Ministry in a Recovering World
Louis McBurney
The pastor is the link between what's happening in therapy and God's Word.
— Louis McBurney Years ago a pastor attending Marble Retreat was trying to climb out of deep despair. Several years before coming to Marble, she had taken her personal struggles to a psychotherapist and wound up in bed with him. Her troubles, as you might imagine, compounded exponentially. In one of our first counseling sessions, I asked her what seemed like an obvious question. "How have you dealt with your sin of adultery?" A funny look crossed her face. "No one has ever called it that before," she said. "But it is sin, isn't it?" "Yes, it is." Right there she repented. It was the catalyst to her recovery. Later, the irony hit me: this pastor's adultery had happened several years back, but apparently nobody in her church, denomination, or circle of friends had mentioned that what she did was a sin. Neither had the professional counsel she had received after her affair. I was flabbergasted. A Little History
The North American church has been invaded by what some call the "therapeutic culture" — a culture that promotes openness, acceptance, and tolerance; a value system of listening, empathy, and support. This phenomenon began in the 1960s, in what psychiatry called the Age of Anxiety. The cultural unrest of that period conceived and gave birth to despair, a despair that has continued for some thirty years. Today's lonely crowd has lost the capacity to cope. Many feel hopeless and aimless. The evening news reports the grim result: suicide, child abuse, spouse abuse, divorce, violence — the rates in recent years have skyrocketed. Paralleling this despair has been the proliferation of support groups and professional counselors — the secular recovery movement — ...
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