by Roger Alcaraz

So you’re at church on Sunday and everything is going peachy as you’re getting to know some of the newer faces of the church. You find yourself bonding with a younger member who reminds you of yourself from 5-10 years ago–perhaps they’re even struggling through some of the same issues that you once did. You pray with them and tell them if they ever need someone to pray with, to find you. Then they ask you the all terrifying question: “Can we meet up regularly?”

Gulp. “Regularly?” I mean, praying with them is one thing, but how would you go about counseling them week to week? Well, I hate to break it to you, but as the church gets bigger, the more impossible it becomes for the leaders to counsel everyone. And so the church must rely on its members (including you if you’re part of Lighthouse) to point each other to Christ, to shoulder one another’s burdens, and weep with those who weep.

But if you’ve never done this, it could be a daunting task. Heck, I’ve done it many times and I still get scared. Questions run through my mind like, “Do I have the time to invest in this person’s life? What if the situation is more than I know how to handle? What if I make things worse?” Still, I trust God with all of those things and find the experience rewarding every time. So even if you’ve never regularly counseled someone, I encourage you to serve the church in this way. And to help you in this, I’ve written out some steps to guide your times together in counseling.

Gain Involvement

Interestingly, your very first goal as a counselor is to gain involvement—establish the kind of relationship with the individuals that they tell their problems honestly and honestly take the counseling to heart. Without this, there is a lack of trust and the counseling becomes questionable for the individuals. I cannot emphasize this enough. If the counselee doesn’t trust you, they will likely hide their deep struggles from you. And even if you manage to draw them out, they will likely ignore any counsel you give. So building trust is a must.

Gather Data

Next, you need to gather data that would allow him to understand the individuals and the problem as much as possible. This should be done regardless of how well you think you understand the person or the situation because there will always be new things revealed that will affect how you counsel. Often times, gathering data is done by asking a lot of questions. The questions range from focusing on what happened, to why it happened, to how the person felt when it happened, all to gain clarity on the situation. It may seem like a tedious time and perhaps even a waste of time, but you should not feel bad if you spend a majority of your early sessions just asking questions and learning. Data gathering can also be used to gain involvement and trust from the individual. It can also be used to know just what homework to assign. Overall, it sets the foundation for the rest of the time with the individual and helps make all those times profitable. Once the you feel confident that you have all the relevant data, you must then proceed to interpreting that data.

Give Hope

After this, you need to give hope. It starts as early as the first session because most people who come for counseling are lacking hope. It is your job to offer the hope that can only come from God and his word. Look for the promises God gives concerning their situation and continually remind your counselee of them. They might be comforted by God’s word, but it’s up to you to have them meditate on Scripture and allow the Holy Spirit to bring about change.

Provide Instruction

After all of this, you are finally ready to provide instruction from God’s word. The warnings in Scripture towards those who teach should cause a healthy fear during this time. Hopefully, by this point, you understand the person you’re counseling and the situation in full to know how to instruct. The most important thing to consider is that your instruction is biblical. For this, it’s helpful to categorize your instruction as either a biblical mandate (such as avoiding fornication), or a helpful instruction (such as setting a curfew in dating). The difference between the two is whether or not Scripture commands it. Disobeying would then be a sin. But our instruction can also include things that would serve as a help to our counselee, even though Scripture doesn’t directly command it. But we should always make the distinction clear to our counselee so we don’t promote legalism (the idea that if we follow man made rules, we’re more righteous before God). The helpful instruction we give is meant to help people obey biblical mandates.

Assign Homework

In school, homework is used to improve one’s ability to perform some task and it is also used to mark progress. The same can be true for homework regarding one’s spiritual life. More than just the need for homework is the need for specific homework. The difference between that and vague homework is that specific homework can be monitored and directly measured. For example, for someone who is struggling with selfishness, homework that consists on putting others’ needs before your own is vague. What does it mean to put someone’s need before your own and how would one be sure it was done? However, more helpful homework would be to require the person to treat three people out for a meal or ask five people for prayer requests and praying with them. The difference is that at the end of the week, one can be sure whether or not the homework was done. This allows you to provide greater accountability, and give the counselee a time to build better habits. This is all aided with the use of specific homework, cleverly chosen according to the need of the counselee.