Today, Dr. Ernie Baker sits down with Adjunct Professor Dr. Jennifer Chen to hear her journey from clinical psychology to biblical counseling.
Growing up, Jenn was not raised in a Christian home. Her exposure to church began in her youth, as her parents wanted her to be surrounded by a good community. It was around this time that she began experiencing her own personal struggles, which led her to seek secular therapy, as she did not yet know the LORD.
It was not until she started attending a Christian fellowship group where she started to understand the gospel, and it was there that she experienced the most improvement in her mental health. This led her to attend a christian university, where she earned her degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. However, she soon realized she wanted to pursue a different direction in counseling, which prompted her to earn her doctoral degree in clinical psychology. During her training, she focused heavily on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which she saw to be the most evidence-based approach.
Motivated by the desire to prevent suffering for others, Jenn had pursued the best training available in her field. She went on to spend twenty years working in LA County as a clinical psychologist, working primarily in inner-city communities, before the LORD began to redirect her path.
In her early forties, Jenn experienced a personal crisis as past struggles resurfaced. She tried to address her struggles by using the strategies and tools she had been trained to use, but ultimately found them insufficient. By God’s grace, she was attending a church at that time that offered biblical counseling. Up to that point, Jen was taught that biblical counseling was simplistic and even harmful, blaming people for their suffering. But as she walked through being counseled herself, her perspective began to change.
She came to see that biblical counseling was not just concerned with changing her thoughts but her heart as well. More than just another method, it was centered on a relationship with the triune God. The more she engaged with it, the more she realized the ways in which psychology fell short in helping people in their struggles.
A passage of Scripture that has become foundational to Jenn as she pursues biblical counseling is 2 Timothy 3:13-17, which emphasizes the sufficiency of Scripture. Reflecting on her time as a clinical psychologist, she notes how frequently theories and trends were changing, with a desire to be progressive in their methods. In contrast to the ever-changing theories of the world, Scripture does not change. It is inerrant, supreme, and sovereign, and therefore remains fully sufficient and profitable for addressing the human condition today.
