Pastors

[This article is part of a youth ministry series we have been writing about for years. Click the link to check out all of the other articles we have here.]

Download Youth Ministry is a resource for youth pastors to run their youth ministry from sermons to games to trainings. Last year, they released a whole training series through a part of their store called DYMUniversity to help train up staff and volunteers. One of those episodes is an 18-minute video called Suicide Detection and Prevention which they made available for free.

It’s put on by Craig Lomax and Josh Griffin with a foreword by Kay Warren. I honestly hope that you go check it out. The church I volunteer at is going to be putting together a luncheon for our youth ministry team, show the video, and then our campus pastor and myself as a licensed professional counselor will be on-site to have a conversation and Q&A afterward.

I am absolutely all for people looking at how to start up a mental health inclusion ministry. The difficult part, how do you start and what do you focus on? The good news is you do not need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve already talked about the book Mental Health and the Church which you should check out.

But the author of that book, Steve Grcevich, also did a series of training videos to create a mental health inclusion ministry that you can go watch now for free on his non-profit’s website at KeyMinistry.org here. I’ve included a couple of videos below and if you like them, click through to see the rest.

Want to get your own pack of church mental health awareness cards? Order them here.

Mental health stigma is culturally a huge problem. Stigma is when someone views you in a negative way because you have a distinguishing characteristic or personal trait that’s thought to be, or actually is, a disadvantage.

It limits people’s motivation to engage in the treatment, getting the help they need, but also in the activities they are currently involved in, like church. Further, it can actually cause some mental health symptoms to create further harm and isolation.

The way you fight against mental health stigma is educating yourself and others as well as create a culture open to dialogue and not shaming or guilting others who you feel are different.

[This article is part of a youth ministry series we have been writing about for years. Click the link to check out all of the other articles we have here.]

Ever since I wrote the article 10 Facts To Know About Teens and Vaping, it has been at least the second most viewed article on our site. The article itself was actually written out of necessity because several youth pastors in a Facebook group were asking questions and not getting any answers.

This article is more out of having the content and helping the Church out in understanding the facts of the situation. The topic is very tricky because many times the experts on the topic are the people who use. So the fight is a bit of a disadvantage when discussing this, yet those from a Christian perspective tend to argue out of ignorance anyways and many times it’s one of fear.

The new wave of evangelism and discipleship within churches are small groups. We see men’s and women’s small groups, small groups for young married couples, small groups going over specific books of the Bible, or based on location.

Interestingly, clinical mental health programs typically can have a strong focus and foundation in group as they offer a unique way for people to help connect and work on their mental health symptoms.

But are Christian mental health groups possible?