The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Openness in the Christian community

This is an area of concern for myself for the church and is something I believe I will always take in interest in. I believe that the church has given up a lot of ground in the area of counseling to secular institutions. The counselors that I’ve met, who call themselves Christian counselors, haven’t impressed me. It is my opinion that the church should have a strong counseling program for anyone who needs help with their sin issues. It is my opinion there are many people in the church that struggle with their sin, especially newer believers that do not have a strong faith yet. What makes it even worse for people in our culture today is that the secular world tells us that we need to make excuses for our sin and not take ownership of it. It's frustrating to know that sin, repentance, mortification of the flesh and obedience are not projected from the pulpits of the mainstream church anymore.

The church is where people need to go for healing. But as others have already stated in their reply’s here, it should be done in a proper manner. I’ve been apart of charismatic communities where people shared “all” their problems with everyone in the community. This was in my opinion not a good situation. I fully believe that people need others to pray for them and their problems and needs, but that doesn’t mean that they have to know every detail. First of all, we are all still fallible and sinful, so unfortunately people, even Christians can still be judgmental. So I witnessed that in this particular community where people were encouraged to share their sins, that some with real problems would share and of course there were others who never shared. But the ones who shared it seemed to me, were the ones who continued to struggle week after week and were not ever really getting the help they needed and on top of that, they would start to be politely “ignored” by the rest of the community that continued to encourage people to share their sins. Second, the focus was wrong because everything was left up to prayer. Don't get me wrong, prayer is powerful, but so is instruction. There was no “official” one on one counseling or any type of true “action” from the community to help. So it became apparent to me that this type of “openness” wasn’t helping.

But of course it depends on what type of “openness” you are talking about. The one type of openness that I feel that should be practiced and is vital for the body is letting people know about prayer concerns. I’ve seen people over and over again tell others that they had just been in the hospital or that they had just lost a job. When asked they say something like: “Oh I didn’t think it was important to tell everyone.” Or “I was too shy to tell someone.” I feel that the church should work very hard at making people feel comfortable to share their prayer concerns and get others to pray for them.

But as far a deep rooted sin issues that continue on in a believers life, something that is seriously hurtful and is effecting their personal lives, then that I believe should be something they should seek “private” and “confidential” counseling for. But it should be a situation where church members should feel very comfortable to approach their elders or the pastor about. In my opinion the church should be strong in this type of ministry. Being apart of men’s programs and small groups for a while, I know how much people struggle with their sin. Life isn’t easy and neither is marriage or parenting. It’s not easy being a teenager or a young adult either. Let’s face it, the world’s not an easy place period. People run into problems all the time and I believe they should feel comfortable to seek help from the church.

Now with saying that, I believe that the answer should always lie with Christ. So, those who are maturing with Christ and who are being sanctified are changing and are able to lead a more edifying and peaceful life. Being apart of a church that is Christ centered and biblical will sanctify people and lead them to stronger faith and Christian lives. So I’m not saying that there is nothing that is effecting us and our faith outside of counseling and that counseling is the only answer, just being a faithful member of a church who preaches the Word of God and the Gospel is extremely edifying. Another ministry I believe really helps are small groups or growth groups or cell groups… what ever term you want to use. I believe that if your church has these types of small congregational groups who meet frequently and are lead by church elders, then they can be a tremendous help for people to get more intimate and open with each other. I for one have really enjoyed being apart of a small group, it really helps in my opinion. But I believe as the church encourages people to focus on putting a sovereign God first in their lives and to live for Him and to use their spiritual gifts for Him and to get involved in ministry for Him and to be Christ centered and to live obedient and disciplined lifestyles then this will be a tremendous help to those to mend their problems without having to codependent on others. God will heal us.

My answer to the poll was that I believe that we should be 100% open and vulnerable but I believe only in a certain way. I don’t believe we should be sharing all our problems with everyone, but we should try to be honest and if we need to talk to someone about some deep issues we should be made to feel comfortable to approach an elder or the pastorate. We should feel comfortable to share our prayer concerns with everyone and we should feel comfortable to build more intimate relationships with others, but that these types of relationships take time and there’s still an understanding of confidentiality.

The one example I have to give with my personal experience is a friend of my wife and I from my old church. She is a single mom with two children and she became a friend of ours a few years ago. At that time she had been a member for a few years and other people in the congregation had negative opinions of her. In fact, certain people were very negative towards her. She has problems. I wouldn’t say, mental problems but more so emotional and social problems and certain specific sin issues. I would say that one of her main habitual sins is gossiping. She spends a lot of time talking with anyone that will listen, about other people. She also has anger issues and depression and she has problems with raising her children. My wife and I though have always looked past this and have remained friends with her and have helped her and prayed for her. We love her as our sister in Christ and we want to see her change for the better and we want her to grow with Christ and develop a love for the Word of God and the light of truth. So we have been her friends now for a few years, but it’s frustrating because she doesn’t listen to our counseling, when we are brave enough to give it to her and she continues to be a slave to her sin issues. What I really believe she needs is professional counseling. She needs to admit that she has problems and she needs to be put in a situation that forces her to start to work them out and to repent. But my old church doesn’t have any type of counseling. Repentance is also not preached or taught at my old church. The pastors at my old church will just refer people to professional Christian counselors who of course are going to charge a lot for their services. But the other problem is that the leaders of my old church including the pastors do not use any type of church discipline, church discipline is non existent in my old church. So you have a situation where this lady’s sin issues are very apparent to everyone in the church but no one is “insisting” on her to seek professional help. No one will approach her and say “you need to get help. Your actions are unedifying to the rest of the body and you are hurting yourself and your children.” So she is being allowed to continue to lead her life unchanged and the result is that she continues to get people mad at her and be depressed and in pain until one day she won’t want to stay in that church any longer and she will move on to another church who basically won’t care either.

Dave.