Biblical counseling
Someone sits across from you with a broken marriage, their anger or their grief, and that hour decides something. Biblical counseling is a proven method for that hour —how you listen, what you teach, what happens between one session and the next— and Iglesia Fiel is the tool that carries it: on your screen and on your counselee’s phone.
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The approach
It is also called nouthetic, from the Greek nouthesia: to instruct, correct and warn — with Scripture and out of affection, not out of technique. It starts from a conviction that is awkward for software and natural for a pastor: a person's deepest problems are not problems of information but of the heart, and God did not leave his church without resources to address them.
“Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”
Before opening the Bible, the method requires distinguishing three things that are not treated alike. It is the step people assume this approach skips — and it is exactly where it begins.
He blows up at his children most nights, and hates himself afterwards for it.
Here there is sin to confess, and something to do: concrete repentance, a plan for change, and someone walking alongside. The guilt he feels is not the enemy — it is the signal.
Her husband humiliates her in front of others, and has for years.
Here there is nothing to confess. There is protecting to do, evil to name for what it is, and —where it applies— authorities to involve. Confusing this with the first is the worst mistake a counselor can make.
She buried her mother in March and has not slept since.
Here there is no guilt and no culprit: there is grief, a body, and time. You comfort, you accompany, and you rule out the medical before going further. Calling this sin does harm.
Three people with the same symptom can be in three different categories. That is why the module asks for the category before the diagnosis — and why this approach is not "telling people everything is their fault".
The shift that changes everything
The hour you spend together is for understanding what is going on, opening Scripture and deciding what to do. But life is lived on the other six days — and that is where a person starts responding differently, or does not. That is why homework is not an afterthought: it is the instrument of the method, and the counselor prepares the next one before this session ends.
The practical corollary, and what most orders a case: when homework is not done, it is neither overlooked nor punished — it becomes the subject of the next session. The reason it was not done is usually the most valuable datum in the process.
It is not therapy with a verse on top
It has its own structure: how information is gathered, how the problem is defined, how instruction happens, how it closes. Not a borrowed technique in Christian language.
It does not ignore the body or medicine
Physical health is part of the intake form, and medical causes are ruled out before going further. A thyroid problem is not solved with a reading assignment.
It does not blame the one who suffered
That is what the three categories are for. Someone who comes because of what was done to them does not get a list of sins: they get protection and truth.
It does not replace the church
The process ends when the person stands within the body: with accountability, service, and a plan they wrote themselves.
The problem
The method does not fit in a text field. Homework that reveals as much as it changes, a report that feeds supervision, a closure prepared from the start — none of that exists in a CRM with a "counseling notes" module. And the real instruments stay where they always were: in paper folders and Word documents that never talk to each other.
The module, phase by phase
We did not invent a workflow: we follow the one biblical counseling teaches. Each phase brings its instruments, connected to each other — and if you already use them on paper, you will recognize them one by one.
Before the first session, the counselor already knows who is coming.
Fourteen-area PDI
The counselee fills it on their phone, at their pace, before session 1. From least to most intimate, and all optional.
Counseling agreement
With the limits of confidentiality made explicit, versioned per congregation, accepted in person or from the counselee’s phone.
Risk protocol
Configurable per church: what to do before crisis, abuse or risk — visible where it is needed, when it is needed.
The three categories
What they did, what was done to them, what happened to them — the problem is defined in biblical categories before translating clinical vocabulary.
It is not an ordinary session with different content: it has different steps, and the editor knows it.
Is this person truly a believer?
The 1 Corinthians 2:14 question, recorded — because the whole approach depends on it.
Obtaining commitment
Having rapport is not having involvement. It is asked out loud and recorded: they want to continue, they commit to the homework, and at what time of day they will do it.
Hope with its text
An element of the method, not the session’s tone. If it is not recorded, it cannot feed the report or the log.
Every session follows the method’s steps, and what gets recorded gets used again.
The session, in its seven steps
Homework review, data gathered, instruction (put off / put on), Scriptures, hope, homework, prayer.
Homework with the eight characteristics
Which passage, how many times a week, which columns to log, how many minutes. People do not change in a fog.
The counselee’s journal
The anger log with its classic columns, one entry per episode, on their phone. It cannot be rewritten: an editable journal stops being evidence.
Case agenda
The eight base topics seeded in one click, plus the case’s own goals, ordered.
Sixteen-question report
Pre-filled with what the session already recorded. The story of change accumulates, dated, report after report.
Session log
The master grid computed by itself: what was assigned, what was taught, what was done — and the non-compliance pattern flagged, which is what calls for escalation.
Supervision
Supervision reads and comments on the report; it does not edit it. A reserved case is seen by no one but the counselor and the parties.
Closure is prepared from the beginning, not announced at the end.
Discharge criteria
Adams’s four P’s and the nine indicators from intern training, as a list that informs — never as paperwork that blocks.
Session spacing
The last sessions two or three weeks apart, as proof the person stands without the weekly appointment.
Three-month plan
The counselee writes it on their phone, not the counselor. It is their first self-assigned homework and works as a final exam.
Closing letter and check-up
The letter naming what God did, the final review of memorized Scripture, and the check-up at two or three months — with an automatic reminder to the counselor.
The engine of the method
In the session a person tells you what they remember and what they dare to say. The week, on the other hand, shows what is actually there: whether they tried, when they wrote it down, what got in the way. That is why homework is not loose text — it is tied to its session, its specifics are defined, and the counselee carries it on their phone.
Every assignment stays tied to the session that assigned it. That traceability feeds the log.
The counselee logs each episode on their phone, close to where it happened — not a summary the night before.
Step 1 of every session is reviewing the previous homework, with the counselee’s journal in view.
Two consecutive sessions with homework undone highlight themselves in the log. One undone assignment is information; two in a row ask why.
A log that can be rewritten stops being evidence of what happened, and becomes evidence of what one prefers to have thought. That is why the counselee’s journal is append-only.
Confidentiality by design
Access control is enforced on the server, not in the UI — and it is tested against the adversarial case.
Cases are not visible to the rest of the leadership or the congregation. The counseling capability is assigned by profile.
For leader-counselees or sensitive cases: not even the senior pastor sees it. Only the counselor and the parties.
Supervision reads the report and comments on it. The counselor’s answers are never touched.
The counselee accepts an agreement that states what is confidential and the biblical limits of that confidentiality.
Custody of information
The question a wary counselee asks under their breath, and the one their counselor has to be able to answer with facts.
Server rules grant the super-administrator no access to any collection where a case narrative lives. They can know a case exists; they cannot open it. This is not an internal policy: it is the rule the server enforces.
Keep it, anonymize it, or destroy it after a period following closure. Where ACBC recommends destroying, it is destroyed; where local law requires keeping, it is kept. A daily sweep carries it out, and warns the counselor seven days ahead.
What the counselor writes is encrypted on their computer before it leaves. The server stores text it cannot read, and neither can we. If the phrase is lost, those records are not recovered: that is the property that makes it worth something, which is why the system requires printing a recovery envelope before turning it on.
The document you hand a counselee —or an authority— is generated by the system from your configuration, not from a template. If it says records are destroyed after ninety days, it is because the sweep is configured to do it.
We hold no certification seals, and be wary of anyone showing them: no government certifies software of this kind. What you can choose is the legal framework your church works under —GDPR, ACBC practice, your country's data laws— and the module configures itself with the controls that framework requires.
To be clear
The biblical (nouthetic) counseling model in the tradition of Jay Adams: the four phases, the put-off/put-on dynamic of Ephesians 4, homework as the engine of change, the case report and closure with the counselee’s own plan. The module was built by checking it against the documented practice of the method, phase by phase.
To get the most out of it, yes: the PDI, the agreement, homework with its journal and the three-month plan reach their phone (iOS and Android). But the counselor can record the agreement in person and run the whole case from the web if the counselee does not use the app.
All of them. Counseling is a base module of the platform: it is not gated by price but by capability — only the counselors designated by the church can see it.
Yes. The case report and the session log have a print view designed for PDF: no interface borders, full answers. That is the current path for supervision outside the church.
That is what the reserved case is for: neither the senior pastor nor supervision sees it — only the counselor carrying it and the parties. The restriction is enforced on the server and tested against direct queries.
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No credit card · Included in every plan · Support in Spanish & English