My Story – Chapter 6

I started again to accept counselees. Soon I was asked to join a Bible school as a teacher in Pastoral Care and Missions. We agreed that I would do that on a ´half-time` basis. The other halftime I could accept invitations to minister wherever I would be invited and also establish my counseling ministry.

In 1977 I became aware that my training in counseling had been insufficient. Evangelical believers didn´t go easily to a secular psychologist or psychiatrist. I had several clients who were survivors of early sexual abuse. I realized that some people actually looked up to me like I was a psychiatrist myself.

With more and more specialized needs coming my way, I felt I had to take more time to study. 

I didn’t fit in the traditional European evangelical theological training.

My training was more American oriented thus I wondered about immigrating to the USA. At that time a friend gave me a folder of International Correspondence Institute in Brussels. They had what I needed. The next 3 years I studied every week 20 hours, usually early in the morning and late and night, in addition to having my daily work. I loved the study. I graduated in 1980 and got my B.A in Bible and Missions.

With that, I was accepted for my Masters’ study at Fuller in Pasadena. There I started to see the missiological approach to counseling abuse survivors. Not one abuse survivor has the same story. They all develop their own twisted cultural view of the world and themselves. I saw some patterns, but above all, I became aware that they needed first to meet the Peace of Jesus, as ´their body remembered what happened. Then the light of Jesus could wash them clean through His blood that flew from His body on Calvary, and gives them a new sense of purity´.

I became too tired to keep this intense schedule. Through a secret fund-drive by my wife, I was able to go for several summers to the USA for ´in residence´ studies. I graduated in 1987 and continued to work in the Netherlands and also internationally. I had for several years a pastoral column in a charismatic monthly. I developed a Pastoral Training Course Helping through Blessing, aimed at helping traumatized people. I became more and more known as someone who has specialized in helping people who were in their youth sexually abused. A Foundation was established which now carries the name “Zegenend Helpen” (Helping through Blessing). People learned to listen to abuse survivors. To be there with them, believe them and encourage their faith in a healing process. Some others caught my vision to teach the courses I had developed as well and continued to do this, until today.

Youth With A Mission in Norway went through a rough time, and I was invited to help there in teaching and to assist the leadership in their task. I went for about 10 years about 4-6 times per year to be with them for 8-10 days. In this way, I also got to know the Lutheran Church. In one communion service, I discovered that `bread and wine´ were much more than symbols: they represented for me the reality of the Body of Jesus.

Hospital Christian Fellowship invited me in 1988 to teach a weekend in Denmark. The chairman there was Dr. Vibeke Möller. She became so angry when she heard me speak about sexual abuse. I smiled and said: “Vibeke, I bless your anger, it is a wonderful force. Use it and do something about sexual abuse in Denmark”. She resigned that week from her teaching job in the Nurses Training Institute in Arhus, and we both started an organization to help abuse survivors. I had been going around Europe teaching Pastoral oriented people about the topic of sexual abuse. We discussed at one time, together in Switzerland that it might be better to start teaching in one place, inviting people to come, rather than touring around Europe. I wrote “From Shame to Peace” in English for translation in Danish.  A proper English translation of my Téo-English followed. Then in German, Finish, French, Dutch, Egyptian/Arabic and Myanmar/Burmese. This is also the theological/ psychological handbook of our schools. Our first teaching week started in the summer of 1992. This has grown now into a two-level school. ISARPAC (1) for lay people, from housewives to people with university training, with 4 times a one-intensive-week of studies in August and one weekend in the time between summers + homework assignments and supervision in their own country. The second level IPSICC (2) is for people who want to become European recognized psychotherapists, through the Danish Psychotherapists organization, with a specialization in helping sexual abuse survivors. ESARPAC has now daughter schools in France, India, Egypt, and Myanmar.

A Charismatic Roman Catholic group in Salzburg was very open to Evangelicals to participate. They invited me to share with them in 1996. The result was a ten-year relationship. I had been teaching about `Helping through Blessing` and how to help people who were severely traumatized. At the end of my first series of five monthly study days, there was a Mass planned.

The priest officiating in this Mass discussed with me its´ meaning. I shared with him what God had shown me ten years before in Norway, about communion: that bread and wine were much more than symbols. He exclaimed,

He helped me in a liturgical dress and gave me a task. I still remember the peace and the wonder of the worship in this Eucharist service. Since then I have attended the Mass every time that I was in Austria. It helped me to leave all the dirt I had heard, on the altar and I could start anew over again, not too much troubled by the often-messy stories I had listened to the day before.

After working for about 10 years in Austria, it seemed that it became time to change my working area again. A large goodbye party was held, with many friends attending. I had still one invitation left. In St. Pölten was the Emmaus center (for people at the border of society) I was invited to tour the place. The founder and director Charly Rotenschlager decided to use this opportunity so I could at least teach one day for the staff and have an open evening. This was at the time that the St.Pölten Priest seminary was closed down by the newly assigned bishop Klaus Küng as they found thousands of child abuse photos on computers plus many pictures unbecoming for a Priest Seminary. The topic was ´hot.´ About 40 people wanted to still receive training from me. There was a social worker Marlis Resch who took it upon her to organize the course. I planned to postpone my leaving Austria for half a year. I had only one request. I wanted that bishop Klaus Küng would fully support me. He had by that time received my book, and he gave his full support and a very touching personal blessing.

Since then I haven´t left the diocese anymore. With at least two courses each year, one in Spring and one in the Fall, plus other courses in Austria and Germany, Marlis Resch and I were busy. Marlis has been my closest co-worker and by now a retired social worker, counselor, and accredited supervisor.