People often ask what drew me to CCEF and to the role I currently hold here as executive director. Typically, my first answer is—the people! I love the people at CCEF and the work we do. My second answer is that I love the distinctives that guide our ministry. In fact, I carry around a copy of them in my notebook wherever I go.
If you’re unfamiliar with our distinctives, you might wonder how they shape our overall mission to restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church. Our seven distinctives demonstrate our commitment to knowing Scripture and knowing people. They are recurring themes that run like threads in a tapestry. They distinguish CCEF’s approach from others, and they permeate our writing, counseling, online content, and teaching. They represent not only what we do in counseling but also how we do it.
Take, for example, the first distinctive: The personal God gets personal with us. At CCEF, we share a fundamental commitment to helping people meet the Lord and walk with him in relationship. Too much counseling and theology can be easily abstracted into esoteric affirmations and impersonal propositions. While theology in that format can serve a purpose, we believe counseling ministry is first and foremost a personal activity because we serve, love, and know a God who is personal with us. A God who breathed life into us, made us in his image, and calls us by name. A God who describes himself as a refuge, a fortress, a hiding place, our very rock of salvation.
Our vision for ministry and people, then, is shaped and formed by this distinctive. When you read our writing, sit in our courses, and attend our conferences, we want you to walk away having encountered the Lord. We want to see and know people personally. We don’t want to talk about sin and suffering in the abstract. We want to know and understand the real sins and struggles that real people are facing in everyday life so that we might connect them with the person and work of Jesus through Scripture.
Our hope at CCEF is that these distinctives would not shape just our lives, ministry, and content, but that in some way they might also help shape and form the ministries you currently find yourself in. There are many voices to listen to and seek counsel from, and sometimes the loudest voice can win the day. Our voice may not be the loudest, but we hope you’ll find that our voice reflects abiding in Jesus Christ, who is both wise and winsome in his interactions with people. We yearn for our work to be characterized by what James describes:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom . . . The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:13, 17)
If you have not had the opportunity yet, let me encourage you to take a deeper dive into each of our distinctives through these seven conversations our faculty have recorded on our podcast, Where Life & Scripture Meet. Our prayer is that they will be an encouragement and helpful guide as you think about care and counsel in your own context.
