Author Background
T. Dale Johnson, Jr. is a father, author,
associate professor, speaker, and a pastor. Significantly, his work on Biblical
Counseling is one of the continuous threads that runs through this phenomenon. According
to the MBTS.edu website, he currently resides in Kansas City, MO. married to
Summer with six children. He completed his Ph.D. in Biblical Counseling at
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as the Executive
Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. He regularly
travels to speak in conferences and has authored many books about Biblical Counseling
including, “The Church as a Culture of Care.” (New Growth Press)
Thesis/Purpose
The fundamental question is, what is
the purpose of the church? A generalized answer is to read the scripture and
explain it. However, the responsibilities of the church are far more
complicated than just simply reading and explaining the scripture. Here are
three essential responsibilities of the church based on my experience and
understanding of the scripture:
1. Lead people to accept Christ as their Lord and
Savor. (Romans 10:9-11, John 1:12, John 3:16, Act 2:21, 2 Corinthians 5:27)
2. Teach people to form a biblical world view.
(Roman12:2, Hebrew 8:10, Colossians 3:2, 2 Corinthians 10:5)
3. Be the light and salt of the earth by
fulfilling the Great Commandment. (Matthew 28, Matthew 5:13-16)
In short, Pastor duty is to send
people to Christ, change their lives, and send them out to the mission field. Though
it seems, that the church is often defined by the public proclamation of the
scripture as the main duty of a pastor in order to accomplish the above objectives,
this shifted everything else including counseling into supporting roles. However,
the attraction with public proclamation is the present of the adoring crowd and
the need to grow that adoring crowd. The Pastor often modified his message to
attract the crowd rather than giving a biblical based message. Charles Colson: “The
pastor or Christian leader who is constantly the object of adoring crowds soon
can’t live without it and often unconsciously, begins to shape his message to
assure continued adulation.” (Gunderson. Leadership Paradox pp.30 YWAM, 1984). Many
of our churches has fallen into this idolatry—driven by the biggest crowd.
Johnson’s bring us back to a biblical based definition of our human
experiences: “to love as Christ, shepherd as Christ, care as Christ, and mend
the brokenhearted as Christ.” (Johnson, Jr. 2021, pp.5)
Johnson is attempting to address the question
that was asked by Jay Adams: What is the role of the Church in soul care? Furthermore,
to also clarify that the Bible is fully sufficient to address all our
psychological challenges. (Johnson, Jr. 2021, pp.2) A
third objective of Johnson’s work is to challenge the notion that the Church is
an antiquated institution that it is not prepared to deal with contemporary
psychological problems. (Johnson, Jr. 2021, pp.3)
Argumentation and
Support
Church as God’s agent to care for the
soul of His people has challenged the way I think about the church’s role in “soul
care.” Johnson’s enlighten me with the fact that, as a Christian, my priority
is God’s words through the scripture. There is power in His words and should be
the lens through which I see the world. Christian Counseling sees the data through
the lens of compromising variables between Christian’s understanding and
secular understanding. Hence, this is talking the words and fit it into the secular
model. Essentially, understanding of the intermixes between secular and Christian
model does not make any sense. A true biblical based believer, would look at
the data and ask, is the data fit into a biblical definition? Is the utilized
model based on biblical definition? Keep in mind, if we proclaim that we are
followers of Christ—is it not the only sensible thing to do is to utilize God’s
works entirely for the process of healing the counselee?
The church is in a constant struggle
on how to stay relevant with the current trend. It seems, for the most part,
the church is continuously redefining and redirecting itself to find the most relevant
path. The obvious problem with this, hunting for relevancy often takes the
church on a journey of imitating secular model. Culturally, most churches have
joined the rat-race of the business world. Once the church does this, it will start
to discriminate on who they serve—the objective shifted from being biblical
based to whatever secular desire that the church has. “The bible teaches that
the church is responsible to God to the duty and the authority He has given to
us.” (Johnson, Jr. 2021, pp.16) Hence, the church under the headship of Christ
is to be like Christ.
For the Church to sit comfortably on a
foundation of a Culture of Care, it is very important to use biblical
categories to describe people’s problem. Culture is built on conventional wisdom
formed by accepted shared values that are propel by common belief and practices.
Hence, within our churches, we have our universal to local culture that
regulate our roles and how we do things. I have been to several churches that
has “traditional” service and “contemporary” service, Hispanic and English services.
Although some of these divisions are practically necessary, still, these services
are catered to groups with different values and practices. That is how culture
works in our churches today. Oftentimes, we have shared value but insist on
different practices and methodologies.
Culture of care within the church is
natural and it should be the essential to our calling, to care for one another.
If the church follows the way of the Lord. “God shows his love for us in that
while we are sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Although all humanity
shared in the problem of suffering and pain, Christians view it differently. “For
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) And because Christ
showed His Love for us on the cross, we have the greatest of Hope, eternal
hope. For the unbeliever, without the biblical understanding, suffering and
pain is taken through a secular model that only provide temporary relief and
does not have lasting hope.
Therefore, it extremely important that
we categorized and defined pain and suffering through a biblical category. If
we defined our problem of pain and suffering through secular definition and label
with secular name, we would likely end up treating this with secular method.
Again, the core function of the secular method is to make the pain go away; contrary
to biblical counseling, biblical counseling target to heal the pain and
suffering and change the person.
One of the ways that the church glorify
God is, care for the souls of His people. Hence, the church should be the light
to the communities. “Keep watch over
yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you
overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with
his own blood.” (Acts 20:28) The essential role to the church is to be a caring
shepherd for His people and the orientation should always biblical; bible is
the basis for all counseling method.
A secular view of human problems affects
the church’s approach to soul care. The secular methods guided through Diagnostic
and Statical Manual of Mental Disorders (DMS) has methodically standardize and
unified the secular process which, somewhat, bring consistence to the treatments
of pain and suffering. The secular methods have also welcome some of the Christian
practices. In fact, some churches have adopted the secular methods because of its
Christian friendliness. The acceptance of this type of secular methods have stigmatized
biblical counseling as too narrow on its focus and too simplistic while
elevating secular methods as more scientific professionalized.
In order for our churches to mature into
a culture of care, we must start with submitting to the headship of Christ. “And God placed all things
under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the
church, which is his body, the fullness of
him who fills everything in every way.” (Ephesians 1:22-23)
One of the greatest examples of how
Christ intervene in our lives is my personal story. I grew up in the Island of
Tonga, extremely poor but given the opportunity to move up to Hawaii at a young
age. I can remember my mother praying about this very transition—it became
reality. Yet, at the time, I had very little understanding of what transpired.
Had another opportunity to move here to the mainland and completed my formal
education—yes, I can still hear my mother praying. However, church was a thing
of the past during my pre-teen years. Took a job with a fortune 50 company and
consider myself, in the eyes of my peers, successful. Married to a beautiful
woman with three beautiful & talented girls, yet—miserable. Although, I was
living an irresponsible and undiscipline life, God seems to continue tucking at
me to go back to church. Now my mother had passed, my wife took up the prayer
torch. It was 4 years ago, that I was asked to take a demotion or get fire that
brought me back here to the DFW area, however, still running away from God. Nevertheless,
my wife tenacious prayers got me back into church and I became a lay preacher.
I thought to myself at the time, the only way she will quit irking me, is for
me to join. For the most part, I was presumptuous about my way because now, I
am in church, but lifestyle and behavior had not change. It was August 2022, in
my doctor office, I got the dreadful news “Mr. Finau, you have cancer.” From the
third week of August to second week of September 2022. Cancer moved up to stage
three. Doctor advised that I had to go into surgery immediately before the cancer
spread any further. I had the surgery on November 8th. 2022 and they
were able to remove the cancer. Although, I have been declared cancer free. I
still go back every three months for testing. Christ the Shepherd never let me
out from His side. This is Christ the Shepherd interacting with me and continue
to engage me as it seemed that I have fallen deeper into a life of sin. As
counselor, we will take up an active role in people lives that Christ had bought
with His blood. Therefore, the role of a shepherd must not be minimized to a
mere figurehead. God continue to engage us in our daily lives, and we ought to
take notice and act upon these engagements.
One of the interesting things about
being a shepherd is that we are asked to take care of the flock within our
cares. It is the separation of a personal and public ministry or in-reach and
out-reach ministry. This is a distinction that we, as counselors must recognize.
When a counselee is a church member and has already accepted Christ as their
Lord and Savior, the counselor takes on a role of personal or in-reach counseling
process. Basically, the counselor is not to worry about evangelizing to this counselee.
The counselor will focus on developing a pattern of biblical based behavior to
improve the situation. Contrary to that of someone outside the flock, counselor
will have to evangelize, out-reach, the counselee and lead them to commit and
dedicate their lives to Christ as their Lord and Savior. The role of a biblical
counselor is not confined to the walls of the church. Counselors are called to
follow the headship of Christ; during his ministry, he ministered to His inner
circle and ministered to others outside of his circle.
I alluded earlier to my personal
journey on how God provided many life lessons on the way. Many of my sermons, I
reminded folks that we have 2 portals to reach God anytime and anywhere in
every situation: 1. The Scripture 2. Prayers. Fundamentally, God has equipped
us biblically for his works; hence the question is not the ‘tools’ but rather, do
we know how to utilize these tools? At the very core of our ministry, to create
a culture of care, counseling must play an active role in our personal ministry.
Oftentimes, it takes repeating something that was told from the pulpit. Within
the confined of the church, culture of care must be personal. It is building
relationship with an intensive focus on an acute problem (Johnson, Jr. 2021,
pp.143)
Strengths and
Weaknesses
Johnson’s work on this book is
biblically based yet provided sound advice to the counselor. It provided
foundation on how the counselor should proceed with developing a process that look
at the Bible as the ultimate authority. Johnson identified the stigmatic
perceptions surrounding biblical counseling and provided ways to move beyond
the stigma. He provided many examples of how a church is voided with care when
culture of care is not embraced. It is important to point this out because if
Christ is the head of the church, then the church is behaving Christ like. “Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out
His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing;
be cleansed.” Mark 1:41 This is the compassion and care that Christ demonstrated
for his Church. Johnson undoubtedly provided the reader with many examples of
how, we as a church, follow the earthly ministry of our Lord.
Johnson’s focus was a counselor role in changing church
culture to culture of care. However, the liquidity of cultural concepts and the
rigidness of some culture introduces some variables that are often difficult to
change. A breakdown of different type of church cultures would facilitate a more
productive argument. For example, this church has culture A, therefore, ‘B’ is
the biblical response to culture A. Furthermore, the reader is left with the assumption
that whatever the existing church culture, it needs to be changed.
Why would the Professor make me read this?
This is a good introduction to the subject of biblical
counseling. I am currently reading Jay Adams’ Competent to Counsel; this
is a rather more difficult reading and lengthy. Hence, allow me to say thank
you for assigning Johnson’s as the reading assignment for this semester.
However, I’ve learned the many roles of a biblical counselor and how active we
must be as a Christ like shepherd.
Discussion Starters
1.
Personal, public, and team counseling, how are
these varies from one another what are the key factors for their successes?
2.
Is there a time that generalizing the problem
work for resolving the counselee’s problem?
3.
There’s a tendency that the counselee can unduly
relies on the counselor for solving his/her problem minimizing the role of the scripture,
how can the counselor redirect the attention of the counselee to rely on the scripture
as the ultimate authority for their transformation without losing their trust?
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