For Pastors & Church Leaders
Your people need someone at 2 AM. On the drive home from the affair disclosure. In the bathroom at work after the panic attack. You were never meant to be the only option. Now you don't have to be.
Refuge is a 24/7 Christian guidance app that gives your people a trustworthy first step before they ever land in your office — built by a licensed counselor with 23 years of clinical experience.
The Data
The difference between effective pastors and burned-out pastors isn't talent. It's what's on their plate.
Refuge is the boundary. It takes the first call so you can make the most of your calling.
Source: Lifeway Research — "What Effective Pastors Do With Their Time"
"The difference between effective pastors and burned-out pastors isn't talent. It's what's on their plate. Pastoral burnout isn't a lack of faith — it's a lack of operational boundaries."
— Dr. Jon Thompson
Clarity for Skeptics
You've seen AI tools that slap Bible verses on ChatGPT and call it ministry. This isn't that.
See It In Action
This is an anonymized exchange from a real Refuge conversation. No scripts. No rehearsal. This is what happens when someone opens the app at midnight with something they can't say out loud.
Anonymized and used with permission. This is Refuge's actual voice — not a script.
Practical Implementation
Pastors don't need another tool to manage. They need something they can hand to people and trust. Here's where Refuge fits into what you're already doing.
When someone calls the church office in crisis, point them to Refuge before their first appointment. They arrive having already named what they're carrying — and you skip the first two sessions of surface-level circling.
Your counseling meeting ends on Tuesday. The next one isn't until the following week. Refuge holds the conversation in the gap — so people don't spiral between appointments.
Recommend Refuge as a companion resource for small groups, marriage intensives, or recovery programs. It goes deeper than a workbook and it's available when the group isn't meeting.
Your worship pastor, your youth director, your administrative staff — they carry weight they'll never bring to you. Give them a private place to process that doesn't require a meeting on your calendar.
Include Refuge in your welcome materials. First-time visitors carrying heavy questions aren't going to sign up for your small group first. They need a safe entry point — and Refuge is one.
The text at 11 PM. The call on your day off. You can't always be available — but Refuge can. It holds people steady until you're able to engage, without defaulting to a crisis hotline or a Google search.
Theological Foundation
Built on historic, orthodox Christian theology — not trending cultural positions. Refuge stands within the 2,000-year consensus of the church on Scripture, sin, identity, suffering, and redemption.
Designed by Dr. Jon Thompson, LPC-S — 23 years of clinical counseling experience. Doctorate from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Undergraduate, Calvary University. Not a tech founder guessing at theology.
Refuge doesn't just tell people what they want to hear. It holds the tension between compassion and truth — the same thing a good counselor does. It won't validate sin to avoid discomfort.
Crisis detection triggers appropriate intervention. Refuge never attempts to handle what belongs in an emergency room or a licensed therapist's office. It knows its lane.
Conversations are encrypted and private by design. When a user deletes a conversation or their account, the data is wiped from servers and backups. Gone. Period.
This AI model was specifically built to hold conservative theological positions under pressure — because nobody builds technology for Christians. We did. It was stress-tested on sexuality, identity, grief, and suffering — the topics where most AI tools collapse into cultural accommodation.
From the Field
"I'm sharing the Refuge app with all my pastor friends. Have taken time this morning to work around in it. Amazing tool and resource. Thank you for your work on this."— Senior Pastor, Kansas City
"We live in a very hard area of need, beyond what I can adequately put in this message. The conversation with Refuge, the connection to the Scriptures… the thoughtful prompts and questions it was placing before me went far beyond my hope and expectations."— Children & Women's Director, San Diego
"I tested it with the hardest question I could think of — something about same-sex attraction from a teenager's perspective. It didn't flinch. It didn't condemn. It held the line theologically while treating the person with genuine dignity. I've never seen AI do that."— Associate Pastor, Missouri
"My wife started using it after a miscarriage. She said it was the first time anything — person or app — didn't tell her 'everything happens for a reason.' That matters more than I can express."— Worship Pastor, Colorado
Church Pricing
Every plan includes unlimited conversations, full access to all guided journeys, and the complete Refuge experience. Share with your congregation or use it yourself.
Honest Answers
No. Refuge runs on a custom system prompt with 13 specialized modules — marriage, grief, addiction, apologetics, pastoral burnout, sexuality and identity, parenting, and more. Each module is built on specific clinical and theological frameworks. The AI model was chosen specifically because it holds conservative theological positions under conversational pressure. Generic AI tools collapse on hard topics. Refuge was engineered not to.
Historic, orthodox Christianity. Refuge is grounded in Scripture and shaped by the thinkers pastors already trust — C.S. Lewis on suffering and the human condition, Dietrich Bonhoeffer on costly grace and community, Francis Schaeffer on truth and cultural engagement, and the theological anthropology of Reinhold Niebuhr on pride, brokenness, and the self before God. It does not adopt progressive, revisionist, or culturally accommodating positions on Scripture, sexuality, or identity.
Refuge has professional-grade safety protocols. If a conversation indicates imminent danger or self-harm, it provides appropriate crisis resources and guidance. It never attempts to handle what belongs in an emergency room, with law enforcement, or in a licensed therapist's office. It knows its limits — which is more than most people's late-night Google searches can say.
No. And you shouldn't be able to. Conversations are fully encrypted and private by design. This is intentional — people won't be honest if they think their pastor might see what they typed. The privacy is what makes it work. When they're ready to talk to you, they'll come with more clarity because they've already done the initial processing.
It shields you. Refuge handles the 2 AM triage so you don't have to. You get the "second session" version of your people — the ones who've already named what they're feeling and are ready to be shepherded, not the ones in raw crisis who need four hours of your evening. You become more effective, not less necessary.
Start by using it yourself. Spend a week with it. Bring a real question — something you're actually carrying. Once you've experienced it, you'll know how to talk about it. Then mention it from the platform the way you'd recommend a trusted counselor: "I've found something I think could help some of you with what you're carrying between Sundays."
A Final Note From Dr. Thompson
A Note From the Founder
I've been a licensed counselor for 23 years. I've sat across from thousands of people in the worst moments of their lives — affairs discovered, children lost, faith unraveling, marriages ending.
The hardest part of my work has never been the clinical complexity. It's the math. There are too many people who need help and not enough hours in any counselor's week to reach them. The waitlists are months long. The cost is prohibitive. The stigma is real.
Pastors feel this acutely because they're the first call for people who would never dial a therapist. And they carry that weight with almost no support of their own.
I built Refuge because I believe the gap between "I need to talk to someone" and "I have an appointment in six weeks" is where people make their worst decisions. Refuge lives in that gap. It's not a replacement for you or for me. It's a first step — available at 2 AM, on Christmas Eve, in the parking lot after the argument — that gives people handles for their pain before they ever need our offices.
I staked my clinical reputation on this. It carries my name, my credentials, and my theology. If it doesn't hold up under the hardest questions your people will ask, I want to know about it.
Try Refuge yourself. If it holds up, share it with your people.