Course Information:

• Location: Louisville, KY or Online
• Intensive Cost: $2000 (Early Bird, Student, and Fellow Discounts available.)

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

Course Information:

• Location: Louisville, KY or Online
• Intensive Cost: $1500 (Early Bird, Student, and Fellow Discounts available.)

Focus: Story Work, Union with Christ and his story, Redemptive Transformation of negative emotions

Building on the core CCT skills and practices presented in Level 1 training, this intensive focuses on story-work, based on a Christian’s union with Christ and his story. Therapist-participants will explore their own story, while practicing Redemptive Transformation, the 2nd Pillar of CCT, a stepwise process of working through negative emotions within the Relational Pyramid, for problems stemming from insecure attachment, chronic trauma, personal sin, spiritual struggles, and related transdiagnostic processes (e.g., rumination, emotion avoidance, & dispositional conflict) in the context of the Christian story. 

Attendees will:

• Personally experience the therapeutic value of the narrative and symbolic resources of the Christian faith and the catalytic role of the imagination in Christian therapy
• Learn how to address many transdiagnostic processes of counselees with the help of Jesus and the resources of the Christian story
• Work in dyads to promote emotional healing and reflective function, within the framework of the Redemptive Transformation stages of negative-emotion processing
• Be able to explain the therapeutic benefits of many of the remarkable narrative resources of Christianity
• Increase their competence in the therapy practices at the heart of CCT (therapeutic prayer and Bible reading; Christian meditation; and story-work, imagery-work, and chair-work with Jesus)
• Progress in the development of their own model of CCT

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

Course Information:

• Location: Louisville, KY or Online
• Intensive Cost: $1000 (Early Bird, Student, and Fellow Discounts available.)

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