Connecting Counseling to the Life of the Local Church
“We want to build a counseling practice that doesn’t locate care for people separate from the church but in partnership with local churches.”
Here are a few ways we can partner with your church to bring care and counseling to your people.
The most simple way we can serve your church is as a trusted gospel centered counseling resource you can refer your people to when they need specialized / long term care or when your pastoral care resources are depleted. Individual counseling sessions cost $90 per session. We can provide counseling with people struggling with depression, anxiety, grief, anger, addiction, trauma, and relational difficulty. A strong referral program can help pastors ensure that their congregation is finding care that aligns with their biblical and pastoral convictions.
Referrals
Subsidized / Pre-Paid Counseling
We desire for counseling to be available to everyone regardless of economic status. In this spirit churches can work with us to cover a predetermined number of sessions for their congregation or pay for a portion of each session in order to reduce the out of pocket cost. If churches want to pre pay for a certain number of sessions in advance it secures sessions for their congregation and also comes with a reduced rate. Finally, this approach can build a pathway from the church to our counselors in a way that helps us keep church leaders and pastors aware of the struggles and difficulties within their congregation.
Counseling Advocacy Program
Integration between counselors, counselees, and their local church is critical. In our advocacy program we train members of your church to walk along side people within your church receiving counseling from Olive Press. These advocates serve as a place of ongoing care between counseling visits and can help counselees work through moment by moment situations.
Counselor Training / Development
In some respects, professional counseling exists because of a lack of equipped counseling within the local church. We want to help change that. By training local members in gospel centered care and counseling we believe churches will be able to help their members deal with difficulty, sin, and sorrow before it becomes a crisis. These trainings can cover specific topics (anxiety, depression etc.) or can serve as a semester long introduction to Biblical counseling training for interested members. After counselors are training within your church we can help to serve as a sounding board and resource as your counseling ministry grows.