Training for Biblical Counseling in the Church: A Very Affordable Option

If you are like me, you may have noticed that, compared with the number of preachers and teachers formally prepared to serve the church, there seem to have been a lesser number of counselors.  And, many of us may remember the popular books by Jay Adams, published in the 1970s, which maintained that much of Christian counseling was not all that Christian, and that some of it appeared basically humanistic (a very different term than humanitarian, and not to be confused), where the view of the human being was very different from that portrayed in the Bible.  Some of us may have wondered where things went, after Jay Adams.

Well, apparently, Jay Adams himself is still with us, but a movement developed, and is now said to be in its "third wave."  There have been critiques of the movement that have said that it has been too problem-based and not enough God-based; that it has posited an expert (the counselor) and a dummy (the counselee), and that, sometimes, it has made too much of "certification," since many people in the church are qualified to counsel, and it has operated too separately from the church.

Some of these critiques have helped the movement, which now focuses more on what the Bible says, onside-by-side counseling (sans expert and sans dummy), but still offers certification as a way of ensuring that a counselor has thought about the issues and has received some of the wisdom of others in the church, often based on experience.

The movement has conferences with keynote speakers and the like, and one can hear some of these on the Web.

The movement has two or three outreaches: one is ABCB, another is CCEF, and yet another is IBCD, all connected, depending on how long one might wish to train.   This very week, in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, another organization, a new Canadian Biblical Counseling Coalition is holding its first-ever conference, as I write.

 Here is a link to a website that will explain much more about some of the training, but, having said that, and even if you do not wish to see training, the resources section at this site are very interesting and helpful, no doubt:

Equipping Christians to Counsel One Another in Their Local Church