Interested in Biblical Counseling?
Open Door Church provides church-based, Christ-centered, biblical counseling to individuals, couples, and families to help them know Jesus, or know him more deeply, and to help them find and apply God’s answers for their personal and relational problems.
What Distinguishes Biblical Counseling from Other Forms of Counseling?
- Our counseling presents Jesus Christ as the crucified, risen Lord and Savior who, through his Word and his Spirit, can help us handle our personal and relational problems. Jesus alone provides the forgiving mercy, the wisdom, and the power we need for daily living.
- Our counseling uses the Bible as our main tool to diagnose, explain, and solve our problems. As God’s Word, the Bible provides thorough, authoritative, and sufficient guidance for every life situation we face, and it is richly superior to the competing counsel of secular or “christianized” psychologies.
- Our counseling reflects the love, kindness, and compassion of Jesus our Shepherd and Counselor. Biblical counseling is a caring process marked by Christ-like love, wisdom, and concern.
- Our counseling seeks to bring thorough and lasting godly change by addressing both the inward and the outward issues of our problems. Scripture alone goes deep enough to uncover and solve both our inward, heart struggles and our outward, behavioral struggles.
For Whom Do We Provide Counseling?
First, we provide counseling as a shepherding ministry to our Open Door members (or to regular attenders who are committed to ODBC and who are in the membership process).
Second, we provide counseling as an outreach ministry to people in our community who are not members of another Bible-believing church but who desire biblical counseling in our church context.
Who Are Our Counselors?
Each of our male and female counselors is an active Open Door member, each has completed a certified training program in biblical counseling, each has been approved by our church pastors, each receives ongoing continuing education training, and each receives oversight and consultation help from our Director of Biblical Counseling.
In addition, our pastors and staff ministers provide various levels of counseling.
By choice, we are not state-licensed counselors and we do not provide “professional” or “psychological” counseling. We counsel people as a ministry of our church based on the good news of Jesus Christ and based on our understanding of the Bible as God’s Word.
Is There a Financial Cost?
There are no fees for our counseling ministry. Through the regular, generous giving of our church members, we are able and delighted to offer counseling free of charge. At the same time, we encourage and welcome financial gifts to our ministry to help cover various costs (training, materials, childcare for our counselors, etc.).
How Does Someone Make an Appointment?
Step One: Download the following initial-session forms to read, complete, and submit:
- Open Door Church Biblical Counseling Agreement Form to read and sign
- Overview of Problem Form to complete
- Personal Information Form to complete
If you cannot download the above forms, you may pick up a copy at our church office during normal business hours: Monday-Thursday 8:30am-5:30pm.
Step Two: Submit your three completed forms by email ( [email protected]) or postal mail (Open Door Counseling Ministry, 9801 Durant Rd, Raleigh, NC, 27614), or drop them off at our church office.
Step Three: Our counseling staff will review your completed forms and contact you to discuss scheduling an initial session. Please do not contact our church office to schedule an appointment; our counseling ministry handles these requests separately. Our normal appointment slots are Sundays at 5:00pm, 6:00pm, and 7:00pm, and Wednesdays at 6:00pm, 7:00pm, and 8:00pm. Since we have limits on available counseling staff and office space, there might be a waiting list to see a counselor.
