Many people, including Rick Warren, have begun to beg Christians and the churches to do something about helping people with what they call mental illness. These kinds of desperate calls for assistance go out every time there is a nationally known tragedy like the Warren's son or Sandy Hook or the Roman Catholic Priest scandals. I agree that the 500,000 or so churches in America desperately need to do something to help the mentally distressed. (I avoid using the mentally ill term.) But, WHAT should and could they do?
In 1969 I attended a three week training seminar with two of the most famous American psychologists of all time. The entire event was led by the team brought together by Dr. Carl Rogers, a former seminarian who was born and reared in a Conservative Christian home in Wheaton, Illinois. Even after Rogers left seminary and his faith behind he restated the Gospel into psychological terms and called Grace "Unconditional Positive Regard" and that was the core of his entire model right along with agape love.
The other psychologist, Orval Hobart Mowrer, was the founder of Integrity Therapy and trained thousands of people who carry on his traditions today. That includes Jay Adams who claims it is straight out of the Bible. That seminar impacted me deeply because of the focus on Lay or Peer Helping and the comments of these two agnostics about the power of the church to bring healing and growth to humanity. Mowrer said, "The early Christian church was the most powerful healing community the world has ever known." He had regained his own sanity and sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous.
Unfortunately, so many conservative Christians and churches are unfriendly toward anyone with an emotional, relational or mental problem. Instead of compassion, love, and prayer with God's truth, the hurting person gets judgment, rejection, and a lack of caring.
When we did our research on families with a child who had a disability, we discovered that almost 100% of them had seen a wall of rejection from the ministers and members of their churches. We discovered:
No one at the church ever asked how the adults were dealing with the stresses of having a special needs child.
No one from the church had visited the family, prayed for the sick child or the family.
No one asked how to support them.
This is often also true of a family member with a sick adult as well.
The care and cure of the sick has always been a central part of a church mission. However, today's churches are often more committed to the drama on stage rather than the drama's at their members' homes. If a church truly cared for the sick, it could lead to great ministry and expansion in this cold, friendless world.
Gary Sweeten books on ministry and helping hurting hearts
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