Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church in counseling and discipleship.

Hello. Hello. Hello. We are still on the road at the biblical counseling coalition global summit. I'm excited about this particular episode.

We've got two people from a country that I have been wanting to go to for a very long time. I've got Daryl Berlin and Jason Winslade.

You got it.

Did I say that right?

That was perfect.

Nice. The accents. We've had what yeah. This conference, we had a little bit about accents, and so, thankfully, we get to you guys get to hear these New Zealand accents, and so I'm excited to do that. But I'm excited about this episode because coming from New Zealand, talking about biblical counseling as well as missions in this summit, and so these guys are gonna represent a little bit of that.

I'm excited about this conversation. So before we jump into the content, Daryl, would you share a little bit? And then Jason, share a little bit of your context, and then we'll jump into the New Zealand Biblical Counseling Association.

Sure. So I'm Daryl Burling, and I have I started the New Zealand Biblical Counselling Association in 2017 I think it was I was currently doing my doctoral work at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at the time and so looking for a way to support myself but also invest myself in New Zealand and what we could do. So I started two organizations we'll talk about one later but one of them was the New Zealand Biblical Counselling Association and it started with the goal of initially training and preparing people to start to do biblical counselling. It then ran out of steam because I got distracted with another project which again we'll come back to and now we're in the process we've got a we've added a few new members to the board this year and we're starting to do a bit of a ground up rethink and the news and the biblical counselling Coalition Global Summit has been really helpful to talk to other people, think through the approaches they've taken, what's worked, what hasn't, and then learn from that and find out what else is available that we can use back in New Zealand that's going to be appropriate for our context.

And also it's something that we can customize a little bit as well so we're not just dropping an American system into a foreign context and hoping it's just going to work so that sometimes does happen but in our case we don't necessarily want to do that so that's a little bit about me

yeah Jason Yeah. I'm Jason Winslay. As you mentioned, I live in Christchurch, which is in the South Island Of New Zealand. I pastor a church called Redemption Church, and that's I've been pastoring there for sixteen, going on seventeen years now. I've been involved in biblical counseling for a wee while that was probably out of necessity.

Pastoring in a church and especially a growing church really needing to know how to better equip be equipped to help people with the word of God and as our church has grown that obviously extends beyond the eldership and the responsibilities of the eldership. It's really equipping the saints to do the work of their ministry. And so for about the last six to seven years now, really been trying to encourage biblical counseling in our church. And by God's grace, we've seen people go through biblical counseling training. We've been able to see people become certified in biblical counseling as well.

And last year, we ended up launching New Zealand's first biblical counseling center from our church as an outreach from our church. And we now have we're taking in counselees from other churches, even unbelievers, treating that as evangelism, and God's been really kind. We really believe we're at at the very beginning stages of biblical counseling in New Zealand and certainly within our church as well. And it was real privilege to be invited to be part of the national body, the New Zealand Biblical Counseling Association this year and really teaming up with Daryl and the guys. And and, yeah, really excited about what's ahead.

That's really exciting. So for our New Zealand listeners, and y'all know who you are, and I'm excited about this episode for y'all because with some of the inquiries that I've received over the years of hearing the podcast, listening to it, wanting to do biblical counseling in their context, but not being able to because they don't know where to do it, or they don't have the means to get online and do all of that, or they lack the support from their teaching pastor elders, whatever the case. And so to have you guys available in there is really exciting. And so with that, Jason, how would you encourage those listeners in New Zealand no matter where they are? And is it just a North and south Island?

Is that kinda how it's referred to?

It is. Yeah.

No Middle Island?

There there is a very small island called Stewart Island down the very bottom, but it's small. I don't know how many people live there, but it's pretty small.

The closest you'd get would be someone like Jason from the South Island, which is the island in between the North Island and Stewart Island calling themselves Middle Earth.

Okay. Nice. Yeah.

Nice. But no, it's just the two islands. So I'm in the North Island. Jason's in the South Island, and we're primarily so the NZBCA has been very much focused on the North Island mostly because that's where we are. All the board members except for Jason are in the North Island.

So bringing Jason on has been really good for giving us a better view of the whole country. Not that we weren't focused on it's just that we didn't have the contacts and the ability to make those connections but having Jason on the ground in Christchurch means now we've got a fully national organizing body which and we're organizing conferences in the North Island and South Island going forward rather than just in the North Island which is what we did in the past so I think overall what we've got now is a solid body we've got six members on our board of them three are pastors two of us more academic and one is she's she we've got a woman on our board as well which is great and she's really helpful from a she's got a social work background so she brings another sort of perspective and she's super practical which is something that I lack which is a real blessing as well so very thankful for the board that we have, and the future's looking good. So we've got a whole new set of energy now, and I think that's gonna make a difference going forward.

I'm really excited about that. And so where are you guys at? What's the name of the cities? Where are you and where are you? And where is New Zealand Biblical Counseling Association?

Okay. New Zealand Biblical Counseling Association is in New Zealand. It's just nationwide. So we don't have an office as such.

Oh, you don't? Okay.

Yeah. We're actually in different the border the board is in different places around New Zealand. So I live in Christchurch. Daryl lives in Brooer.

Rua, so you have a brick and mortar office type We of

do, so yeah we meet over video and get together obviously for conferences and things like that.

Yeah and again it's if you have a place and New Zealand is a really it's a long country, if you turn it sideways it's approximately two thirds of the width of The United States Of America it's about 2,000 miles or thereabouts so it's quite a long kind of country it's all one time zone so it's vertically challenged I guess you could call it's vertically just one long island so it's all in the same time zone but it's quite a big distance down that island which makes it quite challenging from being in the same location and there's a big piece of water in between as well so you can't just drive from one end of the country to another you

can

drive from one end of one island to the other end of the other island but you have to get on a boat to the other island and so it's not quite that simple and

even

though we're all on one country because of some of those distances like it's five hours for me to get to Wellington by car or four and a half hours to get to by and then to get to where Jason is it's another four and a half hours by car and then there's a three hour boat ride in the middle and then if you want to take a plane I've got to fly to Auckland to fly to Christchurch to fly to Wellington so you end up in this it's just not as easy to get around as you might think it would be it used to be easier but Air New Zealand which is our main airline has consolidated routes and just made it a little bit more challenging

so

it is what it is but it makes more sense for us to be a virtual organization and be able to reach everyone everywhere and just travel to these different conference venues and put them in different cities every year so that we share the love so to speak. We do also have the ability to call or summon us, not quite the right way of saying it, but we can be summoned so to speak. So you can go to our website and you can actually say, hey, request a speaker or we can even do workshops as well. So if you're in a city and you've got a church that wants to get started on biblical counseling, you can go to our website, sign up and we can basically send like me and Peter or whoever it happens to be come talk to your church about the basics of biblical counselling, how to get started, do a workshop, teach you some basics, of that kind of thing. So we can do that sort of thing and that's one of the things we really want to continue to do as well.

So that's a great way to get started. If you are listening to this and you are in New Zealand, go to biblicalcounseling.nznz if you're in New Zealand and just go to the request a speaker section and ask us get in touch and we'll do what we can to come visit, spend some time with you, figure out what we can do to serve

Great. So Jason, your particular role?

Yes. So I'm the pastor in in my local church where I'll be pastoring for sixteen, seventeen years now and just as a fellow board member on the NZBCA, so New Zealand.

Yes. So are you carrying the day to day of the organization as far as like everything that Daryl just alluded to? Are you the one helping to drive that the most?

Yeah. We yeah. We have a team. Yeah. So there's nationally, and we're building that team.

We're in the process of building that at the moment. But, yeah, a lot of what I do on a national level is very much what I was already doing on a local level. So we've been trying to encourage biblical counseling. We've been trying to we've been doing conferences and so forth. We've come under a national umbrella of NZBCA now, and it's great to be part of national have a national identity, national team.

Yeah. And, yeah, really, we are in the process of building the team but while we're building the team things are already happening we have two conferences planned for next year.

Oh can you talk about those for a minute?

Yeah absolutely yeah so we have a North Island and a South Island conference happening next year it's never had two conferences in one year within New Zealand biblical counseling. So we're pretty excited about that. The one in March is happening in Christchurch and we have registration for that online on our website biblicalcounseling.nz. We have Doctor. Jim Fain coming out and this will be his second time to New Zealand speaking at the conference.

He's the director of Rod and Staff Ministries biblical counseling and so very experienced and supervising counselors to get into the counseling role. We have him coming out. He's doing a pre conference on a Friday, a full conference on a Saturday it's really geared that conference is going to be very much for those who are already counseling or in training in counseling. They can go to the pre conference. It's going to be really geared for that for that level and then Saturday it's basically for everyone.

Whoever wants to come can come along to it. This year at the conference we had this year we had over a 100 adults attend and about 60% of those were just those who were interested in biblical counseling which we were incredibly excited about because it showed the vast majority of those who are attending they want to learn how to help other people with the bible. And so coming on that Saturday will certainly help with that. So that's that's the South Island Conference in March. Then in September, we have another conference happening in the North Island that's in Auckland, our largest our largest city up in Auckland.

And we have Stuart Scott coming out for that, and he's gonna be doing the similar thing. We're gonna have a pre conference on a Friday and also a main conference on a Saturday as well.

Nice. That is very nice. Man, I would love to go to that.

Yeah. Come over. Yeah.

You said, yeah. I don't know if those dates will work, but I yeah. I that's one of the places I definitely wanna go while I still have breath.

So We've heard that so many times this week here this week. Yeah.

I'm sure you have. Yeah. I'm sure you have.

So come along. We'll set up a conference around you being there. Fine. Yeah. In fact, in 2027, we've got Garrett Higbee coming out so we've got to work out a date with that but basically he's coming he said he was going to come to New Zealand for his anniversary so he said great why don't we put on conference around it he's like sure okay so that's gonna happen.

Yeah. When you have those conferences, you guys are gonna have exhibitors?

Yeah. I I heard, but Sure. We're we're happy to have ABC there. So yeah. If you come along.

Yeah. We yeah. We'll have to figure that out. And so that would leads me to my next questions as people listen to this, and hopefully you guys get some inquiries. Before I jump to that, to those, as far as, like, volunteering, you said you guys are looking for help.

I don't know if it's in the budget to hire people, but I'm sure there would be people who would wanna volunteer to learn more about that so that they could potentially get that in their own church and see understand that more. Any thoughts on that? What would be a good way for that pathway?

Yeah. Sure. If they wanted to help on a national level, on our we have a volunteer page on the on our website, and so you can go if get involved under that. You have volunteer or partner. Can't remember what how it's put now.

You know, it's serve with us. And basically if you wanted to help out with

I'll find it put in the show notes.

With the con with conferences, with administration, with some developing of resources, things like that, you can jump on a national level if you wanna help partner with the national mission. If you if people are wanting help in their local church, that's why we exist. We really exist to be able to help to strengthen and equip local churches to become collaborative bodies of soul care, not just for themselves, but getting themselves to a place of strength so that they can then do that as an outreach to help other people with the bible and so we would anyone who's wanting any kind of help at all whether it be training, whether it be counseling you know within their churches, whether it be even starting a counseling center, collaborating any of those sorts of things we're right there to help and we'll do as much as we can it's all free of charge for that so we're just volunteering to help to see soul care really established within local churches so I would say just reach out we've got so many contact forms

on

our website.

Okay

good. If you want training there's a contact form. If you want counseling, if you want to start a center, if you want to request a speaker, if you want to serve there's contact forms galore and there's great people behind that can answer that direct that and get the help within a week, I'd say at least. So I would say just reach out there, and we can do what we can do to help.

Nice. So do you guys have any how many counselors do you have? And I just wanna make sure that I'm not drawing attention to y'all if it's not something that you offer. But as far as, like, counseling, like, virtually, if somebody, like, hears about this or they want it somebody wants to share it for counseling, somebody that they have a friend or whoever, is that something that you offer? So you're not offering are you offering counseling just whoever needs it?

Absolutely. So on our website, biblicalcounseling.nz, there's a specific tab that says request counseling. We have the whole application forms, the PDIs for those who are biblical counselors, the whole application forms, the whole confidentiality agreements, the digital signing of those kind of documents to enable counseling to start. All of that is already online. So that comes through to our national counseling and training person whose name is Sam.

Sam then evaluates the request for counseling and depending on which region they're at, they'll then direct them to either a certified biblical counselor or someone who's a seasoned pastor who's faith who can faithfully help them with the bible. And so we direct them in that kind of way. So if people know if that if they know someone that needs some counseling, we'll do that and we'll direct them to somewhere where they can get some help.

It's an amazing service. We we do hope for

that to fade out though. We do because what we really our heart really is we're enabling we're enabling look, we're standing in place for local churches at the moment. So we have a an online presence where people can come. But like I said, the vision and the big picture vision is to have local churches as little hubs. We'd love to see tens, if not hundreds of little local churches offering exactly what we're doing on a national level.

So we this is a temporary thing. So, yes, we're taking it nationally and we'll redirect it locally, but we do wanna see local churches and we wanna help local churches get to that place of strength. Something that might just be helpful as well if you're wondering how might that look on a local church front. If you go to hopecounselingcenter.nzed, just one word, hopecounselingcenter.nzed, that's our church's outreach counseling center, and that's something that we're doing at the moment, not only for our members, but also as an outreach as well. We can help local churches establish exactly what they'll see on that website, the processes, the forms, the policies, everything like that.

So it doesn't have to be a massive thing for a local church to organize themselves to start doing that kind of outreach.

Yeah. That's really good. And two two things on that is, one, to have the church recognize that as a missional like, the fact that it has a missional purpose to it.

Yeah.

So being able to going back to your point about becoming a training center and having that because one of the things in our own counseling ministry that we had is we were the pastor's best friend. Because you're like, oh, we'll just send them to truth renewed. We'll just no. We wanna be your overflow. We want this to be in your church so that you can handle your own.

Yeah. So I I love that vision. And what I appreciate about it is it seems like the Lord is really making that clear to a lot of people where that's on their hearts, and they want to get involved in that and put it back to the church where it belongs. Yeah. So that's a great vision, Darrell.

Way to way to get things going, and then surround yourself with like minded men and and women who are able to try to move that forward.

So one of the things I think for New Zealand churches to be aware of with biblical counseling is historically, the church was where people would turn to get help. Now that changed in the nineteenth century, the 1800s. And as a result of the what we now call the mental health movement and all that kind of thing, effectively the church lost its place and we pastors gave over the care of souls effectively to the state, to medical institutions and so on. And what we're saying here is that Christ offers hope. And as the church, we offer Christ.

And therefore, if you want the end person in your community to have the hope of Christ, they should be coming to you and you should be equipped to help them. And so if they're struggling with addiction, they're struggling with porn, if they're struggling with drugs, whatever it happens to be that marriages or relationship struggles, whatever it happens to be, Christ offers hope. And the mission that we have is to give you the tools to offer that hope to these people saved or or unsaved. Christ is the answer to our problems because sin is the greatest problem we have. The state can't solve that problem.

We can solve that. We can't solve that problem. Why? That Christ can solve that problem. And the task of the church is to point people to Christ so that He becomes their rock.

He becomes the one who works in their life to transform their hearts so that they now have a life that is upwardly focused, focused on how do I please the Lord so that the Lord then works sanctification in them and is glorified by the transformation of his people into the image of his son. That's what we're trying to achieve. And so there's an opportunity for local churches here to use this, not only to serve their own churches and their own body and to help people who come to church regularly, but also to serve their communities as well. And that's one of the things that Hope Counselling Centre that Jason set up is doing a great job of. They're getting inquiries from their community and they're able to help people, lead them to Christ, show them that Christ solves these problems.

And it's a fantastic ministry. Even if people don't get saved and don't really solve their problems, at least now they know that this is where I need to go to solve my problems and they know what Christ offers and what God calls them to. Yeah. And they can make a conscious decision about what they do with that.

Yeah. That's really great. It's just a tremendous vision and I just appreciate it because whether you're in New Zealand or The States or wherever you are, that really is the heart. And just the evangelistic task that every church wants to do well at, seeing biblical counseling as a means to accomplish that to everything that you just said. So that's awesome, guys.

Thank you so much. And I do hope, Lord willing, that I will be at that conference in 2027 with Garrett Higbee as we do a lot with Garrett. Yeah. And so I would definitely do that. Maybe I can bring we can bring speak the truth, and then we record.

That'll be our next time recording of podcast together.

Sounds good.

As in 2020 you to that. We're gonna keep you to that.

Hey. Daryl's got my number. I don't think you got my number yet. Well, great, man. Yeah.

We definitely wanna keep in contact. Again, thank you guys for this. And then for those of you who are New Zealand, I hope you take advantage of this episode. For those of you who have reached out to me, that this is the answer. That this is what's gonna help you moving in the right direction because we're here in The States, but you got somebody locally or not quite locally depending on what island you're on.

But you got something in your neck of the woods. And so for that, thank you guys for being obedient. It's a pleasure meeting you guys. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you guys next time.