Not Your Father’s Pastoral Counseling Class 

This week I’ll be teaching a Master of Divinity class on Pastoral Counseling at Moody Theological Seminary in Chicago. When I was young, a commercial tag-line said, “Not your father’s Oldsmobile.” The car-maker was communicating that something new, something fresh was on the horizon.

I could say the same about the Pastoral Counseling class I’m teaching: “Not your father’s pastoral counseling class.” For too long, seminaries have taught pastoral counseling classes by trying to cram every conceivable pastoral counseling issue into the class and trying to cover each topic with a one-hour content dump.

I took a course like that. It was a total waste of time and money. An eclectic approach like that fails miserably at helping future pastors to think through what it truly means to offer biblical pastoral care and counseling.

So what we will do instead?

A Better Way: God’s Answers to Life’s Seven Ultimate Questions

I want to help my students to explore a biblical theology of biblical counseling in the local church (pastors and members). I want to assist these church leaders to develop a Christ-centered, church-based, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed model of discipleship counseling that embraces life issues in a biblical and relational way.

In seeking to discern what makes biblical pastoral ministry biblical, we’ll explore seven foundational biblical categories covered in the book Soul Physicians. I describe these categories as God’s Answers to Life’s Seven Ultimate Questions:

• God’s Word: “What is truth?” ”Where do I find answers?”

• The Trinity: “Who is God?” “How can I know Him personally?”

• Creation: “Who am I?” “What makes people tick?”

• Fall: “What went wrong?” “Why do we do the things we do?”

• Redemption: “Can I change?” “How do people change?”

• Glorification/Consummation: “Where am I headed?” “How does our future destiny impact our present reality?”

• Sanctification: “How does God change lives?” “How can I help others to grow in grace?”

Teaching People to Fish versus Giving People a Fish

The old way of teaching pastoral counseling offered people a fish; it didn’t teach them to fish. The new way teaches students how to think biblically about every pastoral counseling issue. They can then use their biblical grid, their biblical way of thinking about life issues, to develop effective biblical counseling approaches to whatever issues people bring to them.

In our five days together, we’ll use a host of creative, interactive means to stretch one another to see how the Bible is our robust, relevant, relational, authoritative, and sufficient guide for life and ministry. Some examples include:

• Relating God’s truth to our lives.

• In-depth, interactive exploration of specific biblical passages.

• Personal application projects.

• Ministry application projects.

• PDQs: Prompting Discussion Questions.

• Real life counseling vignettes.

• Role-play counseling scenarios.

• Movie clips to illustrate pertinent points.

• Music clips to illustrate pertinent points.

• Q/A time.

• Evaluations of current models/approaches to pastoral counseling.

• And much, much more.

I can’t wait. I love helping to equip pastors for the work of the ministry.

In fact, the end goal of the class is not simply that these students become better pastoral counselors. But rather, that these students help their churches become churches of biblical counseling—churches saturated with a vision for every member speaking the truth in love. In other words, I want my students to equip others also.

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