The essays collected in this volume examine evidence-based approaches to Christian counseling and psychotherapy, exploring treatments for individuals, couples and groups. The book addresses both the advantages and the challenges of this evidence-based approach and concludes with reflections on the future of such treatments.
All approaches to counseling and psychotherapy rest on assumptions about human nature. Current theories are primarily derived from Buddhist, humanistic, and evolutionary perspectives where there is no God or faith. This book mines the riches of scripture to identify the dimensions of human nature as understood in the Christian faith that can illuminate the work of the practicing clinician. These dimensions of human nature serve as a scaffolding that organize the scientific findings from psychology and neuroscience while remaining attentive to the spirituality of the client. A neuro-psycho-spiritual approach takes a whole-person perspective, delving into the psychological, neurobiological, and spiritual layers of human experience that are relevant to clinical practice. The counselor and psychotherapist will learn how to utilize the dimensions of human nature found in the Bible and apply them to their clinical work through the treatment of Joe, a priest struggling with a sex addiction. Joe will serve as a guide to illustrate how Christian principles can serve as a roadmap to better understand how emotional healing can be facilitated.
This substantially revised and updated edition of a widely used textbook covers the major approaches to counseling and psychotherapy from a Christian perspective, with hypothetical verbatim transcripts of interventions for each major approach and the latest empirical or research findings on their effectiveness. The second edition covers therapies and techniques that are increasing in use, reduces coverage of techniques that are waning in importance, and includes a discussion of lay counseling. The book presents a Christian approach to counseling and psychotherapy that is Christ-centered, biblically based, and Spirit-filled.
With compassion and urgency, this book makes a plea for parishioners to engage in 'grappling soul to soul with troubled lives.' It looks toward a method of counseling which neither overlooks sin nor is reduced to a simplistic model of confrontation and exhortation.
Beginning in the late 1960s, a biblical counseling movement sought to reclaim counseling for the church and provide a Christian alternative to mainstream psychiatry and psychotherapy. The Biblical Counseling Movement: History and Context is an informative and thought-provoking account of that movement. David Powlison's historical account ...
This book provides a forum for five major perspectives on the interface of Christianity and psychology to display their distinctions in a counseling context. Experts in each approach show how to assess, conceptualize, counsel and offer aftercare to a hypothetical client with a variety of complex issues.
A classic in the field of Christian counseling, Competent to Counsel is one of the first works to fully articulate a vision of "nouthetic" counseling—a strictly biblical approach to behavioral counseling and therapy. Dr. Jay Adams defends the idea that the Bible itself, as God's Word, provides all the principles needed for understanding and engaging in holistic counseling. Using biblically directed discussion, nouthetic counseling works by means of the Holy Spirit to bring about change—both immediate and long-term—in the personality and behavior of the counselee. As he points out in his introduction, "I have been engrossed in the project of developing biblical counseling and have uncovered what I consider to be a number of important scriptural principles. . . There have been dramatic results. . . Not only have people's immediate problems been resolved, but there have also been solutions to all sorts of long-term problems as well." Competent to Counsel has helped thousands of pastors, students, laypersons, and Christian counselors develop: A general approach to (and theology of) Christian counseling. Specific, practical responses to particular problems useful for teaching, study, and personal application. Since its first publication in 1970, this book has gone through over thirty printings. It establishes the basis for and an introduction to a counseling approach that is being used in pastors' studies, in counseling centers, and across dining room tables throughout the country and around the world.
Everyone talks about the personal ministry of the Word, but how do we make one-another ministry truly biblical? Gospel-Centered Counseling equips readers to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth. It does so by examining life’s seven ultimate questions and then guiding readers on a journey that explores the biblical, gospel-centered narrative of: The Word: “What is truth?” “Where can I find answers?” The Trinity: “Who is God?” “Can I know Him personally?” Creation: “Who am I?” “What makes people tick?” Fall: “What went wrong?” “Why do we do the things we do?” Redemption: “Can I change?” “How do people change?” Glorification: “Where am I headed?” “How does our future destiny impact our present reality?” Sanctification: “How can I help?” “How can I change lives?" Bob Kellemen builds on the foundation of the written Word and provides a gospel-centered resource for understanding people, diagnosing problems, and prescribing biblically-based solutions. Gospel-Centered Counseling is the first volume in The Equipping Christian Counselors Series, a comprehensive relational training curriculum for the local church that provides a model for equipping God’s people to change lives with Christ’s changeless truth. This two-volume series weaves together comprehensive biblical insight with compassionate Christian engagement.
How are Christians to understand and undertake the discipline of psychology? This question has been of keen interest because of the importance we place on a correct understanding of human nature.This collection of essays edited by Eric Johnson and Stanton Jones offers four different models for the relationship between Christianity and psychology.
