Pastors

May is Mental Health Awareness month and we want to encourage you to be able to better communicate with your congregation and community about mental health and how the Church can come alongside them.

Here are a bunch of resources for you to use for your church.

Churches and pastors are truly at the forefront of interacting with people, especially in America. You get to sit and talk with people about sin, grace, redemption, and edification. But many times the scope of a pastor’s knowledge becomes limited when someone comes in feeling suicidal, having a manic episode, or struggling with an addiction to drugs. It’s at this time you need to be helping connect the person to a professional counselor who is trained, but how can pastors refer someone to counseling?

Busyness is a mentality that many in the American culture strive for. We see how it can take away from family, cause medical conditions, and lead to burnout. Pastors in America are not immune to this, in fact many churches where the badge of being busy as an honor. “Look at everything I’m doing” is a common generalized approach for pastors on social media. “Our church is doing it all and we are ‘doing it with excellence.'”

While I’m not against meeting the needs of your community and congregation and never would push for anything less than your best at what you do, I believe that busyness is a lie.

This month is Autism Awareness Month (and May is Mental Health Month if you are scheduling out) so we wanted to help churches figure out how they can participate in their own way. Below are several things you can do, from the very simple posting a social media post to the very involved of implementing a strategy.

The hope is that this first of all shows more alignment from the church with mental health and developmental delays. Beyond this, we hope that conversations start and maybe even revival for people with developmental delays and mental health may begin in your communities.

[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.]

Vaping is definitely the new fad for nicotine and with this new instrument, there are a lot of unknowns. This can be problematic for counselors and church leaders, especially for one of the most under-reported populations, teenagers.

Yes, teenagers are using vaping and using it a lot.

So we wanted to give you ten facts to arm yourself when talking with teenagers, teachers, and parents. Hopefully these are relevant for you and make you all the more wiser.

Want a free printer-friendly copy of this policy? Download it here.

I’m part of several church Facebook groups, constantly trying to keep in touch with what is happening in ministry. Many of these groups are open, honest, and raw, asking questions about mental health you may not actually ask in front of your senior pastor or elder board. One such question is what goes into creating a church suicide prevention policy.

I get excited by helping people bring mental health into the church, but I also want to encourage mental health professionals to listen up too. This is your opportunity to get your foot into a door of a church and help your community out.

When I worked in youth ministry, whether within a church or in a parachurch setting, I discovered a little secret pastors don’t tell anyone. They are human just like everyone else and stress and anxiety are just as bad for them, if not worse. If pastors cannot be successful, how can we have any hope?

[Read more…] about Is It Okay For Pastors To Have Anxiety? [Devotional]

Let me first say, this is a very sensitive subject. Suicide is gaining more and more public press with high profile people in the media spotlight committing suicide. Along with that, mental health is becoming more of a normalized topic where people feel they can openly talk about this as we demystify suicide and get the facts about it. If you are worried about yourself or others struggling with suicide, please familiarize yourself with several resources to help support you. Further, if you know someone has suicidal ideation, we ask you review this sheet and take proper precautions.

Also, for churches who have not created a Church Suicide Prevention Policy, go steal that one and copy/paste it into your church policy manual today so you can implement it immediately.

[Read more…] about How The Church Could Prevent Suicide