Christian Counseling
I received an email from a minister who asked the following questions: I have been in full-time ministry for the past 11 years working in youth/family/pulpit/evangelistic ministry. I am currently enrolled (in a) MA in Marriage and Family Therapy (program) and have about 30 hours with 30 to go for completion. I’m not sure if [...]
Smart Marriages
I will be in Dallas the next few days at the Smart Marriages conference. In years past, AAMFT offered the best workshops and seminars in the field of marriage enrichment and marriage therapy. That’s no longer true. When Diane Sollee left AAMFT and formed Smart Marriages, she took her connections and experience with her. This [...]
Strange Googlings
I occasionally look through my logs and sitemeter info to discover what search phrases people are using to find this site. Among other things, I get ideas for future entries. Counseling Pastors was one phrase. I assume this refers to the unique aspects of providing counseling to ministers; i.e. how to help someone who is [...]
Forced Termination of Ministers
The problem: What do you do with ministers who have been fired for no real reason? In my counseling practice I see many ministers who have been terminated by their churches over “leadership issues”. No moral failure or doctrinal wanderings, just “personality styles” that clash. The problems for the minister are myriad. No job. No [...]
Encouraging Your Pastor: Part 3
The other day I received an email, as did other blogging pastors, from Curt (The Happy Husband) asking how pastors could be encouraged. My responses are here and here. I wanted to finish with a brief discussion of problems unique to pastors in developing friendships. Curt asked, “I know that a lot of pastors find [...]
Encouraging Your Pastor: Part 2
Curt, at The Happy Husband, recently asked several blogging pastors how they can be encouraged/appreciated by church members. I said, “Be a friend”. Now, Curt wants to know: how? I know that a lot of pastors find it difficult to make friends with congregation members, even when people want to be friends. There are all [...]
Encouraging Your Pastor
I received this email the other day from The Happy Husband: I’ve been growing increasingly aware of how difficult the job of pastor can be. I know that pastors often receive a lot more criticism than encouragement, and that can lead to all sorts of bad feelings. I think, though, that most congregations truly love [...]
Recreational Dating
Henry Cloud has an article at Christianity Today on dating for dating’s sake. Dating Is Not About Marriage advances the thesis that dating should be a learning and growing experience and not merely a search for one’s mate. Matt Hall takes exception to Cloud’s position: “Unfortunately, Cloud simplifies the issue into an either/or dilemma where [...]
The Goal of Parenting
I have written before about the goal of parenting. For the end result of successful parenting we can borrow a rule from business/time management guru Stephen Covey: Begin with the end in mind. The goal, when raising children, is NOT to have a precious 2-year-old, or a precocious fifth-grader, or a model teenager. The end [...]
Parenting
Proverbs 22: 6 “Teach a youth about the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (HCSB)I’m writing about parents who seem to wait until their children are teenagers before they become interested in parenting. “Oh great”, I can hear some of you thinking, “Another ‘lets blame the [...]
