Michael: 00:07

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.

Michael: 00:19

Hello. Hello. Hello. We are back in studio. Unfortunately, I am Han Solo today.

Michael: 00:24

I am by myself, but I'm always joined by a special guest. And today is no different. I have special guest with me, Brian Walker. Brian Walker is from Anchored Hope. He is the operations director at Anchored Hope.

Michael: 00:37

And if for anyone who's been on our website, you've seen them as a partner, and so we obviously wanted to make it a little bit more official as far as bringing them on the podcast and just letting them letting our listeners know about their services and how they can help wherever you are, pastors, counselors across the country, that if you need some virtual help, we've got you covered with Anchored Hope. And so, Brian, how we doing, brother?

Brian: 01:01

Doing well. Doing well. It's, great to be here. Thank you for having me, and really thankful for you, for Truth Renewed, and just the opportunity to talk today.

Michael: 01:10

Awesome. We're gonna jump right in, Brian. But, before we do, I wanted to, just get the genesis of Anchored Hope and just to let our listeners know a little bit about what is Anchored Hope. I mentioned virtual, so we can explain a little bit about what that is. And then really how you ended up in the role of operations director, and how did you end up being a biblical counselor?

Brian: 01:30

In in a lot of ways, I fell into it more than planned it. And so Anchored Hope started about 4 years ago. We were actually an offshoot of a parent ministry called Mark Inc. Ministries initially. So pastor and his wife, Chuck and Sharon Betters, who had, tragically lost a son in a car accident in 1993, began a grief content ministry called Mark Inc.

Brian: 01:55

And as they got more and more requests for help, along the way they realized we we need to connect folks with trained counselors who are biblical counselors, who can point people toward the truth, but can walk with them in more of a long term way. And so they started Anchored Hope Biblical Counseling as an offshoot of Mark Inc. In 2019. I was one of the first 6 counselors who were hired as a part of that. And within those that first year and a half, I think I and one of our other counselors, Rebecca Hanna, both had a sense that this could be much more.

Brian: 02:30

Yeah. And so I was coming at that from I was a pastor at the time, and I was coming at it more from the standpoint of what would it look like for this to be a resource to pastors who just don't have access to biblical counseling and don't know who to refer people to. And I think Becca had this vision of this platform that we're using right now could be expanded into something much, much bigger to actually have a global impact. And so along the way, as we started talking to one another, we realized these are really just two aspects of the same vision. And in 2021, the betters said, YouTube, take this and run with it.

Brian: 03:09

And we and then in early in 2022, we rebranded the website, and we began to add more counselors. And that's really when we started to see our growth accelerate. The Lord was just very kind to enable us to grow significantly in that first year, year and a half. And then it's just been a steady growth since then. And so yeah.

Brian: 03:29

We're we're excited, privileged for the opportunity. I never thought when I left seminary that I would be the director of operations in a virtual counseling organization. I just had no way of envisioning that at that time in my life.

Michael: 03:44

Yeah. That wasn't a career pathway. Grace. That was not a career pathway in seminar. It was like No.

Michael: 03:49

What do I do with this? Yeah. That's awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that. And just to go back to a few things that you said, because I think it'll be interesting as we discuss a little bit further as far as the assimilation with you being a virtual counseling ministry.

Michael: 04:03

But you being a pastor in the past, how do you integrate the back end of knowing what that looks like in your counseling process with your counselees?

Brian: 04:13

For us, because we are a virtual counseling organization, we are very clear on what our limitations are.

Michael: 04:21

Right.

Brian: 04:22

We know that we can provide some focused, specialized help for folks who are stuck, but we cannot provide the embodied care that the Lord has entrusted to the local church. And so from the very beginning, we said this is only gonna work if we are very intentional about how we partner with local churches and in establishing the relationship with the church in a way that's clear. And so I often use the example of, crowbar versus rebar. Biblical counseling can often function as a crowbar in a person's life where to help them get unstuck from a particular issue of sin or suffering. But God's ordained rebar for their life is gonna be ongoing before, during, and after that process is the local church.

Brian: 05:05

And so we work really hard to keep open lines of communication with pastors and ministry leaders. We work really hard to help our counselees understand the benefit and value of involving someone in their local church. And so that may be their pastor or it may be just a brother or sister who's a faithful advocate who's walking with them. And in either case, we will invite that person into some of the sessions with the consent of the of the client. And so we're always gonna operate within the boundaries of confidentiality, but we actually build into the counseling process why that's valuable and why in in most cases, there are some cases where that might not be prudent.

Brian: 05:44

But in most cases, it's gonna be really valuable for that person to draw someone into the counseling process who has a connection to their local church. And that person doesn't need to feel the weight of being the counselor. They can then be free to provide tangible support, to meet with that individual, to pray with them, to bring them a meal, and just to ask really thoughtful and intentional questions.

Michael: 06:09

No. That's really good. And so how long were you a pastor?

Brian: 06:12

I was a pastor in various roles various pastoral roles for about 20 years before I started with Anchored Hope.

Michael: 06:18

Nice. So are you an active biblical counselor, or does your operations director role have you really busy? Because you guys have, what, 30 counselors?

Brian: 06:28

We right now, we have 47 counselors. And I would guess by the end of this year, we may be up over 50. So we try to staff ahead of our growth. Part of I'll get into this a little bit more in a bit, but part of giving hope for us is giving access and so we try to staff ahead of our growth enough to where there's always availability. Having said that, I do maintain a small counseling load still because a lot of my role is overseeing our counselors, helping plan training development events for them, And I find that if I get disconnected from counseling, I'm just not gonna be as good of a leader for our counselors in that role.

Brian: 07:06

So I always maintain a caseload. Sometimes it grows a little bit bigger, sometimes it's a little smaller. Right now, it's a fairly small caseload just given my other responsibilities. But that helps me stay grounded. It helps me remember what our counselors are facing and the kinds of resources that they need.

Michael: 07:25

That's good. So I've got a few logistical questions. With this being virtual, some people are gonna be in different time zones. So if somebody were to go to your website, which is done really well, by the way. So for those of you who are listening and I'll have it hyperlinked in the show notes.

Michael: 07:39

But you can go to the website, and you can see that the counselor has their name, if I'm not mistaken, a little bit of their background, some of their credentials, if I'm not mistaken. Right, Brian? Yeah. So when you go to

Brian: 07:50

our counselor page, you can click on every counselor, and there's a sidebar that comes over that where you can read their profile, you can read their credentials, learn a little bit about their background, their specialization. And then if you scroll down, there's a place where you can schedule with them or you can message them directly.

Michael: 08:06

Yeah. That's nice. That's super helpful, especially, virtually. But so the the logistical stuff is right? So it's we've got listeners all over the country in the world for that matter.

Michael: 08:15

But it's people trying to find because, obviously, scheduling is difficult enough with people that are, like, in your town. Right? But it's when you have something virtual where it's like you might somebody goes to the website, and let's say they're on the Pacific Northwest and they're on the Pacific Standard Time, and then they find a counselor. I'm assuming you have counselors all over the different time zones within America. But do you have primarily East Coast time zones or or just for those listeners who are thinking along those lines of being able to find counselors in that way?

Brian: 08:47

Yeah. The good news is our system really does all the time zone translation for the person who's searching. So if they click on accounts let's say someone's in North Carolina and they click on a counselor who is in California, the system is gonna show that counselor's availability in their time zone.

Michael: 09:06

Yeah.

Brian: 09:07

So I guess it's in theory, it's probably more likely that they're gonna find availability with someone who is either in their time zone or one time zone over. But if they find a counselor they really who's 2 time zones away or 3 time zones away, the system will actually show them availability in their own time zone. And then when they schedule an appointment, the notifications come to both the counselor and the client in their own time zone. So I'm really thankful for our system that does that work. Yeah.

Brian: 09:33

The only place where it's it trips us up a little bit is when we're scheduling on the back end, we go in, everything is set to central just because that's the easiest place to set a standard time zone for the system. And so when we go in to schedule, we always have to remember this is central time.

Michael: 09:49

I have to translate it into my own time zone. Yeah. That's good. I just

Brian: 09:49

know, like, Yeah.

Michael: 09:51

That's good.

Brian: 09:52

I just know, like, how difficult

Michael: 09:53

it is just in general to schedule counseling. So just thinking about availability. So another question outside of logistics of just we mentioned credentialing. When you go to the website, it's, I mean, it's I mean, it's it's biblically rooted and clinically informed, so it has that scope to it. So do you have biblical counselors?

Michael: 10:14

Do you have LPCs? Could you share a little bit of how that's structured?

Brian: 10:16

Yeah. So all of our counselors are biblical counselors in the sense that they all share a biblical counseling conviction in terms of their methodology and their philosophy of counseling. In terms of how they're credentialed, our standard is that we want them to be trained at a master's level or above and that can look different ways. So we have some counselors who are pastors who received an MDiv, and they have strong biblical and theological training. And then they added biblical counseling certification on top of that through an organization like ABC or CCEF or ACBC.

Brian: 10:49

And then we have others who came the other direction who have maybe a clinical masters and then became con convinced of biblical counseling and also pursued one of those certifications. And then we have people who went to a seminary where they got just a straight up biblical counseling degree, and often one of those certifications is built into the degree itself. And so we have people coming to us from, like, all of those directions. I would say because we have so many seminaries that that have developed really strong biblical counseling programs, we are seeing more and more of our counselors coming to us that way.

Michael: 11:26

Yeah. That's good. So that was leading into my next question a little bit of because we get a lot of inquiries from people that are currently in seminary or just recently graduated. And much to what we were saying in passing a moment ago of just, alright. What do I do with this degree that I have?

Michael: 11:43

Our church doesn't have biblical counseling in it. There's really not a care pathway as far as having something certified, some training center or counseling center in the church. And so they're trying to figure out how they can serve their church. And then they begin to think about, what am I supposed to do with this? And so I get quite a few inquiries on that.

Michael: 12:04

And so you're saying that just a lot of people from seminary, like, for example, Southern, which is where I'm currently a student as well. But places like that, Midwestern, I think, Westminster. Is that what do you know I would imagine, obviously, because you have, you know, would you say, 47 counselors coming back with various backgrounds even theologically, right, where you've got people, counselors coming from Baptist backgrounds, reformed or Presbyterian backgrounds. So you have a you have a good theological spectrum, if you will, of qualified people, who can meet people? Because I would is that, like, a legitimate, like, concern when people are thinking through and asking inquiries of what they're looking for?

Michael: 12:45

A counselor who's a Baptist or a Presbyterian or or any of those things come up. Is that even a relevant thing or not really?

Brian: 12:50

Yeah. I'm surprised at how infrequently it comes up. Occasionally, a counsel will say, I feel more comfortable if I'm counseled by someone from my own theological tradition. Right. Most often, I think people in crisis just have a sense of, is this person gonna help me see how Jesus meets me in the midst of my sin and suffering?

Brian: 13:11

And I would say among our counselors, there is, definitely some, a spectrum of theological backgrounds, and yet by the time we go for us it's really important that all of them have a really high view of scripture, a strong doctrine of scriptural sufficiency, that they have a very strong ecclesiology and understanding of the local church, and that they have a very clear and biblical anthropology. And by the time we have nailed down those three aspects of their theology, most of our counselors are coming from the, what I would call, the broadly reformed evangelical world. And so we have some Presbyterians, we have a lot of Baptists, we have some evangelical free folks, we have some nondenominational folks, but all of them are centered around those reformed evangelical commitments that tie them to a high view of scripture, the local church, and biblical anthropology.

Michael: 14:06

No. That's good. And and with that biblical anthropology, I would imagine just knowing looking at the seminaries that most of your counselors, at least when I looked at it, are coming from that they have a sound theological basis for suffering. Right? It's a it's a very robust understanding of having a theology of suffering.

Michael: 14:23

And that biblical lens of having the counselees understanding what it means to be seen as a sufferer, a sinner, and a saint?

Brian: 14:31

Absolutely. One of the things that we have done more and more in our interview process is assessing the ability for our counselors to apply what I would call a non formulaic approach to biblical counseling, which is what when I say formulaic, I mean, I've got my grab bag of verses for every issue, and I just throw those verses at the issue. What we want them to do is to to know the storyline of scripture so well that they're able to invite this counselee into the storyline of scripture and see where it meets them, whether that's with a sin issue or a suffering issue, and to be able to, as you said, see themselves as saints, sufferers, and sinners, and have this holistic biblical view of who they are. A a lot of times we have made one of those a predominant lens. So if a person's a very just upbeat person, I've got a pastor friend who, like, in his world, every everyone's awesome all the time.

Brian: 15:31

Everything's awesome all the time. So the saint lens is just huge.

Michael: 15:35

Yeah.

Brian: 15:35

Right?

Michael: 15:36

Yeah.

Brian: 15:36

And, but maybe not the most empathetic person in the world and maybe not the best at loving confrontation. And then, of course, there are those for everything is just a black and white, like, I gotta go after this if this feels wrong to me kind of issue. And maybe, again, the, empathy for suffering isn't there or even the ability to see, like, what what good is happening in this person's life? Where is God already at work? Where I can encourage them.

Brian: 16:04

And maybe this person needs some encouragement or needs some compassion before we get into the issues where they may be responding sinfully to this.

Michael: 16:14

Yeah. That's really good. So just some methodological questions. As far as, like, your counseling process, because every counseling ministry sort of has their own, I guess, care pathway, if you will, of just how many sessions do they tend to get. And then some other other questions outside of methodological questions just sort of, like, cost and things like that.

Michael: 16:32

So we'll we'll get into that in just a moment. But in terms of methodology, do your do your counselors typically see their counsels use 5 to 10 sessions? Or is it is it really based on the scope? What severity, ownership, support, like, depending on where the counsel is. Is it a crisis?

Michael: 16:49

Is it a wisdom issue? And what's your methodology there as far as just a care pathway for your counselors?

Brian: 16:55

I get this question a lot, especially from partner churches who wanna try to project out and think, like, how many sessions should we plan for as we're helping this person financially? And we try to give them a sense of here's maybe how many sessions before you would build in a checkpoint where there's a conversation that's happening between all three parties to determine whether more sessions are needed. But we also try to be very careful not to say, hey, this issue requires this number of sessions and this issue requires fewer or more because it really does depend on the scope of the issue, the severity of the issue, and also just that individual and where they are Yeah. In the process of dealing with it themselves when they enter into counseling. And so we try to think more in terms of principle, which is that our approach to counseling is goal oriented, and and it is oriented around a process that's moving people toward a place where they're in a sense graduating out and seeing that the Lord is gonna sustain them through the ordinary means of grace of the church and just godly friends and family.

Brian: 18:01

And and so we don't wanna become anyone's personal therapist. Right? We don't want someone entering into counseling and saying, 5 years from now, I expect every week we're still gonna be meeting and just talking because there's this cathartic help I feel from talking to someone.

Michael: 18:14

Right.

Brian: 18:14

We want them to really define that in embodied relationships. Not that we don't want our counselors to build meaningful relationships. We absolutely want that. But it is a very goal oriented relationship to, again, help them with dealing with this very specific issue. And and from the very beginning is built into into it the assumption.

Brian: 18:37

There's gonna be an endpoint to this, and we wanna help you get there. And that's a win for everyone when you do.

Michael: 18:44

That's really good, which kinda goes back to where we started towards the beginning of just sort of that triage care of because you're virtual, it's already sort of isolated in that sense, which is the methodology being goal oriented is what does your support structure look like? How involved are you in your local church? What does that look like? So I would imagine, obviously, with you saying those things that that's very much on the lips of the counselors as far as they're concerned and things that they're telling their counselees of just continually hitting that mark of getting them in that Christian Koinonia.

Brian: 19:16

Yeah. And the challenge with assessing that is that no one there's never anyone who graduates out of counseling that says all my issues are fixed.

Michael: 19:24

Right.

Brian: 19:24

Right. It's much more nuanced than that. It's assessing are they moving in the right direction? Do we see a consistent track record of progress toward Christ likeness in the midst of this? Do we see that those support systems exist?

Brian: 19:40

Do we see that there is less and less of a need for guidance and direction and they're in a sense self directing their own growth at that point? As we're assessing those things, that's what helps us to say, hey, we can begin to space this apart. It's it's very rarely just a hard stop after meeting every week for a few months. A lot of times it's saying, you know what? I think counseling is has really served a role in your life, and I think it's probably not as needed now as it was 2 months ago, but let's start to space our sessions apart.

Brian: 20:16

Let maybe let's go to every other week or go to once a month. And then at some point, we're gonna say, let's just celebrate this and have a graduation session. And then sometimes people will check back in 6 months later and just say, hey. I'd like to let you know how things are going, and here are some things I wanna continue to work on. But we really are wanting them to think in terms of this is goal oriented, and we when when we reach that goal, then we celebrate that counseling has served its purpose.

Michael: 20:50

Yeah. That's great. And that's something I get excited about in thinking about that is just one of those things that I know that I do here at Truth Renewed, which obviously we're a little more local. But talking with the council, helping them see that as they're receiving care and they're growing and they can see that that growth and the the counselors encouraging that growth and helping them see that. So when they actually go back into the local church and they the more assimilated they are, connected they are in the local church, they begin to give that care that they've received, which is always a a beautiful thing, which I would say is is really the goal.

Michael: 21:22

Right? Going back to goal oriented. And so just being able to, as as a counselor, to just continue to encourage and edify, the council in that way to to help them see beyond themselves to be a part of the community. And so that's awesome that that's a that's part of your philosophy and goal of counseling, obviously, because that's a temptation because you're already virtual. So But

Brian: 21:44

what a delight that is when you see someone who was in the midst of intense suffering now enter back into the local church, and they're becoming an advocate for someone else, maybe walking through a similar kind of suffering. And from the comfort they've received, they're now providing comfort for others. And it's just a real delight as a counselor to be able to see that or even hear about that.

Michael: 22:05

Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Brian, man, I appreciate, your time, and I appreciate just the work that you're doing. So in closing, though, how would you encourage those who are coming out of seminary or in their local church trying to think through how can they best serve their their church, but they but they also feel a call to counseling more specifically.

Michael: 22:28

How can they reach out to Anchored Hope and begin that process?

Brian: 22:31

There's a careers tab on our website, and we love getting to know candidates. And we take a long time in the process of getting to know a candidate. We one of the questions we ask is, where are you involved in your local church? We really want to know that this person has begun to move toward counseling opportunities, whether formally or informally, wherever those opportunities exist in their current situation. And so we don't want Anchored Hope to be seen as the this is the way I can get started in counseling, but rather this is, maybe a new way or another way to serve the church or to serve people who are suffering who don't have access to biblical counseling.

Brian: 23:13

We exist for people who don't have access, and so we we love to hear that heartbeat among our counselors just, realizing we wanna close the gap for those who are geographically cut off or maybe cut off because the resources in their area just have a wait list, and, and yet we wanna know that they are serving in their local context. And so if you click on the careers page, there's a place where you can submit an inquiry. You can actually submit an application there, and and then begins the process where I I send an email and we usually set up an initial call and get to know you call that then leads into a first interview and then a second round interview and so on.

Michael: 23:51

That's awesome. Thank you. Ryan, I appreciate your time. And for our listeners, I just wanna encourage you to check out Anchored Hope. If you're a pastor in your church, I would give I would give them a call.

Michael: 24:01

Reach out to Anchored Hope and see how you can partner with them. Because again, the goal is for them to get in the local church. We wanna be able to bridge that gap. They need care. And as Brian mentioned with the rebar versus a crowbar, the rebar is the anchor in the concrete.

Michael: 24:15

Is it not?

Brian: 24:17

Yeah. Absolutely.

Michael: 24:18

Yeah. That's good. Brian, thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Thank you guys for listening.

Michael: 24:21

We'll see you next time.

Brian: 24:22

Thanks so much, Mike.