Episode 263: The Holy Spirit Is the True Counselor — Shaun Furniss (Part 1)

“True Christian counseling, I think, is at its core, it’s discipleship. It’s taking the gospel and applying it to the unique pains, hurts, and sins of an individual, and then walking them to the cross…When you walk into that room where you’re counseling someone, you’re not the true counselor. The Holy Spirit is, and he’s given us his word. That is the means by which he is going to bring that healing.” — Shaun Furniss

Summary of This Episode

What does it mean to truly care for the souls of people in your congregation? In this first part of a two-episode conversation, Jason sits down with Pastor Shaun Furniss of Trinity CRC in Sparta, Michigan, to dig into the often neglected art of pastoral care and counseling. Shaun brings a background unlike most pastors in the CRC. He did not grow up in the church. His first experience was a Roman Catholic mass in second grade, where he was enthralled by the transcendent beauty of what he saw. A season of involvement there gave way to confusion and distance when he couldn’t reconcile the theology at his confirmation class. It was not until a college Bible study led him through the Heidelberg Catechism that the Lord drew him to faith.

That background, along with an early crisis when a teenager disclosed a suicide attempt to him within his first months as a youth director, pushed Shaun toward serious training in pastoral counseling. He went on to earn a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and Counseling alongside his Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. Today he serves as co-pastor at Trinity CRC, splitting all pastoral responsibilities 50-50 with long-tenured Pastor CJ den Dulk—a model that reflects a deep conviction that the care of souls cannot be done by one man alone.

The conversation quickly moves to the heart of the matter: what is Christian counseling, really? Shaun makes the case plainly. True Christian counseling is discipleship. It is taking the gospel and applying it to the unique pains, hurts, and sins of an individual, walking them to the cross, and helping them in their walk with the Lord. Shaun affirms this without hesitation. All pastoral care, he says, is just discipleship.

But there is a problem. The church has largely abdicated this work. The default move in too many congregations—and in too many seminaries—is to farm it out. And when you do that, you hand your congregant over to someone whose worldview you may not know, whose objectives may differ from yours, and whose methods may actively undermine what the gospel requires. Shaun is blunt about what he’s seen: what often passes for Christian counseling is humanistic counseling with a prayer at the end. He estimates only about 10% of counselors he has encountered meet the standard he would feel comfortable recommending. The seminary culture that shaped many current pastors gave them one class on pastoral care and one running joke: just refer it out.

Shaun argues that pattern is a delinquency of responsibility. Even when outside help is warranted—in cases of abuse, or when counseling someone of the opposite sex—the pastor remains the shepherd of the soul. You bring someone alongside. You do not hand off and walk away.

But what does good pastoral care actually look like in practice? The biggest misconception pastors carry, Shaun says, is that they need to have the answer immediately. They walk into a counseling situation feeling pressure to solve. But before any solution can land, trust must be built. People don’t care what you know until they know that you care. The person who comes to you in pain is not a transmission that needs to be fixed. They want to be heard, understood, known. When that relational foundation is laid, the truth you eventually speak will actually be believed.

Shaun frames the core of pastoral counseling around four root issues: guilt, fear, anger, and loneliness. Every situation is unique, every story has variables—but at bottom, nearly everyone who comes for help is wrestling with one of these. And the scriptures give us the answers to all four.

The episode closes on what may be its most striking moment. Shaun reflects on his experience as a hospice chaplain during seminary and the lesson that has never left him: the ministry of presence. People don’t always need the right thing said to them. They need someone to be there. One of the evil one’s primary tactics in suffering is isolation—convincing people that no one knows what they are going through, no one has been where they are. The presence of a pastor, a shepherd, someone who walks in and says, “I’m not going away—I don’t know every step either, but we’re going to walk this together”—that presence is itself healing.

And when the situations are overwhelming? The true counselor is the Holy Spirit. He has given us his Word as the means of healing. The pastor is simply the instrument. “I’ve never fixed anyone, I’ve never saved anyone, but by the grace of God, he’s allowed me to be a part of what he’s doing.”