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iShare 2019

Dee Casper

Rethinking Mental Health In Evangelism

God in heaven, thank you for this privilege to know you, to serve you, that you are a God who desires our holistic health, that you are not solely interested in our spiritual lives, you're not solely interested in our physical health, you're also deeply interested in our emotional well-being.

And so I pray that as we have this time together that you would bless us, that you would speak to us, and that you would challenge us, and that you would effect an important change that's needed in this movement, and including something that I believe you never intended for us to exclude from our evangelism.

And we ask this now in Christ Jesus name.

So we talk a lot about training for evangelism, right?

That we need to have, you know, so-and-so come in and train our people how to give Bible studies, and we need to have someone come in and train our people to know how to knock on doors, and we need to have someone come in and train people to know how to answer hard objections, and how do we give health presentations on how to eat right and cook healthy food and do the CHIP program and and all of these things are good things for us to be doing.

But I do have a question in regards to this.

When we talk about training for evangelism work, very rarely is the topic of mental health mentioned in that discussion.

If you were just do some random Google searches on the statistics of mental health issues in the United States of America today, you would realize it's a massive problem.

And my question is, are we doing anything to train the people that we're, you know, equipping to do evangelism to know anything about this topic?

Because they're not just needing ways to help people out there that have mental health issues.

Anyone who's worked in ministry can tell you, hey, there's a whole lot of people in here that have mental health issues.

Another thing that we're gonna have to start doing is having conversations internally about the fact that our own people are hurting and allowing an open and safe space for vulnerability to take place and allow for them to communicate, I am struggling and I'm not a loser for struggling.

You are not a loser for struggling, but we can feel like that at times.

Some of us have grown up in cultures, some of us have grown up in homes, some of us have grown up in environments where for me to acknowledge the fact that I'm struggling in the area of mental health will immediately make me feel like a leper, like someone who's weird, who's, you know, it shouldn't be associated with, that I'm all of a sudden someone who's less than.

So when it comes to training people for evangelism, this needs to be part of our discourse.

And I would say the same thing about relationship seminars, right?

You'll hear people go through the whole recipe, and there's very good information being shared in these, don't misunderstand me, but we go through the whole recipe of, how long have you known him, all this other stuff, but are we actually encouraging people in their preparation for relationships to deal with their own brokenness?

Not just talk to the parents, do this, do this, which are all things that should be done, but don't avoid the fact that, hey, am I even in an emotionally safe and healthy place to be considering a relationship?

Not just do I have a job, can I provide for a family, am I actually in a space emotionally and psychologically where it would be wise for me to begin yoking up with somebody else?

And how to prepare people for that, resources in the church and so forth.

Our public evangelistic meetings are very rarely addressing issues that cripple people in their day-to-day lives.

I'm talking about emotional health largely, right?

We give the Daniel 2 presentation, we talk about the great controversy, God didn't start it, but God will put an end to it, right?

We give 1 presentation on Jesus, and then we fast forward to everything else, all these other random, seemingly disconjointed pieces, whenever Jesus should be at the center of all those pieces.

But I think we would do well in our public meetings in addressing issues that those people are dealing with, right?

We can lose sight of the fact that God may have more in mind than just changing somebody's philosophy.

God may want to do more for this person's life.

So what was the work that God commissioned Jesus to do?

So what was the work that God commissioned Jesus to do when he was on this earth?

Psalm 147 verse 3 says that he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds Russell told in Isaiah chapter 61 in verse 1 that he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted To proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison for those who are bound.

I am personally convinced and deeply convinced of the fact that this is the way that our ministry should look.

Even our public meetings should involve healing the brokenhearted, not just again asking someone to exchange philosophy through the means of proof texting.

We should be seeking for ways to dramatically change these people's view of themselves and of God and to make those views healthy.

Many of our own people are wrestling with unhealthy pictures of God.

3BN's pastoral department, a large television station in our denomination, is getting an alarming amount of phone calls from Seventh-day Adventist adults and pastors who have 0 assurance of salvation.

Unhealthy views of God, unhealthy views of themselves and their standing with God.

And so I think there could be some systemic issues that are not being addressed that leads people to think poor thoughts about themselves and about God.

The Bible says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

Many times we're projecting our faulty core beliefs in ourselves upon God.

That God looks at me in the way that I look at me.

Why does God even bother with me because clearly I'm a defective model.

We project those unhealthy views we have about ourselves upon God and assume he looks at us in the way that we look at us.

The faith of Jesus is the answer to all of this.

So if the work we're doing in evangelism does not heal the brokenhearted, we have to ask ourselves if we're really doing the work that God intended.

Our public meetings should be landing the airplane in their living room, not just on their bookshelf.

Get rid of the books by this theologian, put in the red books.

Get rid of these thoughts, now believe this about what happens when you die.

We want them to have healthy views of God because the thing is our view on the state of the dead, on hell, on prophecy, every bit of it is good news.

But you can contextualize those beautiful truths to the needs that people have in their day-to-day lives, are you with me?

And a big need that people have in our churches and outside of our churches is the topic of mental health.

There is a pandemic in our movement of loneliness.

I can't open up and tell someone that I'm struggling.

No 1 cares about what I'm going through because we haven't fostered an environment where that's welcome.

Or we saw somebody be vulnerable and then the gossip mill started and we realized, I'm not hopping on that train.

We had to have some internal discussions about the fact that our people are hurting too.

And you are not a loser if you're dealing with mental health challenges.

And God does have answers for these circumstances.

I believe that the message that we've been given can supply answers to that.

So I'm gonna walk through some stuff that has been very helpful for me.

He sets us up to be hurt so he can whisper his lies in first person language that I'm not good enough, that I'm worthless, or et cetera.

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Rethinking Mental Health In Evangelism

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