We hear a great deal today about the pressure on the church for counseling. As a layman, I am often approached personally for counsel, and I’ve come to a number of conclusions about making it effective.
Probe for the True Motive
The first thing I want to know when someone comes to me is motive. Why are they really there? Are they coming for counsel, or just for contact? Some people come supposedly for advice, but it’s just their way of getting reassurance. Others want reinforcement for their own ideas, not counsel that can help them face their problems.
For instance, a young man walked into my office one Saturday morning as I was trying to finish off the week’s work. He hadn’t made an appointment; he just walked in and said, “I want to tell you about myself.” I felt it was my Christian responsibility to listen for at least a bit, but all he did for an hour was emotionally vomit, and I sensed he had no desire to do anything more.
I was thoroughly frank with him. “It seems to me you’re more anxious to castigate your parents than to solve your problems.” The next Saturday morning, he walked in again and repeated his performance. I asked, “Specifically, what have you done since last Saturday to solve your problem?” He replied, “Well, I’ve done nothing because of my mother and father.” Here was a man in his thirties who had done nothing in seven days to solve his problem other than pour out his bile all over me. Now, this is the only time in my life I’ve ever done this, but I reached over and picked up a New Testament, put it into his hand, and said, “Read it. The whole thing. Don’t come back to this office until you’ve read it cover to cover. When you’ve read it, I’ll be glad to talk to you again.” He never returned, and I’m sure he went all over town telling people what a poor Christian Smith was-because that would sure beat reading the Bible.
I believe I have a responsibility to probe what price a person is willing to pay for help. To me, this is where you put faith and works together. If you’re not willing to put effort into it and pay a price, you don’t want help, you simply want someone to commiserate.
Personally, I’m not in the commiserating business, I’m in the problem-solving business. Each counselor has to decide what he or she does best. In my case, I don’t find that just listening to problems proves helpful to anyone.
I see a lot of people trying to do indirect counseling who are inept at it. They’ve read somewhere that indirect counseling is effective, so they don’t give an opinion, only passively listen. Maybe this works for some people, but I can’t imagine being helped by just talking to someone. I may feel better, but if I have a problem, I need some help toward a solution.
There are many forms of good counseling, but simply trying to make people feel better can mitigate against objectivity. The major reason the Mayo Clinic is so effective is because it’s thoroughly objective. Now, the first time you go to Mayo, you feel like you’re a numbered steer in a cattle barn. Everyone takes a number, sits, and is moved from one procedure to the next. But after you’ve watched the system work, you realize they’ve achieved a high degree of objectivity, and this gives them tremendous results.
If you’re going to help people solve problems, you need to be more objective than subjective. I try to look at the problem rather than the person. Certainly you can’t separate the two, but if all you do is analyze the person, you may find yourself in a quagmire of analysis. Problems ought to be solved, not rationalized. Psychiatry has done many good things, and I’m all for finding root causes, but too often one bad result has been to let many people accept sin as normal. The rationale is that everyone does it, and it’s environmental; so for endless hours, cause and effect are discussed, but action and an infusion of God’s power are ignored.
We cannot take away the person’s responsibility for himself. Take away initiative and a sense of self-support, and over a long period of time you destroy the individual. My responsibility is to ask, “What is the ultimate effect of what I’m saying to this person?”
I’ve never been the emotionally loving type of counselor, and I used to feel bad about that. Then I came on a definition of love which I’ve found practical in my own life: “Love is willing the ultimate good for the other person.” We have to face problems in light of their ultimate effect. If I let people become too dependent on me, I’m going to keep them from becoming all God wants them to be.
Probe for Your Own Motives
It’s been said to me that some Christian counselors have such a great need to be needed that they subconsciously create dependency in others. This is tragic. It means the other person must be less important to make me more important. It’s not a Christian nor a loving relationship.
It reminds me of an analogy. Wouldn’t it be grotesque if the companies who put up scaffolding during a building’s construction could get a law passed that scaffolding could never be taken down? Now scaffolding is essential, but it would be an eyesore on a finished building.
Some counselors want to keep the scaffolding on people. They keep reminding them how they were needed by saying in subtle ways, “I helped you at that critical time; without me you wouldn’t have made it.” That’s refusing to take the scaffolding down, refusing to move on to help “build” another person. Such emotional interdependence weakens both.
Dependency, to me, is a sign I’ve failed. In contrast, the doctor who sees a person become whole and independent must experience a great thrill. I would certainly have no respect for a doctor who had a cured patient coming back to him so he could continue to be paid. This would be prostitution. The counselor needs to channel people into the body, into the church, where people can bear each other’s burdens and build each other up.
Years ago, some seagulls got into the habit of eating fish parts discarded by a fishery on the coast. This went on for years, but then the fishery went out of business. The seagulls died because they had lost the ability to forage for food.
This is what I would be afraid of-that I would create a situation in which people would look to me for automatic answers. When we solve problems for people instead of helping them grow to solve them on their own, we’re really hurting them. An executive I know asks a young executive who comes to him with a problem, “Is this something you can’t do, or something you won’t do? If you can’t do it, we can help you. If it’s something you won’t do, then we can’t help you.”
I use a similar approach in counseling. I ask, “Is this something you really want to solve? Are you willing to pay a price? Why do you think I can help you?” They have to think these things through or they don’t deserve my counsel. Now, I understand a pastor might feel he’s paid, and he’s the shepherd of the flock, so he can’t take such an approach. But a pastor might be quite surprised at the improved quality of counseling and the decrease in volume if people knew they were going to be held accountable and asked these kinds of questions. They’d think them through before they came.
Some people just keep coming back with the same problem and won’t grow. Changing a baby’s diaper is necessary, but you look forward to the time when you won’t have that recurring problem. I see a lot of counseling that is simply diaper-changing. If people aren’t growing up, then we should stimulate their growth; and to achieve that, sometimes you have to be very firm.
Counseling Pressures
I’ve been told of pastors being overwhelmed by their counseling load. One of my savvy pastor friends is trying a novel idea. He has established Tuesday as his counseling day. He doesn’t let the telephone or anything else interfere. And his people all know that’s what he does on Tuesday. This has a number of interesting advantages. A person knows he can’t sit there for three hours because other people are waiting. The pastor can legitimately say, “I have ten people who want to talk to me today, so I have to divide the time fairly. Now, I’m sure you’ve thought out your problem.” If he or she hasn’t thought it out, the pastor can say, “Let me give you some guidelines for thinking about it, and some possible solutions. Then come back next Tuesday.”
Frankly, if they’re not willing to cooperate and be realistic, there’s little hope for their being helped anyway. Oh, they may say some nasty things about the pastor, but he has to be mature enough to know immature people do such things. He can’t be nervous about dealing with people who have problems. If you’re going to be a professional, you have to have poise. Your motive is right, you have a method, and you’re going to follow it. You won’t play favorites, and, as much as possible, you refer people to those who have more expertise in certain areas than you do. Barnabas, you recall, when he got in over his head, called on Paul.
I’d like to see more churches organized with volunteers who can counsel in the areas of their competence. I know of one church in which a CPA volunteered to help young people with financial problems. Now when the pastor hits that particular problem, he says, “Why don’t you call Frank?” We need to find ways to involve capable people who could really contribute. For instance, my wife probably wouldn’t volunteer, but she’d be marvelous in counseling young wives distraught with children problems. There are people in every church who have come through these problems. They could visit in the homes and talk very helpfully. I was asked by a Sunday school class to hold a session on personal finance, and we spent all day Saturday talking about the nuts and bolts of making money, saving money, and investing money. Too often, paid staff find themselves trying to be authoritative in areas they know little about.
But there’s a warning I want to put in here. The desire to bear one another’s burdens shouldn’t be confused with getting free professional help. I’ve seen a real cheap strain in the church. Because we believe in free grace and we have inexpensive suppers in the church basement, we think everything else ought to be cheap-like free medical or legal advice. Now although the CPA volunteered to help, he’s not making out people’s tax returns; he’s helping them where they’re bound up in a wrong philosophy about money.
Crisis Counseling
I’m told crisis counseling upsets many pastors’ well-laid plans to spread the load. One gets a phone call at eleven o’clock at night that a marriage is breaking apart, and pretty soon he’s involved with lawyers and the spouse has already moved out, and now he’s bouncing from one crisis to another. It’s not a problem with easy solutions, but I know of several churches experimenting with dividing the members into groups and having elders shepherd these smaller flocks. People then realize the elder has his own occupation and his own family-then they’ll limit their calls to bona fide crises. It takes a mature staff willing to develop undershepherds, and elders very senous about their commitments to their twenty families or so, but the results can be tremendous.
I’m very close to one elder active in such a program. He takes his commitment very seriously. He visits and is called by his families. One of the young men in his group woke up in the middle of the night and found his wife dead in bed with him. It was completely unexpected. At three in the morning, the elder and his wife were with that man.
This approach can develop the body of the church and get away from the crisis mentality. When you have ten or twenty elders trained and shepherded by the pastor, what tremendous growth you can experience. However, if a pastor resents this sort of thing, he may be saying, “I don’t want to give up control.” Well, those who want to maintain control shouldn’t complain about being on the business end of the crisis. Frankly, no one feels more reassured as an authority than they do in a crisis when everyone is vulnerable and wandering around looking for someone with answers. One pastor finally began to realize that he was caught up in crisis counseling because, more than anything else, he wanted to be there. Since he first recognized the problem, twenty years ago, he says he can think of only two times in those two decades when he was really needed in a crisis.
There’s an analogy here to what we’ve found in large families. As children grew up, they took on responsibilities for the smaller children. In a sense, the church should be organized as a large family.
Confidentiality
There are many practical things any counselor should keep in mind. For instance, confidentiality. I’m convinced this is one of the counselor’s greatest responsibilities. I don’t think anyone who seriously wants counseling can freely open up unless they believe they’re talking to someone in confidence. I can’t remember a single thing I’ve ever told that I promised I wouldn’t tell. But I try to keep such agreements to a minimum because it’s a burden to keep confidences. I quiz a person and ask, “Is this something I really must keep confidential? It’s going to be an effort for me to do this. Tell me why you think I should keep it in confidence.” Years ago I was afraid I’d talk in my sleep, because I felt so strongly about confidences. I know things about people that I fully expect to take to my grave, and I would feel a tremendous sense of defeat if I were to divulge them.
There’s a great temptation to divulge information just to prove you’re in the know. Someone will comment, “Of course, you’re not involved.” And here you have a juicy piece of information they haven’t dreamed of. But you simply say, “I probably know more about it than you do.” They respond, “Well, I doubt that.” And a game is started in which the pawn is someone else’s personal information.
Have you heard the old fable of the frog who wanted to go South with the geese? They discussed the wonderful southern climate and the fall migration so much that the frog became obsessed with wanting to go. Now, the geese liked him and wanted him to join them, but his abilities as a frog simply didn’t include flying. So, they put the burden on him by saying, “If you can figure out a way to go, we’d be delighted to have you down there with us.” The frog put on his thinking cap and eventually came up with a plan. He talked two of the geese into holding a stick between them in their bills. He clamped his mouth on the middle of the stick and they took off. It worked! They began flying down, and they were doing great; but several other geese flew by and one said, “My, my, isn’t that a clever idea? I wonder whose idea it was?” And with that, the frog told them-and landed in the ocean.
Our egos get in the way all the time, and we have to be extremely careful. Some confidences may seem trivial and not worth keeping, but they could e extremely important to the individual. I once knew a company president who had become a social recluse. He was very wealthy and successful; people couldn’t understand his behavior. So I was surprised one day when he called and invited himself and his wife to our home for the weekend. While there, he very hesitantly admitted he’d never gone beyond seventh grade. His lack of education, despite all his prominence, had grown on him to the point where he didn’t feel worthy to associate with others. That may seem unimportant, but it wasn’t to him. That man is dead now, but I kept it in confidence because it was so important to him.
People want all sorts of things kept in confidence. Reduce them to the minimum number, but seriously accept the responsibility. Of course, you get tremendous insights into a person’s motivations and problems by what they want to hide, especially when they don’t need hiding at all. Our task is to help them become “free indeed” of these things.
As you probe people, though, know the difference between curiosity and interest. Interest means you want to help; curiosity is selfish. I’m careful never to ask a question that simply satisfies my curiosity. Some people seem so curious about a person’s sex life, for instance, that they’d end up talking about it even if the person were seeking a job opportunity. Too much curiosity can make people distrustful of your integrity.
Guilt
Another practical thing to consider is a careful understanding of guilt and grace. I remember waiting to have dinner with a psychiatrist who arrived late after being with a patient. He said, “That patient comes in each week, and I drain her of guilt, but the frustration is that the minute she leaves my office she starts accumulating guilt again.” In a sense, the great joy of the Christian faith is that Christ, by his sacrifice, put a guilt drain-plug into each of us. But so often our Christian community, instead of enabling the guilt to be drained, creates false guilts. We think we can police people and maneuver people with guilt. A man I talked to in Seattle wrote and thanked me for “letting me out of a cage so I can now fly.” I sensed he had finally grasped the freedom of faith. Many Christian leaders are very slow to give up guilt because it’s such an effective tool for manipulation. The good counselor has to discern between true guilt and false guilt, and to face both of them.
Never Show Shock
Another bit of advice about counseling: Never show shock, no matter what happens. I’ve trained myself so I hope that if someone came in and said to me, “I just shot my wife,” I wouldn’t show shock. Or if a man said, “I just kicked my brother,” I’d say, “I can understand that. I know your brother, and I’ve had the same desire several times.”
Shock sets your value system against the other person’s. You become opponents, because what he has done is contrary to your values. The moment you show shock, you become his judge, not his advocate, and he has to start rationalizing and justifying. If you don’t show shock, you can approach the problem mutually.
Encourage Respect, Not Admiration
The counselor needs respect, not admiration. I don’t need people to admire me, but I do want them to respect me. I’ve found those who respect you come a lot closer to taking your advice. An executive doesn’t need to be liked, but he must be respected. When you counsel, you take a position of authority, and you shouldn’t let the desire to be liked sabotage your efforts.
Money
I’ve had many people come to me for counseling in the area of money, and I’d like to make just a few observations on that. Many people have financial problems because of wishful thinking. They hide the facts from themselves and let their desires overcome their sense of mathematics. These are basically ego problems, not mathematical problems.
One young man told me he couldn’t stay out of debt because his income from commissions was sporadic. I asked, “Do you make about the same every year?” He told me he did. So I said, “Well, we can project this very easily.” “Oh, you don’t understand,” he said. “Between commissions my wife and I get so far behind in our spending, by the time we catch up on our spending, we don’t have any money to pay our debts.” I looked to see if he were snickering. He wasn’t. He was deadly serious. I simply couldn’t relate to that. He wasn’t looking for a solution, he was looking for justification. In counseling, you find many people looking for justification instead of solutions.
In financial counseling, I first find out if a person wants to be solvent. That may sound as strange as Christ asking the man at the pool, “Do you want to be made whole?” But I learned it’s the most crucial question. Do you want to be financially solvent, or do you want to be currently over your problem? Do you want to start a new life financially? If they don’t, it’s not worth wasting the time.
However, if they say, “Absolutely, I have to have a different way of life. Debt is something I can’t live with. I can’t keep my self-respect,” then you can help them. They must understand they’ve gotten into trouble because of ego, or fantasy, or by trying to keep up with someone else, and they must realize this is serious business.
A lot of young people who have been indulgently supported by their families want to transfer that support onto God. They make debts and expect God to get them a raise. They pray for money to be left to them, and when it doesn’t happen, they blame God in the same way they would have blamed Dad if he hadn’t sent it to them in college. I’ve had adults say to me, “I don’t understand why God has let me suffer these financial problems.” I ask them, “Why bring up God? You’ve broken the law of economics.” Saint or sinner, you have to pay.
Listen!
Perhaps it appears I take a rather hard line in counseling, but I believe one must be realistic. At the same time, this doesn’t mean I downgrade the vital aspect of genuine listening. It’s essential that a counselor be a very good listener. The persons I find easiest to talk to seem to have four characteristics.
First, they look you in the eye, and they do it with what I call a “soft eye.” Their eyes are not blank, but neither do they pierce nor probe. Listening eyes are soft, sympathetic eyes that say, “Talk to me.”
Second, the good listener keeps an interested expression. Some of my friends are pokerfaced and extremely hard to talk to. We all expect guidance from someone’s face-a smile, raised eyes, a wag of the head-something that says, “I hear you. I understand you.” A poker face threatens people, even if it’s a natural attribute. To talk to people comfortably, a counselor must communicate interest and acceptance through facial expressions.
Third, the good listener has learned to smile. Friendliness and the ability to smile are vital to good communication. Some people have to develop this because they don’t naturally smile, even when something is funny. For example, professional comedians rarely laugh. They’ll tell or respond to a joke with a straight face saying, “That is funny,” while another person will roar with laughter. If you don’t naturally smile, give attention to developing the habit so it becomes natural.
The fourth point is that in our society, most of us have to learn to listen. We associate status with the one who does the talking. Go into a military group, and you can pick out the senior officers because they talk and interrupt anyone else at will. You can tell who is a president because he has the right to interrupt and talk. The lower you are on the totem pole, the more you get interrupted and the less you get to say. So we have a tendency to talk in order to show our position. It’s difficult to converse when, as you are talking, the other person is inhaling as if he’s reloading. You’re afraid to pause because you think he’s going to shoot. Some counselors can be like that.
Relax. Look the person in the eye. Listen both for what and why it’s being said. Then you can get the insights you need in your counseling.
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