How Do You Help a “Psychologized” Church? 

I recently read a guest blog post by Rob Rodriguez at Jonathan Okinaga’s Soul Care Network site. Rob blogged about How Do You Help a “Psychologized” Church?

Here’s the gist of Rob’s article. He was seeking to lead a biblical counseling ministry in a church where many, including the senior pastor, were not necessarily aligned with a biblical counseling mindset. Here’s a noteworthy quote from Rob’s article:

“At our church, our senior pastor not too long ago gave a sermon recounting his experience with anxiety and stress, and his journey in seeking the guidance of “mental-health” professionals and medication. He openly admitted they helped. I cringed through the entire message.”

Thus the title of my post today: When Biblical Counselors and Their Church Don’t See Eye-to-Eye. Or, to state it in question form:

What do we do when not everyone in our church aligns with biblical counseling?

As someone who has spent four decades equipping churches to become churches of biblical counseling, and not just a church with biblical counseling, this is quite the relevant issue for me.

So, I read with interest Rob’s blog. Some of it resonated with me. Some of it caused me to pause and reflect…and ask some questions…

I’ve forwarding this post to Jon, who I know, and he is forwarding the post to Rob, who I do not know. I write this in the hopes that Rob, Jon, and I could engage in a public conversation that might help all of us in the biblical counseling movement to ponder:

How do we relate to fellow church members who might not align with our biblical counseling convictions?

Where I Resonate with Rob and Jon 

Here’s what I would write to Rob and Jon about areas where I resonate with their article… 

Jon and Rob,

Thanks for your article about a psychologized church. Thanks for sharing your experience with seeking to move your church to a church of biblical counseling. I’ve spent 40 years seeking to help churches do the same, so I respect your ministry endeavors.

From my work in Equipping Biblical Counselors: A Guide to Discipling Believers for One-Another Ministry, I especially resonated with your call to “recognize the need for competent care.” We all seek to disciple God’s people to gain the one-another competency that God requires. “I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge, and competent to counsel one another” (Romans 15:14). (For equipping in twenty-two biblical counseling competencies, see, Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ.)

From my work on Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives, I also resonate with your call to correct this false mindset:

“Our minds were set on spreading the gospel of biblical counseling, rather than the Gospel.”

Christ’s gospel of grace must be central in all our public and private ministry of the Word.

Your post raises a very important, and I suspect, very common issue.

What happens in a church where some leaders/members are committed to biblical counselor and other leaders/members are not committed to biblical counseling?

In Equipping Biblical Counselors, I sought to address this:

• In chapter 1, by talking about a vision for one-another ministry.
• In chapter 2, by discussing how we diagnose the heart health of our congregation.
• In chapter 3, by sharing how we craft a vision for biblical counseling.
• In chapter 4, by identifying how we cast that vision to the entire church.

Perhaps chapter 5 was most important in this process, as it discusses “Shepherding the Transformation: Cultivating a Climate for Ongoing Ownership.” In other words, how do we lovingly, patiently address what some have called “change management”? As my chapter title suggests, I prefer the biblical concept of “shepherding the transformation.”

So, again, thanks for raising this issue in your public post—what do we do when not everyone in our church aligns with biblical counseling? Or, put another way,

How do biblical counselors relate to fellow church members who are suspicious about biblical counseling? 

Where I Have Some Reflection Questions for Rob and Jon 

Here’s what I would write to Rob and Jon about areas where Rob’s post raised reflection questions for me. 

Jon and Rob,

As I read your post, I had some reflections and questions. I have especially pondered this quote from Rob’s article:

“At our church, our senior pastor not too long ago gave a sermon recounting his experience with anxiety and stress, and his journey in seeking the guidance of “mental-health” professionals and medication. He openly admitted they helped. I cringed through the entire message.”

Reflection: If my senior pastor shared about his anxiety and stress, my first response would be to pray for him. My second response would be to respect his vulnerability and to thank him for it, the first chance I had to do so.

Question: I’m curious about your use of quotation marks around “mental health” professionals? Some people describe those as “scare quotes” which imply a derogatory, negative attitude toward the term. Could you briefly describe your assessment of the term mental health professionals?

Questions: Your senior pastor openly admitted that mental health professionals and medication helped his anxiety. I’m curious:

• Why do you think they helped him with his anxiety?
• Did you ask your senior pastor how mental health professionals and medication helped him?
• Did you ask your pastor what he meant by help?

Questions: You said you were cringing through the entire message, and you specifically mentioned medication for anxiety.

• Could you share why were you cringing at the idea of medication for anxiety?
• Do you believe medication for anxiety (or depression or bi-polar or schizophrenia) would never be appropriate and always be something to cringe at?

Reflection: ACBC Fellow, Dr. Bob Somerville, in his excellent book, If I’m a Christian, Why Am I Depressed? Finding Meaning and Hope in the Dark Valley: One Man’s Journey, acknowledges using psychotropic medication for his depression, says his biblical counselor agreed, and says his fellow faculty members in the Biblical Counseling department at the Master’s University agreed. (Note: See also, When a Biblical Counselor Battles Depression.)

Questions: I wonder how Dr. Somerville’s choices and your pastor’s choices might compare.

• Do you think we should we cringe over Dr. Somerville’s use of psychotropic medication?
• If not, could you help me (and others) to understand why you cringed at your pastor’s comment about being helped by psychotropic medication (and mental health professionals)?

Reflection: You noted that you have a biblical counseling ministry in that church. This is wonderful. You also noted that,

“Our church still does not fully trust us with ‘hard’ cases, and I am not sure they ever will.”

You also said that after three years,

“We are grateful to be now somewhere in the middle of their resource list, rather than a handwritten footnote labeled as ‘last resort.’”

If that were me, and my senior pastor and my church did not fully trust our biblical counseling ministry with hard cases, and after three years still had their doubts, rather than cringe at the church or at the pastor, I might engage in some self-reflection questions…

Questions: I might ask, and I wonder if you and your team have asked:

• What might we be doing as a biblical counseling ministry that might be discouraging our pastor and our church from trusting us?
• What might we be communicating about anxiety and other hard cases that might be discouraging our pastor and church from referring to us?
• Where might we need to change?
• What self-counsel/self-confrontation and change might we need to do as a biblical counseling ministry in order to gain the trust of our senior pastor and of our congregation?

Reflection: When speaking of limitations of a psychologized church, you said,

“When limitations are acknowledged with humility and met with a commitment to God’s Word, they become opportunities for growth and faithfulness rather than excuses for inaction.”

Questions: I might ask, and I wonder if you asked:

• How could we apply that quote about acknowledging limitations and humility to our biblical counseling ministry?
• How could our team acknowledge with humility any limitations in our competency to provide effective embodied-soul care to someone struggling with anxiety?
• How could our team acknowledge with humility any limitations in the level of compassion that we demonstrate to someone struggling with anxiety?

Reflection: As I read your post, I couldn’t help but wonder what your senior pastor would think if he read your post, especially if he read about you publicly saying you cringed throughout his message.

Questions: So, I wonder…

• Has your senior pastor read this blog post?
• If so, what are his thoughts about the blog post?
• If your senior pastor were to write a follow-up post, what might he say?
• Has he now rejected mental health professionals and medication, or is his mindset much the same as it was three years ago?
• How has his perspective on your biblical counseling ministry changed in the past three years?

Reflection: I mentioned earlier that when I’ve equipped congregations in biblical counseling, I’ve sought to shepherd the transformation by cultivating a climate for ongoing ownership—where we help everyone see the beauty of the transforming power of the gospel. (See chapters 1-6 of Equipping Biblical Counselors for the types of relational shepherding processes I suggest.)

Questions: I think it would help people to hear more about the process you’ve used over the past three years to shepherd the transformation in your church.

• What have the conversations been like between you and your senior pastor about meeting counseling needs in your church? About mental health professionals? About psychotropic medications? About the competency of the biblical counseling team?
• How have you sought to help your senior pastor, other church leaders, and church members to begin to see the beauty of the transforming power of gospel-centered counseling?
• During the process, how have you and your team acknowledged a humble willingness to learn from your senior pastor and other mature, wise church leaders?

Thanks again for writing this post and sharing your experience with seeking to move your church to a church of biblical counseling. I would be happy to post on my blog site any thoughts you have about my reflections, or any responses you have to my questions.

A Word from Bob 

I believe it is legitimate to think about psychologized counselees and psychologized churches. In 1996, David Powlison wrote, How Do You Help a “Psychologized Counselee”?  He discussed biblical counseling with a counselee who views their problems through primarily psychological categories—a “psychologized” counselee.

I also believe there are “biblicized” counselee. I wrote about that in 2024:

Counseling the “Biblicized” Counselee.

By “biblicized, I mean the counselee who has mistaken ideas about what the Bible actually teaches about Christian living, Christlikeness, and the process of change. These mistaken beliefs are often influenced, sadly, by our modern Christian culture, and even by our secular world, more than by biblical truth.

So, as biblical counselors, in addition to thinking about how to help a psychologized church, we may also want to think about how to help a biblicized counselee or a biblicized church…

Join the Conversation 

1. For you, would it be cringe-worthy if your pastor said mental health professionals and medication helped him with his anxiety? Why or why not?

2. What would you be thinking if your pastor said in a sermon that his anxiety was helped by medication and by seeing a mental health professional?

3. How would you respond and relate if you had a biblical counseling ministry in your church, and your senior pastor was not supportive of it?

4. How would you help a church to transition toward a biblical counseling approach to pastoral care and one-another ministry?

5. If you’ve been in a church that transitioned to biblical counseling, how did you seek to lovingly, graciously, humbly, patiently, and wisely shepherd the transformation?

Note: The featured image for today’s post originated here.