Video Transcript: Changing the Church

We're back again week 11, part three, and here we are. We have now built our  theology of mental health, we have now built our resource list, and we are ready to see what is next it is to prepare. Now I know what you're thinking. I just did a  lot of preparation. Why on earth would I need to prepare even more Well, I'll tell  

you. The first thing you need to do prepare is find at least one person who  understands the system. You need to know at least one person who can  navigate the mental health system in your area. Ideally, they go to your church.  The reason you want to have this person is ideally you would like to designate a  point person that is not you. I repeat, if you are the pastor of this church, I do not want you to be the point person for everything. I would really like you to delegate these things and help empower other people to step into their giftings and  talents and abilities, so you don't need to burn yourself out by trying to do  everything. So please find someone who understands the system, who is willing  to learn how to navigate the system. That may be someone who already has a  mental illness. It might be someone who has a friend or family member who has  a mental illness. It might be a therapist, but you're going to want somebody you  can use, who is just just almost like your point person with some of this.  Furthermore, you want at least one person willing to share their story. Now it  might take you a while to find this person, because they might be in your  congregation. You might have to find someone outside your congregation,  whatever it happens to be, but find someone who's willing to share their story,  you can begin that search now you do not need that person yet, but you do  need to start the search next. After you start that search, you want to consider a  training for your staff. I have three listed here that are all fantastic in different  ways. Mental Health First Aid is a training that is specific to helping people who  are in like suicidal crises and helping them walk through that well, how do you  basically triage somebody with a mental health issue, find out what the next step is, and get them to that next step? Mental Health First Aid. It's called that  because it's basically first aid. This is what you do until the paramedics get  there. So same thing applies. This is what you do until you can get them the  help that they actually need long term, but they need something. So this is how  you can be prepared to get them that something. Soul shot is actually a  Christian group based out of Pennsylvania, at least they were. I think they're  also working in other parts of the country. They do trainings all over the United  States, though, and they do suicide prevention trainings. Want to learn how to  prevent someone from dying in your church call soul shop. They'll arrange  trainings, and they'll help you learn how to do that. They're fantastic. Also listed  here is sources of strength. Those are training specifically for helping teens.  They're also fantastic. If you can train your staff so that they feel prepared. That  gives you a level of confidence. We're not just talking about being prepared for  the sake of being prepared. Now we're also talking about how we step into a  room. Do we have the confidence because we have the trainings that we need 

in order to just deliver good work, because that means having the knowledge  and having the confidence, and sometimes the trainings can help build that. It  also means that you have the same expectations and the same shared  language, if you do something like a staff training around these now, in a lot of  cases, you can get some of these staff trainings even for free. When I was  working alongside different mental health groups in the city and county of  Denver and some of the other counties around, it was amazing, because we  could find free mental health first aid classes all over, and if we couldn't find free  ones, it was only 30 or $40 to get through a training. So to train your staff, it's  great, and there's a lot of opportunities to do that. I don't know how that works  internationally, but I know in the States, it's hugely available. And mental first  Mental Health First Aid, I believe, was not developed in the United States. It  was, I believe, developed in Australia. So you already have your resources  there. So you start by doing your training. You learn how to identify people who  are going with through suicidal ideation. You learn how to. Step in and intervene. You learn about your next steps. You learn how to call emergency paramedics if  you need to in order to get somebody some help. You learn how to work with the national suicide prevention hotlines or whatever you need to do. This is where  you find those specific resources to make sure your staff all feel prepared.  Specifically make sure your youth pastor, if you have a youth pastor is prepared  to deal with this stuff, the rates of suicidal ideation among teens are insane. If  your youth pastor is not prepared to work and do a suicide prevention plan or to  help somebody walk through preventing a suicide by doing an intervention, they  need to be so please, please help them get trained next. We are prepared. We  have our people now. We have we have our person who has a story. We have  our person who navigates the system. We have been trained as a staff. We  have our resource list. We have our theology of mental health. We are in great  shape. We have built the foundation that we need to build a house on. Now it's  time for us to build that house. The first thing that you need to know about that  house is it has to be spoken out loud, right? I showed this earlier, because  silence is violence. Stigmas around mental health mean that people do not feel  free to share or are scared of having mental health problems. The only way to  break those stigmas is to talk about them. So you have to find a way to talk  about them. And I will say that the way you break stigma in your church is  critically important. Stigmas must be broken on stage with real people sharing  their stories. You cannot put that you are dealing with mental health in the  bulletin and not announce it. There is a reason that stigmas exist. It's because  people don't think it's safe to say in your space. And those stigmas exist whether you have tried to put them in place or not, unless you have been incredibly  active at sharing your story, being vulnerable, and pushing the envelope on what people will say, as far as pushing into a vulnerability on a regular basis, the odds are there are significant stigmas in your church about whether or not people 

wanting to share these things that said you cannot do a class in your basement,  and just put that in the bulletin. You cannot get people together and just put it in  the bulletin. This is something that you need to do from stage, ideally from the  front of your church, with a live person. Now, if you need to film it, because  they're going to have a hard time getting through their story. Go ahead and film  it. But this needs to be somebody that is relatable. This needs to be somebody  that ideally is in your own congregation, who has a story around these things,  who can tell their story and talk about what God's doing with them. And the  reason this has to be in the biggest stage possible is because when it is you  send an incredibly strong signal that is is safe here. This is something that we're  tackling. This is something that we care about, and this is an us problem, not a  them problem. We have a problem with mental health, and we are dealing with it together. You could not send a more powerful and amazing message to your  church if you wanted to. So please, on Sunday morning, get it done in front of  the entire congregation, share the story. You can determine how long that story  should be when I've been asked to share my story, generally, it's between five  and 10 minutes. But I've also been asked to preach sermons on those stories.  I've also been asked to do breakouts afterwards. You name it. What fits most for  your congregation is great, as long as you start in front of the whole  congregation, and it doesn't need to be long, you can do something for three or  four minutes, and that would be great, which can seem like an eternity on  Sunday morning. But please take the time. This may be one of the most  important things that you'll do all year on a Sunday morning. So now that you've  spoken in front of the state, in front of your entire congregation, you have begun  to make to break stigma. You have said, this is important to us. We care about  this. Here is somebody in our congregation who's dealing with this is an us  problem. You have built the foundation of your house. You have built everything  well. You have done fantastic work. Now it's time for you to finish that work. Now the last thing to do is to make space. This conversation is not a one Sunday  done thing. You cannot just have one person talk about it and expect this  problem to take care of itself. This is a problem that number that a number of  people in your church are probably dealing with right now, that they need a  space to process in, that they need a safe place to be in. They're questioning all  those things that we've spoken about earlier in this course, about their identities, about who God is about, what their capacity is about, what this means for them  now, and they need a safe place to start wrestling through those things your  church can provide that. And just by breaking stigma, it's already starting to the  number of people who have said, You did that thing on a Sunday morning to a  church that we worked with, you did that thing on a Sunday morning that was life changing to me. I want to be a part of a church that's actually talking about these subjects. It's huge. It's absolutely huge. So please address it. Push on it, do it,  and then work to create space, because you need a place for people to start 

working these issues out. Because people do not heal alone. They need a  space to work things out in now, there are a number of groups for churches. I of  course, I'm going to list my quiet cave first because I started the organization. I  still am on their board. I love their work. It's amazing that is a resource that you  can pick up, train people within your church to lead groups that are peer led  groups on mental health issues, and do a lot of this theological integration that  we're doing now. There's also Fresh Hope. Those are long term groups. My  quiet cave has both short and long term groups, but they do more short term  groups. Fresh Hope has focused only on long term groups, and they're fantastic. Brad, who runs fresh hope, is a good friend of mine. He's one of the most  amazing people in the world. They do great work as well. They're based out of  Nebraska. There's also a Grace alliance based out of Texas. They do some  great integration work as well, based on the research that Matthew Stafford did,  he originally helped start the organization, and Joe Padilla over there does an  amazing job. I highly recommend you get in touch with some of these  organizations. All of them are happy to work with you, all of them, and they have to do their own fundraising and their own work to make sure they can provide  resources at either a free or incredibly cheap cost to you. So I know that just like CLI, where you're getting this incredible content for like free, this is an incredible  way to get incredible content at a really low price, and build partnerships and get trainings and all of those things. Now when you build a support group, if you  decide to build a support group, there are a few things you need to know. One of those things that you need to know is support groups always work best if you  have someone who is leading a support group who has a story of mental health. You may have therapists in your church, but you need to have someone who  gives everyone else the gift of going second. That is to say you need someone  who can tell their story and invite the rest of the group to share, because  vulnerability is generally matched. So if you can have someone who has a story  of mental health, and you can get them trained to lead one of these programs,  you can actually build a very, very deep, very, very intimate group very, very  quickly, where they can do some incredible work. I have found it also very  helpful to often have a therapist in the room with like fresh hope and mental  health, Grace Alliance. That's not necessarily part of their programs. It used to  be part of My Quiet cave at all points in time. The reason being, if you can get a  therapist in the room, it's great to have somebody who can have their eyes open and understand what's going on in certain situations with the group dynamic. For me, this became real when we did a group and we had three people with  borderline personality disorder out of six. And I told you, when we were working  through the disorders that that's a pastor killer, we had to break out and assign  seats and figure out where we were going to sit, in conjunction with the other  members, so that we could make sure this group ran smoothly and didn't just  completely implode. Having another mental health professional or having a 

mental health professional in that space, it's not going to make sure that  everything runs perfectly, but if something looks like it might go sideways, they  can provide the support to make sure that it doesn't go as sideways as it could. I would highly recommend that. I would highly also recommend talking to your  insurance and working through and making sure that that licensed counselor, if  they're licensed, is not going to be held responsible for everything that happens  in that group, especially if you're leading a peer led group where they are only  there to observe and help out. So that's something that you need to check with  with your groups around that church. Addressing mental health challenges  changes who your church can reach when you start addressing areas like  mental health, it means that you're starting to break down stigmas that are  coming towards your church in different areas. This means it becomes a safer  place for a lot of different things. It becomes a place that people want to call  home when they've often been burned by the church. I cannot highly  recommend this enough like do it. The other thing that I can tell you is it changes the DNA of the church for the better. We talked to one of our partner churches,  after we had helped them implement a lot of these things, and Dean, who's their  pastor, came up to me, he said, this actually changed the way our church was  happening, because people started being vulnerable with each other, and we  hadn't had that little level of vulnerability ever. So it's almost like we had this  group, this mental health group, and it's almost like this vulnerability and this  incredible just confidence and authenticity started rippling through our church,  and it changed who we are as a church, because we were dealing more  authentically with each other when you start opening up avenues for people to  Talk about the hard things going on in their lives, they will and when you say, this is a judgment free place where we can work through these things, and where we can offer solutions together, and we can work through hard things together.  People are dying for those sorts of opportunities, so when they take them, they  are so glad they have those opportunities. I believe very strongly that creating  authentic spaces where people can be fully themselves and vulnerably  themselves is one of the highest callings of the church. Right? We can go back  to I John walk in the light as He is in the light. There's this element of being  together and being vulnerable in the same space that is so important. And as  long as on Sunday morning, we're coming and showing up and talking about the score of the last football game or how you did at golf, you're missing all of that  depth. And if you can build that depth Absolutely, you can talk about the score of the last football game or your last game at golf, but there's already the invitation  to work on such deeper and harder things. And that invitation and having that  means that your church has the opportunity to continue to push into hard things, and it will be a place when people come where they go, Wow, those people talk  about really hard things, and they don't just talk about them like they're really  happy with their lives because they're dealing with stuff. It's just different than 

I've ever seen. It's just like a group of people who are just authentic. I've never  seen anything like this that ripple changes when you create space for people  who are in hard places to have a home. And that would be my challenge to you.  My second challenge for you is I've read the stats on church leadership. I know  that 70% of pastors deal with depression at one point. This may not be a  ministry that you're building for yourself, but please build the ministry that you  would want to go to, and then, knowing that 70% of pastors will deal with  depression at some point, get the help that you need. Find a therapist, find a  group of people who care about you, if you're part of a denomination, tie into  that denomination and see your other pastor friends well, but also make sure  that it's a safe place. Some denominations I've talked to are literally the most  safe and healthy places for pastors. You can imagine. There are these beautiful  places where people are authentically themselves, and where they push and  drive each other to more and then from other denominations, I've just seen that  they just kind of get together and they're just not that there's just not that  camaraderie. Or I've seen other denominations where there is actually a threat  felt, because this isn't a safe place. If you need a safe place, that's okay. There  are safe places, there are safe people, there are safe pastors. So please, please do your work, find healing yourself, and that healing can continue to flow  through you. On a final note, Henri Nouwen is one of my favorite authors, talks  about the wounded healer. And in this course, we've talked a lot about how the  light shines through. How Our scars shine like dark stars, the work that you do  around mental health or the work that you do in your personal life, about  anything that work when you pour in deep, those areas change people's lives  deeper than anything else you can say. When you are able to point to your scars and say, Jesus made me whole here, and this is how he did it, and this is the  story of how he did it, people will engage that story differently than anything else you will ever say, regardless of how good your theology is, or regardless of how  good any of your other doctrinal bits are, when you can say this part was broken and Jesus healed it, this was sozo towards shalom, there is a power that rests in that that is just beautiful. Isaiah 53 says, By His stripes, we were healed in the  King James, or by his wounds, we were healed in most other translations, the  idea being Jesus's lashings, Jesus's scar, Jesus's wounds, those were the  things that brought us healing and fullness, and as the church, it is our  opportunity to offer healing to the rest of the world through our own wounds,  often through our own vulnerability and through our own courageous sharing of  that next week is going to be a summary, and we're going to touch a couple  different topics. Thank you for this time. If you have additional questions, feel  free to go through this section again. I will also provide my contact information at the end of this in case you ever need to follow up or you have additional  questions. Also, the team here at CLI is just incredible, so you can always 

contact them as well. I will see you next time so we can continue talking about  faith and mental health.