Creating a Culture of Counseling: One Church’s Testimony

BCC Staff Note: This blog is the first article of a three-part series on the BCC Grace and Truth website written by counselors from Lighthouse Community Church. The mission of Lighthouse is to make gospel-centered disciples who exalt and proclaim Christ. Biblical counseling enables the church to fulfill that mission in the lives of believers who are overwhelmed with suffering and sin as they regularly engage in both formal and informal conversations that admonish, encourage, and give hope (1 Thess. 5:14; Col. 1:28).

Now that we are an “old” church plant (15 years old!), a question we have often been asked by young church planters or churches that are trying to establish a biblical counseling ministry is, “How do we create a culture where people seek counsel?” This is a great question, and one we have wrestled with for a long time. How do you overcome the stigma of counseling and encourage an environment where people actively pursue help?

Though every context is different, and we still have much room to grow, I thought it might be helpful to share a bit of our testimony and what we have done to try to build a culture of counseling within our church.

History and Challenges

We started Lighthouse Community Church in Torrance, CA in April 2003 with a vague conviction that biblical counseling was right (which I essentially inherited from seminary), but we faced various challenges:

1. The church that planted us (who we are very thankful for) did not hold to biblical counseling and helped establish an integrationist Christian counseling center that the church would refer people to.
2. This meant that everyone who planted with us either didn’t agree with biblical counseling or had the general conviction that it was right, but little understanding about what it meant practically (myself included).
3. We had no trained counselors.
4. We were/are ministering to many Asian Americans who had been raised, to varying degrees, in a shame-based culture in which you don’t tell people your problems. It can be highly frowned upon to share any struggle, as it might bring shame upon you or your family.

In light of this, even though we knew there were struggles in the church early on, we had few formal counseling cases, and the ones we did have were usually already at a crisis point. Since then, by God’s grace, the culture has slowly changed and we now have over 25 formal counselors in our ministry and over 60 people currently receiving counsel.

Though we still seek to make progress, and we understand that any fruit is by God’s grace, there are specific steps we took to pursue change:

Through Committed Leadership

Our elders committed to make biblical counseling a part of our church, which meant committing time and resources to growing the ministry of biblical counseling. For example:

• We pursued our own training. We really believed it had to move beyond conviction to being a part of our regular ministry.
• We were willing to pay for just about any member of our church who wanted to get trained in biblical counseling.
• We help people attend biblical counseling conferences and hold our own conferences rooted in biblical counseling themes.
• We teach classes on biblical counseling.
• We eventually hired a full-time counseling pastor.

Through Expanding Biblical Counseling from Formal Meetings to Church DNA

One of our goals was for the truths of biblical counseling to be a part of our DNA as a church. This meant encouraging our members to see that those truths are not just for formal counseling sessions, but at the heart of church life. All of us are called to have loving conversations to build one another up. One way we have done this is by encouraging everyone to take our counseling class. We tell them it isn’t just for those who want to formally counsel, but also for those who want to better love their families and others in the church. In our last class, of the 150 people (90+ from Lighthouse) in attendance, only one person took the next steps to join our formal counseling ministry, but we are thankful nonetheless. We don’t teach the class merely to raise up formal counselors, but because we want the truths of biblical counseling to permeate the church and our homes.

Beyond this, we sometimes study books rooted in biblical counseling themes in our small groups (e.g. Side By Side by Ed Welch and Instructing a Child’s Heart by Tedd and Margy Tripp), have had biblical counselors as retreat speakers, train small group leaders with biblical counseling principles, and have begun to proactively integrate it into a variety of ministries (e.g. our disability ministry).

Through Preaching That Encourages a Counseling Culture ** **

One of the most powerful ways we have been able to shift our culture is through the regular preaching of the Word. Here are some specific ways we encouraged a culture of biblical counseling through preaching:

• Preaching that makes doctrine beautiful and practical – Though we preach verse by verse through Scripture, we want to make sure that we bring out the biblical counseling themes that permeate the whole Bible (e.g. themes of gospel, sin and idolatry, hope, worship, etc.). It is preaching that shows Jesus as worthy to be trusted, loved, and worshiped. Just as with counseling, preaching should help the church know Christ more deeply and accurately, so that they would trust Him more truly, love Him more intensely, worship Him exclusively, and live for Him more faithfully.
• Preaching that recognizes our desperation for grace – We try to convey the reality that we are all sinners who need God’s grace. No one has arrived, so all of us need other people to speak the truths of God’s Word into our lives.
• Preaching that targets the heart – In preaching, we want to not only focus on people’s actions, but their hearts. We ask questions to help each person evaluate their own heart (e.g. In your daily life, where are you fueling your idolatry? If someone wrongs you, do you meditate on their wrong as if you are meditating on Scripture?). This heart evaluation often gets extended into sermon-based small groups that continue exploring heart issues that were exposed on Sunday.

Through the Testimony of Transformed Lives

Finally, we believe that one of the greatest apologetics for biblical counseling is transformed lives, so we try to have testimonies shared by people who were transformed by God’s grace through counseling. Years ago, on one particular Sunday service during which we focused on biblical counseling, we had one member share her testimony. She is a state licensed psychologist, who was truly helped and powerfully changed by God’s grace through biblical counseling. I really believe it was one of the turning points in our church, as people saw a sister find grace and hope through the truths of the Word.

Ultimately, any shift in culture is by grace, but my encouragement to you is not to wait for it to happen but to proactively pursue a culture of counseling in your own church body.

Questions for Reflection

What are you doing to create a culture of counseling within your church? Have you asked what the specific challenges are in your church to people receiving counsel? Are there things you are doing that inadvertently work against a culture of counseling? If so, how can you change?