Learning to Listen: Essential Skills for Every Counselor

Learning to Listen offers counselors the biblical principles and core skills necessary to become the active, compassionate listeners counselees need.  

Counselors have a high calling to love and care for people who are struggling in a fallen world. A wise biblical counselor draws out the deep attitudes of the heart and encourages their counselees toward growth into the image of Christ. Learning about specific problems, sharing Scripture, and sitting with suffering people are all important parts of counseling. While all of these elements are essential to the counseling task, counseling will ultimately fail without the simple yet vital skill of listening well.

In Learning to Listen, biblical counselor Joseph Hussung gives readers a theology of listening and explains the purpose, posture, and practice of this essential counseling skill. If counselors do not truly hear the hearts of their counselees, they won’t understand the nuanced struggles at play nor how to apply biblical principles. Listening well enables counselors to love well and understand with empathy.

• Outlines specific practices including sample questions, reflections, affirmation, confrontation, body language, and vocal tone.
• Offers both a theology of listening and practical application of skills.
• Learn from Jesus what a listening heart attitude is like.

AUTHOR

Joseph Hussung, MDiv, DMin, is the Director of Recruitment and a Senior Counseling Supervisor at Fieldstone Counseling, where he counsels regularly, supervises the remote counseling team, and directs Fieldstone’s residency program. He previously spent over fifteen years on staff at churches in various discipleship and pastoral roles. He is the author of Learning to Listen and is a regular contributor to the Biblical Counseling Coalition blog. Joe and his wife, Sarah, have three children and live in Hopkinsville, KY.