Who Erin works with
Counseling for pastors and ministry leaders who carry everyone else.
When you are the one people call at the hospital, the graveside and the late-night emergency, it can be hard to find a place to set your own weight down. Erin L. Smith, MSPC, LPCC, LPC, counts faith-based counseling among her most experienced areas. She offers counseling for pastors and ministry leaders by telehealth throughout Kentucky, Arizona and Minnesota, and in person at her Georgetown, KY office.
01Pastors and ministry leaders
Steady in public, frayed in private
Ministry often asks you to be the calm one. You preach with a heavy heart, sit with families in their hardest hours and absorb criticism graciously while people watch how you handle it. Over time, performing steadiness can become a second job on top of the first. You may notice irritability you hide well, rest that does not restore you, or a sense of going through the motions in work that once felt like a calling. Burnout often finds the people others lean on most, pastors included, and naming it is not a failure of faith.
02Pastors and ministry leaders
Who shepherds the shepherd
When life falls apart for people in your congregation, they often call you. The harder question is who you call. Ministry can leave you with few places to be fully honest: friendships inside the church come with roles attached, your family lives with an audience, and colleagues may feel more like comparison than support. That isolation can make ordinary struggles heavier than they need to be. Counseling offers a relationship outside those circles, where for an hour you are not anyone's pastor and do not have to manage how your words land.
03Pastors and ministry leaders
Boundaries with calls, crises and expectations
Ministry rarely has a clock-out time. The phone rings on your day off, a crisis lands in the middle of family dinner, and expectations arrive from the congregation, the board and your own conscience at once. Saying no can feel like failing someone you are meant to serve. Therapy can help you examine the beliefs underneath that pressure and practice boundaries you can sustain, without abandoning the people you love serving. Stress management is one of Erin's core areas, and sacred work is not exempt from stress.
04Pastors and ministry leaders
Room for doubt and dry seasons
Doubt, anger at God and long stretches when prayer feels empty can be especially hard to admit when faith is also your profession. In counseling, you can say those things out loud and look at them with curiosity rather than alarm. They do not have to be resolved before you begin, and they are not treated as a problem to be managed away. Some seasons of ministry are simply dry, and naming that honestly with someone outside your church can be a relief in itself.
05Pastors and ministry leaders
Counseling for pastors, with faith as you choose
This is licensed clinical therapy: an assessment, goals you set together in concrete terms, and evidence-based methods such as CBT and ACT. Your faith can be part of it as much or as little as you choose, and that balance can shift from week to week without explanation. Erin welcomes people who want faith-based counseling, and she equally respects those who want a break from religious language for an hour. Either way, the focus stays on you: your health, your relationships and the life you want outside the pulpit as well as in it.
Signs this is the right page
- Steady for everyone, worn thin in private
- No one to call when you need a pastor
- Prayer that feels dry and hard to admit
- Your day off keeps getting interrupted
None of this is a diagnosis, and no outcome is guaranteed. It is a starting point for a conversation.
Questions
Common questions
- Is it okay for a pastor to see a counselor?
- Yes. Needing support is part of being human, and ministry does not exempt anyone from that. Counseling with Erin is clinical care that makes room for your faith, so you do not have to choose between your beliefs and getting help for what is weighing on you.
- How private is counseling for someone in ministry?
- Telehealth lets you meet from home or another private spot, so you are not sitting in a waiting room in your own town, which can matter when you are well known locally. If you have questions about privacy in your particular situation, bring them to the free 15-minute consultation.
- Is this only for senior pastors?
- No. Counseling here is open to adults in any ministry role, including associate pastors, ministry staff and lay leaders who carry a lot of responsibility for others. The weight of being someone others lean on in matters of faith does not depend on your title.
In Erin's words
What she would say if you called today.
If faith matters to you, it is welcome here, in whatever amount you want. We start with the relationship and with what you need, not with a script, and we set goals together. I will tell you honestly what I am seeing, and I will keep checking with you about what is actually helping.
Free 15-minute consultation
Book a consultation with Erin
Fifteen minutes by telehealth, at no charge. You can describe what is going on, ask how Erin works, and decide afterward whether to book a first session. Scheduling opens in her secure SimplePractice portal.
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