Biblical counseling is the work of bringing the Word of God to one person's trouble, usually inside a local church. This guide explains what that means in practice, how it differs from the other kinds of counseling you will hear about, who does it, and the three ways to get trained. It uses the Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling at Faith Bible Seminary as the worked example, with the seminary's published figures for time and cost.
What biblical counseling is
Paul told Timothy that all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Peter wrote that God's power has given believers everything that pertains to life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3). Biblical counseling takes those two sentences at their word. If the Bible equips a person for every good work, it equips him for the hard conversation about his anger or her grief.
Faith Church's counseling ministry, Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries, defines it this way: biblical counseling is "the process where the Bible, God's Word, is related individually to a person or persons who are struggling under the weight of personal sin and/or the difficulties with suffering, so that he or she might genuinely change in the inner person to be pleasing to God." Two things in that sentence matter for everything that follows. The counselee is a sinner and a sufferer, and Scripture speaks to both. The goal is change in the inner person, which the Bible calls the heart.
Sufferers need comfort first. God is "the Father of mercies and God of all comfort," and he comforts his people so that they can comfort others (2 Cor. 1:3-4). A counselor who opens with a lecture has not read Job's friends carefully. At the same time, the Word is living and active and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb. 4:12), and Jesus taught that what defiles a person comes from within (Mark 7:21-23). So the counselor comforts first, then opens the Bible with the person in front of him, expecting it to do both kinds of work.
The seminary states its position in its own doctrinal statement, and we quote it rather than paraphrase it:
We believe that the Scriptures, given by God, are sufficient for life in that they, when properly interpreted, reveal to the believer all the data necessary for one to understand his need for Christ, how he can please the Lord, and how to live in a God-honoring way regardless of the circumstances, whether comfortable or oppressive.
FBS Doctrinal Statement, Art. 11
The same article adds that "genuine heart change is totally dependent on the ministry of the Holy Spirit," so counseling practice "includes the importance of prayer, dependence on God, a thorough knowledge of the Word of God, and an understanding of ministering to people" (FBS Doctrinal Statement, Art. 11). A counselor cannot change anyone. Apart from Christ we can do nothing (John 15:5). The counselor's job is to be faithful with the Word and to pray; the Spirit does the changing.
One more thing about where this happens. Paul was confident that the Christians in Rome were "full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another" (Rom. 15:14). The word of Christ is to dwell in the church richly, with members "teaching and admonishing one another" (Col. 3:16), and those who are spiritual are to restore a brother caught in sin "in a spirit of gentleness" while bearing one another's burdens (Gal. 6:1-2). The New Testament assigns this work to the members of a church. Biblical counseling is that one-another ministry done with care and training, under the oversight of a church's pastors. The full doctrinal statement is online.
Biblical counseling, Christian counseling, and licensed therapy
"Christian counseling" usually describes the counselor. A Christian who counsels, in a church or a private practice, with or without a license, may call his work Christian counseling. He may draw on Scripture a little or a lot, alongside counseling theories learned in a secular program. The label tells you who the counselor is. It does not tell you what the counselor treats as the final authority when the Bible and a theory disagree.
Biblical counseling is defined by that question of authority. The FBS Doctrinal Statement says the Scriptures "are also the authoritative source with which all truth claims including claims made by science (e.g. psychology) and history must be evaluated," and that as a result "we reject all counseling theories that use presuppositions, principles, and/or methodologies that are inconsistent with the proper interpretation of the biblical text" (Art. 11). In plain words, FBS teaches counseling from the Bible and tests every theory by it.
Licensed therapy is a regulated profession. Each state sets its own requirements for who may hold a counseling license. On that subject the seminary publishes one sentence, and we repeat it exactly: the MABC program "is not designed to lead students toward a counseling licensure within their state." If a license is your goal, read your state board's requirements before you choose any program, including ours.
Decide with your pastor. The church that knows you is the church that will affirm your fitness for either path.
Who does biblical counseling
Pastors do, whether they call it that or not. Paul charged the Ephesian elders to pay careful attention to all the flock (Acts 20:28), and he told the Thessalonians to admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and be patient with them all (1 Thess. 5:14). Every pastor counsels. The question is whether he does it with training.
Church members do too, and in larger numbers. Faith Church's counseling ministry has trained more than 10,000 men and women in biblical counseling over more than thirty years and provides over 2,000 hours of free counseling to the community every year. That counseling happens at a church-run community center in Lafayette, Indiana.
The MABC was written for that range of people. It is designed for current ministry leaders, lay counselors, missionaries, and anyone who wants advanced training in biblical counseling. Its program philosophy says it equips pastors, missionaries, and lay men and women as biblical counselors. In the 2025–26 year, 137 students were enrolled in the MABC.
How to get trained: three routes
Many counselors take all three routes in order: a basic course at a church, then certification, then a degree when they find themselves leading a ministry or training others.
Basic training
Most people start in a church, in a training course that runs a week or a series of evenings and covers how to listen and how to open Scripture with a person. Faith Church's counseling ministry has offered that kind of training for over thirty years. FBS strongly encourages MABC applicants to have completed basic biblical counseling training before they enroll; students without it complete that training during their first year.
Certification
ACBC is a certifying organization that does counseling training, and it has always been a separate organization from Faith Church's counseling ministry. Certification is primarily self-guided. It involves hours of observation videos, supervised counseling, and exams, usually takes two to three years, and costs about $1,500 in fees. It gives basic training for the most common counseling issues, which is exactly what a church member who wants to counsel well needs.
FBS students can pursue ACBC certification alongside the MABC. The seminary provides the observation videos and the material needed to write the ACBC exams, so students who want both do not have to do the work twice. Several of the faculty who teach in the MABC hold ACBC certification or are ACBC Fellows.
Graduate degree
The Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling is a 39-credit graduate degree that most students complete in four to five years. Faith Bible Seminary is accredited by the Association for Biblical Higher Education Commission on Accreditation; initial accreditation was granted February 20, 2019, and reaffirmed in 2024. Admission requires a bachelor's degree in any field from an accredited institution, a 3.0 GPA on a 4.0 scale, and a $50 non-refundable application fee; up to 10% of the student body may be admitted without a bachelor's degree. The application includes a personal testimony, your spouse's testimony if you are married, three references that speak to your spiritual life, a pastoral reference, transcripts, and a video meeting with an admissions representative. The full requirements are on the MABC page and the how-to-apply page.
Degree or certification?
The seminary answers this question on its own FAQ page by asking three others: what do you want to do in ministry, what is your current ministry position, and what are your time and money like. The comparison below uses the figures the seminary publishes.
ACBC certification | FBS Master of Arts in Biblical Counseling | |
|---|---|---|
Time to complete | 2 to 3 years | 4 to 5 years |
Cost | About $1,500 in fees | $12,935 tuition and fees |
Level of training | Basic training for the most common counseling issues | Advanced training; some basic training expected first |
What you hold at the end | A certification; the process is primarily self-guided | An accredited graduate degree |
Figures as published by Faith Bible Seminary on its MABC FAQ and tuition pages. The MABC total is approximate: 39 credits at $310 plus 13 classes at $65.
The seminary's own guidance runs like this. If you are already in ministry, the MABC is often the right route, because its purpose is to train mature Christians to lead counseling ministries and to train other counselors. If you are a church member who wants more knowledge in order to help the people around you, ACBC certification can be the right choice. Many people fall in between. The MABC FAQ has the seminary's full answer.
What a biblical counseling master's covers
The MABC is 39 credits in four areas.
The five foundation courses, 15 credits, come first: BC505 Introduction to Biblical Counseling, BC506 Principles of Bible Study, BC507 Theology of Biblical Counseling, BC508 Methods of Biblical Change, and BC509 Spiritual Formation and Self-Counsel. Two of those five are about handling the Bible rightly and one is about the counselor's own heart. A counselor who cannot interpret a passage in context, or who has never applied the Word to his own sin, will not do the counselee much good.
Four counseling theory courses, 12 credits, follow: BC510 and BC511 Common Counseling Issues I and II, BC512 Marriage and Family Counseling, and BC513 Advanced Counseling Issues. Then two practice courses, 6 credits: BC611 Counseling Lab and BC701 Supervised Counseling and Oral/Written Exam.
The last 6 credits are a concentration, chosen after the oral and written exams. The counseling concentration (BC720 and BC721 Advanced Counseling Practice 1 and 2) is for people who will spend most of their ministry in the counseling room. The training concentration (BC750 and BC751 Equipping Biblical Counselors 1 and 2) is for people who will teach others to counsel. The thesis concentration (BC790 Thesis Proposal and BC800 Master's Thesis Project) is for people who want to write. To graduate, a student completes the 39 credits with at least a 2.5 GPA, completes 30 hours of supervised counseling, finishes one concentration, and demonstrates godly character as Scripture describes it. The full curriculum is on the MABC page.
Supervision and practice
"If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame" (Prov. 18:13). "The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out" (Prov. 20:5). Both are learned by sitting with a person, asking the next question, and then having someone more experienced tell you what you missed.
That is why the seminary requires 30 hours of supervised counseling through BC701 before anyone graduates, and why BC611 is a counseling lab rather than a lecture. It is also why the MABC is not fully online. The seminary says plainly that it could offer the degree entirely online and chooses not to, because the in-person experience of counseling a real person is too valuable to give up.
Online and hybrid formats
The MABC is a hybrid program built for people who are already working or serving somewhere. Five courses are online and run eight weeks each; lectures can be attended live or watched as recordings. Five are residency courses that run 15 weeks, with one week on campus in Lafayette and the rest completed online. Two are independent studies done from home under a professor's supervision. Over the whole program a student comes to campus five times, for one week each: three weeks in June and two in January.
A residency week runs from Monday at 1 PM through Friday at 11 AM, about 31 hours of instruction. Courses are offered every spring and winter semester; spring coursework begins near the end of April with residencies in June, and winter coursework begins in early November with residencies in mid-January. Students may take up to three classes a semester but never more than two at the same time. You will need a computer no more than three years old and reliable broadband. The how-it-works page explains the three course formats, and the course schedule lists the current dates.
Careers
Here is the honest picture. Biblical counseling is a ministry before it is a career. Much of it is unpaid, or folded into a pastor's existing role, and the degree is not designed to lead toward a state license.
The seminary publishes where its MABC graduates serve. Of the graduates listed, 25 serve as lay counselors (in the United States, Canada, and Australia), 15 as pastors, 7 as ministry professionals (United States and Hungary), 5 as missionaries (Brazil, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland), 4 as authors, and 1 as an adjunct professor; 6 are listed as unknown. The largest group went back to their churches and counsels there.
Starting a counseling ministry in your church
Start with your pastor, since a counseling ministry belongs to the church and operates under its elders. Christ gave pastors and teachers to the church "to equip the saints for the work of ministry" (Eph. 4:11-12), and Paul's instruction to Timothy was to entrust what he had learned "to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. 2:2). A counseling ministry is that verse applied, a few trained people who train a few more.
The MABC's training concentration, BC750 and BC751 Equipping Biblical Counselors, exists for the person who will do that training in his own church. The pattern at Faith Church, where the counseling ministry offers free counseling to the community out of a church-run community center, is one model; the seminary's educational philosophy names community-based outreach of this kind as one of its four pillars. The seminary also gives priority in its Leadership in Counseling Matching Program to students who belong to a church with an existing biblical counseling ministry.
Paying for it
MABC tuition is $310 per credit hour, with a $65 non-refundable administration fee per class. For the 39-credit, 13-course program that comes to approximately $12,935 in tuition and administration fees (39 credits at $310 is $12,090; 13 classes at $65 is $845). The application fee is $50 and the graduation fee is $50; a distance module fee of $200 per class also appears on the fee schedule. Faith Bible Seminary does not offer direct financial aid.
Two scholarships are available to MABC students, both with applications due October 15 each year. The Leadership in Counseling Matching Program pairs $500 a year from your church with a $500 match from FBS, $1,000 a year in all, disbursed at $250 a semester; it requires at least three classes a year and a personal or family income under $75,000, and you cannot already be receiving tuition help from your church. The Joyful Journey Podcast Scholarship covers 50% of class tuition each semester for women students who take at least two classes a year and whose income is under $75,000; students may apply annually. Details and the forms are on the scholarships page, the full fee schedule is on the tuition page, and the paying-for-seminary guide works through the whole budget, including the M.Div.
Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.