Top 3 mistakes when managing your biblical counseling ministry (and how to avoid them)
Mistake #1. Emailing intake forms, personal data inventories, and other confidential information
This is by far, the most common confidentiality concern that we encounter. But why is emailing confidential information a problem?
Family Members May Read Your Counselees Emails
When communicating by email, it’s always best to assume that someone else may be reading it. Writing your counselee through email can be particularly dangerous for domestic abuse or marital cases. A counselee once told me about how her domestic abuser opened her laptop and read all the emails that she had sent to her counselor about him. It goes without saying, there can be grave consequences with this method of communication.
Your Counselees Probably Use Unsecure Email Providers
While your email account may be secure, your counselee may be using a free, unsecured email account. Free email providers have been known to scan the contents of email and collect information for marketing purposes.
Some Counselees Use their Work Emails
Some counselees use their work email to request counseling. If you email a counselee at their place of business, please keep in mind that their company email is the property of the company, and that the contents may be monitored. A counselee’s boss or company could read everything they wrote about why they are requesting counseling.
How do you email your counselee without compromising confidentiality? You could use one platform for secure messaging and another platform for securely collecting pre-counseling forms. Alternatively, you could use a platform like BibliCare to securely send both messages and pre-counseling forms. This way, all communication with your counselee would be securely stored in one place.
Mistake #2. Not being organized
When you use more than a couple of tools to manage your counseling ministry, you may find yourself spending a lot more time managing your ministry, and a lot less time counseling. You may also find yourself frequently asking:
- Who is counseling who?
- Why is this person receiving counseling?
- Did Mr. Kounselor record his session notes yet?
The best way to organize your ministry is to have everything you need in one place. This way, you’ll save time in not having to sift through records in various platforms, filing cabinets, inboxes, and so on.
Mistake #3. Not having your current process down-pat
Without a specific counseling process, it’s almost impossible to be organized! Consider the following questions:
- What type of pre-counseling forms should we assign (See Ideas)?
- When do we assign pre-counseling forms (See Ideas)? Remember, timing matters. How can these forms be submitted securely?
- On what basis should I assign a counselor to a counselee? (See Ideas)
- How should we schedule appointments? (See Ideas)
- What's the best way for us to record session notes (paper and/or typing; free-written and/or template)? (See Ideas)
- What type of homework should we assign, and how do we make sure that counselees actually complete it? (See Ideas)
- How do we know what's happening in our ministry day-to-day, monthly, yearly, etc.? (See Ideas)
BONUS: Not having a plan for future growth
Several biblical counselors start their counseling ministry informally. Perhaps you’re only seeing a couple counselees at a time. Managing a couple counselees is simple! It’s easy to remember when and where you’re meeting, as well as what you talked about. But the more counselors and counselees come in, the more time-consuming and tricky managing ministry becomes.
If you’re just starting a biblical counseling ministry (or even if you already have one), it’s helpful to think through how you will handle managing future growth by considering the questions listed in Mistake #3 above.