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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
Community Action Proposal Paper
Liberty University
EDCO705-Issues and Trends in Community Counseling
Dr. Kristy Ford
November 7, 2021
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
Name of organization and proposed location.
The name of my organization is Start-To-Finish. This is organization name was born out
of a desire of my wife and to create a community that will help people find solutions to life’s
issue through biblical counseling and proven mental health counseling techniques. Life is a
journey that is filled with transitions as you start a new chapter the previous chapter will end.
You will have to navigate the transitions of life from start to finish. The location of this
organization will be at our church located in Park Forest, IL. Our church is actually a multi-use
building. It was previously an elementary school that is located in the heart of the surrounding
neighborhood which is a residential area. The local school district had decided to close the
school several years earlier prior to our church purchasing the building leaving the property
vacant. Our church was able to purchase the property and bring the building and land back to
life. Since it is a school classrooms and other spaces in the building have been converted to
multi-use room, one of which will be a counseling room.
It is also important to note virtual counseling has exploded in light of the Covid-19
pandemic. Therefore, we anticipate having sessions virtually with clients as needed or requested.
One of the things that is very important to our pastor and his leadership team is maintaining a
health culture within the church and within the lives of the membership. For to long the mental
health of the congregation has gone overlooked as a forgone conclusion within the body of
Christ, and especially within the black church. Our pastor is also keenly aware of the skill
required to effectively counsel someone from a mental health perspective. While as a pastor he
certainly counsels’ people every day there are some cases where a trained professional should
step in. Recognizing that this is a need for the body he engaged my wife who is a licensed
counselor and myself to form this ministry.
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
Vision statement.
Our vision at Start To Finish is “To Engender healthiness in the body of Christ, core
family, and individual lives of people, through sound biblical mental health counseling
techniques that offer solutions to life’s challenges.”
I am a firm believer that God’s word has everything that we need to guide and govern our
lives as redeemed believer in Christ Jesus. Psalm 119 says “your word is a lamp to my feet and a
light to my path.” (ESV, 2001, Psa. 119:105). And of course, Proverbs 15 provides us great hope
by letting us know that in the multitude of counsel there is safety. I also believe there is no
institution like the church. I love going to church and being a part of the family atmosphere.
Granted I was raised in church; however, I personally have learned some of life’s most valuable
lessons in the church. I have literally had my highest and lowest moment (at this point in my life)
all in church. With that said it is at church where I’ve felt the most love and experienced and
seen some very deep hurt caused. In hindsight vision is 20/20, but I would venture to say that a
lot of the hurtful thing that I’ve seen happen could have quite possibly been avoided.
Christians seek out counsel frequently from their most trusted sources. However, I
believe we face a two-prong problem. Many times, the church leaders who are in position to
counsel individual are not educated or equipped to counsel them and the professional who are
educated and equipped to counsel people are not trusted by the people who need counseling.
Therefore, there remains a stigmatism in the church as it relates to mental health counseling and
going to see a therapist.
Currently, the church overall does not have in place many of the education, training, and
oversight mechanisms necessary to effectively practice or provide the level of counseling
integration that the bible calls us to have. There are promising signs but there is room to grow.
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
One example that is fairly consistent across denominations and church body organizations is the
structure of the leadership competency assessment. Most churches assess and examine their
leaders in a few key areas such as, theology, soteriology, exegesis, church history, church
government, and preaching ability. However, rarely is a minister, elder, or leader examined on
what they believe or how they will practice counseling to an individual. Leaders do not have to
present any examples of how they have been discipled in helping a marriage, or someone with an
eating disorder, or someone who deals with bouts of depression. Their views on counseling
would be left to one’s own conscience and opinion (Powlison, 2015). We need a support and
structure within the body of Christ that help us to think as biblically about counseling as we do
about theology, preaching, and evangelism.
Needs analysis and assessment.
There are two primary populations that we are targeting but certainly not limiting our
focus two. We want to reach the local membership of our church, the wider community of Park
Forest, IL, and the African American community. While these are our target group, we do not
want to limit our reach to just these areas.
Park Forest is home to approximately 21,210 residents. The median age for Park Forest is
39. The median household income in 2019 was $53,938. This does represent an increase for
about 5.21% from 2018. However, the poverty rate in Park Forest is 13.4%. The median property
value in 2019 was $73,600. The demographic breakdown of Park Forest are as follows: 66% are
Black or African American, 27% are White, 4.6% are Hispanic or Latino, 2.8% are Two or more
races, 0.5% are Asian (https://www.census.gov).
Based on the population demographic from my local communities ranging outward to the
county and state levels, there is a significant need for mental health services. In fact, it can be
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
described as a crisis. The COVID-19 has of course taken its toll on the world at large and has
only exacerbated an already fragile and thinly supported mental health infrastructure. Based on a
recent NPR report Illinois is facing a statewide mental health crisis. There have been significant
accessibility issues that have plagued the work force in general. Illinois residents have been
widely unable to access mental and behavioral heal providers in their communities. For years
Illinois has faced budgetary shortfalls that have been worsened by the pandemic. When that issue
is compounded with a lack of funding and extremely low Medicaid rate for mental health
services it leads to 4.9 million people in Illinois, or 38% of the population living in designated
areas with mental and behavioral health shortages (Grace Barbic, 2021).
Additionally, in Illinois the lack of access to mental health services and resources in low
income and rural areas is staggering. In a study done by the National Alliance on Mental Illness
of Illinois, it was documented that 97.3% of Illinois’ rural hospitals are in designated mental
health shortage areas. According to thresholds.org/unequal It is well documented that African
American adolescents and adults with mental health issues are less likely to receive medication
or therapy for their condition than white children and adults (Grace Barbic, 2021).
The Illinois Department of Public Health released a state health assessment in a wide-
ranging report that covered primary physical health with a small behavioral health component. In
this section they surveyed data from adults that reported experiencing poor mental health
conditions more than 7 days in a month. The data showed that overall, 14.8% of Illinois adults
reported experiencing a poor mental health state for longer than one week per month. For
African American that percentage was 17.3%, for white that percentage was 14.7%, and for
Hispanic that percentage was 15.5%. While the percentage of individuals who experience a poor
mental health state did not vary widely by race or ethnicity, the access to services here in Illinois
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
is directly correlated to where you live and the proximity that you are within to those services.
(http://www.idph.state.il.us)
Communities of color have historically been disenfranchised through this history of
America. Ironically one of the things that can help the African American community heal from
the trauma that is has experienced overall and for people at an individual level in their personal
lives has been so heavily stigmatized that it is often rejected or not actively sought after. Couple
that stigmatism with community disparities, lack of access, and lack of representation only
compound the need for focus on this group. When mental health is not supported or goes
untreated then in can lead to other more serious issues such as, substance use continues, poor
education and limited social development in children, and more.
According to Mental Health America, African American that live below the poverty line
are twice as likely to report serious psychological or mental health distress than those that are
living well above the poverty line. African Americans are more likely to struggle with feelings of
hopelessness, self-worth, and sadness versus white adults. While Black Americans are less likely
to die from suicide than whites, Black teenagers are more likely to attempt suicide. In Illinois
blacks are incarcerated at nearly nine time the rate of whites. This has become the unfortunate
alternative to treatment and affordable housing because of lack of early access to mental health
services and substance use treatment (Sutton, 2020).
Additional impacts of depression on African Americans stem from the afore mentioned
social problems, family, and economics. Ironically when broken down certain categories such as
age, gender, and income, then the rates are equal to that of Whites. However, many feel that the
African American experience is misrepresented because Black may experience depression is
ways that are not easily measured by standard diagnostics and instruments. Also, access to care
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and care-seeking behaviors can contribute to the experience of Black Americans not being
accurately measured (June & Black, 2002).
Despite this the black community still, understandability so, struggle with our attitude
and posture towards counseling. One of the ways to support changing this is through the church.
The church is a trusted entity in the black community. Pastors and ministers are generally seen as
trustworthy and knowledgeable resources in the community (Sutton, 2020). Our organization
wants to start changing the narrative for counseling in the body of Christ, one life at a time, one
church at a time, one community at a time. By bringing a biblical yet clinically focus service to
members of the church and the community we can start to break the stigma of mental health
counseling in the church and advocate for more people to pursue additional services as needed.
The bible says in 2 Peter 1:3 that His divine power has granted us all this that pertain to life and
godliness, the knowledge of him who call us to his glory and excellence (ESV, 2001, 2 Peter
1:3).
I believe the church will continue to play a pivotal role in the life of its congregants and
community overall. It is incumbent on the church to position itself to be an advocate for
wholeness and healing to call who come through the doors. While some percentage of members
of the community may not attend church regularly folks in black communities will still likely be
influenced by a church in their community. Churches have always provided services to the
community such as physical, medical, and financial education. Many pastors and spiritual
community leaders work diligently to fight other issues that plaque our community such as lack
of housing, jobs, the criminal justice system, and access to programs (Sutton, 2020).
With that said it is vitally important to have trained culturally competent counseling
resources available through the church. One thing that the church has the opportunity to do is
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
meet its community where it is. This is at the heart of the ecological perspective. Recognizing
that the community citizens need things like housing, jobs, medical screening, etc. have always
been imperative and paramount to helping change the lives of people.
However, our organization wants to take the next step by creating a counseling program
that is integrated into fabric of the church and community, leveraging all of the things that
congregants find appealing about the church and supplementing it biblically based counseling
methods and techniques. This will generate environment that acknowledges the individuals that
make up the community and ensure that the leadership and ministerial staff gaining a
psychological understanding how those individuals are impacted by the various elements in their
environment and therefore being better positioned to create a therapeutic approach that will help
improve their overall mental health (Scott & Wolfe, 2015).
Program goal and objectives
Overall goal
The overall goal of Start To Finish provide, teach, and advocate for the inclusion of mental
health counseling in the church. We want to arm individuals with the tools they need to conquer
life’s most challenging issues and we want to equip leaders with the tools they need to be
effective and empathetic counselors and ministers of the gospel.
Measurable goals
1. Recruit and step up the team of clinicians and support/administrative staff. Ideally, we
want to have a licensed counselor and licensed social worker on our team so that we can
offer support in any area that surfaces as a need for our community.
2. Remodel counseling room at the church to ensure the space is safe, inviting, and
relaxing.
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
3. Select virtual platform that will be used to see clients remotely. We will want to make
sure that we have a platform selected and in place so that therapist don’t have to use their
personal information when communicating with clients.
4. Offer training classes to ministerial and leadership staff on the basics of mental health
counseling. I believe something like this will even more widely received when people
recognize the position of trust that they are in and how precious and valuable that it.
5. A long-term goal will be for us to hold seminars that would be open to the church,
community, and beyond to share valuable information on an assortment of relevant topics
Services to be provided
As mentioned earlier, churches have always provided services to the community such as
physical, medical, financial education, and more. We envision that Start To Finish will provide
counseling therapy and social connection services to the members of the church and the wider
community as well.
From a counseling model perspective, we will seek to maintain a balanced approach to
the people that we will be seeing. Because this is a faith-based organization using biblical
principles will be core to how we do what we do. However, we believe that it will be important
to leverage well known and proven psychological methods. The Christian Psychology model for
instance leverages a basic understanding of philosophical and religious assumptions about an
individual and tries to locate the root of the problem pinpointing something more specific than
sin. Christian counselors who use these types of techniques need to have strong biblical theory as
their foundation (Keller,2004). This will be the core of our model and approach to counseling,
we will only use techniques and theoretical approaches that line up with our Christian values and
biblical world view.
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COMMUNITY ACTION PROPOSAL PAPER
For our counseling services we plan to start off offering up to six free one-hour
counseling sessions. After the sixth counseling session we will refer the client to a more
permanent counseling arrangement. Because we will likely be starting off small, we do not want
to overwhelm our counselors with long-term sessions and limited rotations.
We are anticipating the need in the community to great, especially in this day and time.
We will offer some social work services. Social Workers are a vital resource that can connect
people to a variety of social support services, however the challenge can sometimes be access to
the community. This is why it is very important that our organization be located in the
community and part of the community. Cultural competency will also not be limited to just the
counselors but must include the social workers on our team. We could run the risk of violating or
offending the client’s self-determination if we do not take into account the clients value system,
religious commitments, or lack thereof. This is especially a risk if our team is not sensitive to
these aspects that client’s will bring to the table (Sytner, 2018).
Structure of the organization.
Our organizational structure will come under the church as a ministry/program. The
pastor as the head has established my wife and I as leaders over the counseling program. Since
my carries a license in our state she will actually be the primary lead of the program since she
will have to supervise any non-licensed counselors on our team.
To that end, there may be an opportunity to also incorporate the concept of lay or
“ordinary counselors on the team in a supplementary role. Lay counsellors are people who don’t
have formal training, education or experience with professional counselling, however they sound
and stable members of the congregation who are willing to help. Not only can adding ordinary
counselors help to improve the capacity of the team to reach people, but it can also help to
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change the narrative around counseling especially as it relates to trusting counseling within the
four walls of the church (Potgieter, 2015). 1 Peter 2:9 says “But you are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the
excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (ESV, 2001, 1
Peter 2:9).” God always intended for there to be a priesthood that would exemplify his perfect
counsel. Our organization will use an intake process that will consist of the following forms, an
intake form that will cover why they are seeking counsel and what their goals are for coun3eling.
Secondly, we’ll have clients sign a consent form to ensure that the church and program are not
liable for any things we are not responsible for.
Organizational accountability.
One assessment that our team will perform is a community needs assessment. We’ll want
to make sure that we have a solid grasp of what’s the need is in the community overall. The
community needs assessment is an instrumental tool will allow us to systematically examine the
context conditions of the people who are from that community. Our team will likely start in an
informal organization model as we start small and then grow into a more formalized model one
of the biggest benefits in this model is you can easily integrate less experienced ordinary
counselors into it. Here, ordinary counselors will be offered additional training to help them
come up to speed on the subject of counseling. These ordinary counselors will also that benefit
from receiving supervision during their time working on the ministry team (Potgieter, 2015).
Last but not least, we will need to make sure there are policies and procedure in place so
that we are covered. Some of the policies cover items such as:
Scope of allowable advice
At what point do we refer to external clinician
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How will confidentiality be handled
Define policies on how incidents need to be responded to and report to the police
(https://www.churchlawcenter.com/church-law/church-counseling-services/)
Budget
The $4 million will go a very long way in helping us get the program established in the
next of years. Initial investment will be as follows:
$500k – Counseling space – Remodel Administrative office and Counseling Room
$2.5M – Stipend (3-4 years) – Most resources are volunteer however their time is
valuable.
$500k – Community outreach/community programs
$300k – Video counseling platform acquisition
$100k – Website/social media/graphic
$100k – Additional Equipment
As the program continues to grow and mature, we will be moving to a more formal
organization model. In a formal model therapist are trained, supervised, and carefully selected.
While we are always conscious of who we select overall, we would be looking for therapist with
more formal training to really pick up. In a more formal model staff and team meetings happen
much more regularly. Formal models also work well in larger churches because of the volume of
members that come to counseling going up as well. Our church is also growing rapidly, we will
have a scalable foundation to build on (Potgieter, 2015).
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Reference:
Barbic, G. (2021, May 14). Disinvestment, Pandemic Leave Illinois' State Of Mental Health
Care In ‘Crisis’. NPR. Retrieved from https://news.stlpublicradio.org/government-politics-
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crisis
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June, L. N., and Black, S. D. (2002). Counseling for Seeming Impossible Problems. Grand
Rapids, MI: Christian Research & Development
Keller, T., (2004). Four Models of Counseling in Pastoral Ministry. Redeemer Counseling
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Sytner, A., (2018). Social work and pastoral counseling: Empowering each other. Journal of
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