Over the past nine years, more than 1,200 people have taken one or more of the training courses offered by Biblical Counselling UK (BCUK).
People’s motives for taking these courses vary. Those involved in church leadership, or with a pastoral care role in their church, often take the courses to develop their ability to care for others. Many others have no formal role in the local church, but frequently find themselves walking alongside a brother or sister in Christ. They take these courses simply to be better friends. Still others come from a background in the caring professions (therapists, doctors, mental health workers, etc.) and are looking for a Biblical perspective to set alongside their professional training.
Whatever their initial motive, many taking the foundational course, Dynamics of Biblical Change, find it transformational in their walk with Christ. So many times (and this was true in my own experience) I hear something like this: ‘I took this course because I wanted God to show me how to point others to Christ in the midst of their struggles. What I didn’t anticipate was that the first person who would be pointed to Christ was me!’ For myself, I can say that there is no experience – no course, Bible study, conversation or sermon – that has been more powerfully used by God in my own discipleship. Dynamics of Biblical Change made a difference: it changed the way I led and preached; it changed my approach to marriage and parenting; it changed my prayer life and Bible study; perhaps most importantly of all, it deepened my delight in Christ. And it did these things not by offering me some new take on the gospel message, but by taking the same old gospel message I’d always known and applying it to the attitudes and desires of my heart with a richer and deeper precision than ever before.
