THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSIONS OF THE LUTHERAN COUNSELING CENTER
AS A FAITH-BASED COUNSELING CENTER
by Serge Castigliano, PhD, Clinical Pastoral Supervisor
“…No longer conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds”….Romans 12:2
The Lutheran Counseling Center (LCC) proclaims its mission to be a faith-based Christian pastoral counseling center. This aspect of its self-understanding grounds its counseling services in long-standing Christian traditions that link faith, religion and spirituality with healing and coping with life’s sufferings and struggles.
In recent years an ever-increasing quantity of persuasive empirical research data has emerged to demonstrate that religious faith and spiritual dimensions play a significant role in influencing health and healing. In keeping with both these emerging new insights and with the long standing Christian healing heritage, LCC holds that spirituality has a major place in counseling and psychotherapy and seeks both new and old ways to emphasize the spiritual in the care and treatment of persons.
LCC embraces the spiritual dimensions of its services within a particular framework of self-understanding, which can be identified in the following categories:
1. THE FAITH-BASED CHRISTIAN IDENTITY OF THE AGENCY
2. CHRISTIAN VOCATIONAL IDENTITY OF PRACTIONERS
3. EXPLICIT ADDRESSING OF SPIRITUAL MATTERS IN COUNSELING PROCESS.
1. THE FAITH-BASED CHRISTIAN IDENTITY OF THE AGENCY
The client’s awareness of the agency’s faith-based identity is important to establishing a foundational base for the counseling process. Typically, this identity fosters trust and confidence, especially if service locations are in a church or specific religiously identified space---which is the case for all LCC’s service locations. The symbolic effect of entering a church---a holy place designed to engage persons with the divine---establishes a spiritual context for the personal reflections of the counseling process. Such awareness may well be subliminal and never overtly discussed. Nevertheless, this dimension is of vital significance as it invites the client to recognize that for LCC the relationship of faith and spirituality to the distress is a natural part of the process.
This context also symbolizes the role of the church and religious community in the care and treatment of the sick----not only those with physical illnesses, but also with those experiencing emotional troubles and spiritual afflictions. It makes a statement that God cares and that God desires to be involved---thus establishing the potential for heightened awareness of spirituality.
The agency seeks to make the distinctively Christian base of its identity visible and central in all marketing and promotion, as well as in the self-understanding of board, staff, and volunteers. Further, of equal importance is the presence of an orientation that stresses ecumenical and multi-faith inclusivity as a natural and well-integrated part of this identity. Sensitivity and respect for the views of other religious traditions are an essential part of the agency’s ethos. Orienting the client about who/what LCC is, and on what religious/spiritual ground it stands, is an important part of establishing the spiritual context for services. Thus, for example, by coming to LCC the client encounters this particular spirituality—namely, one that embraces and respects all religious backgrounds, or even none at all. This encounter impacts the counseling experience and process. For some it provides relief and confidence; others may experience challenge, even tension.
Of course, many other beliefs and values are present and encountered by the client in the symbolism of the agency’s identity. These serve as prehensive elements in the counseling process----potentially evoking feelings, impressions, thoughts, etc. that intrinsically become grist for the mill.
In summary, the effects of agency identity and location on the client’s therapy process should not be underestimated---even if not brought to awareness in the process.
2. THE CHRISTIAN VOCATIONAL IDENTITY OF PRACTIONERS
In addition to Master’s level training in mental health and psychotherapy, required qualifications for LCC counseling staff also include Master’s level education in theology and/or religious studies--- with ordination as clergy, or a comparable “setting apart” as a diaconal minister or similar vocational identity, being strongly preferred. Further, there is an expectation that staff have an integrated vocational identity, that is understand themselves to be functionally competent in their roles both as religious/pastoral practitioner and as mental health practitioner. The ability to function pastorally as well as a counselor-therapist is essential.
Consequently, counseling staff members bring significant expertise in their ability to think theologically about areas such as interpersonal relationships, human suffering, stress, trauma and relationship with the transcendent---along with the ability to integrate the spiritual dimension with insights and practices from psychology and the behavioral sciences.
This vocational identity, honed with these integrated competencies, differentiates the counseling services provided by such practitioners from many other mental health practitioners and forms a distinctive orientation to the counseling process. For such practitioners the process is framed with fundamental Christian beliefs and values. For Christians this vocational identity represents a calling by God and the community to serve as a representative of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the idealized figure who stands at the center of all Christian religion as the powerless hero of love, giving and sharing. He used no violence, did not want to rule, did not orient himself around acquiring, but rather offered himself as a model of sacrificial love on behalf of the community. This is the exact opposite of the “pagan” hero who seeks life fulfillment in power, glory and fame---in being the best killer or acquirer. This opposite orientation is common in our culture, and framing the counseling process based on a different vocational identity is one of the key ways the spiritual aspect is integrated at LCC.
To illustrate, the counselor with this vocational foundation brings a belief that the client was uniquely created by a loving God and has intrinsic value apart from skills, talents, appearance, position, etc. The counselor also believes that nothing the client has done changes this fundamental worth---that life in the future has meaning, value and purpose despite the past. The counselor believes there is forgiveness and renewal of life…and that all people by virtue of being created in the image of God have spiritual or religious impulses at some level of consciousness. These impulses, as Erich Fromm has said, can give persons the energy they need to bring about fundamental personal and social change, and thus fulfill a basic inner human need. This spiritual dimension is the aspect of humanity that connects us to God.
The thesis here is that the identity, beliefs and pastoral ministry orientation of the counselor—whether overtly evident and explicit or not---establish a context and framework for the counseling client that significantly impacts the spiritual dimensions of the counseling process.
3. EXPLICIT ADDRESSING OF SPIRITUAL MATTERS IN COUNSELING
LCC is committed to helping people find emotional, relational and spiritual healing and wholeness with a variety of therapeutic approaches and techniques. These generally are defined by the training and inclination of the therapist—but also by the needs of the client. Similarly, the approaches taken by individual counselors to address spiritual matters, as well as understandings of what is meant by spiritual, vary with individual counselors. Further, all the varied means and methods used to address the spiritual aspects of the counseling process need to be sensitively related to the faith traditions and beliefs of the clients. Overall, the common denominator is to connect to the fundamental spiritual grounding of the client. What ultimately identifies a therapeutic activity as pastoral counseling is the spirituality of the process.
When the client introduces specific religious or spiritual language or images, or makes specific requests, then the task of addressing the issues from that perspective typically is easier---though not always. Addressing the spiritual dimensions explicitly requires careful and sensitive approaches. It has been said that talking truthfully about one’s spiritual side is more anxiety producing than doing so about one’s sexuality.
Given the sensitivities in this area, any introduction of religious language or images by the counselor can reasonably be termed a “spiritual intervention”. This terminology puts the introduction on a parallel with other psychotherapeutic interventions, such as those of a psychological or other orientation. It is good clinical as well as pastoral practice to obtain verbal consent when engaging in a “spiritual intervention”. When consent is broadly framed, the counselor can have wide latitude in introducing religious resources such as theological reflection, Biblical verses or images, and spiritual connections.
Consent may not be needed for some fundamental inquiries, since they can be presumed to be part of the contextual framework for the counseling process. For example, questions like…”Do your religious beliefs or faith have any bearing on all this? Or, “How do you see or understand God as part of this?” Or, “Is there a spiritual dimension for you in this?---generally do not need consent. Other interventions, such as reading a Bible verse, offering to pray, or challenging a client with a perceived discrepancy between stated beliefs and behavior, usually warrant consent. A typical consent request may be…”Is it OK if I address this with religious language? Or, I have a religious belief that I think addresses this, is it OK if I share it with you”
The fundamental spiritual orientation of LCC counseling means that life’s struggles---such as with love (loving and being loved), forgiveness(giving and receiving forgiveness), guilt, self-worth, sin, hope, salvation, and many others---are viewed in theological and religious perspective, and dealing with them within that perspective is understood to be essential to the process. Therefore, these matters need to be introduced and addressed somehow. This is done not by trying to impart concepts from the depth of the wisdom of the counselors via lectures, sermons, videos, etc., but rather questions are used, and lots of them. The questions are not simply to obtain information, but to stimulate reflection and encourage clients to ask and answer these questions of themselves. Engaging these life issues is part of a lifelong journey that becomes the engine of continual spiritual development, otherwise known in classic theological language as sanctification.
REFLECTIONS ON SPIRITUALITY AND TRAUMA
The foundation for the spiritual aspects of trauma, crisis and recovery involves one’s fundamental beliefs about God. Placing faith and trust in a loving and just God is one of the most common coping behaviors for life’s challenges. One of the grave dangers of trauma is the prospect of the loss of this belief. Helping clients to hold or recover this belief is an important task for the counseling process as this belief provides a basic frame of reference for faith to be a source of hope, comfort and a basis for recovery.
The spiritual orientation of LCC counselors is based on Biblical themes that teach that in the midst of chaos there is new creation; in the midst of darkness a light appears; in the midst of death there is re-birth. This orientation ultimately frames the trauma---even with all its existential issues of loss, suffering, pain, etc.--- as holding significant potential for personal renewal and transformations.
The key spiritual areas impacted by trauma can be identified as follows:
• Transitions in beliefs
• Changes in life purpose and meaning
• Clarifying values
Even the casual observer realizes that these impacts are not always positive.
For some the negative impacts can be life-long---with limited or no recovery. For others the trauma provides a base for life-long changes in beliefs, purpose, meaning and values. LCC counselors have many stories of 911 counseling clients who have experienced such transformations. Seeking new occupations, vocations, partners, locations, activities of meaning, relational healing, etc. are but a few examples.
It has been said that the two greatest obstacles to spirituality are health and security. This implies that illness/injury and insecurity are more like windows than obstacles to the spiritual dimension of life. As is said, there are no atheists in foxholes. The spiritual/theological base for LCC counselors embraces the view that all traumas are soulful, offering natural spiritual windows and yearnings for healing and renewal.
I waited patiently for the LORD;
He turned to me and heard my cry;…
He set my feet upon a rock
And gave me a firm place to stand
He put a new song in my mouth,
A hymn of praise to our God…..Psalm 40: 1-3