Building Your Church Through Counsel and Care

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I'm not just a professional; I'm an extension of the love of Christ, a channel of his grace.
—Robert J. Morgan

I love it, and I hate it. It's exhilarating, and it's exhausting.

Pastoral counseling—it's part of who I am and what I do, yet it often feels as if it's an invasion into my life.

No one does pastoral counseling better than a pastor. Not a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or a psychotherapist.

Professional counselors, the good and the biblical ones, have an important role to fill. I don't understand much about schizophrenia, repressed memories, cyclothymic disorder, or the treatment of ADHD, OCD, or PTSD. Mental illnesses are complex, and I'm not equipped even to recognize some of them. My parishioners and I have benefited from good counselors, and I consider them my allies.

But they are not my replacements. I'm not prepared to yield to a society enamored with Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, or Joseph Wolpe. Pastors can still do things that professional therapists can't.

After all, the prefix "psych" means "soul"—and pastors are tenders of the soul. That's our job.

Pastoral counseling, as I'm using the term, is helping people resolve their problems, facilitating positive changes in their lives, and helping them grow toward greater wholeness. No one does that better than pastors. Here's why.

When people come to me with problems, they come to someone who loves them. I'm not just a professional; I'm an extension of the love of Christ, a channel of his grace. Many professional counselors, of course, exhibit genuine concern, perhaps even love, for their clients—but not as only a pastor can.

When I began pastoring twenty years ago, I studied shepherding in the Bible. The Hebrew word ...

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