I was recently talking with a fellow alumnus of my doctoral programme. She is the head of a psychology department at a Christian University in Northern California. As we were talking, she stated that people on her campus were interested in exploring the relationship between Christianity and counselling. I thought 'I've been exploring that for years, even before I entered the field of clinical psychology'.

Here's what I think at the current moment.

One could say that Christianity is one religion among many. In our current global climate, religion has become a cause of concern and an attraction of interest. Terrorists are religious. Wars have been fought because of religion. Whacko, right wing, religious fanatics (I love to say that even if I think it's a stereotype) hide in bunkers in Montana at the same time that the American Psychological Association has been publishing a series of books on spirituality, the role of spirituality in clinical practice, and the parameters of best practice for the integration of spirituality in psychotherapy.

All the way to the left and all the way to the right in regard to the role of religion/spirituality in clinical psychology/counselling would be to miss landing in the boat. The boat floats in the middle where a lot more grey resides. People like simple, black and white answers, but truth lies in the grey. And I don't know about you, but I prefer landing IN the boat instead of in the water to either side of the boat.

Having said that, Christianity is the one religion I know the best, so I'll talk about that one. What are some truths that exist in the grey?

Christianity is both an institutionalised, organised creation of humankind – a religion – and it is a dynamic relationship with God. People get mixed up about these things. They often think that participating in the institution qualifies them to spend eternity with God. What qualifies one to spend eternity with God, in the Christian worldview, is a personal trust in Jesus developed over time during a personal and actual relationship with Jesus. I know; He died. But remember that he was raised from the dead? I know, He went off to heaven and He's supposed to come back some day, so how can you have a relationship with someone who is absent? Jesus said that He would not leave us alone, that He would come to us, and that he would send the Holy Spirit to be with us and in us. Thus, through the Holy Spirit a Christian has ongoing intimacy with God.

That leads to the first point of integration between Christianity and counselling, and I am talking about the second kind of Christianity, the ongoing intimacy with God; God is present in the counselling session. When client and therapist who is a Christian meet, God convenes a three-person field. God is in the midst and available for psychological, emotional and physical healing.

Second, God made us in His image, so that means we share to some extent in His attributes, and the foremost of these, to me, is that we are relational. The second most salient factor relevant to positive outcomes in psychotherapy and counselling is the relationship between the client and the therapist. It accounts for about one-third of all positive outcomes. Thus, what develops in counselling is a genuine relationship between therapist and client, not a fabricated, for-effect relationship, but the real meeting of two human beings in which both client and therapist risk being affected by the other. The therapist cannot remain in a distant, 'professional' stance and pretend he or she is untouched, having only a 'professional' influence on the client. Contemporary psychodynamic therapists have realised that the relationship between client and therapist is intersubjective in nature. It's a two way street.

Third, the most salient factor relevant to positive outcomes in therapy is what the client him or herself brings to it. These are all the factors and dynamics in what my gestalt colleagues call 'the field'. The field is all things having effect, and it is also a sphere of influence. There can be overlapping fields for any given client. Thus, one person might come because she is carrying unfinished business about having been sexually abused as a child, difficulty with a currently overbearing and demanding male supervisor at work, and concern that her marriage lacks the intimacy and warmth, even the passion with which it began. She comes well educated and sophisticated. She has travelled extensively and survived in all her various experiences by being hypervigilant and oriented to detail, but after several years of approaching life like that, she is feeling rather worn out, and she lacks enthusiasm. She watched her parents limp through a loveless marriage, and she is determined not to live like that; she will either find a way to solve her marriage issues or she will divorce her husband. Meanwhile, prior to coming to her first therapy session, the world economy goes down the drain.

These are the kinds of things in the field factors that clients bring to therapy, and they account, in one way or another, for about 45 percent of positive outcomes in therapy.

How do field factors relate to Christianity? The field is a pneumatic field, a 'God-in' field. God is part of this equation and has been all the way along. He is not an add-on or a sidebar.

Space does not allow a more detailed description of how the pneumatic field operates; suffice it to say that the very fact that a given and specific client comes to a given and specific therapist is something to be considered in the pneumatic field.

God brings to me people and there are times when I know they have been brought, almost as if God were holding them by the hand and telling me, 'Now, here is my child for whom my Son died…' or 'Here is someone I love dearly and have cried over with compassion; please attend carefully to them and be open to Me and what I might do through your meeting with them'.

That is, quite frankly, Christianity at its best, so I am privileged as a psychotherapist to experience it.