Are You Ready to…
Get Well | Live Well | Give Well?
Join the Adventure!
Like your annual auto inspection or physical check-up, designed to keep you safe and healthy, we make sure your relationship with God, and life in general, operates at peak performance!
Tune-up or fix-up,
your next adventure could be spiritual coaching!
Are you ready to open up to God more fully?
Like when your car breaks down or your body gets sick, we diagnose the problem and treat both symptoms and disease, an aspirin for the pain and surgery for the deeper issue!
About Us…
We provide, above and before all else, a Christian service.
- Everything we do is intentionally Biblical, or not contrary to the Bible.
- Everything we teach and advise about life is informed by the pattern Jesus set.
- We employ psychology and what can be learned about the invisible, immaterial self, as long as it agrees with Biblical teaching.
- We are not Christ-followers who employ purely secular and clinical beliefs about human healing and recovery.
- We are Christ-followers who use extra-biblical knowledge of how God created us to augment what the Bible tells us about living well.
- We make no pretensions about being a clinical, licensed, practice.
- We believe that God can and will heal any and every personal wound for those who request it and will cooperate with Biblical teaching.
- We believe that the healing of emotional, realtional, and spiritual aspects of human woundedness has already been provided for by Jesus Christ.
- There is no past that God cannot heal–nothing is done to us or by us that is “unredeemable”–freeing us to live well, albeit, with a limp or scar.
We are a Christian practice staffed by Christians.
- We are a Christian practice (in theory, strategy, vision, values) and our staff are Christians in practice (habit, life style, devotion).
- We are Christians who put the ancient scriptures before and contemporary secular beliefs and practices.
- We have no staff who are clinicians and not Christians and do have staff who are Christians and not clinicians.
- Our people may or may not be educated, trained, or licensed as mental health practitioners.
- We have no animosity toward the academic or medical approach to psychology in its many forms.
- We freely use psychology acknowledging the great contribution is makes to the helping profession.
- Finding them complementary we integrate psychology with our Christian faith, refusing to operate from either one exclusively.
- When the two disagree and cannot be reconciled, we put the Bible over psychology.
- We are first people who know and love the God of the Bible and work out of our own relationship with God to help others.
- We hire people who meet that requirement, and if they are dully sanctioned to practice, that is secondarily beneficial.
- As freely as we received, we give (Matthew 10:8b, 2Corinthians 1:3-7).
We share God’s love to heal eternal souls as passionately as we share his love to heal broken hearts and lives.
- We believe that mankind’s primary need is to be brought back to God and it is our privilege to make God’s appeal for him as his representatives (2Corinthians 5:18-21; comp. Colossians 1:19-22; 1Timothy 2:5-7).
- We were created to be in relationship with God, to know him personally and experientially.
- Without this relationship, life will be hollow, meaningless, and frustrating and the human heart will feel empty, incomplete, and long for something more.
- Without God no amount of wrenching on the soul will lift people out of an empty and meaningless life and into peace, joy, contentment, and fulfillment, not to mention due to reverence for God.
- We believe that the salvation offered by God is not primarily to forgive sin but to restore us to relationship with him (the end)… by forgiving sin (the means).
- This core need and critical lack is the first thing we strive to “heal” in people’s lives – to reconcile them to God.
- Holiness is simply the conditions on which our relationship with God is based and grows stronger and less hindered.
- God desires holiness from us (because he loves and wants to be in relationship with us) before he wants comfort for us, and “discomfort” is often the way to greater purity and dedication to God.
- The focus of the believer’s life is not to be on correct actions or not sinning, but on knowing God deeply and following him fully.
- A relationship with God does not necessarily put an end to all our suffering nor was it intended to.
- God gives peace and strength and endurance to weather all of life’s storms and does not exempt us from them.
- We believe that people must want God himself before they want his blessings or else they will use God for what they can get from him.
- It is not normal to live the Christian life without developing a deep and vital passion for God over time.
- Deep passion grows to be all-consuming and vital means it becomes of the utmost importance to us.
We hide nothing that we are or believe and are ashamed of neither.
- We do not hide from or apologize for being Christian or Christians (Romans 1:16-17).
- We are not combative, demeaning, pushy, superior, rude, or apologetic about it.
- We are proud to provide a service to our community that is distinctly Christian and beneficial.
- We work hard to be known to provide safe, secure, professional, affordable, and quality service.
- We seek godly people who are called and gifted by God to lead others into an ever-growing relationship with and surrender to, God.
- We are teachable students who continually strive to improve our craft, both in our Biblical knowledge and our understanding of the human psyche.
- We are healed people who, with skill and compassion, share what we have received from God with those who are open to the same experience.
- We take our calling and role in our society seriously.
Pure psychological (for the mind & emotions) counseling is valuable, and seldom enough.
- We offer spiritual counseling—not therapy, or psychoanalysis—that is good for the whole person, body, soul, and spirit.
- We are thankful when people have gone to traditional therapy because it makes our job easier.
- Therapy lets them talk with someone who will genuinely listen, helps them connect their present struggles to their past, and encourage them to dwell on life-giving thoughts.
- Yes, medicine can help us get and keep personal mental health issues under control.
- No, using medicine does not necessarily demonstrate a lack of faith in God.
- We will refer without hesitation whenever we find that a person’s deeper issues require someone with greater education and experience.
- Knowledge, (self)awareness, perspective, connection, discovery, closure, physical remediation, a practical tool, an encouraging word, a listening ear, a mental discipline, a cognitive redirect, are all eminently useful…
- But more is required.
- Humans are integrated beings so their emotional, relational, physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects cannot be separated.
- Every human struggle is a spiritual struggle on some level and a holistic approach to treatment includes all these interrelated parts.
- We specialize in the spiritual but do not underestimate and certainly do not neglect the role that they all play in life.
- Only God can heal the wounded heart, freeing us from the deadening disease of nagging guilt and shame, painful memories, cruel abuse, pugilistic words, pervasive deception, and debilitating bondage.
- Only Jesus Christ secured and shares the victory we need to win the invisible war.
- When/since therapy is not enough, we provide the vital missing piece.
- That “piece” (peace!) is Jesus Christ who alone can truly and permanently transform lives.
- Jesus free us from the prison of suppression and releases us to express our true selves fully without the fear of what else may surface if we do.
- He is the more-than-therapy “secret” transformative weapon that we have experienced and gratefully share with everyone!
Our understanding is that we are all on a journey, and no one has arrived.
- We are all in different places on that journey.
- We are like a mountain sherpa helping you climb higher on your ultimate quest.
- We may be further down that road than you, but sometimes not a whole lot further!
- We prefer not to stand facing you as if to parent but should to shoulder to encourage, embolden, and strengthen you.
- We share our story with its victories and defeats when it is relevant and will help you feel less alone.
- Whatever you (think you) are looking and longing for, we are here to help you find… him.
- We are each the hero (main character) in our own story.
- We position ourselves as little more than a (humble) guide that shows you how to reach your full potential… in him.
- Our counsel is designed to help with present struggles and equip people for future struggles so they are better able to draw on a growing relationship with God and handle life from that foundation.
- We strive to help people know (gain first-person experience with) God deeply and follow him fully into his unimaginable and fulfilling dream for them.
- If we point you to God, he will make the journey we call life, worth living (John 10:10).
That is the substance of our Message.
We preach Christ…
We teach in a spirit of profound common sense
so that we can bring each person to maturity.
To be mature is to be basic. Christ!
No more, no less.(Colossians 1:27-28, The Message)
Our Staff…
Pastor Kerry Krissel
Kerry began pastoral work in 1981 while attending college. He began in his first church as an assistant pastor in 1986, interim in 1987-1989, then Christian Education pastor till 1996. He then served in various positions in four other churches in New York and Texas before ending up at Two Rivers in 2013, where he still is today. His undergraduate degree in Pastoral Studies is from Lancaster Bible College in Pennsylvania. In 2016 he completed his master’s degree in ministry leadership with a concentration on spiritual formation from Portland Seminary.
Counseling has officially or unofficially been a part of his ministry since the early 90s. At Two Rivers he began as the Pastor of Spiritual Formation & Direction before transitioning over to found and driect The Two Rivers Counseling Center.
