to our 24th meeting of Intermediate Biblical Counseling. And just a joy to be able to gather tonight in this online format and in this online meeting and to continue our study of the word of God. We're looking at tonight, theology exam number 24, which deals with the subject of the church and the counseling process.

And so a great topic for us to end our study this year on. It's been a wonderful time studying the word of God with you these last number of months. And by God's grace, we've made it to the end of the theology exam questions. And in January, we will be doing another class dealing with the 20 questions on the counseling exams, but that's for 2021.

I'm just happy to get to the end of the theology exams with all of you. And just again, want to thank you for your faithfulness and for your perseverance through this year. And thank you for your diligent study of the word of God. And it's just been a joy to study these topics with you.

Well, as I mentioned tonight, we're looking at the 24th theology exam question, which has to do with the church and the counseling process. You'll remember last week, we looked at the doctrine of the church and did a broad survey of what the church is and how the church is spoken of in scripture.

We saw the different descriptions of the local church in scripture, that the church is the very bride and the body of Christ. The church is the flock of Christ. The church is the family of God. And also that the church is the very dwelling place of God, the New Testament temple as revealed in the New Testament scriptures.

And just a wonderful look at the descriptions of the church as found in the New Testament. That was more of a general theological question. Describe what the church is and in this question, we're going to be looking at how does that relate to actual counseling ministry? How does our view of the local church, our ecclesiology, if you will, relate to our view of biblical counseling ministry?

How should we view counseling ministry in light of the doctrine of the local church? And you have heard me, if you were in year one of ACBC training with me, year one training, then you have heard me say that counseling is a ministry of the local church and that the best counseling ministry occurs in the local church as an expression of the local church's ministry.

The best counseling ministry occurs in accountability to the governance structure of the local church. The best counseling ministry occurs as the counseling ministry integrates into the life of the local church, into the preaching and the teaching ministries of the church as well as into the body life, the one another ministry of the local church.

And so all of that is really the expression of the core conviction that underlies ACBC's ministry. We believe that counseling is a ministry of the local church and that the best counseling that occurs in this world occurs in the context of the local church's ministry. That is why I love ACBC as an organization.

That is why I am committed to ACBC as a parish church organization that has come alongside the local church and to be a support to the local church. ACBC is very clear on its mission and also its core conviction that counseling ministry is to occur as an expression of the local church's ministry.

So I love ACBC because of its commitment to the sufficiency of scripture for counseling ministry and also for the organization's robust ecclesiology, how the ministry of ACBC sees counseling ministry as a ministry of the church. So what we're asking you to do in theology exam number 24 is to apply the doctrine of the local church that you have studied and articulated in the last exam and apply it to the actual practice of counseling ministry.

So how does your doctrine of the local church shape and inform how you do counseling? Jesus said in Matthew 16, verse 18, "I will build my church "and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." So we wanna build our counseling ministry not only upon the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, but also upon the doctrine of the church.

And so this is a fitting end to a wonderful year of study. And I just wanna devote our time of study to the Lord. Let's pray together and let's ask the Lord to bless our time. Well, Father, we thank you for our time tonight and this hour that we can look at some very precious truths in scripture.

And we thank you, Father, that tonight we are looking at a topic that is really near and dear to the heart of Christ. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. The church is the very bride in the body of Christ bought with the blood of Christ.

And it is the church that is the organization, the organism that is being built into a spiritual temple in this, the New Testament era. And we thank you for the promise that Christ will build his church and the gates of hell shall not stand against it. We thank you for the ministry of the church.

We thank you for the preaching and the teaching ministry of the church. We thank you for the fellowship of the church. We thank you for the ordinances of the church, the Lord's table and baptism. We thank you for the mission of the church, which is to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And we just thank you for the privilege of not only belonging to Christ, but also the privilege of belonging to the church. We pray that you would make us men and women who love the church, who are committed to the church and who express our counseling ministry as an extension of the local church's ministry.

Help us to be committed to the churches that we are a part of. And we pray that Father, you would use this session to help us to think through the practical implications of this truth, that counseling ministry is a ministry of the church. And so we just thank you for this time, we commit it to you in Jesus' name, amen.

- Amen, well, let's read together Theology Exam number 24. And the question is, what role should the church play in the counseling process? And so a number of good resources that I've listed for you on page one of your handout, the works by Wayne Grudem, Paul Toczkis and Heath Lambert, as well as David Powelson's article in the Journal of Biblical Counseling.

All of those are very good resources that will help you think through this topic of how a counseling is a ministry of the local church. I also wanna commend to you the additional resources that I've placed on your handout and a really good blog post on this topic was written by Dr.

Robert Jones, who was my professor at Southern Seminary. He has thought through this topic of church-based and church-centered biblical counseling ministry in some detail. And there's a part one as well as a part two to that blog post that's found at the Biblical Counseling Coalition website. A very helpful work.

And I'm gonna go over some of his comments through the course of this session, but I did want to quote from his blog post for a moment. This isn't on your handout, but I'll just put it on the screen here. And he writes, "I love church-based counseling. Having done it for 30 years now, 19 as a lead pastor and the past 11 as an associate, I can assure you that there is nothing better than counseling in the context of a healthy local church.

By church-based counseling, I mean, Christ-centered, biblical counseling provided for the members and visitors of a local church done by the trained leaders and members of that church with the goal of helping those members and visitors follow Christ and function as growing members of that congregation." And I love his definition of church-based counseling.

It is Christ-centered biblical counseling provided for the members and visitors of a local church. Dr. Jones continues that, "While I thank the Lord for my brothers and sisters who counsel biblically as much as they're permitted to in para-church settings, private practice offices, and institutional settings, and I recognize their place in God's kingdom, none of those scenarios offers the depth and breadth of care that a sound biblical counseling church can provide." And I would agree with that assessment.

He talks about how counseling ministry as an expression of the local church is able to integrate its ministry into all of the different ministries of the local church and therefore offers to a counselee what no standalone practice could offer. And I think as you'll see by the end of this session, I hope you will see how that is practically true.

And I like the balance in this. We're not against para-church settings or private practice offices. We're not against institutional settings. We are not known for what we are against so much as what we are for. We are for a high view of the local church and a high view of the sufficiency of scripture.

So that's just a very helpful blog that I would encourage you to read and think through on your own. I would encourage you for your essay purposes that if you were to take three or four of the 13 statements there, the 13 benefits of church-based biblical counseling and do your own reflection on that topic and even think through some benefits on your own and incorporate that into your theology exam, that would very much enrich your theology exam and really provide some material to write on this essay topic.

Just a very helpful resource. And then on your handout there, I would highly recommend to you Milton Vincent's seminar, "Abounding in Hope and Able to Counsel." That was recorded at the IBCD conference and I had the privilege of sitting in on that seminar and just one of the best one-hour seminars that I have heard on the topic of church-based biblical counseling and how the believer is able to counsel because he or she has the full revelation of the gospel as recorded in the book of Romans as well as in the Old Testament and New Testament scriptures.

So please get your hands on that seminar and refer to those notes. That is a very helpful work that will help you think through this topic. And then a couple of blog posts there, Ed Welch and Paul Toshkis have some good material on counseling one another as a ministry of the local church and the ministry of church discipline in the local church, which is, as we shall see, related to the counseling ministry in some degree.

So let me move to page two of your handout and let's talk through the role of the church in counseling ministry. What do we mean by the church being central in counseling ministry? And what do we mean by church-based and church-centered counseling ministry? Well, the main idea that we're communicating in this session is simply this, that biblical counseling is a ministry of the local church.

Biblical counseling is a ministry of the local church. And at the risk of overstating the obvious, we want to promote a church-centered view of biblical counseling. It was back in 1970 when Jay Adams published his landmark work entitled "Competent to Counsel." And in that day, Adams was responding to this idea that the church has a lot to offer in terms of biblical teaching and the church is tasked to evangelize the world.

But when it comes to life's problems and helping people with the issues of life, the church did not have the resources to do that ministry and needed to refer their members outside of the church into the secular world. And the church needed to tell its members to receive help from secular psychologists.

That was the prominent idea in Adams' day. And he wrote this landmark work, "Competent to Counsel." The fundamental conviction that Adams promoted in his book was that the church was indeed able to counsel and had the resources to help people with their problems. And Adams based his conviction off the teaching of Romans 15, verse 14, where Paul says, "I myself am satisfied about you, "my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, "filled with all knowledge, "and able or competent to instruct." The Greek word is nutheteo, to admonish.

It could be translated to counsel. You are able to instruct one another. And that term, nutheteo, became the basis for the counseling movement, nuthetic counseling. That term is derived from the Greek term used in Romans 15, verse 14. The term nutheteo is used in Colossians 3, verse 16, where Paul says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you "richly, teaching," and nutheteo, admonishing, "one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns "and spiritual songs with thankfulness "in your hearts to God." And Adams said in that work that the task of nutheteo belongs to those members in the local church.

He wrote that the thesis of this book is that qualified Christian counselors, properly trained in the scriptures, are competent to counsel, more competent than psychiatrists or anyone else. And that is the fundamental conviction that launched the biblical counseling movement. It was a radical idea back in 1970, and it continues to be a radical idea even today.

Believers are able to counsel. The problems that are addressed by secular psychology are the very same problems that are addressed by the scriptures. And this ministry of admonishing one another, speaking the truth to one another, belongs as a ministry of the church. The term nutheteo comes from the Greek words nous, meaning mind, and tithimi, meaning to place.

It literally can be translated to place in the mind. And the idea there is to lay it on the mind or the heart of a person with a view towards a change in conduct. Nutheteo could be described as the ministry of putting sense into someone's head. So that's what we do in counseling ministry.

We speak the truth in love, and we seek to bring biblical truth to bear upon people's lives through helpful conversations with a view towards a change of belief and conduct. You'll note there that Paul simply includes that ministry of admonishing one another as the one-anothering that occurs in the local church.

There are 59 one-anothers in the scripture, 59 commands that call us into the fellowship of the local church and call us to build relationships in the local church. A sampling on your hand out there, love one another, live in harmony with one another, welcome one another, care for one another, greet one another, through love serve one another, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, encourage one another, build one another up, pray for one another, exhort one another, and you can add to that list, newt the tale or admonish one another, speak truth into one another's lives.

All of those commands taken together bring to bear upon our lives and our understanding of the Christian life that we cannot live our Christian lives in isolation from relationships in the local church. And so counseling ministry is meant to work in conjunction with all of the other one-another commands in scripture.

We counsel one another as we pray for one another. We counsel one another as we care for one another. We counsel one another as we greet one another. There's been many times in my own counseling ministry where I have the joy of meeting with a counselee in a counseling room on a Thursday morning or a Thursday evening, and then have the opportunity to greet that counselee on a Sunday morning at the counseling during the worship service.

We operate in conjunction with the ministry of the local church. And so we counsel one another as we exhort one another and as we encourage one another. So this is why we wanna encourage you to have a broad view of counseling ministry as well as a narrow view of counseling ministry.

The broad view of counseling ministry is that counseling happens all the time. Counseling happens in coffee shops. It happens in living rooms. It happens at breakfast at Denny's or at Flappy Jacks. It happens as you text or as you call one another or FaceTime one another. It happens in small group meetings.

It happens after a worship service at as you eat donuts with other believers in Christ. Counseling happens all the time in the conversations that you and I have on a weekly daily basis where we share life together with other believers in Christ. That's the broad view of counseling ministry.

And then there is a narrow aspect of counseling ministry where counseling happens in structured counseling sessions that are in an office or in a counseling room in which you organize 12 to 15 sessions and walk through a very specific issue of life. There is a broad aspect and there is a narrow aspect.

And one of the benefits of the certification process is you get better at the narrow aspect of counseling ministry. And guess what? That makes you better at the broader aspects of counseling ministry. If you can do 12 to 15 sessions with a counselee dealing with an intense issue of life, then you will be able to handle that conversation at Flappy Jacks or at Starbucks or wherever you may be.

And so counseling ministry is the ministry of the church happening all the time in the church. So Adams asked this question. Why would we go outside the church when addressing the real problems and issues of life? I'll just reason theologically for a moment. If the church is the very body and the bride of Christ, if the church is the very flock that belongs to the shepherd who is Christ, if the flock is the family of God, if it is the dwelling place of God in which the spirit of God dwells and empowers effective ministry, then why would you forfeit all of the benefits and the blessings that belong to the church and send your people outside of the church to address the problems and the issues of life?

We're not against the idea of medication. We're not against the idea of, at some point, partnering with a physician. We're not against some of the insights that secular psychology has to offer in terms of how people behave. Even J. Adams noted that secular psychology makes good and helpful observations about human behavior.

And so we wanna be balanced with this, and we're not anti all of these other things that go on in the world. What we are saying as we are affirming the sufficiency of scripture and the centrality of the church and the plan and program of God is that ministry belongs to the church, that lives are changed as the scriptures are brought to bear upon people's lives, and that the counseling issues that you and I face in the world today are issues that are addressed by the scriptures and can be addressed in the local church.

And so this was Adam's statement and the one that launched the biblical counseling movement. Now, with that said, let me move to page three of your handout and just talk through some practical implications of this. The key passage, as we noted, that Adams entitled his landmark work after is Romans 15, verse 14, where Paul says, "I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers," that means Christians, "that you yourselves are full of goodness," and that word talks about practical help or practical benefit, "that you are filled with all knowledge," which refers to the knowledge of the gospel, the knowledge of Christ, the knowledge of all the doctrines that he has spoken of in the book of Romans, the knowledge of the truths of justification by faith alone, the knowledge of the truth of glorification, which will occur at some time in the future.

You are filled with all of this spiritual knowledge, the knowledge of Christ, the knowledge of the truth of God. You're full of goodness because you are filled with practical help based upon your knowledge of Christ and his word. And therefore, Paul says, "I'm satisfied about you, and you are able to newt the tale to instruct one another." And he just makes the statement that the believer is competent to counsel, that we should not be intimidated by those who have some professional certification.

We should understand that if we have been given the scriptures and given the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that we are able to give instruction from God's word. And this statement is expounded upon by Milton Vincent in his excellent seminar, "Abounding in Hope and Able to Counsel." And what Pastor Milton does in that seminar is he notes that it appears that even in the realm of secular psychology, that different models of secular psychology, different methods of psychotherapy do have some limited temporal benefit.

He notes there that there seems to be, and this is just kind of a broad observation, that when a person, even an unbeliever, goes to see a secular psychologist or a secular therapist, there is some limited benefit of a temporal nature. And he also notes there that it appears that it doesn't seem to matter what the content of that therapy is in the actual delivery of a theory that addresses the person's issues.

It doesn't seem to matter what the content is, what the common thread that surrounds the limited benefit that people receive from secular psychology seems to be a live person who seems to care or expresses some kind of care that devotes a certain amount of time to a specific person, that the common denominator behind how people receive help from secular psychology doesn't seem to be the exact model or the exact theories being espoused in the counseling delivery, but it is just, there's a person to talk to, and that person appears to care, and that person gives attention, and that person, for at least a structured amount of time, devotes himself or herself to addressing your problems.

After doing this survey of secular psychology, Vincent makes this statement that I think is very helpful for us to think through. He says, "If the common ingredient that makes all models of psychotherapy at least somewhat helpful is a caring human being who is willing to listen and talk and help, then the church should be a dynamic place that is bristling with power to help people.

Those of us who have been saved by Christ are called to be quick to listen and slow to talk, and when we talk, we speak the truth in love, and the truth we speak is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God into salvation to everyone who believes." Just a balanced view there of secular psychology and how it would contrast with the church's counseling ministry.

Vincent knows that it seems that even secular psychology can be somewhat helpful in some limited temporal sense because there is a live person who is caring for another person, and if that is true under common grace, then how much more under saving grace should the church be a dynamic place that is bristling with power to help other people?

For we offer not only a caring person who is devoted to help another person, but we also offer the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the truth of the scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ. How much more ought the church to be a place that is abounding in hope and is filled with believers who are equipped to counsel others and to give them the life-changing truths of scripture?

If the world can produce a minimal level of helpfulness under common grace, how much more ought the church to be a place that is filled with life-changing counsel under saving grace? For we offer people not only a caring human being, but a Christ-like spirit-filled counseling ministry that is empowered by the scriptures and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so Paul says here, you are able to instruct one another. William Henderson has made this comment, "Today the word counseling is heard again and again. Ever so many books and articles have been written about it. The apostle here reveals that there was a mutual counseling already in his day.

And it was of a high character. By and large, the members of the Roman church were competent to admonish one another." And I love Ed Welch's statement in towards the middle of page three. He says, "No longer do people need a special anointing to offer a prophetic word of direction and wisdom.

Now we are part of the new covenant in which the spirit has been given to all who have put their faith in Jesus. God is pleased to have the church mature through the ministry of weak people who seem unqualified in the world's eyes. Most likely this is already happening in your church.

People share their struggles with each other. People pray with each other. This is certainly happening with the women in the church. Sometimes it is happening with the men. We want it to happen more and with growing love and wisdom." And here is Welch's definition of biblical counseling. He says, "Counseling is wise and helpful conversations." That is counseling.

I like that definition. Wise and helpful conversations in surrounding God's word and relating it to life. He says, "We all need this and need to give it." This is a view of counseling ministry that is, again, was radical in 1970 and that is still radical today. So with that said, let me move to page four of your handout.

And what I wanna do is actually segue a little bit into a brief overview of Robert Jones's blog, his "13 Benefits of Church-Based Biblical Counseling." As I thought about this subject, I thought that Jones does a fantastic job of just giving an overview or a big picture of what does church-based counseling ministry look like.

And I wanna do a brief overview of that here and then come back to page four of your handout and then highlight a few of these benefits in greater detail. But as I mentioned, you would do well to reflect on these benefits on your own and perhaps use them as a prompt to write your own thoughts on this issue.

But the question would be, what are the benefits of church-based counseling as opposed to counseling, which is done outside of the local church or even counseling that is done as a standalone ministry? And just run through these. I think you'll get the big picture and this will be helpful to think through this topic.

But number one would be the direct oversight of God-ordained shepherds. And he's referring there to the elders and the pastors of the local church. Here at Kindred Church, our counseling ministries operates underneath the authority of the elders and pastors of the church. We are accountable to the governance structure of the local church.

And that is a healthy accountability that I rejoice in and I thank God for. We have tremendous benefits that flow out of this accountability to the elders and the pastors of the local church. This keeps us as a ministry theologically grounded. We are accountable to the doctrinal statement of our church.

We are accountable to the bylaws of our local church. And it not only keeps our counseling ministry accountable, it keeps our counselors accountable that they must be accountable as to their doctrine and as to their conduct in the local church. We seek to affirm counselors as ACBC certified counselors who have a good reputation in the local church.

And this is a question ACBC asks us as pastors to answer regarding our counselors on a yearly basis is what is your counselor's reputation in the local church? And that's for the simple reason that we don't want to affirm biblical counselors who have poor reputations in the local church.

And I thank God for the counselors in my ministry and just thank God that each of them have stellar reputations in the local church and they have built up those reputations over years of faithful service in the church. So the first benefit would be the direct oversight of God ordained shepherds.

A second benefit would be consistency between private counseling and the public preaching and teaching of God's word. This would be the idea that we want our counselees to be not only coming for counseling, but also to be sitting in worship service on a Sunday morning, hearing the word of God proclaimed.

We want them to be in essence hearing the same thing on a Sunday morning in a group setting that they are hearing in an individual meeting during the week. It is the partnership of this public ministry of God's word and the private ministry of God's word that produces life change in the counselees life.

And so counselees need to hear both preaching, Caruso ministry and counseling, Nutheteo ministry. And it's helpful when both of those ministries are coming from the same doctrinal viewpoint. It's helpful when this isn't always the case in counseling ministry because we do counsel people who are coming from different churches, but it is helpful when the counselee is hearing from the pulpit, a high view of the authority of scripture and then hearing the same doctrinal viewpoint in the counseling ministry that there's consistency between private and public ministry of God's word.

Oftentimes an ideal setting is my counselee is sitting in a worship service on Sunday morning, hearing the preaching of God's word. And then even we can bring into the counseling session applications of Sunday's message to the specific issue that the counselee is facing. I've been surprised and amazed at how many times the Sunday morning message is directly relevant to what my counselee is going through in his life.

And so that is a very helpful partnership between public preaching and private counseling. Number three would be God-centered Christ-exalting worship. Just note here that you're not gonna get this in a standalone counseling session, but getting your counselee involved on a Sunday morning worship service gets them exposed to the corporate worship of the church and they're exposed to God-centered Christ-exalting worship.

Now, why is this helpful in counseling ministry? It's helpful because as we have learned in the fundamentals of biblical counseling, the deepest heart issues are always theological and the deepest heart issues are always related to worship. Who or what do we worship as the Puritans used to put it?

Who do we give our ultimate allegiance and affections? One of the counselors in our ministry was commenting that the common thread seems to be that the heart issues deal with idolatry and unbelief. Those are the dominant heart issues that come up in counseling. And I would agree with that assessment that usually at the deepest heart level of a counselee's life, there are issues related to unbelief and idolatry that the counselee is worshiping or worth shipping something other than the true and the living God.

How do you deal with these matters of the heart? How do you deal with idolatry and worship issues? Well, you have to get the counselee into the corporate worship of the church and you have to get them exposed to corporate worship. God-centered Christ exalting worship has a wonderful way of addressing the counseling issues that we are facing.

Jones even writes that this comment is a little tongue in cheek, but the idea is good. He writes and I quote that a biblical counseling church offers two counseling sessions every week, a kind of Sunday morning group therapy time for an assembly of recovering idolaters and then a private session during the week.

He says that's a little bit of a humorous observation, but the idea is good. You need both the group meeting of a Sunday morning and also the private meeting with a counselor. Number four would be Christ's ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper, which are some of the most powerful moments in the life of a church.

I've had the privilege of administrating the baptisms here at Kindred Church for the last five years and also been involved in leading the Lord's supper and just a tremendous joy to be part of these ordinances. It never gets old. In fact, these ordinances grow more and more meaningful as the years go by.

And the truth is that some of our counselees do need to be baptized. And part of the counseling process is to instruct them in the ordinance of baptism and just to let them know that that is the first and most simplest commandment that Jesus gives to a believer in Christ.

And we can't progress to the greater commandments if we don't obey Christ in the first and simplest commandment, which is to be baptized. We've had people in our church say that, well, I wanna work with children or I wanna be involved in working with youth, but I haven't been baptized and I don't plan to be baptized.

And our response is, if you're not willing to be obedient to the most basic command in the Christian life, then how can we entrust children to your spiritual influence? What indeed are you going to teach our children that the word of God does not need to be obeyed? That's not the message we want our children to hear.

So we just encourage people to be baptized and to partake of the Lord's table. And sometimes there have been occasions where we will instruct our counselees to be baptized as part of the counseling process, that this is actually going to be helpful for you to grow in sanctification if you obey Christ in this very important ordinance.

A fifth benefit would be formative and restorative or redemptive church discipline. I have some material on that subject in your handout, but I'll just mention it here. When and if we have a counselee who's caught in unrepentant sin and is unwilling to repent and deal with that sin issue, then a church-based counseling ministry has a recourse to bring that to the next stage of church discipline and to bring some of that spiritual pressure upon the counselee's life.

Now, I thank God that at least in the last five years of my ministry here at Kindred and in the Kindred Counseling Center, we have not had to discipline any counselee that comes in for church discipline and or comes in for counseling ministry. No one comes in for church discipline, but they come in for counseling ministry.

We have not had to institute church discipline for any of our counselees as of yet. And so I do wanna be balanced with this. We don't wanna train counselors who are always threatening their counselees with church discipline if they don't do their homework or if they don't show up on time or if they don't make radical change in a week or two.

That's not the tone that we wanna set. The rule is patience and long-suffering and waiting for the counselee to take those steps towards obedience. But there is a framework, however, and there is an accountability structure in place that we operate as a ministry of the local church and therefore we do have the right, if we have a situation where there is blatant, unrepentant sin that's not being repented of or not being dealt with, then we do have recourse to bring the pressure of church discipline upon that situation.

And all of that is recorded in our consent to counsel documents. And that, by the way, is a very helpful accountability to live under that we do live in a local church that practices church discipline. Number six would be the fellowship, encouragement, an example of mature fellow believers. We can actually assign as homework to ask a counselee to join a small group.

We can even get really specific in our homework assignments that some of our counselors have even gotten so specific as to say to our counselee, "We want you to join a small group "and then we want you to stay after the small group, "the formal time ends, "and we want you to stay during the snack time "and talk to two to three people, "ask them what their prayer requests are." You can get that very specific in counseling ministry as part of the homework to get people involved in the fellowship of the local church and just bring that resource to bear upon the counselee's life.

We've just noted this, that the two things that are very common in counseling ministry is one, our counselees are not reading the word of God on a daily basis. And number two, they're just living isolated lives, that they don't have relationships in the local church. And so if we can assign homework that will help them to get into the word of God on a daily basis, and then get into the flow of relationships and fellowship in the local church, we will have helped them build the foundations of their spiritual life.

And many counselees, just from those two items being dealt with in their lives do grow in their counseling issue. Even if we haven't addressed the specific issue of anxiety or anger or conflict resolution, just getting them into the word on a daily basis, getting them into fellowship brings tremendous spiritual benefits to their lives.

And so that is another benefit. Number seven would be existing facilities and office space. As a related note, a church-based counseling ministry is ideally funded by the offerings of the members of the church. And so typically we offer our ministry for free. I'm always, I'm often asked the question, do we do this as a paid ministry or can we expect to make money off counseling ministry in the church?

And typically my basic response is, it's similar to the public ministry of God's word. We don't charge for people to come and hear the word of God on a Sunday morning. We don't charge admission for people to do that. Even though what we offer them in the preaching of God's word is invaluable.

We're not charging tickets. We're not selling tickets to come and hear the word of God on a Sunday morning. And similarly with private ministry of God's word, we don't charge for our counseling ministry. At times with non-members, we might give a suggested donation to the counseling ministry. And definitely if a counselee feels led to give a freewill offering out of gratitude to what they have received in counseling, we certainly encourage them to do that.

And we certainly will receive that offering, but that's a different motivational structure than if a counseling ministry charges for its counseling ministry. And I know there's a little bit of differing perspectives, even in the biblical counseling world on this particular subject, but just to let you know where I've landed after many discussions on this is, I just kind of landed with an understanding that if we don't charge for the public ministry of God's word, then generally speaking, I'm comfortable with a view of counseling that says, we don't charge for the private ministry of God's word.

And on a practical note, if we did charge, that would introduce a lot of different complexities as to how we would have to set up our ministry. And I would rather avoid that if possible, but you can use existing facilities and use existing resources of the local church and not have to pay additional overhead where you have to go to a financial model of charging for counseling ministry.

And so as a side note, most of our counselors do this as a ministry. They're not paid for their service. They're not paid for counseling just as they would not be paid for serving as a deacon or deaconess or serving in the welcome tent or serving as an usher.

For the majority of our counselors, this is a labor of love. There may be a place for a highly dedicated counselor who is giving significant amounts of time and energy to the counseling ministry to be given a stipend or to be supported in some way, but that would be at the discretion of the elders and the pastors of the church.

Generally, our counselors are doing this as a ministry and as a service to Christ. And then there is letter number eight, immediate opportunities to serve others, which would be also a suggested assignment that you can give to counselees. It's just many of our counselees have a very self-focused view of their lives and we need to pull them out of that and help them to see others in the body of Christ.

And you can assign them homework that gets them into service. Number nine would be resource people for auxiliary help. I can think of one counselee that without getting into details, I had one counseling situation where there were financial issues and I was able to ask the counselee, can I bring in another person in the church who has expertise in this very, in the specific financial issue that you're dealing with and have them speak into the situation and was able to get the consent of the counselee on that.

And that led to a wonderful partnership of having someone in our church minister to the counselee alongside myself. And those are some of the opportunities that exist in a local church setting that may not exist in a standalone counseling center. Number 10 would be benevolence assistance, financial help or physical labor.

Our church does have a benevolence fund that's meant to help members with financial needs. And we have partnered with that ministry in the counseling ministry of the church. Number 11 would be members homes for counseling, discipleship and small group life. We've seen that some of our counselors, it's like the, when Paul left the church at Ephesus and the church, they asked Paul not to go.

And some of our counselees become friends in the ministry. The formal aspects of counseling lead to a longer relationship. And that's a joy to see. That doesn't always happen, but sometimes it does. And that's a wonderful thing to see when we see the formal aspect of ministry lead to informal ministry and informal relationships.

There is the aspect of a greater legal protection. When you define your counseling ministry as a ministry of the local church, and just define it as a ministry that is accountable to the doctrinal statement of the church, then there is legal protection there that whatever protections apply to the church as a whole can be claimed by the counseling ministry as part of that larger structure.

And so there are some benefits of that that I could take time to explain, but my time is limited here. But to say that there is some legal protection and defining it that way. And then Jones notes, we offer all of the above free of charge. Jones concludes this, that truly given this baker's dozen of benefits, the local church remains God's ideal counseling center.

May our Lord help his church gain this vision, equip its leaders and members to counsel others biblically and skillfully, and reach its members and their community with the life-changing hope found in Jesus Christ, the wonderful counselor. Now, as I said, you would do well to take those dozen benefits and reflect possibly on three or four of those items and write out your own thoughts on the subject.

But I did an overview of that because I do hope you'll see that a church-based counseling ministry does have resources to offer to our counselees that a standalone or parachurch counseling ministry may not be able to offer. Now, what I've done on pages four to six of your handout is I've highlighted three of, having done a survey of blessings or benefits of church-based counseling, I've highlighted three items that I found to be very significant in my own ministry and in leading the Kindred Center.

These are three benefits or distinctions of church-based ministry. I'm gonna do this really briefly and then close our time together. But just three of those elements that are very helpful and have been very helpful to me. Letter A would be that biblical counseling operates under the oversight of elders in the local church.

So we always wanna be operating in partnership with the elders of the local church. Ideally, if a counselee is coming from another local church, we wanna be operating in partnership with the elders of that local church and we don't wanna be going against the elders of a church. One of the practical implications of this is we do not promise absolute confidentiality to our counselees.

We state that in the consent to counsel documents, which I've given you a copy of. And we do retain the right to take an issue in the counseling relationship to the elders of the church if that is necessary. Now, please be balanced with that because we do practice limited confidentiality, which is to say that if I can keep this information confidential, I will by all means be discreet and trustworthy with this information.

I will not disclose this information outside of the counseling relationship unless I am biblically mandated to do so or unless I'm under compulsion to do so because of legitimate reasons. We do wanna be discreet and we do want to be confidential, but we never practice or promise absolute confidentiality and we have that in our counseling documents.

On page five, letter B, we do instruct our counselees to be involved in the ongoing ministry of the local church. That includes Sunday morning gatherings, small group ministry. We encourage them to get involved in the body of Christ and get involved in service. And it is the combination of all of those ministries alongside of counseling that has the resource and the power to change people's lives.

And then on the last page, on page six, I have a page there on church discipline. We do believe that church discipline can be initiated if the counselee continues in unrepentant sin. In next year, if you are involved in going through the counseling exams with me, you will write one entire essay on the subject of church discipline and your view of church discipline.

Just to note this briefly here on Matthew, on page six, you have Matthew 18, verse 15, which outlines the steps of church discipline. You have private confrontation, semi-private confrontation, church-wide pursuit, and you have a removal from fellowship. If counseling ministry is a ministry of the local church, then the members of our church who are being counseled can undergo church discipline if there is not repentance from ongoing sin.

Again, be balanced and careful with this. We have not had to do this in our counseling ministry as of yet, but that structure is in place as an accountability, as accountability to the local church. And so all of that to say that I hope you have, we've been given a good overview of how church-based counseling works and the benefits and the blessings of that.

And I would agree with Robert Jones' statement at the end that the local church remains God's ideal counseling center. So ideally, the local church does not have a counseling center. Ideally, the local church is the center where counseling ministry takes place, both formal and informal. Ideally, the church is a community of counselors who speak the truth and love to one another and who do so both in informal settings, such as Starbucks or Coffee Bean or Corner Bakery or Flappy Jacks, and also do so in formal structure settings in a church office in a specific counseling room.

And all of that is so that the body of Christ can be built up to become more like Christ and to honor the one who has loved and saved us. Just to let you know that this has been my prayer over the past number of years, that the church would catch a vision for biblical counseling, that the church would catch a vision for a counseling ministry that is both relational and biblical, that is both theological and practical, that is both rooted in the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture and expresses a high view of the local church, and that the members of the church would catch a vision for how they could be used as instruments in the Redeemer's hands to give hope and help to those who are in need.

And I believe that even in the short time that I've been involved with ACBC, that God has been gracious to answer that prayer that already He has done exceedingly abundantly beyond what I could ask or think. And I do believe that you who are enrolled in this class, working through these exam questions and working through these topics related to God's word, that you are an answer to the prayers that have been made in the past, that there would be members of the church who would catch a vision for this ministry and then be used as a catalyst to help others catch a vision for biblical counseling ministry.

I can think of probably no greater testament to the biblical counseling ministry and the character of the counselors that are part of this ministry than to say that many of our counselors have sat in on classes like this, have gone through year one training and then year two training, and then the third phase of certification process.

And then they have been unleashed in counseling rooms to counsel people, to counsel people who are dealing with addiction and sleeplessness and broken marriages and out of control anger problems and family issues and all of the issues that we see biblical counseling addresses that we've seen our counselors work through this training and then be used by God to bring hope and help to hurting people.

And there probably is no greater testament to these counselors ministry than to see that the people that they have counseled have then enrolled in these classes and have said that because I have been so helped by the word of God in biblical counseling, I want to be trained to help others using God's word.

That's exceedingly abundantly beyond what I could have asked or thought five years ago when we began this ministry. And I believe God is gonna use many of you in the very same way that as you complete these essays and as you move on to phase three of certification and as you moved on to meeting with people and loving them and helping them and caring for them and bringing the word of God to bear upon their problems, that God is gonna multiply your ministry in a wonderful way and that God is gonna use you in great ways.

So let me conclude our teaching this year and our class tonight with the benediction from Romans 15 verse 13, which says this, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace and believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another." Let's pray together. Father, thank you for this hour of study. Thank you for this year of study. Thank you for these 24 topics that we have sought to carefully walk through as a class and that we have sought to articulate and put into our own words to put pen to paper.

We have devoted ourselves to this class and to this time because we believe your word is precious and powerful, because we love your church and because we understand what is at stake, that there are people whose lives are in need of good, solid biblical counseling, that they need more than what the secular world can offer, that they need the hope that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I just thank you, Father, for the diligence of the students in this class. I pray that you would help them as they complete these essays and as they move on to write the counseling exam essays. And we pray that in years to come, that you would bear fruit in their lives and through their ministries that would be indeed exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we could ask or think, that you would multiply the fruitfulness of their lives and their ministry 30, 60, 100 fold, and that there would be many who come and say in years to come that they have received help and hope from God's word because of the result of the hours that we have spent together.

And so we just commit the fruit of this class to you. We give you all the resources, all the time, all the hard work. We give to you all of these essays, and we pray that, Lord, you would somehow use it all for your glory and for your praise and for the furtherance of the gospel and the building up of your church.

And we thank you and pray this in Jesus' name, amen. - Amen. Well, God bless you all. Have a wonderful holidays. I will send out notification of our next class in January. Merry Christmas and.