The Church Chair & The African Chair

Pastoral care—the shepherding of souls by church leaders—has ancient roots stretching back to the early church fathers. Gregory the Great's 'Pastoral Rule' (590 AD), Martin Luther's letters of spiritual counsel, Richard Baxter's 'The Reformed Pastor,' and Charles Spurgeon's pastoral ministry all represent a rich tradition of soul care within Christianity. In the twentieth century, this tradition bifurcated: one stream followed Jay Adams' 'nouthetic counseling' (later called biblical counseling), which insisted that Scripture alone provides all that is needed for counseling and rejected secular psychology entirely; another stream, led by figures like Gary Collins, pursued integration—the systematic combination of biblical principles with psychological insights. In Africa, the church chair has been shaped by additional influences: the rapid growth of Pentecostal and charismatic movements that emphasize spiritual warfare and deliverance, the prosperity gospel's promise that faith guarantees health and wealth, and the communal nature of African church life where the pastor serves as community leader, mediator, and de facto counselor for virtually every life challenge. Understanding this complex landscape is essential for the restoration counselor, who must navigate between the strengths of pastoral care and its potential for harm.

At its best, church-based counseling offers powerful resources that no secular approach can replicate. First, it operates within a community of faith where the counselee is not an isolated individual but a member of a spiritual family—providing the relational context that both secular and traditional approaches often lack. Second, it brings the authority of Scripture—God's revealed truth about human nature, sin, forgiveness, transformation, and hope—as the foundation for understanding and addressing human brokenness. Third, it recognizes the reality and power of the Holy Spirit as the ultimate Agent of transformation, acknowledging that lasting change is not merely a human achievement but a divine work. Fourth, pastoral counselors often have long-term relationships with their congregants, providing continuity of care that secular therapists (limited by session counts and insurance) cannot match. Fifth, church-based counseling can address the whole person—body, soul, and spirit—within a framework that takes moral reality seriously. These strengths are genuine and significant. The restoration counselor builds on this foundation rather than abandoning it.

Despite its strengths, the church chair carries significant dangers that must be honestly acknowledged. First, many pastors counsel without adequate training, relying on spiritual authority and personal experience to address conditions that require specific knowledge—mishandling trauma, failing to recognize clinical depression, or inadvertently reinforcing abusive dynamics. Second, simplistic applications of Scripture can cause deep harm: telling a trauma survivor to 'just forgive and move on,' assuring a clinically depressed person that they 'just need more faith,' or counseling an abused spouse to 'submit and pray harder' represent not biblical wisdom but spiritual malpractice. Third, the power dynamics inherent in pastoral relationships create opportunities for manipulation, spiritual abuse, and boundary violations—problems that are exacerbated when churches lack accountability structures. Fourth, the prosperity gospel, particularly influential in African Christianity, adds a toxic layer: counselees are taught that their suffering indicates insufficient faith, creating a cycle of shame, false hope, and deeper despair. Fifth, many church counseling programs operate without confidentiality standards, exposing vulnerable people to gossip and social stigma. The restoration counselor must be willing to name these failures within the church—not to undermine pastoral ministry but to elevate it to the standard of excellence that God's hurting people deserve.

Long before Western missionaries or colonial administrators arrived in Africa, sophisticated systems of healing existed across the continent. In Botswana, the dingaka (traditional healers) served communities through herbal medicine, divination, ancestral consultation, and communal rituals. Across Africa, healing was understood holistically—physical illness, psychological distress, relational conflict, and spiritual disruption were seen as interconnected rather than separate domains. The traditional healer operated within a worldview that took spiritual reality seriously, honored communal identity, respected elders and ancestral wisdom, and addressed the whole person within their social context. Many of these principles align remarkably with biblical values: the rejection of Western individualism, the recognition of spiritual reality behind physical symptoms, the importance of community in healing, and the holistic view of human experience. Contemporary interest in 'African psychology' and 'decolonizing mental health' has rightly called attention to these strengths and challenged the assumption that Western models are universally superior.

While honoring the genuine wisdom within African traditional healing, the restoration counselor must also apply biblical discernment to practices that may conflict with God's Word. Several areas require careful evaluation. First, ancestral veneration and communication with the dead—central to many traditional healing practices—is explicitly prohibited in Scripture (Deuteronomy 18:10-12). The belief that ancestors mediate between the living and the spiritual realm contradicts the biblical truth that Jesus Christ is the sole mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). Second, divination practices used to diagnose spiritual causes of illness or misfortune are forbidden in Scripture, regardless of their cultural acceptance. Third, some traditional remedies involve rituals that invoke spiritual entities other than the God of Scripture, creating spiritual entanglements that the Bible identifies as bondage rather than healing. Fourth, the traditional framework's explanation of suffering—often attributed to curses, ancestral displeasure, or witchcraft—can create paralyzing fear rather than the freedom and hope that the Gospel provides. The restoration counselor does not dismiss African culture wholesale but applies the same critical evaluation to traditional practices that we apply to Freud, Jung, and Rogers: testing everything against the standard of God's revealed Word.

African Christians live at the intersection of multiple worldviews—Western modernity, Christian faith, and traditional African spirituality. This intersection creates unique counseling challenges. A Christian woman struggling with infertility may simultaneously seek medical treatment (secular chair), request prayer from her pastor (church chair), and secretly visit a traditional healer (African chair)—not because she lacks faith but because she is navigating multiple explanatory frameworks without an integrated approach. A young man experiencing depression may be told by his doctor that he has a chemical imbalance, by his pastor that he lacks faith, and by his grandmother that he has offended the ancestors. Without a coherent framework that takes all dimensions seriously while maintaining biblical authority, people are left to piece together their own eclectic approach to healing—often with harmful results. This is precisely the gap that restoration counseling addresses. By taking spiritual reality seriously (correcting the secular chair), by demanding methodological excellence (correcting the church chair), and by maintaining biblical authority over cultural practices (correcting the African chair), the Arukah model provides the integrated approach that African contexts desperately need.