Faith-Based Schools: Bringing faith to the classroom

A career as a Christian counselor can be rewarding, challenging and fulfilling all at the same time. Practicing counseling within the Christian faith is a way for you to serve God and others. You can prepare for a career that creates both a personal connection and a life-changing impact on your clients. However, before you start your journey to become a Christian counselor, there are important things to think about.

Christian counselors strive to help their clients overcome personal problems and achieve a healthier mental state through traditional principles of psychology and psychotherapy combined with knowledge from the Bible.

If you’re considering the possibility of becoming a Christian counselor, it’s important to first think about your commitment to the Christian faith as well as your knowledge of Christianity. It’s important that you have a committed relationship with Christ before your share your faith and counsel others. Your clients will come to you for biblical advice, as well as a practical, balanced perspective. It will make it easier for them to trust you and identify with you if you share their beliefs.

Most importantly, you’ll need to complete the education to become a Christian counselor. Just like secular therapists and counselors, you will need an education in psychology, counseling and psychotherapy in order to provide professional counseling.

Earning a degree in Christian counseling or related psychology fields can help you learn the appropriate moral and ethical rules of conduct that come with the profession. You can also train to counsel a variety of people from different situations and age groups, including individuals, couples, and families. Coursework involved with earning your Christian counseling degree will include much of the same coursework as a standard counseling degree with the addition of faith-based courses.

The three most common components studied within a Christian counseling degree include:

• Psychology (General Psychology, Psychology and Theology and Social Psychology)
• Psychotherapy (Crisis Counseling, Counseling Theory Cross-Cultural Counseling)
• The Bible (Old Testament, New Testament and Christian Counseling)

As you earn your degree, it’s important to develop your own personal Christian counseling philosophy. You can build your own unique viewpoint that includes theories, techniques and trends from both psychology and the Bible.

Are you right for a Christian counseling career? You may find this profession fulfilling if you identify with the following statements:

• I enjoy talking and listening to people about personal issues
• I want to experience a deeper relationship with God’s Word
• I love to help others
• Psychology interests me
• I enjoy sharing my faith with others and helping them learn more about the Bible

With a degree in Christian counseling, you can combine counseling with your Christian faith and bring joy and meaning to your clients’ lives. Before you start your journey, think about your own beliefs and your ability and passion to help others. Then start searching for the right degree program for you!

Music can be an amazing form of worship, a way to share your faith with others and even a form of revitalizing meditation and prayer. For many Christian musicians considering a future career, their love of music may be overshadowed by the reality of finding a job in the field.

By earning a music degree from a Christian college, you don’t have to be stuck pursuing a career as a Christian musician – let’s face it – not very many people are able to make it in that competitive business.

There are many other rewarding and exciting careers for Christian musicians besides trying to make it big in the music industry. With a music degree from many Christian universities and colleges, you can be prepared for a wide range of careers, and a music degree also provides an excellent background for any graduate degree.

What can you do with a degree in music? Many Christian musicians choose to combine their music degree with a business, theology or psychology degree. With a degree in theology, you can pursue opportunities as a music minister, worship leader, youth group director or choir director. All of these jobs allow music to still be very much a part of your life and offer the reward of working closely with others and sharing your faith and love of music.

With an emphasis in business, you can take your music degree to careers at Christian record label companies, recording studios, sound engineering or public relations firms. You can enjoy the excitement of the music industry with more job security than a singing or songwriting career can offer.

Producers of Christian records must have a strong background in music. As a producer, you are required to hire studio musicians, recording engineers, background vocalists and many other professionals who help make an album. Recording budgets for Christian recording acts are generally very comparable to secular record deals.

Talented publicists are also needed in the Christian music world. Many Christian record labels have their own in-house publicity departments. Publicists in the Christian music industry must consult with the label and the artist to create a strong, cohesive message and then work to get the message out in print, broadcast and online formats.

Another career possibility with a music degree is an artist and repertoire representative. Also known as talent scouts, artist and repertoire representatives are responsible for finding, signing and developing talent for record companies.

Many larger churches also look for people with music degrees to teach music lessons at the church or be a children’s ministry director or event coordinator. One positive of pursuing a music career in a Christian setting is that it often offers more opportunities for performances and participation in musical events than the mainstream music industry. As a member of a church, director of the choir or youth group leader, you are able to share your talent each Sunday morning or for special church events.

Choosing to pursue a music degree doesn’t mean you’ll be stuck without job opportunities! Instead it can offer truly enjoyable and rewarding careers that allow you to worship and share your faith with others. Most of all, your job can allow you do what you love!

You feel a calling to earn a degree in religion or theology. The question is, can you make a career out of it? That is, can you make a good income by living your faith in the service of others?

First, some good news: there are numerous career paths to choose from besides priest, minister or pastor. If that’s your calling, by all means go for it; but for a great many, their faith calls them into service working with youth, music, church affairs, teaching and missionary work, among others.

These career paths are made possible thanks to education at a faith-based school. At such a school, you can earn an Associate degree, a Bachelor’s degree, a Master’s or a Doctorate. In this way, a faith-based school is no different than a traditional college or university; however, your degree options are vastly different in a faith-based school. You can earn a degree in Biblical Studies, Christian Ministries, Theology, Youth Ministry, Religious Studies or Music Ministry, for example.

With diploma in hand and a greater understanding of your faith, you could be ready to make a contribution in your area of interest.

Here are 10 career options to consider:

Youth Program Coordinator
Most churches have youth programs and the youth program coordinator is in charge of organizing activities for them. If you enjoy working with young people and are a master of organization and detail, this could be a rewarding career for you.

Missionary Work
Does traveling the world and sharing your faith while helping others excite you? Missionary work isn’t for everyone, but if mission trips in high school increased your sense of calling and duty, missionary work might be a career option to consider.

Church Management
A church office isn’t that different from a regular business office. There are administrative duties, employee relations, management of finances and much more. If you have an intellect for business but your soul stirs your faith, what better purpose to serve than this?

Teacher
If you’re drawn to teaching K-12 but also have strong faith and values, teaching in a religious setting is an option. You can perform all the duties of a teacher but also lend your expertise in shaping young minds to the faith.

Director of a Church School
Teachers who advance in their careers and develop leadership and organizational abilities can qualify for the role of director of a church school. In this position, you could lead a school in every respect, from programs to teachers to managing the annual budget.

Christian Youth Therapist
A young person is hurting, perhaps even suicidal. Could you lead them out of the darkness and into the light? It takes a special person, special training and possession of strong faith to be a Christian youth therapist. Do you feel the calling?

Music Director
For many congregations, music plays a key role in worship. A music director oversees it all, conducting, directing, planning and leading instrumental and vocal performances. If you’re musically inclined and strong in your faith, music direction is a career option to consider.

Hospital Chaplain
If you have a Master’s of Divinity degree and are certified by the Association of Professional Chaplains and/or ordained or commissioned by your church, you may find service as a hospital chaplain. You must be an excellent listener, exude empathy and provide a pastoral point of view as you minister to the sick and dying.

Pastoral Counselor
What if you could combine theological practices with behavioral sciences to cultivate mental health? That’s exactly what you could do as a pastoral counselor. In this role, you help people challenged by life – marriage, divorce, grief, and drug and sexual abuse.

Prison Minister
People behind bars need to hear the word of God. If you believe that, earn the degree and hear the call of your faith, your career path might turn you toward prison ministry. Most are employed with a church affiliated with a prison or, in some cases, chapels on-site at correctional facilities.

Whatever career direction your faith calls you to pursue, it all starts with earning a degree from a faith-based school. Once you have that degree, you’ll have a better picture, not to mention a strong calling, of what career path to follow.

Discerning whether God has placed a call to full-time ministry in our lives is something a lot of believers struggle with, and solid answers to those tough questions can be hard to find. There’s not a simple litmus test that can answer them either. In finding answers, though, there’s one vital step that a lot of people forget about: ministry. A call to ministry can be acted on long before a career in ministry begins.

Let me start with this: Every believer is called to ministry. Consider Isaiah’s words: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’”(Isaiah 6:8, NRSV) God’s call was not directed at Isaiah—it was open for anyone to respond, and Isaiah rose to the challenge.

The word minister actually means “servant”—this service is usually focused on other people—and every believer is called to serve others in some way. Just as with Isaiah, the call is out there for anyone to answer. So the first big question to ask before pursuing a career in ministry is not whether or not you can do the job, but whether or not you’re already doing the job.

Ministry outside of professional ministry can take a lot of forms. It can be talking with a friend who’s going through a rough spot in life, or involving yourself in (or organizing) charity projects with the company, or sharing your faith with those who are open to hear it. Keeping with the servant definition, it is simply meeting people’s needs, spiritual and otherwise.

Just as standing in a garage does not make you a car, working as a minister does not magically make you someone who ministers. It still takes work and dedication—both of which could be applied to accomplish ministry in any other position. Full-time ministry is not the only way to minister, nor does it guarantee ministry.

There’s a widely-held notion that the title and position that go along with ministry will make ministry easier. This is not entirely true. First of all, there are a number of administrative things that go along with any ministry position, so even full-time ministers don’t get to spend all of their time in ministry. Second of all, working at a church does not always put you in a place where you’re in constant contact with people in need of ministry. Yes, it does force you to focus a good portion of your time on ministry, but it’s not any easier to find opportunities to minister than it is in any other workplace.

I don’t mean to propose that no one should go into professional ministry. There’s definitely a strong need for pastors, youth pastors, and missionaries in the world today, and those jobs can be entirely right for some people. But ministry is not the automatic choice for those with a strong faith. God has a place in any job, and that place is just as important in the office as it is in the church.

An old pastor friend of mine once told me, as I was asking these questions myself, that if I could do anything well besides ministry, I should do that. At the time, I thought that was a rather audacious thing to say; but now, I see that he was counteracting the notion that a call to ministry was more spiritual than a call to, say, web design. Now, having pursued both ministry and web design, I can say with some certainty that I’m called to the latter.

If you find you are already doing the job of ministry, you’ll soon find you’ll lean one of two directions. One is that you’ll enjoy and excel in your career, and naturally fit ministry into it. (Mind you, it might take a few jobs to settle into that career. There may even be some career changes along the way, but ministry should fit nicely into each of them.) The other is that you feel a strong, undeniable urge to minister that may even interfere with your career. That is the call to ministry, and it doesn’t call to everyone. If you feel this call and feel that professional ministry is what you were absolutely made for, talk to a pastor or spiritual advisor more about this decision.

You can’t talk about higher education long without the word “vocation” coming up. Students are supposed to pick a vocation, and school itself is sometimes referred to as vocational training. The word has become synonymous with career and occupation.

But the word vocation is actually a little more complex than that. It comes from the root word vocatio, meaning literally “a divine calling from God.” In simple terms, it isn’t what you pick—it’s what you were made for.

Many of us have picked up a calling on our lives to serve God professionally. But oftentimes, we try to fit that calling into preconceived notions, boxes that are a little more obvious than others. Ask most people what serving God professionally looks like, and you’ll inevitably get answers like pastor, youth pastor, and field missionary. And those are all great things; but not everybody was made to be a pastor, youth pastor, or field missionary.

Growing up in youth group, I heard several times that you don’t have to be the best speaker or leader to be a pastor. That may be true, but you still won’t be the best speaker or leader. Play to your strengths. If you’re a mediocre speaker but a great artist, doesn’t it make more sense to put that skill to effective use?

Hundreds of churches, charities, and missions organizations need graphic designers, businessmen, lawyers, writers, event planners, musicians, mechanics, teachers, and almost anything else you could aspire to be. And they need people who are good at those things, just like churches need people who are good at pastoring.

I spent some time working with a missionary organization, and when reaching out to high school and college students, our unofficial slogan was, “Anything but bartending.” I worked as a writer and web designer. Yes, we needed speakers and translators—but we needed teachers for missionary children growing up overseas. We needed mechanics to fix vehicles that went out of service. We needed businessmen and women to run our offices, and accountants to manage our finances, and web designers to give us an effective presence online. All of these people were just as crucial as our missionaries in the field. (Our other unofficial slogan was, “Saving the world… from the office!”)

Fields like medicine and law have vast outlets in the Christian world. Medical missions are a huge need in the world today, and medically trained individuals are needed like never before. Even a nurse’s training can help save hundreds of lives. Those with legal training can work with organizations and governments to help stop systemic injustices and put processes in place to protect those who can’t protect themselves.

An increasing number of churches are also in need of artists like graphic designers and video producers. Even if you can’t find employment in a church doing these jobs, having those skills will allow you to volunteer in your free time and meet those needs, even if you’re working elsewhere.

Now, even though I’m not working for a missionary organization any more, I work in the education industry, helping others find and respond to their vocations. It took me a while to give up on being a pastor, but I feel like, for now at least, I’ve found my vocation.