A Safe and Effective Church-Based Lay Counseling Ministry

The escalating mental health crisis of recent decades has brought increasing rates of addiction, suicide, and debilitating symptoms of depression and anxiety. In many places, there are insufficient affordable mental health care options.

In light of this, it makes sense for people of faith to turn first to their spiritual community for help. Yet churches struggle to determine the best way to respond to congregants’ expressed need for affordable counseling that aligns with their faith.

Most Christian pastors will meet with troubled church members a few times to provide pastoral care and spiritual guidance. However, most lack the time or training to provide long-term care, so they refer to professionals in the community, doing their best to facilitate warm transfer to Christian therapists.

Only rarely will a church employ licensed counselors on staff because of cost and liability concerns.

One solution: lay counseling

Dr. Paul Looney is a gifted psychiatrist who joined the pastoral team at The Woodlands Church, a mega-church in Texas, sixteen years ago. He was hired to develop a lay counseling ministry to serve some of the counseling needs in this church of nearly 18,000 attendees.

With his vast clinical expertise, knowledge of Scripture, and great compassion for people who are hurting, Dr. Looney was well-equipped to build a helping ministry to fit the distinct culture of the church.

Over these sixteen years, Looney has trained hundreds of lay counselors in his approach, and thousands of counselees have been helped.

I spoke with Dr. Looney about what has made his program safe, effective, and flourishing.

Is it safe?

Looney shared that the church’s executive pastor, an attorney with an eagle eye for potential liabilities, has remained skeptical about lay counseling because of its inherent risks. Their insurance carrier even urged them to abandon it.

But remarkably, there have been no significant legal issues or ethics complaints in the 16-year history of the lay counseling ministry.

This is due to a few essential factors: a comprehensive training curriculum and rigorous screening process for prospective lay counselors, careful matching of counselees to counselors, ongoing supervision, and as Dr. Looney says, a lot of prayer!

Risks are also mitigated by assigning women to counsel women, men to counsel men, and couples to counsel couples.

Training

Dr. Looney gathers a multi-disciplinary team of professionals to present the extensive course material to new cohorts of prospective lay counselors. The course is open to any interested member of the community.

The core concepts Looney teaches, based on the Beatitudes in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, are connection, confession, course correction, and conviction.

As with any good model of care, his begins with creating a safe, trustworthy, and compassionate relationship between counselor and counselee. In this atmosphere, counselees can freely discuss their presenting problems, receive support to change behaviors, take appropriate action, and grow spiritually in the process.

The training informs participants about counseling ethics, grief, trauma, addictions, family dynamics, and suicide prevention.

Most importantly, participants learn what lay helpers are qualified and authorized to do, what they are NOT qualified and authorized to do, and when to refer to professional caregivers.

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Qualifications

After the training, individuals may apply to be lay counselor candidates and go through a screening process.

Dr. Looney says that he looks for lay counselors who “have a servant's heart, don’t NEED to be needed, and listen more than they speak.”

In other words, he looks for those with proven emotional and spiritual maturity and genuine love for people. These are the best equipped to help, and the least likely to harm.

Supervision

Supervision groups are led by licensed counselors weekly. In these sessions, lay counselors continue their training and discuss cases together. Supervisors are available at any time to consult with lay counselors individually.

This system of training, screening, and ongoing close supervision has given the lay counseling ministry its exemplary safety track record.

When is lay counseling most helpful?

The church’s model is squarely established on Scripture, making it most effective for people who ascribe to biblical principles and aspire to live in accordance with them. Counselors can thereby “leverage” counselees’ trust in the authority of Scripture to facilitate confession, healing, and the repair of damaged relationships.

Dr. Looney observes that the most satisfying outcomes have occurred in marriage counseling. The presence of both husband and wife as counselors allows the sharing of wisdom gained from their own experience. This lends much hope and courage to couples in distress and is an opportunity rarely found in the clinical realm.

Lay counseling can also be very helpful for those with symptoms of situational depression and anxiety. Charles Kollar, in his book Solution Focused Pastoral Counseling states,

“…95 percent of admissions to psychiatric centers and of personal psychotherapy sessions are for problems related to depression and anxiety. These are areas in which pastoral competency is at its highest and where Scripture is most outspoken."

Lay counseling allows for pastoral care, utilizing Scripture, prayer, and community support that might be difficult or inappropriate to apply in a clinical setting. This is often sufficient to begin alleviating symptoms.

Need to refer

Some presenting problems are not appropriate for lay counseling, and this is clearly outlined in the training process. Looney considers active addiction, ongoing adulterous affairs, psychoses, and dementia to be problems requiring higher levels of care.

Lay counselors also do not counsel minors because of liability concerns. Children are referred to therapists closely aligned with the ministry.

It’s up to the counselee to get better

Looney stresses a point that is as true in the clinical realm as it is in lay counseling: the counselee is the one ultimately who determines the outcome. As he puts it, counselees are responsible for bringing their faith into the process, staying open to influence, and accepting the grace offered to them.

He quotes Jesus: “According to your faith be it unto you.”

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There is no perfect way to meet all of the mental health needs in our communities. But it is encouraging to witness a low-cost option that has so effectively filled a gap in one community. We can learn much from the example of Dr. Looney and his team of lay counselors at The Woodlands Church.