The Framework for Building a Church-Based Counseling Ministry
New series helps churches mobilize volunteers and facilitate counseling groups
Many churches want to start a counseling ministry because they want to help their members navigate the hardships of life. However, they are intimidated by the belief that the ministry needs to run like a professional counseling center and fear the liability involved. Sustainable church-based counseling is possible, but it may not look like what is instinctively envisioned.
Brad Hambrick, the Pastor of Counseling at The Summit Church in Durham, NC, has developed the Church-Based Counseling series to help churches mobilize volunteers to utilize levels of care from friendship to mentoring to counseling groups. A groups- and mentor-based counseling model allows churches to effectively enable lay people to lead a counseling ministry in ways that avoid the liabilities and misconceptions that emerge with pseudo-professional models of lay counseling.
Mobilizing Church-Based Counseling, the first book in the series, provides a framework for guiding churches through the process of their ministry. Based on proven models used in his own congregation, Hambrick lays out a clear plan to launch a sustainable soul-care ministry that can be replicated in churches of any size.
Hambrick brings clarity to common points of confusion about church-based counseling and provides guidance on how to provide oversight for lay-led counseling groups and mentoring relationships. A congregation can minister the hope of the gospel to the struggles of life—both sin and suffering—without going beyond the capacity of its members.
Readers will discover two flexible models of church-based counseling ministry. One addresses common life struggles (the G4 group model) and the other focuses on Gospel-Centered Marriage mentoring for premarital and marital enrichment.
John Chapman, who serves as the Director of G4 Recovery-Support Group Ministries at The Summit Church, joins Hambrick as co-author of the second book in the series, Facilitating Counseling Groups which provides training for lay leaders to guide a group-based church counseling ministry (G4 model) that addresses common life struggles. This book outlines the dynamics of leading a topic-specific peer counseling group and underscores the importance of ongoing support and training for group facilitators.
Leading a counseling group is different from leading a general discipleship group, even if both exist at the same church. A counseling group focuses on a specific need, garners heightened levels of vulnerability about matters of greater sensitivity and requires more skill and intentionality from its leader. When a layperson is well-equipped, this kind of ministry is tremendously rewarding, as they see God multiply the work he did in their life with people walking a similar journey.
The authors equip lay leaders to be effective in a group-based counseling ministry within the church. By learning how to use their life experiences and a group curriculum to help others overcome a life-dominating struggle of sin or suffering, leaders will learn to share the comfort and hope for change that can only come from God.
“At The Summit Church, we’ve been developing and refining a groups- and mentoring-based lay counseling model for over a decade. We believe these models can help churches accomplish the good ministry they want to achieve without the factors that intimidate them,” the authors share. “It’s not theory. It’s field-tested practice. We are not professional counselors retrofitting what we do in private practice to be executed in local churches by lay counselors. Mobilizing and Facilitating provide counseling models that, from their inception, were designed to be carried out in local churches by lay people.”
Michael Gembola, the director of Blue Ridge Christian Counseling writes, “Many churches love the idea of being a place of care, but they are sobered by the possibility of hurting rather than helping. Strong pastoral counseling, lay counseling, and counseling groups truly are difficult to do in an organized and effective way. Brad has done church leaders a real service by offering a realistic template for providing relational ministry wisely and well for the problems of life. Highly recommend.”
Mobilizing Church-Based Counseling: Models for Sustainable Church-Based Care
By Brad Hambrick
Print ISBN: 978-1-64507-329-1
Facilitating Counseling Groups: A Leader’s Guide for Group-Based Counseling Ministry
By Brad Hambrick and John Chapman
Print ISBN: 978-1-64507-331-4
October 16, 2023 / Retail Price: $16.99
Church-Based Counseling Series
RELIGION/Christian Ministry/Counseling & Recovery
