LIVING ROOM’S OPEN DOOR –

A humble facilitator is the key to an effective faith-based mental health support group. By modelling vulnerability and candidly revealing pain and insecurities, facilitators can encourage the entire group to do the same. Honestly sharing faith and doubt, hope and despair, joy and sadness with others helps bring members of the group in touch with Jesus. They need to get the message that there’s no need for shame.

Years ago, I trained Living Room facilitators, helping them learn how to help people with mental health challenges find healing through the love Jesus has for them—helping them realize how Jesus values them. My favorite resource was Henri Nouwen’s book, In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. Published in 1989, long before Living Room got its start, the book contains wonderful lessons for all leaders to pay attention to. In fact, it contains lessons for all who want to follow Jesus.

Nouwen was a Catholic priest with an interest in using psychology as a means of exploring the human side of faith—something he felt was being overlooked from a pastoral standpoint. Nouwen suffered from depression and understood the needs of those who live with mental health challenges. He is an ideal person to teach us about the kind of support followers of Christ—especially those having leadership roles—are called to give.

One of the greatest dangers in leadership is pride. The desire to look self-assured can cause us to present ourselves as wiser and closer to Jesus than those we serve. Unintentionally we might set ourselves above others, especially those we give support to—forgetting that in Jesus’ eyes we’re all equally worthy—equally loved. Humility is of utmost importance.

Jesus’ life showed that he did not look down on the people around him. He did not look down on the tax collector, the leper, or the demoniac. He touched them, spent time with them, talked to them. He was a giving person who served others rather than asking to be served. Jesus is our best example of humility.

According to Nouwen, leaders need to show their own woundedness instead of feigning more wholeness than is theirs to show. Says Nouwen: “We are not the givers of life. We are sinful, broken, vulnerable people who need as much care as anyone we care for.” Are we able to have this attitude when we serve the needs of those with mental health issues?

Likewise, there should be no pride in carrying out the work we are called to do. When we are called to help people with mental health challenges, we are expected to carry out such work in the way Jesus treated the sick and the rejected when he walked the earth. There should not be any thought about how good we are to be serving such needs. With a humble spirit like Jesus, we should give up all claims of praise that we think should be our due.

We serve others out of the love Jesus has put into us, allowing that love to flow to those who need it so badly. People with mental health challenges hunger for such love. They hunger for Jesus and we, as believers, have it in us to spiritually feed them.

As the apostle Paul told the church in Philippi, “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2)

marja