God wants us to know and enjoy him personally (Phil 3:8-11, Jn 17:3).
The one true God, who is Creator and King over all, is not distant and removed from his creation. Rather, in his very nature as the Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—he is a personal, relational being who draws near to the people he has made. Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), the ultimate expression of this personal God drawing near to his people. God has given us his special revelation in Scripture (2Tim 3:16-17) and general revelation in creation (Rom 1:19-20) to help us behold his glory (2Cor 3:18) and worship him personally.
We value the personal nature of biblical counseling as reflective of the way that God relates personally with us as his children.
God’s beautiful and sufficient Word helps us live Christ-exalting lives (2Tim 3:16-17, 2Pet 1:3-4).
Scripture provides the framework for our counseling—it is the lens through which we understand all of life, with God at the center and our human identity always seen in relation to God. Scripture forms our understanding of the foundational human problem and of God’s merciful solution through Christ. And Scripture is sufficient—the overarching Gospel storyline speaks to the underlying desires and devotion of the human heart with wisdom that brings hope and life in every suffering and struggle we face.
We value a Christ-centered approach to the study of Scripture. In our counseling ministry we want to interact with the Word of God in ways that address a person’s worldview and point to Christ as the ultimate source of help and hope (Lk 24:25-27, Jn 5:39-40).
God created us as spiritual and physical beings for his glory (Gen 1:26-27, Ps 139:13-16, Is 43:7, Rom 8:12-17).
Humans are created beings, thus we are finite and dependent on God for life and breath. Of all God’s creation, humans are uniquely formed in the image of God to reflect his beauty and glory (Gen 1:26-27). Yet that image of God has been marred in every human being by the sin nature passed down from Adam and by our conscious choices to sin, resulting in our separation from the holy God who has made us (Rom 3:9-18, 23). All human beings are thus lost and without hope (Eph 2:12) apart from the mercy of God given through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection to all who will believe. Scripture speaks of the human heart (mind, emotions, and will) as central to our being, but our hearts are influenced and shaped by many factors (Jer 17:5-10): the limitations of our physical embodiment, the influences of our family and culture, and the battles of the unseen spiritual realm (Eph 6:12).
We value an approach to counseling that treats each person with dignity as a fellow image-bearer of God. And for every believer whom we counsel, we want to see them as a whole person: saint, sufferer, and sinner, whose only sure hope is found in a deepening relationship with Christ.
God has placed us in a community of believers to expand our worship and deepen our enjoyment of his love (1Cor 12:12-27).
Believers in Christ are adopted into the family of God, and we are each given unique and vital roles within the body of Christ. Thus we are called to relate with one another in a multitude of ways (love one another, serve one another, forgive one another, bear one another’s burdens, greet one another, etc.) as part of our discipleship to Christ. Care and counsel are most basically one aspect of that larger discipleship process within the church family (Eph 4:15-16, 2Cor 1:3-11, Heb 3:12-13), but there are also many other pathways of grace within the body of Christ, through which we grow in relationship with God and one another (Col 3:12-17, Heb 10:19-25, 1Pet 4:7-11). Every one of us is needy and dependent on the whole body of Christ, and every one of us have gifts and experience that are needed by others in the body; thus we counsel and comfort one another with the comfort we ourselves have received from God through the body.
We value the local church body as the primary context of care and counsel for one another in Christ, and we highlight that value by requiring church membership in order to receive formal biblical counseling.
Growth in godliness is a gift of grace by the Holy Spirit that comes about as our worship of Christ deepens (2Pet 3:18, Col 1:9-14).
Counseling is one aspect of the larger process of sanctification that God is carrying out in each Christian throughout our entire earthly lives. Particularly, counseling is sanctification in the hard places–it is a pathway of grace through which God grows our hearts in Christ in the midst of our struggles with sin and our seasons of suffering. We believe this growth in Christ centers around our worshiping hearts. Every moment is a worship moment, including moments of temptation to sin and moments of intense suffering. The influences in and around us are significant but don’t determine what we worship or how we live (Jer 17:5-10, Mark 7:20-23). Instead, our worship is powered by the beliefs and desires of our hearts (Heb 4:12, Luke 6:43-45, James 1:14-15). In counseling we are seeking to understand what our hearts are worshiping in place of God, and then learning to fuel our delight in Christ so that we might worship him more fully.
We value the ways in which the Spirit uses the public ministry of the Word (in preaching) and the private ministry of the Word (in individual intake of Scripture) to complement the relational ministry of the Word in counseling, in bringing about the sanctification of our hearts in Christ.
