Endorsement for Alasdair Groves

It’s my great pleasure to recommend and endorse my colleague Alasdair Groves as he begins a CCEF affiliate counseling ministry in New England. I have served as Alasdair’s professor, as his counseling internship director, and as a counseling peer at CCEF. Through these experiences, I have no doubts regarding his personal and professional readiness for this new endeavor.

After having Alasdair in class, it was an easy decision for the CCEF faculty to choose him as one of our interns for the 2008-2009 academic year. This is a highly competitive internship and many more students apply than are ultimately selected. I met with Alasdair and the other interns every week for two hours of group supervision for the nine months of the internship. From the start Alasdair demonstrated an ability to come alongside counselees, give them hope, and chart a gospel-centered path for growth. During the internship I referred one of my former counselees to Alasdair for additional counseling and was delighted to see the way God used him in her life to bring her to a place of healing, forgiveness, repentance, and joy. Truly he was an “instrument in the Redeemer’s hands.”

The internship experience confirmed what I was confident I would see from the start—that Alasdair is eminently gifted for counseling ministry. And so, he was invited to become a staff counselor at CCEF for the 2009-2010 year to further refine and develop his counseling experience with a larger caseload. During this year, Alasdair has also helped to supervise the current group of interns. I continue to appreciate his thoughtful questions and his wise insights in the context of supervision, which reveal his maturity both as a man of God and as a counselor.

Finally, I have appreciated Alasdair’s honesty, humility, passion, and dependence on God. He strives to practice in his own life what he speaks to his counselees. Who could ask for more in a counselor?!

Michael R. Emlet, M.Div., M.D.
Faculty and Counselor, CCEF