Pathways Celebrates 25 Years of Service
PATHWAYS CELEBRATES 25 YEARS OF SERVICE
by Rod Marshall | LPC, President/CEO Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes
This January marks 25 years of “professional counseling services from a Christian-perspective” provided by the ministry we know today as Pathways Professional Counseling. I am honored to share that I was the first counselor employed with this sister ministry of Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries (ABCH), beginning in 1995. Paul Miller, now retired CEO of the Children’s Homes, used to like to joke with me that I did not show up for work on my first day of employment with the Baptist Children’s Homes. I defended myself by saying that my first day was January 2, 1995, not January 1, 1995. He smiled and responded, “Well, I know for a fact that you went on the payroll on January 1, 1995!”
In November of 1994, my pastor called me one Monday morning and told me that he had just gotten a fax from the Children’s Homes announcing that they were looking for a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) to employ. Mr. Miller had been working diligently since the 1970s to persuade the Board to add a counseling component to their ministries to children. My pastor knew that I had recently earned my LPC status and that I felt a sense of calling to ministry and that my current mental health counseling job was never going to allow me to be true to that calling.
I called the number and interviewed and soon had a second interview. I was then hired to be a part-time counselor at a location in an office park in a suburb of Birmingham.
My first priority was to provide counseling services for the girls in our Gardendale Group Home. However, we also launched a foster care ministry in Birmingham that grew faster than could have been anticipated, and soon, several foster children were also in need of professional counseling services. By this time in my career, I had had the great blessing of having worked for quite a few years in clinical settings before coming to the Chlidren’s Homes. Because of that experience, I was able to create the intake paperwork, the informed consent documents, and the other documentation protocol to meet the industry standards. Soon after coming to the Children’s Homes, we began to get referral calls from pastors. This exciting development led to us accepting community-based referrals.
After eleven months of surprising growth, people began to notice and word got out about this exciting new ministry. The Montgomery Baptist Association entered into a partnership with Baptist Health Systems and the Children’s Homes to begin a counseling ministry in Montgomery. The Friendship Baptist Association also inquired about hosting a counselor in their office. I was asked to increase my hours, and in my second year at the Children’s Homes, I was a three-quarter-time employee.
The second year also saw great growth in our counseling ministry. At the end of the second year, we had added more locations in partnership with Baptist Associations. I was asked to come to the Children’s Homes as a full-time employee, and did so, on January 1, 1997.
In 1998, I was asked to become the Director of our counseling ministries. Every few months, another Baptist Association would inquire about partnering with us to provide professional counseling from a Christian perspective. We grew from 3 offices to 5, then to 10, from 10 to 20 and before we knew it, we had 25 locations. Not long after that, we had 30. Our goal had been to establish a network of counseling sites, so that no one would be more than 30 minutes away from available, affordable professional counseling from a Christian perspective.
We also committed to a model of excellence. All of our counselors have at least a master’s degree and are Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC), Licensed Certified Social Workers (LCSW) or Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFT.) We have more Registered Play Therapists than any other ministry or mental health agency in the state. In the last 10 years, we have deliberately trained our counseling staff in attachment-based therapies for children in foster care and in trauma-based therapies for children and adults.
Currently, we have a network of over 40 counseling sites all across the state. No one in our state is ever more than 30 minutes away from one of our locations. We serve the children in our care, as well as the families who provide foster care for children. We see individuals who are seeking assistance to manage various challenges in their lives. We get referrals from pastors, the LeaderCare ministry of the State Board of Missions, family court judges, pediatricians, adoption experts, current and former clients, school counselors, other mental health professionals, and a host of other colleagues.
We made a commitment early in the life of this ministry that no one would ever be turned away due to an inability to pay for their services, and many years later, we have been able to hold true to that commitment. In 2018, there were 3,767 individuals served through our ministry. By the end of 2019, that number increased to over 6,600!
In February of 2012, the Board of Trustees of the Children’s Homes asked me to accept the position of CEO to follow Paul Miller’s tenure. I am often asked if I miss the counseling program now that I have responsibilities for every area of our ministry. I have great confidence in the Pathways leaders—Ross Hickman, Lisa Keane, and Kristin Lowrey—who have taken the baton from me and have run further with it than I ever thought possible! I would miss the counseling ministry much more if I had any concerns it was not in very capable hands.
Alabama Baptists should be proud of Pathways Professional Counseling. To my knowledge, no other state and no other denomination have a counseling program like this. The impact they make for the Kingdom of God through protecting, nurturing, and restoring children and families through Christ-centered services is hard to measure.
In the past 25 years, how many families have been brought back from the brink of destruction by one of our counselors? How many children did not have to enter foster care because their family was strengthened or restored? How many pastors are still serving after questioning their call during a difficult season in their ministry? How many individuals are overcoming their trauma thanks to the work they are doing with highly-trained professional counselors?
Thank you for your prayers and support. Together, we are making a huge impact for the Kingdom of God among families in Alabama.