July 6, 2026 Show with Russell Threet on “Pastor, You Must Be a Counselor”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this sixth day of July 2026.

A Recent Debate on Losing Salvation

Before I introduce to you my guest and co-host and our topic of the day, I want to let you know that the two-day debate that we recently had on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio between Nazarene Pastor Jared K. Henry and Reformed Baptist Pastor Jeremiah Nortier on the theme, Can Truly Born-Again Believers Lose Their Salvation, a debate during which the Nazarene pastor affirmed that proposition, that true believers can lose their salvation, and the Calvinist or Reformed Baptist pastor involved in the debate, Jeremiah Nortier, denied or opposed that thesis.

That two-day debate, or two-part debate, is now available not only in an audio form on ironsharpensironradio .com, but it is also available now in a video format that you can watch on YouTube. Just type in the search engine on YouTube, Jeremiah Nortier versus Jared K. Henry on Losing Salvation.

That should be good enough to get you to that video. So I just thought I'd let you know. It was really, I think, a well-done debate. Both men were respectful and handled the issues very well. And I hope that you tune in and listen to it and spread the word, spread the links for that debate to those whom you know and love, especially those, perhaps, that you know who a true believer can indeed lose their salvation, if you want to lovingly correct them on that.

I think that the two-day debate that I had on Ironsharpensironradio .com will be an excellent tool to point them to the truth of the matter. Well, today we have a returning guest. I am delighted to have back on the program.

Russell Threatt and the Need for Biblical Counseling

His name is Russell Threatt. He is Professor of Biblical Counseling and Dean of the Counseling Certificate Program at Forge Theological Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. And he's going to be addressing today the theme of one of his books, Pastor, You Must Be a Counselor, Restoring Counseling to the Heart of Pastoral Ministry.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Ironsharpensironradio, Russell Threatt.

Thanks for having me, Chris, I'm glad to be back with you guys.

And we also have joining me as a special co-host today, the man who actually introduced me to Russell and urged me to invite him on the program. His name is Pastor Jason Contino, who by now should be no stranger to our audience.

He's been on the program a number of times. He is pastor of Harborview Christian Church in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York. And thank you for joining me as my special co-host today, Pastor Jason.

Thanks for having me, Chris. Well, first, going back to Russell, please tell us about Forge Theological Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina.

Forge, while Columbia, South Carolina is where it's kind of listed as headquartered, it's kind of headquartered everywhere. Forge is a fully online seminary. And I would say this about Forge. I think Forge is the answer to a problem that a lot of ministers have had in looking for further education.

It is a thoroughly academic institution, solid. It's broadly reformed in nature. There's all of the professors there, they affirm several different things, but either the Westminster Confession or the 1689 London Baptist Confession.

But what Forge has going for it is they have a fantastic faculty, as well as good course content, good degree programs. But what they also have is affordability for such a high quality education at a level that I'm not familiar with anywhere else.

They're set up like a subscription service. And depending on what degree level you're at, I think the way it works is it's somewhere between $70 and $85 per month as a subscription service. And you just pay that until you finish your program and withdraw.

And so Forge is wonderful as far as an educational opportunity for pastors out there who need full cost.

And now tell us about West Park Baptist Church in Ozark, Arkansas, where you serve as senior pastor.

West Park is a great church over here in western Arkansas. I've been here almost four years. We are just what I would call just a good old Baptist church. We preach the truth. I preach expository. Still have three services a week, do outreach in the community.

We have for a smaller church, we have a pretty large ministry footprint. We're planning a church about 40 miles down the road from us. Just got started in that process that's going now. We have other things that we're connected to and involved in.

And so love our church. Great folks. We've had some good ministry in the last few weeks in particular. We went to church camp and had a one of our adult sponsors who had been a regular visitor at our church who had a Catholic background.

They came to Christ while we were at church camp. And so that was wonderful.

And how would you describe your congregation theologically?

We are our congregation is part of the Baptist Missionary Association of America. And so we affirm the BMA's doctrinal statement as well as the New Hampshire Confession as kind of our foundational doctrinal beliefs, kind of summarizing the way we believe.

You know, I'm very much in the stream of Calvinistic Baptist. I don't go as far to call myself just highly Reformed, but overall, just we're a Bible preaching church, we're a Baptist church at our heart.

Like I said, the New Hampshire Confession pretty well encompasses where we're at.

Great. Well, if anybody wants more details on the FORGE Theological Seminary, go to FORGE .EDUCATION, FORGE .EDUCATION. And for more details on the church where my guest, the senior pastor, West Park Baptist Church of Ozark, Arkansas, go to WESTPARKOZARK .ORG, WESTPARKOZARK .ORG.

And now, Pastor Jason Contino, tell our listeners about Harborview Christian Church. And more just on Long Island. Yeah, we are a non-denominational Christian church in the Reformed Baptist tradition, old to the First London Baptist Confession of Faith from 1646.

And we just embrace the new covenant as the fulfillment of God's redemptive plan and seek to glorify him by living in the grace and truth of Jesus Christ, pointing people to him every step of the way, preach expositionally, as does Dr. Russell Threed.

And it was a joy to get a tour from you and your lovely wife recently when I was visiting Long Island. And the Lord has blessed you with this beautiful building. This church dates back to the 19th century, and it was very cool to explore that building with you.

Hopefully, one of these days, I'll get out there for an actual worship service. Yeah, I'll have to wrestle you away from the guys at Hope Reformed Baptist Church. Maybe you can stay at my house. I'll just kidnap you and drive you to Hope.

Well, if anybody wants to know more about Harborview Christian Church at Fort Jefferson, Long Island, go to harborviewchristian .church, harborviewchristian .church. Well, we have a very interesting theme today, and the theme actually may raise the ire of some pastors who are listening.

The title of the book appears to be an admonishment or even a rebuke to pastors who are not counselors or conducting counseling. The theme, again, the title of the book, Pastor, You Must Be a Counselor, Restoring Counseling to the Heart of Pastoral Ministry.

I can remember a dear friend of mine who is now in heaven, a Calvinistic Baptist pastor on Long Island who is also a New Covenant theologian. I can remember him saying to me years ago in a voice of complaint, we don't have counseling here.

We just let the preached Word do the counseling. That should be enough. When we open up the Word of God from behind the pulpit, if you're there listening, that should be counseling enough. Obviously, you would disagree with that approach, Russell, and I disagree with it myself, even though he was a dear friend who I love deeply.

Tell us about your motivation for writing this book. Why did you find this book to be a need, even though there are scores of books on biblical counseling available? Why the need for this?

What compelled you to write it? Well, I think that the big thing is that though biblical counseling, which I'm a practitioner of and a professor of, trained biblical counselors, is on the rise and has been for decades now, I still see a lot of pastors in a situation that I think was sort of defined in the generations that have gone before them.

We've seen churches and pastors themselves kind of redefine the role of a pastor. We expect them to preach and administrate and lead and oversee programs, but when it gets particular, you know, someone struggling with sin, marriage issues, addiction, anxiety issues, whatever it is, we've been taught, even at the seminary and Bible college level, to kind of send them off somewhere else.

And I wanted to call pastors back to really the functional role of shepherding. If you're going to actually shepherd people, you have to go, hey, I believe in preaching. I'm a preacher, and I believe in preaching.

But I would say that pastoral shepherding, biblical counseling, whatever you want to call it, done right, is simply in the private setting what preaching is in the public. Amen.

Amen. And tell us why people have to be very cautious about going to a self-professed counselor who happens to be a professed Christian. They may or may not be a pastor or an elder. They may exclusively be a counselor.

But there are a host of different ideologies involved when it comes to counseling, some of which are at great odds with one another. So what are perhaps the warning signs, in your opinion, as to why someone should either hesitate seeking counseling from an individual or even be more than hesitant to avoid it altogether?

Well, now, I'll be very upfront here. I am a convicted biblical counselor. I believe in the biblical-nothetic approach from top to bottom. And there are a lot of biblical counselors that just throw lots of rocks at psychology, and they spend all their time doing that.

I will try not to do that, but I would say this. I believe that the psychological world in general, on the secular side, is man's best answer to the problems of life apart from God. Most of those models and the men who founded them operate from a strictly atheistic standpoint in the development of the different psychological models.

That's just historical fact. And even those—and I have great friends who are what we would call integrative or Christian counselors who are psychologists who are Christian. I think they're faithful brothers and sisters, most of them.

But I think that there is a fundamental problem with most of the psychological models out there in that they run counter to Scripture in so many places that I don't see how you can apply a consistent biblical worldview in using.

I have no problem with someone dealing with a lay counselor, and, you know, I train lay counselors. But I think primarily the best situation is when people within the life of their own local church are able to receive solid biblical counsel.

Now, I talk out of both sides of my mouth because I counsel people that are not members of my particular local congregation, but I do my very best to involve their pastors and elders as much as is possible and obviously with the permission of the one being counseled.

Because my goal is not to keep somebody for the long term, my goal is to turn them back into the regular ministry and support of the local church, because I think that's where the majority of their growth and even healing is going to take place.

But overall, I think you've got to be very wary, if you're a solid Bible-believing Christian, of a system that at its heart runs counter to the word of God.

Tom, in fact, Pastor Jason Contino, what were the compelling reasons that you actually sought out to be trained as a counselor at Forge Theological Seminary? Yeah, to be perfectly honest, I was looking at the electives and finishing up my master's degree, and I saw that the classes that I need were the exact same amount of credits that I would have needed for my certificate in biblical counseling.

And I said, what could be more valuable for my sheep? Now, I come from my secular life. I was both a nurse and a police officer, police detective. So I have a lot of experience in dealing with both people who have mental illnesses and dealing with professionals.

And I finished up my career, as you know, Chris, Special Victims Child Exploitation Section, working with wonderful people in both social work and psychology, and trying to help people, help young people, help young people who, as my biblical worldview grew, and I was considering, I was an elder, and I was considering going into ministry, and here I am as a detective.

And for the first time in my career, I had people who had injured souls. They didn't have a bicycle stolen or a house burglarized, but they had been affected in a way through the victimization. They had been affected in a way that I said, there must be something more.

And I started to see that the Bible is all-sufficient. It's a distinctive that I hold to, and now as a pastor that I hold to. And so one thing led into another. And as I took the biblical counseling classes, after being a pastor for five years now, I started to see that this is something that I think all pastors would do well to realize, that this is what we all need.

We all need to recognize, as I think Russell in your book says, as a pastor, you have no problem standing in front of your congregation, opening up God's Word, saying, thus saith the Lord, and speaking to 50 people, 100 people, 500 people, depending on the size of your church.

And then Monday or Tuesday morning, somebody comes into your office with a pointed problem, and you're going to reach into your drawn hat, give them a card of someone, and say, go speak to this person now.

I can no longer help you. And you're going to put them into the lap of somebody who might be Hindu or Jewish or Buddhist or atheist or Muslim. It makes no sense. If we believe that this is God's all-sufficient Word, then is it sufficient for everything or not?

And do you have a question for Russell, your former professor? You know, I guess my question for Russell would be what I learned in my career. Was that as we try not to demonize these professionals, and so oftentimes such well-meaning, and they do valuable work in these lines of work that they're in.

Russell, how do you make sure that you—sometimes their diagnosis or their view of something is something that can be very helpful to us. Could you expound on that, perhaps?

Yeah, so one of the things where, you know, I think we can—somebody comes to my office and they come in and they have a particular issue that they're dealing with, situation, and they come in and they say, you know, I've been diagnosed bipolar or with depression or telenovela, whatever other diagnosis.

You know, I've done some online work with veterans and first responders. And, you know, most of those folks come in saying, I've been diagnosed with PTSD. What do I do with that? Well, what I don't do is allow that to become the get-out-of-jail-free card for everything that they're dealing with.

What it does for me is, I would say, twofold. Number one, it gives me some information, because I am familiar enough with, you know, the diagnosis that people receive. And, in fact, I have some books from a biblical counseling standpoint that will say, you know, if someone's diagnosed this, then the DSM says this is something that they observed, right?

And so I understand what a professional counselor might have seen in order to give them that label. That gives me information. But what it also does, as a biblical counselor, I'm going to tell them, look, this isn't something that's going to excuse what we're doing.

We're still accountable to God for everything that we do and say and think. But it does give me a place to stand and know where I probably need to operate maybe a little more slowly and with more grace and more compassion.

Maybe not be as confrontational in that area of their life right at the beginning, where you might be in other situations. And so, again, it's information. It informs my grace and practice, and it gives me a place to begin, although I don't let it change the way that I understand the word of God and seek to apply the word of God.

R .C. Spiegel. And I just wanted to quickly give our email address if anybody listening would like to join the conversation and ask a question of Russell Threatt. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. That is C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Please only remain anonymous if your question is involving a personal and private matter. And having a biblical counselor on the show obviously lends itself to that being a strong possibility that you have a serious issue involving the need for counsel or you have a loved one who does, and it's about an issue that is very personal and private.

Please feel free to remain anonymous. We would actually want you to in those cases. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. How do you respond to some of the critics of the way counseling can be conducted, both biblical counselors and so-called Christian counselors, where it seems at least on the surface—and of course it could be well beyond just seeming like something in many cases—but like you are adding a commercial aspect to the body of Christ, a very clinical aspect where people are filing in, perhaps a church building or perhaps it's a separate building, and paying for counseling services, and it may have a detached feeling, and even more than just a feeling, from the care of a shepherd, if you follow what I'm saying.

How do you respond to those who complain about that phenomenon?

Well, I would say, Chris, that that's not my framework for biblical counseling in general. While I do at times have kind of formalized appointments and things like that, number one, a lot of biblical counselors never charge for their services.

I don't think there's something wrong with that necessarily. I'll be upfront. I have a contract with a big church out of Florida. I do some counseling for them, and they pay me a small amount to do that.

But overall, I look at biblical counseling—the best way to simplify it is I say it's discipleship with a laser focus, right? A lot of biblical counseling conversations—and I encourage church members and pastors in this—it's the advice we give one another in the hallways in the parking lot.

It's the conversations over coffee. We're all counseling every day, right? So the question is, are we going to be giving godly wisdom and counsel, or are we just kind of giving our own experience, our best advice?

And I think that type of counseling—there are times when there are serious issues, and we need to get along, and we need to have some time and appointments over time, and I do that a lot as well. But every Christian is a qualified biblical counselor if they have the Word of God and the Spirit of God.

There are some times they're going to run into some things where they need some support, they need some training, or whatever that situation might look like for them. But we're doing this all of the time, and that's what I tell pastors.

That's what this book is really about. If you're a pastor and you know what biblical discipleship is, we think about discipleship in this broad model of, well, somebody becomes a believer, and we got to teach them how to study their Bible, and how to pray, and how to have a quiet time, and what service in the church looks like, and outreach, and evangelism, all those things.

I say, look, the same concepts you use in general discipleship, these are the things that you use in a, quote, counseling setting. You just zoom them in, and you say, okay, here's a particular issue of life we've identified.

Here's where you are. Here's where the Word of God says we need to be. And now, practically, how do we walk together in order to help you go that direction? Look, we may not get there, right? But we all are moving that direction.

And so that's why I tell guys, I say, well, I'm not a counselor. I'm like, you're a pastor. You do discipleship. That's what this is. It's taking the Word of God and seeking to apply it faithfully to the lives of individuals who are dealing with particular issues of life.

You may have just answered, at least in part, a question from one of our listeners that has come in. And let me see if I could find that question. I was just looking at it. Okay. We have Dean in, and I know I'm probably going to butcher the pronunciation of this city, Tahlequah, Oklahoma?

I hope I'm—. Tahlequah. Oh, so you know the city. Tahlequah? Tahlequah. Tahlequah. Okay. I think I'm getting it right. He may say I'm wrong. Hehehe. Okay. And Dean says, I know that most evangelical Protestant Christians are supposed to believe in the concept known as sola scriptura, that only the inerrant God-breathed Word is binding upon the hearts, minds, souls, and activities of the body of Christ.

And I was just curious, why is it that when we read through 1 Timothy 3, we have these qualifications for an elder? Therefore, an elder must be blameless, the husband of one wife, stable, sensible, respectable, hospitable to strangers, and teachable.

He must not drink excessively or be a violent person, but instead be gentle. He must not be argumentative or love money. He must manage his own family well and have children who are submissive and respectful in every way.

For if a man does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church? He must not be a recent convert so that he won't become arrogant and fall into the devil's condemnation. He must be well thought of by outsiders so he doesn't fall into disgrace and the trap set for him by the devil.

And the other passage that is very similar in Titus also, interestingly, never mentions equipped to counsel. I was just curious why you believe, as your title states, a pastor must be a counselor. That's a fair question.

That's a fair question. I think it's a good question. I would say that elders are commanded to be able to teach, and elsewhere, Peter speaks and says that we are to shepherd the flock of God that are among you, right?

And so able to teach, obviously, we generally associate that with the public ministry of the Word. But I think if you look at what Peter says, shepherding the flock of God that are among you, or even if you look at Paul's example of how he ministered, we see that that's not simply the public setting, right?

Paul in Acts 20, he said that he taught publicly and from house to house. And so I'm not adding a pastoral qualification here. I'm saying that counseling—and that's the modern word that we use, but it's a form of teaching within the lives of those that you're given authority and given oversight of, you're going to them and you're ministering the Word of God to them in a more private setting.

Like I said, Paul did that publicly, and he did it house to house. What was he doing? He was going and he was—was he just having Bible study or was he helping people deal with issues of what? I think if we look at his letters, we would say, well, he wasn't just teaching theology in his letters.

He was dealing with issues. And so I think he's doing the same thing in his ministry. And again, you know, Peter's admonition to shepherd the flock of God, that's—shepherding is a—it's a public thing, right?

A shepherd deals with the whole flock, but the shepherd also at times has to minister to those who are sick and who are wandering and who have particular needs. And so, again, I'm not trying to add a separate pastoral qualification.

I know that title's a little bit in your face, and I did that on purpose, but I think it's because we have set a piece of the function of the shepherd pastor teacher to the side. We've said it's only this public ministry that I'm—that I'm required to do, and the private matters, I'm not called.

So that's—that's a good question.

Yes, and in fact, if an important aspect of a biblically functioning church is discipline, how on earth can you discipline someone without counseling them? It doesn't even make any sense to think that you could.

You can't separate—you can't separate them. And, you know, Don, when Jesus asked, do you love me? The answer—what do you—if you love me, then feed my lambs. If you love me, then shepherd my sheep. So there's no separation.

You know, it's almost like—it reminds me a little bit of—was it R .C. School? Everyone's a theologian. By the way, it's Stroll. Everyone's a theologian. Are you going to be a good one or not? Every Christian is called to do this, to counsel.

Every Christian's called to read the Bible and disciple and to be involved in these things. Are you going to be good at it, or are you going to—when somebody has a serious problem, are you going to turn your back on them?

And by the way, folks, in case you didn't detect the voice change, that last speaker was Pastor Jason Contino. And we are going to our first commercial break. And if anybody else would like to join the conversation with a question, we do have another listener waiting to have his comment responded to.

It's not a question, it's a comment. But you can get in line if you would like to join the conversation by submitting your question to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

Biblical Counseling, Psychological Models, and the Sufficiency of Scripture

I'm Simon O'Mahony, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune God.

We are also devoted to living out the one another commands of scripture, loving, encouraging, and serving each other as the body of Christ. In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every Sunday.

We would love for you to visit and worship with us. You can find our details at trbccarlisle .org. That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries in the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new, beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

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I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight-volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the Westminster Larger Catechism, titled Authentic Christianity, by Dr. Joseph Morecraft.

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And praise the Lord. Joseph C. Morecraft III is home. He's been home for several weeks now from the physical rehabilitation facility where he was recovering from a serious fall in his home. Months ago, that hospitalized him and then eventually led to his requiring physical rehabilitation.

He is home and preaching again from his pulpit to the delight of his congregation. And hopefully, you'll be hearing him once again as a guest on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio. He is such a precious and dear friend, and in spite of the tiny size of his congregation, he is one of the largest financial supporters of this program.

So, let's keep in touch, Pastor Joe. If you're listening, we definitely want you back on the show. If you just tuned us in, we have Russell Threatt on today, and Russell is discussing his book, Pastor.

You Must Be a Counselor, Restoring Counseling to the Heart of Pastoral Ministry. And we have a friend of mine who is a pastor in Enola, Pennsylvania. Since I am identifying him as a pastor, I'll give you his full name and the name of his church.

He is George Jensen, and he is pastor of the Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania. A dear brother and friend, and I definitely cherish his fellowship in spite of the fact that he has described both of us as him being a plain-tea Arminian and me being a black-coffee Calvinist.

So, we do have our differences. But Pastor George says, dangerous topic, I don't do counseling. I provide pastoral care based on biblical principles and wisdom. If one who is non-licensed in the area of counseling claims to be a counselor, provides counseling, he is asking for trouble legally speaking.