Our Mission
Counseling that connects life’s problems to God’s wisdom and grace for flourishing in Christ.
Our Story
From the Executive Director
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Non-profits exist because of problems. The particular problem we address at SBC is what I call the Disconnect, the missing connection between the Christian faith and the daily lives of Christians, between God’s Word and life’s problems. Before I tell you how we address the Disconnect, allow me to tell you a story, the story of how our mission came to be.
Fifteen years ago, when I was in seminary (which I cherished), I took the one pastoral counseling class required of MDiv students. The essence of the course was this: “If someone comes to you with a spiritual problem, that’s fine, do the work of ministry. But if it’s emotional? It’s not your territory, refer to a therapist. Relational? Meet a few times for triage, but again, it’s not your territory, refer to a therapist. If it’s physiological, nope, not your territory, refer to a doctor.” At first, the simplicity of it was relieving - whew, I can just pass off all these problems! But before long, the sweet taste of simplicity soured in my stomach. It seemed a little too neat, too easy, and what’s worse, it seemed to neuter the wisdom, power, and scope of Scripture. I began to have some serious questions and doubts:
Is anger emotional, and therefore in the territory of the therapist? Or spiritual, and therefore on pastoral territory? According to my professor, “both” wasn’t an option.
At what point does someone’s drinking cross the line from drunkenness (to which Scripture applies self-denial, repentance, and grace) to alcoholism (which is, apparently, beyond Scripture’s jurisdiction)?
If a doctor gives a psychiatric diagnosis and prescribes medication for anxiety or depression, does that mean the Bible is irrelevant, since the problem is being treated physiologically?
Doubts like these plagued me in the class and honestly only got worse by the end. I had sensed the Disconnect between faith and life before, between God’s Word and life’s problems, but I never dreamed the Disconnect would be sanctioned and institutionalized in seminary (and by the way, almost every pastor takes a very similar class in seminary). That doubt and frustration began a lifelong journey (which I’m still on) of understanding the Disconnect: its nature, development, and what can be done about it.
Serving in several churches during and after seminary, I encountered the Disconnect there as well. The flock gathered on Sunday and wholeheartedly affirmed their faith, but Monday through Saturday we lived as sheep without a shepherd, turning to self-help gurus for wisdom on family, work, money, and sex. For help in the spiritual “compartment” of our lives, we sat at the feet of Jesus and listened attentively, but for all other sectors of life, he might as well have left us as orphans to fend for ourselves in the streets of Google, pop-psychology, and social media. Capturing the Disconnect in the church with a humorous twist, Soren Kierkegaard tells this parable:
“There was a little town of Ducks. Every Sunday the ducks waddle out of their houses and waddle down Main Street to their church. They waddle into the sanctuary and squat in their proper pews. The duck choir waddles in and takes its place, then the duck minister comes forward and opens the duck Bible. He reads to them: “Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings and you can fly like birds!” All the ducks shouted “Amen!” And they all waddled home.”
I was tired of waddling. I wanted to fly, to feel the air beneath my wings, and to help other people do the same. And I knew the only way to do so was to address the Disconnect between Sunday and Monday, between life’s problems and God’s Word.
Through a season of closed doors, long wandering prayer, and plenty of swing-and-a-miss opportunities, the Lord led me in an unexpected direction. Rather than addressing the Disconnect within the local church, I could come alongside the church. And, of all the ways, I wanted to do so by starting a local counseling center. In hindsight it looks like a terrible idea, but it felt like a no-brainer at the time. And so, with my heart in it and my wife’s blessing on it, I jumped into the deep end. I quit my job, did coursework through the Christian Counseling & Education Foundation, and interned with a biblical counselor in Jackson, who helped me start an affiliate office in 2016 that eventually became Shreveport Biblical Counseling.
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So how exactly does SBC address the Disconnect? While there are all kinds of ways to make the connection between faith and life, we have chosen one: counseling. Rather than being decent at a handful of things, we want to do one thing well: counseling. True, we dabble in writing and teaching, but mainly as a way to promote and support our primary task, which our mission statement defines as “counseling that connects life’s problems to God’s wisdom and grace.”
But why choose counseling to address the Disconnect? Admittedly, in God’s providence, it’s more like counseling chose us. That said, I do think counseling is especially fertile ground for fulfilling our mission, because counseling is all about problems, which, if they’re bad enough, raise all kinds of questions: “Who can I trust to guide me? What can make my life whole again? How will I ever change? Who will love me after all I’ve done?” You can hear the Disconnect being exposed in each of those questions, each one brimming with potential for connection to a new source of hope and help, which counseling is especially well-suited to do. Likewise, a crisis exposes the lie of self-sufficiency - the belief that we can care for ourselves - leading us to do something many of us would otherwise never do - ask for help. As counselors, we are in a strategic place to take them by the hand and lead them to the most abundant source of hope and help that can be found.
For a biblical counselor, that source is Holy Scripture, which, along with the Holy Spirit and his Church, we consider to be our Father’s premier gift to us as we navigate life in a fallen world. “Biblical counseling” does not mean a Bible study. It means the lens through which our counselors look at life is calibrated to Scripture. The perspective on problems we offer people is, as far as we can tell, our Father’s perspective. While we make room for human wisdom found in the humanities and sciences as forms of God’s common grace, we let Scripture have the first and last word on the human condition. The Bible may not address all modern problems at face value, which is where psychology and medicine can be helpful, but scratch the surface and you will find questions underneath that are timeless, universal, and surprisingly biblical: “Who am I? Why am I here? Why do I do what I do? What is wrong with me? How do I change?” Whatever common grace we draw from to help people, the foundation and framework of our content is biblical, and the cornerstone is Jesus Christ, crucified and raised for the redemption of humanity.
We also aim to be biblical in our methods, which are modeled after the incarnational ministry of Jesus. Rather than technical and clinical, our methods are pastoral and relational. We aim to counsel as Jesus did in his interpersonal ministry: we listen, ask questions, show compassion, confront, and through it all, we love. We trust the Holy Spirit as the agent of change, who works within ordinary conversations to do things beyond human skill and wisdom. In that sense, we are not counselors but assistants to the Counselor, which is a comforting thought, as there are few things as confounding and mysterious as the human heart (not to mention its Redeemer).
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Lastly, we aim to be biblical in the goal of our counseling, which leads to the final piece of our mission statement. The ultimate goal of resolving the Disconnect through counseling is “flourishing in Christ.” We’ve chosen that word “flourishing” very carefully. To modern ears, the word is used to describe something coming alive, coming into its own, fulfilling its latent potential - an athlete flourishing in his gifts, a girl into a woman, a garden overflowing with fruit. It’s an earthy word that carries a kind of greenness with it, a sense of vitality, fertility, of something in bloom. The word is an affirmation of God’s creation, especially human beings.
While I love and appreciate this take on “flourishing,” we do have to filter it according to Scripture. For one, the path to flourishing is very specific in Scripture. According to the Beatitudes, for instance, someone on the path of blessing is not marked by self-sufficiency, but poverty of spirit, aware of our ongoing need for a Savior; not by positivity but by “mourning,” sensitive to the brokenness around us; not by self-satisfaction but by “hunger and thirst,” knowing this world cannot satisfy us. You want life? “Take up your cross,” he said, “Lose your life and you will find it.” You want to have true wealth? “Give everything you have to the poor, and follow me.” To put it all in one word, the path of flourishing is Christlikeness, a path on which our counselors walk as companions.
One other thing Scripture makes clear: just because someone is flourishing doesn’t mean they have no problems. The tree that flourishes by streams of water does so in the midst of drought and storm, not in its absence. Sure, following God’s wisdom and grace can do wonders for our relationships, emotions, and addictions, but we will never have a shortage of brokenness in this world. In Christ, we can learn to flourish in the midst of life’s problems.
Job, for instance, lost everything, and before anything was restored, he found a perspective on his suffering that put him in a place of quiet wonder. Joseph spent thirteen years wrongfully enslaved and imprisoned, but clung to the steadfast love of God and became a blessing to everyone around him. Paul was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, but even still his hymns echoed off the walls of his prison cell. Of course, there’s our Lord himself, packing his bags for his journey to the Cross - to certain death - and yet saying, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.” And then, if ever there were a person in full flourish, someone who made it to the end, it is the resurrected Christ stepping out of his tomb with nail-scarred hands and feet.
We see in each of these the kind of flourishing we’re after, the ultimate aim of our counseling: an abundance of life that even life itself can’t take away.