Every week, congregants talk to their pastors about their struggles: a marriage under strain, a young adult wrestling with anxiety, a family working through grief. You offer prayer, wisdom, and presence, and for many, that is exactly what helps most. For others, part of that care might be connecting them with an outside counselor alongside what you're already giving.
Connecting a congregant with a counselor isn't a new form of help for many pastors. But, what can sometimes get in the way of that help is not knowing exactly who to call when that moment comes.
Barriers That Keep Pastors From Connecting With a Counselor
For some pastors, that connection is already in place. For others, the harder part isn't willingness, it's having a specific mental health professional or practice you already know and trust to refer them to. Research on clergy and mental health points to a few reasons that connection can be hard to build:
Cultural Barriers
Stigma or cultural expectations within a congregation can make it harder to talk about outside help openly, even when a pastor believes it would help.
Mismatched Expectations
Longstanding friction, often rooted in mismatched expectations on both sides, can slow collaboration between the two.
None of that reflects a lack of care. More often, it reflects a missing piece: a specific counselor a pastor already knows and feels good about referring to.
A Pastor's Role in the Community
A 2024 study of 636 U.S. religious leaders, published in the Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, found that more than three out of four clergy had been approached by a congregant for help with a mental health concern in the past year, and a similar number had encouraged someone to seek help from a mental health professional.
The same researchers point to what helps close that gap: pastors already carry a level of trust in their community, and that trust can be the starting point for a real relationship with a mental health professional. A referral built on that relationship comes with a name, a face, and a shared understanding of the congregant's context, not a cold introduction to a stranger.
The researchers also noted that additional mental health training tends to help clergy feel more confident addressing these needs and more careful about not reinforcing stigma in the process. A known, trusted counselor does some of that same work. It turns a referral from an abstract suggestion into an introduction to someone whose approach you already understand.
What a Partnership With a Counselor Can Look Like
At Abundant Life Affordable Counseling, our team of Marriage and Family Therapist Associates and Trainees works under the direct, individualized supervision of Kathleen Shanahan, a CAMFT Certified Clinical Supervisor. That structure lets us offer sessions at a reduced cost, which can be meaningful for congregants who could not otherwise afford ongoing therapy, while keeping every client's care to a high clinical standard.
Faith integration in our sessions is led by the client, never assumed. We meet each person where they are, so the congregant you refer to us will be respected in their beliefs, whether they want an overtly faith-integrated process or simply a counselor who understands their church background.
A partnership between your church and our clinicians might include:
- A direct line of communication with our supervising clinician to ask questions about fit before you refer someone
- Familiarity with our specialties, including trauma-focused EMDR, grief recovery, family systems work, biblical integration counseling, and premarital and couples counseling, so you know what to mention when you make a referral
- An open invitation for you or your ministry staff to visit our office and meet the team
- Ongoing dialogue about what is and is not working for families in your congregation, without ever compromising a client's confidentiality
This kind of relationship can be genuinely beneficial on both sides. You gain a counseling partner you trust and understand, and we gain a clearer picture of the congregants we are serving and how to serve them well.
How Pastors Can Build a Counseling Relationship With Us
The best time to build this kind of partnership is before a crisis. A few small steps can start that process:
- Reach out and introduce yourself, even with a short email or phone call
- Share what your congregants most often need, whether that's premarital counseling, grief support, or another specialty we offer
We serve individuals, couples, children, and families throughout Santa Ana and the surrounding Orange County communities, and offer telehealth to clients anywhere in California, so location is rarely a barrier to getting your congregant connected.
Building a Relationship With Abundant Life Affordable Counseling
Referring a congregant to counseling is not a departure from your calling. It is an extension of it, made stronger when it comes from a genuine and trusting relationship with a counselor.
Abundant Life Affordable Counseling exists to be that kind of partner for pastors and ministry leaders. If you would like to talk through how a referral relationship could work for your church, we would welcome the conversation.
Reach Out To Learn MoreTopics covered