Professional Documents
Culture Documents
05.cary E. Lantz - Strategies For Counseling Protestant Evangelical Families
05.cary E. Lantz - Strategies For Counseling Protestant Evangelical Families
Families
Cary E. Lantz
CARY E. LANTZ
Entry
The Brazen Consumers. Most evangelical families who
come into contact with professional counselors do so through
referral by their minister or priest (McCann, 1962). Thus, the
clergy are typically the gatekeepers to evangelicals' use of
mental health services.
Historically, evangelicals have made limited use of profes-
sional human service personnel. The clergy have absorbed the
great majority of the calls for counseling among these people.
With the advent of current movements toward rapprochement
between applied psychology and religion, however, pastors
have become increasingly open to referring their parishioners to
more highly trained counselors than themselves.
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these are people who can, like the rest of humankind, respond to
the modeling of self-disclosure by the therapist which admits to
hurting, failure, suffering, alienation, sadness, and loss; the
communication of understanding, despite significant differen-
ces in beliefs, values, or behavior; and the pursuit of an active,
caring acceptance and respect which reaches out despite
differences and shortcomings in the searching subject.
In fact, the experience of these interpersonal events in
therapy bears striking parallels with the components of the basic
experience and content of the evangelical's faith. These pa-
rallels, often not articulated to the therapist, are expressed
within the worshipping community to which the evangelical
belongs by such theological terms as "confession," "forgive-
ness," and "love." It is, in part, because of this prepotent faith
experience of the evangelical that the second stage of treatment
for these persons is labelled one of translation.
Translation
Encoding and Decoding. This step in the process of helping
the evangelical family derives from the fact that the core ex-
perience of their lives--variously described as "conversion,"
"salvation," being "born again," or"saved," "meeting the Lord,"
"coming to faith," etc.--often is associated with its own descrip-
tive language which tends to permeate the conversation of many
of these people. Daily life experiences, as well as the meaning of
life itself, come to be filtered or translated through the eye of this
fundamental faith experience. Communication often takes on a
"Scripturese" tone, being flavored with Biblical words, phrases,
or even quotations. Outsiders, upon encountering such people,
may feel as though they had just stepped on foreign soil--yea,
verily, "hallowed ground."
An initial suggestion in respondingto the encoded messages
of the evangelical is that their language be respected as a part of
them, just as idiosyncracies of experience and style in other
clients are respected. This injunction, while appearing, perhaps,
obvious and therefore unnecessary, may be especially relevant
for the potential helper who is offended or put off, or feels the
need to attack such language as being unauthentic.
Lorand (1962) points out that "religious devotees," in
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Mobilization
CARY E. LANTZ
Exit
The fourth significant stage of treatment in working with
evangelical families is the exit, or termination phase. It will not
be discussed in detail because, in essence, it represents a
recapitulation, in compressed form, of the issues presented by
the preceding three phases. Exit parallels entryto the extent that
it involves linking up with the natural environment of the family.
Often, this will include working out the follow-up support role of
the minister. Translation issues are repeated, as previously
mentioned, as the therapist seeks to help the family integrate
the changes which its members have achieved into their super-
natural world view, with special concern that they have learned
something lasting about their personal role in bringing about
change. And, mobilization of resources for ongoing support is
essential to the maintenance of therapeutic gains.
The therapist who has managed to maintain an effective
working relationship with the evangelical family through the
preceding three stages is likely to experience termination as the
least unique period in the process. Whether this sense of
increasing similarity with non-evangelical families be the result
of the therapist's having learned the "language" of the evangel-
ical and thus feeling an increased sense of kinship and under-
standing of where they are "coming from" (a change in the
therapist's perception of the client), or a consequence of the
family's having "shifted gears," coming to trust the therapist as a
helping resource (a change in the client's perception of the
therapist), is a moot point.
While the evangelical family represents a challenging
system for intervention attempts, the therapist with the open-
ness, energy, and flexibility to take on the challenge stands a
good chance of reaping the satisfaction of an investment well
worth the effort. While the question awaits empirical con-
sideration, personal clinical experience suggests that successful
negotiation of the four stages outlined in this discussion is highly
correlated with low rates of recidivism.
It has been suggested that: (1) the resources to which
evangelical families have access in their daily lives, (2) the
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