Christ-Centered Therapy Credential

The Training Journey

The CCT Credential consists of two primary components:

1. Four Online Courses (consisting of six (6) 2-hour sessions)
   Foundational training in Christian worldview, theology, and soul care, designed to frame therapy within the redemptive story of Scripture and Christian tradition.
2. Three In-Person or Online Intensives (five (5) 8-hour days each)
   Experiential training that deepens personal transformation and clinical skills, focusing on therapeutic practices that embody the presence and story of Christ.

Online Courses (Prerequisite Coursework)

These four courses provide the theological and philosophical foundation for Christ-centered therapy. Each course includes six weekly 2-hour sessions and assigned readings (1–2 chapters per week).

1. Worldview, Ethics, and Distinctly Christian Therapy

Examines how secular and Christian worldviews shape counseling models, ethics, and goals for therapy.

Week 1 – Worldviews as Eyeglasses, Loves, & Possibilities

Week 2 – Worldviews & Therapies: Christian, Secular, or Mixed

Week 3 – Revolutions that Shaped Modern Therapy

Week 4 – Therapy Needs All Kinds of Knowledge – Not Just Empirical

Week 5 – The Ethics of Therapy: Being a WV Minority in a Secular Therapy World

Week 6 – Christ-Centered Ethics and the Very-Good Life

2. Human Nature and Christian Healing and Formation

Explores a Christian framework for understanding human complexity, psychopathology, and healing, based on Foundations for Soul Care.

Week 1 – Four Dimensions of Human Beings, Part 1

Week 2 – Four Dimensions of Human Beings, Part 2

Week 3 – Christian Psychopathology and the Four Dimensions

Week 4 – The Origins of Christian Inwardness & Self-Examination

Week 5 – Christian Inwardness, Internalization, & Manifestation

Week 6 – Therapy Models vs. Modalities

3. A Theology for Counseling – Part 1

Presents a theological foundation for therapy rooted in the Trinity, the Christian story, Created Goodness and the realities of sin and suffering, based on God and Soul Care.

Week 1 – The Glory of the Trinity and Christian Therapy

Week 2 – Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Goal and Ultimate Means of Wellbeing

Week 3 – The Healing Story of Christianity

Week 4 – Created Good

Week 5 – Sin, Suffering, & a Christian Psychopathology

Week 6 – Weakness, Fault, and Fallenness & a Christian Psychopathology

4. A Theology for Counseling – Part 2

Explores themes of union with Christ and his story, redemptive living, and transformation through Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension, based on God and Soul Care.

Week 1 – Christ, the Center of Christian Therapy and Christ’s Life

Week 2 – Christ’s Death & Resurrection & Christian Therapy

Week 3 – Christ’s Ascension & the Church & Christian Therapy

Week 4 – The Old and the New

Week 5 – Redemptive Differentiation

Week 6 – Redemptive Integration

Certification Intensives

The heart of the CCT credential is three progressive intensives—each five days long—focused on cultivating the personal, spiritual, and clinical capacities necessary for Christ-centered therapy. Each intensive combines lecture, small group processing, experiential exercises, and hands-on practice of core interventions.

Level 1 Certification

Introduction to CCT: CCT Basics, Establishing a Safe Haven and Becoming Oneself in Christ

Focus: Therapist formation and renewal, foundational CCT practices, establishing internal refuge, and developing secure attachment with Christ.

Attendees will:

• Personally engage in and experience the exercises and practices introduced throughout the training.
• Deepen their understanding of the therapeutic significance of the Father’s affirmation of the Son, recognize Jesus Christ as the climax of the Christian narrative, and explore how the relational nature of the Trinity makes Christian therapy both unique and possible.
• Practice embodied strategies that promote body awareness and meditative focus (e.g., muscle relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing), while envisioning—and beginning to dwell in—a safe internal refuge. In this place, they grow accustomed to life within their Window of Tolerance, meet with Jesus, gain insight, and nurture their created and redeemed core self.
• Learn how to prioritize relational connection and lived experience in therapy, equipping counselees to address psychological distress linked to insecure attachment, chronic trauma, personal sin, and spiritual challenges.
• Become acquainted with the core therapeutic practices central to Christian Clinical Therapy (CCT), especially those that explicitly “bring Christ into the therapy process,” both individually and in group contexts:
  • Therapeutic prayer (e.g., lament, confession, praise, examen)
  • Lectio Divina (therapeutic engagement with Scripture)
  • Christian meditation, encountering God through Christ using biblical resources
  • Story-work, imagery-work, and chair-work involving Jesus
• Begin developing their own model of Christ-centered therapy, integrating what they’ve learned into a coherent, spiritually grounded framework.

Weekly Schedule

Day 1 – Worldviews in Conflict, God and the Two Kinds of Grace, Christian Inwardness, and Establishing a Safe Haven/Refuge with Christ

Day 2 – Working with Body & Soul, Relationships, and the Emotions

Day 3 – Therapeutic Prayer, Lectio Divina, and Jesus

Day 4 – Imagery-Work and Chair-Work with Jesus

Day 5 – Becoming Oneself in Christ

Level 2 Certification

Redemptive Transformation and the Power of Story – Increasing Competence in CCT

Focus: Healing personal and client narratives, based on a Christian’s union with Christ and his story, and advanced emotional processing skills.

Attendees will:

• Personally engage with the narrative and symbolic riches of the Christian faith, experiencing their therapeutic power and discovering the transformative role of the imagination in Christian therapy.
• Learn how to address a wide range of transdiagnostic processes in counselees by drawing upon the presence of Jesus and the redemptive resources of the Christian story.
• Practice working in dyads to support emotional healing and strengthen reflective capacity, using the Redemptive Transformation stages of negative-emotion processing as a guiding framework.
• Articulate the therapeutic significance of key narrative elements within Christianity and how they can be meaningfully integrated into clinical work.
• Further develop proficiency in the core therapeutic practices of Christian Clinical Therapy (CCT): therapeutic prayer and Scripture engagement, Christian meditation, and story-work, imagery-work, and chair-work with Jesus.
• Make continued progress in crafting their own model of CCT, shaped by both theological and clinical insight.

Weekly Schedule

Day 1 – Our Story within the Christian Story

Day 2 – Our Backstory’s Impact on Our Body, Emotions, and Relationships

Day 3 – Christian Story-Work with Trauma

Day 4 – Advanced Imagery-Work and Chair-Work with Jesus

Day 5 – Special Topics in Christian Story-Work 

Level 3 Certification

Deepening Communion with God in the Therapy Process

Focus: The therapeutic value of worship and communion with God, Contemplative prayer as a means to experience intimacy with God, promotion of earned secure attachment to Jesus in order to address psychological problems due to insecure attachment, chronic trauma, personal sin, and spiritual struggles, Counseling of “parts” within a Christian worldview. Supervision will also be included.

Attendees will:

• Personally encounter communion with God and learn to identify and describe its key experiential features.
• Engage in contemplative prayer as a pathway to deep, relational connection with God.
• Attune to the indwelling Spirit of Christ as an embodied source of comfort, conviction, consolation, and transformation.
• Strengthen their skills in the core practices of the Jesus Therapy Framework: therapeutic prayer, Scripture engagement, Christian meditation, and story-work, imagery-work, and chair-work with Jesus.
• Grow in their ability to help counselees encounter Jesus as a real and relational presence who meets them in the midst of psychospiritual struggles and transdiagnostic concerns.
• Begin working therapeutically with internal defenses and “parts” in collaboration with Christ’s healing presence.
• Advance in shaping their own model of Christ-centered therapy

Weekly Schedule

Day 1 – Involving the Entire Trinity in Therapy and God as the Ultimate Safe Haven/Secure Base

Day 2 – From Attachment to Communion and Contemplative Prayer as Therapeutic

Day 3 – Earned Secure Attachment with Jesus, Communion with God, and Beyond

Day 4 – Imagery-Work and Chair-Work with Jesus, Parts, and the New Self

Day 5 – Special Topics in Christ-Centered Therapy

Outcome

By completing this program, participants will:

• Gain a holistic, biblically grounded model for Christian therapy
• Grow in their own spiritual and emotional formation
• Acquire skills to incorporate distinctly Christian resources—prayer, Scripture, spiritual imagery—into the clinical setting
• Develop and articulate their own model of Christ-Centered Therapy

Theological and Clinical Foundations

CCT draws from Scripture and classical sources (Reformation theology, spiritual direction, inner healing prayer) while also integrating insights from:

• Emotion-focused therapy
  
• Attachment theory
  
• Interpersonal neurobiology
  
• Internal Family Systems
  
• Accelerated experiential psychodynamic methods
  
• Narrative therapy and memory reconsolidation

References

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Charry, E. T. (1997). By the renewing of your minds: The pastoral function of Christian doctrine. Oxford University Press.

Chrysostomos, A. (2007). A guide to Orthodox psychotherapy: The science, theology, and spiritual practice behind it and its clinical application. University Press of America.

Cloitre, M., Cohen, L. R., Ortigo, K. M., Jackson, C., & Koenen, K. C. (2020). Treating survivors of childhood abuse and interpersonal trauma: STAIR narrative therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford.

Coe, J., & Hall, T. (2007). Psychology in the Spirit. InterVarsity.

DeYoung, P. (2003). Relational psychotherapy: A primer. Brunner-Routledge.

Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the emotional brain. Routledge.

Fosha, D. (Ed.). (2021). Undoing aloneness and the transformation of suffering into flourishing. AEDP 2.0. American Psychological Association.

Greenberg, L., & Paivio, S. (1997). Working with emotions in psychotherapy. Guilford.

Hermans, H. J. M., & Dimaggio, G. (Eds.). (2003). The dialogical self in psychotherapy. Brunner-Routledge.

Johnson, E. L. (2007). Foundations for soul care: A Christian psychology proposal. InterVarsity.

Johnson, E. L. (2017). God and soul care: The therapeutic resources of the Christian faith. InterVarsity.

Johnson, E. L. (2024). Counseling and worldviews: Negotiating conflict ethically in a pluralistic world. [Unpublished manuscript]. Christian Psychology Institute.

Lopez, A. (2016). Gift and the unity of being. Cascade Books.

McCullough, L., et al. (2003). Treating affect phobia: A manual for short-term dynamic psychotherapy. Guilford.

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2003). Philosophical foundations for a Christian worldview. InterVarsity.

Knabb, J. J., Johnson, E. L., Sisemore, T., & Bates, T. (2018). Psychotherapy in Christian context. Routledge.

Paivio, S. C., & Angus, L. (2017). Narrative processes in emotion-focused therapy for trauma. American Psychological Association.

Payne, L. (1995). The healing presence. Baker.

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Schwartz, R., & Sweezy, M. (2019). Internal family systems therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford.

Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy (3rd ed.). Guilford.

Siegel, D. (2020). The developing mind (3rd ed.). Guilford.

Tanquery, A. (1930). The spiritual life. Society of St. John the Evangelist, Desclee & Co.

Vitz, P. C., Nordling, W. J., & Titus, C. S. (Eds.). (2020). A Catholic, Christian meta-model of the person. Divine Mercy University Press.