A Moment With Pastor Fred

Special thanks to those who attended or helped with our counseling conference. Attendance was 150+ – larger than I ever anticipated with around 30 churches participating. Recently I read an article why church members are trending to go to therapy instead of the church with their problems. The article was written by Laura Kleinshmidt from Westminster Seminary. I’ve adapted her article.

It’s challenging to care for congregants when one doesn’t know their struggles. We are two-part beings: body and soul. It’s often been said, if your body has a problem see a physician; if you have a spiritual issue, see your pastor but if you have a psychological problem talk to a therapist. We here at HBC disagree. Scripture doesn’t identify psychological problems divorced from our bodies and spirits. What society calls psychological can be reassigned to either body or soul. We live our lives under God’s authority. When we separate people into three parts and label only one of those as spiritual, the other two parts may seem outside of God’s authority. With the three-part model it is hard for people to see God’s authority as over the body and even more challenging to convince them he is over the so-called psychological. Our secular therapeutic culture communicates a godless alternative. 

What dominates our culture tends to seep into the church. Christians tend to think issues like anxiety or relationship struggles are not related to their spiritual lives – and that is a huge mistake. The psalmist asked, “Where does my help come?” Culture answers, “My help comes from Google, social media, my support group or my therapist.” And yet Scripture reminds us God is our Refuge and Strong Tower.