On this page I will place links to some things I’ve written in the recent past. Feel free to use them as fodder for thought or to line your rabbit cage. If you find them helpful, let me know. If you use them in your own presentations or publications, please cite your source.
1. Guidelines for the Effective Use of the Bible in Counseling
2. Repairing Broken Relationships (PPT slides)
3. be-anxious-for-nothing.ppt Anxiety slides from 3/3/07 talk at COS, Wayne, PA
4. CAPS Presentation: teaching-the-history-of-christian-psych.ppt, 3/24/07.
5. 2007 PCA Mercy Conference PPT presentations: Distorted Sex: Providing Mercy to Sexual Strugglers, and Restoration & Repentance: How God Restores Broken & Sinful People.
6. 2007 National Biblical Counselors Association Conference: Biblical counseling in the 21st Century: A review.
7. 2007 World Conference (AACC) Presentation with Diane Langberg: Spiritual Care Teams for Abuse in the Church(Working with Churches that are Dealing with an Abuser: A Model in Progress)
8. Presentation at Park Cities Presbyterian Church on 6/7/08: pcpc1
9. Literature review: needs-of-ministry-leaders
10. 2008 CCEF Conference Presentation (Counseling Strategies for addictions): ccef-annual-conf-b
11. 2009 Pastoral Health Conference Plenary with Philip G. Ryken at Biblical Seminary: what-seminary-didn_t-teach-me
12. Helps for Sexual Addiction (Macedonia Baptist Church, 8/12/09): Macedonia Baptist Sexual Addictions
13. Be Anxious for Nothing??? Dealing with Anxiety in a Frightening World (Macedonia Baptist Church, 8/19/09 Be anxious for nothing
14. AACC 2009 World Conference: Pastoral Sexual Abuse (with Dr. Diane Langberg) (accompanying Pastoral Abuse Treatment Decision Tree)
15. AACC 2009 World Conference: AACC 2009 trauma therapy Engaging Biblical Texts in Trauma Therapy
12 Comments
September 16, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I could not get the slides from the link to AACC seminar?
September 17, 2007 at 10:27 am
Regena, sorry the link was broken. Try again now.
Phil
September 17, 2007 at 10:59 am
Thanks.
I have a church in my area with these problems I will be giving them your name. Ik am willing to help them if that is the best way with your help. Does your consulting cost? How much?
Regena
October 9, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Phil,
I just read “Guidelines for the Effective Use of the Bible in Counseling.” I thought it was well-written, well-thought out, and clarified the Christian counselor’s stance. I did have a few questions and comments, though.
I’m wondering if you have ever considered that client problems can stem, not from not understanding the message in context, or from being rebuked by unthinking parishoners, but from the actual message and resulting psychology of Christian practice itself? That the Christian message itself is the source of pathology?
I’m sure you are aware of the concepts of double binds, fusion, emotional reactivity, and Stockholm Syndrome. Have you ever applied these concepts to the psychology of the relationship between God and man, as outlined in Abrahamic literature and practice?
Using Scripture as a corrective lens to see and connect to God reminds me of a similar analogy used by Ken Hamm of Answers in Genesis: he suggested to an audience of children that we put on our Biblical glasses so that we can see God’s truth that the earth is 6000 yrs old, dinosaurs walked with Man, and that God is always right and the scientist who disagrees with the Bible is not to be trusted.
By the same token, it’s difficult to sustain comfort and hope from the Bible, when the reasons for it (teaching, training, discernment, and understanding), are demonstrably wrong.
I could see in the four vignettes, in which biblical verses are adapted from the original context they were written in, to the situation at hand for a therapeutic purpose, can be useful for clients who have both a well-developed theological schema and an underdeveloped secular schema.
Do you work with clients trying to cope with agnosticism or atheism, either for themselves or with loved ones?
Thanks in advance for consideration of my comments.
October 9, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Lightbearer, Thanks for your couple of comments. You raised many issues that would take me in very different directions (e.g., the issue of the person who believes that the bible teaches a young earth is quite different from the question of the value of a theological or secular schema). For the record, I don’t think the earth is young or that the bible is a scientific text. Nor do I believe that science is a purely objective since empiricism is one (important but not sole) means for knowing. All theories are underdetermined by the facts used to build them–and all make moral claims, whether implicitly or explicitly.
But to your question about the msg of Christianity being the problem itself. I would admit it is theoretically possible–if the msg of the bible is merely myth. If, however, the God of the bible is real and really involved in the world and that the bible reveals the character and person of this God, then I don’t think that the bible harms people because it is a message of a gracious God finding and saving a people for himself. It may be offensive and harmful to those who disagree with that message but not harmful if accepted.
But, I will quickly say the biggest problem in Christianity is not God or his message but his weak and broken followers who abuse his words and claim to speak for him but do not. 1 Timothy is a great and short book that points out this problem.
Thanks for stopping by.
November 17, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Phil – I could not get the file to open
November 18, 2008 at 10:14 am
Keith, it opens on my end. Anybody else have this problem? Can you open any of the other PPT files on this page?
February 20, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I was talking with someone about anxiety (panic attacks) and used your PP slides about the subject. Thanks for sharing
April 25, 2009 at 9:03 am
I have found the blog but I don’t know how to navigate to read McMinn blog. Help please.
September 18, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Unable to open
September 18, 2009 at 2:33 pm
It is in PPT 2007 format. PPTx files cannot be opened with the old PPT format. You can acquire a free reader from Microsoft…
If that doesn’t work I’ll see about uploading it in the older format.
Phil
November 8, 2009 at 11:41 am
hi, i am interested in subscring to ur blog. i am currently suffering from chronic pain, fatigue, addiction to hydrochodone after years of being “perfect”, church, seeking God with everything in me, my therapist Dr. Mark Woods was like my second dad. He was like my second dad and he hung himself. He loved the Lord and me and made me feel hope that I could be well. I am scared. My parents want me to live in a sober living home, but I don’t want to live away from my daughter almost two. It’s not fair. I was date raped as a virgin as I was “waiting for marriage” and now God is allowing me to be seperated from her. I wanted to go to a nice treatment center, but they are too expensive. I feel like I have tried to climb a wall my whole life, tried everything, been “perfect”, been “rebellious”, never understanding why I am sad all of the time. I’d do anything to be well, I just don’t see it. Too many problems.