WP 7 | How to Network with Churches
In this episode of The Wise Practice Podcast, host Whitney Owens discusses the importance of networking with churches and shares tips on how to effectively connect with pastors and other laypeople associated with churches. She emphasizes the need for counselors to have good relationships with churches, as they are a valuable resource for referring clients and for supporting the work of counselors in their communities. Owens also addresses common pitfalls that counselors may encounter when trying to connect with churches and provides advice on how to avoid these pitfalls and build successful relationships.
The Importance of Networking with Churches
Churches are an important resource for counselors, as they can refer clients who are in need of mental health services and support the work of counselors in their communities. Additionally, pastors and other laypeople associated with churches often have a good understanding of the needs of their congregations and can provide valuable insight into the challenges and concerns of the people in their communities.
Tips for Connecting with Churches
Counselors can effectively connect with churches by utilizing their existing skills in building relationships and engaging with people. Some key tips for connecting with churches include:
Utilize your existing skills in building relationships and engaging with people: Counselors are trained to establish rapport with clients and build trust, and these same skills can be applied to building relationships with pastors and other laypeople associated with churches.
Be prepared to talk about your practice and the services you offer: When meeting with pastors and other laypeople associated with churches, it is important to be prepared to talk about your practice and the services you offer. This can include providing information about your education and experience, as well as the types of clients you work with and the approaches you use in your work.
Be open to collaborating with other professionals in the church: Many churches have other professionals, such as social workers or mental health therapists, who may be interested in collaborating with counselors to provide services to their congregations.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Counselors may encounter some common pitfalls when trying to connect with churches, including:
Not being prepared to talk about your practice and the services you offer: It is important to be prepared to talk about your practice and the services you offer, as this will help pastors and other laypeople associated with churches understand the value of your work and how you can support their congregations.
Not being open to collaboration with other professionals in the church: Many churches have other professionals who may be interested in collaborating with counselors to provide services to their congregations. It is important to be open to collaboration and to consider how working together can benefit the church and the clients you serve.
Not following up after initial meetings: Building relationships with churches takes time and effort, and it is important to follow up after initial meetings to continue the conversation and to maintain connections. This can include sending informational materials, attending events at the church, and offering to provide educational seminars or workshops.
Conclusion
Networking with churches is an important part of building a successful counseling practice, as churches can refer clients and provide valuable support for the work of counselors in their communities. By utilizing their existing skills in building relationships and engaging with people, counselors can effectively connect with churches and avoid common pitfalls. Through ongoing communication and collaboration, counselors can build successful relationships with churches and provide valuable services to their communities.
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Episode 7 How to Network With Churches
Whitney Owens: Hello friends, and welcome back to The Wise Practice Podcast. This is episode number seven, how to Network with Churches. I am thrilled to be hanging out with you on this topic because it's so common among faith-based practice owners, and honestly common among all practice owners. Churches are a place that need good clinical work.
and pastors need to understand that process. One of the big pitfalls that comes along with this is counselors unsure how to connect with churches. What do they say to pastors? And then how do you keep that ongoing relationship? So I'm gonna go into all that today and share the tips that I've learned as a group practice owner and how I continue to further my connection with.
Before we get into the episode though, I wanna first say thank you to all of you who supported the launch of this podcast today. I'm recording on Monday at the end of November, but we launched the podcast on Friday, November 18th, and I was so blessed by all the outpouring of love, the text messages, the emails, and all of you that went on and wrote a review for the.
And like I said, I always take the time to go in and look at those reviews. They encourage me and they help me point me in the right direction as far as movement in the podcast. So I wanted to take a few minutes, first of all to say if you have not rated and reviewed the show, it is super easy. I wanna walk you through those steps real quick.
If you have an iPhone and you listen on iTunes, cuz honestly that's the one that I use. Um, you hit the main cover of the. and you scroll down past the episodes and you'll see a great and review section. You will also see five stars there. And if you feel so inclined, hit 'em all . But then right under that it says in blue writing, write a review, click that and you can write a review.
Takes just a couple of minutes. I had a few people reach out and ask me how to actually go through that process. So there it is right there. So we'd love for you to go and do that. Um, and I wanted to read a couple of those reviews for you today. The first one here is Whitney puts her experience and heart to work in this podcast.
Happy to have her voice again, speaking into our lives. So that was, um, from angry at, uh, angry at Ads . Um, another review here. Let's see. Um, always a good listen. Whitney always shares such great information, so thankful she's back. That was David Frank. Thank you David. Um, and then here is a podcast review called, so Helpful from Zachary Deal, Morris.
Um, Whitney is such a wealth of knowledge and always inspires me to be genuine and self-aware in my life and work with clients. Another one here is from Mint for Life, uh, wealth of information and Support. I have worked with Whitney for over a year now, and her experience, expertise, and encouragement have been huge in getting me to where I'm currently am in private practice in a way that aligns with my faith.
I can't wait to hear more from her through this new podcast. So there are so many more, and maybe the next time I record, I'll read some more. But I appreciate each of you taking the time to write those reviews and encourage you to continue to do so. Um, so please share the podcast with your friends. Need to, um, get the word out about faith-based practice ownership.
All right, so let's jump into. Good meat of our episode today on how to network with churches. A lot of practice owners tell me they don't really know the first step on this, so the good news. You're a therapist. You already have so many great skills to make good relationships. We learned this in school.
We learned the interview process in our first meeting with our clients, so you already know how to meet new people, how to talk about the work you do and how to help them. So we're just gonna have to translate that work from a client in your office to outside of your office, to going into churches, to meeting with pastors or other lay people associated with.
So I'm gonna walk you through a step-by-step process to help you in, in understanding ways to do this. And I encourage you, um, you can definitely check out the show notes on my website, whitney owens.com/i think podcast, so you can go check those out, um, so that you can have those steps and really create a plan for yourself.
Like create maybe one church you're gonna focus on. Or maybe each step and when you're gonna complete those steps, but create a plan. Because we find that when we don't create a plan, we just say, I'll get to it. We never actually do. So when you're done listening to the episode, sit down or make some time later today and think through how you're gonna actually make these connections.
So the first step here in how to network with churches is just making the connection, right? You first have to figure out where am I gonna connect? Like what kind of church or organization? And obviously as I go through these steps, you can replace church with organization or agency as you feel, um, led to do when you're listening to the podcast episode.
But I'm gonna be specifically talking about churches. So making the connection is your first. I encourage you to start with your own church. Now, some people say to me, oh, that's a dual relationship. That's not he or good, and I hear you. We definitely don't wanna have dual relationships as therapists, but I also think that you can serve your own church, and there are some different ways to do that.
First of all, if you are in a small town that lacks services for mental health, you just might have to see people that attend your church because they don't have other options or they're not able to do virtual for whatever reason. , you might be the only option or one of very few options for them. The next thought is for churches that are large, and I'm talking about several hundred people.
You could probably safely do therapy with someone without having much of a dual relationship. Our church, I would say we have probably three, 400 people that come on a Sunday morning, and I've done therapy for several people in my church. The thing is, clients prefer to work with someone that understands their faith and their background.
So if someone attends their church, sometimes it makes it easier for them. They can talk about what they're learning, maybe a sermon that came up, and you're gonna understand exactly what they're talking about. You have immediate trustworthiness because of the fact that you attend the same church, and a lot of times it's the pastor that actually recommended you, which even speaks more volumes to the reason that these clients trust you.
Now, I think it's super important that you discuss dual relationships at the very beginning. So when I get a new client from my church, I always say, Hey, I wanna make sure that you understand that I am the youth pastor's wife. I don't know if you knew that and. That will not be a part necessarily of your counseling, but you might see me at the church and I wanna make sure you're comfortable passing by.
We won't be speaking to each other other than a quick, hello. Not things that you would say in session to me. You, because church is my time, so we talk about all those things in the first session. A lot of times in the intake call when I was taking calls, I would talk about that as well and then documenting that we had that discuss.
Now, I don't think you should be doing therapy with someone you're close to at your church. So for example, I wouldn't do therapy with someone in my Sunday school class. Someone that's children are the same age as mine that I would be at functions with. These are people that I don't work with, and I refer them out to other clinicians that I trust that they can work with.
So you wanna have that boundary if it's someone you already had a relationship with at your church prior to them reaching out? Probably not the best idea. Most of the clients that I worked with at my church, I didn't know who they were until they called for the first time. and I still actually do this even with my group practice sometimes if it's someone super involved in the church, we let them know, Hey, Whitney's the owner and her husband is a pastor of the church.
Wanna make sure you're comfortable coming here and making sure you're aware, because now we're kind of at a point where people find us so many different ways, they don't necessarily know that. I even am a part of Waters Edge counseling, and so we wanna make sure that people understand that they go to our church.
All right, so the first one was just making the connection, right? So starting with your own church and meeting your ministers there, talking to them about it. And I'm gonna go through the steps of how to have that conversation in a few minutes, but just this is figuring out which churches you're gonna connect with.
Number two, find connections with other churches through family, and. Okay, so we call this a warm connection. So that's when somebody knows somebody. A cold connection would be knowing nobody and just reaching out, right? So if you have a friend that attends at church, or maybe you have a friend that's a pastor, go ahead and reach out to them.
Number two, find connections with other churches through family and friends. So we want to make what we call a warm connection if possible. So a warm connection is when somebody already knows somebody as opposed to a coal connection when you don't know the person at all and you have to reach out to them.
So a warm connection is maybe you have a friend that's a pastor or a friend that goes to a church in town is really involved. Ask them to introduce you to other pastors or other people in the church. Refer clients for therapy. Right. So an example of this was when we first moved to Savannah. My husband's a youth pastor, and so he was meeting with some other youth pastors within our denomination for coffee.
And I said, Hey honey, make sure you mention that your wife has a private practice. And so he did, and then I connected with those youth pastors. So that was a warm connection. All right. Number three, I want you to ask your own pastor for other connections to other pastors. I especially see this within different denominations.
So for me, I'm Methodist, and so my Methodist pastor will connect me to other Methodist churches in the area. And like I said, you already have that trust developed because they understand the way you think theologically, and you're also associated with that denomination. It's helpful. I especially see this within the Catholic church.
A lot of referral back and forth within the Catholic Church and trusting one another because of the way the Catholic faith is and that they have some different ways of thinking about religion, and so it's really helpful for Catholics to have a Catholic based therapist. So number four is introduce yourself to churches within walking distance of your office.
So you might wanna consider looking at churches that are a mile away, maybe writing those down and remembering these are places that you want to connect with so you can have that list going. And the last one here is search for churches online and reaching out to them. Now, I put that last because we've at least found this to be the hardest way to make connections with churches, but the truth is, there are pastors out there that don't know where to refer clients, or they're referring clients that are not having good treatment outcomes.
You've got to get yourself out there and let them know about you. I can't tell you how many times churches or other places that I'll say, Hey, I'm a therapist, and they will say, oh, I have been looking for someone to refer to, right? This was somebody actually locally, um, I connected with her again through my husband.
Her name came up and I was like, oh, I know her from 20 years ago at my home church. I wanna connect with her. And so I reached out to her and said, I'm here. I'm a therapist, da da da. And she said, this is so great, because I've been needing another place in town to refer people. And so we were able to connect that way, and she has sent many referrals to our practice, not only to me, but also to my therapist at the.
So make sure that you are kinda looking online maybe for other churches, not only in your area, but also bigger churches, maybe churches that need more resources for people. Now, if a place already has a counseling practice, that might not be the best place to go unless you really specialize in something they don't offer.
So maybe you do substance abuse or eating disorders and you see that that church has a counseling center, but they don't have those service. Great place to reach out. But if you see they already have a counseling center, they, they have what they need and so you might wanna be looking at other places that don't have that type of service.
Okay. So those are the five steps to networking and thinking about how to connect. Now we're gonna move on to how do you actually do the connection, right? So you've made your list, you know the places you wanna connect with. Now how are you actually gonna do that? So, like I said at the beginning, you already have some amazing skills in being able to connect with other therapists, so I want you to use those skills, um, to be able to connect with pastors as well.
So the most important thing is for you to just be yourself, be authentic in what you do. Have casual conversations with other pastor. When you're talking to pastors, you just wanna make it comfortable, easy conversation. It doesn't have to be complicated, so invite them to lunch or to coffee, because who's gonna turn down free food, right?
And so try to go somewhere, maybe near the church, um, grab a cup of coffee or lunch and talk about. Your practice, but honestly you're just getting to know them. So you might be thinking, okay, well how do I actually set up this meeting? Right? So encourage you if you can, to do it in person, talk to the person, say, Hey, I wanted to connect with you, learn more about the church, talk more about mental health.
Is there a way that we could connect? Um, or you could do that through a phone call, a text message, or maybe you have some money, do a joint email between you and the pastor. Um, and I, if you really needed to, and someone told me they did this once and I thought it was a great idea. Right after Covid, this group practice owner sent emails to local churches that just said, Hey, we're in the area.
We're thinking about you. We know that being a pastor's difficult with lots of decisions right now, just want you to know we're here to support you. They were cold emails, but several pastors who responded were very grateful, and I think it really helped in making some connections for. Further networking.
So you could definitely do emails as well, call emails, but I think a phone call goes a little bit further, um, in connecting with people. Or you could also do it through social media. So you might know a pastor and you might wanna send 'em a Facebook message or uh, Instagram message to be able to connect with them.
Okay? So once you set up that meeting, you're just gonna be yourself. Be authentic. Just share about yourself. So number two, and how do you actually talk to pastors is building trust and rapport with the pastor. So when you do meet with them, don't jump into sharing about yourself. This is not what most PA most therapists want to do.
Some of 'em do cuz they just don't know what to do and they're nervous. But we know how to build rapport. That's what we're really good at. So I want you to build rapport with that pastor. And when I say pastor, this might not necessarily be a senior pastor. This might. Someone who helps with member care or someone else within the church that would be referring people to therapy.
So you're gonna build or trust in your rapport. You're gonna ask 'em about the pain points at their church. What is the difficulty that you have, um, with your time management or maybe with mental health? What are the things that people are coming in your office to talk about? What are the things that you're not really sure how to respond?
Yeah, ask 'em what it is it that they sit and listen to shared often. Like what are the regular things that people bring into their office? Pastors will be so glad to have somebody to share this with, I promise. Okay. The, the next point here, number three, is educating the pastors on the benefits of counseling.
So after they share with you the pain points, talk about how counseling can be, Right. I always say to pastors, if you have to meet with somebody more than twice, you probably need to refer them out for actual therapy. Even though pastors do go to school and they get an hour, or usually one course in pastoral counseling, that's all the counseling they usually get unless they're in a special program and you can let them know like you went to school for a long time to get your degree right, and you have tons of experience in mental health and that's what you're here.
and the pastors, they need to be preaching, they need to be, um, doing services, you know, funerals and weddings and meetings and financial meetings and budgets and all these things. As a pastor, they don't have time to meet one-on-one with parishioners on a very regular basis as far as the same person every week over and over.
And so that's why we wanna encourage them, Hey, focus on the things that you need to do here and to keep this church rolling, and I will be here for your clients and your parish. Okay. Number four, explain the benefit of counseling and your theory approaches and how they relate to your faith. Right? And so I think a lot, some churches, especially down here in the south, they can feel like, uh, like what's gonna happen if I refer out?
They're not sure how to trust you. They don't share what you're gonna say about faith. And so I encourage you to share with them kind of how counseling and how faith can go hand in hand. So a simple example of what I usually say for. Is cognitive behavior therapy is got some biblical foundations within it, right?
It's our thoughts. It's renewing our thoughts, changing those thoughts, and making 'em reality, right? And so the Bible has lots of passages about taking your thoughts captive, renewing your mind and Christ. And so those go hand in hand in my mind. So explaining the benefits of counseling and just how you allow faith to be a part of the process in that you do bring in biblical examples or you bring in stories to be able to relate to clients.
You might incorporate prayer into the conversation with clients, and obviously it's all client directed, but you can explain to them some stories on how you do.
All right. Moving on to the next one. Number five, letting the pastor know that you're gonna be in communication with them and refer back to them as needed for theology questions. So, like I was saying, pastors might get worried about what you're gonna teach them, so I think it's important that you reassure them.
That if they refer someone to you and that person has theological questions, that you're gonna refer back to their pastor and that you'll be working together to be able to care for this client. I also think it's important that you share your own faith story when you're talking to pastors. . And so tell them not only about how you came to be a believer or a Christian, but also talk about why you became a therapist.
What's your passion behind it and how that's important. We're talking about therapy. I actually think this is a really great way to start in sharing about yourself, cuz typically what happens is when we want pastors to share about their story, how they became a pastor, what are the issues in their.
They're gonna wanna do the same and ask us about how we became therapists and how does our faith become a part of that. Now, at the end of your conversation, there's gonna be some follow up things you wanna make sure to be able to share with pastors, where you're located, what your rates are, your specialties, your hours, things that you would share with anyone that's referring to you.
If you have rack cards, business cards, QR codes, whatever it is, give them all this information. If you give them your cards, it makes things a lot easier. They can throw 'em in their desk and then have 'em to pass out to people whenever they do need something. Now I also talk to pastors about more of a partnership in the sense of how they can refer to us back and forth, how we can partner with them.
So I'll do another podcast episode about how to partner with churches, cuz I get a lot of questions on how to do. This podcast is just making that connection, how to network with them. Okay? So make sure that you're sticking around for the next episode, and I'll talk more about how to have an ongoing partnership with churches, but you wanna make sure that you can give them all that information so, At the end of this meeting, you should be able to have a good connection with that pastor and create, I would create some follow up, whatever that looks like for you.
So maybe you decide in about three months to check in and see how they're doing in six months, or maybe you send a Christmas gift, whatever it is that you wanna do. To keep that ongoing relationship. And I encourage you to do that with anyone that you have a referral relationship with. And so sometimes it might be that I send someone a quick text and say, Hey, just wanted to check in and see how you're doing.
How are things at your church? You know, we had talked about this and, and then, you know, kind of go into that. Um, but you wanna make sure you follow up with them, and I wanna encourage you that just because they don't refer to you immediately does not mean they don't value you or that they're not going to refer to you.
I think a lot of therapists make all this effort to connect with another organization and then they don't get a referral for a week or two and they think, oh, they didn't like me or, I did something wrong, y'all. It just means that they haven't had a moment to refer yet, or they don't need to yet. Right.
And so just wait on that. And I also wanna encourage you to be consistent. I actually, believe it or not, one time I was, this was at not a church, another organization, I'm sitting with them and I'm talking about referring to us, and they go, oh no, we referred to the other practice in town. I was like, oh, okay.
Like it was like she didn't wanna hear anything I had to say because she was not gonna be swayed to refer. Could I continue to be persistent and share more about my practice? And I mean, I wasn't forcing it down her throat, but just offering that to her. And believe it or not, we've got multiple referrals from her.
So just letting you know that it doesn't always mean if you're getting kind of a negative feel or vibe, just continue on because you never know when they're gonna need to refer out to you.
Now, if you are. Needing to, you can head to my website, or actually you should and join my email list because if you hit that, you will have the opportunity to get a free P D F on tips to market and network with churches. So a lot of the information I'm sharing in this podcast today. You'll be able to get that, um, free download to be able to help you.
So you just go to my website, whitney owens.com, hit the join email list, and then you'll be able to get that free p d f plus lots of other great tips and information straight from me. So those are kind of the ways that I'm marketing network with churches. I have a referral sheet that I keep up with on a very regular basis to be able to see how I'm working and talking to those pastors and making sure that I'm following up and remembering who they.
But before I close out the podcast episode, I just have to share something kind of funny here. I'm sitting here recording, right, and I was talking, if you remember, I was sharing the story about. The woman who has, uh, that refers to us a lot. And then I met through my husband, who's a youth pastor in y'all.
30 seconds after I said this on the show, my phone starts ringing and she's calling me and I promise she's not someone who calls me every day. This is someone I probably talk to every few months. So it was so weird. I actually stopped the recording to take the call. At first I almost sitting and then I thought to myself, wow, like what are the odds?
This is God, right? Like, I think a lot of times, We aren't noticing God or I'm not. And um, I heard on another podcast recently, I think it was Eugene Peterson, who said, as a pastor that his job is to help people see God, right. Pay attention to God. And so I'm sitting here recording and she's calling. So I did stop what I was doing and I stopped the recording and took her call and she was needing to refer someone to the practice.
And so I just thought that that was so affirming, um, not only for her, but for this. Like the fact that it's almost like God's thinking about 'em and God's thinking about us here recording this podcast that I just happened to sit down at this moment and record the podcast about networking in churches.
And then I get a call from a local pastor while I'm recording it, just like gotta sit with that. God is so good and I just feel very strengthened by that. And I hope that you do. And so I appreciate you hanging with me here. I will record another episode, um, for episode eight, and I'll talk more about kind of what a partnership with churches can look like.
Um, there's a lot of different opportunities for that, so we'll kind of go into those details. But thanks for hanging with me. And now I want you to go out, make your list of churches that you wanna connect with, and make a plan to connect with them. See you next week.
Show Notes Prepared by James Marland
