“Having bipolar disorder does not mean you are broken; it means you are strong and brave for battling your mind every single day.” Healthy Places
Today, I finally got up the nerve to deal with my mother’s estate. One day, I will write about my experience caring for four elderly family members. My mom was the hardest in terms of my emotional state since her death was much more complex than I imagined, and I avoided finishing up on this final commitment to caring well for her. My new lawyer was a delightful surprise. He’s an Anglican. I asked him some difficult questions, which he answered in three parts: legally, ethically, and morally. I was impressed and look forward to working with him.
TWW readers are well aware of my concerns regarding the biblical counseling movement. I am not a fan of ACBC (Association of Certified Biblical Counselors). On 12/23, I wrote Biblical Counseling Is Neither Professional nor Biblical. Let the Buyer Beware. I am including these posts for readers with questions about my concerns about this worrisome counseling method.
At the beginning of this post, Did Southwest Baptist University (Missouri) Deny Tenure to Behavioral Health Faculty In Order to Promote Unlicensed *Biblical Counseling?,* you can find links to several posts that I have written that express my profound dismay of the development of this counseling method usually found in the evangelical morass.
- Part 1: The Biblical Counseling Movement and Timberlake Baptist Church and Counseling Center
- What is the Difference Between Nouthetic and Biblical Counseling? Just the Spelling.
- Biblical Counseling Training: Inadequate Education, Problematic Resources and Questionably Educated Leaders
- Heath Lambert Channels Martin Luther (As If) and Writes the 95 Theses of Biblical Counseling
- Heath Lambert’s 95 Theses of Biblical Counseling Reminds Me of Bob’s Advice in Stranger Things 2: It’s All Easy Peasy.
- John Piper and Heath Lambert of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors Views of the Mind Demonstrate Why We Have a Problem With the Biblical Counseling Movement
- Biblical Counseling: Anyone Can Do It, Sin Is the Focus, Confidentiality Is Not Guaranteed and Women Should Beware
- Another Reason to Avoid Biblical Counseling: Confidentiality Is Not Guaranteed When Sin™ Is Involved
- Julie’s Story, Part 1: Of Domestic Abuse, Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, and Cross Walk Church, Appleton, WI
- Julie’s Story Part 2: Shame on ACBC and Cross Walk Pastors. They Failed Julie and Then Blamed Her For Not Reporting Child Abuse Sooner
- Association of Certified Biblical Counselors and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: People With Delusions May Be Faking It and Christians With Schizophrenia Are Probably Not Christians!
A Christian discusses being diagnosed with bipolar disease and being sent to biblical counseling.
Religion News Services’ Yonat Shimron wrote A new memoir that examines how to reclaim faith after a bipolar diagnosis. It is subtitled:
In her new book, ‘Devout: A Memoir of Doubt,’ Gazmarian lays bare how inadequately the church and church-approved therapists treated her condition and how she struggled to find another way.
Shimron explains:
Gazmarian was an evangelical and attended a Southern Baptist high school and was active in church youth groups.
This sounds nice on the surface, but Gazmarian suffered with her mental health throughout her childhood and teen years. Of course, she consulted with her church, and guess what? They sent her to biblical counseling. Here is what she said.
And (church leaders) sent me to a Christian counselor, and they were strictly biblically based. And so everything that they said was in the Bible. There was no psychology at all.
She was aware of kids around her who threatened suicide. She remembered when Rick Warren’s son died of suicide.
(preachers) saying it was an unforgivable sin and he was going to go to hell.
…in my English class one day, the teacher mentioned that people who die by suicide go to hell.
Yet she continued to experience anxiety even though she was told:
Be anxious for nothing.
Amazon gives an overview of the book, which is helpful.
In this revelatory memoir, Anna Gazmarian tells the story of how her evangelical upbringing in North Carolina failed to help her understand the mental health diagnosis she received, and the work she had to do to find proper medical treatment while also maintaining her faith.
When Anna is diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2011, she’s faced with a conundrum: while the diagnosis provides clarity about her manic and depressive episodes, she must confront the stigma that her evangelical community attaches to her condition. Over the course of ten years, we follow Anna on her journey to reframe her understanding of mental health to expand the limits of what her religious practice can offer.
Bipolar disease and Anna Gazmarian
Anna was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disease, which the Mayo Clinic describes. Please pay attention to the last line.
Bipolar disorder, formerly called manic depression, is a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings that include emotional highs (mania or hypomania) and lows (depression).
When you become depressed, you may feel sad or hopeless and lose interest or pleasure in most activities. When your mood shifts to mania or hypomania (less extreme than mania), you may feel euphoric, full of energy or unusually irritable. These mood swings can affect sleep, energy, activity, judgment, behavior and the ability to think clearly.
Episodes of mood swings may occur rarely or multiple times a year. While most people will experience some emotional symptoms between episodes, some may not experience any.
Although bipolar disorder is a lifelong condition, you can manage your mood swings and other symptoms by following a treatment plan. In most cases, bipolar disorder is treated with medications and psychological counseling (psychotherapy).
Anna had a diagnosed condition that could be treated by medication and psychotherapy. She was dealing with what I consider poorly trained biblical counselors who do not have the background to diagnose or treat bipolar disease. Sadly, ACBC has said that people with delusions might be faking it, and “those who have schizophrenia may not be Christians.”
MDs who are also Christian practitioners were of help to her.
According to Shimron, Anna said that her counselors did not take mental illness seriously. However, an MD who was a Christian therapist was beneficial.
And the problem was that the therapist I was seeing did not take mental illness seriously. They thought it could be cured by therapy and by reading the Bible. When I was older I did go to a Christian therapist who did have a medical degree. And for me that worked really well.
Duke University School of Medicine has a joint program with Duke’s School of Theology. I have met some of these folks, and their knowledge of medicine and faith is comprehensive.
Her prayer journal became a list of sins that caused her to become depressed.
She eventually got rid of her prayer journal and even finds praying difficult today.
I saw it as this thing where I basically apologized to God for everything I had done wrong. And because of all my religious guilt, I constantly just wrote my sins down. I viewed God as someone I needed to please and that I constantly needed to make things up for. That’s how I viewed prayer. It wasn’t a conversation, it wasn’t a relationship.
Women were supposed to be submissive, and Anna kept trying to make herself “smaller.”
She was given a faulty view of the roles of men and women.
I grew up with a view of men as the leaders and women as submissive and quiet. And the problem for me was that I was never quiet. I always had a lot of opinions, and I thought there was something wrong with me for having all of those things. And I constantly felt myself wanting to be smaller, wanting to take up less space. I thought that is what it meant to be a woman, especially as a Christian.
Anna had a setback when she had her daughter since she was not able to take ketamine, which helped to control her mood swings. She also didn’t understand about postpartum depression.
This made her feel like a failure since she needed to seek inpatient care. Mental illness is a lifelong commitment, and ups and downs are to be expected.
After I had my daughter, my mental health kind of collapsed. And it was very difficult for me to work on the book because I felt like a fraud for writing this book about mental health and recovery and grappling with faith because I was living with those things in real time. I struggled with postpartum depression and because I didn’t have ketamine during pregnancy, I did not have the tolerance built up. The last two years have been really hard, and I was resistant to a lot of medications.
While an inpatient, she met many people struggling with faith and mental illness.
And when I was there, I remember being so discouraged and scared about my book coming out because, who am I to talk about all this stuff when I’m living this in real time? And while I was there, I met many people with religious trauma (who were) grappling with faith and mental illness.
A mission field of failure
As I read Shimron’s account of Anna’s struggle, I began to see that evangelicals have made a severe error in promoting biblical counseling. Anna said that there were many people in inpatient care who struggled with mental illness and their faith. Yet, ACBC and similar groups have failed to care for these folks. Biblical counselors have very little training in honestly caring for those struggling. The leaders train average people in weekend sessions to become “biblical counselors.” These are weak-minded leaders who have expressed stupid ideas like “delusions are made up” or “schizophrenics can’t be Christians.”
I believe Christians need to become aware of professional counselors who have psychology training as well as access to medical doctors (psychiatrists) who care enough about faith to get more training in the field. We must continue exposing the biblical counseling world for its dangerous inadequacies in training and Scriptural understanding. It is downright scary to have people who take a few weekend courses and read some books (a number of them are inadequate) care for hurting people who may need medication and expertise that comes with years oftraining and experience.
Sadly, the SBC is not listening. SBTS and other seminaries train pastors in how to do biblical counseling and they, in turn, help to train ordinary people to do biblical counseling. Letting poorly trained people to access and care for hurting people may lead to lawsuits. Sometimes it is only the loss of money that cause churches to rethink their paradigms.
I can’t wait for some of the behind-the-scenes comments on this one. Dee is behaving like a true Daughter of Stan!
Not all biblical counselors are created equal. Some have master’s degrees. Some go on to get licensure. Different organizations have different requirements. ACBC might be the worst. I had a wonderful Christian counselor who really knew her stuff (and was very close to getting licensed). But you really have to vet them carefully and find out whether they are well versed in modern psychology and treatments in addition to the Bible.
The Bible is not a ‘how to’ book for everything.
Kelly Johnson’s work as a therapist was apparently affiliated with the Association of Christian Counselors.
This is from an article in Business Insider that has info on her counseling work
Very sorry for messing up my post
THE FACTS ABOUT ACBC and THE FACTS about “professional counselors.”
1]. This is very important. About a decade ago ACBC changed it’s name and more importantly shifted away from Jay Adams and his “Nouthetic counseling.” NO longer does ACBC teach that any depression/anxiety or whatever is because of SIN. They have thankfully come to understand that Scripture takes a much more nuanced view of the human condition.
2] It has frustrated me over the years that the commenters on TWW seem to assume that all secular therapists are superior to any therapist who holds to Biblical counseling. From personal experience working in psych hospitals over the years I can assure you that many mental health professionals suffer from “B.S.C.” [ Bat Sh*t Crazy]. Just because they hold a license does not attest to a person’s mental stability. They can be, narcissistic, rigid, authoritarian, depressed, anxious, schizophrenic, suffering from PTSD, food issues, addiction issues etc.
Mental health professionals are not exempt from mental, moral and psychological failings. They are totally human with all the weaknesses seen in mankind. There are some, but not the majority, who are very good, naturally gifted.
3] For ACBC graduates, there are some, but not all, who are very good, naturally gifted and extraordinarlly wise.
4] What about meds? Does ACBC counsel people to stop their meds? ABSOLUTELY NOT. They recognize that it is not their job or area of expertise to tell people not to take their prescribed meds. [ BTW, most commenters probably recognize that psych meds are not an unmixed blessing. Meds can be very problematic; I had an old roommate who almost died of Lithium poisoning with which he was treated for Bipolar I for decades. Lithium can be both very helpful and very deadly. ]
5] Scripture has EXTRAORDINARY INSIGHTS into the human condition. After all, God is the Creator of mankind and He wrote the book on how humans can flourish or how they can self destruct. It’s all there.
5] Finally a comment about diagnosis vs treatment. Making an accurate diagnosis should never be confused with helpful treatment.
I think that part of the problem of simplistic Evangelical thinking about mental illness is rooted in the body/soul dualism that is characteristic of Ev anthropology. Disorders of the body are “disease”, disorders of the soul are regarded to be “sin”. If one grants the assumptions, along with certain proof texts (for example the statement 2 Peter that is often interpreted to imply the comprehensive sufficiency of Scripture for solving all functional life problems), the claim of Church competence and jurisdictional authority in counseling people with these kinds of problems can seem compelling.
Epistemic humility and the precautionary principle/”do no harm” would argue for great caution on the part of would-be Christian helpers. Unfortunately, confidence in one’s understanding of and ability to apply the Scriptures tends (in my experience) to subvert humility.
Muff Potter,
I don’t think that the Bible is a how-to book for anything.
I’ve posted here before that one of my kids inherited a constellation of mental disorders including bipolar from the birth parents, and how lay people poorly trained caused my kid to have a psychotic break, so I am going to restrain myself. Good Christian Biblical counselling has been a helpful add on to my kid, but ONLY after psychiatric, not psychological, treatment. If you don’t address the broken brain no amount of any sort of counselling will help. But if you do address the broken brain, then there are issues of diet, exercise, psychology, and yes Biblical counsel that can make a huge difference. Psych meds are often seen as THE answer. They are not. They ARE the first and probably lifetime step before further treatment can succeed. Sort of like diabetes. Yes, many need meds including insulin. But there are also issues of diet and exercise that have to be part of the equation AFTER meds, insulin, or both have the numbers beginning to be a tad under control.
Prayer request: we have a cold front moving in, which may tank the fruit crop and all the beautiful bloom out. Before it arrives, we face a risk of tornadoes, and a much higher risk of 60-70 mph straight line winds, heavy rain, and up to baseball size hail. Praying the Lord spares the region the winds and the hail! And the twisters of course.
“Sadly, the SBC is not listening. SBTS and other seminaries train pastors in how to do biblical counseling and they, in turn, help to train ordinary people to do biblical counseling.”
In my humble (but accurate) opinion the Southern Baptist Convention is so off-track “biblically” now that they don’t need to be counseling or training anyone! The New Calvinist movement has created a bunch of unloving authoritarian church leaders who need to be better grounded in the whole of Scripture (rather than reformed theology), who are in need of being spiritually counseled and trained in Truth themselves! Turning them loose on the Body of Christ has led to countless stories of biblical terrorism, many recorded by TWW.
“Sadly, the SBC is not listening. SBTS and other seminaries train pastors in how to do biblical counseling and they, in turn, help to train ordinary people to do biblical counseling. Letting poorly trained people to access and care for hurting people ”
The SBC is creating and training witch doctors, only with a “Christian” twist.
senecagriggs,
1. ACBC is not different than nouthetic counseling. I wrote about it above. Also, this woman who lives in a medicine mecca was forced into Baptist biblical counseling. It exists.
2. Many biblical counselors are bat sn*t crazy. Also, you have not read very carefully. This woman did find a Christian psychiatrist who helped her. I also showed the joint program at Duke-medicine and theology. It seems you don’t like Christians who actually get training.
3. ACBC “graduates” are graduates of what I perceive to be inefficient training, as I have proven to my satisfaction if you read all of my links. I’m sure they are lovely—read Julie’s stories—but their training is not effective, in my opinion.
4. Of course, many of them (not all) don’t tell them to stop their meds. They’ll get their butts sued. Good psychiatrists understand the problems with meds, just like any other good doc. And the lithium of old is not the meds they have now.
5. Of course, Scripture has insights. That is not what is being discussed.
6. Too many people make diagnoses, and it is not helpful.
Unfortunately this group is being pushed by many churches.
Churches need to do a better job “discipling” believers in Scripture (the Truth, whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth) … rather than “counseling” and “disciplining” them. A relationship with Jesus and firm foundation in Scripture should be a personal endeavor, rather than having church leaders gang up on you with their fix-it version of Truth.
dee,
Dee, I’ve paid close attention. ACBC divorced Jay Adams a decade ago.
Praying….
Max,
“Discipling” is just another word for “Shepherding”.
As in The Shepherding Movement, where you are just mutton on the hoof and your Disciplers/Shpeherds have quite an appetite for mutton.
They used to tell me that “Discipling” comes from “Discipline” and they applied Discipline to their inferiors as only a control freak can.
No, “Just like Witch Doctors, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!” better describe the Spiritual Warfare, Demon Fighter, and Prophecy types.
This is more like Scientology and its hatred of mainstream Psych/unwanted competiton for Sciento Auditing.
“Just like Scientology, Except CHRISTIAN(TM)!”
NANC rebranded themselves as ACBC in an attempt to escape the well-deserved bad reputation they had given ‘Nouthetic’ counseling.
This is why I think it’s inaccurate and unhelpful to say Ravi Zacharias had a psychiatric problem. He was not like the woman in this article. She has a psychiatric problem. Ravi was just selfish, wicked, unloving, callous, and guilty.
Yeah, you can find ministries which will mess up anything Christian.
“…I asked him some difficult questions, which he answered in three parts: legally, ethically, and morally.”
++++++++++++++
I’m interested the know the difference between ethically and morally.
I think there is a genuine philosophical difference between what practitioners call “nouthetic counseling” and what the post-Jay-Adams (Bettler/Tripp/Powlison) CCEF called “biblical counseling.” I don’t have visibility into the hearts of the founders of ACBC, but I have the impression that CCEF’s vision of counseling came to be regarded more favorably than nouthetic counseling in the Evangelical theological institutions that trained the founders. I believe that David Powlison was Heath Lambert’s PhD advisor and, IIRC, Lambert’s dissertation topic was related to the disagreements between the Adams and Bettler/Tripp/Powlison wings of the “bring counseling back into the churches” movement, a disagreement which, as I understand it, CCEF substantially “won.”
This is not to speak in defense of ACBC, just to express the view that this is not a “nouthetic counseling” association operating under a different name. IIRC as of some years ago when I last noticed, the ACBC supervised counseling requirement for “certification” was on the order of 100 hours. This seems ludicrously low compared with, as I understand it, the multi-thousand hours requirement for state licensure in secular counseling disciplines. I do not think it is realistically possible to gain meaningful case wisdom in such a short period of time.
Echoing senecagriggs’ view that there are good BC-trained counselors out there, I suspect that the best ones who are not also state-licensed in a secular counseling discipline are the ones who are not recently trained, who learned first hand through CCEF’s on-WTS-site or web-based curricula (a 3-year MA-level program), and who have done much counseling over years and who have thereby gained a substantial measure of case wisdom.
Nope: I answered this in a post above. There is little difference. I have documented the absurdity of ACBC overthe years bey suing THEIR MATERIAL.
Jerome,
It appears that NANC, or somthing that calls itself “NANC”, is still out there:
https://www.biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/organization/national-association-of-nouthetic-counselors/
I cannot find “Jay Adams” in the author list, which intrigues me. Have his seminal contribution (he dominated the movement for decades) been repudiated?
I don’t know what to make of this, but perhaps the Adams wing has moved toward the Bettler/Tripp/Powlison wing (or the original generations of Adamsites have aged out) while retaining the label “nouthetic.” If that has happened, then “nouthetic” counseling has not merely rebranded, but has actually changed.
ChEKA rebrands itself as OGPU which rebrands itself as NKVD which rebrands itself as KGB which rebrands itself as FSB…
Having seen this from the inside (layman taking CCEF classes at WTS, including multiple classes taught by Jay Adams’ intellectual rival, David Powlison), I can testify that CCEF’s vision of counseling differs in significant (and IMO beneficial) ways from Jay Adams’.
What I don’t know is where the wider BC community (there are BC-oriented counseling programs at a number of Evangelical seminaries, including, I think, some of the SBC seminaries) stands on a notional continuum with Adams at one end and Powlison at the other. I think a useful diagnostic is whether the counseling methodology aims to help the counselee gain insight into his own motives. This is alien to Adams’ methods. Adams sought repentance at the level of behavior. BC (Better/Tripp/Powlison-style) aims deeper.
By bad — it’s a 2-year MA-level program.
One person had to write a very confusing (to me) comment to explain the evolution of thinking on “biblical counseling”.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just put people in the stocks until they clean up their act? I mean, the goal is submission to authority. Why spend spend so much time talking in counseling sessions?
Name changed, that’s it. NANC had made itself such a byword that they opted to dump their name about a decade ago. Started calling themselves ACBC.
Words, wurdz, and more words, that’s how they do it.
Until sugar is salt, and salt is sugar.
“(preachers) saying it was an unforgivable sin and he was going to go to hell.
…in my English class one day, the teacher mentioned that people who die by suicide go to hell.
Yet she continued to experience anxiety even though she was told:
Be anxious for nothing.”
+++++++++++++++++++++
I have influence and i’m going to carry on about ominous things and try to make you believe in a litany of things about yourself to be worried about and pump you up with self-doubt.
and then i’ll tell you to be anxious for nothing because God.
sounds like brainwashing to me. sounds like christian culture.
which paves the way for biblical counseling.
Muff Potter,
…it’s a marvel to me that christian culture can be so piously cruel with many double-standards and use the magic word biblical to call it love and faithfulness.
all through word-smithing. and the concept of God for persuasion.
.
.
not so say I don’t believe in God.
elastigirl,
clever word-smithing, in a manipulative sense.
not in a mark twain sense.
Dee could have accurately written the title as: “The pain of living with bipolar disease in a “secular counseling” world.”
NANC still exists under the name “NANC”, so NANC does not seem to have changed its name. Perhaps there was what in the software world would be called a “fork”, in which a faction of the wider “bring counseling back into the churches” movement that did not follow Jay Adams formed its own association. People who do not embrace Adams’ approach would certainly not want to use name he adopted, “nouthetic” (which I think basically “admonitory”, not a cheerful brand, I agree), It appears to me to not be “change of name” so much as “rejection of a flawed approach.” That’s what it looks like to me from my perch. What I know of the conflict between the Adams and Bettler/Tripp/Powlison wings comes what Powlison said about it in CCEF classes at WTS. Doubtless there is a great deal that I don’t know.
It seems some disciplines make a difference with morality being personal and ethically being community. https://www.britannica.com/story/whats-the-difference-between-morality-and-ethics
I have always found that word to be weird and gross. It sounds like the application of an ointment.
My Dear Wormwood,
I refer you to my previous epistle on Semantics, specifically the redefinition of the Enemy’s words into their “diabolical meanings”.
Your Ravenously Affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape
P.S. Nowhere do we corrupt so effectively as at the very foot of the Enemy’s altar!
Chris Webster,
IIRC, it’s derived from the koine greek word “noutheteo”, “to admonish”. It appears in a few New Testament passages, such as Col 3:16. Adams’ approach was top-down and directive. The term is an apt name for his counseling approach.
A point which has been made by Adams’ critics is that there are other words in the New Testament which overlap with the semantical field of “counseling”. An example is “parakaleo”, “to come alongside to help.”
I’m glad that Adams seems to have been substantially abandoned or repudiated. His methods are IMO not fit for purpose. I think that he still must have sympathizers among the oldest cohorts of Reformed pastors. In the early ’10s I encountered deep hostility to CCEF and its approach to counseling among a number of older OPC ministers and ruling elders who were ardent Adams enthusiasts.
For those praying re our weather, we did not get anything severe. Please pray for those that did, as some tornadoes spun up, some had heavy damage due to those winds which reached over 80 mph in places, huge softball size hail, and one home was destroyed by a lightning strike.
We did receive much needed rain for which we are very thankful!
Samuel Conner,
True. Here’s another article.
https://biblicalcounseling.com/resource-library/articles/from-nanc-to-acbc/
Even when a mental-health professional is both competent and credentialled, finding the one that is a good fit for your problem and for you personally can be quite fraught, people have told me.
The problem with non-credentialled “counselors” is that they often lack the information and skill to decide that/if
a) your problem is beyond their skill
b) you need, for instance, psychiatric intervention, not talk-therapy
c) your meds are no longer helping you (wrong medication or dosage)
d) your problem is a known condition with a successful or at least useful program of treatments
Knowing that you are completely out of your depth is difficult if you are mostly out of your depth.
Oh, then, that makes sense that the New Calvinists would be into nouthetic counseling … they all about admonishing the spiritual daylights out of their followers to keep them in line (e.g. 9Marxism).
When it comes to the New Calvinists, “there is no balm in Gilead.”
Nancy2(aka Kevlar),
Thank you; this is helpful. It wasn’t a “fork” but a renaming (or, less sympathetically, a rebranding). I have not closely followed developments in the “bring counseling back into the churches” movement since the early ’10s when I began migrating away from Evangelicalism.
Reading through the item, it looks to me like more than a change in name only; there does appear to be a move away from the roots of the movement in Jay Adams’ NANC. Not entirely — I’m confident that they still affirm things like “sufficiency of Scripture” and they share Adams’ desire to restore counseling as a pastoral responsibility (something that it was before the 20th century). I am confident that there are significant methodological differences. What I learned of BC methods from Tripp, Powlison and Welch does not look to me like Adams’ approach (but my visibility is limited; I don’t know how “BC” is taught in schools other than WTS, which at the time I was taking classes was using CCEF’s curriculum and instructors).
In my last (2010) class with Powlison, called “Theology and Secular Psychology”, DP spoke of challenges ahead for the “bring counseling back into the churches” movement. He thought that institutions needed to be built, for example professional associations that would impose standards. I speculate that his involvement in Heath Lambert’s PhD project was connected with these aspirations. What actually transpired looks disappointing.
linda,
Linda,
I agree with you. Proper Biblical counseling can be a good thing when someone needs help coping/managing a moral dilemma….. is in a difficult situation……. having trouble coping …. want to deal with things the best way they can, etc. Good, biblical counseling might even help you cope/deal with your child with the disorders, a little bit anyway.). But biblical counseling is not going to rid the child of the disorders. Counseling is not going to alter a person’s genetics.
(Just an fyi – I have a friend who has been clinically diagnosed and is on medications for bi-polar disorder – she functions very, very well and loves life.)
…. But, if these ‘counselors’ believe they can fix bi-polar disorders, then what else is on their list?
But, What about my autistic cousin, and my autistic adopted cousin? What about my daughter’s intellectually disabled step-son? What about my dad, who is showing clear signs of dementia/Alzheimer’s. What about student’s I’ve taught who had ADD/ADHD and epilepsy?
Terrifying.
Nancy2–agree totally. Our experience has made us adamant that NO ONE should attempt to give mental health care without proper training. That said, our kid has found that wise scriptural counsel (think perhaps a good grandma or grandpa or wise mentor) that can help them sort through what they bear a responsibility for and what they do not, and seek God’s aid and forgiveness for what they bear.
Here is an example: with bipolar may come episodes of reckless spending, violence, and hypersexual behavior. Meds prescribed by a psychiatrist can help control it. Talk therapy by a psychologist can help them learn coping strategies so they accept their tendency without giving in to it. And good Biblical counsel can help them understand they remain accountable for their behavior, help them seek forgiveness for what they have done, help them step up to make amends, and help them forgive themselves.
So our kid needs med to tone down the impulses, a good psychologist to help them recognize when they are getting strong and to set in place good ways to resist. The Bible counselor can help them take responsibility for their actions. Our kid also had to learn that being bipolar makes life harder, but they are still legally either responsible for their actions or in need of involuntary in patient treatment. A diagnosis is not a free pass to offend. And a Bible counselor can help them deal sanely with the guilt while shedding the shame if that makes sense.
And yeah, no Bible counselor should think they can “cure” anyone.
They’d still burn witches too if they could.
Muff Potter,
And/or not believing in reformed doctrine.
Religion has (for the most part) been a scourge on the back of humankind.
senecagriggs,
Seneca,
Thank you for your post. I’ve had ACBC training, and I’m just staring to use it. One of the most important things I picked up was never to tell people to abandon their meds and some people do need professional psychiatric help. A lot of it depends on the church. We take a people helping people approach, have a policy for reporting domestic/child/elder abuse in line with state law, and a triage team for people that need more help than we can give.
Some of these guys firmly believe it (biblical counseling) will indeed rid the child of the disorders. And if it doesn’t? Then they’ll claim that you (generic you) didn’t have enough ‘faith’, and that the child has a ‘sin’ problem.
Like I quipped before, some of these guys would still burn witches if they could.
Linn,
That’s good, but unfortunately all counselors don’t follow this course. And “they don’t legally have to follow this course because they are not licensed.” Many counselors don’t keep confidentiality either. They often involve church leaders. They also don’t know how to look for the signs of abuse, nor how to handle issues with children. So, no thank you to this type of counseling. It did untold damage to a child I know.
Linn,
I won’t dispute that some biblical counselors are wise caring people who love those under their care well, so I’m not intending this as criticism of you or anybody else personally. But there have been prominent examples of horrendous abuse perpetuated under a “biblical counseling” framework too.
As I understand it, ACBC only recently kicked out the people responsible for the abusive counseling “ministry” at John Macarthur’s church. The organization didn’t do anything for decades while these “counselors” were perpetuating the abuse of women and children like Eileen Gray and her kids. And acting as educators, passing their coercive model to class after class of future counselors and pastors. If the fruit of biblical counseling can include absolute dreck like what grace community church and masters seminary was/is doing, then is any good fruit it bears really attributable to the model itself?
Personally, I’m coming to believe that we can find anything in the Bible if we go looking for it. Christians have been trained to equate “biblical” with “good,” “safe,” “true,” “godly,” and “not subject to question or interpretation,” and IMO that’s dangerous.
CMT-I agree with your observations regarding ACBC and MacArthur. I didn’t know all the connections to whoever when I first took the training.
Which is why I do think you need to look at the individual church. My church seems to be doing well with it. I’d be the first one out the door if the church became controlling and coercive.
Bridget,
Bridget,
I’ve been involved in secular, religious, and private school education for over 40 years. I’ve seen plenty of people messed up by all different kinds of counseling. I think that is where prayer and wisdom come in.
Here is a true story: Two adolescent sisters. #1 is 14, rebellious, out all hours of the night and cuts school daily. #2 is 16, new Christian, academically serious and bound for college.
Parents take D1 to secular counseling for several months where she is told to assert her individuality and challenge her parents on everything. She ends up dropping out of school, marries young, and his an addict for the next decade plus.
D2 is a bit confused about sister, who she loves. Talks to leaders at church where she is encouraged to cooperate with her parents, do well in school, and plan on a bright future.
I was D2. My sister was D1. The secular counselor made a mess of her. We all probably know a story line that with both secular and non-secular counseling. PS-I ended up raising my sister’s children for 10 years because of her addiction. When I needed help with forgiving her for “interrupting” my life, it was biblical counseling that taught me how to forgive her and set proper boundaries with her.)
Just like Faith Healing.
If it works, the Faith Healer gets all the credit.
If it fails, the “patient” gets all the blame.
Win-Win for the ManaGAWD, Lose-Lose for the tithing unit with the ailment.
“With green wood, so that they burn SLOWLY.”
— Calvin re Servetus
Only Holy Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale.
“I am with Paul!”
“I Am With Apollos!”
“I Am With CALVIN!”
“I AM WITH ADAMS!!!”
Some thoughts stimulated by this post and comments, in a somewhat rambling order, but with a point.
The views expressed below are my opinions, informed by personal observation and reading. I welcome correction where I have misremembered facts or misinterpreted evidence.
Reflecting on the class I took in 2010, “Theology and Secular Psychology”, taught by David Powlison, part of the WTS “practical theology, counseling” curriculum that was accessible to laymen like myself through CCEF’s lay training program, I think I see hints of seeds of present problems.
First, a bit about the class itself and, before that, my interpretation of “what BC is.” BC (Bettler/Tripp/Powlison-style) can be thought of (IMO, anyway) as a form of psychodynamic talk therapy that is informed by a biblically-derived “world-view” and anthropology.
(Aside: I say “a… worldview and anthropology” as I think that there is probably a range of worldviews and anthropologies that could be justified from the text of the Scriptures. CCEF is [or was, as of my last interaction, more than a decade ago, with a principal on this matter, firmly dualist — body/soul — but sees the two as intimately connected; people are ’embodied souls’. Personally, I’m agnostic; perhaps ‘non-reductive physicalism’ is a valid approach to anthropology and is a better account of the real world. Dualists find support for their views in the Scriptures; I’m not sure that it would make much difference in counseling practice; whether monist or dualist, the dynamics of the psyche are difficult to discern). End aside)
The views underlying CCEF’s approach are Reformed, which is understandable given the history of the institution.
(Further aside, the psychodynamic character of the CCEF’s counseling methodology that developed under Bettler/Tripp/Powlison after Adams’ departure resulted in a great deal of criticism from the “right”. Adams and like-thinkers considered this evolution to be a form of “integration of secular psychology with theology/ministry”, something that was being done in psychology departments of christian universities, for example Biola’s Rosemead school, and that they considered theological compromise and dangerous deviation of ministry away from the guidance of the Scriptures.
This (the psychodynamic character of BC) is, I believe, what the language “the dynamics of personal insight” refers to in David Powlison’s “endorsement” that is quoted in the “NANC to ACBC” statement linked by Nancy2(aka Kevlar). This core aspect of BC led to decades of controversy between the Adams and Bettler/Tripp/Powlison wings, and that still is today grounds for rejection of CCEF’s vision of BC by older counselors and ministers who were trained in Adams’ methods.
This concept leads to major differences in counseling method. To put it bluntly (and this is my interpretation; correction is welcome), Adams was not concerned for either counselor or counselee to understand “why” the counselee does what he does; it was enough to identify “what” was problematic in the counselee’s behavior and to correct that. Deeper issues could be left to God to correct through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. Bettler/Tripp/Powlison are very clear that if the “why” is not uncovered and addressed, mere behavior modifications will not reliably lead to durable improvements in the counselee’s life. Adams was convinced that the “why” was fundamentally inaccessible to counseling method (on the biblical principle that only God sees the human heart with perfect clarity); Bettler/Tripp/Powlison were confident that wise, patient counseling method could “draw out” the “deep waters” of the “purposes of the heart.” (Proverbs 20:5 — a biblical text that can be argued to support psychodynamic approaches to counseling ministry). In actual counseling practice, Adams’ approach results in much swifter “progress” in the counseling relationship, since the visible problems are relatively straightforward to identify (assuming counselee cooperation – the lightbulb does need to want to change, as the joke goes). Bettler/Tripp/Powlison are aiming for counselee self-insight, and that may take much longer to develop, and may call for a much wider survey of the counselee’s life history and other aspects of the counselee’s life and experience that may help to discern the “why” that underlies the “what” of the counselee’s visible behavior.
End of further aside)
Back to “Theology and Secular Psychology”, the class was a survey and analysis of the history (almost entirely 20th century) of secular psychology and counseling approaches, including the conflicts over jurisdiction among the early movements that led to the development of professional societies and the present mental health system.
(As an aside, things were kind of woolly in the early decades of the formation of what has evolved into the present “mental health establishment. Trying to interpret [not to justify, but to understand — a psychodynamic agenda 🙂 ] Jay Adams within his context, I wonder whether part of his reaction against psychiatry may have been stimulated by some of the disturbing forms of therapy that were employed mid-Century, things like electro-shock therapy and prefrontal leukotomy. In retrospect, it is hard to argue that he was wrong to be troubled by interventions of this kind, and it may be that this distrust extended to other forms of medical intervention in the brain. Science is provisional; the mental health science of the first half of the 20th century was especially so.)
The final lecture discussed implications for the “bring counseling back into the churches” movement. DP argued that the BC movement needed professional associations that could impose standards on practitioners. I don’t recall him naming names, but in retrospect I suspect that he did not consider NANC, at least in its then form, to be an adequate standards-setting and -enforcement association. I suspect that he would not have been impressed with the brief “supervised counseling” requirement for certification.
Both BC and nouthetic counseling have been characterized by critics as being antagonistic toward secular therapies. My perception of the reality (at least among people at the top of the Bettler/Tripp/Powlison wing) is more nuanced. DP spoke with admiration and appreciation of certain leaders of the secular mental health approaches. Specifically, he admired i) their genuine care for people, ii) their careful observation of people in clinical practice and in life generally, leading to iii) their case wisdom and skill in helping counselees. He made an interesting distinction, between “upstream/downstream”. that is also relevant to analysis/critique of the NC/BC movement. By “upstream”, he meant the theoretical sources in the secular mental health Academy who were doing research and developing methods to help people; “downstream” referred to the “street/level” counseling practice of people trained in the universities in the methods developed “upstream.” He noted that “upstream”, there was a lot of humility and nuance, realization that mental health therapies are more art than science, awareness of how much is still not known, and a sense of the provisional character of science. “Downstream”, among some practitioners and especially newly-trained practitioners, there was less humility and less flexibility in practice.
I think the same can be said of BC (and perhaps also of NC). “Upstream”, among people who have developed decades of case wisdom, BC methods are applied with great care and discretion. I’ve seen this myself — in 1999 I had a course of “therapy” with a CCEF principal, and he was extremely helpful, patient and kind. He helped me solve a serious, life-dominating, problem.
“Downstream” in BC world, among recently trained counselors, there can be a tendency to assume that the counselor understands the counselee better than he actually does, to apply methodology formulaically, and to not recognize the limits of one’s own competence.
This speaks to the need for better standards-setting and -enforcement in BC-world.
The “seeds of present problems” with which I started this comment relate to the issue of “BC as a livelihood”. DP noted that training in a counseling modality that is not recognized by the mental health establishment creates a serious problem for the trainees. They cannot find employment through typical vocational paths, such as independently “hanging up a shingle” or working as a staff therapist in a group practice, unless they obtain licensure in a recognized counseling discipline, which entails multi-years of further training and educational expense. The quickest and least costly path to employment is to become part of the ministerial staff of a church large enough to employ vocational counselors.
And, as history unfolded, many of these churches exalt “discipline” as a core value and, as Dee and commenters have reported, some of them offer no-cost counseling but, in the service of the ‘church discipline’ agenda, without confidentiality. Some counseling graduates, needing to find employment, end up in this unhappy place of trying to function as a mental health care-giver but in unprofessional and IMO unethical ways.
—-
Personally, I think that what the BC movement needs to do is the hard work of seeking formal recognition of its approach as a valid counseling modality, along with all that entails in terms of research into efficacy. And it needs professional standards with teeth, comparable to the burdensome supervised therapy requirements for licensure of currently approved counseling methods.
In the past, the assertion of BC superiority has been “deductive” — “the Bible tells us so.” I think that an “inductive” approach would be more compelling — compare under controlled conditions. You think your methods are superior — fine, prove it. Back in the days when I still held out hope for the future of the Evangelical movement, I thought that BC might actually serve as a defense of the Gospel, if it could show that it is a superior counseling method to secular alternatives. These days, I’m not confident that Evangelical understanding of ‘the Gospel’ is even true, but I still see great beauty in what I understand of the BC approach (it has, for me, been life-transformative). I think the movement needs to come up to the standards of professionalism of the secular disciplines that it regards itself to be superior to.
Linn, thank you for sharing your own experiences; and kudos to you for stepping up and assuming some responsibility for helping raise your sister’s children.
Nancy Kevlar
” But, if these ‘counselors’ believe they can fix bi-polar disorders, then what else is on their list?
But, What about my autistic cousin, and my autistic adopted cousin? What about my daughter’s intellectually disabled step-son? What about my dad, who is showing clear signs of dementia/Alzheimer’s. What about student’s I’ve taught who had ADD/ADHD and epilepsy?
Terrifying.”
What makes you think the ACBD teaches counselor trainees that they can cure autism, bipolar, dementia or I.D. I’d bet my bottom dollar that they DO NOT teach such fallacies. Now the “Name and Claim it” gurus may teach exactly that but ACBC – I’m sure they do NOT teach that.
BY the way, are their commenters out in TWW land that truly believe secular counselor do not gossip? Do not violate HIPPA? Only act ethically at all times? Please get a grip.
CHINATOWN – It was both a physical place in L.A. and a metaphor for chaos, confusion and lack of control.
The movie had some brilliant insights into the human condition. Jake Gittes, the detective tries to help out a very disturbed married woman, Evelyn, who has a promiscuous past, appears to be on the verge of a mental breakdown and is trying to protect her daughter “Kitty” from the daughter’s grandfather, who raped his daughter Evelyn who gave birth to Kitty. In the final scene, the mother is trying to get her daughter away from the evil grandfather; shoots him in the arm and tries to escape in her car but is cut down by the police. Jake and Kitty have looked on in horror as the final events take place having tried to stop the police from shooting and killing the mother. “Jake mutters the mantra of the police working Chinatown, “As little as possible” which the cops tried to do in Chinatown because any more involvement made situations worse. The Lead cop yells; “Take him home, just get him the hell out of here.” Walsh, the associate, grabs Jakes arm and says, “Come on” – Jakes turns back momentarily and Walsh say, “Forget it Jake; it’s Chinatown.” Due to Jakes involvement, Evelyn the protective mother, lost her life and the evil grandfather regained control of his daughter/granddaughter.
Followup movie: The Two Jakes
Mrs. Berman [ Kitty, years later;] “Jake, does it ever go away? The past”
Jake responds; “I think you have to work real hard on that one….”
Mrs Berman leaves, walks down the stair; Jake burst out the door and say, “Kathryn it never goes away.”
Good therapy doesn’t make it worse but it seems to me other people’s lives are like the metaphor for Chinatown; Chaos, confusion and lack of control.
How do you become a wise counselor? You start by being an unwise counselor.
senecagriggs,
Seneca,
ACBC insists on a doctor’s appointment for things like autism, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc. They acknowledge some people need medication and medical attention.
Linn,
But they claim one cannot be Christian and be schizophrenic.
senecagriggs,
Looks like you skipped over most of Dee’s post.
This is the ACBC.!!!!Read what I have documented.
http://thewartburgwatch.com/2021/01/22/association-of-certified-biblical-counselors-and-southern-baptist-theological-seminary-people-with-delusions-maybe-faking-it-and-christians-with-schizophrenia-are-probably-not-christians/
“We started with the question, “Is schizophrenia an outcome of spiritual problems, or is it a medical problem—a disease of the brain that results in the symptoms?” What can we say then about the cause and care of schizophrenia from the articles we have examined?
First, there is a growing body of medical evidence that supports the idea that schizophrenia is a brain-based disease. As we noted above, it is important to remember that schizophrenia is often over-diagnosed. And, psychosis from drug use and other diseases can be mistaken for it.
Second, is schizophrenia primarily a spiritually caused problem? The more we know about it from a medical viewpoint, the less likely this seems. Is it a medical problem with spiritual implications? This seems to be more likely.
In either case, at this time, the answer is not absolutely certain. As one writer said, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. As a physician and biblical counselor, I believe schizophrenia will prove to be a medical problem that will eventually have a cure. However, that is just my opinion. I do believe that opinion rests on a growing body of research findings.”
[ From personal experience family and inpatient; it’s a terrible disease.]
They don’t discuss a case with other people in the church and have the entire church then viewing said person as evil! Many adults in church were warned against interacting with said person and said person was like a “pariah” in the church. This. Said. Person. Was. A. Child.! No way I ever trust church counseling.
The problem is that they most often can’t identify the real problem people may be dealing with because they are not trained medically.
senecagriggs,
I am getting frustrated with your comments. ACBC has allowed for comments that people with schizophrenia cannot be Christians and that delusions are made up. I am tired of you winging around this. I have done my homework, and you don’t like what I’ve found. ACBC is a group made up of a bunch of untrained people who are making serious errors in the care of mentally ill individuals. If you continue to ignore my written posts, I will ignore your comments, which means they will not be approved.
You get into lots of trouble online, and I have been more than fair with you through the years.
One of the secular counsellors we were assigned to with our kid turned out to know the worship leader at our church, and did indeed spread gossip about our kid throughout the church. Not to mention revealed confidential information about our kid’s BIRTH parents, but with only the label parents, so we were blamed for their misdeeds.
First our church caused a psychotic break. Then secular counselling about did in the whole family.
Thank God for neuro psychiatry.
That.
I was going through various blog archives, and Seneca’s been doing this on Internet Monk and Wondering Eagle with exactly the same reactions, skipping from blog to blog as each gets too hot for him.
(At least ChapmanEd – former regular troll on both Spiritual Sounding Board until 2016 and on Wondering Eagle from 2016 to 2021 – never discovered this blog. Now that guy was flat-out VICIOUS, with several 100-round belts of Bible Bullets all linked together.)
No matter how fair you get with someone like him, it will NEVER be enough.
To a guy like him, “Fair” means “YOU HAVE TO LET ME HAVE MY OWN WAY, FIRST, LAST, AND ALWAYS!”
Just like all those trid gamers from my D&D days who ran wild all over the other players AND DM. No matter what the character alignments said, the player ran Chaotic Evil and any time anyone tried to rein them in, same butt-hurt “BUT THAT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!!!”
But they Have The Holy Spirit(TM) on Speed-Dial!
Bridget,
Exactly. Mental health diagnoses can be challenging even for those with medical training. The DSM undergoes regular edits and revisions as the field changes. That can be difficult for professionals to keep up with, let alone laypeople. Especially in church cultures that mistrust secular sources of knowledge. I would not be confident someone whose only credential was from the ACBC or similar entity would know what they don’t know when it comes to complex mental health issues.
‘Biblical’ this, biblical that, has gotten so used and abused, it’s like the bald tires on a poorly maintained big rig.
Muff Potter,
Bible(TM) and Biblical(TM) – just like Scripture(TM) and Scriptural(TM) – have ceased to have any meaning.
Meaningless buzzwords rewordgitated to raise something to Cosmic Importance, nothing more.
When did you go to medical school? I understand that you are a counselor.
dee,
He’s also a theologian, and possibly a lawyer.
As a licensed therapist, a word or two about diagnosis, as it has been mentioned a great deal here. If insurance is involved, a diagnosis has to be rendered at the end of the first session and a treatment plan created by the second session that the client has to approve, both diagnosis and treatment plan.
Because I only get to know my patient in the first session, a diagnosis is based on presenting issues. I’m not going to diagnose someone with something major based on a one time meeting. Thus, diagnosis is “least to most.” For instance, someone presents with anxiety which sends them for therapy. My first response is not going to be a major diagnosis such as F41.1 Generalized Anxiety Disorder because I don’t know enough about the person. A more reasonable diagnosis would be F43.22, “Adjustment Disorder with Anxiety” which gives me time to understand the patient and what is taking place with them. At treatment plan renewal time (six months from first date of treatment) if I have evidence the condition is more serious the diagnosis may be revised at that time and treatment methods discussed with the patient. The point being, no therapist should be making “huge” diagnoses during the first visit with anyone about anything.
In terms of “Biblical Counseling”, they haven’t the training to be making a diagnosis at all . . .
The term ‘Biblical’ Counselor implies “You can trust me.” American Christians should have learned by now that you can’t trust everything served up by some (most?) church leaders … the American church is way off track in many ways.
Too many horror stories out there; TWW documents them weekly.
FYI – Senecagriggs appears to have been quoting someone who was a physician and biblical counselor.
Well spotted.
This looks to be the page from which the quotation came:
https://www.biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/2019/12/09/schizophrenia-reviewing-an-overview/
The writer is Charles Hodges. The bio indicates that in addition to his medical licensure, he is licensed in marriage and family therapy. The counseling training appears to have been from Liberty University. He’s an older gentleman and could quite credibly have developed a lot of counseling case wisdom.
Samuel Conner,
Reading through the article, it appears to me (though
it must be admitted that I have zero knowledge of the subject) to be a responsible treatment.
I glean from the way it is written that the author may be “leaning into the wind” in his effort to persuade his readers to regard this symptom constellation as a medical disorder.
He mentions that the community to which he is writing tends to insist on clear evidence of cellular pathology before acknowledging the medical nature of a syndrome or symptom constellation. The implication, I think, is that non-medical, i.e. psychological or spiritual, causation is the presumption when there is not a clear medical etiology for a constellation of behavioral symptoms. This is in 2019; perhaps there has been some further evolution in their thinking since then.
This rhymes with what I encountered 20 years ago in CCEF classes at WTS.
I’m not confident that this article is strong evidence that the great majority of ACBC-certified counselors regard schizophrenia to be primarily a medical rather than primarily a spiritual problem.
It does indicate, I think, that there are “upstream” people in ACBC.
—
I think that there is some validity to the concern in the BC community of over-medicalization of behavioral problems. Talk therapy is expensive and many medications are comparatively cheap. Given the structure of our medical system, the stigma of mental health diagnoses, and the relatively poor mental health coverage in most insurance plans, it may very well be that people would benefit from costly talk therapy (in addition to or perhaps even in place of medication) are being medicated without other therapy because that is the cheapest way to manage their problems.
Luckyforward,
Amen….
Bridget,
I see the apostrophes now.
A beginner needs the prior wisdom not to start with the hellish inversion of the senec’y senec’er who described his own life.
The effect of gossip is particularly bad in evangelical circles which are closely interconnected, you new already; you are also sin leveling
The secular ones increasingly use the evangelical model to guilt trip depersonalised rape survivors to become transexuals.
Li ewise those practitioners imported responsible and ethical s ills for themselves
Gossip (either direct or under the cover of “third-party prayer requests”) is so Christian it’s almost an Eleventh Commandment: Thou Shalt Gossip.
Trans is Trendy.
Like homosexuality in early Furry Fandom or something I heard happened in American high schools a decade or two ago: the “Contagious Lesbianism Epidemic” where almost all the high school girls self-identified as Lez but showed no same-sex behaviors; their Lez identities faded away after a couple years.
The difference is, Trans has a Point of No Return.
Where if you change your mind, you cannot go back.
Headless Unicorn Guy,
Further thoughts on the above:
In Social Media (i.e. This is your Brain on TikTok), there’s a trend for influencers to fake having some kind of of disorders for views and likes. Tourettes Syndrome and Disassociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality) seem to be the two top trending. Maybe faking Gender Dysphoria is the next fad?
(Some YouTubers with ACTUAL Tourettes – “Ticcing Together” is the only on I can remember right now – do videos evaluating and exposing the fakers.)
Reminds me of the South Park Episode “Le Petit Tourette” where Cartman faked Tourette’s Syndrome to get away with all kinds of things. Until he could not stop even when he wanted to.
If I remember correctly, some years back, ‘senecagriggs’ went by the moniker ‘jimmy’ and had to be booted from TWW when madam dee decided enough was enough.
ACBC is absolutely a “nouthetic counseling” operating under a different name.
ACBC’s 2023 ‘Approved Reading List for Individuals Pursuing ACBC Certification’ contains many books authored by Jay Adams:
https://acbcdigitalresources.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/resources/Approved+Reading+List+(2023+Revision).pdf
No. See above.