You spend your days in other people's deep water — the counseling room, the hospital hallway, the conversation after the service that turns serious. The Foundations Cohort exists for you: a small company of practitioners doing the slow, serious work of their own formation, so that the help they give comes from somewhere real.
Who this is for
The Foundations Cohort is a spiritual formation training program at Banner Institute in Monroe, Louisiana, for pastors, counselors, and anyone whose life has become a place where others bring their burdens — whether that ministry is a title or simply a pattern God keeps arranging. It is not a certification course, and it is not counseling. It is the deliberate formation of the practitioner: serious reading, honest discussion, and each participant's own interior work, done in company.
This is Strength-stage work. It assumes your own ground is steady, that you are past your rescue season. What stirs in you now is not the need for another technique but the sense that the next thing God is asking for is a deeper self to bring into the room.
Some in the room hold licenses. Some speak from the pulpit. Some hold no office at all; they lead retreats, sit with the men and women who keep finding them, or carry a ministry that has never appeared on a letterhead. The common thread is not a credential or a role. It is the conviction that the one who does this work must first submit to it.
You cannot take someone where you have not gone
Every field that touches the human interior eventually offers its practitioners a shortcut: master the technique, and the technique will carry the room. It will not. The people who find their way to a counselor's office, a pastor's doorway, or a quiet conversation after a retreat are not finally looking for technique. They are looking for someone whose own house is in order. They want to speak with someone who has faced the weight of the truth about their own life, and can therefore sit, steady and unafraid, with the truth of someone else's.
That is why this cohort does not begin with method. It begins with identity, the question underneath every helping role. A counselor who answers to the profession first will find there are true things the profession will not let them say. A pastor who treats the deeper work as someone else's jurisdiction will keep handing off the very conversations they were called to. Before either role there is a prior identity: a person who belongs to God, formed by Him, and sent by Him into other people's lives. Get that order right, and the roles come free.
So the first curriculum of the Foundations Cohort is the participant. The reading is demanding and the discussion is honest, but the real work is interior — the same excavation, confession, and reordering we ask of the people we serve. Nothing is asked of anyone in the room that the room has not first asked of itself.
What the work looks like
The cohort works through serious reading — long, dense, and worth it — drawn from three languages that map the same terrain: philosophy, psychology, and theology. The philosophers give precision about the structure of experience; the psychologists give the developmental mechanics; the theologians say what the whole apparatus is for, and Who holds it. Where the three converge, you can have some confidence you are looking at the soul as it actually is. A person who works with people needs all three.
The reading feeds discussion around a table where honesty is the ground rule and confidentiality is what makes honesty possible. And the discussion feeds each participant's own work: the slow, deliberate excavation of their own story, brought into the light where it can be named, grieved, and reordered. The cohort meets over an extended season, and the pace is unhurried on purpose — this is not material that can be rushed, and neither are you.
“In your patience possess ye your souls.”
Luke 21:19
The method behind the table
The frameworks the cohort works through were developed at Banner by our founding director, Andrew Dodson — years of counseling practice distilled into a coherent account of how the soul is formed, how it breaks, and how it is taken back into possession. The cohort is where that method is handed on: not as a manual to be memorized, but as a formation to be undergone.
Joining
The cohort is small by design and stays that way. There is no enrollment page and no seat counter; joining begins with a conversation, and invitations come out of that conversation because the room only works when the room is right.
For licensed counselors and therapists, cohort hours may qualify for continuing education credit. Ask our Care Coordinator, and confirm the details with your licensing board.
Or call us: 318.396.8152
Frequently asked questions
Is the Foundations Cohort a certification program?
No. The cohort grants no certificate or license and is not a path to one. It is formation — the deliberate shaping of the person who does the work. What you leave with is not a credential but a deeper self to bring into the room.
Does the cohort count toward continuing education?
For licensed counselors and therapists, cohort hours may qualify for continuing education credit. Ask our Care Coordinator about documentation, and confirm applicability with your licensing board.
I'm not a pastor or a licensed counselor. Is this for me?
Quite possibly, yes. Some participants hold licenses or pulpits; others carry a ministry that has never had a title — leading retreats, mentoring, simply being the person others keep finding. If people bring you their burdens and you want to be formed for that work, this counseling training is as much for you as for any pastor or professional.
Is the cohort only for men?
No. The Foundations Cohort is open to men and women.
Is this counseling?
No. The cohort is training and formation, not therapy. If what you need in this season is care rather than training, our counseling and coaching pages are the right doors, and our Care Coordinator can help you find the one that fits.
How do I join?
Start with a conversation with our Care Coordinator. The cohort is small, and invitations come out of that conversation. Expressing interest is the first step, not a reservation.
How much does it cost?
We discuss cost openly in conversation with our Care Coordinator rather than posting a number that won't fit every situation.
Strength-stage work has two expressions at Banner: going deeper in your own formation, and being formed to walk with others. If this page found you before you were ready for it, the first door is open too.
Or call us: 318.396.8152
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300 Washington Street, Suite 310
Monroe, LA 71201