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1. Spirituality and faith are increasingly recognized as important aspects in a personʼs life. National research shows that 66% of people feel counseling should include spirituality. Research with ASU students found that students reflect this statistic, as they feel spirituality is an important part of counseling. Students also feel spirituality is appropriate to include as part of counseling services offered by centers referred to by ASU.
2. There is a need for counseling at ASU. Nationally,approximately1,100 college students commit suicide each year. At ASU, almost one-third of students reported feeling so depressed that it is difficult to function, and 0.9% report having attempted suicide within the past year.
3. Surveys of ASU students indicate that students who describe themselves as being religious are more desirous that counseling include a spiritual dimension. Surveys of campus pastors indicate that over 80% believe there is a need for faith-based counseling and would refer students to a local center.
4. Price is an issue. Indeed, a survey of campus pastors indicated that they believed cost of counseling to be one of the primary deterrents to students seeking help. One way to control costs is to use a mixture of residents and licensed counselors. As in medicine, students must complete coursework along with a period of residency or internship to obtain licensing. Both religious and secular masters programs in counseling exist in the greater Phoenix area. Thus, there is a potential supply of students who could work as residents, permitting RLCC to offer counseling services at reasonable prices.
Social media is a tool widely used by many organizations for purposes of spreading ideas, influencing users politically, and promoting products for purchase. Among the ideas spread on social media is religious belief, a task undertaken by religious officials and members alike, in both widespread and personal communication. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has promoted its religion online for years through official webpages and the testimonies of members, but now seeks to spread knowledge of its beliefs and increase membership by involving its full-time missionaries on Facebook and Instagram. The initiative to add online-proselytizing to a missionary’s list of duties began in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has been through multiple changes to arrive at the present function of social media in full-time missionary work. Despite these positive changes, missionaries still feel that they lack the necessary knowledge and skills to conduct productive conversations online that lead to opportunities to share their message. Two separate missions are analyzed through Bolman & Deal’s Four Frames to gain a complete perspective of missionary work through social media and how it can be improved. By implementing visual symbols that relate to the importance of social media missionary work and increasing the social media training that missionaries receive, they would feel better prepared to host conversations on online platforms and share their messages. Additionally, by updating the leadership position associated with social media in a mission, more missionaries would ultimately gain expertise in this skill and better fulfill their purpose as missionaries.