Overview

Biblical Counselling and African Cultural Commonalities was driven by my desire to gain a deeper understanding of African culture in order to become a more effective biblical counsellor in the African context. I also sought to enhance the usefulness of others and to provide a model for other biblical counsellors in Africa and beyond. This model would allow them to examine the cultures in which they live and understand them from a theological and biblical counselling perspective. My generative literature review exposed a void in cultural research in the biblical counselling history, literature and training. This gap was evident even after the movement became self-critical and identified areas requiring new developments. In the absence of any prior biblical counselling analysis of cultural features, I recognised the need to employ cultural theology to better understand culture and enhance data-gathering and interpretation in biblical counselling methodology. I developed a cultural analytical framework that allowed me to analyse cultural features generally, theologically, and as a biblical counsellor.When selecting African cultural customs to analyse, I found that existing literature, such as African discipleship materials, African Traditional Religion, philosophy, and ethics, while detailed in African cultural issues, did not contain data that met the needs of biblical counselling analysis. Discipleship material tends to be general, long-term, and extensive, whereas this analysis required data suited to the individual, immediate, and intensive approach of biblical counselling. This highlighted the need for new empirical research. I chose a qualitative case study, using semi-structured interviews as the instrument, focusing on African members of participating Gauteng evangelical churches. In designing the research, I also developed a research ethics policy that was approved by a professional ethics lawyer, ensuring it met ethical and legal standards in South Africa.Given that biblical counselling is still largely unknown in South Africa, it became necessary to construct a biblical counselling epistemology for this new context. I based this on the time-tested Justified True Belief epistemological framework, incorporating Van Tillian transcendental epistemology. The primary reason for studying African Psychology in the literature review was to examine its epistemological foundation. Comparing the new biblical counselling epistemology to that of African Psychology, I concluded that biblical counselling stands on a far firmer epistemological foundation, earning it the right to a valid, independent epistemological jurisdiction in South Africa.The fifty-two interviews conducted, representing thirteen languages and seventeen churches, revealed a remarkable trend. By a wide margin, interviewees identified African cultural community, secrecy, respect, and marriage as what I term the 'big four' African cultural commonalities. Additionally, there were eleven significantly smaller categories of data, some representing African cultural commonalities and others not. All audio and interview notes were transcribed, categorised, synthesised, and cleaned according to ethical standards before being analysed generally, theologically, and through a biblical counselling cultural analysis.In conclusion, this research has achieved its intended purpose. It has significantly deepened my understanding of African culture and made me a more effective biblical counsellor. I trust it will also assist others in doing the same and that this research will serve as a model for biblical counsellors worldwide who wish to gain a deeper biblical understanding of the cultures in which they live.

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After serving in the military as an operational medic in South Africa and Namibia, and working as a paramedic in Johannesburg, Alan managed a Christian rehabilitation centre in South Africa for seven-and-a-half years from 2000. He began to study theology in 1998 and biblical counselling when he discovered it in 1999 both privately and formally. He studied through Life Enrichment Ministries, the Bible Institute of Kalk Bay, Christ Seminary, Grace School of Ministry under Dr Mack, and South African Theological Seminary. While serving as a student assignment evaluator for Dr Mack at GSM, SMTI and Mukhanyo Theological College for 11 years, he completed his ACBC certification under Dr Mack's supervision. Biblical Counselling and African Cultural Commonalities is Alan's initial contribution to the Biblical Counselling Movement, particularly the biblical counselling community in South Africa. He is a founding member of Living Hope Church Pretoria, where he serves as the counselling pastor/elder. He teaches systematic theology at the African Bible Training Centre and has written two other books which have now been made available for free download on his website graceunlimited.co.za. Alan was happily married to Charleen for 19 years until she died unexpectedly in 2012. From this marriage Alan has two adult daughters.

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