Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling
This past Friday, I was so pleased to receive my long-awaited copy of Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling—the combined work of 40 friends from the Biblical Counseling Coalition. Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling is sure to become a standard text for those interested in understanding the theology and practice of biblical counseling.
David Powlison writes in the Foreword:
“This book affirms that a good counselor is many things simultaneously: tender and firm, responsive yet purposeful, candid and tactful, patient yet urgent, attentive and instructive, profound yet practical, prayerful and hard-working, comforting yet challenging, empathetic and objective, flexible yet committed, faithful to Jesus Christ and relevant to any person facing any trouble…along with many other good and desirable qualities. While the ingredients of deft conversation are hard to capture on paper, the tone and content of what you read will give you a feel for how godly wisdom carries on a compassionate and constructive conversation.”
In this book, Powlison says, we will hear the following core commitments, which we continually promote and affirm on this blog.
- Reality is God-centered and all human beings are worshipers, whether or not they are conscious of this reality and its implications.
- God our Father, Christ our Savior, and the Holy Spirit our Life-giver is purposefully on-scene and actively working in people’s lives.
- Scripture is comprehensively relevant to the things that concern, preoccupy, and trouble humankind.
- Counseling is an integral aspect of ministry and of church life.
