Book Review of Psychology, Theology, and Spirituality in Christian Counseling

This book purposely presents how Theology and spirituality significantly contribute to the well-being of the society. McMinn (2011) portrays persistent challenges experienced by Christian along the social divides and professional levels, these ideologies, moral values, and practices are incorporated in the biblical text. Notably, theology provides the platform upon which the guidance and counseling techniques are conducted. McMinn displays an array of occasions in the entire book on how an individual point of view significantly impact one's guidance and counseling style. The book explores how a real-life situation plays a pivot role to understand and comprehend the topic presented by MicMinn (2011). He showed and discussed various topics used by the spiritual guidance and counselors on how to merge spirituality and theological aspect into societal practices. These topics include spiritual and psychological health, the sequence of healing, spiritual formation, and assessment (McMinn, 2011).

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McMinn further provides an explanation regarding the concepts frontier of integration as personal, professional and spiritual dilemma the Christian counselors face while making attempts to integrate the spiritual and theological practices in their counseling activities (McMinn, 2011, p. 9). The frontier of integration can be due to, irrelevant ethical standards, incompetent professional attributes and expanded training competence (McMinn, 2011, p. 10).

In chapter two, McMinn (2011) provides an in-depth analysis on how the counselors in a Christian set up can give a proper inclusive, holistic and integrative guidance and counseling approach to enable the counselee to meet their full potential to judge situations right. He also hints at the contradiction that "Christian counselors are concerned with spiritual growth as well as mental health" (McMinn, 2011, p. 39). Notably, he recognizes the fact that the spiritual and mental health is inseparable and is not distinct from one another when the spiritual and mental health are blended together it nourishes the mind and also helps build the understanding and sense of belief in the healing process (McMinn, 2011). The book further points out that to obtain a well-structured model of mental and spiritual health there is need to integrate the spiritual and psychological disciplines. Undeniably, the Christian counselors often experience challenges while exploring the spiritual activities and therefore should adopt mapping of spiritual and physiological health practices. These principles are well structured and in cooperated in the biblical and spiritual teachings. Besides, there is specific time appropriate to integrate biblical teachings. The author states that prayers should be the first step when exploring spiritual teachings. Once the client opens up to prayer and becomes receptive, the integration of scriptures can then be incorporated into the spiritual teachings. The prayers and scripture reading are potent tools that can help the client adopt appropriate mental and emotional transformation to a healthy state of mind. The clients are expected to gain a deeper understanding and profess that indeed they are ready, willing and able to walk in spirituality. McMinn (2011) asserts the significant impact and contribution of redemption into the spiritual life of a Christian. Psychologists Alderian and the social cognitive theory indicate the guideline for obtaining a healthy redemptive spiritual coexistence.

Personal Reflection

Back in 2011 when the passion for education dawns my mind, I decided to join liberty to pursue my undergraduate degree program. As a young determined and motivated person, I had lived with a team of Christians whose leadership and spiritual guidance transformed my life. Being brought up by a single parent exposes me to various challenges since I never felt the fatherly touch, protection, and support. I encounter a lot of insecurity and struggle which negatively affected my affection with Christ. Notably being a well-mentored person on spiritual matters saved me since they would still see me as a potential and able child of God whom he loved. My experience strengthens my belief, love, and dedication to Christ and my future expectation is to continue to grow in my walk with Christ, save more souls and assist many just like Jesus. The transformation I experience in my life today is from the positive teachings and mentorship I received from the Christian counselors and spiritual leaders on how to alternatively put into practice the spiritual and mental mentorship.

According to McMinn, counseling requires good assessment, evaluation since it is a rate-limiting step to make the client meet their full potential, proper counseling needs a higher level of accuracy in the entire assessment" (McMinn, 2011 p. 61). Counseling at liberty and the guiding principles presented in the text affirms the importance of employing summative and formative assessment skills when evaluating the client. McMinn provides three basic principles on psychological and spiritual growth to provide needed therapy to the client to meet the desired goals and full potential. These guidelines include a healthy sense of self-worth, abiding relationship and personal brokenness (McMinn, 2011, p.61

Application & Analysis

This text outlines an appropriate mechanism for how the Christian counselors can efficiently merge and integrate the spiritual and theological aspects into practice. These guiding principles provide the essential foundation upon which the counseling sessions are conducted affirmatively to provide an integrated approach to the clients. When effectively integrated the entire counseling session will be a success since the principles presented in the text do not whatsoever affect the ethical counseling standards. On the other hand, the text gives a clears step by step procedure and instruction to enable the counselors to use the approaches efficiently. McMinn in the book states to attain full spiritual growth prayers, and scripture reading can be used interchangeably at suitable times as needed by the client. This approach brings the sense of self-worth, brokenness and an intimate relationship with Christ to attain full maturity on spiritual and psychological health. The attributes, principles and the guidelines present the text has awakened my future goal and objective of putting up a private Christian based counseling center with the pursuit and aim to help Christians who often experience chronic challenges in their spiritual life. This Christian based counseling center is to be founded on the guiding principles as outlined in this text in conjunction with the counseling ethical standards to meet the personal and professional challenges that might arise in the course of counseling sessions. When these preliminary attributes are exposed to the Christians, it will expound on their spiritual and psychological maturity thereby creating a deeper understanding of Christ. Apparently, this positive spiritual teaching will sensitize the Christian on repentance, faithfulness and leading a positive lifestyle to create concrete relationship with Christ.

Reference

McMinn, M. R. (2011). Psychology, theology, and spirituality in Christian counseling (Rev. Ed.). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House.