Pillar One
The care of souls. The oldest counseling there is.
Scripture, prayer, discipleship, and pastoral guidance for the weight people carry.
What it is
The care of souls. It is older than psychology by centuries, and the church was doing it long before anyone thought to call it counseling.
Your counselor is a trained minister, not a clinician licensed or registered by the State of California. Scripture and prayer are in the room with you rather than translated out of it. The work is discipleship: honest conversation, the Word opened together, and the long patience of someone walking with you.
It also means there are questions we can take up that a clinical frame has no category for. Guilt that is not a symptom. Whether God is still good when the outcome was not. Forgiveness you cannot manufacture. Calling. Doubt. Shame that theology can answer and technique cannot.
People bring us grief, marriage and family struggles, anxiety and fear, parenting, life transitions, spiritual struggle, and the ordinary weight of a hard season.
We do not diagnose, and we do not treat mental-health disorders as the DSM defines them. If you already carry a diagnosis, that is not a barrier. We work alongside it, and alongside the clinician treating it.
How it differs from clinical counseling
Both pillars sit with many of the same troubles. Anxiety, grief, a marriage under strain, a hard season that will not lift. The difference is not the list of problems. It is perspective, scope, and method.
Perspective
A minister views your life theologically. You are an image-bearer. Sin and grace are real categories, not metaphors. Suffering happens inside God's providence rather than outside it, which changes what the work is for.
Scope
Pastoral counseling takes up the soul: conscience, guilt and forgiveness, calling, doubt, spiritual dryness, and formation over years. It does not assess, diagnose, or treat a mental-health condition. That is clinical work.
Method
Scripture opened together. Prayer. Confession and accountability. The disciplines that have formed Christians for centuries, applied to what you are carrying now.
The practical details
- Who provides it
- Pastoral counselors are trained ministers, not licensed or registered clinicians in the State of California.
- Setting
- Telehealth across California.
- Cost
- Set by the counselor's degree level. Not billed to insurance. See fees.
- Before you begin
- Informed consent, the Notice to Clients, and a Good Faith Estimate.
Your church, not instead of it
We are not a replacement for a congregation. Where you have a church, we work to strengthen your place in it. Your counselor will ask about it, encourage what is already there, and where it helps and you want it, coordinate with your pastor.
Where you do not have one, and many people arrive without, that is a normal place to start. If you want help finding a church home, ask.
For pastors: if someone in your care is beyond what you can carry, that is not a failure of your ministry. Write to us.
Whom we serve
People from every background and every walk of life. We are shaped by our beliefs. They never decide whom we serve.
You do not need to be a Christian to sit with a pastoral counselor. The framework is openly Christian, and you are welcome whether or not you share it. Read our Statement of Services for what we offer and where our services have limits.
You are loved. You are welcome. And there is hope.