§

01.  Fingerprints and Turning Points

Fingerprints. If made by small peanut butter and jelly hands on the TV screen, they are not desirable, although they may be endearing. If fingerprints are made by the killer in a murder mystery on the TV screen, noticing them may be essential to solving the mystery.

Turning points. Turning points can also be negative or positive. The most critical turning points change the trajectory—of a life or a mission—for better or for worse. Some turning points are obvious because they are dramatic. The significance of other turning points is hidden at first. It takes time to notice and understand their significance.

This was my experience of a commencement address given by Dr. T. Scott Daniels.Dr. T. Scott Daniels, Commencement Address, Azusa Pacific University, May 7, 2011. Dr. Daniels talked about TV detective shows with criminal investigators. Common in these shows is that investigators would find evidence (like fingerprints) of a crime committed by someone they were trying to catch, and they would say, “It’s him again.” He used this phrase to describe how people throughout church history would see evidence of God intervening, evidence of God’s fingerprints, and they would say, “It’s Him again.”

I did not know then, but I know now that I will remember what Dr. Daniels said for the rest of my life. Using a simple murder mystery illustration, Dr. Daniels taught me to notice evidence of God working and to celebrate His intervention by declaring, “It’s Him again!” That was a turning point in my life and my relationship with God. And it had God’s fingerprints all over it.

What follows is the story of a calling and a ministry. It’s a story of turning points that shaped my vocational calling. It’s a story of turning points in the history of the ministry God called me to serve. And it’s a story of the evidence of God’s fingerprints all over all those turning points, which has led to many grateful declarations of, “It’s Him again!” The purpose of sharing the story is simply encouragement. I pray that you will be encouraged to notice more closely the turning points in your life and in the history of the ministries you serve. And I pray that you will be drawn closer to God and deeper into your relationship with Him by more often celebrating His fingerprints on the crucial turning points you have witnessed and will witness in your life and ministry.

§

02.  A Calling Fashioned Out of Suffering

One of the most impactful experiences in my life came in my first year in college at age eighteen. During that year, I suffered an overwhelming amount of anxiety and depression. I found myself awash in emotional pain in a way that I had not experienced before. Compounding the difficulty is that I was unsure where to turn for help. When I sought help for my suffering from several churches, I experienced something that changed my life—something that became a turning point. I was told by the churches I approached that they would be happy to help me with my spiritual issues, but they could not help me with my mental health issues. They said I would have to go to a secular counselor to deal with my mental health issues.

It did not make sense that I would go to a secular counselor to deal with what I was experiencing. Because I had centered my life around Jesus Christ, I knew the healing I sought had to involve my relationship with him. If my relationship with Christ was not powerful enough to transform all of me, including my negative emotions, then what was the meaning of that relationship? John R. W. Stott has said, “The eternal and ultimate purpose of God by his Spirit is to make us like Christ.”John R.W. Stott, as quoted by David Kineman and Gabe Lyons, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2007), 151–152. How could that ultimate purpose be best served by working with a secular counselor?

Please understand that I have never been opposed to science-based solutions for emotional pain and suffering. After all, I have a PhD in the science of clinical psychology. However, I have understood science-based solutions to be tools that are not to be confused with the healing that comes from the Master Craftsman who uses those tools. And I know God can work through secular counselors. But I wanted someone who could work integratively with me, including my body, mind, heart, and spirit, using scientific methods grounded in a Christ-centered perspective. I needed somebody to join me at the center of a faith that sees a relationship with God through Christ as what ultimately heals and transforms. I sought soul care from someone who had training in counseling and theology. That person did not exist fifty years ago in my hometown.

Turning point. God used that experience to call me to be trained to be the person I could not find at the time. That resulted in training in both clinical psychology and Christian theology. It resulted in becoming a clinical psychologist and an ordained minister. It also resulted in a calling to support the church in making counseling more available within the church for those inside and outside the church. It led me to base my life’s calling upon Isaiah 61:1–3. I identify this passage as the Soul Care Commission. It calls the church to provide care for people’s souls—to “bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”All Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ The suffering I experienced led me to dedicate my life to establishing professional counseling in Christian churches so that more churches could offer people like me another way to experience the processes of healing, growth, renewal, and being made to be more like Christ. That turning point had God’s fingerprints all over it. “It’s Him again!”

§

03.  Here I Am, Lord

The passion God set ablaze in my soul, through my personal experience, for empowering the church to be the primary provider of soul care in the community increased significantly due to a writing project in graduate school. The class was entitled, “Community Psychology.” The assigned task was to write a paper describing an effective psychological intervention within a community context. My dear friend then and now, Dr. Gary W. Moon, brought a similar passion for the healing potential of the church into that class. We collaborated to write a paper on the powerful potential of a church-based model for delivering psychological services in the community.Marty M. Goehring and Gary W. Moon, “Church-Based Psychological Services: A Cost-Effective Method of Interfacing Training and Service Delivery Needs,” 1983, unpublished paper. We were deeply inspired by the fact that the church, with “its proximity in the community, its self-supporting financial arrangement, its consistency in providing a stable social environment,”Jay M. Uomoto, “Preventive Intervention: A Convergence of the Church and Community Psychology.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Christian Association for Psychological Services, Atlanta, April 1982. and “its relatively untapped human and physical resources, is in an opportune position to wake from its posture as a ‘sleeping giant’ and avail itself as a mental health resource.”Howard J. Clinebell, Jr., “The Local Church’s Contribution to Positive Mental Health, in Howard J. Clinebell, Jr., ed, Community Mental Health: The Role of the Church and Temple (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1970), 1–2.

This represented another significant turning point in my vocational journey. God used the experience of writing that paper with Dr. Moon to move me from a conceptual calling based on personal experience and my understanding of Isaiah 61:1–3 to a practical calling to establish church-based counseling centers.

December 5, 1993. Turning point. I attended a worship service at Heights Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque. I was visiting my home church from my home in Pasadena, California, to explore the possibility of becoming the director of the church-based counseling center the Church had established. The choir sang a hymn during the worship service, “Here I Am, Lord.” Some lyrics of the hymn, in God’s voice, are “I have heard my people cry.” “I have borne my people’s pain. I have wept for love of them.” The chorus says, “Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord? . . . I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.”Daniel L Schutte, “Here I Am, Lord,” Oregon Catholic Press, 1981, accessed August 19, 2024, https://genius.com/Dan-schutte-here-i-am-lord-lyrics.

The second time I heard the chorus of that hymn, I felt the Spirit of God flood my soul. Tears began to stream down my face as I said to God, “I will go, Lord, if you lead me.” One of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life led me to accept the position as director of the church’s counseling center, Family Therapy of Albuquerque, in 1994. This move from a private practice in Pasadena to a church-based counseling center in Albuquerque represented the fulfillment of the strong commitment that was awakened in me when Dr. Moon and I wrote our paper together. “It’s Him again!”

§

04.  A Ministry Born to Meet a Need

The camera angle on my story widens to include God’s fingerprints upon the turning points in the history of the ministry of Family Therapy of Albuquerque (FTA). As you will see in what follows, FTA later became Formation Counseling Services (FCS). It opened its doors in November 1984. This was ten years before I became its third director in the summer of 1994. One of the most inspirational aspects of the genesis of the ministry is that it was born to meet a need. The pastors of Heights Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Rev. Larry Moss and Rev. Richard Brown, saw that they could not keep up with the need for counseling within the church. They also saw an unmet need for counseling within the community—especially among those who could not afford counseling services.

Rev. Dr. Dwight Keller, who had enrolled in graduate school at age sixty to get his counseling degree, said, “Here I am, Lord.” He joined Pastors Moss and Brown to found the ministry of FTA. And he was its first counselor. Rev. Dr. Keller retired three years later. Dr. Marion Heisey was hired as the ministry’s second director. Under Dr. Heisey’s capable leadership, the ministry grew significantly from a single counseling pastor to the thirteen counselors who were employed when I arrived in 1994, following Dr. Heisey’s retirement.

Central to the story of FTA is the fact that the foundation of the ministry is its original mission to meet the ever-overwhelming need for counseling in the church and in the community. This applies to counseling for Christ followers and for those in the community who do not embrace the Christian faith. FTA was designed to be an expression of fulfilling the Soul Care Commission in Isaiah 61—as above, the Biblical mandate that calls Christ followers to care for the souls of others. Also, ever at the core of the ministry has been its mission to minister to those experiencing financial hardship. This is a mission to break down the financial barriers that often keep people from accessing counseling services.

§

05.  The Growth of a Ministry

There was a turning point as I began my ministry as the Director of FTA in 1994. It involved the next step in developing the counseling center from a church ministry to a professional agency. Accounting procedures had to be established. Clinical policies needed to be more clearly articulated. Practice management needed to be taken to a higher level of professionalism to fit the growth of the ministry. All this needed to be accomplished while not losing but enhancing FTA’s identity as a church-based counseling center. It needed to be achieved while continuing to empower FTA to serve those who ordinarily could not afford counseling services.

In 2003, God’s fingerprints were all over an opportunity given to FTA to partner with Valencia Valley Church of the Nazarene in Los Lunas, New Mexico. This is significant in the history of FTA. This began what became known as “the satellite model.” The satellite model is the ministry model used by what is now Formation Counseling Services to make our services available and accessible. As we partner with churches to provide counseling services, we make our services available by being geographically present in different neighborhoods. We make our services accessible partly by eliminating the cost of bricks and mortar and rent as we use office space offered by partner churches. That cost saving is passed on to our clients, who are provided services based on their ability to pay.

Another significant turning point in the history of FTA involved a phone call on February 17, 2004. For the first twenty years of the ministry of FTA, the ministry was a line item in the Church’s budget. It was not financially separate from the Church. The phone call was from one of the biggest insurance companies for which we provide clinical services. We learned that the insurance company could no longer write checks to the Church to reimburse our services to their insureds. It became clear that this was soon to be the case with all insurance companies. That meant that FTA had to incorporate as a nonprofit corporation so that insurance checks could be written directly to our ministry. God’s fingerprints were all over this turning point as well.

Although we did not recognize it then, reestablishing the ministry of FTA as a nonprofit corporation brought many advantages. Chief among those advantages was that we could now accept donations directly instead of donations being funneled through Heights Cumberland Presbyterian Church. This contributed to significant growth in contributions to our ministry. This helped our ministry better reach those who are financially disadvantaged. “It’s Him again!”

The year 2009 brought an additional turning point for FTA, which made a spiritual and a practical impact. That summer, FTA encountered a challenging situation. The transition of New Mexico’s Medicaid insurance payor from one company to another resulted in the delay of Medicaid insurance payments for several months. This created a financial hardship. We were a ministry running on a razor-thin profit margin.

By October, we did not have sufficient funds to cover the next paycheck run for our staff (!). A timely $10,000 gift from a generous donor made a significant spiritual and practical impact. The spiritual impact was that our faith in God’s ability to meet even the most extreme financial need within our ministry grew exponentially. The practical impact was that the donation helped to bridge the gap until Medicaid insurance money began to flow again.

Another pivotal moment for the ministry of FTA occurred in January 2010. It resulted from the spiritual discernment of the Board of Directors. For the previous three years, the Board had been pursuing a fund-raising campaign to build a $3 million facility. The facility was planned to enhance the ministry of FTA and to be a headquarters for the satellite model. In what was experienced by the Board as a powerful move of the Holy Spirit, the Board discerned that God was leading the ministry away from using the funds from the fund-raising campaign to build a new facility. Instead, the discernment was to use the funds from the campaign to empower the satellite model FTA was developing. God’s fingerprints! “It’s Him again!”

The model of ministry that FTA began using in 2003, the satellite model, has always drawn enthusiastic reviews. It’s a simple model. It’s a cost-effective model. It’s an excellent model for reaching financially disadvantaged individuals. It is a beautiful expression of the potential for church-based counseling to be a highly effective model for delivering psychological services to the community. This harkens back to what Dr. Gary Moon and I learned from our research project about the power of church-based counseling. The satellite model is a spiritually meaningful model because it represents the church fulfilling its Biblical calling to be the primary provider of soul care in the community.

The basic premise of the satellite model is that our ministry partners with churches (and occasionally other ministries) to provide counseling services in satellite locations. These satellites expand the ministry beyond the headquarters at Heights Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Partner churches provide space for the ministry. FCS provides everything else. Most churches are not using all the available space within their facilities. This is especially true during weekdays. Churches providing space results in tremendous cost savings for FCS, as mentioned above. This helps the ministry reach deep into the financially disadvantaged community. And, as has been noted, we are driven to make counseling services accessible to members of that community.

In the satellite model, FCS provides the counselors, the office furnishings, administrative support, client billing, insurance billing, a cloud-based practice management system, and clinical supervision for the therapists. FCS supplies everything needed for a counseling ministry except the space. Our partner churches provide the space to host a counseling ministry that serves its members and reaches out to the church’s community without needing expertise in providing counseling services. This is because FCS provides the counseling services, not the host church. The fact that FCS, as a separate non-profit corporation, provides counseling services, and not the church, protects the church from liability.

As was mentioned, sharing our model of ministry consistently draws enthusiastic responses. Such was the case with counseling students I taught as an adjunct professor at Richmont Graduate University. In the fall of 2012, several students approached me with the idea of their church in Atlanta hosting our ministry. Turning point! This led to the ministry’s first out-of-state church partnership. Clinical services were launched at Grace Midtown Church on October 1, 2014. This huge step was supported by the Board of Directors’ decision in 2013 to go national with the ministry of FCS. And this was based on what God was inspiring in my former students. The model was gaining traction beyond New Mexico. A significant part of the spiritually discerned motivation to take the ministry beyond New Mexico was the desire to give the model away to the larger church.

The Board knew that the ministry model FCS uses depends upon the creation of a nonprofit corporation. This means it is not an easy model for churches to replicate. The Board heard God saying that because FCS had already done the work to organize a nonprofit corporation, He was leading the board to “give the ministry away.” We were led to offer the ministry to whatever churches wanted to partner with FCS, regardless of location. This meant partner churches could host a counseling ministry without having to establish a separate nonprofit corporation to provide counseling services.

We back up to 2013 to describe another turning point for FTA/FCS that had God’s fingerprints all over it. The first meeting with my former students and the church leadership of Grace Midtown Church to discuss the possibility of partnering in ministry took place on February 14, 2013. We met at a coffee shop in Atlanta. As previously mentioned, it was those promising conversations that led to the Board of Directors’ discernment that God was leading the ministry to go national. A problem encountered with that discernment involved the ministry’s name. It did not make sense to establish a ministry in Atlanta called “Family Therapy of Albuquerque.”

That led to the lengthy process of changing the ministry’s name to “Formation Counseling Services.” This name had the advantage of not being geographically limited. It helped people understand that we provided more than family therapy. It also provided a connection to the purpose of our ministry. Our single purpose is to assist the Spirit-driven process of Christ being formed in people’s lives. On January 1, 2014, FTA began providing ministry as Formation Counseling Services. “It’s Him again!”

§

06.  A Mission and a Vision That Are Amazing and Exciting

I love what Henry Nouwen says in his book, The Spirituality of Fund-Raising. He talks about inviting people to invest in a vision. He says, “We are declaring, ‘We have a vision that is amazing and exciting. We’re inviting you to invest yourself through the resources that God has given you—your energy, your prayers, and your money—in this work to which God has called us.’”Henri Nouwen, The Spirituality of Fundraising (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2010), 17.

Formation Counseling Services has a mission and vision that are “amazing and exciting.” Our mission is to partner with churches and other ministries to provide counseling services that inspire healing, growth, and renewal. That simple statement captures our commitment to support the church in fulfilling the Soul Care Commission. It identifies the model of ministry we use to accomplish our mission. We partner with churches and other ministries to provide counseling services. We strive to provide those services without financial or geographical barriers. Our vision statement is directly related: “The availability and accessibility of Christ-empowered, highly trained counseling in every church.”

What adds excitement to the spiritual meaning and the kingdom purposes we serve is that the model of ministry God has given us is compelling. We talk about “money to ministry in minutes.” This means that donated resources can be easily and swiftly translated into ministry. This is partly because only 12 percent of our costs are administrative. Eighty-eight cents out of every dollar donated to our ministry can be used to expand our services. The unmet need for mental health services in communities across our country is staggering. Churches are available geographically everywhere across our country. They have space to lend to the ministry of counseling. Our simply structured model is wired to provide additional ministry quickly upon adding additional financial resources.

Among other ways to measure, what testifies to the power of the model of ministry God has given us is that over the forty years of providing services, our ministry has grown from one counseling pastor to thirty-eight clinicians and forty-three total employees serving our main office at Heights Cumberland Presbyterian Church, eight satellite locations in New Mexico, and five satellite locations in Georgia.

The potential for the model of ministry God has given us to reach the need for counseling services and to transform individuals, couples, families, churches, and communities is nearly unlimited. It is limited only by the amount of financial resources donated.

In his book, Visioneering, Andy Stanley says this about pursuing a vision: “When God intervenes, the attention shifts to him. Divine intervention, when it is recognized, results in authentic worship and unquestioned obedience. This is God’s ultimate agenda for the visions he has given you. He is at the end of the visions he has authored. Your visions are for his glory.”Andy Stanley, Visioneering (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah, 1999), 241.

When God intervenes, the attention shifts to him. And we say, “It’s Him again!” Perhaps this story of God’s fingerprints upon the turning points in one person’s life and in one ministry will encourage you to look a little more often for the turning points in your life and in your ministry and to God’s fingerprints upon those turning points. And may you be led to say often in celebration and gratitude, as God is glorified in your life and in your ministry, “It’s Him again!”