Becoming a Christian Counsellor

If we are to accept counselling as a valid Christian ministry, it is essential that we do not simply allow just anyone to be involved with it, nor think that all we need is for The Holy Spirit to give us all the answers. We should apply the same reasoning as that which we apply to those we invite to preach and teach or lead worship in our churches. God's whole strategy is for every person to use their God-given abilities to make their own discoveries and choices in the light of His Word and then to receive comprehensive training and equipping to minister their gifts to others. We must recognise that some of the people who will feel drawn towards becoming counsellors will not have the right qualities of character to take on such a role. This emphasises one of the major reasons for people to undertake formal counselling training. There is a sense in which God is committed to use the natural gifts He has deposited within us but that usually means we must take the responsibility to get whatever training is necessary to develop these in order to be able to use them more appropriately.

One difficulty that frequently occurs in churches is that the people who are the most naturally suitable and gifted with regard to offering counselling are often already heavily committed in other aspects of family and church work and are therefore unable to devote sufficient time to additional training. To develop a church counselling team, like developing a worship team or an evangelistic team, will require the leadership to make it a priority so that the most gifted people can be freed up from some of their other commitments. It is most important for everyone to be taught what we mean when we use the term 'counselling' and how this is different from other forms of Christian helping and ministry. There is so much poor quality counselling being offered today that it is quite easy for people to develop a jaundiced view of the potential benefits. Not only are there plenty of poor, inadequately trained people who want to call themselves counsellors but there is a myriad of psychologically suspect and dubious approaches being talked about as 'therapy'. There is massive growth taking place in the number of people who call themselves therapists and this is, I believe, very largely due to the fact that Christians have not seen it as their prerogative to meet the demands of the public in this respect and have consequently left a huge gap in the market.