Statements like 'I am what I have done' and 'I am damaged goods' feel true to many believers. Walking through Ephesians 2, this course teaches you to answer each false identity statement with what God has actually declared about you in Christ, with a specific verse for each, spoken in the first person. Based on the Freedom Groups identity material.
A person can cry, apologize, and promise change without repenting. This course teaches counselors the difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow from 2 Corinthians 7, the common counterfeits of repentance, and why fruit over months matters more than a single emotional moment. You will evaluate realistic cases and decide what is actually happening.
Scripture addresses fear more often than almost any other emotion. Built on Matthew 6:25-34 and Philippians 4:4-13, this course teaches a concrete practice for everyday anxiety: name the fear, catch the worry spiral early, and replace it with specific acts of trust. It also explains the difference between righteous concern and sinful worry.
James 4 locates conflict in the desires fighting within us. This course teaches you to handle anger and conflict at that level: identify what you want that you are not getting, locate yourself honestly among the peace-faker, peace-breaker, and peacemaker patterns, and walk the four G's of peacemaking through a real conflict.
When a group member dominates discussion, goes quiet, or bristles at everything, there is usually something going on underneath. This course teaches small group leaders the fruit-to-root framework for understanding what drives behavior, and the practice of connecting with a person before correcting them. You will work through four recurring member profiles and decide how to respond to each.
Care reaches a whole congregation when the structure supports it. Using the trellis-and-vine picture and 2 Timothy 2:2, this course walks pastors through designing the six care roles (from group members to endorsed counselors), the training pathway for each, and the rhythms that keep the system healthy across generations of leaders.
Building a soul care culture takes several years and a deliberate sequence. This course gives pastors and church leaders the implementation roadmap: honest review of the current culture, biblical rethinking, and a reset that aligns elders, then staff, then ministry leaders, in that order. For leaders who have the vision and need the plan.
Many churches sincerely want to care for their people and are structured in ways that prevent it. This course walks pastors and church leaders through the seven paradigm shifts SCCI has observed in churches that moved to every-member care, from professional-driven ministry to mutual ministry. You will assess which shifts your church has made and which remain.
Churches care for people at several levels, from friends in a small group to trained counselors, and it helps to know how the levels fit together. This short orientation walks through the whole Discipleship and Care Continuum: who provides care at each level, when a need should move up, and where you fit. A good first course for anyone on this platform.
This capstone course turns what you learned in Freedom Groups into a written, scheduled personal growth plan: daily and weekly practices, community commitments, and a testimony you can give in three points. The tutor pushes back on vague plans until each element is specific enough to actually do.
Your history shaped you, and in Christ it does not determine what you do next. Framed by the prodigal son, this course teaches the biblical categories for handling your past: grieving what deserves grief, repenting of what needs repentance, and receiving the identity the Father gives. You will apply the categories to your own patterns.
Under pressure, most people default to one of four heart responses: anger, fear, foolishness, or despair. This course helps you identify your own default, recognize the situations that trigger it, and respond with specific scriptures chosen for that pattern. Devotional in tone and meant for repeated personal use.
Peter writes to suffering Christians and names the hard thing first every time. Suffering is disorienting, and God is personal. It leaves us disillusioned, and God is preserving us. It is distressing, and God is purifying us. This course works through Freedom Groups session ten on 1 Peter 1:3-9, including how to tell apart suffering that follows your own sin, suffering caused by someone else's, and suffering that comes with living in a broken world. David Powlison shows what Psalm 119 is actually doing, which is a person talking to God with complete honesty about affliction. You will finish by writing your own psalm to God about something real, and by thinking through how you would ask someone in your group to do the same.
Sexual sin takes all the attention, which is exactly why it is so often the hardest to help. This course teaches SCCI's heart-targeting method and then applies it where the presenting problem is sexual: the Fruit to Root levels of behavior, thought, and desire, and the six heart-revealing questions that get a person talking about what they actually wanted. David Powlison supplies the case material, including a man who had fought the same battle for twenty years without anyone noticing that his falls were a temper tantrum at God. You will learn to look for what else is running alongside the obvious sin, including anger, self-pity, the demand that God owes you, and the counterfeit refuge people take when life gets heavy. Written for biblical counselors.
Most help for addiction aims at stopping the behavior. Scripture aims further. This course works through SCCI's addiction, affliction, affection model: treating the problem as an addiction leads to recovery, treating it as a stronghold leads to restraint, and treating it as misdirected worship leads to redemption. You will learn the assessment questions that come before any counseling plan, how to name a person's functional god, and how to trace foolish behavior down to the heart using Fruit to Root. Ed Welch supplies the idolatry underneath and the reason Scripture speaks about this in the language of war. Practice comes through three kinds of fool, each needing a different response, and the course ends where Garrett Higbee begins: freedom in Christ is freedom for something, not only freedom from something.
Despair rarely arrives all at once. It builds through five stages, from discontentment to being downcast, then discouraged, then depressed, and finally despairing, where isolation and hopelessness take hold. This course teaches SCCI's approach to depression and despair. You will learn what the body may be contributing and when to involve a physician, what the heart is saying underneath, and how to help without dismissing the suffering or treating the person as a diagnosis. Ed Welch supplies the listening posture and the well-meant advice that does more harm than good. The course closes with a counseling case scored on S.O.S., traced through Fruit to Root, and worked into a plan built on hope in Christ.
Counselees ask hard questions: why God allowed something, whether He still loves them, why prayer feels empty. This course prepares counselors to answer from doctrine, pastorally: God's attributes, Christ's mediation, the Spirit's role, sanctification, and the church. Each unit starts with a counselee's question and works toward a faithful, usable answer.
SCCI's diagrams are counseling tools, and each one fits certain situations. This course teaches you to choose the right diagram for the person in front of you, walk them through it, and design the homework that follows. It also covers situations where no diagram is the right choice.
Counsel can drift into moralism (try harder) or therapy-speak (feel better) while the gospel goes unused. This course trains counselors to notice that drift in a counselee's story and in their own advice, and to correct it using the seven areas of gospel-focused care. Based on the T5 teaching on conforming versus transforming counsel.
SCCI treats persistent sin as a worship problem: something has taken a place in the heart that belongs to God. This course teaches counselors to surface those idols using the Y Diagram and the Desire to Demand progression, and to walk someone through repentance and reorienting worship. It also covers the danger of hunting for idols in everything.
The Fruit to Root diagnostic moves a counseling conversation from the presenting problem to the desires driving it. This course drills the method: what to ask, how to follow the answers downward, and how to keep going when the conversation stalls. You will generate the next question yourself repeatedly, because asking good questions is the skill.
Coaches sit between group leaders and the church's care ministries, and they decide where a need goes next. This course teaches routing with the S.O.S. tool across all five levels of care, from mutual ministry in a group to intensive care. You will place realistic situations on the continuum and explain your reasoning.
A small group leader models the faith, facilitates the discussion, and cares for the members. This course describes each of the three roles and shows what happens to a group when one gets neglected or takes over. You will read descriptions of real groups and diagnose which role needs attention.
Sometimes a leader has to say something a group member will not want to hear. This course prepares you for those conversations: a six-step biblical response process, grace and truth held together, and Scripture chosen for what is actually going on in the person's heart. The tutor plays the group member so you can practice the conversation itself.
If a friend has ever asked you for advice, you have counseled them. This course helps ordinary believers give better counsel in ordinary conversations: grounding advice in Scripture, speaking honestly and kindly, and recognizing when a situation needs a leader or pastor involved. No counseling background needed.
Most of us pray for people's circumstances: health, jobs, travel, test results. This course teaches you to also pray for what God is doing in a person's heart, using Scripture to shape the prayer. You will practice turning a friend's situation into specific biblical intercession and evaluating your own prayers with a seven-question checklist.
Fear runs along a continuum: unresolved worry turns into fretting, then anxiousness, then panic. The Greek word Jesus uses for worry means a divided mind, and Scripture treats that divided mind as a worship problem. This course teaches SCCI's approach to fear. You will separate godly fear from sinful fear, work through the fear-of-man self-check, and trace worry from behavior down to the root heart issue using Fruit to Root. Robert Jones's study of Matthew 6:19-34 supplies the two roots underneath, idolatry and unbelief, along with a heart check that holds up in a live counseling conversation. The course closes with a case study you score on S.O.S. and a way out drawn from Philippians 4.
Pastors carry unusual burdens and rarely take real rest. This course presents a biblical case for sabbath and sabbaticals, then gets practical: weekly rest, monthly retreat days, and the five stages of an extended sabbatical (Disconnect, Decelerate, Discernment, Debriefing, Re-deployment). It also covers planning the sabbatical with your spouse and re-entering ministry afterward.
Proverbs 20:5 compares the purpose in a person's heart to deep water that understanding draws out. This course teaches the life-story interview: how to structure it, what questions to ask, and what to listen for, including shaping influences, recurring heart themes, and the places where the gospel needs to land. For pastors and counselors who want to understand the whole person behind the presenting problem.
A care team is built on discernment about people. This course teaches pastors the seven C's for evaluating readiness (with character as the requirement that cannot be waived), how to develop leaders through experience rather than classes alone, and how to deploy a team using the delegation structure of Exodus 18. You will evaluate candidates and design development plans.
A crisis in the church raises emotions, distorts information, and tests a pastor's convictions. This course teaches a careful response: triage the situation, distinguish consequences of sin from trials of suffering, and practice church discipline as Matthew 18 presents it, where every step aims at restoring the person. Built for pastors and elders.
Pastors who can teach the care tools multiply their reach. This course takes you deep enough into SCCI's C.A.R.E. tools and diagrams to hand them to other leaders: choosing the right tool for a situation, walking a person through it, and training others to do the same. Built on 1 Thessalonians 5:14: different people need different responses.
A church's actual culture shows up in what it reinforces, measures, tolerates, and practices. This course helps pastors and elders assess their church honestly against three culture types (transactional, traditional, transformational) and identify what is driving the current one. You will leave with a specific reading of your own church and a starting point for change.
Galatians 5 says to walk by the Spirit, and the walking happens in small decisions: the commute, the inbox, the dinner table. This course makes the flesh-versus-Spirit choice concrete in daily situations and teaches you to look for the way of escape God provides in temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13).
Why did that comment set you off? Why the scrolling, the snapping, the avoiding? This course applies the Fruit to Root diagnostic to your own everyday reactions, tracing each one down to the desire underneath and bringing that desire to God. Personal and practical, with exercises drawn from ordinary life.
James 4 says conflicts come from desires at war within us. This course teaches counselors to trace a conflict below the surface disagreement to what each person wants, and to help them shift focus from winning the argument to honoring God. The tutor plays one party in a conflict so you can practice the diagnosis in conversation.
C.A.R.E. stands for Connect, Assess, Respond, Encourage, and it structures a counseling relationship from the first meeting to a working care plan. This course teaches you to recognize which stage a conversation is in, gather a person's life story, and build a care plan you can adjust when new information surfaces. You will practice on a composite case.
Good counseling starts with understanding the person, and that takes discipline. This course teaches the W.A.L.K. method (Watch, Ask, Listen, Know) for first meetings, scoring risk with S.O.S., and holding back advice until you actually understand the situation. Proverbs 18:13 sets the standard: answering before listening is folly.
SCCI teaches that persistent struggles usually trace to one of four heart attitudes: anger, fear, foolishness, or despair. This course trains counselors to identify a person's predominant heart attitude, translate psychological labels into biblical categories, and take physical and medical factors seriously along the way. You will practice on counseling vignettes.
Choosing leaders is one of a coach's most consequential decisions. This course teaches the readiness markers SCCI uses (the five C's plus four skills) and the ten red flags that signal someone is not ready. You will evaluate candidates, make the call, and design a mentoring plan for each.
The G.P.S. tool measures a group's health across seven areas. This course teaches coaches to use it: identify the weakest area from a leader's description of their group, then work with the leader on specific, achievable next steps. You will practice the diagnosis on a series of coaching vignettes.
Part of coaching is correcting a leader who is off track. This course teaches how to do that well: agreeing on the problem, addressing the root rather than the symptom, and assigning next steps that give the person hope. The tutor plays a defensive or discouraged leader so you can practice the conversation.
Every group needs a leader in development. This course walks small group leaders through selecting an apprentice on character using the Faithful, Available, Teachable standard, developing them with real responsibility, and preparing the group to multiply. You will evaluate candidate scenarios and decide whether each person is ready.
Mutual ministry is when a group cares for a member biblically in the moment, and it takes skill to lead well. This course teaches the eight-step Reveal and Respond process for those conversations, plus five practices that build genuine friendship in a group. You will work through scenarios where a member shares a serious struggle in the middle of a study.
Group members share sensitive things, and what a leader does with that information matters. This course teaches SCCI's four confidentiality rules (informed consent, need to know, trusted circle, discretion) and applies them to hard cases: a mention of suicide, an abuse disclosure, gossip framed as a prayer request. You will also learn when confidentiality must give way and how to involve your coach or pastor.
Some needs require more care than a small group can provide. This course teaches leaders to evaluate a member's situation with the S.O.S. tool (Severity, Ownership, Support) and decide whether to care for it in the group, consult their coach, or refer it to the church's soul care ministry. You will score realistic scenarios and practice making that decision.
The New Testament repeatedly commands believers to love, forgive, encourage, bear with, and admonish one another. This refresher course walks through the One Another commands, matches each to its scripture, and gets concrete about what each one looks like during an ordinary week. Useful for anyone in a small group.
When a friend is grieving or discouraged, it is hard to know what to say, and easy to say something unhelpful. This course teaches the biblical practice of comfort: listening first, staying present, and speaking hope that is actually true. You will practice responding to a grieving friend, a discouraged group member, and a fainthearted believer.
Confession is a normal part of the Christian life, and most of us were never taught how to do it. This course covers what to confess, to whom, and in how much detail, how to deal with conviction without spiraling into shame, and how to respond when a friend confesses something to you. Based on the T1 teaching on confession and restoration.
Pastors cannot personally carry every care situation in the church, and they need a reliable way to direct each one. This course teaches the pastor's three moves: assess risk with S.O.S., give wise counsel in the moment, and establish a care plan through the church's own soul care ministry. You will practice deciding which situations to handle personally and which to route to others.
Coaching is a different job than leading a group: a coach serves the leaders. This course covers the three functions of the role (connect, consult, counsel), the qualifications for it, and how to decide what to handle yourself versus what to route to a pastor or the soul care ministry. Built on the T3 coaching material.
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