Spiritual Care/Professional Counseling

---

Spiritual care? Professional counseling? What’s the difference? 

For people who are part of a faith community, both of these forms of support are equally important though they come from two different sources. Ideally, they will complement each other to help survivors move toward freedom and wholeness. 

Faith leaders can offer crucial spiritual and emotional care. They can focus on survivors and relate to them as Jesus would, being supportive and directing attention to our loving, ever-present Creator. Pastors can assure survivors that child sexual abuse is never the child’s fault; that it is never our Lord’s desire for innocent people to be hurt; that God is working to bring restoration and wholeness to survivors. This type of support and encouragement can help someone get through sad or anxious times.

A pastor can offer connection, presence, a listening ear, and spiritual assurance. A godly church community will provide companionship, sustenance, and opportunities for meaningful involvement in the congregation. In sermons, the pastor can give spiritual care and comfort to survivors, along with all other members, based on Jesus’ example and related scriptures.

Faith leaders also work to foster a sense of acceptance, belonging, restoration, and hope in the overall church community.  Pastors and church members interact in various ways throughout a week (e.g. at a Bible study, at a potluck supper, at Sunday worship, at the Communion table, or at a community service work day). 

Therapists, or professional counselors, are mental health service providers who have special advanced training to address issues such as emotional or behavioral health. Their interactions with their clients are strictly limited to formal appointments at set times.  

Therapists have advanced degrees and special training to address mental and emotional health. They are mental health practitioners who have met licensure requirements in their state and are in good standing. They are not life coaches or spiritual directors. There are different types of therapy for various situations, and it can be offered in different settings.

Therapy looks at the past to see the present-day impact of trauma. A professional counselor uses special tools to help clients gradually open up, deal with their issues, and understand their lives. Therapy offers a safe space for individuals to explore the impact of past experiences on current life challenges; understand and manage mental health issues like anxiety, depression, stress; improve coping mechanisms, identify thought patterns, develop healthier behaviors, and regulate the nervous system.   

Counselors often work with other allied health professionals to meet the client’s medical and psychiatric needs.  Their interactions with clients are limited to formal appointments at designated times in a confidential setting. Therapists are careful to keep their personal and professional relationships separate, and this is very important for the kind of work that they do.   

It may be helpful to think of faith leaders as companions on the journey, heading the same direction as the survivor, traveling the ups and downs together. We can think of therapists as people who offer specialized assistance to people on that journey, but they do not have the friendly relationship that a companion does. 

When offering spiritual support, please do:

-Use words and phrases that show you believe the survivor.

-Emphasize that the abuse was never the survivor’s fault and never God’s plan. 

-Suggest scriptures to read, and potentially helpful practices and techniques (“Some people find it helpful to…”).

-Direct the focus to God’s reliable, constant presence, power, desire to deliver, and ability to bless.

-Provide referrals and references to organizations and groups that may be helpful. 

-Offer spiritual support and encouragement.

-Carefully pray with and for the survivor, being sure to keep your personal focus on God.

Please don’t:

-Offer or agree to meetings with family members and/or abusers.

-Ask for details of the abuse.

-Urge specific practices and techniques, and guarantee results.

-Offer hugs or other physical contact beyond a handshake.

-Interject your experiences, or someone else’s; let the survivor tell their story. It doesn’t help them to hear what happened to someone else.

-Suggest that prayer, Bible study, and/or church alone will do all the healing. This can contribute to a sense of shame or inadequacy when the survivor continues to struggle with the aftereffects of trauma.