Pastoral Counseling

This opening lesson defines pastoral psychology as the study of why pastors behave as they do, then centers on the call to ministry. Using Moses at the burning bush, Paul on the Damascus road, and personal testimony, it teaches that a genuine call need not be dramatic or mystical, yet it compels a person to abandon everything and supplies the faith, boldness, and anointing to serve rather than labor in the flesh.

Here the course distinguishes conditioned responses (learned behavior) from unconditioned responses (the way God made you), concentrating on the latter through the seven motivational gifts of Romans 12: prophet, server, teacher, administrator, exhorter, giver, and mercy. Referencing the fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4 and the gifts of 1 Corinthians 12, it encourages each pastor to minister authentically as himself rather than imitating another minister's style.

A practical guide to hospital visitation, this session walks through concrete do's and don'ts: examining your motives and your own health before going, honoring visiting hours, reading door signs such as NPO and isolation, refusing false optimism or out-diagnosing the doctors, and guarding confidentiality much like the nurse's Nightingale pledge. It closes with specific scriptures for the lonely, weary, and dying, and the reminder to wash your hands.

This lesson addresses ministry in prisons, jails, and nursing homes, settings where people are unusually receptive, easy to follow up with, and form a captive audience that yields large results. It stresses securing permission, obeying every rule, bringing suitable gifts and lively music, preaching familiar passages like the prodigal son, leaning on personal testimony and tracts, avoiding any superior attitude, and undergirding the whole effort with prayer.

Turning to funerals and weddings, this lesson explains how to break the news of a death and how to structure a funeral around three aims, giving honor, comfort, and warning, drawing on Psalm 23 and John 14. For weddings it urges pre-marriage counseling, screening for legal or moral obstacles such as an unfinished divorce, and cites statistics linking active church involvement to a marriage's survival.

Drawing on a Southern Baptist survey of fast-growing churches, this session identifies five shared traits: a genuinely friendly, loving congregation; verse-by-verse expository teaching; the pastor functioning as the undisputed authority; lively praise and worship; and a resolute heart to reach the lost. Illustrations range from Wally Beebe's book The Ministry of a Second Man to improvised music, along with the sobering ten-to-one ratios of who visits, stays, and truly serves.

A guest speaker explores street evangelism through the mind and behavior of Christ, urging witnesses to perceive people's faith as Jesus and Paul did in John 5 and Acts 13 at Lystra. He describes three kinds of sinners, the careless, the awakened, and the convicted, and offers hard-won street wisdom on tracts, handouts, keeping confidences, constitutional rights, and preaching for conviction of sin, absolute surrender, and reconciliation.

The closing lesson centers on a pastor's attitude, opening with two keys to winning people: asking an intelligent question and being a sympathetic listener. It then examines four attitudes that shape a ministry, toward yourself (via Robert Schuler's Self-Love), toward God, toward the church, and toward the people, urging pastors to view others not as they are but as what they can become, just as Jesus saw the future in Peter.