Fundamentals of Soul Care: Helping People with the Word of God
What do you say when a friend tells you his marriage is falling apart? How do you help someone who is overwhelmed by anxiety, anger, guilt, grief, or discouragement? What do you do when a fellow believer is caught in sin? How should parents shepherd the hearts of their children? How do you encourage someone who is suffering without offering shallow answers? And how do you bring the truth of God’s Word to bear on the ordinary struggles of everyday life?
Those are not questions only pastors and professional counselors face. They are questions Christians face.
That is why we are excited to offer a new 30-hour course called Fundamentals of Soul Care: Helping People with the Word of God.
The purpose of this course is bigger than simply training people to become biblical counselors. We want to help ordinary Christians become better equipped to love God, love others, and minister the Word of God faithfully to the people He has placed around them.
Soul Care Is Part of the Christian Life
When people hear the word counseling, they often picture an office, an appointment, and two chairs sitting across from one another. Formal biblical counseling certainly has an important place in the ministry of the church, but the Bible’s vision for caring for people is much broader than that.
Christians are called to care for one another’s souls.
Scripture tells believers to “teach and admonish one another” (Colossians 3:16), to “exhort one another every day” (Hebrews 3:13), to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2), and to speak “the truth in love” so that the body of Christ grows toward maturity (Ephesians 4:15–16).
Paul could even say to ordinary believers in Rome that they were “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14).
That is soul care.
Sometimes it happens in a counseling room. Often it happens around a kitchen table, over a cup of coffee, in a small group, between a husband and wife, between parents and children, after church, during a phone call, or when one Christian simply notices that another is struggling.
The question is not whether we will influence and counsel people. We already do. The question is whether the help we give will be shaped by the wisdom of this world or by the sufficient Word of God.
What Is Fundamentals of Soul Care?
Fundamentals of Soul Care is a 30-session, 30-hour course designed to give Christians a biblical foundation for helping people with the problems of life.
The course will also cover the core instructional material required for an ACBC Fundamentals Training Course, making it valuable for those interested in pursuing further training in biblical counseling. But you do not need to be pursuing counseling certification to benefit from this course.
In fact, one of our main goals is to show why these truths belong to the whole church.
Over the thirty sessions, we will consider subjects such as:
- Why every Christian should learn to care for souls
- What makes biblical counseling genuinely biblical
- The authority and sufficiency of Scripture
- How biblical counseling differs from secular psychology and integration
- Progressive sanctification and how people really change
- How to identify issues of the heart rather than merely changing behavior
- How to listen well and gather meaningful information
- How to understand people’s problems biblically
- How to give genuine biblical hope
- How to use Scripture wisely when helping someone
- The place of practical homework and obedient action
- Marriage, communication, sexuality, parenting, and discipline
- Guilt, confession, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation
- Trials and suffering
- Fear, worry, and anxiety
- Anger
- Depression, sorrow, and despair
- Sexual sin
- Physical illness and the relationship between the body and soul
- Psychiatric diagnoses and psychotropic medications
- How all of these principles come together in an actual counseling situation
The goal is not merely to accumulate information. We want to learn how to take biblical truth and lovingly apply it to real people facing real problems.
Truth and Compassion Belong Together
Faithful soul care is not simply telling people what they are doing wrong.
People suffer. They become discouraged. They are sinned against. Bodies become weak and sick. Families experience loss. People become afraid. Some are confused and do not know what to do next.
The Bible calls us to respond differently depending upon the person and the situation:
“Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”
—1 Thessalonians 5:14
Sometimes love requires correction. Sometimes it requires encouragement. Sometimes it requires patiently walking beside someone through deep suffering.
Wise soul care learns the difference.
We want to become Christians who know the truth well enough to speak it faithfully and who love people enough to speak it carefully.
God’s Word Is Enough for the Work God Has Given Us
At the heart of this course is a simple conviction: God has not left His people without the resources necessary to live faithfully and help one another.
The Scriptures reveal who God is, who we are, why our world is broken, what sin does to us, what Christ has accomplished, how believers change, how we should respond to suffering, and how we are called to live before God and one another.
That does not mean every problem is simple. It certainly does not mean Christians should ignore legitimate medical problems or pretend suffering is insignificant.
It means that when the question becomes, How should I understand this life before God? How should I respond? What should I believe? What should I desire? What must change? Where can I find hope?—God has spoken.
And because He has spoken, Christians should learn to use His Word well.
Who Should Attend?
Anyone can come!
You should consider joining us if you are a:
- Christian who wants to become more useful in helping others
- Parent who wants to shepherd your children more faithfully
- Husband or wife who wants to strengthen your marriage
- Sunday School teacher or small-group leader
- Pastor, elder, deacon, or ministry leader
- Christian who regularly finds people coming to you for advice
- Person interested in biblical counseling
- Person considering ACBC certification
- Believer who simply wants to understand how God’s Word applies to the struggles of life
You do not need previous counseling experience.
You simply need a desire to know God’s Word and become better equipped to love people with it.
Helping People Toward Maturity in Christ
Paul summarized much of the work of soul care when he wrote:
“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”
—Colossians 1:28
That is ultimately what this course is about.
We are not trying to turn every Christian into a professional counselor.
We want to become a church filled with Christians who know how to open their Bibles, listen carefully, love patiently, speak truthfully, give hope, encourage the suffering, restore the wandering, and point people again and again to Jesus Christ.
That kind of ministry belongs to all of us.
Join us for Fundamentals of Soul Care: Helping People with the Word of God.
Thirty hours. Thirty sessions. A biblical foundation for a lifetime of helping people.
Course: Fundamentals of Soul Care: Helping People with the Word of God
Length: 30 sessions / 30 hours (~1.5 years)
Who can attend: Anyone interested in growing in biblical soul care
Registration: NO COST OR REGISTRATION
Dates & Times: Begins Sun. August 16th at 5:30pm (1st & 3rd Sunday each month)
Come learn how to care for the people God has placed around you—with truth, compassion, hope, and the Word of God.
This looks like an excellent course! I’m excited to go through it 😃