Ministers and church leaders have been encouraged to lend support to members by understanding their nature and personalities.
This was made known at a two-day workshop on Christian Ethical Counselling organised by the Suame Area in collaboration with TUCEE Counselling Organisation, a Christian Based Counselling Organisation in Accra.
Under the theme ‘Healing the Congregation via Ethical Christian Counselling’, the programme sought to equip ministers, ministers wives and other office holders in the Area with the requisite tools and skills to effectively offer counselling support to members in the churches.
Opening the event, the Suame Area Head, Apostle Michael Collins Asiedu underscored the importance of counselling as a tool for restoration and bringing hope using two case studies of how through counselling, intervention was brought to the lives of two church members who were in crisis.
‘If you observe our members carefully, you would see that many of them have issues and for some of them, giving them a listening hear and offering counselling would help,” he added.
Some of the topics treated at the seminar included Guidance and Counselling, Understanding the Personality of the Congregation, Personality Identification where participants used a personality identification kit to discover their real personalities (temperaments), stages in counselling, counselling skills and techniques and ethical considerations in counselling.
In addition, there were group discussions on practical issues which needed counselling, insightful interactive sessions, as well as case study simulations where participants were made to apply the tools, learnt in the simulated contexts.
At the end of the workshop, certificates were duly presented to participants with recommendations for every district to institute a counselling unit under the leadership of the District Minister and his wife.
Report by: Pastor Kwasi Asante Annor, Kodie District
