The End Goal: The Big Picture - Transformed People

Posted on May 18, 2022 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Men's Christian Living
Posted by : Bob Kellemen

The end goal of this book and of all church ministry is not to launch a biblical counseling ministry. The end goal is transformed people—people transformed into the image of Christ. Remember this core theme:

A relationship with the transforming Person (Christ)
produces transforming leaders (you and your team)
who relationally lead a transforming process (the 4Es)
that the Spirit uses in transforming your church (the body of Christ)
so others (the congregation and community) are also transformed into disciple-makers.

My vision is to equip you to build an equipping culture. God’s fundamental vision for church growth focuses on every member speaking the truth in love to one another in every situation. That’s it. Get that and you get this chapter— you get God’s purpose for his body today.

It’s everywhere. It’s in Ephesians 4:11–16; Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16; Romans 15:14; Hebrews 3:12–13; Hebrews 10:24–25; Philippians 1:9–11; 1 Thessalonians 2:8; 2 Timothy 2:2; Matthew 22:34–40 with Matthew 28:16– 20. God’s end goal is for every member to be a disciple-maker who speaks and lives gospel truth in love to help every member grow in content, character, competence, and community.

We have wrongly defined biblical counseling so that it’s about solving problems. We’ve made it a subset of discipleship focused on reactive work with persons struggling with sin. Instead, we should think of biblical counseling as another word for comprehensive personal discipleship. Biblical counseling is focused one-another ministry designed to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

We don’t want to create the ministry mindset where the only way people can relate to one another is by discussing their problems. The goal is to move people forward in Christlikeness whether or not they are facing specific crisis problems. We need a definition of biblical counseling that encompasses all of life: Christ-centered, church-based, comprehensive, and compassionate biblical counseling depends upon the Holy Spirit to relate God’s Word to suffering and sin by speaking and living God’s truth in love to equip people to love God and one another (Matthew 22:35–40).

It cultivates conformity to Christ and communion with Christ and the body of Christ leading to a community of one-another disciple-makers (Matthew 28:18–20). I love biblical counseling, but we can’t see it as a ministry of a few people to a few “unhealthy” people. Biblical counseling is the calling of all God’s people all the time because we are all striving to grow in Christ all the time.

Does that mean we shouldn’t launch local church counseling ministries? Not at all. There is nothing unbiblical about people with a special gifting and a special passion for wanting to focus their ministry energy on biblical counseling. Just like there is nothing unbiblical about some folks in a church taking extensive training in evangelism. Does that mean that only the “evangelism folks” are called to share their faith? Of course not. We want a church of evangelists where everyone is passionate about and equipped to share their faith, even if we have members who focus more time on evangelism. In the same way, we want a church of biblical counseling where everyone is passionate about and equipped to speak the truth in love, even if we have some within the church who focus more time on biblical counseling.