The 2024 ACBC Annual Conference 

For nearly a decade, I had the privilege of speaking every year at the annual NANC/ACBC Counseling Conference. So I continue to eagerly anticipate the announcement of the conference theme each year. I love the title/theme for the 2024 ACBC Annual Conference:

Care of Christ: The Counseling Ministry of Jesus.

It reminds me of the titles and sub-titles of two of my books:

Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ. (This book seeks to offer a methodology of biblical counseling centered on Christ and His gospel of grace.) 

Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives. (This book seeks to offer a theology of biblical counseling centered on Christ and His gospel of grace.)

All of us as Christians committed to counseling seek to care like Christ. We all seek to emulate the counseling ministry of Jesus.

I applaud the ACBC conference title/focus.

The 2024 ACBC Annual Conference Promo

During the first week of August, I was contacted by three separate ACBC certified counselors who alerted me to the conference promo wording. On August 8, 2024, I visited the ACBC 2024 Conference home page. I visited it again over two weeks later on August 24, 2024.

Here’s the first line of ACBC’s promo for the conference.

“Many claim that they model their counseling after Jesus Christ, but their theology and methodology are devoid of Christ and His care.” 

The rest of the promo paragraph reads like this:

Join us in Fort Worth, TX on October 7-9, 2024, for our Annual Conference, Care of Christ, as we examine how the Wonderful Counselor provides a complete model of counseling and care for Christians to follow. 

Here’s the introductory question asked on the ACBC Conference promo video (26 second mark).

“If we let Scripture paint a picture of the way Jesus counseled, how would it compare to what often passes today as biblical counseling?”

My visit to the ACBC Conference home page prompted some ponderings on my part…

The Progressive Sanctification of Our Biblical Counseling

In biblical counseling, we rightly focus on personal progressive sanctification. In my book, Consider Your Counsel: Addressing Ten Mistakes in Our Biblical Counseling, I suggest that we ponder the progressive sanctification of our biblical counseling.

We all need to be humbly honest: none of us have arrived as Christlike counselors.

We all need to see Jesus—the Wonderful Counselor—as the model whose life and ministry exemplifies the type of counselor we aspire to become.

Here’s how we said it in the Biblical Counseling Coalition Confessional Statement.

We confess that we have not arrived. We comfort and counsel others only as we continue to receive ongoing comfort and counsel from Christ and the Body of Christ (2 Corinthians 1:3-11). We admit that we struggle to apply consistently all that we believe. We who counsel live in process, just like those we counsel, so we want to learn and grow in the wisdom and mercies of Christ.

I recall Jay Adams saying at a NANC Conference that we are not just “human beings;” we are “human becomings.” As Christians, we are all in process—the process of progressive sanctification. We could tweak that concept for our ongoing growth as counselors.

None of us are fully Christlike counselors. We are all progressively moving toward becoming more like Christ as Christians and as counselors.

I believe that the ACBC 2024 Conference title communicates the humble desire for all of us to grow as Christlike biblical counselors.

Does the promo wording as effectively captures and communicates this humble desire? Rather than focusing on potential weaknesses and faults as ACBC counselors (the speck or log in one’s own counseling eye), the promo wording focuses on the perceived weaknesses and faults of other non-ACBC counselors (the speck or log in their counseling eye).

“Many claim that they model their counseling after Jesus Christ, but their theology and methodology are devoid of Christ and His care.” 

“If we let Scripture paint a picture of the way Jesus counseled, how would it compare to what often passes today as biblical counseling?”

Reading these ACBC promo quotes prompted two biblical counseling progressive sanctification reflection questions.

1. What could be some ways of wording a written promo about counseling like Christ that would promote a humble, iron-sharpening-iron mindset that reflects a desire for self-confrontation and progressive sanctification as counselors?

Here are some possible re-wordings in light of this first question:

• All of us want to model our counseling after Christ. However, if we are humble and honest, none of us can claim a counseling theology and methodology that is perfectly or even consistently Christlike.

• Join us as we examine how the Wonderful Counselor provides a comprehensive model of counseling and care for Christians to follow. Together we can learn how the counseling ministry of Jesus—the care of Christ—can impact, improve, enhance, and strengthen our ACBC counseling theology and methodology.

• Join us in the progressive sanctification of our counseling theology and methodology as ACBC counselors—as we all humbly seek to become more Christlike in our care and counseling.

2. What could be some ways of wording a video question about counseling like Christ that could promote a humble, iron-sharpening-iron mindset that reflects a desire for self-confrontation and progressive sanctification as ACBC counselors?

Here are some possible re-wordings in light of this second question:

• “If we let Scripture paint a picture of the way Jesus counseled and ministered, what could it teach us about doing biblical counseling and one-another ministry today?”

• How does Jesus, the Soul Physician, model soul care for embodied-souls?”

• If we let Scripture paint a picture of the way Jesus counseled, how would it compare to how we ACBC counselors minister today?

• How could our ACBC approach to biblical counseling be lovingly confronted by how Jesus counseled?

• As we consider our counsel, what mistakes in our ACBC way of counseling might the counsel of Jesus expose so that we could all grow to be more Christlike in our counsel and care?

Caring Like Christ for Our Brothers and Sisters in Christ 

Reading and listening to the promos, some other questions came to mind. These questions relate to how we view and communicate about those we perceive to be outside our group or camp.

1. Are we Christlike in the way we talk about counseling like Christ?

2. Are we Christlike in how we talk about other Christians who counsel?

3. Are we addressing the logs in our own counseling before we discuss the specks in how others counsel?

4. Aren’t we all on a continuum on the spectrum between very Christlike care, somewhat Christlike care, and not very Christlike care?

5. Are any of us as Christians perfectly Christlike in our care?

6. Are any of us as committed Christians who counsel devoid of Christ and His care? (Note: Synonyms of devoid include: vacant, destitute, barren, bereft, void, free from, without, bankrupt, empty, totally absent.)

Some Biblical Self-Confrontation Questions 

The ACBC video promo explains that,

“As Christ showed us, love also confronts and speaks a hard truth when necessary.”

Reading and listening to the ACBC promos, here are some biblical self-confrontation questions that I have wondered about, and that I have asked some of my ACBC friends about.

1. If we let Scripture paint a picture of the way Jesus counseled, would Jay Adams’s approach to modern nouthetic counseling be the only current, genuine Jesus-like portrait of biblical counseling?

2. If we let Scripture paint a picture of the way Jesus counseled, would ACBC’s approach be the only current, genuine Jesus-like portrait of biblical counseling, soul care, historic Christian pastoral counseling and one-another ministry?

3. To what degree does the promo wording model the conference theme of caring like Christ for our fellow Christians? (“Many claim that they model their counseling after Jesus Christ, but their theology and methodology are devoid of Christ and His care.”)

4. If you are thinking of attending the ACBC conference does this type of wording make you more interested or less interested in attending the conference? (“Many claim that they model their counseling after Jesus Christ, but their theology and methodology are devoid of Christ and His care.”)

5. Where is the cut-off line between counseling that is devoid of Christ and His care, and counseling that is committed to Christ, but differs in some ways from Jay Adams, the founder of the modern nouthetic counseling movement?

6. Where is the cut-off line between counseling that is devoid of Christ and His care, and counseling that is committed to Christ, but differs in some ways from the current ACBC/NANC model?

7. Can you cite specific examples of Christians who claim to counsel after Christ, but whose theology is devoid of Christ and His care and whose methodology is devoid of Christ and His care?

8. What would it even look like to be a committed Christian who counsels with a theology devoid of Christ and His care and a methodology devoid of Christ and His care?

9. Who does the ACBC video have in mind when they speak of “what often passes today as biblical counseling”?

10. If you are in ACBC leadership and participated in crafting the promo wording and promo video, do these reflection questions in any way prompt you to ponder the current wording?

What’s My Hope? 

Why post this? What’s my hoped-for and prayed-for outcome? I hope and pray that:

• All of us would speak like Christ when we speak of fellow Christians who counsel.

• All of us would first consider our own counsel—addressing the counseling log in our own eye—before we consider addressing anyone else’s counseling.

• Those in positions of influence at ACBC might prayerfully ponder whether the current promo wording best reflects the conference theme of caring for Christians like Christ.

Addendum: Prayer, Consultation, and Waiting 

If you’re reading this, that means, I decided to post this…obviously. Here are a few things I did before posting this blog.

• I posted this blog only after a good deal of prayerful pondering.

• I posted this blog only after a good deal of consultation—there’s wisdom in a multitude of counselors.

• I sent this post to over a dozen leaders in the biblical counseling world, including to people in ACBC leadership. I asked for their feedback, pushback, input, thoughts, suggested word changes, edits, additions, or deletions.

• I made changes in this post based upon their iron-sharpening feedback to me.

• I asked people in leadership and positions of influence with ACBC to consider my feedback and consider discussing it with those who worded the promos.

• I then waited over two weeks to see if there were any responses or any changes to the promo language.

• I continued to pray about this post and continued to re-word it to be as charitable as possible.