For over fifty years Dr. Jay Adams was at the forefront of a movement calling pastors and other Christian workers back to the Scriptures in their counseling ministry. Beginning with the publication of his book Competent to Counsel in 1970, Dr. Adams demonstrated the importance of understanding the sufficiency of the Word to bring about the kind of change that pleases God and genuinely helps the counselee. Dr. Adams devoted his life to teaching others how to effectively minister the Word as an author, seminary professor, denominational executive, popular lecturer, and as a pastor.

Dr. Adams entered into rest on November 14, 2020, but before he died he partnered with Mid-America to make The Institute for Nouthetic Studies’ teaching ministry readily available, in a structured way, to students around the world who desire to better prepare themselves to minister the Word of God as they counsel.

Our Nouthetic Counseling Certificate consists of over 170 hours of instruction in all aspects of biblical counseling, the majority of which is taught by Dr. Adams. All lectures are now available online and can be studied in the student’s home and at the student’s pace. In fact, with a laptop computer or iPad, students can study anywhere a WiFi connection can be accessed! Furthermore, as a Certified Training Center of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC), our program counts towards the Fundamentals requirement in Phase 1 of the ACBC certification process.

Because we are not offering a formal academic degree there are no prerequisites for studying at INS nor do we require tests or written papers. We do provide study questions at the end of the notes for each lecture which the student can use to gage his progress and grasp of the material. While the lectures are challenging and are intended to stretch the student both academically and spiritually, they are not overly academic and can be studied profitably by any motivated student who has a growing familiarity with the Scriptures.