Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I have with me Jeremy Pray. He’s the pastor of biblical counseling at North Creek Church in Walnut Creek, California. He’s an ACBC certified counselor and he’s also an ACBC fellow candidate. We are looking forward to him finishing that role and helping us as we train additional counselors. In addition to overseeing North Creek’s robust counseling ministry, he also oversees various other adult ministries there. He spent 15 years in the construction industry as a project manager, but in 2017, he transitioned from the marketplace to vocational Ministry. He has a Master of Divinity from the Masters Seminary, and he’s the author of one of our ACBC booklets called Infertility and Miscarriage. He has been married to his lovely wife, Haley, since 2005 and they have four children. Jeremy, welcome to podcast, brother. We are so grateful for you.
Jeremy Pray: Thanks Dale, thanks for having me.
Dale Johnson: Listen, this will be an interesting conversation as we talk about the ideas of counsel versus counseling. I appreciate the way that you’re even setting some of this out. I think this could be a really interesting conversation. There’s a lot of confusion as it relates to this word “counseling” and how we think about it. It has certainly been modernized. And with that idea of counseling, there has been so much baggage that’s been infused with this term, this idea, and what’s expected when we think about counseling—in terms of talk therapy and the whole psychotherapeutic world. I am interested to see how we’re going to go here. So, let’s just talk about these terms and sort of lay out what we mean, and how we would distinguish between the terms counsel and counseling.
Jeremy Pray: Yeah. Well, there are different ways that we can use the words to highlight different things. And we could even say, you know, that counsel is obvious. Counsel is the content and counseling is the process, but that’s not actually how I’m using the words here. That’s not how we use those words around our ministry, and so, I’ll explain it here as we go. I think it’s helpful to break it into several categories. I think the idea of counsel versus counseling can be helpful within the private setting—So, like behind closed doors, when one person is counseling another person. You can think about it in that way. But it’s also helpful to think about counsel versus counseling when we’re talking about ministry as a whole, when we’re deciding who and how to help people in need. So, let me start with the ladder and broader ministry perspective—first because I think that’s also going to provide some context and make the private side a little bit easier to understand. This also lets people know where I’m headed and probably be helpful to make more of a banner statement. So, it’s this just because someone says that they need help or counsel on an issue in life doesn’t mean that they should enter into or continue in formal biblical counseling, you know, where your meeting weekly homework is assigned. Or, if you want to say it more simply, just because someone asked for counseling, doesn’t mean that they need it.
So, I want to explain what I mean and how I arrived at this place with a personal story. About seven years ago, you mentioned it at the introduction, I came out of the marketplace and entered into vocational ministry. My role was and still is the pastor of biblical counseling. Now, I came into a well-established ministry of about 45 people who were counseling at that time, actively counseling. Now we have more, but that’s what I came in to. Many of the men and women that were counseling there have been doing it for years, and so my job among other things was to handle the initial request for counseling that would come in. Now, we’re well-known in our community, so it’s people from within our church, nearby churches, and even some unsaved people. So, my job was to do some initial triage and then assign those counselees to a counselor. And we always had a waiting list. We still do to this day, too. So, every week, I’d come in, and I’d be looking at a list of like 15 to 20 people. These are people that ask for some kind of help in some fashion and in varying degrees of seriousness, but my goal was just to get that waiting list down as low as possible. Especially, because some of the people were waiting for months. And so, my efforts early on in ministry went mostly towards this beating the bushes, so to speak—like making sure that all the counselors were counseling as many cases that they could handle. But when I soon realize that some of my tactics were burning out our counselors, not saying what they are doing, but rather the types of counselees that they were getting. What they were telling me is that their new counselees weren’t that committed to the process. They have one meeting. It will go well. They assign homework, but the counselee would just kind of ghost us. And from that point they might show up for a second meeting sometimes, but so rarely having done the work. And I found that our counselors were saying like, “Where are all the committed people?” and me early on a ministry, I’m like, “Wow, that’s a good question. Probably, I’ll look into that.” Not all the counselees were like this, but I had enough comments from our experienced counselors that signaled to me, that I had some work to do to improve our triage system. And that’s when I started thinking about the difference between the terms of counsel and counseling.
Dale Johnson: Now, you brought up this triage system and I’m sure it has lot of people intrigued and I want you to talk a little bit about the triage system itself and then what you changed about it. And how do you think that affected your church and your counseling ministry?
Jeremy Pray: Yeah. Generally speaking, in the past: People would call, let’s just say they call the church’s main number, and they say, like, “I got this situation going on, and I need help.” And just simply because they check the proverbial box of someone in need, whoever took the call usually without that many triage questions would say, “Hey we have a really strong biblical counseling ministry” or “We actually even have a pastor of biblical counseling, let me transfer you.” And that wasn’t good, but I couldn’t blame it all on the receptionist because I was the one that was actually perpetuating the problem myself. Because once it came to the biblical counseling ministry, the call, or even sometimes the person would come in, I didn’t really do that good of a job with the triage, the initial triage either. I just like wave them through as quickly as possible. And we got Joe over here, he can take a counselee, go talk with him. But what ended up happening is the Lord, in His kindness, was just so patient with me to just help me apply the word of God to myself. It’s funny, the truth that I was actually teaching to other people was that the church as a whole was meant to care for one another. Pastors are meant to care for one another, right? That is 1 Peter 5:8. Church members are supposed to care for one another. There’s no verse or no concept in Scripture that indicates that all matters of care fall solely on a particular ministry, or even on one person. That shouldn’t be our default move, but that’s kind of what was happening in our church. I mean, we know this—the whole church is responsible to care for one another. And I knew this. I was actually teaching this, but I wasn’t applying it on our day-to-day ministry. And so, to answer your question—what has changed now? Now, when someone calls in the church, whoever takes the call is to be discerning: Who within the church should be first up? Has this person talked to their community group leader? Have they contacted their pastor or leader? Who has direct oversight over them? If they’re from another church, have they talked to their own pastor? I’m always amazed at how many people have not even thought about that. But I also think it’s helpful if we just personalize this for a second—What about when someone brings an issue to us in the hallway, or you’re sitting down over coffee and all of a sudden things kind of start to get a little bit more serious? Well, I would say like, “tag, you’re it, you’re the first one in.” You’re the one that’s supposed to provide counsel, say biblical counseling, right? Counsel, that’s in accordance with the Word. Then, if they need more than you can offer, or if you’re not in the best position to continue, then you just need to figure out who from within the church body is already in their life, from a leadership capacity, that can provide counsel. So that’s how I’m using, the term counsel there.
And then, after all that plays out, if they still need ongoing, acute care or help for a particular issue, I like to use a language of Galatians 6:1. If they’re caught—we can even say if they’re stuck in a sin, then we should feel free to pass them off to whoever might be within the biblical counseling ministry to do counseling. So, your counsel and then when all those other things are exhausted, and we need someone that’s going to provide some more thorough help, or maybe more experienced help, then we move them to counseling. Now, I know as soon as I say that some people are going to say, “Well, our church doesn’t have a formal counseling Ministry.” I mean, I hear that all the time. That might be true, but I think the point still stands–just don’t punch so quickly. Don’t shortcut the other members and leaders in the church that are within their circle. And don’t assume that every hard situation requires formal counseling, either. So, if I can bring it back to my own shortcomings, just what I learned is that I was just waving people through without discerning like, “Wait, hold on. Are they asking for counsel? Do they just have a couple questions, or do they need ongoing counseling?” So, they could just need advice. That’s what I would call counsel. Are they just needing encouragement? That’s counsel. Do they just need practical help, counsel? Now, if they’re going to do all those things, they don’t need to fill out a PDI and don’t need to sign a consent form. That’s just what the church does, and this is definitely what pastors and leaders do. Or do they need ongoing help with dealing with an acute issue? That’s counseling. Do they need intensive discipleship because they are “stuck.” That’s counseling. Are they in a situation where their suffering is significant and someone’s going to need to devote some serious time to walk alongside them through a trial, that’s counseling. Perhaps it’d be helpful to think about it this way and to use our common biblical counseling training language. This is all we’re talking about with gaining a commitment. I mean, we’re not just discerning whether or not they’re willing to put in the work, we’re also discerning who within the church is most the most appropriate person to jump in first. Counseling is great. It’s very helpful. But dare I say that not everyone needs it? Not everyone is stuck. And so, just because a biblical counseling ministry might be fruitful, it doesn’t mean that every cry for help means that we automatically send them there.
Dale Johnson: Man, I appreciate that. That’s really, you know, well distinguished. And I think these are categories that we should be thinking about. And I’m going to give you a couple of things, but I want you to give a personal testimony related to these concepts of counsel and counseling. But before you do that, I want to make some of those distinctions and highlight those. What you’re describing, Jeremy, I think this really protects the church itself, honestly. So, it really does at least two things, if not more than that, at least those two things. The first thing is, it starts forcing your people who are doing the triage, or when they encounter someone who has some sort of need, to start thinking, first, about the church. You know, one of my convictions is that we’ve trained people to think about the church as a last resort for help. What you’re training people to do in this triage mentality is to think about, you know, what they’re there are people or places or ministries in the church that can work with these people to help them, in terms of counsel. The other thing it does is sometimes we get really excited about a counseling ministry. And as we grow a certain counseling ministry, what we start seeing is that it’s taking away some of the vitality of the church. That’s never the intention. The counseling ministry should never replace the ongoing soul care that God intends to happen as a part of the fellowship of the church, with the one another’s. And so, really your ideas of triage here in distinguishing these two things. It helps the church to flourish and what we’re called to do. And it protects the church, so that we can continue to do some of these ideas. I love that. So now, Jeremy, what I want you to do is to describe this idea of triage a little bit further. Let’s give it some practicality here, okay? So, you’re in the counseling room with somebody and these concepts still work out in your mind. Do you use these concepts, or is this just sort of things that guide the ministry at a 30,000 level? Are these concepts that you’re bringing into the counseling room? How does something like that look?
Jeremy Pray: When it comes to the personal side we could say, like behind closed doors and the actual counseling setting, I still think the concept of counsel versus counseling is a helpful distinction to make. And let me describe it: I mean, there’s a concept in a diagram out there that I think explains this dynamic, well though, not using those terms. And I think I first saw Stuart Scott draw this diagram, or use it on his slides. I think, I don’t know who first came up with it, but I’ll give him the credit here. It’s a drawing of like a river flowing from left to right. On the right-hand side, where it’s flowing, you draw a cross, right? This is the idea of all believers are in the river. They’re on the move, becoming more like Christ in their sanctification. There are little rapids here and there, little rocks that we hit, but we keep moving down the river in our sanctification. And that indicates that the sanctification process is not over until we’re glorified. But in that particular diagram, what is drawn at the bottom of it on the edge of the river is an eddy like a rock with a little eddy. And there are some Christians that are stuck in this eddy, some trial in life. Some, I mean, it could be from sin or suffering or something’s not allowing them to continue on in the sanctification process. Humanly speaking, right? To use the words of Galatians 6:1, they’re just caught, or they’re stuck in a trespass, there in the eddy. Counseling is reserved for those who are in the eddy. Counsel is for those that are in the river in a need. So, keep in mind, the river goes on until we’re with the Lord in heaven. We’re going to hit bumps, and we’re going to need counsel from time to time, but we’re not in constant need of counseling, to use the word that way. So, hopefully you’re able to understand the diagram even though I’m not able to draw it for you. I had a boss that said, “This is like getting a haircut over the phone.” So, hopefully, you can understand that.
Let me give you two quick scenarios to illustrate how I think this is helpful. So first, let’s just say that you’re in a meeting with someone for counseling—assuming that you’re a trained counselor. Now, after you spend a full-time hearing someone and they’re explaining their situation saying why they’re asking for help, sometimes you’ll find yourself thinking, “like, yeah, the Word does have answers for your questions here, but honestly, this is just normal life.” They just need general discipleship, not ongoing formal counseling. And in those cases, I think that you would do well to pass them off to another member of the church, who can jump in and help. So that, you can—again, this is assuming you’re a trained counselor, that’s done some equipping–you can jump back in with someone who truly is stuck. But let’s consider the other end of the spectrum. Let’s assume that when they came in, it was obvious that they were in the eddy. They were truly stuck, and they needed counseling, to be sure. But let’s just assume for a second that by God’s grace, they’ve been responding well to the Word. I think you do well in that situation to ask yourself, “Hey, from this forward, do they need counsel or counseling? Are they, are they coming out of the eddy? Are they out of the eddy?” Because if it’s counsel, like they’re not stuck anymore, then I think that it would be wise to pass them off to another believer in the church, who can then carry them through life’s ups and downs. But if it’s counseling, like they’re still stuck in some way, well, then you’re still going. Keep counseling. Your job isn’t done yet. Now, there’s a lot more I could say about that. It doesn’t cover everything, but it covers the bases. These are just some of the lessons that I’ve learned about how you can even just apply the counsel versus counseling, even within the private setting. And, sometimes it can be really freeing for both, honestly, the counselor and the counselee, knowing: When are we done? What are we doing here? And so, perhaps that perspective can be helpful for people to think through.
Dale Johnson: I think so. And I think you’re highlighting the beauty of the local church and what God has called the church to do. You’re still allowing organizational processes for that to happen by using a specific triage and categories to help make sense of that. You know, this is helpful on a lot of levels. As I mentioned, with allowing the church to flourish as God intended to church to do, in terms of soul care. But it’s also on a micro-level, I think, in our counseling room. Where there’s a process in a floating counseling, we’re trying to assimilate people back into the normal flow of the body of Christ–into the normal processes of care. I think this model that you’re describing really lends to that. You have given us a lot to think about, especially those who are formally doing counseling at a church and are trying to think through triaging. I know it’ll be a blessing to all of you. Jeremy, thanks for your work in this, and thanks for communicating it to us.
Jeremy Pray: Thanks again for having me on.
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