For almost fifty years Dr. Jay Adams has been 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 has been demonstrating 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 has 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 has now retired from formal ministry and because of declining health is unable to travel. Still, he continues to write and to lecture locally in the upstate of South Carolina. The Institute for Nouthetic Studies was established to make Dr. Adams’ 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—and to do so under the tutelage of the founding father of the modern biblical counseling movement!

Our Certificate Program in Biblical Counseling 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.