Tim Chester on the connection between biblical counselling and preaching
It didn’t happen the way I had expected.
When I first read Seeing with New Eyes by David Powlison – one of the leading thinkers in the biblical counselling movement – I was expecting it would change the way I did pastoral care. But its first impact was on my preaching.
In Powlison’s handling of Scripture, I began to see how I might preach so as to connect the text to the realities of people’s struggles in a gospel-centred way.
1. Connecting truth to application
People’s behaviours stem from their beliefs about God, for good or for ill. We see this first in Genesis 3. There we find the two major problems of humanity. First, we doubt God’s Word – ‘Did God really say?’ Second, we desire things more than we desire God and we create idols in our hearts – ‘She saw that the fruit was pleasing to the eye.’ The result is disobedience.
It’s a pattern that’s replicated every time we sin. Every sinful behaviour and every negative emotion is driven by unbelief. We don’t believe God offers more than sin does.
The good news is that, just as the problem is a lack of belief in God, so the solution is renewed belief in God. In preaching we’re offering people a way out and that means we proclaim good news. Biblical counselling has enabled me to make these links between belief and behaviour in specific and nuanced ways. So I’m not simply saying: ‘You just need to trust in God.’ I’m able to show people how the gospel liberates them from their pastoral problems or enables them to view their problems in a new perspective.
It can be helpful to see preaching as a pastoral process in reverse. In pastoral care, the movement is from the problem to the gospel of Christ. In preaching, we start with Jesus as he is revealed in the Word and then move to the issues people face. So in preaching we’re trying to make the connection between the truth about God and people’s lives, and then to present that truth in a way that captures their affections.
Liberating
I think this is liberating for preachers. For 95% of the time, 95% of what we say is already known by 95% of the congregation. If you think preaching is primarily an educational process then you will always go after the remaining 5%.
That’s a hard path to follow, because you need to find some new insight from the text every time. It’s also a dangerous path, because you’ll always be searching for novelty. And most of the time that’s not what people need to hear. The Christian who leaves his wife doesn’t do so because he hasn’t been sufficiently informed that adultery is wrong. He leaves his wife because the truths in his head have not captured his heart.
So in preaching, we tell the old, old story. That’s what our congregations need to hear each week. I often tell my students: ‘We’ve only ever got one message and two applications: the one message is Jesus, and the two applications are faith and repentance.’ What stops this being dull is the Bible itself. Jesus is presented in so many textured ways in its pages that every passage overflows with freshness. Let the text do the work (though that requires working hard on the text).
2. Connecting action to motivation
Biblical counselling also gave me a way of applying the text in a gospel-centred way. It’s easy to spot what God has done in a text and it’s easy to spot what we should do for God. But I wasn’t good at connecting the two.
A good test of preaching is this – will people think: ‘That is such good news’? If not, then something has gone wrong. Our preaching should always be good news – even when we’re calling people to repentance – because it’s the gospel we’re proclaiming. So, when I’m preparing, there are a couple of questions I ask:
What am I calling people to? Not only are we calling people away from sin, we are also calling people towards something better. So, when I call people to turn from sin in repentance, I need to ensure I’m also calling them to turn to God in faith. For repentance and faith are really one movement.
No-one does this better than Isaiah: ‘Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare (Isaiah 55.1-2). Here are reasons to turn from sin. It’s food which doesn’t satisfy and it demands a great price. But here, too, are reasons to turn towards God. ‘You will delight in the richest of fare.’ And it’s free.
What’s the motive in the text? We need to look not only for the actions a passage tells us to do, but also for the motivations it gives for doing those actions. Consider Colossians 3.12: ‘Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.’ It’s all too easy to think that this is saying we should be compassionate, kind, humble and so on. And of course it is, but, first of all, it is saying: ‘You are God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved.’ A message which is just ‘you need to be more compassionate’ is legalism. Over time it will crush a congregation. But think how people will respond if they hear ‘you are dearly loved by God (and so you can be compassionate).’
Preaching as a pastoral act
Preaching is a pastoral act in which God himself addresses his people through his preached Word. So as preachers we’re mediating an encounter between God and his people, between wounded people and the Great Physician, between enslaved people and their Redeemer.
Imagine you were about to counsel a couple contemplating divorce. You’re in the car, driving to their house. What would you do? I assume you would pray with desperate, heartfelt prayers! You need God’s help. You’re about to enter a war zone. You can’t solve this. You don’t even know where to begin. And so you pray.
When you stand up to preach there’s every chance you’re about to give counsel to a couple contemplating divorce – or someone struggling with depression or experiencing panic attacks or self-harming. What do you do? You pray! You pray desperately for divine encounters to take place.
Tim Chester is a pastor with Grace Church, Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, a faculty member of Crosslands Training and the author of over 30 books including You Can Change (IVP) and Rediscovering Joy (IVP).
