Clergy Reflections on Mental Health

  “I’m sorry, God. I’m sorry, God. I’m sorry, God.” That’s the ritualistic mantra I made myself recite somewhere around age 10 every time I felt I sinned. It had to be said out loud, but in the rules I constructed, I left myself a loophole that allowed me to say it softly, under my breath, so I didn’t seem completely nuts to any friends who might have born witness to my sinning, which—to be safe—covered a wide range of behaviors, from taking three ketchup packets in the lunch line instead of the permitted two, to demonstrating a cavalier disregard for my mother’s back by stepping on sidewalk cracks.   For a period of my childhood, I was a slave to compulsions like that.   Thanks be to God, over time, I was able to reason myself out of them. It can be terrifying when you fall asleep during your bedtime prayers because your ritual for completing them has grown impossibly long and complex. When you realize in the aftermath, however, that none of the worst-case-scenarios the ...

  May is Mental Health Month! In a few days, we kick off Mental Health Month! This is a terrific way to promote helpful mental health practices and awareness for those living with mental health concerns. Our faith communities can highlight this month as a way to promote mental health as an opportunity, not a hardship.  Below are a few starting points to help your faith community approach mental health with compassion: -Establish support groups: Overall support from difficult life situations can also benefit our individual and communal mental health Examples of helpful support groups, include: Grief groups, such as widow/widower and loss of a child grief groups; offer divorce support or peer groups; life changes in mobility, memory loss, or cognitive abilities;  organize support groups for those living with cancer, diabetes or chronic illness; provide emotional and tangible resources for those dealing with unemployment. -Anxiety, Stress, Isolation, & Loneliness: Promo...

Across North Carolina,  faith communities are joining the wonderful work of mental health advocacy. These places of worship are eliminating stigma, becoming trauma-informed, promoting healthier mental health practices, providing resources, hosting trainings, normalizing professional therapy, and the list goes on. There is sacred work happening throughout our state and one beautiful example of this, comes from Chapel Hill’s St. Thomas More Catholic Church . St. Thomas More goes to great lengths to include mental health in their outreach and pastoral care work.  St. Thomas More Catholic Church offers a helpful example of what it looks like for a faith community to establish a mental health ministry that becomes central to the life of the church. The following blueprints are shared with the hope it inspires you to work within your own context. With the various social and societal needs around them, congregants within St. Thomas More identified the need for support on mental healt...

      Rev. Amy Brundle is an ordained Baptist music minister living in Raleigh, N.C. with her husband, Scott, and a spoiled torbie cat named Brandy. She is also the Marketing & Communications Manager for NAMI North Carolina, a mental health awareness and advocacy nonprofit organization. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and has been studying music for nearly 35 years. Her passions include inspiring volunteers to grow as worship leaders and increasing mental health advocacy within the local church.      The Idols of Performance and Productivity   For years I’ve religiously kept a productivity journal to plan my daily schedule. You know the type – color coded tabs, stickers, each day broken out into 15 minute increments, pages labeled with inspirational phrases like “You’ve Got This!” or “Seize the Day!”. These journals are designed to make you excited – and frankly, obsessive – about squeezing...