030 Interview with Mark Shaw {Clip 1 | 1:12}

You don’t have to have a counseling center to be effective in your community. In fact, you know, I would argue from scripture that it’s you know, as you go you’re preaching the gospel so you know, the church is gathering together to be equipped, to be encouraged, and then we disperse, right? We go to our work places, we go to our schools, we go to our neighborhoods. That one-on-one ministry, where now we have some equipping to be able to address some of those life issues, you know I think as a pastor I’m thinking I want the average person at our church to be able to you know, talking to their neighbor next door that evening and a life issue comes up. You know, a teenager that’s addicted to something, or you know, they’re having marriage problems. I would hope that a believer at that point wouldn’t say, “Well hey, let’s go to our community counseling ministry,” although they could do that, but that they would engage them wisely and in a loving way from the scriptures to give them gospel hope in that moment.

So didn’t realize it at the time, but by teaching literally every leader in our church who was teaching at some level, taking them through a basic course in Biblical counseling, I didn’t tell them that. I said, “This is discipleship material,” but to get that type of training it really created a culture in our church that helping others with the gospel from the scriptures for life problems, for training children, training adults, you know, whatever it is, that’s normal church ministry.

Biblical counseling, meaning in our view that’s just taking the gospel, taking the scriptures and ministering to hurting people that are struggling with life problems, that has allowed us to evangelize our community in a way consistent with our ecclesiology. What I mean is, we’re not trying to put on a show, we’re not you know, doing entertainment.