Intensives

The CCT Credential consists of three in-person or online intensives:

The heart of the CCT credential is three progressive intensives focused on cultivating the personal, spiritual, and clinical capacities necessary for Christ-centered therapy. Intensives consist of experiential training that deepens personal transformation and clinical skills, focusing on therapeutic practices that embody the presence and story of Christ.

EXPLORE UPCOMING INTENSIVES & COURSES

Training Intensives

Each intensive is five days of 8-hours long sessions and combines lecture, small group processing, experiential exercises, and hands-on practice of core interventions.

Intensive 1 Training

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

PASTORAL COUNSELOR APPLICATIONMENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL APPLICATION

Intensive 2 Training

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 

PASTORAL COUNSELOR APPLICATIONMENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL APPLICATION

Intensive 3 Training

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

PASTORAL COUNSELOR APPLICATIONMENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL APPLICATION

Eligibility

This program is designed primarily for licensed mental health professionals, though pastoral counselors and spiritually mature lay leaders may apply with relevant training and experience in counseling or soul care. Applicants should have a working knowledge of therapy or ministry practice and a desire to develop a distinctly Christian approach to healing work.

 Choose the application that best fits your background.

PASTORAL COUNSELOR APPLICATION
MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL APPLICATION

Prerequisites

Courses may be taken in any order as they are available, though foundational coursework is recommended. Intensives must be taken consecutively.

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