On my birthday—August 1, 2021—New Growth Press will release my latest book: Consider Your Counsel: Addressing Ten Mistakes in Our Biblical Counseling.

• For free resources related to the book, click here.

• To pre-order a copy of Consider Your Counsel, click here.

Folks like you who read my blog know that I typically focus on a positive presentation of the sufficiency of Scripture for biblical counseling, one-another ministry, and daily Christian living.

So, why write a book about mistakes in biblical counseling? Fair question.

That’s why in today’s post I’m sharing the Introduction to Consider Your Counsel—where you’ll learn my motivation for writing about addressing 10 mistakes in our biblical counseling.

But first, what’s in the book? Check out the Table of Contents to see what those 10 mistakes are.

Table of Contents for Consider Your Counsel 

Introduction: A Word from Bob

Mistake #1: We Elevate Data Collection above Soul Connection

Mistake #2: We Share God’s Eternal Story before Listening to People’s Earthly Story

Mistake #3: We Talk at Counselees Rather Than Exploring Scripture with Counselees

Mistake #4: We Target Sin but Diminish Suffering

Mistake #5: We Fail to Follow the Trinity’s Model of Comforting Care

Mistake #6: We View People One-Dimensionally Instead of Comprehensively

Mistake #7: We Devalue Emotions Instead of Seeing Emotions as God’s Idea

Mistake #8: We Minimize the Complexity of the Body-Soul Interconnection

Mistake #9: We Maximize Sin while Minimizing Grace

Mistake #10: We Confuse the Sufficiency of Scripture with the Competency of the Counselor

Conclusion: 40 Biblical Counseling Self-Assessment Questions

Introduction: A Word from Bob 

Consider Your Counsel began when several biblical counseling students who had been under my supervision asked my thoughts on common themes, threads, and patterns I detected as a counseling supervisor. They were specific:

“We’re not asking about all the ‘good stuff’ we do as biblical counselors. We’re interested in the consistent areas where you sense a need for growth.”

Because it’s a passion of mine to encourage biblical counselors who are looking for ways to grow, their question intrigued me. And, since I’m a collator of patterns, their request sent me back to my supervisory notes. The result is this book.

Encouragement, Not Critique  

My only hesitation in collating these ten mistakes into book form is that I do not want to foster a negative perception of the modern biblical counseling movement. I’m a big fan of biblical counseling and biblical counselors. I’m a biblical counselor. I’ve invested over thirty years into providing biblical counseling, equipping biblical counselors, and supervising biblical counselors.

It was one of the greatest joys of my ministry life to be the founding Executive Director of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. The vast majority of the content I’ve written in more than 2,500 blog posts, more than 150 published articles, and more than twenty books and booklets focuses on a positive presentation of biblical counseling and Christian living.

That said, there’s something very healthy and humble about a movement self-assessing, self-critiquing, and self-correcting—biblically, wisely, collaboratively, and graciously. Indeed, the modern biblical counseling movement was launched with the concept of confronting out of concern for change. And biblical counseling is well known for self-counsel and self-confrontation. So it would be unusual for us as biblical counselors not to consider our counseling individually and collaboratively.

Rather than focusing on critique, this book highlights tendencies I’ve noticed in the thousands of biblical counselors I’ve trained and the hundreds of biblical counselors I’ve supervised over the past thirty years. These include laypeople in four churches, pastors, counselors, Bible college students, and seminary students in over a dozen schools (as a professor and as an adjunct/visiting professor). My supervisees also include experienced counselors and mature pastors who have requested additional counseling supervision. I poured over my supervision notes asking:

What patterns, themes, and threads of blind spots do I detect in rookie and veteran biblical counselors—myself included—that we need to address so we can become more competent counselors?

Although I’ve been providing biblical counseling for thirty-five years, I have made these mistakes. Even “seasoned” biblical counselors can benefit from a course correction. We are wise to regularly self-assess and to have others speak into our practice of biblical counseling. My heart behind sharing these ten observations is to encourage all of us to continue to deepen and develop as biblical counselors. Biblical counselors are well known for emphasizing progressive sanctification—ongoing growth in Christ. We can think of this book as part of that iron-sharpening-iron process of progressively growing together as biblical counselors. 

Drawing Positives Out of Negatives 

When I supervise counselors, I spend a good deal of time affirming the positives I see. For instance, “That was great how you interacted there. Keep doing more of that!” or “Wow! That was amazing how you connected Scripture to life there. What biblical insights led you to pursue that helpful direction?”

Even if I detect weaknesses or “mistakes,” my aim in discussing them is to help counselors-in-training to mature. For instance, “Your interaction there seems a tad off track in this specific way. . . . Let’s talk about what might have been going on there. What way of thinking about counseling might have led to that interaction? And let’s ponder what you—and I—could learn from this.”

Supervision in Writing

That’s the plan in addressing these ten common counseling mistakes—growing together. You’ll note that I’ll spend less time highlighting the mistake and most of my time devoted to describing a biblical alternative and what a more biblical approach might look like. Think of this book as supervision by writing. My chief desire in crafting this material is that it would be an encouraging refresher tool for us as biblical counselors.

A final word before we start addressing these common mistakes: this list does not attempt to say everything that could be said about the essence of helpful biblical counseling. For more on biblical counseling theology, see Gospel-Centered Counseling. For more on biblical counseling methodology, see Gospel-Conversations.

Let’s begin learning together—from our mistakes. Let’s keep learning and growing into more mature biblical counselors who speak and live God’s truth in love.