Jim Wilder

Dr. E James Wilder
PhD, Clinical Psychology, and M.A. Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary

Dr. Jim Wilder has been training leaders and counselors for over 30 years on five continents. Jim has extensive clinical counseling experience and is the founder and chief neurotheologian of Life Model Works. Jim grew up in South America and is fluent in English and Spanish. He is the author of 20 books with a strong focus on maturity and relational skills. His co-authored book, Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You, has sold over 100,000 copies and is printed in 14 languages. Jim has published numerous articles and developed four sets of video and relational leadership trainings. He served as a guest lecturer at Fuller Seminary, Biola, Talbot Seminary, St. John Vianney Theological Seminary, Montreat College, Tyndale Seminary, and elsewhere.

Life Model Works builds on the fifty-year legacy of Shepherd’s House, which began in the 1970s as a ministry to street kids in Van Nuys, California. In those early days, Jim worked with the team of volunteer counselors and Fuller Seminary faculty to build a counseling center to help broken people recover from negative habits, addictions, abuse, and trauma. By the 1990s, Jim was Assistant Director and later Executive Director of Shepherd’s House, helping hundreds of pastors and churches with their toughest counseling cases.

Jim was intimately involved in 1987 when Shepherd’s House conducted a careful review of why some people with the same level of trauma and treatment recovered but others did not. The results of this case-by-case study became the Life Model, a new recovery model. The Life Model study findings were published in Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You.