Silhouette Andrew Pano

Testimony of Counseling in The Small Group

 

During this month, we’ve examined the counseling in the small group. We’ve looked at the power of group counseling, the supervisor’s role in counseling, and the gift of counseling. But what about professional counseling? Are there any small groups who have successfully integrated professional counseling into their ministry? One great example is the Celebration Church (Pastor Dennis Watson). This church is located in the New Orleans area and, after hurricane Katrina, Pastor Dennis wisely gathered together a group of professional counselors to help those devastated by the disaster. Daphne Kirk knows a lot about this ministry since the Celebration Church is a key supporter of her ministry. Daphne agreed to interview the director of counseling at Celebration Church. This will be a two-part blog. Daphne writes:

"Having read with interest the blogs on counseling, I interviewed Michele Louviere M.Div., LMFT, Director of Counseling at Celebration Hope Center, which is the counseling agency under the umbrella of Celebration Church’s non-profit, Healing Hearts for Community Development.  She gives timely warnings about, and encouragements for, the roles that pastoral and professional counseling can play in bringing healing and wholeness. It is my opinion that this should be read with diligence so that legal, professional, and healthy life-giving boundaries can be upheld to bring healing to hurting people both in the church and those outside it."

Part 1: Counseling Ministry at Celebration Church

Daphne: Could you tell us about Celebration Hope Center and your experience there?

Michele: Celebration Hope Center (CHC) first opened two months before Hurricane Katrina as an outpatient, faith-based, professional addiction recovery center. Katrina literally washed CHC away, because it was located in the Celebration Church campus and had 10 feet of toxic flood waters. After the storm, CHC eventually re-opened but added mental health services, specifically intensive trauma recovery. Trauma experts had successfully predicted that people could not hold the current traumas of Katrina and the secret childhood traumas from the past. CHC received training from professional Christian therapists from across the country and began working with hundreds of childhood trauma survivors. They also added prevention services targeted for local schools and many evidence-based programs. In a fairly short time, God has grown CHC to be an amazing place of healing for thousands of people through addiction, mental health and prevention services. Without advertising, CHC has clients coming from over 10 parishes and cannot keep up with the numbers seeking help. CHC is also a training facility for local masters’ students, including New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Since Katrina, we have had the awesome opportunity of training over 70 professional, Christian therapists, who many are now working all over the country. I have the privilege of being the Clinical Director and being here since Katrina. I have a front row seat watching God work to bring people into a relationship with Him and then recover from the issues that hinder them from healthy abundant living. I also do intensive trauma recovery work with people who have been devastated in unthinkable ways as children. Watching God heal from lifetimes of pain and problems is a great honor.

Daphne: How does Celebration Church (a small group church) and CHC work together?

Michele: Celebration Church and CHC work closely together. Although we see clients from many churches and the non-churched, a large percentage of our clients do go to Celebration. Celebration has a large recovery ministry, Celebrate Recovery, that we also work closely together. We, as Christian therapists, see our role as being part of the intensive discipleship of the church. Often times, when people come to Christ, they have issues that hinder their growth into the leaders that God has designed them to be. Celebration Church has our services listed on their bulletin. Their small groups know about our services. Pastors refer clients to CHC. When issues go beyond pastors’ qualifications, then we are able to step in and take those clients. Pastors have more time to do other ministry tasks because we work with the intensive crisis issues. Dennis Watson, Lead Pastor, and other staff persons are on our Board of Directors. The staff and church helps with fund raising for our non-profit.

We teach classes and run groups for the congregation, such as a premarital group, parenting, and marriage groups. We provide training for their small groups and ministries, such as Darkness to Light, which is a sexual abuse prevention program. We encourage and even require small group attendance for many of our clients. Becoming part of a small group is a healthy, safe place for people to heal and learn adaptive coping strategies. We provide training for Celebration pastors to help them know how to minister safely and effectively to those in their congregation that are trauma survivors. When needed, release of information forms are signed by clients so that therapists and pastors can work together. We need and support one another.


Part 2: Counseling Ministry at Celebration Church

Daphne: What do you see as the differing roles of pastoral counseling and professional counseling?

Michele: The big issue is knowing limitations. In many states, to counsel outside of an area of expertise is illegal and becomes a liability issue. It is critically important that pastoral and lay counselors know their limitations. Usually, pastoral counselors can work with issues such as marriage and family, parenting, grief, basic life issues, and of course, spiritual issues. Professionals work with those issues that are diagnosable, such as clinical depression, anxiety disorders, bi-polar, addictions, eating disorder, domestic violence, post-traumatic stress, and numerous others. Usually, pastors need to work with issues that can be resolved within 3 to 5 times of meeting. Professional counselors are specialists. Just like pastors do not serve as medical doctors treating issues such as cancer, they also cannot treat emotional cancers. They can provide spiritual encouragement and prayer for both, but pastors need to be very careful about offering advice to issues that they are not experts about, such as intensive trauma recovery. Often times, our clients have been hurt by well-meaning Christian leaders when these boundaries aren’t respected.

Daphne: What advice would you give to small group leaders, coaches, and pastors who meet people with problems on a daily basis?

I think pastors ought to go to every training possible because knowing how to minister to hurting people is critical in our society today. This is also a way to reach lost people. I think that these leaders should also receive training and be very careful to follow appropriate boundaries not going beyond their level of expertise. Christian professionals spend years of time learning, practicing, and being supervised to do the specialized care that they do. It is really important for Christian leaders to have resources available to give to people who are in crisis and need help beyond what they can provide.

Daphne: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Michele: The numbers of hurting people in our society only increase as time progresses. People are more isolated than ever before. The numbers of our children who are being abused continue to rise. Now, 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys will be sexually abused by the time they are 18. Small groups are perfect for helping hurting people heal and recover from life’s hurts, but they also need other resources. We have found in our traumatized community that it has taken many different ministries and ministers working together to help our community recover. We are all on the same team, and each team player is critically important in helping people become who Christ wants them to be. As we help hurting people, we need to seek out as much training as possible to make sure that we do no further harm to those who we minister to and we need to know our own limitations, whether lay, pastoral, or professional.