If you are reading this article, I am going to work from the assumption that you believe the local church should be involved in the process of counseling in some way. The goal, therefore, of this article is to answer two questions:

1. Is there a relationship between counseling and discipleship?
2. If so, how should that impact the way we view counseling specifically?

In order to answer these two questions, there is one preliminary question worth exploring: What is biblical counseling? This can be a bit more difficult to answer because there are various theological streams and convictions that come under the label “biblical counseling”. But here are 5 definitions^[i] by people within the movement to help us form a complete definition.

Biblical Counseling According to Howard Eyrich

Biblical counseling is the process of dealing with human suffering in the context of God as Creator, designer, Savior, and enabler. The counselee is introduced to the richness of God’s life-design and the power of the Holy Spirit to enable him to live in sync with this design, thereby being able to glorify God and enjoy Him and life in the midst of living in a broken world. 

Biblical Counseling According to Elyse Fitzpatrick

Biblical counseling is the act of one believer coming alongside another to bring the truths of both the indicatives and imperatives of Scripture to bear on their heart and life for their edification, the strengthening of their faith, and the glory of God. 

Biblical Counseling According to Bob Kellemen

Biblical counseling is Christ-centered, church-based, comprehensive, compassionate, and culturally-informed personal ministry that depends upon the Holy Spirit to relate God’s inspired truth about people, problems, and solutions to human suffering (through sustaining and healing), and sin (through reconciling and guiding) to equip people to exalt and enjoy God and to love others (Matthew 22:35-40) by cultivating conformity to Christ and communion with Christ and the Body of Christ leading to a community of one-another disciple-makers (Matthew 28:16-20; Ephesians 4:11-16). 

Biblical Counseling According to David Powlison

Counseling is one part of the overall ministry of Christ that meets us publicly, privately, and interpersonally. The public means of grace—preaching, teaching, the Lord’s Supper, worship, and fellowship—meet people in crowds. You never have to attach anyone’s name to it, but the Holy Spirit is able to personalize the public ministry of the gospel and the truth of the Lord.

Then there is the private ministry of the Word of Truth. This is your own prayer life, meditation on and study of Scripture, application, journaling, and your own implementation and meditations of the heart. Finally, biblical counseling is part of the interpersonal ministry of the Word. God means for us to bear each other’s burdens.

It’s a good goal to become more competent at self-counsel, the private ministry, but we always need other people. We need their prayers, encouragement, and insight. There may be something you have said to yourself a hundred times, but then you hear it from the lips of someone else, and the Holy Spirit chooses to work. Hearing it from another person’s voice makes it come to life. Wise counseling brings that personalized relevance of interpersonal ministry of the eternal Word of Truth that turns our lives upside down and inside out. 

Biblical Counseling According to Deepak Reju

My definition depends on who I am speaking to—for lay people in our congregation, I describe biblical counseling as “an intensive form of discipleship” or “an opportunity to speak into someone’s life using God’s wisdom and not our own.” For my counseling students or counselees, I say something like, “My goal is to erect from the Bible a model and method to wisely help people with their problems.” 

Ingredients of Good Biblical Counseling

There are things in each of these definitions that are helpful for formalizing our own definition and I’d like to draw out a few characteristics either implicit or explicit in each of the definitions that I think are “must haves” and then we will connect all of this to discipleship and how that should shape how we view counseling.

One: The Centrality of the Triune God

This is both a critical and foundational component of biblical counseling. In the ministry of counseling, the Triune God is central, not the counselee. We do not need help making ourselves the sole focus of our lives—that is what we tend to drift toward. A good biblical counselor understands this and is always compassionately re-directing the gaze of the counselee toward the glory and worship and enjoyment of the Triune God.

Two: A Biblical Anthropology

I’ll spend most of my time here. A wise biblical counselor seeks to help the counselee understand himself in relation to God. Mankind is the creature, and He is the Creator. He made us in His image for His own glory according to His good, unchanging character. We are made body and soul and we are (all of us) accountable to God and not autonomous, free agents. In other words, we are not self-sufficient and un-governed. God alone is self-sufficient. God alone is autonomous and free.

Having a biblical anthropology also helps us form the categories of sin and suffering. We are in bondage to sin apart from the intervening work of the Holy Spirit. Our nature is one that is marred by the sin of Adam. As a result, we act freely according to our sin-nature and are unable to do anything in our own strength to remedy our condition.

The London Confession of Faith (1689) summarizes it this way: “Humanity, by falling into a state of sin, has completely lost all ability to choose any spiritual good that accompanies salvation. Thus, people in their natural state are absolutely opposed to spiritual good and dead in sin, so that they cannot convert themselves by their own strength or prepare themselves for conversion” (9.3).

We need outside intervention and that outside intervention comes from our Triune God alone. It is the Father who graciously sent His only begotten Son to die for the elect and to resurrect for our justification. It is the Holy Spirit who regenerates the heart and causes man to express repentance and faith in Christ alone for salvation, applying Christ’s active and passive obedience to our person. When this happens, it means that we have been transformed “into the state of grace” and freed from our “natural bondage to sin and by [God’s] grace alone [enabled] to will and do freely what is spiritual good. Yet because of [our] remaining corruption [we] do not perfectly nor exclusively will what is good but also what is evil” (9.4). Thus, the need for counseling this side of eternity.

Furthermore, we are also sufferers. Since the fall of Adam, this world is full of thorns and thistles and our bodies experience a biological brokenness that is not a result of our personal sin. A good biblical counselor should see every counselee as both a sinner and a sufferer, and the counsel one gives should be considerate of this.

Biblical anthropology is necessary—understanding ourselves in relation to God is essential. We are created in the image of God. We are sinners. We are saints in Christ. We are sufferers. Counseling should reflect this multi-faceted identity.

Three: A Mindfulness of the Authority, Sufficiency, and Application of Scripture

A biblical counselor knows that the Scriptures are authoritative because they are God-breathed. They are inspired by the Holy Spirit and because of that they are profitable to make a fully furnished man of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17). We really can—and should—apply the Scriptures to our lives.

The Scripture is “living and active and sharper than a double-edged sword piercing to the division of soul and spirit, or joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). No other book does this because no other book is like this. Yes, there are helpful books out there on developing good habits. Yes, there may be value in reading a felt-need book here and there. But there is no book (or collection of books) like the Bible. A good biblical counselor knows this and will teach this to the counselee.

Four: The Necessity of the Local Church

Powlison’s definition above emphasizes this point masterfully. I don’t exactly remember where I heard this, I only know that it is not original to me, but someone once told me that preaching is the public ministry of the Word and counseling is the private ministry of the Word. This has always been helpful to me. When I preach on the Lord’s Day, I see that as the primary way that I counsel the members of my congregation. And it is my involvement in their lives that informs me of their spiritual needs.

However, in my preaching, I am preaching to the whole of the congregation and not singling out anyone (that would be inappropriate and terrifying for one of my congregants). However, the Holy Spirit of God is taking the sermon and applying it specifically to various people in the congregation. That is the primary way the Lord grows His church spiritually.

The private ministry of the Word is still the administration of God’s Word, but in a more personalized way. It is not preaching, rather it is a biblical counselor bringing the Word of God to bear on an individual and his/her particular circumstance(s). Both aspects of the ministry of the Word are necessary in the lives of believers.

Furthermore, the local church is the context in which we are all accountable (see Matthew 18). If a goal of counseling is change, I would argue that change happens only when there is accountability, and accountability works best in the context of the local church. This does not mean that all counseling must come exclusively from the local church where you’re a member. However, people in the congregation (and especially your elders) should know what is going on in your life.

Five: The Need For Wise Helpers

There is safety in a multitude of counselors (Proverbs 11:14). The local church should be the best place to find safety and counselors. Biblical counseling should be seen as a “one another” ministry in this way. I often push back on the idea of counseling that is isolated, formal, and clinical. I increasingly do not like that idea of counseling.

I am not saying there isn’t a need for clinical approaches to mental health at times. Also, I am not saying that the complexities of our human experience shouldn’t be addressed by people that have a particular skill-set. However, far too often I’ve found that we overcomplicate the counseling process, and on my more cynical days I think that is by design. In my experience, when people say they want counseling, what they really need is a godly, wise helper that can give good, practical, biblical advice. The church is a good place to find wise helpers.

Six: A Goal Toward Holy Spirit Enabled Change

On a related note, we shouldn’t seek to spin our tires in the same place. We should seek—by God’s grace—spiritual growth, and God promises to grow us when we avail ourselves of the means He’s provided to us.

Very rarely do I think someone needs long-term counseling. I’ve often seen counselors who take advantage of people by keeping them in counseling so that they can charge them co-pays for every visit. It reminds me of the woman with the hemorrhage for 12 years (Mark 5:25-26) who suffered many things from many physicians, who in turn took all her money and made her situation even worse!

Recently, I ran into a gentleman I counseled a number of years ago. Pretty early on, I could tell that he wasn’t motivated to change the habits in his life. After a few sessions I ended the counseling relationship. Years later, we see each other and spent about 30 minutes catching up, and I could tell from that short conversation that he is in the exact same place he was years ago when we met. However, he was hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars poorer because he was going to regular counseling, and he seemingly has released himself of any sense of responsibility for his own life. A wise counselor sees the goal clearly and helps his counselee see it clearly, as well.

Returning to Our Two Questions

These are 6 characteristics I think are noteworthy in all the above definitions. Ingredients we should keep and cultivate. The questions we must answer now are whether or not we see any relationship between discipleship and counseling and, if so, what does that mean for how we view counseling?

Based on the work we’ve done together, I pray you can see that there is a close connection between discipleship and counseling. In fact, the two are inseparable.^[ii]

Counseling is the birthright of the Church, but the more modern psychotherapeutic approach to it, combined with our passivity, has hindered our ability to see that. Counseling is primarily a theological task—a discipleship ministry in which one person, seeking to grow and mature or lament, comes to someone they believe can help them do that very thing.

So how should that shape how we view the counseling ministry? In many ways, we should see ourselves in the context of the local church as both counselor and counselee. This doesn’t mean that we are good ones, but for better or worse we are those things. Therefore, may we—by God’s grace—grow and may we be people that, in humility, surround ourselves with godly mentors and disciple-makers, submitting ourselves to them and, in turn, maybe have eyes for those less mature than us, seeking to come along side of them and do them spiritual good.

References:

^[i] I am indebted to Bob Kellemen, who put this list of definitions together here: https://rpmministries.org/2013/03/5-definitions-of-biblical-counseling/

^[ii] I genuinely can’t think of any form of counseling that isn’t discipleship. Even counselee led counseling in which the counselor just sits quietly (maybe he asks a question or two) but lets the counselee “self-discover” is discipleship. Nothing is neutral.