Finances
Finances
Whenever there is pioneer work targeting the “bottom billion” (i.e. the poor), there will always be a tension between accessibility and sustainability. Donors play a heroic role in bridging this financial gap so that we can prioritize the poor.
You Can Only Choose Two
An aid doctor in Africa once told us, you can only choose two of the three options in the care triangle: caring for the poor, sustainable care and excellent care. If you want to have excellent and sustainable care for the poor, you will need to have outside funding.
Case Study
We have good friends who are rescuing women from sex-trafficking in Asia. They employ the women who were trafficked, introduce them to the community of faith and reintegrate them into public life. This is worthy work, but they don’t have any counselling training. Charity is planning to begin training with them to help them better understand trauma care and, hopefully, link them with our local counsellors in Asia. This would be an example of the green bubble above: “Great care for the poor, but not sustainable.”
Why Don’t You Just Open Up A Counselling Center And Stop Raising Support?
We could relatively easily start a counselling center in central London and all of our clients would be bankers and doctors. This would be an example of the purple bubble above: “Excellent, sustainable care, but the poor are excluded.” We want to leverage the stability of Counselling Global to be able to help hold up those who are vulnerable.
Denny Vaulters - Greenville, SC
Strategist with Generis
“The Jones family has identified an accessible, impactful way to reach the nations in a financially sustainable way. The gospel conversations opened up through counseling, combined with the ease of access to counseling services that technology provides are an incredible intersection for ministry. They are pioneering a new way to meet people all over the world, encourage them in the Gospel, and, and connect them to a local church.”
Let’s Go Back To Our Story
With Serge in London, Charity was looking for an outlet to serve our community and I was working in the church. She started a counselling ministry for those without access as a way to meet the practical needs of our neighbors. This is just like we did in Spain when we partnered with the European Union to provide food for the poor during the financial crisis 2009 – 2011. The church led us out into the community to meet the needs.
Surprise Twist In The Story
Not only did the nations come to our doorstep looking for help from this counselling center, but the huge surprise was all the people who wanted to train under us as counselling trainees. The counselling trainees can’t be paid for their sessions while they’re in school, but we didn’t want their supervision fees to fall on them. So, in order to make it sustainable for both the trainees and helpful therapeutically for the clients (studies have shown that clients do better work when they pay for counselling), we charged the clients fees. What we didn’t anticipate is that we would have leftover funds. We then used all of those funds to discount sessions for needy clients. For the last six years, we have given away over $185,000 in discounted fees.
Circling Back To The Church
In our Western culture, counsellors have become the new global priests. Traditionally, someone would go to their pastor for advice or counsel, but as people are leaving the church in the West, they now pay for that service with a counsellor. This funding model creates a new opportunity. Instead of churches starting counselling centers, we can now use the excess funds from counselling centers to help plant churches in the unreached world. The counselling becomes the starting point for a sustainable fund for global missions.
Counselling As The Mudroom Of Gospel Ministry
When I (Stephen) told others that I was pastor and wanted to disciple them, there were so few people interested. When I told them that I was a counsellor and could help them with their anxiety, there was a line out the door. Counselling Global exists to be the mudroom of gospel ministry. Clients can come in with their panic attacks and trauma. They don’t have to follow Jesus. We will provide counselling that is culturally fluent, theologically astute and clinically excellent. Some clients will be interested to move from the mudroom to the living room of the church.
Kirk of the Hills (PCA) St. Louis, MO
“As a church, we’ve had the opportunity to partner with the Jones family since 2014. Their winsome witness to their neighbors and intentional care for those hurting from the consequences of sin is clear evidence of a fruitful, growing ministry. As they move forward into this new season with Counselling Global, we are excited to see them continue this excellent work. We are in fervent prayer that this next step furthers their ability to minister to people around the world for the sake of the growing global church.”
Care Triangle Reimagined As A Repeating Cycle
We want to move into at risk communities, provide training for them to begin to provide counselling to their own people. They often need the clinical, theological and business training to get themselves started. This is the green bubble below from the first graph. This stage is not sustainable but we are training them to be sustainable. Once they are trained and empowered, they will then be able to stand on their own. This is the orange bubble below. Then, over a period of time, we would provide coaching for them until they are moving into excellence. Once they are excellent and sustainable, we would want them to begin to do their own training with their own materials to grow their practice. Then, Lord willing, they would be able to continue the cycle to the green bubble to serve their own poor.
If This Is Moving Toward Sustainability, Why Do You Need Donor Support?
The donor support lets us go into the most vulnerable areas of the world and help them work toward sustainability. Our goal is not that we are in control of lots of churches or counselling centers, but to decentralize the power and giving ownership to the locals.
Wouldn’t A Video Explanation Help Here?
I’m glad you asked. Here’s a video we made to give you a glimpse of the impact of your generosity. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at sjones@counsellingglobal.com
So What’s The End Goal?
The result of this donor supported work is that we will pioneer sustainable counselling centers and churches all over the world. We want their work to be sustainable so that they can lead it locally and spin off from us. Our 3 main goals are to use excess funds to plant churches among the unreached, empower new counselling centers and do other humanitarian good in the name of Christ (e.g. dig wells, starts schools, etc.).
Join Our Work In Making Counselling The Mudroom Of The Gospel.
Thank you for your interest and we hope you would consider giving and praying for our work. We feel so fortunate to do what we do and look forward to many years of investing in work that can multiply to create sustainable care for thousands of people in the name of Christ.