We are aligned with the
Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation's
Counseling Distinctives.
The personal God gets personal with us
The triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—has always known reciprocal fellowship and unity, and he has created us to participate in that fellowship. He welcomes us to himself through Jesus Christ. The Spirit connects us to Jesus, and Jesus is the only way to the Father.
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This foundational reality has critical implications. God’s plan is to be close to us and for us to draw near to him. Herein lies the source of our interest in relationships and human connection. In response, our care for each other is inviting and familial.
Scripture comes from the mouth of God
The Spirit presses the very word of God into our hearts. He reveals Jesus. In Jesus, we find all wisdom and goodness. No one else can so deeply nurture and sustain us.
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The Spirit applies Scripture to our hearts. “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10). Here are implications of this truth.
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Scripture must shape the details of our counsel, including how and why we listen, what is important, how we speak, and what we say.
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Scripture must be the lens through which we see the world and its many observations about people.
We are embodied souls shaped by a world of influences
People are complex creatures. We are affected by our own bodies, other people, culture, work, money, spiritual beings, and much more. These contribute to our endless diversity, and they can build us up or tear us down.
Our hearts are active
Amid the swarm of life’s influences is the human heart—that is, the soul. Made in God’s image, we are both physical and spiritual. To know the heart is to know the person. And to know a person you must know what he or she desires and loves.
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The heart has depth and layers. Most apparent are our natural desires for love and meaningful work. These desires are either satisfied or thwarted. And there are our emotions—anger, fear, shame, love. All of these reveal what is important to us.
Help and change follow a path, but not a script
The care of souls is not formulaic or predictable. What helps one person might not help another. When you listen to people’s stories, you can be helpful in so many ways. Some will be strengthened by a particular text of Scripture. Others will be moved by a personal story that helps them see God and their relationship to him in a new way, an act of love giving a taste of God’s kindness, or the death of a friend painfully reminding them of human need for redemption of body and soul. God uses people, circumstances, his Word, our own choices, and the direct power of his Spirit. Humility is an essential quality of a helper. We are constantly reliant on God, the wisdom and experience of others, and the input of those we help.
Biblical counseling engages with the voices around us
Biblical counselors are not alone in our desire to help others. There are many helpful Christian voices out there, and yet there are differences among us. Differences in practice usually reflect different theological emphases, particularly differences in how to understand people and how people change. There are also many secular voices whose differences in practice reflect more fundamental differences about who God is and his activity in our lives.
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Our view of science is not a primary difference with other Christian and secular voices. Like others, we make observations about people that are useful to our counseling practice. We are also intentional to learn from the observations and experience of others, which includes the burgeoning Christian and secular literature. Biblical counseling adds, however, that all these sources are then interpreted and refined by the question: Who is the Lord and what does he say?
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When we do find differences between biblical counseling and other counseling theories, we aim to identify the strengths in those theories and represent others and their viewpoints accurately. When we disagree, we want to engage with respect and a generous spirit, as if we were face-to-face.
