God’s Treasure Map
Note: This is the second in a blog mini-series asking the simple question: Is there a biblical model for spiritual friendship, one-another ministry, biblical counseling, and pastoral counseling?
Read Part One: Spiritual Map Quest.
I’m summarizing these posts from Spiritual Friends. 
Since God does not play games with us, He has not hidden His one-another treasure map from us. Through the pages of Scripture and the halls of Church history, we find our way.
God’s Biblical Counseling Treasure Map in Church History
Several truths summarize God’s treasure map.
• The Church has always been about the business of helping people who are suffering and sinning.
• God’s people have always provided soul care through sustaining and healing hurting people in the midst of suffering (parakaleo for deprivation).
• Spiritual friends have always offered spiritual direction through reconciling and guiding hardened people struggling against sin (noutheteo for depravity).
• The role of the Church has always been to train soul physicians who work in concert with the Holy Spirit to diagnose the condition of the soul, and from there proceed to the personal work of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding souls toward communion with Christ and conformity to Christ.
Four Compass Points on Our Map: Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding
Church historians who have studied the history of biblical counseling have identified four common themes running throughout Christian spiritual care, labeling them: sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. Using these four tasks, they created a profile of historic pastoral care according to the following framework:
• Soul Care: Parakaletic Comfort for Suffering
• Sustaining
• Healing
• Spiritual Direction: Nouthetic Concern for Sinning
• Reconciling
• Guiding
Plotting the Map of Sustaining, Healing, Reconciling, and Guiding
Few contemporary descriptions of the inner life of the Christian congregation during the first three centuries have been preserved. Therefore, Church historians attach special interest and influence to the Didascalia Apostolorum (c. 225/1903). A major portion of this work is a treatise on the office and pastoral function of presbyter. The Didascalia Apostolorum sets forth four analogies for understanding the character and duty of the chief minister of pastoral care. The pastor is to be:
• A shepherd who sustains by partaking of the suffering of the flock—sustaining.
• A physician who heals by mending the wounds of the patient—healing.
• A judge who reconciles relationships by providing discerning rulings—reconciling.
• A parent who guides by giving parent-like direction to the young in the faith—guiding.
Reflecting on these four concepts, Clebsch and Jaekle noted that:
Thus the pastoral office, even as early as the third century, was seen as consisting of the four functions of guiding, sustaining, reconciling, and healing. The far-reaching influence of this early analysis of pastoral care can be measured by reference to modern writings on the subject (Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective, p. 103).
Clebsch and Jaekle further stated that pastoral care or the cure of souls has historically involved:
“Helping acts, done by representative Christian persons, directed toward the healing, sustaining, guiding, and reconciling of troubled persons whose troubles arise in the context of ultimate meanings and concerns” (Clebsch and Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective, p. 4).
Thomas Oden (Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition) suggested that the four tasks:
“Try to absorb and work seriously with a wide variety of confessional and denominational viewpoints on ministry” (p. 10). They try to “reasonably bring all these voices into a centric, historically sensitive integration, with special attention to historical consensus” (p. 10).
The History of the Personal Ministry of the Word
As Church historians have probed the history of the personal ministry of the Word, they have categorized all “people-ministry” using the four tasks of sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. Though different terms were used in different epochs, these historians have found consistent categories, definitions, and descriptions.
The framework of the four tasks provides a perspective—a historical way of viewing and thinking about spiritual friendship, pastoral care, biblical counseling. It is one way to systematically organize what Christians have done throughout Church history to care for people.
The Rest of the Story
I invite you to return for Part 3 where we learn how to provide Biblical Soul Care for Suffering.
Join the Conversation
How does this church history road map of pastoral care, biblical counseling, and one-another ministry compare to your current approach to the personal ministry of the Word?
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