Mobilizing Churches by Caring for our Pastors

Love INC doesn’t exist without our local churches. Over the past year, we held dozens of listening sessions with local church leaders to understand much of what is on their hearts, including what they see as the biggest concerns facing our community. Again and again, one common challenge they shared was how best to understand and respond to the mental health pain which appears to be growing in our churches and the community at large.

In response to what we heard, we reached out to White Stone Resources Christian Counseling for help. On Tuesday April 18th, we hosted our “Forging a Pastoral Response to Mental Health” workshop. Our goal was to help local pastors and church leaders better understand some of the mental health concerns faced by their congregants, as well as provide tools and resources to help in responding.

In all, 31 pastors and leaders from 18 different churches attended the event. We prayed together. We shared key information on how to identify and reach out to those experiencing hopelessness. We even spent some time discussing pastoral self-care. (You can’t help others if you aren’t healthy yourself!)

It was a wonderful morning of fellowship, seeing the Body of Christ come together in this relational way. To God be the glory!