A Word from Bob: On September 15, 2020, Baker Books released my two-book series:
Earlier this week, I focused on Gospel-Centered Marriage Counseling. You can read that post here:
Marriage Counseling Is Not Just Individual Counseling with an Audience: The central competency in biblical marriage counseling is to equip spouses to be each other’s best biblical counselor.
In my post today, I’m focusing on some central themes of Gospel-Centered Family Counseling:
- Family counselors don’t replace parents; they empower parents.
- Families need godly parents more than just good counseling.
Our Typical Training in Family Counseling
Here’s how most of us were trained as family counselors:
- We learned a biblical theology of a healthy, godly family.
- We learned a biblical methodology of individual biblical counseling.
Our Typical Practice of Family Counseling
So, what do we then typically do when a family sits in front of us?
- We teach them a biblical theology of a healthy family.
- While the kids listen, we counsel the parents.
- While the parents listen, we counsel the kids.
Now, is a biblical theology of godly family living essential? Of course.
Is individual counseling with the parents and then with the children helpful. Sure. I’m a chapter author in a new book on counseling children, so I believe in its value.
But is individual counseling of family members the essence of biblical family counseling?
And, is it discipleship?
If we just teach at individual family members, then we are only giving them a fish. Instead, we want to teach family members—especially parents—to “fish the Scriptures.”
My focus in Gospel-Centered Family Counseling is to:
Equip counselors to equip parents to be their children’s best biblical counselors.
In biblical family counseling, we empower parents to explore and apply the Scriptures humbly, lovingly, and jointly to their family relationship. That’s discipling them to fish the Scriptures.
Biblical family counseling helps a home become a place of grace. The home becomes “soul school” for growing together in love for God, one another, and others.
Let’s think about how we get there…
Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding in Family Counseling
In Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ, I equip biblical counselors with nearly two dozen biblical counseling skills (relational competencies) for individual counseling. I group these counseling competencies around four “compass points” from Scripture and church history:
- Sustaining: “It’s normal to hurt.” Learning how to empathize with and bring biblical comfort to a hurting, suffering counselee.
- Healing: “It’s possible to hope.” Learning how to encourage and bringing biblical hope to a hurting, suffering counselee.
- Reconciling: “It’s horrible to sin, but wonderful to be forgiven.” Learning how to lovingly, graciously, and humbly expose sin and dispense Christ’s grace.
- Guiding: “It’s supernatural to mature.” Learning how to equip and empower counselees to grow in their love for God and others.
In this approach to individual counseling, it’s vital that the counselor empathize with the counselee, encourage the counselee, speak truth in love to the counselee, and equip and empower the counselee.
However, if that’s my primary focus in family counseling, then the family becomes counselor-dependent. The counselor ends up replacing the parents as the primary disciplers of their children, instead of empowering parents to disciple their children in the Lord.
So, what do we do instead? We don’t just provide individual soul care to each family member. Instead:
- We get the family members interacting in front of us so they can hear each other well and grow in healthy, godly family relating.
- We equip each family member—especially the parents—to provide soul care for each other.
Contrast what our individual counseling approach with this portrait of family counseling:
- Sustaining: “Like Christ, We Care About Each Other’s Hurts”
- Healing: “Through Christ, It’s Possible for Us to Hope in God Together”
- Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin Against Christ and Each Other, but Through Christ It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven and to Forgive”
- Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Love Each Other Like Christ, Through Christ, for Christ”
Think about the first area—family sustaining. Picture a mom and dad with a discouraged and distant teen. They’re all upset and frustrated with each other; they’re all hurt by each other.
Now imagine that over time you could help those hurting parents to look at the log in their eye, look at the hurt in their teen’s heart, and say with maturity and compassion:
“We’re sorry for the hurt we’ve been causing you. We’re beginning to understand some of the discouragement you’re feeling that we’ve been responsible for. The Bible says not to embitter and discourage you’re children, but we’ve been doing that with you. Please forgive us…”
And, over time—perhaps a good deal of time—imagine that their adolescent son begins to sense the sincerity in his parents’ hearts and begins to soften to them and to God. And he says to his parents:
“It’s not only you guys. I’m starting to see how I’ve hurt both of you with my angry attitude. I don’t like how I’ve been. I don’t like how we’ve been. I’m not sure how I change or how we change, but I want things to be different…”
Getting to this point of “mutual empathy” and “mutual ownership” is never easy. That’s why I’ve written a whole book on it. But once a family starts on this healthy and holy path, then real family change is possible.
Now, with softened hearts, you empower the parents to empower their family to change—through Christ’s resurrection power. That’s the gist of Gospel-Centered Family Counseling:
- Learning how to help the family talk honestly and maturely to each other.
- Learning how to help family members hear each other’s hearts so that they each family member owns the “log in their own eye.”
- Learning how to empower parents to keep the family change going and growing in Christ.
22 Biblical Family Counseling Skills (Relational Competencies)
How do we grow as biblical family counselors? Gospel-Centered Family Counseling walks us through 22 biblical family counseling skills that equip and empower families. Here they are in outline form:
Infusing Hope
- H: Having Hope as a Family Counselor
- O: Offering Hope to Hurting Families
- P: Prompting Parents to Tap into God-Given Resources
- E: Encouraging the Family to See Signs of Christ on the Move
Sustaining: “Like Christ, We Care About Each Other’s Hurts”
- L: Looking at Families Through the Lens of Suffering
- O: Observing, Openly Joining, and Orchestrating the Family Dance
- V: Venturing Together Across the Family Chasm
- E: Equipping the Family to Comfort Each Other with Christ’s Comfort
Healing: “Through Christ, It’s Possible for Us to Hope in God Together”
- F: Framing Family Healing Narratives
- A: Applying Our Identity in Christ
- I: Integrating in Our Victory Through Christ
- T: Training in Teamwork on the Family Quest
- H: Honing Homework That Works
Reconciling: “It’s Horrible to Sin Against Christ and Each Other, but Through Christ It’s Wonderful to Be Forgiven and to Forgive”
- R: Recognizing Destructive Family Narratives
- E: Enlightening Family Members to Destructive Family Relationships
- S: Soothing the Family’s Soul in Their Savior
- T: Trust-Making
Guiding: “It’s Supernatural to Love Each Other Like Christ, Through Christ, for Christ”
- P: Putting on Christ’s Wisdom Perspective
- E: Empowering Families to Live in Light of Their Victory in Christ
- A: Activating Application
- C: Coaching Families
- E: Emboldening Families
Join the Conversation
Which approach to biblical family counseling were you taught? Was it individual counseling with each family member? Or, was it connecting the family members and then equipping the parents to be their children’s loving biblical counselor?
