The lyrical opening to Dire Straits’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and the melodic refrain of Brothers in Arms resonated in my sound track while coming of age in the early 80s.
Knopfler’s song, ‘Sailing to Philadelphia’, featured in June this year. I didn’t sail to Philadelphia, ‘a world away from the coaly Tyne’ where family roots lie. I flew there to complete the two modules of Biblical Counselling training provided by CCEF, which require on-site attendance: Counselling Observation and Essential Qualities of a Biblical Counsellor.
Quietly training
For the past 44 years CCEF have been quietly training counsellors in the biblically-rooted process of changing the human heart. In their own words: ‘CCEF is a counselling and educational ministry located in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We were founded in 1968 and the goal of our ministry is to call the church back to the primacy of Scripture as the basis for pastoral care and counselling. The phrase we use to describe our mission is to: Restore Christ to Counselling and Counselling to the Church. We do this by offering counseling services, training in biblical counselling, writing books and articles, and holding a major conference once a year’.
Having completed five modules of 12 online, I had begun to grasp what is unique in both the content and process of the CCEF biblical counselling paradigm. It hasn’t been easy. I have had to grapple with the state of my own human heart within the loving yet piercing guidance of the Holy Spirit. Back in 2010 when I began the first module, the Dynamics of Biblical Change, I had been a Christian for 24 years.
Practical implications
The process of working through David Powlison’s scriptural model of human heart change transformed my theological understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ; it had profound and practical implications for who I am, what I do, how I live and whom I worship, love and serve: ‘The Bible speaks to every area of our lives, but the Bible isn’t simply a recipe book for happiness. Ultimately, the Bible points us to a relationship with a person — Jesus Christ.’
The process of heart change is a deeply intimate engagement with the person of Christ through the words God has revealed in Scripture so that we grasp the implications for me and you in the particulars of our lives together. Being in Philadelphia and learning with other trainees from Britain and elsewhere, as well as the States, brought home to me that the budding counsellor engages with the work of the Holy Spirit: in the good desires of the heart which become distorted by sin and suffering; in the search for significance and meaning in a world where God has been excised from the public imagination; in the longing for something better than this after Adam and Eve led us all in our fatal preference for self-rule and destruction. It is not a process that is confined solely to the counsellor’s office. It takes place in the body of the local church in every kind of pastoral ministry we have with one another as we live out the comfort and call of the gospel through the whole of life, discovering and passing on hope in the One who has bruised the serpent’s heel and begun the process of making all things new.
David Powlison will be speaking with Tim Lane, CCEF’s Executive Director, at the first national conference in the UK with CCEF. The Changing Hearts Conference will be held at Westminster Central Hall, London, on February 23 2013. More details are available at http://www.ccef.org/UK or by emailing changing.hearts@ccef-uk.org
