After reading Hawkins and Clinton’s book there are eight key points that stand out to me and they are as follows.
What is Christian Counseling? To say one is a Christian counselor, they first must know and understand what that involves. When saying one is a Christian counselor one needs to make sure that they are living their lives in such a way that others can see God’s light shining through us daily in and outside of one’s counseling sessions. One of the best things that I got from this part of the book is that we have all sinned and it is God’s grace that helps us through that, and all in all, that is all we can offer our clients, a hope in something other than and bigger than ourselves.
Process of Spiritual Counseling While many believe
In order to effectively offer clients scriptural insight, “we need to be armed with key biblical passages that speak powerfully and graciously to the specific needs of the client (Hawkins & Clinton, 2015, p. 21).”
Ethical Counseling Core Elements Ethical practices that were talked about by Hawkins and Clinton (2015) were competence, consent, consultation, confidentiality and contracting for services. When thinking about counseling one would typically think confidentiality was the most important concept that a counselor could possess. However, since reading The new Christian counselor (2015), I have come to understand that they are all crucial in an effective counselor.
Attachment Styles – Secure and Insecure The new Christian counselor by Hawkins and Clinton (2015), talks a lot about attachment styles and how they relate to the counselor and patient relationship. Attachment styles are secure meaning that one is self-sufficient and is comfortable with intimacy, avoidant attachment is the opposite, one wants approval from others and is fearful of intimacy. Then there are anxious attachments meaning they are overly involved and dependent and then there is avoidant attachment meaning they are counter dependent. Knowing a client’s attachment will help counselors better align their course of therapy
Having a reader follow this step will help them later explain items found within the text to their clients. For example, if a client goes to see a Christian counselor wondering why or why not something is right/wrong according to scripture, the counselor must first know their stance on the same subject matter. The counselor not only needs to understand scripture but also be able to relay information found in the Bible in such a way that the client can understand. Hawkins and Clinton further talk about five of Christian Integrated Worldview which are as follows:
• Essential unity of all truths as God’s truth
• Our abilities are gifts from God, that are meant to be used for God’s glory, but Gods law.
• Human life in unified on both an individual and corporate level.
• Human sin and finitude are limiting factors in every one of our pursuits
• Humans can know through, rational means, empirical methods and revelation, but our interpretation of the facts we find are limited and often flawed.
Hawkins and Clinton present things in such a way that it comes across as loving and supporting as far as integration goes in integrating it into one’s counseling practice. The authors also use love and God’s grace as a blueprint as to how we should view our clients when offering them compassion, understanding, and love.