National Certifying Organizations

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.

1 04, 2016

Witnessing the Birth of a National Biblical Counseling Organization

Overseas Instruction in Counseling, a faith-based missions ministry, was launched in June, 2006. The very next month Susie and I traveled to the Philippines to conduct the first of five annual biblical counseling conferences in partnership with the international evangelism and discipleship ministry, Word of Life, Philippines. The director at that time, Mike Foster, had identified the need for soul care based on biblical sufficiency for the pastors in the Philippines. He invited us to begin the process of addressing the need for biblical counselors who could train others to also do biblical counseling.

20 10, 2015

Is International Biblical Counseling Training “Imperialistic”?

The concept of “cultural imperialism” has been the subject of innumerable books and journal articles in the Christian missions community (and the missions communities of other religions) for many decades. There is general agreement on the basics: The Word of God is eternal, the gospel is unchanging, and believers of every culture are sanctified through the same biblically-prescribed disciplines of faith. Therefore, the discussion on this topic focuses on the application of those principles. And, throughout the history of missions the pendulum has swung from one extreme (obliterate every vestige of cultural expression to make the evangelized group “Christian”) to the other (allow even unbiblical practices and perspectives to remain in the evangelized group to avoid an “imperialistic” impression).

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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