Spiritual Care and Counseling

Program Overview

The Doctor of Christian Counseling in Spiritual Care and Counseling prepares Christians to attend to the spiritual dimension of human suffering wherever it surfaces — in hospital rooms and hospices, after disasters, in prisons and on military bases, and in the private crises of faith that bring people to a counselor. Illness, injury, and loss raise questions of meaning, guilt, hope, and God that medicine cannot answer and that people often have no one else to ask. Students learn structured spiritual assessment with tools such as FICA and HOPE and with the fuller models of George Fitchett, so that spiritual needs can be identified, documented, and addressed as part of whole-person care. Kenneth Pargament's research on religious coping and spiritual struggle gives the program its empirical backbone: faith can be a powerful resource in crisis, and spiritual struggle can also deepen distress. Courses cover the ministry of presence, care at the end of life in the hospice tradition Cicely Saunders founded around the idea of total pain, moral injury, ethics consultation, prayer and ritual, spiritual direction, and caring for people of other faiths or none while remaining faithful to one's own. The doctoral project develops and evaluates spiritual care in the student's setting — a hospital program, a hospice team, a congregation's ministry to the sick and dying. Graduates serve as chaplains, spiritual care directors, and counselors who integrate spiritual care into whole-person support. The degree is academic and ministry formation; it does not itself provide the clinical pastoral education units or the license that some positions require.

Core Courses

• SCC 801 — Spirituality, Health, and Whole-Person Care (6 credits)
• SCC 812 — Spiritual Assessment and Documentation (6 credits)
• SCC 824 — Religious Coping and Spiritual Struggle (6 credits)
• SCC 836 — End-of-Life and Palliative Spiritual Care (6 credits)
• SCC 848 — Interfaith Care, Ethics, and the Team (5 credits)
• SCC 860 — Research Methods in Spiritual Care (4 credits)
• SCC 899 — Doctoral Project in Spiritual Care and Counseling (24 credits)

Admission Requirements

• Master's degree in counseling, pastoral care, ministry, psychology, or a related field
• Experience in counseling, pastoral care, chaplaincy, or lay care ministry
• Statement of purpose describing the people you care for and the question you want to pursue
• Current resume or ministry profile
• Official transcripts from prior institutions when available
• Signed acknowledgment that the degree does not by itself confer a license to practise counseling in any jurisdiction