Odyssey: Two Cultures and How to Bridge the Divide

The passion that fired me up 30 years ago is burning brighter than ever. But how things would look if my dreams came true is no longer clear. My days of youthful idealism are behind me. When I was in private practice, it struck me with high noon clarity that whatever good I was doing in my office could be done better in the Church, not by physically moving my office into the church building, but by providing real community for everyone in the Church. It seemed to me (when I was hopelessly naïve) that honestly facing your hidden life in safe relationships was a pretty powerful experience. And I figured the Spirit would help people see what needed to be seen, and would release sincere followers of Jesus into loving relationships and gifted ministry.

As that vision became clear, I began to see that the Church was the ideal environment for spiritual formation, and that spiritual formation was God's remedy for most of our emotional ailments. So I dedicated my life to that dream. When I formed the Institute of Biblical Counseling, I defined its mission as "Meeting Counseling Needs Through the Local Church." Those words were on all my brochures. Over the years, the reaction I've heard most often from the organized church has been, "Look, if people need counseling, we'll send them to you. But don't get our people looking at the junk in their lives. That will just get in the way of what we're about."

WHAT I SEE MORE CLEARLY NOW, 30 years later, are two cultures. The dominant culture in the western church is dedicated to one central mission: make something happen. Preach better, evangelize better, provide better worship, do small groups better, strategize better, think better. No wonder the Church is still successdriven, results-focused, and program-dependent. As churches and counselors alike wake up to the crying need for spiritual formation in the human soul, a second culture is developing. This one is united by a longing to know God better. Face what's wounded and ugly within you, come broken into God's presence, and release His life through your grateful heart into the broken hearts of others. And that will make happen what God wants to happen. These two cultures necessarily collide. As long as Christian counselors are committed to making things happen (fixing problems, treating pathology, improving marriages), counseling in the Church will continue (at best) as one more program. There will be no productive collision, only accommodating cooperation among people committed to the same wrong goal. But if we devote our old_resources and surrender our opportunities to knowing God better, then in Spirit-led cooperation with churches that want to shift from better-programmed organizations to spiritually forming communities, we might witness a few miracles. Online counselor is always available to help you out.

COUNSELORS AND CHURCHES SHARE the same calling, to enter the deepest recesses of the image-bearing human heart, and through the experience of brokenness over all that is selfobsessed, release all that is God-obsessed in profound relating that will generate Godordained ministry. Until we claim that shared calling, true counseling in the Church will remain a hard sell. We'll have to reduce it to one more program to get a hearing. And that's not worth the trouble.   Larry Crabb,Ph.D., well known author, speaker, and psychologist, asks hard questions and seeks to understand the path to true wholeness. His book, Shattered Dreams, launched New Way Ministries, through which he offers training in Spiritual Direction and explores the mystery of Spiritual Formation. He is pleased to serve as Spiritual Director of AACC.