EFFECTS OF LENGTH OF SERVICE AND POST-SEMINARY COUNSELING EDUCATION ON INTEGRATION OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY FOR PARISH PASTORS IN THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (ASCRIPTION, ORDINATION, PASTORAL

The purpose of this study was to survey parish pastors in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to investigate the effects of the length of their professional service and the amount of their counseling education acquired since seminary graduation upon their style of integration of psychological counseling and Christian theology. The survey was based upon Carter's (1977) four models of the integration of psychology and theology: psychology against theology, psychology of theology, psychology parallels theology, and psychology integrates theology.;The subjects provided demographic and background information, and completed a survey questionnaire indicating their level of agreement with 19 descriptive statements Carter (1977) used to categorize styles of integration of psychological counseling and Christian theology.;The study indicated that neither length of professional service nor amount of post-seminary counseling training were significant at the .05 level. Carter's (1977) 19 descriptive statements failed to discriminate clearly the style of integration of psychological counseling and Christian theology for Presbyterian parish pastors. One implication of the results is that an accurate scale is needed to do further research into styles of integration. Another implication is that Presbyterian parish pastors are not being adequately trained to meet the expectations of counseling competence ascribed to them by parishioners.