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Counseling university students
by David and Hannah
11 October 2011 Tucked away in our living room is a group of university students talking about life. We’re an inconspicuous gathering, my wife and I and our guests, except that for many of these students, meetings like this one are a rarity. Many of these Asian students grew up in a culture that teaches them to keep things to themselves. Emotions are not meant to be expressed, the thinking goes, and showing weakness should always be avoided. I’m joined by my wife, Hannah, in our ministry, which is mostly focused on students. We’ve been here almost three years, and in that time we’ve better realized the challenges of ministry in this culture. One such challenge is readily apparent. In many ways the environment is highly suppressive, and people seldom disclose personal struggles to others. Often there is little trust, even among friends. Using a platform of counseling and life coaching, we give regular talks in our home and around the city about such things as identity, dating relationships and navigating everyday conflicts. We have one policy that governs all our actions. It’s straightforward and it works. Simply put, we openly share our lives without hiding things from our students. And we allow them to share things from their lives. The goal is for them to lower their guard, so we’re always seeking to build friendships with them.
Inner brokennessIn a city inhabited by thousands of university students the needs can be staggering. Most have come from neighboring states or farther, and they’re at a pivotal point in their lives. Like many university students across the world, they’re in a place of openness and receptivity. Here they can step away from their deeply hierarchical families for a time and answer important life questions.
We want to share our Christian thinking without using Christian jargon, and we always try to understand the students’ struggles. We seldom explicitly preach the gospel in meetings, but rather apply Christian principles as the framework for our counseling and life coaching. Increasingly, in a society where performance and fierce professional competition rule, university students are shackled with heavy emotional burdens. Recent government surveys show that a high percentage of young people enter their university years in a state of instability. Depression, compulsive disorders and an inability to simply get along with their peers are among the common issues. And students often enter their adult lives with weighty inferiority complexes, loaded on them by the lofty expectations of their family. One 25-year-old student in our group puts up a particularly abrasive front in order to hide his deep feelings of inferiority. His story is typical. The first time you meet him, he’ll try to put you down. Many students try to act proud but actually feel very small.
Healing graceIn response to these societal issues, many universities are now requiring all first-year students to undergo a psychological evaluation before enrolling. But while many students face emotional problems, they’re frightened to share with the poorly trained and abysmally out-numbered school counselors for fear it might taint their record.Here lies our passion! In the coming years, we hope to expand our services into a formal counseling and life coaching business, affording us a platform to remain on site and extend our reach. Since we’re an independent party, the neutral platform is ideal to give people a sense of confidentiality. To help us in this process, we’re praying for the addition of one or two trained counselors proficient in the language and committed to long-term service. It’s only because of the gospel that we can truly be honest with ourselves and others. Only the grace of God allows us to expose our inner brokenness. And when we open ourselves up to this healing grace, it’s then that the inner struggles may be resolved. Please join us in prayer for the university students of Asia. Pray they would experience Christ’s redemption in profound ways, through simple conversations. 
 
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