Crabb And Worthing: A Comparative Analysis

The third difference between authors: The third way that Crabb and Worthing differ is in their strategies and guidelines for marital counseling. Crabb’s strategy for building marital unity in a couple is based on three building blocks: grace, commitment, and acceptance. In Crabb’s section on grace is where he addresses the importance of hope in marital counseling. Before the responsibilities of marriage can be regarded as inviting opportunity rather than pointless duty, the individuals must be hopeful in the healing of their marriage. As is the standard with Crabb, he attaches hope to biblical obedience. If the couple has a foundation of hope from which to earnestly strive for biblical living, then even the worst marriages can be healed.
Crabb aims to build hope in the individual by assisting them in being aware of God’s presence in their life and leading them to the realization that they can directly approach God with our emotions. From the foundation of hope, a couple can build commitment to obedience to God, which ultimately leads to commitment within the relationship. If there is confidence in the sufficiency of God’s grace, then there is strength to commit to being obedient to God, and obedience to God means persisting in even the most difficult times of marriage. This commitment must be more than lifeless, mechanical actions. Lifeless commitment indicates a deficient belief in God’s goodness. This returns to Crabb’s emphasis on hope from an awareness of God’s presence and His character. From grace and commitment, a couple can accept one another. Couple’s must respond to interactions with a decision to minister to one another rather than manipulate one another for personal gain. Acceptance involves a decision to minister with the absence of the negative feelings that interfere with forgiveness. The shift from manipulation to ministering demands a shift from bitterness and forced kindness to freely give love and forgiveness. A person’s ability to forgive is grounded in their full appreciation of God’s forgiveness. Even though these are “building blocks” that Crabb uses for couples in marriage counseling, each of these elements is dependent on the individual having a right relationship with God.

Worthington’s strategy for his hope-focused marriage guide is to correct weaknesses in valuing love, faith, and work.
The target for change is based on an assessment of the couple, with an extensive collection of sensible, powerful, planned interventions flexibly used in sessions. He aims to apply faith working through love. This is founded on scripture depicting God’s pattern for helping people mature (Galations 5:5-6). Worthington defines love as a willingness to value and to avoid devaluing people that springs from a caring, other-focused heart. This strategy involves fostering hope and motivation, showing tangible ways to change, and strengthening the couple’s resolve to wait on God’s work in their marriage. His structure for counseling consists of no more than 10 sessions, each with assessment, in-session interventions, and homework assignments. These interventions are physical with verbal processing and should be focused and choreographed toward promoting the strategy of faith working through love, giving hope to the couple. Worthington focuses the interventions in nine typical areas of conflict: central beliefs and values, core vision, confession/forgiveness, communication, conflict resolution, cognition, closeness, complicating factors, and commitment. Focus in these areas can help target, address, and resolve the weaknesses and emotionally negative pitfalls that the couple needs to work through. Worthington and Crabb has a few areas in which they find common ground here – namely commitment and forgiveness. However, Worthington’s strategy and structure is much more defined, offering an outlined guide, tools, and resources for counselors to use and build
on.