Do you remember the 60’s? For those of us who are “baby boomers,” it was an exciting time. We were in junior high and high school learning about and experiencing much of life for the first time. There were first dates, the first Super Bowls, first driver’s licenses, astronauts, cars, color television, transistor radios, and Beatles music. For our parents, however, the sixties were very different. Their memories are filled with assassinations, riots, Vietnam, LSD, the sexual revolution, Chappaquiddick, Charles Manson, and Beatles music. It was very much a best of times and worst of times—right out of Charles Dickens’ novel.
The same was true on the ecclesiastical scene. By 1960 most of the ecclesiastical wars had ended and new lines had been drawn. The modernist/fundamentalist fights were then history with new denominations and church associations formed by those who had separated from the apostasy of the old mainline denominations. Among Baptists the GARBC, the BBF, and the CBF were not only growing in numbers of churches but individual churches were growing stronger as well. Bible believing Presbyterians were also prospering following their separation from the old UPC. The great issues concerning the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, the inspiration and authority of the Bible, creation, Christ’s bodily resurrection, and the reality of hell had all been settled for the men in these new groups and they now sought to minister the Word of God in which they had unshakable confidence to their people. These new church groups were flourishing and their leaders and pastors could now focus their attention on their church ministries and much less on denominational issues.
While these men had great zeal for God and burdened hearts for both the lost and for their church flocks, many quickly found that the education they had received (most with a three year Bible Institute diploma or a four year college degree) had focused their attention on answering the attack of the liberal rather than answering the attack of a drunken husband on his wife. While the battle for the authority and inspiration of the Bible had been won, a seed of doubt as to its ability to solve problems in people’s lives had been planted. Pastors who were burdened for their people’s hurts and problems quickly realized that their training had not prepared them to do serious pastoral counseling and those who looked for answers were invariably pointed to the “mental health” professional: the psychologist or psychiatrist. These well educated professionals warned pastors against getting involved with troubled people and urged pastors to refer and defer to the psychologist, the only ones who could effectively deal with the deep complex issues of the heart.
Many pastors of the day did just that. For one reason, they were busy, busier than they had ever been and dealing with people and their individual problems was time consuming. Secondly, most just did not know how to help. They believed the Bible had answers for theological issues and they trusted it completely, but was it a source book for these new issues they were facing—depression, fear, anxiety attacks, alcoholism, marriage breakdowns? Thirdly, the pastors who did want to help and make the effort to learn were usually taught a form of Rogerianism which had captured most of the seminaries. Carl Rogers taught an entire generation, contrary to Scripture, that man had everything within himself to solve his own problems and that any directive counseling from some other source would at best only complicate circumstances and at worse impair the ability of the individual to come to his own solution. John Bettler recalls,
As a student at Westminster Seminary in the mid-sixties, leaving a class in Apologetics in which Cornelius Van Til railed against the incorporation of unbelieving thought into a consistent Christian world-view and then walking to a class on pastoral care where Rogerian methods were taught and practiced uncritically—and nobody blinked.[1]
One such young pastor was William Goode. Goode was saved while serving in the Navy in 1953. He attended and graduated from Bob Jones University in 1960 while pastoring a church in the mountains of Northern Georgia. At BJU, a conservative, fundamantalist school, he acquired an unshakable confidence in and love for the Word of God. Goode was a gracious pastor who had a genuine desire to minister the Word he loved to the people he loved. In 1967 he moved his family to Gary, Indiana becoming the pastor of an independent Baptist church there. He quickly realized Gary was not Georgia in ways other than geography. Gary was a gritty industrial, blue collar town and his people were experiencing problems he had not encountered in the back hills of Georgia. Like many of his brethren, Goode began to search for help for his people but was discerning enough to realize there were no answers in secular psychology. As he searched he learned of a psychologist who was a born again, evangelical Christian who had written a book on psychology from a Christian viewpoint and published by the best known evangelical publisher of the day—Zondervan Publishing House. Clyde Narramore had done much during the 1950’s and 1960’s to assuage the natural suspicion conservative pastors had about psychology. He was a genuine believer who attended a conservative church in California and spoke of the need for salvation and the Spirit’s help in counseling. Narramore had established a training center in California and in 1970 Goode and his wife, Mildred, spent three weeks there studying under Clyde Narramore. Sadly, he returned home only more frustrated that before. As he pressed Narramore and his colleagues for answers the response he received repeatedly was that as a pastor, he should refer his people to the experts with psychological training rather than risk doing harm by counseling them from the Scriptures himself.
Bible believing pastors were not the only ones experiencing this frustration. Dr. Robert Smith had attended medical school with the goal of becoming a medical missionary. After graduation he joined a medical practice in northern Indiana to pay off school bills and prepare for the mission field. When he learned that he would not be able to go the mission field he decided to continue in the practice but his desire to help people spiritually did not diminish. He noticed that many of his patients who came to him complaining of physical problems really had spiritual problems which had physical symptoms. He began searching the Scriptures for answers but did not know how to find them. He did not know Greek and some of the theology he had been taught only confused the issues for him. In medical school he had been immersed in the Freudian concept of the subconscious and its influence and began to wonder where the subconscious resided in man. Was is a part of the soul? The spirit? The body? He wondered how he could train his subconscious mind with Scripture so he would not be guilty of subconscious sin! He continued to see patients who professed to be believers but did not handle bad news or serious illnesses any better than his unsaved patients. One vivid memory he has from those days was of telling a woman with stomach troubles that her physical problems would not be resolved until her marriage problems were and then racing from the room before she could ask him what she should do about her marriage.
Bill Goode and Robert Smith are just two examples of the ministry experience of countless pastors and Christian laymen in those days. Victory had been won over the dark forces of liberalism and unbelief in many churches and God had blessed the fight. Yet, the Word of God that had been fought for so vigorously just a generation before, was being replaced in the church by secular psychological concepts and teachings.
Throughout history, when God’s people faced distress or hardship or had fallen into one form of heresy or another God would raise up a man to lead and instruct his people. The biblical examples are numerous, as are the examples from church history. Moses, Joshua, Jeremiah, Peter, and Paul are the obvious biblical examples; Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Huss, and Zwingle are among the historical examples. In our day He gave us Presbyterian J. Gresham Machen, Baptist Robert T. Ketchum, and others who took leadership roles during the conflicts of the early 1900’s. Thankfully, God has done the same in our generation by raising up a man to lead the church back to its confidence in the sufficiency of the Scriptures to handle life’s problems.
Jay Edward Adams was born in Baltimore on January 30, 1929. He was saved at the age of 15 and began his theological education at age 16 at Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. He received his Bachelor of Divinity at RE, a Bachelor of Arts in Greek at Johns Hopkins and did graduate work at Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary. He withdrew from the program because of the liberalism in the seminary and finished his Masters in Sacred Theology later at Temple University, and finally received his Ph.D. in Speech at the University of Missouri. He was ordained in the old United Presbyterian Church at the age of 23 and assumed the pastorate of his first church near Pittsburgh. Adams’ aggressive evangelism and Bible preaching in that old line denominational church led to a church split two years later and Adams became the pastor of a new church founded by those who split from the old. In 1956 he became the pastor of a church in New Jersey that was enduring another form of conflict, this time over degrees of separation. This church had separated from the congregation pastored by Carl McIntire. By 1958 Adams’ leadership abilities had been widely recognized and he was called to become the Executive Secretary of Home Missions for the Bible Presbyterian Church. When the two main Presbyterian denominations in the country merged in 1959 Adams published an “Open Letter to Former United Presbyterians” urging them to come out of the liberal denomination and join with him and the Bible Presbyterians. In 1959 he also published his first book, a book promoting an amillennial understanding of eschatology, giving him a reputation in his largely dispensational denomination as a “militant” amillenialist.
While all this may be viewed as immaterial biographical information we can see from it that by the age of 30, Jay Adams was a veteran of academic, ecclesiastical, and theological conflict. God had given him not only considerable theological training in Greek, Hebrew, and theology but real life experience in dealing with people and conflict.
During his pastorates, Adams encountered the same frustrations Goode and Smith would encounter later. Adams writes:
Early in my first pastorate, following an evening service, a man lingered after everyone else had left. I chatted with him awkwardly, wondering what he wanted. He broke into tears, but could not speak. I simply did not know what to do. I was helpless. He went home that night without unburdening his heart or receiving any genuine help from his pastor. Less than one month later he died. I now suspect that his doctor had told him of his impending death and that he had come for counsel. But I failed him. That night I asked God to help me to become an effective counselor.[2]
After finishing his Ph.D. Adams moved his family back to the Philadelphia area where he became the pastor of a church in Westfield, New Jersey. He was invited to teach part time at Westminster Seminary and was assigned a course in poimenics (shepherding). Contained in that poimenics course was a unit on counseling.
What would I teach? I was stuck, and I didn’t know the answers. So I started digging. I read everything I could find on counseling in two or three seminary libraries, as well as other books on psychology. I got immersed in Freudianism because that was the thing that both the pagan books and the Christian books taught. I threw something together for the course; it was horrible. But at least I had started to wrestle with the issues. [3]
The fire had been lit. Adams knew he had not helped anyone with his course and he was determined to do better.
In the winter of 1965 Adams learned that O. Hobart Mowrer was to be giving a lecture at a nearby College. Adams went, listened, and spoke with Mowrer who invited him to apply for a summer internship for clergy with him that summer. Mowrer was an unbeliever and an iconoclast who attacked with great vigor the Freudian assumptions of his colleagues. Mowrer challenged the moral failings of his patients instead of treating them as mentally ill. He was assertive and directive in his counseling. For Adams, this was an eye opening experience. For six weeks he traveled with Mowrer, questioning him, arguing with him, and thinking through what he was witnessing. For Adams, Mowrer cleared the rubble of all the old teaching and thinking from his mind. Sadly, Mowrer had nothing to erect in the place of what he had demolished but he provided a clearing for his student whom God had prepared with the tools to build.
Adams began to build. Each counseling session, each sermon preached, each class taught became the lumber from which he would build his next story. In 1966 Adams was appointed Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster and relinquished his role as pastor. During the next four years Adams would spend long days counseling and teaching as he developed his counseling system. With his first student, John Bettler, he organized the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation which gave him a vehicle through which to do his counseling and training of other pastors. By 1970 Adams’ thinking had jelled. What Adams had built was more than a system of counseling. It could be better described as a philosophy of Christian ministry. It was a philosophy he called nouthetic.
The word nouthetic comes from the Greek word nouqesia (nouthesia). It is a compound word meaning literally “to place into the mind.” It is usually translated “admonish” but that is a most inadequate translation. The problem is there is no English word equivalent to nouthesia so Adams thought it best to simply transliterate it into English and coin his own word so he could be sure it was defined correctly. In the word Adams finds three aspects:
- The counselee has problems resulting from sin that must be resolved God’s way.
- These problems must be resolved by verbal confrontation using the Scriptures.
- The resolution must be done out of love for the counselee to help him love God and enjoy Him in his life.[4]
Nouthetic counseling is counseling that uses Scripture to confront people about their sin with the goal of helping to restore them to usefulness (Gal. 6:1). Confrontation out of concern leading to change. It is of necessity directive and best done by those who have a thorough-going grasp of the Scriptures—Greek, Hebrew, and Systematic Theology—not by those immersed in secular systems of psychology. Taking his cue from Romans 15:14 Adams concluded, and then contended, that it was the believer who was filled with both goodness and the knowledge of God’s Word who was truly “competent to counsel.” Those who sought to counsel from a secular psychological stance or even a “Christian” psychological stance were usurpers whose wares were to be driven from the house of God.
By 1970 Adams was ready to go public with his conclusions and his book Competent to Counsel hit the Christian community like a bombshell. Reaction was divided but never weak. In many circles, especially academia, he was savaged. In the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, J. Ernest Runyons wrote:
Adams’ work is superficial—excruciatingly so. He betrays little evidence of scholarship…He betrays little appreciation and only superficial knowledge of modern schools of psychology. He offers little theological exercise, operating reflexively from a standard Reformed position. His understanding of human predicaments is unsympathetic; his elaboration of nouthesia into a school of pastoral counseling is a model of eisegesis.[5]
But among the Bill Goodes and Robert Smiths of the world Competent to Counsel hit a responsive chord. Like Goode and Smith there were hundreds of men who found the answers they were looking for in Adams’ book. Dr. Smith began to correspond with Adams and finally flew to Philadelphia to spend a day with him. Dr. Smith seriously considered leaving medicine and going to the Seminary to learn Greek and Hebrew to better understand the Bible and find biblical principles to help him deal with people who were struggling with various aspects or illness. He was dissuaded by Adams’ who convinced him that Biblical counselors needed medical people who understood biblical counseling. Adams urged Smith to contact John Bettler, his former student. Bettler was then pastoring a church in Wheaton, Illinois, and working on a D. Min. at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Smith brought together five other men from his area (including Bill Goode) and together they traveled to Wheaton once a week to be trained in Adams’ nouthetic philosophy of ministry. Smith and Goode formed a friendship and ministry team that would last until Goode’s death in 1997. Together they founded a training center for Biblical counseling at Goode’s church in Gary. When Goode later accepted the call to a church in Lafayette, Indiana, the center was eventually moved there.
The nouthetic counseling movement was underway. Adams published several more important books in the years to follow including The Christian Counselor’s Manual, The Big Umbrella, and Lectures on Counseling. During the 1970’s Competent to Counsel sold over a quarter of a million copies and still continues to sell 5,000 to 10,000 copies per year.
By 1974 the word nouthetic was recognized in nearly every pastor’s study in the country. John Bettler, who by this time had moved back to Philadelphia, became increasingly concerned that many were identifying themselves as nouthetic counselors who had little or no understanding of what they were seeking to communicate. Bettler went to the board of CCEF and explained why he believed a certifying organization for Biblical counselors was necessary to ensure that truly competent counseling was being done by people who had a solid understanding not only of nouthetic counseling principles, but of the Word in general. Bettler spent two years thinking through the need and preparing a proposed structure for such an organization.
At first Adams questioned the need for the organization; however, Bettler convinced him and brought his proposal to the CCEF board in 1976. He presented a provisional constitution, by-laws, and Statement of Policy and Procedures for study by the board. A provisional Advisory board was appointed composed of Jay Adams, John Bettler, John Broger, Howard Eyrich, Rich Ganz, Lloyd Jonas, Wayne Mack, George Scipione, and Dr. Robert Smith. Thus, at that meeting, the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors was organized under the auspices of CCEF. Adams objected to using the word nouthetic in the name as he thought it would be limiting and keep otherwise good men from seeking certification. The board overruled and the name stood.
NANC was to be first and foremost a certifying organization. Its stated purpose was:
To encourage, acknowledge and standardize counseling done by Christian pastors and laymen who are committed to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the only authoritative rule of faith and practice by:
- setting standards for the training and practical preparation of Christian counselors;
- providing certification for clergymen and laymen engaging in the practice of Christian counseling;
- providing certification for pastoral counseling centers;
- developing constructive relationships with theological schools and other educational institutions and agencies for the
- professional training of Christian counselors;
- promoting research into the biblical principles of Christian counseling and their remedial and preventative application to life;
- providing opportunities for fellowship among Christian pastors and laymen who are interested in Christian counseling.[6]
Four levels of membership were established reflecting the desire of the board to emphasize theological training and still encourage committed laymen to become trained and skilled as counselors. Level one certification was open to anyone meeting the general requirements for certification. Level two certification was provided to those who also held a recognized seminary theological degree. Fellows were those who also held an advanced degree and were active in bringing others along in the certifying process. Finally, the honor of being named Member of the Academy was reserved for those who had made a significant contribution to the cause of Biblical counseling.
To become certified, the counselor must complete an approved training course, pass a theological as well as a practical written exam, and complete at least 50 hours of closely supervised counseling under the direction of a NANC Fellow. The applicant also was required to provide documentation that he was a part of a Bible believing church and was counseling under that church’s authority.
NANC held its first conference in 1977 in an Atlanta hotel. Jay Adams and Henry Brandt were the featured speakers and there were about 120 people registered to hear the addresses which were later reduced to writing and compiled into a book entitled What to do When[7]. While it was the first official NANC conference, it was the occasion of the second organizational meeting. This was followed by a meeting in Chicago in 1978.
At the Chicago meeting two important developments in NANC’s brief history took place. The first was the appointment of Dr. Robert Smith as executive director. The second was the decision of CCEF to separate itself from NANC largely for legal and administrative reasons. By now John Bettler had concluded that it was not proper for an organization to be in control of the organization that certified it. For NANC certification to mean anything for CCEF it was essential that it be an independent organization. The NANC board, immediately recognizing the wisdom of Bettler’s reasoning, unanimously and amicably voted to dissolve the ties.
NANC grew very slowly and some years not at all. Each member of the board was busy in his ministry back home. Dr. Smith, the first Executive Director, was a practicing physician, Adams was busy writing and was in great demand as a speaker and teacher both in the areas of counseling and homiletics, the discipline for which he originally trained. John Bettler was overseeing the growth and expansion of CCEF and the other original board members were as busy pastoring churches or teaching. Time spent attending to NANC matters had to be carved out of already hectic schedules.
A second limitation of the early years was financial. NANC had no founding benefactor and its founding organization, CCEF, was itself dependent upon contributions for its existence. There was no money for advertising NANC and each year it was a financial challenge merely to hold a conference let alone advertise it!
A third limiting factor was the certification process itself. NANC was not simply an association or fellowship of like minded people, it was a certifying organization. While the certifying process was not arduous by secular or academic standards it was still rigorous. After years of academic training and navigating the ordination procedures of one’s church group there was little taste or energy left for jumping through more hoops, as profitable as they may be. Certification by a small group of self appointed men just did not carry the weight of a theological degree or an ordination certificate.
In 1982 NANC leadership was passed to Dr. Howard Eyrich. Eyrich was a graduate of both Dallas and Western Theological Seminaries. At that time he was working to establish a counseling center in Coral Gables, Florida. He was given the Herculean task of promoting NANC, responding to inquiries, publishing a newsletter, and organizing an annual conference each year—all without the help of office staff. When he resigned at Executive Director in 1988 the board expressed warm gratitude for the work Eyrich did as their “pioneer director.”
1988 was a watershed year for NANC. At the conference held in St. Louis fewer that 100 people had registered. NANC now had no Executive Director and no means to hire the full time administrator NANC needed. NANC’s “Founding Father”, John Bettler, had resigned from the board and had been inactive for six years. Several board members began to wonder if NANC had a future. It was at this crossroad that NANC turned to Pastor William Goode for leadership.
Faith Baptist Church of Lafayette, Indiana, was a badly divided and hurting church when Bill Goode accepted the call to pastor the church in 1975. The church had gone from over 800 in attendance in the late 1960’s to just over 100 when Goode arrived. He came armed with two very important assets. The first was a core of men who had endured the turmoil of the past several years in their church and were anxious to see their problems solved in a biblical way and to honor God. Goode’s second asset was his training in nouthetic counseling coupled with his growing experience as a counselor and teacher of counselors. He came to Lafayette with a fully developed nouthetic philosophy of ministry.
Faith Baptist grew under Goode’s leadership. In 1977 the counseling center and Dr. Smith moved to Lafayette. Smith worked as an emergency room physician and directed the church’s counseling ministry. Goode taught his people the things he had learned about solving problems biblically and growing in progressive sanctification. They learned to have confidence in a Bible that was sufficient for “every good work,” and they learned to serve Christ as they observed the humble servant leadership style of their pastor. By the middle 1980’s the church had outgrown its building and relocated to a new campus on the edge of town. By then hundreds of pastors had been trained in Biblical counseling under Pastor Goode, his associate pastor Tim Turner, Dr. Smith, and Randy Patten, a former pastor who was then leading their association of churches in the state. By 1988, NANC’s watershed year, Faith Baptist Church had become widely recognized as the model of how a nouthetic philosophy of ministry is implemented in a local church.
Still, Pastor Goode was as busy a man as there was in NANC circles. Every Monday was consumed with teaching and counseling, he was in demand as a speaker away from Lafayette, he was the Senior Pastor of a growing and exciting church, and he was a personal mentor to a number of young pastors around the country. Still, he believed in NANC’s mission and energetically took on his new responsibilities with NANC. Steve Viars had joined the pastoral staff that year relieving Goode of some of his pastoral duties and Steve’s wife, Chris, assumed many of the day to day administrative chores of NANC.
In Faith Baptist Church NANC now had the benefactor it needed. The entire church from deacon to nursery worker understood what a nouthetic ministry was and they were anxious to see other pastors and churches experience what they were enjoying at Faith Baptist. The church embraced NANC providing volunteer workers to do mailings, host conferences, duplicate tapes, and support their pastor in his labors for NANC. The counseling ministry’s alumni became a base from which to recruit members and the ranks of the certified began to grow.
In 1996 Goode retired from the pastorate of Faith Baptist and was able to devote more time to his NANC responsibilities. His associate Steve Viars was called to lead the church as pastor and the church continued to grow and prosper.
In 1990 well known pastor, radio preacher, and college president John MacArthur discontinued the entire Behavioral Studies department of the Master’s College and publicly embraced the biblical counseling movement. That year he invited Dr. Smith to move to California for two years and train his staff in nouthetic counseling and establish a counseling program in the college. After Dr. Smith’s commitment was completed Dr. Wayne Mack, formerly with CCEF and a NANC board member, was hired to lead the new M.A. program in biblical counseling at the Master’s college. The annual NANC conference was held in MacArthur’s church in 1992 and 1996.
Under Bill Goode’s stewardship NANC grew and prospered. An increasing number of pastors, missionaries, and lay people learned that there was help and hope available to them through NANC certified counselors and the services provided by NANC.
During the week of August 18, 1997, Bill Goode taught a seminary module on Biblical counseling at Faith Baptist Theological Seminary in Ankeny, Iowa. The following Saturday, August 23, 1997 God’s plan for Bill Goode was completed and He took him from this world. His sudden death was greeted with sadness and grief but also with joy for God’s provision of a good and faithful servant at such a strategic time.
Randy Patten graduated from Cedarville College in 1971 and Grace Theological Seminary in 1975. In 1974 he became the pastor of the small, struggling Westridge Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Patten’s testimony, like many others, is one of learning biblical principles of counseling and problem solving by dealing with church conflict. By 1982 Bill Goode had recognized Patten’s abilities as a counselor and teacher and invited him to teach and counsel in the counseling center at Lafayette. In 1986 the Indiana Fellowship of Regular Baptist Churches called him to lead their fellowship and serve as a “pastor” to the pastors of the state.
Patten was first elected to the NANC board in 1986. It was Bill Goode’s express desire to groom Patten to take his place as Executive Director in several years, however upon Goode’s death in 1997 it became obvious to the NANC leadership that it was God’s timing to call Patten as NANC’s first full time, fully salaried Executive Director.
God has blessed Patten’s labors on behalf of NANC and the great cause of sufficiency for which NANC stands. At this writing (2000), NANC has more than 300 certified members. Pastors who desire to give their people the biblical help God intends for them to have head the list of NANC members, but membership also includes a growing number of physicians who desire to minister to more than just their patients’ physical needs. NANC membership also includes missionaries who have seen lives changed at home and desire to help not only those to whom they had been sent but fellow missionaries as well. In addition educators are represented in both colleges and Christian schools who desire not only to minister the Word to students but to train faithful men to teach others also. The list of Christian colleges and seminaries who seek NANC members to teach biblical counseling in their classrooms is also growing longer every year as administrators are inundated with requests for the kind of training NANC seeks to provide.
The annual NANC conference is the primary event of the organization. It provides opportunities for specialized study during scores of workshops, encouraging and uplifting plenary sessions, fellowship with other Biblical counselors, a report from the Executive Director, and information about resources available for further help. Recent conferences have exceeded one thousand registered attendees. Additional conferences have been held and are being planned for physicians, writers, and Christian conciliators in conjunction with the conference in an effort to widen NANC’s effectiveness in specific areas.
Certified membership in NANC will never exceed in numbers what many integrationist organizations claim, as certification requires more than sending in a membership fee. NANC’s influence and effectiveness has already surpassed that of these other organizations, however, because of its commitment to the sufficiency Word of God.
The history of any organization, or any history in general, ought to be more than informative; it should also be instructive. There is much to learn from the history of NANC about the faithfulness of God to His Word and to His people but one key lesson towers over all others. It is the truth Jay Adams, as a young pastor in his twenties, contended for on several fronts. It is the foundational truth of the system of counseling and philosophy of ministry that he described as nouthetic. It is also a doctrine that has been largely lost to the Christian church that has chosen to go “a whoring” after the siren song of the psychologist who offers unsound prescriptions to the church of the living God. The story of NANC and the Biblical counseling movement is the story of the sufficiency of the Word of God.
Eighty years ago, during the early days of the modernist/fundamentalist controversies, when the great fundamentals of the faith were being attacked, Curtis Lee Laws, a man who also coined a word that would became a part of the Christian vocabulary (fundamentalist) wrote:
(Fundamentalism seeks) to put first things first. We would not concern ourselves too exclusively with the first principles of Christianity but would rather go on to perfection. It is well that we should remind ourselves however, that we are to leave these principles only as a tree leaves its roots and as a house leaves its foundations. The greater the tree the more deeply the roots must sink into the soil. The greater the house the stronger the foundations must be.
Thoughtful people will agree that in our day the roots of Christianity are being tampered with and the foundations of Christianity are being undermined. While realizing that roots are not trees and foundations are not super structures, we ought also to realize that to cut the roots and undermine the foundations of Christianity is master strategy upon the part of the devil. Such work is done underground and too often the Lord’s husbandmen and the Lord’s builders are unaware of the purpose or even the presence of this hidden and powerful enemy.[8]
Thoughtful people will agree that the roots of Christianity are still being tampered with. Laws was referring to the modernist’s attack on the inspiration of the Bible. What was true of the early years of the last century is true of the opening days of this one as well. The evil one desires to undermine the church’s confidence in the Word of God.
“The Bible is a good book and has many inspiring passages,” the Deceiver would say. So those who contended for the inspiration of the Scriptures for clarity’s sake had to profess belief in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, i.e. that inspiration extends to every part.
“You can’t trust every single word that was written, it is just the broad concepts that were inspired by God,” the Wicked One would suggest. The careful believer again had to amend his doctrinal statement and proclaim his belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, inspiration extending to the very words used to communicate each concept.
In more recent days the contention has been over the inerrancy of Scripture and once again we have amended our doctrinal statements to profess our belief in the inerrant, verbally and plenarily inspired Word of God.
Today the Evil One says, “Sure, the Bible is good and well as far as it goes but it is just not enough. It doesn’t deal adequately with the deep complex issues people face today. We need more.” Upon learning of her husband’s five year affair Ruth Graham McIntire, daughter of Billy Graham, testifies:
I became depressed. I realized I needed professional help. This wasn’t easy for me to admit. In my growing up years, it was implied that God and the Bible were all I needed—and resorting to a psychologist meant that you have “spiritual problems.” Despite feeling terribly inadequate and continuing to fear that others would find out, I sought professional counseling.[9]
For Ruth Graham McIntire “God and the Bible” were not enough! She had needs that God and the Bible could not satisfy. The psychologist had the “more” that God and the Bible did not have. But psychology does not quench thirst, living water does. Psychology does not satiate hunger, the Bread of Life does. Psychology does not penetrate the darkness of the soul, the Light of the World does. Psychology cannot discern the thoughts and intents of the heart, the Word of God does. Today God asks our generation, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance.…My word …which goes forth from My mouth…it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (Is 55:2, 11 NASB). Dr. Jay Adams, NANC, and the biblical counseling movement, are leading the way in defense of God’s Word from Satan’s most recent, and possibly most effective, attack to date.
But NANC has not been satisfied to be merely polemic, though that is an important part of its job description. It has not been enough simply to tear down the slums of psychology and level the ground. NANC has been on the leading edge of ministering the Word of God to people, building a sturdy structure upon solid ground. Listen to Laws again:
A wide outlook demands a firm footing. It is only when the mountain climber has his feet on solid ground that he can afford to look up and around. Those interested in the preservation and formation of the fundamentals of our holy faith must not abandon the implements of work for the weapons of war. If swords are to be found at our side, trowels must be found in our hands.[10]
NANC counselors and their counselees have demonstrated repeatedly that the Bible has answers, that it is “living and powerful,” and offers the hope and help people today are seeking. NANC counselors and their counselees can testify to the sufficiency of the Scriptures.
NANC exists to help pastors and those who would be ministers of the Word of God by providing help and encouragement in the following ways:
NANC is first and foremost a certifying organization. The certifying process is rigorous but attainable by even the busiest pastor. The process consists of the completion of an approved training course, the completion of both a theological and a practical counseling test, several references, and a minimum of 50 hours of supervised counseling experience. The first step in the process is to go on the NANC website or contact the NANC office and obtain a membership packet.
The certifying process has two goals; the primary goal is to bless the counselor. The training will challenge your walk with the Lord and cause you to examine your own heart. The testing will challenge you to think through important issues relating to the counseling process, and the supervised counseling will sharpen your skills and keep you relying on God for wisdom.
The second goal of the process is to be a blessing to others. Certification points hurting people to you as one who has been trained and tested. It tells a counselee the counselor has been examined and his counseling is biblical and consistent with the NANC doctrinal statement.
In addition to being a certifying organization NANC desires to be a teaching and training organization as well. One-day symposiums are held around the country on a regular basis with the goal of simply receiving a hearing among pastors and Christian workers who are also searching for answers to give to their hurting people. “On the Road” training is made available as well with NANC leaders traveling to various parts of the country to hold counseling training seminars.
NANC also exists to promote the cause of Biblical counseling and the doctrine of the sufficiency of the Scriptures. The Biblical Counselor, NANC’s newsletter, goes out to a mailing list of 14,000.
NANC also desires to be a key resource for the busy pastor who is looking for biblical answers to the problems he faces as he ministers the Word to his people. Over the years the annual NANC conference has featured hundreds of lectures on almost every topic relating to counseling. A listing of these taped workshops can be found on the Sound Word website at soundword.com as well as information about ordering tapes. The NANC website is becoming more and more useful as a resource for information about training and help for specific counseling issues.
Finally, NANC seeks to be a source of encouragement and fellowship. The annual NANC conference provides not only continuing education; it also serves to illustrate that hundreds of other pastors and Christian workers have come to embrace the doctrine of sufficiency and desire to minister the Word just as you do.
Helpful websites:
National Association of Biblical Counselors
9600 W. 96th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46268
(317) 337-9100
info@NANC.org
www.NANC.org