Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I have with me Dr. Keith Evans. He’s Associate Professor of Christian Counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Previously, he was Professor of Biblical Counseling, Director of the Biblical Counseling Institute, and Academic Dean at Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Prior to becoming a professor at seminary in 2018, Keith pastored in Lafayette, Indiana for seven years. He’s married to Melissa, and they have four daughters. He earned his Ph.D. in Biblical Counseling at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Keith, it’s so wonderful to have you on the podcast today and talking about a subject that I think is absolutely critical, brother. So, thanks for joining me today for this discussion.
Keith Evans: Thank you so much for having me here.
Dale Johnson: Well, this particular topic, honestly, is one that we see is impacting the biblical counseling movement in a variety of different ways. Really, historically, not just in our contemporary context. But historically, this has been a constant discussion. Way back in the days from J. Adams and John Butler, asking the question, what can we include relative to extra-biblical material from outside the Bible? How do we think through this?
Now, that conversation has been updated in many ways, from general revelation to now thinking about common grace, and all these different ideas. I want you to help us understand this idea.
In some of our counseling circles, there’s this idea that everybody integrates. And so, we say—well, okay, we are open if we trust an individual to allow them to bring in extra-biblical material.
Some would say integration is inevitable, so it’s just a matter of incorporating things from the outside world in a very wise way. Because you’re writing a booklet on this. I want you to describe how your booklet is aiming to help us through some of that confusion.
Keith Evans: Yeah, I think what’s happening, actually, is a redefinition of the word integration. It’s different than the way we have historically used and understood that term. We’ve meant it as far as incorporating methodology from the outside world.
But the way that it’s being used at present is a much lower standard. So that even if, for instance, I use intake forms, or if I meet for an hour length of time, that that’s being alleged that those types of cultural considerations or just like circumstances of counseling, that those types of things are integration as well. They rise to the level of incorporating extra-biblical material or extra-biblical methodologies and helps for the counselee.
But again, that’s a deviation from how we’ve always understood the term. These types of things are just the circumstances of me meeting with people—whether I meet in Starbucks while we’re talking shoulder-to-shoulder, or whether we meet in my office, whether I’m a pastor who’s doing it or just a friend who’s speaking biblical counsel. These are just the various circumstances, and it doesn’t rise to the level of integration.
Dale Johnson: I appreciate the way that you’re describing this. Really, it’s a change in historical view of integration.
I can’t imagine, Keith, if we were having this conversation sitting here with Jay Adams on one side and Gary Collins on another, that Gary Collins would think that the way we’re describing everyone integrates, that Gary Collins would agree with that. I don’t think Gary Collins would look at Jay and say he thinks he’s an integrationist. Gary Collins, who was a contemporary of Jay, made very clear that they thought very differently.
I think you’re right. What’s happened is we’ve updated this conversation to where we’re broadening the concept of integration to sort of subsume biblical counseling to some degree. You mentioned this concept of circumstances. I want to dive a little bit further in.
In your booklet, you introduce this concept using an illustration of biblical worship. This is the idea that God is the one who decides how He wants to be honored and how He wants to be worshiped. You use these categories, using circumstances and using elements of worship.
I’m really intrigued by how you shape these concepts. What I want you to do is unpack these categories for us and how you use these categories to explain how they can help us in this current discussion in the biblical counseling world relative to integration.
Keith Evans: Absolutely. In ACBC, there’s a wide range of different approaches to biblical worship. If we go to all of our different churches, we’re going to see variation. That doesn’t mean that there’s unbiblical worship in our churches or that’s not evangelical worship or that’s not evangelical praise.
There are the essential elements of worship consistent across our evangelical churches. We have the singing of praise. We have the reading of the word. We have the right preaching of the Word and so on and so forth. We would call those the elements. That’s what’s essential to what we’re doing.
Then we have different cultural considerations, different circumstances. Whether or not we sit in wooden pews or we have an auditorium with comfy chairs, these are the incidentals. It doesn’t change what we’re doing. So, too, in counseling, we have the elements, the essentials of what we’re doing, that Christ has given us in His Word, that this is what we need to be doing when we care for souls and we’re seeing the sanctification of saints.
Then we have the incidentals, that whether or not I’m applying the Word in Africa or Japan or America, that’s going to look different culturally, but that’s not changing the essence of what we’re doing. That’s where I think elements and circumstances really help us.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, I think that’s helpful because what you’re saying is the truth itself doesn’t change. The circumstances don’t alter or change or loosen the truth whatsoever at all. It’s still truth applied specifically in a literal culture.
So, I want you to unpack this. You’ve given us the categories, and the categories are helpful, but categories remain categories—sort of aloof, if we don’t have practical application of them. So, I think these can be helpful grids or measuring sticks, honestly, of how we think about extra-biblical information.
So, describe some of what you would say are the essential elements that must be present for counseling to be considered truly biblical. I think this is a big question, and why do you believe these particular elements are so critical, so non-negotiable?
Keith Evans: Yeah, absolutely. We would say that these are the ordinary ways God changes people, and He changes people with His Word, rightly understood and rightly applied. He changes people with prayer. He changes people in the community, so that this work is being done under the church.
Christ has died for his church, and He’s given blessings to his church, and it’s not like we’re just farming this out and saying, like, any old person can do this. No, Christ uniquely is gift to the church.
And so, I’m touching upon some of those elements, but we would say the use of the Word, prayer. We would say even listening, for instance, that we would be quick to listen, slow to speak. So, we want to make sure that we rightly understand, like, these are some of the essential components to what we would say are biblical counseling.
Dale Johnson: I love that, and it is helpful to have these categories that help people to think through. So, I’m going to go a little bit deeper and maybe think on the opposite side here. You suggest some certain practices and theories that if they were to be introduced into biblical counseling would really fundamentally alter the nature of biblical counseling.
And if I’m honest with you, Keith, I see that happening all the time today. I see these types of proposals, of incorporating extra biblical methods into the counseling room. Thinking that they’re benign. They’re nothing to worry about, nothing to be concerned about. They are actually more helpful ways to think about a person, to get to know a person, and so on.
I want you to elaborate on some of these, what you call in the booklet, forbidden elements, and explain why they are in fact—even though they’re well-meaning, people are well-meaning when they use these, people are not intending to harm someone else. I want you to explain why these things are incompatible with biblical counseling.
Keith Evans: Yeah, let me go back to the illustration of worship for a minute. If your pastor this Sunday were to stand up and say, “Okay, we come to the time of prayer. Why doesn’t everybody sit down on the floor and get in the lotus position, and put your hands upward, and then repeat ‘aum’, and we’re going to enter a time of meditation.” And they’re going to call that Christian meditation. We would call foul on that, and hopefully all of our people would be up and out, and we wouldn’t be staying in that place.
That’s not Christian worship, that’s not Christian praise. That is introducing an element of pagan worship, and then bringing that into Christian worship and calling it Christian. That doesn’t work, right? It doesn’t work in praise. It certainly doesn’t work in the counseling room as well.
So, if we’re taking these elements of the world’s intervention, and we’re bringing it back in, and we’re saying, okay, this can be Christianized. I mean, even for the example of meditation, if we’re going to call that type of meditation, Christian meditation, that’s not what we mean when we talk about meditating on the Word.
When we talk about prayerfully reading over the Word and praying the Word back to the Lord, that’s Christian meditation. And even if there are echoes, slight echoes that the world has picked up on, there’s nothing of value there to integrate from a world’s understanding of meditation. So that’s just one example, but there are many.
If we think about other interventions, we know very simply that if I were to engage in hypnosis in the counseling room, that is an element of the world’s interventions. And those types of examples could be replicated. As far as cognitive behavioral therapies, methodologies, EMDR, etc.—these are the elements of the world’s counsel, and to bring them back into our counsel would fundamentally change what we’re doing.
Dale Johnson: That’s right. I mean, they’re dealing with a man that’s described differently. They have different goals, and so therefore, again, while it’s unintended, we’re dealing with the nature of man that’s not described in the Bible.
We’re not aiming at the proper things that God describes or proper aims. And so that’s why it begins to destroy. Now, some people may choose that they want to do that. Well, there’s a category for that, right? Historically, that category is integration. And I’m just saying, if you want to do that, own it.
And just acknowledge yourself to be an integrationist. That is not what biblical counseling has claimed, and that’s not what I would argue that I’m claiming. And I think you would agree with that, that you’re claiming as well.
So, we do have to be cautious here. We have to be wise in how we bring in those elements. And that they—if we’re saying the Bible is sufficient—do come from the Scripture, not from extra biblical material. Now, we need to balance this. You had two categories.
You talked about elements, and you talked about circumstances. I want you to sort of flesh out this category that you call circumstances of counseling. So how do you acknowledge these particular circumstantial aspects?
Because I think people get confused with some of this. So, I want you to help us to acknowledge some of these circumstantial aspects to help counselors avoid some of the pitfalls that are happening in the movement today. Help flesh that out for us a little bit.
Keith Evans: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think it’s perfectly appropriate, for instance, that I choose to meet for 50 minutes and take a 10-minute break before I roll into my next session, so that I can get my mind into a next session. And that’s not integrating from the trappings of the world’s systems.
So, just because the world might do the same, and we have arrived together, if you will, that these are circumstantial ways that make the day move along reasonably and move through the care of individuals. Like if I’m in a counseling setting where I’m doing more than one counseling session at a time, that’s just circumstantial consideration, right?
That’s not integration. Or again, the fact that I use intake form. So the fact that I have a notebook open as I’m listening and I’m jotting down the flow of the session just so I’d remember that for next time, or after I’m done with my session, I just jot down some notes to be mindful of when I pick back up next week with the person, just some things to keep on my mind. The world does those same things. Well, that doesn’t mean I’m garnering from the world. I’m gleaning from the world. I’m taking their wisdom, and I’m incorporating that back into my counseling system.
These are the incidentals. You know, if I throw all those things away, if I decide to meet for four hours in my home with my wife, and we’re all just talking together, and I’m not taking notes at all, and I’ve not filled out intake form—I trust I’m still doing the elements of biblical counseling, that whether I meet in my office or whether I meet in my home, and regardless of the length of time and so forth, we don’t have to be allergic to these things and think, “oh, no, you know, I use an intake form, therefore I’m integrating.”
So, there’s freedom and flexibility, again, of these cultural or circumstantial considerations that really don’t alter the essence of what we’re doing.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, and that’s what we’re after. And I appreciate that clarification. That’s a helpful, nuanced way of describing what adds, in terms of extra-biblical methodology, to the counseling room in a way that’s unhelpful and unhealthy. And then in a way, you know, understanding what is okay relative to practicality and circumstantial necessity as we try to engage really well. And the circumstantial pieces are still informed by the Scriptures, right? So, the overall idea is you want to listen well in your ideas of intake and note-taking and so on.
We want to listen well. So, what are ways that we can accomplish that? I’m not adopting a secularist methodology by that. To distinguish that, then, is what are the means by which we believe this person will change, right? Implementing some methodology where we believe a person is actually going to get better or actually is going to make strides towards, you know, feeling better or they’re going to become more situated or more healthy or whatever. Those are elements now that you’re adding into that are different and contrary to the nature of biblical counseling.
So, I think these categories are helpful, brother. Looking forward to that booklet and giving a chance for everybody to read and follow up here and hear you talk about this even more. So, thanks for your time today, Keith. I appreciate your helpful distinctions here.
Keith Evans: Thank you so much, Dale.
