I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on African Americans and biblical counseling. Leaders in various biblical counseling movements lament the low percentage of African Americans attending their conferences.
Why? I think my study of Black Church history provides a convincing answer. Working on my book Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, my co-author and I were looking for any and all instances of what today we call biblical counseling—whether by pastors or lay people.
We looked for examples of:
*Soul Care for Suffering and Sanctification: Sustaining and Healing—Comforting those sinned against in a fallen world.
*Spiritual Direction for Sinning and Sanctification: Reconciling and Guiding—Confronting those sinning.
We certainly found reconciling and guiding.
However, we found a greater preponderance of sustaining and healing.
Here’s the issue. Some current models of biblical counseling focus almost exclusively on confronting sin. In fact, some leaders in some of these movements will tell you that people simply don’t come to them for issues related to suffering. Of course, this may have much to do with the message being communicated that biblical counseling is about sin and not about suffering (a false message, by the way).
African Americans, given their history of suffering, have grave concerns with any model of biblical counseling that spends the bulk of its time confronting sin while ignoring suffering. For African Americans, progressive sanctification is just as vitally related to suffering as to sinning.
For African Americans, pastoral counseling and pastoral care is equated at least as much with sustaining and healing sufferers who have been sinned against as it is with confronting Christians who are sinning against God and others. This in no way minimizes their hatred of sin, their view of depravity, or their focus on God’s glory. African Americans, however, understand from the Bible, Church history, and their national history, that true pastoral counseling, lay counseling, biblical counseling, and pastoral care must deal both with the sins we have committed and with the evils we have suffered.
Good Morning. I have been struggling for the past couple of years to finish my dissertation in Biblical Counseling. My research statement is: Is biblical Counseling an effective methodology for providing valid guidance and hope for believers in today’s African American Church? I have done much research and still I am having trouble finding any African American Biblical Counselors who speak to this issue. Are there any books, or articles out there that will help me? I would like to get this finished this year. Thank You in Advance.
This link to my book and related resources on African American soul care and spiritual direction should be of great help to you. https://rpmministries.org/bookstore/beyond-the-suffering-embracing-the-legacy-of-african-american-soul-care-and-spiritual-direction/ Feel free to email me at bob.kellemen@gmail.com I would enjoy talking further about your project.
Hi Mr. Kellemen:
I am writing my thesis on the role of the Black Church in Biblical Counseling within the postmodern World. I have started my thesis but at first, it was too broad. So, this is the new title I came up with. So, now I am rereading the first draft to pull information I can use and look for new resources. This dissertation has to be up to 80 pages of body. Would it be okay to use some of the same information but tweak it somewhat? My argument was that there is a war that has been going on for over 500 years with the protestant reformation about secular and biblical counseling. The debate that is going on is that secular is subjective selfish, and biblical objective truth coming directly from the word of God. I had an outline first dealing with the history of biblical counseling past, present, and future. Followed by the definitions of Biblical counseling what God defines it as, and what various authors define. Now I am thinking of dealing with the black church and starting with the history of blacks from slavery and how their religion came to and deal with counseling from that perspective. This may cause me to have a write a new outline and possibly a thesis too. What is your perspective? I like the previous individual.
Thanks so much for any suggestion or resources you can direct me to.
Would you want to send your dissertation proposal to me via email?