The way that you counsel other people is determined by how you understand God, yourself, other people, life’s pressures, and change. This course addresses the depth, breadth, and balance of your understanding. How does Christ’s past grace, present grace, and future grace speak to our hearts and change how we live our daily lives? This course is about people. It is about how we face the troubles of life. It is about how we deal with our inner struggles. It is about how we change into Jesus’ image. Through case studies, class lectures, assigned readings, and Scripture, you’ll explore these practical questions. Self-counseling projects will help you to make first-hand, practical application of the concepts learned in class.

Let’s say you have a basic and growing understanding of biblical counseling. You know the key ideas and have been able to apply them to yourself. Now comes the hard part: How do you apply this understanding in your everyday relationships? This course will take the content you already know and get specific about how you can actually deliver the content. Case studies, lectures, and group discussions will help you grow in your ability to listen well, know people, interpret another person’s story from a biblical perspective, and offer biblically-based truth that will motivate others in their growth in Christ.

Note: This course has two unique requirements. First, you will be grouped with 3-4 other students for a bi-weekly community group. This group will decide when they want to meet, and what format works best (Skype, Google Hangout, Phone Call, etc.)

You will also meet weekly for an hour with someone (a friend, fellow church member, neighbor, etc.) to put into practice what you are learning in Helping Relationships. You will receive more information about these activities in your course syllabus and in the opening lecture.

Biblical counseling – is it just for the pastors and elders? Or for trained professionals? What does it look like to restore counseling to the local church? The purpose of this course is to:

• to broaden students’ understanding of counseling to include all relationships
• to build a thoroughly biblical understanding of the local church as a ministering community where everyone plays a part
• to help students find their place of ministry within the context of the local church and to help others do the same
• to see the importance of both public and private ministry of the Word and how they interrelate
• to examine present ministry opportunities

Topics covered include a biblical foundation for private ministry of the Word; the role of community and relationships in the process of sanctification; developing a practical ecclesiology; and developing an eye for ministry opportunities such as conflict resolution, evangelism, and church discipline.

Course Description
Marriage problems can seem especially complicated and disheartening, not only for the couples struggling with them but also for those trying to help. Talking about them with a helper can be difficult, even explosive. In this introductory course on marriage counseling, you will walk away with a working model for how to make sense of marriage problems. You’ll understand simple, basic, and Biblical categories that can handle all of the mess and hardship that marriage counseling and marriage problems will throw at you. You’ll also learn methods that help you to manage and constructively direct the conflict and volatility that are often part of the process. But most importantly, you’ll have a model that in every way connects the truth of the Gospel to everything that you are going to see in marriage problems.

Who is God? Who are we? Most everything we do comes from our answers to these questions, so we want to get the answers right. This course will focus especially on the questions Who am I? and Who are we? Since we are made in the image of God, we will also have the pleasure of asking Who is God? The goal is practical theology. We want answers that will inspire, instruct, guide and provide direction for our face-to-face ministry.

Course Description
A biblical view of human beings begins with an understanding that we are both body AND spirit. From this reality flows a nuanced pastoral approach to suffering and sin in a person’s life that takes seriously both the physical and spiritual aspects of the struggle at hand. In this class you will look at issues such as traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, OCD, bipolar disorder, and other problems that require discernment of physical and spiritual components of the struggle. You will also gain an understanding of the role of psychoactive medications and psychiatry in caring for others. Through lectures, group discussion, and case studies you’ll learn how to wisely help those who struggle with problems in which both attention to physical and spiritual aspects are paramount.

What does actual counseling look like? It’s one thing to learn about biblical counseling through reading books and listening to a lecture, but it’s quite another to learn by actually seeing it done. You’ll have the opportunity to observe various CCEF counselors and faculty members as they counsel actual cases, either live or on video. You’ll experience the unscripted, unpredictable, and often messy aspects of face-to-face personal ministry, and be introduced to the artfulness, skill, and utter dependency on the Spirit that is needed to counsel wisely. Class discussion will focus on topics that arise out of each counseling session, and you’ll learn how to make effective progress notes to document your own counseling sessions.

Taught by Ed Welch or Mike Emlet (alternates each term)

*Please note: Dynamics of Biblical Change and Helping Relationships are prerequisites for this course.

Important Note

This class has very limited space available. Your registration will only be confirmed upon CCEF’s availability.

Enrollment in this course requires additional approval from SBC Administration. Students who enroll will receive a follow-up email with additional steps and instructions for enrollment within 5 days of registering. Course enrollments will be held as “pending” until the enrollment is approved.

Course Description

In marriage, oppression occurs when one spouse seeks to control and dominate the other through a pattern of coercive, controlling, and punishing behaviors. Abuse is not a marriage problem. As a result, traditional marriage counseling will likely cause us to do more harm than good. In this course we will seek to understand the distorted and dangerous beliefs of an oppressor that require us to have a distinctive counseling approach. To minister and care wisely for people ensnared in abusive relationships we must understand abuse biblically, know what God says about it and how he calls us to participate in his rescue. In Counseling Abusive Marriages a biblical counseling model will be presented that will conceptualize abuse and provide guidance for how to wisely minister in these difficult and overwhelming situations. You will study physical, spiritual, sexual and emotional abuse and how each uniquely impacts a victim and their children.

You will walk away with tools for assessing the extent and severity of abuse, ways to discern the deceptive behaviors of an oppressor, plans for providing protection, strategies for church engagement as well as practical counseling approaches for both the oppressor and the oppressed. Lectures and readings will provide the essential conceptual elements for organizing and understanding oppressive & abusive elements and how the gospel penetrates and applies. Through the use of written work, discussion and case studies you will learn how to connect the gospel to these overwhelming and complex dynamics.

Counseling Abusive Marriages is designed to train helpers (pastors, elders, counselors, and friends) to care for victims of abuse and oppressors. Some students who have taken Counseling Abusive Marriages have had a history of an abusive marriage or are currently in one. However, if a victim is still greatly affected while going through the class, some material might be too difficult, as this class and its instructors cannot provide needed personal support.

Scripture for Life & Ministry (SLM) is offered in place of Biblical Interpretation (BIN). If you have completed BIN previously, you may use either BIN or SLM toward the completion of the CCEF Foundations of Biblical Counseling Certificate. 

SLM seeks to preserve the best elements of BIN (hands-on interpretation of Scripture applied to life) but makes that process even more explicit and practical for students in their contexts of ministry. SLM is a substantially different course (perhaps 70% or more new lecture material) although there is some overlap in the assignments with BIN (e.g. Acts 8 passage work, Psalm 77 final paper). There are several new assignments with SLM as well. Students who have taken BIN would still benefit from taking SLM as an elective.

Scripture is authoritative and sufficient for counseling (2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:3-4), but how do you connect God’s Word effectively to the lives and struggles of people around you? Do you frequently turn to the same familiar passages, but are less confident in using other biblical passages to communicate the power of God’s love and faithfulness in the Gospel? How do you use the Bible’s redemptive story in counseling so that counselees grow in their knowledge of and love for the sovereign Lord? This course will help you understand both people and the Bible more thoroughly and is designed to strengthen your ability to rivet Scriptural truth to real-life ministry situations. Through lectures, class discussion, and interpretive assignments, you’ll develop your skills in interpreting and applying any passage of Scripture to help people to grow in love for God and others more fully in the midst of their complex, daily lives

In this course, you will:

• Grow in excitement and passion for the personal application of God’s Word in your own life and in the lives of others.
• Learn and practice a method of biblical interpretation that makes connections between the details of particular passages and the wider story of Scripture that centers on Jesus Christ.
• Practice moving from Scripture to life by making gospel-centered connections between specific passages and the particulars of a person’s life.
• Practice moving from life to Scripture by learning to frame people’s struggles in ways that naturally connect with particular biblical themes and passages.