MENTAL HEALTH AND THE CHURCH It’s wonderful how much work is being done to raise mental health awareness in the Church today. At the beginning of this century there was so much ignorance that individuals with mental health issues were leaving their churches because of the hurt inflicted on them by fellow Christians who told […]
Read More...FAITH-BASED MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT Christians and their churches in Canada have been learning about mental health—the various illnesses and how they present themselves in those who live with them. They learn to accept and support the individuals in their church who live with such challenges. They learn how to respond to their needs. But have […]
Read More...CHRISTIAN SUPPORT – In her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver relates Robert Boyd Munger’s story about how he showed Christ around his house room by room. When they got to the drawing room they both liked it best and decided to meet and start every day together in this room. They […]
Read More...LIVING ROOM’S OPEN DOOR – Jesus was a radical in the way he treated social outcasts like prostitutes, the poor, the sick, lepers and others. He treated them in a way that was completely contrary to social conventions of the day. Christ’s love brought a sense of dignity and value to those on the margins. […]
Read More...LIVING ROOM OPEN DOOR – Have you had thoughts about facilitating a Living Room group? Perhaps you would like to share how your faith has helped you live with your mental health problems. You may have learned coping techniques that you would like to pass along so that the people in your group could learn […]
Read More...Tulips at Keukenhof Gardens in Holland LIVING ROOM’S OPEN DOOR – All members of the Living Room Open Door faith-based peer support groups, including the facilitator, have suffered, or are suffering from mental health issues. It’s this commonality that pulls them together. Groups are not led by professionals and don’t offer clinical therapy. They don’t […]
Read More...MY PERSPECTIVE – There is a large organization not far away, promising Christian churches that it will equip them to respond to people with lived experience. They teach the ins and outs of mental health and have been doing so for over ten years, offering free online courses about its various aspects. They speak with […]
Read More...COMPASSION – And today I wonder. Does all this fussing about rebuilding Living room come from my will and not God’s at all? Am I trying to push my own will, in memory of how good the experience of Living Room used to be? Is it because of the Holy Joy I always felt after […]
Read More...From March 2019 – I went through years of hard times. During that time, I found solace in my writing through Jesus, to whom I could not have come closer. It was in the suffering, especially in the quiet night times as I wrote, that Jesus came closest. I often pictured myself as a biblical […]
Read More...The following piece was written from the perspective of a person needing care. Have you ever needed care in the way this person did? How would you like to have someone like the Samaritan looking after you? Can you imagine how good it would be to have someone like him—someone so much like Jesus—taking care […]
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