May 1, 2025

A Bright Future for Biblical Counseling

Dear friend,

The future of biblical counseling is bright. Before I unpack this statement, I’m excited to tell you about an opportunity to have your donation to CCEF matched dollar for dollar. As I share with you a few of my hopes for biblical counseling’s service to the church, would you consider making a gift today?

“Biblical counseling is simply the Christian life.” A friend recently said this, and it’s a sentiment I deeply appreciate. Since 1968, CCEF has sought to help people make sense of the significant and ongoing struggles they face, namely by connecting them to the God of hope who speaks to us in his Word.

And yet, God has been speaking into the intimate details of our lives since the creation of the world. The modern biblical counseling movement isn’t new, nor is it a passing fad. While it has its emphases and places of focus, the heart of our work is bringing the Scriptures to life for each person the Lord brings to us in their hardships. It’s our mission to serve local churches around the world in equipping those who need help and those who give help—and truly, we all both need and give help.

Today, I invite you to invest in the future of this work. If we’re simply joining in a long thread of the church’s life since Eden, then the future is as bright for biblical counseling as it is for Christ’s church. Our hope at CCEF is that the resources and training created today will impact God’s people for decades to come. Let me share with you a few of the ways we’re investing in these coming years.

• A Counseling Internship: Just as Jesus and Paul invested in a few committed followers, we want to raise up the next generation of biblical counselors. To this end, we’ve brought back our yearlong internship. This year, we have six interns who are attending trainings, meeting with mentors, observing counseling, reading and conversing, and counseling in their local churches under the oversight of their pastors. We’re grateful for the men and women the Lord has provided, and we pray that they faithfully serve the church for many years.

• A Course for Pastors: This January, we launched a new course, Biblical Counseling for Pastors, taught by Ed Welch. One hundred pastors spent three months learning, discussing, and growing together—all with a particular focus on growing as shepherds with a call to counsel their flock well. Having finally designed a course specifically for pastors at a pace for their busy schedules, we couldn’t accommodate everyone who joined the wait-list, and we’re eager to see more pastors take this course in June. The Lord is giving us opportunities to invest in local churches by serving faithful pastors who long to mirror their Father in heaven.

• International Opportunities: Finally, our partnerships with local churches and biblical counseling ministries around the globe are deepening and expanding. In any given term, we have individual students and cohorts from places like South Africa, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Just as the church isn’t limited to the US, neither is biblical counseling, and this movement of Christians seeking to connect others to the treasures of Scripture for the troubles of life is growing in many countries. It’s a joy to know these brothers and sisters and invest in the health of churches serving in countless contexts.

There are always more opportunities for ministry than resources. And we want to do all we can to serve the people of God and see the church flourish in the years to come.

So would you join us? For the month of May, generous donors will match every dollar donated, up to $300,000. Would you invest in the future of biblical counseling by making a donation today?

Thank you for considering how you might partner with us and for your heart to serve God’s people.

Blessings,

Alasdair Groves
Executive Director