I Love History
I love history. I’ve written three books on the history of Christian soul care. For a quarter-century, I taught the seminary course: The History of Christian Soul Care. If I hadn’t become a pastor-professor-biblical counselor, perhaps I would have been a high school history teacher. I love history.
Normally, I don’t write about current history, or my own history, but today is different. By God’s grace, many people have benefited from and use the Biblical Counseling Coalition’s Confessional Statement. In 2010, as the founding Executive Director of the Biblical Counseling Coalition, I had the honor of facilitating the process of developing the BCC Confessional Statement (CS). (Here’s a link to the PDF version.) Here’s my behind-the-scenes look at the collegial process that led to the BCC CS.
Reviewing the First-Hand History
Early this morning, I spent several hours scouring through the history of our development of the BCC CS. We spent eight months developing ten drafts, with a core team of six members, and a feedback team of fifty biblical counseling leaders, along with consultation from several dozen Evangelical theologians, seminary professors, and pastors, and with feedback from lay and pastoral biblical counselors from around the world.
I have a confession.
“My name is Bob, and I’m an email hoarder.”
I keep all my emails. I’m glad I do, because our recollections can fail us, and our memories can sometimes be false memories, or at the very least, faded memories.
In my Gmail thread labeled BCC CS, I counted 798 emails. Then I quit counting because my eyes were tired! I’m sure we had more than 1,000 email exchanges as we moved from draft stage to final product. In addition, we had scores of phone calls, video conference calls, and in-person meetings. (I also hoard meeting notes, and this morning I reviewed notes from those calls and meetings.)
The Big Picture Process: Humility and Collegiality
From the get-go, we sought to communicate the collegial nature of this project. For example, in a very early email to the CS team, I wrote:
“At the end of the Confessional Statement process, none of us would say, ‘This is exactly how I would have written it.’ Instead, it will be our document—our best attempt to communicate in summary fashion the core of what makes biblical counseling truly biblical.”
In another email, this one to fifty biblical counseling leaders who were providing feedback on an early draft, we wrote:
“As we work on this, let’s remind ourselves that this is no single person’s document. It is not ‘mine;’ it is ‘ours.’ In other words, none of us would likely word this document exactly as it is currently crafted. But that’s not the idea. We are seeking to craft a document that is representative of the core convictions about biblical counseling that all of us share in common.”
Humility and collegiality were vital: “Not my document” (humility). “Our document” (collegiality).
Re-reading eight months of emails from May to December 2010, brought back pleasant memories of the unity expressed in email after email. In browsing over 700 emails, I have not seen any disunity. I joyfully re-read humble, mutual respect!
Now, there was honesty and there was “push-back.” We invited that and honored that. You don’t gather fifty biblical counseling leaders and expect timidity. I was especially encouraged by how many emails specifically expressed how mutually respectful the process was, and how people wrote me to say that they appreciated that they were being humbly heard and responded to.
The Goal
Yes, we wanted to “get along” as we developed the BCC CS. This aligned with our first goal as a coalition: collegial relationships.
But we also had a second BCC goal: robust biblical resources.[i] We wanted the BCC CS to be biblically-sound, theologically-rich, scripturally-saturated, academically-robust, and user-friendly. We wanted to communicate to “the person in the pew,” and to the professor at the lectern, and to the pastor in the pulpit, and to everyone else, what the Bible says about biblical counseling. Read the BCC CS and you will, thankfully, see how scripturally-saturated and theologically-rich it is.
The Step-by-Step Process: From “Straw-Man” to “Going Public”
On May 26, 2010, as the founding Executive Director of the BCC, the Board of Directors (BOD) asked me to facilitate a team of biblical counseling leaders to develop two documents: The BCC Doctrinal Statement (DS), and the BCC CS. I appreciate that they gave me a great deal of freedom and latitude—to select team members, propose a process, and facilitate the development. Because I like accountability, I reported to the BOD often, as their email in-boxes would attest!
- Step 1—Selection of a Team: I had led teams like this many times previously, so I knew the value of selecting a cross-section of leaders. As Chair of the CS team, on May 28, 2010, I personally selected and invited the following team members to join me: Elyse Fitzpatrick, Heath Lambert, Bob Jones, Deepak Reju, Paul Tripp, and Sam Williams. Because of previous time commitments, Elyse Fitzpatrick was unable to accept my invitation. However, Elyse did provide feedback when we sent drafts to fifty biblical counseling leaders. All the other team members accepted my personal invitation. It was a diverse group. For example, you had a well-known, long-term leader in the biblical counseling movement in Paul Tripp. You also had a younger biblical counseling leader in Heath Lambert who was at this time already serving as Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Boyce College and Southern Seminary.
- Step 2—Collating Foundational Documents: Next, we asked biblical counseling leaders for recommendations for foundational biblical counseling documents that we could use so we were not starting from scratch. We ended up collating sixteen different documents, such as David Powlison’s Affirmations and Denials, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Resolution on Biblical Counseling, John Piper’s Toward a Definition of the Essence of Biblical Counseling, Heath Lambert’s Biblical Counseling Confessional Document, Bob Kellemen’s The Future of Biblical Counseling,[ii] CCEF’s Pastoral Care and Counseling Document, Faith Bible Seminary’s Counseling Theory and Practice Statement, and four statements from NANC (now ACBC), including Statement on Sufficiency of Scripture. We determined that no one document should provide the primary foundation. Instead, the Scriptures provided the sufficient foundation.
- Step 3—Facilitate the Collaborative, Collegial Process of Creating a “Straw Man” Document: From my experience in leading groups like this, I knew that we couldn’t send sixteen lengthy documents to fifty busy biblical counseling leaders. Instead, we needed to create a “straw man” document for review. (A “straw man” is a very rough first draft that provides the basis for ongoing interaction and further development.) So, I tasked the six of us as CS committee members with reviewing the sixteen documents from June 2 to June 30, 2010, and then creating a BCC CS straw man document. Throughout June, the six of us emailed, called, and had video conferences. During this time, our little group of six requested that three of us focus on creating the “straw man” draft—Bob Kellemen, Heath Lambert, and Deepak Reju. As Dee, Heath, and I worked together on this, both Heath and I crafted a straw man draft. Deepak emailed Heath and I to share that he thought he and Heath should defer to my draft due to my greater experience in ministry, as a biblical counselor, and as an author. However, I deferred to Heath, and we used his draft as our straw man. The six of us spent a good deal of time engaging in iron-sharpening-iron interactions based on Heath’s draft. Then, the six of us unanimously agreed upon a finalized straw man first draft that we sent to the BCC BOD. (This straw man document became known as Draft 1.0.)
- Step 4—The BCC BOD Provides Robust Feedback on Our Straw Man Draft 1.0: From July 1-14, 2010, I led all members of the BCC founding BOD in interacting with this draft via email, phone calls, and conference calls. Every BOD member was engaged in the process, with David Powlison just slightly more involved than the other BOD members.[iii] After I received feedback from each BOD member, the committee and I worked together to craft Draft 2.0. Again, this morning as I reviewed our email exchanges, it was a joy to see all BOD members and all members of our CS team (Kellemen, Lambert, Jones, Reju, Tripp, and Williams) expressing how pleased they were with the collegial process, and with Draft 2.0.
- Step 5—The “Chicago Group” Provides Their Feedback: In 2009 and 2010, we had three in-person meetings to discuss the launch of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. The largest and longest of those meetings occurred in Chicago on May 3-4, 2010, with fifty biblical counseling leaders. We affectionately called this the “Chicago Group.” We sent Draft 2.0 to the Chicago Group for their feedback. Some of those fifty individuals were very active in providing feedback, such as Martha Peace, Lou Priolo, Stuart Scott, and Mark Shaw, among others. Others of those fifty biblical counseling leaders provided their fair share of feedback. Some of the fifty leaders provided limited feedback, primarily comments like, “Looks good!” “Keep up the great work.” “Thankful for all your hard work.” Initially, and naively, we thought the process of receiving, collating, interacting with, and using their feedback to create a new draft would take just a month—from July 14 to August 14, 2010. We thought we would have a final draft by mid-August. We were naïve. And that’s okay. We received so much good iron-sharpening-iron feedback that our CS Committee needed much more time to interact with it. At times, we emailed or did calls with biblical counseling leaders who provided feedback. We wanted to be sure we were hearing them well and being responsive to their input. For instance, this morning I re-read a long, enjoyable, iron-sharpening email string I had with Lou Priolo. It was well into September before our CS Committee had produced Drafts 3.0 and 4.0. We then sent Draft 4.0 to the BCC BOD for their feedback. In response to their work, we crafted Draft 5.0.
- Step 6—Request and Receive Feedback from the NANC (ACBC) BOD: On September 23, 2010, we sent Draft 5.0 to the NANC (now ACBC) BOD. We requested that they provide feedback to us by the end of the NANC National Conference, the first week of October. During the NANC BOD meeting, the NANC BOD unanimously approved a very generous stipend to help fund the launch of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. During and after the NANC BOD meeting, we received feedback from NANC BOD members with minor suggestions, but also with unanimous positive feedback about the document.
- Step 7—Request and Receive Feedback from Theologians, Professors, Pastors, and Lay Biblical Counselors around the World: Based upon feedback from the NANC BOD members, we updated Draft 5.0 into Draft 6.0. We had been requesting that the “Chicago Group” send us a list of theologians, professors, pastors, and lay biblical counselors to whom we could send a draft of the CS. Among those who received and responded to our request were President Al Mohler of SBTS, President Danny Akin of SEBTS, Pastor John Piper, theology professors from The Master’s Seminary, and many more. Because we wanted the BCC CS to communicate not just to “academics,” but to “the average person in the pew,” we also sent Draft 6.0 to lay biblical counselors. Because we wanted the BCC CS to communicate cross-culturally and not only be a United States document, we sent Draft 6.0 to biblical counseling leaders in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, England, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, and other countries. This feedback led to Drafts 7.0 and 8.0, developed in October and November 2010, all of which we worked on collegiality as a BCC CS Committee and as a BCC BOD.
- Step 8—Request and Receive Feedback from Evangelical Christians Outside the Biblical Counseling Movement: I thought that this step might be the most controversial. However, I could not find a single email where anyone questioned or disagreed with this step. We were not ceding our convictions to non-biblical counselors. However, we knew that if we wanted to make an impact outside the biblical counselor world (which was one of the goals that the “Chicago Group” agreed upon for the Coalition), then we needed to, at the very least, consider how our wording was being heard by those outside the modern biblical counseling movement. Some non-biblical counselors were very positive about the tenor, tone, and content of Draft 8.0. However, some non-biblical counselors provided feedback that suggested we had not changed at all from the tenor and tone of 1970s nouthetic counseling. While reviewing my emails this morning, this was the only time I read negative responses—and it was by those outside the biblical counseling movement. To be honest, this negative feedback was discouraging to me, to our CS Committee, and to our BCC BOD. We believed that we had worked hard to communicate graciously, yet firmly, our convictions. If nothing else, as one BOD member noted, “at least it shows we haven’t given away the farm, or compromised our convictions.” There was another positive result: I was able to have a number of e-conversations and phone conversations with these leaders from outside the biblical counseling world. From reviewing my emails, all the conversations ending up with a mutual respect and appreciation, and with many non-biblical counselors saying, “Reading this document again, after our interactions, I have more appreciation for it now.” We did not create a new draft based upon feedback from non-biblical counselors. However, we did wordsmith a few phrases to assure that we were communicating “well and wisely” as David Powlison always like to say.
- Step 9—Producing a Near-Final Draft (Draft 9.0): With feedback from around the world from biblical counselors, from pastors, from lay leaders, from theologians, from professors, and from non-biblical counselors, we were ready to wordsmith. Our final two drafts were focused on clarity and simplicity of communication. As I noted earlier, we wanted it to be biblically-sound, theologically-rich, scripturally-saturated, academically-robust, and user-friendly. We wanted the BCC CS to be readable. If you have ever crafted a document by committee, then you know how difficult it can be for such an endeavor to result in a readable document. Our entire BCC CS Committee and our entire BCC BOD provided suggestions. Then, Deepak Reju and David Powlison recommended that I do the final wordsmithing. At the same time, we sent Draft 8.0 to several professional editors. By the end of November, we had Draft 9.0 completed.
- Step 10—Finalizing, Distributing, and “Going Public” with the BCC Confessional Statement: By the end of November and into December of 2010, we were ready to finalize the BCC Confessional Statement with Draft 10.0! After final wordsmithing, editing, and formatting, we began sending The Biblical Counseling Coalition Confessional Statement to various churches and organizations in the US and beyond. We were thrilled to hear of churches and para-church organizations requesting if they could post the BCC CS on their website. Many asked if they could use it as the foundational document for their biblical counseling ministry. Still others asked if they could have permission to translate it into their language. We had to ask many eager folks to wait until we published the CS before they published it! We were racing to complete our BCC website and get the BCC CS posted before others posted it on their sites. (Our Biblical Counseling Coalition website would not launch until February 1, 2011). By the end of 2010, The Biblical Counseling Coalition Confessional Statement was completed. On February 1, 2011, we “went public” with our collegially-developed Biblical Counseling Coalition Confessional Statement.
Final Thoughts: To the Glory of Christ!
In my 40+ years of ministry, I’ve been blessed with so many wonderful memories. Perhaps one of my fondest ministry memories is the collegial process of co-creating the Biblical Counseling Coalition Confessional Statement.
It was fun and encouraging this morning to re-read so many of the e-strings, and to hear how well we all respectfully and humbly related to each other. No one was trying to say, “Mine!” Everyone was seeking to say, “Ours…to the glory of Christ!”
Notes
[i]At the “Chicago Meeting” May 3-4, 2009, fifty biblical counseling leaders coalesced around the twin focus of collegial relationships and robust resources. We agreed that we would meet once a year in person to build supportive, respectful iron-sharpening relationships. We also agreed that we would work together to develop robust resources, which included blog posts, book reviews, and free resources. At the Chicago Meeting, Paul Tripp floated the idea, and the fifty attendees agreed, that the combined “fire power” of the fifty biblical counseling leaders would coalesce around co-written books. Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God’s Changeless Truth, was the first of three such books co-written by dozens of biblical counseling leaders. Even each chapter was co-written. I reviewed emails today in a separate string of more than 1,000 emails! I was, again, encouraged by how biblical counseling leaders expressed that relationships were strengthened as they worked together to co-author chapters. At the May 3-4, 2009 meeting, everyone also humbly and sacrificially agreed that chapter authors would defer any payment, with all profits going directly toward the self-support of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. Chapter authors were given written approval to use their chapters in other published booklets and books. This was not easy to convince our publishers to do, as it is totally contrary to what occurs in the publishing industry. As the BCC Executive Director, and as the person in charge of negotiating the book contracts, I can attest to how a-typical this was, and to the many conversations I had with publishers to gain this unique approval on behalf of each of our chapter authors.
[ii] I was encouraged this morning when I re-read my brother, Heath Lambert’s, email to me on June 19, 2010, after he had read my document, The Future of Biblical Counseling. Heath shared: “I’m taking some time to read through all of these confessional documents. I just finished reading yours and wanted to write and let you know how wonderful I thought it was. It made me thankful to the Lord for the opportunity of working with you. As I was thanking God for that privilege it occurred to me that I should not only share that with him, but with you as well.”
[iii]Throughout the Confessional Statement development process, David Powlison’s primary areas of focus were the biblical counseling approach to: 1.) science and research, 2.) body and soul, and 3.) common grace. For example, in a September 30, 2010 email interaction between David and I, David addressed each concern. “We need to debunk stereotypes particularly about psych research and common grace…. We must address the problem of bifurcating body and soul.” Specifically related to the body/soul issue, David remarked, “I’ve attached another short meditation on the problem of bifurcating body and soul problems, and the neglect of social-experiential factors in the obsession with body and soul. You and I are on the same page on this issue, too.” Concerning all three issues (the biblical counseling perspective on science/research, body/soul, and common grace), David said (with all caps and exclamation points), “Bob, I can’t tell you how heartily I ‘AMEN and AMEN!’ your concerns here.” In his email attachment, David shared further, including, “To delimit the scope of counseling to non-organic problems obscures how counseling is intimately involved in the organic…. People’s problems always come socially-embedded as well as physically-embodied. Counseling is different from both medicine and social welfare, but it is not disconnected from either. So, in defining the scope of counseling ministry, we must work against a tidy bifurcation between body and soul, and we must throw all the variables of the social setting into the mix.” David’s concluding words in his email were prescient/prophetic. “The [mis]perceptions on these issues are linked with a problem far thornier than accurate framing of the intellectual issues: clannishness, factiousness, haughty eyes, suspiciousness… etc. But clearer framing of the issues is certainly a help. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, kyrie eleison.”
