Pastoral Counseling in African American Churches

African Americans, as a people group, are generally reluctant to pursue clinical support related to emotional or mental health issues. Black people underutilize professional services that address emotional and mental health-related problems (Hankerson & Weissman, 2012). According to Neighbors et al. (1998), regardless of problem type or severity, individuals less likely to secure assistance from professionals are those who contact pastors first. Avent et al. (2015) noted that African American Christians who seek religious support tied to a variety of circumstances choose to access their pastor in order to be supported in opposition to a professional counselor. A perception exists that individuals should seek God in order to cope with their problems (Avent Harris, 2020). Subsequently, those who may be positioned to best support an individual’s spirituality, such as pastors or church leaders, may also be best positioned to counsel regarding non-spiritual matters. This qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) used two focus groups, one group of five African American pastors and one of five African American congregants, to explore the lived experiences of congregants and pastors from predominately African American Baptist and non-denomination churches in Northeast and Northwest Ohio.