Thank you for your interest in church-based, Christ-centered, biblical counseling and for giving us an opportunity to serve you. We look forward to helping you find God’s help and hope for the personal or relational problems you are facing. The following information will help you further understand our ministry and will serve as an agreement between us.

What is church-based, Christ-centered, biblical counseling?

We provide Biblical Counseling services to individuals, couples, and families to help you find and implement God's answers to personal and relational problems.

Four convictions underlie our biblical counseling ministry:

1. We present the Lord Jesus Christ as the crucified, risen Savior who, through His Word and His Spirit, can help us handle our personal and relational problems. Jesus alone provides the forgiving mercy (through His saving death and resurrection), the wisdom (in His Word), and the power (through His Spirit) we need for daily living.

2. We use the Bible as our main tool to diagnose, explain, and solve our problems. As God's Word, the Bible provides true, thorough, authoritative, and sufficient guidance for every life situation we face, and it is richly superior to the human wisdom and competing counsel of secular psychologies.  

3. We reflect the love, concern, and compassion of Jesus our Shepherd and Counselor. Biblical counseling is a caring process marked by Christlike love.

4. We seek thorough and lasting godly change by addressing both the inward and outward issues of our problems. Biblical counseling is not shallow, superficial, or simplistic. Scripture alone uncovers and solves both our inward, heart (beliefs and motives) struggles and our outward, behavioral (words and actions) struggles.

This means that in Jesus and His provisions there are powerful, abundant, life-changing answers for every problem you face. There is real help and hope for you today!

I. General Comments:

Your counselor is a member of Christ Family Church and is ministering under the authority and direction of the church’s elders. He or she is a church-trained biblical counselor, not a licensed psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, and offers Christ-centered, biblically-based counseling, not psychological counseling. He or she has completed (or is in the process of completing) certification with the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (https://biblicalcounseling.com/). If you have significant legal, financial, medical, or other technical questions, you should seek advice from an independent professional. Your counselor will seek to help you apply God’s Word to your life, based on your counselor’s understanding of God’s Word.

Your counselor may have one or more church members or leaders present in the sessions to assist him or her, observe him or her for ministry training purposes, or to serve you as mentors. These individuals will observe the same standards of care and privacy as your counselor. 

You or your counselor may choose to discontinue counseling at any time, without explanation. 

II. Making the Process Most Effective:

To increase the effectiveness of the ministry process, your counselor asks the following of you:

1. Be committed to biblical counseling as described in this document and any other accompanying materials your counselor gives. Come to each session with a humble spirit, seeking to learn how God wants you to handle your problems based on His Word.

2. Attend each scheduled session. Allow 50-60 minutes for a session. If an emergency arises and you cannot attend a session, please text or call your counselor as soon as possible and leave a detailed message for your counselor including your name and phone number for them to get back to you. Your counselor does not usually do telephone counseling and cannot reply to frequent phone calls, email, messages, or postal correspondence.

3. Be as open and honest as you can. At the same time, your counselor realizes that talking about your problems may be very difficult for you and that your trust in him or her may take time to develop.

4. Be patient—your problems did not develop in a day. It may take your counselor several sessions to obtain a good understanding of your situation. It is vital for him or her to carefully listen and gather needed information and to build understanding and trust with you.

5. Complete any growth assignments given, and review and pray over the matters discussed during previous sessions. Your counselor will give you assignments that fit our counseling aims and will help you make progress between sessions. Failure to complete them may indicate lack of commitment to the process, and may result in discontinuation of the process.

6. Attend our Sunday morning worship service each week and a Community Group when they meet. Regular participation in a Christ-centered, biblical church like ours provides you with vital complements to our counseling: God-centered musical worship, solid Bible teaching with practical life application, pastoral care, and meaningful friendships with other people needing—and learning—God’s grace together.

III. Privacy and Legal Concerns:

Privacy is an important aspect of the counseling, and your counselor will carefully guard the information you entrust to him or her. We desire as much as possible to protect your privacy.

At the same time, you must realize that this privacy is only within the limits of biblical and civil law. Your counselor cannot guarantee absolute confidentiality in every situation. For example, to ensure that you are receiving consistent counsel and support, your counselor might need to discuss your situation with appropriate leaders of Christ Family Church as well as pastoral leadership at the church with which you maintain membership. Furthermore, he or she might need to divulge information to appropriate civil authorities if there is indication that you or someone else might otherwise be harmed. In counseling minor children, your counselor might need to divulge information to parents or legal guardians.

Your counselor also asks you to agree not to discuss our communications with people who do not have a necessary interest in the counseling or conciliation process. In addition, where your situation might involve legal issues, you must agree to treat all dealings with him or her in regard to this counseling as settlement negotiations, which means they will be inadmissible in a court of law or for legal discovery. Furthermore, you must agree that you will not try to force your counselor to divulge any information acquired during the counseling process or to testify in any legal proceeding related to the process.

Biblical counseling is exempt from counseling licensing requirements per Georgia Code § 43-10A-7 exception 11 (Persons engaged in the practice of a specialty in accordance with Biblical doctrine in public or nonprofit agencies or entities or in private practice).

In the unlikely event of a conflict between you and your counselor, all parties must seek to resolve it in a biblical manner, through discussion, and, if necessary, through mediation and arbitration, according to the Rules of Procedure of the Institute for Christian Conciliation, available at Peacemaker Ministries’ website (www.peacemaker.net). For further information about confidentiality, see the Guidelines for Christian Conciliation at the same website.

Agreement by Counselee: If you have any questions about the above matters, please talk with your counselor or our church leaders. If you agree to these terms, please sign below and return this sheet to your counselor before or at the beginning of your first meeting.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to serve Jesus by helping you find and apply his answers to your problems. May God encourage, bless, and empower you in these coming days!