A Pastor's Heart

1 Thessalonians 3:8 For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord.

8 ὅτι νῦν ζῶμεν ἐὰν ὑμεῖς στήκετε ἐν κυρίῳ.

There isn't a lot of devotional material in this chapter.  However, I do think that it shows us what a pastor's heart should look like.  Paul decided that it was more important to get news about the Thessalonians than it was to enjoy Timothy's company.  He sent Timothy to get word about them.  This was how Paul expressed his feelings about their church.  Their steadfastness was obviously very important to him.  ζῶμεν is a present active indicative verb.  It seems that the ESV translates this perfectly.

When I read this I think back to my time at Setting Captives Free.  When I started working as a mentor I think that this verse pretty well described how I felt.  But as I proved myself faithful I got more work piled on me.  Eventually I was working with so many guys that I was basically just processing them.  I couldn't really counsel them and, therefore, I stopped caring.  I just wanted to see them get through the course.  I stopped following-up with them and really didn't even notice when they disappeared.

It seems terrible to look back on it that way.  It's not the fault of Setting Captives Free either.  There just simply was not enough time to work with all the men who came through.  But I think back to those early days and I miss that.  I would love to get into a ministry where I could actually work with people.  We'll see if that happens.

Being Nouthetic

Romans 15:14
(14) I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.

This was one of my memory verses in my counseling class last year. I take this as quite an encouragement for the nouthetic method. What Paul is saying here is that the people have the Holy Spirit and have been instructed in the Truth. Therefore, they can help one another grow. The word translated instruct here is "noutheo," which is where we get the term "nouthetic counseling."

Take heart you believers! Scripture is sufficient to help one another. Obviously we do need to handle it correctly, but we can trust that God is true to His Word. What gets me is that so many well-meaning teachers have a "defer and refer" approach to counseling. They think that the Bible is sufficient for everything except for issues of the mind. Our litigious society has helped with that too.

It seems to me that back in the day if someone had problems that person would talk to his minister, priest, or rabbi for advice. Now we feel like we have to go to a "professional." Of course, the counter-argument is that we don't go to the shaman for medical advice anymore. This is true. The big difference is that medicine is much more of a hard science. If someone has diabetes then insulin will help that. But if someone is depressed is the right answer to medicate?

I know that this is an old rant for those who are long-time readers of my blog. However, I also know that there are a lot of you who are anonymous, so I thought I'd bring it up again. I'd love to have interaction in the comments about this.

Parenting Seminar

I found the seminar taught by Dr. Stuart Scott to be very helpful and encouraging. I left it with a few takeaways. Specifically, I need to remember that it is not my job to save my children. It is my job to be faithful and it is God's job to save them if it is His will to do so. I think that we naturally have this idea that our children merit God's grace. I know that a part of me thinks like that. However, I know that is no more true for them than it is for me. It is pretty clear that they are sinners who need grace. I pray that God would save them.

There was a challenging aspect to the seminar as well. He raised a good question about prayer. Should children offer petitions to God? It's easy for me to scoff at the unrepentant sinner who prays for God to get them a job, a girlfriend, or through a hangover ("I'll never do this again!"). What is the difference between that and my daughter praying for something or someone? I think a lot of it has to do with how you view Jesus' command to allow the little ones to come to Him. Was He just talking about infants or was He talking about kids? If He was talking about children then where does the so-called "age of accountability" come in to the play? When is it no longer for a child to offer petitions to God?

I don't know if I completely agree with him on this. Lily is a prayer warrior and I really admire that about her. She has a childlike faith. However, I'm not sure that she really understands the gospel. It's so hard to say with someone so young, even if she does seem to be beyond her years sometimes. It is good for her to be in the habit of praying. Every night we give thanks to God for some things and we tell God that we're sorry for what we've done wrong. I think these are good habits.

At any rate, it's all good food for thought. I do know that I am going to keep preaching the gospel to my children as well as to myself. We all need reminders frequently, amen?

Counseling Conference

I just finished day 2 of the IABC conference here in Easley, SC. So far I have found it to be more edifying than the conference I went to in Denver in 2005. The theme of the conference has been on relationships by the book. Last night we had a general session that talked about the progression that Adam and Eve had in committing the first sin and how we go through the same progression. The cure? Knowing and loving God's Word.

This morning I got to share my testimony and then we had a session about divorce and about how God hates it. It's interesting that the ESV does not have the same impact in its translation of Mal 2:16 as the NASB or the NIV. I'll have to ask Randy about that one. The second session was about remarriage and how it often happens when people have not been divorced for biblical reasons. It's not an unpardonable sin, but as pastors we need to examine that.

The workshops have been OK. I attended one last night on how to counsel someone with cancer. The key thing is to point to God's goodness. God may heal the person or not, but He is always good and He always does good, even when it doesn't feel like it. I went to a workshop about marriage that a friend of mine led. It was a good reminder of what marriage is supposed to look like and that it is a covenant, not a contract. The last workshop I attended was about preparing children for the world. The main thing I got from that is to model godly behavior and to look for teaching opportunities in everything.

The highlight has been the parenting seminar taught by Dr. Stuart Scott. My life and marriage have been shaped by his book The Exemplary Husband. Tonight's two sessions were about our children's salvation. He offered us a great encouragement from Isa 1:2 that God parented children, but they turned from Him. If children can turn from the perfect parent then they can turn from us too. Our job is to be faithful in raising our children. It's God's job to save them if it is His will to do so. I need to certainly pray hard for that and that reminds me of the need for that. My anchor must be in my savior, not my children's performance. It has to be all for God's glory.

I hope to write more tomorrow after the two sessions. If they're as good as these two were then I will certainly be blessed.

Struggling for the Gospel

I do apologize for not posting more lately. Amanda was sick last Thursday and I spent the day with the kids. I was sick last Friday. Then there was the weekend and catching up. Here is a verse to contemplate:

Col 1:28-29
(28) Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
(29) For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

Let's break this down a little bit. First, we see the need to proclaim Christ. That means that we need to be talking about Him and sharing Him with people. What is part of the message? We are warning people and teaching people with all wisdom. While I do think that the gospel is much more than eternal fire insurance, the warning of eternal condemnation must be part of the message. We have to do this with wisdom. To me, that means we must know our Bibles. We also must exercise care in how we communicate our message to people.

Why do we do this? Paul wanted to present the Colossians mature in Christ. That means that this is not just sharing the gospel to unbelievers, but also helping believers grow in faith as well. I think that this is big part of the "teaching" he refers to. The message from the pulpit, the counselor, or just the Christian friend should be one of helping each other grow in Christ. I think that starts with Scripture. We have to know what it says and then we need to prayerfully apply it.

The image of "toil" is powerful to me. I know that many a minister has been burnt out because the ministry was not done with the energy that Christ powerfully works within us. If we do this on our own we will fail. It will simply be labor and we cannot do it any more than we can keep moving stacks of firewood indefinitely without some external nourishment in the form of food and water.

This is one of my memory verses for Biblical counseling. I hope that you enjoyed thinking through this with me.

What Matters Most

We're to the last chapter in the counseling book edited by MacArthur. The chapter is really a FAQ about biblical counseling with questions like, "Aren't biblical counselors cold, unfeeling, and mean?" There was a comment in a question about doctrine that really piqued my interest. The comment was that biblical counselors are not concerned about ecclesiology or eschatology.

This really struck home with me. Those are two issues I haven't thought much about. I guess that the method of church government is a big deal in some baptistic circles, but I don't pay it much mind. I still haven't come to any conclusions about eschatology. All the views seem to have some merit. I'm afraid that is one where it comes down to which teachers we trust.

At any rate, neither one of these has factored much into my work with SCF. I have been interested in harmatiology and soteriology, but church government and end times don't really get me that excited. I think that churches must have some structure where the pastor is accountable to some governing body. I also think that we must rejoice in the hope of Christ's triumphant return. There are times when I would certainly like to get raptured away, but I am not counting on it.

Let's focus on the gospel. The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things, amen?

Focusing on the Essentials

I have to do response papers from my reading for my Biblical Counseling class. What we do is pick a sentence from our reading and expound on how it applies to our personal lives and to our personal ministries. This has been pretty easy for me since I have so much time invested with SCF.

This week I'm going to write on the statement that biblical counselors do not all have to agree on ecclesiological or eschatological issues. Amen to that! While I do think that doctrine is important, I would rather have a Wesleyan who denies the value of psychology talk to someone than a Calvinist who thinks that we need to have other "truth" brought to bear.

I'm sure glad that eschatology isn't important. If it was then I would have to make a decision about what I believe...

What We're Up Against

I had my Biblical Counseling class last night. We continued talking about how Systematic Theology affects counseling. It was actually very interesting as I had a hard time thinking of too many practical applications when I was taking Systematic.

The last 10 minutes were probably the best as we clarified what we mean by being anti-psychology. In fact, I kept thinking about the linguistics book that we're reading for Greek class. The word "psychology" has become packed with meaning. The distinction that helped me was to say that we are fighting against any counseling practice built on humanistic theories. For example, Rogerian psychology offers no answers, but just helps the patient find the answers from within his own goodness. Of course, this stands in stark contrast to the biblical view of man. We need to fight the influence of that kind of thinking in the church.

However, there is nothing wrong with something like educational psychology that seeks to understand how best to teach children. There is nothing wrong with industrial psychology that seeks to study what practices help people get the most productivity out of their time. And so on. What we need to be careful about it is anything that seeks to treat the "inner man" or the "heart" as Scripture calls it.

It is always good to go back to the gospel, amen?

Core Elements of Biblical Counseling

Here are the seven core elements as proposed by Jay Adams:

1. God is at the center of counseling
2. Commitment to God has epistemological consequences
3. Sin, in all its dimensions is the primary problem counselors must deal with
4. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the answer
5. The biblical change process which counseling must aim at is progressive sanctification
6. The situational difficulties people face are not the random cause of problems in living.
7. Counseling is fundamentally a pastoral activity and must be church-based

I imagine that many who read this blog might think that this is an over-simplistic view of the problems man faces. However, I've worked with Setting Captives Free for too long not to believe in the truth of these elements.

The key, I think, is how we communicate the timeless truths of Scripture to those who need to hear them. I am firmly convinced that these elements are correct, though of course there are times of doubt. However, I also know that if these elements are not true I would have to throw out a lot of what I believe. That of course does not make anything true or false, but if I am really sure about other beliefs then that helps to cement what I believe about this.

Biblical Counseling

I started doing some reading for the semester yesterday. I'm excited about my Foundations of Biblical Counseling class. We have to read one book by MacArthur and another for which he wrote the foreword.

There is a part of me that still questions the nouthetic model. I guess that is the pragmatist in me. I know that drugs will often produce results right away, and they are often OK. Of course, there are tragic exceptions as well. I wonder about diagnoses of schizophrenia as well as bipolar. How can we counsel someone when that person is not rational?

I am thoroughly convinced of the problems with psychology. I do believe it is a competing gospel. I think this is an area where my faith will have to stretch a little bit. I'll keep you posted.