When life falls apart, where do believers run? For many, the church is their last resort. The culture has offered rival explanations for our biggest problems, deepest needs, and the path forward to change. Overwhelmed pastors have accepted the counterfeits, hoping that licensed therapists will provide a balm for their hurting flock.
What if we were never meant to outsource soul care? What if biblical care and counsel was intended to be so much more than a counseling program at church?
As pastors and church leaders, we need to take responsibility for the ways we have given in to the cultural definitions and return to the unchanging Word of the Maker, Redeemer, and Wonderful Counselor. The Bible addresses all the issues we experience in life from the primary perspective of how we live in relation to God. The church is not only the best institution equipped to bear the burdens of soul care, but the only one to which God has given the responsibility to minister to the problems in a believer’s life.
Dr. Dale Johnson joins us to discuss the calling God has placed on the church to disciple its people biblically. Together we talk about the beautiful culture of mutual care and counsel that grows from obedience to God’s command and faithfulness to His good design. Dr. Johnson is the Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, the Director of Counseling Programs and Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Johnson is an author and host of ACBC’s Truth in Love podcast. Dr. Johnson is passionate about the local church and committed to equipping pastors and church members.
In this episode, Dr. Johnson shares his own journey in psychology and how a faithful pastor challenged him to scrutinize the therapeutic approach to care and counseling with the sufficient and supreme scriptures. Dr. Johnson unpacks the call of Biblical discipleship and what this looks like practically for both the shepherds and the flock of the local church.
Listen in!
RESOURCES:
- Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC)
- Truth and Love with ACBC
- (BOOK) Legal Issues in Biblical Counseling | Dr. Dale Johnson & Ed Wilde
- (BOOK) The Professionalization of Pastoral Care | Dr. Dale Johnson
- (BOOK) The Church as a Culture of Care, Finding Hope in Biblical Community | Dr. Dale Johnson
- (BOOK) Christian Counselors Manual | Jay E. Adams
- (BOOK) Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry | Gary Greenberg
- Read our Articles
- Follow us on Instagram
- Donate to support BCM
- Learn more about our 5-Project Biblical Counseling Blueprint Model™
- Explore the rest of our website – bcmnational.org
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- We cannot minimize biblical discipleship to a counseling program when God’s design is a culture of care and counsel. Ephesians 4:11-16 “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
- A culture of care and counsel is produced when believers embrace their individual calling as daily counselors instead of abdicating that role to the pastors, elders, and formal biblical counselors. As a pastor encourages and shepherds the local body in the truth and commands of the scripture, those growing believers will soon start to live and speak like Christ to help others live and speak like Christ. Christ can exponentially multiply a pastor’s efforts of discipleship when the people he is caring for and counseling turn and do the same for the believers around them in the local church, lightening his individual counseling burden as the church thrives in God’s design.
Meet Dale Johnson
Dr. Johnson is the Executive Director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, the Director of Counseling Programs and Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Johnson is author of The Professionalization of Pastoral Care and The Church as a Culture of Care, co-editor of Legal Issues in Biblical Counseling, and host of ACBC’s Truth in Love podcast. Currently, he resides in Missouri with his wife, Summer, and their six children. Dr. Johnson is passionate about the local church and committed to equipping pastors and church members.
