Change in the Classroom

Jay Adams's How to Help People Change: A Review

Jay E. Adams, How to Help People Change: The Four-Step Biblical Process (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986).

Dr. Jay Adams was first, and foremost, a counselor.¹ Adams earned degrees from Reformed Episcopal Seminary, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Missouri where he earned his doctorate. Adams served in the pastorate, and continued teaching through the Institute for Nouthetic Studies, where he promoted a Biblical approach to counseling and psychological studies. He was also the author of numerous books, such as Competent to Counsel, Theology of Counseling, and Handbook of Church Discipline, to name but a few.

In How to Help People Change, Adams seeks to offer a four-step process that places the Bible at the foundation of any counseling session, because “whenever well-meant help is not biblically directed, it does more harm than good” (viii). These steps essentially boil down to four jobs for the counselor: teaching, conviction, correction, and discipline. This process is derived from 2 Timothy 3:13-17 and provides Adams’s general view on how people change. Teaching is the first step for an obvious reason: one must know what God says in His Word if change is to take place (51). Once this knowledge has been imparted, it must take root in the individual. For change that is not brought about through the conviction of God’s Word will not be the kind of change that lasts (113). But conviction must be followed by correction, for this is the “pivotal point of change, in which the transfer of thought and life from non-biblical to biblical life begins” (146). All of this builds to the idea of righteous living, which can only be accomplished through solid, biblical training (178). Each of these ideas works in tandem with the one before it, and the entire process should be followed in order to help people change.

Teaching in the milieu is perhaps one of the most difficult things in any classroom, though my own experience teaching Great Books courses showed a particular difficulty. While some in the humanities classroom might suggest that the materials covered are irrelevant, that was not what I found. the materials were often incredibly germane, with students seeing in Homer or Plato or Augustine someone with whom they could connect. But often because there is so much to cover, that the milieu is hardly broached as a topic. Knowing what the “actual situations” my students were facing each day remained a challenge (83). There is a layer of superficiality when they might share something in class.

When I read Adams’s book, I was left asking, “how do I overcome this shallowness?” One step was to include more self-reflection writing, putting the students in a situation where they have to be honest and open to succeed as mere regurgitation could not bring them a coveted grade. But I became convinced that Adams is right in the sense that students will learn “better, faster, and more eagerly” while putting class lessons to work in their daily living if they can see themselves in the literature or history or theology that is covered (84). Adams also clearly illuminates the end goal of teaching and counseling: namely, righteousness (178). This is something that is easy to say, but harder to practice. How does the reading of Hesiod or Dante inculcate righteous thoughts or actions in one’s students? Only by intentionally working toward that goal will such training take place. Adams’s emphasis on Biblical principles, and his deft use of Scripture, served me well in the classroom for many years. I continue to pray that my former students saw this in our readings and discussions, bringing them closer to God’s designs for each one of them.

1. The following information was found on Dr. Adams’s website, The Institute for Nouthetic Studies (http://www.nouthetic.org/about-ins/our-faculty/8-about-ins/6-jay-adams-biography).