Ministry and Mental Illness – Theology and Practice

At the end of October I was very pleased to attend the East Northants Faith Group Leaders’ Lunch and to join my friend and colleague Dr David Smart in speaking about the Church’s response to mental illness.

I recalled being at the equivalent meeting a year ago and hearing about FaithAction and also the award-winning Renew37 mental health café in West Bridgford.   This had led, a year on, to my Chaplaincy partnering with FaithAction to explore ways of measuring the impact of spiritual care in mental health, and to my wife Denise linking with Renew37 to start a wellbeing café at a church in Northampton.  The value and outcomes of networking!
I began by noting three gaps.
 
First, there has been encouraging growth in the recognition of the importance of spirituality, but often a gap in relating this to a Christian theological and biblical understanding. 

Secondly, much of the very positive writing and discussion on spirituality in mental health has been led by psychiatrists and healthcare academics, but there is a gap in the contribution of those rooted in Christian theology and ministry practice.

Thirdly, there have been significant helpful contributions from a growing number of national organisations, but a gap in local reflection and response.

Then, looking back not merely a year but more like 25, I recalled how as an acute hospital chaplain (at St James’s in Leeds) I had embarked on an exploration of how the Christian healing ministry can appropriately connect with healthcare settings.  I had been challenged by reading Francis MacNutt’s comment in his seminal book Healing that often the chaplain will seek to accommodate a patient to their suffering, while the latter is wanting the former to pray for their suffering to be relieved.  When Francis MacNutt came to Harrogate, I was eager to hear him speak, and this led to my fully encountering the healing ministry of John Wimber.  In the years that followed I believed I saw many answers to prayer for healing in the hospital.  And I recalled a consultant paediatrician commenting to me that the significant improvement in her patient’s condition was “a real answer to prayer.”

In the intervening years as a parish vicar I continued to explore the healing ministry, and encouraged others to do so.  I was part of the ministry team at the Lakeland ‘revival’ taking testimonies of physical healings.  I joined in Healing on the Streets, and even in Rushden on the ‘plaza’ outside Iceland we saw a woman’s leg grow.  After I visited Healing Rooms in Northampton and Northern California, and devoured the theory and practice in Robby Dawkins’s book Do What Jesus Did, at Whitefriars Church in Rushden we developed the ministry of ‘As You Go’ – out in the streets and peoples’ homes, seeing the impact of practical help and also sometimes of prayer for physical healing.

So I had much to give thanks for in relation to the rediscovery and growth of the Church’s ministry of healing.   But …
- In the many charismatic healing meetings I have been part of, have there been any words of knowledge about healing mental illness?
- In the many stories I have read of the ministry of great healing evangelists, or in the testimonies at large conferences or gatherings, how many relate to mental illness?
- Does this mean God is less concerned about mental illness than physical disease?
- And what about our approach to developmental disorders, which are not illnesses but which can have such debilitating effects on ability and functioning?

I had recently come across a conference which was aimed at seeking to fit the Church’s response to mental illness ‘into our healing model’ – and this had got me to wonder what might be the elements of a very different model and approach to ministry in this area.

Compassion

Mental health workers do not have a monopoly on compassion, far from it!  I recalled John Wimber movingly imparting the gift of compassion to a man in Harrogate all those years ago.  All healing ministry is rooted in compassion, but that needs to be reflected not just in our motivation but also our practice. 

Our models of ministry which focus on a ‘come to the front’ style, or ‘trying something you could not do before’ arguably lack something of compassion.  In the hospital setting we are privileged to be able to give people time, to build trust, and deepen relationship, getting to know them beneath the physical surface.

Commitment

When I was in Rushden I remember praying for an RAC man who came to fix my car: he had back pain which was healed as I prayed for him, but then he drove off, smiling, and I never saw him again.  By contrast I think of a lady we got to know as a church, living in very difficult circumstances with many health and other problems: her healing came as one particular church member left her comfort zone and committed herself to her welfare week after week, sacrificially.

We see patients discharged from the hospital, who then find it really difficult to connect with well-meaning churches, because there is a need for committed effort to befriend them, actually come and accompany them to worship or other events, and do it again when they have let us down.

Community

I often listen to the Radio 4 All in the Mind programme, and cringe at the repeated suggestion that anyone with a problem should go to their GP – for a 10 minute anonymous interview!  Recently I preached at a church where a lady came up to me saying she was Aspergers, praising the congregation for accepting her, allowing her to play the organ after services, and I could see that they all knew her by name.

Jesus’s healing of those with leprosy brought the healing of reintegration into community, and mental illness drives us too much into loneliness and isolation.  I was deeply impressed by Renew37’s ethos of not distinguishing between ‘clients’ and volunteers – just community together, and moreover a community rooted in the rhythm of praying together.

Commission

I often hear churches speaking of how they want to be welcoming to those who come suffering from mental illness.  But the greater need and challenge is for the Church to step out into the community and reach those who may never cross their threshold.  At Whitefriars we stopped our Sunday morning gatherings once a month to encourage the church to go ‘Stepping Out’ into the community, and we started the ‘As You Go’ outreach, seeking to pray for people in the shops or streets as well as offering practical support to meet needs in Christian love.

Chaplaincy is a wonderful ministry because it is a visible expression of the Church being sent into an institution to be an expression of the Kingdom of God within it.

Resources

There is a huge range of resources to support Christians in seeking to minister to those with mental illness.  Many are national organisations or movements – so it is important for us to develop local and accessible resources through networking.  I highlighted the following:

www.mentalhealthaccesspack.org developed by Mind and Soul, Livability and Premier Life

www.mentalhealthmatters-cofe.org from the Church of England

www.catholicmentalhealthproject.org.uk from the Roman Catholic Church

www.spiritualitymentalhealth.org.uk from the National Forum on Spirituality and Mental Health

www.new-wine.org/events/accessible-church-1-day-conference to be held in Leicester on 10 March

In Northampton a group of us are looking at putting together

    - A Symposium on ministry and mental health perhaps looking at: theology and biblical   
      insights; healing; assessing impact; good practice; and young people’s issues.

    - The encouraging of church events addressing: biblical perspectives; healing; 
      accessibility and good practice; reaching our communities; and young people’s issues.  
      My own nascent blog www.prevanstherapeuo.blogspot.co.uk and Twitter account
      @therapeuoblog

Questions

1  Identify one theological reflection or pointer which arises from these issues
2  Identify an example of good healing ministry practice in these areas from your experience
3  Identify someone or somewhere to ‘go to’ to minister in these areas
4  Identify one way for your ministry in these areas to be more accessible or compassionate

The house of God, the gate of heaven: 

was Jesus more like a mental health chaplain than a vicar?

I walked on to one of our hospital wards, and a young adult male patient called out to me in a friendly way, “How’s your church?” – to which I responded, “This is my church.”

He looked rather puzzled.  I explained that I worked full-time for the hospital and not separately for a parish church or similar.  And I added that in any case the church was not a building, but simply anywhere that the Lord’s people would meet together: the very word church simply came from the Greek word for Lord.  So this patient and me meeting together was ‘church’ – as real and relevant on a Tuesday afternoon in a bare and slightly malodorous hospital ward as scores of people meeting together in a fine church building on a Sunday.  He completely grasped the point.

Last Christmas a number of the adolescent patients I work with expressed real surprise that I was going to come and see them on Christmas Day.  I asked them what Jesus would do, if he was in Northampton for a few hours on Christmas morning – attend a service at a town centre church with lots of nicely dressed people, or come along to visit one of our wards.  “He’d come and see us,” they said without any hesitation, and I think complete accuracy.

It is very easy for local church leaders and members to be focused primarily, possibly exclusively, on what happens in their building mid Sunday morning.  A moment’s thought of course tells us that God fills the earth, and most ministry and mission is out there, as we go.

In Genesis 28 Jacob settles down for the night in a remote spot, taking a single stone for his pillow.  He has his famous dream of angels ascending and descending between earth and heaven, and he awakens to declare that he had not known that God was there: “How awesome is this place, it is none other than the house of God, the gate of heaven.”  It is the house of God, not because of a building (there was only one stone lying around) but simply because of his manifest presence.

I find the manifest presence of God holding a patient’s hand as we pray through a seclusion door, sitting on a bare floor sharing holy communion, or listening to Godfrey Birtill’s song ‘Do you believe what I believe about you?’ with a young person who has always believed the worst about themselves.

At a church leaders’ conference earlier this year the host said to me that it was a problem that mine was such a niche ministry.  My turn to look rather puzzled!  Ministering to the marginalised and forgotten, speaking freedom to those literally captive, offering words of healing to the sick and oppressed: I do think the New Testament picture of Jesus’s ministry and that of his followers was out in the community, and especially in the darker and more difficult places, rather than primarily in the gathered place of worship.  Indeed Ezekiel’s prophetic picture in his chapter 47 is that the flow of God’s river of healing is greater the further away it gets from the temple.

Why this Blog?

The purpose of this blog is to offer and to encourage reflections on the Church’s ministry to people with mental illness.

There are some important questions.  What particular provision of welcome and pastoral response is needed? What does the healing ministry look like in this context?  How can mental health chaplaincy best develop and demonstrate its impact?  And much more …

I am keen to explore the theological and biblical principles for mission and ministry, and see how these undergird and inform good practice.

Similar issues arise in relation to developmental disorders – people with intellectual disability or autism.

I became a full-time mental health chaplain working in a secure setting three years ago. Prior to that I worked in parishes and acute hospital chaplaincy as an ordained Anglican minister for 25 years, and developed particular interest in the Christian healing ministry, especially in the charismatic evangelical tradition.  I had experience of these aspects of ministry dating back to the 1970s when an undergraduate, with interest developing through then becoming involved in Clinical Theology.