Frequently Asked Questions

Two important signs of an excellent program are:

• CACREP accreditation
• Licensure exam passing rates

Our program is CACREP accredited and our graduates consistently pass their licensure exams at an almost 100% rate on the first time they take it.

However, you must ask yourself the question, “Does the program meet my needs?” Many students fail to assess counseling degree programs in this manner. 

For example, one way many students evaluate the desirability of a graduate program is by the reputation it has with friends, family and other influential people in their lives or even the media. They neglect to realize that the opinion or experience of another can only speak for the suitability for that individual, not necessarily anyone else.

When contemplating a particular counseling program, reframe the issue. Instead of wondering “Is this a great program?” make your main inquiry “Is this a great program for me?”

The graduate counseling faculty at Southern believes that God has a unique plan for your life. They are committed to helping you discover that plan, regardless of whether or not it involves attending this program. Do not hesitate to seek their advice. They will be happy to provide you with impartial guidance so that you may have the right information to answer that question for yourself, “Is this a great program for me?

A CACREP accreditation is the highest mark of approval that a counseling program may receive in the U.S. and around the world.

• It assures you that the academic preparation you will receive has been recognized for its high standards of quality.
• It shows you that those responsible for the program are committed to ongoing assessment to maintain and improve program quality. 
• It influences your ability to transfer credits and receive financial aid.
• It facilitates for you the process of becoming professionally licensed. Many states require students to attend a program approved by CACREP and will only grant licenses to individuals who graduate from CACREP accredited programs.
• It increases your potential for employment after graduation. Prospective employers will know that the education you have received meets the standards of the counseling profession and will therefore be more inclined to hire you.

No matter how prestigious a secular counseling or psychology program might be, it will never give you what Southern will provide you in terms of:

• Learning how to carefully examine counseling and psychological theories in light of the Bible. You will know how to differentiate between secular and humanistic theories and those theories that are congruent with biblical principles.
• Learning how to apply counseling interventions that are respectful of your clients’ values and beliefs without violating your own Christian principles.
• Having the freedom to conduct biblically based counseling research without feeling judged by faculty and classmates who hold secular views.
• Developing life-long friendships with others who have similar values and beliefs.

Just as Christian students have the freedom at Southern to study professional counseling from the biblical perspective, non-Christian students have also the freedom to examine the profession from their own perspectives, regardless of what these perspectives might be.  They are encouraged to ask themselves how counseling and psychotherapy theories are congruent with their own worldviews and how this will inform their research and counseling practice.
 
Non-Christian students are enriched by life-long friendships that they develop in this program not only with Christians, but with others who come from very different religious and non-religious traditions.

Since the School of Education and Psychology is home to both your undergrad psychology program and the graduate counseling program, you might wonder, “Will my grad experience be any different? Will my education be enriched beyond what I have already learned from my undergraduate professors?”

Although a great spirit of collegiality exists in the School of Education and Psychology among professors, each academic area functions as a separate department. That means that courses offered by the Graduate Counseling program are taught by different faculty members who hold different academic degrees. The graduate faculty also possess many years of experience in clinical practice that, although equally valuable, are different from the types of experiences that your psychology professors have.

As a result, your academic training will be different indeed, and your education will be enriched beyond what you have learned while completing your undergraduate degree.

The only aspect that might be the same is that you will be able to continue living in an area that is already familiar to you and hang out with those friends around Southern who might be close and dear to you.

Absolutely. Holding an undergraduate degree from a field that is not related to counseling is not a prerequisite to be accepted into the program. However, you may need to make up for a few courses that perhaps you didn’t take while completing your bachelor’s degree. You might be surprised about how easy it is to accomplish this.

Make sure you contact our graduate programs manager for additional information on this subject.

It all depends on the type of doctoral degree that you want to pursue. If you want to obtain a psychology research doctorate (e.g., Ph.D. in educational psychology, developmental psychology, experimental psychology, social psychology), it is not imperative that you complete a master’s degree in professional counseling before you apply to the doctoral program. 
 
However, if you desire to obtain a doctoral degree that will allow you to become a mental health care provider and offer clinical services to clients or patients (e.g., Ph.D. or PsyD in clinical psychology, counseling psychology, marriage and family therapy), we strongly advise you to obtain a master’s degree in professional counseling, marriage and family therapy or other related degrees). There are many reasons for this. So we encourage you to consult with our graduate counseling faculty before you make any final decision. It could impact your entire life.

The realms of social work and counseling often overlap. Professionals in both fields are typically passionate about helping others to improve their lives. However, they differ in how they help and the approach they take to helping.

• Generally speaking, social workers focus on the need to change their clients’ social environments in order to solve specific problems or issues they are facing. For example, they might help a client get a job by working with an employment office or providing guidance as the client navigates the complicated bureaucracy involved in child custody. 
  
  Although they might work in the same types of settings where professional counselors work, (e.g., a private practice, a medical center, or a nonprofit organization), they will mostly examine a client’s situation from a sociological perspective and will try to help by changing the environmental conditions that are causing distress for the client.
  
  
• Professional counselors, on the other hand, do not ignore the sociological and environmental factors that negatively impact their clients, but they focus more on the internal (e.g., mental, psychological, emotional, spiritual) dynamics experienced by these individuals, and how they react to their external circumstances.
  
  Counselors might work with married couples to help sort out feelings and establish better communication. They might also work with people who have mental health disorders or are recovering addicts. Additionally, they might address the emotional needs of children and adolescents in schools that might be interfering with their ability to learn. 
  
  In other words, while the social worker might help clients navigate an employment office, the counselor might treat the emotional aspects of dealing with a traumatic layoff. 
  
  

If you have a great passion for improving the lives of others and feel undecided about these two fields, the key is to decide how you would like to help and which approach will be most rewarding for you based on your personal values and interests.

The terms Biblical Counseling and Christian Counseling represent two different types of counseling that are prominent among American Evangelicals. They can be confusing to the general population because they embrace opposite views but also agree on a number of points that make them overlap with each other.

Biblical Counseling (also known as Nouthetic Counseling before 1993) is a movement that was founded in the 1970s by Jay Adams, a United Presbyterian pastor and author. According to Heath Lamber, Southern Baptist pastor and former director of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBD), there are two central areas that distinguish these two approaches: the necessity of secular counseling techniques and whether the Bible is a sufficient counseling resource.¹

1. Biblical counselors discard the need to use professional counseling techniques to provide counseling. Christian counselors do not.
2. Biblical counselors believe that the Bible is sufficient as the only counseling source. Christian counselors believe in the Bible as the ultimate answer to human suffering, but they also welcome the use of psychological interventions, as long as they are not in opposition to the biblical truths.

Speaking in favor of the Biblical Counseling approach, David Powlison, one of its leading advocates, explains that disciplines like psychology, history, sociology, biology, and others have nothing to offer to the methodology of biblical counseling because such disciplines can never provide a system for understanding and counseling people as the Bible does.²

On the other hand, the Code of Ethics of the American Association of Christian Counselors (AACC) states that Christian counselors are rooted in "the Bible as the final authoritative basis for faith, values and all ethics and interventions," but also acknowledge "that science and the great arts of humanity speak a certain measure of truth as revealed in the 66 books of the Holy Bible." ³

____
¹ Lambert, H. (2016). A theology of biblical counseling. Zondervan.
² Powlison, D. (1994). Biblical counseling in the twentieth century. In J. MacArthur & W. Mack (Eds.), Introduction to biblical counseling, (pp. 44-61). Nelson.
³ American Association of Christian Counselors. (2014). AACC code of ethics. https://www.aacc.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/AACC-Code-of-Ethics-Master-Document.pdf

I am a Christian wanting to obtain a professional license to practice counseling inside and/or outside of church settings. Which graduate degree will be best for me, Biblical Counseling or Clinical Mental Health Counseling?

A master’s degree in Biblical Counseling will not qualify you to obtain a professional license to practice counseling. The master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling will. 

With the master’s degree in Biblical Counseling, you can become certified as a Biblical or Nouthetic counselor through the Institute for Nouthetic Studies or through the Association of Biblical Counselors. However, the certification is not an official certification or license recognized at the state or national level. It simply demonstrates that you have completed a Biblical counseling program. You will not be able to use one of these certificates to meet the requirements for a job as a licensed counselor, therapist, or other position. At the same time, these certifications do hold some weight with a number of churches that support the Biblical Counseling approach, and if you are already employed by a church or if you are only interested in being hired by a church, these certificates could be beneficial to you.

A master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling will prepare you to obtain a professional counseling license. As a licensed counselor, you will be able to provide mental health services to individuals, families, and groups in community mental health centers, agencies, the U.S. Veteran Health Administration system, and other institutions where your services will be covered by managed care organizations and health plans. As a Christian, you will also be able to be employed by churches and Christian institutions that support the Christian approach to counseling, as well as to establish your own private practice.

The Clinical Mental Health Counseling program and the School Counseling program follow a professional counseling approach that is strongly founded on the historic commitment of Seventh-day Adventist Christians to wholistic health. This approach draws on careful empirical research, professional clinical practice, and the word of God as revealed in the Bible.

As a student in any of these programs, you will be equipped to practice in the field of professional counseling with a clear understanding of your personal values and beliefs and how you can practice professional counseling without compromising those values and beliefs. At the same time, you will work to understand the client’s belief system, always maintaining respect for the client, and acknowledging the importance of the client’s own belief system in the counseling process. You will be challenged to uphold a strong commitment to ethical and professional excellence at all levels.