A Church Of Biblical Counseling
In yesterday’s post, Twenty-Four Disciple-Making Champions, I introduced you to the two dozen best practice churches that I researched for Equipping Counselors for Your Church. Throughout each chapter of the book, we learn from these Disciple-Making Champions. In chapter one, we learned from two churches about being a church of biblical counseling, not just a church with biblical counseling.
Steve Viars, Sr. Pastor and Rob Green, Counseling Pastor, Faith Baptist Church
Steve Viars and Rob Green are just two of many leaders of the biblical counseling ministry at Faith Baptist Church in Lafayette, Indiana. At Faith, you find no discrepancy between what happens in the pulpit, what occurs in formal biblical counseling sessions, and what transpires in informal spiritual conversations.
“Our goal is to be a church of biblical counseling—we want these truths to permeate everything we do…. Call it counseling; call it specialized discipleship. It doesn’t matter. We want to be a progressive sanctification machine, a discipleship factory. We want people growing and changing where God’s Word and Spirit make each of us more like Jesus Christ through careful attention to the inner person. That is what brings honor to God…. The goal of our biblical counseling training just like the goal of all our ministries is to glorify God by winning people to Jesus Christ (for unsaved counselees) and equipping them to be more faithful disciples (for saved counselees).”
Pastor Bill Goode, the Sr. Pastor who preceded Pastor Viars, and who launched Faith’s Biblical Counseling Ministry, clung to the same vision.
The local church is a counseling ministry. The question is not, “Should Christians counsel each other?” because they already are. Most Christians are ministering to one another on a personal basis. So the question is, “What kind of counseling is offered? How effective is the ministry? Do people have confidence that the Word of God has answers to everyday life problems?”
Pastor Mike Wilkerson, Pastor of Biblical Living, Mars Hill Church
Mike Wilkerson’s title screams Ephesians 4 vision: Pastor of Biblical Living. Mike pastors at Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. He makes plain their biblical philosophy. “When I say we envision being a church of biblical counseling, that’s just to say that one-anothering is normative in our church life.”
Pastor Wilkerson uses several terms to show the synergy between the pulpit ministry of the Word and the personal ministry of the Word. He describes the pulpit ministry of the Word as the “air wars” in which sermons bomb the shores, softening and preparing hearts for the personal ministry of the Word. He calls that the “ground wars” in which biblical counseling, small group ministry, and one-anothering provide the hand-to-hand combat in helping each member of the Body to be disciple-makers.
“When we re-launched the ministry, since our Sr. Pastor initiated the process, and he desired unity, we all agreed on the biblical direction. So we had the Air War covered—the biblical philosophy of ministry embedded in the preaching. The Ground War is an equal priority. We’re committed to building it well—theologically and relationally—and having it unified with the Air War (the pulpit).”
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What is the difference between a church of biblical counseling and a church with biblical counseling?
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