Gabriel Mizrahi

But I am not a trained counselor.

It is different.

Different education and different skill set.

Totally different from Lydia and Lydia.

On top of that, not all pastors are the same.

Saying pastor is like saying salesman or businesswoman.

It's generic.

Is that businesswoman running a Fortune 500 cutting-edge AI company, or is she a businesswoman selling homemade candles at the farmer's market?

It's the same thing with pastor.

I'm Lutheran, and most of us in the main line have a master's degree from an accredited seminary.

Many mainline seminaries, including mine, do extensive psychological evaluations done by secular firms for new students.

I also took one unit of clinical pastoral education working in a hospital under professional supervision.

My seminary required that.

That's one kind of pastor.

But lots of people, charlatans, hucksters, poorly trained people, etc., call themselves pastor.

Now, that's not to say that a trained pastor can't do awful things.

Some do.

They are flawed human beings like anyone else.

But some pastors don't have training, don't understand confidentiality, don't understand their state's mandatory reporting laws, and so on.

There is a lot more to pastoring than just loving God, which hopefully every pastor does.