About & History
The Center for Pastoral Counseling is a community-based interfaith ministry, located in Covenant United Methodist Church, which has hosted a counseling program in its facility for over fifty years.
The Center, supported by a cluster of local congregations and individual donations, provides professionally-accredited counseling, consultation and educational programs and services offered to members of area congregations and the communities they serve.
Our pastoral perspective grounds us in a reverence for all of creation, while our professional training equips us with the needed skills to help our clients discover untapped potential for personal growth, change and healing.
We see ourselves as catalysts for change and seek to facilitate that change at the point where emotional and spiritual currents converge.
Our goal is to make creative use of the best of modern psychological understandings and blend them with the insights and guidance derived from spiritual wisdom and religious tradition.
Our hope is to foster the empowerment of all who seek our help until they are able to recover their own counsel and experience as much personal healing, health and wholeness as possible.
Most importantly, we acknowledge, with respect, the courage often required to make the first call seeking professional help. But we hope to provide a place where clients can feel safe, grounded and secure, working with their counselors to explore difficult issues better faced together than alone.
Rose Adamo - 215-515- 9071
Mike D'Angelo - 484-436-4035
Valerie Latney - 610-981-1288
Donna Liu - 484-442-0064
“Deeply Spiritual… Thoroughly Professional”
History
Some time back in 1973, executives of an organization called the Pennsylvania Foundation for Pastoral Counseling (PFPC) met with the pastors of five Springfield area churches to establish the Center for Pastoral Counseling at Springfield. The Covenant United Methodist Church in Springfield was chosen to host the Center in its facilities. The ministers then formed themselves into the first Center Advisory Committee, which met regularly to help guide the development of the young center.
In 1977, The Rev. George I. Bustard, Jr. was called to become the Center’s first Director. Under his leadership, the Center began to grow. In addition to the individual, couple, and family counseling provided by the counseling staff, the Center became a training site for pastoral counseling interns and expanded its services to offer retreats for couples, consultation groups for clergy, Sunday morning sermons and Christian education workshops, and seminars on a variety of topics related to personal growth and healing.
Although the ensuing decades saw various changes in management and institutional affiliation, the Center has continued to provide pastoral counseling and psychotherapy featuring a blend of various psychological techniques and insights with the best of spiritual wisdom through the services of Donna Liu and Michael D'Angelo.
After 50 years of service to the Delaware County and Greater Philadelphia areas, the demand for services has increased, so we welcomed Valerie Latney and Rose Adamo to our team of Pastoral Counselors. The Center has increased its range of clinical services and is now in a more powerful position to offer a wider range of programs to its clients, the congregations, and to the Greater Philadelphia community.