Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Lay Counseling is Effective

Research about the effectiveness of counseling has some shocking truths to tell. First, most of the people who seek a counselor to help them solve a problem or get over an emotional issue are satisfied that counseling helped them. Second, counseling and counselors have good outcomes. Clients are happy with their counselors because the problems that sent them to the counseling office were mostly resolved. In otter words, counseling worked for most people.

About thirty years ago Bea Combest asked me to help her set up a telephone call in counseling ministry. I was then at the University of Cincinnati and knew something about equipping the laity to care/counsel and so Bea thought we could work together to train the Contact Queen City phone counselors. We did and it was a great time.

The research that I found back then is still consistently saying the same things today. Lay Counselors are about as successful as are the Professionals. That is, if the Lay Counselors had training in the "Core Skills of Helping". So, I wrote my doctorate about how to train Christians in the Core Skills.

Apples of Gold I, my first book, came from that dissertation. I am still using the same skills even though we have changed the name of the class and book. It is now Listening for Heaven's Sake and the updated version, Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty.

Lay Counseling is as Effective as Professional Counseling

You can learn to use the core skills in your life and ministry

Praise the Lord!

1 comment:

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