I wanted to share this wonderful article with you about Christian counseling. Here it is in it's entirety.

 

Christian Counseling: Attracting the Faithful From All Walks of Life

We created our site ChristianCounselingDegree.org to provide useful and accurate information to career seekers interested in this dynamic profession. In order to better serve you and to learn more about prospective Christian counselors, we made an independent poll of readers who visited our site.

The Poll

We asked our readers three simple questions: What interests you most about Christian counseling? Have you ever attended a Christian school? And, would you prefer to practice as a state-licensed counselor, or within a ministry or Christian organization?

The Results

Christian Counseling: A Way to Combine Faith & Work
In response to the first question about our readers’ interest in Christian counseling, your most common response by far was this: Christian counseling is a way to combine my faith with my work.

From a historical and social perspective, this is significant because it shows both the growth of counseling as a respected profession, and the growth of the Christian faith in everyday life. One-hundred years ago, counseling as a defined profession did not exist. Individuals facing hardship and seeking advice would look for help from ministers or family members. As society has better come to understand the psychological burdens of day to day life, counseling has arisen as a social science based discipline to aid people going through tough times.

This answer is also intriguing because it shows how Christianity, for the faithful, has become increasingly part of everyday life in modernity. While we often think that faith played a more important role in daily life in the past, Christian counseling, along with Christian literature, television, websites, and music, has extended the reach of faith in the modern era.

Christian Counseling: A Diverse Profession
You may think that Christian counseling would draw a rather homogenous group of career seekers, but the answers to our last two questions proved that this isn’t the case.
Just 35% of respondents stated that they had attended a Christian school during their life. This supports the idea that counseling draws individuals from all backgrounds and walks of life, not just people who have been immersed in ministry throughout their lives.

The results of our last question showed that this diverse array of backgrounds spills over into the types of careers that these prospective counselors would like to build for themselves. 60% of respondents stated that they would like practice within a ministry or Christian organization, while 40% said they would like to seek out a state counseling license.

This relatively even split shows that prospective Christian counselors are diverse in where they would like to work; many would like to practice within churches or Christian groups, while others would like to counsel in hospitals, schools, and other secular institutions. Rather than being an insular profession, Christian counseling is made up of diverse individuals who would like to help people in a variety of situations and walks of life.