Selwyn Hughess Ideas on How To Help a Friend Free Essay Example, 1500 words

Effective Christian counseling is not all about the counselor carrying out the session all the time. It is vital that an individual being counseled is made part of the process. This is best achieved by allowing oneself to listen to the counselee, usually without interrupting. One can note down issues in a summary form for later follow up once the counselee has been given a chance to speak out freely. It is important to note that listening is an encouragement for one to continue expressing themselves out. It is also important to note that Christian counseling presupposes that counselors have an understanding, knowledge as well as experience of Christianity. Owing to this, a counselor at a local church should strive to reinforce and encourage the individual with motivational scripts from the Bible to weight down the highly emotional parts of the confession or revelations. One should also note that sometimes they might not agree with all or some of the revelations that they hear from the counselee. Even so, it is important to exercise the virtues of love as demonstrated by Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.We will write a custom essay sample on Selwyn Hughes's Ideas on How To Help a Friend or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now Therefore, counseling a local church would require one to set aside his/her personal biases and conflicts. The most important way, however, is not to judge and approach the situation with compassion. The advantage is that counseling at a local church is made one level easy by the fact that the counselor and the counselee tend not to be strangers. Even so, counseling an acquaintance may be tricky in the sense that the friendliness may overshadow the seriousness of the process. The technique, therefore, is to learn to treat the two as completely different entities yet appreciate their connectedness, which helps with ice-breaking (Collins, 2007, p. 59). As Hughes observes in his model, counseling in the context of a local church would also require the counselor to avoid expressions of disapproval or judgment. The counselor should be keen on aspects of communication such as tone, facial expression, and other non-verbal cues.