What is Christian Counseling?
(The following excerpt is quoted from the document titled 21st-century Christian Counseling: Definition Of An Emerging Profession-Specialty for the American Association of Christian Counselors and the International Board of Christian Counselors, January 2006.)
Base Definition
Modern Christian counseling builds from biblical wisdom and Christian spiritual formation, salted with the best modern mental health clinical practice for client and community betterment. Christian counseling is holistic in that it is oriented toward a bio-psycho-social-spiritual assessment and intervention. Furthermore, the treatment and prevention of mental/emotional/character disorders is joined with the goal of growing up into Christian maturity. Christian counselors combine, in complementary fashion, the very best of Christian ministry and clinical mental health knowledge with dedicated, caring service to individuals, marriages, families, churches, organizations, and communities. At its best, professional Christian counseling integrates the best theory and proven methods of the mental health professions with biblical truths and spiritual practices to produce "Christ-like" character, behavior, and contentment in the lives of people and systems served.
Christian counseling, then, melds modern clinical science with ancient biblical truths to the honor of God and the wellness-maturity of clients and client systems.
Who are Christian Counselors?
(The following excerpt is quoted from the document titled 21st-century Christian Counseling: Definition Of An Emerging Profession-Specialty for the American Association of Christian Counselors and the International Board of Christian Counselors, January 2006.)
Christian Counselors
Professional Christian counselors are both confessing Christians and licensed/certified/registered mental health professionals dedicated to serve others in godly ways. Whenever appropriate, these professionals bring the life of Jesus Christ into the work of counseling, psychotherapy, medical and psychiatric treatment, testing and evaluation, mediation and arbitration, counselor supervision, teaching and research, administration, consultation, speaking, and church, courtroom, and legislative testimony.
Christian counselors of all kinds - when in the client's interest, with their consent, and when appropriate in therapy - pray for and with clients, read the Bible and make reference to Scripture, encourage the confession of sin, the practice of forgiveness, and the making of amends, support the practice of spiritual disciplines, and give assistance or make referral for spiritual warfare and other specialized practices. When consent does not exist, Christian counselors may be engaged in these activities silently and implicitly, always functioning in the best interests of their clients.
These spiritual practices are not illegal, unethical, or illegitimate, nor are they antagonistic to the forementioned clinical purposes and practices. Christian counseling is not dichotomized into sacred and secular compartments but, from the perspective of the mental health professions, is rightly seen as holistic, adjunctive and integrative.
This integrative work is a central aspect of the Christian counselor's lifelong challenge to become a helper of excellence and ethical integrity. Christian counseling integration is not excessively complex nor is it simplistic and reductionistic. Christian counselors understand and revere the spiritual dimension of human nature and change - best known through encountering Christ and growing in a life of faith in Him. They also diligently search for, evaluate, and apply the best data and practices of the behavioral and social sciences.
Tying these various threads together in clinical practice, Christian counselors understand and respect the role of cognitive, behavioral, moral, emotional, relational, spiritual and environmental forces in human and social change. They also invite God's presence and power to guide this change, and to transform and sanctify the person being helped, properly using God's Word and the ministry resources of His universal church...
...regardless of religious creed or preferred clinical theory, Christian counselors are bound together by these common goals and ethics:
* knowing and loving God;
* loving and serving others;
* avoiding all harm toward clients and others;
* bringing truth, healing, and agreed-upon change into people's lives;
* helping set people free from sin, bondage, mental disorder, and emotional distress;
* making peace and doing justice; and assisting the church, community, and profession to grow to its full maturity.
 
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