Counseling Week 4 Reading Log

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model The Strategic Pastoral Counselor Must Be Active and Directive

the strategic pastoral counselor will have as much to say as the parishioner.

This makes excellent sense. A heart of sincere love is ready to engage, and listen thoroughly to the needs of those who seek us out. However, it would be of no benefit if we are not ready to provide maximum wholesome council that matches, approximately, the time spent and the word said by those we are counseling.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model The Strategic Pastoral Counseling Relationship Must Be a Partnership

toward a deeper engagement with God and a richer appropriation of the fullness of the life of the Spirit in the midst of present life circumstances.

This could be a common goal that is stated for every counseling session by pastors. Also, the stated triage, Pastor, Parishioner, and Holy Spirit organizes a structure that bespeaks security and reliability in the process.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Time Limitation Must Be Maintained

Limits are a God-ordained part of life, not a mere concession to life in the fast lane of the twenty-first century. In the long run, counseling is never helpful if limits are consistently ignored. Limit setting is, therefore, a part of all responsible counseling.

Limit’s validated scripturally:

Acts 17:26 (NRSV)

26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Time Limitation Must Be Maintained

Failure to do so should be recognized not as flexibility and compassion but rather as an inability to provide the necessary structure for counseling.

If the Counselor cannot provide necessary structure, can they provide necessary counsel? Will their council be of the highest value? Perhaps this is what is best recognized when the counselor succeeds in providing standardized time and goals in each session.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Holistic Counseling

Humans are ultimately understandable only in the light of this primary and irreducible wholeness, and helping efforts that are truly Christian must resist the temptation to see persons only through their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, or any other manifestation of being.

Holistic wholeness is the true beauty of Holy Spirit sanctification. The pastoral counselor is called by God to

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Exploring Behavior

difference between counseling and preaching. Counseling involves an exploration of behavior and the sources of resistance to change, not simply telling a person what he or she must change.

Contrast between preaching and counseling. Interactive exploration of origin and source of issues in question, with a mutual goal to identify and lead to redemptive, God-glorifying change. This is where concrete strategies emerge and (hopefully) be agreed upon. Strategic, operative word here.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Exploring Behavior

I want to work with God in this process.

Are we not laborers together with Him? Prayer at intervals during the sessions would deem this answer to be true.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Structured Counseling

clear focus

Toward a policy of Clarity

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Structured Counseling

discipline and structure become integrated within their personality and should not obscure the person behind the role.

Integration within the counselor’s personality indicates an undeniable requirement for the counselor to be intimately familiar with this concept of strategic pastoral counseling.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Explicitly Christian Counseling

rely on the Spirit of God to help both parties in the counseling relationship know what to say and when to say it.

Policy: The Holy Spirit is central and welcome as the third party in our sessions. I’m a firm believer that, even when we don’t know what to say, the Spirit will guide and give us utterance to reach understandings that redeem and relieve the burdens of our hearts.

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Conducting a Pastoral Diagnosis

diagnosis, and pastors must do this just as surely as physicians. Pruyser defines diagnosis as “grasping things as they really are, so as to do the right thing”

Diagnosis explained as an initial and crucial step

Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model Conducting a Pastoral Diagnosis

healthy and unhealthy religiosity

Reflecting on the core concern of the majority of my pastoral counseling, I have seen and continue to see many with spiritual abuse issues—those who have been mistreated by former church leadership and by General Church relations. This leads me to question how many of them would actually identify Unhealthy religiosity by such instigating their issues, causing their landing in a position that needs counseling?