ONLINE SOLUTION: What church doesn’t want to save money and gain convenience while starting an effective, caring counseling ministry?
In this two-part series by Tim Allchin, BCC’s executive director, you’ll see how Biblical Counseling Center has come alongside a variety of churches, helping them to start and build effective ministries to care for those who hurt. BCC is accomplishing this by online training and also through a new program called LAUNCH. Here meet two common scenarios detailed from recent conversations with pastors. In part one, you met two churches that began counseling ministries. Here are two more.
Rural Church Profile: A young pastor from a small, rural farming community 60 miles outside of Chicago. His church of 150 is multi-generational and is growing. However, this pastor wants the older generation to be more active in discipling the younger generation. Pursuing biblical counseling training has been difficult because farmers rarely travel, and they only have evenings available. His solution is group training at the church, watching training sessions together and talking about the implications for their congregation.
Suburban Church Profile: A suburban pastor of a church of 700+ with a Christian school nearly double that size. The church has played it safe, has a nice building, is doctrinally sound, and has a comfortable congregation. It fits perfectly into a nice, family-driven, comfortable suburb. However, the church is starting to realize they should have a far greater impact in their community than they currently do.
They know their doctrine better than they know their neighbors, and in the past, nobody admitted to having any problems! They are finally recognizing their congregation and their community need answers, real solutions to big counseling issues, answers that the church should have. Whether they decide on live seminar training or internet training within the comfort of their own homes, God’s Word has practical answers to those big counseling issues.
BCC Helps Your Church Host Online Training
Do you have leaders who would make good biblical counselors but who lack the necessary training? Through our online training portal, your key people can get the same training we have traditionally offered in our live seminars, but completely online.
You can offer this high-quality training by meeting together weekly or monthly, or by decentralizing your training approach and letting individuals study at home on their own time. BCC grades their work and will sign off when their course in complete. We will also appoint a representative from your church to work as a moderator in the course to help your students succeed and to monitor your students’ progress.
Think about how an online training class might serve the needs of the following groups of people in your church.
- Young parents for whom traveling is difficult or impossible
- Business travelers
- College students who are away
- Homebound with health issues but alert minds and passion for ministry
- Those who find the travel cost prohibitive to conferences
- Those with little vacation time for conferences
- Busy small business owners
- Pastors with small budgets
Consider the recent testimony of a few of our students involved in our online training programs.
I am so thankful for the online program that BCC offers, and am already blessed by the time I have spent in the class. The online program’s self-paced approach has been very helpful in allowing me to fit the coursework into a busy schedule. — Peter from IL
The coursework is excellent so far. I am greatly enjoying the training and format of the course. — David from WI
Every church should equip its leadership in biblical counseling. Our goal is to help you become more successful in your efforts and also to help you launch a biblical counseling ministry. If we can help you in any way, please reach out to us at .
