Discipleship Counseling

Discipleship Counseling

Introduction

This paper discusses the topic of discipleship counseling. It will explain the importance that communal approach has in the counseling strategy along with the features of Dr. Anderson's therapy with its relation to the said approach. The modern mainstream counseling stresses over the individual while carrying out the counseling process. However, the counseling process has started ignoring the impact of community on the counselee for a long time. The work of Anderson symbolizes the approach towards individualized Christian counseling. The paper aims to explore the existing system of normative Christian counseling along with revealing the importance of community based counseling.

Discussion

Jesus taught His disciples to multiply when he commissioned before His ascension among all nations to make men to be His disciples and continued the method of His ministry on earth. This goes far beyond the mandate to evangelize and means binding and proximity of mature and young Christians learn from each other. Discipleship in the New Testament order is clearly established as a pastoral contract; if the term is "pastoral" can ever prove biblical. Many people seeking advice actually call and contact are seeking and that much will be learned in the handling of Christians among themselves, which replaces some unnecessary counseling appointments and other supplements. In this respect comes the discipleship work also an economic component, as the work of shaping and training, prayer and counsel is distributed among many disciples of Jesus (Massey, 2000).

In this respect, there are many different ways to apply the principle of discipleship in our time and in our framework of community and society (Wilson, 2003). According to Anderson (2003), discipleship counseling is an approach which aims to develop disciples along with helping the counselee solving their issues. He suggests that one of the most important means of discipleship counseling is the inclusion of God. He states that Christians know very well that nothing can be done by them which may last for eternity.

The word “counseling” may have different meanings such as exhortations, providing advises, share skills and knowledge, resolving the conflicts, settings goals etc. generally, counselors investigate about the past in order to fix it while knowing about the context of the issue. On the other hand, they sometimes search for the potential impacts of chemical and physical imbalances that may cause psychological problems. Christian counseling is distinct from secular counseling. Christian counseling rises to another dimension. In contrast psychological systems, Biblical counseling seeks to carefully discover those areas in which a Christian can be flouting the principles and commands of Scripture, and help you learn how lovingly submit to the will of God". Resolving the problems and conflicts and healing the people is an important part of counseling. Christian counselor may do this because they possess a standard through which they measure their aims and also assess the lifestyles of counselee (Clinton, et al. n.d.). They consider the Bible as the only source of truth. On the other hand, secular counselors do not have any such standards, though; they ...