Biblical Counseling

21 05, 2018

Toward “Air Traffic Control” in International Biblical Counseling Training: An Appeal for Inter-Agency Cooperation

OIC desires to work cooperatively and collaboratively, never competitively, in any country with others who have a heart for international biblical counseling training. Our quick initiation of an offer of partnership and the gracious response of the other ministry averted the potential for damage in this case.

8 01, 2018

Revival Through Training? (Or, Significant Personal Spiritual Growth Through a Graduate Academic Program?)

It is normally expected that those being trained to help others through biblical sufficiency-based soul care ministries will themselves first be touched by the grace of God and experience some measure of personal spiritual growth. That certainly happened to me! But graduate academic classes in biblical counseling are sometimes just another programmatic requirement to be endured. In addition, the academic environment itself can seem theoretical, detached-from-life, even “stuffy.” This is the story – mostly testimonies – of something God did that was the dramatic transformation of lives, families, and churches through the first two classes of a new academic program.

19 01, 2017

Reflections on Doing International Biblical Counseling Training

It seems impossible to believe that Overseas Instruction in Counseling is already a little more than 10 years old. When, in the Fall of 2005, Susie and I began to envision a ministry that would train pastors around the world in biblical sufficiency-based soul care, we never could have imagined the ways God would open doors of opportunity and expand the ministry we began in June, 2006.

14 10, 2013

Biblical Counseling Training in the Middle East

Because we’ve just returned from extended ministry with our Arab brothers and sisters, that part of the world is, today, especially on our hearts. In partnership with a well-respected, regionally-accredited, Christian academic institution (the largest in the Middle East), OIC currently directs graduate degree programs (Master of Biblical Counseling) in both Egypt and Lebanon. A similar program is scheduled to begin in Jordan in Fall, 2014.

10 05, 2013

Culture Is Local – Really Local!

How Local is “Local”?

Lebanon is a small nation. But while southern Lebanon and northern Lebanon are not far apart, the former is controlled by terrorists while the latter was the site of one of my family’s three-day vacations—safe and beautiful! I was raised in a farming community in western Michigan. I attended an all-white high school. Because of a heritage of Dutch influence, people in my town were at least religious and moral, if not born-again. So imagine the culture shock I experienced (although, in truth, I didn’t know that was what I was experiencing) when, in 1981, I was called to pastor a church in northwestern Indiana. I was thrust into an urban, multi-cultural, multi-linguistic environment in which the economy was driven by the steel mills and unions. And our relocation covered barely more than 100 miles!
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