by Mike Emlet

I decided to write a short series on training biblical counselors, more specifically, on the CCEF internship, which I have either co-directed or directed for the last six years. The internship is an opportunity for a select number of students to put into practice what they have been learning in the classroom and in other aspects of their lives. Wisdom gained by supervised experience is critical in the formation of a biblical counselor. While the learning curve never stops with regard to developing your counseling competence, a season of more intensive training is invaluable to develop and refine your care of people.

Today I’ll focus on the structure of our internship, including some of the readings I have the interns do. The most important aspect of training is—no surprise here—the actual face-to-face counseling that interns do. There is no substitute for that “hot seat.” Interacting with case studies, reading counseling transcripts, even observing live counseling, as helpful as they are, pale in comparison to the actual experience of wrestling with how to bring the gospel to the person, the couple, or the family sitting with you. You have to decide what to say or not to say. You have to prayerfully consider the direction of the session. And so on.

But receiving mentoring and supervision are critical to honing this raw experience. For example, no one taught me how to serve a tennis ball. I simply picked up ball and racket and practiced serving again and again, doing what felt most natural. Although I developed a pretty good serve, eventually I hit a plateau and sought help. A friend and tennis pro gave me a lesson, and suddenly I found that I was doing it all wrong! I had to unlearn what I had practiced for so many years before actually advancing in my skills. Mere practice was not enough! My practice needed supervision. So, a critical aspect of training is having your counseling supervised by someone who has more experience. This is so essential—counseling is inherently a “private” ministry and you can easily, by default or by design, fall into a “lone ranger” mentality.  

In addition to doing counseling and receiving supervision, the interns develop a growth plan at the beginning of the year, following an assessment of strengths and weaknesses in several areas, including (1) their character qualities, (2) their baseline knowledge (of people, problems, the gospel), and (3) their skills (communication & relationship-building, conceptualizing & developing a gospel-centered plan). From this self-assessment each intern sets specific objectives/goals for the year, which are revisited at the mid-point and end of the internship. 

Lastly, I encourage the interns to read on a broad range of topics, expecting that they will, in addition, read more focally on the types of problems they are seeing in counseling. (The interns will have read many of the CCEF authored series of books during their classroom experience). Here are some of my required readings:

• Brian Baird, The Internship, Practicum, and Field Placement Handbook
• Samuel Knapp & Leon VandeCreek, Practical Ethics for Psychologists: A Positive Approach. 
• David Powlison, “How Healthy is Your Preparation?” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, 14, no. 3, Spring 1996.
• David Powlison, “Familial Counseling: The Paradigm for Counselor-Counselee Relationships in 1 Thessalonians 5” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 25, no. 1, Winter 2007. 
• Timothy Lane, “Walking the Razor’s Edge of Truth and Love in Personal Ministry” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 22, no. 1, Fall 2003.
• Winston Smith, “Dawning Insights and Changing Agendas” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 21, no. 1, Fall 2002.
• Diane Langberg, Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse

Though the first two resources are written from a secular perspective, they introduce the intern to important nuts and bolts counseling issues such as confidentiality, “dual relationships”, record-keeping and other administrative aspects of counseling, life-endangering counselees, and child-abuse reporting. Tim Lane and Winston Smith’s articles are annotated counseling transcripts and give a feel for the process of counseling.  
David’s articles (and in general, many articles in The Journal of Biblical Counseling) provide a wealth of conceptual and methodological wisdom. Finally, Diane Langberg’s book is essential reading for anyone who works with sexually abused counselees.

While there are other components to our internship, that’s a start! If you’ve had an internship experience: 
• what did you find helpful?  
• what do you think are key components of hands-on training for biblical counselors? 
• what resources have you found helpful for your growth as a counselor? 

In my next post I’ll talk about the process of supervision.