Chapala Theological Seminary Counseling Situations

The Dying Individual

Where the first course taught the ten steps, this course walks one situation through them. We begin at a bedside.

The Situation

A man comes to the church already carrying an incurable disease. He joins, and over months a friendship forms — a standing weekly breakfast, two men slowly becoming friends. Then comes the hospital room, and the breakfasts give way to bedside visits. The counselor's task there is not to fix what cannot be fixed but to stand inside a dying man's two battles and not flinch. For a dying person is fighting on two fronts at once: a physical battle against the failure of his body, which medicine may slow but cannot finally win, and a spiritual battle of the soul — the battle that matters most, and the one a pastor is actually equipped to help him win. The counselor can lose the first battle alongside him and still see the second one won. One minister, sitting with such a man, later spoke of his joy that the man had settled all spiritual matters before the battleground of agony fell upon him; then he slowly and softly repeated the Twenty-Third Psalm, and the man squeezed his hand and in a short time went to be with the Lord. (Christianity Today, June 9, 1967, p. 4.)

The Stages of Dying and Grief

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first described five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — drawn from her work with dying patients; grief researchers later applied the same arc to the bereaved. The parallel is the heart of this section: the dying person and the family who will survive him often walk the same emotional road, and a counselor who recognizes it is far less likely to misread the person on it.

For the dying person the road often runs like this: denial ("there must be a mistake; not me"); anger ("why me?"), often aimed at God or the doctors or the family — which the counselor must not mistake for rebellion against God, for it is usually grief over one's own life; bargaining, the secret deals struck with God for a little more time; depression, the heavy sorrow as the loss becomes real and the man withdraws; and finally acceptance, a quiet readiness to go.

The family walks those same five stages — and, crucially, often out of step with the patient. A dying man may arrive at acceptance while his wife is still in denial or his son still in anger; one is ready to say goodbye while the others cannot yet bear to hear it. That mismatch is itself a source of friction at the bedside, and naming it gently — helping each understand where the other is on the road — is some of the most useful work the counselor does.

The Ten Steps, Applied

Step One · Stage 1

Determine the Time and the Place

At a deathbed the counselor rarely chooses the time or the place; the hospital, the disease, and the hour choose for him. Yet the step does not vanish — it bends. The "place" with this man was prepared long before the hospital room, at a breakfast table where, week by week, trust was built and a friendship formed. Presence at the bedside is possible now only because presence came earlier, when it cost less. Where there has been no such groundwork, the counselor moves slowly and gently. And the ordinary cautions still hold — where the dying person is of the opposite gender, the counselor does not visit alone behind a closed door, but with a family member, a nurse, or another believer present.

Step Two · Stage 1

Listen — "Why Don't You Tell Me About It?"

The dying have things to say and a shrinking amount of time in which to say them, and the greatest gift the counselor brings is often not words but the willingness to receive them. Resist the urge to fill every silence with reassurance; reassurance offered too quickly is usually for the counselor's comfort, not the dying man's. The first thing a man says is rarely the thing weighing most heavily on him; the real fear — of pain, of leaving his family unprovided for, of dying itself, of meeting God — surfaces only when he senses the counselor is unhurried and unafraid of his honesty. Let him talk about his life, his regrets, his hopes for those he leaves behind, and listen for which of the two battles is heavier today. Here the Rogerian gift of unhurried attention is at its strongest — the counselor listens like Rogers, but, as the introduction warned, does not stop at listening.

Step Three · Stage 1

Clarify the Situation — "Just What Do You Mean?"

Once the man has spoken, the counselor gently makes sure he has understood. People at the end of life, like everyone else, often name one trouble and mean another: a man may speak of his pain and mean his dread; may speak of dying and mean his worry for his wife after he is gone; may speak of God's silence and mean his own unconfessed guilt. Knowing the stages helps here — a question that sounds like denial, or anger that seems aimed at the counselor, may simply be the man working through his own grief rather than stating a settled belief. A gentle "Tell me what you mean by that" keeps the counselor from carrying the right help to the wrong battle.

Step Four · Stage 1

Investigate Previous Counseling

Before the counselor brings spiritual help, he finds out what has already been settled and what has not. Has this man made his peace with God, or is that the unfinished work the whole visit turns on? Has another minister, a hospital chaplain, or a family member already walked part of this road with him? In the source account, one minister's particular joy was that the man "had settled all spiritual matters before the battleground of agony fell upon him" — that is, the most important counseling had been finished while there was still strength to do it. Knowing where a man stands keeps the counselor from re-fighting a battle already won, or, worse, from assuming a peace that is not really there. It also tells him when the need exceeds his competence and the faithful step is to involve those who can.

Step Five · Stage 2

Responsibility — "Where Have You Failed?"

Of all the steps, this one is handled most gently at a deathbed. "Where have you failed?" is never, here, an accusation; a dying man has run out of time to be lectured. But the question still has a tender, redemptive form: is there anything left to set right while there is still time to set it right? This is the moment for confession, for the asking and granting of forgiveness, for reconciliation, for words long left unsaid. The counselor does not force these; he opens the door and lets the man walk through it if he will. The aim is not guilt but release — that the man might lay down what can still be laid down, and meet death with his accounts settled and his heart at peace, rather than carrying old and heavy burdens into his final hours.

Step Six · Stage 2

Model the Role

A dying man, and the family gathered around the bed, watch the counselor more closely than he knows. They are looking to see whether the man of God is himself at peace, because if he is not, his words of peace will ring hollow. So he carries himself with a steady, unhurried, unafraid faith; he does not flinch at the sight or the smell of dying, does not rush the visit, does not let panic or his own grief master his face. His steadiness is itself a sermon. In modeling the calm assurance of one who believes that to depart is to be with Christ, he lends the dying man and the watching family a faith they can, in that hard moment, lean on and borrow.

Step Seven · Stage 2

Review the Alternatives

Even a dying man has choices left, and part of honoring him is laying the real ones before him rather than deciding for him. What does he want of the time remaining? A reconciliation he has long put off; a blessing spoken over a son or a daughter; a word of instruction or comfort for his wife; a wish about his funeral; the Scriptures and hymns he wants read and sung at the end. There are spiritual alternatives too: to spend his last strength in fear, or in trust and the quiet settling of his soul. The counselor presents these gently, as a friend laying out what is still possible, and lets the man choose while he still can. Choices a man makes for himself are owned in a way that choices made for him never are, and at the very end that ownership is a dignity the counselor must guard.

Step Eight · Stage 2

Explore the Outcomes

With each alternative, the counselor walks honestly through where it leads, without false cheer and without false dread. To leave a quarrel unhealed is to leave a wound in those who survive; to seek reconciliation now is to give them a memory of grace that will comfort them for years. The counselor is honest that he cannot promise healing of the body, and he does not pretend the dying is not real; but he can promise that God works all things together for good for those who love Him, and that the One who conquered death walks through it with His own.

Step Nine · Stage 2

Supply Information

Now, and not before, the counselor brings the word of God plainly to bear. Scripture read at a deathbed is not a lecture but a lifeline: the Twenty-Third Psalm, read slowly and softly,; the assurance of salvation from John and Romans; the hope of resurrection from First Corinthians. He answers honest questions about what is coming, as truthfully as he can, neither frightening nor falsely soothing. And the family is fighting its own battle in the same room — moving, often, through the very same stages of grief as the dying man, and out of step with him. So the counselor supplies them too: a word of comfort, a plain explanation of what is happening, the assurance that they are not alone, and the quiet example of how a believer faces the end.

Step Ten · Stage 2

Provide Closure

Closure at a deathbed is prayer and a hand held — but it does not end at the bedside. In the source account, the minister "slowly and softly repeated the Twenty-Third Psalm; the man squeezed his hand and in a short time went to be with the Lord." That squeezed hand is closure: a wordless amen between two friends. Yet the counselor's work is not finished when the man dies. The family now enters the hardest stretch of their own grief, and the pastor who walked with the dying must now walk with the bereaved — through the funeral, the first terrible weeks, and the anniversaries that reopen the wound for years. Closure here is not a clean stop but a handing-off: the end of one ministry, to the dying, and the beginning of another, to those left behind. That second ministry — to the grieving family — is the subject of Unit 7.