The Wagners currently serve in Southern Brazil as one of the Brazil National Coordinators for the biblical counseling training ministry, Overseas Instruction in Counseling (OIC).
After completing his theological education at Word of Life ministries in Sao Paulo, northern Brazil, over a decade ago, Tiago returned home with his family, including his wife, Ariane, to accept a pastoral position. In his new role, Tiago quickly identified two major dilemmas that were present in his home state. First, his home state was the least evangelized in the country. Second, there was no biblical counseling training center or any local church that modeled biblical counseling in their ministry.
The tenacious conditions of brokenness, misery, and wretchedness impel people that do not acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ to desperately seek solutions to their problems in all kinds of places. Unfortunately, all human beings, without fail, seek help from source(s) that, at best, only provide temporal answers and, at worst, compound or accelerate the problem. This condition is the heart of the Brazilian dilemma. Citizens are deprived of the knowledge of the truth that could set them free from the tenets of secular disciplines like psychology and psychoanalysis. According to Tiago, secular psychology has become woven through not just his home state, but the entire Brazilian society and has appeared to render the Word of God powerless to change unbelieving hearts. Sadly, even among professing Christians, the Bible is deemed useless in counseling.
Furthermore, according to Tiago, the general consensus among traditional churches, including but not limited to the Baptists and Presbyterians, is that pastors need to be trained to be psychologists and psychoanalysts in order to be qualified for counseling sessions. He added that a Brazilian pastor without certification in psychology and psychoanalysis is considered unqualified and incompetent to provide answers that deal with human nature and the soul. What secular psychology has done to the church is it “makes the church believe that the church has no answer to the human problem!” Pastors are led to think that they do not have a biblical way of engaging counselees who come seeking solutions to their struggles with depression, suicide, mental illness, broken relationships, and many other problems and issues. Even more devastating is a trend that is seeing Brazilian pastors committing suicide, as they get caught in the Brazilian dilemma.
Tiago and his wife knew something must be done to remedy the Brazilian problem. However, this condition among professing Brazilian Christians also characterized Tiago and Ariane prior to their exposure to the power of the Bible to truly address all of life’s issues, whether simple or overwhelmingly complex, through biblical counseling. During their engagement period, they encountered arduous circumstances that required counseling. Unfortunately, they were unable to get the help they needed. Nevertheless, Divine providence had His way in their encounter with an American missionary who was serving at their local church at the time. The missionary opened the Bible and counseled them through the difficult challenges of their courtship period from the biblical worldview. According to Tiago, this encounter birthed his desire and passion to help steer his fellow citizens toward the only source that can provide true, ultimate, and lasting answers to the Brazilian dilemma, which is ultimately the human dilemma. With the recommendation of the American missionary, who became a mentor to Tiago, he and Ariane decided to attend a biblical counseling conference that took place in Lafayette, Indiana, in the United States.
Over the years, Tiago has begun to see an awakening to good theology in Brazil. Pastors and young people are longing to be fed with sound doctrinal teaching. Consequently, issues related to counseling in the church began to gain attention. For example, while attending a 2017 biblical counseling conference, an opportunity arose for Tiago to be the man in Paul’s vision who beckons Paul to “come over to Macedonia and help us” (c.f. Acts 16:6-10). Tiago met Wayne Vanderwier, the founder of OIC, after the conference and said to him ‘come over to Brazil and help us.’
When asked, “Why is training trainers for biblical counseling important in counseling?” Tiago answered, “biblical counseling helps counselors get to the heart of the human problem.” He strongly believes that the Bible is trustworthy and sufficient, not only revealing the heart of the Brazilian dilemma, but also providing answers to all of man’s problems. He felt a great urgency to encourage Brazilian pastors to reject the popular lies that the church does not have answers and equip them to embrace the truth that God’s people, through the Bible, do have answers. Therefore, for the Wagners, a reason to embrace becoming OIC Team Members to Brazil was revealed. They understood the vital need for Brazilian pastors to be well equipped and trained on how to open the Bible and let it speak into and give eternal truths in any counseling session.
In addition, Tiago and Ariane’s first-hand experience of the transforming power of the Word of God encouraged them to implement biblical counseling in their local church, United Bible Church, in Novo Hamburgo-RS. For Tiago, being trained as a biblical counselor helps him connect and identify with the issues in the life of his counselee. More humbling is his confession that he often experiences personal convictions during counseling session, for counseling that is done biblically always deals with the foundation of the problem. No human heart that is subjected to the authority of Scripture stands a chance of avoiding conviction. Paul attested to this in saying, “for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). Therefore, for Tiago and Ariane, this model of ministry is the solution to not just the Brazilian problem, but to every problem experienced by all people everywhere.
Since OIC began work in Brazil, with the ministry’s model of training trainers in biblical counseling, Tiago has seen the Lord bring about awakening among Brazilian pastors. Tiago recollected that he met an elderly man who had been in ministry for over four decades but with no understanding about how to counsel biblically until he attended the Module 1 portion of OIC’s Church Leadership Training (CLT) program. It is very humbling for Tiago to be training men who have experienced decades of church ministry, but without the fundamental knowledge and experience of applying biblical truths accurately and appropriately in counseling. While the present situation in Brazil, namely younger men teaching the older, may seem counterintuitive, therein lies a great hope for the future of Christianity in Brazil.
Finally, being a Great-Commission-minded person, Tiago is passionate and excited to see more biblical counselors well-equipped to become biblical counseling trainers to their local communities in Brazil. Brazilians are seeking answers and many are coming to realize that psychology and psychoanalysis do not provide sufficient and permanent answers to their sin and suffering. Therefore, this makes Brazil fertile soil for the explosion of biblical counseling. Tiago desires that believers will fervently pray that the Bible will be the source of authority for Christian counseling in Brazil. He desires that God’s people will pray that the Scriptures will be opened, read, taught, and explained to counselees as they seek answers to their problems. With great expectations, Tiago and his ministry in Brazil are anxious to see the Lord Jesus bring a great change about in his home country whereby citizens are caused to see the Bible as trustworthy and sufficient to solve the Brazilian dilemma.
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