So you want to start a counseling ministry?
If you walked into a room of pastors and elders and said, “I want to start a counseling ministry,” few would object to this idea. Many pastors find their schedules overturned by messy counseling cases, elders find themselves over their heads as they shepherd the flock, and church communities would be transformed if major counseling crises were addressed and defused before the shrapnel of conflict and betrayal increases the number of counseling casualties.
“You want to start a counseling ministry? Great! Can’t wait to see what it looks like when you build it!”
The fact that these conversations do not always result in tangible support from church leadership reveals an often-overlooked truth that has defined the healthiest elements of the biblical counseling movement. The primary vision of biblical counselors is not merely to see churches launch biblical counseling ministries, but to see them become biblical counseling ministries. In the words of Rob Green and Steve Viars from over a decade ago, “we pray that you want your church not only to have a counseling ministry, but to be a counseling ministry.”1
Over the years, IRBC has had the privilege of talking with pastors, church leaders, and seminary students who have expressed a strong interest in starting biblical counseling ministries within their local churches. These conversations usually start with two convictions: a deep sense of need and a clear vision of a community transformed through biblical counseling. These conversations are always exciting, and there is something fun about meetings devoted to dreaming and praying about what God can do in the life of a local church. At the same time, these conversations often overlook an essential prerequisite for a successful and fruitful long-term counseling ministry—a church culture of one another care and counseling.
A Biblical Vision for a Church Culture of Care
From one perspective, a church culture of care is not the result of a church making one or even several biblical counselors available to meet the counseling needs of its members. A church culture of care is the byproduct of the entire church community knowing how to apply principles of change and growth into one another’s lives. This vision is not the result of the ingenuity of Jay Adams or another well-known biblical counselor. Rather, this vision is the fruit of a church fully implementing the principles that God has given to the church and its members in the Scriptures for their life together within the body of Christ.
According to the Scriptures, every church community that desires to please God and grow in godliness together should be defined by three tangible realities:
First, a deep and mature knowledge of the truths of Scripture and its application to the problems of life.
Throughout Scripture, God’s people are presented as being a “people of the book.” Whether in the Old Testament presentations and explanations of the Law (Exodus, Deuteronomy, Neh 8:8) or early converts devoting themselves to hear the preaching of the Apostles (Acts 2:42), the corporate gathering of God’s people reflects the priority of the reading and preaching of God’s Word. For example, Paul instructs Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:13 to devote himself to the public reading of Scripture, while also charging Timothy to “preach the Word” in 2 Timothy 4:2.
Scripture does not give the impression that Christians listen to the reading, teaching, and exposition of Scripture for mere entertainment. God’s people receive the Word of God to be equipped with the Word of God. Christians are called to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly (Col 3:16). This expectation reaches both to growing in biblical and theological knowledge (Eph 4:13) as well as an ability to speak these truths in love into the lives of other believers (Eph 4:15). The example of the Roman church is a model for all congregations, that not only pastors and elders but church members as well are “filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Rom 15:14).
Scripture further specifies the expected nature of these theological conversations. The health of these churches is not gauged through corporate Bible trivia scores. Paul repeatedly impresses upon his protégés—Timothy and Titus—the importance of “sound doctrine,” or theological truths applied to life. In 1 Timothy 1:8–11, Paul describes a list of various characters whose lives are described by sinful vices as being “contrary to sound doctrine” (1 Tim 1:10). One of the tests that Paul offers Timothy for orthodoxy is orthopraxy, whether one’s teaching accords with and promotes “godliness” (1 Tim 6:3). In Titus 1, Paul short hands this concept as “truth which accords with godliness” (Tit 1:1). Paul’s confidence for Timothy’s ministry rests upon Timothy’s Bible, which is able to equip every Christian for “every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17). Scripture presents the mature Christian church as a community filled with a deep knowledge of the Scriptures, producing a firm understanding of theological doctrine and a vision for the godly Christian life.
Second, genuine relationships, defined by vulnerability and transparency, where people are known, and anonymity is impossible.
The watching world did not know what to do with the early church. Unlike Judaism, this “faith community” was not ultimately defined by a shared genealogical heritage. They defied national boundaries. They were not a cult or gnostic group for a subsection of society (old, young, male, female). Rather, they were all defined by a simple trait. They all claimed to follow the teaching of Jesus, believing him to be the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures and their prophecies, having risen from the dead. There was no other accurate name for the odd followers of this movement other than the reference, “those are the Christ-people, Christians” (Acts 11:26).
Christians are those who have declared to the world and the church that they believe in Christ and are committed to following his commandments (Matt 28:19–20). This radical realignment of a person’s allegiances and loyalties has horizontal implications for our lives among the body of Christ. In 1 John, the Apostle John effortlessly weaves together fellowship and communion with the Father and the Son (1 John 1:1–3) and fellowship with our brothers and sisters within the church (1 John 1:5–10). Memorably, John says that a Christian who claims to know God (“be in the light”) but hates his brother is “still in darkness” (1 John 2:9). The image of “light” in 1 John communicates both moral purity and holiness as well as relationships or “communion” defined by transparency and integrity. As John plainly states: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:19–20).
The antecedent truths and biblical principles have been historically used to support the Reformed practice of church membership. According to Article 28 of the Belgic Confession, all true believers are expected and required to unite themselves to a local church. But Scripture expects more than having one’s name on a church’s membership roll. Christians are called to live out their discipleship to Christ by deeply embedding themselves in transparent, mutually supportive relationships within a local church, allowing other believers, including their leaders, to fulfill their responsibilities of exercising spiritual oversight and watchfulness over themselves (Heb 2:1; 3:12; 13:17).
Third, a faith and love that flows from the Gospel and fuels good works.
Reformed Christians have long stressed the theological truth that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone. At the same time, the retort is often warranted that the salvation that is by faith alone should not long be alone without good works. Good works are not the foundation or basis of our faith—that is, the finished work of Christ through the instrument of faith—but good works are an expected result of conversion and new birth. Christians show their gratitude to God by responding to the good news of the gospel through a life of devotion and service unto him (Rom 12:1–2).
In Ephesians 2:10, Paul concludes his glorious declaration concerning our salvation with the comment that believers are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). Paul repeats in Titus 2:14 that Christ has redeemed “us from all lawlessness and to purify himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good work” (Tit 2:14). Now, there is a sense in which these “good works” of obedience and love should be indiscriminately displayed within the lives of Christians, but Christians are also called to demonstrate this joyful obedience to God in their relationships within the body of Christ.
This point is revealed in the following question: How many Christians could confess that they are regularly fulfilling all the “one another” commands within the Scriptures? How many Christians are faithfully practicing the commands to love one another (John 13:34–35), live in harmony with one another (Rom 12:16), forgive one another (Eph 4:32), count others more significant than themselves (Phil 2:3–4), bear one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2), and more? What would our churches look like if every member was regularly fulfilling these commands, then exercising their gifts and particular callings within the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:1–11)? As Paul reminds us, it is when every member is in their place within the body of Christ, and every part is working properly, that the body “grows” and “builds itself up in love” (Eph 4:16).
A Church Culture of Care and Counseling
At this point, I can anticipate that some readers may be thinking, “That is a great overview of the Bible’s instructions for churches and their members, but what do these truths have to do with biblical counseling ministry?” The three vignettes previously outlined—a theological and practical understanding of Scripture, transparent Christian relationships, and a visible faith that results in good works—together produce a church culture of one another care necessary for fruitful, long-term biblical counseling ministry. A church begins to adopt a mutual culture of care when its members do not view “counseling” as a specialized service for individuals with “those big issues and problems.” Rather, God does something beautiful when an entire church body catches this vision for one another care. A church culture of care is the result of a body of believers viewing their discipleship as a community project, inviting other brothers and sisters into mutual relationships of support, edification, and encouragement in their areas of sin, weakness, and suffering, which inevitably produces Christians offering one another counsel from God’s Word to the various issues of life.
A church culture of care is a vital prerequisite for a biblical counseling ministry because biblical counseling is only one tool in the toolbox our heavenly Father uses to grow and sanctify his church. Biblical counseling allows pastors, elders, and church members to address issue-specific problems for a duration of time that are inhibiting a Christian’s overall growth and maturity in the faith. Biblical counseling goes after that debilitating depression, that marital conflict, that deep-rooted sin pattern, so that believers can re-engage with the overall discipleship culture of a local church in a beneficial way.
Therefore, at every step in the biblical counseling process, some level of local church involvement is expected. Counselees are encouraged to allow others to support them with their problems, and counselees are graduated back into the stream of a local congregation. In this way, the best practices of biblical counseling do not address life’s problems in a cold, clinical way between a therapist and a client. Rather, biblical counselors appropriately invite the congregation and its giftings into the counseling process, so that counselees can experience the help and comfort of the entire body of Christ while receiving biblical counsel for the difficulties they are facing.
At the same time, it is entirely possible that some churches can use a biblical counseling ministry to work against a culture of care. A biblical counseling ministry can wrongly reinforce the idea that other church members do not need to know about the things occurring in a person’s life or that church members do not need to be equipped to address problems biblically because that is the “counselor’s job.” What is more likely is the fact that many biblical counselors will feel isolated and alone within a church culture that has chronic issues in the spiritual malformation of its members.
For any church interested in launching a biblical counseling ministry, begin by taking a long and hard look at your own church’s discipleship history and culture of one another care. Is there tangible progress that your church is heading in the right direction in the three areas addressed above? Begin your work here, for a healthy culture of one another care and counseling is the most fertile ground for the Lord to raise up future men and women to lead a lay counseling ministry.
Conclusion
In my experience, the biblical vision presented above for life among the body of Christ is almost addictive. Once one grasps these overarching profiles of a healthy church and their potential impact, it is difficult to become comfortable with the discipleship status quo in many congregations.
Yet, this vision also comes with a great cost. It may require rethinking the priorities and current investment of time and resources within a congregation. It may require a season of theological and practical teaching concerning God’s vision for a local church and its members. It may require taking that first step by being vulnerable in an elders meeting or a small group discussion, being the first person in the room to put down their guard and their walls. It may require overturning the cold traditionalism, culture, and formalism that have long replaced the Gospel as the primary “glue” holding a church together. It may require confronting the Pharisees within your midst whose critical attitude and comments actively work against Christ’s vision for his church to be a hospital for sinners and sufferers (Luke 5:31–32).
A biblical vision for a church community of one another care may have a high cost, but that cost is worth it. If the biblical picture presented above reflects the reality Christ sets for his church, then the stakes are higher than whether our church may eventually have a website offering counseling services to a broader community. Rather, the question is as follows: “Is my church actively working with or against Christ’s vision for the mutual care, support, and counsel that Christ expects to see within our local church community?”
On that last day, may every Reformed congregation be able to say with a clear conscience, “Yes, imperfectly, with many weaknesses, and by God’s grace alone, we labored so that our church community was this type of place for God’s people.” If your church community is striving to answer this question in this way, you are providing the best foundation for God to one day build a biblical counseling ministry in your church.
- Rob Green and Steve Viars, “The Biblical Counseling Ministry of the Local Church,” in Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God’s Changeless Truth, ed. James Macdonald, Bob Kellemen, and Steve Viars (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2013), 225. ↩︎
