In this ninth lesson of the Biblical Counseling 101 class, Pastor Dave Capoccia begins presenting a practical method for counseling based on biblical principles. Pastor Dave explains the first four steps of this method in part 1:
1. Begin Counseling
2. Gain Involvement
3. Gather Data
4. Interpret Data
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Summary
We are reminded that biblical counseling is a structured, love-driven ministry that every believer is called to practice. This lesson walks through the first four steps of a practical counseling method—beginning counseling, gaining involvement, gathering data, and interpreting data—showing how each step is grounded in Scripture and oriented toward helping others walk faithfully with Christ.
Key Lessons:
- Preparation matters: counselors must be spiritually ready, knowledgeably equipped, and logistically able before entering a counseling relationship.
- Gaining involvement—building genuine, caring friendship with a counselee—is essential before any instruction can be effective. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- Thorough data gathering, through questions, observation, and tools like the Personal Data Inventory, prevents the mistake of offering solutions before truly understanding the situation.
- Interpreting data through the lens of Scripture—looking for heart patterns and biblical labels—allows counselors to identify what a counselee truly values and formulate a strategy for change.
Application: We are called to take seriously our responsibility to counsel one another, to get equipped where we lack, and to love our counselees with genuine Christlike compassion—setting clear expectations, asking good questions, and pointing people toward heart transformation through God’s Word.
Discussion Questions:
- What areas of preparation (spiritual readiness, biblical knowledge, relational skill) do you feel least equipped in, and what steps could you take to grow?
- How does the principle ‘people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’ challenge the way you currently engage with struggling people in your life?
- Think of a time you gave advice before fully understanding a situation. How might more careful data gathering and interpretation have changed your approach?
Scripture Focus: Proverbs 18:13 and 18:17 ground the importance of listening before speaking. Matthew 9:36 and 1 Thessalonians 2:7–8 model the compassionate involvement exemplified by Jesus and Paul. 1 Samuel 1:12–18 illustrates the cost of misinterpreting a counselee’s situation. Ephesians 4:29 calls counselors to speak according to the needs of the moment.
Outline
- Introduction
- Overview of the Eight-Step Counseling Method
- Step 1: Begin Counseling
- Spiritual and Personal Readiness
- Logistical Readiness
- Setting Proper Expectations
- Homework, Church Attendance, and Commitment
- The Question of Payment
- Clarifying What You Can and Cannot Do
- Step 2: Gain Involvement
- Step 3: Gather Data
- Step 4: Interpret the Data
- The Danger of Misinterpretation: Eli and Hannah
- How to Interpret Data Biblically
- Formulating and Testing an Interpretation
- Conclusion and Preview
Introduction
All right, it’s nine o’clock, let’s get started. Good morning, welcome to the Biblical Counseling One-on-One Sunday school class. Why do I do what I do, and how can I change?
We are on the second to last lesson here. And don’t forget that this is a foundation-setting course. This is not an exhaustive course. You might say, “Wait, but we’ve hardly talked about this, and I need more information about that.” I understand, but this is just foundational, and we’ll get to some of the other things, Lord willing, in the future.
Let’s pray as we get ready for today’s lesson.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this time of training. I pray with you to be profitable and help me feel to explain well. And God, make us into what you’ve called us to be: those who can counsel, encourage, confront one another, and cause one another to go after you in a more consistent way. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Before we get to today’s lesson, let’s talk a little bit about your homework. I won’t say as much about it today because, aside from the Bible reading and prayer, the journals are really something that’s meant for you privately. But I did want to take any time for questions you have.
Any questions about the T journals I had you asked you to do for homework last week? Maybe we could talk about that afterwards, and maybe I’ll walk you through that a little bit more specifically. But if you have any questions—you’re like, “I don’t really get it. I don’t understand how to do it”—you can talk about it with me afterwards.
And don’t forget the extra credit from last week: the notes on pride. What’s your homework for this week? Well, I told you that I wanted to actually do this journal for several weeks, that way you have more of a time to see what’s the pattern, if there is a pattern, and are you able to implement changes?
Remember, the last step in the journal entries is transformation: “How does God want me to change? How is His word and His spirit enable me to do that?” I want you to be able to see that over some weeks of time.
So continue writing in your journals. And also, I have some more notes that we won’t be able to get to in today’s class, but some that are pretty important: notes on crisis and suicide counseling.
That’s not necessarily a super common situation that any one of us will face, but it could be. We won’t have time to talk about it in class, but I will make those notes available for you electronically as extra credit.
I think we’ll even think about counseling somebody who’s contemplating suicide would feel like, “Whoa, that is beyond me. There’s no way I could ever help that kind of person. That’s too stressful and important.” But really, it’s just another version of what we do in counseling in general.
Overview of the Eight-Step Counseling Method
Many of the things we’ve talked about already in this course, and the things that we’re going to be talking about today—I’ve given you a lot of theological and theoretical foundation for counseling. But today, I want to get very, very, very practical and really talk about a method: what’s a way to apply all these principles that we’ve talked about in a method that you can practice?
That’s what I want to talk about this week and next week: how to counsel. Today is part one. Next week, our final class, we’ll do part two.
Here is a method. This is not inspired—the terms and the number of steps—but this is an application of biblical principles we’ve looked at.
Here’s a method of biblical counseling: number one, begin counseling. Two, gain involvement. Three, gather data. Four, interpret data. Five, provide instruction. Six, give homework. Seven, give hope. And then eight, end your counseling.
The steps of this method are roughly chronological, but they do overlap. Don’t feel like you’re not going to do step one or step three after the beginning of your counseling. You’re going to be doing that throughout. But certain steps happen more in the beginning, and certain steps happen more at the end.
“Begin counseling. Gain involvement. Gather data. Interpret data. Provide instruction. Give homework. Give hope. End your counseling.”
Today, we’re just going to talk about the first four steps. We’ll do the next four in our last class.
Now, imagine that someone actually comes to you for counseling. You say, “This is all nice. Yeah, I’m learning.” But imagine you actually have to counsel someone. Someone comes to you: “Brother, I really need help overcoming immorality.” “Sister, I’m struggling so much with anxiety.” Or, “Friends, our marriage is about to fall apart. Can you help us?”
How would you respond? Or maybe a person doesn’t come looking to you for help, but you notice that they need help. Get involved in someone’s life. You’re talking to their family members, and you can see, “Man, this person needs some focused discipleship. They need some counseling.”
Unfortunately, it’s a fact that most people don’t reach out for the help of biblical counseling until it’s reached an absolute crisis, until they’re in dire straits. You don’t want to do that. If you’re ever struggling with something spiritually, reach out early. It’ll be a lot less painful that way. You will have a lot less damage in your life.
But most people don’t. So just be ready for that. Whether you reach out to someone or someone reaches out to you, how do you begin? That’s what I want to first talk about.
Step 1: Begin Counseling
First step in biblical counseling is to actually begin counseling. Quick aside: I’ve given you kind of bare notes on your handout today because otherwise it would be way too much for me to include on there. Be ready to write some notes.
I’m sorry if you’re maybe not ready to write so much, but I’ve written the most important points on the slides. Take them down in the notes, and the slides will be available afterwards.
Spiritual and Personal Readiness
How do you begin counseling? What does beginning a counseling relationship involve? Some things. First of all, absolute prayer and dependence on the Lord. I’m giving you a laid out technique, but none of this is possible apart from the power of Christ. The work is beyond us all.
Christian ministry is really beyond us, and counseling included. Everything you do in counseling needs to be surrounded in prayer. Make sure you’re also ready to counsel. You need to be spiritually ready. You need to be walking with the Lord and practicing spiritual disciplines yourself if you’re going to counsel someone else effectively.
You can’t preach what you don’t practice, or at least you shouldn’t, if you want to be effective. Remember, Jesus says in Matthew 7:3, “Don’t tell your brother, ‘Hey, you’ve got a speck in your eye, and let me get it out for you,’ when you’ve got a log in your own eye.” You either won’t be effective, or you’ll only be effective in teaching hypocrisy.
Now, don’t then say, “Well, I still sin so much. I could never counsel anyone.” It’s not about perfection. It’s about the direction of your life. Are you walking with the Lord? Are you pursuing Him consistently? You want to make sure you’re doing that before you counsel.
“It’s not about perfection. It’s about the direction of your life. Are you walking with the Lord? Are you pursuing Him consistently?”
You also want to be knowledgeably equipped. You need to know the scriptures. I mean, that’s what biblical counseling is, right? You’re ministering the Bible, the truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ. You need to have some competency in it, and even some competency to talk about the specific issue that you will be counseling somebody in.
Somebody is really struggling with parenting their kids, and you have no idea how to address that. You’re not the right one to counsel them. You need to have competency in handling people. If you’re completely socially unaware, if you have no ability to relate to people, that’s going to make it really hard for you to counsel someone.
Now, you might hear some of those things and be like, “Oh, well, I guess I can’t counsel. I’m not good with people, or I don’t know the Bible that well, so I guess I’m not going to be a counselor.” Wrong. The Bible has called you to counsel. We’re all to be doing these one-anothering, ministering the word to one another.
The excuse is, “Well, I’m not equipped to do it. I can’t do it.” The response would be, “I need to get equipped to do it. I need to learn how to deal with people. I need to become patient. I need to become competent in the scriptures.”
You and I are both called to counsel and minister to others. So if you have to get your life in order, get your mind trained—don’t just excuse yourself.
“The response would be: ‘I need to get equipped to do it.’ You and I are both called to counsel and minister to others.”
Logistical Readiness
One other matter of preparation is that you need to be logistically able to counsel. You have to understand that counseling takes time, takes energy, and it takes an emotional commitment, a commitment of the inner man. It is spiritually weighty to uphold another person who is going through a spiritual struggle.
It will, to a certain degree, burden your spirit and will also, at times, lead to your own temptation to sin. Maybe somebody is so anxious, and it encourages you to be anxious, or somebody struggling with immorality, and you’re tempted that way now too, because they’re telling you about their issue.
Because of this weightiness, it is important that you do not take on too many counseling cases at once. When I was in seminary and becoming trained as a biblical counselor, I was talking with somebody who’d done it for a while. I asked, “Well, how many cases should you take on at once?” And he said, “Well, I’ve never known anybody who’s done more than four at a time, and even that is pretty a lot.”
I think one of the missionaries that we support has talked about counseling in their church, and they said the same thing: “Hey, we feel like it’s just too much to go. I think that maybe I mentioned three or four.” So you want to be aware of that. Don’t over-commit because otherwise it can be really spiritually draining.
“I’ve never known anybody who’s done more than four counseling cases at a time, and even that is pretty a lot.”
You have other life obligations. You want to make sure you’re not overextending yourself in any kind of ministry. You never want to get to the point where you don’t have time for people. I remember one of my seminary professors emphasizing that to me.
But also, you don’t want to over-commit and not really be able to minister to people well. If you’re not able logistically to counsel someone, don’t just say, “Sorry.” Direct them to others who can, or give them something to do in the meanwhile until you’re ready to counsel them.
For example: “Hey, I’m not ready, just because of things going on in my life right now, to counsel you as you’ve asked me to. But here’s a great book that I’ve used in this issue. Why don’t you read that, and we can come and talk about it later?”
Setting Proper Expectations
Make sure you aren’t ready to counsel, and then begin your first session. Do an exploratory first session, a first meeting with your counselor or counselors—if it’s a couple—and find out about the problem. Say, “Hey, I need some help in this area. Find out more about it.”
In this first session, you also want to give hope and preliminary instruction, which we’ll talk about more. But also, super important: you want to set proper expectations in your first session.
I’m going to find out if they’re really serious because counseling is good labor, and there’s a lot of need for it, but it is labor. It’s important that you spend your time as a servant and steward of Christ most profitably. That means you want to spend it with people who are actually serious about changing.
You’ll partly need to convince them of that, motivate them to do that. But if they’re half-hearted in the beginning, or if they hear about some sort of expectation and say, “Well, I’m not going to do that”—it’s better for you not to waste your time and theirs by proceeding on formal counseling with them.
Even the disciples were instructed by Jesus to practice this principle. Matthew 7:6 says, “Don’t lay your pearls before swine. They’ll just trample them and then tear you to pieces.” When it came to evangelizing people in the cities, Jesus says to them in Matthew 10:14, “If they don’t listen to you, leave that city, shaking the dust off your feet as a testimony to them.”
You say, “Oh, you’re just going to give up?” Well, the idea is there are other places that you can go, other people who might be more willing to listen. We see the apostles do this in Acts 13:46. Paul and Barnabas are preaching in a synagogue, and the Jews and some leaders begin to fiercely oppose them. They say, “Since you’ve judged yourself unworthy of eternal life, we now are going to turn to the Gentiles. They will listen.”
That doesn’t mean you give up any time there’s difficulty or resistance. But it does mean you want to use your time effectively. Counseling is good labor. You want to use it well.
So what are some proper expectations you want to set for someone in formal counseling? A lot of this I’m talking about is more formal counseling. You might do this more informally with a friend or a family member. Some of what I’m telling you might be a little adjusted.
But what are proper expectations for counseling that you want to communicate to someone when you’re committing to them? I’ve listed a number of them here.
Generally, a good way to format your meeting together is weekly, one-hour sessions. This is not a hard rule, but a good general principle. Over an hour, it’s hard for your counselors to focus. Under an hour, it’s hard to get anything meaningful done. Meeting weekly is helpful because it allows you to consistently meet with a counselee, help them establish new patterns of thinking and acting, while also giving them time to actually apply it.
“Meeting weekly allows you to consistently meet with a counselee and help them establish new patterns of thinking and acting.”
If you meet with them every day, you don’t have much time to see whether they’re implementing what you’ve taught or to have them do the homework. Generally, one hour weekly is good.
Homework, Church Attendance, and Commitment
You want to communicate to your counselee that you expect them to actually meet with you consistently, be there, and be on time. If this is a problem—if a counselor keeps canceling or showing up late—that may show a lack of seriousness, and you might even need to address that.
Communicate also that you expect them to do homework, just like I’ve expected you to do in this class. Your one-hour meeting is not a therapy session, not just something that they do and then forget about it. It’s also not the magic hour where all the change happens. It’s just guidance.
I think I’ve said something very similar in this course. I’ve tried to model counseling for you, even in the way I do this class. The one-hour time is just guidance to direct them in the process of change as they pursue the set of means that you’ve encouraged them to take hold of: church fellowship, Bible reading, prayer, the preaching of the word, and the homework.
Homework is really where the magic happens. You want to stress the importance of doing the homework. If they are not willing to do the homework, if they keep coming up with excuses, or only partly do the homework—that is a problem. It may be an indication that they’re not serious about changing.
You want to be understanding of unexpected life events, tragedies, and crises that come up in their lives. But don’t simply excuse them not doing the homework: “Oh, yeah, you have a lot going on, so I guess we won’t worry about the homework.” No. The homework is important. That’s where they’ll get lots of reinforcement and further instruction and direction beyond what you’re saying in the counseling hour.
Tell them you expect them to do the homework and to do it completely.
“Homework is really where the magic happens. Stress the importance of doing the homework.”
Also, expect them—communicate your expectation that they be in church and in a good church. I’ve learned this the hard way. One of the counseling couples that Emma and I worked with in California didn’t go to a good church. They didn’t go to our church, and it was so much harder because you end up trying to basically unteach some of the things that they’re learning in a not-so-good church, or if they’re not going to church at all, they’re missing out on a major means of grace, a major way for them to grow spiritually.
Tell them that you expect them to attend church. If you’re going to counsel them, you expect them to attend church and attend a good church. How do you know it’s a good church? The best way to know: have them attend your church. That way, you can say, “I know you’re going to a good church,” and that gives you extra opportunity to observe and interact with them and even serve them.
Say, “Hey, I’d love to counsel you, but one of the things that I need for you to do, if I’m going to do that, is I need you to attend my church.” Again, if they’re serious, this shouldn’t be that big of a deal. But it is important, even if it’s not your church. It needs to be a good church, a church that you can be confident in.
Another expectation: communicate that you would like to assess the direction of your counseling after six weeks. It’s not good for counseling to go on forever. You may be tolerating a lack of commitment or getting a person reliant on you as the counselor rather than on Christ.
Communicate, “Hey, I’m committing to you. I want to work with you. Let’s see how we’re doing after six weeks, and then see if we need to adjust something or address something.”
“It’s not good for counseling to go on forever. You may be getting a person reliant on you as the counselor rather than on Christ.”
Generally, informal counseling—a little different from discipleship—you don’t want to go past ten sessions. That’s not an absolute rule, but there’s usually an issue or a problem if there’s no change after ten weeks of meeting and doing the homework.
Inform your counselee upfront that you are committed to them, but you want to do this wisely and allow both you and them to assess the progress after six weeks.
The Question of Payment
What about payment? Should a counselor expect payment for his counseling? Two schools of thought on this. Some say you should accept payment or even ask for payment.
First Corinthians 9:14 says, “Ministers of the gospel should be fed by the gospel.” This is true of pastors, right? Why not true biblical counselors? This is hard work. You have to put in a lot of preparation. You should get something for it.
And people will take you more seriously if there’s money involved. Don’t charge an exorbitant amount, but if they’re going to commit, have them show that by being willing to pay for it. That’s one school of thought.
Then another school of thought is don’t accept payment at all. Yes, ministers of the gospel can exercise the right to be fed by those who they minister to. But remember, Paul gave up that right for the sake of the gospel. He says, “I don’t want this to be a stumbling block to you. I will do anything to let anyone not take this reward from me, which is to give the gospel without charge.”
It does help you gain trust from your counselees when you’re not doing it with money involved. They don’t have to suspect, “Oh, is he just doing this for the money?” It also gets away from a more clinical model to a more church-oriented model.
If we’re ministering to one another in the church, we’re not expecting payment for it, are we? Generally, in the body, it’s more like a medical clinical model: “Say, yep, okay, you gotta pay my doctor’s fee, and then I’ll see you.”
There’s also some legal protections in not asking for money. Some states, if you counsel and charge for your counseling, they will not allow you to say certain things, or you can be sued. If you’re not charging money at all, you have much more freedom, at least before the law.
I will say also, personally, it’s been my practice not to charge any money for biblical counseling. Even with those I was training to be a biblical counselor in California—at least one couple, I think multiple people said this, but one couple was just amazed that I was not charging any money, that we were not charging any money.
Emma was counseling with me because they had been to a number of other counselors, both Christian and secular, who all charged money and also said, “Hey, after a certain number of weeks, like, forget it. I’m just done.”
But we said, “Hey, if you’re committed and you show us your commitment, we’re committed to you, and we don’t want to charge.” They were amazed by that and so grateful for that.
So I don’t think it’s wrong. I understand those who do take the approach of accepting payment. But I favor, and I would encourage you to, informal counseling, not to charge anything. This is Dr. John Street’s stance. He’s the one who trained me in counseling.
This is also the organization ACBC’s general stance: Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. I think it’s the best way.
“Paul gave up the right to payment for the sake of the gospel: ‘I will give the gospel without charge.’”
Clarifying What You Can and Cannot Do
Two other clarifications that you want to give to your counselors: clarify for them in your first session, if not before, what you can and cannot do for them. It’s always good to find out from your counselors what they actually expect from counseling. What do they expect to gain?
Most of them will say, “I want better circumstances. I want a better marriage. I want my spouse to come back. I want my sibling to stop acting so evil towards me.” These are not wrong desires, but they’re not the best desires. Don’t get sidetracked by just taking on the counselee’s agenda: “Oh, that’s what you want? Okay, I’m going to help you do it.”
You can’t necessarily do what they want you to do, and you’re not called to do so. You want to communicate to them: “Hey, I’d love to see your marriage improve. I’d love to see your spouse come back. I’d love to see your sibling act in a better way. And as you put into practice some of this counsel, maybe that will happen. But ultimately, I can’t guarantee that. I can’t change your circumstances necessarily.
But I can do this: I can teach you how to be God’s kind of man or God’s kind of woman in the middle of your circumstances. I can teach you. I can help you. I can guide you in following after the Lord with joy and peace in the middle of whatever circumstances you find yourself in.”
If the counselee is truly a Christian and you want to give a little bit of reinforcing instruction on this, they should be interested in this. They’ll say, “Okay, all right, I’m good with that.” But if they’re not, then it’s not really profitable for you to counsel them. Bring out this expectation up front.
Your counselor really wants to honor Christ? Tell them that’s what you can help them do. But you can’t necessarily change their circumstances and fix their problems.
Finally, if you’ve laid all that out and they’re still interested, ask for an expression of commitment, either verbally or certainly in writing. “I’ve explained all this to you. This is what we want to do. Are you committed to this? Are you ready to do the hard work of sanctification, growing in Christ? Are you willing to go all out so that you can walk with Christ and honor Him in this area of your life?”
If they can express this commitment, it’s a sign that they understand what’s going on and they’re serious. When you get them to verbally express that or in writing, it’s something you can point back to if they start to not really apply themselves or to resist the counsel that you’re giving: “Hey, didn’t you say that you were committed to doing whatever the Lord would require you to honor Him in this area? Why is it that you’re not doing the homework? Or why is it that you won’t do the thing that the Bible calls you to do?”
It’s good to get an expressed verbal commitment. And verbally commit to them: “You commit to me. I’m committed to you.”
“I can teach you how to be God’s kind of man or woman in the middle of your circumstances—with joy and peace.”
Lay out these expectations as you begin counseling. Pray. Make sure you’re ready. Have an exploratory first meeting. And set expectations.
Step 2: Gain Involvement
Now, from your first interaction with your counseling, you also want to be doing something else. It’s the second part, or the second step, of the method: gain involvement.
Gain involvement. What does that mean? To gain involvement means to build a relationship with your counselor so that you put yourself in a position to help him—actually, build a relationship so you can actually help him. That’s what gaining involvement is.
You want your counselee to trust you. He needs to let you be involved with his life. You want to help him, but you can only do that if he actually lets you be involved and interact with him.
There’s a statement that I heard in seminary. It applies well to every kind of Christian teaching and preaching and counseling ministry. And that’s this: “People don’t care how much until they know how much you care.”
If you fail to gain involvement with someone, you can speak eloquently and accurately about their spiritual issues, but they probably will not listen because they don’t think you care. They don’t trust you.
You want everything you do as a counselor to communicate to your counselee that you genuinely care, that you love them with Christian love. And this is what we see in the Bible.
“People don’t care how much until they know how much you care.”
The Biblical Basis for Compassionate Involvement
Jesus was marked for his compassion for people. Matthew 9:36: “Seeing the people, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.” You need to feel compassion, and you need to communicate that. It motivated Jesus to teach and to serve, and it should motivate you too.
Or look at Paul when he’s talking to the Ephesians before he’s headed to Jerusalem and in prison for Christ. He tells them, Acts 20:31: “Therefore, be on alert, remember that night and day for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears.” That’s admonish, which we’ve looked at before—neutha—to counsel or to speak to another person’s mind. And he says, “I did it with tears. I cared, and I was communicating that to you every day.”
Or as he explains in 1 Thessalonians 2:7-8: “But we proved to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives because you had become very dear to us.”
1 Corinthians 13 says, “If you do the greatest Christian service and don’t have love, it counts for nothing. It’s actually annoying.” Your counseling will sense whether you really care and love them, just like your children do, right? If you’re trying to do something spiritual but your heart’s not in it, your kids will notice, and other people will too.
“Jesus felt compassion for the people because they were distressed like sheep without a shepherd. You need to feel and communicate that.”
You want to make sure that you’re gaining involvement with your counseling by communicating and actually having genuine care. You want to become your counselee’s friend. For how do we regard friends? Listen to what Proverbs says.
Proverbs 27:6: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.” If someone’s your friend, they may say something wounding, but you say, “I needed that. Thanks.” You’ll regard the words of a friend.
Another proverb says the same thing. Proverbs 27:9: “Oil and perfume make the heart glad, so a man’s counsel is sweet to his friend.” If you’re someone’s friend, your counsel to them will be sweet. You want to become your counselee’s friend.
This isn’t always easy. A lot of times, especially if you’re not doing formal counseling, you’re already that person’s friend. That’s the reason why they come to you for counsel. So gaining involvement is a lot easier.
But sometimes someone’s referred to you through someone else, or you’re just getting to know a person, and gaining involvement is going to take a little bit more time. And if the person doesn’t have very many friends or is slow to trust people, it’ll be even harder.
But you can do it—especially as you communicate true love and compassion.
Practical Ways to Gain Involvement
What are some specific ways you can gain involvement? Too many for me to list on the slide, but I’ll just mention them to you. These are just example ways. How can you gain involvement, gain trust, gain friendship from your counseling?
Be available. You’re already going a long way to gain involvement when you say, “Hey, I’m ready to meet with you, to speak with you, and to help you.” Be available.
Also, show tangible compassion. If they have physical needs, meet them. Do what you can to meet them. Serve your counselees. Speak words of sympathy and understanding. Remember, true compassion is always moved to action. They should see your compassion in what you do for them.
Also, take your counseling seriously. Don’t minimize his problems, but do maximize Christ’s supremacy and sufficiency through those problems and over those problems.
Persuade your counsel. Do not simply seek to manipulate or order around your counseling. We see a good example of this in the book of Philemon. In a somewhat comical way, Paul says, “I could order you what to do as an apostle, but instead, I appeal to you because I know that’s much more effective.”
Express confidence in your counsel’s ability to change and obey Christ by faith. “I know you can change by God’s spirit.”
Receive your counselees’ objections and disagreements without getting defensive. This is a little harder, right? “Hey, I was willing to help you, but now you’re getting upset with me. Forget it.” You’ll gain involvement if you show patience through that and help them, even when they do have questions and objections.
Adhere to principles of confidentiality with your counseling, but explain the limits. Obviously, counselors will not trust you if they think that you’re going to share what they consider their deepest and darkest secrets. Yet you should not simply say, “Oh, I’ll tell no one,” because you can’t commit to that. It might be necessary and edifying for you to discreetly share some information that your counselor shared with you with someone else, like in a matter of church discipline or in a matter before the law.
A good way to explain it to your counselor is to say, “If they’re pressing you to be confidential, I will be as confidential as the law and the Bible allows. I’ll respect your desire for privacy.”
Be honest and open with your counseling about yourself and your credentials as a counselor. Why should they listen to you? Not because you’re so great, but just because you’re a servant of Christ who’s become trained by God’s grace. Be honest about your own struggles and overcoming sin and struggle by faith in Christ. “Hey, don’t think that I’m totally perfect, but I have grown.” That’ll be encouraging to your counseling.
Be honest about your values and convictions. Be honest about your agenda, your goals, and your methods in counseling. You don’t have to keep secret as if you have to keep all your cards hidden for what you’re going to do with your counseling. You’re like, “No, this is what I want to do, and this is why I think this would be helpful for you.” Be transparent with what you want to do in counseling. That’ll help you gain trust.
Model the fruit of the spirit to your counseling. That’s a way to be winsome. Communicate clearly, appropriately, and helpfully to your counseling. Listen well to your counseling. Be solution-oriented to your counseling. Pray with your counseling and for your counseling, both in the session and outside of the session.
In my counseling, I always open in prayer, and then I pray with my counseling at the end. I pray, and the counseling prays. We get some of all these examples of gaining involvement with the simple truth, the simple exhortation to love your counseling.
God’s love is powerful. When you love someone with God’s love, it makes an impact on their heart. They open up to you. It’s kind of interesting. When I first started biblical counseling, another counselor said to me, “Many of my best friends today are people that I counseled,” which kind of makes sense. When you’ve shown love in such a tangible way to people and they’ve really opened up in their lives with you, when you finish counseling, you find that you’re good friends. You should find that to be the case too as you counsel and help one another.
Counseling is one of the most loving acts you can do, especially when someone is facing a real crisis.
“Counseling is one of the most loving acts you can do, especially when someone is facing a real crisis.”
Step 3: Gather Data
So number one: begin counseling. Number two: gain involvement. A third and very important step in how to counsel is number three: gather data.
Now, I’ve stressed this one to you already in this course by quoting to you two proverbs I probably mention all the time when it comes to counseling.
Proverbs 18:13: “He who gives an answer before he hears it is falling in shame to him.”
Proverbs 18:17: “The first to plead his case seems right until another comes and examines him.”
If you’re going to speak knowledgeably, skillfully, and helpfully to someone’s inner man issue, you need to gather data first, and lots of it. You’ll prove yourself to be a fool if you say, “You don’t need to tell me. I know what’s going on.” You will give an effective counsel.
Proverbs 18:13: “He who gives an answer before he hears it is folly and shame to him. — Proverbs 18:13”
Again, this is the model that we see prescribed for us even in the New Testament. First Thessalonians 5:14: “We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone.” Notice how the approach changes depending on the type of person and the situation he’s in.
How do you know which one you need to do? You’ve got to find out. You’ve got to gather data and information.
Jesus did this very well, did he not? Consider the different ways he spoke to Nicodemus as compared to the Samaritan woman or the Pharisees or his fellow minister John the Baptist or the rich young ruler or Mary or Martha.
Ephesians 4:29: “If we’re going to speak, we always should speak in an edifying way according to the needs of the moment.” What are the needs in the moment? Again, you won’t know, and you won’t be as effective as you could be unless you find out. You need to gather data.
Categories of Data to Collect
What kind of data should you gather? All kinds. I’ve listed some examples here.
Example categories: physical data. How’s your sleep? Tell me about your medications. What’s your diet like? What are activity levels, illnesses, injuries you have or have suffered?
Resource and relational information: job and school situation, your social situation, your family situation.
Emotional data: feelings, attitudes, emotional extremes, your personality.
Action data: what’s the behavior? Then what sins of omission or commission have occurred?
Conceptual data: what are your goals, your values, your desires, your motives?
Historical data: notable experiences, successes, failures, problems in the past and present for your counselee.
1 Thessalonians 5:14: “Admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. — 1 Thessalonians 5:14”
Tools and Techniques for Data Gathering
I want to find out a lot of information. How do you do this? How do you gather this data?
Well, first, there is the mighty PDI—the Personal Data Inventory. If you’ve never heard of that, I understand because it’s something usually only biblical counselors talk about. What is this? It is a form that counselors often ask their counselees to fill out before beginning formal counseling. I’m going to include one in the follow-up to today’s class. You can see an example.
What this form is—it can be two pages or four pages. It’s a number of blanks and questions that just help give a whole lot of data, background data to your counselor or to the counselee.
Many questions like the ones that I just mentioned to you and the categories that I’ve listed on the slide. This is a very helpful tool. It already allows you to go into your first counseling session with some idea of what’s going on and what kind of new data you’d like to gather.
Okay, they mentioned that they’re dealing with this, and I see that they’re on several medications. I need to find out more about this and see when they started this and whether that corresponds at all to the development of their problems. Or I see that they’ve listed—even though they’ve told me that their marriage is having trouble—I see on his PDI he’s listed anxiety as a major issue. This could be connected to the interpersonal problems that are going on in the relationship. He’s got something else going on in his heart.
So it helps you figure out what kind of questions you want to follow up with.
Now, I understand that PDI is kind of a formal tool, and maybe not something that you feel comfortable asking another person in the church to do: “Hey, I want to meet for one-on-one counseling. Here’s this big form I want you to fill out.” Actually, it’s not that big. But I would even encourage you to use it, even for informal counseling. It’s just such a great and efficient way to gather lots of data.
Say, “Hey, I know this is a little weird, but could you fill out this form for me? It’ll help me a lot in trying to help you.”
But even if you don’t use the PDI, you would still do well to find out the same bits of information that usually are on a PDI. Where do you live? What medications do you take? Have you ever been in counseling before, either secular or biblical? How did that counseling go? Did you implement the counsel? Why or why not? What do you expect me to do for you as a counselor? And many other type questions.
Again, whether you use a PDI or not, the main way you’re going to be gathering data is by asking many and good questions. You have to ask a lot of questions. Ask questions extensively—a little bit about a lot. “Tell me about this. Tell me about that. Tell me about this.” And also, I ask questions intensively—a lot about a little. “You mentioned this. Tell me more.”
Usually, the way this works in an actual counseling situation is that you ask a number of broad questions, and then when answers indicate something important or relevant, you drill down more. “Oh, you mentioned that you don’t have a good relationship with your father. Tell me what happened.” Or, “You say that you’ve really changed in your spiritual life over the last two months. Tell me what started that.” You can drill down further.
When you’re asking questions, you certainly want to ask questions that establish facts: how, what, where, when, what for, how often. But you also want to ask open-ended questions—much better than yes or no questions. A closed yes or no type question would be something like, “Do you want to get married?” And that doesn’t give you a lot of data. Better is to ask, “What are your thoughts about marriage?” That will reveal more of what your counselee is really thinking.
Try to use open-ended questions and ask specific questions, not vague questions. And don’t settle for vague or general answers. As my counseling teacher, Dr. Street, likes to say, “You’ve got to get people out of Vaguesville and fuzzy land.” If they give you a vague answer, say, “Can you be more specific?” And make sure you understand their answers. Don’t just assume what they mean. If there’s some question, one of the best questions you can ask as a counselor is, “What do you mean by that?”
“You’ve got to get people out of Vaguesville and fuzzy land. Don’t settle for vague or general answers.”
Now, as you ask all kinds of questions and listen to all kinds of answers—and by the way, you should explain to your counselee beforehand—this is part of gaining involvement—that this is what you will be doing. You’ll be asking many questions. It’s because you just want to get to know their situation so that you can help them.
As you’re doing that, you want to be taking notes. Otherwise, you’re just not going to remember the information that your counselees are telling you. Take notes physically and mentally. And again, tell them, “Hey, I’m going to take notes. This is just so that I can help me think through what you’re telling me and so I can minister to you in an effective way.”
Take notes physically. Also, mentally. And mark important areas for further questioning. “Oh, they just said something really important. Let me highlight that in my notes. Look for patterns, significant statements, habits.” We’ll say more about that in just a second.
Also, you want to make note of your counselee’s countenance. Not all of the information has to be spoken directly to you by the counselee. What information does it give to you non-verbally? Are you noticing his posture, his expression, size, tears? Now, be careful about non-verbal cues. They are easy to misread. But it is part of the data that you’re gathering. If something non-verbal sticks out, note it.
One other reminder: as you ask questions, be careful not to betray horror, disgust, or judgment, no matter what your counselee tells you. People will tell you shocking things in counseling. And this is something that I definitely experienced in my counseling. When I first started, I couldn’t believe some of the things that people would admit. “That’s what you think about your spouse? Or that’s what you did, even after I just counseled you?” I’m a little more used to it now.
We should never not be shocked to some degree by sin. But remember what you’re doing. Remember what you’re there for. You’re there to try and gather data in order to help your counselee overcome sin and follow Christ. If your countenance betrays judgment or disgust of your counselee, you will probably lose involvement before you get the chance to really help your counselee.
So don’t betray your shock. You can admit, “I’m really sorry to hear that.” Now, asking questions is your primary way to gather data, but there are some other ways. I mentioned looking at non-verbal cues, but you can also get information from others aside from your counselee. But be careful about this. Don’t get information, say, from the counselee’s spouse or from other friends of the counselee without telling your counselee ahead of time that this is what you’re going to do.
“Hey, I’d like to ask some of your family members about the situation.” Unless there’s something that was totally public, like a crime, you don’t necessarily have to ask permission or inform your counselee. But that’ll prevent some misunderstanding between you and your counselee.
You can ask others. You can also give your counselee your own perspective based on what he’s telling you and invite his feedback. “Whoa, here’s what I hear you telling me. Is this accurate?” That’s a good way to get further data.
You can observe your counselee outside of the counseling session. Like if you go to the same church, you can listen to the prayers of your counselee in the counseling session. That can reveal the heart. People often pray for what they think is most important. And you can also use certain homework—homework for data gathering, like journaling.
Now, for this class, I’m not requiring you to show me your journals. But when you’re working in a relationship with a counselor, that actually is something that you can do. Say, “I want you to journal, and then I’d like you to turn in a copy of that to me so that I can look at it and understand the situation more.”
Listening Well
Now, if you’re asking lots of questions, you need to make sure that you listen well to the answers. In the flesh, people are naturally not good listeners. But you need to be a good listener as a counselor for Christ. If you’re going to, by God’s grace, uncover your brother or your sister’s heart and minister the gospel to it, you need to be a good listener.
Here are certain items that you should listen for. Definitely listen for markers if you detect them in your counseling. Listen for blame shifting. Words like “I can’t,” “I’m unable,” “it’s too much.” A victim mentality. Using medical terminology to describe sin: “I have this sickness, this illness, this disorder.” Listen for hopelessness.
Listen for rabbit trails that are getting you off of the main issue. You might have to point that out to your counselee and get them back on track. Listen for evasiveness. Listen for exaggerations, which is really a form of lying, if not used rhetorically. Listen for defensiveness. Listen for them judging other people’s motives.
“I know why my spouse did this, and that’s why I resent it. How do I do that?” Listen also for a willingness to accept responsibility. And not everything you listen for has to be negative. Listen to what they don’t say. Sometimes the silence tells you a lot.
As you listen, make sure that you’re listening with kindness, focus, and patience. Don’t interrupt. Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t let your mind wander. Don’t do distracting things. Don’t allow your counselee to waste time with rabbit trails. Don’t hesitate to ask for clarification when you don’t understand.
“Listen with kindness, focus, and patience. Don’t interrupt. Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t let your mind wander.”
When counseling more than one person together, don’t allow one person to dominate the conversation. You’re counseling a couple, and only the husband speaks or only the wife speaks. Don’t let that happen. You might need to—as Dr. Street reminded us many times—you might need to use the word “whoa” a lot in counseling.
“Whoa, let’s pause for a second.” You indicate that there’s something important in the conversation that you need to address before the conversation gets back on track. Don’t be afraid to say “whoa.”
Now, when in the counseling process do you gather data? Well, all throughout. But most of it—the majority of it—should be at the beginning, in your first few sessions. Actually, your first session together is mostly just to gather data. You do want to give a little bit of instruction and hope as you communicate expectations.
But you really are just trying to find out about the situation. Maybe thirty or forty minutes of your counseling session is just you asking questions. Most of your data gathering is in the beginning. It’s kind of like if you can imagine a graph—I wasn’t able to put one in here—but if data gathering starts at the top of the graph in the beginning, it gets less and less as the counseling goes on.
Whereas giving instruction gets more and more as the counseling goes on. That makes sense, right? Because as you’ve gathered the data, then you’re actually able to communicate what they need.
Step 4: Interpret the Data
Data all by itself doesn’t do anything, however. You have to do something with it. That’s our fourth and final step today: you need to interpret the data.
We need to interpret the data. Just like Christians often misunderstand the Bible by moving too quickly, Christian counselors can misinterpret people and their spiritual needs by failing to take the proper time both to gather data and to think through it to come up with an interpretation of what’s needed.
The Danger of Misinterpretation: Eli and Hannah
We see a good biblical example of this in 1 Samuel 1:12-18. This is the story about Hannah and Eli. Remember Eli? That man of God, high priest of Israel. He saw this certain woman acting strangely near the tabernacle.
It’s one of those times of year that families come to sacrifice to God. Families are probably feasting, eating and drinking as they enjoy their sacrificial portions. This woman has come after dinner time, probably at evening. She looks like she’s in hysterics, sobbing uncontrollably.
She’s also doing this weird thing where her lips are moving, but she’s not saying anything. Remember, people at that time mostly prayed and even thought out loud, not silently.
So Eli, high priest, observing this data in the surrounding circumstances, comes up with an interpretation of what’s going on. The woman is drunk. She is a drunkard. And so what does she need? A reproof against drunkenness, which is what he gives her.
Eli did gather some good and true data, but it wasn’t enough. He hadn’t done enough data gathering. His interpretation applied some assumptions that were not necessarily justified. “Oh, she’s just another one of these women of Israel, drunk, doesn’t really care about God, just here for the sacrifice and the feast.”
If he’d spent more time gathering data before offering his solution, if he’d spent more time thinking through it, he could have ministered to her in the way that she needed.
She gives him some of that extra information. He would have discovered that Hannah was not a worthless woman but a woman sorely distressed, as she says, by childlessness and even the provocation of another wife. She didn’t need reproof. She needed consolation and encouragement.
That’s really what Eli gives her once he figures it out. “Oh, okay, this is what’s going on. May the Lord grant your petition. Go in peace.”
As biblical counselors, we want to make sure that we don’t make that mistake that Eli did, or try to avoid making that mistake. I want to make sure that we’re interpreting people and their situations rightly so that we can minister to them in the way that they really need.
“We want to make sure we’re interpreting people and their situations rightly so we can minister to them in the way they really need.”
How to Interpret Data Biblically
How do we do that? Well, let me give you some ways.
First of all, we need to pray. Just as we need God’s help interpreting His word, we need God’s help understanding and interpreting people. He’s the God of all insight. It makes sense to ask for His help and depend on Him.
Second, we need to make sure that we’re supplying as our authoritative standard and set of background assumptions what God says in His word. We need to be operating from a biblical perspective, not interpreting people according to our subjective opinions and preferences, but rather what God says trustworthily in His word.
Bring to mind the truths we’ve talked about in these sessions that come from the Bible as to why a person does what he does, what is the state of people in the world. We want to run a person’s behavioral responses, thoughts, attitudes, desires, values, expectations, motivations—all the things that we’ve gathered as data through the sift of God’s word.
See if we can discover the most fundamental of questions: “What is going on in this person’s heart? What’s the theme? What’s the heart theme? What does my counselee really value in his heart, maybe even as a lust or an idol?”
You’re looking for patterns in the gathered data. That’s what’s really going to point you to the heart. Are there typical behavioral responses in certain situations? Typical thoughts? Typical attitudes? Typical interpretations from my counselee of what’s going on? Typical longings? Typical desires? Typical demands? These are going to point to what the heart really values.
“Run a person’s thoughts, attitudes, desires, and motivations through the sift of God’s word to discover what is going on in the heart.”
You will be greatly helped in this process if we continue to use biblical labels and descriptions of what we see. I’ve stressed this already to you in this course. Remember, labels suggest solutions. So use biblical labels. Don’t think in terms of codependency, but fear of man and love of man’s approval. Don’t think in terms of eating disorders, but idolatry to body image or pleasure or a lack of self-control, or an extreme desire for control. Sometimes that’s where an eating disorder comes from.
Pay attention to organic factors that may also pop up in your data gathering. Could physical issues be contributing to this inner man struggle? And if so, how?
Formulating and Testing an Interpretation
Once you’ve detected some patterns, you want to be prayerfully formulating an interpretation of the nature and causes of a person’s problem, grounded in Scripture. Begin to say, “All right, how does this fit together? What’s a proper explanation for what’s going on from a biblical perspective?”
You can use your own experience as part of coming up with this interpretation and some of the experiences of others. After all, 1 Corinthians 10:13 does say that every temptation is common to man. So you will see repeat situations. But remember that people are sometimes a little different. Your experience may not actually explain what’s going on.
Don’t just say, “I’ve seen this before. I know what it is.” Remember what Eli did. Remember what Job’s friends did. Don’t just assume.
Even as you bring in some of your own life experience, come up with an interpretation. Actually, come up with multiple interpretations. Say, “All right, here’s one explanation of what’s going on. But what’s another possibility? Here’s another explanation for what’s going on. Which of these better fits the data?”
Come up with multiple interpretations. And once you brainstorm these, test them. Test their accuracy and strength. Review the data again to see which explanation has the most and the least support. Seek input from others—another counselor or mature believer.
Here, again, is why I say you want to be careful about how you articulate confidentiality. You might go to another counselor and say, “Hey, I’m trying to help someone right now who has this data. What explanation do you think makes the most sense?” So you can be discreet about it. You don’t have to give names and super personal details. And you can get help from somebody else.
“Labels suggest solutions. Use biblical labels—not codependency, but fear of man. Not eating disorder, but idolatry to body image.”
If you don’t see further need for revision, actually present your interpretation to your counselee. Ask for his feedback. “My brother, I’ve been considering everything you’ve shared with me and what I’ve observed in our sessions together and praying about it, thinking about it, according to the Bible. And here’s what I think is going on in your heart. What do you think?”
He may give you some helpful feedback. He may resist it. If he mentions something and you think, “Oh, okay, I didn’t consider that,” be ready to revise your interpretation. Adjust as needed. You’re testing it. You formulated it, and you’re testing it. You’ve compared the data, you look for patterns, you come up with the interpretation, and you test it.
Once you’ve sufficiently tested it and you feel validated in the interpretation, it’s time to formulate a strategy of how to address it. “I think we understand what the problem is. You love marriage too much, or you think that God has mistreated you, or you feel like you can’t trust God. You’ve said that to me, and I see that now from our times together. Here’s how we’re going to seek to address that issue of the inner man.”
Formulate a strategy to help your counselee overcome his heart problems. Present this to your counselee. Clarify the issues you think you need to deal with, the best order to deal with those issues, and the manner and methods that you will use to help him. “We’re going to talk about this, and this is the homework I’m going to give you, and this is why I think it’s going to be helpful to you.”
As you begin to implement your solution, you may still need to continue to revise your interpretation and your proposed methods of helping. You may find that there’s a different heart issue or a deeper one. Don’t be afraid to adjust, even to go back to the beginning if need be. It’s humbling when we misinterpret. But God is still the powerful, illuminating God, even if you need to adjust your interpretation.
You can continue to show your counselee that you’re serious about helping him change and confident in God’s grace to bring it about. “We were thinking this before, but I think from what’s happened now, it’s more this. And so we’re going to adjust our approach.” That’s fine. Your confidence in God will help your counselee have confidence too, even when you need to revise your approach.
“Your confidence in God will help your counselee have confidence too, even when you need to revise your approach.”
Conclusion and Preview
Now, what will be your main tool in bringing about these heart solutions for your counseling? Well, instruction. Instruction from the word of God. This is what biblical counseling is, right? At its core, it’s instruction. That’s the fifth step in our method, and what we’ll pick up with next time.
I know that was a lot of information. I hope you find that helpful. Again, I’ll send an email follow-up with the notes from the slides for the afternoon.
“Biblical counseling is, at its core, instruction from the word of God. That is the main tool in bringing about heart solutions.”
Well, that’s all the time we have today. Let’s close in prayer.
Thank you, Lord, for your sufficient word. Thank you, Lord, for the equipping, even practical equipping, for how to help one another in a focused way of discipleship. Lord, raise up, equip, and use your people here at Calvary as counselors to one another. In Jesus’ name, amen. Thank you.