Inside this Issue:

Take a L.E.A.P. 1

Seeds for the Mind 2Important Dates for your Calendar 2

The Test of Spiritual Competence 3The Truth About Faith 4Alumni Connection: Matt Rensi 5Almini Connection: Esther Estey 6

Take A L.E.A.PBy: Dr. Kay Bruce

COUNSELING CONNECTION

Coming home after a day of containing heart-wrenching stories from my clients, I turned on the television. News overflowed with stories of shootings, knifings, racism, hatred, and violence. Surfing through channels, choices included: crime dramas, reality shows depicting humanity at its worst, satire billed as comedy, violence laced with sex, and political talk shows describing our nation’s leaders in the same dismal light. Like cravings for ice cream or chocolate, I longed for something happy.Cognitive theory and positive psychology encourage us to focus on strengths and positive thoughts for good mental health, yet little in our current culture help us in this regard. Interestingly the bible has made the same recommendation for centuries. Philippians 4:8 tells us to think about things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, excellent, admirable, and praiseworthy. I am challenging you for the next month to take a LEAP each day and identify something: Lovely, Excellent, Admirable, and Praiseworthy. Here are mine for today.Lovely is a soft word for the intense beauty of the flowers and blossoms this time of year. Colors and fragrances are all around us displaying live creations of magnificent art. Bringing in cut flowers is such a treat!Excellent is how I would describe the quality of our counseling students. Clinical supervisors so frequently remark about the compassion,

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Portland Campus June 2017 Volume 21 Issue 4

knowledge, and skill of our interns. Not only do clients benefit, but also the light of Jesus is reflected to staff and colleagues all over the city.Admirable are the accomplishments of our graduates who go out and help in the transformation of lives both domestically and internationally in such a variety of roles. One example is our own Laurie Bloomquist who completed the MA Counseling program at Western and just this month walked across the stage to receive her Ph.D. to continue serving as a professor. Or Esther Estey, another of our graduates who is working on her Ph.D. in New York and came back this summer to teach at Western. Or Lisa Ramsey who has been teaching and conducting counseling in Kosovo and just graduated with her Ph.D. Or Mike Kozlowski who is also pursuing his doctorate with a desire to teach. We have graduates in school and university settings, private practice, clinical mental health agencies, on the staff of churches, counseling missionaries on and off the field, in chemical dependency treatment centers, and in military settings, just to name a few.Praiseworthy is the fact that the God of the universe is never too busy—to be with us, to listen to us, to love us, and to help us through our day! Compare your feelings when reading the first paragraph to how you feel by the end of the story. Even better than chocolate is a heart and mind filled with pleasant truth. I encourage you to take the LEAP challenge and I would love to hear some good news from you.

Seeds for the Mind By: Dr. Norm Thiesen

By: William Doherty & Steven HarrisIf you do (or hope to do) any marriage counseling this is a must read. How do you help couples with a “mixed agenda” (one wants the marriage to continue, one does not). The authors provide a protocol for what to do and how to do it when working with these types of couples.

By: Lamar HardwickVery insightful book about living with autistic traits. Not only will you better understand their experiences, the author provides wonderful principles of healthy functioning that are applicable to all. Also a good book to suggest for someone who might also be autistic and looking for hope and understanding of their condition.

By: Le Ly Hayslip & Ja WurtsThe experiences of a Vietnamese woman who lived through the Viet Nam war. She eventually married a serviceman and migrated to the US. It is a story of her return to her country 20 years later after we had developed diplomatic relationship again with that country. Her perspective is fascinating and is in many ways a very different narrative from what we we have been told here in the U.S.

By: Alexandra Cavvdulacos & Kathryn MinshewWritten by the developers of the Muse web site. It is like the book “What Color Is Your Parachute,” but from a younger millennial perspective. If you are into helping young people navigate the new world of work this book will give you some good pointers.

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Here are some good books to consider putting on your reading list. They will not only help you be a better counselor but also better prepare you to live out your faith.

By: Daniel BrownA fun read about a group of guys from the University of Washington who won the rowing gold medal at the Olympics at the Berlin games before WWII. A feel-good book about a bunch of average guys who beat out the rowing teams of the big eastern U.S. universities and then the Germans at the Olympics (and in front of Hitler!).

7/1 Financial Aid applications due 7/4 Independence Day-Campus Closed 7/7 NCE Exam applications due 7/14-15 Positive Psychology Elective Course 8/18 Summer 2017 hour forms due 8/18 Summer 2017 Internship Evaluations 8/18 End of classes 8/24 CPR Training 9/5 First day of fall semester

Important Dates for your Calendar!

The Test of Spiritual Competence By: Dr. Laurie Bloomquist

Did you know that most counselors do not receive specific training in helping clients address the spiritual issues that they face? In fact, in my dissertation research I discovered that out of 174 clinical supervisors, only 33% of them were able to meet the cutoff score for spiritual competence on the Spiritual Competency Scale. ASERVIC is a branch of ACA that developed a list of spiritual competencies that counselors should be able to implement. This is great news in that we are encouraged to appropriately address and support clients as they explore the role of spirituality and religion in therapy. The problem is that most counselors are not able to do this well.

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What does that mean for us? Well, Western graduates receive far more training in spiritual integration than almost any other counseling program in the country. We learn to know ourselves well, develop our own theology and become clear about our beliefs, and nurture our own spiritual lives. With this self-awareness, we are able to confidently help clients explore these topics in counseling.

If you are reading this, you are probably a leader in this area. That’s right, YOU are a leader. You have more experience and personal awareness about how to understand the role of spirituality and religion in a person’s life than most counselors. You are far less likely to “accidently” impose your worldview on a client because you are self-aware. Additionally, you are choosing to pursue training at Western Seminary, where you are digging deeply into the Bible and wrestling with your own theology to explore how the gospel impacts your life and ministry. This is real to you! And it is real to your clients, whether they come from a faith based perspective or not.

Most if not all of my clients will bring up spiritual topics in counseling at some point. When this happens, I try not to overlook or minimize what they are saying. I can support someone in exploring their worldview and looking deeper at the spiritual questions that are built into us as humans. My experience is that when we sit with people well, showing respect and compassion and exploring deep questions, God shows up! Just this week, I had a client sincerely thank me for introducing her to Jesus. I did not preach to her or impose my own ideas about him, but sat with her as she explored her broken view that God was out to punish and reject her. Jesus revealed himself through his word as she read the Bible between sessions and asked him who he was. What a joy to witness this!

This summer in spiritual assessment class we will be looking at the question “what is healthy spirituality?” and exploring how the trends in the counseling field support and challenge our work in this area. If you haven’t already, take a look at the competencies and see how you feel about them. And don’t be afraid to help encourage and educate your peers who may not have any idea how to work with spiritual issues. Who knows what kind of powerful conversations may open!

There is an underlying fear that I have noticed surrounding how to address spiritual issues in professional therapy. We are aware of the ethical mandate that we must not impose our values on our clients, and often that means that counselors steer clear of spiritual issues, and find the topic to be almost taboo.

The Truth About Faith By: Shanita Gills

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The other day, I reread an email I wrote to family and friends in 2014, explaining why I was leaving my church. No, it had nothing to do with a change in leadership or the fact I did not like the worship style or was struggling to understand the sermon. I LOVED my church, the people, and attending, so it was bewildering when the Lord asked me to step away. Yes, GOD asked me to leave my church, to step away from my comfortable place, and to trust Him with what would come next. After struggling for a few days to comprehend why God would ask me to give up a place so meaningful to me, with tear-filled eyes, I said goodbye to those I called family for the past four years and journeyed into the unknown.

Faith does not guarantee a happy experience. It does not promise everything will happen exactly as we imagined or declare us free from suffering or heartache. Faith is saying to God, “I will trust you even in my blindness.” And if your faith is in Christ, it assures you a place at His table when this world passes away.

The unknown was not the fantasy that I imagined. I dreamed of God leading me to a church that was “better” than my last, where I would instantly fit in and could hit the ground running, investing in every ministry I had time to serve in, however, this was not the case. For the next two years, I struggled with finding my place, never fully felt comfortable, and lost many battles to Doubt and Fear who were always armed to slay me. How could this be God’s plan? How could He ask me to leave my place of enjoyment and lead me into suffering? Does He really love me? These hard questions should not be avoided, but I believe when we ask them, we must revisit the definition of the word “faith.”

According to Hebrews 11:1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. What is interesting about this passage is that it does not guarantee that we will have the privilege of experiencing the things we hope for or seeing what we believe. Did David’s desire to build a house for God come to pass in his lifetime? No, his son Solomon was the one who built it (1 King 5:5). Did Abraham know where God would lead him when he left Haran believing God’s promise? No, he simply moved and believed God would reveal the path (Gen. 12:1-4). The Bible is filled with stories of real humans who placed their faith in God’s promises, with no assurance that they themselves would experience that promise.

Thinking About Internship?It is the perfect time to be thinking about internship. Internship sites interview students in February and March for fall placements. This is the time to research the available agencies, get your resume updated, and plan your strategy for contacting sites. Talking to students who are currently at sites of interest to you, can give you lots of helpful information. If you want to know who is interning at a particular site, you can look it up in the site notebook under the “Intern List” tab. If you don’t know about the notebooks, please see the Counseling Administrative Assistant or Dr. Bruce. Internship is a time to sample the buffet of counseling opportunities. It allows you to field test what you learn in class and helps to shape your future career. Carefully thinking it through and submitting your applications early can allow you to work at a site that prepares you well for your future career or ministry. It’s time to start thinking about your internship semester!

Alumni Connection: One War Zone to Another By: Matt Rensi Jesus Christ grabbed ahold of my life on the second of three combat tours I served as an infantryman with the United States Marines during the Iraq war. I had initially thought that surrendering myself to Christ meant that He would magically take away all the pain I held and mend the fractured life I had created. I was sorely disappointed.

Instead of a wave of a hand and a special word, Jesus worked in a way I often find Him working now: He sent people to be partners in His work of healing the broken. Over the course of half a decade I was aided by pastors, mentors, and counselors. And through the process a consistent theme emerged, critical healers in my life had been educated and molded at Western Seminary. This led me to eventually enroll in the Master’s of Arts in Counseling program at the Portland Campus.

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The first semester I was disoriented and constantly re-evaluated my choice to attend school. Instead of the papers and tests I was used to, I found myself sitting across from other students attempting to coax out their pain yet be gentle and compassionate at the same time. Mind you, the papers and tests were there, but they were finger-painting and macaroni-necklaces in comparison.

My second semester I sat across from a man in his sixties who had been smoking crack cocaine for 40 years. It was my first day of practicum. I came away from that experience feeling rather hopeless about my abilities as a counselor. Tears would often flow that semester, whether in my car or at home as I saw firsthand in the therapy room the destruction evil can cause: the flesh, the world, and the evil one had ravaged life after of those I counseled.

This created an intensity to my studies that I had not felt before. I needed to know what was taught in each class because I would put it into practice the next day. The level of education at Western did not disappoint. The professors were knowledgeable and wise, taking the bones of a dusty theory and bringing it to life. Through the process I gained a working proficiency and a confidence. Although I was far from having mastered the counseling arts, I had a basic competence and a solid foundation to build on in the professional world.

Since my time at Western, I have worked as a therapist on a PACT team in Washington (PACT teams work solely with psychotic clients that have a history of hospital or jail utilization). In three brief years at Western I went from complete ignorance to feeling competent doing family therapy sessions with violent males diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Last summer my wife and I had a second child, our first son. Our eldest was a year and a half and we were… frazzled. So we decided to move to the San Jose area for family support and to be closer to grandparents (My wife is currently pregnant with another son due in Oct. 2017 - We make jokes about our annual baby reveals). I currently work as a therapist for the chronically homeless who have severe mental health issues in Santa Clara County. Therapy on a curb or in a homeless shelter is a new experience for me. In the future I hope to enroll in a doctorate in a counselor education and supervision program in order to eventually teach other counselors and therapists. My passion is for the integration of theology into the counseling/psychology field. Through this process so far I have been convinced that Western Seminary offered me a superb education and equipped me well to do the work of Jesus in this phase of life.

Matt Rensi (2016) is currently a therapist in Santa Clara County. CA

Alumni Connection: The Simplicity of Now By: Esther EsteyLife is not something to be rushed through, it is something to be lived. As students, our minds are always “nexting”, thinking about the next assignment, the upcoming semester, graduation off in the distance, that elusive job or licensure, and the list continues without end. We live for “that moment when…” even though it is now, in whatever you are doing and wherever you are, that life is happening. It is a constant challenge to live wholeheartedly in the present, to breathe in the sacred essence of each moment, loosening our grip on what may become of tomorrow. As we remain attentive to the present moment, in an act of surrender to God’s presence and purpose, our awareness is expanded to all that is in the here-and-now and new possibilities arise to find joy and equanimity that is unattached to attaining or achieving the next goal. This has been my daily practice of mindfulness over the past three years, through many changes and developments since my time as a student at Western.

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Since graduating from Western’s counseling program, I’ve had the opportunity to provide counseling to survivors of trauma at HAVEN, an agency that offers services for individuals whom have suffered from domestic violence and sexual assault. While walking alongside them on their journey towards recovery from devastating trauma and horrendous abuse, I have seen tremendous growth, resilience, and healing in my clients – God’s ability to make the broken whole again. At HAVEN, I developed the clinical counseling program and created a Wellness Program that offered mind-body classes and groups to facilitate holistic well-being for clients as well as PlaYoga, a yoga and mindfulness program for child survivors of abuse. My path shifted when I was accepted to the Counseling Psychology Doctoral Program at University at Buffalo, New York, and moved across the country to research mind-body interventions for trauma and other mental health issues under Dr. Catherine Cook-Cottone. Currently, I am interning at the counseling center of Canisius, a private Jesuit college where I counsel students struggling with a variety of mental health issues.

I could not be more grateful for the clinical education, spiritual encouragement, and emotional support Western’s faculty has given me. They provided a strong clinical foundation that has served me well in my work as a counselor and as a Ph.D student. Being invited to return to Western as adjunct professor has been an immense honor. In addition, teaching on Christ-based mindfulness and trauma and abuse counseling has been a deeply meaningful experience for me, as these topics are core to my personal and professional experiences.

So, then, this is life: the staying, the leaving, the loving, the trying, the failing, the holding, the letting go. Be with it, all of it, with lovingkindness and awareness of God’s ever-enduring presence in whatever chaos, stress, or suffering you may be facing. Joy and contentment can be found in every moment…now, not at some point in the future. I will leave you with a poem I wrote some time ago. May we live every moment with whole hearts.

Esther Estey (2015) is a Western graduate and adjunct professor. She is currently pursing her Ph.D in Psychology at the University of Buffalo in New York

Could it be Joy is herePackaged in ordinary momentsWe hurry through, Ignore, and rush by,

The stillness, waiting for red to turn green

Or the birth of morning, Bare feet on wood floorWarm water soothing achingMemories interruptedBy the smell of roasted coffee

The sound of cars, always going Somewhere-but-you-are-here

In the chatter of childrenTalking with their bird-like voicesAbout what they will eat today,

In the hum and rhythm of lifeThat slows only when you lookUp, down, throughBehind and in the chaos and painTo embrace all that it is; This is joy.