Thoughts on counseling

After I had been a bivocational minister for a few years I decided that I needed to do something different when people came to me for counseling.  What I needed to do differently was to stop counseling.  Soon after making that decision a couple came to me wanting counseling for some problems they were having in their marriage.  I met with the couple, listened to them for about 30 minutes or so, and then referred them to a Christian counseling center.  I did this for a couple of reasons.

One, like many pastors I had virtually no training in counseling.  I had taken classes in pastoral care, but I had no classes in counseling.  I think pastors often do more damage than good when they try to counsel people when they've not had the training to be competent counselors.  In addition, there may well be some ethical issues involved when we try to counsel people without benefit of adequate training in counseling.  Just because we've read the Bible and have memorized some versus doesn't mean that we are trained counselors.

The second reason I stopped doing counseling was a lack of time.  As a bivocational minister I simply realized I wasn't able to devote the time required to provide the counseling it might take to help an individual or couple address their issues.  If someone came and needed some advice I was often willing to do that, but if it quickly became obvious that the issues that brought the individual to me was going to require several sessions to address I referred them to trained counselors.

There was a time in my life when I needed the services of a trained counselor.  I referred this couple to the same counseling service that I used and assured them that there were people on their staff who were highly skilled in helping couples address marriage related problems.  However, as their pastor I didn't want to ignore them or their situation, so I told them to contact the counseling center and set up their first appointment.  After that appointment they were to call me so we could schedule a time to discuss how they felt about their initial session with the counselor.  As long as they were seeing a counselor I wanted to meet with them once a month to provide pastoral care as they worked through their issues.

For many bivocational ministers this is the best alternative to trying to counsel people yourselves.  Refer them to Christian counselors who have the training to provide sound counseling and maintain a pastoral connection to them while they are going through their challenges.  This provides them with the best of care from both a counseling and a pastoral perspective.