Basic Counseling for Pastors and Other Church Leaders

By Trennis Killian

Are you a pastor or other church leader who would like to counsel but are afraid you can't do it? This book is for you! It will help you get over the fear of counseling and help you to counsel most people with most of their problems. It will also help you to know when to refer them to someone more qualified. Learn about grief, suicide, abuse, communication, forgiveness,and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trennis E. Killian
• Release date: Aug 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452382111

Trennis Killian

Trennis E. Killian has been an Army Medic, high school English teacher, pastor, hospital chaplain, crisis counselor, police chaplain, and pastoral counselor. All of these occupations have helped him to understand how men and women build and keep relationships. He also knows how they repair or destroy those relationships. He has also observed how people interact in all kinds of situations. They also give him firsthand knowledge of how people live and act within each of those types of situations. He writes in all of the following areas: Bible study, Self-Help, Crisis Preparation, and Christian oriented novels. To be able to write so many different kinds of books, he has spent years of intensive study of Greek, an earned doctorate in counseling, and worked in many different occupations. He writes all of his novels under the name T. E. Killian. Because of his varied education and experience, his characters take on the characteristics and personalities of people who work in all of the occupations he knows so well. Having been in many crisis situations over the past thirty plus years, he can write about them realistically. He and his wife, Ann, live in Black Canyon City, Arizona, where he writes fulltime.

Book preview

Basic Counseling for Pastors

and Other Church Leaders

Relational Self Help Series

Trennis E. Killian

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2010 by Trennis E. Killian

The paperback edition of this book may be obtained at www.trenniskillian.com.

Unless otherwise noted, all New Testament Scripture quotations are taken from The Easy Study Bible, Copyright © 2011 by Trennis E. Killian, Christ Centered Ministries. Used by permission

Unless otherwise noted, all Old Testament Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible ®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB® and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of the Holman Bible Publishers.

This E-Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This E-Book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Other Books by Trennis E. Killian

The Relational Self Help Series

The Relational Self Help Series addresses most issues of relationships. Here are the titles published to date.

Beware of Abusive Behavior

Basic Counseling for Pastors and Other Church Leaders

Building a Godly Marriage

Conquering Grief

Controlling Your Reactions

Coping with Stress

Crisis Intervention/Suicide Prevention

Planning Communication

Relational Self Help Collection, Vol. I

The Easy Study Bible

Mark

Luke

John

The Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)

Acts

Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians

Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,

1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy,

2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon

Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John

3 John, Jude

Revelation

The New Testament (Diagram Form)

The New Testament (Paragraph Form)

James (Free E-Book only)

The Easy Study Bible Commentary

James

Jude (Free E-Book only)

Other Nonfiction Books

Victory over Gambling: Leading Compulsive Gamblers to Freedom in Christ

Victory over Gambling: Workbook

Novels

The Real Beginning

There are more books coming in all of these categories, please look for them at our webpage. For information or to purchase one of these titles either in paperback or EBook form please go to the webpage www.trenniskillian.com.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Pastoral Counseling

1. The Basics of Pastoral Counseling

Part Two: Counseling Individuals

2. Getting Started

3. Biblical Intervention

4. Spiritual Discipline

5. Family Relationships

6. Who They Are in Christ

7. Goals and Faith

8. Forgiveness

9. Truth

10. Pride

11. Habitual Sin

12. Grief

13. Suicide

Part Three: Couple of Marriage Counseling

14. The Basics of Marriage Counseling

15. Counseling the Issues

16. Communication

Part Four: Staying Free in Christ

17. Dealing with Temptation

Follow-up

Epilogue

About the Author

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Introduction to Basic Counseling

for Pastors and Other Church Leaders

My goal for this book is to help pastors and other church leaders gain the confidence to be able to counsel members of your congregations in some of the basic relational problems you may have. Another goal is for you to be able to know when to refer someone you are counseling to a more qualified counselor.

I have discovered over the years that a strong counseling ministry in the local church will turn out to be a good outreach tool. Even if it does not bring people from the community into your church, they will look at you much more favorably.

My experience has been that it does both. When I was a fulltime crisis counselor for nine years, I helped several hundred people find a local church. Even when I was a pastor, I saw many people come because of our counseling ministry. Currently, my church has almost thirty people on the fringes or actual members who are coming out of a lifestyle of addiction. This does not include others who have come due to other types of counseling.

This book is for you, the pastor, or other church leader. I strongly believe that someone who has a good basis in the Bible is a potential counselor. The main thing we have to do is rely on God in all we do and bathe everything in prayer.

I will address all comments to you directly. In addition, to save space and energy, I will address all of you as church leaders, since pastors and all other leaders fall into that category.

This book is divided into four parts. Part 1 consists of my beliefs and practices concerning pastoral counseling. Part 2 is a systematic description of how you would conduct various individual counseling sessions. Part 3 covers marriage counseling. Part 4 shows how the counselees can stay free from their problems. A last section deals with your follow-up with the counselee.

I will write the instructions for each step of the process as if I were talking to you in person. I want you to be comfortable with everything that I ask you to do. If not you will not be comfortable in asking your counselee to do what they need to do to achieve victory in Christ.

To keep clutter down in these sections, I will precede each set of comments that I address to you with an asterisk (*). Whenever you see a paragraph with the asterisk, you will know that this is a set of instructions for you only.

I will precede each set of comments that I want you to give to the gamblers with the pound symbol (#). Whenever you see a paragraph beginning with a pound symbol, you will know that these are instructions you are to give to the counselee. You may put these instructions in your own words, but please do not change the meaning or thrust unless you have a good experience based reason.

When a paragraph begins with one of these symbols, all succeeding paragraphs will be the same until you come to a paragraph beginning with the other symbol.

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Part One: Pastoral Counseling

Chapter 1. The Basics of Pastoral Counseling

I will begin with the basics of pastoral counseling as I see them. I want you to feel comfortable with what you are doing and saying to your counselees.

Fear of Counseling

We fear those things we know nothing about or those things we do not understand. Many church leaders have a strong fear of counseling. Most fall into one or both of the above categories.

There is nothing to fear about counseling. If you are waiting for a but or an if you are correct, you will get both.

If you understand the basics of counseling, there will be nothing to fear about counseling.

But, if you do not understand the basics of counseling, you have much to fear.

When we apply the word counsel to what we do, we are actually using a misnomer. The word means