Dr. Jeffrey Gross, Th.D., Ph.D., M.S., SAC-IT

Dr. Jeffrey Gross is the Lead Counseling Pastor and Executive Director of Restoring Hope Ministries, and founder and Dean of the Restoring Hope School of Biblical Counseling (RHSBC). He has been providing biblical counseling since 2019, serving individuals, couples, and families with Scripture-saturated care rooted in his own story of redemption.

Dr. Gross holds a Doctor of Theology (Th.D., Cum Laude) and a Doctor of Philosophy in Christian Counseling (Ph.D., Summa Cum Laude) from Northwestern Christian University, and a Master of Science in Clinical Psychology (Cum Laude) from the APA-accredited Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology (WSPP), where he is currently a doctoral student in the Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology program (anticipated May 2028). He also holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay (Cum Laude) and holds the Wisconsin DSPS-regulated credential of Substance Abuse Counselor — In Training (SAC-IT).

His clinical training includes work as a Student Psychologist at the Milwaukee Psychotherapy Collaborative, a Chief Student Psychologist role at Froedtert and Medical College of Wisconsin supporting veterans and first responders with TBI through the BRAVE program, and contracted group therapy work at The Manor by Windrose — a private residential addiction treatment facility. He is also an active Psi Chi officer (Co-President and President), a Wisconsin Psychological Association member, and NAMI North Bay Affiliate Leader.

Dr. Gross is certified in Brainspotting (Phases 1, 2 & 5), Gottman Method Couples Counseling (Levels 1 & 2), and holds a Certified Peer Support Specialist credential and Mental Health First Aid certification. He integrates these neurologically and clinically-informed approaches within his deeply biblical framework of care. He specializes in grief, addiction recovery, trauma, identity, marriage restoration, men's ministry, and spiritual formation.

He has presented at NAMI Wisconsin CIPS Training, APA Division 39: Bodies in Praxis, and the Wisconsin Psychological Association Annual Conventions (2025 and 2026). His dissertation research focuses on the Orienting Reflex — a subject that runs throughout much of his published writing.

Dr. Gross holds that Scripture is not merely true — it is where truth is born. This is not a slogan; it is a conviction that shapes the way he approaches every session, every question, every silence. Scripture is not a reference book to be consulted after the real work is done. It is the interpretive frame through which the whole of human experience is first understood and then, slowly and humbly, navigated.

He will often say, with some discomfort, that he struggles to call himself a "biblical counselor" — not because he doubts the work, but because the title can quietly place the counselor at the center of something that belongs entirely to Christ. Jesus is the true and wonderful Counselor. Dr. Gross is not. Christ is the teacher; Dr. Gross is, at best, a student who has been asked to sit with other students for a while. That distinction is not false modesty — it is the only posture that keeps the room honest.

Biblical counseling, as he understands it, is not a Bible study. It goes deeper, and it moves differently. From the opening chapters of Genesis — where we first see a relational hierarchy and the structural logic of a biblical worldview — the Scripture lays out a metanarrative that plays out, in one form or another, in every human life. His questions in session emerge from that framework: not from technique, not from a checklist, but from the lived, tested, imperfect wisdom of his own journey with Christ.

One of the things Dr. Gross is careful to clarify — perhaps especially to those who fear the process — is that the goal of a session is not to uncover sins the client doesn't already know about. People are not unaware of their own failures. The work is not a wagging of the finger. "Let he who has not sinned throw the first stone," he has said, and he means it in the most personal sense: he enters the room as a sinner himself, someone not worthy yet living in Covenant. The heart of Christ in the space is what he is aiming at — not a catalog of wrongs, but an exchange of Truth.

And "exchange" is the right word. Biblical counseling, for Dr. Gross, is not a unidirectional transfer of knowledge. He brings his own vulnerability, his own true experience and emotion, and shares them — not indulgently, but appropriately, in service of the other. He regularly describes learning more about God from his clients than he imparts to them. The Holy Spirit's presence comes out in the space between two people who are both reaching, both dependent. He describes this as healing in the meta — not in the technique, not even in the words, but in what happens when Christ's love is proven through the capacity to love one another well, even imperfectly, even in struggle.