About

The Biblical Counseling Institute (BCI) is an educational ministry that exists to train pastors, vocational ministers, lay leaders, and professional counselors in the process of biblical care and discipleship. We believe God’s Word is fully sufficient for the counseling task and vastly superior secular methods of support. The apostle Paul wrote:

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Therefore, any position of support, counsel, training, discipline, or teaching should be grounded in the inspired Word of God. We believe the Scriptures provide a template that defines normal and abnormal behavior. Humans operate and function at the optimum when they are aligned with God’s principles of order and structure. Anything outside His order places one in discord with the Holy Spirit and will produce spiritual, functional, and relational consequences.

It is impossible to counsel someone into “healthy alignment” when using the template of the world. As a result, the biblical counselor must become intimately knowledgeable and responsive to God’s Word and the leading of the Holy Spirit if he/she is to be effective in the delivery of Godly care.

Purpose

The goal of BCI is to return God’s written Word to the center of any setting where counseling, teaching, and discipleship occur. We want to help the Church reclaim this important spiritual turf; counseling, teaching, and building itself from within, rather than referring to outside resources that utilize a humanistic approach to life problems.

The Body of Christ has the scriptural mandate to teach, counsel, restore, and evangelize. Paul wrote to the Ephesian church:

“…that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head–Christ–”(Eph. 4:14-15).

Objective

Our objective is to train a growing number of candidates each year to rightly apply God’s Word in all counseling settings including the church, discipleship programs, youth and family ministries, the mission field and other Christian settings. We seek also to generate leaders and teachers within this field of ministry who may continue to advance the message of biblical sufficiency throughout the U.S. and overseas.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen” (Matt. 28:19-20).

By doing so, the Institute can provide an alternative and an expansion to traditional learning models that focus primarily on secular methods of psychological intervention. This process will empower and engage the Body of Christ, through church and clinical settings, to care for its people while also bringing evangelistic truth to those outside the Body.

“But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor. 12:24b-26).