Sligo22:Kintsugi Hope
With Patrick Regan spoke during week B of #Sligo22. Here is a summary of what he shared.
I feel like the most precious thing you can give anyone is your time, so I’m really grateful for you. We’re going to share our heart around what it means to be a mental health friendly church.
Kintsugi: if you get a bowl and break it, we tend to mend it with super glue. But in Japan, they make a feature of the cracks by binding it with gold. It becomes more beautiful for being broken.
I’m a firm believer that beauty comes out of brokenness. That our scars make us who we are. Jesus in His resurrected body has scars. You know there’s going to be scars in heaven right? And so we need to have a much more real and honest conversation.
To put this in context, I was a Christian leader very passionate, working very hard, too hard. I thought, I’m just getting to the edge of burnout, I need to rest. If you get your phone - it works as well on 100% as on 10%. But it doesn’t last very long at 10%. But some of us put ourselves in cycles, with a little bit of a recharge, and then keep going again. Life can be like a game of Tetris, with rotating all these blocks, and they just keep coming. And suddenly everything goes wrong. My dad gets cancer, I get a very serious knee condition, my kids get ill. I started to cave. And on the outside it looked good.
In 2016 the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited the charity. The photos went round the world. One went into Okay magazine and everyone’s texting me like, “Wow Patrick, you’re doing really well!” But the reality is, I was struggling with anxiety to do with my health and family. And I’m like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I think I’m a burden.
I never heard people preach about it. When I started to talk to people, they said, “You just need to trust God a little bit more.” I think I’m depressed. “Well, you know depression is the sin right?” I felt ashamed. I was prayed for so many times I felt bad for the person praying for me. So I worried, “What’s wrong with me?” And I felt a sense of shame. Guilt is where I’ve done something wrong, but shame is believing I am wrong. The way you step out of shame is owning your story.
I was living by these rules: should, must, ought.
I should be able to cope
I must pull myself together
I ought to be stronger
And these things go round and round in my head. But more than anything anxiety is caring. It’s never wanting to hurt someone’s feelings. It’s never wanting to do anything wrong. More than anything, it’s the want and need to be accepted and liked so you try too hard sometimes. And so I came to the conclusion that depression, anxiety and panic attacks are not signs of weakness, but trying to stay strong for too long. A friend said, “Have you ever read The Curse of the Strong?” These are some of its key ideas:
moral strength
reliability
diligence
strong conscience
strong sense of responsibility
sensitivity
vulnerability to criticism
self-esteem dependent on the evaluation of others
a tendency to focus on the needs of others before one’s own
Does that look like a weak person to you? People who struggled with this include: Winston Churchill, Vincent Van Gogh, Mother Teresa. Not weak people, but people who stay strong too long.
Nick Warren said,”It’s not a sin to be sick. Your illness is not your identity, and your chemistry is not your character. Everything is broken in the world because of sin. I my liver doesn’t work perfectly, I take a pill for that, there’s no shame in that. If my heart doesn’t work perfectly, I take a pill for that, there’s no shame in that. If my lungs don’t work perfectly, I take a pill for that, there’s no shame in that. So why is it that if my brain doesn’t work perfectly, I take a pill for that and I’m supposed to be ashamed?”
After writing the book, When Faith Gets Shaken, we did a tour. Forty shows later, we were still going. We got a massive cross. We used to say, “Write down something on a post it note where you feel like you’ve been carrying something for too long.” And these post it notes were put on the cross. As I read them, 70% were to do with mental health. Standing with the leader afterward, they’d say, “Wow, I knew stuff was tough but not that tough. What do I do now?”
I was burning out but God was breaking my heart for social isolation and poor mental health. And I said, “God, I’ll do anything for you, apart from run another charity. I never want to fundraise ever again” God said, “Don’t think charity, think movement.” So I thought about movements for a while:
We started to dream: Our dream is to see a world where mental and emotional health is understood and accepted with safe and supportive communities for everyone to grow and flourish. We wrote a 12-step programme, with the seven different learning styles. The idea was people could contextualise it to their community. And we started to pray. These are the four key things:
safety and support where there is no shame and embarrassment in struggling
an increase in self-worth, confidence and wellbeing
a deeper understanding of the reality of God’s love
clear pathways to receive additional help
So we started training churches to do this in person. And we saw loads of non-Christians coming to these groups. We had people start it in farms, and the police, and then Covid hit. And my team said, “You know what, we could put it online.” Anyone can do it.
Suddenly the movement had started. There are thousands of people involved now. The stories are incredible. People have said this group saved my life, saved my marriage. There was a lady who lost her kid to foster care, and she felt a real sense of shame. So for the first three weeks, she kept the light off. And in week four, the light came on for the first time. That’s what Jesus does. I’m not an expert. We can’t be the expert, but we can offer love, community and support.
2 Corinthians 4:7-9 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
I was praying, and I said: “God, if the next big move of your spirit is gonna come somewhere in America, in a massive meeting, with a really famous band and a really well known, charismatic speaker, and God TV are gonna come and beam it all around the world, and call it revival, I think I might just quit.” But do you know what? If revival could be in small groups, in prisons, in schools, in universities, in pubs and coffee shops, in mums and toddlers groups, in farmers markets, in hairdressers, and all these different places, and if it’s not led by the great and good and the famous, but by the fragile, the vulnerable, the courageous. It would be incredible to see a move of God like that.
It would be incredible to create space in these places.
As this was happening, I got together a load of friends, and one leader said to me: “I love how this is creating spaces for people. But what happens if the church isn’t a safe, supportive space?” So then we decided to find some funding and went to a research company. We asked them for research for what a mental health friendly church looks like.
Research
We found that:
· 1/4 people struggle with mental health every year.
· More than two thirds of adults in the UK reported feeling somewhat or very worried about the impact of Covid on our lives. And I think that’s growing.
· The proportion of people coping well is falling: 73% → 60% since covid
· Those with pre-existing mental health conditions - 34% coped well
· 53% cited that mental illness, and 79% cited that isolation and loneliness are the greatest problem in their parish.
Language matters: A quote from Matt Haig:
“We use ‘depressed’ as a synonym for ‘sad’ which is fine, as we use ‘starving’ as a synonym for ‘hungry’ - though the difference between depression and sadness is the difference between genuine starvation and feeling a bit peckish.”
And if you’ve struggled with depression, you know it’s not just feeling a bit down all day.
From questionnaires; key research insights:
43% experienced a mental health issue in life
UK Christians overwhelmingly agreed that churches can help people
35% felt supported by the church
consensus that it’s not caused by personal actions or sin
Stigma from negative lay theologies:
lack of faith
selfishness
personal sin
demons
Church leaders:
91% of church leaders have had no training in mental health issues
56% felt their church rarely or never speak about mental health issues
Where do we go from here?
Train better
We’ve got to change the way we teach church leaders.
Our leaders are under so much pressure. It’s just not sustainable. No wonder so many church leaders are leaving the ministry.
We want to bounce forward.
Name our position
Most churches don’t name their position on mental health and then silence remains. It’s important we grapple with the theology of mental health. 40% of the Psalms are laments. Elijah was suicidal in 1 Kings 19. Theologians think Paul had a breakdown between writing 1 and 2 Corinthians.
Gentle presence
We’ve got to learn to be a gentle presence. I can’t be a mental health expert, but I can be a gentle presence and come alongside people.
People start to heal the moment they feel heard. -Cheryl Richardson
The day after his resurrection, Jesus walked with two heartbroken disciples, struggling with grief. His version of success looks different.
They share their story, and Jesus never interrupts and says, “Don’t worry, I’m Jesus!” When He stays for food, the brokenness reveals who Jesus is. People need a gentle presence to love them, to create a safe and supportive space.
The good Samaritan story: when acted out, I was always the rescuer. In the church sometimes we feel like the good Samaritan, but I’ve come to realise that I’m the beggar and Jesus is the Samaritan.
You cannot heal people, but you can bring them into the presence of Jesus.
In a church I visited, 50% of the church were homeless: 25% street homeless and 25% working poor. The rest were white middle class. And I found it fascinating. And the pastor said, “There is no them and us, there’s just us. We’re all broken and all need each other.”
They had an art therapy group instead of worship. They ran 12 Alcoholics Anonymous classes a week. They employed social workers twice a week. I came away thinking, the opposite to poverty is dignity. We need that: to feel that our stories have been presented and believed. It means we engage in the mess and it takes courage and vulnerability.