A structured certification for practitioners who want to read the assessment, run the methodology, and earn a credential that says they actually know what they are doing.
The Stronghold Certified Practitioner program trains you to use the Stronghold assessment with real clients. It is built for licensed clinicians, Christian counselors, pastoral counselors, pastoral ministers, and coaches who want a structured, scope-respecting way to integrate the platform into their practice.
The credential signals to your clients that you have read your own assessment, walked through your own reports, completed structured training on every platform surface, and submitted real session work for review.
Stronghold is a coaching and screening platform, not a diagnostic tool and not a substitute for clinical care. The certification is a competency credential on the platform, not a license to practice anything else. The training makes this distinction unmistakable.
Core is required for every practitioner. Couples and Business are optional specializations that unlock after Core. All three are included with your subscription.
The foundation every Stronghold practitioner needs. Scope of practice, the assessment engine, reading the report stack, running the platform, methodology, legal and ethics, cert mechanics.
Deep work on couples coaching. The Couples Layer questions, dual personality stacks, compatibility and friction reports, dual-practitioner workflows, the Marriage Crisis Cluster, pre-marital coaching.
Coaching founders. The Business Owner 360 module, the 11 business composites, founder identity fusion, delegation experiments, the cost dimensions, exit readiness and succession.
Certification is not a separate fee. It comes with your Stronghold subscription, along with the full practitioner platform.
Need more, or a team or organization plan? Mention it in your application and we will tailor it.
Six steps from application to a credential you can verify.
Fill out a brief application. We ask about your credentials, your practice context, which tracks interest you, and why you want to do this work. Five minutes.
Before you coach anyone through it, you take it. The full thing, about 20 minutes. This is the most important step in the program: every time you later read a client's pattern, you will remember reading your own.
Your reports and Coaching Brief generate, and Macy — the platform's AI co-pilot — walks you through them in a guided conversation. You see exactly what your future clients will see.
An automated review of your results. If something acute surfaces, we ask you to address it first, not because you are not welcome, but because practicing while in acute crisis is unsafe. Practitioners with lived experience are explicitly welcomed; the check is for crisis, not for friction.
Your subscription activates and the platform unlocks. Core training begins. You can take the Couples and Business specializations once Core is complete.
Five fully documented coaching sessions, a case study, and a reflection. Dr. Hines reviews cohort 1 personally. When you pass, your credential is issued: a digital badge, a verifiable URL, and an opt-in directory listing.
You're also joining a platform that holds itself to a published trust and safety protocol — independent AI oversight, hard conduct rules for the AI you'll work with, database-level privacy for your clients, and a tamper-evident incident record. Read The Stronghold Standard before you apply — your clients' trust is built on it.
Five minutes. We respond within two business days.
Already certified? Log in to your practitioner portal →