Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I’m thrilled to have with me Dr. Jacob Elwart. He’s the pastor of Discipleship Ministries at Inner City Baptist Church in Allen Park, Michigan. He serves as Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary.
He’s a Fellow with ACBC and a Board Member as well. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children and one grandchild. Jacob, welcome to the podcast.
Jacob Elwart: Thank you.
Dale Johnson: Now, today, complex cases.Sometimes we call those hard cases. These are the difficult things where you see the messiness of lives in a fallen world. Then there can be some really, really difficult cases, some very, very troublesome cases. People have had difficult lives. Their sin added to it has made their life more difficult.
So we want to talk a little bit about methodology here. So help us to think a little bit about counseling methodology. How do we approach something like this that would work for complex type cases?
Jacob Elwart: Yeah, this is an important topic because we’re all going to come to these cases that are more complex than we expected. As we start to unpack them, we find out that maybe they’re deeper than what we were anticipating.
One thing that’s helped me is David Powlinson has a statement, a bit of Bible for a bit of life. Another way to say that is a little bit of truth for a little bit of life. I love that because we still want to speak truth to the person in the midst of their complex situation, but we don’t have to overwhelm them with that. There are several reasons for that, but we just want to work towards simplicity, not overly simplistic, but we want to try to get to the core of what’s going on and aim towards clarity.
So if we can do that and then give them a little bit of Scripture for a little bit of life and then just recognize that this is a long game, you’re not going to solve this all in one sitting or one session. You’re going to take some time to work through this. But that’s kind of how I’ve thought about approaching it and that’s been super helpful for me.
Dale Johnson: That’s great. I think it’s helpful because a lot of times what happens, you know the moments in your own personal life when you have to make some sort of decision, there are a lot of unknowns. It feels really complex when that happens.
With cases where there are a lot of unknowns, a lot of difficult situations, that makes it really, really difficult. When you can break it down as you were just describing, where you can bring some clarity to smaller parts, you can think about how the Bible applies to little basic issues. I first ran across that concept from Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon uses that in his sermon as he wants to give, as he’s describing his preaching, he wants to give a little bit of Scripture for a little bit of life. I think that’s a great biblical counseling concept and it helps to break down complex cases into manageable sections of a case.
I think that’s so important. Now, as you think about this, why is it so important that we have clarity and simplicity in counseling cases?
Jacob Elwart: Well, I think there are a couple of reasons. First, because we encounter major and multifaceted issues when we counsel. If we come to it without being clear and simple, then we’re going to overwhelm the person that we’re trying to help.
The second reason I can think of is that your counselee is probably listening to other voices. Biblical counseling sometimes is the last resort for people. They often will have an idea of what they think might work. If you’re not clear as to where you’re going and how you’re going to help them, then you might actually not be able to help them as well as you’d like. Third, I think the Bible is multifaceted in its response to our problems.
There are deep and timely answers for life’s problems, but they’re not always easy. That’s why we need to help people with specifics. Jay Adams said in Competent to Counsel that when people don’t deal with specific problems, they rarely solve them. Stuart Scott used to say—he was my professor at seminary—and he said there’s no change in fuzzy land. We have to help people with specifics. When we’re dealing with multifaceted kinds of responses that come from the Bible, then we need to help them move beyond the generalities and move more towards specifics.
The final reason I can think of is that we can’t fix it all at once, that we have limited time to meet in a given session. The counselee has limited capacity for understanding what you’re trying to share with them. We need to take it slow and give them a little bit of truth for a little bit of life. Like Powlinson, Adams said that we should take one thing at a time.
And I’ve found this to be just a helpful practice, because often when a person comes to me with a complex issue, it can be overwhelming for me to try to understand. And sometimes I want to answer every single thing that they’re talking about, but that’s actually not going to be helpful for them, and they’re not going to be able to respond to it very well. So I want to give them a little bit at a time.
Dale Johnson: I appreciate you adding some of the specific methodology, and I want to talk a little bit more about how we do this, because we want to definitely talk about the case generally, where they can kind of see how what you’re describing fits into the whole of the problem. We don’t want to break it down to such a degree that people think what we’re doing is just simple and not helpful to the whole of the problem. We also don’t want to come across as if we’re dismissing other aspects of what they’re dealing with. What we want them to see is, you know, we’re going to break down bits and pieces at a time so that we can digest really the whole.
So talk about how we do this. And basically, I think what I’m asking here is how do we get from something that’s really complex and maybe seen as like generic, where we’re seeing the whole, and we can’t get past that to break it down simply and more specifically.
Jacob Elwart: Yeah, I think this is really is the hard work of counseling. We have to boil down the fire hose of information that we’re receiving into smaller chunks. And so the first part of that is that we need to understand what the issues are. If we are going to help them, we have to be able to identify what’s going on. And then we need to mind the Scriptures to find answers for those issues.
One of the things that we have to avoid is the proof texting and pat answers. I often think about counseling like a medical doctor’s work. I mean, how would we like it if we got in a terrible car accident and we were rushed to the hospital and the doctor was supposed to be taking an assessment of our injuries? And he says, you know, we’re going to go ahead and discharge you, take these two pills and call me in the morning. We’d be like, wait a second, I wish it were that easy, but are you going to do anything about this broken bone or these burns that I have in my forearms or the broken ribs or the punctured lungs? And so our counselees don’t need just pat answers and overly simplistic answers and ridiculous proof texting – they need careful biblical wisdom that is clearly taught and understood that we almost have to do a kind of triage approach to our counselees’ problems and help them deal with the things that are most important first.
So, I think one of the ways that I’ve grown in this area is just trying to learn how to explain things simply. And this is just a lifelong process that we have to learn as, essentially teachers, in the counseling room. I love learning from good children’s teachers, maybe partly because I’m a child at heart, but more seriously, it’s probably because I like how they develop their concepts into simplistic or simple forms. They take complex theological issues where thousands of books have been written about something and they’re able to boil it down to something simple that a child can understand.
And this is a skill that we should all work to develop, that we need to make truth simple and clear. Like Albert Einstein once said, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. And I think there’s great wisdom in that statement and something that might be helpful for us in the counseling room, that we need to be able to understand both their problem and the solution well enough that we could explain it to our counselee in a simple way. Once you’ve understood it, then you can break it into smaller chunks and then research each chunk.
You don’t have to do it all at once. I don’t think you can. And then see what the Bible has to say about each of those specific areas. And then, of course, you’re going to try to apply the Bible to each particular chunk that you’ve made. In his chapter on this topic, Powlinson says we help others when we can first do this for ourselves. When we get good at it on a personal level, we’ll be able to help others on an interpersonal level.
So, when your heart is warm to the things of God, your counseling will be more effective. When your heart is cold towards the things of God, your counseling will be cold. Richard Baxter wrote in The Reformed Pastor, he says, “I confess I must speak it by lamentable experience that I publish to my flock the distempers of my own soul. When I let my heart go cold, my preaching is cold. And when it is confused, my preaching is confused.”
And I think that applies in the counseling room as well. One final thing that I’ll say about this point is that one thing that’s helped me in counseling, this is not necessarily for everyone, but it’s something that’s worked for me and the people that I try to help, is to use one passage instead of ten. Powlinson recommends that we keep it simple in the amount of Scripture that we share. I’ve seen several, I’ve observed several counseling cases with various people, and sometimes they’ll just rapid fire all these different texts. And of course, nothing inherently wrong with that or sinful, I’m not suggesting that by any means.
But Powlinson argues that there are values to giving only one passage, because it orients the person to his life. We give them a big picture, a roadmap, we show them some light to see their steps, and then show them how the passage applies specifically. It also brings Christ’s grace and truth to bear. We understand the struggle. We see where God is in all of it, and we have a specific passage that we can go to and reflect on and meditate on.
Powlinson said that a good theology asks the question, what is God? And goes on for 400 pages to give the answer. That’s fine. But Psalm 121 asks, where does my help come from? And answers with an immediate practical hope, “my help comes from the Lord.”
So we’re keeping it simple, and what we’re doing there is we’re inviting change. The Christian life is marked by regular repentance, so that when God speaks, we listen. When he promises, we trust and pray. When he loves, we love. When he commands, we obey.
And if we stay out in the generalities of counseling, then people will nod and agree, but rarely will they change. And change, to me, happens in the small choices of life. So take them to one passage, show it to them, show it what it looks like, show all the aspects of it. Help them to learn how to study a passage for themselves. That’s the other side benefit, is they learn how to use their Bible for themselves.
Because this is likely how they’re reading their Bible. They’re probably not reading a selection of ten or a hundred texts. They’re probably reading paragraph by paragraph. And so when we teach them how to handle those paragraphs, we’re actually teaching them how to grow on their own.
Dale Johnson: Now, that’s really helpful. And what you’ve done is provided some particulars with some cautions associated with it. And you’ve helped us to think very pointedly about how to engage the Scripture into the realities of a person’s life, not generically, but specifically and particularly.
I want you to talk a little bit about if you can add to some of that, maybe some particulars or practices that you have in mind, like walk us into the counseling room. We know you’ve described what we’re aiming at, what we hope to do, ways that we can break down a counseling complex case into particulars. Talk about the things that you have in mind, how you go from complex to simple in the counseling room.
Jacob Elwart: I have simplified my methodology this way. First, identify the issues, describe each issue in biblical terms, organize in order of priority or severity, and then bring the Bible solution to each issue. And through all this, I’m taking one issue at a time. So my practice is, in the first session, I’m seeking to understand what the struggle is, what kind of suffering are they experiencing, when did this problem start, what are the unresolved issues that keep coming up over and over again, what sins of anger or worry or immoral behavior have been added to the conflict to complicate it even more. I want to ask both extensive and intensive questions.
I want to know what’s going on in other areas of the life. I want to know more detail about the specific area that they came for. And I think of it like a speedboat across the entire lake of their lives, looking at everything, but then putting on the scuba gear and digging down deep in the specific area of conflict or the presenting issue, diving down deep, trying to understand that more clearly. And so in that first session, I won’t answer all their questions or provide solutions for every single problem, even though I’m tempted to do that. I’m tempted to stop them along each part of the way and say, actually, the way that you said that is not true.
Instead, I want to offer hope for them in that first session. I want them to be confident that if they humble themselves, if they’re willing to see things as God sees them, if they’re willing to submit themselves to God, then God promises grace. That we have a big God, that no sin or conflict or suffering is too big for our God. And so don’t make things worse by running out in front of Him and doing what He told you not to do.
So between sessions one and two, I’ll organize everything that I’ve heard and I’ll take what I’ve seen in their intake form and what I’ve learned in the first session, and I’ll try to summarize that in terms of five or six main issues that need to be addressed.
And so it might look something like this. Let’s say I’m working with a couple, might be communication, conflict resolution, forgiveness, overlooking or confronting sin, and then roles and responsibilities. Maybe there’s a couple more, but whatever, we’ll just leave it at that. In session two, I’ll take this list to the session and I’ll share it with the couple. And I’ll say something like, based on what I heard, these are the main issues that you’re concerned about. Is there anything that you would add to this list, anything you would take away?
And so I want them to have some buy-in that this is what we’re going to be working through. And now I’d like to organize these issues, I tell them, in terms of severity or priority. So I ask them, which ones do you think are the most important? Which are the drivers versus the followers? Which are the front of the domino line that we need to knock down first and make it easier for the others to fall?
I’ll usually let them have some say in that. And so sometimes they’ll choose conflict resolution. Most often I start with roles and responsibilities because I want them to understand that they always have a right response, no matter what has happened to them or what kind of sin that they’ve done in the past.
And so we’ll organize them, and now I have a list of issues that can be described in biblical terms that are in order of priority. And now that’s going to be on my agenda for future sessions. So next time we’re going to talk about roles and responsibility. Here’s the homework that will prepare us for that session. Next session after that, we’re going to talk about conflict resolution. So here’s homework for that. And once we finish covering all these topics, then I tell them we’ll reevaluate and see if there’s anything else we need to address, anything we need to go back to. But what I’m doing there is I’m simplifying something that is complex so that I can help them just have a little bit of truth for a little bit of life. So now we’re focusing on one thing each session.
Here’s what Spurgeon says about this. He says, “one bit of Bible prayed over and bedewed with the Spirit and made alive, though it be only a short sentence of six words will profit you more than a hundred chapters without the Spirit.” And so I’m just trying to help them little by little. And if I need to break that up into more chunks, so to speak, or more sessions, then I’ll do that. But typically I’m usually sticking at five, six, seven issues that I’m going to work with them. And they know where I’m going. I know where I’m going. I don’t have to guess what am I going to talk about this next session. We all know where we’re going. And then we just work on them one at a time.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, that’s super helpful because complexity creates a situation where it’s overwhelming and it seems insurmountable. That mountain seems really too big. And what you’re doing is breaking it up into winnable situations. And that’s so helpful because that in and of itself brings a little bit of clarity, simplifies life a little bit more.
Now there’s hope where there was despair before. Really helpful, Jacob. Thanks for the practicality and helping us dive in, organize, and move forward.
Jacob Elwart: Thanks for having me.