Jay E. Adams - Competent to Counsel: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling

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Competent to Counsel

Copyright 1970 by Jay E. Adams

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EPub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-82954-6

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Adams, Jay Edward.

Competent to counsel.

(The Jay Adams library)

Reprint. Originally published: Phillipsburg, N.J.:

Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1970.

Includes indexes.

ISBN 0-310-51140-2

1. Pastoral counseling. I. Title. II. Title: Nouthetic counseling.
III. Series: Adams, Jay Edward. Jay Adams library.

BV4012.2.A323 1986 253.5 86-5233

06 07 08 /DC/ 38 37 36

As far as I am concerned about you, my brothers, I am convinced that you especially are abounding in the highest goodness, richly supplied with perfect knowledge and competent to counsel one another.

Romans 15:14 (Williams)

Like many other pastors, I learned little about counseling in seminary, so I began with virtually no knowledge of what to do. Soon I was in difficulty. Early in my first pastorate, following an evening service, a man lingered after everyone else had left. I chatted with him awkwardly, wondering what he wanted. He broke into tears, but could not speak. I simply did not know what to do. I was helpless. He went home that night without unburdening his heart or receiving any genuine help from his pastor. Less than one month later he died. I now suspect that his doctor had told him of his impending death and that he had come for counsel. But I had failed him. That night I asked God to help me to become an effective counselor.

In my first efforts to improve, I bought, borrowed and devoured as many of the current volumes on counseling as I could, but in these I found little help. Almost all commended non-directive Rogerian methods or advocated Freudian principles. Uneasily I tried to put into practice what I read, but I could not help wondering how as a Christian minister I could re-translate what seemed to be sin, as sickness. I found it ludicrous to nod and grunt acceptingly in detachment without offering biblical directives. It soon became apparent that I was helping almost no one by such procedures, and I was wasting valuable time. Moreover, most of the advice offered in text-books consisted of little more than vague generalizations, which I found practically worthless for meeting the problems of concrete counseling situations. Many of the interpretations of cases cited in the literature seemed fantastic or absurd, and to top it all, a number of writers made it abundantly plain that they themselves were able to help only a few of their counselees, and these found help only after many months or even years of weekly sessions. How then could I expect to do much? Where would a busy pastor find the time to devote to such extended counseling? Was it a good stewardship of his time; could I ever become competent to counsel?

I soon became disillusioned with the standard books and was tempted to fall into the common practice of referring nearly all counselees with serious problems to psychiatrists or state mental institutions. After all, that was what the mental health propaganda advised. As a matter of fact, stern warnings against counseling anyone with difficulties more serious than a psychic scratch studded the pages of books and pamphlets published by the Mental Health Association. Pastors were threatened with the possibility of doing serious harm to people if they did not refer. One trouble with this otherwise convenient solution, however, was that people who were referred frequently returned worse off or no better. And then, there was the problem of the non-Christian counsel given by unconverted psychiatrists. How could that be justified?

When I took graduate work in practical theology, I seized the opportunity to enroll in courses in pastoral counseling taught by a practicing psychiatrist on the staff of a large university hospital. Now, at last, I told myself, I shall get the real inside dope. But by the end of the second semester I was convinced that he knew no more about counseling than the men in his class (almost all were pastors of churches)-and we were confused! He had a thorough knowledge of Freudian doctrine, to be sure, which he zealously taught us. He doled out large doses of Freud unstintingly, as he critiqued the verbatim accounts of counseling interviews which we brought to class, but his insights mostly proved to be wrong, and his best advice when put into practice simply didnt work.

Gradually I drifted into hit-or-miss patterns of counseling growing out of on-the-spot applications of scriptural exhortations as I remembered them. Surprisingly, I became a more successful counselor than ever. Of course, age and experience might have accounted for some of the difference. Yet, I could not help but notice that the more directive I became (simply telling counselees what God required of them), the more people were helped. Spelling out and getting commitments to biblical patterns of behavior after an acknowledgment of and repentance for sin seemed to bring relief and results. Facing up to people and honestly talking over issues before they grew out of proportion seemed to be important behavior for me as a pastor, in view of Matthew 5:23, 24 and Matthew 18:15-18. As this worked well for me in most instances, in counseling I began to advise others to do the same and saw some persons helped even more. But while these and other more biblical goals and methods began to emerge in haphazard fashion, I was still a very confused counselor.

Then, suddenly, I was forced to face the whole problem in a much more definitive way. I was asked to teach practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary. One of the courses I was assigned was Poimenics (the shepherding work of the pastor). As part of this course, I was expected to teach the basic theory of pastoral counseling. I had less than a year to think through the problem and prepare my lectures. Where would I begin? In desperation I began to exegete every passage I felt had any bearing on the subject. It was not long before I found I had taken on a mammoth task. The Bible, I discovered, says much about counseling people with personal problems. Such difficult questions as the relationship of madness to demon possession intruded themselves. I began to wonder about the dynamics behind the psychosomatic effects of guilt seemingly portrayed in Psalms 31, 38 and 51. Further, James 5:14-16 seemed to confirm the importance of confession of sin, as well as the use of medicine, in the healing of some physical illnesses. I began to ask myself, If, as James teaches, ones sinful behavior is at least sometimes responsible for physical illnesses, what about the possibility of a similar responsibility for mental illness? James raised for me the question of the pastors duty to confront the so-called mentally ill. James seemed to say that patients should at least be asked to consider whether some of their difficulties might stem from sin. As a matter of fact, the question soon became does not James speak explicitly about psychosomatic sickness?

Not very long afterward, I found myself asking, Is much of what is called mental illness,