Growing a counseling ministry in the local church on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson 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 on the podcast, I have with me a dear brother. So much fun to be around. I appreciate

him in relationship, but also in his teaching. And today we get to talk about one of those teachings,

Brad Bigny. He's a pastor with the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Held's an MDiv from Columbia Biblical Seminary. He's certified ACBC counselor. He's a conference speaker.

He's the lead pastor of Grace Fellowship since 1996. He's the author of gospel treason, a book that I

think all of you should probably get and read if you've not

done so already.

He and his wife, Vicki, have been married for 36 years. They have five adult children. Brad, I'm so grateful that you're here again on the podcast to talk about counseling and local church. Yeah. Thank you, Dale. It's a passion. Yeah, amen. And listen, I had to say the people out there may not know this, but what you guys do at Grace Fellowship, I think is just absolutely tremendous. You've built, even the book that I wrote, the church as a culture of care, you guys have built what I'm trying to describe. And the way that you guys do things, I just, I'm so encouraged when I see, you know, the things that you all are doing

and the ways in which you're just being creative and how you minister to people and the haven

that your church is for so many who are broken and hurting. So I want to start into this talking

about counseling ministry and local church. What got you thinking about how to grow counseling

in the local church? Well, I'll spare the initial story of how I got

excited about biblical counseling for the sake of time. It was getting biblical counseling myself.

But shortly thereafter, probably within two years, I finished my MDiv and thought, you know what,

I think I want to plant a church because it's so hard to take an existing church and

turn it. So actually, my hat's off to any guy who turns an existing church. I think that's

harder. So we, you know, we had it hard. The offices in my basement were meeting in schools. I'm

breaking down cafeteria chairs. But guess what? No one can say we've never done it that way.

But when I went,

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