Daniel Kiser

Erica Vaughn

As Bethesda Workshops’ Marketing Director, Erica helps share the hope and healing available at Bethesda. Her work includes creating our messages shared through email, social media, and on our website.

She brings experience in marketing several small businesses and non-profit organizations in the Southeast. Erica earned her BS in Business Administration in Marketing from Appalachian State University and completed a certificate program in Digital Marketing with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She and her husband have three kids. She enjoys traveling with her family to the Carolina beaches and mountains.

Daniel Kiser

Shelly Gibbs

Shelly Gibbs is a nonprofit consultant and business coach who partners with organizations and individuals navigating their next season of growth. Her work centers on three pillars: strategy, systems, and staff — the building blocks of sustainable, thriving organizations.

Before launching her practice, Shelly served as Executive Director of NorthState Care Clinic and Director of Moral Revolution, two nonprofits dedicated to equipping and empowering people to live as their best, truest selves.

Shelly brings a whole-person perspective to her work, grounded in the belief that we are tri-polar beings — body, soul, and spirit — and that lasting transformation requires all three. She partners with people in their pursuit of freedom, peace, and abundance, holding firmly to this: we are better together.

She holds a BA in Liberal Studies and a Multi-Subject Teaching Credential from Simpson University. A Northern California native, she's now rooted in the Pacific Northwest.  

Daniel Kiser

Melissa Haas

Melissa Haas serves as the spouse-supporting therapist at HopeQuest. Melissa has a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy and is a licensed professional counselor.  Passionate about spiritual community, healthy marriages, and intimacy with God, Melissa regularly facilitates small groups and teaches and speaks on these topics in order to help the Body of Christ grow relationally with God and each other.  

Melissa and her husband Troy have been married for thirty-four years and have three adult children and one grand-daughter. They have devoted their lives to helping others find hope and freedom from addiction, giving back the comfort they have received on their own journeys of healing.  

Daniel Kiser

Daniel Kiser

Daniel is a Licensed Marital and Family Therapist in the state of Tennessee. He has earned master degrees in Marital and Family Therapy and Biblical Studies from Lee University. Throughout his clinical experience, he has demonstrated clinical effectiveness working with adolescents and families through utilization of evidenced based approaches in his roles as a counselor, clinical supervisor, and behavioral health manager. He has worked with adolescents with severe suicidal behaviors, anxiety, depression, aggression, and high-risk behaviors in residential treatment. Addressed the relational distress within the parent-child relationship created by their child’s disruptive behavioral responses, helping parents through their despair, resentment, and disillusionment. He is invested in the integration of theology and psychology, believing that activation of human longings, desires, and vitality for life is based upon both disciplines. Aside from professional development, he also has experienced the profound impact of a transformative therapeutic relationship that provides accountability, exploration of underlying wounds and thoughts, and compassionate care. Counseling is oriented towards reclaiming, rediscovering, and restoring vital aspects of human development and he is eager to help others in their process as well. 

The Illusion Of Insecurity

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on insecurity and significance.

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on insecurity and significance. In full disclosure, it wasn’t a topic I typically speak on. Ironically, I was feeling insecure about presenting on insecurity. Isn’t that what it means to be human? As I prepared the material, I realized how passionate I was about the topic and how often I have talked about insecurity with clients. Isn’t that also the way God works? So often, it is in obedience that we see God. We trust what God says about us despite our fears. Trust clears the smoke of insecurity away just enough for us to act. Living in freedom isn’t living without insecurity, it is living “through” it while clinging to what God’s truth is for us.

In your life, you won’t experience the total extinguishment of insecurity. That is good news, because we don’t have to wait until we feel secure to do the things God presents to us. Scripture tells us that “God’s power is made perfect in our weakness". I have found this truth very comforting to me over the years. I often remind myself of it as I prepare to do something I don’t feel prepared to do. Our work in this world (and for the Kingdom) requires only obedience. That sounds so simple and it is most certainly not. What is true though is that we are secure regardless of what it seems. Insecurity is an illusion borne from our trauma, messages from our family (and others) and Satan. Breaking through illusions is hard but I find it so helpful that the truth waits for us on the other side!

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