title: Using Scripture in Pastoral Counseling
author:  Edward P. Wimberly 
description: At a time when there is concern within the church to draw on its historic resources for use in the transformation of persons, this book presents a model for the use of Scripture in pastoral counseling. Drawing on narrative biblical criticism and the psychology of narrative, the book suggests a model for pastoral counseling using Scripture to explore and release human possibilities. Detailed case studies are presented to depict the way the Bible can be used with counselees. Particular attention is given to pastoral counseling with individuals, marital couples, and families who bring to pastoral counseling a history of employing Scripture to bring order and meaning to their lives. Often, however, the biblical story seems to be secondary in their lives, and a more dominant and unhealthy story is primary. The method of using Scripture suggested in the book illuminates how the Bible story challenges and transforms unhealthy dominant stories that people bring to counseling. The model is presented in stages that cover the beginning, the middle, and the ending phases of pastoral counseling. The stages of the model include attending to the presenting problem, giving attention to the personal, marital, and family myths that dominate the lives of the counselees, mapping the negative influence of these myths, ascertaining a preferred story that counselees want to enact, setting therapeutic goals, and using Scripture to re-author and edit the negative mythology.
zlib_text: Reading Scripture
  with the
  Church Fathers
  Christopher A. Hall
  www.IVPress.com/academic
  
  InterVarsity Press
  P.O. Box 1400
  Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
  World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
  E-mail: email@ivpress.com
  © 1998 by Christopher A. Hall
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission
  from InterVarsity Press.
  InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a
  movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of
  nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of
  Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept.
  InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895,
  or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.
  Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version