This website was created for the purpose of organizing and promoting a series of trainings in the field of Christian NLP in September and October of 2008. Realizing that many are unfamiliar with Christian NLP, this website exists to provide beginner friendly information on what Christian NLP is and how it can benefit God’s people today.
Consider James and I (Judy) to be your tour guides in exploring the science and Scripture behind the transformational tools of Christian NLP. We are not experts in Biblical studies or psychology, but we can introduce you to the experts and teach you some of the jargon. We just enjoy using Christian NLP in our own lives and are eager to share our experiences with others, making NLP more available to the masses.
Use this website to get more information about Christian NLP, hook up with resources or get details on the training series in September and October of 2008. The series will be held in scenic Anchorage, Alaska, so you’ll want to make your plans early if you want to keep your costs down. Alaska is truly beautiful and an appropriate place to learn about how eager God is to transform our lives into beautiful reflections of His generosity.
Patterns for Renewing Your Mind International
Our Vision: Educating, Equipping, Empowering, and Engaging.
Our Mission: To be one of the leading Christ-Centered organizations in the world whose focus is teaching and training Christian pastors, counselors, and everyday believers in the tools, patterns, and processes that facilitate the fulfillment of the call and command of Romans 12:2 to be “transformed by the renewing of the mind”.
What is Christian NLP?
NLP stands for neuro-linguistic programming. I know – what a mouthful! It was developed in the 70s by a couple of guys (Richard Bandler and Dr John Grinder) who specialized in language and math/computer programming so it’s not such a surprise that they liked big nerdy words.
What does neuro-linguistic programming mean? Let’s break it down. Neuro refers to our body’s neurological system, the system God designed to carry on conversations between our brains and our bodies. Linguistic refers to language. God has given human beings a far greater capacity for language and meaning than the rest of His creation. (You can teach an ape to ask for a banana in sign language, but you can’t get him to contemplate the nature of his existence.) Only humans are meaning makers like our Father in heaven. We use words to assign meaning to our experiences. Programming is a computer term for setting up structures to handle data. Like computers, we program our brains how to manage the information it receives from our five senses in order to make sense of the world around us. The data is stored in soundtracks and pictures and labeled by our brains to be retrieved later – much like information is found on an internet search engine by sorting for key words.
Put them all together and you get a communication model for how our brain assigns meaning to the date collected by our five senses. NLP is a set of tools explaining how we do what we do, and how we can make changes to do it better.
Christian NLP gives God the credit for how our brains and bodies talk to each other, and seeks to use Jesus endorsed tools to improve our internal communications. The results is the ability to make positive changes faster and easier, empowering us to more fully live out God’s dreams for us.
Want to learn how to stop feeling like a pawn of your negative emotions? Want to be more helpful in encouraging others around you toward genuine change? Want to have tools to support hurting people? Want to make it easier to actually do the things God’s asking you to do? Then welcome to Christian NLP!
Why don’t more Christians know about this?
Many Christians have avoided NLP because it sounds like an invention of the world. It’s sad, but the church has allowed many of the tools God gave us to help each other to go unused. It happened with counseling. The Bible is full of passages describing the importance of helping to bear each others burdens with support and encouragement. Biblical people gave and received wise counsel when making changes or enduring tough times. But somewhere along the road we stopped practicing those skills until they were all but forgotten. Then when the world “discovered” counseling, we didn’t recognize it as our own but saw it as something new and worldly. And lets face it, when the world starts trying to wrangle the truth, it often gets distorted, making it even harder to recognize. It’s taken the church years to be open to Christian counseling, when really true counseling came from God to begin with. Now many Christians think that counseling is something to leave to the professionals, when a wise friend or listening ear could ease our burdens long before they become psychosis.
It’s just like bottled water. Water is a simple substance given to us by God to keep us healthy and hydrated. But somewhere along the line, water just didn’t seem as cool as its contemporaries. After all, water is so mundane whereas soft drinks are so sparkly and come in such fancy containers. After a while, we lost sight of the fact that water has always been available to us, and therefore didn’t recognize it as ours when we started seeing it bottled up and available for sale in vending machines. Now scientists try to sell us on the benefits of water as if it’s something we can trust only because of their extensive research. I’ve even heard some people reject drinking water because, “Doggone it – coffee is all I’ve ever drank so I don’t believe all this new fangled talk about water!” God gave us coffee beans too, but He didn’t make them nearly as available as water.
Because the NLP model is so effective, it has been adopted by the psychological community and more recently by New Agers; but NLP contains insights and tools that were used regularly by Jesus and are supported by Scripture - based on old wisdom not new invention. It’s like the bottled water of making personal changes. We may not recognize the fancy new container but what’s inside has always been ours.
But aren’t God and Science in a fight?
Modern scientific enquiry was developed in the West on the foundation of a Christian world view. The Bible teaches that the world around us is subject to natural laws put into place by God Himself. That means that we can make observations and predictions about how things work. That’s how science got its start; essentially, Christianity gave birth to science because all truth comes from God and is observable to Christians and non-Christians alike. We can all know a tree by its fruit (though the fruit tastes juicier to the one who is grateful to God for it).
In recent history, atheists have used science to back up their own beliefs. (That’s the problem with scientific inquiry; the data is limited by the researcher’s own hypothesis. We don’t see anything in the lab that is outside of our scope of inquiry.) Scientifically we cannot prove or disprove God, and I’m good with that. God has always been about faith and not about proving Himself.
Today there are top scientists who have faith in God, and faithful Christians who value modern scientific study. Research can be a very effective tool all the more useful in the hands of godly people. God’s spirit is powerful enough to protect us when we learn new information. For example, you don’t have to go to a Christian medical school to be a Christian doctor. We don’t need to reject the insights of everyone who doesn’t understand God; they may have stumbled across an important truth despite their unbelief. We do want to hold those insights up to the Bible to keep our beliefs in step with Jesus and His teachings. All good scientific research lines up with God’s truth because God designed the laws of this universe. Science, at its best, reveals the wisdom of God.
What are some of these NLP Tools?
Rapport: Rapport is a feeling of being on the same page with someone. The bridge of rapport is built by meeting people where they are before expecting collaboration or change. Jesus is the ultimate example of rapport building. He left His throne in heaven to become human. He met us on our own turf, in human form, using language and stories from our world to help us get a glimpse of the Father. One quick tip to establish rapport is to speak in the other person’s jargon. If you mirror back their words it creates a feeling of shared understanding. You don’t want to mimic them like a parrot, but instead attempt to see the world from their point of view and communicate that picture back to them. Christian NLP can teach you how to do that. How would it transformation your life if you had skills to relate to anyone you wanted to?
Modeling: Modeling is about seeing excellence in someone and breaking it down into the little steps that add up to greatness. Unlike medicine and psychology, which focus on and treat disease (what’s wrong), modeling looks for what’s right – how the successful do what they do. Jesus came to be our mastery model. Discipleship is all about breaking down Jesus’ character into little steps that we can emulate in our own lives. Studying the strategy of modeling helps us to make changes faster and better. How would it transform your life if you were an expert modeler?
Outcome Thinking: Outcome thinking is about focusing on where you want to end up. Paul tells us the importance of focusing on the goal in the book of Philippians. When we concentrate on our destination rather than our obstacles we have a much greater sense of hope and perspective. God wants us to keep our eyes on the prize because He designed us to live and work better that way. Christian NLP can show you just how to accomplish this. How would it transform your life if you could keep your mind on your destination?
Sensory Awareness: We were designed to take in information with our five senses. It is the fastest and most effective way to learn. When we get our brains and our bodies going in the same direction, life feels better and works better. Often people try to think their way out of problems, but without involving your body and neurological system, you set yourself up to resist change. How would it transform your life if you could learn how to use your mind and body to work for you rather than against you?
Using Patterns: Christian NLP takes complex truths and breaks them down into little exercises that make change happen fast. It is miraculous how well crafted little steps lead to human transformation. You don’t have to be a scholar or a rocket scientist to make lasting positive changes with little investments of time and energy. You’ll learn some simple tools that facilitate amazing growth. How would it transform your life if you had the tools to actually become who God designed you to be?
Behavioral Flexibility: The book of Proverbs is all about wisdom, how to take profound truths and make them real in our day to day behavior. In Christian NLP we get attached to the desired outcome but not attached to our specific strategy to create it. If one tool doesn’t give us the result we want we simply move on and try a different tool. We know we’ve hit on something good when it produces good fruit (results). Jesus never used a formula to heal people. He may have placed His hands on one person, spoken a command to another, or my favorite – made mud from spit to heal another. God seems to like variety. I has been said that “blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape.” How would it transform your life if you had a variety of tools to make changes and could choose among them for the best fit for your current situation?