Pierre / Reju The Pastor and Counseling

The Basics of Shepherding Members in Need
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-4515-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Pastors spend much of their time counseling people in crisis-a delicate task that requires one to carefully evaluate each situation, share relevant principles from God's Word, and offer practical suggestions for moving forward. Too often, however, pastors feel unprepared to effectively shepherd their people through difficult circumstances such as depression, adultery, eating disorders, and suicidal thinking. Written to help pastors and church leaders understand the basics of biblical counseling, this book provides an overview of the counseling process from the initial meeting to the final session. It also includes suggestions for cultivating a culture of discipleship within a church and four appendixes featuring a quick checklist, tips for taking notes, and more.

Jeremy Pierre (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as Dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evanglism, and Ministry as well as professor of biblical counseling at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a pastor at Clifton Baptist Church and serves on the board of directors for the Biblical Counseling Coalition. Jeremy and his wife, Sarah, live in Louisville, Kentucky, and have five children.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pierre, Jeremy

Reju, Deepak

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

The Pastor and Wednesday Morning

It’s Tuesday afternoon, and you are waging war with your inbox when your secretary buzzes. A church member is asking to speak to you, and it’s trouble. With a quick prayer that is more like a sigh, you pick up the phone and wade into a half-hour conversation that confuses you and, you’re sure, confuses her too. You hang up, your mind racing with what to do with this sudden revelation of just how bad things are between her and her husband. You’ll be seeing the two of them first thing the next day to iron some of this out. How do you begin to prepare for Wednesday morning?

Pastors and lay leaders alike are familiar with phone calls like this. Probably too familiar. Stubborn depression, heart-wrenching adultery, volcanic anger, chronic miscommunication, guilt-ridden pornography struggles, calorie-phobic eating disorders, recurrent cancer, hidden same-sex attraction, suicidal thinking—and that’s the short list. Life in a fallen world is touched with misery. For some, it’s submerged in it. That goes for folks inside the church as well as those outside.

This is why you are a pastor. God has called you to shepherd his sheep, and often those sheep are hurting, confused, or stubborn. But it’s not always clear how to care for them, especially in the more complex situations that weigh them down. You may or may not think of yourself as a counseling pastor, but the bottom line is that you are called to labor for your people in these unsettling problems. And this is a worthy labor.

We offer this primer because in our line of work we frequently get last-minute phone calls from pastors who need help thinking carefully through tough situations at church.

In fifteen minutes, I am meeting with a couple who are about to get a divorce. Here’s what I’m thinking of doing . . .

A young man at our church just admitted to me that he has same-sex attraction. I need to follow up, but I don’t know what to say . . .

Some parents at my church recently put it together that their daughter is anorexic. Is there a place to refer them to?

Most pastors are short on time and burdened with many other responsibilities. Add to this a few common facts that plague the work of a pastor:

• Most seminary students take just one or two counseling classes in their degree programs. They often underestimate how much counseling they will do when they reach their first pastorate.
• Most pastors enter the pastorate to preach and teach, not to counsel. They counsel because it is an expected part of the job, not because they are excited to do it.
• Both smaller and larger churches have people who have made messes of their lives. Small churches, especially those in rural areas, often have very few resources in their community to draw on for help. A pastor and church are sometimes the only available resources.
• Church members expect their pastor to help them with their struggles. After all, the members fund the pastor’s salary. They expect him to give them his time, often a lot of it. They may even assume the pastor has instant access to the Bible’s answer for the troubles of life.
• Weak sheep tend to consume a disproportionate amount of the pastor’s schedule with their problems, demands, and sometimes just general selfishness. Often this comes with very little gratitude to God for the Christlike care given through their pastor and the church.
• Most church members let their problems get far worse than they need to before they overcome pride and come in for help. Thoughts like “I don’t want the pastor to think poorly of me” or “I can handle this on my own” deceive them. If they had sought help earlier, it would have saved everyone a whole lot of sweat and tears.

What should a pastor do with all this? He may have very little training in counseling. He may have weak sheep making exorbitant demands on his time. He may have precious little relational help to draw on in an unhealthy church. It doesn’t sound all that promising, does it?

DEAR PASTOR, CAN WE HELP YOU?

We want to help by giving you a basic framework to approach your people’s troubles. You may not have a lot of time. You may be fearful of messing someone up permanently. You may simply not want to deal with this stuff. So what you need is both a reminder that the gospel of Jesus Christ is powerful in these situations and some practical guidance for ministering in light of that power.

Here’s what we would like to cover in this short book. In part 1, made up of the first three chapters, we cover the concept of counseling. In chapter 1, we set out a vision for what it means to labor for your people. Our point is simple: shepherds shepherd. Pastors are about the task of making disciples, and discipleship will often include counseling people through difficult situations. This fact should neither annoy nor overwhelm you. It doesn’t necessarily need to thrill you either, but it should make you see caring for troubled people as part of the privilege of loving Jesus. Feed his sheep. In chapter 2, we help you know how to prepare for counseling—how it starts, who starts it, and how to arrange things to run as smoothly as possible. Chapter 3 lays out the basic method of counseling. We explain a helpful technique to explore a person’s trouble and have something redemptive to say to him or her. We discuss the types of questions to ask, the pertinent areas of a person’s life to explore, and how to respond in biblically helpful ways.

The second part, chapters 4–6, traces out the process of counseling, from the initial meeting to the final conversation. We give tips for recognizing heart dynamics, understanding problems theologically, and employing redemptive strategies for change. We want these chapters to help you answer the question, what does the process of caring for this person look like?

The third and final part, chapters 7 and 8, explains the context of counseling. Pastoral counseling occurs within both the church community and a community of resources outside the church. Chapter 7 deals with the reality that you, the pastor, cannot labor alone. It’s not possible for you to do everything and still stay sane yourself. So we’ll help you think about what it means to develop a culture of discipleship in your church that will supplement and enrich whatever counseling occurs. What does it mean to develop a culture in which members help one another thrive in their faith? Chapter 8 then looks outside to the community to see what counselors, doctors, or other relational resources are available. Is it ever wise to refer outside the church? If you do, how can you be confident a particular doctor is going to help and not hurt your church member? What if you can’t find a like-minded counselor in your community, but only those who work from a naturalistic standpoint? Questions abound.

We close the book with a number of helpful practical resources, from a simple definition of biblical counseling to a method for taking notes. These are meant for your use, and we hope they aid you in this worthy labor.

THE REAL POWER IN COUNSELING—JESUS CHRIST

Honestly, no one expects one little book to change your world. Our goal is not to enable you to handle anything that comes your way. The goal, rather, is to give you confidence that in the gospel you have the categories you need to navigate the troubles of your people. Your confidence is not in some super-developed counseling technique, or even in yourself, but in God’s power to change people.

Real confidence is rooted in the life-transforming power of the good news of Jesus Christ. After all, Jesus is the model of how human beings function best. And he came to a malfunctioning world as a substitute for malfunctioning human beings like us. Sin estranges us from God. It estranges everything from God. This is why we suffer and this is why we sin. But Jesus reconciles what was estranged by making payment for sin by his death. And now Jesus lives again, transforming people to live according to his righteousness, according to a reestablished relationship with God. It is God, through his glorious Son, who changes people.

Here’s what we mean more specifically: We human beings were created to display God’s character in the way we think, in what we desire, and in how we act. When a hardened thought, a lustful desire, or a selfish intention emerges in the human heart, that heart is failing to display the character of its Creator, which is patient, pure, and generous to others. In short, everything inside and outside a person was designed to glorify God.

Jesus’s heart was the only one that perfectly displayed the character of God—because he is God himself. But he is also human, like us. Therefore, he is fit to be our representative, our example, our rescuer (Heb. 4:14–16). For counseling, we should therefore keep the following in mind:

• Jesus Christ is the means of change. Believing his gospel changes our hearts’ responses. All theoretical wisdom and practical advice in counseling should most centrally promote a relationship with Jesus Christ through faith.
• Jesus Christ is the goal of change. Displaying his character is the model of maturity we strive for. Circumstances may not change and problems may not go away through counseling, but God promises the power...