Local pastors often experience burnout and international missionaries face culture shock and intense spiritual warfare, creating in both a need for counseling and therapy to help them restore and maintain spiritual wholeness. For decades students and faculty of Fresno Pacific University and Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary have partnered with a local nonprofit to meet this need.

Link Care has counseled more than 7,500 pastors and missionaries since it began in 1965, and over that time many university and seminary graduates have played a vital role in the agency’s mission “to serve those who serve.” At this time 10 graduates serve there, and two current students are doing their practicum work.

Seminary and university graduates serving at Link Care as marriage and family therapists are Kari Medeiros (TC ’09, MA ’23), Lisa Basile (MA ’23), Kevin Reifman (MA ’24), Tanya Blomgren (MA ’24), Breyona Midgett (BS ’18, MA ’24), Valerie (Elwell) Kadera (MA ’13), LMFT, and Seminary Assistant Professor Cheryl Dueck Smith (BA ’93), D.Arts, LMFT, while Erica Evans and Courtney (Warkentin) Ellis are completing practicums. Mary Samarin, LCSW, also graduated from the university. Pastoral Counselor Jamie Mack (BA ’99) completes her Master of Arts in Ministry, Leadership and Culture from the seminary this month. Lastly, Link Care is led by president and CEO Jennifer (Toler) Smith (BA ’03).  

Kevin Reifman started at Link Care in 2023 as a practicum student while working on his M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary. He was hired on staff in 2024 when he graduated from the seminary.

Reifman enjoys working at Link Care for two reasons. First is the unique mission: “There’s really nothing like it that I’ve seen,” he says. “It combines a strong missions focus and church focus along with high clinical professional standards. Link Care has high clinical and academic rigor.”

Second is the team he works with: “We have a great culture with really good supervisors. Our supervisors are approachable, accessible and take the time to answer questions in depth. They also collaborate and do research on things to help each other as colleagues. It’s a very collaborative and cooperative environment where people support each other well,” he says.

A normal day for Reifman is spent counseling pastors, missionaries and their families. “Sessions are about 45-50 minutes, and I usually see four to seven clients a day,” he says. “I spend time after sessions and between sessions writing case notes. I spend a little bit of time planning sessions that I’m going to do, thinking about client cases and what it is that I’m going to do and talk with them about.”

Several seminary classes prepared Reifman for his role. “I remember there was a point when I was doing the Counseling Children class and lab that I started to feel like things were clicking,” he says. That class helped him start to feel confident in his counseling ability and gave him a sense that this was the direction God wanted him to go.

The Theology for Integration class was also crucial. “Mark Baker’s ‘Theology for Integration’ class was really helpful in terms of pulling together some strings of personal theology that helped inform the work that I do and help me as a person as I work as a counselor,” he says. Baker is an emeritus professor of mission and theology.

Not only the classes at the seminary helped prepare Reifman for this role, the staff did too. “The first professor that comes to mind is my academic advisor, Cheryl Smith. She was always super encouraging and very patient. The classes that I had with her I got a lot from. She was challenging.” Reifman says at one point he wanted to speed up his academic program. “I think she saw that I was going to bite off more than I could chew so she stopped me from that. In retrospect I appreciate that very much.”

Several other seminary faculty impacted his work. “I got a lot from Adam Ghali. He not only thinks about counseling, but integrates it with an understanding of culture and society. Delores Friesen was a huge reservoir of knowledge and hugely encouraging. Mark Baker was a great influence in terms of getting us to think about connecting theology to practice and counseling,” he says. Ghali, Ph.D., is associate professor of marriage and family therapy at the seminary while Friesen is emerita pastoral counseling.

Reifman is at the beginning of what he sees as a long career as a counselor. “I want to continue to serve pastors. I want to continue to serve missionaries. I want to continue to serve people in our community,” he says.

Link Care’s mission is to serve those who serve. FPU’s mission is to develop students for leadership and service. Both have partnered together to serve students, local pastors in the Fresno community and Christians worldwide through missionaries.

For more, see “Helping the Helpers” in the Spring 2025 issue of Pacific magazine coming later this month.