The Pastor and Counseling (with Deepak Reju)

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Deepak Reju
If we think of discipling as the overarching banner that we have in Scripture, we are mentoring people into greater maturity in Christ, counseling is is problem focused and time limited version of discipling, and therefore I am trying to work my way out of a job when it comes to counseling and hand people off to the culture of discipling, I hope is in our church.

Matt Smethurst
Welcome to the everyday pastor a podcast on the nuts and bolts of ministry from the gospel coalition. I’m Matt Smethurst and I’m Luke Duncan, and today we’re going to be thinking about the topic of the pastor and counseling. And with us to help us, is our friend, Deepak Raju. He’s the senior pastor of ogletown Baptist Church in Newark, Delaware. Previously, he served as an associate pastor for counseling at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC for nearly 20 years he’s a trustee of the Christian counseling and education foundation, popularly known as ccef. And Deepak is the author of several books, including one in particular that’s germane to this conversation, the pastor and counseling, the basics of shepherding members in need. Co authored with Jeremy Pierre, and he’s also the co host of counseling talk, a great podcast from our friends at nine marks, and most importantly, he officiated my wedding.

Deepak Reju
So true.

Matt Smethurst
Welcome to the podcast.

Deepak Reju
Thank you, Matt and Luke. It’s pleasure to be on the show Deepak.

Matt Smethurst
Let’s just start by framing the conversation with why it’s something I mean, after all, this is a podcast called The everyday pastor. This is not your podcast, counseling talk. So why is this a conversation we should be having on our podcast? Why is this a topic that everyday pastors need to care about.

Deepak Reju
The typical scenario for everyday pastors is graduating seminary, getting their first pastorate, whether you’re associate or senior pastor, and then trial by fire, usually within weeks, if not months, the phone starts ringing, or you get texts, or you get the requests, and you get thrown in the deep end of difficult and hard situations in that congregation. So the depression, suicide, bad marriages, you just you go on down the list of the hard things that show up at a pastor’s door. And lign as gracious I want to be to seminaries, you know, all all the departments want to get a piece of you. So you get one to three classes at the most, and then suddenly you’re thrown in. So every pastor knows the experience of having to figure it out and feeling ill equipped to handle some of the very difficult things that walk through their doors. So that’s why we care about it, because in the day to day trenches of what pastors are facing, they are getting all these requests to help out and be honest. You know, with how expensive counseling is, if you’re going to go for private practice, your pastor is your free counseling in a sense, you pay their salary by faithfully tithing, but you can go see a pastor any number of times and have them serve and care for you for a number of years, which is a different kind of care than what The rest of the world typically offers.

Matt Smethurst
Setting the terms definitionally. Yeah. How would you describe what we’re talking about? What is counseling according to the Bible?

Deepak Reju
The simple way to think about it is, it’s sinners coming alongside sinners and sufferers coming alongside sufferers, with the goal of seeing them grow in Christ, so Colossians, 127 and 28 to them, God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory, the mystery which Christ in you, the hope of glory him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. And then the phrase that Paul uses for this I toil. That’s what we’re laboring to see everyone grow up in Christ and coming alongside of them through everything that they’re going through.

Matt Smethurst
That explanation sounds a lot like discipling, so how would you distinguish the categories of counseling and discipling?

Deepak Reju
Yeah, that’s a great question. If we think of discipling as the overarching banner that we have in Scripture, where one on one, or, you know, a teacher in a classroom, you. A small group setting, but essentially we are, we are mentoring people into greater maturity in Christ counseling is, is problem focused and time limited version of discipling. So counseling is a subset of discipling, and therefore I am trying to work my way out of a job when it comes to counseling and hand people off to the culture of discipling, I hope is in our church, so that the rest of the congregation to take the responsibility of discipling those members through the many seasons of their life, and then I get to step in at a variety of times, so like at CHPC, I I would get to know young guys when they were single, and often get involved in their lives, some of them, my first entry in was when they showed up with a problem like pornography, and I’d help them through that. We’d work through to the place where they were ready to start dating, because they were free of pornography and could start thinking about marriage. They would get married. Well, guess what I’m doing, I’m mentoring him in early stages of marriage. Conflict Resolution is typically early stages of marriage, and then they start having children and mentoring them in parenting as a father and a husband. So you see how I enter in at different stages. But counseling is like you take that first season, a guy shows up and he’s struggling with pornography. I’m entering in for a limited time to deal with that problem, and they don’t need my help once they’re free of pornography to deal with that problem anymore. Hopefully they have the tools so problem focused, time centered, people don’t show up typically, if they don’t have a problem to the counseling pastor, if they’re happy and they’re doing fine, they don’t need to be in my office, or they don’t show up at my office.

Matt Smethurst
So what I hear you saying is is not that counseling isn’t more than that. You’re saying it’s not less than that, that at bottom, counseling is this kind of, you said, problem focused, time limited, this kind of intensive, temporary form of discipleship, yeah.

Deepak Reju
And you could use all kinds of word pictures. One of them Steve Byers wrote an article in the journal biblical counseling from CCF, and he described counseling is that I’m not a fisherman, but that Eddie that you pull over if you’re in the river, you need a time to take a break, to focus on things, to get retooled, and then when you’re done there, the limited time you get back into the flow of discipleship, the river of the culture of discipling in your church, so that the rest of the congregation could take responsibility for your life. So time limited and problem focus is the reason why, if they’re doing fine spiritually, they don’t really need your help.

Matt Smethurst
LIG, as you reflect on your decades of pastoral ministry, how did you think about the topic of counseling? And of course, much of your ministry was before the kind of biblical counseling movement as we would know it today took off, not before it was founded, necessarily, but before there were as many tools and resources available to everyday pastors. So talk a little bit about what your experience was like as a pastor trying to both counsel and equip members to counsel one another.

Ligon Duncan
You know, Matt, counseling was not a thing that I would have told you that I felt particularly strong in or well equipped for now, looking back, my mother was a good listener. I had had two really good listeners for pastors, and I sort of picked up some skills from from that that really served me well. I first, first place that I served was, was in youth ministry, and you listen to a lot of specific kind of adolescent related issues in life. And I’m not sure I was particularly helpful. If I had had somebody like Deepak to teach me in seminary, I would have been a lot more helpful. But I did. I think I listened pretty well. I just sort of had to make my way and do the best I could. And it’s interesting, secular counselors will tell you that far and away, more important than their theories of counseling is the relationship between the counselor and the and the person who’s come for counsel. And if, if a person feels like you care about them and that you want to help them, it that gets you a long way down the road in getting people to a better place in their life. Now look, I was constantly reaching out to other pastors and professors for wisdom. I think I may have told you this story, Matt, but one night, at about 10 o’clock after a Bible study, one of my. 10th grade girls called me up. Her father was dying of brain cancer. We had been studying through the book of Job together, and she said, you know, LIG, I’ve, I’ve been praying that the Lord would grow me in grace. And I’m afraid that this is the way that the Lord has answered my prayer he’s given my dad brain cancer. And I’m almost afraid to pray that prayer again? Well, I had no idea what to say to cat that context. So I called my systematic theology professor up at 1030 at night. He had been a pastor, and I said, I’m so sorry to interrupt you, but I have no idea what to say to this young woman. And I’m sure that had I had a class with Deepak or with David palison, I would have been better equipped to answer that that kind of question and be supportive and helpful to her, but we definitely have more resources today, Matt, for young pastors as they’re going out to do this work. When I came to first prayers, I had a lot of help from older, wiser heads. I had two older ministers on the staff who had gone through so much life that I was 35 years old, Anne and I didn’t have children. I mean, I look back on some of the things that I said to young couples when I was a single man, and I just shake my head, or I look back things that I told parents before I had children, and I just shaked my head, but I did have older men that I could rely on. And I would say to anybody who’s here and you’ve not been able to go through and have somebody from like CCF, or have somebody like David palison or Deepak or Jeremy is another guy I call Jeremy all the time for advice. Jeremy, yeah, here, yeah. You know there’s so many wonderful Jim new Heiser at RTS Jackson, I call Jim regularly asking for help in counseling, and he’s so wise, and he’s seen so many things. So young pastors do have more resources than I have, but just do learn to reach out to people that you trust and who are committed to the Scriptures, and they’re committed to the kind of discipleship that Deepak was just describing, and they’ve just got more wisdom and experience in that area.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, Matt, could I build on that? Just to say I learned the first few years of pastoral ministry by being alongside a brother you both would know Michael Lawrence, who had been there a number of years before me. I have living templates to this day, while I was in the room, watched Michael work with people ways that I could have never gotten out of the hundreds of pages I read in counseling books and seminary and, you know, I had a PhD in counseling by the time I showed up at chbc, and yet, I was learning things in the first few years by simply watching Michael, an older, experienced pastor, work. I think that’s one of the best ways to get training, is simply get in the room with an older, wiser pastor, and you will walk away with information that you’ll carry for decades that will help you in an infinite number of

Ligon Duncan
scenarios. And if I can just throw this out, I know this is not the direction we’re going today, Matt, but a wise counselor like Deepak, like Jim neuheiser, like Jeremy Pierre they’re not only helpful when you’re counseling a couple or an individual, they’re actually helpful when you’re dealing with whole groups of people, like elders or deacons. I can’t tell you how many times I call Jim new Heiser when there is a church situation that needs wisdom, and the same wisdom that he has for working with couples that are getting married, couples that are married and are having problems, individuals in church that are struggling with things, the same wisdom that he has in that it plays out corporately with bodies of Christians. So I am often calling wise biblical counselors for help. How do we how do we get folks on this team working together again? How did we get, you know, what do I need to do to help us trust one another again, or process a really hard thing together? Actually, these skills are applicable to a lot of things in pastoral ministry.

Matt Smethurst
And I would say it’s probably counseling meetings that most quickly humble a new pastor. You emerge from seminary brimming with answers, and you emerge from your first few counseling meetings brimming with questions and, well, that’s why I’m just so grateful for the wealth of resources that we have today through the ministry of brothers like you. Deepak, at one point in your book with written with Jeremy Pierre, the pastor in counseling, you write quote, we should strive to make church a place where being anonymous or nominal is different. Call to pull off elaborate what on? What you mean? Yeah.

Deepak Reju
So we had a we had a young guy who would show up in the CHP sanctuary. I sat across our family, sat across from him, and you can guess when he showed up. He showed up during the first song, and he always left at that final hymn. And what I loved is that I would watch the members queue in on him, and it started with first members would catch him on the way out, and then members would take him out for lunch. Members would start building into his life, and eventually they asked him, Why don’t you join? He did join. He told me, this is a really hard place to be an anonymous Christian. And so what I loved is it wasn’t the paid pastoral staff who went after that guy, it was the congregation that understood that someone wasn’t connected, noticed it and pursued it. If I spent all my time pursuing all the people who were on the fringes, I would pull my hair out. But fortunately, I don’t have any more hair, so I don’t have to worry about that issue anymore. But it is, it is it is something that pastors end up doing. It piles on their shoulders alone so you’re trying to build in this sense of one anothering In the church as a whole, so that there are no isolated Christians. I can’t get to every person in the church, but the congregation. Can. Congregation help us get to, especially those people on the fringes, the people who are hurting, and sometimes the people are hurting are isolated, and that contributes to the reason why they’re hurting, and so therefore they need to be connected. Sometimes the people who are actually in deep sin, you know, the sin pulls them away from the congregation, and that’s why they need to be more connected. So that’s what I essentially, I meant by it. I often think of that story when I say or I wrote that particular

Matt Smethurst
line, yeah, what I take from that quote is that a vibrant counseling ministry, at least a faithful counseling ministry, is not going to be possible apart from meaningful church membership. I feel like something that most pastors listening to this podcast, understand and teach would be, hey, Ephesians, four, we as pastors don’t exist to do all the work of ministry for our members, but rather to equip them. We’re the supply line. They’re the front line. But something that I think can be under emphasized is that we’re not just wanting to equip our members to have quiet times and practice spiritual disciplines. As important as that is, we’re wanting to equip them with a vision for Christianity, a vision for the Christian life in which they view it as their responsibility to take care of one another. It’s not just the pastor’s job to shepherd, to counsel, to bear burdens, but church membership is saying, I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper, and they are mine. So I love that note that that you sounded

Deepak Reju
Yeah, and I could take it one step further. Matt, most members will be willing to step into discipling, you know, helping others grow in Christ, studying the Bible, praying the way I’ve pushed it a little bit further, is to be able to say, you know, the friend who has cancer, or the friend whose marriage is falling apart, or the friend who’s hooked on pornography, or the young lady who’s got an eating disorder. Most members are scared when they hear those kinds of situations and problems and assume they just got to call the pastor that the pastor’s got all the skills to do that. I want the members to think no part of my responsibility is to be able to contribute. I’m not the counselor, but I can contribute to the care of those people who are suffering and those people who are struggling with significant sin in the congregation. And that’s what I loved about building a culture of discipling counseling builds on that culture. If you begin to understand how to invest in others, then you begin to understand how to get involved in some of the hard things. It’s the next natural step for a church member to begin to do that, but we got to think in terms of pastors how to equip our members, because when the friend shows up and says, my marriage is falling apart, a lot of members don’t know what to say or do. So building the bridge from what Scripture says into that moment is one of the greatest things you could do with your application your sermons is helping them to understand when the suffering person shows up. Here’s how Scripture speaks to that situation, and you as a member the. One another in text apply to you in stepping in some of these hard things, and whether they want it or not, it’s still going to show up in their life. Yeah, they’re going to have family, members of friends who are going through those hard things, so they’re going to want to practically know what to do.

Matt Smethurst
I’m glad you mentioned sermon application even in passing, because I actually think that so much of sermon application is just biblical counseling in public. So I would encourage everyday pastors listening in read the work of counselors, because they have particular experience and expertise with being those surgeons of the souls climbing into people’s hearts and frankly, just slowing down enough to notice what’s there and to point people to the hope of the gospel.

Ligon Duncan
Let me say it also having people open their hearts and lives to you and work through their struggles with sin helps the pastor be able to apply the scripture in a in a sharper way that that helps people. Wow, he’s actually talking about a real situation. This isn’t some illustration he read in a book from 100 years old. He actually knows the process that I’m going through in my own heart and mind right now, and I will say I’ve learned a lot about application just from talking to people working through hard things and knowing the kinds of things that they struggle with and knowing the things that they think about.

Deepak Reju
Now Lincoln, true or false. Like, if you have those conversations with your members, your application will become richer because you’ve gotten involved in the lives of your people. So when you start writing that sermon, get the application. Now you’ve got people in mind. One of the shifts I made from chbc here. Chbc is 32 years of age, average somewhere around there. So there’s a lot of 3020s, and 30 year olds, some 40 year olds. I’ve shifted a congregation that has a lot more seniors. We have young people and college students, so I’m now facing end of life issues in a way that I didn’t when I was in DC. Yeah, I’m surrounded by a lot more cancer, a lot more the last 10 years of our life, a lot more seniors and second marriages because a spouse died. It’s a whole new kind of congregation I’m ministering to, which means my application has changed.

Matt Smethurst
Deepak, how should pastor think through getting something started maybe a little more formally in his church? Obviously, he wants members organically taking initiative in the lives of one another. But what might it look like for a pastor to take the lead in starting some kind of lay counseling training or Yeah,

Deepak Reju
that’s a great question. I mean, the first thing, as you mentioned earlier, there are abundance of resources that are available. So whether you are giving books away or the new growth. Press, little booklets, gospel size, digestion of counseling issues to larger, books to now, videos, podcasts, blog posts. There’s a lot of content available that you can highlight for your congregation and start handing over as you give them opportunity. So I handed a copy of good and angry David Paulson’s book, which is a masterpiece, to an older gentleman in the congregation on Sunday, and told him, this is the best thing I ever read on the topic. I’m just handing out tools to people to begin to develop a culture of care for others. So that’s resources is number one. Be conscious of the resources. Hand them out and every time somebody in the church,

Matt Smethurst
Pastor may mean you need to have a line item in your budget, yeah, for discipleship resources. So not just a kind of personal book budget, as as you’re buying commentaries for sermon prep, but also something that will go toward being able to be a church that’s developing a culture of reading, a culture of facilitating the engagement with good books together.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, and every time I hand it out, I’m commending other people to think about it. I’m surprised when I hold it up, how many people will buy a copy on Amazon for themselves also, and how quickly that that effect multiplies within the congregation. The other thing to do is, if you have mature

Matt Smethurst
pastor who likes his members being on their phones while he’s talking,

Deepak Reju
if you have mature members, pure community group leaders or small group leaders, I think the curriculum from new growth press that’s captured TCFs really curriculum at a layperson level, so they got, they have how people changed, by Paul Tripp and in a small group format. And a chapter book format, or instruments Redeemer hand by Paul Tripp in a small group format, or chapter book format. I’ve taught the small group format for years, but you can hand it to a small group leader. They’re so user friendly that they could run with it, and right there, they’re beginning to sow seeds. What I like about the small group format is that it gets into the weeds of people’s lives. They’re not just reading content. They’re beginning to digest the material and apply it to their life, because it’s filled with application questions. If you don’t have any room to be training yourself, you can hand it to mature people within your church, there’s lots of good resources to hand over, and they can run with it. If you think I don’t know that, I have people who are ready, but they’re kind of ready. Well then take one semester, Gather your most mature leaders, take them through the curriculum, which is 12 weeks each one of the books, there are two books that cover the core curriculum of CCF, the key first two classes,

Matt Smethurst
again, these are how people change and instrument, the receiver, Tanner’s hands.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, there’s other curriculum that’s out there. This is just, this is how to start in your own local church. If you can’t get out to a conference, if you can’t do more formal training, then you set the goal of some people in that group will then take the curriculum and go teach it in their own small group afterwards. And it’s that multiplying effect where you take one semester and train them and then they go out and then do that with others. But I’ve been surprised how quickly people will grab hold of that material and do that. Then the third one is, well, get people out to conferences or do online training. CCS Certificate Program is a much shorter version than the Masters, and it’s dominated by lay people who recognize they’re running into these problems and they need more equipping. And the faculty at CCF would often tell me some of the best questions come from the people who are out there in the world right now facing these problems and trying to figure out right now. So the certificates are easy to add in. They’re all online. They’re deliberately that way so that people don’t have to uproot themselves. And that’s another example of there are online training that’s available in abundance that you can take from your own setting. And if you can find one or two mature leaders within your church who are willing to do that, that’s the start of people who could begin to train. And then the key thing after that, if you get all that done, train and train and train and train. Because as people are taught these things, it changes the DNA of the congregation.

Matt Smethurst
I’m actually just looking up right now on ccef.org you can go there and get more information about this certificate that Deepak is talking about. Also ccef.org/course gives you a list of various courses that you could work through by yourself or with others in your congregation.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, and the, the original classes by David Paulson for their first class is the lectures you will receive, and they are gold. I mean, they’re, they’re really pure gold to to take in his wisdom, but also begin to sort through your own heart, because once, once it ministers to your own heart, then you know much better how to care for other people.

Matt Smethurst
And I also want to ask you Deepak about how pastors should think through counseling within the local church, vis a vis working with counseling centers online or in the community. How would you encourage a pastor to think through that. And I’d also love you to talk about, when you are going to work with a local or online counseling resource, what are you looking for to ensure that your members are going to be faithfully cared for?

Deepak Reju
Yeah, great questions. So I have a lot of sympathy for a guy who’s in a congregation he doesn’t have that much help in terms of leadership, he’s overwhelmed because he’s revitalizing that church. So therefore he’s overrun. And so to think he’s going to take on a lot of hard counseling situations is unrealistic. Therefore finding partners in your community is a really good thing to do. One of the wisest things to do is figure out what the other gospel centered churches are in your community, pick up the phone or text them, because they will already have figured out who are the resources in their community. So don’t reinvent the wheel. Just go to the wiser, older pastors in your community and tell me, give me your list of people who you go to. That gets you down the road a lot further than you figuring it out, and again,

Matt Smethurst
that you and League of both made that’s never been easier in church history. Yeah, it is now to find these good resources and trusted voices.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, yeah. Then once you have a list, there’s two ways to go about it. Number one, you pick up the phone and call them, or, even better, take them out to lunch and hand them a stack of. Good books, and you’d be surprised what the Lord would do in opening up conversations. But you need to ask some questions about where they go to church, about their conversion, about what they do in the counseling room, because some people will say they’re counselors, and yet their Christianity doesn’t touch what goes on in the room at all. Versus some people, the gospel is integral to how they think about what they’re doing when they come alongside sinners or suffer. So you just got to get a feel for that. The other way, if you just don’t have time, or they don’t give you any time, is is you start referring. Don’t be disengaged. Don’t hand it off. Make sure your members report back to you. So I will, if I give a referral, I will ask the member to just text me couple of sentences, or give me a quick summary over email. In the first few sessions, I will quickly get a sense of what they’re getting, because if they get too far down the road, because you’re you’re giving them another authoritative voice in their life, I do not want to hand off my sheep to authoritative voice that’s going to lead them astray. So I need to make sure to vet this first. But once they even get there, make sure they’re getting fed Christ centered, God honoring wise counsel that will not lead them astray. Because the worst thing is, it comes in conflict with what the elders think you’ve got, this competing voice of authority with what our elders are guiding a person to do. So you need to vet that. Be careful so that I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from members over the years to get enough of a sense of who I’m willing to refer to or not. But that runs parallel with do not, do not hand everything and everybody off as much as you can slowly take a long term view and build within your own congregation all the things we said about training and it’s start small, it’ll be limited. It’ll take years to build, but that’s okay. I mean, I was, I was in DC for close to 20 years, in terms of staff work, if I look back at the end of that versus what I started with, it was extraordinarily different. But I had no idea where I’d be 20 years later, it took every single year. It’s slowly building over time. And then you’d be surprised what the Lord would do if you’re willing to do a little bit of training, a little bit of teaching, hand out a little bit more resources. How people will catch on, will grow in their interest, will step forward and volunteer. And then you have things you can start building

Matt Smethurst
on. I feel like this is something that LIG and I are constantly saying on this podcast in some form or another, and that’s don’t underestimate the slow drip long term approach Exactly, exactly we don’t need to wait into all the deep waters around this issue. But there are some extreme examples of a kind of exclusive view of biblical counseling. So some Christians before have said that, for example, depression or anxiety or even domestic abuse are things that can be treated kind of only via biblical teaching. And often, such voices would say that no clinical psychologists or medications or authorities outside the church that you know don’t submit to King Jesus are going to ever be helpful how? I mean, I know that’s we could have a whole conversation. Sure about that. And if there are resources you would direct pastors to, whether podcasts or books, to think more about this. Feel free. But what’s just kind of a thumbnail of what you would say to pastors in thinking through the totality of the human person, body and soul, and how we can minister to them in a holistic way?

Deepak Reju
Yeah, I mean, we’ve referred to David a lot, so I’m just going to go back to King David, Dr Paulson, who’s with the Lord now, who is probably asking all the questions of the disciples he ever wanted to ask, and having a grand old time. His article carous souls help, helped me rethink this whole issue in a way that I hadn’t before. And he offers a hermeneutical paradigm for starting with understanding any topic according to what Scripture says, because people will falsely say all truth is God truth, and then throw in anything they want to in terms of their extra biblical knowledge. And yet he hopefully helps you understand like you’ve got to understand, first, what God thinks about any topic, and only then can you go outside of that to begin to understand what extra biblical knowledge will offer you, versus running to extra biblical knowledge. And presuming that just because I’m a Christian, I’ll be able to handle it just fine, and that’s just false.

Matt Smethurst
And just to clear, I want to clarify the term you’re using by extra biblical. You’re not meaning anti biblical. You’re no, no, you’re just meaning knowledge that we get from outside the pages of Scripture.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, well, like you read your newspaper, or you read a research paper by a scientist you know you you read a book written by a secular author. You’re getting extra biblical knowledge, knowledge that comes from this world, that tells you about the world, about our anthropology, about God. It tells you all kinds of information, I need to have a richly theological worldview to interpret that extra biblical knowledge. And therefore, if I have clear in my mind what Scripture says, then I can go to well, then what is wrong with the extra biblical knowledge? Because the Scripture will be my lens, and only then can I finally look at what’s useful in that extra biblical knowledge, rather than the old phrase of all all truth is God’s truth, that it turns into excuse to grab anything I wanted in regards to extra biblical knowledge. And that’s just that is that is not exercising discernment in regards to what Christians should do, which is a radically Christian worldview when we step into the world. But you know, a mature Christian is going to do that with anything that they’re approaching.

Ligon Duncan
If I could give, if I could give an illustration of that? Yeah, please. Dr guy Richardson, who was the former president of RTS, Jackson, was trained in counseling and served on church staffs in couple of different states, and helped teach counseling here in Jackson, and on one occasion, very wonderful, godly woman in the congregation came to him, and she had been to several good biblical counselors, and she was struggling with anxiety issues, and they had, you know, they had talked with her about the things that you would want biblical counselor to talk to a Christian about, in terms of trusting God’s providence and being able to to rest in the Lord’s care for us, and not to be given over to worry and such. When she sat down with him, within a matter of minutes, he actually noticed some physical indications that she might have a thyroid problem. And he just said to her sister, have you been to your doctor recently? I think you need to go ask him to run tests on your thyroid. Sure enough, she had a thyroid problem that was contributing to her anxiety, and she wanted to think like a Christian. She didn’t want to be torn up with worry, but she had a physical condition that was actually contributing to it, and it that was it. It settled everything for her in that condition. And so that’s an example of that that’s not undermining the authority of the Bible, it’s just right here, if you had a broken arm and you walked into your pastor’s office, I’m kind of short tempered, and I’m kind of mad with everybody and biting it at my kids. When your arm is broken, go see an orthopod. Get your arm set, you know, and you’ll be able to be nicer to people around you. Sometimes, what’s happening to us, even physically can impact the way that we’re relating to other people, and you want to pay attention to those kinds of things, and it’s not an either or. It’s not scrapping the Bible and going to what really matters is just recognizing we are a psychosomatic unity as Christians. And that means sometimes there can be physical conditions that impact our spiritual behavior, our relationships and things of that nature. You want to be aware of those things.

Matt Smethurst
One illustration I’ve used when it comes to the really complicated question of medication. Of course, some folks would kind of be anti medication, and would just be quick to prescribe a Bible verse, essentially. And then on the other extreme, would be basically the industrial complex of our over medicated age in which everything seemingly can be fixed with a prescription. I I liken it to if you if you’re driving in a car and your windshield is foggy, and therefore you find yourself in a ditch on the side of the road. Secular psychology, at least some voices might make it sound like they can get you from the ditch to your destination, when the reality is they can’t even tell you which direction to drive once you’re back on the highway. But what they can do or not what they can do, but what medication in certain situations can do is default the windshield you’re able to. Just get back on the road, but then it’s going to be the word of God, the people of God, the sanctification of the Spirit, that show you which direction to drive and ultimately help bring you safely home.

Deepak Reju
Yeah. I mean, the simple way to describe it is sin and suffering put you in valleys or on hills. And medication often what it does, it evens you out, so that then I have access to the heart in a way that preaching in the word community, all can can speak in, and that doesn’t mean they can’t speak in at other times. And you know, the reality of some medication numbs me out. Some medication brings me back to life. And this is there’s a practical aspect to medications. People think that, hey, all medications will solve all my problems, and it’ll be, it’ll be a magic bullet. There is no such thing as a magic bullet, but it is one means that the Lord could use if you have wisdom, but working with a doctor and thinking wisely about your own body and life that has potential, so it’s a help, but it never solves the

Matt Smethurst
problem. Right? What might work for one person, what might be a help to one person is going to be anything but to another Deepak, if a pastor listening hasn’t put much thought into counseling yet, not because they’ve haven’t cared about the issue, but like you said, a lot of pastors are just trying to keep their heads above water. They don’t have the luxury of a large staff in which they can have people specializing in various things. What are some practices or plans or boundaries or whatever that you think an ordinary pastor could put in place this coming week to at least be moving their church in a healthy direction in these regards.

Deepak Reju
Yeah, first thing is just go ahead and, for example, put biblical counseling. And you can go to ccf.org, or, you know, the biblical counseling coalition, there’s a number of faithful organizations. Go ahead and get on their websites and start reading, listening, studying. That’s the first step that doesn’t cause them to have to do anything, spend any money that will begin equipping them. Second thing we mentioned earlier, find an older, wiser pastor and get them on your speed dial so that you can ask for help when, whether it’s individual situations or congregational situations or elders meetings, as Ligon mentioned earlier, you can start learning from them how to handle some of these things. And then even better, if they’ll let you sit in, or they will sit in and help you, because I would, for example, I would drop in one every four or five sessions, different staff would come to me with different issues, and I would step in for a single session. The person was warned. You know, I would work with the with the counselor or pastor and the person. And then I would step out, and I would be able to give a take on what I saw in that situation. Help provoke some things. I did a little bit of good guy, bad guy. I could come and be the bad guy. Provoke some things, and they would clean up after me, but it would get some things in motion. So work with another pastor, to either learn from them or work alongside of them, would be second thing. The third thing is, get equipped. Pastors don’t want theory from me. They want the practicalities of how to deal with some of these hard things. So there are abundance of conferences, a lot of online training available. Take some time to work with your elders to get budget money set aside to equip yourself and some of your staff so that they can feel better equipped in the years to come. And you know that slow drip you mentioned, the long term view is the best way to think about it. So I love that one pastor wrote me and said, Give me a key book in each one of these problem areas, because I know I’m going to face them over the next few years, and he is slowly chipping away at those books, and he said it’s going to take me years to read through them, but I want to begin to work on it now. And he’s he’s in the first year of his pastoral ministry, so I wanted to commend him that he’s taking the time to get himself ready, because some of those things haven’t walked in his door, but he knows they’re

Matt Smethurst
coming. You don’t have that list handy? Do you?

Deepak Reju
I will come up with the list so you can put in the show notes. I’m glad to come up with a list like that.

Matt Smethurst
As we kind of start to wrap up the episode, we keep talking about pastors being equipped, but what’s a sign a pastor’s not equipped? What do you think are some of the main misconceptions pastors have about counseling or mistakes, most common mistakes that you see or hear about pastors making?

Deepak Reju
Yeah, I had, I have one pastor who said to me, I’m pretty confident that I can solve most problems in 20 minutes in one meeting. Uh, and I was, I was a little surprised. I think if you’re willing to be be humble and learn you can actually handle a lot more than you think you’re capable of, the Lord can grow you immensely in doing that. So first, ask your wife what you’re not good at in terms of listening and responding and speaking in because she will have plenty advice of how you can become a better counselor. That would be a first place to start. And then secondly, just go to some of your leadership, because they will have observed your strengths and weaknesses. They’ll be able to give you good, solid feedback and other ways in which you can grow. And then set out a pathway, set out a plan to begin to work at growing in terms of your skills and your competency to help other people. Other thing is, even if you don’t have that much bandwidth, take on some of the situations, even if it’s just one, and that single situation will begin to help shape you and grow you to understand how to come alongside a sinner or a sufferer, the more you can take on that is reasonable, and I’m all about having proper boundaries, making sure you’re able to go across and care for your family, that it doesn’t overrun your schedule. That’s a more typical problem pastor, take on too many of those hard things and don’t know when to partner with other elders or counselors in the community. And as you grow in learning that, you’ll be really surprised. I had, I had a friend asked me to co teach with them at a pre conference, and he assigned me the topic of the mistakes I’ve made in in counseling ministry. It was about 10 years in. It was a great topic, because it caused me to pause and reflect, and there were a lot of mistakes I made, but I was also surprised in a decade how much I had grown, how much the Lord had taught me, how much I knew, much more so than I’d walked in the very first day. So just be patient, because the Lord will keep growing you as you do all of these things.

Matt Smethurst
That’s helpful. And I think near the beginning of the episode, you all just mentioned the importance of listening, I’m reminded of Proverbs 2520 verse five, the purposes of a man’s heart are like deep waters, a person of understanding draws them out. And two things I’ve read recently that I was impressed with in regard to just soft skills, emotional intelligence, listening well would be the especially like the first third of David Brooks’s book How to know a person, and there’s a chapter in a new little book by Gavin ortland. The book is called The Art of disagreeing, but there’s a little chapter just on listening, the art of listening, and as I’m trying to train up future pastors, those are two resources, maybe unexpected resources, that I want them to think about, because that’s not necessarily what you’re going to get taught in seminary. Yeah, so much of that bedside manner, having that bedside manner can be a difference maker when you’re actually dealing with strugglers and sufferers and sinners LIG what final words of advice or caution would you commend to pastors on this particular topic?

Ligon Duncan
I do think most of us in the pastoral ministry feel overwhelmed with the you can run into such deep, profound hurt in the lives of your congregation members, and typically they’re coming to you in a time of crisis, and you do feel inadequate for it. So it’s wonderful to have these other resources to turn to. But I would just say, as a pastor, I have a number of occasions realized that if I’m going to serve, especially if I’m dealing with a family or with a couple, that if I serve them well, chances are they’re both going to be angry with me when I’m done and I and as a pastor, you just have to, you have to own that and say, because a lot of times, a man will come to you because he wants you on his side, and a woman will come to you because she’s desperate for help. And if those, if that combination is coming you to you together as a couple, then both of them want to be vindicated, as much as they may want to get better. They want to be vindicated. And if you don’t vindicate one or the other, the other will be angry with you, and sometimes both of them. So I think as pastors, we just need to be ready. There are going to be some situations where people are desperate and they’re looking for any hope and help they can find, but they want a particular resolution that you cannot you can’t produce it. I mean, my guess is Deepak probably does. See many cases that he could diagnose in 20 minutes. To go back to the statement that he just but sure he also knows this will take weeks and weeks and months and months of prayer and and effort at change and dealing with one another differently, and listening and so, you know, it’s not an easy thing to change habits and patterns to deal with deep issues of the of the heart, you may diagnose them, but part of it is, does the couple, or does the individual, or does the family have the will to do the hard work that needs to be done. So pastors just realize you will need a lot of humility in this area, because you will want the best for people, and they’ll still kill one another. I mean, they will just clobber one another, and you’re there praying for them, loving them, wanting to see them grow, and they’re just clobbering one another, and they’re not listening to what you tell them to do. Or they listen while you’re while they’re there at the office, and then they go right back home and do the same thing. So that, you know, sanctification is frustrating for us individually, or we’re talking about sanctification of the congregation and individual lives. And that’s a, it’s, it’s not a steady climb up. It’s, you know, it’s all kinds of problems. And so pastors just hang in there, turn to wise counselors, prepare as best as you can to serve people and recognize sometimes you can do your best and have it thrown right back in your face. And when that happens, you’re just walking the way that your savior wants. So I just say, be encouraged, even when discouraging things happen, keep on trying to be faithful. You know you won’t save every marriage that you want to save. You won’t see every you know tension between elders in the congregation fixed, but you you want to give yourself to that as best as you can, and then, and then leave it in the Lord’s hands as to how he’s going to use your faithfulness.

Matt Smethurst
Amen, it’s a good word. So again, Deepak, thank you for being with us. Listeners. Check out his work, his counseling, talk podcast, and we pray God’s blessings on your ministry. Thank you all for tuning in to this episode of the everyday pastor. We hope it’s been helpful to you as you seek to build a culture of counseling in your local church, and please take a moment to leave a review to recommend it to someone else so we can continue helping pastors find fresh joy in the work of ministry.