3 Ingredients of a Safe Church for your Mental Health

‘Am I doing ok?’ was the question I was most frequently asked when I was a pastor/chaplain. ‘Is this Church safe?’ was another. Keeping pace were other limping souls …

• ‘Am I welcome here?’
• ‘Does God really love me?’
• ‘I can’t seem to get it right.’
• ‘… keeps telling me I need to do … if I am going to be okay and be part of this church.’
• ‘I keep going back to my addiction; I feel so guilty, God is angry.’

At this point, nice gentle Pastor Barry feels like getting a whip, going to certain churches and people, overturning pews, casting out tithing bags and shouting…

‘Stop laying heavy burdens on broken backs.’

Stories flood my mind of beautiful people carrying guilt loads handed to them by constipated Christians.

Bound up by rules, formality, accountability, hats on Sunday, ‘never question leadership’, black and white, and of course mental illness being the result of sin in your life.

I could rant on more, but I think you get the picture.

Three ingredients needed

1. Compassion, not Castigation

‘To suffer with’ is the root meaning of the word compassion. It says I am there with you in your struggle.

Castigation means to punish, to chastise and to bring back into a religiously pure state of chastity.

In the beautiful but agonizing Book of Job, we find a man called Job who has lost everything. Family wiped out, business failure, loss of health and then three friends come. They sit with him, mourn with him and say nothing. Job 2:11-13

Then they start to speak and offer their supposed wisdom in the hope of bringing him back to a place of chastity. Job obviously must have done something wrong.

There are some people that you need to say, ‘Go away, you’re not helping’.

A friend of Jesus called Mark tells us a story where Jesus is invited to come and pray for a supposedly dead child. People laughed at Jesus when he suggested that the child is but asleep. Mark writes, ‘Then he put them all outside’ Mark 5:40.

We read those words with such a polite version of Jesus, but just maybe Jesus ‘showed them the door’.

Those who don’t show compassion need to be shown the door.

2. Creativity, not Castration

When the box is formed and the person is placed in it, then both Spirit (Holy) and spirit (our emotion spark of life) are crushed.

So many times when a mental illness is discovered, the castration of creativity creeps in. The leaders become fearful of what this person may say or do. The battle with an addiction supposedly renders the addict unworthy and having nothing to offer until they have (trigger warning: loaded terms of a religious nature ahead) ‘won the victory’.

Some of the most significant and profound preaching I have heard and still remember to this day has come from people wrestling with psychotic voices, gambling addictions, sexual compulsions and personality disorders.

These Charles Spurgeon’s (famous preacher who suffered severe bouts of depression) cut through the religious clutter and went straight to the heart.

We need more creative voices from the gutter of life, not fewer.

Turning the page is an opportunity for you to express yourself.

I want some guest posts, but please no religious clap trap B.S. fluff.

3. Connection, not Control

We seem to think that accountability works.

That if you have accountability partners, groups, policies, protocols and procedures that this will somehow promote good spiritual living.

It doesn’t.

Instead, we hide our failings further and further away. We don’t share the struggle because we fear control, castigation, and castration.

Spirituality becomes a rule book rather than a relationship.

I need a friend who is not afraid of my failings. Who will plumb the depths and never leave, even when I am drowning and they feel hopelessly equipped to know what to do.

Your Mindset Matters

So what are you going to do to help change a mindset? Perhaps fall in love with compassion, creativity, and connection. Three ingredients of a safe church.

Do it for one other person, do it for yourself, and watch the world change.

Quotes to consider

Questions to answer

1. Did I offend you? Why?
2. Which of the three mindsets is most needed in your opinion?
3. Does accountability work without a deep connection?

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Barry is a writer, coach, online pastor, and course creator with a passion for Mental Health and Spiritual Formation. Read more about Barry’s story. 

Image cc: Karl Fredrickson