Psychology Serving the Church

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from the Wheaton University Quarterly Magazine, winter 2001.These are exerts from the article titled, “Psychology serving the church.”Because we believe it is time to celebrate the church and all it has to offer in providing hope and healing in a fallen world, the Center for Church Psychology collaboration was initiated in 1999 and functions under the auspices of Wheaton’s doctoral program in clinical psychology.Our mission is psychology serving the church which we accomplish through research, training, and service.The research story starts in 1997, two years before the Center for Church Psychology collaboration began.Some doctoral students and I had completed a national survey of psychologists and pastors in which we asked our respondents to describe what sorts of collaborative work they do and what encourages or hinders collaboration between psychologists and clergy.Our results were robust, but not surprising.Pastors expressed concern about trusting psychologists and emphasized the importance of sharing core values with psychologists before entering into a collaborative relationship.Our current research program is multi-faceted.We are looking at ways pastors and psychologists learn to trust one another, exploring how pastors cope with their demanding work, investigating the ways effective mentoring occurs in seminary settings, and assessing the congregational needs and resources of evangelical pastors in the United States and in other parts of the world.Many congregations are seeing the importance of Christ-centered counseling services.We want to support and encourage these efforts while casting a bigger vision for the various ways psychology, including the research skills of psychologists can be used to serve the church.

Tom:

Dave as you know, my father was a psychiatrist, he’s deceased now.I grew up in the mental health community from mental institution to mental institution, so I know by my own experience that the people involved in these services, they are sincere.They really want, for the most part they really want to help people, but there are major problems with this.

Dave:

Well Tom, I wish we had several hours.There are major problems with psychology itself and some of the best books written debunking psychology and psychiatry are written by secular psychologists and psychiatrists themselves.You could take Bernie Zelbergeld for example, he says there is absolutely no evidence that people with professional training do a better job of any type of counseling, than those who genuinely love you and are concerned about you.That’s one of the major problems.

Tom:

That’s just his opinion.We are talking research here.

Dave:

Oh this is research, fifteen years of research.He was a clinical psychologist.Now Tom, I know you want to be kind—we do want to be kind, we want to give people credit.It is true that many of the people who enter this field enter it because they genuinely want to help people.On the other hand, this is a professional relationship.It’s $100 or more an hour, I don’t know what they charge now, and the man is looking at his timer, and you’ve got to get out of there to make way for his next patient. This is not a loving relationship and in fact, they don’t want that kind of a relationship between client and doctor.This is a professional relationship, but more than that, there are so many problems.This thing does not work.Thomas Szasz you remember, one of the world’s leading research psychiatrists, said, “You want to know what we’ve done?We’ve turned the salvation of sinful souls into the curing of sick minds.”So, I mean we don’t have time, but I could quote you, and quote you, and quote you top experts who say it doesn’t work.Well, a psychiatric diagnosis is more likely to be wrong than right.Psychiatrists themselves can’t even agree.They make up—I was sitting next to a clinical psychologist on the plane a few weeks ago.She had just come from a conference.She was a little bit upset.The (DSM), The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, they revised it again, but it hasn’t come out yet, but anyway, they just vote on these things.This is not science; they make them up as they go along. But now that the Christian church would consult them, and they are looking for ways, oh how can the pastor consult—they talk about Christ-centered psychology.What do you mean Christ-centered psychology?If it’s Christ-centered psychology let’s go to Christ.Let’s go to his Word, let’s see what he had to say.The scriptures say he has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of him who has called us to glory and virtue, and so forth.Now the secret to the Christian life is Jesus Christ living in me, right?Christ in you the hope of glory.Now if he has become my life, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.He’s my life.I don’t think Jesus Christ needs any help from a psychologist.For sure he does not.Then why don’t I let Jesus Christ live his life through me and why don’t I study his Word?Oh this is something that came up in 1999, isn’t that wonderful?1900 years, more than 1900 years after Paul was here.Wouldn’t it have been great if Paul had only understood this?If Jesus had understood this, and they had been able to add these things from Freud and Jung, and Rogers and Maslow.These godless, atheist, anti-Christians to a man and now we’re going integrate their theories with the Bible as though the Bible is not sufficient.Tom, I’m sorry, I get angry because people are being led astray.

Tom:

Dave, I find it really fascinating, well it’s worse than that, I’m quoting from the article again: “We are looking at ways pastors and psychologists learn to trust one another.”Now why is there this distrust?Because of just what you are talking about.

Dave:

But why would you need to trust someone other than Christ and his Word?

Tom:

But Dave, again this trust issue—they are trying to work a collaboration here, but they recognize that there are problems.

Dave:

Am I going to trust Sigmund Freud, who was so messed up—the guy was a basket case.He couldn’t straighten out his own life.Am I going to trust Carl Jung who had a spirit guide, a chorus of screeching ghost who gave him his major theories?Why am I going to trust these guys?Why should I?Why don’t I trust God’s Word?Is it not sufficient?You see the problem is Tom, we still have people who think, some of them, who say well the Bible is inerrant.That is what we’ve been talking about, but it’s not sufficient.So let me, can I just paraphrase the psychologists translation of John:8:30As he spake these words, many believed on him.
See All..., 31: “Jesus said if you continue in my word then you are my disciples indeed and you will know part of the truth and you will be partially free, but unfortunately I can’t set you totally free because the Holy Spirit either through ignorance or oversight has left out certain important things from the Bible that are essential.But one day those new prophets of truth: Freud and Jung and Rogers, anti-Christians and atheists to a man, nevertheless they will be God’s prophets of truth and they will give the church finally at last, those things the church has been lacking all these years and then pastors can learn to trust psychologists and work together.”