A number of years ago, RTS Charlotte launched a two-year Master of Arts in Christian Counseling degree (MACC) and it has been wonderful to see how it has grown. We believe that solid, Christ-centered, biblical counseling is critical to the health of the church.
Two years ago we also announced that we are now offering the MACC degree in an exciting new Summer/Winter format. This means that students can now get the MACC degree over the course of four years without having to relocate.
We are rolling out this new structure because we know there are many people who want to benefit from the MACC program, but are not able to move. This new format can help address that problem.
The fact that this program is meeting a real need was evident during the counseling classes we just offered in our winter term last month. As I visited with the students, I realized they were from all over the country, including Oregon, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, and more. Clearly there is a great desire for more biblically-based counseling courses.
And this simply highlights the thing that makes the Charlotte program unique: our counseling classes are not taken online. They are all residential classes right here in Charlotte. They are simply done in intensive formats during the winter and summer.
Given that counseling is inherently a relational exercise, we think it is a bit counter-intuitive to get a counseling degree by only plugging in the head phones and looking at a computer screen. Instead, counseling is best taught and learned in a face-to-face environment where students can interact with each other and with the professors.
So, we are excited to see how this new Summer/Winter MACC program can allow people to get a degree without moving, but at the same time preserving the important face-to-face, relational aspects of counseling.
In addition, Charlotte’s biblical counseling degree has a number of other distinctives:
- Committed to the gospel message and the sufficiency of God’s Word as the basis of all counseling
- Our program shares the same biblical perspective on the counseling task as modeled in organizations like the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF) and the Biblical Counseling Coalition (BCC).
- Phenomenal visiting faculty including Ed Welch, Rod Mays, Jeremy Pierre, Heath Lambert, Deepak Reju, and Bob Kellemen
- More than half the MACC curriculum is Bible and Theology, laying a critical foundation for counseling
- A director, Jim Newheiser, with over 25 years of counseling experience, and program coordinator, Nate Brooks, who just completed his counseling Ph.D. at Southwestern.
- Located in beautiful city of Charlotte on a gorgeous 17 acre campus
To read more about the new program, see here. The original press release is here.
Hope to see you in a counseling class soon!