The 5 Most Effective Traits of a Successful Christian Counselor
If you are considering a career or ministry in Christian counseling, you are probably wondering
what traits make the most effective Christian counselor. Is it knowledge, training, and insight?
Or is it maturity, flexibility, and compassion?
The truth is, that there are several steps to becoming a Christian counselor, and it requires
many traits to become effective in Christian counseling. Pursuing a degree in Christian
counseling"is a serious consideration; one with life-changing implications for both you and your
clients. Considering the traits that make a career Christian counselor successful in his or her
practice is essential to take that first step toward a fulfilling career.
Knowledge and Training
The level of training and instruction you receive in Christian counseling is critical in how well
you perform in the field. The need for counseling services is on the rise, and the counselor will
experience numerous challenges and demands. Deep knowledge and expert training will help
meet those demands as well as develop trust with the client.
Insight
Insight is the ability to see and understand how every individual and experience fits into a
particular picture and plays a role in current circumstances. A counselor may have expert
training, but without insight, it is impossible to grasp the full picture or apply biblical concepts
effectively.
Flexibility
A part of God’s infinite creation, humans display an endless array of personality traits,
experiences, and needs. One of the most important traits in counseling is flexibility and the
ability to change things such as communication styles or meeting structures to meet the client’s
needs.
Spiritual Maturity
Spiritual maturity is not just biblical knowledge, and it does not come easy. Spiritual maturity is
the ability to apply biblical knowledge to one’s own life, consistently demonstrating wisdom,
humility, holiness, and forgiveness. The spiritually mature counselor will lead by example,
recognizing God and scripture as the ultimate source of truth and guidance.
Compassion
One of the traits that set exceptional Christian counselors apart from the rest is true, Christ-like
compassion. Compassion sees beyond the surface and situation to the heart of suffering and it is
compassion that helps others see their own lives in the light of Christ and experience true
healing.
The world is inundated with people overwhelmed by today’s societal pressures. The field of
Christian counseling is one way to help meet the needs of the hurting and reach out with Christ’s
love.
The most significant direct contribution of clergymen to mental health is their counseling and
shepherding of troubled persons.( Action for Mental Health, p. 134.) In his report on the
activities of the churches in the mental health field, Richard- V. McCann declares: "The minister
as counselor is perhaps the one role in which the relations between religion and mental health are
most sharply illuminated," (The Churches and Mental Health, p. 46.)
No one really knows how much time the typical clergyman spends in counseling. The ministers
in McCann's study averaged only 2.2 hours per week in formal counseling relationships. In
contrast, a survey of the activities of thirty-four clergymen in suburban Pittsburgh showed that
they spend thirty percent of their time in counseling at least thirteen hours each week.( J. W.
Eaton, et al., "Pastoral Counseling in a Metropolitan Suburb," Journal of Pastoral Care (Summer,
1963), pp. 93ff.) In any case, the total investment of pastoral energies in counseling is
impressive. If the 246,600 clergymen serving churches in this country average only 2.2 hours per
week, a remarkable total of over half a million (542,520) hours of pastoral counseling occurs
weekly. The fact that these hours are frequently spent with persons whose mental health is in
jeopardy gives counseling a qualitative significance for mental health which far outweighs the
quantitative investment of pastoral time.
Troubled people are more apt to seek help from a clergyman than from a member of any other
professional group. This puts the minister in a strategic and demanding position. An oft-quoted
study of a cross-section of the American adult population revealed that one out of every seven
Americans has sought professional help with a personal problem. Of these, forty-two percent
went to clergymen, twenty-nine percent went to family doctors, eighteen percent to psychiatrists
and psychologists, and ten percent to a special agency or clinic.( Americans View Their Mental
Health, p. 307). Ministers are on the front lines in the efforts to help the burdened and the
troubled.
In most small communities the only professional people available for counseling are ministers,
physicians, and lawyers. Although the minister's counseling training may be less than adequate,
he ordinarily has considerably more such training than persons in law and medicine. In the study
just cited, sixty-five percent of those who had consulted clergymen reported being "helped" or
"helped a lot"; another thirteen percent indicated that they were helped to a lesser degree.(Ibid.,
p. 319) Clergymen led the helping professions in the proportion of counselees who expressed
satisfaction with the results of counseling. In spite of the limited training in counseling of many
ministers, the majority apparently function with impressive effectiveness. As more and more
clergymen receive clinical and academic training in counseling, the quality of ministerial work
with the heavy-laden will continue to rise. The mental health potentialities which can be realized
by increasing the availability of skilled pastoral counseling are immense!
In addition to formal counseling, the general work of pastoral care involves rich opportunities for
informal counseling. Pastoral care is the multifaceted ministry of caring for the spiritual welfare
and growth of persons of all ages. This function is invaluable as a sustaining, nurturing influence
in the lives of millions of people. The minister's caring symbolizes the caring of the religious
community and of God and is expressed in many ways -- for example, a friendly word as people
leave the worship service, a congratulatory note when a member is honored by his company, a
visit to welcome a new family to the community, and the vital pastoral ministries in the pivot
points and crises of life -- marriage, birth, death, confirmation, sickness, accidents, and so forth.
For countless persons, this supportive ministry is indispensable to the maintenance of robust
mental health. Over the years many times as many people are helped through a minister's general
pastoring as are helped through formal counseling.
The Heritage of Pastoral Care and Counseling
The clergyman as counselor has a heritage which is many centuries older than those of the
mental health disciplines. As Robert Leslie indicates, "For centuries the church was the only
agency concerned with the maladjusted." (Unpublished PhD. dissertation, Boston University,
1948, p. 10) Counseling is one aspect of a concern for healing which has been integral to the
Hebrew-Christian tradition through the centuries. In recent years there has been an astonishing
flowering of this ancient pastoral concern; it has been watered by streams of new insight
concerning man which flow from the behavioral sciences and from the new methods of the
psychotherapeutic disciplines. These new resources enable clergymen to fulfill their traditional
helping functions with new vigor and effectiveness.
The counseling pastor walks in the footsteps of the great pastors of the past. He seeks to follow
the example of one who was called the "Great Physician" whose healing influence brought
release of the captives of inner conflict, recovery of sight to the spiritually blind, and let the
broken victims of mental illness go free. To some, it must have seemed that he devoted a
disproportionate amount of time to the sick. But he knew that it is the sick who need a physician,
that those in crises are both more in need of and more open to help. The counseling pastor works
beside the modern Jericho roads with people robbed of happiness and beaten by their fears, their
guilts, and by the savage cruelty with which disease, pain, and death often strike. It is in response
to the raw stuff of human suffering that a person-centered minister functions as counselor.
The Nature and Uniqueness of Pastoral Counseling
Counseling is the utilization of a one-to-one or small group relationship to help persons handle
their problems in living more adequately. In contrast to psychotherapy, it is usually short-term
(ten sessions or less) and does not aim at radical changes in personality. It deals mainly with
contemporary relationships and problems rather than exploring childhood relationships. Its aim is
to help a person mobilize his inner resources for handling a crisis; for making a difficult
decision; for adjusting constructively to an unalterable problem; or for improving his
interpersonal relationships, including his relationship with God.
The heart of counseling is the establishing of a warm, accepting, honest relationship between
pastor and parishioner. As Carroll Wise has pointed out, the counseling relationship is simply an
intensification of the same quality of relatedness which should exist throughout the life of a
church. Experiments conducted under Carl R. Roger's direction demonstrated that growth tends
to occur in a counselee when three qualities are present in the counselor: congruence
(authenticity, inner openness, self-honesty), unconditional positive regard (warm caring and
respect for persons), and empathic understanding (entering into another's inner world of feelings
and meanings) .(Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1961], pp. 263Ff.) Carl G. Jung also emphasized the importance of the counselor's personality:
"Learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the
living soul. Not theories but your own creative individuality alone must decide."( Carl G. Jung,
Psychological Religious Reflections [New York: Pantheon Books, 1953], p. 73.)
A psychiatrist (who is an active churchman) writes: "My hope is that we may develop a more
intensive in-reaching mission, a ministry to those lost within themselves in our own
congregations." ("The Terror of Good Works," p. 250.) This is the goal of pastoral care and
counseling. It is an instrument for implementing the basic purpose of the church -- increase of
love of God and neighbor -- by helping to release the ability to love in those in whom this ability
has been blocked or crippled.
The mental health potentialities of counseling by a minister can best be realized when he is
cognizant and appreciative of the uniqueness of his counseling role. What are the clergyman's
particular contributions within the general field of counseling and psychotherapy?
(1) To some extent the minister is unique among the counseling professions in his training.
Unlike most other counselors, he is trained in philosophy, theology, comparative religions, and
psychology of religious experience. This training should equip him to be of special help to those
whose problems root in an unsuccessful search for a philosophy of life which would give
meaning to their existence. The minister's training should help him develop expertness in
facilitating growth in the relationships of persons with God. Paul Tillich describes pastoral
counseling as a "helping encounter in the ultimate dimension." (Address at the National
Conference on Clinical Pastoral Education, Atlantic City, November, 1956.)
(2) The clergyman is unique among counselors in his explicit goal of spiritual growth. Any
counseling which enhances a person's ability to relate to another makes for greater vitality in his
relationship with God. Most religiously oriented counselors, however, regard the development of
a more mature relationship with God as essential for personality wholeness. The fact that a
minister has a continuing concern for the quality of his counselee's relationship with God,
whether or not this is ever discussed in theological terms, inevitably influences the nature of the
relationship and the direction of counseling. For many people, God is dead. He can come alive
for them only as they are able to remove the blocks to awareness of his living presence. These
blocks usually stem from distortions in early relationships which can be reduced through
experiencing grace -- unearned acceptance and love -- in a counseling relationship (or elsewhere)
.
A minister should be aware of the theological realities with which he deals constantly in
counseling -- guilt, grace, sin, alienation (from God, oneself and others), the terror of
meaninglessness and death, the dark, "demonic" destructiveness of inner conflicts, the struggle
for rebirth to wider dimensions of relationships, and the powerful, God-given drive toward
wholeness. It may be helpful for the counselor to point out to persons from religious
backgrounds that they are dealing with profound theological (as well as psychological) realities
in the counseling experience. With others, the use of "religious" language may actually block
religious growth. A theological student, reflecting on his clinical training experience, described it
as "theology on an experiential level." This is precisely what effective pastoral counseling is. The
ultimate goal of such counseling is spiritual rebirth through loving reconciliation with oneself,
others, and God.
(3) The minister is unique among counselors in his professional role. Because he is a religious
authority figure, people spontaneously project on him a rich variety of associations from their
early life, including powerful feelings about such matters as God, heaven, hell, sex, parents,
Sunday school, death, sin, and guilt. This provides a sensitive clergyman with a superb
opportunity to help people mature in these emotionally charged attitudes. Through their
relationship with him, he can help them grow in their relationships with all authority figures,
including the supreme authority, God. This will occur most readily if his professional self-
identity is clearly that of a minister.
Unique dimensions in pastoral counseling are derived from the minister's role as leader of a local
congregation and his function of shepherding persons from birth to death. His continuing
contacts with families (often stretching over many years) give him advantages in counseling
which those in no other counseling profession possess. Many people seek his help because a
bridge of relationship already exists with him. Often they have trusted ministers since early
childhood.
Another advantage derived from his role is the expectation that he will go to his people in their
homes and places of work without a special invitation. He can often detect problems in their
early stages and bring help before they have reached the final, destructive stages. As a pastor, he
is normally with his people during periods of stress when major problems often develop. Unlike
most counselors, he can be consulted informally, without calling the helping process
"counseling" or necessarily going through the often difficult matter of appointment-making. The
setting of a religious fellowship within which the minister functions as counselor offers a rich
variety of group resources which can undergird, broaden, and complete many of his counseling
efforts. As a counselor, the clergyman has many things in his favor.
(4) There is uniqueness in the religious instruments which the minister naturally employs when
appropriate in his counseling. When used carefully, prayer, scripture, sacraments, and devotional
literature can be of distinct value, particularly in supportive and crisis counseling. When used
indiscriminately, these instruments can block rather than facilitate the emotional and spiritual
growth of persons. Whether or not the minister uses religious tools in a particular relationship,
the counselee knows that he represents the religious community and the vertical dimension of
existence upon which both can draw in counseling.
Pastoral counseling should always be done in the spirit of prayer -- that is, openness to and
dependence on the growth forces of the universe which constitute the source of all healing.
Growth in counseling is the result of the release of these God-given resources which have been
blocked within the person. The effective counselor is only a catalyst in the person-to-person
interaction through which these growth-healing resources become available to the individual.
In order to avoid using religious instruments in irreligious ways (which block growth), they
should be employed in counseling only after one is aware of their meaning to that person. It is
wise to explore their impact on the person by inquiring after a prayer, for example, "What was
going through your mind as I prayed?" The use of instruments and symbols of religion tend to
strengthen the dependency aspect of a counseling relationship by stirring up childhood feelings.
In some cases, this may arouse guilt feelings which block the catharsis of anger, jealousy, and
sexual or destructive fantasies. The content of some prayers tends to arouse expectations of
magical solutions not involving struggle on the counselee's part. In general, religious instruments
should be used sparingly in insight counseling, more frequently in supportive counseling, and
generously in the wider ministry of pastoral care. A prayer of thanksgiving at the close of a
counseling relationship can be a beautiful way of articulating the gratitude which both pastor and
parishioner feel for the mystery and miracle of healing.
Types of Parish Counseling
The client-centered approach has dominated pastoral counseling literature too long. This
approach constitutes one valuable aspect of a minister's training, helping him master the art of
disciplined listening and lessening the occupational tendency toward facile verbalizing.
However, a minister must modify the client-centered approach in a variety of ways if he is to
serve those who seek his help. A minister with only a client-centered string on his counseling
fiddle often feels guilty or blocked in counseling situations requiring the constructive exercise of
authority, functioning as a teacher-counselor, or serving a parishioner emotionally in a feeding
role.
The father of client-centered counseling states clearly that many troubled people cannot benefit
from an insight-oriented, client-centered approach because of excessive instability, aging, or
unfavorable environment.( Carl R. Rogers, Counseling and Psychotherapy Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1942, pp. 61-80.) In my experience, a majority of those who seek a pastor's
help cannot respond to a pure Rogerian approach. This approach is sometimes effective with
reasonably intelligent, highly verbal, young or middle-aged neurotics who are strongly motivated
to obtain help. Attempting to use it with troubled persons ,who lack these characteristics usually
results in what a social worker, Gordon Hamilton, describes as an adventure in passivity(Howard
J. Parad (ed.), Ego Psychology and Dynamic Casework (New York: Family Service Association
of America. 1958), p. 26.) -- a rambling relationship which becomes an exercise in mutual
frustration. Many people's capacity for insight and self-directedness is so limited, crippled, or
ossified that they cannot respond to an insight-oriented approach. But, they can be helped to
greater adequacy in living by varied counseling approaches involving the selective use of
guidance, authority, instruction, along with a focus on improving interpersonal relationships
(rather than effecting major intrapsychic changes) and seeing one's situation from a more
constructive perspective.
The full person-helping potentialities of a minister's counseling can be released only if he
develops skills in several basic types of counseling To some degree, these types utilize different
facets of his personality. Here are the basis types of counseling which the minister is normally
called on to do: (a) Marriage and family counseling, (b) supportive (including crisis) counseling,
(c) counseling for referral, (d) short-term educative and decision-making counseling, (e)
superego counseling, (f) informal counseling, (g) group counseling, (h) religious-existential
problem counseling. Several of these types usually are employed in the same counseling
situation.
Before looking more closely at these types, the ingredients which all effective counseling
approaches have in common should be mentioned:
(a) Establishing a growing therapeutic relationship through warm nonjudgmental concern. (b)
Disciplined listening to and reflecting the parishioner's feelings. (This encourages the pouring
out or catharsis of bottled-up feelings which is like draining the poison off a wound.) (c) Seeking
a growing understanding of the person's "internal frame of reference." (d) Gaining a diagnostic
impression concerning the nature of his problems, his weaknesses, and inner resources. (e) On
the basis of this tentative diagnosis, suggesting an approach to help. These general procedures
have been discussed in standard books on pastoral counseling.( See, for example, Seward
Hiltner, Pastoral Counseling (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1949), Rogers, Counseling and
Psychotherapy, pp. 83-173, and Carroll A. Wise, Pastoral Counseling: Its theory and Practice
(New York: Harper & Row, 1951), pp. 39-114). The mastery of skill in establishing and utilizing
a therapeutic relationship in these ways is the foundation upon which the minister can build a
differential approach to the major types of pastoral counseling.
