Dr. Andrew Rogers, M.Div., Ph.D. (Candidate, ABD), Assistant Professor and Program Director of Biblical Counseling at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, ACBC Fellow and Board Member, and member of the Biblical Counseling Coalition Council, will be installed as the new Executive Director of BCM Worldwide on Oct. 7, 2019...
Part Two of this article is simply a copy of the certification maintenance protocol that has been created and is being enacted by Biblical Soul Care Philippines, one of the by-nationals, for-nationals, culture-specific, biblical counseling certification organizations created through the work of BCM Worldwide in fulfillment of its strategic objective.
Here is one of the worst-kept secrets and, in my opinion, one of the most glaring deficiencies in the modern biblical counseling movement: the requirement of continuing education for certified biblical counselors is practically non-existent.
What neglected ministry skill training most powerfully changes pastors – thereby strengthening churches – causing them to more faithfully fulfill the Great Commission by becoming more intentional and effective in their disciple-making? Biblical counseling – or, more broadly, soul care – training, of course!
There are others reason we train others: because we share God’s goal that His glory be known among the nations, because God has blessed us with resources that should be shared, because we have developed and tested the one thing most people who want to teach overseas lack—a curriculum—so we can meet the invitations that regularly come to us from nations around the world.
Most of us tend to work close to home, so we’re not alert to 1) the peculiarities of other cultures, and/or 2) the doctrinal perspectives of other ministries. That was certainly true of me during my years as a pastor, 25 of which were invested in one town in middle America. But, traveling to teach—even in the USA, but especially around the world—will inevitably cause you to be faced with the collision between culturally-generated ideas and (what you have been taught are or what you believe to be) scriptural mandates.
BCMW 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.
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.
It seems impossible to believe that BCM Worldwide 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.
BCM Worldwide, 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.
BCM Worldwide
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Walnut Creek, CA 94598
USA
“…what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”
2 Timothy 2:2
You can also hear biblical counseling stories and testimonies from around the world at the BCM Worldwide podcast hosted by BCMW. Subscribe here:
BCMW is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
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