Video Transcript: Resourcing the Church

Welcome back to week 11, mental health integration part two, resourcing the  church. We are going to start this week with a quote from Stephen Fry, and then  we are going to jump in. So here is that quote. If you know someone who's  depressed, please resolve never to ask them why depression isn't just isn't a  straightforward response to a bad situation. Depression just is like the weather.  Try to understand the blackness, lethargy, hopelessness and loneliness that  they're going through. Be there for them when they come through the other side. It's hard to be a friend to someone who's depressed, but it's one of the kindest,  noblest and best things you will ever do. As a church, our job is to do the  kindest, best and noblest things. And being a church working with mental health  issues, we can start to do those. We're just trying to build them well. Now we  talked last time about how to build this in layers, and those would continue to go  out. We've already worked on our theology of mental health so that we're  consistent in our language and our speech and our understanding of what  mental health issues are and how they impact each other. Now we're going to  start talking about resourcing. And the reason resourcing is so important, most  churches that I have talked to have a resource list in place, but often that  resource list is old. It's out of date. The therapists on there often aren't practicing anymore, or they've moved out of state, and the resource lists often also don't  actually have the information on them that you need to have on them. So I want  to go through how to build out your resource list to make sure that it's great. And then in the next section, we'll continue on our sticky note with preparing and  breaking stigmas and doing those sorts of things so that all will be in actually,  the last section of this week. This section, we're going to be talking just about  that resource list, how to build it out. Who's on there? Why? How all of that fun  stuff. So what you need to know first, do the good thing. We need help with this  mental health thing in order to get through well. So let's go ahead and do the  good things. Here is our to do list. We need to build a resource list. We need to  prepare, we need to break stigma. We need to make space, and we need to do  them in that order. Otherwise, we'll try and do too many things simultaneously.  So for this section, we are going to work on building that resource list, if we do  not have a resource list, and we work on breaking stigma and creating space  and doing all these things. Oftentimes, we have needs that we don't have  answers for while we're trying to manage a program that's not boring, while  we're also trying to figure out what's going on with managing volunteers and  everything else, you just get too much layered on top of each other, and it's  really hard to manage. It's much, much, much easier to build it beforehand. And  as somebody who decided to build a plane in midair learn from my mistakes, it's  just so much easier and better. So why your resource list first? It's just like you  said, just like we just said, if you need a resource for someone with depression  and you just have it that makes your life so much easier. Your goal with working  with mental health as a church is that you are going to move the power down 

the organization as much as possible. You do not want as the senior pastor, or  as any pastor, to have every need come across your desk and you to be the  person responsible for making that need happen. That's way too much. If a  quarter of your church comes tomorrow and says, Hey, we have mental health  needs too. Where do we find this resource and this resource and this resource  and hey, I need this spiritual guidance. I also need this other thing. You will be  overwhelmed before you even start at something. But if you put systems in  place to push that power down the system and enable other people to share  their stories and volunteer and work to make a difference, you give them a  voice, and you allow yourself the time and the space to do the job that you need  to do, because your job responsibilities as a pastor aren't going to change.  They're not going to get less because you start a mental health ministry. They  might change. They might improve your church. They might do some really cool  things. But it's definitely not going to be that you suddenly have nothing else on  your to do list. You still have. A job that you have to do, and if you're bi  vocational, or something like that, you already have two jobs that you have to  do. So trying to figure out how to do that, and often means figuring out how to be scrappy and put things together before you need them, so that those resources  can be as effective and efficient as possible. For you, what do you need on your  resource list? Now, a lot of these things are going to look very familiar, because  they're things that we already talked about when we talked about getting your  own personal therapist, but there's some additional pieces of information that we need to talk about, because you need to break out your resource list with extra  things than you do for an individual. For instance, with therapists as an  individual, I need a total of one good therapist to see me. They need to be a  good fit, but I just need one. If you are building a resource list for a church, you  probably need several, because even good therapists might not be a good fit for your people. For instance, my wife's therapist is phenomenal. She was not a  very good fit at all for a friend of mine who understands what good therapists  are, and he just said, She's phenomenal for somebody, but not for me. She's not what I need right now. That's great. That's not a problem. Things are bad fit  sometimes. But because of that, you don't just need one therapist on your list.  You need several on your resource list. You will need therapists, you will need  psychiatrists, you will need community mental health services, and you will need community resources, and ideally, you will have more than one of all of these.  Now with therapists. We've already talked about the quality of a therapist. We  talked about that in finding your own therapist weeks ago. So if you need to go  revisit that, please go revisit that. The really brief version of that is they need to  be a good therapist. If you need to find good therapists, the best place to look is, if you have a one name for a good therapist, ask them who other good  therapists are. It's almost like good therapists travel in packs. They'll know each  other. Another great place to look for great therapists is if you contact any 

schools of therapists that are in your area, living in Denver, there are currently, I  believe, eight schools turning out therapists in the Denver Metro area. If I would  go talk to the faculty of those schools, they will tell me which therapists they  would recommend, and if I follow those recommendations, I will eventually find  some really, really great therapists. If I also know that some of the schools in my  area are faith based and I'm Faith based, I might find some great faith based  therapists because of that. For instance, in Denver, Denver seminary and  Colorado Christian University are both in Denver, and both of them have  masters in counseling, licensed or masters in counseling degree programs  towards licensure. Well, that helps a lot. Now you know that there's a couple  programs that are turning out therapists. And if you go talk to the professors of  those programs, they probably know who some great therapists are who even  match your worldview. That's fantastic. So go find, go find the first place to find  us. If you need additional ways to find resources or additional ways to find  counselors, ask other pastors in your area. If you still can't find resources, look  for telehealth resources. Especially since the pandemic started, there are a lot of telehealth resources available. One of the organizations that comes to mind is  called sondermind. All they are is telehealth therapy, and now it looks like they  might be branching into psychiatry. I don't remember if they are or not, but look  at what resources are available and find what's going to work best for your area. Now that you've found some therapists who are hopefully really good, you need  to ask, okay, what is their specialization? Now this matters a lot on your list,  because you'll build a resource list, there's always a resource list. Put down their specialization, what it is, and also put down what kind of populations they work  with within that specialization, you want the most information possible to make  sure that you can make the best possible referral. So just get it all on paper. A  key thing here is, is this therapist faith based in therapy? This can be a really,  really important thing for some of your folks. For some of your folks, it may not  be helpful at all, but both of my counselors that I've had in the last 10 years have been Christians, and they've walked me through identity issues and issues that  to be blunt, I couldn't have walked through this way without a faith based  clinician. Since your clinician is getting into the muck of your life, sharing the  same faith and the same worldview can be really a positive experience and  really hopeful. However, that may not be the case, or it may not be as necessary with community or psychiatric resources. It really is the case with therapy,  though, the last thing on this list is biblical counseling, and there are master's  programs in biblical counseling, and some churches really promote biblical  counseling. Biblical counseling is not the same as licensed professional  counseling, and in some cases, it can be really helpful in some cases of  especially minor things that you're walking through, I've seen some great  outcomes. I've also seen incredibly terrible outcomes in cases of severe mental  illness or severe trauma. So I'm not going to say this is what you should do, but 

if you have biblical counseling that comes up that specific term, I personally  would not recommend a biblical counselor I never have because I believe  there's a lot of other counselors who are better trained and who do better work.  I'm sure there are some phenomenal, phenomenal biblical counselors who  would love to prove me wrong on that, but I haven't seen it yet. Now, when we  talk about therapists, when a therapist graduates from school, they'll have at  least their masters, and they'll graduate in generally doing talk therapy, and  there are a lot of different modalities of therapy that they can interact with. So  here are a few of those. You want all of these if possible on your list. If there's an exception to that, it's probably the bottom one. But you want as many modalities  as possible nail down on your list, and you need to know what those modalities  are and what they mean. And there is more than is on this list, because there  are so many, there are a lot of different types of therapy, so I highly recommend  find a good therapist and then start going through the rabbit hole, or find a good  program and start going through the rabbit hole. But here's some ones that you  need to be aware of. With trauma you want specific therapies. A lot of the time  you'll see EMDR after a trauma therapist name. That's because they do a  therapy modality called EMDI, or eye movement rapid desensitization. So this is  something that actually rewires your brain in the case of trauma. It's been  proven incredibly helpful for like veterans and rape victims and all sorts of things like that. You want those resources. So if you find somebody write that down,  you'll also want addictions. Therapists dealing with addictions is not like dealing  with normal talk therapy. There are specific things that you need to know. It  rewires your brain. It changes how you think so you want specifically, addiction  therapists. Addictions therapists normally have what's called their CAC their  certified addictions counselor. It's a post grad licensure or certification, and  there's different levels of those certifications. You can have, like a CAC one, a  CAC two, a CAC three, and that the higher the number, the more training this  person has had. On a side note, having a CAC or any of these other things does not necessarily mean that you are the best counselor in that specific  specialization. It does, however, mean that you've received a standard level of  training. So often those two go together. Often counselors who are the best in  their field, often have that special, that standard level of training, and then  they've done extra work. But it doesn't necessarily mean they have so you're  going to need to feel that out. Ask some other therapists, ask some people in  your community and get to the bottom of it next, there's a marriage and family  therapist that one is actually a degree program, an LMFT, instead of an LPC,  and that works with marriage and family. There's also post graduate programs  that also work with marriage and families. Sort of work and our additional  certifications, those can be really helpful as well. The final one on this list is  family systems therapies. There are a few different types of systems therapists.  There's like, IFS therapists, there's specifically systems therapists. You want to 

find the ones that are right for you. Okay? You may not be able to find a couple  of these. Just do your best, and as you come up, you'll find the modalities that  you need. There's other disorders or other specializations. Rather like every  single mental disorder you can name, probably has someone who specializes in it. You have counselors who specialize in eating disorders and counselors that  specialize in depression and anxiety and trauma. You have counselors who  specialize in autism, you name it. Finding someone who specializes in the thing  that you are looking for, especially when someone is newly diagnosed, is really  important. When they're down, down the road a little while, when they've done  some serious work, it's not nearly as important, because they've already done  so much work, they might be working on something else at this point, and now  they're looking for a specialization that fits what they're going through. You also  will look for people who specialize in different populations, like men or women or kids or teens. Every counselor is going to have a specific population they  generally work best with. Line those up and mark those down. Because if you  can line up somebody who works with who you know is a woman with someone  who works with women, that's just probably going to fit better. I know therapists  who work specifically with moms or specifically with teens, or specifically with  kids under age 10, whatever it is that you're looking for, there's probably a  therapist out there who does it if you're in a larger metropolitan area, if you're in  a smaller area, it might be harder to find, or you might have to find online  resources either way. Go start digging. Go see what you can find. Go find those  specializations, though, and see what you can dig up. Cost that is going to be a  big thing. Some of the counselors that I know charge upwards of 180 almost  $200 an hour. Some of them charge about $100 an hour. And some internship  programs are in the area of five to $25 so if a person has no money, it's probably important to have some low cost options there. If somebody has just needs the  best therapist available, it's important to have those options available as well.  Go and find those out. Some therapists take insurance. Most of the best  therapists I know do not take insurance, and that's because the amount of time  that it takes them to do the paperwork. It's just not worth it. They'd rather just  see an extra cash paying client. So go ahead, do the research. See what you  can find. Put your list together, and that will help you know, when I have these  needs, I have these therapists available, you will also have needs that you  haven't even thought of yet. They will come up. You'll find out that now you have  someone in your church who's adopting, and you need someone who works  specifically with attachment disorders and adoption. If you have a decent list of  therapists, you are much more likely to find somebody a lot of the time good  therapists kind of travel in packs. So find some good therapists. Those  therapists will know the other resources, ask and tap into your network as you  need more of your network, as you need it to grow, let it grow itself. You also  need psychiatric resources. Specifically you need psychiatrists. Those are a 

great place to start, but you can also look at mental health centers because they have psychiatrists on board or other qualified specialists. Sometimes, in some  cases, you can use GPs too. We talked about this as well weeks ago when we  were talking about meds. So please find those psychiatrists and find those  mental health centers and other qualified specialists. The thing about running a  church is that you will probably need the centers and the major groups for areas  around your church. For instance, the church that we used to belong to had  people from five different counties going to it. It was about 1000 people that  attended that church. But that meant that there were five different counties of  mental health systems that you had to tap into if you wanted to actually serve  those populations. So find the other major mental health centers. Find the other  resources that you need, and not just exactly where you are, but you may have  to build a radius that you start finding some of those resources around. Next  about psychiatric resources. They often go in through insurance, some mark that down, and there are often exceptions to that. Some of the exceptions are in bad  cases. You want to go through things like research universities. For example,  the CU depression center in Colorado, that's a research universe, a research  center attached to the University of Colorado. You can also think of some of the  famous ones, like Johns Hopkins University or the Mayo Clinic. There's these  groups that do just fantastic work, please. If you have a really, really bad case,  consider these. If you have not been able to find good treatment for community  mental health. They often offer a number of resources. Often, they'll have  therapists, peer support specialists, who are people with mental illnesses, who  are in training in order to help other people. They'll often have volunteer  programs or different drop in programs. They'll often have different ways of  meeting needs, you name it, find out, is it what? What is it your community  mental health center? And find out what they take as far as insurance or  payment. Some of them will take no payment if necessary. Some will take  insurance. Some will take Medicaid. Find out, oftentimes they'll let you do tours  so you can see what's there, and you can kind of break the ice and know that  you're sending someone to someplace good, or if you feel really uncomfortable,  know that you can try and find another mental health center. Either way you  want to know the people involved, if possible, know also that they're doing a lot  more telehealth work now since covid. So those are those are definitely more  available regardless of where you are. When it comes to community sources,  look for nonprofits in your area, especially that support outside needs. For  instance, you have drop in centers and support groups. Resource navigation in  Denver, if you wanted to look for some of these, you might find there are nets of  resources that don't have anything to do with mental health that you will need.  For instance, there's transitional housing, there are legal aid clinics, there are  other things that you will need, just because it's good to have access to those  things, and building partnerships with those other groups and ministries is 

beneficial for everyone involved. So it's just a really great idea. We're all in the  same kingdom. We're all moving the same direction. Let's go there together  instead of as separate pieces. Also, you can see peer support is there, and  suicide prevention, you can tap into resources such as mental health first aid, or  there's even a couple Christian groups that are doing suicide prevention training  that are just fantastic. So I will leave some of those resources in the notes for  this class as well, so that you have them, but please consider things like mental  health first aid or soul shop or any of those. You'll also want to know what  community resources are available, like volunteer arrangements, storytelling  groups, upstream opportunities, what what nonprofits or ministries or groups of  people are doing different work that can help improve mental health in ways that are unconventional. I talked a little bit about this earlier, things like project  helping in Denver. There's groups that are doing storytelling, there's groups that  are doing healing through dance or yoga or meditation. There's a lot of different  groups doing a lot of different things. Some of them are going to line up with the  mission over your church. And what you need to do to help find those. You'll also find that there are ministries around your city. Potentially, they're already  partnering with some of these. You might be able to piggyback on their list and  find a lot of resources that way as well. Well. Now you've built your list, you've  got it. Here's a list of providers. Now you are ready to take on some serious  issues, and I'm excited for you, because this is where the real work begins. This  is where it makes a difference. So thank you for doing this preliminary work.  Now let's get to the fun stuff. I'll see you in the next section.