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Yet university students are not the only ones who need guidance. PBU’s mission statement compels us to engage and serve the church, society, and the world. Counseling is beneficial to improving spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health of all people. And while the negative stigma attached to counseling is not as widespread as it was a generation ago, there still exists an unhealthy and inaccurate view that counseling is for the weak or sick people around us. Scripture is replete with statements that direct us to not rely solely on ourselves but to turn to God, seeing Him and His Word as powerful, in the times of our greatest need. Sometimes this turning to Him is done by leaning on those who have walked difficult paths many times over and can help people walk through their suffering biblically and effectively.
At the Oasis Counseling Center, we see our work directly supporting the overall mission statement of the University; to educate students to serve Christ in the church, society, and the world as biblically minded, well-educated, and professionally competent men and women of character. We believe that the student body represents the next generation of Christians who will go into the corners of this world in a wide variety of ways, impacting the world for Christ and the Kingdom. We believe that the challenges, difficulties, and struggles which affect the student body can threaten their professional and spiritual development rendering them ill-equipped to face the world to the utmost of their ability. Our counselors are entrusted with assisting those in need to move successfully through their university years, growing and maturing biblically as they do.
In the Oasis Counseling Center, we serve the entire student body with a staff of professional biblical counselors who have a passion for working with young adults and individuals. Our staff also includes some of the best and brightest master’s-level interns from PBU’s Master of Science in Christian Counseling (MSCC) degree program. Under close supervision, this new generation of counselors is also learning to walk a new path; one where they gain experiential knowledge and skills to shepherd those lost, hurting, and “stuck” among us to a place where they are able to walk their path without a personal guide. This work is called counseling, but it very much resembles the working relationship of a mentor and mentoree. The interns are learning to be mentors, assisting the younger brother/sister in approaching life’s challenges in new, more effective, more biblically sound ways, developing in him or her important life-skills that will aid them as they move forward into the world.
Until this year, these services were limited to the student body at PBU. Now our doors are open to the community at large, providing quality biblical counseling. Members of the community can now schedule weekly counseling sessions with Oasis counselors. Our goals of therapy are individually designed for each client to address their own specific situation and needs. Our counselors are careful to ensure that the goals for each client are realistic, achievable and biblically responsible before God. Our hope in expanding our services is twofold. First, we desire to provide a quality counseling option to the community around us. We believe that scripture offers the keys to making life work as God intended and that skilled therapists can assist people in approaching their struggles with biblical wisdom from angles they had never considered. The second goal of our expansion is to create additional counseling opportunities for our MSCC students who are pursuing the state-required, year-long internship. We desire to provide a state-of-the-art training experience which is not available to other master’s-level therapists on the East Coast. By providing a well-supervised, real-world training experience, we hope to provide the world with the next generation of mature, experienced, and highly skilled counselors. We believe that this expansion will be beneficial to our graduate students as they prepare to begin walking the path as a licensed professional counselor.
For the Oasis staff, this is incredibly rewarding. We are able to see the growth and maturity of the student body that benefits from the Oasis Counseling Center. Additionally, we are privileged to work with some of the brightest graduate-level counselor trainees helping them to hone and refine the techniques and theories they have gained in the classroom. In all of this I see the tremendous growth which is achieved, both for mentor and mentoree.
[framed_box]Baron King, Director of Counseling Services, has been at PBU since 2004. His areas of special interest include working with young adults and sexual abuse recovery. Baron is also an adjunct professor in PBU’s M.S. in Christian Counseling program.
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[info]The Oasis Counseling Center sees clients by appointment 9 am – 9 pm, Monday – Thursday and 9 am – 3 pm on Friday. The fee for non-student clients is $25.00 per session. For more information, or to schedule an initial appointment, please contact oasis@cairn.edu or 215.702.4224[/info]