A Conceptual Framework

There are significant parallels between counseling, discipling, and parenting.  Although my job primarily calls me to disciple younger women I find that I daily practice counseling and I occasionally wonder if I've (perhaps wrongly?) wandering into the land of parenting as well.  As I consider, Lord willing, the ministry of Christian counseling for my future I have sought a greater understanding of counseling.  Parenting will come with time, again, if the Lord wills, but within this topic there is no rush. 

As I have read and discussed the topic of counseling I have gleaned a great depth of knowledge from David Powlison.  In Powlison's book Seeing With New Eyes he elaborates upon the conceptual - a view of people and problems - in the first book of his series addressing Biblical counseling.  Powlison writes:

Concepts are the first and defining ingredient in any system of counseling.  Every theory defines its version of human nature and the dynamics of human motivation.  Every theory defines or assumes an ideal of human functioning by which problems and named and solutions prescribed: right and wrong, value and stigma, true and false, good and bad, sound and defective, healthy and pathological, solution and problem.

One cannot begin the process of counseling without first narrating through and defining their understanding of mankind.  As Powlison notes, "part of knowing any person well is learning what he or she typically lives for - the pattern of desires."  A great deal of counseling and discipling begins with understanding their desires!  "But naming what you want is the easy part.  The harder part is this: how should you now interpret what you've identified?"  Being able so ask questions, listen, and understand a person is only the first step in counseling (initiating intentionally helpful conversations), but we must be guided by God and good teaching as we tackle interpretation.  Our interpretation will have everything to do with our conceptual framework of human nature and motivation.  And only once desires are correctly interpreted can one move towards transformation, reconciliation, and healing.

As I counsel, disciple, and perhaps parent I seek to invite people to an inner transformation of mind, heart, motive, will, identity, and emotions.  Without a clear goal I am left to the dangerous vulnerability of leading younger women towards haphazard and directionless transformation.  Therefore, my conceptual framework is of most importance as I minister to younger women.

A last word from Powlison:

Souls are curred, but they also sicken in new ways.  Souls always need more curring.  In the counseling context, you often witness such ambiguities.  The positive effects of good, true, and beautiful counsel coexist - uneasily, you hope - with the negative effective of counsel that is bad, untrue, and deformed.  

Let us who shepherd and counsel do it well!