Building up a Pool of Christian Counselors

16 June 2013 by James Hoh CM –

 

The National Association of Christian Counselors (NACC) held a two-day conference to train and equip Christian counselors to reach out to the community.

 

The conference, with the theme of Integrating Psychology and Theology for Effective Counseling Across the Life-Span, is held on June 14 and 15 at the Bible College of Malaysia (BCM). 

Below are the excerpts from a short interview with Mr Patrick Cheng, the Executive Director of National Association of Christian Counselors (NACC) Malaysia.

 

 

Mr Patrick Cheng, the Executive Director of NACC, explained that this year's conference was aimed at equipping Christians with effective counseling approaches in order to understand the developmental needs of people in different stages of their life.

 

 

 

Developmental process is explained and principles are discussed at the conference with the aim of benefiting not only parents to raise confident and secured children but also church workers on how to serve their church members better.

 

 

For example, Dr Ng Kok Mun talked about the strength based approach which is a secular counseling model but because of its usefulness, he presented it from a Christian perspective. This can be integrated into Christian ministry today, said Mr Cheng.

 

 

“With today’s problems in society, we are training and equipping Christians to be able to reach out to their community, to give the needy people a helping hand.

 

 

“This is a nutshell of what NACC is doing for the 300 participants who came from Penang, Johor, Kuching and other parts of the country. There are a few participants coming from China too. The speakers are from USA, Dubai and Australia.”

Mr Cheng pointed out that although Christian counselors are not recognized by the Government yet, what we want to show to the authorities is that there are other forms of counseling which maybe equally effective or more.

“In this case, I am talking about Christian counseling,” he added.

“Currently, Christian counselors are restricted to work only in church or ministry.

“In order to be a recognized counselor, you will have to go through proper training at Bachelor’s or Master’s levels before applying for a license with the authorities.

 

 

“Even students with counseling degrees from Christian colleges or universities are not recognized by the authorities straight away.

“They would have to study additional subjects from a locally recognized college before they are able to apply for counseling license.

“Therefore, our aim is to train and build up a sizable pool of Christian counselors and only then we will be able to approach the Government authorities for recognition.

 

 

“Once our counselors are trained and equipped, we would be ready for the community whenever help is needed.” 

In Malaysia, the National Association of Christian Counsellors (NACC) is established with the support and encouragement of the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship of Malaysia. 

NACC is registered as an independent body by the Registrar of Societies on 9 May 2011 with the following objectives:

a)      To promote the practice of Christian counselling in Malaysia.

b)      To encourage the development and advancement of Christian counselling as a discipline in Malaysia.

c)      To promote and assist in the research of Christian counselling theories and practices.

d)      To promote and reinforce high standards in education and training, competency, growth and accreditation of Christian counselling based on Biblical ethics.

e)      To promote and enhance public awareness of Christian counselling in Malaysia.

To foster co-operation and sharing of information and experience among Christians of different Biblical counselling approaches and specialties.

For more information about the work of NACC, please visit website:

http://www.nacc-malaysia.org.   

 

 

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