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This study explores Christian clients' expectations and preferences for Christian marital counseling and identifies factors that have a formative effect on clients' expectations and preferences for this service. A chronological literature review identified three periods with distinctive conceptual frameworks for application of spiritual interventions in Christian and secular counseling practices. An original classification table sums up the findings and serves as a navigating visual aid for practicing clinicians. A survey asked Christian couples to rate their expectations and preferences on 16 therapeutic interventions: eight secular and eight spiritual interventions. Analysis revealed that Christian clients expect Christian marital counselors to be equally competent with secular counselors in applying secular therapeutic techniques and they strongly prefer that counselors utilize explicit spiritual interventions but not at the pastoral level of expertise.
Keywords: Christian counseling, marital counseling, clients' expectations, clients' preferences, spiritual interventions
The institution of marriage, as the smallest self-sustainable unit of society, is currently undergoing unprecedented socioeconomic, cultural, and political changes. From the 1980s the national divorce rate has maintained a relatively stable rate of 50% for every marriage (Cherlin, 2010; William, 2002). The divorce rate among Christians follows the same century-long pattern. In 2009, the Barna Group reported similarly high divorce rates among Christians and clergy: 28 percent of Catholics, 34 percent of Protestants, and 33 percent of born-again Christians (Mahoney, 2010). Even when controlling for faith commitment, Wright (2010) finds high divorce rates among regular church attendees (38%) compared to less-committed members of the faith community (60%).
Despite variations in divorce rates among different groups, the data is overwhelmingly indicative that the incidence of divorce besieges Christian and secular couples alike. This fact compelled us to examine the services through which distressed Christian couples could find help. The perception of Christian counselors, members of the American Christian Counseling Association, is that Christian couples counseling is popular and widely practiced (Hook & Worthington, Jr., 2009). At the same time, earlier studies have shown that Christian clients associate counseling services with mainstream American culture, which they highly distrust on the issues of marriage and divorce (Keating & Fretz, 1990; King, 1978; Ripley, Worthington & Berry, 2001).
With these thoughts in mind, we specifically set for ourselves a two-fold task: 1) Examine Christian clients' current expectations...