Editor’s Notice: Our April 2025 mini-series on the BCC Grace and Fact weblog addresses developments in biblical counseling. On this ultimate article, Jared Poulton and Jeff Doll replicate on the creation of the Institute for Reformed Biblical Counseling. In different contributions to the sequence, Jeremy Oliver discusses alternatives for ministering to the getting older and aged, and Dave Deuel shares in regards to the want for ministry to fathers of youngsters with disabilities.
In 2008, two elders of Cornerstone United Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan, reached out to pastor Jeff Doll with a big concern. As they mirrored upon their labors amongst their respective elder districts, each males felt underequipped to shepherd the souls underneath their care. They wanted assist. Dr. Doll led the 2 elders into the empty sanctuary to ask the Lord for knowledge in addressing this want. In that point of prayer, God planted the preliminary seeds of the Institute for Reformed Biblical Counseling (IRBC).
Biblical Counseling Seeds
The biblical counseling motion has skilled outstanding progress ever because the publication of Competent to Counsel. What started as one man’s want to see counseling restored to the church and the primacy of the Scriptures returned to counseling has grown into an interdenominational parachurch motion comprised of various church buildings, organizations, and associations. The motion’s middle of gravity has additionally shifted from Reformed and Presbyterians inside the neighborhood round Westminster Theological Seminary and impartial Bible church buildings comparable to Religion in Lafayette, Indiana, to the various Southern Baptist establishments advancing tutorial biblical counseling.
Alongside the way in which, the seeds of biblical counseling have taken root inside many smaller communities throughout the USA. As one instance, readers of Jay Adams and college students of David Powlison at Westminster have taken the ideas of biblical counseling into the Dutch Reformed denominations of the Midwest—the United Reformed Church (URC), the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), the Heritage Reformed Church (HRC), and others.
IRBC Grows
Within the Eighties, Jeff Doll first encountered biblical counseling via the writings of Jay Adams. within the sciences, the critiques of the psychologies within the works of Jay Adams resonated together with his issues in regards to the reigning materialistic worldview he encountered inside his secular undergraduate research at Colorado State College. Later, Jeff would pursue pastoral ministry and superior coaching in biblical counseling. Within the Lord’s timing, this dialog with the elders occurred towards the tip of pastor Doll’s research. After additional prayer and reflection, the consistory (URC board of elders), council, and congregation of Cornerstone affirmed pastor Doll’s want to dedicate his efforts to the development of a Reformed biblical counseling ministry.
The unique function of this ministry was to offer coaching and equipping for the church’s elders in member care, reflecting the robust custom among the many Dutch Reformed of elder visitation. As their coaching progressed and Dr. Doll continued to develop church-based counseling materials, IRBC started to supply seminars to native pastors and elders from congregations inside the higher Grand Rapids space. These seminars had been nicely attended and mirrored a broader want for equipping inside the neighborhood. Ultimately, the demand for counseling coaching elevated from not solely church leaders but additionally church members needing to be skilled in biblical counseling. In 2011, IRBC supplied its first year-long primary coaching course.
The last decade following that first course mirrored sluggish and regular progress. Between 2012 and 2024, over 650 college students from twelve completely different states and two places internationally have participated within the IRBC’s primary coaching course in Reformed biblical counseling. Some graduates of these first few lessons partnered collectively to launch the primary IRBC counseling middle at Cornerstone URC. From that preliminary counseling middle has grown the Shepherd’s Means Biblical Counseling Community, a small community of counseling facilities working underneath the oversight of leaders from Reformed and Presbyterian church buildings inside a area people. Along side creating its primary coaching course, the IRBC additionally started to supply counseling certification for biblical counselors looking for to use God’s Phrase in accordance with their Reformed convictions. IRBC has additionally had the privilege of partnering with Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, and Mid-America Reformed Seminary to lift up future biblical counselors for the church.
Seeking to the Future
Because the broader biblical counseling motion continues to develop, the IRBC feels the growing demand for biblical counseling and counselor coaching. After over a decade of regular management from Dr. Doll, the IRBC has employed Dr. Jared Poulton to function its subsequent government director. His doctoral research at Southern Seminary targeted on the Dutch apologist Cornelius Van Til and the mental foundations of the fashionable biblical counseling motion, getting ready him for his immersion into the Dutch subculture of Western Michigan.
The IRBC is an affidavit to the knowledge and energy of God to do excess of anybody can ask or assume (Eph. 3:20-21). What started because the prayer of three unknown churchmen has grown into a company overseeing counseling facilities and providing counseling coaching and certification. Together with the IRBC, there are various smaller and “unknown” organizations laboring to advance biblical counseling and supply counseling and care to saints, sinners, and victims in America and around the globe. The historical past of the IRBC can present an encouragement for any pastor, elder, or church member who acknowledges the necessity for counseling inside their native congregation or neighborhood and is keen to hope, “Lord, in case you are keen, use me. I’ll go” (Isa. 6:8).
It’s the imaginative and prescient of the IRBC to offer Reformed biblical counseling coaching and help in establishing cooperative Reformed counseling facilities. The IRBC actively recommends many biblical counseling assets to its licensed counselors and counseling facilities, introducing many smaller Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian congregations to the broader biblical counseling motion. Biblical counseling is enticing to those communities due to its dedication to offering counseling and care underneath the oversight of the native church. We hope that the Lord could permit us to supply a distinctly Reformed voice in biblical counseling and a house for Reformed biblical counselors, addressing the wants of Reformed and Presbyterian congregations in offering counseling assets that replicate the broader streams of the Reformed custom and the Reformed confessions. We additionally hope to proceed to develop in our partnerships and friendships inside the broader biblical counseling motion, looking for recommendation and counsel on finest practices in counseling coaching and certification.
Because the biblical counseling motion grows, inevitably, the seeds of biblical counseling initially scattered by Jay Adams and David Powlison will take root inside completely different church communities. On the finish of the day, the biblical counseling motion grows in energy as counselors look to their very own ecclesiastical contexts and theological forefathers for steering in understanding the Scriptures and addressing the issues of life. To that finish, the IRBC stands beside the various biblical counseling organizations—huge and small—looking for to finest serve their native church buildings and lift up counselors, till all of us “attain to the unity of the religion and of the information of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).
Questions for Reflection
- Are you able to determine any areas inside your personal neighborhood the place biblical counseling is constant to develop?
- What’s your church custom? How does your church custom affect your apply of biblical counseling?
- How could the Lord use you to advance biblical counseling in ways in which you don’t at the moment anticipate?
