Lay Counseling

Watch the lay counseling video.

Personal Counseling

Lay Counseling Program is available free of charge to regular attenders and members in a one-on-one, time-limited format (10 to 15 sessions) with a same-sex counselor. The Lay Counseling program is based upon biblical principles and is designed to create an opportunity for spiritual growth through participating in a series of individual spiritual counseling sessions with a peer counselor.

This lay counselor has received training in spiritual counseling principles through the lay counseling training program and is supervised by a member of the church’s pastoral staff or another person assigned by the pastoral staff for that purpose. The peer spiritual counselor to whom you will be assigned is a non-professional. He/she is not a professional mental health therapist. All the appointments take place in the church offices and all the scheduling is done through at 714-257-4 316.

Training Program (schedule)

The training program to become a lay counselor takes about a year and begins every January. Phase I consists of 20 two-hour lectures and is open to the public. All lecturers are licensed, dedicated Christians specializing in their assignments. Following the lecture series is a testing program for those continuing on with the lay counseling training. Phase II includes practical counseling skills and interviews with the pastor of counseling ministries and a consulting psychiatrist. Those who complete the year-long training program are asked to give one full year of service to this ministry, averaging two/three hours per week. Church membership is a requirement for all lay counselors at First Evangelical Free Church.

The best lay counselors are the recovering wounded—those who are able to acknowledge their own pain, their own recovery process, and their own dependency on the living God.

Schedule

2011 will be the 24th year we offer lay counseling training and will be the final year (at least for awhile). Our Pastor of Counseling and the Director of the Lay Counseling program, Dave Carder, plans to continue on our church staff for another three to four years, but will be part-time after 2011. He anticipates that the graduates of the current 2010 program as well as the graduates of the final “class” of 2011 will provide the church with sufficient lay counselors for several years to come. Church leadership continues to consider whether and in what form our lay counseling program might take.

If you’ve ever considered this comprehensive and stimulating course of study, evaluation and supervision, 2011 might be the year!

The class meets on Wednesday evenings on our north campus (northeast corner of Rolling Hills & Brea Blvds), in room 180, from 7-9:00 pm.