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

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. When the local pastor says he isn’t qualified to help Bill and Mary, how will you respond to him?
4. 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?
5. 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

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