I'm a pastor. How Do I Counsel on this edition of Truth and Love?

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the

problems that people face. This week, we want to talk about how the local church is designed by God

to be a counseling center. And our guest this week is Dr. Steve Viers, who is the pastor of Faith Church

in Lafayette, Indiana, which is a large and growing church in that

community. And Dr. Viers is not only the leader of that congregation who's preaching and teaching,

but is also committed to member care and taking care of the individuals in his church, even at the

level of counseling. Dr. Viers, why don't you tell us some of the things that faith is doing to minister to the

individuals in your church and in the community to meet their counseling needs?

Well, over 35 years ago, a medical doctor and our former senior pastor, along with a number

of other godly men and women, just decided that

they were going to start a biblical counseling center to serve the needs of people in our church

who were struggling and not able to find answers in soul care in small groups and other

offerings that were already in place, along with serving people in our community

who might be having challenges and just looking for someone who would love them and sit

on and talk with them about those issues from the Word of God.

So it's been a marvelous, marvelous blessing.

It's been a great way for us just to care for souls for people in our church family.

Our former pastor used to say it like this.

There's a difference between counting noses and counting disciples.

We want to be sure that every person who's in our church has access to compassionate care

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