Counseling services need not be a last resort

This is the third and final installment of a series on mental health issues affecting believers. The previous installments appeared on April 12 and October 11 of The Index.

Click here to view the related articles in the series

 

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“I feel stuck. I don’t know how to get better. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off dead.”

Tessa Smith listened to the college student voice her frustration. Smith was a US/C-2 missionary through the North American Mission Board at the time, conducting apartment Bible studies and campus ministry at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M. She knew she was in over her head.

“You need more help than I can give you right now,” she answered. “I can help you find that help, though.”

 

The right call

Prior to that 2004 encounter in New Mexico, Smith had already earned a psychology degree from Georgia State University. Her encounters on the two-year missions excursion cemented a desire to help people in a desperate struggle with themselves.

“I felt called into the ministry when I was a freshman in college, but I didn’t know what that meant,” says Smith, a member of Roswell St. Baptist in Marietta who recently received her Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Counseling from New Orleans Seminary.

“While in New Mexico, I saw people in tremendous pain,” added Smith, who recently was hired as a social service provider with Avita Community Partners, a state-run mental health agency, in Gainesville. “I developed a huge desire to get formal training in counseling to work in that field.”

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (www.nimh.nih.gov), more than a quarter of Americans 18 and older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. The number suffering from a serious mental illness is much smaller, about six percent. Still, that translates into potentially more than 13,000 Georgia Baptists in Sunday School – and the pulpit – each week suffering from a severe mental disorder.

Those wanting professional help may contact someone with a Christian background to navigate the ways faith plays into mental health. It’s a growing field for a growing need, doctors say. However, the term “Christian counselor” can mean different things, and some research is advised.

 

Current research + God’s Word

“There are various definitions of what a Christian counselor is,” said Kathy Steele, assistant professor of psychology and counseling at New Orleans Seminary. “Some think it means the counselor is a Christian who uses the same methods as any other counselor. Others say it’s a counselor who uses only the Bible.

“The danger in these two extremes is that they exclude most understanding of the physical and medical issues of mental health. In between you find counselors who are Christians, have studied theories from psychology and current research about the brain, but evaluate those theories with the standard of God’s Word.”

Gary Greene saw the needs up close. Years ago as a part-time student at Southeastern Seminary and full-time pastor at New Freedom Baptist Church in Pinehurst, N.C., he says he was “literally building a church based on counseling.” He had studied pastoral counseling at Southeastern – a program not meant for licensure but for specialization in counseling for pastors – but in 1995 felt a call to being a practicing therapist.

“After 20 years as a pastor and missionary I’d done so much counseling and seen God bear fruit through that,” said Greene, who today serves pastor of counseling and recovery at Central Baptist Church operates Christian Counseling and Recovery Service, both in Douglasville. “I knew I had limited knowledge and wanted to build on that. [Counseling] is a unique way to meet the needs of the community and a perfect opportunity to open the door to the body of Christ.”

He, his wife, and four children moved to Louisiana in 2001 where he enrolled at New Orleans Seminary. Greene graduated with a Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Counseling degree. Following that was a three-year, 2,000-hour internship with the Georgia Baptist Health Care system that he says put him working under “world-class” therapists.

In addition to his roles at his church and private practice, Greene has taught counseling for five years as an adjunct professor at New Orleans’ North Georgia Extension Center, located at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta.

At Central, Greene oversees several small groups that meet periodically in helping members cope or overcome addictions.

One group leader, Gerri Lester, first discovered Central’s ministry through its Celebrate Recovery program. When her mother died in 1999, Lester admits she “crawled into a hole.” A friend of hers at First Baptist Douglasville recommended she look into Central’s program.

Lester joined Central four years ago and now leads one women’s group for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and another over general issues concerning abuse.

A survivor of sexual abuse as a child herself, Lester said coming to grips with her own past was the biggest hurdle toward helping others.

“I had a lot of heart issues,” she said. “Lots of times I was told to trust God and I didn’t really want to. I had to admit that I was afraid to. I finally realized there were people in the Bible just like me with weaknesses and God used them. If I’m open with my own defects God can use me too.

“I’d been a very independent woman most of my life. I had to deal with the fact that I wasn’t as powerful as I thought I was.”

For pastors, required training in counseling has increased, but there is still a line where ministers need to use discretion and contact a licensed therapist.

“If a pastor is going to be a counselor, he doesn’t need to be a pastor,” stated Jerry Barlow, professor of preaching and pastoral work at New Orleans Seminary. “He must concentrate on one or the other. We want students to be knowledgeable on how to do counseling, but also know when to refer.

“We don’t want students to think that because they have an intro training course they can counsel someone with serious disorders going back to childhood. We stress knowing the limits of your capability.”

When pastors don’t heed that warning, well-intentioned clergy can sometimes make matters worse. Staying on top of the latest research is crucial.

“I’ve been doing counseling for 30 years and still find myself in situations where I’m not qualified,” said Paul Gregoire, New Orleans dean of Admissions and registrar who teaches child psychology and developmental psychology at Nunez Community College in Chalmette, La. He also is an instructor at a local extension center for Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa.

“I’ve seen so many untrained people attribute things like a drunk driver to God’s will. Worst of all, at funerals people may say something like ‘Jesus needed him more than you.’ You get into these situations where people don’t know what to say so they say anything.”

Two years ago, Gregoire was in a state where he needed to be on the couch, so to speak, instead of sitting in the chair beside it. Like so many others, Gregoire found himself dealing with the fury of Hurricane Katrina. His house had seven feet of water in it. His church, St. Bernard Baptist in Chalmette, was destroyed by an oil spill from the storm. He had nothing but three days’ worth of clothes and tickets to the Louisiana State University home opener that would soon be moved to Arizona State.

He moved with the seminary to Atlanta while his wife and two boys remained in Carthage, La., in the northeast corner of the state. For seven months he piled 45,000 miles on a ‘96 Lincoln Town Car donated by Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., trying to maintain some sense of stability.

“Counselors need to be settled in themselves,” he said. “It took about four months before I could talk to people in my church about Katrina. It was therapeutic being among people who went through the same thing. I had to get myself straightened out first. Going through that grief made me a better counselor.”

 

Becoming a helper

One morning at a Bible study a brochure from the American Association of Christian Counselors ended up in Lester’s hands. In it was a note about training for those wanting to be counselors. The thought of helping others with backgrounds similar to hers led to Lester enrolling in classes at New Orleans Seminary for an associate’s degree in Christian Ministry.

“I’m 50 years old,” she said on her hesitation and Greene’s insistence that she enroll in the program. “Gary was encouraging me to go. I thought I was too old and too scared, but he talked me into it.”

Currently, Lester is working through the AACC to be a certified biblical counselor. Steele says there is a place in the church for others like Lester.

“These lay counselors can do much work in mentoring and modeling to help people learn to deal with emotional health and relational problems. There are several good programs for training, and usually one of the primary components is learning when to defer to someone else with greater expertise,” she stated.

Throughout therapy, said Gregoire, there is a higher purpose in treatment.

“A non-believer will not understand [the focus coming from] Scripture. If they don’t understand God’s word, it doesn’t do any good. All our objectives as Christian counselors are to get them saved.

“They need a higher power outside of themselves.”

 

Related article:

Seeking counseling still an uneasy first step