The two articles entitled, “Ministering to Stepfamilies” and “Pre-Stepcouple Counseling: A Sample Session Format” written by popular Christian counselor, Ron L. Deal, are found on Ron Deal’s website called SmartStepFamilies.Com. They are illustrative of the mentality that Christian counselors typically have towards counseling. Christian counselors who are often integrationist, have more of a secular bent in regards to dealing with counseling issues, if not just a “practical” bent with less attention to the Bible.
And yet this may not be altogether needless for us as biblical counselors in establishing a context for our own more biblical concentration and application, but what is lacking in Ron Deal’s method is the theological and biblical authority for addressing these key issues and for answering them.
Ron Deal leaves out a Biblical orientation in place of a secular, therapeutic orientation. The difference is fairly easy to recognize. Ron Deal flavors his counseling advice with Christian terminology, but what he is giving is secular advice. For instance,
Stepfamilies often find themselves trying to put all the pieces of their family together with no outside help and little family problem-solving abilities. In addition, the family image they are trying to create (the biological family) doesn’t fit with the pieces they find. Frustration and confusion abounds.
Perhaps that’s one key reason many stepfamilies end in divorce. Couples can become so disillusioned with the bonding process they give up. It actually becomes more attractive to once again divorce than to work through the crises that erupt.
Ron Deal in “Ministry to Stepfamilies” here says that the problem in stepfamilies and in making them work is that they do not get “outside help” “to put all the pieces…together” and that “the family image they are trying to create (the biological family) doesn’t fit with the pieces they find.” He says that they become “disillusioned with the bonding process.” All of these are secular, psychological phrases and diagnoses of the reasons why stepfamilies do not work.
The main reason that marriages or anything in peoples’ lives go wrong is for the simple reason that the Bible identifies, called sin. This is the reason that marriages fail. Ron Deal is not wrong from a practical standpoint. However, a biblical counselor would do things differently. In other words, he would go deeper. He or she may in fact mention to his/her counselees that stepfamilies struggle with trying to make themselves like a biological family, but that is an secondary issue that a an ACBC certified counselor might bring out not to the neglect of the main issue, which is a biblical concept of sin. To address sin, a counselor needs God’s word.
Biblical counseling offers the solution that is not just based on the Bible but is the Bible. In other words, the biblical counselor is concerned with what the Bible really says about this issue and how God’s word says to handle it, not just an individual’s subjective interpretation per se. One way that such a counselor could open up discussion and identify encouragement about this issue with stepfamilies could be to mention the story of Joseph in Genesis and all the mixed up family difficulties of his household between his father, his wives, his many brothers, and all the difficulty of Joseph’s family living under the same roof. There was bickering and jealousy. There has always been mixed family problems, and drawing a connection between a biblical account and their own situation can be very inspirational for these persons who are struggling to cope.
Ron Deal mentions a number of suggestions as to how to handle these issues in ministry. He says in “Ministering to Stepfamilies,”
“A second barrier to developing a stepfamily ministry is churches don’t want to perceive the need. Ministry is a tough and stressful profession. Ministers are coping with ever-changing technology, rising baby-boomer leadership styles, shifting musical styles, polarized churches with some members holding out for the status quo while others are pushing for radical changes in ministry methodology. The list of challenges before ministers in [sic] endless. And now, in order to understand stepfamilies, church leaders are being asked to rethink their most commonly held notions of marriage and family life. This would require stepping back from standard family advice, retooling, and looking afresh at the ministry audience. On top of everything else ministers are trying to handle, that is a difficult challenge.”
It is noteworthy that Ron Deal says that “church leaders are being asked to rethink their most commonly held notions of marriage and family life.” He continues, “This would require stepping back from standard family advice, retooling, and looking afresh at the ministry audience.” Ron Deal sees this as not only such a change, but also a change that requires pastors to retool, as it were, and look “afresh at the ministry audience.”
The fact is that it is not really a change in the most fundamental sense. Sin is still sin. Biblical counselors are still dealing with the same issues. The difference in the American culture is that people have taken their sin to further levels and created more complication in their relationships. This is not to suggest, because opponents would bring this up, that people should treat divorced persons or remarried persons any worse than any other child of grace, but it is still the same old sin and nothing different. It is a problem that needs to be addressed, however true it is that the proliferation of divorce is, in fact, a change. However, it does not represent a need for a fundamental change in counseling. It provides a more complicated context in which Biblical Counselors apply the same Biblical truth as ever, i.e. Biblical principles for relationships.
Obviously, a counselor should acknowledge that it is more complicated, and a Biblical Counselor does take this into consideration as he or she works at specific application in a more difficult context. However, Ron Deal is missing the fundamental point that the problems of humanity are the same that they have always been, and the Bible’s timeless truth can address these as well as any other issue without fundamental change in any sense. There is no need to retool, as it were, a church’s ministry just to address the same sin issues which are, in fact, in a more “complicated” scenario due to more of the same sin.
Ron Deal further establishes a model schedule for counseling with potential stepfamilies in his article called “Pre-Stepcouple Counseling: A Sample Session Format.” He gives an example of one such session,
Session 7: Bio Parent—Children Session(s):
1. This may require more than one session if each adult has children.
2. Make overt that it is common for children to fear losing their parent to the stepparent and stepsiblings. Discuss ways to express this openly when it happens and make plans to keep certain key “touchpoints” alive.
3. The bio parent must express an expectation that the children respect the stepparent “as they would any other authority figure.” Discuss the implications.
4. Discuss the possibility of changes in family rituals, household rules, and discipline.
The bottom line is that the Bible itself, or counseling from out of the Bible itself, is apparently absent from Ron Deal’s counseling, if only in orientation. Ron Deal puts secular counseling in its place. His counseling may not disagree essentially with the Bible. Some of it may in fact be helpful. There is nothing inherently wrong with what he lists here in “Session 7,” but it is utterly lacking in biblical content and doctrine and thus real insight. As a biblical counselor, one should be informed of the issues that Ron Deal addresses, but the essence of a biblical counselor’s counseling is from the Bible.
A case in point, bouncing off of this session, would be that a given biblical counseling session should consist of counseling the children to not only respect their biological parents (Eph.6:1-3), but to respect and to obey their stepfather or stepmother if only based on 1 Tim. 5:1, and all the more as this person really fulfills the role of a real father or mother also.
The biblical counselor could also include some of the points that Ron Deal mentioned but only from an informative standpoint. That is not the heart of his or her counseling. The biblical counselor would also mention specific examples of mixed families from the Bible, such as Joseph’s family in the book of Genesis. He or she should counsel encouragement and wisdom as well as correction from the Bible based on a diagnosis of sin as the problem. A counselor should correct any sin issues that may be present based on an extended time of counseling and coming to know the couple and their respective children. There will undoubtedly be sin issues that carry over from previous relationships. Ultimately, God is gracious, and the biblical counselor believes that He gives the Holy Spirit to assist in this work.
The difference between a biblical counselor and Ron Deal is the orientation of his or her counseling. The biblical counselor counsels from the Bible, from out of the pages of God’s word. He or she is concerned with application of the Bible and believes that sin is the essential problem in any part of life. Ron Deal takes his cue from the discipline of psychology. He talks about Christianity, but he assumes the main hindrances to success in relationships are found in a person’s state of mind or psychology. He believes that bad habits need corrected and that people need educated. However, sin and solutions from the Bible are mentioned not at all or only in passing.
Bibliography
Deal, Ron L. “Ministering to Stepfamilies.” Smart Stepfamilies Website, 2013, Accessed November 27, 2014. http://www.smartstepfamilies.com/view/ministering-to-stepfamilies.
Deal, Ron L. “Pre-Stepcouple Counseling: A Sample Session Format.” Smart Stepfamilies Website, 2013, Accessed November 27, 2014.
http://www.smartstepfamilies.com/view/pre-stepcouple-counseling-a-sample-session-format.
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