Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God’s Changeless Truth by James MacDonald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a collection of essays on counseling, and as with any collection some selections are home runs, others are more akin to a batter standing in the box with glazed eyes watching three, dead-center fastballs zoom by. In other words, some are real strike-outs. At points it seemed as if, in some brainstorming meeting, the folks planning this book imagined what they’d be in hot water for if they left out a chapter on “xyz.” It seems as if they then proceeded to make sure they didn’t leave those chapters out, leaving some essays feeling “forced.”
On the whole, however, there are good insights and encouragement as to how a church should think about its counseling work and ministry. As the title indicates, the editors and authors really did strive to make it a Christ-centered approach to counseling, and therefore returned again and again to the sufficiency of Scripture. I certainly have no complaints there. This isn’t the best book on counseling, nor the worst. At points it is really good, and again, at others, not so good.
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