You are a Christian counselor serving in a para-Church organization. Frequently you receive requests from local churches to counsel some of their church members.
Over the years you’ve run into these scenarios:
#1 – You called a local pastor to let him know that “one of his sheep” was seeking counseling from you. He said,
I don’t need to know what is going on with them. Just fix them up and send them back. I’m too busy to help them.
#2 – You asked a local pastor if he or one of his leaders would come alongside you as you counsel one of his members. He said,
None of my people are qualified to counsel. Just do it and keep me posted on how it goes.
#3 – You were able to help a couple from a local church and soon after they began to realize that their options for on-going care were either to pay you to provide care for them for the rest of their lives or to find another church that could offer adequate care for them.
#4 – Bill & Mary come to you for counseling. As a counselor in a para-Church organization, this is an immediate “red flag” that there is possibly something wrong with their local church. It would be like a hospital patient leaving the hospital to go and get help from the local Exigent Center and then going back to their hospital to eat and sleep.
Application Questions
- How will you navigate through the “sticky situation” of caring for somebody else’s sheep while seeking to lead them back to their local shepherd?
- In light of Hebrews 13:17, how will you delicately walk the leadership of the local church, who does not know you, through your concerns about providing care for someone they are “responsible to God” for?
- When the local pastor says he isn’t qualified to help Bill and Mary, how will you respond to him?
- What kind of relationship do you have or would like to have between your ministry and the God-ordained context for change, the local church?
- As it becomes more and more evident that Bill and Mary’s local church is not adequate to care for them, which is why they were seeing you initially, what will you tell them as it pertains to their long-term care after their season of counseling with you ends?
Other articles in this series
- Case Study: Counselees and the Local Church
- Case Study: Are You NANC Certified?
- Should I Be NANC Certified?
- To Certify or Not to Certify: That is the Question for Counselors
- Counseling Solutions Training Program to Equip Counselors
- Desire and Burden Do Not Make a Biblical Counselor
- Inherent Liabilities with Biblical Counseling
- Counseling Today: Standing on Jay’s Shoulders, Pt. 1
- Counseling Today: Standing on Jay’s Shoulders, Pt. 2
- Can’t the Local Church Do This?
- Two Ways to Become a Better Counselor
- My Top Choices for Counselor Training
- Do I Need a License to Be a Christian Counselor
Checkout some of our training videos on our YouTube Channel
I think this is an excellent question. We are currently part of a church who has never had a counseling ministry, not dealt with sin or problems in the church itself. My husband is a young pastor who is seeking to become more prepared in this area and yet has his hands very full as the only full time employee of the church. We are working to become “certified” and have read tons of books, but I don’t know that you ever feel qualified, you just have to serve those that God put around you to serve, and read and study the Word and other books to be more prepared. I will say that the local churches around here don’t offer much biblical counseling most pastors send their church people to “christian” psychologists. We are working to teach the people about the need for Biblical answers to every problem, but the past generation has very much left things to the world and not the church. Re-education takes time and I’m praying that soon many ministries will offer to truly shepherd their flocks completely.
I’m up-in-the-air on this issue. I don’t think I would feel right counseling someone who is going to a church where the leadership is not willing to be involved in the process. There would be a good chance that I would tell them one thing and they would get a different message from the pulpit. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to tell them I couldn’t counsel them – the reason they need counseling might be partly because of their church situation.
The up-in-the-air part is this: Would it be right to insist they attend a different church as one of the requirements for counseling?
Phil, you raise an important and sensitive issue here. What you are talking about is very real and it does need to be talked about.
When a person comes to counseling outside their local church, many times that signifies a “problem” of some sort with the local church.
The counselor needs to discern, in detail, why they are coming to you. There is so much more to this than what can be addressed here in this comment.
But the bottom line in some cases is that it might not be wise for the counselees to continue at that local church. However, that can be a huge decision and needs to be worked through on so many different levels.
I have recommended in some rare cases a person seek out another church because they were people in need of soul care and it was objectively obvious that their current church could not care for them and they understood that I am not a “life coach” that they would come to until we all go to heaven.
“Until death do we part” is not my role for them, but the local church’s.
They grew in their understanding of what the local church is about, according to the NT and began to feel in their conscience that they needed to be in one that was trying to model a NT local church as far as soul care.
Again, there is so much more to say here.
Our immediate concern, before addressing the questions at hand, would be to address the issue of confidentiality. We believe that a counseling center should have a policy in place to address the privacy of the counselee’s information.
We believe that the counselee should give written permission to share their counseling data and to designate the nature and type of information to be shared (e.g. verbal, written, summary only) and who to share it with. We also feel it would be best to have the counselee himself discuss with their pastor the content and progress in counseling on a regular basis, if the pastor requests it.
When it comes to communication with a counselee’s pastor we believe it should be left to the director of the counseling center or another designated person with permission from the counselee.
Therefore, in answer to questions 1 & 2, based on the level of the counselee’s involvement in their local church, we would contact the pastor upon request from and with permission from the counselee. If the counselee is not active in church then a foundational part of their counseling homework is to get back involved in church attendance and ministry. Otherwise, we would encourage the counselee to let their pastor know they are in counseling and to inform them of their progress.
In response to questions 3 & 4 we think it would be beneficial to develop a brochure explaining the biblical counseling services we provide and to make the information available to area local churches. As believers we are called to come along side those overtaken in a fault and to help restore them (Gal. 6:1-2). We see our biblical counseling service as a ministry to fellow believers and a mission to the lost. As counselees begin to grow and change and share their progress in their faith, we hope that churches that do not practice biblical counseling will see the need to be better equipped to help their own members work through their problems.
Question 5: We would encourage Bill & Mary to prayerfully talk with their pastor about their concerns. We would encourage them to prayerfully seek a fellowship where the Word is taught and they can continue to grow and serve, if that seems to be the only solution.