take all this to heart. As we take it to heart, we enter into the lively dynamics of transformation portrayed in Psalms, Proverbs, Prophets, Histories, Gospels, and Epistles. You enter into God’s counseling process for yourself. You become his disciple, learning his ways. You join the wise saints of all ages.

God’s take on things becomes yours. You increasingly come to live in reality, leaving the shadowlands behind, forsaking the imaginary virtual realities. Whatever the configuration and severity of your personal problems, you come to understand yourself in a new light. That we must personally embrace biblical reality registers something very significant. I am not committed to biblical counseling because it’s a theory that I happened to find persuasive, or because one killer Bible verse turned the lights on. I am committed because God tells the truth about me, about my world, about the Father, Savior, and Friend who has taken me to heart and takes me in hand. And I come to know any other human being—you, my fellow struggler, my brother or sister—by the same light in which I am coming to know myself.

The fact of personal embrace and embodiment is no oddity unique to biblical counseling. There is something essentially autobiographical about every counseling model ever proposed—Freud, Adler, Jung, Wolpe, Rogers, Frankl, Gestalt, Glasser, biomedical psychiatry, MFT, CBT, ACT, DBT, EFT—or any eclectic combination. Each theory and practice reveals its author’s core personal faith. Any ABC theory and XYZ therapy invented a hundred years from now will proclaim something essentially autobiographical. It will offer some way of interpreting and then reconfiguring humanness, according to where the author stands personally. If that understanding is not true to Scripture and to Christ—the Word written and the Word incarnate—then it will be false to humanness. If that interpretation and reconfiguration is not true to Scripture and to Christ, then it will be false to humanness. In a commitment to biblical counseling, I bear witness to how I understand life and to how I live. I hope that you enter into the call to wise counseling as simply one outworking of your call to live in Christ.

Fourth Stage. We need training, teaching, mentoring, practice, and supervision. Maturity always involves an educational process, a discipleship. You read books, talk with others, take classes, give it a try in practice, get feedback. If you are humble, you grow wiser. Your comprehension grows in scope and depth. Your skills in loving develop more relevance and flexibility. We rarely grow to understand anything without conscious application. Some of you will start to read good articles or books. Some of you will form discussion groups. Some of you will enter a graduate program for systematic study in biblical counseling. Some of you will take part in training in your church. I hope that you seek out the sort of learning appropriate to who God has made you and how he is working in you.

Fifth Stage. We need to become good at counseling. Excellent, in fact. You can enthusiastically embrace biblical counseling as an idea, even go to school to learn more, while still remaining inept. Perhaps the most accurate synonym for counseling is wise love. Wise love makes a huge difference in other people’s lives. Both the receiving and the giving of wise love make a huge difference in your life. Genuine care, a searching question, sympathy and understanding, a timely and true word of God, practical aid, patience in the process—these are life giving. Here’s the bottom line: you must become better able to help people. This contains a divine paradox. All genuine life transformation is the direct work of the life giver, the Shepherd of his sheep, the Father of his children. At the same time, this living God willingly uses us to give life to each other, to shepherd each other, to nourish, protect, and encourage each other. Skill takes time and experience. Skill calls you to the humility of a man or woman who is always learning. Skill bears fruit. It sweetens and brightens the lives of other people. I hope that you pursue the goal of becoming good at counseling.

Sixth Stage. We need to develop leaders. Counseling wisdom is a communicable skill. It must be communicated to others, spread around, passed down the generations, developed further. Three kinds of leaders will be raised up.

Some people will become leaders by their skillfulness in teaching others. They are able to break a complex process down into its component parts. They have a sense for the scales and arpeggios necessary to learn to play beautiful music. They possess some of the many sub-skills: assessing others accurately, selecting good candidates, hands-on training, face-to-face mentoring, insightful supervision, careful coaching. Leadership means not only the ability to counsel strugglers but also the ability to help someone else learn to counsel strugglers. It replicates skill. It’s not a given that skill in practice (fifth stage) leads to skillful teaching (sixth stage). Think of a basketball player who can routinely nail the 24-foot jump shot. What if you ask him to teach you to nail your jump shots from downtown, and he tells you, “I just shoot the ball, and it goes in.” He may make the Hall of Fame as a player, but he’ll never be a coach. Will God call you to train others?

Other people will become leaders by their ability to contribute to intellectual progress. Biblical wisdom must always be sharpened and developed. It is fashioned by engaging new problems, meeting new threats, interacting with new contenders, and identifying new needs in order for us to grow up into greater wisdom. It helps all of us when someone can put familiar truths into unfamiliar words and can point out unexpected implications. It helps all of us when one stands back and reflects on what we are all doing and then points out both our strengths and our weaknesses. It’s so easy for any of us to stagnate or get into ruts. We need to be refreshed, to extend the range and depth of what we understand to be true. Will God call you to contribute to the R&D work that refreshes ministry? Will he call you to push the envelope so that we all become more faithful to the God who speaks and acts?

Still others will become leaders by their talent as entrepreneurs and managers. Counseling needs a home. The care and cure of souls calls for organizational structure, institutional development, delivery systems, support staff, financial underpinning. All ministry costs time and money and occurs in a context. Leaders with gifts in startup and in administration are able to create, maintain, and re-create appropriate structures and support systems so that counseling skills are best used. Will God call you to help build healthy churches or healthy parachurch ministries so that the body of Christ can deliver the goods of good counseling to people in need?

I hope that someday some readers become such leaders.

Whether you are just considering the possibility of biblical counseling, or flourishing already as a leader, or somewhere in the middle, I trust that the pages that follow will nourish your wisdom. The Biblical Counseling Movement after Adams is a story about our growing up. Make its story your story. As you work your way through the book, let me encourage you to take the next steps. Commit yourself to choose one of the books or articles mentioned and put that next on your reading list. Commit yourself to talk with someone else about how your church might become better at counseling.

Most of all, may each of us live our lives within God’s reality, becoming good at receiving wise love (stage three). And may each of us thus grow up toward wise love in helping others (stage five). Here’s one way I weigh whether a counselor is good: would I entrust my mother, my daughter, or my wife into your care? Would you handle their honest struggles well and wisely? Would I entrust the fine china of my own life into your care? Would you prove truly helpful? And do I give you reason to trust me with the hardest things in your life? May we give each other good reasons to trust, as Ephesians 4:15–16 becomes the living reality of our life together, bringing the peace of Christ into this broken world.

David Powlison

Acknowledgments

A project like this always represents the labor of many people. This reality is certainly the case in my situation. I am deeply indebted to many who have contributed in countless ways to the completion of this project.

I am thankful to the members of Crossing Church in Louisville, Kentucky, whom I serve as the pastor of biblical living. It is a joy to live the Christian life with them. As they speak to me and let me speak to them, I am learning to be more like Jesus.

I am also thankful to the many students I have had in class at Southern Seminary and Boyce College. Their questions, criticisms, and comments have helped me think through much of what is written here. Their reflections spurred me to make many improvements to the ideas in this book.

I must thank Stuart Scott. It is a joy to stand beside him preparing future ministers for service in the kingdom of Christ. For years he has been a treasured mentor, guide, and friend. In our numerous conversations, he has been a source of wisdom and encouragement as well as an example of how true and loving conversation should happen in the Christian community. This book would look very different were it not for his influence on me.

Before this was a book, it was a PhD dissertation, and so I need to thank the members of my doctoral committee. Chad Brand and Randy Stinson have given of their time and wisdom, and I am profoundly thankful for each of them. These men—apart from helping me to improve what is written here—have encouraged me greatly. In my life up to this point, I have never worked under men who were so interested in helping me arrive at excellence and success. Working with each of them has been an honor.

The supervisor of that committee was David Powlison. He has walked with me every step of the way through this project. Without his wisdom and care, this project would never have been written. Without his living example of Christlikeness, I would be much less than what I am. One of the greatest honors of my life was doing my doctoral work under his leadership. I am repeatedly thankful for his friendship, wisdom, and input.

I also need to thank the entire team at Crossway for their confidence that this dissertation could become a book. Working with everyone on their team was truly a blessing. I have deep appreciation for the work of Lydia Brownback, in particular. Her meticulous work of editing caught errors that many other people missed. She took the book to the next level, and I am very grateful.

My dear and precious wife, Lauren, is more responsible for the completion of this project than any person under heaven. During my work on this dissertation-turned-book, she has cooked one thousand meals, changed a million diapers, given birth twice, and cared for me day in and day out. She is God’s most precious gift to me, and I love her more than I could communicate in a work one hundred times as long. “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” (Prov. 31:28).

Finally, I am supremely thankful for the sustaining grace given to me by God. The completion of this project is one more demonstration that his strength is truly perfected in weakness.

Heath B. Lambert

Louisville, Kentucky

January 2011

1 The Birth of a Biblical Counseling Movement and the Need for Growth

This is not a book about counseling. Even though you might be tempted to think it is a book about counseling, it is really a book about ministry. The fact is that counseling is ministry, and ministry is counseling. The two are equivalent terms. Counseling is the word our culture uses to describe what happens when people with questions, problems, and trouble have a conversation with someone they think has answers, solutions, and help. Those kinds of conversations are what ministers do every day, all day long, and the ministers who don’t do this know that they could spend their time this way if they wanted to. So don’t think that just because this book is about counselors, it doesn’t have anything to do with your ministry. That it is about counselors means it has everything to do with your ministry.

If counseling is equivalent to ministry, it means that it must be informed by the Bible and that those who do it are theologians. Ministry always grows out of worldview commitments. As Christians we believe that our worldview is authoritatively informed by God’s Word, the Bible; that is to say, it is theologically informed. Counseling is, therefore by definition, a theological task. Counselors may understand that counseling is a theological task or they may not. They may be good theologians or bad ones, but make no mistake: they are theologians who are neck deep in a theological enterprise.

I hate to say it, but most people don’t understand this. In fact two very different groups have been guilty of cutting the theological foundations away from the counseling task. The first group is secular psychotherapists who are very well intentioned but ultimately seek to help people solve their problems while ignoring Christ and his Word. They have rejected the Godward dimension of counseling, moving in the opposing direction to claim that God and his people should have little or no role to play in the counseling task.1 Their diagnoses of and their attempts at “curing” people and their problems are man-centered and so will always fall short of offering people true and lasting change for their deepest problems. Integrationists, taking their cues from this group, attempt to be theologically faithful but formulate the theology in an unfaithful way.2

A second group misunderstanding this issue is—ironically—conservative, Bible-believing, Christ-exalting ministers of the gospel. These conservative ministers fail to grasp that counseling is an essential part of ministry and so disconnect theology from counseling. They demonstrate the misunderstanding every time they say things like, “Oh, I don’t counsel people; I’m a preacher,” or, “Counseling takes too much time away from my other ministries,” or, “I don’t think the Bible has anything to say about this problem; you need to see a professional.” Such people mean well, but they are wrong about the theological, ministry-driven nature of counseling. Each of these groups fails to understand the intrinsic connection that counseling has with ministry and theology. The truth of the matter is that I used to be in the second group. Let me tell you my story.

My mother was addicted to vodka during the first eleven years of my life. By the grace of God she quit drinking, repented of her sins, and became a believer in Jesus a few years before her death, but that was after I had grown up. A large portion of my childhood was filled with the roller coaster of my mother’s months and years of drunken stupors followed by her many failed attempts to stop drinking. I would sit with my mother during her many visits to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and at these meetings I overheard a great deal of talk about “the disease of alcoholism” and statements like, “It wasn’t me who did those things; it was my disease.” At a very young age I remember thinking, “It doesn’t seem like a disease.” When my grandfather died of cancer I thought, “Now that seems like a disease.” The point here is that even before I became a believer, I was not convinced about the application of a disease model to problems such as drunkenness that were clearly moral in nature, because such problems involved issues like self-control and avoidance rather than being merely physical.

Then, years later, after I became a Christian in my freshman year of high school, one of the first books I read was the first book Jay Adams wrote about counseling, Competent to Counsel. I read through the book in one sitting, and my mouth was hanging open the entire time I read it. I was captivated by Adams’s vision to reclaim counseling as a theological and ministerial task and of his mission to make counseling an enterprise that was centered on Christ, based on his Word, and located in the local church. From that point on, I was a wholehearted believer in biblical counseling and wished the best to those who were a part of the movement. I only wished them well, however; I certainly did not want to be a counselor.

I wanted to be a pastor, and by that I meant that I wanted to be a preacher. By my second year of college, the Lord had created in me a strong desire for the work of ministry. I wanted to preach. I wanted to spend my weeks surrounded by commentaries unearthing the glories of God’s Word. I wanted to spend my Sundays dispensing those glories to God’s people. I admired preachers such as R. C. Sproul, John Piper, John MacArthur, and Tim Keller. A few years later I reported for duty to my first paid pastoral position and couldn’t wait to hit the books. Little did I know that in that first week God was going to completely redefine how I conceived of pastoral ministry.

That very first week, three separate groups requested meetings with me. I wasn’t sure what they wanted to talk about but was thrilled at the thought of conducting such meetings. I couldn’t wait to answer the theological questions these people had. I was ready to deal with issues about the Trinity, inerrancy, Calvinism, whatever. Let me at it!

I was in for a surprise.

The first meeting was with an elderly couple who were having marriage problems and wanted advice. Their words to me were, “We’ve been married for more than fifty years and all of it has been bad. We don’t know how much time the Lord has for us, but we want what is left to be good. Can you help us have a better marriage?” The second meeting was with a mother and her daughter, who had been molested, and they wanted help they had not received from secular therapists. The third meeting was with a mother who wanted help knowing how to control a difficult child.

To say that I had absolutely no idea what had hit me would be putting it mildly. I had no kids, had never been molested, and had been married for only a few weeks! What did I know? I realized in the span of one week that I should not only wish biblical counselors well but figure out how to do what they were doing. I realized that there was no arbitrary distinction between the public ministry of the Word in preaching and the personal ministry of the Word in counseling. I realized that being a faithful pastor and preacher meant also being a faithful counselor.

So I began to work hard to understand biblical counseling. I made friends with people who were committed to counseling and spent a lot of time with them. I also started reading everything I could get my hands on and even began formal study in the area. In fact, I got a little carried away and ultimately earned a PhD on the topic.

I tell you that story because I want you to know how I came to see that learning about counseling is really about learning how to do ministry well. Here is a fact that you’d better write down, underline, circle, highlight, and memorize: if you want to be faithful in ministry (I didn’t say successful) you’re going to have to learn something about counseling. There’s just no way around it.

The other reason I tell you that story is to help you understand something I began to figure out about biblical counselors. As I read all the different books and all the different authors on biblical counseling I started to notice that not everybody sounded the same. Oh, there were plenty of strong similarities: everyone was committed to Scripture as the source of wisdom for change, to Jesus as the source of power for change, and to the church as the central location for change, but there were also a lot of differences. Specifically, people who wrote during the first twenty years of the movement often sounded different from those who have been writing in the last twenty years of the movement. I also noticed that these differences were really improvements. The movement was not merely changing but was changing for the better. I further noticed that there was actually a fascinating story that surrounded these changes and improvements.

The purpose of this book is to tell you that story and to describe the improvements that have happened in the biblical counseling movement. I think it is important to tell you this because I believe that if you know how the biblical counseling movement has advanced, you will be a better church member, friend, brother, parent, or minister who is more equipped to have the kinds of conversations Jesus wants his church to have.

The story of this group of men and women is actually the fourth part of an even larger theological drama. You see, the Christian effort to help people with their problems did not begin forty years ago but rather is as old as the Scriptures themselves. God inspired the Scriptures for the very purpose of helping people with their problems (2 Pet. 1:3–4). Throughout the centuries of church history God’s people have been at times more faithful and at times less faithful to use the Scriptures in ministering to struggling persons. The last forty years have been a time when the American church has been growing in its facility to use the Scriptures this way, but it is not really possible to understand what has happened in the last few decades without a brief peak into the last few centuries for some historical perspective. The church’s attempt to do ministry in the last several hundred years has unfolded in a drama of deep theological reflection, theological neglect, theological recovery, and theological advancement.

A Period of Deep Theological Reflection

The Puritans took counseling seriously. They didn’t call it counseling, but they believed that ministry was important, and they began a particularly rich period in theological thought regarding personal ministry of the Word. Those men wrote hundreds of works to help people deal with their problems in living. It is impossible to survey all the literature there, but it will be helpful to mention a few works. Richard Baxter wrote The Christian Directory, outlining in exhaustive detail the spiritual problems Christians face.3 John Owen wrote, among other things, The Mortification of Sin as a practical guide for dealing with the flesh.4A Lifting Up for the Downcast was intended by William Bridge to be an encouragement to Christians struggling with all manner of life’s difficulties.5

Writing in the Puritan tradition in America, Jonathan Edwards wrote A Treatise Concerningthe Religious Affections to deal with the pastoral issue of judging true works of the Spirit from false ones.6 One of the last careful works was Ichabod Spencer’s A Pastor’s Sketches in the 1850s.7 In this work, Spencer recounted his conversations with many troubled persons and showed—in the context of nineteenth-century case studies—how ministers might talk with troubled people about their problems. Spencer’s work was not perfect. He could be a bit heady and ignored internal realities that helped some secular thinkers believe that Protestant reflection on counseling was a wasteland. Still, in many ways, it represented the end of careful and uniquely Christian reflection about the task of interpersonal ministry.

Theological Neglect

The next book after A Pastor’s Sketches that would offer uniquely biblical insight into helping people with their problems was Jay Adams’s book Competent to Counsel, more than one hundred years later!8 Why is it that Christians neglected a robustly biblical approach to counseling for more than a century? The truth of the matter is that there were many reasons why this happened, and here I want to address nine of the most important.

1) People Want to Understand and Help Other People

Just look at the best-seller list. Books written by psychologists thought to explain people and their problems typically dominate. Seen any TV lately? Talk-show hosts often serve the role of pop-psychologist to their viewers (when they are not professionally trained as such). With increasing frequency, news programs invite psychologists to explain the inner workings of newsmakers or the public that observes and responds to them. Psychology is the most popular undergraduate degree program in colleges across the United States. All of this is true, because people love to know how they and others function. But there is a rub. When people begin to discover how others function, they become aware of problems and want to help. This is where counseling and therapy come in: when you observe, you see trouble and try to give help.

This reality ensures that what David Powlison calls “the Faith’s psychology”9 will always have competitors. That competition will come from both inside and outside Christianity, but this drive to know about people will mean that many different philosophies of helping people with their problems will always be present and in need of critique and correction. Therefore, Christians must always be vigilant to strengthen their understanding of the problems people have and be aware of alternative positions so that such positions may be critiqued. When this fails to happen, the faith’s psychology will recede and a faithless psychology will ascend.

2) Counseling Is Hard to See

Another consistent problem that makes it hard for Christians to engage in theological reflection on counseling is that it is hard to see. Think about it. Preaching is not hard to see at all. It’s a public ministry visible to the masses. The opposite is true with the interpersonal ministry of counseling. Very often, those who are in the room at the time are the only ones aware that counseling is happening. Out of sight, out of mind—that is the problem here. People do not generally give much thought to things they never see.

As I mentioned earlier, the Lord used the preaching ministry of several men to ignite a passion for ministry in my heart, and this centered initially on preaching rather than counseling, because I could see the former and not the latter. There are thousands just like me in this regard. They think about and love the public ministry of the Word because they see it. Conversely the personal ministry of the Word doesn’t occur to them, because they never see it. Because this is true, it is critical that Christians be vigilant to use the public ministry of the Word to exhort other believers toward the importance of the personal ministry of the Word.

3) Counseling Is Hard to Do