Editor’s Notice: Our Might 2024 mini-series on the BCC Grace and Reality weblog addresses the usage of expertise in biblical counseling. On this first article, Josh Stephens explores the advantages of utilizing expertise to create your individual diagrams, illustrations, and pictures to make use of within the counseling room. In different contributions to the sequence, Jim Burke presents ten expertise concerns for digital counseling suppliers, Garrett Higbee shares the advantages of Care Observe Case Administration System, and Julie Lovette explains tips on how to successfully handle your counseling ministry utilizing Biblicare.
Way back to I can bear in mind, I’ve been intrigued by the inclusion of expertise into on a regular basis life. I can bear in mind my enjoyment in taking aside computer systems, studying software program, creating web sites, and utilizing the rising instruments that expertise continued to offer. Whereas I acknowledge that some lament over all that expertise has modified, I additionally know we might all have a difficult time dwelling with out the advantages it now offers.
Whereas it is not uncommon for pastors, lecturers, and counseling trainers to make use of expertise to instruct others from the pulpit, classroom, or at conferences, it may be equally useful to these we look after within the counseling room. On this article, I wish to encourage you to think about using expertise to create your individual diagrams, illustrations, and pictures to be utilized within the counseling room.
One of many features that expertise affords us in the present day is the flexibility to combine the usage of photos and illustrations with projection software program or PowerPoint. The Scripture is stuffed with phrase photos and illustrations to assist the reader recall biblical reality.
I can bear in mind being educated in counseling by extra skilled counselors who got here from an period with much less expertise. They’d use a whiteboard or a easy piece of paper to diagram or illustrate biblical truths. Now, I merely create my very own photographs, with the assistance of expertise, to make use of within the counseling room to help in instructing biblical truths.
Coronary heart/Conduct: Proverbs 4:23
Years in the past, I started utilizing PowerPoint to show photographs, illustrations, and diagrams as instructing instruments within the counseling room. I didn’t need to take time to attract issues out for the counselee; I may show the picture for them on the extra display screen I take advantage of within the counseling room.
Take, for instance, the connection regarding coronary heart and conduct present in Proverbs 4:23: “Guard your coronary heart with all vigilance for out of it flows the springs of life.” This essential proverbial reality seeks to convey how the unseen coronary heart produces seen responses of conduct. I developed varied slides just like the one you see right here to show and illustrate the reality of this passage. The blessing of utilizing expertise on this approach is that I can use this picture in varied contexts (formal or casual counseling, household devotions, and many others.) the place a biblical perspective on the center wants rationalization.
Ruling Wishes: James 4:1-4
One other picture I created got here from some great instructing I obtained from my professor, Dr. Robert Jones, who wrote an article entitled, “How Good Wishes Go Dangerous.”[1] With permission, I took the written concept and created a picture just like the one you see right here to assist educate the rules present in James 4:1-4. The picture helps me show and clarify this biblical precept: when an individual permits sure wishes to turn out to be ruling wishes, these wishes start to rule their life as an alternative of the One who ought to be on the throne of their coronary heart.
Two Methods to Stay: Jeremiah 17:5-10
Counselors usually use Jeremiah 17:9 to emphasise the misleading nature of our hearts. The prophet Jeremiah describes how the center is commonly deceived and depraved. The context of Jeremiah reveals that an individual who trusts in himself might be simply deceived, however the one that trusts within the Lord may have a unique outlook and final result in life. This picture helps me to debate with the counselee the place they’ve been trusting in themselves and the place they should belief within the Lord. Paradoxically, a lot of my counselees will take out their cellphone and ask if they’ll take a photograph of the image on the display screen. It all the time jogs my memory of that saying, “An image is value a thousand phrases.”
Utilizing one thing as easy and acquainted as PowerPoint or different imaging software program to mission photographs, illustrations, or diagrams will help our counselees join with Scripture and turn out to be useful instruments for retaining and recalling God’s Reality as we care for his or her souls.
Through the years, I’ve created completely different photographs that I proceed to make use of within the counseling room. I’d encourage you to think about using an extra monitor in your counseling to show photographs, illustrations, and diagrams as an assist. With the development in wi-fi expertise, I’ve discovered that I may even use the display screen as a whiteboard if I want to attract photographs or show ones I’ve already created.
If you’re studying this pondering, I shouldn’t have the time or the technological talents to create photographs like these to make use of, don’t worry! Because the Government Director of the Biblical Counseling Alliance, a company that gives on-line biblical counseling assets, our workforce has created quite a few these PowerPoints and different assets which are already obtainable for you. So head over to www.bc-alliance.org if you’re considering having access to assets that might be a blessing and a time saver for you as you put together to biblically look after others.
Query for Reflection
How will you incorporate the usage of expertise within the counseling room in order that it aids within the effectiveness of your counseling?
[1] Robert Jones, “How Good Wishes God Dangerous,” Journal of Biblical Counseling, https://www.ccef.org/jbc-article/how-good-desires-go-bad.
