Our Clinical Orientation

City Church Counseling Center is guided by a relational and incarnational model of care. The word most often attributed to the character of Jesus is "compassion." The original Greek word indicates that Jesus was moved in a deep way (literally, in his "gut") by the pain of others. We believe that compassion begins with a trusting relationship. If and when you feel safe, we can begin the harder work of confronting the roots and consequences of the problem. In our time together, we will likely explore your story - the unique narrative of your life. No two stories are alike. Abuse, for instance, is experienced differently by each person. We want to know you. Counseling, we find, can take on many different forms - from problem-solving to grieving, from gaining awareness to identifying patterns of hurting others, from self-contempt to self-sabotage. With your trust, we'll identify the places where you need to work. Some of our Christian and secular-psychological influences include the fine work of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF), the writings of Christians such as Larry Crabb, Dan Allender, Paul Tripp, Eric Johnson, and others, as well as the rich insights of Object-Relations Therapy, Attachment Theory, Narrative Therapy, Internal-Family Systems, and Existential Therapy (including the works of Bay Area native and committed atheist Irvin Yalom).