The Shifting Landscape: Why Christian Therapists Must Study the Bible

Camille McDaniel (00:01.94)
Welcome back to another episode of Christ in Private Practice. I want to say hello to everyone who is new listening and for everyone who has been with us throughout the journey, welcome back. I want to throw something out there today for today’s episode based on a conversation that I was having with a therapist buddy of mine, I guess safe to say,

I do enjoy talking to her and we were actually just kind of talking as it related to different plans that we had for business and different themes that we had just seen over time as it relates to our businesses, as it relates to faith, just a lot of things. But one of the things that came up was the idea that we are not

we are not pastors, we are not trying to take the place of anyone’s pastor. And that actually brought up a good conversation that I would like to talk about for this episode. And really, it’s me talking, but also I would love to have you all think about this and feel free to reach out to me and tell me what your thoughts are about it. either way.

how we kind of continued down that path in the conversation was a few things that I had seen over the years in my own practice. I too used to think, you know, I’m not anyone’s pastor. I don’t desire to try to take the place. I’m not trying to get into any…

type of power struggle between what your pastor said and what I’m saying here in session, nothing of the sort. Over the years, I have started to notice that where I used to be able to refer a person to speak to their pastor about, or the leaders in their church, about certain challenges that they may have over the years, I have lost

Camille McDaniel (02:21.676)
I guess the ability to be able to do that. First of all, I’m not able to vet, you know, churches. I don’t have a lot of recommendations outside of the church that I go to and maybe like one or two other churches. So I’m at a little bit of a loss if there’s deeper biblical knowledge about something specific that someone needs, someone to kind of like exergete the text.

and usually I would refer them to schedule time with their pastor to kind of talk these things through. Over the years though, I’ve had clients express just, guess it wasn’t really that we were talking about church specifically, but for whatever we were talking about, it led the client down a path of just sharing more about their church.

And it gave me some insight into the fact that while we may know our clients go to church, I don’t really think that we have a good operational definition of what that means really anymore. So I’ve had clients go to church and like one client told me, they go to church but in their church you believe God to be whoever you believe him to be.

And so I don’t know exactly then what that means. So if there are questions that you have, your client there, your client has as it relates to the Bible and you send them to their pastor or the leaders or whomever, their church, right? But if their church is doctrine,

actually doesn’t line up with scripture, then what are we sending our clients into? And there have been other examples that I like won’t necessarily talk about on this episode about people’s descriptions of their church or descriptions of leaders and it was really it was no judgment at all. So I want to be super clear. It was very black and white. Honestly, it was pretty easy because it was just, okay.

Camille McDaniel (04:46.904)
But I knew, okay, well, the Bible, that’s not at all lining up. So maybe again, it is a church, but it is a church and the doctrine is the doctrine, just like one of my clients said, it’s whatever you believe God is, that’s who God is. so if we are directing our clients back to, because our clients are wanting understanding of their faith,

their Christian faith, then if we are referring them to places of confusion, then how does that help our client? Which then brought me to kind of thinking more on how the Bible talks about an instruction it gives us to study, to show ourselves approved. And what does it really mean?

to study, to show yourself approved. So it’s like to study the word of God so that you can defend your faith. I mean, not that you have to defend God. I mean, he doesn’t need defending, but I mean, so that you can confidently stand firm on why do you believe what you believe? Do you even know what it is that you are believing or are you believing it because that’s just what generations of people in your family have believed?

Do you know what’s in there? In the book, in the Bible? Do you know what it instructs you to do? Do you know what it cautions you about? Do you know what it promises you? So it kind of led me to, even though we are not trying to take over, you know, and we’re not trying to have any power struggles, we’re not.

Many of us who happen to be practicing Christian counselors, many of us have not gone to anyone’s seminary or anything like that. But we may find ourselves in a very interesting place in this particular day and time as it relates to clients coming to us wanting to explore their Christian faith and maybe not having a lot of referrals that we can give them. So that actually brought me to a couple of

Camille McDaniel (07:12.494)
Paths of Thought, one of which I had talked about in a previous episode some time ago when I said, you know what, you could read the Bible in 90 days. And I was encouraging us to know the Bible as well or better than we know the DSM. So if you don’t know the DSM that well, then know your Bible better than that. if you know the DSM very, very well, then

let’s work to making sure you know your Bible just as well, much better than. Because we are moving into phases of life, just our society, where we must study to show ourselves approved, but to also be an accurate light for those who are wanting to explore their Christian beliefs.

within the counseling field, excuse me, within the counseling session. So they’re not coming just for Bible study, they are coming for life challenges, but they want those life challenges to be explained within an incorporation of their faith. And the way that we are noticing certain changes happening in our world today, it seems as though it is really calling for us.

to understand our scripture. And that then leads me to kind of throw out the question of how comfortable are you with knowing your word and being able to apply it to the different challenges that your client may be experiencing, even if your client is coming to you for faith struggles, for trauma that they have sustained.

within the church or with their family or spouses using the Bible, weaponizing the Bible. Can you help them? Do you know enough of your own word to be able to stand accurately, to know why you are saying what you’re saying, knowing that you are standing on Bible when you say certain things, when you instruct them certain ways, when you…

Camille McDaniel (09:37.078)
guide them and counsel them. So that’s what came up, you know, for me was that we have got to, we have got to go deeper in our word, in our understanding, in our studying. We need a link together to support one another in this and encourage each other. Check in with somebody. Hey, how’s the reading going? Hey, let’s get together on this date. Maybe we can go over this chapter together, you know.

Then, you know, the other thing outside of us studying to show ourselves approved is, it’s just kind of like been on my mind some changes, you know, that are going on in churches such that maybe if we are referring people to…

you know, to go to their pastors or maybe we’re trying to refer people to, to seek a church home and try some, some churches. Maybe we need to also, and I’m really just throwing this part out there, what do you think? But maybe just the same way as we get referrals for individuals who can help our clients, other mental health professionals that can help our clients or doctors that can help our clients, attorneys that can help our clients and all the other.

people out there that can help our clients, have we thought of maybe finding churches that are standing on the word, they are you know scripturally accurate in the way that they teach, in the way that they preach and maybe we can then develop a resource list for clients who might be looking to

find a church home to reintegrate into church at all, to find a Bible study, what churches have them, to find a support group within their church. You know, I will speak to myself. I know that there are many people who listen or watch the podcast. So I am sure there are some of you who actually have stepped out in order to have

Camille McDaniel (11:49.46)
referrals that you can give your clients as it relates to churches. I find that I am falling short in that area and I need to find out because I don’t think that if I had a client

who was really wanting to better understand their faith, wanting to get better at understanding the Bible and wanted support on being able to go somewhere where they can maybe connect with other people, where they can have sound doctrine be taught.

would not feel comfortable knowing that I’m sending a client who wants those things to a church where they say that, you know, God and Christ is just whoever you want them to be. I understand that is a belief system, right? But that would not…

I would be accountable for that. You know, we are accountable for what we do or don’t do during our time here on this earth. And I would not want to be accountable for that. Just the same way as I would not want to be accountable for referring my client to get services with another therapist if I knew that that therapist was unethical.

or could do more harm to them than good. So I wanted to just kind of, you I just wanted to come and bring that up because sometimes that can be an overwhelming task, both of them, both studying and getting deeper in our word and also finding referral sources that are Christ-centered, whether they be mental health professionals, whether they be churches.

Camille McDaniel (13:38.318)
You know, I think that for some of us that really is a bit of a struggle. And in order to take steps to do both of them, first of all, we want to look at the Bible. I think I said in the last, not the last podcast, but like whenever I was talking about, I’m like the Bible in 90 days. Now look, here’s the thing with all of the different artificial intelligence out there.

from chat gpt to google gemini to grok all the all the things you could easily put in there break down the books of the bible so that i am reading the entire bible in 90 days what would it look like now okay i’m not saying you have to do it in 90 days i’m just saying if you did that you would see hey this is you know this is really not impossible

And then what you could say is well let’s say you just want to you want to complete the Bible between now and the end of the year. Put in how many months that is and then see how many chapters you would have to read in order to be able to complete it. And then you know what do it all over again in 2020 um you know the next the next year that comes after we say happy new year and then um and then you move on to the next year.

and go ahead and put it in there and into AI again and let it break it down for you so you can see, hey, do you want to complete the Bible again? Because it’s a living word. So you’re always getting new revelation. Certain parts of your reading will pertain to things you’re going through at this point in time. And certain parts might pertain to things that you’re going through next year. And so, you know, it’s a living word.

And so when you get to the new year and you’re starting at the beginning, you go ahead and ask the AI to go ahead and outline for you what would my reading calendar need to look like if I wanted to complete the Bible in the first quarter of the year or the first half of the year. And then I would like to go through it again and take more notes and see what comes up and pray and talk to the Father.

Camille McDaniel (16:02.976)
I’m telling you, it’s not as overwhelming as we think, but I would say that if you feel overwhelmed by it, do get a colleague. Reach out to somebody. Just say like, hey, I think I want to do the Bible in the next 90 to 120 days. Like, would you support me in that? Or get a friend or a family member, but you know, get accountability for some.

You all may say, don’t really, I don’t need the accountability, but I think I do need to dive into my word a bit more so that I can be prepared because times are changing and we may, I know in my case, I can speak for myself to say that I have had on more than one occasion where I was the only example of Christ in the Bible that anyone had seen.

in a long time. I know that after some sessions where we had discussed faith and things like that, one client decided to go to church with their spouse. And it had been the first time in a decade that they had stepped foot in a church. And so, you know, sometimes we are that light. Sometimes people will, you know, choose their own.

their own direction and they may not choose to step in a church exactly, but they’ll ask you questions. And you can tie it into what they are experiencing within the counseling realm because it goes to faith struggles and helping clients to find instruction and direction and resources. But we have to be knowledgeable so that we can be in a position to

be that information source for them. They trust you, they trust us. And sometimes they are in a place of vulnerability and they don’t want to take a chance on going into a church that may or may not receive them well. Everybody has different experiences with church, but they trust you. And so if they come to you and you are the only light and information source,

Camille McDaniel (18:25.004)
that they happen to be in contact with for this particular point in time in their life. Are you prepared? Are you prepared? And if you’re not, no judgment, no judgment here, that’s for sure, right? But how are we going to rectify the situation? How are we gonna find a solution? What does it mean for you? What does it look like?

And then the same thing for finding sound, biblically based referral sources. Sometimes I’ve had a hard time finding those resources, finding those referral sources. And sometimes for me, what it actually meant was that I had to schedule time to talk to the person, schedule time to meet by Zoom if it was

convenient like enough for both parties than in person but usually for me it’s been Zoom. You do whatever works for you wherever you are located but but on Zoom we can talk, get to know each other, our specialties, our you know what’s what’s your belief system, how do you handle faith as it relates to your clients wanting to know more about faith, how do you handle faith struggles, how do you incorporate faith in your practice, do you

know, do you talk about it at all? Do you bring scripture into play? How do you deal with certain scriptures that people might bring up and maybe it was weaponized and they you know and they don’t have a proper understanding. Are you able to help them with that understanding or how do you handle that? So you know you can just ask each other questions so that you can better understand is this somebody who really and truly would be a a healthy resource?

that I can refer to because I’ve had clients say that they have unfortunately sought out counseling that integrated their Christian belief system but then the things that were said in the counseling session did not align with scripture and so then they were then left kind of continuing to seek.

Camille McDaniel (20:45.868)
So we want to, again, it’s just, I’m just throwing it out there because again, like I said, I had this conversation with my buddy colleague and it led us to think, you know, at this day and time with all the different things that happen to be going on in the world and in churches around the world, you know, is the Father calling for us to show up a bit stronger in our knowledge and our ability to

understand the word, express the word, explain the word, you know, is he is he calling for us to stand up and stand firm? Because in the Bible, again, he did say study to show yourself approved. So he didn’t say only for pastors to do that. And again, for all of the individuals who are out there who are pastors or former pastors who are now counselors like

Believe me, I’m not trying to say, it’s nothing to just jump right into that role. I’m not saying that, but what I am saying is that there have been a lot of changes going on. I know that you all can see it. I know that you can. And how are we equipping ourselves to meet the need? Yeah, so yeah, that’s kind of what was, that was what was rattling around in my mind.

How are we meeting the need? It just continues to be laid on my heart for us to not be afraid to dig into our word and study it and know it and not go based off of what someone told us or, you know, partly what we read or, but stop and really get ourselves prepared because the Father has people that he needs to send to us.

and some of us are not ready because our knowledge of our word does not meet the level of need and darkness that the people have. So he will definitely work with you wherever you are but he has more and he has more intense cases that he’d like to send your way. He needs you to be ready, he needs you to be prepared. I’m speaking to myself too.

Camille McDaniel (23:02.414)
I know that too. So, you know, we got to dive on in there. And we can do it. Again, we can do it together. Reach out to someone. Reach out to me. Let’s reach out and see how we can support one another to get this done. But what are your thoughts? What are your thoughts? Are you sensing in your spirit the same thing, the same change in atmosphere?

you seeing some things? I’ve actually gotten some emails from some of you. I know that that some of you are seeing some changes in the atmosphere. But for those of you who I’ve not heard from, are you seeing changes in the atmosphere? you hearing things? Is the Lord kind of pulling on your heart to to do more, to to get deeper into your word and and integrate it more into your counseling practice? You know, where are you at ultimately? So again,

Until we meet again, God bless you and I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your week. Bye-bye.