In 1970 Baker Book House published Competent to Counsel by Dr. Jay Adams. With this book the biblical counseling movement began. David Powlison says:
Then when he published his first book in 1970, Adams’s personal rediscovery of biblical counseling initiated a widespread rediscovery for the entire Church.1
Contrary to what Powlison says, the current biblical counseling is not a rediscovery but an initially well-intended beginning gone bad. The biblical counseling movement is really a latter day movement unparalleled in church history. And, like any latter day movement it must be tested with Scripture, rather than with the opinions of men, to establish its validity.
We have done just that in Against biblical Counseling: For the Bible. The movement may have begun with the idea that pastors and lay people are or can become competent to counsel without psychological training. However, the current biblical counseling movement intimidates pastors and other Christians into thinking they are incompetent to counsel, no matter how knowledgeable and mature they are as believers. Moreover, this movement often looks too much like the psychological counseling movement it was meant to replace.
We demonstrate in Against Biblical Counseling: For the Bible that many so-called biblical counseling groups are integrationists, are unbiblical in many ways, intimidate individuals just as the psychological counseling movement does, and comprise a contemporary movement unlike any found in the history of the church.
1David Powlison, “Biblical Counseling in the Twentieth Century.” Introduction to Biblical Counseling. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994, p. 51
(From PAL V3N2)