Mcminn's Approach To Christian Counseling

Analysis

What this writer found truly exceptional about McMinn’s approach was the wisdom shared in helping Christian counselor become more successful in the therapy process. The challenges that McMinn shared in chapter one could be difficult for a Christian counselor if they don’t embrace this new frontier “as McMinn’s would call it” of intradisciplinary integration. The first of the six challenges is moving from two areas of competence to three. Dr. Gration shared her viewpoint that psychology and theology is not sufficient enough for interdisciplinary integration. So moving from those two and adding a third, which is Christian beliefs is necessary to keep “counselors grounded in the midst of a profession easily swayed by new theories, fads, and sensationalistic claims” (McMinn,

2011, 9). The next challenge is blurred personal-professional distinctions. In most professional-ethics codes there is a clear difference between the professional life of the counselor and the personal life of the counselor. McMinn debates the distinction by articulating that professionalization of counseling is not only successful with therapeutic techniques, but it also matures out of the person’s inner life. In this sense, counseling is both. In the next challenge it explains how professional and personal life can co-exist to prepare the counselor for interdisciplinary integration. McMinn called this expanded definitions of training, both professional and personal training is needed.

A competent counselor only requires professional training, but the Christian counselor would need that as well as “The Spirit of the Disciplines” to have the substance of spiritually sensitive counseling that goes deeper than technique (McMinn, 2011, 15). Confronting dominant views of Mental health is another challenge, meaning that there are other views and conversations on the methods used by Christian counseling. If the Christian counselor is not careful the Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) that McMinn share about Albert Ellis’s an outspoken atheist relativistic worldview. McMinn states that “we can bend Christian assumptions to conform to existing techniques, but at some point our belief system snaps, and we are lift with only theistic scraps saturated by artistic definitions of mental health” (McMinn, 2011, 17). Establishing a scientific base is also a challenge for Christian counselors. In order for the Christian counseling theory can be accurately understood among secular professionals must use the language of science that are most common among these professions. And lastly, defining relevant ethical standards is a challenge for the new frontier of

intradisciplinary integration