How Christian is Christian counselling? In what ways should one's counselling practice be conducted in order to fulfil one's role as a Christian counsellor? Is there a counselling practice that truly penetrates into the secular approaches while remaining faithful to the Christian traditions of healing? What are the theological roots of secular counselling? How may secular counselling both reinforce and challenge the Christian faith? In answering these questions, this book engages readers to navigate between two frames of reference: one Eastern, secular, social scientific, and modern; the other Western, Christian, theological, and traditional. At levels of both theory and practice, this book undertakes to integrate, synthesize, hybridize, revise, dichotomize and antagonize the two. It proposes a revised presence-centred counselling approach which may serve as a perspective that helps us to see things in more depth as we shuttle back and forth between the two frames. This book thus negotiates a revised presence-centred form of counselling that is theologically grounded, social scientifically informed, and cross-culturally sensitive.
As the author's counselling practice proceeds mainly in societies where Chinese is the majority, the cross-cultural examinations and proposals offered in this book have been bred in a space where Chinese culture meets the Christian (Protestantism in particular) West. This book is an outgrowth of the author's experience teaching Christian counselling courses for 17 years and his 30-year clinical practice experience in places where East meets West, namely Hong Kong and South China (Guangdong Province).