Slavic Baptist Church of West Sacramento (pastor I. A. Verstak) hosted a fourth module of the International Institute of Biblical Counselors “Coram Deo”. Twenty-four people from different churches in Sacramento, including one brother from Pennsylvania studied the section of training in “Applying Scriptures in Counseling”. The goal of this module was to keep the counselor from misapplying the Scriptures, to instruct and model the right approach of application, to study and understand the application of moving from the Law to the Gospel in the process of sanctification, to help the counselor how to accurately handle the Scriptures and to rebuke or encourage the counselee.
Time and time again in the process of training, there was an emphasis on the wickedness of every sin, on God’s holiness and the necessity of personal sanctification of every Christian. At the end of the module, the students testified about how much they learned not only in the area of biblical counseling, but also for their own growth and conviction.
The training program included not only the theory of counseling. The founder of the program of biblical counseling for the Slavic people, Dr. Ron Harris who also taught this fourth module, made an emphasis on the fact that without doing the homework, without the constant practice of biblical counseling, it was practically impossible to learn true biblical counseling. Ron who was a pastor and licensed counselor of America with twenty-five years of experience with the team of the institute presented many scenarios of counseling during which he demonstrated the examples of proper and improper counseling. A few of these scenarios he demonstrated during this course and then he offered the students to do the same in small groups, while at the same time analyze their mistakes and apply what they learned.
The effect of these theoretical and practical exercises is hard to overemphasize. It was unfortunate that there were few of ministers who would benefit from these important classes and practices.
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