Our Growth in Grace Is a Community Journey
Did you know that while the church rushes to replicate the mental health system of world, the world is desperately trying to replicate the church? I discuss that reality in chapter 13 of Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives.
Here’s a sampler…
My Years at the Bowen Center
During the four years that I was in seminary, I worked at the Otis R. Bowen Center for Human Services (ORBC). It was a five-county, government-run psychiatric inpatient unit for individuals struggling with life issues.
The ORBC tried desperately to replicate a family setting with a community feel. Patients and staff shared meals together, took walks together, played games together, laughed together, and cried together. We had group therapy, individual counseling; art therapy, activity therapy, and off-site “field trips.” We provided every patient a primary care team focused on their individualize treatment—a psych nurse, psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, mental health worker, and dietician. Everyone received the best care the world could offer 24/7.
The ORBC desperately tried to replicate…the church.
While the clients at the ORBC may not have always verbalized it, they were all seeking an answer to one of life’s ultimate question:
“Where can I find a place to belong and become?”
The ORBC attempted to be that place. They wanted to be a place where struggling people felt accepted, loved, and cared for—a place to belong. They also wanted to be a place where struggling people could grow, overcome their struggles, and mature—a place to become.
What the ORBC was trying to be is exactly what God calls the church to be—a place to belong and become.
Why Replicate the World?
The mental health world is trying to replicate what we have in the church, so why in the world is the church trying so hard to replicate the world? This is sad biblically given that the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and the people of God provide us with all that we need for life in a broken world.
It is also sad practically given the fact that the ORBC had an astronomically high rate of recidivism. Even after the best care the world could offer, patients returned repeatedly because their problems in living were never resolved.[1] Why in the world are we sending our people to the world’s empty counterfeit replica of the church?
Perhaps because we have forgotten the truth that God has not placed our sanctification in the hands of trained and paid professionals.[2] God’s plan is that everyone in the Body of Christ speaks and lives gospel truth in love so that the whole body grows up in Christ.
Why are we seeking to conform to a deformed world? Perhaps because we have also forgotten the truth that gospel-centered ministry, biblical counseling, sanctification, and the local church must be united in our thinking and in our practice. We make the mistake of treating our growth in grace as a separate topic from our life together in the Body of Christ. That’s why we must apply a biblical theology of the church—gospel communities that provide a place to belong to Christ and become like Christ.
The Rest of the Story 
For the rest of this chapter about the power of the Body of Christ for spiritual, mental, and emotional health, check out Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives.
Join the Conversation
The mental health world is trying to replicate what we have in the church, so why in the world is the church trying so hard to replicate the world?
RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth
[1]For research into the effectiveness, or the lack thereof, of professional counseling/psychology, see: J. S. Berman and N. C. Norton, “Does Professional Training Make a Therapist More Effective?” Psychology Bulletin 98, no. 2 (1985): 401-407; J. Durlak, “Comparative Effectiveness of Paraprofessional and Professional Helpers,” Psychological Bulletin 86, no. 1 (1979): 80-92; J.A. Hattie, C. F. Sharpley, and H. J. Rogers, “Comparative Effectiveness of Professional and Paraprofessional Helpers,” Psychological Bulletin 95, no. 3 (1984): 534-541; Keith Herman, “Reassessing Predictors of Therapist Competence,” Journal of Counseling and Development 72 (September/October 1993): 29-32.
[2]Paul Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands, xi.
