Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions

Transcription

1 2 JBC 28:3 (2014): 2 14 From the Editor s Desk Giving Reasoned Answers to Reasonable Questions by DAVID POWLISON Several years ago I was interviewed for Psychology Today as part of a series that looked at twelve Varieties of Religious Therapy. 1 The series editor posed a set of outsider-looking-in questions, inviting religiously-oriented therapists to make their case to the Psychology Today readership. I was delighted at the opportunity. It s not often we get invited to speak to non-christian psychologists. 2 It was rather like Paul s invite to the Areopagus: May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean (Acts 17:19 20). I was given an open invitation to bring some strange, new things to their ears, and was happy to oblige. Here are the questions that each of the religious therapists was asked. What is the role of religion or spirituality in your clinical practice? How does your technique or theory differ from mainstream psychotherapy? David Powlison (MDiv, PhD) is the executive director of CCEF and edits the Journal of Biblical Counseling. 1 The other eleven were Judaism, Native American Spirituality, Catholicism, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, African Spirituality, Secular Humanism, Twelve Step Spirituality, Christian Psychology, and Buddhism. See the series introduction: the-varieties-religious-therapy-introduction. 2 JBC has published three articles in the past that were specifically addressed to a non-christian audience: Jay Adams, Change Them into What? (13:2, 1995, pp ); Ed Welch, A Discussion among Clergy: Pastoral Counseling Talks with Secular Psychology (13:2, 1995, pp ); Jay Adams, The Christian Approach to Schizophrenia (14:1, 1995, pp ). See also Sam Williams, Counselors as Missionaries (26:3, 2012, pp ) for a discussion of our calling to communicate with men and women in mental health professions.

2 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON 3 A new client comes to therapy reporting his main problem is feeling detached from God. How would you proceed? What is the relationship between sin and psychopathology? Who or what is the primary change agent in therapy? What is the most difficult part of practicing psychotherapy while maintaining your beliefs? What is the most rewarding part of your counseling practice? These are reasonable questions. My answers had to be well-reasoned and to the point 1300 words total. This article will reprint that interview as part of discussing the larger issue of how biblical counselors should engage a secular audience. I will do three things. The first section articulates a conscious strategy for redemptive engagement that shaped how I approached the opportunity. The second section reprints my answers to the original interview. The third section reflects back on those answers, drawing out the particular biblical truths that came into play in my effort to present biblical counseling to this audience. We who are biblical counselors need to become better communicators with men and women in the mental health world, and I hope this article will contribute to such endeavors. A Strategy That Seeks to Communicate Persuasively Many readers will have noticed that the seven questions are largely framed in language different from how biblical counselors usually think, talk, and write. I don t conceptualize what I do as religious therapy or clinical practice. I don t describe myself as a therapist who practices psychotherapy. I don t view the people I counsel as clients whose problems are psychopathologies. I don t think that Christian truth is my theory, or that seeking to love another wisely is my technique. I don t even think of Christian faith as a religion or a spirituality! But I had been invited to speak to the readership of Psychology Today. I was entering their world; they had not entered mine. So in 1300 words I had to answer seven vast questions framed in a language I do not use, and asked from the point of view of a worldview that I do not hold. It was a lovely challenge to communicate well and wisely. As I have sought to understand the Bible s strategy for redemptive persuasion, here is how I have come to see the tasks before us as Christians who seek to be effective communicators. The first task for effective communication is to know those with whom we wish to speak. What do my readers believe, do, assume? What are their intellectual and professional habits? What is their reality map? What are their goals and expectations? The form and terminology of the seven questions reveals a worldview,

3 4 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON explicitly identifies a profession and its practices, and significantly characterizes a significant people group. I can resonate in a particular way with that world. I was educated in those same theories and practices. I shared their professional aspirations. And though I came out of their world and into Christian faith, I still keep up with their world. I know something of my Psychology Today readers, even if I know none of the particulars. I can t fully know my readers, but I can do my part to know them well enough. Not all of you came out of that world, but all of us must keep informed to the degree that the mental health world touches us and touches the people to whom we minister. The second task in communicating well is to genuinely seek the welfare of those you are speaking to. I must care. I must love. I must treat with respect. And I do care in this case, about the readers of the original interview. Those therapists consciously intend good. But the problems they face are intricate and often intractable. The human heart is a labyrinth. Counseling troubled people is hard, chancy, troubling work. Even defining what constitutes success is problematic. I believe that these readers need Christian understandings. What does suffering mean? How does endemic sinfulness work? Why are people simultaneously foolish and wise? Who is God, and how does his grace work? What does it mean for a human being to truly flourish? Why is it possible for hope and joy to outrun loss and despair? It has been life and joy for me to come to Christian understandings I want my readers to share the same, to know the goodness and wisdom of the same Savior who mercifully found me. The third communication task is to enter the hearers frame of reference. I ve been asked to enter a conversation that they initiated. To do so, I must be willing to speak a foreign language, as it were, to talk in their terms, to answer the questions they are asking. I am willing to speak the language that expresses the experience of people who are outsiders to Christian faith, who do not understand how counseling might be a ministry of Christ. And I am willing to get personal, disclosing who I am as a person. In each answer, in attempting to explain what I believe and do, I start in their world and seek to stay connected to that world even as I explain the world that I think all of us actually inhabit. I take their questions seriously. I hope that every answer stays on point and answers the question asked rather than ignoring their questions in order to assert my own predetermined talking points. The fourth task in persuasive communication is to shake readers habitual frame of reference. I want to take what is familiar and portray it in a different light. The very things that readers know best actually mean something quite different from what they assume. So, though I take their questions seriously, I reshape the

4 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON 5 meaning of those questions. I redefine terms. I overturn implicit assumptions. I seek to retell their version of reality to demonstrate how they miss very important things. Not only do they have significant blind spots, but they misconstrue things they take as givens. The things they see most clearly and care about most deeply don t actually mean what they imagine. I want to arouse dissonance, to rattle the cage, to create a dilemma. So even while speaking in their terms, I am retelling their story in a way that brings fatal flaws, inner contradictions, illusions, and blind spots to light. The fifth task is to portray Christian faith in a fresh, relevant way. I want them to understand religion in ways they ve never heard or understood before. Christian wisdom is directly and surprisingly relevant to everything that matters in psychotherapy. I assume that they do not know how true Christianity pointedly illumines their questions, explains the people and problems they deal with, and reframes everything they do in trying to be helpful. I want to show and tell better ways of making sense of people. I want to show and tell better and more significant solutions. I want to show and tell better, truer, and more enduring hope. I want to surprise readers with how the gospel of Jesus Christ intercepts who they are and intervenes in what they do. The sixth task is to woo, invite, and open a door for readers and hearers to change their minds. So I include the reader in almost every paragraph This is for you. This is about all of us. I want a reader to know, You live in the same world I do. You live in the same world as the people you counsel. We live in God s world wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly. Awaken. Understand yourself within this new, better reality that I am portraying. Understand who you are and what you do in a bright new light. Come to the Lamb of God. None of the theories you know and therapies you do can point to the Person by whom therapist and client alike can live instead of die. None of the theories or therapies offers a Person of mercy who soothes our real-time sorrows, washes our real-time sinfulness, guides us into real-time flourishing, and can do the same for those we meet in the conversations that are called therapy. In sum, a redemptive strategy for engaging readers and hearers is summed up in these six communication tasks. Know the people with whom you are speaking. Love them genuinely. Enter into their questions, their defining experiences, their terminology. Retell their story in a fuller way than they are able to tell it,

5 6 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON creating dissonance. Show and tell the truth of God and his gospel of Christ in a fresh and personally relevant way. Hold open a door of invitation to come in. 3 That s a lot to aim for in 1300 words! Yet this is what Jesus, John, Paul, and Peter do. Jesus interaction with the Samaritan woman in John 4 and Paul s speech at the Areopagus in Acts 17 provide rich examples of what these communication tasks look like in action. A redemptive communication strategy not only engages people winsomely, but also serves a larger purpose. It opens the door to the three stages of a living, lifechanging faith: knowledge, assent, and trust (notitia, assensus, fiducia). Real faith starts with coming to know something. Then I must come to agree that it is true. Finally I must shift the weight of my life onto that truth. This correlates to three aspects of pastoral communication: informing, convincing, and persuading. Writers and speakers make a judgment call about the necessary balance between these activities in any piece of communication. I was invited to inform Psychology Today readers about my particular variety of religious therapy. Simply informing was my first-level goal no one can believe in something they don t even know exists. I primarily sought to make biblical counseling clear and relevant. But I had a second-level goal. I was informing in order to convince. I don t want Psychology Today readers simply to know that biblical counseling exists. And I m not trying to prove my legitimacy to them in order to gain a seat at their table. I want to unsettle their assumptions about both psychotherapy and religion, and then woo them toward a different point of view. I want them to agree with the God who unsettled and wooed me into agreeing with him. So I made the case, presented my arguments, and gave my examples in order that some readers might stop to consider. They might shed a few biases and misunderstandings. They might even start to be convinced. Of course, ultimately, I also have a third-level goal. I want them to be persuaded, to come and sit at our table, the Lord s table. That goal remained largely implicit. In that sense this interview does pre-evangelism rather than making an evangelistic call. In all this, I hope that my answers prove faithful to our redemptive God, that I have been able to wisely proclaim and defend his ways, his promises, and his will. And I hope that my answers will encourage readers of the Journal of Biblical Coun- 3 I am indebted to Curtis Chang s Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine and Aquinas (Intervarsity Press, 2000, pp ) for his provocative discussion of entering the other person s story, retelling that story from our point of view, and telling our story in a way that captures their story.

6 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON 7 seling to better make the case for what we believe and do. Here is the interview. The Varieties of Religious Therapy: Biblical Counseling 4 Psychology Today: What is the role of religion or spirituality in your clinical practice? David Powlison: Religion or spirituality is not a sector of some people s lives, but a dimension in every human life. It s a dimension in the same way that, in the fourdimensional space-time continuum, you can t go anywhere outside of time. Similarly no one escapes dealing with God, wittingly or unwittingly in every thought, word, action, desire, and life experience. Each of us faces essentially the same existential questions, and those questions entail the God who creates, sustains, knows, judges, and intervenes to bring life. This has many implications. For example, I am more like the people I counsel than different. We will have significant differences in life experience, in personality, in the complexity or straightforwardness of our struggles, but we are like in kind. The notion of a common human nature puts us all on the same level. No temptation overtakes you that is not common to all, as 1 Corinthians 10:13 puts it. This fundamental commonality means that as a counselor, I never make the us-them move of reifying diagnostic categories. Yes, I pay close attention to the severity of what a person struggles with. But it s never as though You are the patient, and I am the doctor. You are one of the sick, and I am one of the well. Both of us suffer in various ways; and both of us sin by our own version of obsessive self-absorption. Psychology Today: How does your technique or theory differ from mainstream psychotherapy? David Powlison: There are hundreds of variants on mainstream psychotherapy. Since cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is so well known, I ll offer a broadstrokes comparison with the core of CBT s theory and technique. There are apparent similarities. Many elements of constructive human conversation look similar at first glance. I care about people; psychotherapists care about people. I ask questions; they ask questions. I aim to facilitate changes (in perception, belief, values, choices, feelings); they do the same. Such similarities are like the similarities between different religions. But the closer you look at what actually happens, the more radical the differences appear. Perhaps the biggest difference is this: CBT seeks to change your 4 This interview is posted at

7 8 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON self-talk. It s essentially self-referential, not relational. It s about changing how you talk to yourself. But I don t want you to spend so much time either talking to or listening to yourself. My goals are essentially other-referential and relational. I want to overthrow self-obsession. I want both of us to learn to listen to God and talk with God. That s what all the Psalms are doing. This Copernican revolution of putting God at the center also changes how we view and treat others. We learn to relate in the same ways and in the same terms as we are being related to. And, along the way, how we talk to ourselves also changes. Psychology Today: A new client comes to therapy reporting his main problem is feeling detached from God. How would you proceed? David Powlison: First, I want to know, Who is the God that you feel far from? As a Christian, I believe that God is a self-defining, self-revealing, active Person. He is not whatever we imagine him to be. God shows and tells who he is, but often people feel far away from a God that does not exist, a fabrication rather than the true God. A second question is equally important: What is happening in your life? We face two kinds of evils as broken people in a broken world. Evils arise from within us (our sinfulness). Evils beset us from outside (the hardships of being sinned against, bereavement, pain, disability, etc.). Often, a person who feels detached from God is going through some traumatic suffering, or is experiencing some moral failure, or is living within a false frame of reference and chasing rainbows. The real God s mercies reach into our elemental human struggles and troubles: He forgives all my iniquity; he redeems my life from the pit (Ps 103). My third question is, When you feel detached from God, what else are you attached to? To feel far from God doesn t mean that you now live in a vacuum or that God is far off. The human soul never lives in a vacuum; we always attach to something. What is the something that you are preoccupied with that is not the one true God? Answering that question opens a wide door to significant self-knowledge and to grasping the real mercies of God in Christ. Psychology Today: What is the relationship between sin and psychopathology? David Powlison: Sin is the ultimate psychopathology. Sin, in the biblical view, is not simply the high-handed actions we do e.g., committing adultery, abusing a child, nursing a grievance, or complaining and gossiping. Though sin includes high-handed things, it runs far deeper into who we are. It is the perverse inner bentness that erases God from his universe and skews all our perceptions, purposes and choices.

8 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON 9 But sin is not the only factor at work in people s deep struggles and troubles. Our bodies undermine us (e.g., dementias, some depressions). Our social situation besets us (e.g., cultural lies, being abused). These things matter, yet the person never reduces to the interplay of physiological and social factors. For example, take the classic nature-nurture reductionism as applied to the etiology of eating disorders: The body loads the gun, and the environment pulls the trigger. In other words, if an underlying obsessive-compulsive disorder meets a culture that idolizes a certain vision of beauty then, voilà, you have an eating disorder. Instead, I believe that body and culture may be significant factors, but you pull the trigger. Something about who you are the sin-distortion in a person s values, desires, fears, aspirations is decisive in a body-image dysmorphia. Psychology Today: Who or what is the primary change agent in therapy? David Powlison: Let me use a pictorial image to capture the interplay of five change agents that work in concert. Imagine a child s simple drawing of a house: floor, two walls, roof, and the room inside. The floor is God s personal hands-on mercy and power. God is the underlying agent of true change. The roof is what God says. Scripture is his word to us, and we change when we listen and take to heart his message. One of the walls represents the influence of wise, constructive people. We can be change agents with each other, hence friendship and counseling. The other wall is difficult life experience. People grow (either better or worse!) when pressed to realize limitations, to face mortality, to endure suffering, to recognize that career, money, power, and pleasure are not what they re advertised to be. Finally, the person himself or herself is the room inside the house. People are always responsible agents in the change process. A person awakens, turns, changes: repentance and faith working out into love is the classic formulation. All five elements of the house matter. Psychology Today: What is the most difficult part of practicing psychotherapy while maintaining your beliefs? David Powlison: Let me reframe the question slightly. The word psychotherapy is borrowed from the Christian phrase cure of souls. It describes the entire purpose of Christian ministry. That said, I would reword the question, What is the most difficult part of practicing cure of souls in a way that is faithful to your beliefs? God has given us such a rich, comprehensive, and active truth in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is very difficult to handle such life-searching depth and life-renewing breadth. Though I am the counselor, even I tend to get stuck on some piece of the whole, seeing half-truths or quarter-truths. I tend to grind an ax, focus-

9 10 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON ing on what s familiar, or what has been personally significant, or what was helpful to the last person I talked with. May God be merciful to us all. Psychology Today: What is the most rewarding part of your counseling practice? David Powlison: I get the privilege of watching another human being grow wiser, more trusting, more loving, more courageous. I watch as a mind owned by confusion, fear, hostility, immorality or despair (or all of the above) becomes increasingly organized and oriented. I am grateful for this privilege, that my interaction, by God s mercy, played a small part in another person s flourishing and was part of my flourishing. It is a great delight to see relationships sweeten, to see movement in the direction of what is good, true, beautiful and imperishable. A Systematic Practical Theology of Counseling The answers given in that interview did not pop up in a vacuum. They are not random bits from an eclectic grab bag of personal opinions. They arose organically. They are natural fruit of a comprehensive way of understanding psychotherapy the cure of souls as a ministry of Christ and his people. As I was rereading the Psychology Today interview to develop it into this article, I was struck both by the diversity and by the internal coherence of the varied points made. This short interview covers a lot of ground in 1300 words, and contains many of the foundational elements in a systematic practical theology of counseling. Why do I say these answers arose from a systematic theological outlook? That word can make it sound abstract, dissected, canned, categorized, predetermined. But this interview was a living process. The problem lies with the connotations of systematic. It is an odd (but quite understandable) fact that we often think of systematic theology as a collection of various doctrines disconnected from each other: Scripture, God, the Person and Work of Christ, Justification by Faith, the Holy Spirit, the Church, Eschatology, etc. Systematic comes to sound like Christian truths that are chopped up logically under various topics and headings. It comes to sound like abstractions from the Bible, what s left after you remove all the stories, people, places, conversations, drama, and emotions. In reality, the truth of God and his ways is truly systematic: organic, systemic, alive. In a complex yet unified whole, all the parts interrelate, interact, and work together. Our faith comes to know an only-wise, unified Person from whom all personhood and all coherent life wisdom derive. All the parts connect and move in concert. So the Bible s truth is truly systematic, as in an organic whole, a living body of doctrine. We may talk about it or write about it in ways that obscure the interconnections. But such dissection is our fault and does not express the intrinsic

10 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON 11 character of theological wisdom. The interconnected whole is far greater than the sum of its dissected parts. A person who has acquired mere knowledge of the Bible, of Christian doctrines, of the main principles of biblical counseling may be able to describe each part and then tally up the sum of the individual parts. But the organic, systematic wisdom that each one of us needs for life and ministry goes far deeper, higher, and wider. We need to live within the dynamic relationship between all the parts working together. And they do work together. My statement that a systematic practical theology of counseling gives rise to my answers in the Psychology Today interview entails two complementary implications. First, because the interview is brief, I could never cover all that could be said, and that s okay. So, for example, I left out the church, did not name the Holy Spirit, passed over Satan s role, and said nothing about the skills in pastoral conversation that Scripture teaches and that Jesus and the apostles embody. Why? I thought that those first three topics would trigger confused and misleading associations in my readers minds that I wouldn t have time to redress. And that fourth topic involves riches that I didn t have time to address and illustrate. Second, because what I was able to say arose organically, what actually was said links to innumerable complementary truths and implications that could be said on another occasion. There is room for a lifetime of further conversations. So what systematic truths were active in my answers to the seven interview questions? Here is my tally of those individual parts of organic Christian truth that came on stage to play some brief role in demonstrating the distinctives of a Christian cure of the soul. I spoke about God. The living God is every person s all-pervasive environment. God is a specific, self-disclosing, active person, with his own name, character, and purposes. He is merciful in ways that reach into our real struggles with doublestranded evil both with sinfulness and with sufferings. He both forgives our sins and redeems us from the pit. So life triumphs over death and the fruit of biblical change is imperishable good. God s creation and his providence in common grace bring all the blessings of this life, including the good things enjoyed by both Christians and non-christians. But the deeper you dig, the more evident the differences become between Christian truth and ministry and those theories and practices in the secular mainstream. God himself, in person, is the difference-maker. I spoke about people. All human beings are essentially and inescapably religious, either rightly or wrongly relating to the one true God. A human nature common to us all underlies all idiosyncratic differences between people. Every person deals with his or her particularized version of intertwining evils. Sinfulness is multifac-

11 12 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON tored and complex, arising from an active heart that attaches ultimate loyalty either to the real God or to some fiction. Sin finds expression in both overt and subtle ways. Sufferings are also multifactored and complex, entailing both our bodies and numerous situational variables. But something about who the person is always proves decisive. I spoke to non-christians because everyone is included in the scope of what Christian faith addresses. Christ s words communicate to Everyman in language that is understandable and relevant. So I can write with secular psychotherapists in mind, seeking to open their minds to a God-centered reality. They may close their minds. If they do, then however well-meaning, they will be unable to offer the understanding, help, and guidance that their clients most need. Unbelief has immediate and far-reaching costs for both client and therapist. I spoke about the Christian life and the role of ministry. The goal of Christian ministry is the formation of an outward-looking and outward-going person: faith working through love. This goal is the fruit of God s love: the way we have been treated by him is replicated in how we treat others. The change process is multifactored, fundamentally animated by God s hands-on presence, as he typically works in and through various means: Scripture, other people s help, life s difficulties. In it all, we are always responsible agents. The greatest difficulty we have in practicing our religious therapy is not because there is some inherent clash between religion and psychotherapy our faith and ministry is the cure of souls. The greatest difficulty lies within ourselves, in our limitations, immaturities, and continual need for mercy. We can be honest about ourselves and our shortcomings because we are one with those we seek to love, and we don t need to present an illusion of clinical objectivity. Success in ministry is the joy of playing some small role in another person s flourishing wisdom. And the fruit that is truly fruitful lasts forever because the ingredients of eternal, imperishable life consist of all that is wise, peaceable, true, good, and beautiful. Giving an Answer Peter says, Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect (1 Pet 3:15). I have tried to give good answers to honest questions. A philosophy of redemptive communication builds on the way that all the Scriptures and Jesus and his apostles in particular engage in both evangelism and discipleship. The interview was given for a non-christian readership. But I hope that these answers also have discipleship implications. This interview for inquisitive secular psychotherapists may also help Christian psychotherapists better

12 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON 13 understand how their professed faith connects to (or may disconnect from) their counseling practice. It may also help biblical counselors to better understand the implications of our own core commitments and some of the ways we communicate (or miscommunicate) to others. Finally, an understanding of the systematic nature of Christian truth and wisdom can help us understand something of why very basic Christian truths can be expressed in innumerable ways. We should always seek to adapt what we say and how we say it to the particular needs and experiences of those to whom we hope to minister. Questions that need answering deserve thoughtful, pointed, reasoned answers. * * * I hope that every article in JBC gives well-reasoned answers to the innumerable questions that the cure of souls raises. The first article raises a very serious question: Is same-sex attraction a taboo subject in your church? If it is, you are probably failing to connect to people in your congregation who are struggling silently. They need fellowship and support. In his article, Five Ministry Priorities for Those Struggling with Same-Sex Attraction, Mike Emlet speaks to this pastoral need. He offers practical ways that ministry leaders and wise lay persons can positively impact the church culture in order to offer help to those who struggle with same-sex attraction. Another familiar problem in the church is the blithe way people respond to the suffering of others. A snippet of Romans 8:28 All things work together for good is too often quoted as if it were a panacea. This section of Romans is intended to connect to the hurting, struggling person, but we can unwittingly use it in a way that disconnects. Brad Hambrick helps us with this in Making Peace with Romans 8:28. He uncovers the false beliefs people have about suffering and then places this verse in its proper context within the passage. He walks us slowly through verses in order to show us how to help sufferers journey to the stunning truth of verse 28. We, too, must journey with sufferers if we are going to be faithful helpers. Next we turn to small group ministry in the church. Every church has small groups of some sort. And every church struggles with the question: why are we meeting? Steve Midgley, a pastor in Cambridge, England experienced this in his church. Using principles of personal sanctification intrinsic to biblical counseling, he refocused the groups to learn to be like Jesus. Read how he implemented this in his church in Something Worth Meeting For A Biblical Vision for Small Groups. Our first Counselor s Toolbox also addresses small group ministry. The article

13 14 GIVING REASONED ANSWERS TO REASONABLE QUESTIONS POWLISON is from Alasdair Groves and is titled How to Set Up Church-Based Accountability Groups. It dovetails with Midgley s larger vision by focusing on one problemspecific application. Groves offers practical instruction on how to start and sustain this type of ministry in your church. He sets this within the biblical call for brothers and sisters to hold one another accountable, confess significant sin patterns, and support one another in the battle against sin. The second toolbox helps people answer the question, What Is Your Calling? I walk you through various ways that Christ is purposing you. A series of initial questions help you discern your vocation within the kingdom. A second set of questions helps you to discern your opportunities to use your vocation specifically related to counseling ministry. Relatively few people identify themselves as counselors, but all of us counsel no matter what our vocation. What opportunities are available for you?

14 The Journal of Biblical Counseling (ISSN: ) is published by: Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation 1803 East Willow Grove Avenue Glenside, PA Copyright 2014 CCEF All rights reserved. For permission to copy or distribute JBC articles go to: