Where Your Fee Goes
Most counselling practices exist, at least in part, to make a living for the counsellor. This one doesn't, and I want to tell you honestly why.
I don't take a salary from Grace Biblical Counselling. Fees cover the real costs of running the practice, and everything beyond that goes to support missionaries serving in a region where the church faces real pressure.
This page explains why it's built that way, and what your fee actually does once it leaves your hands.
Why a counselling practice would be structured like this
I left secular practice out of genuine conviction, not strategy, and that same conviction shaped what this practice is for.
If Scripture is truly sufficient for the deepest struggles of the human soul — if that's actually true, and not merely comforting to say — then counselling isn't a product I'm selling to you. It's the ministry of God's Word to people who are genuinely suffering. That doesn't mean it should be free; it costs real money to run it well, and the labourer is worthy of his wages (1 Timothy 5:18). But it did mean I had to think carefully and honestly about what the money is actually for.
The answer I landed on, after real thought: cover what it genuinely costs to do this well, and send the rest somewhere it will do more good than it would sitting in my account.
What your fee actually covers
Running a practice has real costs, and I want to be transparent with you about them. Secure video that meets clinical standards. Booking and records systems. Professional liability insurance. Registration and certification fees with the BCACC and CCPA. Continuing education, which my credentials require of me and which keeps me genuinely competent to sit with you.
Those come first, honestly, because a practice that can't cover its own costs eventually stops existing — and that helps nobody, least of all the people who need it.
Everything past that goes to the mission.
The missionaries
We support a couple serving as missionaries in a region where the church faces real pressure.
I'm not going to tell you more than that, and I want you to understand why it matters: publishing details about people who serve where being identified as a Christian carries genuine risk isn't a marketing decision I get to make lightly. It's a security decision, and honestly, it isn't mine to make at all. So there are no names here, no country, no photographs. That's entirely deliberate, and it's permanent.
What I can tell you, gladly, is that the work is ordinary in the way most faithful work tends to be ordinary — presence, patience, years rather than months, in a place where that costs something real. Your fee genuinely helps make it possible.
What this doesn't mean
It doesn't mean the counselling is a favour to you. You're not receiving charity, and I'm not doing you some kind of a kindness by seeing you. You're getting the full attention of a Registered Clinical Counsellor with a Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology and graduate training in biblical counselling. The structure of the practice never changes the standard of the work you receive.
It doesn't mean your fee is a donation, either. It isn't, and I want to be precise with you about that, because precision genuinely matters here. You're paying for a service and receiving that service in return. Grace Biblical Counselling is in the process of registering as a non-profit corporation in Canada; that process isn't complete yet, and a non-profit corporation is not the same thing as a registered charity. No part of your fee is tax-receiptable as a charitable gift right now. If that ever changes, this page will say so plainly.
And it doesn't mean you should pay more than you honestly can. I want you to read that in the other direction, actually. Because I'm not paying myself out of these fees, there's genuinely more room to move here than most practices have. If the standard rate is out of reach for you, please say so in the consultation — I would truly rather find a number that works than have you stay away.
Why tell you at all?
Two reasons, really.
The first is simply that you're entitled to know where your money goes. You'd want to know that about a charity you support. You should get to know it, just as much, about the person you're trusting with the hardest and most tender parts of your life.
The second is more uncomfortable to admit, so let me just say it plainly: it keeps me honest. A practice that publishes where its money goes has to keep actually going there, year after year. That's the whole point of putting it in writing, for me as much as for you.
Questions worth asking
If any of this raises a question for you — about the structure, the mission, or where a specific dollar goes — please ask me in the consultation. I would truly rather answer it directly than have you sit with it, wondering.