Mentor & Lay Counseling Training

This monthly training (eight sessions in nine months) is meant to support the launch of a heart-change-focused mentoring or lay counseling ministries in local churches. It equips participants to do short-term topical mentoring or lay counseling one-on-one with church members or people from outside of the church. It focuses on humbly leading people into the deeper heart change studied in How People Change and Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands. Participants will learn how to build a strong mentoring or lay counseling relationship, lay biblical foundations for understanding heart change, lead people to encounter God’s comfort, help them to face conflict, and encourage them in the growth of life-giving relationships in the church.

The mentor training makes up the first five sessions and equips people for a more structured form of lay counseling focused on one particular topic (like parenting, marriage communication, etc.) that works through a book that relates to that topic. The lay counseling training adds three sessions on to the training and equips participants to offer more varied help on multiple topics. The trainings also focus on how we can minister in the context of both formal and informal mentoring/counseling opportunities, and they discuss how to recognize the need to refer to more experienced counselors and how to respond in a potential crisis as a volunteer minister.