Will Counseling Make a Church Turn Inward?

What do counseling and evangelism have in common? What do counseling and community have in common? Have you ever put them together? At first glance, it would seem that the two pairings are awkward at best. But stop for a minute and consider how a local church that takes counseling seriously actually does a better job of reaching non-believers as well as build community.

Counseling and Evangelism

How has the church historically persuaded the surrounding culture of the truth of the Scriptures? If you know your church history, it has largely happened when people’s lives were changed so much by the grace of God that others could not dismiss those who were changed. Nor could they as easily dismiss the truth claims that transformed them. There has been much discussion about modernity, post-modernity and the apologetic challenge this raises for the church. In a post-modern climate, modern notions of rational categories of truth and error, right and wrong, good and bad have been abandoned. Those belong to the day when the majority culture imposed its meta-narrative on the minority culture. Since this led to oppression, it was necessary to rule out any claims to absolute truth. This is the context in which we live. It is going to take much more than logical arguments to convince people of the truth of the Christian faith.

When a church counsels, it is saying more than the Bible is true; it is saying that the God of the Bible is real. He comes to change lives, families, communities, cultures and the entire cosmos. You can actually see those changes! When a church counsels, it is engaging in one of the most important apologetic tasks it can engage in. It is saying, “We will not simply proclaim the truth, we will demonstrate the truth in the way we live and in the visible proof of lives changed.”

Talk to any church that takes counseling seriously and they will attest to the fact that they reach non-believers naturally because they are addressing the problems they struggle with in their daily lives. The truth changes them and they come to embrace the truth!

Counseling and Community

We don’t often think of the word community when we hear the word “counseling”. The word “counseling” evokes images of conversations between two people behind closed doors where no one else can listen. We think “confidentiality”. While we would not want to diminish the need to handle personal information and conversations with great care and wisdom, a church that counsels is actually a vibrant community. 

Paul, in Colossians 3:16 says, “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.” This passage is speaking of a vibrant congregation where brothers and sisters in Christ are counseling one another in the context of daily life as they grow as a community. This does not preclude more personal, confidential contexts for counsel. It does emphasize the communal nature of “one-anothering” ministry.

When a church counsels, it becomes the first place, not the last place that people think about when they need help. How biblical and yet how radical for people to think of the church in that way!

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Should the Church do Counseling?

In my travels over the past 12 years (and 15 years of campus and pastoral ministry before that), I have had the privilege of talking with countless pastors. Given my obvious interest in pastoral care, I regularly get asked a simple but basic question from people in ministry. It is then followed by an interesting statement. “Should I really try to “counsel” people or should I find someone who is an expert to whom I might send people for help?” “After all, I wasn’t trained in counseling in seminary.”

Why should a local church and its leaders seek to incorporate counseling within the context of the local church? It seems like a major distraction from the more important matters of church life and mission. Won’t counseling distract the church from being truly missional? Might it move the church to become insular and self-focused? Shouldn’t counseling be left to professionals who are highly trained to deal with people’s problems?

These are all good questions that deserve an answer. Here are some reasons a church should counsel:

• Before we begin, we need to define our terms. The word “counseling” is a very distracting word. For the past 100 years, it is a word that has been associated with secular therapy and highly trained/skilled experts with degrees. They are also governed by state and national agencies that insure “best practices” in the helping professions. Unfortunately, the church has not engaged the "soft sciences" as it should have. Still, the word “counsel” is a word that is found all throughout the Bible. Just take Psalm 1:1-2 for instance. Notice the usage of the word “counsel”;

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…But his delight is in the law of the Lord…

Other translations use the word “advice” for the word “counsel”. In other words, the concept of counseling or giving advice is as old as the human race. We are meaning makers and meaning seekers. We need advice and we offer advice. If this is an aspect of being made in God’s image, it would follow that God is very concerned about what we refer to as “counseling” or giving advice. In Psalm 1, the distinction is drawn quite starkly. One is often giving or receiving good or bad advice. In light of this Psalm alone, it is imperative that the church be in the business of “counseling.”

• As Christians, we are on a mission. In John 17:18, Jesus says, ‘As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” Jesus came on a courageous mission of compassion to rescue us from ourselves and to restore all things. He did this as the incarnate Son of God. He did not preach a message from heaven but instead “became like us in every way” (Hebrews 2:17) though without sin. When a church commits to counsel people, they are saying that they are willing to get down in the trenches of daily life and love people with the redemptive compassion of the Incarnate One. They are saying that good preaching, as important as it is, is just the beginning of ministry of the Word not the beginning and end. Ministry of the Word that does not connect at the level of people’s sins and sufferings in a rich and meaningful way is insufficient. It fails to fully display the amazing compassion of the God of Scripture. A church should counsel if it wants to demonstrate the compassion of Father, Son and Spirit.

While different messages for change and human flourishing abound, the church must speak and demonstrate the power of the Gospel as it addresses issues endemic to the human condition.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Criminal Under My Own Hat

You may be familiar with G.K. Chesterton and his famous character Father Brown. Chesterton was a prolific British writer at the turn of the 20th century. Some consider his most famous work to be Orthodoxy  which is a defense of the Christian faith. A must read for anyone who believes or is interested in the Christian faith.

 Chesterton wrote his first series of stories about Father Brown in 1911. He based the character on Father John O'Connor (1870–1952), a parish priest in Bradford who was involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922. Father Brown is a humble priest as well as a very cunning detective. There are close similarities between Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown. The creators of both were contemporaries and good friends.

At one point, Father Brown describes his approach to finding the criminal. The key is not the cleverness of a well trained sleuth, but humility.

I don’t try to get outside the man. I try to get inside the murderer. . . . Indeed it’s much more than that, don’t you see? I am inside a man. I am always inside a man, moving his arms and legs; but I wait till I know I am inside a murderer, thinking his thoughts, wrestling with his passions; till I have bent myself into the posture of his hunched and peering hatred; till I see the world with his bloodshot and squinting eyes, looking between the blinkers of his half-witted concentration; looking up the short and sharp perspective of a straight road to a pool of blood. Till I am really a murderer. 

No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.

Singer-songwriter, T-Bone Burnett captures this well in his song - Criminals. It also reminds me of John Owen's quote, "The seed of every known sin is in my own heart."

Listen to the song and scroll down to read the lyrics.

I've seen a lot of criminals
I've seen a lot of crime
Doing a lot of evil deeds
Doing a lot of time

We speak of these men as aliens
From some forbidden race
We speak of these men as animals
We will lock in a cage

But there's one man I must arrest
I must interrogate
One man that I must make confess
Then rehabilitate

There is no other I can blame
No other I can judge
No other I can cast in shame
Then require blood

I see him in the shadows down the hall
I see him in the plaster on the wall
There is no crime he cannot commit
No murder too complex
His heart is filled with larceny
And violence and sex

His heart is filled with envy
And revenge and greed
His heart is filled with nothing
His heart is filled with need

He's capable of anything
Of any vicious act
This criminal is dangerous
The criminal under my own hat

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Heaven and Sex: Future Invading the Present

Followers of the Messiah should live already in the present in the light of what they will turn out to be in the future.    N. T. Wright

How does a view of eternity and heaven shape the particular way we think about and live out our lives as it relates to sex?

Heaven Teaches Us to Take Sex Seriously Now

The Christian view of this present life and the life to come are both substantial and physical. As Christians, we are not Gnostics. Gnosticism is a view of life that says what is most important is the spiritual. Physical existence is bad. The biblical answer to Gnosticism is that the physical world is good, therefore, sex is good. Sex, though, is to be taken seriously. Sex is not a casual game of pick-up basketball. There is playfulness but it is between 2 people who have taken one another seriously to begin with! Heaven and eternity do not diminish sex; it increases its importance and calls us to take it very seriously.

Heaven Teaches Us Not to Take Sex Too Seriously Now

This is the irony of the Good News of the Kingdom of God. While heaven calls us to take sex seriously now, it also calls us to place it in its proper context. Since marriage and sex are signposts, pointing to something greater, we are called to not make either more important than they are. It is a really good thing but that’s all. It is not on a level with God. It is a second thing not a first thing. Romans 1:25 speaks of taking something good in creation and allowing that to replace the Creator. When we do that, we actually diminish the created thing and possibly destroy it and others with it.

Heaven Teaches Us That Our Desires Must be Stronger Than the Strongest Sexual Desire

Jesus and the rest of the Bible teach that heaven will be a place that utterly confounds our imagination. Heaven will make our most vivid fantasies, now, seem like a bad dream. We are to stir up our imaginations by contemplating heaven so that we live in such a way that we are beneficial to others, now. Heavenly mindedness, for the Christian, moves you deeper into reality because now you live for something bigger than yourself. Seeing this present life through the grand vista of heaven enables you to not put so much pressure on the good things in this world so that they can actually be rightfully enjoyed; food, relationships, work, marriage, children and sex. They are gifts but not the Giver of the gifts.

Heaven Teaches Us to Serve Others Now

According to Scripture, the most powerful aphrodisiac in sex and marriage is the selfless love for another person. Sadly, it is the very opposite of how sin has corrupted us. The grace and glory of heaven is beckoning us to live very different lives. How can heaven shape your desires to be centered on another person’s good? How can heaven shape your sexual desires to be trumped by your desire to serve your spouse more than yourself?

Heaven Teaches Us Our Present and Eternal Need for the Lamb

All of this can sound overwhelming; and it is. You nor I can rise to this standard. In fact, we fail to in so many areas of our lives on a daily basis. That is why this last point is so important.

As you read Revelation, Jesus always remains a Lamb. You see images of  a Lion but they are often super-imposed onto a lamb. How is sex dethroned and redeemed in our present lives? Only by the grace of the Gospel that becomes ours through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who was slain for our sins and self-centeredness. Only God’s grace can create a revolution so great in us that we want to love God and others more than ourselves. Without the pardoning and cleansing grace of Christ, I am on my own, looking to create a “heaven like” existence for myself that has no room for anyone else unless they are serving me.

The gospel gives me the power and freedom to let go of the center; to not grasp for equality with or superiority over God. I am welcomed in based upon no merit of my own but by the sheer gift of the Lamb of God. I can be welcomed into his embrace now and begin to prepare myself for his ultimate embrace in heaven.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.

Sex, Intimacy, Pornography and Heaven

Did you know that there are approximately 300 new pornographic websites launched a day? Were you aware that there are over 30,000 people viewing internet pornography a second? These statistics are staggering. And they are not going down anytime soon.

Why are we so driven sexually? Some would argue that it is just the biological/evolutionary impulse to maintain the human race. But Scripture argues differently. Scripture describes sex as a way of knowing another human being. Beneath the surface of a torrid industry is a God-given desire for intimacy run afoul.

The Hebrew word yada is the word often used to talk about a man and a woman having sex. The Hebrew word yada means to know. Older translations of the Bible actually translate the text in this manner. For instance, the King James Bible translates Genesis 4:1 this way;  And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain. This tells us that sexual union is a significant aspect where we can experience intimacy with another person. It is a deep knowing of another and being known by another.

That is a very strong reason the Bible places sex within the context of marriage. This is where an understanding of the nature of heaven is so critical. At least two passages are essential for this task: Revelation 21:1-5; 21:22-22:5.

From these passages, a number of things can be said about the nature of heaven. We could spend quite a while elaborating on each, but I will only focus on one.

•    Heaven is a place that is utterly centered on the Triune God.

Now, we are ready to see the thing that supersedes sex. While there is comfort for past miseries there is so much more. It is a place where we enjoy the fullness of life. We are welcomed into the very presence of the Triune God, who is the fountain of love. This is heaven. Complete and unbridled intimacy with God and with one another. This is ultimately what we want. Jonathan Edwards writes this about the nature of heaven,

God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light. And therefore the glorious presence of God in heaven fills heaven with love, as the sun, placed in the midst of the visible heavens in a clear day, fills the world with light. The apostle tells us that “God is love;” and therefore, seeing he is an infinite being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love. Seeing he is an all-sufficient being, it follows that he is a full and overflowing, and inexhaustible fountain of love. And in that he is an unchangeable and eternal being, he is an unchangeable and eternal fountain of love.
There, even in heaven, dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is, or ever was, proceeds. There dwells God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, united as one, in infinitely dear, and incomprehensible, and mutual and eternal love. And there this glorious fountain forever flows forth in streams, yea, in rivers of love and delight, and these rivers swell, as it were, to an ocean of love, in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment, and their hearts, as it were, be deluged with love

Charity and Its Fruits, Jonathan Edwards, The Banner of Truth Trust, pp. 327-328.

Therefore, marriage and sex are good gifts that ultimately function as signposts to something greater. Covenantal union between husband and wife becomes a metaphor for covenantal union between the believer and God (2 Corinthians 11:1-2 and Ephesians 5:32).

Sex within the context of marriage is pointing to a greater reality in heaven. Knowing and being known. Intimacy. We long for it but we are also a bit afraid of it because we know, this side of heaven, we may be hurt. This is a primary reason many indulge in pornography. Pornography provides sexual pleasure without the dangers of rejection.

A way of combatting any struggle with a misuse of sex can be found in a deep understanding of the nature of heaven and what God has in store for those who would be joined in relationship with the Triune God.

Copyright © 2014 Timothy S. Lane. All rights reserved.