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My primary project is to explain the benefits of highlighting biblical counseling in a church planting strategy. I hope to show that biblical counseling can impact a church’s culture, evangelism, and ministry agenda in a way that can be more effective in many contexts than the prevailing models that emphasize great music, relevant messages, or a multitude of demographic-based programs. The four questions that I am interested in hearing from you are:
- Where does biblical counseling (intensive discipleship) make the most significant impact on a church planting strategy?
- How does an emphasis on biblical counseling open doors for evangelism, cultural engagement, and community service? Does it close any doors?
- Are there positive impacts on local church culture from a biblical counseling emphasis that extends beyond any formal counseling activity?
- How can an emphasis on biblical counseling help mitigate the problems common to pioneer churches, mother church plants, and revitalization churches?
I believe that regardless of what is happening with a person, the Word of God has an answer. Biblical counseling is ministering the Word to the human condition. In that case, biblical counseling is a modern term for soul care, which includes evangelism and progressive sanctification. Thus, your thoughts on how this means of grace would impact a local church would be of great benefit to me. —M.A.B.C. Student
The first thing you have to do is define your terms. My friend has provided me with a narrow definition of biblical counseling when he calls it intensive discipleship. It is an accurate descriptor, though only a partial definition of biblical counseling. The reason a proper definition is necessary is that your starting point will determine your presupposition, process, and progress, as well as the purposes you attain along the way. Therefore, I would not recommend any definition of biblical counseling that does not comprehend the full scope of the human experience because it is the full scope of the human experience that biblical counseling speaks to. Therefore, a thorough and proper definition of biblical counseling involves a person’s pre-salvation, salvation, and sanctification experiences. Who we were before God saved us, our current lived experience, and an eschatological encounter convey the scope of what biblical counseling is and how it speaks to the human condition. Thus, here are the intuitive reasons for this definition:
Therefore, before you talk about how biblical counseling makes the most significant impact on church planting, you must define it correctly. For example, you can biblically counsel the unregenerate person minimally by providing counsel on how to be born again or practical, common sense tips for living well in a fallen world. Jesus spoke to Nicodemus’ pre-salvific condition in John 3:7 and the woman at the well in John 4:13-14.
A sound definition of counseling, in its most basic and comprehensive form, is anything that comes out of your mouth, plus your silence and other nonverbal cues, i.e., body language. Counseling encompasses everything about you that provides a message that conveys how Christ is working in and through you (2 Corinthians 3:2). When I love my wife well, I counsel others about how the message of the gospel is affecting me and impacting her. When I choose anger toward my wife, I counsel anyone within earshot on how the message of the gospel is affecting me and impacting her.
However, though I have a high view of biblical counseling, I do not prefer that label. The primary reason I use the term biblical counseling is for marketing purposes. People understand what I’m saying, and they will typically receive it more readily than the word discipleship when the assumption is a more technical and detailed term for soul care. People come to me for counseling, not for discipleship, though the words are interchangeable. Biblical counseling is nothing new. It is the modern repackaging of an old idea: the ministry of the Word of God into the lives of men and women, or what the Bible has always called discipleship.
“Where does biblical counseling (intensive discipleship) make the most significant impact on a church planting strategy?”
Intensive discipleship is a formalized counseling construct in which a person with the gifting for high-end discipleship counsels individuals or couples through relational and situational difficulties. Crisis counseling could be another way of talking about biblical counseling. This kind of discipleship is the acutest form of discipleship. It is the type of counseling that is usually private, intense, and personalized. Though every Christian has the gift for counseling—discipleship, not every Christian has the gift for intensive discipleship.
Therefore, each Christian should be counseling according to how God has gifted him or her.
The obvious benefit of doing intensive counseling in a local church plant is that it will envision and equip the infrastructure of the local church because the core people who make up the church plant will be more mature in their sanctification. The strength of any church, humanly speaking, will be dependent on the disciple-making ability of the core group of individuals and families that make up that church. It is similar to our physical bodies: the stronger our immune system, the more likely the body will be able to handle the things that could potentially weaken it. This infographic communicates that idea.
“How does an emphasis on biblical counseling open doors for evangelism, cultural engagement, and community service? Does it close any doors?”
If a local church does intensive discipleship well, they will be doing more than intensive discipleship for a small number of individuals that make up that local congregation. If you are good at it, you will not be able to contain your biblical counseling activities to a few people or within the walls of the local church. In 1997, I began leading our local church in developing a biblical counseling ministry. That church continues to have a thriving biblical counseling emphasis today. Before 1997, there was no biblical counseling worldview or practice at our church. One of the most surprising things that happened during this developmental stage was how the word began to spread throughout the community.
Though our church was already known as a compassionate community of Christlike disciple-makers, by adding a pointed, specific, and directed biblical counseling emphasis, the community took notice. The result of developing that biblical counseling culture within our local church created a door that the community was willing to enter. The biblical counseling message spread and the community responded favorably to what we were doing. The result only highlighted the need for a robust local church infrastructure, which meant the entire church body needed to envisioning and equipping with a biblical counseling worldview. If this had not happened, the needy community would have overrun our weakened church, and I would not have been able to meet the demand alone.
All small start-up local church bodies will experience dysfunction; it’s a fact of fallenness, and if you cannot take care of the people beyond introducing them to Jesus and basic life issues, they will either stagnate or find a church that can competently help them with their problems. Just like our physical bodies, if we are not strong enough, mature enough, or healthy enough to withstand what is coming at us, whatever enters through our gates (eye, ear, nose, mouth) can kill us. One of the most significant failures of today’s modern church is a weakened infrastructure. They have created systems and strategies to motivate people to come and hear the preaching, but they are not able to disciple them to maturity. A church with a strong discipleship emphasis that knows how to envision and equip its regular folks will be able to withstand the masses who will most assuredly come.
“Are there positive impacts on local church culture from a biblical counseling emphasis that extends beyond any formal counseling activity?”
If you are a competent biblical counselor, it will be impossible to contain the positive effects that will flow from your efforts. The community will come because the world is hungry for change, and they have found no satisfying answers at the culture’s table. By waving the biblical counseling banner, you will communicate a positive message that will motivate them to enter your doors, looking for answers to the real messes of their lives. The church and the community are no different in that way; they both are hurting, and they both are looking for solutions. By having a strong biblical counseling (or discipleship) emphasis, you will be speaking words that resonate with the deepest longings of our hearts. The sound effect of promoting biblically sound discipleship care in the local body should motivate you to establish some early ground rules to sustain the positive sanctification momentum that will most certainly ensue. Let me share with you two of the concepts we implemented right from the beginning.
Everybody participates in providing biblical counseling according to each person’s unique gifting. There are no haves and have-nots in the local church. Everybody must participate. Christianity is not a spectator sport. My primary emphasis was on the replication of biblical counselors (disciplers), not counseling counselees. If you are not replicating more people than you are counseling, you will burn out the few who are doing the work while hitting a personal ceiling of how many you can bring care to. But if you are spending more time replicating than counseling, your cap is virtually unlimited.
“How can an emphasis on biblical counseling help mitigate the problems common to pioneer churches, mother church plants, and revitalization churches?”
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:19-20).
If you emphasize biblical counseling, it will help mitigate the problems common to pioneer plants, mother church plants, and revitalization church plants. A healthy body is a happy body, whether you’re talking about your physical body or a local church body. The gospel is about transformation, which must go beyond being born again. Regeneration is an introduction to Jesus, though not transformed by Him. Transformation happens in progressive sanctification, and a church that does not do this well will either not survive or be mediocre in fulfilling the Great Commission. Thus, a healthy church that is operating in a robust application of the Great Commission will be:
The benefits of this approach to building a church are evident. The pioneer church plant should create a robust infrastructure while communicating a soul-care message to the larger culture. If it does this well, it will mature in Christlikeness. The mother church plant will be able to cut the ties to its sending church quicker while positioning itself to grow its church because they are replicating leaders through the concepts presented here. If Christians hone their soul care practices, there can be a modern-day revitalization of church planting that changes church cultures and the communities where God has planted them.
If you want to call what you are doing biblical counseling, that is fine with me as long as you define it broadly, not narrowly. If you envision whole church participation, you will do well. What I have described here is how Paul talked to us through his letters. He called the entire body of Christ to participate in the salvation and sanctification of souls by reaching out to the community while doing competent “one another soul care” to the church body. You can accomplish this through a biblical counseling worldview.
Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.
In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).
