2022 ACBC Conference
The Conference will be hosted in Pretoria and Hillcrest. More information will be forthcoming upon registration.
We are excited to announce our 2022 Annual ACBC Africa Conference, A Biblical Worldview of Mental Struggles, with guest speaker Dr Daniel Berger.
Registration fees:
In-person: R500 | Online: R300
In a world that seems ever more hopeless, there is genuine hope for broken and damaged souls to be restored and strengthened. This only hope is found in the God of hope (Romans 15:13) and not in a program, a gimmick, and certainly not in human wisdom. Whether it is a complex phenomena occurring in the soul or a deep spiritual wound caused by the sin of others, the compassion and comfort of God are intended to deliver the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). It is well-past time for the church to turn back to biblical soul care that views, interprets, understands, and treats both human fragility and depravity through the lens of God’s immutable wisdom.
This year’s ACBC Africa Conference ‘A Biblical Perspective of Mental Struggles’ will address these issues. Dr. Daniel Berger has spent years studying the Scriptures and counselling believers. He also draws on many years of research and interviews of secular and Christian psychology. He will show us that there are clear biblical explanations and solutions to what the world has defined as mental illness. You will be encouraged that God’s Word has provided us with everything we need to help suffering friends, family members and fellow Christians.
Dr Berger will be joined by Dr Wayne Mack, Pastor Sybrand de Swardt and others at our August Conference. This year’s conference will be held at Lynnwood Baptist Church in Pretoria and at Hillcrest Baptist Church in the Durban area.
Conference Schedule
Conference Sessions
Pastoral Preconference: “The Need to return to God’s foundation for Biblical Change (2 sessions)”
Sessions 1-3 – “Forming a Biblical Worldview about Psychiatric/Mental Disorders”
With faith in scientism so prevalent today, it is not surprising that many people have come to believe that the subject of mental disorders/psychiatric illness is primarily a medical and scientific issue. Few people realize, however, that leading psychiatrists and theorists themselves both acknowledge and teach that psychiatric disorders are based upon one’s presuppositional beliefs and very real metaphysical phenomena, rather than on objective and physical realities. In fact, as will be discovered in these three sessions, psychiatric disorders are primarily phenomenological rather than biological, and they exist as fundamental to humanism’s denial of biblical dualism and as a necessity to sustain evolutionary theory.
Sessions 4-5 – “A Biblical Look at Depression”
These 2 sessions will take the modern concepts of depression and examine them through both a biblical worldview and a secular lens. What will be realized by those who attend is that Scripture speaks on all aspects of human life—even the metaphysical phenomena of the soul that are deemed to be abnormal within evolutionary theory. More importantly, what will also be discovered is genuine hope to move forward in life despite real and distressful sorrow, despair, and suffering.
Sessions 6-7 – “A Biblical look at Schizophrenia, Psychosis, and ‘Madness’”
Schizophrenia is likely the most important and studied psychiatric construct within the Kraepelinian model of mental illness. Yet, it may surprise attendees to learn that no science exists to validate the theory of schizophrenia (psychosis – “a condition of the soul”) as a valid explanation of a person’s very real delusional thinking and vivid hallucinations. These sessions will begin to examine both the creation of the construct, the deceitful basis of its existence, as well as the biblical understanding of the deep deceit of the psyche/soul.