Phone: 314.434.4044
Email: faculty@covenantseminary.edu

Dr. Dan Zink

Professor of Counseling

Dan Zink’s personal and professional life testifies to God’s whimsical providence. Young Dan was born in Wisconsin and raised in Quincy, Massachusetts, which explains how a New Englander has a Midwestern accent. Zink’s family was deeply steeped in a denomination shaped by the theology of John Wesley, leading young adult Dan to graduate from the denominational college where his mother worked, marrying the daughter of a denominational college professor, serving as a church board member, Sunday School teacher, assisting in children’s ministry with his wife, and so forth. This is surprising preparation for a person who has served for more than 30 years at a Seminary grounded in the Reformed tradition.

Zink explains this radical transformation was a slow and gentle walk with God down a new path. Instrumental in this process was the teaching of Francis Schaeffer. Dr. Schaeffer’s biblically grounded deep and practical guidance was what he needed to make God-honoring choices in the context of public child protection services. This Schaeffer connection ultimately led Dr. Zink to Covenant in 1985 in pursuit of an MDIV degree.

God’s shaping providence is evident in the multiple threads of counseling, supervision, management, teaching, administration, program direction that He wove together in the variety of jobs in Dr. Zink’s 45 years of professional work. After pursuing a Master’s in Social Work (MSW) immediately after college, Zink worked in social work for 11 years as a caseworker with children, troubled families, foster parents, and adoptive families, as a supervisor of a unit of caseworkers, and as a program consultant. After graduating from Covenant with an MDIV, Zink was an assistant pastor in Dallas, Texas, for a year, then returned to lead the re-establishment and expansion of Covenant’s Student Services program from 1990 to 1995. This administrative role also included adjunct teaching in Christian education, homiletics, and counseling including teaching two courses in the first years of the MAC program beginning in 1993. In 1995, Dr. Zink moved to a full-time faculty position teaching primarily in the MAC program. Zink’s central focus is teaching marriage and family counseling, his area of PHD studies at Saint Louis University. However, he has taught 9 different courses in the curriculum including Introduction to Counseling, Human Growth and Development, Counseling Ethics, Emotional Intelligence, Internship Supervision, and team teaching God and Humanity: Foundations of Counseling for more than a decade.

Dr. Zink considers his long teaching career to be a gracious gift from God. Seeing the many students who have graduated and put what they learned here to work in many walks of life is a very special thing. It is particularly thrilling to see students from long ago at Covenant’s graduation celebrating their child’s own graduation from our school. Most special of all is the continuing relationships with graduates of the MAC program.

Dr. Zink’s wife, Carolanne, is a retired schoolteacher who serves her local church developing and delivering Bible studies in the church’s women’s ministry. Carolanne and Dan have two adult daughters. Laurianne is a schoolteacher, recently moving to work in an urban private school, City Academy, in St. Louis, after 20 years teaching in public and private schools in North and West St. Louis County. Bethanne, formerly a service provider to children with Autism, has worked for several years as a software engineer. She currently works for a service-oriented web-based company in West Africa. To round out the family on their little farm, Dan and Carolanne have two thoroughbred horses, Missy and Cabo, and two Rough Collie dogs, Teddy and Rosie.

Education

Faculty member since 1995

Select Courses

• Marriage and Family Counseling

• Advanced Marriage and Family Counseling

• God and Humanity: Foundations of Counseling