5 Ways Churches Can Minister to Those with Mental Illness

It is an honour to welcome back Therese J. Borchard as a guest blogger to Brownblog. Therese is the author of the hit daily blog “Beyond Blue” on Beliefnet.com, which is featured regularly on The Huffington Post and was voted by PsychCentral.com as one of the top 10 depression blogs. Her first guest blog post was Growing Your Faith as a Person with a Mental Illness, seriously worth checking out if you missed it. In this wonderful post Therese writes on how churches can minister to those with a mental illness.

She writes,

Awhile back Mark Brown asked me to write two blog posts: one about how you grow your faith as a person with a mental illness, which he published awhile back, and one about what churches can do to help those who suffer from mental illness. This article has been much more challenging to write.

Granted, it’s been several years since I’ve stood up in the middle of a homily and walked out: the priest going on and on about how the faithful should flock to the confessional instead of a psychologist’s office because the real battle is fought in the soul, and a bunch of diagnoses and medication prescriptions only legitimize the behaviors and thought patterns that we should regard as sins. But I haven’t really heard anyone address it. And that could be just as bad.

No. Wait. The going to hell stuff was worse. But it would be refreshing to hear the word “anxiety” in church other than the prayer that follows the Our Father: “In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Here, then, are just a few ways that churches might begin to help those who suffer from mental illness.

1. Get educated.

One of the members of Group Beyond Blue, my online depression support group at Beliefnet.com, recently posted the thoughts of John Clayton, a well-respected author and speaker who was interestingly enough a devout atheist until his early twenties. He wrote this:

The first thing the Church and its leadership must do is become educated about the mentally ill. Education will remove misconceptions, fear, and prejudice. There are many in the Church that can help us in this education, especially those in our Christian schools and in our larger congregations who are full-time psychologists and psychiatrists. The worst mistake we can make is to expect preachers and elders to be able to solve all the problems the mentally ill and their loved ones have. Doing this is analogous to expecting a preacher to do bypass surgery, and the damage done can be equivalent.

It can be as easy as browsing some mental health websites, like Psych Central, MentalHealth.com,Web MD, Revolution Health, and Everyday Health; checking out nonprofit groups such as NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) or DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance), and others; visiting a library to see what kinds of literature they have available on mental illness; attending a lecture by an expert in the field at a nearby college; tuning into one of the top 10 psychology videos found on YouTube.com; visiting an expert’s website or blog; and finally, making an appointment to speak to a psychiatrist or psychologist in the area. Continue reading »

Digital Evangelism - how?

I have come across an interesting ministry role and an interesting ministry opportunity.  The role is Digital Evangelist and the opportunity is to participate in an online ministry program.

I caught up with Paul Watson who is the Digital Evangelist and chatted to him about him and the online ministry program he is organizing.

1# Tell us a bit about yourself?

Well…for starters, I was born in Fort Worth, Texas. My parents were in ministry together and started churches in the United States among the deaf community. God called them both into missions and, at the age of seven, I moved with my family to Hong Kong. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I lived in Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, and Singapore before returning to the USA for University.

I met my wife, Christi, the first week of University. We were good friends for some time. I proposed to her in my second year. We’ve been married ten years now and have two children. My daughter is 6 and my son just turned 4. We live in Texas and my wife is a science teacher at a local middle school.

I work with CityTeam Ministries and started their Reaching the Online Generation Initiative to create and implement the strategies necessary to catalyze Gospel Movements among online communities.

#2. What does a Digital Evangelist do?

I divide my time roughly into thirds. One third of my time I’m online ‘walking’ through different social media and following the breadcrumbs of human interaction that guide me toward communities. When I find a community, I search for the person of peace Jesus describes in Luke 10. Specifically, that is a lost person who is spiritually seeking for answers and will respond to the Gospel and open up their home or community for a Bible Study to learn more about the God of the Bible. Continue reading »

An extraordinary website

On occasion I come across a website that blows me away.  And Newseum is one such site.  Very simple: presenting the front cover of newspapers from around the world.  The interface is amazing, simple click and drag.  And once you find a newspaper cover you like, you can open a large .pdf version.  So why am I excited by this?  Well first up as a website its usability is wonderful.  But the idea of being able to read the front page of newspapers from around the world is very cool.  What are the patterns, the trends?  What is important news?  This is a sociological treasure chest!  To check it out head to: Newseum .  Nice.

Top Speakers, Your Place, Your Timing, For Free

How would you like some of the greatest thinkers and practitioners in the world to come to your place to provide some top level training?  And all for free at a time that suits you! Three web sites that are worth carefully exploring is Ted.com, Pop!Tech and Charlie Rose.  They are full of stunning videos and podcasts by some of the brightest and finest thinkers in the world.  Well worth setting aside some time to dig into these treasures.  And don’t just limit yourself to your own discipline, spend some time checking out other areas to get another perspective on the world.

Check out this example from the Ted.com website entitled: Richard St. John: Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes.
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Get your head in the clouds

I got my first hotmail address in 1998 and I remember thinking how cool it was that I could access my email wherever I could get internet access. Well this convenience has now extended not only to email but to a range of applications such as word-processing, spreadsheets, image storage and presentations to name a few. It all comes under the umbrella of what is called cloud computing. What are the benefits of cloud computing?

• It enables people to collaborate on documents wherever they live.  An example is Google Docs which is a very simple to use word-processor in which others can access the document via the net and suggest changes, add comments etc.. Continue reading »
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The Reason Your Church Must Twitter

The world of Twitter is opening up at the moment as churches and organisations are attempting to work out how best to leverage this growing social network.  One resource you definitely should check out is the impressive e-book, The Reason Your Church Must Twitter by Anthony Coppedge.  It costs just US$5 and provides an excellent explanation of what Twitter is and why we in the church should consider it.  I caught up with Anthony recently and asked him a few questions about him and the book: Continue reading »

Growing Your Faith as a Person with a Mental Illness

It is an honour to welcome Therese J. Borchard as a guest blogger to Brownblog. Therese is the author of the hit daily blog “Beyond Blue” on Beliefnet.com, which is featured regularly on The Huffington Post and was voted by PsychCentral.com as one of the top 10 depression blogs. I invited Therese to write on growing your faith as a person with a mental illness, in part to encourage you if you have a mental illness, but also to reveal the challenges faced by those around us with a mental illness.  What follows is stirring stuff.  Therese writes,

This morning was fairly typical: I was both inspired and ticked off by the reading of the day, in Mark’s gospel, when Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever. Jesus grabs her hand and her fever immediately leaves.

“Nice, Jesus, good going with that one, ” I said to the Son of God, half sarcastically and half sincerely. Because all of us who live with severe depression, bipolar disorder, or any mood disorder know that our illness is chronic. Even on the good days, we wade through some pretty thick crap, and sometimes it feels like we spend the entire day on our knees, begging for that tap on the hand-when the negative thoughts will painlessly evaporate and our hippocampus will stretch instead of shrink, when all the cells housed in the prefrontal cortex of our brain get ready to party, and tell our nervous system that there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

But that’s not the way faith works when it comes to a mental illness. At least not in my life and in the lives of most of my readers.

The healing process is slow. Really bloody slow. Most often we take three steps backward for every four forward. Continue reading »

Eating Problems For Lunch

Recently a Facebook mate of mine by the name of Jay Raines published on his blog a great e-book called,  ‘Eating Problems For Lunch‘  Given how cool the book is (and free, yes here is the free lunch) I decided to get behind the scenes and find out a bit about the book and the man they call ‘Mighty Jayboy.’  (Ok so I made that name up…) So here is the Raines interview: Continue reading »

10 Tips For Starting a New Ministry

One of the things I have discovered I like doing is ministry start-ups.  In the past couple of years I have started a couple of significant ministries including paid government school Chaplaincy in New Zealand, administered by the LifeWalk trust.  This sees committed and compassionate Christians serving a school community a minimum of three days a week.  They have an office in the school and are treated as part of the staff team as they offer prayer support and pastoral care to students and staff.  Another ministry I started was the Anglican Cathedral in Second Life church plant which founded nearly two years ago, now offers 5 services, a Bible Study and a very lively discussion group each week as well as numerous informal pastoral conversations.  It has very quickly become a legitimate experience of church.

So from the hard slog of experience here are my 10 tips for starting a new ministry… Continue reading »

Book Review: Reaching Out in a Networked World

I have just finished reading Lynne Baab’s latest book, ‘Reaching Out in a Networked World: Expressing Your Congregation’s Heart and Soul .‘

It gets the Brownblog thumbs up as an excellent introductory resource for churches wanting to utilise the internet to promote and encourage their ministry.

Four standouts:

1) A good overview of what makes a great website

2) An excellent explanation of blogging.

3) Baab highlights the importance of the leadership and the wider congregation being involved in guiding the design of the website, and not just leaving it to a web designer.

4)  The point is made of the importance of making sure the values of the congregation are accurately expressed through the website.

My only concern with the book is Continue reading »