By Hattie Brisco (BA 27)
Bekah Rainey, a third-year counseling student at Grace from Huntington, Indiana, with a passion for ministry, initially felt God calling her to a career in counseling while attending a high school summer camp.
“The speaker was sharing from the book of Jonah,” Rainey said. “She shared how when Jonah was in the fish, God wanted him to use that time of darkness to better understand the darkness of sin that the Ninevites were in.”
During a time of prayer following the speaker, Rainey felt God was saying He would use counseling as a ministry and an opportunity for her to walk alongside people. Since then, she’s followed that calling into a summer internship as she works toward a degree in family counseling.
As a counseling major with a concentration in child and family therapy and a minor in intercultural studies, Rainey learns about people of all ages and backgrounds, how their brains work, and how that knowledge can be applied to address their developmental, emotional, or mental challenges.
Rainey spent her summer working and observing at an internship with Shepherd Community Center in Indianapolis. During this experience, she applied the lessons she learned during her first two years at Grace, while also learning new lessons such as the importance of silence — even in a room full of students.
Building on a Degree in Family Counseling through New Experiences
Prior to arriving at Shepherd, Rainey had only ever worked with younger students in ministry. For the internship, she was given the unexpected opportunity to work with middle and high school students in Shepherd’s Education to Employment (E2E) program. While this was out of Rainey’s comfort zone, she was open to the idea. After being offered the position, she asked the staff for twenty-four hours to pray about the opportunity, taking deliberate steps to understand where God was calling her before accepting.
When Rainey arrived at the community center, she was well equipped with the knowledge and skills to serve, carrying with her lessons from classes required for her degree in family counseling, such as Family Systems and Child and Adolescent Psychology.
As she pursued a Christian family counseling degree, her professors at Grace emphasized the importance of recognizing students’ behavior as a reflection of their experiences and upbringing.
“As a camp counselor, I was working with middle school and high school students,” said Rainey. “I found that knowing about family systems and how people’s past experiences come out through their emotions was really helpful. I could take a step back and ask myself, ‘Where is this coming from?’”
Rainey also learned about leadership as she stepped into new roles and discovered how counseling could be viewed as a form of ministry.
“The team was really supportive about allowing me to lead,” said Rainey. “Being able to lead activities and take the disciplinary measures I needed to helped give me confidence. While this was difficult for me in the past, I now feel more prepared to do that in a counseling setting one day.”
Furthermore, in her quiet time with God, Rainey was reminded of the importance of silence both in her time with Him and others. She reflected on the role silence played when connecting with students at Shepherd.
During her internship, Rainey encountered students who didn’t understand why the activities they were engaging in, such as going to chapel, were important. In response, she initially tried to help them understand by repeatedly explaining the importance to them, but this proved ineffective.
“Eventually I realized that if I gave them enough time to think on their own, they would start to verbalize things like ‘Oh, this is why we were going to chapel; I realize I’m growing closer to God because of this,’” said Rainey. “Giving them that silence allowed them to be part of the growth.”
