Because We Care...

The man sat opposite counselor Lance Brown, Chapel Hill’s Director of Counseling, Marriage & Recovery Ministries. There was pain in his eyes, defeat in his posture. His spirit was clearly broken. The man had attended Chapel Hill regularly at one time, but not for the past five years.

“Why did you come here today?” Lance asked him, gently probing. “Because,” said the man, “this is the last place I can remember feeling cared about.”

Many of us would agree that Chapel Hill is a place where we feel cared about. But as this man discovered, feeling cared about by a church does not guarantee that every awkward relationship, every conflict, every prickly issue in our lives will be made right. There are times when we need to talk with someone we can trust, even if we are regular churchgoers and our lives are in fairly decent order.

Lance Brown and our pastors have counseled people for years. Soon, however, there will be another group of listeners available to us as Chapel Hill launches a new lay counseling ministry on November 1.

A lay counseling ministry is run by laypersons who have backgrounds and strong interests in working with people and who have decided, with God’s blessing, to volunteer their gifts to help their brothers and sisters at Chapel Hill.

Currently 40 lay counselors are undergoing rigorous training with Lance and other certified counselors. The training is Christ-based and Chapel Hill-based, working within our value and faith structures. They will operate under Lance’s close supervision, and he is fully confident of their talents and abilities.

Lance stresses that there are safeguards in place to assure complete confidentiality for those who are counseled. And he makes a point of saying that this service, which is offered free of charge, is not just for those in advanced states of crisis. He hopes this ministry will allow people to deal with little issues before they have a chance to become big ones.

Lay counselors will be equipped to help people with parenting skills, grief and loss, emotional wounds, emerging addictions, communication problems, conflict resolution, money issues, and sources of bitterness and resentment.

“We want to communicate the heart of Christ,” says Lance. “We want to extend an invitation, to raise the bottom, so to speak, so that people don’t have as far to fall. By making this counseling accessible to people, we hope to send the message that it’s okay to say ‘My life isn’t perfect.’”

You already knew that life isn’t perfect, of course. But it’s sort of nice to realize that others know that, too, people who will soon be ready and willing to talk to you about it, simply because they care.