RECLAIMING THE BIBLICAL CARE OF SOULS IN THE BODY OF CHRIST

The Reformation was a turning point in church history. Two great teachings of the Reformation are Sola Scriptura and the Priesthood of all believers. Sola Scriptura means by Scripture alone. The Priesthood of all believers means that believers, guided by the Word and empowered by the Holy Spirit, are equipped and called to counsel one another in the Body of Christ. In his book Competent to Counsel, Jay Adams describes his own struggle over the issue of Christians using the psychological theories and therapies of the world. After having been acutely exposed to the psychological process during a summer fellowship under O. Herbert Mowrer’s leadership1, Adams concluded that Christians have something superior to psychological counseling theories and therapies. The body of Christ has what they need in the Scriptures. Pastors do not have to be intimidated by psychological counseling theories and therapies. As a pastor himself, he contends that pastors were already competent to counsel, if they knew the Bible they had more to offer people than psychologists did. Out of his struggles, Adams developed genuine biblical counseling – what he calls Nouthetic Counseling, which consists of confronting a believer with the Wor