In today’s episode Catherine Boyle interviews Laura Howe about the upcoming Church Mental Health Summit.
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The Church Mental Health Summit
Transcript:
Welcome to the Key Ministry podcast. I’m this week’s host, Catherine Boyle. Since it’s the 5th Thursday of the month, we have a special edition for you, focused on my Key Ministry specialty, mental health, and a guest you need to know. And now, on to this week’s episode… Welcome to the Key Ministry podcast. I am this week’s host, Catherine Boyle, and I am delighted to have a guest with me today. This is something we do when we have five weeks in a month. I'd love to introduce you to our guest today; this is a special lady who has an event coming up that we want everybody to know about.
My guest today is Laura Howe; she’s the founder of Hope Made Strong, and she is the brainchild behind this fabulous conference called the Church Mental Health Summit, so Laura—welcome to the Key Ministry podcast!
Laura Howe: Well, thank you for having me! I'm very excited to be here.
Boyle: Alright, just so everybody is on the same page, tell us a little bit about what Hope Made Strong is and does.
Howe: Hope Made Strong has a number of different arms, so I'm going to try to keep this simple and clear what we offer. My passion is really helping churches transform their communities through care and care ministries. We do that through a couple different ways. We have a couple of free events; opportunities like the Church Mental Health Summit is one of those. The Care Ministry podcast, Mental Health Sunday. We have some free things that we just want to be able to equip and encourage people with; I also do training and online courses myself and then do consulting with churches who are specifically wanting to be a bit more strategic with their care ministries, and develop some systems and pathways and to make it sustainable. That's what I love to do at Hope Made Strong!
Boyle: Excellent. Tell us a little bit about how you got into this and what is your personal background: are you a therapist? Are you an ordained minister of some kind?
Howe: I'm from Canada, so in Canada my registration is I'm a registered social worker. I’m learning what that translates to in the US is that I'm a registered clinical social worker clinical, or mental health social worker. I think that's how we would translate it. I did that for 15 years, in a community mental health and addictions clinic, as well as in community health care. I worked with people and supported individuals who have serious persistent mental health, addictions, homelessness and even on the crisis line that you would call or walk-in counseling as well. So I number of different experiences that brought me to this place where faith and mental health intersect.
Boyle: Absolutely. What great experience for understanding the importance of what a faith community can do to support an individual or a family who has a mental health crisis, or an ongoing mental health need. You know us; that's a big thing that we are proponents of—collaboration between all these different groups can really accomplish so much.
Howe: Yes, yes, yes.
Boyle: So the Church Mental Health Summit is coming up on October the 10th and that's World Mental Health day. I think that's the day that you always have the summit, is that correct?
Howe: We actually had it last year on a different day, just because it was on a Sunday. I just don't think people would want to do that on a Sunday. But yes, on October 10th, in honor of World Mental health day every year we have the Church Mental Health Summit. I'm excited that you guys once again are offering your wisdom in some sessions as well.
Boyle: We are honored to be part of it! What a phenomenal group of speakers you have assembled. Do you want to drop a couple of names or topics that are going to be discussed?
Howe: I'm trying to think of some names off the top my head. We have Dr. Diane Langberg who's talking about trauma and spiritual abuse. Dr. Matthew Stafford is talking about how churches can prevent some large [acts of] violence—in response to the Uvalde school shooting. Oh my gosh, I can't even think of them all! Yourself and Dr. Steve…
Boyle: I'm not trying to put you on the spot!
Howe: No, it's all good! What we really do is we bring and collaborate with many different clinicians, pastors, those with lived experience and and just present a diverse perspective on faith in mental health, so that when ministry leaders come, they're not just hearing from the same voices, but they're hearing voices and expertise from a number of different people who can speak into this space. It’s meant to provide practical resources that you can use in your very next conversation. It's not all theology, not all theory, but it really is how can we equip the local church to be able to impact mental health in their churches, in their leadership and in their communities.
Boyle: That's something that obviously we're passionate about and we work towards as well, just really giving people those practical tools— which is an emphasis of the Church Mental Health Summit—it makes all the difference in the world. I appreciate that you have put the time in from your organization to to develop this ministry outreach to so many leaders. It sounds like an impressive array of presenters who are going to be there; some we've interacted with, some we have not. But pretty much every single name is somebody I have heard of before. It sounds like there's a lot of great people here.
People are probably going to be asking, alright, this is going to have a big price tag! But that's not really true. So tell us a little bit about the cost, and what people can expect.
Howe: Right, so yes, we want to decrease the amount of barriers that people have to accessing this information. Really, the passion and the heart around this is equipping the local church, so we want to do that as barrier-free as possible. In honor of World Mental Health Day and thanks to a number of sponsors, we've been able to offer the summit for free for the day on World Mental Health Day. I'm in Eastern Time, so from 7:00 AM eastern right till midnight on World Mental Health Day, all the sessions, all the information is going to be accessible for free.
However, a number of churches have asked, Okay, how can I access this longer? I want to use this to train my volunteers; I want to use this in staff meetings; I don't want to watch 23 hours worth of sessions in a day. We do have an all-access pass that is available for $79 US; that gives you lifetime access. But if you don't have the budget for that, the summit is available for free.
Boyle: Well that is fantastic! I love that about what you've created here; we to try to keep the cost to an absolute minimum with everything that we do, because we know that people who live with mental health challenges or broader disabilities often have financial barriers. So we definitely appreciate about that about this particular conference as well.
In fact, I I was just spending a little time creating my own social media posts about it today, and will be doing so between now and October 10th a couple more times. There's a lot of people registered for my particular presentation already, which was kind of a shock to me.
Howe: Not to me—you have a fantastic talk!
Boyle: Well, thank you. Just so you know, I'm talking about eating disorder and identity and the church helping teens find identity and purpose. I get that those are hot button kinds of issues in our culture right now, but I I'm curious about what the overall registration and response has been, and are there any limits to people being able to access any particular presentation?
Howe: Right now, at the time of us recording this, we are about three weeks away from this summit and there's already almost 1700 people registered. The uptake is absolutely phenomenal. This just speaks to what you said: these are issues for everyone; it's no longer “oh, these are the issues for outreach or for those other people.” We're seeing this in our leadership, we're seeing this in our churches and churches really are starting to recognize that they have a role to play in supporting people. So it's exciting to see so many people engaging. And to help you feel a little bit even better—people don't have to actually pick talks when they register. It's on demand, so it's kind of like Netflix. As soon as you log on on October 10th, you could pick whatever talk whenever you want, because everything is pre-recorded. So that's the benefit of it, it doesn’t matter what time zone; there is no schedule. You just log in and access the content and the information how you want. So if you're seeing that you have dozens and dozens of people already registered, that's because they have scrolled through all the talks and specifically picked yours. That is what we're seeing; people are becoming really intentional about picking and choosing what they want to view, so it's really exciting.
Boyle: That's outstanding. I have to believe that your previous Church Mental Health summits had a phenomenal response, to already have that many people registered to this point—three weeks out. I know for myself, but also from the work that we do with our conference that people tend to wait till pretty much the last minute to register for things, even when it's a virtual kind of thing, and maybe especially because it's virtual. But I am curious: what has been the overall response to the summits in the past? Or what have you done differently perhaps this year?
Howe: This year I think we’ve been really intentional about communicating about the on-demand aspect, and that it's open to different time zones. This was a lesson learned from previous years. The first year which was three years ago in 2020, everybody jumped online, but everyone was kind of new to online. We saw just over 2000 people register across 60 countries, so that was mind-blowingly exciting and like ‘wow, God. what are you doing around the world in this topic?’ And then last year it was over 3000 people across 75 countries. I had to Google some of these countries, I didn't even know some of them. Most I'd never heard of, and then a couple of them were like, ‘ooh, I want to vacation there someday!’ as there were some pretty incredible places. But yes, we're really seeing an uptick and increase. You know, you put goals out there and you just need to shoot for something. We're really hoping to get over 4000, closer to 5000 participants, and I don't even know, more than 75 countries, as long as it's accessible around the world. I think that's what we're really trying to do, is really say, “You know what? In this context, let's create something that is accessible, low barrier to entry and that meets a specific need in your church and community.” I’m so excited about it.
Boyle: Just to clarify the time zone thing: basically, if you live in California, for example, and you wake up and it's 7:00 AM your time, you have access till midnight your time; it's not based on East Coast time.
Howe: It is based on East Coast time. Yes, it is, just because I had to put some sort of parameters on it, and I do need to sleep at some point! What that means is if you wake up in California, then it's going to be 4a.m. It's going to go live from 4:00 AM to 9:00 PM for you. So wherever you are in the world, you have some sort of realistic time zone you'd be able to view the content. It might be across two different days for people in Asia and Australia, but but you will be able to access it.
Boyle: Well that is wonderful. So tell our listeners how to find the Church Mental Health Summit. It’s real complicated, I know.
Howe: All you have to do is go to churchmentalhealthsummit.com, and there it is—all the information; you'll be able to view the speakers. All that's required for registration is your e-mail address. I ask two questions—where you're from (just because my accountant is requiring that from me) and then the other one just telling us are you a peer? are you a friend or family member? ministry leader or clinician? That helps us guide and create content, and and look for speakers for next year, based on who's viewing. So that's just information for us, but other than that all you need is an e-mail address and then you're able to access it for free on October 10th.
Boyle: Excellent. Well, I am just delighted that we had this time today, Laura. This is, again, Laura Howe from HopeMadeStrong.org. Be sure to check out the Church Mental Health Summit to register or learn more information about this event. And definitely check out the other work that Laura is doing through hopemadestrong.org.
Howe: That's correct.
Boyle: Okay. We'll have those links in the show notes, too. So again, this is Catherine Boyle from the Key Ministry team, thank you so much for spending a little time with us today on the key ministry podcast. Take care.
Howe: My pleasure.
Thank you for listening to the Key Ministry podcast! Scroll down on your device to find the links mentioned in today’s conversation, and be sure to give us a 5-star review, so more people can find the podcast. We’ll be back next week with another member of the Key Ministry team, to share more insights and resources for ministry leaders about disabilities and mental health.
