I’m often asked this question–“What is pastoral counseling?”–or perhaps even more often, “Who are pastoral counselors?”
So here are some answers to those and other similar questions which I’m presenting in Q and A form.
Q. Who are pastoral counselors?
A. Pastoral counselors are ordained ministers, priests or rabbis with specialized training in an interdisciplinary blend of theology, ethics, psychology and related behavioral sciences.
Besides being college graduates, pastoral counselors have graduated from a seminary or divinity school, or the equivalent, and also usually hold another graduate or professional degree related to the art and science of psychotherapy.
Pastoral counselors maintain an accountable relationship with their particular faith tradition.
Q. How are pastoral counselors authorized to practice as mental health professionals?
A. First, pastoral counselors are authorized by their particular faith tradition, be it Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. For example, I am endorsed by both the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, particular Protestant denominations in which I hold clergy standing.
Nationally, a legitimate pastoral counselor is minimally a certified member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC). This is comparable to being “board certified” in a medical specialty. AAPC authorizes two particular designations to practice pastoral counseling independently. These designations are Fellow and Diplomate. I am, for example, an AAPC Fellow. It took me ten years of training, beyond my graduate and professional education, to obtain that certification.
Finally, in states that have licensing for professional counselors or marriage and family therapists, pastoral counselors hold an appropriate license. In some states, such as North Carolina, this is a pastoral counseling license. Whereas in other states, such as South Carolina, this may be a license as a professional counselor, a marriage and family therapist, or even a psychologist or clinical social worker, depending on whether the particular pastoral counselor qualifies for a license in one of these last two professional disciplines.
Often pastoral counselors are also certified as marriage and family therapists by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). I am, for example an AAMFT Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor.
Q. But don’t most ministers, priests and rabbis do counseling?
A. Yes, depending on their interest and/or level of training. But even then, it is considered unethical when clergy who pastor congregations engage in extensive counseling with their parishoners. This breach of ethics is called “dual relationships.”
The kind of ethical counseling a typical pastor of a congregation normally engages in is better termed “pastoral care.” This often involves crisis intervention, assessment and referral. As well as providing a nurturing and supportive presence in the lives of parishoners, and/or other family members, who are ill or are grieving.
However well-trained a parish pastor may be, with respect to pastoral counseling, s/he will focus on assessment and referral where parishoners are concerned. A competent parish pastor will be well-trained and skilled in assessing the needs of congregants, where more extensive counseling is warranted, and will also be knowledgeable with respect to appropriate resources in the community to which/whom parishoners and/or their family members may be referred.
Sometimes, there are large congregations which are able to employ a multiple staff of professional clergy who typically have different areas of expertise and responsibility, one of which may be pastoral counseling.
And then sometimes, a coalition of congregations, denominations or other forms of religious groups will join together in sponsoring a pastoral counseling center. Sometimes, such counseling centers are staffed by certified pastoral counselors (AAPC Clinical Members, Fellows or Diplomates); often, they are not. As in, for example, here in Charleston, where there are counseling centers which call themselves “pastoral,” even though they are staffed by persons who are not authorized “pastoral counselors.”
Currently, in Charleston, there are only three certified pastoral counselors. Besides myself, the Reverend Dr. David Williams, an AAPC Diplomate, serves as rector of St. Stephens Episcopal Church, and the Reverend Dr. John Johnson, a retired Episcopal priest, a certified Jungian anaylist as well as an AAPC Diplomate, who continues to practice pastoral counseling.
Q. So what’s the difference between any minister who does counseling–or for that matter, non-clergy who may be licensed as professional counselors or marriage and family therapists who refer to their practice as “pastoral counseling”–and an AAPC Clinical Member, Fellow or Diplomate?
A. Here, an analogy from the medical field may be helpful. In the practice of pastoral counseling, AAPC Clinical Members, Fellows or Diplomates are comparable to physicians who have been trained, certified and authorized to practice medicine in a way that nurses, physicians assistants or emergency medical technicians are not trained, certified or authorized, even though these latter medical professionals also practice forms of and related expressions of medicine.
Or to press this analogy further, family physicians and internists may, in fact, write as many anti-depressant prescriptions for their patients as does any psychiatrist. However, a family physician or internist has not been trained, is not credentialed, and is therefore not authorized to call her/himself a psychiatrist, even though s/he (the family practitioner or internist) may also practice a notable amount of what might be considered psychiatry.
Q. What then is the difference between a credentialed pastoral counselor and those who, these days, advertise themselves as “Christian” or “biblical” counselors?
A. Perhaps the best answer to this question is the same analogy to the practice of medicine as I offered to the previous question.
In fact, authorized pastoral counselors will typically tend not to “trade on” such explicitly “Christian verbiage” so overtly as do those who may call themselves “Christian” or “biblical” counselors.
Q. How do you explain that?
A. The important terms here are “integrated, implicit, covert and intrinsic.” Unlike so-called “Christian” or “biblical” counselors, certified pastoral counselors engage in a depth and rigor of training which “integrates” theology/spirituality and contemporary approaches to counseling/psychotherapy. And when one’s approach to this interplay is “better integrated,” such an approach to treatment will be more informed, valid and ethical.
According to both Christian theology (Jesus, in Matthew 6) and modern psychological theory (e.g. Carl Jung, Donald Winnicot, Carl Rogers), such “integration” lends itself to more “implicit” and “covert” dynamics in the therapeutic process and counseling relationship which explains why it tends to be both more effective and ethical. Because the more “implicit” and “covert” communication in any relationship is expressed, the more powerful and intrinsic it tends to be.
For authorized pastoral counselors, then, the relationship between theology/spirituality and the counseling/therapeutic process will not be “traded on,” nor even considered an “add on,” as is commonly the case with so-called “Christian” or “biblical” counselors.
In fact, here are a couple of other analogies–and perhaps rather strained ones at that–but, if you can connect the dots, it’s a less clinical way of looking at what I’m explaining. And likely appropriate–at least the first one–on this Memorial Day weekend. The latter, of course, involving a subject seemingly so ever-popular in our culture.
In my limited experience, I’ve noticed that those veterans who have contributed the most to America’s military engagements, through service in combat, are usually the least likely to want to “talk about” their military accomplishments. Whereas, those whose minimal contributions to similar military engagements are, conversely, ever so eager and can’t seem to wait to tell their suspiciously inflated “war stories” to whomever they can exploit to listen.
Do you suppose the same is true where one’s religious/moral and spiritual values and commitment is concerned? As they say, the difference between those who “walk the walk” and those who merely “talk the talk.”
The other analogy, I’m more familiar with, as is anyone who’s ever played sports fairly successfully. In contrast to those athletically less accomplished or actualized parents whom I often term “Never wases” or “Has beens.” The latter seemingly “stuck back there,” somewhere, such that their athletic achievements in the past have seemingly become what is most defining in their lives; while the former only wish–in often just as “stuck” ways–that their lives could have been, when at their children’s ages, at least minimally athletically fulfilling.
If you’ve ever watched a youth league, or even a high school athletic event, perhaps you’ve noticed? Parents who are at some peace and sense of satisfaction with their “athletic past” are generally able to watch their children participate in sports with an appreciative, supportive and encouraging attitude and comparable behavior.
In contrast to the “Never wases” and “Has been” parents who seem forever over-involved in their children’s athletic endeavors–criticizing the coaching and officiating so blatantly, often even profanely, offering their children unsolicited, and usually critical “coaching advice from the stands.”
Not unlike professional counselors in relation to their clients–pastoral or otherwise–if the former are “helping” their children in the least of intrusive ways, the latter are doing just the opposite.
Q. Does one need to be religious or spiritual to seek and/or benefit from the professional services of a pastoral counselor?
A. No. Considerable research has been done which concludes that a significant majority of people who seek professional counseling services wish not only for their religious/spiritual values to be respected, but also for the mental health professional to acknowledge her/his own religious/spiritual values.
At the same time, credentialed pastoral counselors often discern how a patient’s/client’s particular religion/spirituality may have become the source of, or a contributing factor to the person’s pathology. For example, my teacher, the late Wayne Oates’ book, When Religion Gets Sick. And when this is the case, certified pastoral counselors are the best trained and equipped mental health professionals to treat such mental/emotional/moral and spiritual/even social illness.
Again, because authorized pastoral counselors have so rigorously and thoroughly “integrated” a theological/spiritual understanding of the therapeutic process/counseling relationship, they are also well equipped to provide effective services for persons who would claim no religious/spiritual values or perspective. For if certified pastoral counselors may “expose” their religious/spiritual values, they never “impose” such a perspective.
Q. Do pastoral counselors counsel pastors?
A. Sometimes. Pastoral ministry is typically a lonely, high-stress/low-pay profession. In fact, some denominations or other forms of religious judicatories sometimes employ a certified pastoral counselor whose primary responsibility is to provide pastoral care/counseling to clergy and/or their families.
In recent years, for example, the Reverend Dr. Lloyd Rediger, an AAPC Diplomate and author of the important book, Clergy Killers, presented a training program for clergy and laity, here in Charleston, at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital. Earlier in his career, Dr. Rediger served in such a role, providing pastoral care and counseling to clergy and/or their families on behalf of the Wisconsin Council of Churches.
Q. What do you consider to be the distinctives of pastoral counseling?
A. Two characteristics are, I believe, most representative of faithful, ethical, effective pastoral counseling.
1. One I’ve already mentioned. It is the “integration” concept so essential where “faith” is involved in the healing process. Indeed, the values of Christian faith are always experienced most profoundly the more implicitly they are expressed. For the more secure one is about anything–and certainly where faith is concerned, especially of the Christian kind–s/he will not need to express such convictions as overtly as when one’s values are less integrated within the fabric of one’s life.
2. Second, pastoral counselors who have been trained so as to be certified by AAPC: they stand, in fact, in a faith and values tradition which extends over some 3000 years.
This, in contrast to contemporary psychotherapy which is little more than a century old. Sigmund Freud only died in 1939. Whereas such books in the Hebrew Bible (our Christian Old Testament) as Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, even Job represent a form of “secular psychology,” if you will, as expressed in the life of ancient Israel.
Modern pastoral counseling can be traced, even from Pope Gregory (as in the “Gregorian Chant”) in the 6th century, up through the Puritan pastor, Richard Baxter, in the 17th century, and Ichabod Spencer, in the 19th century, to the seminal influence of Anton Boisen, an American Congregational minister in the early 20th century who, out of his own mental illness, first encouraged and developed a program for clergy to study counseling in hospitals for the mentally ill. For Boisen, the correlation between mental illness and religious experience is often profound.
