a great joy to see each of you on this class in this online format, and we're looking forward to a great number of weeks studying the word of God together. I just want to thank you for joining us tonight, and we're just so glad that you're able to be part of this training.

We want to give a welcome to those of you who are continuing students. Many of you in this class were with me last year, and you were working through the 24 theology exam questions, and we were able to complete that study in December, and now you are joining us for the 20 counseling sessions, the counseling exam questions this January, and so I want to welcome those of you who are continuing.

I also want to welcome new students to this class. Many of you were with me in year 1 biblical counseling last year, and completed that training in December, and you're jumping into year 2, and so this is your first time in the intermediate biblical counseling class, and you'll be jumping right into the 20 counseling exam questions as part of the phase 2 ACBC training, and we want to give a warm welcome to you who are starting phase 2 of ACBC's training, this is going to be a wonderful study, and one that I trust will be a blessing and encouragement to you.

Wherever you are in the training, just want to give you a welcome. Thank you for joining us, and as we work through the 20 counseling exam questions, which are part of ACBC's phase 2 training, I do hope and pray that we will be able to grow both in our understanding of counseling methods but also in just our own lives, in our own interactions with others in the church, our own relational skills.

This is an opportunity for each of us to think through how we are conducting ourselves in relational ministry and to grow in the practical skills that are necessary for an effective biblical counseling ministry. We do look forward to a wonderful time together. As we look at counseling exam number 1, we're going to be starting with that topic tonight, the introductory session, and I think this will be a wonderful study.

Let me pray for us and devote our time to the Lord, and ask the Lord to bless our time together. Let's pray. Holy Father, thank you so much for your amazing grace and mercy, and just thank you for the wonders of our salvation, for the joy of knowing Christ.

Thank you for the blood of our Savior, which cleanses us from all of our sins. We thank you that we are accepted and beloved in Christ, and through the work that he has done for us on the cross, through his glorious resurrection from the grave. We thank you that we do not fear death, that death is merely the gateway through which we go home and be with the Lord.

We thank you, Father, that you've given to us the hope of eternal life, and we thank you that Lord, because of the assurances of the promises of your word, that we have hope and that we can have joy in every season of life. We thank you for the ministry of your spirit who lives in us, and who bears his sweet fruit in us.

We pray that your spirit would take your word tonight and change us, make us and mold us into more of what you want us to be. Bless each student as we continue our training. Father, as we put pen to paper, as we put our thoughts down in a format where others can evaluate it objectively, Father, I pray that this would be a clarifying, refining process for each of us in this training program, and that the result of our study would be effective counseling ministry that would be used by you to change lives for your glory.

We dedicate this class to you, and we give to you this hour of study. We pray that you would bless it in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, if you look at the first page of your class handout, I want to jump right in to counseling exam number 1 tonight, which is the topic of the importance of the first session.

So we're going to be looking at a very practical subject tonight. We're looking at how do we conduct a first session with a counselee. Perhaps in a potential counseling scenario, you will be meeting with a counselee that you have never met before. Perhaps you'll be ministering in your local church as part of the counseling ministry, and you will be asked to meet with someone who doesn't even attend the church, who possibly lives in the community, or maybe has some marginal involvement with the local church.

And you'll be asked to do a first session with a counselee. And then there are the counseling situations where you do know this person. Perhaps this person is a faithful member of your local church. Perhaps there are relational connections between you and the counselee already formed. Perhaps you already have a relationship that has gone on through years.

And yet in a formal counseling session, you'll be asked to conduct a first session with a counselee. So this essay topic really is dealing with a very practical issue. How do you structure and organize and plan for the first session with your counselee? And you are asked to write one essay of about a page to a page and a half on this subject.

So this is a practical essay, and we do want to think through how do we practically plan for a first session? My prayer and my desire for each of you is that you will have many good first sessions with counselees, and that these good first sessions will lead to further sessions.

And as you have good first sessions, which set the tone and the agenda and the goal for the counseling sessions, that that will lead to effective ministry in your counseling ministry. I have had my share of first sessions with counselees, which have honestly not gone well. I've had my share of poorly conducted first sessions, and I've tried to learn from my mistakes.

And some of this session will be some of the things not to do in a first session. And I've also had, by the grace of God, my share of good first sessions, which have gone well and have led to further counseling meetings. And I've tried to learn from both the good and the bad.

I've also learned to talk to my fellow counselors in the counseling ministry, who are also conducting their first sessions. And I have just learned, quite honestly, to beg, borrow, and steal whatever works, the practices, and even the organizations, the schedules that seem to work in first sessions, and to use that in my own counseling ministry.

There's nothing new under the sun. If it works in counseling ministry, then I do try to use it. And just try to learn from other counselors, as well as learning from my own mistakes and the things that have gone well. So I am teaching this session tonight with that prayer that some of these best practices will be passed on to you, and that you will take them, and that you won't be afraid of conducting first sessions that go poorly.

I always say counseling is like riding a bike. The only way to learn to ride the bike is to fall off and get back on the bike. And so to do good counseling, you do have to do some bad counseling. That's just the nature of the training process. But I do pray that you will have many good first sessions.

When a first session with a counselee goes well, it just really sets the tone and the expectations for future meetings and it is a means by which a relationship is built. And I pray that God will give you many good first sessions in a counseling ministry. You can, by the way, recover from poor first sessions.

You can do-- if you have a poor first session, you can do a good second and third session and recover. So there's hope for all of us in counseling ministry. So on your handout there, I've listed a few helpful resources that I would highly recommend, especially the first resource there by Jeremy Pierre and Deepak Raju.

That's a book that's entitled The Pastor and Counseling. And it's not just for pastors. It really is an introductory book that contains the basic principles of biblical counseling. It's a very, very helpful work, very condensed. It packs a lot of helpful material in a short amount of space. And basically, this book is a one-stop resource that a pastor who needs to do counseling but doesn't really have time to go through an entire three-year ACBC training course.

What is one book that would really summarize the essential components of biblical counseling for a busy pastor? And Jeremy Pierre and Deepak Raju have done a phenomenal job in condensing very helpful material in one small book. And if there's one book I would recommend on just the practical issues that arise in counseling, it would be Pierre and Raju's book, The Pastor and Counseling.

In that book, there's a very helpful chapter that's called The Initial Meeting on Chapter 4. It's a very helpful summary of many of the principles you will want to cover in this essay exam. And I would just recommend that book to you. Some other resources that we've already mentioned in the year one training, Jay Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual, chapter 20 of that resource has a section on getting started.

And Adams talks about the importance of a first session in counseling ministry. And then the two books that I signed as part of the year one training, we have John MacArthur's book, How to Counsel Biblically, and Paul Tripp's book, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands. You will recall from our year one training materials that we covered the six key elements of biblical counseling, otherwise known as the six I's of biblical counseling.

And we'll do a brief review of that tonight. And I'm going to suggest in our session tonight that your essay for counseling exam number one should be a summary of about four of the six I's of biblical counseling. If you cover four key elements of biblical counseling, and then briefly discuss them, articulate them, and then apply them to the first session, how would you apply this key element in a first session with a counselee, you would write a very good essay.

And so I'll talk through some of that as we go along. But for the purposes of the resource, I just want to mention that the key elements are covered in these chapters on your first page of your course notes. Wayne Mack has some really good material in how to counsel biblically on the six I's of biblical counseling.

And then Paul Tripp as well has some very good material there. So if you want to review the six I's, review the six key elements of biblical counseling, those are some places that you can find some really good discussion on this topic. And then three blogs that I would recommend to you.

Ken Long has a good blog that's entitled "Plan to Get Hope During the First Counseling Session." Michael Hines has a good blog on "That First Counseling Session." And then Paul Toczkis has a good blog on "Basic Guidance for the First Counseling Session." Now, you're going to find, and I'm going to make an argument tonight, that basically the three blogs are saying the same thing in different ways.

They're going to the six key elements of biblical counseling. They're highlighting three to four of those key elements, and they're showing you how you would express or apply those key elements in a first counseling session. They do it in a little bit different way. They don't all call them the six I's.

They use different language for that. But you'll find that the material is very similar. They're essentially taking the key elements of biblical counseling and then applying them to a first session. And I would suggest that that is a very good approach for you to write this essay, taking the key elements and then summarizing them and showing them how you would personally apply those key elements in a first counseling session.

That's a very good way to talk through or walk through this essay topic. And so let me just read the question for us. Counseling exam number one is, "What issue should be covered in an introductory session with a counselee, regardless of the counseling issue, and then explain the importance of each issue?" As you think through the importance of the first session in counseling, let me for a moment ask you to place yourself in the shoes of a counselee.

And let's just say that you are a believer who is struggling with maybe a particular sin issue that you've lost hope in overcoming. Maybe it is a season of suffering. Maybe you have experienced a personal loss. Maybe you just need help in making a decision, a major decision that has come up in your life that's going to affect the rest of your life.

And place yourself in the position of a counselee who is coming to a counseling ministry of a church and asking for counseling. If you were a counselee who was coming to a biblical counselor-- and let's just say in this example that you haven't met this biblical counselor before, you don't have a previous relationship, and you are coming to see an ACBC certified biblical counselor.

If you were in the shoes of a counselee, what would you want to see in your biblical counselor that would help you to be open to the ministry of God's word? Now, if you place yourself in the position of a counselee coming for counseling, I think you would agree that in some ways you will be feeling quite vulnerable, perhaps.

You're not in the strongest position in life. You're not walking through a season where you feel self-sufficient. You're coming and sharing with a counselor some very personal issues. And so you are being placed in a vulnerable position. What would you want to see happen in that first session with a counselor that you haven't met before that would motivate you to move forward in counseling ministry?

If you think through that question and you place yourself in the position of a counselee, then I think you would agree that many of the things that we talked about as far as the key elements of biblical counseling would be very helpful for you to be motivated to make a second appointment and a third appointment, and then to follow through with the counseling ministry.

I think that in the first session, if you were to meet with a counselor and you just found that this counselor was compassionate, this counselor really did care about you and the Lord, that there was a mercy and a kindness and a patience in the demeanor of this counselor, I think that would motivate you to make a second and a third appointment.

I think if you found a counselor who understood God's Word, who knew the Scriptures thoroughly, who knew not only the contents of Scripture, but knew how to apply the Scriptures to life, I think that would motivate you to make another appointment and to continue to be ministered to by that counselor.

I think if you were to find a counselor who was filled with hope, who not only had hope for himself or herself, but who had hope for you, I think if you were to find a counselor who said to you in the counseling session that, I have hope that God is going to do a wonderful work in your life for His glory, and then not only share that as some kind of pie-in-the-sky sentiment, but actually follow through with, here are some practical ways that we can pursue life change for the glory of God, I think you'd be encouraged to move forward in counseling ministry.

And I think if you were to find a counselor who was disciplined in his or her listening skills, who really wanted to hear you out, who wasn't quick to make snap judgments, but really took the time to understand your situation, who asked good questions, who was focused, and who seemed to understand what you were saying, I think that would motivate you to continue with the counseling ministry.

I think you get the point. If you were in the shoes of a counselee feeling vulnerable, and weak, and weighed down, and just maybe confused about the issues of life, and you were to sit with a biblical counselor who gave hope, and who was empathetic, and was filled with God's word, filled with the Spirit, I think that first session would motivate you to make a second and third appointment and to continue in the counseling ministry.

And so that is really what this essay is about. And if it helps you to be motivated to write this essay, place yourself in the shoes of a counselee as you write this essay, and think through, how would a counselee feel if you were able to bring some of these key elements into a first session?

And so that's just a basic way to think through this essay topic. Let me move to page 2 of your course handout. And I've just noted some helpful comments on first sessions there by some trusted biblical counselors. You have Jay Adams, who has made this observation, that the first session is particularly important.

Basic trends are set. Initial attitudes and decisions, as well as relationships, are formed by both the counselor and his counselees. I found that to be true, both in my own counseling ministry and in the counselors that we have trained as part of the Counseling Center here at the church, that especially when that first session, the counselee is assured that you care about that person, that you really desire that person to grow in the Lord.

And just that basic trust is built in a first session. It goes a long way into setting up future sessions. Ken Long has a good blog on conducting a good first session. And he writes, when starting with a new counselee, the first session is a most important one for both counselor and counselee.

A wise counselor once said, when you start, have in mind how you want to finish. For us as biblical counselors, we desire that there will be God-like change in the heart of our counselee. This kind of change points to the glory of our God and is good for the counselee.

From the first session, we should clearly have in mind the end goal that we desire for the counseling. So it has been said, if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. We should have an end goal for our first session. And then I like Ken Long's observations about planning.

He writes, with this goal in mind, we should plan our first session and follow through with our plan. Another wise counselor regularly says, proper planning prevents problems. In like manner, proper planning promotes progress. And progress refers to growth in Christ-likeness. Since the first session can be emotionally charged for all present, having a proposed plan will help us stay on track with what we believe God wants us to cover.

However, if it becomes evident that God has something different planned as the session unfolds, we can then flex to adjust our proposed plan in accordance with his plan. So we always encourage our counselors to have a plan for their sessions, to think through what is the best usage of that time, and then not to be enslaved to your plan.

Allow your plan to serve you. You will need to deviate from your plan at times. And really, you should be deviating from your plan in many cases, as counseling is an ongoing dialogue. But it's good to have a plan. It's good to have a map through the forest, if you will.

And if your counseling session takes you on a detour that goes into the forest, that you know your way back to the path that you have laid out and that you don't just keep marching further into the forest until you don't know where you are. And so having a plan for a counseling session is helpful, although we do encourage our counselors to be flexible with that plan.

Robert Jones has some good comments on a first session in counseling. He says he has five goals in his first session on counseling. He says, number one, to warmly welcome, to initiate a warm, welcoming, and caring relationship. I want the person to know that I care about him, and I want him to experience that care throughout the session.

By the way, I have noticed this in our counseling ministry that a few of our counselors who are ACBC certified also serve with the welcoming ministry of our church. And I don't think that's a requirement to become an ACBC certified biblical counselor, but I do see how the two ministries do complement one another because these counselors serve on the welcoming team of our church.

They have learned how to talk with strangers. They know how to make small talk. They know how to break the ice with someone that they have just met. They know how to smile, even when the other person is not smiling back. They just have learned these skills in welcoming ministry, and it does translate into counseling ministry as well.

And so if your church has a welcoming ministry, you might want to ask the leader of that ministry if you can do an internship or just get some experience in that because it does serve you well in counseling to be able to have that conversation with strangers, with someone that you haven't met before, and just to have the practical skills to minister to that person.

Warm welcome. You know, you don't want to be a counselor who says kind of a caricature, but you walk into a counseling room, you sit down with the counselee, and you kind of say, OK, we're starting our session. What's the problem? Why don't you come in for counseling? And then here's the Bible solution to that problem, and come make another appointment to see me again.

That's not really how we want to conduct our counseling ministry. So much of counseling ministry is just relational. It's expressing that warmth and that love for others, and giving a warm welcome is very helpful. Just even some practical things such as, you know, would you like a cup of coffee?

Can I show you around the counseling offices so you feel familiar? We want you to feel at home here. We want you to feel like this is a place of ministry where Christ is going to meet you and minister to you. Just some practical things to think through in making someone feel welcome.

Number two, he says, a goal is to know the person, to get to know the person by gathering information about him and to help him to begin interpreting his life biblically. I want the person to believe that I have listened to him well and that I can bring hope-filled perspectives on his life.

We'll talk more about that in just a moment. Number three, to give hope in Jesus. Jones writes that his goal is to present Jesus Christ and the hope he offers through his word and spirit. I want the person to hear from the Bible that Jesus offers hope. So as Adams has emphasized in his writings on biblical counseling, the first session is really a time where you want to give hope.

You want to make sure that the counselee understands that you have hope for this person. You have hope for this situation. You believe that God can do a good work. You believe that, especially if you are sure that this counselee is a believer in Christ, that you have the resources of God's word.

You have the resources of the Holy Spirit. You have all the promises of God that you can bring to bear upon this situation in life. And so you want to be filled with hope and communicate that hope to the counselee. Jones says that his fourth goal is to present a plan to propose a tentative basic counseling agenda and explain the counseling process.

I want the person to be confident that I can wisely lead him out of his present confusion to a clearer sense of his life and to understand that the process will not be eerie or frightening. And then number five, he says that his goal in the first session is to encourage commitment, to invite the person and secure his commitment to counseling, including his desire to complete assignments and to schedule the next appointment.

I want the person to want to meet again and to have a desire to work on some homework that will help him. And so that's a seasoned biblical counselor in just the way that he thinks through the first session. You don't need to incorporate all of that in right away in your first sessions in counseling ministry, but just it's helpful to be encouraged by those who have done this ministry for years and to learn from them of how they think through the first counseling session.

I kind of reduce that to two things that I ask our counselors to evaluate in the first year of counseling. And they are very simple. My criteria are much more simplified than seasoned biblical counselors like Dr. Robert Jones. But I do ask our counselors to evaluate two things after each counseling session.

Number one, did you love this person to the best of your ability? Did you have a heart that this person grow in Christ? Did you communicate that love in Christ for this person to the best of your ability? And then number two, I ask our counselors to evaluate, did you open and communicate the truth of scripture?

And I know that's really simple, but I think that's 80%, 90% of the ballgame that if you loved this person to the best of your ability, if you opened and communicated the truth of scripture, then to me, at least as a pastor who's overseeing your ministry, that is a successful counseling session.

You can always do better. You can always improve upon that. But those two basic building blocks need to be in place. Did you love this person? And did you open the Bible? And we have just found that people respond to those two basic building blocks of biblical counseling. If a counselee is a believer, they do respond to genuine Christian love.

That's just universal, that a believer is going to respond to other Christians who love him in the Lord and who want to see this person grow. And then a believer will always respond to the ministry of God's word, maybe not immediately in terms of immediate repentance and obedience, but there will always be, deep down in a believer's heart, the desire to hear God's word and to grow in God's word.

And so those two basic building blocks are very important. And we find that counselees are motivated to come back if we love them well and if we open God's word. So those are just some perspectives from some good authors on the importance of this first counseling session. Now, let me move to page 3 of your course notes and just talk through how should you think through the contents of this essay.

As I mentioned at the outset, I believe that the strategy for writing this essay is to go back to the material we covered in year 1, the six key elements of biblical counseling, and then to summarize three or four of these key elements and show how you would practically apply those key elements in a first counseling session.

I think that's each of the blog posts that I have recommended to you. That's basically their approach. They're going back to the key elements of biblical counseling, and then they are applying it to the first session. And I would encourage you to think along these lines. The key elements of biblical counseling were the practical skills that we discussed in some detail in year 1 training.

I'll do a brief review here just to bring this to freshen your memory. They are in no particular order. Involvement, number one, you'll remember this as the first I of biblical counseling, which is the skill set or the practice of demonstrating Christ-like compassion. This is really the relational aspect of counseling ministry.

Compassion has been called your pain in my heart. Compassion is disarming. The qualities of mercy and kindness really are rare in this world. And so when you do find a counselor who exhibits these characteristics, it is a wonderful thing, and it does help to build that relationship and trust.

The second key element we looked at was inventory, which is the ministry of active, intentional listening. So as to minister to a person with knowledge and understanding, we discussed that good inventory requires good listening skills. It's asking good questions. It is seeking to understand. It is learning to conduct a conversation where you are moving from the external circumstances that a counselee is facing to the internal issues of the heart and just taking the time to focus on the counselee and understanding the situation that this person is in.

The third key element is interpretation, which is discerning the problems biblically so that a plan for life change can be produced. This involves asking questions such as, is this person a believer or unbeliever? Is this person a mature believer or an immature believer? How much of the problem is sin, and how much of it is suffering?

What are the heart issues that need to be addressed? So this is the issue of applying God's word to the counselee's situation. Number four is inspiration, imparting biblical hope so that the counselee is motivated to pursue change. Counselees are motivated to continue with counseling when they have hope for themselves.

And in order to impart that hope, we need to have hope for them as well. The sixth key element was instruction, communicating the truths of God's word, and then dialoguing through personal application. 2 Timothy 3.16 says, "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." We believe that the scripture is directive.

The scripture encourages, exhorts, rebukes, corrects, admonishes. In other words, our counseling sessions should not merely be a time for the counselee to vent about life's problems. But the word of God, at some point, needs to be opened. And the truth of scripture needs to be brought to bear upon the situation that the counselee is facing.

And so that is the key element of instruction. And then number six, the key element of implementation. This is the method of assigning good homework so that the counselee applies the truth of God's word in between the counseling sessions. We emphasize that in year one, that the majority of life change does not take place in the counseling session, but actually in the space between counseling sessions.

That is when the majority of life change will take place in the life of your counselee. And so assigning good homework is a very necessary skill set. Homework that gets the counselee into the word of God on a daily basis. Homework that exposes the counselee to other avenues of the ministry of God's word, such as sermons, or lectures, or even good praise songs, or hymns, or other means of grace in the local church.

We assign as homework, very specifically, even things like church attendance, that we want you to be in Sunday morning worship service each and every Sunday. We want you to be in a small group so that you can build relationships and so that others can pray for you. We want you to be reading God's word every day.

If you're not sure of the counselee's spiritual situation or their spiritual status before the Lord, you can assign as homework a written salvation testimony to be brought to the second session so that you can evaluate their salvation testimony. It's such a wonderful skill set to be able to assign good homework.

It's a skill set I am admittedly weak in and trying to grow in. My wife happens to be much more skilled in assigning good homework than I am. But it is a very good skill set that will help your counselee to grow in between the counseling sessions. And so these were the six key elements of biblical counseling.

This should be the review from year one. We call them the key elements because we would ask the question, what would your counseling ministry be like if one of these six key elements were missing? And you could have great instruction and be filled with God's word. But what if you had zero involvement?

You just were a counselor who didn't care about people. Would you be a counselor that people want to see? Or you could look at key element number two. What if you cared about people and you knew God's word, but you never took time to really listen to them? The whole entire counseling session was you talking about things that possibly didn't even relate to what the counselee is going through.

Would that counselee want to come see you again? Or what if number four, you just had no hope for people and you knew the Bible and you knew how to listen, but at the end of listening to a counselee's problems, you just were so discouraged. And at the end of a counseling session, you were just saying, yeah, this is hopeless.

I don't see any hope for this situation. Would a counselee want to come see you again? So we call them the key elements because if one of the key elements are missing, then really your counseling ministry is going to be deficient. Now, what I want you to do for the purposes of this essay is to think through the key elements.

And I'll highlight four of them. But I would like you to think through the key elements and apply them to a first counseling session. I'm going to encourage you to look at four, at least four, or at least three, but most likely four of the six key elements would be a good essay.

And then talk through what would it look like for you personally. So we would like you to, in some sense, all of us are going to write similar things on this first essay. We're going to have similar contents because we're not really deviating from the six key elements. Even the three blogs that I gave to you, they're essentially summarizing the key elements of biblical counseling.

And so in some sense, we're going to have a lot in common in this first counseling exam. But in another sense, each of your essays should be completely different in terms of we want you to think through how you personally would apply these key elements in a first session.

So thinking through, for example, an approach to writing this essay would be to write a paragraph on involvement, that in a first session, I would want to make sure that I am demonstrating Christ-like compassion. But then going from that principle to here's how or some ways, practically, that I as a counselor would seek to express compassion and mercy to my counselee.

And just thinking that through and writing a paragraph about that, that would be a good paragraph. And if you take four of these key elements and follow the same approach, you would have a basic approach to a good essay. And each of your essays should be unique in the sense that each of you are going to think through that in a little bit of a different fashion, although the principles generally will be the same.

And so each of your essays should have something in common. But also, each of your essays should be distinct and unique. So the four that I would suggest that you think through in terms of a first counseling session would be, number one, involvement. So what would you do in a first session that would demonstrate Christ-like compassion and warmth?

Now, remember, the question is, what should be covered in an introductory session regardless of the counseling issue? So no matter what the counseling issue is, whether it is a marital issue or whether it's an issue of anxiety or whether this person is facing a difficult decision, how would you show compassion in a first counseling meeting?

The second issue I would encourage you to think through is inventory. How would you do good inventory in a first session? What questions would you ask? How would you express good listening skills in that first meeting? Just thinking that through in terms of a first session. A third element would be instruction.

You want to open God's word. You want to establish in the first session that the counseling sessions will be focused on God's word. Talking to our counselors, they have given me this feedback that sometimes turning to God's word is really just-- it's awkward. There's really no easy way to do it.

But at some point in the counseling session, you need to open God's word. You need to just say, it's time now to open God's word together and allow God to speak into the situation. And thinking through instruction in terms of a first session. I would encourage you to possibly combine the idea of instruction with the key element of inspiration.

In a first session, typically, the instruction that I'm trying to give, the passage that I'm turning to in a first session is a passage that will communicate biblical hope. So although there are two different key elements, they can be combined in some way as you think through a first session.

Usually, I am turning to in a first session a great promise of God. I'm turning to some kind of scripture that will give the counselee hope that God is with them in this situation and that God is going to grow them. And usually in a first session, I'm not going to a passage that is heavily rebuking or heavily corrective.

I'm going to a passage that shows that God is present to bless in this believer's life. And then a fourth element I would ask you to think through in terms of a first session will be implementation. What kind of homework assignments would you want to give in a first session?

Now, going back to the three blogs that I mentioned, I'd encourage you to read those blogs as I've given them to you as resource. Ken Long, Michael Hines, and Paul Toczkas read their blogs as they talk through their first sessions. And then just note that generally, although each of the blogs say it a little bit differently, they're each summarizing basically these four key elements in a different way.

So they're using different language, like Ken Long uses the language of get hope, gather data, give help, give projects for growth. So he summarizes it under four Gs. But essentially, the concepts, what he's doing is he's taking these four key elements and he's packaging them in a different way.

Michael Hines has the language of ask questions, give hope, and then assign homework. Again, it's essentially the same material, but just stated in a different way. And then Paul Toczkas has the language of listen much, speak little, ask questions, apply appropriate questions, give biblical hope through homework, and then take them to the throne of grace in prayer.

Again, he's stating it in a very unique way, as is reflective of his own personal counseling ministry. But essentially, it's the same basic material, taking the four key elements here and applying them to a first session. So we essentially want you to do something along that lines and taking these elements and then showing how you would apply them to a first session with a counselee.

So with that said, and the remaining pages of your handout, pages three to six, I have basically a summary of those four key elements-- involvement, inventory, instruction, implementation. I'm not going to take the time to go through all of that material tonight with the time remaining. But I do want to just ask you to read that through.

Some of that will be a review from year one. But then on each page, I also have some thoughts on how possibly that might apply to a first session. And please think that through on your own. Come up with your own personal applications. But for example, at the bottom of page three, I've suggested some practical ways to establish involvement in a first session.

And just to encourage you along these lines, as I was challenged this week in studying through this, just to improve upon my own preparation in counseling. But I would encourage you that one of the ways to show involvement, respect, to establish a relationship with a counselee is really relates to being prepared for the first session.

And I'm just going to be real practical here. I was talking to one of our counselors this week. And she was this dear sister in Christ. She just walks with the Lord. I mean, she has a living, ongoing relationship with Christ. She spends vibrant time in prayer and in the study of God's word, just personally for herself each and every morning.

And she was just expressing to me that it's amazing how so much of just what she's going through in her personal life, in her own walk with the Lord, and what she's doing in her own personal devotions just naturally overflows and spills into the counseling session. And I just rejoice to hear that, because it does point to the place of personal preparation.

Just preparing your own heart to walk, as you were walking with Christ, just repenting of sin in your own life, seeking the Lord in your own life, being encouraged in your own spirit and in your own soul, feeding your own soul with the word of God, making sure that you are in a spiritually healthy place.

That is one of the best ways to show respect for your counselee. Because if you bring that type of walk with the Lord into a counseling meeting, then it doesn't matter what the counseling issue is. That is going to communicate something to the counselee, where the counselee will be encouraged to trust you.

And then preparing for the counselee. This particular counselor always asked me to get the consent to counsel form and the PDI form to her well ahead of time, because she wants to read and study and reflect and reflect upon the counseling issue and pray for the counselee before the meeting and just to prepare for the counselee.

I think that's a great way just to show respect for that time and to show respect for the counselee. And then practical preparation. I encourage our counselors just arriving early, 30 minutes before your appointment, so you have time to set up the room. And even real practical things, like setting the right temperature for the room is very helpful when you're going through an hour to 90 minutes of a counseling meeting and the room gets to be very stuffy or hot.

It's not conducive to a good counseling session. And so just having the tissues in the right place and a Bible handy and pens and resources and just arriving with enough time so that you're able to greet the counselee without a hurried spirit. Those are just some practical ways to think through showing respect in a first session.

I want to highlight also on just real practically, one way to be welcoming under the heading of involvement is to learn small talk with the counselee. I have had counselors in phase 3 of our training, and you do record, I think, five of your sessions for audio and for your supervisor to review.

And I have reviewed some of these sessions and talked with our counselors about just small talk can be a good means of showing respect for your counselee. It's a little bit jarring if your first statement as you sit down in a counseling meeting is to say, well, tell me about your problems.

All of us would feel a little bit like we're jumping right into something that maybe we're not prepared for, especially if we have not met this counselor before. And so just learning the skill of small talk, where are you from? Oh, you're from New York. Tell me about New York.

Do you like the weather there? And so you're a Knicks fan, and just so forth and so on. You don't want to spend 30 minutes on small talk. The counselee has come to discuss the issues of life. But a good five minutes in small talk is helpful just in making the counselee comfortable and then leading that conversation into a segue.

So finding a good break in the conversation and then saying, Joe or John or whoever you're meeting with, I'm so glad you're here. We're so thankful for our time together. We're going to seek God's word together. And then what brings you in for counseling? How can we be of help to you?

And then leading the conversation in that way, learning to do a good segue, is very helpful. So just thinking through just practically how to show involvement. On page four, you have the discipline of inventory. You can work through some of that. A lot of that's going to be a review from year one.

But just on a practical level, learning to ask open-ended questions is a really good skill in a first session. We talked a little bit about this in year one, that you can ask the question, do you want to get married? And the counselee says, yes. And that's not conducive to allowing the conversation to flow.

That's a closed-ended question. An open-ended question would be, what do you think about marriage? What do you think are the blessings of marriage? What are your greatest fears about marriage? Those are open-ended questions that help the conversation to flow. And so thinking through inventory with a first session. If you move to page five quickly, giving appropriate instruction.

I've noted there that this point can be combined with the discipline of inspiration or imparting hope, having an arsenal of scriptures that really impart hope. You ought to have a go-to five to 10 scripture passages that impart hope to the counselee. If you're a member here at Kindred Church, any of the sermons that Pastor Philip has preached over the last five weeks are passages that you should have as your go-to passages.

Hebrews 13, 5 to 6, the Lord is our helper. Romans 8, verse 28, that all things work together for good to those who love God, and so forth and so on. Those are passages that communicate hope to the counselee. And it's one thing to hear it preached. It's another thing to minister that to a counselee in such a way where you're saying that the Lord is your helper, Joe.

Joe, God has promised never to leave you or forsake you in this trial. There's a powerful ministry there when those truths are communicated one-on-one from a counselor to a counselee. And then on the last page, assigning good homework, let me just-- and I'll draw our thoughts to a close by saying this.

Really, practically, in our counseling ministry, we have found that there are three things that are just so basic. They apply to every counseling situation. You don't even need to get into all of the biblical counseling resources and all the specific issues. But we have found that our counselees grow when they do three things.

And this is not going to be any surprise. I'm not going to sell anything new here. But three things is, number one, if they read the Bible every day, then they will grow. Number two, if they attend Sunday morning worship every Sunday and hear the preached word, then they will grow.

And then number three, if they are in some type of small group fellowship where they're building relationships and they're having people pray for them, and they're not anonymous, but they are known and they have relationships in the local church, then they will grow. Those three things, reading the Bible every day, attending Sunday morning worship every Sunday, and then being part of some type of small group fellowship where they have relationships in the local church, those three things, we have found they just work.

Believers grow when they do those three things. And we also found that most of our counselees are not regularly doing those three things. That usually they're reading the Bible once or twice a week, maybe, or just sporadically, but they're not engaged in daily Bible reading. They're not coming to church every Sunday.

They might come two times a month, or they might sporadically check in, but they're not regularly sitting in Sunday morning worship service each and every Sunday. And if it's in a marital situation, then they're not sitting with their spouse in the worship service. And that's key. There's something that happens, many beneficial effects that happen in a marriage when husband and wife sit in worship service together each and every Sunday.

And then thirdly, generally, they're anonymous in the local church. They don't really have relationships. People don't know them. They don't know people. No one's praying for them. They're not praying for anyone. They may attend and slip in and out, but they don't have real relationships in the local church.

And so we just have started assigning as homework, as an initial meeting, we've just started assigning those three things. And I've worked with our counselors to make sure before you get into all the specifics about panic attacks or anger issues or conflict resolution, there is a place to get very specific with those things.

But before you get in too deep, make sure those three basic things are in place in your counselee's life. Make sure they're reading the Bible every day. Doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be only the passages dealing with their counseling issue. It could really just be reading through the Bible, reading a chapter a day in scripture, but making sure it's every day.

Make sure that they're going to church every Sunday and hearing the preached word, and make sure that they have relationships in the local church. And we found that when we assign those three things as homework, and the beauty of it is, you can assign them as homework. You say, here's your homework.

We want you to read the Bible every day, go to church on Sunday, and join a small group. And then you can check with them in the second and third meeting to see if they follow through. When believers do those three things, they tend to get healthier just in general.

They just tend to grow, because those are the means of grace God has put in His word. There's no secret magic sauce to it. People grow when they're in God's word, when they're worshiping on Sundays, and when they have relationships in the local church. When they grow generally, then it seems to be that their specific counseling issue also gets addressed in some way.

Now, you will need to get more specific, but if they're generally getting more healthy, then their counseling issue also tends to get addressed in a general fashion. And then you have the platform and the foundation to go more specific. So just think through that in terms of homework. I've encouraged our counselors, assign those things as homework.

You can tell them, your homework is to join this small group. You can even get specific as if a counselee really is kind of reluctant to get into fellowship, that I want you to get into a small group, and then I want you, when the small group ends, to talk to three people during the snack time, learn their names, and ask them their prayer requests.

I mean, you can get that specific with homework. Or even just, I want you to attend on Sunday morning worship. I want you, after service, to talk to one person that you know and one person that you don't know, just to get them into fellowship. Because oftentimes, they're isolated.

You can assign those things as homework, and those are the basic building blocks that help people grow. And so think through those four key elements, apply them to a first session. And I trust that you'll write a great essay, and it'll be a helpful resource for you in the years to come.

Well, what I'm going to do at this point, I'm going to close in prayer. But I'm going to hang out for 10 minutes after class for new students, for those of you who are joining in year two. And this is your first session that is dealing with phase two of ACBC training.

And if you have any questions about how to write an essay or any questions about the essay writing process, I'd be happy to hang out for 10 minutes or so, or as long as you have questions and if I could be helpful. I'd love to just be able to orient you to the essay writing process itself.

If you're a continuing student, you can be excused. I mean, you're welcome to hang out, but I'll probably be repeating some material that you've already heard. But if you're a new student and this is the first time that you're writing an essay, I'd encourage you to stay with me after I close in prayer.

I'll mention a few things in the syllabus and then open it up for questions if you have questions about writing the essays. But Lord bless you. We pray that this material will serve you well and that you will have great first sessions that lead to future sessions that will be used for God's glory.

So let me pray for us and we'll close our official teaching time together. Father, thank you for our time in your word and our time to think through just very practically what a first session looks like in counseling ministry. Thank you for these key elements that have been derived from your word and articulated by many men and women who have been effective in biblical counseling.

And we thank you that these elements have shown themselves to be fruitful. And we pray that you would help us to think through our own counseling ministry along these lines. Help us, Lord, to grow in these things, to grow in our listening skills, our compassionate demeanor, our relational skills, to grow in our ability to communicate your word, to give hope, and also, Lord, to assign good practical homework.

And we just pray that you would train us to be effective counselors for your glory. Pray that each of the students here would write a great essay for your glory. And we thank you for this time. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, I am going to hang out here for 10 minutes.

If you are a new student, I'm going to go through just a couple points on your syllabus. And then if you have any questions on essay writing, I'd be happy to answer that. There's a Q&A panel there and also a chat function that feel free to ask any questions that you might have.

But the syllabus is basically-- I think it's 10 pages here that I've given you some of the material that I've given to students as we've walked through the essays together in the past. And I've just put some practical suggestions on how to schedule your week, how to write a good essay.

We would encourage you to get Microsoft Word. And the essays need to be in a DOC or DOCX format. And so we have had very little success in using other word processing platforms. So we just encourage you to get Microsoft Word and put it in a format where ACBC can read and grade these essays.

We did send you a template of the counseling exams. And I encourage you to use that for the right formatting. And that should be in a Microsoft Word document. So we're looking for a page to a page and a half. Any essay that's less than a page long, you're probably not writing enough material.

Anything that is coming to close to two pages is probably too much. And you're going to need to edit your material. And so we're looking for about a page and a half. I'm very comfortable with a page and a half when the student turns in their essay and it's about a page and a half.

That's a good essay typically. And there's a prescribed formatting of 1.5 spacing and 12 point font times New Roman. So we're looking at about the same material for each person. We just encourage you to-- on page four of your syllabus, I'll highlight a couple of points here. They ask you to write the answers as though you are explaining them to a counselee, defining all terms clearly and precisely with scriptural support for your answer.

So the idea here is you're sitting down with a counselee. How would you communicate some of these things in your own language to another person? We encourage you to footnote any quotes or any sources that are used. I encourage my students, please do not footnote my notes because my notes are not published material.

We're asking you to footnote published material that is from a reputable source. So anything that can be sold on Amazon is usually a published resource that you can footnote and quote from. But my notes, if you're going to use any material from my notes, you will want to put that in your own language as how would you communicate that material to a counselee in your own language.

And so just a note about footnotes there. ACBC isn't really crazy strict about the format of footnotes. I encourage students-- and I'll send you a link to go ahead and why not use the Terabian format. It'll make your footnotes look nice. And it'll just put a nice little shine to your essay.

And so I encourage our students to go ahead and use the Terabian format for footnotes. And I'll send you a link that shows you how to do all of that. Exams are graded on a pass, rewrite, or fatal error basis. I've yet to have a student in fatal error.

I hope not to have one yet. We usually have our students turn in their essays to ACBC. And they generally have to rewrite two to three essays. So don't be discouraged if you get to that point and you have to rewrite an essay. That's kind of par for the course.

But we do encourage you to stay out of the fatal error category. I don't think I've had a student do that. So please don't be the first. I think you have to say some kind of crazy things to get into the fatal error category. So I trust you won't-- that none of my students will do that.

A couple notes on just on page 5. I just have some practical notes there. You can read that on your own. But generally, simple sentences are better than complicated ones. Much of the work I think that I've done with students in this class is helping them to write simple sentences, a subject predicate period.

And people tend to write very long, complicated sentences that really should be broken up into three separate sentences. And so I just encourage you to just be very simple in your writing. You don't have to do a long, complicated sentence. Subject, predicate, period, subject, predicate, period will get you through.

And just simpler is better in terms of your writing. I'd encourage you to download the Grammarly. I think it's a software that's available online that's free. I've downloaded that. And I haven't paid a cent for that. If you're struggling with grammar or you want someone to look over your grammar, we do have one of the counselors in our ministry who is a certified counselor who is also a professional editor.

And she's available to read through one to two of your essays to let you know if you're on the right track. But generally speaking, Grammarly, the software will catch almost all of your grammar errors. And so anything that a professional editor will catch, Grammarly will catch before you have to send it to someone.

So I encourage you to get Grammarly. And I think I'll send you a link on that. And it'll catch all of your errors and make you look like you have perfect English. So good resources there. And then on your handout, I have a capitalization checklist. Some common errors we see with capitalization is biblical, is not capitalized.

You have some other gospel, as in the gospel of Jesus Christ is not capitalized. The gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is capitalized. There's just some things there that you need to check in terms of capitalization that is found on that capitalization checklist. And then for abbreviations for Bible books, I would encourage you to use the resource there that has abbreviations from both Old Testament and New Testament.

OK, much more can be said about the essays, but just some brief orientation comments on them. And then I will take some questions, I think, on the chat if you have questions here. OK, first question is, when is the first essay due? So the essays really can be written at your own pace.

I have had students complete them very quickly. I had some students last year take year one and year two concurrently and finish their essays by the end of the year. And I also have students who they take three years to complete their essays, but they do get done. So what I'm going to be doing is teaching one essay a week.

And so if you want to use that as a schedule, that you'll write one essay a week, that'll get you through the 44 essays in the space of a year. But you're not turning your essays into me every week. What I'm going to be doing is taking-- once you have finished all of your essay exams, at that point, you'll turn into me the full 44 essays.

And then at that point, I'll do a final review. Once again, if you want a weekly feedback on your essays, I'd encourage you to get an accountability partner in the class. And also, we have a counselor who will do a review of one to two of your essays in this course.

Unfortunately, because of the number of students in the course, I'm not able to do a weekly review of each student's essays. But if you want to send one to two of your essays, typically, we'll check that. And we'll say, hey, you're doing great. You're on the right track. This is good material.

And just encourage you to keep going there. Great question. So a second question is, will the recording be available? The answer is yes. Every recording will be made available the following week. And so if you can't make a Sunday night class and you want to watch that the following week, we will make that available on YouTube every week.

A question is, page four of the syllabus, are there two-word documents for two exams? So the answer is yes. Great, that's a great observation. So at the end of this entire process, what you're going to have is two Microsoft Word documents. You'll have one document that has 24 theology exam essays.

And that should run about 30 to 35 pages. And then you will have a second document that has the 20 counseling exam essays, which will probably run 25 to 30 pages as well. So those two documents, you're going to turn those in to me at that point. And I'll do a final review.

And then you'll turn them into ACBC. And that'll be the marker of completion of phase two training. And that'll get you into phase three of ACBC training. The 44 essays, they're tough. It's not an issue of so much that each essay is so complex. But it's tough to do an essay a week for 44 weeks.

That's really the challenge, is to persevere and to keep going in that study. And so I don't know any other way to say that, except that's a challenge. And at the same time, I've had people come to me and say, you know, Dan, I haven't written anything in 20 years since high school.

I haven't written an essay. And yet, they're faithful every week to get their essay done. And they finish their 44 essays. And other people who may have more experience or more education that they are not able to finish for whatever reasons, it really is a matter of plotting and getting the next essay done and persevering through that process.

And so we do try to motivate you and keep you going and keep you excited about it. But that is the process in phase two of ACBC training. One question is the name of the editor who offered to look over one of the essays. So Joan Shim is a professional editor.

She's also an ACBC counselor. And she works with us here in the counseling ministry. I'm going to check with her real quick before I send you all her email, just to make sure that she's ready to review your essays. But she is-- she's a tough editor. I mean, very fair.

She catches every mistake and knows her work well. And so she is going to-- she has offered to look over one to two examples. So she's not going to look over all 44 of your essays, but she'll look over one to two of your essays to make sure you're on the right track.

But again, I would encourage you that-- please don't send anything to Joan if you haven't run that through your own spellcheck and if you haven't run that through Grammarly. Because Grammarly will catch almost everything, 98% of the things that we deal with. Grammarly will catch that and help you make the right adjustments.

Great question. Where to submit exams. So once you're done with the 44 essays, you're going to submit those exams to ACBC, and they have a grading process. I think they have a grading fee of $100 or so. And they do have graders who work on your exams. And generally, they send those back for two to three rewrites.

They have some real sharp people grading those exams. I think one of the graders I have learned is very-- I would have been intimidated to send my essays to him because I think he has some very high level theological education. But just to encourage you that the graders want you to pass, but they're going to be fair.

They're not grading in order to-- they're not your friend. Can I say it that way? They're looking objectively as, do your essays make sense? And I think that's the value of this training, is you want someone who's not your friend to be able to look at your essays and to be able to say, either this makes sense or this doesn't make sense, and not to be afraid to hurt your feelings if what you're writing does not make sense.

So that's a whole process. And it's a good process. It really clarifies. It's one thing to hear teaching and to say you agree with that. It's another thing to write your own essay about that subject and to put it in your own words. And it just is a great process to be able to own the things that you have been learning.

So the question is-- an additional question is, will you be doing another course for the theology questions? So we did complete the 24 theology exam questions. And all of that is available on YouTube. And I'm still evaluating whether another live course will be necessary or if we can use those videos and do some discussion around those videos.

I'm still thinking through the right format for the next phase of the theology exam class. But those videos are all available on the 24 theology exams. If you're a motivated student and you want to double time and write the theology exam questions as well, all that material is available online.

But there will be some format of the theology questions offered in the future. So great question. On the Q&A, I have a question that I've read. Is it better to do the theology exams first to have a better understanding to counsel from? Is it OK to do the counseling exams first?

It really-- I've heard different things on that subject. Great question. I have heard-- some people love the counseling exams and they really hate writing the theology exams. And other people are the exact opposite. Some people love the theology exams and they really struggle with the counseling exams. So it really depends on the person.

I've heard both arguments. I've heard some people say it's better to do the counseling exams first because you get in the groove of writing. And it's not as theologically intense, but you get in the routine of knowing how to write a page and a half essay and doing that every week.

And so that sort of helps you lead up to the theology exam questions. I've heard the other argument of it's better to tackle the theology exams first because they're tough. And so get the harder part over with. And then everything else is downhill. It really can be approached either way.

I just encourage you to-- our students to jump in wherever you can. And it really depends on the person. But it's a great question. I don't know if there's a definitive answer. I think there's good arguments either way. Another question is the essay directions say write a paragraph or two on each part and identify each part.

That sounds like section headings. Should those be on every essay or just on ones like today's with four clear parts? I'm trying to understand the section headings. It's a good question. I think what we're asking you to do is to write-- this essay would probably be a good five paragraph essay.

The first paragraph would deal with just an introduction to why first sessions are important. And then you have four paragraphs dealing with four of the key elements. I don't think you need a new section heading on each paragraph. I think you can have just five paragraphs for that essay.

And that would be fine. And so I would encourage you to use the template that we sent out, the ACBC Counseling Exam template, and just where the text is to use that same formatting that they have in the template. And that would serve you well. So that's a great question as well.

Thank you. One question is a suggested weekly schedule notes. Mondays are for scripture. Do you mean general reading or specific targeted scriptural searching for the topic? We are doing that week. So great question. I think that schedule that I put there probably pertains more to the theological essays, which each of the theology exam essays have about 10 to 15 key passages that students needed to think through.

And so I just put that as a suggested schedule to think through the scriptures on Monday and then read the theology works on Tuesday. For the counseling exams, it's a little bit different because I don't think it's as heavy on reading the text of scripture. I think you're going to be, for example, with this essay, looking at much of the material that we covered already in year one.

So feel free to follow a schedule that works for you. That's just a suggested schedule of how you might be able to break down the writing process into six days. And I've had my share of writer's block, believe me, staring at a blank screen for hours and despairing of your life.

And so it's helped me to try to break down the writing process into manageable, bite-sized pieces that you can follow each day. Sometimes when you sit down and you're saying, oh, I have to write a page and a half essay today, and it just seems so insurmountable that you just don't know where to start, I just try to always find ways of how do you break that down into bite-sized pieces.

So one day, you might want to read the suggested readings that were on page one of your handout. The second day, you might want to take notes. The third day, you might want to do a free write that's not your essay, but just a free write is usually-- you're not paying attention to grammar.

You're not paying attention to punctuation. You're just putting thoughts on a page. And you're just trying to get words. And then the next day, you're putting that into paragraphs. And the next-- I'm always just trying to think through, how do you break that down into the next task? Because like many of you and like many writers, writer's block is one of the greatest struggles in writing an essay.

And sometimes, you just have to-- when all else fails, and maybe it shouldn't be when all else fails. It should be the first thing we do, but I have-- I'm in a small group where I share-- I have shared with my small group, I've got to write this thing for my certification or for my program.

I have writer's block. Can you please pray me through this and pray me through the next page of my project? And just getting people to pray for you for the next page or the next paragraph sometimes is how you get through it. And so that material there is just kind of my attempt to try to help you think through, how do you break down this process into manageable bite-sized pieces so that you're not overwhelmed?

You're not just sitting down on a Monday saying, I got to write a page and a half, and it just seems like too much of a task to do. So great question. Think through your own process and your own scheduling, but do think through, how do you break that down into bite-sized pieces?

Great question. The question is, are the template examples supposed to be in a foreign language? So yes, they have a really just kind of a-- I don't know what it is. It's some kind of gibberish, or I don't know if it's Latin or something. That's just supposed to be a placeholder for text.

And you're supposed to go in and take that text and put your own wonderful language into that essay. So go ahead, and you can delete that foreign language and put your own essay writing in. But yeah, that's a good question. I think they just put that in there just to have filler text to show you what the text should look like.

And then a question, would you be willing to share the link for the handouts that correlate to your theology presentations? Great question. Thank you for that. I will send that out. I have a Dropbox link that has all of the theology exam questions, and we can send that out and also send you the YouTube links if you want to access that.

I think the first four essay topics, we still need to rerecord because we have technical issues. But I think 20 of the essay exams for the theology exam should be available on YouTube. So thank you for that question as well. OK, wonderful. Any additional questions on the essay exams?

I hope that's a good overview and orientation. And I do hope that you'll read through that. We are available. Jacqueline Hernandez works with me in the church office, and her email is counseling@kinderchurch.org. And feel free to email her about any logistical or administrative issues. You can email me at dan@kinderchurch.org.

If you have questions on content or questions on any of the issues related to essay writing, Jacqueline will help you with any of-- if you need resources or anything like that, she is a very trusted resource. She does a great job here in the church office, and she's available to help you with any questions as well.

So wonderful. Well, may the Lord bless you. Thank you for joining us tonight. I think it was a great start to the new year. And we look forward to seeing you next Sunday at 5 o'clock Pacific time. We'll be doing counseling exam number 2, which is dealing with the issue of involvement.

And we hope to see you next Sunday. So until then, God bless, and have a--