Counselors

As a Christian counselor, I have found myself in many stories with clients that included the loss of a spouse or child, a victim of domestic violence, the agony of a dream or future that would never come to be, and the tears of redemption, hope, grace, and peace. I have had my fair share of tears in counseling and so this verse, John 11:35, interests me a lot. It starts with who Jesus is, fully God and fully man.

The topic of Jesus being fully God and fully man is a theological concept that is easy to say, hard to understand, and a nearly endless deepness to learn from. The concept is that Jesus who is part of the trinity of God as the Son, came to Earth as a living sacrifice for our sins. But Jesus’ death without a life in this world that is blameless would not do and so we can find comfort in understanding Jesus has been where we currently are.

[Read more…] about Why Jesus Wept

Back in June, my church started up an intentional prayer team ministry that happens after the sermon while worship is still going on. The thought was we have many prayer needs and a place in the lobby called Next Steps for people to pray, but in the hustle of getting kids from nursery, saying goodbye to church friends, and off to the local diner for Sunday lunch, we were missing a lot of time to pray with people. So we kicked off the initiative with a training and recently launched.

But the pastors were very mindful of what we were offering. They asked me to talk about mandatory reporting for our volunteers that joined the prayer ministry. I wanted to come prepared and attempted to research some good curriculum and resources. What I found for churches was very, very little. What I did find cost a lot of money or was a decade old.

[Read more…] about Mandatory Reporting for Churches [eBook]

Mental health has always been a stigmatized thing within the Church, but the last decade has started to see some significant changes. One question I get asked a lot is how to educate people and that led to my sharing what my church has been doing to break the stigma of mental illness, with a new post every year on how we are further developing it. I also did a short video on this talking about several strategies your church could do right away and a separate list of 10 free ways to stop stigma.

But having an on-demand option is nice. Imagine you have a new hire at your church or volunteer that signed up and you want them to get some training? Maybe you need to do a quick refresher after a critical incident happened and noticed some flaws in the response. In my opinion, this is where Spiritual First Aid comes in.

This site is an 8-session certificate course that teaches peer-to-peer spiritual and emotional care and trauma-informed best practices. It is not my first or section option, but should absolutely be used at some capacity in your church process with training.

Having gone through the first course and seen the overview of the curriculum, I highly endorse it.
If you go visit the website linked above, they currently are offering for free Session 1 and download practical tools for responding to spiritual and emotional needs that include a BLESS CPR quick-reference, basic overview of trauma, 12 self-aid resilience practices, and 20 encouraging verses.

What Is BLESS CPR?

Here’s the website’s description:

Similar to medical first aid which provides temporary help, Spiritual First Aid’s BLESS CPR step-by-step helping framework will help you master small actions that make a big difference. Learn how to holistically respond to struggles such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, work problems, and relationship issues. Be equipped to walk alongside others through trauma caused by grief, abuse, violence, and disasters.

If that’s not enough, if you sign up for their newsletter, every week I feel like I’m getting a high grade eBook for free to download that every church should have. So go check out the website now, at least view the free video and download the freebies, and see if this is a resource you could use.

You may have heard of a mental health or substance misuse liaison. This person tends to be an advocate for a whole agency in connection to a specific treatment center or a network of agencies and to form stronger community partnerships between the two entities. This may include a probation liaison, school liaison, hospital/inpatient liaison, or Child Protective Services liaison.

Churches may also want to consider getting a mental health liaison (or honestly, a counseling agency hiring their own). Below, Cath from KeyMinistry.org gives a great presentation on what a church mental health liaison would do and you can get the PowerPoint PDF for it here and their is a second part here.

A friend of this ministry, Dr. Holly Oxhandler, is Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and an Assistant Professor at Baylor University and one of the hosts of the CXMH Podcast. A couple of years ago, she wrote an article that was published in the Social Work academic journal, titled “The Religiosity and Spiritual Beliefs and Practices of Clinical Social Workers.”

[Read more…] about How Religious and Spiritual Are Social Workers?

For those who are counselors, pastors, or have gone through any kind of Christian leadership training, you may have come across any number of formal or informal articles about diagnosing people from the Bible with mental illness disorders. We see Job as depressed, Peter as anxious, or Saul as bipolar or schizophrenic. Some go blasphemous by diagnosing God as antisocial or narcissistic.

As a Christian, I have never felt comfortable with this. But from a professional standpoint, this is wrong on several levels. Here is why:

[Read more…] about Why Diagnosing Bible Characters Is Wrong