All Christians

New Years is coming up and this is the time that people are looking to make their New Year’s Resolutions so we wanted to help. This isn’t our first attempt to help with improving your resolutions nor mental health over the holidays, especially with COVID.

So what if I told you a great option for your New Year’s Resolution is to say no. Let me be clear, I’m not saying don’t make a New Year’s Resolution, though I am of the mind to change your life when it is needed, not at a calendar year change. Instead, add boundaries by starting to say no more. Let me explain.

This year, our church is utilizing the curriculum from GriefShare called Surviving the Holidays to help people this Christmas and New Years.

Our Surviving the Holidays seminar is especially for people who are grieving a loved one’s death. You’ll learn:

• How to deal with the many emotions you’ll face during the holidays
• What to do about traditions and other coming changes
• Helpful tips for surviving social events
• How to discover hope for your future

If you want to see if their is a Surviving the Holidays presentation in your area, visit their website here and enter your zipcode for the United States to find the local church.

GriefShare is a support group that help people cope with grief. GriefShare is a network of 15,000 plus churches worldwide equipped to offer grief support groups. You will find it to be a warm, caring environment and will come to see your group as an “oasis” on your long journey through grief.  It’s something our church values and you may want to look into joining too.

At the beginning of the year, we shared the beginning of a series by Hope Made Strong called Keys to Resilience. Recently they released another video that highlights one specific key in self-care, noting Scripture, research, and why self-care is not selfish. I check out this video and be ready for something we want to release very soon that talks about this very topic.

Last month, Christianity Today (CT) wrote an article for their print magazine titled “Empty Pews Are an American Public Health Crisis.” The concern it expresses is that many Christians have been vocal about “religious freedoms” that prevent them from getting vaccines or covering their faces with masks and so are to be exempt from mandates, yet this has led to many within this group to leave the church when churches require masks as well as many not in the “religious freedoms” groups to leave when churches do not follow local guidelines or people become more than vocal about their beliefs.

The authors then make an interesting statement within the article that “Religious participation strongly promotes health and wellness,” using a research article from JAMA Psychiatry titled “Religious Service Attendance and Deaths Related to Drugs, Alcohol, and Suicide Among US Health Care Professionals.” The research article, which CT does note, cites that 29% of medical workers who say they attend religious services frequently are less likely to become depressed, 50% less like to divorce, and 500% less like to commit suicide than those who never attended. But then CT starts to make comments that the article did not say, like Christians have “far fewer “deaths of despair”—deaths by suicide, drug overdose, or alcohol.” They even reference 12 other articles that address some mental health research to support their finds.

Their claim is “that religious service attendance specifically, rather than private practices or self-assessed religiosity or spirituality, most powerfully predicts health.” In essence, just showing up to church will magically heal your mental health or substance misuse. Am I taking their claims and stretching it a little? Yes. But that’s the point, so are they. Unfortunately they are making a complete guess as a correlation and selling it as fact (or causation).

My friend over at KeyMinistry, Dr. Stephen Grcevich, gave some great insight on this article as well that also note concerns with these associations:

One assumption in much of the research on the mental health benefits of church is that vulnerability to mental illness is equal among church attenders and non-attenders. What if that’s not the case? What if there’s something about church that leads to an overrepresentation of the “mentally healthy” compared to the general population? What if church is less accessible to individuals and families with a greater vulnerability to mental illness because the ability to engage in church activities self-selects individuals lacking the functional impairment seen in common mental health conditions.

Is it possible that Christians who are medical or mental health workers fair better than their counterpart? We see this possibility in one study, but that does not make it a fact. Nor can we then easily blend that over to all Christians.

In fact, that we have organizations like KeyMinistry or Church And Mental Health trying to bring the Church into a conversation with mental health professionals, hitting numerous barriers in so many ways from within the Church, and churches regularly asking “how do we do this, no one else is doing this” should suggest that the Church may not be as open armed to mental wellness as CT offers.

It is my experience that Christian faith, a true relationship with Jesus does in the long run improve mental health. But I do not have a mental illness and I do not believe just being in a church building to hear about the Bible magically fixes everything. I have a guess that a devoted Christian who prays, seeks service in God’s name, is a good steward of not only their finances but of relationships, evangelizes, and reads Scripture will have an improvement with mental health. This includes going to Church faithfully, but it is my belief that this is a piece of the puzzle. Many ethics boards also say suggest this, even secular ones who say spirituality is important and should be part of the counseling process. But we need to be careful that because of COVID mandates and Christians leave the church, that everyone’s mental health is definitely going to get worse.

In fact, I remember how because of the hardships of Paul that the Gospel was furthered, not because attendance was high. Because of true persecution in the Middle East, Christianity spread throughout the world. And when Jesus showed up, it was not always happiness and peace, yet it was good. Maybe we need to look to see if the Church is furthering the mission of Christ to all people and my hope is that we can do more, better for those who struggle with mental illness and substance misuse, just as Jesus is recorded for seeking out not those who are well, but those who are hurting and broken.

This is a call to my Christian brothers and sisters, understand what is actually being said. And publishers, we really need to do better with what we publish.

I am a fan of constantly learning, whether it is about my faith or about clinical counseling. You’ve probably seen our whole host of books we recommend reading on the topic of Christian faith and counseling (and honestly I do most of that through Audible with audiobooks). Besides going through books, another great active source of information is through podcasts where we get to listen to experts on Christianity and clinical counseling, noting how they are investigating and tackling tough issues.

Below are three podcasts I have listened to regularly and highly endorse not only for the strong faithfulness to Christian theological truths but also good, ethical, clinical counseling advise. I have all of these subscribed and while I’m still working on catching up all the episodes, but I highly endorse these.

CXMH Podcast

Website

Description: CXMH is a podcast at the intersection of faith & mental health, hosted by Robert Vore & Dr. Holly Oxhandler. We bring together faith leaders and mental health professionals for honest conversations.

This was my first experience with a Christian podcast and honestly what gives me hope for Christian counseling podcasts. This is definitely made with strong academics in mind, so do not expect this to be a beginners dive into Christian counseling. Yet, they make it very approachable for pastors and lay Christians to understand how churches can bring mental health support into their congregation and community.

The Care Ministry Podcast

Website

Description: Building a culture of care in your church can feel as complex as the people you serve. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Laura Howe offers listeners practical resources and actionable strategies to support leader’s well-being, strengthen volunteer teams and equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to care for your community.

I’m a fan of everything that Laura Howe does, so naturally her starting a podcast is an instant subscription for me. Even better is she does not have an American-centric mindset of counseling that this website definitely has along with other known publications and therefore will hopefully offer a broader perspective on issues.

The Faith and Mental Wellness Podcast

Website

Description: Welcome to the podcast integrating faith and mental health where we have real conversations at the intersection of both clinical and lived experience, hosted by Brittney Moses.

Brittney is making an impact on mental wellness in the Christian community and I’m very hopeful about her progress. Do note that this is not a consistent podcast like the other two, but the material is very good.

There are several podcasts out there and I certainly only have so much bandwidth of listening, so if we missed one you think should be listened to, share it in the comments below.

Joni and Friends has always had a strong place in my heart. Their YouTube channel has always had a strong emphasis in Scripture and church doctrine while focusing on compassion and to engaged those who may need our support. They have a new campaign that was just announced this month called “Until His House Is Full” that looks to support not only those domestically in the United States, but around the world who have disabilities and need the Gospel.

Here is their mission with this campaign:

In El Salvador, nearly 1 in 10 people live with a disability. Their challenges are exacerbated by unemployment, lack of services, poverty, and crime. For families like Levi’s, getting access to medical care and a desperately needed wheelchair is almost impossible.

At Joni and Friends, our biblical commission from Luke 14 tells us to go out quickly into the streets and the alleys and bring in people living with disability so that God’s house will be full. As we share the good news of Jesus, we provide wheelchairs and essential support where it’s otherwise unaffordable or unavailable.

I previously talked about our purpose as a ministry to go serve those who are hurting and in need. So of course this fits within our mission.

The video that kicks off the initiative is below, it is impactful and commanding, but with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and a New Year coming up, it makes sense to do nothing else but highlight this.

I was introduced to Dr. Alison Cook not through her book first, but the social media content she was sharing online. If you have not, you need to go check out her Instagram as she is constantly sharing counseling wisdom that integrates Christian faith into it with nuggets of Instagram images. So naturally I needed to read her book Boundaries for Your Soul.

I will say up front that my clinical counseling modality is not the same as hers. Alison makes it quickly known that she subscribes to Internal Family Systems (IFS) which she explains the model well along with how she integrates faith. In contrast, I myself am an Integrationalist therapist that primarily sit with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Motivational Interviewing, and Solution Focused Therapy, but very much Trauma Informed, Systems therapy informed, and Client-Centered Informed. Because of these differences, I’m not going to speak on the the actual treatment modality with regards for Christian counselors or for pastors how may or may not agree with different parts of IFS theologically.

Healing The Whole Self

Alison does a great job of discussing how one can integrate faith into their counseling. Of all of the counseling models, Christian counselors most easily could do so with IFS whereas many other counseling models struggle with identifying is it primarily about counseling or faith but struggling to fully integrate.

The goal is not to eradicate parts of your soul carrying anger, fear, sadness, envy, or shame, but to lead them with curiosity and compassion.

My biggest inspiration in this book as a counselor, Jesus can heal our cognitive and emotional wounds. We see it in Scriptures beyond the physical wounds healed and we need to invite Jesus to our whole selves, not just the Sunday church practices. I think many times we see Jesus as the Savior but forget the Redeemer and Healer or simply do not offer that part of ourselves to him because of shame and pain.

Our Review

Many books talk about the faith and counseling, but fail to address how to integrate the two, Alison does not miss this. With that, we give it a 4 out of 5 and highly encourage you to check it out now.

Would you like a free audiobook of Dreamland? Are you an Audible user? Leave a comment down below letting us know you want it and the first ten will get a copy.

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The purpose of this channel goes beyond just creating content. We share why this website is important and what it means to us.

We are a fan of bringing awareness and appreciation towards mental health and substance use and for the past several years have pushed the different months where awareness is being given to mental health, suicide awareness, autism awareness, or minority mental health awareness among others. But we have not done anything for pastors other than recognize the holidays of Christmas and Easter.

October is Clergy Appreciation Month and October 10, 2021 is Clergy Appreciation Day. Here are some Scriptures for you.

“The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching.”

1 Timothy 5:17 (New International Verson)

“Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.”

Hebrews 13:17 (NIV)

So how do we appreciate and honor our pastors?

Having been in youth ministry for eight years, it can feel like running on a treadmill. Your job is to witness to the lost, care for the hurting, and feed the sheep of the Church while raising up leaders, preaching, in many cases not getting paid enough and worrying if your church will have to shut your door. Have something planned on a Sunday and on social media.

Honestly, a simple thank you to the pastors and saying a prayer for them might be a start. Gift cards for coffee or Chipotle are always appreciated. If they have children and they are okay with it, offer to babysit their kids so they can go on a date or offer a local timeshare so they can go on vacation. Give your pastor a sabbatical.

As a final point that might be a hot take, but lasting change is more about, how can the congregation take up the role of evangelism, volunteering, and discipleship that is led by the pastor, but not completely done by the pastor. I believe this would be a great way to show appreciation by taking lead.

Focus on the Family last year talked about Pastor Appreciation Month that I wanted to share. Also, do not forget the pastor’s spouse either.

Earlier this year, we spoke at the Faith + Mental Health Summit. We wanted to share the video this week for you, noting this can be helpful for pastors, Christians, and communities to consider practicing and Christian counselors to implement.

We want to continue to bring more awareness to integrating faith and mental health and this is another chance to do so. Also, if you want to see our specific talk we gave at the Thrive & Cultivate Summit for free and early before we publish it here, sign up for our newsletter as we will be distributing it in a couple of days. Don’t miss out.