What I’ve Learned in Counseling

… A Person Facing Serious Surgery

Surgery is usually a mysterious and frightening experience. I listen first to the advice of doctors on how much or how little one should talk with the patient about the seriousness of his condition. I have found it increasingly possible, however, to offer assurance—even in cases of serious malignancy—about the genius of medical science and its progress with miracle drugs, surgery, and treatment. One is never casual or callous. But usually one can remind a person that, humanly speaking, he is in good hands.

Prayers that add to or create an atmosphere of uncertainty, or prayers uttered with a tone of “last rites,” are unpardonable. Prayers may be honest without being either light-hearted or presumptuous about an outcome. It is good to listen to the patient. What he has to say to you is more important than what you have to say to him. When a minister speaks, and also when he is silent, he should be suggesting that we are always in the hands of Eternal Goodness, and therefore are beyond any ultimate harm. And the minister should remember that the patient’s family must be his concern also and will probably benefit from the same approach to their needs—GEORGE DAVIS, National City Christian Church, Washington, D. C.

… Parents Of A Retarded Child

I never knew the disappointment, heartbreak, rebellion, sacrifice, and sometimes triumphant spirit that characterize the parents of a retarded child until after May 5, 1952, the day when I learned I was the father of a mongoloid baby boy.

There are many people and institutions to which to turn for guidance: specialists, clinics, children’s homes, and a vast amount of literature. But the supreme problem is, “How do I look upon this child, my child? Is God involved, or did the mathematics of the birth rate of retarded children just catch up with me?” At this point the Bible is particularly relevant. When Moses protested to God that he was not eloquent, his protest brought forth this reply: “Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord?” (Exod. 4:11). The parent will either hate this kind of a God or come, perhaps slowly, to trust completely his wisdom and love. Job, having lost all but a critical wife, could finally say, “What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10).

In counseling sessions often fraught with emotional overtones, ministers are called upon as never before to be articulate and helpful in dealing with troubled lives.

Just how does the skillful pastor go about offering encouragement when hope is dim, or confronting the consequences of sin in love?

Ten Protestant pastors here dip into their own experiences to show how they have handled difficult counseling situations and what they have learned from them.

SoonCHRISTIANITY TODAYwill begin a series by evangelical clergymen on “The Minister as Counselor.” These articles will appear in “the Minister’s Workshop,” a monthly feature currently devoted to effective preaching.—ED.

The biggest lesson I learned is that by following this pathway of acceptance and balanced understanding, Christian parents arrive at the place of being able to believe that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). As I have believed God, I have experienced this progression of thought myself and have seen God lead hundreds of other parents of retarded children to this understanding and acceptance of their children.—ROBERT J. LAMONT, First Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

… An Unhappy Marriage Partner

Think first of a model family. Now watch deterioration. Bob doubts, abandons religion and home. Betty is shaken, but with the help of many Christian friends is not shattered. I spent days searching for Bob. When finally I found him, he talked in abstractions, dodging references to family responsibility. Later he left town with a married secretary. Despair almost overwhelmed Betty, but because of an unwavering faith in God and a deep love for Bob, she took drastic action. She traveled 1,000 miles, found them and talked things out. Reconciliation for both couples resulted. Forgiveness was complete. Confession included a new determination to restore broken lives. Christ and his Church became the center of life.

Not all cases end “happily ever after,” but when counseling others, I remember that there is rarely a hopeless case. I remember Betty’s love and forgiveness and the time she spent in working out a solution. Encouraging her, reviving her self-confidence, stabilizing her faith, was my small part. I recall this case and take heart when I am with others in need. Asking God’s help, I try harder to counsel wisely. Since Betty and Bob made it, so can others—ROGER MILLS, Belair Church of Christ, Bowie, Maryland.

… A Dying Person

To stand beside a deathbed is an experience no minister asks for. But it comes uninvited. And it does something to a man.

On the hospital bed lay a man dying of cancer—suffering agony, gasping for his last breath, clinging to the brittle thread of life. Death seemed to be waiting in the wings while on the stage this poor sufferer pleaded for an end to his agony.

What can a minister say or do in such an hour? Complain to God for permitting such a death to a fine Christian? Unthinkable! To do so would only intensify the suffering of the wife and family.

This is what I did. First I whispered in the man’s ear my joy that he had settled all spiritual matters before this battlefield of agony came upon him. Now he didn’t have to fight on two fronts at the same time, the physical and the spiritual. Then I repeated softly and slowly the Twenty-third Psalm. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me” (and I tried to underline each of these next words by slow and precise diction) “all—the—days—of—my—life—and—I—will—dwell—in—the—house—of—the—LORD—for—ever.”

He squeezed my hand tighter. Words would not come. In a short while he struggled his last and went to be with his Lord.

I went away slowly. My faith was enriched. And this man’s faith was strengthened in his dying moment by a word from God.—NORMAN R. OKE, First Church of the Nazarene, Washington, D. C.

… A Member Arrested By Police

A church member arrested by police? Yes, it sometimes happens.

The member may phone you in desperation, saying he must see you now. You drop everything and go to the police office. The man tells you he’s being held on a morals charge. This is not the first arrest; it’s an old problem. Despairingly he says there is no one but his pastor to whom he can turn.

What have I learned—and done—in situations like this?

Jesus was a friend to sinners. He has been my friend, and now I must help this man, without condemning him or condoning his sin.

I have learned:

1. To put the man immediately in contact with a sound legal adviser.

2. Not to accept the man’s initial statements at face value—the whole truth may be painful and very embarrassing.

3. To contact the arresting officer and ask how I can help. Often he can give good insight and sound advice.

4. To realize that the real difficulty is more than the arrest and probable trial. The man has a deeper problem that he cannot evade. The police and the judge will make him face this basic problem; if they don’t, the pastor must.

5. To help the man see there’s hope in the power and compassion of Jesus Christ. Many times I have read First Corinthians 6:9–11 to a man who thought there was no hope for him.

6. To strengthen the man by follow-up counseling and mutual friendship in Christ (Gal. 6:1, 2).—

RAYMOND C. ORTLUND,

Lake Avenue Congregational Church,

Pasadena, California.

… A Homosexual

“No, that’s not what I was talking about! You’re the one that keeps bringing that up all the time!”

Although it happened twenty years ago, I’ve not been able to forget it. Few counseling sessions are still so vivid to me. It was my first “case.” A call for help had come to the university counseling service. The caller said he could meet a staff member downtown, and the leader of our practicum in psychotherapy turned over name, place, and time to me. For a year I’d served as a vocational counselor. I’d had the theory. I’d practiced role-playing in therapeutic counseling under the critical eye of instructor and fellow students. Now I was on my own.

A handsome, soft-spoken young man approached and identified himself. He was personable and dressed in quiet good taste, and I wondered what could have prompted him to call for help. He looked as though he had everything going for him.

“You called the university about a counselor?”

A long pause. He started to speak several times, stopped, sized me up, then suddenly blurted out, “Yes, I’m homosexual.”

My stomach knotted. Nobody brought up this one in practicum, I thought. How on earth do I handle it?

All the O.K. words came to mind: acceptance, permissiveness, non-judgmental, reflection of feeling. I proceeded with the techniques I’d learned. He spoke of his life pattern in a homosexual community and his distinct uneasiness outside it. His fear was that he would be identified as a homosexual and be the target of any number of untoward consequences. He feared his voice or his mannerisms or something about him would betray him to a hostile society. The fear of being found out had become obsessive, keeping him anxious to the point of distraction.

I was obsessed, too. All I could think was, Of course he wants to repudiate this kind of life. Naturally he should get out of that homosexual community so he could work more productively at sexual reorientation. This is what I thought I heard him saying. What snapped me back to reality was the tart retort with which this account begins.

What had happened? Only that I had violated practically every important principle of good counseling. What I did in that session has appeared increasingly wrong to me with the experience of the years. In capsule form, these are some things I’ve learned as over the years I’ve pondered that disastrous session:

1. I was not relating to him with warmth and concern as one needy, fallible human being to another. Instead, in a doctrinaire way I was playing the role of ideal client-centered counselor. Whatever else may be a part of good counseling, genuineness and a sense of fellow feeling are a sine qua non.

2. I was tuned in improperly. Instead of really listening to him, I heard him only through my own sense of how he ought to feel and what he ought to want. This could only come through to him as my rejection of him. He could only feel that I had judged him and had no interest in helping him deal with the problem as he saw it. I did not meet him with sympathetic concern at the point where he was. In spite of myself, I had a fundamental disrespect for his person.

3. I did not know enough about his most troubling symptom. I did not understand, for example, the homosexual’s tendency to over-identify himself with his sexual orientation to a point where he can scarcely think about himself apart from this problem. Neither did I understand the sense of otherness that haunts the homosexual so that he feels he has no place either in church or in society.

4. I failed to distinguish the person from his symptom. That is, I repeated his own error.

These are some things I learned through a humbling effort at counseling with a homosexually oriented person many years ago. My mistakes were basic ones. And I’ve since learned that to slip back into these errors comes easily. That a few people have been helped in spite of my propensity for such destructive attitudes testifies abundantly to the power of God’s grace.—LARS I. GRANBERG, president, Northwestern College, Orange City, Iowa.

… A Prospective Bride And Groom

A bride- and groom-to-be are people who have already made up their minds. This acknowledgment has helped me improve my perspective toward the rigorous ritual of premarital counseling, often consented to as part of the “price to be paid.” Even though I insist on counseling prior to marriage, I am mildly cynical about the effect (other than the relief I feel at having maintained a standard that is expected of trained clergymen these days).

Perhaps this is a defense for my officiating record of marital mortality, which is close to 50 per cent. But so many couples come to me with minds made up, their questions confined to matters like “How much does it cost?,” that I often feel my services are regarded as part of a packaged plan, along with pictures, flowers, and dresses. Worse, for many my services seem to be thought only a prelude to the main event—the reception!

My lesson is not all negative. Even though the mindset of the prospective bride and groom does not allow for much insight, reflection, and even planning apart from “details,” there is an opportunity to begin a process of continuing help. In conversations before the marriage one can witness to the biblical expectation for marriage. Goal-setting, this might be called. I have found many couples unable to point to a happy marriage! I give personal testimony to what Christ has done for my home and the happiness I find there. Then, having walked with them through the days of hectic distraction, I find I have earned the right to stay in the picture, and later some better opportunities for counsel are available. Counseling bride and groom makes the best sense when it is part of a process that begins before they decide to become bride and groom and certainly continues after, when they are husband and wife, father and mother.—DON DE YOUNG, Elmendorf Reformed Church, East Harlem, New York City.

… A Bereaved Person

It happened to me, not to someone else. Though I had counseled others in bereavement, I could do so only by faith plus hearsay. I had been less than three years old when my father and sister died. Then thirty-eight years later, my mother died, and for the first time I really knew what bereavement was. For over twenty years as a pastor I had prescribed for others. Now would the physician find that the prescription really worked?

In my heart I said the things that I had said to others hundreds of times. She was seventy years old and had lived a full, rich life. As a Christian, nevermore would she feel the sting of death. She had been released from a frail body and in the Lord was more alive than she had ever been before. My own Christian faith told me that I would see her again in the resurrection.

Then I saw her body in the casket. The mortician’s art could not hide the fact of death. Though my faith held for the future, what about now? What or who would fill the emptiness? The sense of loss had hit me dead center.

Awaiting the minister’s words at the funeral, I felt that my chest would explode with the pressure of grief. And then the minister began to read.

“Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by my name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God. the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.…” (Isa. 43:1–3).

A peace beyond understanding overshadowed and indwelt me. I then knew the comfort of God’s Word and of his abiding presence in sorrow. Never since have I read the Bible to bereaved persons simply as a ministry to be rendered. It is now an experience to be shared.—HERSCHEL H. HOBBS, First Baptist Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

… A Terminally Ill Person

The first time I came to know Harry was when he was in the hospital for exploratory surgery. He was not unduly apprehensive, but he had a normal concern. Harry was not very active in church.

The morning before surgery we had prayer, and Harry was calm as he was wheeled away. But the diagnosis was terminal cancer. Harry seemed to know this, even before the doctor asked me to join him in honestly sharing with Harry the truth about his condition. The doctor was not optimistic, but he held out a ray of hope, not ruling out the healing power of God to work a miracle.

Harry did not want to die, but he arranged his business affairs. As we prayed together in the weeks ahead, I saw him grow into a deeper trust and faith in God.

Yet he was to die. The evening of his death, I stood at his bedside with the sacrament. Communion meant much to him. As I lifted his weak and weary head to place the bread in his mouth, tears came down my cheeks. Harry saw them, raised up with strength not his own, and said: “O, pastor, don’t do that! It’s all right, I’m fine! Don’t cry!”

In two hours, Harry was dead. I had seen God bring healing and peace in death. He had helped me to be able to say: “It is not bad to die, when you die as Harry died.”—IRA GALLAWAY, Walnut Hill Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas.

… A Pastor Who Has Lost His Church

An unofficial function that devolves upon people engaged in theological education, especially if they have also had long pastoral experience, is counseling ministers who have lost their churches. Over the years I have learned one big lesson from this counseling and several lesser ones. The great lesson is that Christ is the King of the Church. Whatever man, minister or layman, may intend, God can turn it to good.

Beyond this lesson (which can be learned from Scripture itself), I have learned that when a minister loses his church, it is not always his fault. Aside from cases of incompetence and a few instances of moral failure, I have discovered an alarmingly great number of ministers who have been penalized, not because they were politically or socially controversial, but because they preached the Word of God. I think there is more of this than is generally realized, much more than congregations or denominational officials admit.

Some of these tragedies are related to the fact that there is no spiritually sensitive system of clergy placement in Protestantism as a whole. The methods of the world have infiltrated God’s Church. Nevertheless, not infrequently a minister loses one church in order to be released for an unexpectedly larger usefulness to Christ.

I have learned from these counseling situations that there are two things that the clergy should remember: (1) When a minister finds himself in a church where he is needed and where the relationship is on the whole congenial, let him beware of that subtle worldliness which tempts him to seek for himself supposedly “greater fields of service”; (2) Each minister should take pains to maintain continuing contacts with the seminary of which he is a graduate.—GEORGE MORREL, rector of St. Simon’s Parish, San Fernando, California, and adjunct professor of theology, Bloy House Theological School, Pasadena.

… An Unwed Mother

Carol’s husband had died a tragic death, and her grief had been severe. At the time her ability to catch hold of spiritual insights into life and death had seemed doubtful. Her relationship to God and his Church was vague.

Ten months later she came to me for help. As she sat in my office, she shifted nervously in her chair and took a long draw on a cigarette. Then suddenly she blurted out that she was pregnant.

Her feelings were pretty standard: embarrassment about the exposure of her secret love life; scorn over the unfairness of being left alone so young with three active children; self-pity over the loss of her husband; guilt over the several affairs she had had as she tried to quench her need for love and companionship; and bitterness that sexual intercourse produces children.

Through the weeks that I counseled her, her concern wavered back and forth between her theological and psychological needs. For the most part, her view of life was superficial. This superficial approach revealed itself in shallowness and self-deception. And when the superficial problems were solved, Carol was inclined to slide back into the old patterns of life.

Then she discovered some of the deeper issues of faith. Her discovery lead her to Christ and the miracle of his redemptive love. Although her restoration was slow, I had the privilege one day of seeing a deep spiritual radiance on her face. We had just concluded a prayer, and she had lingered in His presence. She had discovered the divine mystery and the absolute purity of His strength.

This whole experience brought home to me several principles of counseling. The cardinal rule is listen, listen, listen. I’ve learned that most people already have the answers; they merely need support and encouragement to put their plans into operation. Second, I learned that Carol’s fears could break out into the open only when she discovered that I was not sitting in self-righteous judgment of her acts. Only as I empathized with her in each part of her trouble would she uncover the emotional garbage that caused her deep anxiety and guilt. Third, I learned not to overplay the role of counselor. It takes considerable effort to hold back one’s inclination to offer a packaged solution. Fourth, this experience made me aware that every person can have that radiant moment when God’s love flows in. This warms the heart and transforms the life.—NEWTON C. STEACY, St. James United Church, Montreal, Quebec.

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