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Theophostic's advocates claim this counseling method can provide rapid and complete "deliverance" from a host of psychological and spiritual ills. Some Christian critics, however, wonder whether Theophostic is another faddish counseling trend that promises more than it can deliver and rests ultimately on unorthodox Christian theology.

At the center of the movement is Ed Smith, founder of Theophostic Ministries (www.theophostic.com), based in Campbellsville, Kentucky. More than 15,000 people have taken his basic Theophostic training, and he estimates that more than 300,000 Christians have received some type of ministry using Theophostic. The approach is being used in 40 countries, and manuals are being translated into four languages.

Smith, with a doctorate in pastoral ministry from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, began full-time professional counseling in the early 1990s after 17 years of ministry in Southern Baptist churches. Working primarily with victims of childhood sexual abuse, he says he grew weary of teaching people to find what he calls "tolerable recovery"—how to cope with their emotional pain rather than how to see it resolved.

"I saw the same women, week after week, and we would go back to the same memories of childhood abuse," Smith says. "They would share with me the shame and guilt they felt in the memory, and I would tell them the truth—it wasn't their fault, et cetera. Somehow, it just wasn't getting through. As we revisited the memories again and again, there was some lessening of the pain, but there was no real healing."

One day, Smith says, "I just gave up. I told the Lord I couldn't do it anymore." Instead of using his more traditional methods with his client that day, Smith simply asked Jesus to come and "speak his truth" to her. Smith says she was set free from her emotional pain for months. He felt he was seeing genuine healing for the first time.

Since that initial success, Theophostic ministry has grown quickly. Seeking a fresh name for this method, Smith coined the term Theophostic from two Greek words, theos for God and phos for light. Smith claims that Theophostic allows God to "shine his light" into the lives of hurting people. Adherents believe that people's current distress is rooted in past painful experiences that exposed them to accepting lies from Satan or his demons. Smith teaches that when a person's body, soul, and spirit can be freed by Jesus' truth from those lies, the distress found in the memory will go away as well.

During a more traditional counseling session, a therapist will explore a client's emotional response to a traumatic memory, and then the two will often discuss together the truth the client needs to embrace, such as "That person no longer has power over me" and "I am not worthless." Over time the client becomes desensitized to the pain and becomes more functional. The client is taught coping techniques for whatever stress remains.

During a counseling session using Theophostic methods, a therapist still takes a client back to the painful memories. Then through dialogue, they identify the lies and false beliefs in question. This is where any similarity to traditional models ends. The counselor then verbally invites Jesus to communicate his truth directly to the client's heart. "It's not the memory that's the problem," Smith says. "It's the lies or beliefs contained in the memory."

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February 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 2