Nikki Holloway
Liberty University
Dr. Johnny Baker
January 22, 2015
Summary
The author Dr. Lawrence J. Crabb of the book, “Effective Bible Counseling: A Model for Helping Caring Christians Became Capable Counselors,” point toward two challenging areas. The first areas are those bases from physical or natural causes. The second is typically a base that is in essence moral. Crabb have faith in the fact that God has ordained the local church to be his chief device to attend to His people’s arches and pain’s. The author lays out a counseling plan for the church to use his book. In the book he states “people will never be happy if they are concerned primarily with becoming happy (Crabb, p. 22).” The author also mentions “the most basic problem of every human being is his separation from God, a point made essential by the element that God is holy and we are not” (p.17).
1. Primary Goal: (What is the desired outcome?).
The author initially defines what he labels as; “Separate but equal” (Crabb, 1977). This method is a representative of those who would believe through Christ, “scripture deals with the spiritual and theological while psychology falls into a different category with medical paradigms,” (Crabb, 1977). This concept advises that individuals with actual psychological difficulties should turn to professionally trained psychologists for the assistance that is needed. However, Crabb’s Effective Bible Counseling, discloses four methods to integrating the Bible and counseling, primary among these concepts are Crabb’s theory of counseling. The ideas regarding the simple needs aspects of counseling are the most important.
The chief objective of Crabb is to consent to individuals to be unrestricted to worship and serve God as best as they can. To sum it up, Crabb would like to demonstrate to the reader how to change from the approach of “I want to be happy,” to a mentality of trying to be more Christ like (Crabb, 22).
2. Development of problems and personal need (How do the issues come about?) Crabb articulates the people have two chief needs. These needs are significance and security with the minor being acquired needs. Acquired needs are those that meet a main need. The problem escalates outward when these needs are not encountered. Crabb states there are three forms of complications that affect accomplishing a goal. They are unreachable goals, external circumstances, and fear of failure (Crabb, 125).
3. Biblical integration (How much of the Bible is used in this methodology?) Crabb articulates clearly that whatever is anti-God in methodology has a duty to be prohibited. Although, there are contrasting kinds of methodologies, “separate but equal where biblical and psychology teachings are equivalent;” “nothing buttery were psychology is discounted or unimportant”; “toss salad where a little of both biblical and psychology teachings is used without evaluation;” “spoiling the Egyptians” is what Crabb expressions as his method. This concept is a part of psychology that is in sync with the Bible, this is used but then again the foundation is found in the Bible (Crabb, 49).
4. Formula for change (the author’s stated steps to the desired outcome) Despite the fact that Crabb do not mention a time frame for how long each would take, he has stated a number of stages of counseling. There are eight stages to biblical counseling. They are identify the problem feelings, identify goal oriented problem behavior, identify problem thinking, teach, change the assumptions, clarify biblical behavior, identify spirit-controlled biblical feelings, summit to change, and plan the difference (Crabb, 1977).
5. Balance of theology and spirituality (Does the author lean more to theology or spirituality?) Crabb’s gives the impression to be leaning more in the direction of spirituality, for the reason that psychology is measured in contradiction of how it lines up with the bible. The biblical principles are