When Soul-Care Shifts: Why This Conversation Matters

Part 4 of 4 in the “Counseling Crossroads” Series

How Did We Get Here? A Brief History of Biblical Counseling’s Drift and Divergence

In order to understand where the biblical counseling movement now stands, we must retrace how it arrived here. The rise of hybrid counseling models (what some are now calling “redemptive” or “clinically informed” biblical counseling) did not emerge in a vacuum. It was shaped by decades of internal tension, cultural change, and theological drift.

Understanding that history matters. Because these are not isolated developments. They represent a crossroads for pastors, counselors, and churches. Will soul care remain rooted in the sufficiency of Scripture? Or will it accommodate therapeutic models in search of cultural credibility or expanded relevance?

Let’s take a brief walk through how we got here.

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The Foundational Years: A Countercultural Stand (1970s–1990s)

When Jay Adams first published Competent to Counsel (1970), he catalyzed a movement by boldly asserting that Scripture was not only sufficient but superior to the psychological theories of the day. Adams challenged the growing dependence on secular counseling methods in Christian circles and called pastors and churches to reclaim their shepherding role.

While not without critics, Adams’ nouthetic model, centered on the biblical call to lovingly confront sin and apply Scripture for both correction and restoration, was clear in its allegiance: the Bible was the lens, and the Church was the context.

In the decades since, organizations such as the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors (now ACBC), the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF), the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship (IBCD), the International Association of Biblical Counselors (IABC), the Fellowship of Biblical Counselors (FBC), the Association of Biblical Counselors (ABC), and Truth in Love Biblical Counseling (TILBC) have continued to build on this foundation—though not always in agreement about tone, method, or scope.

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The First Wave of Reframing: Broadening the Appeal (1990s–2010s)

As the movement matured, so did its recognition of some internal shortcomings. Early biblical counseling was often criticized for being overly confrontational or formulaic. Leaders such as David Powlison and Ed Welch began refining the tone and expanding the framework, particularly around suffering, trauma, and emotional complexity. This was a needed correction.

But while this “second generation” of biblical counseling deepened the theology and improved the tone, it also opened the door to more porous boundaries with the clinical world. The desire to be “gracious” sometimes blurred the lines between biblical care and therapeutic accommodation. CCEF’s growing influence helped reshape biblical counseling culture, but not without raising questions about the interpretive frameworks behind its expanding vocabulary.

Meanwhile, figures like Larry Crabb and, later, Dan Allender began explicitly integrating psychological theory into Christian counseling practice. Though more clearly outside the biblical counseling stream, their popularity demonstrated a hunger for models that honored both faith and emotion. Their influence made its way subtly into evangelical seminaries, further complicating the boundaries between biblical and Christian counseling.

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The Current Moment: Clinical Integration by Another Name (2015–Present)

In the past decade, the rise of “Clinically Informed Biblical Counseling” (CIBC) and “Redemptive Counseling” (RC)—promoted by professors and practitioners from a major seminary—has brought the conversation to a tipping point. These frameworks claim to be biblical, but they employ a new kind of integration: one where Scripture provides the moral and theological categories, but clinical psychology supplies the structure, language, and method.

In this model, diagnostic categories like trauma, PTSD, attachment wounds, and emotional dysregulation are not reframed by Scripture—they are retained and then baptized with redemptive language. The counselor becomes a hybrid shepherd-therapist. And Scripture becomes a lens for values, not a framework for methodology.

This is not simply a methodological shift. It is a redefinition of soul care itself.

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The Slippery Slope of Language Drift

Part of what makes the current moment so disorienting is the intentional ambiguity of language. Words like “integration,” “sufficiency,” “soul care,” and “common grace” are still used—but they no longer mean what they once did.

• “Integration” now means drawing clinical insight into our practice without (supposedly) compromising theology.
• “Sufficiency” is redefined as “spiritually sufficient” but practically dependent on trauma theory or diagnostic psychology.
• “Common grace” is expanded to include therapeutic discoveries as authoritative insights into human behavior.

This drift is often subtle, wrapped in an irenic tone and compassion-forward language. But it amounts to an epistemological shift: we are no longer interpreting the soul from God’s Word; we are interpreting God’s Word through the assumptions of modern psychology.

This is not simply about vocabulary. It’s about authority. What you are informed by, you will inevitably be formed by.

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So Where Do We Go From Here?

We need more than nostalgia for the past or reactionary rhetoric. We need a positive vision for what biblical counseling and soul care can be—not as a rejection of complexity, but as a reassertion of clarity.

We must:

• Recover the centrality of Scripture not just for theology, but for methodology.
• Teach counselors how to address trauma and emotional suffering with biblical categories, not just clinical approximations.
• Be honest about the pressures to accommodate therapeutic culture, even in the name of ministry.
• Equip churches to disciple and shepherd with confidence, compassion, and discernment.

The future of authentic biblical counseling will not be secured by labels or tribalism. It will be secured by fidelity to Christ, to His Word, and to a theology robust enough to withstand the winds of cultural change.

At Truth in Love, we are committed to training counselors who are trauma-wise, clinically aware, and biblically governed. That means we listen to the culture without being led by it. We speak the language of the wounded without being defined by it. And we offer not just stabilization, but sanctification.

Because that’s what true care looks like.

SDG