Come unto me...

Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

I knew when I married him that he wanted to be a pastor. His first church work after seminary was as assistant pastor (and youth minister) at Lake Shore Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, still one of our two home churches. I watched as parishioners made their way to his office... parents of teenagers, young married couples, young adults... all needing someone to tell their troubles to who embodied the face of God for them. After three years at Lake Shore, we moved back to the seminary for Michael’s Ph.D. in that peculiar discipline of Pastoral Counseling (not counseling for pastors), the discipline that marries the practice of faith and psychotherapy. For forty years I have watched him learn and practice the art and craft of pastoral counseling on church staffs, in church offices, in our home and at the office of Pastoral Counseling and Growth Center.
In 1980 when we moved to Asheville for the first time, he had an office at Beverly Hills Baptist and an office at home. Our outdoor swing was his waiting room in spring, summer and fall. Alison, our youngest daughter, was his greeter, often sitting in the swing with folks chattering away about her life and handing out hugs. When we returned to Louisville, Kentucky for Michael to serve as a professor at the seminary where he received his Ph.D., he had an office at home where he continued his private practice as a pastoral counselor. Our children grew up knowing clients as friends, neighbors, fellow church members and it was a seamless part of Michael’s ministry as a pastor whatever else he did.
When we moved back to Asheville in 1990, Michael established the Pastoral Counseling and Growth Center in an old house, 191 East Chestnut Street. For the first time, his practice was separated from a church building and our home. At first, it was just Michael with the other rooms in the house rented out. Gradually, a collegial practice came into being with other pastoral counselors joining him. As he had done throughout his years of practice, Michael continued to see people who could not afford to pay much at all for help. He always had a group of folks... teens paying their own way, families living close to the edge, pastors who worked for small churches... whom he saw for a very small fee, sometimes free. It was important to him that he tithe his time and talents for the greater good.
And then he had a dream... a dream of a foundation that could help pay the way for those who could not afford to pay, a way to provide help for the least ones, the lost ones, the overlooked ones. It would have been easier to establish a non-profit for his center, a way to expand his habit of tithing time and talent for those under the roof of Pastoral Counseling and Growth Center. But one of the hallmarks of Michael’s character is his generosity of vision and his generosity of spirit. His vision included all pastoral counselors in Western North Carolina and all the people they could help if some financial support was available. He knew that they, like him, depended on the fees collected to support themselves and their families. There was a limit to the help that could be provided by the individual counselors but a foundation could raise money, structure an application process, write checks to counselors for services given to approved clients and extend the ministry of pastoral counseling in Western North Carolina. And, so it has.
Every December, I watch as Michael sits at our big round table, surrounded by letters to donors, writing a personal message of gratitude and grace on each one, asking for their continued financial support for this important ministry. The list is long and it takes hours. He does so, not just for himself, not just for the other pastoral counselors, but for all those who labor and are heavy laden, those who need rest, those who need to see and hear the face of God in a counselor who will help them find their way through the valley of the shadow. He will never see or know most of those who will be helped by the money he raises but it is more than enough to know that they are helped.
Tonight we will gather for the foundation’s annual meeting to see the results of last years work, to give money, to meet and greet one another, to celebrate all that has been done, to see what lies ahead. We will write a check tonight, probably bordering on more than we can afford, not because we are special but because we have a dream. I will sit and give thanks for that dream of Michael’s all those years ago, for all the pastoral counselors who are able to extend a helping hand to those in need, for the generous gifts of the many supporters, and for the director of the foundation and the hard work she must do. But most of all, I give thanks for the opportunity we have to make a difference in others lives in the name of the One who has called us to walk with the weak and weary, to lend them a shoulder to lean on at a time when they are unable to walk alone. Seek and you will find, ask and it will be given... and so it has. Amen.

If you would like to support the Partnership for Pastoral Counseling, you can mail a check to PO Box 8177, Asheville, NC 28814.