[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same.
Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes Total Sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Dorcas, I have to say, I really enjoy chatting with you. Every time we do it, whether it is working when we edited together or when we have just been chatting for the podcast, or various things, I'm always so thrilled to see your face on the other side of my screen and today is no exception. So thanks for being here.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: Of course, thanks for having me. And I feel the same.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Well, that's very sweet, Dorcas. I am so glad we're going to talk today. We're going to talk another time for the other study that we worked on together. But today, the next in this podcast series with IVP and pacts is on the stage study that you wrote called Mental Health Experiencing God's Care for Our Mind, Body and Spirit. And I am holding this in my hand and it is a beautiful study. I was so impressed, even though I felt like I kind of got some sneak peeks into what PAX was doing and know the good work of ivp. When this came into my hand hands, I was like, oh my goodness. It even feels soft on the outside somehow. And it is so beautiful and colorful on the inside. But congratulations on this study. It is really, really beautiful.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Thank you. Yes. This has been a long time in the making. I think we started working on this maybe four years ago.
So it's, it's lovely to see it in print, to, to feel the, the texture of the COVID and the pages, as he said. And yeah, it's gorgeous. They did a wonderful job together.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: They did. It is beautiful.
So this Bible study on mental health, as I mentioned, is part of the partnership between made for PACs and IVP, and it's a six week interactive Bible study.
And I want to ask you, because this is part of a series we mentioned in the episode with Tiffany that we've got one on migration, there's another one on peace, there's another one on reconciliation, which are all topics that are so. The conversations are so needed in the church today. But I'm wondering, what was it for you that like, particularly grabbed your interest and made you want to work on this particular project? With this particular topic, I think I.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Have to start with saying this is a very personal topic for me. Mental health is something that I have wrestled with for. For probably more than two decades at this point. It is a reality that is just part of my lived experience day in and day out. I started experiencing very severe anxiety in my 20s and have had significant bouts of depression here and there along the way.
And so that certainly is something that speaks to me, this topic.
I also feel like it is so common. Right. I think many of us have heard this statistic. One in five Americans struggle with mental health.
At some point, maybe up to a third of us will have some sort of episode or diagnosis related to mental health. The younger generations, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, the numbers of young people struggling with anxiety, depression and other disorders, they're all rising. And so this is a challenge that is here. It's in every family, it's in every community, and yet the church almost never talks about it.
And yet it is something that so many people wrestle with.
But we're not getting good guidance, teaching, even just encouragement and comfort from the one place that I think we really should be finding it. And. And so I would love for this to be a resource to equip people like me who struggled with mental health, who really, I want to understand it from a scriptural, spiritual perspective and to know, you know what, where is God in all of this? Where is the Bible in all of this? As well as communities who care or want to learn how to care for those who wrestle with mental health.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. And I hadn't even thought about it. I'm like, I think that for some, and I almost hate to say this, but I think that for some, if. If you said, oh, my goodness, there's this great Bible study coming out this summer, the topic is mental health. For some, that wouldn't even go together, like, that would feel like an oxymoron to say, I've got a great Bible study. Do you want to come at six weeks? What's the topic? Mental health. They'd be like, what?
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
There, I think, is this strange thing that has happened in a lot of Christian communities where we have almost conflated spirituality and mental health so that we think spiritual ideas, responses, practices are all that you need in order to be emotionally well.
And so therefore, if we are already addressing those things, then we don't need to separately talk about anxiety or depression.
So, yeah, I think that there is a lot of confusion. A lot of people just sort of not knowing what to think, even if they should be thinking about mental health in church context. And the reality is, I think because of that, there's quite a bit of shame. There is the.
There's already stigma and shame around mental health in almost every society, unfortunately. And then you add on top of that this sense of if you are struggling with your mental health, that must mean that you are spiritually unwell or you are not as spiritual as you should be, or you're not following the practices that we recommend in church. Right. You're not reading your Bible enough, you're not praying enough.
And those are the responses that we typically hear that I have heard myself from other Christians. And that makes it really hard to be transparent and open about, hey, this is what's going on with me.
I need help, I need support.
The church just does not always feel like a safe place to have those conversations.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Oh my goodness, you're so right about that. And that makes me. Oh my goodness. That makes me want to jump ahead. And I won't go there entirely. But I will say that was one of the wonderful things as I was going through this study is I. So let me take it back a notch. When I have been and being trained to theologize, right.
To look at the Bible through different lenses, I would say I've learned, okay, I can look through. So let's use some kind of easy ones. I say easy, but they're not easy.
If you look at the Bible through a feminist lens or through a post colonial lens or through a liberative lens, you can see things that you haven't seen before. And that doesn't mean that every single scripture, every single verse is going to be helpful for you to look at them through this one lens. But you could say, oh my goodness, I can, I can see something here that I haven't seen before.
And when I feel like that was one of the things that was done in the study really well were some of the scriptures that said, what if we read this and we put this lens of mental health as we read this scripture, what would we see that was different than reading that same one before?
I think there was.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:33] Speaker C: It was so.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: It was so good. I think there were, I mean, there were essays, there were some of your writings that did that. And I'm like, oh my goodness. You know, I'm thinking right now, I didn't flip, didn't dog ear this page, but I'm like, I think Andrew Riera had a Rilera, had a good one on that you had someone, some ones on Jesus. Even where I was like, oh my goodness. Like, what if we looked at the things that Jesus was walking through through the lens of mental health? Like, how would that help us? If he was really fully human and fully divine, then he's walking through these things, embodied this mind, body and spirit, as the subtitle says, and he's dealing with some of these things. It just felt so helpful to put that lens on Scripture and read it through this lens of mental health.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: Yes. Even for me, it was a bit of a revelation when I was putting this study together of, you know, mental health is all over the Bible.
And so often we sort of skip over those parts or we don't fully entrust the characters in the Bible with their full humanity. Right. Like Elijah is another great example, David's a great example, Jeremiah, of these heroes of the faith, these individuals that we admire so deeply, but they struggle. They had these very, very dark moments, dark seasons in their lives when they were wrestling with strong emotions and depression and anxiety and who knows what else. Right. I mean, Elijah at one point wishes to die. Right. This is, this is serious. This is not just a passing. I feel a little bit blue today. But these are serious emot and mental health struggles that they are dealing with. And I am so grateful that they are part of Scripture because it's part of what it is to be human. Right. And, and so I think it's absolutely worth looking at their examples and understanding. For one thing, it didn't make them less spiritual. It didn't make God love them any less. It didn't make them any less capable of contributing to the work of God in really powerful ways. Right. They are as much a part of the story of God and God's people as anybody who, you know, had a very sunny, optimistic disposition. Right. So there's, there isn't shame in that. That is just part of the story. It's part of the journey of being human, of walking with God, of, I think fully embracing all that this world is. Because we know that there is hardship and there is suffering in this world. And, and that is, that is so much of, of the story of what it is to, to follow God.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for elaborating on that. I'm, I'm really grateful I did. I completely forgot about Elijah. I was thinking of David too. But yes, these, this is not something that is just passing, as you said, but let's let them have their full humanity.
Let's just let them have their full humanity.
This brings me to a little bit of how the study is organized. And I want to mention this because there are statements that guide this study. And I found each of them as a thesis for the section to be so incredibly helpful, even just to meditate on those ideas, because they are. Well, I say they are true, but also they are.
They resist some of what we've talked about, of what we. Of maybe how the church traditionally and even right now is. I say traditionally, recent, traditionally is. Is. Is addressing mental health and maybe kind of what. What we might be hearing from our varying communities. And. And they are. They are these. I just want to say them real quick and then we can talk about them. But. So, as I mentioned, there are four, and they have different names in this.
In this study. The first one, there's. It's called the manifesto statement. And it reads like this.
Beauty and brokenness coexist in our stories. And I'm like, I feel like we just stop right there and we can write a whole study, do a whole podcast on just that one. Beauty and brokenness coexist in our stories.
The second one that moves along in this study is the myth statement. And the myth reads like this. And you already alluded to it. Faith is all I need.
This is what we hear when we talk about mental health, especially in some church circles.
Next, the material statement, Jesus experiences our mental health journey with us.
That, again, feels like a whole study in and of itself. And then finally, the motion statement, caring. Oh, this one was so powerful for me. Caring for our mental health is a sacred practice.
So it's those four that are really guiding this study.
And I'm wondering what about those statements feel, I don't know, particularly relevant for you, given the things that we've talked about right now? How do those jive kind of with what people might be hearing or experiencing? How do those maybe resist what people are hearing and experiencing? And how can those encourage us, challenge us as we think about our own mental health journeys or the mental health struggles of those people who we love?
[00:15:39] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I think, as we've already been talking about, mental health is so often left unaddressed.
It's just not talked about, it's ignored. And so I think, particularly with this study, there was a need to just name it, to put it out there, like, you know what these are, especially the myth one, faith is all I need.
These are things that so many churches, individuals believe, and yet nobody ever says it in a really clear black and white way.
So we wanted to just name it, put it out there. Not shy away from it and kind of force ourselves to confront this and be like, is this really what we believe?
And. And then I think the other three are. Are meant to be the truths that counter the myth. Right. They're all these big ideas that are about our own experience, who God is, who Jesus is, and how we as children of God are connected to that.
Right. And so it was certainly our hope, when we at PAX were putting this together, to weave all of those elements and make it clear, as we've already discussed, that mental health is.
It is part of who we are. It is part of who God created us to be.
And it's part of our spiritual walk in discipleship. And so there should not need to be any shying away from it, any hiding from is not a place of shame.
It is something to be brought into the light and to be addressed. As much as we talk about people having physical illnesses, as we talk about people having disabilities, as we talk about grief, and we should be talking about mental health, because those are all challenges that people walk through in their everyday lives. And God cares about every aspect of our everyday lives.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
When you were talking earlier about the Bible characters and saying they're just as much as a part of the story as a different character who we might say, oh, this person always had a sunny disposition.
And I thought, I hear you. And also for the person whose sunny disposition is recorded, they also had really, you know, there were other aspects of their lives that probably didn't get recorded. You know, so that's one. But this. But this first part of beauty and brokenness are a part that feels like, A, obviously particularly relevant for mental health, but also, B, it just flies in the face of some of the circles that I have been a part of in my Christian life that are more like, if there's brokenness, then there's something wrong.
You know, there's something maybe inherently, inherently wrong.
And to name, as you said, just to bring forth, bring it into the light, say what it is, and say beauty and brokenness are a part of our stories that feels.
Gosh, that feels free, that feels really meaningful to, you know, to say that. Because as you. As you mentioned, like, we have physical illnesses, injuries, people with disabilities, all of these things that are A, just part of what we walk through, B, part of our diversity and who we are as people.
And sometimes in some aspects of our lives are really beautiful, and sometimes they feel really broken, and sometimes those things coexist on the same day and in the same. And in the same condition. You know, and so anyway, I just.
I'm curious if that particular path point, you know, how that was meaningful for you.
[00:19:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I resonate with a lot of what you're saying, how one does not negate the other.
And if somebody is in a season where they are feeling more of that brokenness side of things, whether it is mental health or illness or some other struggle, doesn't mean that you're not still beautiful human being that is treasured in the sight of God.
I think also within that statement, there. There is hope, right? There's so much hope that that's not what defines us. Whatever it is that feels the, like the biggest burden that you struggle with, that I struggle with, that is not what defines us. It is just part of who we are.
And no matter how yucky or hard or difficult something is, that God is still in it. You know, in terms of. I think in two aspects. One is that God is with us in it, which is one of the other path points.
The level of empathy and understanding that Jesus in particular, because of his human experience, has for those who are struggling with their emotions and with their mental health, I don't think we can ever understate that.
But the other aspect in which God is in it is that I believe that God works in it. You know, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was part of God's plan or this is what he wanted for you. I think that's too trite and we too quickly go to that.
But even when things are hard, God is still at work. And how that looks for every person, it's going to be different. It may take years or decades or a lifetime before we even can see what that work has been, or maybe even it will be the next lifetime before we fully understand.
But I know, at least for myself, as difficult as it has been to live with chronic anxiety, it has very much changed who I am in ways that have made me more like Jesus, as strange as that may sound.
Because I grew up as a person with incredibly high expectations and standards of myself and others, I was a perfectionist. I was a workaholic.
And it wasn't until my mind and my body put a stop to all of that that I was willing to take a breather. You know, I just kept going, going, going for years. And I thought that that was the best way for me to honor God, was to give everything I had, every moment I was awake. And it wasn't okay to rest. It wasn't okay to have moments of doubt or weakness or sadness. I Just had to keep going.
And.
And so in this weird way, it made me less compassionate toward others because as high as my expectations were for myself, that's how I would look to others and wonder, you know, what are you doing resting? What are you doing taking a vacation? Why are you doing, you know, taking a mental health day? That didn't make any sense to me. And.
And now that I have had to fully face my own limitations, it has given me the ability to look at others with so much more grace and compassion and to not judge others by how much they do, how well they do it. Right.
But to really see others as just.
You are loved because of you, not because of what you're able to do or not able to do. That's. That's not how.
How love works in the kingdom of God. And that. I don't know if I could have learned that lesson, except that I had to come to my own place of recognizing I am. So. There have been seasons in my life where I was so depressed that I couldn't do anything except sleep and cry and occasionally eat. And that was pretty much it. And I felt useless. I felt like I was nothing.
And in those seasons, though God spoke to me, other loved ones reached out to me. And that was when I learned my own belovedness outside of my ability to do anything or accomplish anything or be good at anything.
And.
And so it has given me a different lens through which to see my own life as well as the lives of others. And that's been a really precious gift. It's been one of the most beautiful lessons I've learned, and it came at a great, great cost. It was excruciating to get to that point, but. But I also see how God was in it and was with me each.
Each moment of that very hard journey.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Gosh, Dorcas, thank you so much for sharing that.
That's really. It's really beautiful. It. I've gone back and forth on whether to say this next statement, but I. I guess I will. But I really. I really appreciate you sharing that about your belovedness.
I think that there are many of us, whether it looked like that or looked like a mental health struggle, where we have found our own belovedness, something difficult to accept, especially apart from our utility.
And I remember, gosh, years and years ago, a woman much more seasoned in her walk than me said to me, she said, you're a mother, and you remember when your kids were babies. And she told us about the birth of her first grandchildren, who. She had two grandchildren by two different of her children who were born on the same day. So she got her first two grandkids on the same day. They weren't twins. They're cousins.
And she said. She just was glowing. And these kids were teenagers at this point, you know, and she said, and we just oohed and awed and, you know, everything over them. We love them so much. We just, you know, we cried and we couldn't help. And she said, and all they could do was eat and sleep and poop and cry, and we just were gooey over them. You know, she's like that. From. From the moment we met them, we could not believe how much we loved them.
And all they could do was eat and poop and sleep and cry.
And it was, you know, something that ministered to me as. As well as. As what you just said about, you know, there were limited things that you felt like you were able to do. There were limited things that you were able to do in that season of your life, and God ministered your belovedness to you in that season.
I also think about Elijah. He's like, take a nap.
Eat something.
Yeah, let's deal with this later. You know?
[00:27:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Isn't that extraordinary?
The God of the universe shows up and tells Elijah, just. Just take a rest, buddy. It's okay.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: It's okay.
[00:28:05] Speaker C: You know, treating him like a little toddler.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot. I don't think God was arguing that it wasn't a lot. Elijah was like, this is a lot. You know, he's like, yes, it's a lot. And take a moment, you know, which is exquisite. I love it.
I'm wondering, as you were talking, the other thing I was thinking about is how we've talked about how addressing mental health concerns can and has been and continues to be unfortunately, difficult in many church communities.
But one of the things that that pacts does, and I'm thrilled that it shows up in these studies as well, is they have a real focus on ministering from bipoc folks and perspectives to bipoc folks and perspectives.
And that came out in this study as well, that there are some ethnic and racial communities where talking about mental health concerns is in. There's an added layer of difficulty there than there would be in maybe in majority communities.
So I'm wondering if you have thoughts on that, like how this study is maybe helpful or some of the things that maybe struck you as you were moving through these topics and moving through the contributions of some of the other authors and artists and poets who.
Who contributed to this. Who are also bipoc Christians, you know, trying to. Trying to walk this out as far as mental health is concerned. Yeah.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: Well, just as I said earlier about how there is kind of a general societal shame around mental health, and then you layer on top of that the spiritual shame. And then I think for many ethnic communities, you lay on top of that the ethnic shame or whatever is to their community, their background, their family.
It can be extraordinarily messy, and it can be a very heavy burden to bear.
If. If mental health is something you're struggling with and you can't even talk about it to your closest family members, or if the response from your closest family members is something that is not helpful, not compassionate, not encouraging, that's challenging. I think we just wanted to acknowledge that. That that is part of the equation as well, and that there are particular ways in which people of color are vulnerable to mental health challenges because of what it is to be a person of color. I think, you know, particularly we're talking about here in the United States. What does that mean? How does. How do the daily or ongoing challenges that you need to face as a person of color, in whatever your context is, how does that wear you down? How does that affect your mental health? And so among. Among certain communities of color, they have higher rates of depression, anxiety than you would see among majority communities.
So it's a very real concern. So it's like higher rates, maybe less willingness to address and talk about. Right. So there's this big gap that we're trying to help bridge and just acknowledge.
And so we really prioritize wanting to feature the words and the images of people of color who have lived through that, who know something of that. You know, the really talented artist, Nat Maxey, who did a lot of the artwork work for this study, similar to me, this is a very personal topic for her.
She has a Latina background.
And so to be able to bring part of who we are, a very important part of who we are into this conversation of mental health is a way that we're hoping to serve others who really are in need of connecting with words of hope, connecting with other individuals who have been through similar experiences.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the things that I was grateful to see with the resources, and we'll get there next, how this study is a multimedia study, which was so great, but with some of the resources. One of the things that I was really thrilled to see were professionals who are working in the field of mental health who are people of color. And it has been something that has.
I Would say, I probably didn't think about it until after I first met my therapist and then started chatting with other folks, and they were like, it's really hard because I want to go see a therapist. But when, you know, I'm.
Whatever it is, I'm Latina. And I went. And my white therapist just does not understand. You know, there's so much about my context that he or she doesn't get. And early in the podcast, I interviewed a black man who is working as a therapist, and he, you know, really reinforced that the mental health community, as far as professionals are concerned, there's just not a lot of representation there when it comes to bipolar therapists and other professionals in the mental health field. And so that becomes another barrier because it's like, you maybe realize, okay, I need some help. It's gonna be hard for me to talk with my parents or my siblings or, you know, my other family or friends, and I know that I need this, and so I'll go find a therapist. And then to have maybe really good therapists who just don't have a good contextual lens because they have very different lived experiences, it's just another barrier to good care.
And so I was really glad to see representation from contributors who were professionals in the space.
[00:34:50] Speaker C: Yes. But it is an ongoing area of need. For sure, we need more mental health professionals from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures.
But. But yes, there. There are some. There are many excellent ones. And there are some networks. If you look online, there are specific networks of therapists that you can find that are, you know, Asian American and African American and Latino. And so that's a starting point. You know, it may not be somebody local. You might need to meet with them virtually. But for. For those who are looking for a therapist who is from a similar cultural background, that could be one place to start. But it does, I think, just gives you a lot more common ground to start with and makes it a little bit easier to share whatever it is that. That you need to share when. When there is a shared context that you're already working off of.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for saying that.
Let's talk a little bit about the.
I mentioned that the study is multimedia, and when I got this, I mentioned, okay, it's soft, it's colorful, it's beautiful.
There are also. It was funny, like, when. When we were working on migration at the time that you said, you know, these were kind of a long time coming, and it was hard to imagine what these might look like in a finished form with all of the interactive kind of multimedia stuff that we're wanting to put in.
And so I will say there are QR codes in this study that lead to videos and spoken word pieces that you can actually hear.
You can hear the poem from the, from the poet's own mouth and their own voices.
And there are essays and there are works of art in the pages.
I'm wondering, I think this is so. Gosh, I feel like we could do a whole episode on that too. I keep adding to the series, if you haven't noticed. I'm saying, oh, we could do all these whole episodes, but you know, on, on what that means kind of more generally. But I'm wondering, how did you find that to be helpful with this particular topic and this particular study?
[00:37:21] Speaker C: Yeah, this is. I think one of the things I love most about the PAC studies is, you know, I think, you know, as probably anyone who has done Bible studies know, is we have leaned so heavily into the intellectual side of Bible study and let's just dig deep into this passage and analyze every single word and sentence. And there's great value in that. I'm a total nerd. I love Bible studies like that. At the same time, and I think, especially when we are talking about our emotions, our physical bodies, our overall well being, our are like a holistic sense of who we are as human beings, There's a lot of value in tapping into all of the other senses and abilities that God has given us. Right. God did not just give us brains so that we could read and analyze.
He gave us brains to also appreciate beauty and to meditate on poetry and to just stare at a really interesting piece of art, you know, and so that's, that's part of what I think we're challenging readers to do is like come and meet God in other ways as well. Because God can speak through so many different mediums and we don't need to limit him to just words on a page.
So, so I think that, that, that is a big part of it. What you were saying about being able to hear the poet, you know, the, the spoken word artist reciting their own words.
That again is bringing in the, the personal, the. Who are these individuals? This is not a remote person who put these words together and you're never going to have any idea who they are or what they. But, but we all who contributed to this, like gave a little piece of our heart, you know, as we were writing the essays, as we were doing the video interviews or conversations, the poet and, and so I think that there is this beautiful sense of connection to the contributors, as well as a connection to this larger sense of, like, look at all that God has made us capable of, you know, and. And certainly we know about the healing powers of art, right? And. And so to. To, I think, sit with art, to embrace it as part of our spiritual transformation.
That in and of itself is really powerful. And then, particularly when talking about a topic like mental health, I think it just. It can speak to our hearts and souls in. In new ways. It might open us up to new possibilities that. That just. Just, you know, looking at words on a page might not necessarily do for us.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much. I won't ask you if you had a favorite piece of art, but I will say they were all so striking. I went through this study in the mornings, and I felt like every time I opened up a new session, like a new, you know, week, it.
I was struck by the art on each page. So anyway, I thought it was, yeah, really beautiful and appreciative of the holistic part.
I think we've talked around this quite a bit, but to wrap us up, I want to give you a chance to answer more directly as this study comes out. And people are. Maybe they're like me and they're just doing it on their own, which I think is fine.
It's designed for a group study, which I think is better in many ways to be able to talk about these kinds of things and experience them in community.
But either way, as this study is coming out, it's available.
What is your hope for people who would. Who would go through this, whether it's on their own or in community?
As author, what is your hope for people who would. Who would get this?
[00:41:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that I would love for people to get to that final statement that you named earlier, that caring for our mental health is a sacred practice, that that would. Would become true for a lot of folks, that not only is mental health important and absolutely worth addressing, not to be hidden away, it's certainly very relevant because given any church Congregation, right, probably 20 to 30% or more of your congregation is going to be struggling with mental health, whether you know it or not.
So it's there. It's in our communities.
So do we recognize it? Are we willing to address it, and are we willing to integrate it into our faith in a healing way? Not in a well, you just got to pray more and read your Bible more kind of way, but in a let's care for. As we would care for somebody who just got a really devastating cancer diagnosis or somebody who, you know, just broke their leg or somebody who just gave birth, right? There's all these kind of moments where I think churches are really wonderful at rallying around one another and caring for one another. And so I would love to see that same sort of rallying around, like, okay, you know, this, this individual within our community, like, his, her anxiety is really bad this month. Like, they're really struggling this month. So what can we do? How can we rally around this person? How can we care for them? Right?
Even really structured ways that churches can be engaged and involved. There are organizations that are specifically designed to help churches figure out how do we want to preach about mental health on a Sunday morning? How do we want to maybe have a community service group around the topic of mental health? Maybe we have a mental health Sunday once a year. Like how you have a mission Sunday, right? You have a mission mental Health Sunday to really highlight that this is a need, this is a reality, it is not something to be ashamed of. And it is a way that the church can really be a shining light. I would love to see churches become some of the safest and most caring places for people to go when they are struggling with their mental health. That you would just be embraced and welcomed and feel supported in any way that you needed.
You know, I think, I think that's the, the ultimate vision that so many of us would hope for. And, and we get there by starting with these conversations, by starting with understanding that God gets it. Like the mental health is all over scripture. It's part of who we are. He knows that. He understands that. He cares, cares deeply about that and so should we as his followers.
So. So I think that's some of what kind of big and small I'm hoping for from this study.
[00:45:25] Speaker B: Amen to all of that. Thank you so much, Dorcas. Again, this study on mental health is coming out as a part of a series of Bible studies with a partnership between Made for PACS and ibp. This one called Mental Health Experiencing God's Care for Our Mind, Body and Spirit. A six week interactive Bible study by Dorcas Changtosin. Dorcas, thank you again so much for being with me. I'm so grateful for our time together.
[00:45:56] Speaker C: Thanks, Alexis. I really appreciated this conversation.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show Notes, music and podcast podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit
[email protected].
[00:46:38] Speaker C: Sam.
