A Calvary Chapel Distinctive of Biblical Counseling

Every Member a Minister of Soul Care

A Description of This Series of Blog Posts

The blog that follows are written from both gratitude and conviction. I have had the rare privilege of being discipled by two men who shaped not only my ministry but the broader movement of biblical counseling within Calvary Chapel—Pastor Chuck Smith and Pastor Bob Hoekstra. Their teachings on the sufficiency of Scripture and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit have deeply influenced everything that has been developed at the Calvary Chapel Fellowship of Biblical Counselors (CCFBC).

I served as a staff pastor at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa under Pastor Chuck’s leadership and later alongside Pastor Bob Hoekstra, assisting in the development of his Counseling God’s Way materials. Those were formative years of theological sharpening, pastoral apprenticeship, and dependence upon the grace of God. When Pastor Chuck first penned Calvary Chapel Distinctives, I was serving as a campus pastor at Calvary Chapel Bible College, where these truths were a constant part of our discussion and practice. This work continues that legacy.

This series is prepared for Calvary Chapel Fellowship of Biblical Counselors—pastors, women’s ministry leaders, and disciplers being trained to carry forward a ministry of soul care in the local church. We are enrolling leaders across the Calvary Chapel family to train the next generation of servants who will counsel God’s way.

Soul Care and Biblical Counseling

Throughout the next blogs, the term soul care ministry is used interchangeably with biblical counseling. This language reflects a conviction central to our training at the Academy: biblical counseling is not a clinical enterprise but the ministry of the Word among the people of God. It belongs to the church, not the secular lab. The Apostle Paul’s vision for the church was one where every believer “admonishes one another” (Romans 15:14) and “speaks the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15).

Ministering Servant and Disciple in Care

Instead of counselor and counselee, this work uses Ministering Servant and Disciple in Care. The Ministering Servant is the believer who serves as an instrument of God’s truth and grace. They are not a clinician dispensing theory but a Spirit-filled servant ministering Scripture with compassion. The Disciple in Care is the believer receiving that ministry—someone learning, as we all are, to walk by faith and grow in grace. This vocabulary distinguishes the biblical model of soul care from modern psychological practice, while emphasizing the priesthood of all believers and the relational nature of biblical discipleship.

Why This Work Exists

Calvary Chapel Distinctives of Biblical Counseling is not a replacement for Pastor Chuck’s original work, but a continuation of it. The same Spirit who birthed Calvary Chapel’s distinctives in the 20th century is now shaping its ministry of soul care in the 21st. Each chapter corresponds to Chuck’s framework but is reinterpreted through the lens of Counseling God’s Way—where the sufficiency of Scripture and the centrality of Christ define both the message and the method.

It is my prayer that these pages will help pastors and leaders rediscover the biblical conviction that every believer is called to participate in soul care—that the local church is the living counseling center of God. May these principles inspire a generation of Ministering Servants who depend upon the Holy Spirit, proclaim the sufficiency of Christ, and minister grace and truth in love.

“We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ.”

Colossians 1:28