One of the biggest concerns that pastors and counselors raise about the Church Therapy model is liability. Having a professional practice within the church setting could expose the church to certain risks that would not be present if the church simply refers those with mental health problems out to a nearby practice. When treatment occurs within the church setting, the risk of lawsuit could be higher.
To address this concern, let us first look at some common liabilities for churches. We’ll begin with perhaps one of the biggest liability risks that almost every church has: the youth group. Whether a church employs a youth pastor or has a volunteer staff, a youth group presents a host of legal dangers. Gathering a number of individuals for whom impulse control is difficult and taking them in church vehicles to engage in activities such as swimming, skiing, or boating is a pretty risky endeavor. Yet I have not met a pastor who would discourage all youth outreach and activity for fear of liability risk.
A second liability risk is untrained counseling ministries. Biblical or lay counselors do not carry professional insurance and are not bound by state ethics boards. These ministries pose a much larger legal risk than Church Therapy because counseling is being done outside the bounds of state licensing boards and professional standards. A church paying a pastor to counsel or allowing lay leaders to offer counseling ministries could be sued if a parishioner showed signs of mental illness that were not properly diagnosed or treated and then went on to commit a crime or harm him- or herself.
Click here for a great article outlining these and other legal risks churches face.
The Church Therapy model reduces the risks of legal liability in several ways. First, a Church Therapist is a licensed professional who is upholding ethical standards for practice. Secondly, the Church Therapist can and should carry their own professional insurance of at least $1,000,000 per incident and $3,000,000 aggregate. No other type of church staff member has an ability to carry additional, personal insurance covering their ministry activities. Third, the Church Therapy ministry can be set up as a sole-proprietor private practice or even an LLC. While operating in the church building and on the church staff, the Church Therapist will likely have contracts with insurance companies that will not be in the church’s name. My practice, for example, is legally my own but is housed within the church and operates seamlessly within the church’s daily life.
The larger question that one must ask when thinking about liability is this: what makes the Church Therapy model worth doing? Why not just refer out and avoid the entire issue? Let us again consider the youth group. There are plenty of youth organizations in any given town or city. Why doesn’t the church simply refer the youth who come to the church out to engage in the activities of those agencies? If the YMCA is going on a fieldtrip, why not send the youth with them and avoid a church liability risk? Hopefully the answer is obvious. If the church is to have influence and work in unique ways to heal the hurting and guide the lost, it must run its own programs to do so. Community partnership is wonderful, but liability cannot be the reason we abdicate our God-given role to shepherd and lead. It is central to the Church Therapy model that services provided excellently within the church setting present a more accessible means of treatment that can be done directly in the context of other forms of spiritual growth and discipleship. Referring out to a private practice immediately decreases the rate of follow-up in accessing those services, removes the partnership with the pastor in the counseling process, and disconnects the parishioner’s mental health recovery process from the way the church is already working with that person.
Don’t let fear be a driving force in your thinking as a pastor or counselor. Working with broken people is a risky business, and we must be willing to take on reasonable risk while at the same time maintaining a quality of work that is above reproach.