Biblical Pastoral Care
You don't have to navigate a hard season alone.
Personalized biblical pastoral care for children, teenagers, parents, and families — grounded in Scripture, prayer, wisdom, and relationship.
Known by God. Never alone.
Known by God.
Never alone.
Care for children, teenagers, parents & families
Who we are
Know God.
Get to know you.
Care.
That's the order, and we never swap it around. Care that skips the knowing is just advice — and your family has had plenty of advice.
Before a child can be helped, a child has to be known. That is the whole ministry.
We're not licensed counselors. We're ordained pastors.
Pastor Matthew Harder is an ordained Christian minister who holds to a traditional biblical worldview. Ordination means years of ministry, theological study, and people who know him standing behind his character and calling.
He does not diagnose, and he does not offer psychotherapy or medical treatment. We say so early and plainly, because a family in a hard season deserves to know exactly what they're getting.
We're not offering you a professional. We're offering you a pastor.
We listen before we advise
Your 60-minute intake exists so we hear the whole story first. No assessment, no diagnosis — just being known.
We can pray with you
Scripture, prayer, and honest talk about God belong in the room here. That's the job, not an add-on.
We care for the household
Parent, child, teenager, family. One person rarely struggles alone, and one person rarely recovers alone.
We'll tell you the truth
When a licensed counselor or physician would serve you better, we say so kindly and help you find good people.
What KNOWN believes
Our convictions, our ordination, and why a pastor is different from a counselor.
How we do it
We do not start with what is wrong. We start with who you are.
- Movement One
We get to know the person
We start in their world. What they love, what they would do all day, what they lose track of time doing. Ten minutes in and we still have not asked about the hard part. That is on purpose. A kid decides in the first ninety seconds whether this is one more adult assessing them.
- Movement Two
We name what they are carrying, in their words
Not our word for it. Theirs. What would you call the thing that has been hard. Then the good half, the hard half, what happens right before it gets bad, and what it feels like in their body. We write it down exactly the way they said it, and we tell them we are writing it down.
- Movement Three
Two witnesses
Scripture says a matter is established by two or three witnesses, so we bring two. What God says about them in his word: made on purpose, fearfully and wonderfully made, known before they explain themselves. And what their own parent has personally seen, written down before the call, five specific true things. We read the parent's five out loud, slowly, one at a time. Then we ask the only question that matters. Do you believe them.
- Movement Four
One plan that no other family gets
Everything from movement one becomes the language of the plan. Their sport, their instrument, their animals, the thing they build. A shared language every adult in their life uses the same way. A signal they design themselves. Ten minutes a day they lead and you follow. Words you can say that will actually land. One verse. One prayer for you and one for them.
Their world
Every kid already has a language. We just learn theirs.
Jesus talked to fishermen about nets and to farmers about seed. One boy we sat with does jiu jitsu, so the whole hour got built out of the mat: tapping out is not losing, nobody is mad at a white belt, you drill it when it does not count so it fires when it does. His parents did not have to learn a new vocabulary. He already spoke this one. That is the method. Your child's world becomes the words your family uses for the hard thing.
Tapping out is not losing. It is how you keep going.
What people carry is different every time. Grief. Anxiety. A divorce. A move. A diagnosis. A friendship that turned. Doubt they are scared to say out loud. Anger nobody can explain. The method does not change.
Where to begin
Start where you are.
Sometimes a family needs someone outside the immediate situation to listen, pray, help make sense of what is happening, and identify a healthy path forward.
KNOWN Kids.
Biblical Care for Children
Gentle, steady care that helps a child put words to what they are carrying — without being talked down to.
ExploreKNOWN Teens.
Biblical Care for Teenagers
Honest, unhurried conversation about identity, pressure, faith and worth. No lectures, no shame.
ExploreKNOWN Parents.
Biblical Care for Parents
A composed voice for the parent carrying more than anyone sees. Practical, biblical, kind.
ExploreKNOWN Families.
Biblical Care for Families
Care for the whole household when a season has stretched everyone thin, and connection needs rebuilding.
ExploreThe process
Here's how KNOWN works.
- 01
Step 01
Tell your story
Complete a secure intake before we meet.
- 02
Step 02
Meet together
Your first 60-minute intake gives us space to understand what's happening.
- 03
Step 03
Build a path forward
Receive a personalized Pastoral Care Plan with prayer, Scripture, practical next steps, and recommendations.
Your care, organized
Everything in one calm place.
Your meeting time, your Pastoral Care Plan, and the Scripture and prayer we're walking through — gathered together so nothing gets lost between conversations.
Your next meeting
Tuesday, August 18
3:30 PM
Pastoral Care with Pastor Matthew
30 minutes
Your Care Plan
Next Steps
Scripture & Prayer
What care includes
Care that's personal.
No template, no script. Every Pastoral Care Plan is shaped around the family in front of us.
- Scripture
- Prayer
- Listening
- Practical wisdom
- Family conversations
- Parent guidance
- Next steps
- Professional referrals when appropriate
Pricing
Clear numbers, before you call.
No memberships and no packages to sign. You'll always know what a meeting costs.
Initial Intake + Personalized Pastoral Care Plan
$149
Includes your first 60-minute intake meeting and your personalized written Pastoral Care Plan.
Ongoing Pastoral Care
$50
30 minutes
Continued care at whatever rhythm fits your family — weekly, every other week, or as needed.
Pastor Matthew Harder
Founder, KNOWN.
About Matthew
Pastoral presence shaped by more than twenty years of ministry.
Pastor Matthew Harder has spent more than twenty years pastoring teenagers, parents, and families. He holds an M.A. in Pastoral Ministries with an emphasis in theology and suffering from Northwest University.
Where this comes from
Long before there was a word for it, there were shepherds.
Nobody in the Old Testament had the title pastor. They had a job instead. Shepherd. It is what Moses was doing when God called him, and what David was doing when they came looking for a king, and God took him from the sheepfolds and he shepherded the people with an upright heart and a skillful hand.
Psalm 78:70–72
It is the picture God uses for himself: he gathers the lambs in his arms and gently leads the ones with young.
Isaiah 40:11
And when the leaders of Israel failed, God named the failure in the plainest terms available. You did not strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, or go looking for the lost. That is still the whole job description.
Ezekiel 34:4
Jesus took the same word for himself. The good shepherd, who knows his own and is known by them, who leaves the ninety nine for the one. He is the reason we do this the way we do it.
John 10:11–14
Watch how he actually cared for people. He went to them. He asked questions he already knew the answer to, because the person needed to say it out loud. What do you want me to do for you. Do you want to get well.
Mark 10:51
He built every illustration out of the hearer's own world: nets for fishermen, seed for farmers, sheep for shepherds, water for a woman who came to draw water. He gave people their name back. He touched the ones nobody would touch.
John 4
And he withdrew to lonely places to pray, and slept through a storm, because even he did not carry it without rest.
Luke 5:16
Then he handed the work to ordinary people. Shepherd the flock among you, not because you have to and not by lording it over anyone.
1 Peter 5:2–4
Feed my sheep. That is the whole commission, and it is the same one an ordained minister still stands under.
John 21:17
One more thing, and it is the part most parents have never been told. In your house, in this season, you are the pastor. Talk about these things when you sit down and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. That was never assigned to a building or a professional. It was assigned to you. Our job is not to replace you. It is to hand you the staff and show you how to hold it.
Deuteronomy 6:6–7
What we need from you
This only works if you work it.
Nine things. Two honest weeks. Ten minutes a day. A tap is never punished. We ask for them before the first call, and we ask you to tell the truth if you are not there yet. Honest beats good.
Fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139:14
Pastors, not professionals.
KNOWN. provides biblical pastoral care from an ordained Christian pastor. We do not diagnose, provide psychotherapy, or offer medical treatment. We can walk alongside licensed counselors and physicians when your family needs that kind of help too.