A pastor was preparing a younger minister to lead a church plant. The church planter didn’t think that training people in biblical counseling was a priority for the new church. The pastor asked him, “Well, then, how early should you start training your people to care for one another with the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” The church planter smiled slightly, and admitted “Immediately.”[1]
This anecdote illustrates the bias we naturally have against the term “biblical counseling.’ We suppose that any sort of counseling requires degrees, certificates and offices, and we suppose that other regular believers can’t provide us any help in the area.
But biblical counseling is applied discipling, in which one believer applies the Word of God to the particular issues and struggles that another believer faces. This is why many prefer to use the term “Gospel Care” to describe what happens in biblical counseling. In these terms, every believer should be both counseling others and being counseled.
Continue Reading “When do you need counseling? Whenever you need the Gospel”