Intro: 00:08

Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church in counseling and discipleship.

Mike: 00:19

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Shauna: 00:20

Yo. Yo. Yo.

Mike: 00:21

Oh. Is that an unfamiliar voice?

Shauna: 00:23

No. It's been a while. Oh, hello, everybody.

Mike: 00:27

I'm sorry.

Shauna: 00:27

Could speak the truth, listeners. Who are

Mike: 00:29

you again?

Shauna: 00:29

Yeah. Whatever.

Mike: 00:30

No. Sorry. Who are?

Shauna: 00:32

My name is Shauna. Oh,

Mike: 00:34

yes. This is the first podcast you've been in in 2024.

Shauna: 00:38

Have you just gotten stormed with emails saying, where is Shauna? Not really. No. Oh.

Mike: 00:44

It's crickets. Okay. Yeah. That's alright.

Shauna: 00:45

Anyways, happy to be back and with one of my besties. So Emily Dempster is here with us to today. So

Mike: 00:52

And we are continuing our little made to minister miniseries. We are in Salem, Oregon at the made to minister

Shauna: 00:58

So beautiful here.

Mike: 00:59

Conference in 2024. And, apparently, the 2 years that they get sunshine, we got to experience it.

Shauna: 01:04

So It feels so great outside.

Mike: 01:07

What did I say?

Emily: 01:07

2 2 years. Yeah. 2 days. Yes.

Shauna: 01:09

But that's a big correction. Big difference there.

Mike: 01:12

Yeah. Sorry. I'm on Texas time where I think of the sunshine that we get. So it does.

Shauna: 01:16

So really quick, I forgot to ask. I heard that you guys almost got a little car accident, fender bender this morning.

Mike: 01:21

You forgot to ask me because we haven't had a chance to talk to each other until the recording.

Shauna: 01:25

Emily was, like, your Uber driver today or something. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm glad that you guys are still alive.

Emily: 01:31

Yeah. We are too. That wouldn't have been a great way

Mike: 01:33

to Yeah.

Shauna: 01:34

Start a conference.

Mike: 01:35

I haven't felt that level of force and impact in a while.

Emily: 01:40

My brakes work.

Mike: 01:41

They work they work well.

Shauna: 01:42

That's good.

Mike: 01:43

So the squeaking they were doing last night wasn't in any way indicative of their condition. Yeah. They they work quite well.

Shauna: 01:48

So what are we talking about on this pause podcast?

Mike: 01:50

On this particular episode, we are gonna be talking about equipping local churches to counsel in their communities. And some of what we've been talking about, we've talked with Pete. We've talked with Justin. We got to meet with Tara and Dave. That's been fun.

Mike: 02:05

And so we're gonna take that conversation a little further as far as equipping local churches. And, actually, at the May to minister conference, there is, if my math is correct, 48 churches that are gonna be represented here.

Shauna: 02:17

So awesome.

Mike: 02:18

That is awesome. And

Shauna: 02:19

Which is a part of the result of Emily's leadership. So perfect person to have on this podcast to help us learn how to do this.

Mike: 02:26

Yeah. How to lead out in the

Shauna: 02:28

region. Right?

Mike: 02:28

Emily hasn't been on actually, I think you were on 2 years ago or last year, we did the counseling through Psalms or Proverbs or which one was it? One of those.

Emily: 02:37

One of those.

Mike: 02:37

Yeah. Yeah. It's been a little while. Proverbs.

Emily: 02:39

It was Proverbs.

Mike: 02:41

Yeah. But for those of you who don't know Emily, I'm going to let Emily share a little bit about herself. And she's been on staff at Salem Heights Church for a little while. And her role has taken shape just like we've heard from others. And so, Emily, could you just share a little bit of kinda your roles, how you've formed this biblical counseling ministry, and where we are with everything now?

Emily: 03:03

Yeah. I get to lead our team for counseling training at Salem Heights. So I guess I'm the director of counseling training, and it's a little bit of a unique role, but we partner with ABC for our counseling ministry, and we offer the equipped counsel classes. We offer both our a level 1, which is our foundational track, and then we offer level 2, which is counselors at our church and out in the community that are supervising that are needing supervising as they're practicing out in their local ministries.

Mike: 03:38

Mhmm.

Emily: 03:39

And so we get to do this awesome conference. We put on other trainings through the year for our community workshops and little half day trainings in various topics. And so I get to be involved in planning those and being part of the teaching team in some of those things, and I get to work with an awesome team of a few people that helped me get that all done. Really thankful for that. And then You just got a new role.

Emily: 04:07

Right? Just got a new role.

Shauna: 04:09

Yeah. I joined the ABC team.

Emily: 04:10

Yeah. Woo hoo. So I've been helping Shauna out on the ABC team for a couple years just with resource development and content and things like that. But there was, a definite need as ABC has grown in training centers to bring on somebody to specifically work with training centers across the nation to just give them help and advice as they're onboarding or interested or just some of those old long time training centers. Just be an encouragement to them as they navigate just different students and and people.

Emily: 04:46

So that'll be fun, and, I'm excited about that role.

Shauna: 04:50

Yes. We we are so happy to have you on the team, and I'm looking forward to not only our existing training centers working with you, but then just also hey. If you're a listener out there and you're interested in maybe your team becoming certified and eventually becoming a training center, Emily would be your girl to reach out to. And so Michael can put her email maybe in the show notes

Mike: 05:08

or Are we sure about that?

Shauna: 05:09

Be oh, maybe be available on the website, ABC website and stuff. But Emily would be the person to help and to support you and what god's calling you to.

Mike: 05:18

No. That's good. And so, obviously, with that with your additional role at ABC, so it's clear that helping equip the local church, right, let alone your own church and what you've been doing for a while. So when we say equipping local churches, though, to counsel in their communities, what do we mean? How would you answer that?

Emily: 05:36

So when we launched ABC training, I think it's been 9 years ago, maybe it's 10. I'm starting to lose count. We our idea was not that we would train just our own team to develop some lay counselors out of there and grow our counseling ministry, but that the training would also be available to other local churches to equip them to be able to have lay teams or just provide equipping for pastors and ministry leaders who are inevitably doing a lot of counseling. Right? And I don't remember what the numbers are, but over the last 9 or 10 years, we've trained people from, I think, close to 70 churches in our region of Oregon to learn basic foundational biblical counseling, and many have brought that back into their churches and developed that in different ways of different kinds of care ministries or counseling ministries.

Emily: 06:38

So there wasn't a lot of counseling presence in this area, and there's really still not. And so as churches are learning and growing, they are continuing to just reach out to us as the people that walked alongside their training journey for the this one particular year, as they have situations in their church that they need help and consulting with, and as they've started ministries and wanna learn how to grow those, and then as they've developed teams just in how to run those teams because they may have a a really great engaged pastor, but he may not have any experience with biblical counseling. Because in particular in the northwest, we've just sent people out to professional counseling and haven't cared well for them in the church. They may not have had any training in seminary in counseling, and then here they have these little teams that still need help. Just trying to be a resource to continue to equip these different churches.

Mike: 07:40

That's great. So what are some of the questions or concerns that you've seen in engaging these 70 plus churches in the area where, you know, some of those beginning conversations of, oh, that sounds great, but what does that process look like? So there's obviously operational administrative pieces to that, but then there's the actual care itself piece when it comes to equipping the church. And like you said, where you may have a pastor or a small staff that's really not aware of that process, let alone what it actually looks like to care at that level. How did you engage those conversations to get them to the point where not only they went through the training, but then actually helping them on the back end actually facilitate just some somewhat of an onboarding process to launch that in their church.

Emily: 08:22

Yeah. I think the most important thing is to let a ministry know you don't have to be like us. Like, your church isn't our church. You don't have the same staff, the same size, the same people, and so we don't want anybody to be we have to replicate Salem Heights Church and how we run a counseling ministry. And and so really trying to meet with different leaders as they reach out and just listen to what their stories are and what their needs are.

Emily: 08:54

And Salem Heights actually provides many hours a month of counseling for our community churches because there are a lot of small churches that just don't have the bandwidth to actually have a counseling ministry. But if they do want to, then investing in them to provide a place to send some people for training and get certified through ABC and then provide the opportunity for continuing education to keep educating their counselors and then provide an outlet for supervision as they get into cases and just need case consulting and that kind of thing. But as far as, like, administration and all of that kind of help, I'm thankful because I've got a great team. So my ministry assistant, she has sat down with other ministry assistants and helped them through how to schedule counseling and what that all looks like to keep track of things and how to create an intake form and shares all sorts of our documents and things these churches so that they would have the resources that they need to be able to launch and then troubleshoot. So thankfully, it isn't all me.

Emily: 10:08

I've got a team that our vision is just to really not grow our ministry so much. It's really to invest in other ministries so that they can grow their counseling and care ministries too. And then on on that note, we provide the equipped counsel training. If somebody is driving to our class twice a month from over 20, 30 minutes away, then what we would like to see is that maybe some people would develop a passion for actually having counseling training in their own community and that they wouldn't have to drive all the way to our church to receive that training. So over the last 5 years, we've helped 3, 4 other ministries in over a 30 mile radius from our church help launch their own ETC classes and then become their own training centers eventually.

Emily: 11:05

So we have some folks this weekend that are coming down down from Washington. They're over 2 hours away. Faithfully for 2 years, they sent groups of people through what we call the Columbia River Gorge, which is treacherous in the winter because of all the storms and wind and all of that, and they would drive down and be at our 9 AM class in the morning to get trained. And so this year, they actually launched their own equip to counsel class up in Washington in the Columbia River Gorge. And this year, we've sent our teaching team up there 4 times to just help them not have to do all the teaching their 1st year, but they have their church and other small churches in the gorge at that training center.

Emily: 11:53

So we don't wanna be, like, the best, greatest thing that everybody has to drive far from for. We just wanna, like, help people be equipped so they can begin building their own counseling and then training ministries in their local communities. And that's just a really cool story. They'll be here this weekend, for the made to minister conference and just super, super excited to to launch new training here in the northwest that way.

Shauna: 12:22

Yeah. And just hearing side conversations between you and your pastor and stuff, just even reminiscing on, like, the past and where you guys were and just how God's faithfulness has grown your church. And so even as you're talking about your team and administrative help and all these things that you guys have built out, that's not where you started. No. And most of the churches that reach out to you and even to us, Michael, the first conversation is just our call to care and having care in the church.

Shauna: 12:46

And then from that thought process of saying, yes. We want that. We want that within our church. We wanna be able to care for our own body. Okay.

Shauna: 12:53

Now what? And that's why it's so good to just have those next steps laid out and having the team to be able to help. One of the things I've really experienced from Salem Heights Church and just you and your team is as you've built it out for your own church and you've seen that fruit of the church grow, you guys have been so generous and just wanting to say, here's our intake form. Here's all of our info. Like, here's my teaching slides even for you to teach it to your church.

Shauna: 13:17

And it's just really just giving it away in a way to say, hey. We wanna make this as easy as possible for you to equip others in your church to care well, to care for those that we're all called to do with the one another scriptures, but how do we take it to that next level?

Mike: 13:30

And taking it to the next level, I'm I'm curious. Emily, with that, we talked about a little bit about the process and how that develops that you were talking about. How long would you say to those who are like, Okay, that sounds great, but how long does that take? I'd love to do something like that. But, man, how long does that take?

Mike: 13:48

What would you say? What what's the duration in terms of training and cultivating and establishing having the core pieces, but then also to your point, having it be whatever context their version of care because it's their church, it's their community, and their people.

Emily: 14:05

Yeah. I get I actually get asked that question a lot, especially if someone comes to our conference or is at the national conference in Texas. Wow. This is awesome. I wanna start something like this in my church.

Emily: 14:17

Really, how long does that how long is that gonna take? And really, start now. Like, you've got the word of God, you've got the spirit of God, and you need to start caring for those people that you're sitting next to in the pew. So don't think you need all of this specialized training to be able to just minister to the person next to you that's hurting or someone in the parking lot that's discouraged or just caring about each other. And so start now.

Emily: 14:47

So that takes no time. That may be just a mind shift for you to say, hey. I need to actually see people and see hurting people and know that I have been equipped to be able to come alongside them, even praying for them, following up with them, and all of that. As far as building out a a ministry, I tell people that that that can take a couple years, actually, because even, getting somebody through a level one certification process our 1st year, that that's an 8 month that's an 8 month program. And at at the end of equip to counsel, ABC level 1, you have a great foundation for care.

Emily: 15:27

You have a great foundation for helping people, but then there's that whole other year after that where, like, really, you could do an ABC level 2, but, really, it's the practice of counseling and just getting reps in the room. And it it takes a couple years to start to develop a team that is gonna feel confident. So we're hosted here this year at Morning Star Church, which is a church friend in our area. Our church is getting a balcony put in, and so we weren't able to have the conference there. And this sweet little church, they launched their counseling ministry last year, but I would say it took a couple years.

Emily: 16:06

They had to send a couple groups through equip to counsel. They had to get launched and get started and get some help with getting started once they had some people trained, and then just building trust, and even in their own church with their counseling team and that kind of thing. But now they're 2 years into their counseling ministry, and they have a lot of applications for counseling. They have a lot of hurting people needing care, and so they've launched. And we've seen that we've seen that everywhere, that it does take a couple it does take a couple years.

Emily: 16:40

And we started super small too. Like, the 1st year we did Equip to counsel, we were all online students. There was 6 of us. We sat in a room. We did our reading, and we came and discussed it.

Emily: 16:52

There wasn't a formal teacher, and that was only about 9 years ago. And this year, we have over a 100 people in equip are equipped to counsel level 1 and 2.

Shauna: 17:02

So That's a really good example because I've worked with a few other churches who've done that to where it's not like a formalized training class, but they all enroll through the online process. They grab their equip to counsel books, and they just there's group discussions in the equip to counsel book. Yeah. So it's very easy to read the book and then be able to come together, have just a group facilitator, and just talk about and process what you're learning. And so that is a great way to do it without saying, hey.

Shauna: 17:25

I have to be an official training center to be able to start bringing people together to learn how to be equipped. One of the most important things I think you said was at the very beginning where you're like, hey. Yeah. Maybe formalized training takes a year or 2, but the start now. Like, you can minister to people right now.

Shauna: 17:42

And as you're yourself growing in God's word and growing in godliness and wisdom, that can overflow to just the people within your in your circle, and then just hopefully that multiplies out in itself. And so I just think that's really important because, yeah, we're wanting to equip the local church in care, but care is all of us living out those one another's, and then just how do we then grow to where we can maybe handle some of the the deeper struggles.

Emily: 18:05

And, Shauna, you and I get to do a care track this weekend together.

Shauna: 18:09

That's true. That's very exciting.

Emily: 18:11

Talk more about that.

Shauna: 18:12

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yep. Yep. So, hopefully, they'll be able the listeners well, the conference will be over by the time they listen to this.

Shauna: 18:18

Right? So, hopefully, next year, there's another conference. And if you happen to in Pacific Northwest, you can come. But as our ABC called the council conference is in April, and so Emily will be on that track is a track speaker for us there. And so you can always come visit us in Fort Worth.

Mike: 18:31

Yeah. That'd be great. Any any last encouraging words, Emily? Just that you've gleaned from these 9 years of not only growing yourselves, but as a result of that growth, equipping other churches and much like we've already discussed. But how would you encourage those maybe struggling with just paralysis by analysis?

Emily: 18:55

I would say grab a friend. If you don't have a training center in your area, grab a friend or 2 in your ministry, get the equip to counsel book, sign up as an online student, and just start learning. And from then, maybe the next year, you can grab a few more friends or start a little class. And so you just have you have to start Mhmm. Not be paralyzed by, wow.

Emily: 19:20

I don't know if I can ever get to that place.

Shauna: 19:22

It seems overwhelming at first. Right?

Emily: 19:24

Yeah. It totally does, but it doesn't have to look like what we're doing here for it to be what God has for you in your own church. So it's such a great foundational material, and I think even if you don't wanna be a formal biblical counselor, it will equip you to walk alongside others in such a better way than than so much. And if you can do it with somebody else, wow, that's gonna you're gonna get the benefit of just that conversation and that time together and all of that. And that's really what we did.

Emily: 19:59

And that's what I tell so many churches, because you may not be able to run this big training to your whole community, but you gotta start somewhere. So

Shauna: 20:09

No. In a lot of ways, like the call of the one, a lot of the conversations you've had at Salem Heights has multiplied out where you started your faithful to what God was doing in your church and then through that with your pastor's leadership just being able to say, hey, we wanna partner with other churches in the community multiply out. Oftentimes those stories that you shared and even ones that, Michael, you and I have experienced is where it might be just 1 person or one couple just coming and they're the ones leading out on we want this in our church, Maybe our our pastors aren't a 100% what this looks like yet, but how God if you're just faithful to that calling to say, hey. Just start somewhere and start ministering. Just watch those kind of be able to come along start coming alongside you in that.

Shauna: 20:54

And so if you happen to be that person that's just the one listening right now, yeah, it does seem overwhelming when you're dreaming, like, what it could look like 2 years out. But, yeah, just be bold in having those conversations and start yourself.

Mike: 21:06

Yeah. I would say at the very least, you're actually going to grow yourself. You're gonna become just better at being able to apply the gospel. Yeah. Even if you don't become an actual, quote, unquote, certified formal biblical counselor, but at the very least again, you will change.

Mike: 21:24

It will transform you. And, really, like Jesus says in Matthew 7 where in his parable about taking the plank out of your eye, you quickly learn the extent of the plank in your eye. Mhmm. So at the very least, it would be encouraging because I know of many people when I say many people, I'm talking churches and organizations where they have people just audit. They'll just audit the class, and they may not really be interested in becoming biblical counselors, but they're interested in the personal growth.

Mike: 21:49

So at the very least, you're at least gonna get that.

Shauna: 21:50

And equipped to counsel is used for enrichment. But how many times we've actually had people join the class because they're excited to be caregivers, and then through the process, they're like, woah. I have been so convicted, and I have learned so much. And what a joy it is to be a leader and seeing how God is

Mike: 22:07

been so fun being back, though. Let's keep talking. Oh, yeah. You know? Oh,

Shauna: 22:14

Oh, it's been so fun being back, though. Let's keep talking.

Mike: 22:16

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You miss it a little?

Shauna: 22:19

A little.

Mike: 22:19

We missed you. You. Yeah.

Shauna: 22:22

Thanks for inviting me. Thanks, Emily, for joining us. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for just your continued faithfulness and perseverance in this calling and and just how that your leadership and how you've just continued to lead out, not only in your own church, but the churches around and now being on the ABC team and being able to meet with so many people across the states and our friends in Canada and all that, I'm just so excited for you and just all that God's doing in your life.

Shauna: 22:45

Yeah. Looking forward to it. A great friend.

Mike: 22:47

Awesome. Thank you guys for listening. Again, we got a lot of 2024 ahead of us. So if there's anything you'd like for us to talk about, topically speaking, please email us at topics that speak the truth. Thank you for listening.

Mike: 22:58

We love you. We'll see you next time.

Shauna: 22:59

Bye.