Should Pastors Counsel?
Yes, pastors are considered qualified to counsel, but it's crucial to understand the distinctions between pastoral care, pastoral counselling, and professional counselling.
Here's a breakdown based on the provided sources:
Distinction between Pastoral Care and Professional Counselling
◦ Pastoral care is fundamentally about the heart. It involves demonstrating empathy, care, kindness, and being a listening ear, often simply walking alongside someone without necessarily having to fix their problems. Anyone can offer pastoral care.
◦ Counselling, particularly professional counselling, involves a framework of expertise and utilises "specific technical qualifications and modalities" or precise, technique-oriented methods. A good counsellor is understood to possess a "pastoral heart" alongside their professional skill set.
Pastors' Qualifications and Role in Counselling
◦ A good pastor should be able to counsel and possess strong "soft skills", which are indicated by the biblical qualifications for eldership.
◦ For a church community to grow and scale, it's considered important for pastors to train laypeople in pastoral care, rather than undertaking all care themselves. This helps manage the significant demands on pastors, who can easily become "burned out" due to a lack of boundaries.
When Professional Intervention is Needed
◦ The human person is viewed holistically – as "whole people, heart, soul, mind and strength" – making it difficult to precisely diagnose whether a struggle is primarily spiritual, mental, or emotional, as these areas often overlap.
◦ The key is to triage the primary underlying issue:
▪ If the struggle is predominantly a spiritual issue (e.g., a wrestle with God, a misunderstanding of the Bible), it generally falls within a pastor's territory.
▪ However, if symptoms of depression, anxiety, or relationship issues are present, a more precise counselling or psychological model may be needed. For example, clinical anxiety might stem from "genuinely misfiring neural pathways in the brain" or "chemical imbalances" rather than just a "lack of wisdom," requiring a different approach. It's important for a professional to differentiate between clinical anxiety and other forms of worry, as simply telling someone to "stop worrying" can be unhelpful.
Integration of Faith and Spirituality in Pastoral Counselling
◦ Faith and spirituality are deeply integrated into biblical counselling.
◦ Prayer is a welcome and permitted part of sessions if the client desires it, and this applies to psychologists, relationship counsellors, and spiritual counsellors.
◦ Scripture is used to engage with fundamental theological "paradigms," rather than unhelpfully applying "out-of-context Bible verses". This involves exploring concepts such as:
▪ Identity: What the scriptures say about who the individual is.
▪ Character of God: Understanding God as a loving Heavenly Father, and discerning what clients are functionally believing in their heart versus their confessional theology (what they claim to believe). This allows for honest exploration of feelings like anger or perceived punishment without condemnation.
▪ Worldview: Examining how a client's beliefs about the world and suffering impact their relationships and perception of difficulties, with the aim of replacing unhelpful beliefs with a more biblical understanding.
▪ Redemptive Story: Helping clients view their suffering and difficulties as part of a "redemptive story," instilling hope "because God is good," which acts as a powerful "counter voice" to anxiety and stress.
◦ Spiritual disciplines like Christian meditation are considered a "biblical idea" that helps reorient "the pathways of our brain through thought". Unlike other forms of meditation, Christian meditation focuses on "emptying to always to refill with what is good and noble and pure," slowing down thought patterns, and challenging inconsistencies with biblical truths by focusing on God. Prolonged prayer is also seen as a form of Christian meditation.
Support for Pastors and Ministry Leaders
◦ It is crucial for pastors and ministry leaders to have confidential spaces to seek their own counsel. As individuals who often identify as givers, they may struggle to receive help themselves. Services like Life to the Full offer this resource, with many pastors as clients seeking relationship counselling or psychology.
◦ It's essential for pastors to have a network of friends and family outside the church they are pastoring to allow for frank and confidential conversations without fear of "he said and she said" scenarios. Ultimately, pastors are humans and can benefit from professional help just like any other Christian.
Ready to take this important step?
Contact Life to the Full today to learn more and schedule your sessions.