Counseling
A resource for churches who do not have an on-staff counselor
Counseling
Dr. Wheeler has a passion to help people find freedom and hope through a deeper relationship with Christ. He knows that Christ alone is the true Healer. He has been a professional counselor since 1989 and has always had a private counseling practice on the side, counseling hundreds of individuals, couples, and families. If he can help in any way, he would love to sit with you.
Dr. Tony Wheeler
Tony likes to call himself a “counselor who speaks.” Tony earned a Ph.D. from Kansas State University in Family Life Education and Consultation and a Master’s in Family Studies/Therapy from Friends University. For over 20 years Tony was a pastor, but is now a professor, counselor, consultant, and speaker. Tony and Stacey cofounded the non-profit ministry Family Ministry Institute, doing business as Wheeler Ministries, to provide help and hope to individuals, marriages, families, and church teams. In 2020, Tony became the Director of Pastoral Counseling for the Evangelical Friends Church—Mid-America Yearly Meeting.
Tony gives seminars specifically focused on developing self-awareness, spiritual awareness, and deeper relationships within marriages and in parenting. He is a contributing author in the book Marriage: Its Foundation, Theology, and Mission in a Changing World (2018). He has been a featured speaker on Focus on the Family radio, Moody Radio, the Chris Fabry Live! Show, the American Association of Christian Counselors, and The Blessing 101 and 201 DVD series with Dr. John Trent. He has been married to Stacey for 34 years and has three adult children, Isaac (32), Adele (30) with her husband Shane Brown and daughter Amelia, and Audrey (26) with her husband Ben Skinner and sons Judah, Jedidiah, and Jireh. When he’s not hanging out with family, Tony enjoys golfing, taking drives with Stacey, and drinking coffee.
To contact Tony for more information about ZOOM counseling or face-to-face counseling, please email him at [email protected].
Tony likes to call himself a “counselor who speaks.” Tony earned a Ph.D. from Kansas State University in Family Life Education and Consultation and a Master’s in Family Studies/Therapy from Friends University. For over 20 years Tony was a pastor, but is now a professor, counselor, consultant, and speaker. Tony and Stacey cofounded the non-profit ministry Family Ministry Institute, doing business as Wheeler Ministries, to provide help and hope to individuals, marriages, families, and church teams. In 2020, Tony became the Director of Pastoral Counseling for the Evangelical Friends Church—Mid-America Yearly Meeting.
Tony gives seminars specifically focused on developing self-awareness, spiritual awareness, and deeper relationships within marriages and in parenting. He is a contributing author in the book Marriage: Its Foundation, Theology, and Mission in a Changing World (2018). He has been a featured speaker on Focus on the Family radio, Moody Radio, the Chris Fabry Live! Show, the American Association of Christian Counselors, and The Blessing 101 and 201 DVD series with Dr. John Trent. He has been married to Stacey for 34 years and has three adult children, Isaac (32), Adele (30) with her husband Shane Brown and daughter Amelia, and Audrey (26) with her husband Ben Skinner and sons Judah, Jedidiah, and Jireh. When he’s not hanging out with family, Tony enjoys golfing, taking drives with Stacey, and drinking coffee.
To contact Tony for more information about ZOOM counseling or face-to-face counseling, please email him at [email protected].
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“They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
Jeremiah 6:14 |
“We will always move toward self-protection before we move to love, if we are not aware of what is fueling our self-protective façade. And it makes sense to put on this façade when we feel disrespected, unappreciated, vulnerable, missed, disappointed, and exposed. Through Self-Protective Façade we will show people how self-protection, pain, and burdens from the past affect them in the present, and help them choose to intentionally move towards others in love, through, and in spite of the walls of self-protection. Knowing how to become aware of what is beneath the surface in our hearts, rather than moving through life controlled by the fear of being exposed, will revolutionize our ability to love God, others, and ourselves.” Dr. Tony Wheeler |
More information about discovering your SPF - Tony's "secret sauce"
We all have a powerful life story that includes love, joy, unmet expectations, disappointment, pain, major life events, and trauma. We develop a self-protective façade (SPF) to protect ourselves from pain and present an image we want to project; but, how many of us have processed the deep and lasting effect of hiding behind our SPF on our relationship with God, our self-esteem, our marriage, and all of our relationships? Do we recognize how our SPF can prevent us from finding truth and freedom in key broken areas of our lives? Jeremiah 6:14 declares, “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” So many people desire to find hope and peace from the constant pain they suffer in their hearts and souls. Is the church addressing this great need for real help? Or is it more common to see band-aid programs dressing “the wound of [the] people as though it were not serious?” Are we really addressing the root issues of our pain?
Our SPF is shaped by our unique childhood painful experiences, and by our family, personality, strengths, and weaknesses. It is used to keep others at a distance and to keep our false image intact. We use our SPF to such a great extent that most of us have become unaware of how disconnected we are from the truth about the strategies we use to protect our hearts. We often go through life unaware of how trials from our past and burdens we carry negatively affect how we view ourselves and God. This important buffer and defense mechanism, SPF, is used to help us survive the pain of life. Some of us, though, begin to recognize that the facades that used to protect us have now become barriers and burdens of false relating created by hiding. We can reach a point where we begin to desire true community more than our desire to appear a certain way to others. We can take a look at the inner workings of our SPF and recognize how it is actually full of wrong beliefs and lies concerning our view of ourselves and our view of God. The ability to become aware of the state of our own hearts and minds, including the great impact of fear, shame, and anxiety on our lives, will increase love and soul care within every relationship we have, including our own self-identity and self-love.
As Dr. Wheeler shares his life story based on his own childhood and his 27 years as a counselor, he brings understanding of how our self-protective façade is affecting the way we view ourselves and our self-identity. This is the focus of this content: Self-Protective Façade will give readers a new framework for what is actually occurring beneath the surface of their own hearts and thoughts. Once we are aware of our SPF, including internal motivations and pain and desires, we are able to choose to intentionally move toward God to help us seek righteousness, freedom, and hope in any given situation and learn new pathways of self-forgiveness and grace.
Our SPF is shaped by our unique childhood painful experiences, and by our family, personality, strengths, and weaknesses. It is used to keep others at a distance and to keep our false image intact. We use our SPF to such a great extent that most of us have become unaware of how disconnected we are from the truth about the strategies we use to protect our hearts. We often go through life unaware of how trials from our past and burdens we carry negatively affect how we view ourselves and God. This important buffer and defense mechanism, SPF, is used to help us survive the pain of life. Some of us, though, begin to recognize that the facades that used to protect us have now become barriers and burdens of false relating created by hiding. We can reach a point where we begin to desire true community more than our desire to appear a certain way to others. We can take a look at the inner workings of our SPF and recognize how it is actually full of wrong beliefs and lies concerning our view of ourselves and our view of God. The ability to become aware of the state of our own hearts and minds, including the great impact of fear, shame, and anxiety on our lives, will increase love and soul care within every relationship we have, including our own self-identity and self-love.
As Dr. Wheeler shares his life story based on his own childhood and his 27 years as a counselor, he brings understanding of how our self-protective façade is affecting the way we view ourselves and our self-identity. This is the focus of this content: Self-Protective Façade will give readers a new framework for what is actually occurring beneath the surface of their own hearts and thoughts. Once we are aware of our SPF, including internal motivations and pain and desires, we are able to choose to intentionally move toward God to help us seek righteousness, freedom, and hope in any given situation and learn new pathways of self-forgiveness and grace.
“God might be calling you to a new level of trust and security in him. He might be calling you to overcome some of the invisible, yet incredibly real, barriers and obstacles from your past so you can choose to live a new life full of freedom and obedience in Christ. Self-protection can be fueled by fear, anxiety, shame, and pride, emotions controlling our ability to reach out and really see and care for others. These emotions are also, in some ways, a by-product of our incredible need and ability to protect our hearts from pain. Self-protection might be holding you back from entering into the amazing gift of consistent and true fellowship and connecting with others. It might also be preventing you from giving love, grace, mercy, understanding, and hope to yourself and to the next person you talk to.” Dr. Tony Wheeler
The truth is that most of us survive by living behind self-protection. Our self-protective façade dictates how we connect with and care for ourselves, our spouse, children, parents, friends, and everyone we meet. It is the way we act around others in order to protect our hearts from further pain and rejection by projecting an image that we hope will be liked, accepted, respected, appreciated, and wanted (our core desires). Our self-protective façade is controlling our thoughts and emotions more than we realize. So many prayers we pray and the self-talk we engage in are just trying to encourage ourselves or someone else to build a better façade. We even judge the effectiveness of our prayers or self-talk based on whether our façade was strengthened or weakened. This is false relating. The Pharisees were warned to first clean the inside of the cup, and then the outside would be clean as well. Our internal thoughts and motives are what will be judged in the end. I want to get to the root issues, and in order to do that we must become aware of what motivates our hearts to do what we do. Then we can choose to move toward righteousness, humility, and love, instead of reinforcing our defensive stance.
“This is the fight I have been fighting all of my professional life. I’m trying to help people to grow spiritually and be dependent on the Lord for their direction and security and purpose because I don’t want them to grow more dependent on themselves and their own strategies. One woman once told me, ‘I know we’re going to talk about “seeking first the Kingdom” but are we ever going to DO anything?’ Doing is so much easier than dealing with the fact that her husband had an affair or facing alone the incredible amounts of pain from burdens that she is struggling through. Going to serve the poor or do some act of service was easier for her than an honest conversation with God about the broken state of her heart and taking a genuine look inside.”
Counseling
Spend one-on-one time through SKYPE counseling with Isaac Wheeler, MFT, trained by his Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy as well as through the years spent in ministry with his father, Isaac will help you overcome destructive patterns and move toward awareness, health, and transformation.
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"A special thank you to Tony for preparing Nick and Bethany for their wedding and marriage! For Stacey's e-book as part of the wedding planning and preparations! . . . So many ways your family has blessed our family! God bless all of you!"
- MARLENE LOFGREN
- MARLENE LOFGREN
