Hosanna Counseling

Some Basics About Us

Hosanna Ministries is a non-denominational Christian counseling organization that has been serving Santa Monica and the surrounding communities since its incorporation in 1986. Our staff is comprised of licensed marriage and family therapists and interns - each of whom considers themselves a committed Christian.

As a non-denominational religious organization, we subscribe to the notion that at its heart, the Christian faith and Christian spirituality are ecumenical. We believe that God transcends denomination and is truly relational - lovingly connecting with his beloved through all Christ-centered denominations.

Our work as therapists is to help you through the development of a caring and non-judgmental relationship – the working alliance. Experience has taught us the integration of Christianity and counseling is most effective when we develop an understanding of you as a person – and about how your faith might be a resource or a source of tension in what brings you to therapy in the first place. We do not preach and we do not proselytize.

Our job is to be as helpful as we can to a person, whatever situation they bring to us.

That said, we believe that an understanding of the love of God is fundamental to healing and transformation. Accordingly, we adapt our clinical and counseling services on a case-by-case basis to incorporate Christian Spirituality and Scripture in a manner directed by our clients.

In the short term, our services are designed to help alleviate emotional pain, relational problems and psychological suffering. In the longer term, in collaboration with our clients, we seek to promote personal growth and development in a framework of spiritual, emotional and relational maturity.

And of course, we love helping people.

Some Details About Us

For over twenty years, Hosanna Ministries has been committed to providing counseling and psychotherapy services that stand as an excellent witness to both the Church-at-large and to the psychological/secular community. This commitment is evidenced through our dedication as therapists to stay current with cutting edge research on what is most likely to facilitate successful therapeutic outcomes, and by remaining rooted and grounded in our faith.

Hosanna is also a training center for interning therapists eager to learn how to thoughtfully and ethically integrate the complex relationship between Christianity, counseling and psychotherapy. This helps fulfill our mission to extend the resource and influence of counseling and psychotherapy by offering sliding scale services to those who cannot afford to pay market rates for professional counseling services.

Therapists at Hosanna hold the canon of Scripture as having final authority over the canon of psychology. And while the majority of our clients are from the local Church, many of our clients do not self-identify as Christians. They come as seekers – no so much in search of Jesus - but more out of an intuitive desire to receive help from a person who is grounded in what they believe. So to those of you who count yourselves among these, we are committed to helping you in any way that we can. And finally, to those of you who are just seeking help and are not seeking therapy that includes any spiritual integration whatsoever, we are also here for you.

Where Spirituality and Psychotherapy Converge

(From My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers)

“My attitude as a saint to sorrow and difficulty is not to ask that they may be prevented, but to ask that I may preserve the self who God created me to be through every fire of sorrow. Our Lord received Himself in the fire of sorrow. He was saved not from the hour, but out of the hour.

We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to receive ourselves in its fires. If we try and evade sorrow, if we refuse to lay our account with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life; it is no use saying sorrow ought not to be. Sin and sorrow and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.

Sorrow burns up a great amount of shallowness, but it does not always make a person better. Suffering either gives me my self or it destroys my self. You cannot receive your self in success, you lose your head; you cannot receive your self in monotony, you disconnect. The way to find your self is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be so is another matter, but that it is so, is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You always know the person who has been through the fires of sorrow and received themselves - you are certain you can go to them in trouble and find that they have ample time to spend with you. If a person has not been through the fires of sorrow, they are apt to be impatient or contemptuous and they have no time for you. It is only when you receive your self in the fires of sorrow that God can and will make you nourishment for other people.”

Hosanna Counseling Ministries • 1015 California Avenue • Santa Monica, CA 90403 • 310-458-9500 • Email Us