Blog Tour Morsels, Part Three: Equipping Counselors for Your Church

I’m very grateful for the many bloggers who have reviewed Equipping Counselors for Your Church.  

I’ve collated links to a dozen of the reviews and interviews. They’ll be running throughout this first week of 2012 with brief “snippets” from each review and a link back to the full review.

In Part One, I posted samplers from David Murray, Brad Hambrick, and Thabiti Anyabwile.

In Part Two, I posted summaries from Jonathan Holmes, Paul Tautges, and Andy Naselli.

Today you can enjoy review “morsels” from Mark Tubbs, Phil Monroe, and Mark Kelly.

Discerning Reader/Mark Tubbs, Part One 

“Equipping Counselors for Your Church is the climax of Bob’s many decades of work in the biblical counseling and pastoring fields. What this book is not: a resource only for senior pastors and denominational executives. It is also not a book about creating and equipping a ‘professional’ corps of biblical counselors. No, Bob’s vision is far more sweeping than that. Rather, this book is an apology for both formal and informal biblical counseling in the church, which Bob defines biblically as every member speaking the truth in love to each another. The aim is to cultivate Christians who are ‘4C’ disciples: biblically convicted, Christlike in character, competent in counseling, and an integral part of Christian community.”

Discerning Reader/Mark Tubbs, Part Two 

“This section on enlisting was refreshing on numerous levels. Kellemen employs Nehemiah’s leadership qualities in a fresher and more faithful way than many preachers through the decades have done. He uses Old Testament Nehemiah and New Testament Paul in harmonious counterpoint, demonstrating how these two leaders were themselves changed people so that they in turn could shepherd others through change. The primary change being, as Kellemen is at pains to point out, reconciliation with God leading to whole-life worship.”

Mark Kelly 

“Dr. Kellemen is a dear friend from whom I have learned much through his resources he’s printed, email conversations we’ve had, and face to face discussions about a variety of topics. I pray that our own church, Calvary Baptist, would consider using Equipping Counselors for Your Church as we move forward in evangelism and discipleship.”

Phil Monroe 

“Why is Equipping Counselors for Your Church an important book? Here’s why:

• Most prior books on this topic present lay counseling either as an anemic listening only task or speak only in theological terms and fail to actually train lay counselors to listen well. This book considers both the biblical basis for lay counseling AND is concerned about listening skills as well.

• Most prior books forget to bring the WHOLE church along in the vision of biblical counseling. Bob has the readers consider the church culture and health. If the church (leaders)aren’t buying in to this, there won’t be a counseling ministry.

• Bob focuses on the character of the counselor. This is HUGE. What’s worse than a poorly trained counselor? One who is well-trained but arrogant and un-reflective.

• Bob covers practical matters of a counseling ministry including the ethics of lay counseling. This is extremely important if a church doesn’t want to make mistakes that could lead to lawsuits.”

The Rest of the Story

Tomorrow you can read some “samplers” from Elizabeth Hankins, Julie Ganschow, and Conrad Yap.

Join the Conversation

What resources do you recommend for equipping one-another ministers in the local church?

Note: If you are a blogger and would like to review Equipping Counselors for Your Church, email rpm dot ministries @ gmail dot com

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth 

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Blog Tour, Book Review, Equipping, Equipping Counselors for Your Church

Blog Tour Morsels, Part Two: Equipping Counselors for Your Church

I’m very grateful for the many bloggers who have reviewed Equipping Counselors for Your Church.

I’ve collated links to a dozen of the reviews and interviews. They’ll be running throughout this first week of 2012 with brief “snippets” from each review and a link back to the full review.

In Part One, I posted samplers from David Murray, Brad Hambrick, and Thabiti Anyabwile.

Today you can enjoy review “morsels” from Jonathan Holmes, Paul Tautges, and Andy Naselli.

Jonathan Holmes 

“In this seminal and landmark work for the church, Equipping Counselors for Your Church, Dr. Bob Kellemen has given us a go-to manual for raising up a new generation of counselors while nurturing the ones currently in our care. Built and crafted from years of experience and based on the solid foundation of God’s Word to us, this book will be a vital, practical, useful manual for generations to come.”

Paul Tautges, Post One 

“Equipping Counselors for Your Church is like having a personal conversation with a private consultant who is committed to coming alongside church leaders—walking step-by-step and hand-in-hand—to equip us to empower the Body of Christ toward biblical, one-another ministry that progressively moves believers toward Christlikeness. I highly recommend it!”

Paul Tautges, Post Two

“Today, I draw your attention to one of the best pages in the book, which calls us to the mutual ministry of comfort. Bob effectively argues for balance in two areas of biblical counseling: confrontation and comfort. Both, he rightly affirms, are Scriptural priorities we must grow in as we counsel one another. Here’s a lengthy quote that received a smiley face and a ‘Yes!’ in the margin of my copy. In the context of this quote the author has just finished explaining the importance of noutheteo, warning, and now urges for the equally-important ministry of parakaleo, coming alongside in mutual ministry to comfort and strengthen one another.”

Andy Naselli 

“Endorsed by Paul Tripp, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Ed Welch, and several others, Kellemen’s 4E’s teach: 1.) Envisioning God’s Ministry, 2.) Enlisting God’s Ministers for Ministry. 3.) Equipping Godly Ministers for Ministry, and 4.) Empowering/Employing Godly Ministers for Ministry.”

The Rest of the Story

Tomorrow you can read some “samplers” from Mark Tubbs at The Discerning Reader, Phil Monroe, and Mark Kelly.

Join the Conversation

What resources do you recommend for equipping one-another ministers in the local church?

Note: If you are a blogger and would like to review Equipping Counselors for Your Church, email rpm dot ministries @ gmail dot com

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Blog Tour, Book Review, Equipping, Equipping Counselors for Your Church, One Another Ministry

Blog Tour Morsels, Part One: Equipping Counselors for Your Church

I’m very grateful for the many bloggers who have reviewed Equipping Counselors for Your Church.  

I’ve collated links to a dozen of the reviews and interviews. They’ll be running throughout this first week of 2012 with brief “snippets” from each review and a link back to the full review.

Today you can enjoy review “morsels” from David Murray, Brad Hambrick, and Thabiti Anyabwile.

David Murray, Top Five Books of 2011 

“Bob Kellemen shifted my thinking with this visionary yet practical book. I probably don’t reach up to Bob’s optimism about this task (who could!), but he certainly made me hope and work towards a much greater role for every-member counseling ministry in the local church.”

David Murray, Part One 

“Bob Kellemen is one of the reasons I love America. In fact, to me he is a classic American – enthusiastic, energetic, positive, cheerful, encouraging, stimulating, pioneering, and every other good “-ing” you can think of…. I deeply appreciate Bob’s brief, clear, and no-nonsense style of writing. He doesn’t waste words in pointless theorizing, but is always aiming at the practical and the helpful. It’s not often you find such fine balance and fervent passion combined in one person!”

David Murray, Part Two 

“Bob does not just dream big, he details small. He gets into the detailed practical steps that have to be taken. We’re not left with, “Great idea but how do we do it?” The book is full of bullet points, step-by-step guides, tabulated information, checklists, appendices and real-life case studies. And that practicality is maybe what gives the book so much credibility and persuasiveness. Bob not only draws from almost 30 years of counseling experiences in congregational settings, but has gathered together a ton of “best-practice” ideas from other pastors and churches as well.”

David Murray, Part Three 

“Bob’s exposition of this verse (Romans 15:14) was perhaps my favorite section in his book, and powerfully persuaded me of the biblical grounds and realistic possibility of what he was advocating. This verse is a huge encouragement and challenge to the church of Christ.”

David Murray, Part Four 

“As Bob says, ‘Everyone is a counselor. The question is really whether it’s good or bad counsel.’”

“Yes, it’s a change from thinking ‘I need to call the pastor…’ to ‘I need to call Joe or Mary, etc,’ but it’s a blessed change.”

Brad Hambrick 

Equipping Counselors for Your Church meets a real need in Biblical Counseling – helping churches cultivate a counseling ministry that is tailored to the needs of their particular congregation and community. Over the last several decades Biblical Counseling has produced a large number of excellent resources, but it has not always been clear what a church was supposed to do with those resources. If you want to begin to explore that possibility with your church, I cannot think of a better book to guide you in that process.”

Thabiti Anyabwile 

“Counseling might be the area of pastoral ministry that most quickly produces feelings of inadequacy for pastors. The pitfalls are man. Needs are varied and often complex. The tendency toward self-reliance gets amplified when people come to you in need of answers. Yet, the resources can be few or too difficult to digest in short order. Even pastors who love counseling find themselves emotionally and spiritually drained and in need of help. Bob Kellemen has come along with a very welcome and promising resource, Equipping Counselors for Your Church.”

The Rest of the Story

Tomorrow you can read some “samplers” from Jonathan Holmes, Paul Tautges, and Andy Naselli.

Join the Conversation

What resources do you recommend for equipping one-another ministers in the local church?

Note: If you are a blogger and would like to review Equipping Counselors for Your Church, email rpm dot ministries @ gmail dot com

RPM Ministries: Equipping You to Change Lives with Christ’s Changeless Truth

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Blog Tour, Book Reviews, Equipping, Equipping Counselors for Your Church

Equipped to Counsel 

Note: The following post is featured at the Biblical Counseling Coalition’s Grace & Truth blog site. It is Part 2 of a unique six-part series where six pastors summarize six different ways of equipping biblical counselors in six different churches. 

You can also read Part One by Pastor Deepak Reju: How We Do Biblical Counseling Training in Our Community. 

The Résumé of the Biblical Counselor: The 4Cs

In Equipping Counselors for Your Church, I ask readers to imagine that they are forwarding their résumé to the Holy Spirit, the Divine Counselor. If you did that, what qualifications would you highlight to demonstrate your eligibility to enter the ranks of biblical counselors? What do the Scriptures say? What qualifies a person for biblical counseling? What qualities make your trainees eligible to claim the mantle of soul physician and spiritual friend?

Fortunately, for those of us who train biblical counselors, the Apostle Paul already completed the résumé.

“I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14).

In this verse, the surrounding context, and other biblical passages, we discover the four résumé qualifications of an equipped biblical counselor. They supply the biblical counseling equipping goals and objectives that I have sought to meet in all three churches where I have equipped God’s people.

Read the rest of this post at the Biblical Counseling Coalition: Equipping Counselors for Your Church.

Tags: Biblical Counseling, Biblical Counseling Coalition, Discipleship, Equipping, Equipping Counselors for Your Church

Quotes of Note: Caring Carefully

The following “Quotes of Note” are from Chapters Ten through Twelve of Equipping Counselors for Your Church. These chapters focus on Caring Carefully by Organizing the Organism. For quotes from Chapter One, read God’s Grand Vision for His Church. For quotes from Chapter Two, read Knowing and Loving Those We Serve and Equip. For quotes from Chapters Three and Four read Christ’s Compelling Calling. For quotes from Chapter Five read My First Priority in Ministry. For quotes from Chapter Six read Mobilizing Ministers. For quotes from Chapter Seven read The Résumé of the Biblical Counselor. For quotes from Chapter Eight read What Makes Biblical Counseling Biblical?, Part 1. For Quotes from Chapter Nine Read What Makes Biblical Counseling Biblical?, Part 2. 

• To train biblical counselors we must think like and teach like biblical counselors—always relating truth to life in the context of relationships.

• Biblical counseling training requires transformational teaching: Creative, interactive, engaging joint-exploration and two-way communication of truth (content) related to life (character) and ministry (competence) in the context of relationship (community).

• We must shift our focus from information to transformation. We are no longer asking, “What information do I need to dump and download into my student’s brain?” Instead, we are praying, “Father, how can our time together (home) transform our heads, hearts, and hands?”

• The authentic, intimate small group environment provides the fertile soil in which we nurture competent biblical counselors.

• God-sized dreams bring glory to God, not to us.

• Before God calls us to equip His people (Ephesians 4:11-16), He reminds us that He “is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).

• The primary way to share your story is through word-of-mouth through counselees whose lives have been changed (perhaps we should call it word-of-life).

• We must obey the law of God and the law of the land in the fear of God and not the fear of man.

• When we oversee that our biblical counseling ministry fulfills God’s law of love, then fulfilling the law of the land, while still necessary, will be undemanding in comparison.

• My prayer is that this chapter, like this book, persuades people—like you—to launch and lead 4E training ministries. It can be done, others have, so can you. “Just do it!”

• Change lives with Christ’s changeless truth by equipping God’s people to speak the truth in love.

Join the Conversation 

Which quotes of note about caring carefully stand out to you? Why?

Tags: Church Law, Equipping, Equipping Counselors for Your Church, Quotes

Brad Hambrick Reviews Equipping Counselors for Your Church

Do you want to see your church develop a biblical counseling ministry, but don’t know where to begin? Do you feel like you don’t know what questions you would need to ask or who would need to be in the room as you seek to answer them? Are you worried about the logistics and liabilities that would arise as you sought to launch this kind of ministry initiative?

A Book You Need to Read

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Dr. Kellemen has put together a book you need to read. Not only does he draw upon his own years of experience as a pastor (both associate of counseling and senior pastor) and as a professor teaching counseling in seminary, he draws upon the best practices from two dozen counselors who have led counseling ministries in the local church or parachurch setting.

Throughout Equipping Counselors for Your Church these two dozen counselors comment about their experience in creating counseling ministries at each stage of the process. In effect, it’s a little like a recovery group meeting. Dr. Kellemen teaches the main lesson which articulates the key aspects of one leg in the journey. Then each counselor gives a testimony about their successes, failures, and key life lessons on that point.

The result is a robust resource that provides detailed guidance without succumbing to a one-size-fits-all counseling model. Rather than giving a step-by-step process to a predetermined outcome, Dr. Kellemen takes you through a question-by-question process to determine what expressions of a counseling ministry would best fit your church and community.

A Small Word, But a Big Distinction

One of the primary emphases of this book is that it advocates for churches to become “a church of biblical counseling” rather than “a church with a biblical counseling ministry.” The difference is significant. A church with a biblical counseling ministry will see its counseling ministry serve exclusively as an “ER” of crisis cases that remained hidden until they were bursting with complexity.

A church of biblical counseling becomes more equipped and prepared to handle such crisis cases, but the counseling ministry interacts with the rest of the church (as a part of the disciple-making process) so that more individuals and families receive care before their struggles become life-dominating. The honesty and transparency of a counseling relationship begins to trickle into the life of the church to a degree that members are “doing life together” in Christian community.

The 4 E’s

If I were reading this review, I would want to know what the 4 E’s were. In keeping with the power-packed, highly-concentrated nature of the book, Dr. Kellemen was able to squeeze five E’s into his four E strategy: (1) Envisioning God’s Ministry, (2) Enlisting God’s Ministers for Ministry, (3) Equipping Godly Ministers for Ministry, and (4) Empowering/Employing Godly Ministers for Ministry.

If you look at those categories and find yourself thinking, “That seems like a process that could be used for any ministry,” then you are beginning to catch the value of this book. Dr. Kellemen is not spending a large amount of time teaching you a foreign process to develop a counseling ministry. If that were the case, you would have to teach your congregation the process and then begin creating the counseling ministry. However, because the book is built around sound, biblical leadership methods, a church that has launched other effective ministries will have no problem utilizing this resource.

What you will find in each E are the key questions and implications that need to be asked for developing a counseling ministry. For the pastor, elder, or other local church leader this should be very comforting. You will find guidance for what you don’t know within the framework with which you are familiar.

A Sample

Counseling can be intimidating. If you are not slightly over-whelmed at the thought of starting a counseling ministry, you may lack the humility necessary to be a good counselor. With that in mind, one of the most effective ways I can conclude this review is to give you a sample from the book on one of counseling’s most intimidating subjects—legal liability.

On his ministry blog, Dr. Kellemen recently posted a six part series on “The Law and Church Counseling.” If you want to know the quality and type of resource you would be getting in Equipping Counselors for Your Church, I would encourage you to preview these posts.

• The Law and Church Counseling: Part One – Caring Carefully

• The Law and Church Counseling: Part Two – The Legal History and Climate

• The Law and Church Counseling: Part Three – Scope of Care

• The Law and Church Counseling: Part Four – Quality of Care

• The Law and Church Counseling: Part Five – Building Safeguards Into Your Ministry

• The Law and Church Counseling: Part Six – Counting the Cost

Other sample resources include:

• The book video trailer as a blog post.

• The book video trailer on YouTube.

• Link to a free sample chapter.

• Link to Equipping Counselors home page with several free resources. 

Meeting a Real Need in Biblical Counseling

This book meets a real need in Biblical Counseling – helping churches cultivate a counseling ministry that is tailored to the needs of their particular congregation and community. Over the last several decades Biblical Counseling has produced a large number of excellent resources, but it has not always been clear what a church was supposed to do with those resources. If you want to begin to explore that possibility with your church, I cannot think of a better book to guide you in that process.

Note: This post originally appeared at Brad Hambrick’s ministry website. You can also read it there at Equipping Counselors for Your Church. 

Brad Hambrick, Th.M., Brad is Pastor of Counseling at The Summit Church (Durham, NC) (www.summitrdu.com). Brad also serves as a Council Board member with the Biblical Counseling Coalition and Chief Editor for The Journal of Counseling & Discipleship with the Association of Biblical Counselors. Brad has been married to his wife Sallie since 1999 and has two wonderful boys.

Tags: Book Review, Discipleship, Equipping, Equipping Counselors for Your Church, Pastoral Ministry