Walnut St Baptist Church
LifeCare Counseling Center was started as a ministry of Walnut Street Baptist Church in 1987.
The goal of the counseling center was to provide an environment that would allow individuals to apply principles of the Christian faith to their daily lives when going through trials caused by the changing situations of Life.
In 1987, Dr. Linda Frost served as the Minister of Community Missions at Walnut Street and was beginning a limited ministry of counseling. Dr. Frost supervised two other counselors, Zelma Pattillo and Bill Holley.
William Holley, MD saw the need for explicitly Christian counseling and, in his retirement from medical practice, became the first director/counselor in the new counseling ministry. Scott Wigginton was hired in August 1987 to provide counseling out of the Community Missions office.
On March 20, 1990 the name was changed to Family and Counseling Care Center and Dr. Ernest White and Scott Wigginton were named as Director and Associate Director. Dr. White was serving as the Gaines Dobbins Professor of Church Administration and Leadership at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Director of the Dehoney Center for the Study of the Local Church. Rev. Wigginton was finishing his Ph.D. at Southern.
With the untimely death of Dr. White in April, 1993, Dr. Scott Wigginton was named the first full-time director of LifeCare Counseling Center, where he served until 2004. Dr. Leigh Conver was then named Clinical Director and Minister of Pastoral Care at Walnut St. Baptist Church and Laurice Rogers was named Administrative Director. Currently oversight is provided by a board of directors and Leigh Conver, Ph.D. provides clinical supervision.
In February 2009, LifeCare Counseling Center was incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the Kentucky Office of the Secretary of State. Articles of Incorporation were amended and refiled with the Secretary of State on November 12, 2009. On March 15, 2011 LifeCare Counseling Center applied for nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service.
