Mailbag: Does your Distance Education Course certify counselors?
Thank you for your good question. Our Distance Education Program is for equipping Christians in the area of biblical counseling. Our three main values are the following:
- Teach the counselor how to apply the Gospel correctly to any life situation.
- Encourage the counselor to use their trained gifts in the context of the local church.
- Teach the counselor how to come alongside the leadership of the local church to serve and complement how God is leading the leaders.
Our program is not designed, though it could be from a quality perspective, to certify the counselor. To do so would simply mean giving a certificate at the end of the program and charge an annual fee in order for the counselor to “be in good standing.” It is not our desire or purpose to create a self-sustaining certification business that requires people to pay annual dues in order to keep us in business.
It is not necessarily wrong to “certify” people from an organization. Ultimately it comes down to conscience and preference. I am aware that if we had 1000 students who completed the program and each one paid fifty or more dollars per year to keep their certification that we would be in better financial shape.
Our experience has been, should we take such an approach, that our aims could be more along the lines of sustaining our organization rather than supporting and complementing the local church. We want to spend our energies, time and resources in thinking through how best to serve local pastors.
Therefore, we have chosen to be “Ecclesiological Complementarians” as fully as we understand the term when it comes to training counselors. We want to turn our trained counselors back into the local church. We also ask them to talk to their pastors with the hope of gaining their counsel and potential oversight through the program and especially after they begin counseling within their local body.
Ultimately, it will be the pastors of the local church that God will hold accountable for how they lead, equip and care for their people. (See Heb. 13:17) I want to complement this by releasing the individual fully into the local church. My goal for all the folks I have the privilege of serving, whether they are counselors or counselees, is “not to see them again” because they are fully functioning within the context of the local church.
Other articles in this series
- Case Study: Counselees and the Local Church
- Case Study: Are You NANC Certified?
- Should I Be NANC Certified?
- To Certify or Not to Certify: That is the Question for Counselors
- Counseling Solutions Training Program to Equip Counselors
- Desire and Burden Do Not Make a Biblical Counselor
- Inherent Liabilities with Biblical Counseling
- Counseling Today: Standing on Jay’s Shoulders, Pt. 1
- Counseling Today: Standing on Jay’s Shoulders, Pt. 2
- Can’t the Local Church Do This?
- Two Ways to Become a Better Counselor
- My Top Choices for Counselor Training
- Do I Need a License to Be a Christian Counselor
Certification won’t make you a better counselor any more than a PhD will make you a better teacher. The reason I’m considering certification is because of the perception that only the pastor should do counseling. This is probably tied to the idea that it should be left to the “professionals”, and I’m definitely not a pastor. I write software for a living. Even though our church is currently without a pastor, and after asking to be allowed to be involved in counseling several times, I’m still not doing any counseling in the church. Previously we had two full time pastors who were NANC certified, so the church is on-board with biblical counseling, but they still think it should be done by professionals. I’m not bitter about it, but I am concerned that the body isn’t being cared for properly.
Another reason I am pursuing certification is because I love to study, especially if there is a goal. If I could make a living to support six people as a student, I would do it.
I believe it is beneficial to have at least one person in a counseling ministry to be certified. In my experience not alot of people know the difference between phycology “christian” counseling and true “biblical” counseling. It is helpful to have someone leading and taking direction when it comes to real biblical counseling. Sad to say that many pastors don’t know or understand what it means to counsel…they want to leave it to the “professionals” and often times that means from the phycology perspective.