Solution-Focused Pastoral Counseling: An Effective Short-Term Approach for Getting People Back on Track Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Charles Allen Kollar (Author), John Behrens (Narrator), Zondervan (Publisher)

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This groundbreaking book, now updated and expanded, furthers its original, effective, time-saving approach that benefits pastors overtaxed by counseling demands.

Dr. Charles Kollar presents a departure in pastoral counseling, showing that counseling need not be long-term or depend on psychological manipulation to produce dramatic results. In most cases, the solution lies with the counselees themselves. Using the tested methods found in Solution-Focused Pastoral Counseling, pastors, apart from counselors, will be well equipped to help their counselees discover a solution and put it in motion speedily and productively. SFPC is short-term - typically one to five sessions, in which the counselor seeks to create solutions with - not for - the counselee.

The focus is on the possibility of life without the problem through an understanding of what is different when the problem does not occur or is less intrusive. The goal is healthy change, sooner rather than later, by helping the counselee see and work on the solution with God’s activity already present in his or her life. The solution-focused approach does not require the counselor to be a highly trained psychological expert. It requires biblically based sensitivity and common sense. Yet this approach also recognizes its limitations and understands that there are situations in which other professional and/or medical help is required.

Accompanying figures are available in the audiobook companion PDF download.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Listening Length

10 hours and 12 minutes
Author

Charles Allen Kollar
Narrator

John Behrens
Audible release date

Nov. 9 2021
Language

English
Publisher

Zondervan
ASIN

B09CWZ2VL4
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	10 hours and 12 minutes
Author	Charles Allen Kollar
Narrator	John Behrens
Audible.ca Release Date	November 09 2021
Publisher	Zondervan
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B09CWZ2VL4
Best Sellers Rank	#133,793 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #1,289 in Pastoral Counseling (Books) #2,516 in Christian Ministry (Books) #3,913 in Christian Ministry & Evangelism

Customer reviews

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4 star		8%
3 star		6%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from Canada

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Hannah

Be Discerning

Reviewed in Canada on April 3, 2014

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This book was required for my course on counselling theory and skill development. The method is very useful for those with little training in counselling who are working with adults and who know when to refer. Many of Kollar's personal opinions, however, need to be taken with a grain of salt. My advice is to read the book, take the major principles to integrate into your practice, and think critically about the rest.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jackie Scrivanich

Great resource

Reviewed in Canada on September 30, 2016

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As a pastor counseling is a part of the job. This book is a great resource for that.

Helpful

Demetrius

Koller's outlook spoils the book

Reviewed in Canada on March 4, 2015

Koller presents a negative view on the mental health industry.

With only a one sided view on the journey to recovery, Kollar presents a method that could be useful, but misses the mark. He starts off his book by criticizing the mental health industry and why pastors need to take back counseling. He himself admits to creating a dichotomy that others in the church profess. He assumes that the mental health industry is out to make money and isn't shy in presenting that, almost as a fact.

The book is riddled with his own personal opinions that detract from the method. This makes the reader have to wade through what is factual or just an opinion.

This book is presented as a means for pastors to take back counseling. While there is nothing wrong with Pastors counseling. This isn't the way to do so. Proper training is perhaps needed for the way in which a pastor can effectively council someone and maybe a new outlook that encourages the pastors not to just refer, but work with the mental health industry.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

MKennedy

Confidence and Authority for the Pastoral Counselor

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2012

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Kollar's book empowers the local church pastor to lead counselees into positive change without carrying the burden of being something other than an expert in psychology. He presents the argument that pastors have been trained to refer far too many cases to secular mental health agencies and professionals when these same pastors have the tools they need to help get the people who come to them "unstuck" and moving forward in a positive way. Kollar gives a practical model for pastors to use to achieve this goal.

Kollar's book is an application of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), a therapy that has been proven by secular research to be at least as successful as other methods of therapy. I recommend doing some research on SFBT and reading Strategic Pastoral Counseling: A Short-Term Structured Model by David G. Benner, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Spirituality at Psychological Studies Institute, Richmond Graduate University (Atlanta).

Solution-Focused Brief Therapy is a method of therapy developed by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg at the Milwaukee Brief Therapy Center which they founded in 1978. Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) purposely does not focus on the cause of a problem. In fact, one of the method's underlying assumptions is that a counselor or therapist does not necessarily need to know much at all about a person's problem to help them. This seems counterintuitive, but Kollar makes the argument that many other psychologists have been making for the last 30 years that focusing on a person's illness is a carryover from medical practices grounded more in medical culture than in research. See Trepper, Terry S., Eric E. McCollum, Peter De Jong, Harry Korman, Wallace Gingerich, and Cynthia Franklin. 2010. Solution focused therapy treatment manual for working with individuals. [Hammond, IN?]: Research Committee of the Solution Focused Brief Therapy Association. [...]

For an academic overview of the effectiveness of SFBT read "Solution-Focused Brief Therapy" by Cynthia Franklin, Terry S. Trepper, Eric E. McCollum, and Wallace J. Gingerich (2011). For a good brief overview of SFBT, read Gail R. Greenberg, Keren Ganshorn and Alanna Danilkewic's 2001 article "Solution-focused therapy; A counseling model for busy family physicians" in Canadian Family Physician, 47 (November): 2289-2295. [...]

5 people found this helpful

pixledust

Fantastic!

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2017

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This is an excellent book. It offers real hope to those seeking solutions to their problems. It is written for a Christian audience, but has wisdom for all audiences. It details the problems with traditional counseling models and then sets forth a short-term solution based model that will allow the client to see progress in the first session. The books basic premise is that the client should be setting the counseling goals and is an expert on his/her own life. It shows the counselor how to be attuned to the things the Holy Spirit is already doing in the clients life. It gives practical strategies to point out, support and affirm the clients in their efforts to create and clarify solutions. This is one of the best counseling books I've ever read.

3 people found this helpful

kllsty

Must have book

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2019

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This made me see helping others to solve overwhelming problems and concerns in a very real and logical way, as well as helping me.

One person found this helpful

William T. Brewer

A compelling approach to counseling that gains its power from some rather simple, well-known principles

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2006

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SFPC is a compelling approach to counseling that gains its power from some rather simple, well-known principles --

. . . the power of positive thinking and the power of suggestion.

Without wanting to be dismissive, I think much of what Kollar does is to simply "operationalize" those principles with a counseling model and some associated practical techniques for asking the right questions. Admittedly, he teaches people to count their blessings, but he does so in a way that keeps them from dismissing that too-familiar idea as simply cliche.

In meantime, Kollar offers wide-ranging insights that church counselors should find helpful regardless of approach. Kollar is right, for example, in being concerned about the "rent seeking"[1] nature of the secular mental health industry, where economic incentives favor the need for more and more mental health services rather than the health of clients. So he is right in being cautious about referring Christians into that industry -- an industry concerned, not with the healing of the biblical mind, but with the "healing" of the secular mind -- a mind so intrinsically unsound from a biblical perspective that it's restoration to "soundness" is inherently problematic -- hence the fundamental awkwardness of referring Christians to secular counselors where definitions of failure and success often run counter to Christian values.[2]

Kollar is right in suggesting that complex problems don't necessarily require complex solutions. He is right in challenging the scientific basis for the "disease" categories listed in the APA's DSM-4.[3] He is right in insisting on the profound implications of approaching counseling from the standpoint of solutions rather than problems. And he is right on letting the outcome (health) dictate the process (solution-oriented).

For Kollar, the "deficiency language" of problem-centered approaches is the root of all evil. For counselees, it fosters negative self-perceptions, preoccupation with self, self-fulfilling prophecies, reliance on drugs, frustration, resistance and blindness to solutions, and misplaced trust in experts. Hard data exist to support the relative lack of success for the mental health profession. Experts on mental disorders can easily guide counselees toward solutions that have nothing to do with the reasons counselees seek counseling. The mental health industry tends to transform problems into mental diseases and then give those diseases weight via psychological labeling. Counselees eventually come defend such labeling as part of their identity.

For counselors, "deficiency language" fosters marketing abuses, conflicts of interest, misdiagnoses, an exaggerated sense of competence, over-prescription of drugs, needless investigations into past experiences,[4] preoccupation with defining the problem rather than the solution, reliance on the expertise of the counselor rather than the counselee, and blindness to solutions. Counselors tend to find what they have been trained to spot; i.e., problems or deficiencies.[5] Instead of fixing problems, problem-oriented counselors often simply sensitize counselees to imputed problems, thereby deepening the sense of deficiency within counselees. Deficiency language neglects the resources counselees bring to counseling sessions -- the very things most correlated with success and least-correlated with a problem-centered approach.

Differences between pastoral and secular counseling are wide-ranging. Pastoral counseling focuses on the cognitive side of counseling -- secular counseling focuses on the affective. The cognitive approach has weight, however, in that the connection of emotional dysfunctions with diseases of the brain has not been established. Rather emotions are best seen as signs that counselees are off track. Secular counseling provides "homework" in the pursuit of counselor-defined solutions. SFPC focuses on tasks in the pursuit of counselee-defined solutions. The secular psychotherapeutic concept of resistance has more to do with power and control within counseling relationships than with the unwillingness of counselees to change. In SFPC, resistance is sidestepped in that counselors and counselees "co-create" solutions.

Practical advice abounds in SFPC. Concentrate on what's working and do more of it. Identify what's not working and do less. In counseling, clearly defining the problem is not necessary. Many problems cannot be clearly defined, but that does not mean they cannot be solved. Counselees are the experts on what needs to be changed. They are often simply stuck in their perception of things and need help in changing their perceptions. They need a vision of how life would be like without the problem. How that change will occur is more important than when it will occur. Emphasis on feelings vice doing needs to be turned upside down -- it takes less effort for people to "act" themselves toward a feeling that to "feel" themselves toward an action. Pastors often make bad counselors because they are accustomed to prescribing thoughts and behaviors instead of practicing attentive listening. Counselees may be adept at using deficiency language and inept at seeing exceptions to their deficiencies, so knowing what to ignore and what to attend to in counseling are important aptitudes for counselors. Everyone needs a second chance without the risk of being entangled in the mental health industry.

SFPC is an excellent book. Although it neglects the necessary, tragic, and redemptive significances of suffering, its focus is well-aimed because most of the misery within Western culture is, after all, self-inflicted.

-- Bill Brewer
[...]

[1] These are my words, not Kollar's. "Rent-seeking" means the pursuit of gain through a non-beneficial relationship in contrast to "profit seeking" where the gain is through beneficial relationships. The mental health industry is frequently accused of rent-seeking in offering services that, in turn, increase the need for such services.

[2] An almost comical example is the "medicalization" of misbehaving children under "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Also note the devastating critique of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) as an ideologically driven association by APA past-president Nicholas A. Cummings at [...]

[3] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, by the American Psychiatric Association.

[4] The only reason to look into the past of a counselee is to help him get back on track.

[5] Kollar notes an experiment by Rosenhan, Stanford professor of psychology and law, who experimented with psychiatric hospitals by presenting them with healthy people who were hearing voices. Each was diagnosed as schizophrenic despite having normal mental states.

From the back cover, Charles Allen Kollar is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. He served as a United States Navy chaplain for ten years and is currently the director of On-Trac Ministries. He holds the D.Min. from Fuller Theological Seminary and the M.Div. from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary.

Solution-Focused Pastoral Counseling (SFPC) is divided into two parts: theory and practice. Part 1 has eight chapters. Chapter 1 addresses the way paradigms reinforce old ways of thinking and prevent new ways of looking at things, not just for counselees, but for counselors as well. Chapter 2 deals with the relationship between pastoral counseling and the secular mental health industry. Chapter 3 highlights the prominence of "deficiency language" in secular counseling and in most Christian counseling. Chapter 4 is concerned with the way presuppositions shape counseling toward a problem-focused approach. Chapter 5 explains the real consequences of perceptions and misperceptions. Chapter 6 challenges secular notions of identity formation with an explicitly Christian alternative. Chapter 7 identifies nine guiding assumptions for SFPC. Chapter 8 offers seven guidelines for ethical counseling.

Part 2 combines an explanation of Kollar's counseling model with examples of its application. Chapter 9 focuses on the counseling interview. Chapter 10 explores the role of attentive listening. Chapter 11 overviews the "track options" a counseling interview could possibly take. Chapter 12 addresses the task of "vision clarification." Chapters 13 and 14 give examples of the "how to's" and the "whys" of "supportive feedback" and "consolidating change." Chapter 15 applies SFPC to a typical case. Chapter 16 offers some final considerations.

3 people found this helpful

Kyle Nielsen

Insightful

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2021

Verified Purchase

Kollar did an excellent job explaining a short-term model in the context of a Pastoral counseling relationship. This book has practical steps for the beginner to learn and begin to wrap their head around. This is a must read for the lay counselor who is thinking about counseling.

One person found this helpful

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Solution-Focused Pastoral Counseling: An Effective Short-Term Approach for Getting People Back on Track Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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