In addition to over 100 books, Jay Adams wrote scores of essays and delivered hundreds of lectures during his life. Many of those essays and lectures were compiled into stand-alone books which have gone out of print over the years. Other essays were published in various journals, festschrifts, booklets, magazines, and compilations edited by others. With this series, INS is pleased to be able to bring these essays back into print.

This initial volume contains lectures Dr. Adams delivered during the first two years following the publication of Competent to Counsel. That book turned the Christian counseling world upside down and because Adams was a skillful public speaker, [1] he was not able to accept the countless invitations to speak and present his views in person. As a result, he decided to put many of the lectures he was giving into print.

The Big Umbrella was the title of one of these lectures and became the title of his first book of lectures, published in 1972. This volume contains all of the lectures originally published in that book and has been edited only for clarity and updating some archaic 1970s language.

[1] Adams' PhD was in speech, not counseling.