Thanks for your desire to obtain consistently biblical counseling. What follows is a brief explanation of my perspective on counseling and why I don’t counsel people over the internet.

If you live in the San Diego area and desire counseling, please call (619) 462-9775 to schedule an appointment with one of the IBCD counselors. If you live outside of the San Diego area, please contact www.nanc.org or call (317) 337-9100 for a referral to a counselor in your area.

Because I believe that the ministry of counseling belongs primarily in the local church context, and because I believe that counseling is not properly a 50-minute visit once a week between strangers (who become friends through the counseling but have no other relationship), I have chosen to limit my counseling to the people of my local congregation (Grace Church, Rancho Bernardo).

Although it is true that help can be given in short meetings on a regular basis, help is best given and received in the broader context of life together in a body – where ongoing mutual encouragement and accountability is natural. Biblical counseling is not the dispersion of special knowledge by a select trained few who pontificate from an ivory tower, but is rather the more common ministry of believers who have been equipped by the Word and the Spirit in the work of “one another-ing” each other. In the local church context believers are called to love the Lord and each other, to know Him, themselves and their brothers and sisters, to speak the truth to one another and then to help each other with ongoing accountability and encouragement. These facets of the biblical care and cure of souls occur more naturally in the local church where ongoing transparency, life together and love flow out of the recognition of family and the mutual need for help.

In light of the above, it is my practice not to counsel anyone over the internet – please do not ask.

Aside from the lack of ongoing relationship, the anonymity of the internet is rife with other problems and any counsel given there is counsel given in the dark, where problems are presented and solutions are sought in a contrived, one-sided, “secret” venue. If you think you need help (and we all do at one time or another), you need to be known, loved, and helped by the believers the Lord has placed in your life. If you don’t attend a church where biblical counseling is offered, then I humbly plead with you to change churches. If you don’t want others in your church to know what you’re struggling with, it may be that your sinful pride is stopping you from receiving the help He has placed for you and I would humbly appeal to you find a godly older woman in your congregation who will mentor you, know you, love you, speak the truth to you and hold you accountable, as she learns and grows in godliness herself.