CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.--City Church has added psychotherapy to its variety of mega-church programs for members. But the service hasn't come without controversy in the conservative Pentecostal church.

According to the Los Angeles Times, churches have recommended Christian psychotherapists for their congregation for years. Now more and more, especially in the south, churches are opening their own clinics, staffed by their own professionals.

City Church's new clinic, and psychotherapist, Mark Carpenter, may be a sign that a long enmity between psychiatry and Christianity may be over.

The American Association of Christian Counselors, an organization of evangelical Christian mental health professionals, has grown from 700 members in 1991 to a present roster of 50,000, Tim Clinton, the organization's president, told the L.A. Times. Half of those are licensed.

Psychology is "no longer seen as a wolf in sheep's clothing," says Nancy L. Eiesland, an Emory University sociologist who has studied suburban megachurches. "It's been domesticated."

But the church may still be a wild animal for secular mental health professionals. Chapman said he has clashed with other therapists because their methods ignore or challenge church teachings. Once, he says, he performed an exorcism on a woman who had been treated without much success by psychiatrists. Another time, he marched into a psychiatric hospital and confronted a clinician over treatment that challenged his church's teachings.

Mark R. McMinn, a professor of psychology at Wheaton College, a Christian school near Chicago, describes Christian psychologists as envoys from one culture to another. While psychologists are trained in the "language of sickness," the church has always employed "a language of sin and grace." Clinicians like Chapman are "biculturally trained," straddling two traditionally hostile camps.

The clinic at the City Church helps Chapman avoid clashes with other therapists, he said, but he still finds himself struggling with the juxtaposition of psychiatry and church teachings.

Carpenter said he faces some difficulty counseling couples in unhealthy marriages because his church prohibits divorce except in cases of sexual immorality or desertion.

"Which is going to be the greater sin? My faith says if I get this divorce it's a sin. But what about continuing to live in the hell that [they are] living in?" he said. "Isn't that a sin?"

On the other hand, Carpenter has little sympathy for people who give up on a marriage because it does not fulfill them. "Our perspective is, marriage is not to make you happy," he said. "It's to make you holy. Happiness comes later. If your goal is to be happy, go buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's. It works quicker."