Nic Wassell is a teacher for Overseas Instruction in Counseling (OIC) who serves periodically in Ethiopia leading OIC’s Church Leadership Training program (CLT) for a local group of pastors in eastern parts of the country, a region that is predominately Muslim. Nic, married to his wife, Amy, for fifteen years, has spent the last twelve years serving full time at North Hills Christian Church in Vacaville, California, where he began as the associate pastor and is now the preaching and teaching pastor. He has significant experience in biblical counseling; however, this is not where his story began.
Nic originally intended to go to medical school in his early years. He had received a job in orthopedics when he met the Lord. While he was working in the hospital, one of Nic’s friends shared the gospel with him and led him to the Lord. In the years following his conversion, Nic used his gifts in the medical field before the Lord directed him into full-time ministry. At that time, he decided to leave the medical field and began a year-long internship with the church he was attending. His understanding, practice, and application of biblical counseling has been greatly influenced by the works of Jay Adams and the ministry of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF). In addition, he has grown in wisely and compassionately applying the Bible in people’s lives through training he has received at several annual conferences of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC). He also anticipates completing his Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Counseling from The Master’s University in May 2021.
His formal education in ministry has grown his desire to receive ongoing training in pastoral soul care. To Nic, the ministry of the Word is the most attractive thing about pastoral ministry. He is a firm believer in Reformed theology and the sufficiency of Scripture, both of which he understands to be essential to biblical counseling. In biblical counseling, he sees how God’s Word speaks directly to our lives, leading to greater progressive sanctification. He already knew and understood that a pastor’s job was not just to preach, but to know and minister to the congregation by bringing the words of Scripture to fruitful application in the lives of his congregants. But, after pursuing biblical counseling education for pastoral ministry, he ended up in the counseling room and experienced the benefits of biblical counseling firsthand. He saw the fruits and joys of biblical counseling as it brought the grand story of the Bible to people’s particular problems, continually placing the emphasis on Jesus Christ as the only Savior.
Nic is a strong proponent for using biblical counseling in the home as well as in his ministry. He speaks of the wisdom and guidance it brings to his and Amy’s home life. They have mutually used biblical counseling to build up their marriage, including, as a primary example, use of James 4:1, which says: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?” (ESV) Taking passages such as these and putting them at the forefront in his home so an atmosphere of edification and encouragement is increasingly developed has set the “temperature of the home,” as he put it. In other words, continually looking through the lens of Scripture and being open to correction and reinforcement creates a joyfully biblical home life that has become the norm for him and Amy.
This zeal in his home has reoriented the culture of their church as a whole, which led him to see the value of OIC’s CLT program. Nic had previously connected with Wayne Vanderwier through ACBC and was soon invited by Wayne to an annual OIC conference in Jacksonville, FL. Nic had already been involved with missions for several years at this point and had a heart for Ethiopia in particular. When considering OIC’s strategic philosophy of education, he noted, “Missions and counseling are a match made in heaven.” He consistently reinforces the idea that people’s hearts are the same throughout the world and Scripture provides all the answers for people everywhere. The Bible holds the same sanctifying hope and power for people of all languages and contexts and a primary task of OIC that Nic appreciates is the taking of these principles and seamlessly interweaving them within the local cultural context.
Nic has had the opportunity to see this counseling model specifically work itself out in Ethiopia. For the Ethiopian culture, accountability and partnership are hurdles to cross in counseling. To hold someone accountable to Scripture tends to be viewed as very offensive or invasive. However, this does not stop the power of the biblical gospel to push through these hurdles and produce real sanctification. Nic recounted a particular moment in which he saw the effects of biblical counsel in the local people through the story of one man in particular. A couple of years ago, after he had just finished teaching a CLT module to a group of pastors, one man asked to share something with the group. He confessed to all the men there that he had an ongoing conflict problem with his wife and he had been convinced that she was the problem. The Lord had brought him to the realization of his sin and how authoritarian he was being to his wife. The man tearfully confessed to the group of pastors that he had been humbled by this teaching and asked for his wife’s forgiveness. Through this process, he and his wife were reconciled both to each other and the Lord and the fruit of peace has grown in their marriage.
Such first-hand accounts of transformed lives through the power of the Bible have made Nic cherish being able to use God’s gift of wisdom and counsel for the nations. As every partner in the work of the Wassells and OIC is a small, but vital, instrument in God’s hand as He works around the world, Nic urges those who are interested in biblical counseling ministry to be encouraged to connect with OIC as co-workers for the gospel. OIC strives to have a biblical mindset for counseling training and missions with the goal of bringing the gospel and its unstoppable power to every country in its culture, language, and context. So, he would urge you to consider partnering with him and Amy and with OIC and so become fellow laborers for the Lord Almighty to accomplish a work that brings great glory to the Him everywhere!
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