No Longer Quivering
by Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church – Why I Don’t Do Marriage Counseling
Editor’s note: Steven has a point that many people that go to the pastor to have him mediate a squabble are looking mostly for justification. Marriage counseling, or at least dealing with sudden crisis in the marriages of his congregation, is part of most pastors job description. Oh yeah, he’s part of the make it up as you go along movement in Evangelical Fundamentalism without any structure or authority over him.
I’m not one that does a lot of marriage counseling. If somebody asks me for advice or has a question about marriage, I’ll give them an answer, or if they ask for prayer, I’ll pray for them. That said, I don’t really do marriage counseling in the traditional sense. It’s really a no-win situation for a pastor to get involved in the intricacies of someone else’s marriage.
Most marriage problems can be solved by applying simple, biblical principles, but people aren’t always seeking real solutions. Oftentimes people just want to vent and air their dirty laundry, but I don’t need to know all the sordid details about what people are doing wrong to tell them how to do things right. When someone tells me they are having marital problems, I try to just cut to the chase and offer them biblical advice. I tell them to do X, Y, and Z, and don’t come back and talk to me about it again until they have done those things.
I don’t need to know every mistake that has been made in your marriage in order to help you. I would rather cut the counseling session short and just tell you how to do things right. In fact, I’d rather skip the counseling session completely and just give the advice to the entire church at one time.
QUOTING QUIVERFULL is a regular feature of NLQ – we present the actual words of noted Quiverfull leaders, cultural enforcers and those that seek to keep women submitted to men and ask our readers: What do you think? Agree? Disagree? This is the place to state your opinion. Please, let’s keep it respectful – but at the same time, we encourage readers to examine the ideas of Quiverfull and Spiritual Abuse honestly and thoughtfully
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