Faculty

George C. Scipione
Director of the Biblical Counseling Institute, Professor of Pastoral Theology, 2008 -

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Dr. George Scipione is a member of the National Association of Nouthetic Counselors, for which he also is a Supervising Fellow and a board member.  He was hired by RPTS in 2008 to begin developing and directing a new Biblical Counseling Institute to offer pastoral students more hands-on experience before graduation.  Students will “shadow” Dr. Scipione in counseling sessions, and he also will offer more courses in pastoral counseling.

Dr. Scipione has been a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for nearly 35 years, and is the founder and former director of the Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship in San Diego, a ministry that trains church officers and laymen in the principles and practices of counseling based on the Word of God as a fully sufficient guide.  He practices and teaches the nouthetic counseling method, which has developed over the last forty years with various applications and been popularized in the U.S. by well-known pastors and authors such as Jay Adams, John MacArthur, and Al Mohler.

I believe counseling is a subset of discipleship. Therefore, counseling is a spiritual duty and for select persons, the exercise of a spiritual gift. The elders are God’s main counselors while gifted laymen will help them, and all exercise this duty. All non-organic problems must be solved biblically under the oversight of the elders. Organic problems need the best available medical care in conjunction with the pastoral care of the elders.

Of the Seminary’s new Counseling Institute that he will develop and direct:  I want this to be the best biblical counseling program in the Reformed theological world, training leaders for the future of the church. The word of God needs to be publicly proclaimed from the pulpit, the street corners, and elsewhere; it needs to be taught privately from house to house and personally one-on-one as Paul did for his three years in Ephesus.  Students need to be discipled personally and prepared to shepherd sheep – not just to preach. Just as parents need to apply the Word in the midst of life as well as read the Word at family worship, so pastors must apply the Word to the sheep in the home or study as well as the pulpit. Most pastors are weak in this area of ministry. We want Christ’s sheep to be led as well as fed. Better to do this before both sheep and shepherds are frustrated. 

Dr. Scipione has written the following select articles: “The Wonderful Counselor, the Other Counselor, and Christian Counseling,” in Westminster Theological Journal; “The Biblical Ethics of Transsexual Operations,” in The Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine; “Is Porn Norm?” in Euangelium; and “How Important is the Biblical Counseling Movement?,” “Eeney, Meeny, Mieny, Mo; Is Biblical Counseling It or No?,” “The Limits of Confidentiality in Counseling,” “Who Owns the Children of Divorce?,” and “Self-Esteeming is Sweeping Over America,” in The Journal of Pastoral Practice.

He also is author of The Pauline Concept of SUNEIDESIS (M.Th.), Timothy, Titus and You: a workbook for church leaders, and  The Sword and the Shovel: The Battle for the Biblical Family.

Pastoral Experience

• Calvary Community (Orthodox Presbyterian) Church, Harmony, NJ - Pastor, 1974-1982.

• Bayview Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Chula Vista, CA  -  Associate Pastor, 1992-2006.

• Covenant Community Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Taylors, CA -  Church Planter, 2006-2008.

Teaching Experience

• Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, Glenside, PA

• Institute for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship, San Diego

• Westminster Seminary California

• Ottawa Theological Hall

• Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

• Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids

• Lecturer in theology in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central and South America

Education:

• A.B., Temple University, 1967

• B.D., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1970

• M.A., Temple University, 1972

• Th.M., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1973

• Ph.D., Whitefield Theological Seminary, 1996

• D.Min studies, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and Westminster Seminary California