Before the pandemic, I was driving down a country road in Anderson County, South Carolina, and passed a small church with a steeple, cross and a marquee that read “Family Counsel Available.” For this church, the most important piece of information to communicate was not “Jesus Saves” or “Worship Service at 11:00 a.m.” Their message was “Is your family in crisis? As a parent, are you desperate? Family counsel available.”
I stopped in the parking lot and thought about that sign. I am still thinking about it.
People in pain do not live in the “post-Christian era.” They go to church for help. I found hundreds of churches that were responding to the call of their communities for help. Churches big and small, country and city, Black and white, Hispanic and Asian, all seeking to help people in need.
One pastor of a church of 150 told me, “I have logged more than 500 calls in the past six months—more than two a day—asking for help with addiction, depression or trauma. We are overwhelmed.”
The need was—and still is—big.
I began to read, research and intervene, which resulted in TheChurchCares.com, a clearinghouse of free resources for the church addressing how to respond to people who need help. Out of that research, I found many helpful resources.
Here are eight books that have influenced thought about church care; the first three are theological, and the final five focus on the “how” of Christian care.
The Theology of Christian Care
I Was a Stranger: A Christian Theology of Hospitality by Arthur Sutherland (Abingdon Press) connects evangelism and discipleship to the practice of hospitality.
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine D. Pohl (Eerdmans) ties a theology of care to early church practices as the central message of the gospel. “We, like the early church, find ourselves in a fragmented and multicultural society that yearns for relationships, identity and meaning,” she writes.
Exclusion and Embrace, Revised and Updated: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation by Miroslav Volf (Abingdon Press) explores the identity of the Christian and how that identity becomes a welcoming invitation to meet Jesus. The best endorsement for this book, in my opinion, was from a graduate student in counseling: “Requiring us to read Volf was worth all my tuition.”
Building a Mental Health Ministry
Lay Counseling, Revised and Updated: Equipping Christians for a Helping Ministry by Siang-Yang Tan and Eric T. Scalise (Zondervan Reflective) is the training manual for pastors who envision or oversee mental health ministry and seek to utilize the capacity of people in the pews.
Mental Health and the Church: A Ministry Handbook for Including Children and Adults With ADHD, Anxiety, Mood Disorders and Other Common Mental Health Conditions by Stephen Grcevich (Zondervan) is a book for strategy formation and tactical application. Grcevich is a child psychiatrist with a passion for assisting churches in becoming communities open to the unique experiences of families with special needs children and adults with mental illness or physical disability.
Grace for the Afflicted, Revised and Expanded Edition: A Clinical and Biblical Perspective on Mental Illness by Matthew S. Stanford (IVP) seeks to implement wholistic mental health recovery within the church. Stanford explains to the pastor-leader the essential details of psychopathology, neurology and clinical care.
Making SPACE at the Well: Mental Health and the Church by Jessica Young Brown (Judson Press) promotes mental health ministry specifically for the Black church. SPACE serves as an acronym for Stigma, Presence, Action, Caution and Exhortation.
Mental Health and Your Church: A Handbook for Biblical Care by Helen Thorne and Steve Midgley (The Good Book Company) is a primer of care. It would be a useful read for anyone who cares for others pastorally: pastors, elders, small-group leaders and congregation members.