Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I’m delighted to have with me reverend Randy Patten. He’s the president of Team Focus Ministries, an organization that seeks to increase the discipleship effectiveness of evangelical churches and Christian leaders through public proclamation of Scripture and private coaching. He is also the Director of Training Emeritus of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. He was former Executive Director and has been a great mentor to me personally. Previously, Randy served 18 years with ACBC and 16 years as the Executive Director when it was formerly named NANC (The National Association of Nouthetic Counselors). Prior to his leadership roles with NANC and ACBC, he served 12 years as a local church pastor followed by 12 years as a pastor to pastors and consultant to churches. He’s been involved in training biblical counselors for 40 years including 24 years at Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries in Lafayette, Indiana. In 2021, Randy was named to the ACBC Academy, an honor bestowed for having made a significant contribution to the development of biblical counseling. Randy has a BA from Cedarville University in Ohio, and an M.Div From Grace Theological Seminary and Winona Lake Indiana and he’s done doctoral studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He’s serving his 35th year as a trustee of Cedarville University and is a founding board member of the Biblical Counseling Coalition. Randy was a contributing author to Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling, Scripture and Counseling and Biblical Counseling and the Church. Randy and his wife, Cindy, have been married for 51 years, and they have two children and six grandchildren and are longtime members of College Park Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Randy, any time we get together it’s always a blessing brother. Thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.
Randy Patten: Thank you, Dale. It’s my privilege, and I rejoice at how God is blessing you and your leadership with ACBC.
Dale Johnson: That’s very kind, brother. And you know, as I always say we stand on the shoulders of sturdy men and you’re one of those and I really appreciate that. The Lord is certainly blessing ACBC and providing fruit. People sometimes lose sight of our history and we’re grateful for all the people who have gone before who have created a sturdy foundation for us to stand well on so thank you for your encouragement. Our task today is to talk about what makes biblical counseling unique and lots of people have questions like this: What is biblical counseling? What does that actually mean? Sometimes the phrase itself can be confusing in its expanse. But today you’re going to help us understand a little bit about what makes biblical counseling unique. So I want to start with this Randy, if I can, what makes it unique in today’s culture?
Randy Patten: Well, first of all, I would define Biblical counseling as just a Christian trying to help someone who’s struggling with the issues of life and living using the Bible. Or, another way of putting it, biblical counseling is the private, compassionate, intensive Ministry of the Word. Part of what makes that unique in our culture are maybe six characteristics that have stood out to me. One is our commitment to the inerrancy of the Scripture. That is, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God and it reflects the character of its author. He is perfect so His Word is perfect. This is significant in counseling because it answers the question, what is your authority? In other words, every one of us needs to ask, why should somebody listen to me? It’s not because of my age or my experience. It would not be because of my education. The primary reason people should listen to us is that we know the Word of God and are able to explain it to them in a way that’s helpful to them.
Related or growing out of our commitment to inerrancy is our belief in the sufficiency of Scripture. We Believe 2 Peter 1:3, which says that God has given us everything we need for life and godliness, and through the Scriptures we have biblical commands, warnings, and principles that help us know how to navigate the issues that we encounter living in our world and this is significant as counselors because it answers the question, what is going to be your guide? Is your guide as a counselor going to be your experience or your education or what some theorists have said? Biblical counselors say our guide without apology is the Word of God. It is sufficient for life and godliness. Also, a third characteristic that makes biblical counseling unique is our focus on the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scripture describes all of us as individuals who are sinners by nature and sinners by choice and our sin problem is a major problem before a holy God and if each of us got what we deserve we’d spend eternity apart from God being punished forever in the lake of fire which the Bible calls hell. But God in His mercy showed grace toward us and made it possible for us to be born again through the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ, His burial and then His resurrection, which made it possible for God the Father to show Mercy to us righteously. And, without apology, good biblical counselors are Christ-centered biblical counselors. We’re focused on the gospel. That is our focus.
Dale Johnson: That’s really helpful. And you could probably list so many more, but as you start to narrow down what makes biblical counseling distinct and what makes it unique, there are certainly characteristics that ought to be prevalent in how we think about biblical counseling and how we approach hurting people.
Now, let’s say, Randy, that churches start to say “Man, you know what, that’s what I believe to be true about the Bible. I think that’s a way that our church and our people could Minister the Word of God to hurting people.” And let’s say they start organizing or formalizing their counseling Ministry and making biblical counseling available to their communities. What happens when churches want to organize in that way and formalize a counseling ministry?
Randy Patten: In my experience, the churches that do this have a pastor who’s become convinced about the uniqueness of biblical counseling in the way I’ve been describing it, and the pastor’s testimony would be that as a result of his study of biblical counseling and doing biblical counseling, that his preaching became more practical because he was more alert to the excuses that people would have for not obeying the Scriptures or areas where they needed help. But he will also become more alert to the fact that the Scripture says a pastor is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
One way for a pastor to do that in the arena of counseling is to organize the counseling ministry or formalize it where there’s a focused effort to get people trained in biblical counseling and there’s multiple ways of doing that these days, and then encouraging people to develop their skills in counseling, and one of the best ways of doing that, of course, is to point them toward the ACBC certification process and encourage people to go through the three phases there. But when churches do that, they organize and then they formalize their counseling ministry; what I’ve seen happen is that churches end up with a waiting list of people from their community waiting to come on to the church property and to talk to somebody, pour out their heart, describe their difficult circumstances, and ask for help. And for me, this is just such a stunning thing that’s happening in our culture and I have to compare it to what happened to me when I started into the pastorate in 1974. It’s a long time ago.
Back then I was called to be a pastor of what, as preachers, we would call a rescue work. It was a church that had been through two different splits before I got there, a church of 120 or so, and had dwindled to where they had 17 voting members, and I was called to be the pastor of this church that averaged 38 in Sunday school at two months before I got there and we were meeting in a house that had not had the interior walls put in. So it’s not the traditional church, and I mean there were so many things that were working against us and in an effort to find somebody and to recruit some people for our church, we used to buy, what was called back then, the turn on list from the local utilities. You know, when people move into a house or an apartment they have to have the utilities turned on and the local utility company would sell their turn on list and we would buy that and I’d go visit the people that were new to the community or so forth, and I’m trying to find somebody that’s not plugged into another bigger, nicer, more elaborate church and talk to him about our church and also talk to them about Christ. I’d be out two nights a week on visitation trying to meet somebody to talk to, and I get lost in so many new subdivisions and wander around. But after I was trained in biblical counseling, and my counseling skills started developing, and then I started helping a few people, well hurting people know hurting people, and it was a happy day for this young pastor back then when people started coming to see me on Tuesday or Thursday night instead of me going out, chasing around, trying to find somebody to talk to.
So today, I am just stunned. This is amazing! In our pagan culture that is degenerating it seems, month-by-month hitting new lows, more than ever before churches that organized and formalized their counseling ministry have people waiting, people from the community, not just their church, but people from the community who are waiting to come on to the church property to go down the hallway to sit in a classroom or an office to talk to somebody who has a big old Bible sitting there and pour out their heart. And I’m convinced, in our culture in the United States, the single most effective way for a church to reach its culture, to reach its community, and to make disciples, is to organize and formalize their counseling ministry. Part of the reason is that through biblical counseling we end up with multiple conversations with people and so many people in our culture today are biblically illiterate.
We live in post-Christian America and recently, I was listening to a recording of a session with a person who was pursuing ACBC certification and in my role now, I get to serve as a supervisor with people pursuing certification, and I asked the people I supervise to record sessions one and two with their new counselees, and I’m listening to the session 1 or 2, whichever it was, and the biblical counselor is wanting to help the person by laying out some biblical principles. I think it was in session 2 that they began to explain the gospel more fully. They had to show the person what the table of contents was like in the Bible and the fact that the Bible is broken into two big chunks: the Old Testament the New Testament. And they opened the Bible for them to John and the person said, “What are those big numbers?” And they had to explain to them that this is what we call chapters, and the Bible is one book, but it has 66 books inside it and each book is broken down into what we call chapters. “What are the little numbers?” The counselee asked and I’m thinking, “This is amazing,” and yet this person is sitting across the table from a biblical counselor who is going to love that person, and is willing to spend time with them week after week, session after session, hearing their burden and trying to help them. What a unique day we live in. That’s one of the things that happens when people organize and formalize their counseling ministry.
The other part that grows out of that, is Christians are energized in their faith. I mean you can just imagine the excitement of that counselor I just related when she goes home and tells her family or friends, you won’t believe I got to talk to someone who didn’t even know what the chapters of the Bible were! I mean, it’s just like the joy of being on the front lines of evangelistic ministry. So it’s just wonderful. That’s part of what happens is that people come and we have multiple opportunities to explain the Gospel, who Christ is, and build relationships. It’s just tremendous.
Dale Johnson: Well, it’s so true as you’re describing how missional this type of ministry is for the church and for my own experience, I’ve heard you talk about this as well, how many people we would see come to faith in the community who were just looking for help, and we were able to show them that distinctly with the Scriptures. And I think part of what’s happening in our in our pagan cultures, as you described it, which I would agree, is people are starting to see the emptiness of pursuing those means of help and therapy in other places. And when churches are able to provide something, that word of mouth starts to spread that man, they’re getting actual substantive help. Help that seems lasting and is changing people’s hearts and minds. It does make biblical counseling unique because the Lord grips the heart of a person through His word and now we’re seeing our church members, as you mentioned, thrive in this ministry because as they’re being equipped in the church, they’re doing the work of the ministry, and they’re making disciples and you’re just seeing the beauty of what God intended the church to be.
So, final words as we think about biblical counseling and its uniqueness and churches taking on that mantle and being unapologetic even in a post-Christian culture. Kind of some final thoughts and final words, Randy?
Randy Patten: I just would encourage churches that are committed to biblical counseling two terms that I like to use are organize and formalize it. And like what you typically do as what a church does with their youth group, or with the music ministry, and other areas, you just don’t talk about them and you’ve got people in charge, it’s funded, and you care enough about it even to help include funding for people to get training and so forth and there’s all kinds of people with ACBC that can help churches take steps forward and how to do this. It is the single most effective way of reaching your community for Christ if your goal is to make disciples of Christ and that’s one of the things that makes biblical counseling unique. Our goal is not just having meetings with people. We want to see people become long-term followers of the Lord Jesus Christ to become disciples. That’s our goal in counseling and one of the most practical ways for a church to manifest its love for Christ that’s shown up in the love for their community is to organize and formalize your counseling ministry.
Dale Johnson: I love it brother, and as always, I’m so encouraged when I’m around you and to hear the things that you’re so passionate about and you’re encouraging others. You’ve been a good friend to me, I really appreciate that and to always learn from you as we have today on the podcast. Thank you brother for being with us.
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