The Church Can Be a Powerful Force for Mental Health

Although I get concerned by the anxiety and mental health struggles out there, I was so encouraged by a recent event where hundreds of counselors and care leaders came together to consider solutions. As a worldwide counseling and caregiving ministry, Hope for the Heart creates excellent resources for both those in need and those who care for them. I was honored they asked me to speak to this recent gathering of leaders, which was also livestreamed around the world.

For years now, much of the counseling world’s work has been based on the idea of a licensed counselor sitting down with a client for 50 minutes, once a week. But as my When Hurting People Come to Church coauthor Dr. Jim Sells pointed out in his book Beyond the Clinical Hour, there just aren’t enough counselors to meet the great needs around mental health today. So in my talk, I cast a vision for two fairly simple additional approaches—not instead of the current process but in addition to it. These could be called a “top-down” and a “bottom-up” approach, and together they have the potential to make a big difference to our current mental health crisis.

Dozens of pastors, counselors and other leaders told me afterward how helpful that framing was, and how important these two approaches might be. So, for those of you who are dealing with mental health issues or caring for those who are, I want to share these two ideas with you. Especially because I think now is the time to share some behind-the-scenes information about my next book that I haven’t shared publicly before.

In this piece, I’m going to describe the “top-down” effort. In the next blog I’ll tackle the “bottom-up” approach and explain the next book.

Here’s the summary of the first approach:

We need a top-down effort to create an infrastructure for peer mental health care in the local church.

In pretty much every research study and popular book on how to create change in a society or organization, one thing has been found to be non-negotiable: the change has to be driven from the top and spread down into the infrastructure of the group.

The effort to make a real difference in the mental health crisis is essentially a culture-wide need that must be tackled from the top down within every individual church. This will require church leaders who are willing to go beyond “referring out” to releasing their people to create an infrastructure for mental health care within the church. 

The problem

As Dr. Sells and I found in our interviews and surveys of 2,000 pastors for our recent book, When Hurting People Come to Church, church leaders are deeply conflicted about how to tackle mental health care. And that conflict has to be addressed before this “top-down” approach will be a possibility.

Pastors have been told for forty years that they should leave most mental health care to the professionals. And yet they also know from experience that having caring people walking alongside one another makes a huge difference. On the survey, fully 88% of pastors felt that for psychological issues, the church’s “primary mental health service” should be to refer the person to a mental health professional. And yet 96% of those same pastors believed that “A community of believers supporting one another is one of the best ways to foster good mental health inside the church.”

Here’s the key truth that will help bring order to the chaos of the pastors’ contradictory feelings: Yes, referrals are important, but not every issue requires a mental health specialist. Don’t misunderstand, I’m a fan of mental health professionals—I just got my Ph.D. in Counseling and Psychological Studies for goodness’ sake! Even though my own doctorate is a non-licensure degree (focusing more on research and leadership in the field), I know how valuable licensed professionals can be. As are biblical counselors, coaches, and many other dedicated professionals. But the hard truth is: There are not nearly enough mental health professionals today to meet the level of need.   

According to government statistics, almost 50% of people with significant mental health issues are not receiving care—often because they simply can’t find an available counselor. Based on analysis I did for When Hurting People Come to Church, right now, we would need more than 100,000 counselors to make a dent in the need today.

That just isn’t going to happen.

So what is the solution?

What if every church had a simple system of peers caring for peers around basic mental and emotional health needs? So much distress around anxiety and worry, grief, depression and sadness, marriage issues, addiction, and dozens of other issues can be addressed in basic ways by simply having the listening ear of a friend. In fact, many of those issues are already being addressed in churches around the country through specialized church-based peer ministries like Celebrate Recovery, Pure Desire, GriefShare, and many others.

We are sharing a vision through an initiative called The Church Cares for the church to get even more basic and still make a huge difference. We can train average, non-specialized, caring laypeople simply to listen and walk alongside those in distress. After all, even if someone does see a specialist for ten sessions for their challenging marriage, PTSD, or postpartum depression, the therapist can’t come over for dinner on Thursday night! (They would lose their license.) And many therapists view it as absolutely essential that (for example) a hurting couple get into regular fellowship with a healthy couple who can have them over for dinner on Thursday night!

Think what an incredible difference it would make if more churches became a place where people walked alongside one another without fear of “messing up” or “saying the wrong thing” and simply learned to listen and care.

This is, after all, what we have done in the church for 2,000 years, long before people felt they should primarily refer out. Consider:

Romans 12:15: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”

2 Corinthians 1:4: “[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any             trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” 

Galatians 6:2 “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

What is that “law?” Galatians 5:14: “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

An infrastructure for showing love

Creating a means for peer care and a listening ear for basic mental and emotional health issues is simply an infrastructure for showing love. This is basic discipleship. Basic evangelism. A way each local church can and probably will be transformed into a place where people expect to find hope and love for the very real issues in their lives.

Just imagine the transformation that could come—to the church, to the community, and to the lives of the individuals impacted.

But it has to be led from the top down. And every pastor I know is the busiest person I know. So, what I proposed from the stage that day to hundreds of counselors and pastors around the world is that each pastor enlist someone else to take point to explore this. Announce that the church is starting a working group to investigate how to bring peer mental health care within your community. See who shows up. See what God provides.

The Church Cares has a host of resources to help, all of which are free—including The Church Cares Kit, which includes the best practices of hundreds of churches around the country that are already doing this well. Every church will set this up differently because every church is different. And each “top down” leader will want it to work with their church’s DNA.  But there are also ways that churches can help each other. And the team at The Church Cares is already helping thousands of churches figure out how to get started.

So, if you’re interested in this . . . help your church get started! Cast the vision for your pastor, so he can cast the vision for the church. Buy a copy of When Hurting People Come to Church for your pastor. Bring me in to speak at a church or regional event to help reinforce the vision. Schedule a simple training on listening for the leaders in your church—and eventually for anyone who wants to be a part of it!

Become someone who helps share the message widely: each of us has a responsibility and opportunity to listen and care. No counseling degree required.

If you are interested in having Shaunti bring research-based strategies, practical wisdom and biblical principles to your next event, please contact Amy Masaschi at [email protected]/.

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