How do you find an affordable, available, and experienced Christian Counselor who has had extensive years of education and training in providing Christian Counseling?   A number of large companies have entered providing online Christian Counseling.  As an organization they are secular in orientation and their mission and purpose is not specifically oriented toward providing Christian Counseling.  However, they recognize that people are looking for Christian Counseling and they have decided to add that to their services that they provide because it makes good business sense as a population to provide services to.  I respect this.   Large businesses have larger leverage in creating still larger businesses and profit for the business and they seek ways to expand this.  In order to supplement my own private practice, I have also had to participate with some of these programs because of their taking over a lot of the healthcare market related to providing mental health. It is like large businesses such as Walmart and Amazon.  They take over a lot of the business that are out there and small businesses and “Mom and Pop” types of brick-and-mortar businesses suffer, and many times go out of business.  This “large business” model has also affected the delivery of Christian Counseling.  In searching on the internet these larger organizations usually come up first while looking for Christian Counseling and finding someone who identifies strongly as being a Christian Counselor.  The dilemma is that you are not likely to see the rest of us working in our “brick and mortar” (that is in person in office) practices  of Christian Counselors because we get put much lower as you scroll down through searches for “Christian Counseling”.  In fact, you may not even know that we exist.  If you do not know we exist we eventually go out of business. By the way, a lot of us “brick and mortar” in office in person providers also provide online Christian Counseling services.  Here are some considerations while searching for Christian Counselors. The question is, are the services provided by these companies and online services ultimately better and more affordable?  Often, they are not.  If you add up the monthly charge for a client subscription to have access to their services, the cost may be the same or higher. Do those programs have the ability to use your insurance to lower your overall out of pocket expense?  Do you really know much about the background of the person’s, education, training, and the amount of time that they have been actively professionally providing Christian Counseling?  What does providing Christian Counseling mean to them?  Are they compatible with your own Christian beliefs?  Just because someone says that they provide Christian Counseling does not mean they do so in a manner that is consistent with your own definition of what is Christian Counseling.   These are all important questions to address when matching up with someone indicating that they provide Christian Counseling.   Please understand, this is not to say that these organizations do not provide valuable services, instead, you need to decide what is better or best and affordable for you.     http://emapdrschulz.com