In this episode of Key Ministry the Podcast, Catherine Boyle shares a peek into some of details of the upcoming Mental Health and the Church 2024 conference, September 26 - 27, 2024, in Cleveland, OH.
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If you follow Key Ministry’s work, you are well aware that we’re just a few weeks past our annual conference, Disability and the Church 2024, which was hosted in Orlando, FL. If you haven’t heard, we had the largest turnout yet for a DATC conference, including a significant number of first-time attendees.
Key Ministry started hosting events like DATC and our recurring online events in large part to raise awareness among church leaders of the needs and challenges for individuals and families with disabilities, and to harness the collective spiritual and other gifts of church leaders to remove barriers to gospel access, create communities of belonging for all Christ-followers, and pursue real relationships with individuals and families with disabilities. In our almost 22-year history, there has been tremendous forward progress. We’ll be making announcements about DATC2025 soon, so be sure to subscribe to our emails for follow us on social media to get notified as soon as the date and location are announced.
When the Key Ministry team studies areas where we still need to create opportunities for gospel access and support, our focus immediately shifts to the local church: equipping and resourcing the average local church to directly support the mental health needs of the individuals and families in the church and in the community around the local church.
We’re delighted by the tremendous momentum around the topic of mental health and ministry in many areas of church world. Whether it’s new books on how churches can be the front door to the mental health world, or many examples of churches using their facilities to support mental health needs, or the many resources and tools designed to support kids and teens who are having mental health related challenges, there are wonderful tools and connections that were not in place even five years ago. Thanks to everyone’s favorite year - 2020 - the awareness of mental health needs has permeated into church conversations, from pulpits to missions teams to small groups and has led to many churches now addressing local mental health related needs.
But still, there is a gap in support and understanding. The gap that still exists led to our recent announcement of our inaugural Mental Health and the Church conference, September 26 - 27, 2024 at Bay Presbyterian Church in Bay Village, OH. The goal of this conference is to provide a place and event where church leaders can be equipped to do the work of mental health ministry, collaborate with others working in this space, see our efforts be multiplied and synergy gained so that people suffering in silence will get the help they need sooner, and will see the great love Christ has for them through individuals in the Church serving as His hands and feet.
What kind of topics will be addressed?
a. The Role of Church Prayer and Care Teams
b. Mental health support groups for individuals and caregivers; caregiver respite
c. Mental health support in Christian schools and universities
d. Empowering mental health peers and their families for church leadership roles using their ministry gifts
e. Innovative partnerships and collaborative projects
f. Evangelism and outreach initiatives created to support mental health needs.
g. How Christian counselors can support local churches and vice versa, and more broadly, how mental health professionals can work with local churches to meet mental health needs.
f. Common mental health needs of vulnerable populations, such as children in foster care or children who become adopted
g. Staff training and congregational education on mental health needs and topics
h. Measuring ministry impacts
Some of the names and faces who will be speaking at MHATC may be familiar to you; some may be new. But each speaker who has committed to present at this event brings a wealth of experience with mental health needs and serving others with mental health needs in a local body of Christ.
Within the next few weeks, the Key Ministry team will issue a call for speakers for a limited number of speaking slots. When we announce the call for speakers, we will also share a list of proposal topics that will work well within the scope of this event.
And just like at DATC, we are very interested in providing opportunities for people working in the space of mental health and ministry to sign up to be a conference exhibitor or sponsor. Find the details about exhibitor space and sponsorships by clicking the MHATC2024 link on the Key Ministry website’s navigation bar.
After I got home from DATC, I heard about the recent experience of a family whose son “David” has Level 1 autism. The family has recently changed churches. David has found friends at the new church, but recently attended an event at his previous church, seeking to maintain friendships there. While at the previous church, David learned of an event coming up at the end of May and registered for it.
Several days later, the youth pastor at the former church reached out to David via text message - not phone call, not face to face meeting - but text message - and told David that it would be best for everyone if he would not attend their church’s events anymore, that he should focus on his new church.
I don’t know the other side of this story, that is, the youth pastor’s view. Maybe David did something really egregious.
But I suspect that this is yet another example of what happens far too often: there’s a teen or child in the church’s ministry who many people find annoying, largely because of their mental health challenges. Rather than educate themselves on how to support all the kids in the youth group, including the teen who is an annoyance, the pastor communicates to the teen in no uncertain terms that this young person does not matter to the church community. And quite easily, teens like David make the mental connection that God must be rejecting him, because this person who represents God has rejected him. No wonder so many people with mental health challenges and other so-called ‘hidden disabilities’ find it easy to run to other belief systems or to an atheistic worldview when this kind of thing happens in our churches.
Join the Key Ministry team in Cleveland on September 26 - 27, 2024, so that people living with mental health challenges who desire to follow Christ can find communities of belonging, where every individual’s ministry gifts can be used to bless and serve others.
