Dear friends,
Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! My name is Dr. Brian Mesimer, and I am the new Executive Director of the Christian Counseling Center of First Presbyterian Church. I have been on staff here at the Center since 2015, while most recently serving as counseling faculty at a Christian university. You are probably aware that Dr. Tom Barbian moved into semi-retirement this summer, and our Board of Directors hired me to fill his very big shoes (think about following a leader like Moses, or for our more football inclined, a coach like Nick Saban). Now that I have been here for a few months, I am glad to report that things are running smoothly (we may have to check in on our friends at Alabama, however!).
I am grateful that the Lord has even given us some growth during this time.
We have opened our fifth satellite with our newest partner church Rivercrest Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Lexington. This is in addition to our existing satellites in Irmo (St. Andrews PCA), Northeast Columbia (Crossings Community ARP), Sumter (Westminster PCA), and Forest Acres (North Trenholm Baptist Church, SBC). These satellites allow us to extend the reach of our ministry to those in need in these communities. We have also added a few new counselors to our team to better meet the need for counseling in Columbia, bringing our total staff to about 35 employees and contractors.
We are on track to provide almost 18,000 counseling sessions this year, as well as serve hundreds of new individuals seeking counseling.
As a reminder, a very high percentage of our clients are not members of First Presbyterian Church, making our Center a significant and unparalleled outreach to the Midlands. In 27 years, the Center has grown into one of the largest Christian counseling centers in South Carolina, while also being one of the few that provide affordable counseling from a biblical perspective.
I cannot emphasize this last point enough. If you have any free time this Christmas season, please take a few moments to Google the standard going rate for counseling in Columbia. I suspect you will find it to be quite high. Because we are a non-profit ministry, we can keep the forces of inflation at bay by offering services at a reasonable rate. In many instances, we can also provide reduced fee counseling through our counselors-in-training and our scholarship and church assistance initiatives. Thankfully, we are also able to compensate our counselors at a fair rate as well. This is an accomplishment made possible only by God’s abundant provision and the generous support of First Presbyterian Church.
Another key ministry we provide is that of being a training center for new counselors.
Dr. Barbian was probably too humble to admit it, but I suspect he trained half of the Christian counselors currently in Columbia in some capacity (myself included). I can tell from my time in the academy that holding an orthodox Reformed perspective has and will continue to be challenging to do in our radically secularizing profession. For that reason, we will look to continue training up our community’s next generation of faithful Christian counselors. Currently, we have 11 very sharp (and very affordable) counselors-in-training on staff who are eager to learn from our team of very experienced counselors.
A biblical, affordable, fiscally responsible, community facing, training focused, counseling center. It seems almost too good to be true! And it would be if not for the grace of our God and your financial and prayerful support. We would not be able to provide this ministry without that help. In 2025, we will look to meet our budget while also paying for a series of technological updates, providing new furnishings and updates to the Center, opening new satellite offices, and providing counseling assistance for those in need, among other things. I would ask that you please prayerfully consider what the Lord might have for you to give towards these ends, as we will require an inflow of giving to meet these needs. Even a small bit helps.
We also could not do this ministry without our Board of Directors.
If you see one of the following, please introduce yourself and thank them for their service: Dan D’Alberto, Eddie Benton, Kathy Bowen, William Cason, Dr. Chuck Davis, Dr. Rick McCain, Dr. Kristy Rollins, Tom Ryan, and Rev. Josh Squires). They would be glad to talk with you more about our ministry.
In closing, I must confess that I have personally thought a lot about what it would have been like to be Joshua, following in the footsteps of Moses.
We are all probably familiar with God’s exhortation to Joshua to “be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1.6). But just before that, God gives the indicative for that imperative, which is that “just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you” (Joshua 1.5). This demonstrates the profound spiritual truth that as sons and daughters of God, we all have, to quote Bunyan, a “key…called Promise,” and that promise is God’s loving and faithful presence to perform His purposes within and through us no matter the circumstance. The Lord does not forget us in times of change, but makes His presence known in profound ways.
These are trying times. And yet, I feel confident that as God has been faithful to the Counseling Center in the past, He will also continue to do so in the future. He will be with you as well in this new year, dear friend. That is just the kind of Father He is. I look forward to where God might be leading us all.
Your servant in Christ,
Dr. Brian A. Mesimer, Ph.D., LPC/S
Executive Director of the Christian Counseling Center