Unjoy, Hope and Help for 7 Million Christians with Depression
Len Lantz is a Christian psychiatrist and professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine writing to Christians (those who attend worship services at least once per month – p. xiv) who are suffering from depression. He claims that there are seven million depressed Christians in America. Lantz believes that, in the majority of […]
Putting Your Past in Its Place, Moving Forward in Freedom and Forgiveness
Pastor and biblical counselor Stephen Viars has written a useful work concerning dealing with our past. He believes there are two extremes: Believing our past is nothing and believing it is everything (p. 17). In order to get a good handle on our past, and respond to it biblically, Viars suggest four buckets, around which […]
Gospel Conversations, How to Care Like Christ
Gospel Conversations, How to Care Like Christ by Robert W. Kellemen (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015) 397 pp., paper, $18.99 Gospel Conversations is a long, intense and thorough manual for biblical counseling. The big idea communicated throughout the book is that “we learn to become competent biblical counselors by giving and receiving biblical counseling in the […]
The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life, Connecting Christ to Human Experience by Jeremy Pierre
Jeremy Pierre, Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written in The Dynamic Heart a comprehensive, one might say intense, textbook designed to aid God’s people (pp. 9, 101, 105). The author states early, “These pages are dedicated to showing how God designed people with dynamic hearts to experience the world […]
Men Counseling Men, A Biblical Guide to the Major Issues Men Face, General Editor John D. Street (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House, 2013), 442 pp., paper $19.99
John Street, chair of the graduate program in biblical counseling at the Master’s College, is the general editor of Men Counseling Men. Twenty-two authors contributed a chapter each on various subjects pertinent to Christian men. Most, if not all, of the contributors have or are pursuing a master’s degree in biblical counseling (MABC) from Master’s […]
Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God’s Changeless Truth, Gen. Ed.James MacDonald; managing ed. Bob Kellermen & Steve Viars
When I first heard about Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling I was not excited. The list of contributing authors was long and most of them I had never heard of. More importantly, some of the contributing authors are associated with groups that are of concern to many in the area of the sufficiency of Scripture. Even so, […]
Anatomy of the Soul, by Curt Thompson, M.D., (Tyndale: 2010). 282 pp., paper $14.99
The subtitle explains what Curt Thompson, a psychiatrist, is attempting to do in this volume: “Surprising connection between neuroscience and spiritual practices that can transform your life and relationships.” The author believes that life can be transformed by the renewing of your mind that can lead to the wholeness God intends. This includes a new […]
TheoPhostic Counseling (Divine Revelation? Or Psycho Heresy?) by Martin and Deidre Bobgan
TheoPhostic counseling is a Christianized form of psychotherapy developed by Dr. Ed Smith in 1996. Smith claimed that he received his system as a direct revelation from God apparently given in February of that year (pp. 7-8). Its success rate, according to Smith, is nothing short of astounding. Much of the burden of the Bobgans’ […]
Psychology Debunked by Lisa and Ryan Bazler
The main author of this book, Lisa Bazler, is a trained psychotherapist, who after receiving Christ began to discover gaping incompatibilities between psychology and Scripture. This ultimately led to her leaving the world of psychotherapy and to expose its error to others. Psychology Debunkedis an attempt to do actually that—and she does it well. Those […]