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Growing in Pastoral Wisdom

Nothing like regular time with unchurched, newly believing, broken people will alert you to the need for gospel-centered counseling. For years I've been reading the materials put out by Christian Counseling Education Foundation (CCEF). I'll never forget the first time I heard David Powlison speak with such measured wisdom at the Desiring God Conference in 1999. Since then, I have read The Journal of Biblical Counseling (JBC), followed Nouthetic literature, and started a certificate program in biblical counseling with CCEF. CCEF offers tremendous insight into human motivation and how the gospel applies to everything from addiction to garden variety idolatry. I highly recommend the Journal, their books, and distance education.

Westminster Bookstore carries all CCEF materials at heavy discounts and highlights Best Sellers of the Month. CCEF offers a host of articles on a whole range of counseling issues for free on their topical resource page. In addition, you can buy a CD ROM of all the JBC articles from 1977-2005. Add to these resources the fine work of Tim Chester, especially You Can Change and The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness. Tim and Steve Timmis are currently working on a Gospel-centered Life Series that will be a tremendous help to equipping us to counsel on mission. And very soon, I will be releasing a short book called Fight Club: Gospel-centered Discipleship.

Counsel on Mission

Counseling on mission is critical. If we do not counsel while we are on mission, we will fail in planting missional churches. Gospel-centered counseling is the overflow of gospel-centered church planting. If our churches aren't founded and shepherded in the gospel, then church planting will devolve into service planting or crusade speaking. Mission must be accompanied by counseling. Without counseling, church planting devolves into mission minus discipleship, which is hardly mission at all.

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Counseling on Mission Series: Click | View Series

As church planters we often reach unreached, unbelieving, and very broken people. As a result, pastoral wisdom and gospel-centered counseling quickly become important skills. After all, the biblical office we hold is not church planter but elder-pastor. How are you cultivating pastoral wisdom? How are you growing in your capacity to shepherd your flock with wisdom, truth, and love? Are you spending time with "slow" or "challenging" people each week? Or do you gravitate to "teachable" people, neglecting the weak and hurting sheep?

Pastoral Counseling

Why should we spend time counseling when we could be evangelizing or preaching? Because in order to plant healthy missional churches, we must grow in gospel depth and breadth. In order to guard and guide our people well, it is imperative that church planters have a regular intake of wisdom (applied theology) from which we can counsel, disciple, train, and lead. As we mature, our sermons should deepen with pastoral application that grows from spending time with struggling sheep. The best application is mined, not from homiletical brainstorming, but from pastoral counseling.
Why counsel? Because counseling the church is:

• Part of our calling/office.
• Critical to healthy community and mission.
• Essential for insightful application.
• Part of being a church that speaks the truth in love.

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Counseling on Mission Series: Click | View Series

The Professionalization of Church Planting

Church planting has already become an industry: just Google "church planting" (897,000 hits appear). A multitude of conferences and businesses have sprung up around church planting. Best practices and venues dominate planting conversations. Church planters borrow business language and practice in order to plant churches. Consider this string of questions:

• What are you running? What are your numbers like?
• Are your groups multiplying?
• When are you going to plant next?
• How are you reproducing leaders?
• How's your giving? What does your budget look like?

We're quick to talk numbers and slow to talk transformation. If we're not careful, church planters will become another profession in an increasingly professionalized church. Planters will share more in common with entrepreneurs than they do with apostles, elders, and pastors. Church planters will become disobedient to God and irrelevant to his church. They will build buildings and launch services, not pastor people and cultivate community.

To be continued.

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Counseling on Mission Series: Click | View Series

Planting or Counseling?

Why should we spend time counseling when we could be evangelizing or preaching? Isn't counseling something church planters "refer," not something church planters do? The answer to this question depends on how we define the word counsel. If we mean specialized sessions devoted to psychological issues that cannot be addressed by the gospel, then perhaps we shouldn't counsel. However, if we mean discipling others with gospel wisdom in the full range of human thinking, feeling, and behaving, then perhaps we should reconsider our default practice of referring.

Counseling Is a Responsibility

Missionally-minded, Type A people tend to look down on or overlook counseling. We dismiss its value or see it as an obstacle to mission. Our actions speak louder than words, often sending the message: "I'll save 'em; somebody else disciple 'em. Counseling isn't my gift." But this simply doesn't agree with the Bible. Counseling might not be your gift, but it is your responsibility.

Even the greatest church planter, the Apostle Paul, had time for counseling. His letters are charged with gospel-centered counsel that springs from an intimate knowledge of people's everyday lives. Very often, his counsel is to counsel (Rom 15:14; Eph 5:25; Col 3:12-17; 3:12-13; 10:23). Peter, James, and the writer of Hebrews also counseled their churches, and counseled them to counsel. If we're biblically faithful, counseling is something that is required of all God's people, even church planters!

To be continued.

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