Having served on the pastoral staff (relatively briefly) of a couple of churches, ran a Christian counseling center (for much longer), and served on the faculty of multiple seminaries, I have seen the recurring struggle over what is more important, people or institutions. When counseling one or two members of a marriage--- should one focus …
Continue reading In Ministry, People are More Important than Institutions
Continuing from Part 1. CLICK HERE if you haven't read Part 1 yet. #3. "RTV" Counsleing often devolves into bad hermeneutics on two levels. On the first level, there is often bad hermeneutics (process of interpretation) of the Bible. For example, a common RTV passage for counseling is Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things …
Continue reading Critique on RTV (“Read This Verse”) Counseling— Part Two
I used to be a mechanical engineer working for one of the larger defense contractors in the world. Sometimes we would have short-cut solutions to problems. In people's homes, one of the big shortcuts is duck tape (also spelled duct tape, incorrectly, at times). We did not use duck tape however, but one of our …
Continue reading Critique on RTV (“Read This Verse”) Counseling— Part 1
One of my favorite books is "The Gospel Blimp and Other Modern Parables". It is by Joseph Bayly and has several great stories that challenge our notion of our faith. One of these stories is Ceiling Zero. In this story some people can fly (without aircraft and without balloons). But as the story goes on, …
I consider myself to be a missionary. However, my biggest single role is the administrator of a pastoral counseling center. There are forms of counseling that are distinctly evangelistic. But “normal” pastoral care, counseling, and chaplaincy typically work within the “faith context” of the client/patient and assume (to a large extent) that the person already …
Continue reading Is Pastoral Counseling Compatible With Missions?