A Centers Series: Serving Students by Counseling with Care

Domini currently serves as a licensed marriage and family therapy associate at Trinity Counseling and Consulting, where she cares for a wide range of clients and cases. She is also an alumna of Southeastern Seminary, where she graduated with her Master of Arts in marriage, family, and individual counseling in 2020.

For Domini, counseling is not just a career. It is first and foremost a mission field and an opportunity for gospel ministry.

“I still remind myself that whoever God brings into my room, he has chosen to bring into that space with me,” Domini shared. “That’s very humbling that he would find it fit for me to sit with them and minister to them and try to bring light and truth into their suffering.”

Serving the Southeastern Community

While at Southeastern, Domini experienced her first foray into the world of professional counseling, serving as a graduate intern at Southeastern’s Counseling Center. As an intern, she also gained a unique perspective on the benefits of counseling for students preparing for ministry.

Operating out of the Ledford Student Center, the Counseling Center serves in an inward-facing capacity, separate from the seminary’s four ministry equipping centers. It acts as a resource and aid for the Southeastern community, providing free counseling to currently enrolled students and their families.

It also provides opportunities for counseling students in the seminary to gain experience through the center’s graduate internship, which counts towards practicum requirements for their degree. Along the way, interns receive various levels of supervision and guidance as they seek to apply their education in a practical setting.

Reflecting on her intern experience, Domini recalled how much she appreciated the opportunity to care for seminary and college students who were preparing “to go out and do ministry as pastors or missionaries or counselors themselves.”

Counselors in the center, Domini explained, are in many ways equipping these students for ministry, “ideally helping them be healthier emotionally and spiritually as they prepare to go pour into people,” Domini said. “I think that’s a beautiful thing. You’re helping them walk closer to Jesus as they’re going to further impact the kingdom.”

I think that’s a beautiful thing. You’re helping them walk closer to Jesus as they’re going to further impact the kingdom.

Seminary, in Domini’s experience, is a particularly crucial time in which students should seek to grow in their spiritual and emotional health — and to solicit help in doing so, especially if it’s a free resource.

“I don’t think we are necessarily born with the wisdom to be emotionally healthy people,” she explained. “I think that needs to be taught.”

Learning by Example

“One of the ways in which I have learned how to sit with and counsel people was — and is — through receiving counseling myself,” Domini shared. “That has been done both in the counseling room by professional counselors and by pastors who knew how to do this well.”

During college, in particular, Domini had several people who poured into her life and helped strengthen her faith.

“I felt like people who discipled me just asked me good questions and listened well, and they taught me how to do that,” she said. “They were probably some of the first people who taught me how to think about my emotions.”

I felt like people who discipled me just asked me good questions and listened well, and they taught me how to do that.

Domini’s desire to pursue a counseling degree grew out of her experience serving overseas in South Asia through the Journeyman program. There she saw first-hand the many hardships that the missionaries endured, as well as the pain and suffering of the people that they ministered to. She knew that if she ended up returning overseas, a counseling degree would equip her with invaluable skills and training for that gospel work.

Upon coming back from the field and eventually beginning her education at Southeastern, Domini found that personal counseling was still very applicable in her own life as she considered how to transition well back to life in the States.

For those who are considering going overseas on mission or preparing to serve in a local church, it’s helpful to seek guidance from a counselor, Domini explained, even if that simply means having a conversation with someone who can ask deeper questions and point out potential blind spots.

Counseling in Preparation for Ministry

For seminary students, aspiring ministry leaders, and pastors in particular, counseling has a two-fold importance. First of all, seminary is a crucial season in which to examine one’s spiritual and emotional health — the two of which, Domini argues, are closely related.

“Jesus invites us in Scripture to pour out our hearts to him,” Domini said. “He is so inviting, like a father would be to a child who’s upset or hurt or worried, or angry. I think it would be difficult to have deep intimacy with Jesus without openly pouring out your heart to him.”

Domini recalled what she learned from Sam Williams, professor of counseling (retired) at Southeastern and one of Domini’s favorite teachers.

“If God created these emotions,” Domini explained, “and emotions are good, and they are insights into our inner world — they communicate something to us — then we do not need to shove them down. We need to sit and listen to them.”

This doesn’t mean surrendering to all emotions or allowing them to have the final say, Domini explained: “Our emotions don’t have to be in the driver’s seat dictating what we think or believe or how we act, but they are insights into our hearts and can teach us about ourselves. They can illuminate parts of ourselves that God may need to change and wants to work on.”

Our emotions don’t have to be in the driver’s seat dictating what we think or believe or how we act, but they are insights into our hearts and can teach us about ourselves.

Through the Counseling Center, students receive spiritual and emotional care as they prepare to go out to their individual ministry fields. Moreover, through their experiences receiving counseling, students are often better equipped to sit in the counselor seat. For those pursuing pastoral ministry or leadership in the church, this is particularly important.

“Pastors are to shepherd, and a shepherd should know its flock,” Domini said. “I think so much of pastoring is counseling and sitting with people in their suffering, their pain, their hurt, and their trials.” For those seeking to be pastors, she explained, it might be helpful to experience counseling themselves and “say, ‘Let me be on the receiving side of that and see what that looks like.’”

“Holding the Rope”

Furthermore, Domini explained, learning how to counsel well often leads to gospel opportunities. Caring for others in the midst of their hardship gives believers windows into a person’s life and open doorways to speak truth to them. Throughout her own years as a counselor, Domini has had numerous opportunities to be the light of Christ to those who do not know him.

While the work that God has called Domini and her fellow counselors to is difficult, it is also beautiful and in many ways a reflection of the gospel of Christ.

As Domini cares for her counselees, she is regularly reminded of William Carey’s famous words to a friend and fellow believer, asking him to “hold the rope” as he descended into the work of ministry.

In her case, Domini often finds herself in that crucial position of support, holding the rope for her counselees but also “going down with them into the dark well and the things they don’t want to shine a light on and face because they’re hard, painful, and sad. But I want to hold the rope and give them the light, and we’ll do it together.”

To learn more about Southeastern’s counseling degrees and how you can be equipped as a missional counselor who is biblically driven and clinically informed, visit sebts.edu/counseling.