“Tell me what to do when I counsel a person.”
What, in particular, do you want to know?
“Oh, you know—just what you do when you counsel someone.”
Well, I’m afraid I don’t know how to answer that question. There is a lot to counseling—one way of approaching people will not do—one size simply doesn’t fit all.
“Yeah, but what do you do?”
The fact is I do all sorts of things—a lot more than I could begin to mention in this Q&A session.
“Let’s say the person is considering getting a divorce. How do you handle that—do you tell his wife or not?”
Well, since I’d have both of them present [if possible], I wouldn’t have to tell her. Counseling people who are both involved in a problem apart from one another is foolish; you don’t bring people together by taking them apart.
“Yeah, but what do you say? How do you go about the counseling itself?”
Listen, friend, you don’t seem to understand how much goes into counseling or I expect you’d get more specific in your questions. I say all sorts of things depending on the situation. They just have to be biblically based.
“But counseling is so much easier than preaching–you ought to be able to tell me what to do.”
I guess this has gone far enough. Let me suggest a few things at the outset:
- Counseling is much tougher than preaching. A preacher knows what he is going too talk about (at least, he ought to). On the other hand, the counselor never knows what will come up in a session–so he has to be ready to handle anything—indeed, everything!
“Oh—I never thought about that!”
- A counselor also has to gather lots of information before he is able to begin following a particular course of counsel. That’s why I can’t answer the sorts of questions that you’ve been flinging at me. I believe in serious data-gathering. Sometime, read and consider Proverbs 18: 13, 15, 17 and I think you’ll see what I mean.
“Hmm . . .I’ll have to do that.”
- Let me just mention one more thing (I could go on listing lots of other points): But consider this: before I can really begin (assuming the person is a Christian) I will want to know whether or not he is interested in getting relief from his problem(s) or (at bottom) he is interested in learning how to please God in his handling of the problem—whether he gets relief or not.
“I never thought of that.”
And I can tell you there probably are many other things that I can see you haven’t thought about as well.
“Yeah—probably there are.”
Let me suggest that you take our course in nouthetic counseling and systematically learn about some of them.
“How do I do that?”
Thought you’d never ask—the answer is contact Donn Arms at [email protected]. He’ll lead you the right way.
“Thanks.”