Curious Christian

I was reading Gerard Egan’s book, “The Skilled Helper,” over lunch as part of my coursework for Foundations of Christian Counseling at Morling College when I came across this comment:

Effective eclecticism, however, must be more than a random borrowing of ideas and techniques from here and there. There must be some integrating framework to give coherence to the entire process; that is, to be effective, eclecticism must be systematic.

I was actually thinking of using this quote as a follow up of my comments about Paul Hiebert’s model of critical contextualization on John Smulo’s blog, just before hearing of Hiebert’s death on my return home. Now it seems all the more poignant.   

Egan was of course articulating this within a counseling context, but I see these comments as equally applicable to the task of critical contextualization. One guy had commended a jazz approach of improvisation, but I pointed out that even jazz musicians, for all their improvisation, have a basic methodology that prevented their stuff degenerating into ineffective noise. If we are not self conscious and self critical of the models we use we run the risk of being unconsciously captive to them.

Hiebert provides a meta-model that helps us assess our eclectic efforts critically. Egan is trying to do the same thing with his skilled helper model. I had been thinking for some time how Hiebert could help me to come to grips with integrating Christianity with counseling culture. It now seems that Egan’s got me thinking how counseling based insights into human communication and cognition can feed back into my contextualization efforts.  For one I am starting to appreciate the distinction Egan makes between cultural diversity and other forms of human diversity. His exploration of the ‘personal culture’ of clients also has deep resonances with the direction my thinking has been going in other areas. I need to integrate all of this – that’s why I appreciate the above comment by Egan.

In the past I have made comments about distinguishing between critical eclecticism and fluff bunny eclecticism. Reading Egan is helping me explore whole new fields of potential integration between counseling practice and my other projects.

Note: This thread, College Reflections, is to be submitted for assessment as part of my coursework in The Foundations of Christian Counseling at Morling College
at the end of Semester 1, 2007. If you would like to speak to me about
issues I raise in this thread, but are concerned about privacy, please
email me privately  instead of leaving a public comment.

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js