We are living in a world with unparalleled suffering and woundedness. The Lausanne movement is giving serious consideration to the implications of this reality for world evangelization.  People caring for people is not a new concept. The Bible and recorded history both give many illustrations of caring acts that are similar to what is known today as counseling. It only has been within the past century, however, that God appears to have been growing a diverse group of Christ-followers who bring wisdom, compassion, and specialized skills to people who suffer from emotional and spiritual brokenness. The work of these helpers is called counseling, pastoral care, spiritual direction, psychotherapy, coaching, mentoring, social work, crisis intervention, trauma treatment and more. Their numbers include highly skilled, professionally trained psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, pastoral counselors, and others who seek to be competent practitioners committed to the highest ethical standards. But the words “Christian counseling” also describe the activities of well-meaning but untrained lay people, along with dedicated but overwhelmed pastors who freely admit that their one seminary counseling course could never equip them to deal effectively with the complex pressing problems in their congregations.

Scattered throughout the world, but mostly in the west, are a host of Christian counseling centers, treatment facilities, and training schools with staff members that run the full range of training, experience and competency. Books, articles, and seminars related to Christian counseling show a similar range of quality and expertise. In addition, Christian counselors include critics of professional Christian counseling and psychology who advocate for other approaches to people helping.
          
Despite this diversity, counseling most often is characterized by a person with troubling spiritual, emotional, psychological or relational needs being helped by another, sometimes specially trained person committed to bring healing, support, guidance or other care and assistance. More formal attempts to define or describe Christian counseling tend to emphasize the person who does the helping, the techniques or skills that are used, and the goals that the counseling seeks to reach. From this perspective the Christian counselor is:

A deeply committed, Spirit guided (and Spirit-filled) servant of Jesus Christ who applies his or her God-given spiritual gifts, skills, abilities, training, knowledge, and insights to the task of helping others move to personal wholeness, interpersonal competence, mental stability, and spiritual maturity.

Christian counselors are committed believers, doing their best to help others, with the help of God. This definition includes believers who come from different theological perspectives, use different approaches to counseling, and have different levels of training and experience. The field is growing around the world, with diverse, effective and culturally sensitive models of care-giving. Even so, the movement continues to be strongest in the west while the potential for Christian counseling worldwide appears to have been often constricted by western middle class models of counseling as a fee-for-service, 50 minute hour of weekly individual therapy.

Three Circles of Care and Counsel

For many years, a small cadre of pioneers and visionaries in the mental health professions, both Christian and secular, have recognized that the predominant and most influential models of counseling are too narrow, too western, too individualized, too geared to middle and upper class, educated Caucasians, and too dependent on English for an acceptable nomenclature and conceptual basis. There is growing awareness of the crucial importance of recognizing, developing, and utilizing culturally-sensitive and multicultural approaches to the giving of care and counsel.

The diagram below shows three circles that can represent the emerging direction of the counseling movement as it partners with the church worldwide.   The inner circle (shown in orange) represents a small but increasingly sophisticated segment of care and counseling that focuses on pastors, missionaries, parachurch staff members, relief workers, Christian leaders or others who work in ministry settings. Most often termed “member care,” the focus appears to be primarily (but not exclusively) Protestant, often Evangelical, and weighted towards Western missionaries serving overseas.

The middle circle (shown in blue) is care and counsel for Christians. This circle takes its mandate from various passages of Scripture that encourage the church to care for one another as we try to reflect and build the Body of Christ worldwide. A wide range of approaches and techniques are being practiced in an effort to bring healing and wholeness to the church. Many of the counseling interventions used by Christian counselors seek to bring Christian values and biblically-based methods to their work, but the global impact of psychology and secular therapeutic techniques often shows a blending of non-Christian and Western approaches in service to the church. This is descriptive of the Christian counseling movement as it has developed in the West, especially since World War II and emerging from the pre-war pastoral care movement.
          
The larger (yellow) circle represents the entire world including Christians and non-believers. The majority of these people are far beyond the reach of Christian care and counsel, commonly understood. This includes non-religious people, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and those who embrace other religions. Many who serve in the Christian counseling movement have little awareness of cultures other than their own, or little interest in working with people who are not middle class and white. Some Christians are unwilling or uncomfortable working within the big circle, outside of the blue area, unless the recipients of the care and counsel make a commitment to Christ first.
          
Other counselors have a broader vision. They work with those in the big circle, Christian or not, who have been displaced, victimized, traumatized by disasters or war, or suffer from economic deprivation. These counselors (broadly defined) work in what might be considered non-traditional ways with those who are abused or at risk. Many work in clinical and hospital settings but they are not resistant to going into the streets and villages to offer a psychological-emotional or spiritual cup of cold water in Jesus name. Some commit to private practice, are staff workers in clinics, or work in relief organizations. These counselors seek to be culturally sensitive. They welcome non-Christian as well as Christian clients if there is evidence that these people can benefit from the counselor’s services. Working in the big circle is difficult and complicated theologically, culturally, and clinically. It is difficult to apply western ethical and therapeutic guidelines. It is work that is not well understood and may be controversial. Perhaps that is why it is the circle that is talked about the least. It is the “counseling as mission” circle where few have dared to go but where a growing generation of younger counselors appears eager to penetrate.
          
While there are still many needs in the smallest circle called member care, there are existing networks and resources available. In the middle circle the development of national and regional conferences and networks, while still vastly underdeveloped, has begun to raise the awareness of the global church that caring for those within the Body is a clear call of the New Testament. The big circle is, however, the pressing need of a hurting world. The diverse needs, and populations are overwhelming; the often isolated service providers, many who might not call themselves counselors, are in need of support, collaboration, resources, and training. It is these needs and the tremendous worldwide resources that God has provided through those who are skilled and compassionate workers in care and counsel that we seek to explore more deeply in this consultation.