Methods of change

The counsellor’s knowledge, skills, experience... are some of the important factors in a successful counselling association. But these are not critical or influential factors. The most significant ingredient in successful counselling is the nature and quality of the relationship between the client and the counsellor.178

In this brief section, it will be argued that a variety of interventions are necessary in order to offer optimum conditions for the promotion of therapeutic change. This variety is coherent with biblical imperatives used for helping people.

Within the context of relatedness, the Waverley Model gives space for a variety of interventions that may be utilised with any given client, at any given time, amidst the unfolding counselling process. This freedom arises from regarding the Waverley Model as a framework of principles to be creatively applied according to context, personality preference etc, rather than as a ‘straightjacket’ within which an extensive number of procedures are prescriptively offered. It is in this creative space that the Waverley Model is most obviously practised as an ‘art’ not as ‘science’. Thus, procedurally, wisdom, discernment and judgment are necessary, which from a Christian perspective require a therapist to ‘listen to the Spirit of wisdom – the Holy Spirit’. An ongoing dependence on God is therefore necessary, a principle which lies at the heart of Hughes’ model of health, not only for the client, but also for therapeutic judgment by the counsellor. This kind of creative discernment is warranted by Scripture itself. In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul advocates a variety of interventions to aid ‘people helping’: ‘And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.’ Elsewhere in Scripture other forms of responses are encouraged including loving (Matt. 22:39; John 15:12), comforting (2 Cor. 1:4; 2:7) and grieving (James 4:9). Jones and Butman sum up the point well: ‘clearly what is needed is a flexible repertoire of approaches, grounded in coherent theory and deeply respectful of the complexity and profundity of human struggles.’179 Regarding the