We offer free biblical counseling to church members, attendees, and anyone in the Pensacola community as an expression of Christ’s love to the church and to the world.
Purpose
The Scriptures testify that in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ are everything necessary for salvation and godly living (2 Peter 1:3).
Likewise, Christ’s Word, the Scriptures, are sufficient for instructing people in honoring God in the midst of sin and suffering, finding freedom from the bondage of sin, responding faithfully to life’s circumstances, and loving others in ways that imitate Christ (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The Cross Church’s counseling ministry seeks to offer a solely biblical approach to caring for people’s souls. We do this through the following ways:
Providing personal biblical counseling to people struggling with sin and suffering under the effects of sin
Directing counselees to the local church to live out their faith in Christ within his community
Training and equipping counselors to be effective in ministering God’s Word to people in various situations.
Who Counsels?
While all Christians should strive to be equipped to minister God’s Word in various circumstances, we have sought to equip our counselors to be competent to handle God’s Word thoroughly in private ministry settings.
The Cross Church’s pastors and leaders, along with credible training and certifying agencies, train prospective counselors in this thoroughly biblical approach to counseling. This training includes the following:
Understanding various problems and how God’s Word speaks to those problems
Observing real counseling sessions
Being supervised while performing counseling.
In addition to this, some of our counselors are certified (or are pursuing certification) through the Association of Biblical Counselors (ACBC)
Who Can Get Counseling?
We seek to offer biblical counsel to anyone who desires to be helped and will continue to abide by our guidelines.
What Are Our Guidelines?
Biblical counseling is not a magic formula for quick results. Rather, it seeks to deconstruct wrong beliefs, values, and actions in light of what God says is true, desirable, and appropriate.
Therefore, we require that counselees be faithful to being at their scheduled appointment, which will usually run around 60-90 minutes.
Because this one weekly meeting is simply not sufficient timewise to create lasting change, counselors also assign homework (Scripture reading and memorization, prayer, reading helpful literature, etc). We ask all counselees to be committed to the homework.
In addition to this, we require all counselees to attend a Christ-centered, biblical local church while undergoing counseling. It is preferred that counselees attend the Cross Church; however, we may grant permission for a counselee to attend another church upon request.
How Much Does It Cost?
While donations are encouraged, we offer biblical counseling free of charge.
How Do I Get Started?
If you are interested in biblical counseling, please email us and state that you are interested in counseling.
Before counseling begins, we will send you a few forms to fill out. Once these are completed, we will move forward with getting you scheduled for an initial meeting with one of our counselors.
Click the button above to email us, or submit the form below.