Bishop Julius C. Trimble is the Resident Bishop of the Indiana Area of the United Methodist Church.

Bishop Trimble has the personal mission to encourage all people with the love of Jesus Christ to rise to their highest potential. It is his commitment to his personal mission that led Bishop Trimble to create the “To Be Encouraged” Podcast along with co-host Rev.Dr. Brad Miller.

Bishop Trimble says, “I am compelled by Jesus to share with you an encouraging word or two about Jesus, theology, the Bible, the pandemic, the environment, racism, voting rights, human sexuality, and the state of the United Methodist Church.”

To Be Encouraged with Bishop Julius C. Trimble is to be published weekly and is available at www.tobeencouraged.com and all the podcast directories.

https://www.inumc.org/bishop/office-of-the-bishop/

In episode 058 of To Be Encouraged with Bishop Julius C. Trimble, the guest is Reverend Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund, (https://sarahgriffithlund.com/) an ordained minister in Disciples of Christ and United Church of Christ. Lund is an author of several books on mental health, including “Blessed Youth: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness with Children and Teens.” 

https://blessedmind.org/

Episode 058 of To Be Encouraged focuses on breaking the stigma of mental health in faith communities, especially in churches. Our guest Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund shares personal stories and other important information on mental health advocacy within faith communities to create awareness and support for those who may be struggling with various mental health issues.

Among the topics discussed are the importance of preaching about mental health to encourage people to seek help and the significance of Mental Health Month in May. Dr. Griffith Lund also highlights the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) as a source for trained volunteers who can share their stories and other helpful information.

Churches can offer educational programs and support groups for those dealing with mental health challenges and caregivers. There is also the "WISE" program, which is a ten-step process for churches to become more welcoming and supportive to people with mental health challenges.

Among the most important issues discussed is breaking the stigma of mental illness and acknowledging that people with mental illnesses are blessed and not forsaken. Mental health ministry can be an outreach opportunity to show the love of Jesus to the community and to create a truly welcoming and supportive environment.

Parents also need to closely monitor their children's online activities to ensure their safety. The Internet can provide such connections, but it can also be harmful. Churches can unintentionally be places where judgment towards children's behavior can occur. Therefore, some churches have created spaces and programs that are welcoming to children who may have ADHD, autism, or sensory issues. Additionally, mental health ministry could be created within faith communities to further address these issues and create welcoming environments for everyone.

To combat the suicide epidemic and gun violence associated with mental health issues, partnerships with other organizations such as schools, social service agencies, and healthcare facilities are necessary. 

Faith communities can provide spiritual support groups for mental health, with guidelines available from the United Church of Christ.

The emphasis is that all people are loved, and mental health issues can begin to manifest even in infancy. Eliminating barriers for people with mental health issues is essential for creating welcoming environments in faith communities. Churches need to be proactive about the mental health of their members and the community they serve. By taking action, mental health ministry can be an outreach opportunity to show the love of Jesus to the community.

Episode 058 with Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund is Part two of a two Part Episode featuring a discussion about Dr. Lund's book "Blessed Youth." Part 1 is Episode 057 about "Breaking the Stigma: Encouraging Mental Health Ministry in Faith Communities  and is be available at https://tobeencouraged.com/episode/057

Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund can be contacted about her books and speaking opportunities at:

https://sarahgriffithlund.com/

Her Ministry is Blessed Mind

https://blessedmind.org/

You. So you provide

a gift for me as I was reading Blessed Youth,

and I really would like you to expand on it a

little bit, Sarah,

because this is kind of a theological word

as well. Blessed. I think about the Sermon

on the Mount and different translations of the word, but the word blessed,

you, you breathe for me, you breathe new life into that word on

what it means to be holy as well as whole.

Whole and holy.

H-O-L-Y So can you say

more about what blessed? I said this a few days

ago in a sermon, that our sacred worth is not subject

to debate. So God has already blessed us

to be loved, but there's so many other

voices that come in. So what does the word bless it?

How do you breathe that life into

that as being holy and whole? Thank you so

much. Mental health is what

impacts our emotions, our feelings, our behaviors,

our relationships. Mental health impacts everything.

And so when we are having a mental health challenge, it impacts our

moods, how we think and feel about ourselves. And so

oftentimes, mental illnesses will cause a

low self esteem, a feeling of worthlessness,

a feeling of hopelessness, despair. The part of our

brain that processes mental illness is also the similar

part that processes spirituality. And so

one of the side effects of it is feeling like God

has abandoned us because our brains

have sort of blocked that spiritual pathway. And so people

can feel utterly abandoned and forsaken

by God when they are really in what I call the valleys

of the shadow of mental illness. And so

in the midst of that, I want to remind myself

and other folks that we are blessed.

We are not cursed, we are not forsaken. As we

hear Jesus say, blessed are the poor in spirit,

blessed are those who live with mental illness and

their loved ones. This reminds us that we are more than

our illness. We are more than our diagnosis. We are more

than our label. We are more than what's broken about

us. We are made in the image of God,

and we are Jesus's beloved disciples,

part of God's family. And so I have to remind myself

because like a lot of folks in my family,

we have generations of mental health challenges. We have bipolar

disorder that is genetic. So I can see four

generations of people in my family that have bipolar

disorder. And so someone might say, wow, is that a family curse?

This passed on from generation to generation

who here sinned? And so that's just

kind of always there for me, because that's so much how we

talk in the Christian faith, right?

Cursed and sin, it's all throughout the Bible.

But really, would God do that? Would God take God's

precious, beloved people and curse them with generations of

bipolar disorder? Not. My God. That's not

a God of love and grace. My God says,

you know what? You're human, you're beloved. You have a brain.

Sometimes our brains are made differently. And so

I like this idea of neurodiversity.

We all have diversity in the ways our brains work.

And when folks like your mother in law get support and help,

these different brains can be beautiful, can create art,

new ideas, talents.

And a lot of our best thinking and original ideas

come from people whose brains are different.

And so that's also part of this idea of blessed

and to really focus on the beauty and the

giftedness that we all have. No matter what mental

health diagnosis we have or medications we take.

It'S so important to realize that everyone has

a story and also the understanding of

from birth on, we often think of

people at a certain age things being noticed or diagnosed.

But in your book, you talk about even early on as infants

and mental, some of these things are

happening. I think back now on some things as a parent,

looking back, I said maybe we were really missing some

things that were going on. Or even I think of things,

language that I confess before God and all of our podcast

listeners that I think back on words that I used or

thoughts that I had that really were not healthy. You know why? When we

said, well, those are bad kids as opposed to good kids,

bad behavior and all of these things that without

thinking about it, stigmatize and label,

when really our stories are maybe a lot more complex than

we extend enough grace to understand.

Does that make sense? I know I'm rambling a little bit. But maybe you no,

it does make sense. Yeah. And I think our church can be

places where that judgment comes out.

So I think we all have stories of encounters at church

with our kids where it's like, oh, is my

kid being bad or is my kid acting in a way that's

not wanted here? And so our church has

a playground. We have a space for kids to be in the sanctuary

where there's no pews or soft pillows and carpeting.

And other pastors are starting to create spaces where

children can be themselves if they have ADHD

or autism, that whatever way they behave, they're not being bad.

They're just trying to manage all of their

sensory stimulation. And so

to not label kids or punish them

just because their brains have them acting

and thinking a little different, too many families that are staying home,

they're not coming to church because they're tired of being

judged or having their kids labeled or feeling rejected.

And so it's really a convicting moment that

there's more we can do, there's more grace and

love. We can show people. So to be

proactive about that. So what would it look like for your

faith community to have a mental health ministry

where you create spaces and programming that are

welcoming of youth who are neurodivergent,

who have autism, who have ADHD,

who have social phobias and really don't feel comfortable

interacting with other people.

That is so fantastic. I hope those who are listening the

last church I served before I was elected a bishop had a mental health

ministry that only came about because laypeople came

to me. I was a pastor and they educated me and

they said, Pastor, we are just missing it. There are people in

our church who are hurting. They're kind of quietly dealing with things.

And then we linked with Nami and another support group

and provided space for a support of ministry.

We highlighted Mental Health Awareness Month and I

made a public commitment to preach several times

around this. But it was laypeople who actually came and

parents and adults. We had one person

who had been traumatized because she had been in a train wreck

and that created a whole post

traumatic stress illness and she helped lead

us creating this ministry. I'm saying this because I know someone

may listen to the podcast and wondering, how do

you get started? This kind of leads to my next question how

do you become mental health advocates in the faith

community? How do we think about I've been to several of our churches

that do have that play space, and I thought I said, boy, I wish

I would have when I was an active pastor at the time,

created space for noise in the sanctuary

or in the same space so parents wouldn't have a

reason to not come to church. We would eliminate

those barriers. So what does

it mean to become mental health advocates and

how does one get started? Maybe there are people

hearing this or others who work

in this area,

in their work life, but they don't bring that to their faith

space. Thank you, Bishop, for your

leadership and advocacy. Preaching about mental health makes a

huge difference to break the silence from the

pulpit because like I said at the top of this conversation,

the stigma is really the barrier that prevents people from

getting help and support. So preach about mental health. May is Mental

Health Month. So preach about it. Pray about it out loud in

your corporate prayer of the people. And then bring in

Nami. The National Alliance on Mental Illness. They have trained volunteers

who want to share their story and can share a mission

moment in worship. Have an educational program

after church. Our church has a Nami support group that meets

here. They have family to family support groups,

the caregivers of people with mental health challenges. They need

support there's peer to peer support groups from Nami.

Nami is always looking for good places to meet that are safe and

welcoming and inviting mental health. First aid is another

great training in the United Church of Christ. I help develop a

whole resource called Wise,

welcoming, Inclusive, Supportive,

Engaged for mental Health wise.

And it's a whole ten step process and a church then votes

to become a wise church. And part of that is

a covenant, a beautiful promise that

this church makes to be welcoming, inclusive,

supportive and engaged. And a key part of that journey to

be wise is education.

Learning about what is mental health, learning about

what would you do if someone comes into your church in a

mental health crisis? How can we love and support them?

What does it mean to have a pastor who needs to go on medical leave

for their mental health? What does it mean to be an advocate in

Indiana as we try to pass Senate Bill One to fully fund

mental health crisis support? How can people of faith

leverage the teachings of Jesus to love our neighbor and

call our Senators so that they will fully fund mental health care?

So it really is an exciting ministry opportunity

and it's also a wonderful outreach opportunity

to show the love of Jesus to our community.

And so mental health ministry, if it's something that you all are interested

in, I would pray that you would start the conversation

and you can read books to help get the conversation going.

So Blessed Youth has a free study guide you can

find on the Chalice Press website.

Speaking of youth, when we talk about peer to

peer, is there a way for peers? I can think

back down. Our oldest son, many years ago was

really trying to be a friend to a friend who was going

through a traumatic time and came to me and asked for all

I remember saying is try to be the best friend you can be. I wish

now looking back, I was maybe better equipped

to have to really been sensitive to what he was dealing with because

it may have been a life crisis situation.

Is there peer to peer training? Because a lot of times the person that

someone in high school or junior high might speak to

might be a friend before, as Brad was saying, they would

necessarily contact their parents.

Yes. So there is peer to peer training, mental health First

Aid has a youth training and Nami,

the national Ants on Mental Illness is working with schools

to create these peer support groups. And we have churches

who their youth group is a mental health peer support group.

They meet after school to do homework together,

but they also have check ins and they check in

with each other about how their mental health is doing.

And so faith communities can have

these mental health support groups and like I

said at the beginning, the spiritual connection to a living

God. We can have spiritual support groups for mental health

and the United Church of Christ. We have a whole guideline

for how to do that. My church has a spiritual support group and

what it is, is a safe space to check in and

to pray for each other as part of our holistic care

for our mental health. Sarah I'm going to stay United

Methodist, but I sure am liking some of what the United Church of

Christ is doing. So I hope you're willing to come,

maybe do some of that training for some of our folks as well.

We can just work across ecumenical relationships

and do that. We do have ecumenical partners.

So if you look at the United Church of Christ mental Health Network,

it has a synagogue that has used this resource and

is a wise synagogue. We have Episcopal and

Presbyterian churches and now we have nonprofits that have

found this wise model. You can adapt it to your culture and

context. So it really is just a beautiful model to

help journey alongside people.

We can't do this on our own in Silos anyway.

This is an epidemic, is it not? Sarah we are talking about

the epidemic of suicide, for one.

I don't even go off in this tangent too much, but gun violence is

so often associated with mental health

issues. I just noticed in a couple of the recent episodes, they're almost a

weekly deal, but there was obvious social

media and phone calls reaching out, basically saying,

I'm going to do this because I'm ending my life, exceed some

people. But my point is, you have to be in partnership with other

church, with social service agencies, with our schools,

with our medical health facilities and all because

it is a crisis that we need to leverage every resource at

hand. Am I correct in sharing that?

Amen. You read my book, because that's what Book of Youth is all

about, partnering families with faith communities, with schools,

with mental health professionals. Well, I think my yes,

my encouragement is that the church pastors

and lay leaders, you can initiate this in your community

because there's a historic division between religion

and the sciences. And so there's a lot of mistrust.

There is this assumption that faith people just want

to pray it away, that we just want the Lord

to save us. Thoughts and prayers don't always cut it all the way,

do they? Right. So they need us to initiate, say, we realize in

addition to prayer and Jesus, we need doctors

and therapists and social workers. So we want to invite you to partner

with us. We're waiting for that. Thoughts and prayers is one part

of it, but you got to take action. You got to be physically I love

what you said earlier about being physically engaged.

Sometimes it means intervention and other things as well and

having that going on, and that's awesome. And I'm certainly a

believer in that. And it all goes back, if I'm understanding you, Sarah, to some

of your personal stories about your own family, your niece and so on.

Bishop about your mother in law.

I've got stories in my family about borderline personality disorder

that could go off in a big tangent about but it's all very

personal, but it is relevant to our whole societal health

at large. And that's what I think. We can do something in the church

as an initiative point, whatever church we're in.

And however, the church can have a true impact in society through saying,

okay, here we're making a stand. And to

show that encouragement through caring for each other,

slowing down and asking,

how is it with your soul? Oh, yeah.

That sounds a little bit of Wesley and doesn't it? Bishop yeah, that's a little

Wesley in there. Sarah, I know we're kind of running out

of time, but you made reference to a book. Was it awakening

around the brain? And what was the name of that book? And author Dr.

Lisa Miller at Columbia University wrote the new

book The Awakened Brain. The Awakened Brain.

Okay. It's about neuroscience and spirituality, cutting edge

research, and it's very much affirming of our

churches, and our whole purpose is to support

people's spirituality. Little did we know that is mental

health ministry awesome. Well, friends, I would

just say, even though you've heard reference to that first book,

you should get is Blessed Youth. So if you get that, this should

be a national bestseller. In fact, get the book if

you read it. If it doesn't bless you, I'll buy back from you

if you can find me in person. There you go.

I did have one final question.

Comment, Brad, before we bring our time together, and that was

in the book. It makes reference and this is very relevant,

the role that social media has played. And I've had some discussions

in my own family around the blessing of social media

and technology and the multiple digital platforms

as well as I won't call it the curse, but the downside

of that and how sure, we understood

experience bullying, but maybe not at this kind

of level with social media. Can you say you make reference to

this in the book in terms of the role social media has played

in exacerbating this

pandemic, if you will, epidemic of

mental stress?

Yes. We need to watch very closely how our

children engage online. My niece, who did

die by suicide, she found the means to die on the

Internet, and there are resources

that will alert you to any searches

like that. So we always need to know, what are our children reading,

listening to? Who are they connecting to? Because the Internet

can help us as well. There was research about

high school students, and it found that students with an authentic connection

were less likely to have suicidal thoughts,

depression, anxiety. And it didn't matter if that was an in person

or online. What mattered was an authentic,

caring connection. So the Internet can give us that,

but it also can harm us. And so for

us as adults, we've got to monitor very closely

what type of activities our kids are

doing online. One of the greatest search phrases

on Google last year, right at the top two or three, was the

phrase, how can I heal, and I think it's informative to

us. But in terms of our conversation here and bringing

it around, Sarah, one of the things we love to do, the theme

of our whole podcast here is to be encouraged. So would you share

with us just a thought, an encouraged word, encouraged thought,

that you have to kind of help us to

wrap up our conversation here today. Well, I love

Psalm 23. It's one that a lot of us hear throughout

our lives. And the reason I love it is because of this promise

that even though I walk through the valley of the shadows,

I fear no evil, for you are with me, you comfort

me. So no matter what you are going through, be encouraged.

For God, who is a living, loving God, is with

you through the valley of the shadows and you will reemerge

into the light of love, with hope, with God's

promise and with God's love. Thank you

for sharing that, Bishop. I want you to close us under your own closing thoughts

in prayer in a moment here. I just did want to say that our guest

today here on To Be Encouraged is Sarah Griffith Lund

and her latest book is Blessed Youth Breaking the

Silence about mental illness with children and teens.

And you can find her@blessedmind.org

and at Sarah Griffith.com

and we'll put links to everything she is about at our website,

encouraged.com. Bishop, final word

of encouragement and a prayer, please. Sometimes people are

looking for a sign and maybe this podcast might be just

a sign you were looking for that you are loved. Often say

I try to explain grace in this way, using my spiritual imagination,

if you will, that God has a printing press in heaven

and God is making name plates and name

tags in heaven, everybody's name. And on the back of

your name tag says, you are loved.

So I want everyone to know that you are loved. It's not subject to

debate. It doesn't have to go before the state legislature,

the US congress or the Supreme Court. God loves

you, and there's nothing you can do about it but receive

that love. Psalm 71 says in you, O Lord, I take refuge.

Let me never be put to shame in your righteousness.

Deliver us, deliver me, rescue me, incline your ear to

me, save me, be to me a rock of refuge, a strong

refuge to save me. We pray that God will be

your rock and that this podcast may be the sign of encouraged,

that you need it. For today you

are loved. And in the name of Jesus, I ask

blessings upon all who hear.

And we thank you for listening today to the two

B encourage podcast with Bishop Julia C.

Trimble. I'm your co host, Reverend Dr. Brad Miller.

Until next time, friends. We encourage you to always do