Pastoral Counseling and Soul Care

The Pastoral Counseling and Soul Care Doctor of Ministry track is designed for the pastor, chaplain, missionary, or parachurch worker to develop and facilitate a healthy biblical holistic counseling philosophy, ministry, and strategy for their congregation or organization. It equips those who will carry out their pastoral counseling and soul care ministries in church-related contexts such as congregations, para-church, and chaplaincy roles (hospital, hospice, prison, military, etc.), and helps ministry leaders grow personally and professionally by understanding the foundations of nurturing their souls and a holistically well-counseled congregation.

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Informing spiritual passions by…
Forming mentored learning communities, thereby…
Transforming ministers and ministries for a lifetime.

Informing

While the stigma of counseling in recent years has greatly diminished in much of the church, too often unfortunately so have healthy ecclesiological implementations of the work of emotional and soul care. A well-defined and refreshed Christian understanding of counseling-related practices, partnerships, principles and themes is vital, including: the role of the Holy Spirit in counseling, holiness as wholeness, the relationship of healthy leadership to healthy churches, a theology of wholeness, the complementary roles of clergy and professional therapists and the best practices of soul care.

Amidst an increasingly secularized society facing major shifts of generational change, medical experimentation and scientific development, the role of counseling and mental health enjoys an unprecedented prominence and role in the daily lives of many people of faith. However, arguably the practices of counseling in recent years have outpaced the accompanying necessary disciplines of biblical, theological, and psychological reflection, consideration, and integration leaving ministers and local churches too often underequipped for the soul care struggles of their congregants. There is a need for more than a refresher experience in this vital area; these dynamics necessitate a deeper rethinking and redesigning of the role of counseling within and around the local church.

Dr. Jack Hayford once said, “God never called us to build big churches, but rather to grow big souls.” This Doctor of Ministry track focuses on the emotional and soul support needs of the shepherd-leader and sequentially builds towards the development of a theology and strategy for nurturing healthy souls and well-counseled local churches in a rapidly changing world.

Forming

This DMin track is designed for the professional pastor, chaplain, missionary or parachurch worker to develop and facilitate a healthy biblical holistic counseling philosophy, ministry and strategy for their congregation or organization. The purpose is not for mental health licensure and ministry in clinical counseling settings, but rather to equip those who will carry out their counseling ministries in church-related contexts in congregations, parachurch, and chaplaincy roles (hospital, hospice, prison, military, etc).

This track exists to help ministry leaders grow personally and professionally by understanding the foundations of nurturing a holistically well-counseled congregation. This will occur through a team-based strategy incorporating the engagement of a “counseling cycle” or system that includes multiple levels of soul care from initial compassion-equipping of every congregant, to soul care mentoring, to the effective and realistic role of the pastor as pastoral counselor, and, when needed, to the role of the effective and informed referral of congregants to a Christ-centered licensed clinical therapist.

Three essential developmental components (the whole leader; ecclesial cultures of wholeness; and well-counseled congregants and practices) will be examined sequentially during the three two-week residencies. Because the nature of the Doctor of Ministry program is to provide an intensive and extended ministry-skills upgrade, the focus of this track will be to enhance the practitioner’s understanding of and experience in pastoral counseling and soul care in a variety of cultural and multi-cultural settings within the overall Church community.

Transforming

1. To resource students to develop and articulate a biblical and theological understanding for holistic soul care and pastoral counseling.
2. To understand the vital role that the Church and ministers throughout history have played in the evolution of counseling.
3. To identify and utilize key soul care skills and practices in the context of Christian discipleship, community and wholeness.
4. To create a personal and transferable philosophy of soul care and pastoral counseling integrating theology and psychology (psychotheology).
5. To recognize and observe contextualized advanced strategies, models, practices and partnerships for cultivating well-counseled souls and biblical community amidst multi-cultural settings.
6. To better understand the broader universe of counseling (from lay-counseling to pastoral to soul care to newer therapeutic modalities) to discern the various effective use and roles of each resource in the journey towards wholeness in Christ.
7. To create through the cohort model of the program a dimension of Christian community and spiritual nurturing so that students form strong friendships with one another and enter long-term relationships with the scholars who guide the learning experience that result in:
   • Students and mentors will be able to encounter counseling and soul care together as a part of their residencies, creating shared experiences that will contribute to their formation, education, and friendships.
   • Students and mentors will have potential opportunities for regional connection and shared experiences outside of the residencies, which will solidify their relationships over the three-year period.
8. To develop in students a deeper understanding of Christ’s lordship in all areas of life for the common good of the contemporary world.
   • Students will be able to develop a vision for Christ’s lordship in the ministry of counseling. One way they will do this is by hearing stories and experiences of experienced practitioners in Christian counseling, including pastors, pastoral counselors, and therapists.
   • Student will be able to grasp and support the role of counseling within God’s kingdom and church.
9. To cultivate within students through critical reflection and careful research through the residencies and projects an enriched Christian witness in the places of society they are called to serve.
10. To instill in students a refreshed view of their ministry as it relates to the proclamation of the Gospel among all people and the role of counseling to that end.