Sample Chapters

Chapter 1 – The Cliff

“If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again” is horrible advice for someone who is suicidal. – Life Advice Expert: Andrew Bates

You should just jump. I heard in my head. Life won’t get any better than this, followed shortly behind.  The cliff is tall enough, so it probably won’t hurt that bad. It will be quick.

I had made my way up the trail from my wife, Victoria, and I’s campsite to get a better view of the sunset.  The dirt was still damp from the rain earlier in the day and cold on my bare feet.  As I walked up the trail each rock made me wonder if leaving my shoes to dry in the sun was the right decision or not.  Victoria did not want to make the short journey to the overlook after already covering 10 miles with our 30-pound packs on our back earlier that day. After weaving through the pine and white birch trees, I found myself standing at the overlook. Sunset was a few minutes away and I took some time to breathe in the fresh forest air. The smell of trees, the moisture of the forest, and the water stirring below me filled my nose. The forest of northern Minnesota is one of my favorite smells.

I moved slowly closer to the edge of the overlook and found myself with my toes hanging over the edge of the cliff, the Split Rock River of Minnesota’s North Shore was rushing and raging a hundred feet below me.   It would be the last night of our 6-night backpacking trip on the Superior Hiking Trail.  As God started filling the sky with pinks, reds, and oranges perfectly arranged through the wispy clouds, over the deep green forest for as far as I could see, my mind started to fill with those thoughts of I wish I was dead.  Going back home would be the death of me anyways, so why not just end it now?

I wish I could say that moment passed quickly, but truthfully it pressed into my soul in a way I still remember. That wasn’t the first time in my life that I thought about suicide or the desire to be dead. These were thoughts I was familiar with and grown accustomed to since I was in the 6^th grade, and on that cliff, I was nearly 30 years old.  There are things that stem further back that we will get into later, but 6^th grade was the year that these thoughts began to sneak into my mind.

A few months into my 6^th grade year, my dad got a new job that required our family to move 2 hours away from my childhood home.  It was a great opportunity for him as a pastor.  He had been working a full-time secular job to be able to support us as a family as well as pastor a church and now he would be a full-time pastor of a church.  I could see even then at 11 years old that it was a good move for him, but that didn’t make me like the decision.  Shortly before we moved, an uncle I was very close to passed away suddenly from a sickness. That was really my first experience with the loss of someone I was close to, and no one really helped me grieve his death, on top of the loss I was about to experience with the move.

The move was challenging for me. Everything in my life was different.  All my friends and family were far away, and it was hard to make new ones.  There weren’t any kids on my block, the kids at school were very different from me, and something inside of me feared making friends knowing I could lose them again.  I hated life. I wanted to run away back to my hometown, but I knew nothing was really going to work, so I began to think about just dying instead.  Eventually I did make friends, found my group in school, and at church, but the thoughts never really went away.

Speaking of church, I had known God for pretty much my whole life.  My parents had been in ministry before I was born and as they said at that time, I was pretty much born in the pews.  I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior in a canoe on a Big Island Lake in northern Minnesota, with my dad when I was about 4 years old.  (We weren’t from Minnesota as you might be guessing, it was where we vacationed every summer growing up. Minnesota has always been a safe and wonderful place to me.)  I loved church and I loved Jesus.  I felt called to ministry as a child.  I remember my dad picking me up and setting me on the end of a table to talk to me about going into ministry. He said, Ministry was hard and not for the faint of heart. Pastoring is not something you should choose but only pursue if you feel called. Here I am, many years later, having been in ministry as a pastor for 17 years, and he was not wrong.

I was never a shallow believer. I was “all in” from childhood.  Even during the move of 6^th grade, I didn’t doubt God, I was angry and frustrated with Him, but I never doubted whether He was real or not.  From a young age I was regularly reading my Bible, spending time in prayer, and honestly in love with God.  In my teen years I was leading Bible studies at church and school. I was playing on my worship team and even started Bible college classes at 16 years old.   After high school, I went to a 9-month discipleship program furthering my ministry training.

Shortly after returning home, I started as a full-time staff member at our local house of prayer, where I spent 40 hours a week worshiping, studying, and praying. After a year, I also became the Youth Pastor at my church where I served for 5 years.  In the middle of all that, I married a wonderful woman of God and we had our first child.  I had also completed schooling to get my diploma in Bible and Christian Leadership, as well as receiving my Pastoral credentials.  We then went on to serve as youth and worship pastors of another church full-time.  By the time I was standing on that cliff I had been in pastoral ministry for nearly 10 years, and all those years were very fruitful.

I share all this not to toot my own horn (beep, beep) but because I want you to know that my depression and struggles did not stem from a shallow relationship with Jesus.  I loved God, I was loved by him and constantly chose him over anything else to be able to follow him. I had my regular devotional times with God, I had read through the Bible many times, I spent many hours praying for healing and had seen God move in mighty ways in others’ lives and even in my own.

People would tell me my depression would go away if I just spent more time with God, if I spent more time praying, if I really loved him, I would be full of joy not depression. Which, if you struggle with depression, and you try all these things and nothing changes, it just makes you more depressed.  I felt like a hypocrite of a Christian.

From the outside looking in, my life seemed pretty good, during this cliff incident.  I had been married for nearly 8 years to a woman I did not deserve. She deserved better. She is beautiful inside and out and deeply loves God and our children. She had already stuck with me through a lot.  We had 3 kids – 2 in the last 3 years.  I finally had a son, who had recently turned one.  We had purchased our first house, and for a first house, it was wonderful. 4 Bed, 2 bath, and a 3-car garage. We had also built a music studio in the basement. Which was always a dream of ours.  We were the youth and worship pastors at a growing church in small town Iowa.  We were experiencing growth in all the ministries we led, and we had really found our stride.  We had a great community of young adults around us, and our families were just a half a day drive away. From the outside, it seemed like we should be in such a good place.  But I wasn’t.

These thoughts really began to penetrate to my core.

Maybe I was not loved by God.

Why does he not want to heal me?

 Am I broken?

Did God make a mistake when he made me?

Why can’t I just be better?

I began to doubt my calling, and really my ability to be anything.  I believed I was failing at all my roles in life: a father, a husband, a friend, and even more so, failing not just as a spiritual leader but failing in my spirituality.  The world around me was telling me I was.  How could someone with doubts about his own life ever lead others to hope in Jesus?

 

 

Chapter 9: You Cannot Heal in the Fire

“Think what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down on our blankets for a nap.” – Barbara Jordan

When my wife and I were at my lowest moment, (the story I shared at the beginning) we were on a short trip to pick up my guitar that needed some work done, and we swung by the office of my mentor, Kevin.  Kevin is one of the main reasons I am on the earth still today.  I don’t want to jump too far ahead of myself, but if you are someone who struggles with depression and anxiety, you need to find someone to meet with regularly in your life, who can speak truth into your life and help guide you in moments where you feel lost.   (All Christians should have someone they do this with, it’s called discipleship, but that’s a topic for a different book).

Victoria and I were in a meeting space with Kevin, and this is between my near suicide attempt and us quitting our job, and we opened up for the first time about how difficult of a time we were having.  This was the first time I had heard Victoria open up about everything and how she was dealing with it all.  It made the weight of what I was going through even more overwhelming.  Kevin posed the question “What are we going to do?”  My mind was like a PC with error windows popping up continuously and that annoying sound it makes when you can’t click on anything.  I was blank, I had no answers.  My wife was sobbing, deeply hurt, everything in me knew something needed to happen but I couldn’t come up with an answer.

Kevin, whether in his great wisdom, or a moment of wisdom from God, said this to us, “you cannot heal while standing in the fire.”  Suddenly, it was so clear that we needed to make some changes in our life, major changes.  The changes didn’t come quickly but the conversations had started.  Change is already scary in general and even more so when you can barely function.

We had a family vacation planned a few weeks after this conversation.  That trip was a break from the fire. I felt like I could breathe for the first time in a long time.  As that trip was ending, I felt like I could think clearly and make the right decisions, which led to Victoria and I putting in our 30-day notice to quit our jobs as youth and worship pastors.  It was either the night we arrived back home or the day after that we did so and met with the lead pastor and his wife. They were really gracious with us during that transition and without their help we would not have made it through.  The church paid for me to see a counselor, and they kept us on staff until we sold our house and had a plan for our future.

I don’t think it’s God’s plan for everyone to move and/or get away from the problems that may be causing or adding to your depression or anxiety, but like myself and Elijah, a time away is always helpful.

God’s first action to help Elijah was giving him a snack and a nap.  Verse 5-6 of 1 Kings 19 says

“Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, “Get up and eat!” He looked around and there beside his head was some break baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again.”

I believe when we are deep in our spiraling that the first thing we need is to care for ourselves physically, and often that does take the help of someone else.  If your friend is at that place where they are overwhelmed, anxious, and/or deep in depression, one of the best things you can do for them is help them make some healthy choices.  Take them to get some good food, make sure they are sleeping well, encourage them to shower, go for a hike or a walk.  Our mental health, and spiritual health for that matter, are connected to our physical health.  And that’s where God started with Elijah.

In my own life, God was starting to take care of those things for us even though we didn’t even see his plan at that time.  About a year before all this happened, I decided to start losing weight. I had become fairly unhealthy leading up to this and I am sure that all played into why my mental health had become so bad.  I ended up losing 90 pounds over that year and Victoria started losing weight with me.  We also started making large efforts to pay off credit card debt we had.  Which aided our ability to move fast as we didn’t have a lot of money going out.  God is good and always has a plan.

In Elijah’s life, it wasn’t just a short nap that was needed. God took Elijah on a 40-day 40-night trip in the wilderness to bring him to Mt Sinai where he eventually began to speak truth into him and redirect his life.  Elijah needed a break from the fire as well.

If you are someone who struggles regularly with anxiety, depression, and feeling overwhelm, I would highly encourage you to make sure you have regular times of rest scheduled into your life.  If you are currently at that place, consider how you can take an extended time of rest.  Since going through those situations in my own life, as a family we have come to see the value of vacation and resting and we take full advantage of those moments.

This is something that God created us to need.  From the very beginning in creation, He modeled that we would work and then rest, and as His people developed and more commands were given, more rest was prescribed for his people.  This is called the Sabbath. It is a gift from God that we should regularly have time set aside to do nothing else but rest and enjoy the life that he has given us.  This is one of the main practices that has shaped my life and kept me from falling deep into my spirals again.  In 40 days, Elijah went from suicidal to back to work.  It’s amazing what a good vacation and some rest can do for us. Don’t miss out on this wonderful offering from God!

                  Deep Wounds

When I was 18 years old, I was part of a discipleship program and one of our responsibilities was running a youth group.  One of my main jobs was on the media side, taking photos and videos and the like.  Our youth room has a storage loft that at the time overlooked the stage and a buddy and I decided that it would be a cool area to take some photos and videos from, so we climbed the built-in ladder to the top.  Now the ladder was in a very messy storage area.

After getting the footage we needed, we started back down in a hurry, my buddy David went down first, and I was following close behind.  As he stepped off the ladder unknowingly to me, he bumped an old whiteboard that now started to tip over from the wall. I was already in the process of jumping down and skipping the last few steps and as I was falling, the old bracket from the white board caught me.  It proceeded to tear my pants from my rear upper thigh up past my butt cheek.  But my pants weren’t the only thing damaged.  The bracket had also sliced my butt cheek.

Let me remind you that we were in the middle of youth group at his time and they had already moved on to worship and this room I was now standing in, exposed and in a lot of pain, was on the left of the stage, only blocked by a thin black curtain.  The bathroom was down a hallway on the opposite side of the stage.   I carefully, yet quickly, walked very awkwardly around the perimeter of the room, careful to not expose myself to any of the youth.

I got to the bathroom and examined the damage, my pants and boxers were destroyed, and there was a lot of blood.  I did what I believe was reasonable at the time and turned my boxers around so I wouldn’t be exposed, stuffed a lot of paper towels in them to soak up the blood, and put my pants back on and went out in the world.

It was a pretty deep cut, let’s just say I had to make sure I was wiping the right crack for a while.  Ok maybe it wasn’t that bad, but in hindsight (pun intended) I probably should have gone in for stitches, but it was embarrassing that it was on my butt. I didn’t want to tell anyone how bad it was, and I definitely didn’t want to show anyone!  It took quite a while to heal and was a literal pain in my butt for weeks. Nearly 20 years later I still have a scar on my butt cheek.

I share that story not just to embarrass myself, but there is a large chance you have a similar experience in your life, in an emotional way.  Maybe you have a wound on your heart and soul that has never fully healed.  A scar that has left its mark and has kept you from fully moving on.

Wounds in places you can’t see, so you don’t understand how deep they are, and you are too ashamed to show them to someone else.   Wounds that cannot be fully healed without some professional help, and all you did was stuff in some metaphorical paper towels and later stuck a Band-Aid on it and acted like it was all good.  But if not treated, you end up with a scar that later may cause problems, and at a minimum marks you for life.

I would encourage everyone to go to a counselor or therapist, even if you don’t believe you have any issues.  We don’t bat an eye at people who go in for a regular physical check-up with a doctor, so why would we not go in for a regular mental checkup as well.  If you are like me and predisposed to depression, or maybe its anxiety for you, then you should definitely go see a professional.  I understand that for a time there was a negative stigma placed on those who went to therapy, but we need to get past that and if you want to be on a path towards healing you need to go as well.

I would not be here today if it was not for therapy.  I have gone multiple times in my life for regular sessions with a therapist and they have helped me to stop my downward spiral and offered tools that were catered to me, to start spiraling up instead.  If cost is the only thing keeping you from therapy, check with your insurance to see what they cover, often your workplace and your church have connections that might help as well.  Your life is worth going to see a professional.

                  Unhealthy Coping

These wounds, if untreated correctly, are often subconsciously treated by other substances.  Like the metaphorical paper towels we use to stop the bleeding and the Band-aids we use to hold it together and cover it up.  These substances range from drugs and alcohol to porn and being a workaholic, to relationships and sex, to danger and extremism.  There are so many things in the world we use to cover up our hurts that will never fully heal us.

One of the most common in our world today is scrolling social media. Getting lost in the lives around us, so we don’t have to think about ours. Numbing our minds with each thumb scroll.  It’s not called “joy” scrolling for a reason but doom scrolling because not only do we do it the most when we are looking for something to fill us, or something to distract us, but it only spirals us down, as all unhealthy coping does.

I heard this quote online one day, and it has stuck with me: “wherever you go in crisis, is where your Christ is.”  Are you turning to God and to healthy things when crisis hits? Do you turn to other coping first? Do you numb yourself with social media, with the hopes someone likes, shares, or comments on a post so you can have that hit of dopamine? Do you turn to porn, drugs, busyness, work, alcohol, or something else that is not God?  Where is your “Christ”?

The enemy is not dumb and knows when to introduce just what we think we need.  It’s no coincidence that when my family moved during my 6^th grade year and depression really started to hit me, that I also stumbled upon pornography.  It all started so innocently.

My parents, in a move to shield and protect me from the world, kept me out of part of the sex education classes during my 5^th and 6^th grade years.  While all my friends were talking about things they were learning I was feeling left out and lost. So, one day while my family was across the street at church, I fired up our home computer and the logged in to our dial-up internet with a plan to learn what all these terms I was hearing were.

Obviously, I ended up seeing a lot of things that I was not prepared to see, but something about it made me feel good, and I had not felt good in a long time.  That hit of dopamine and oxytocin released during an orgasm made me feel better.  It, at least for a time, filled some of the emptiness.

After some amount of time passed, I would fill empty again, and the desire for porn increased.  Eventually even the fact that I had to sneak around to view porn became part of the excitement that filled me.   As I got older, I learned that porn was not good, but I was already hooked and that added a whole new cycle to my life.  The cycle of shame and returning to my vomit. (2 Peter 2:22) I would feel empty and broken from my feelings of depression and I would turn to porn for that hit of the good chemicals in my brain to make me feel good, but then almost immediately feel the shame and condemnation of my actions, which would cycle me lower, which only increased the desire to feel something good again.

25 years later still when things get hard, my body longs for that quick fix. Even though I know what’s best, the satisfaction found only in the presence of God, my flesh still wants to cover it up instead of doing the work of healing.

I have been caught over the years looking at porn, whether it was by my parents when I was younger, or Victoria after we had barely been married. Every time I was threatened with punishments as a “help” to end my addiction, but it was always misdiagnosed.  I was not addicted because I was some “sex addict” or that my wife was not fulfilling me, but porn was just my drug of choice to medicate and numb the pain and cope with deep depression, sadness, and hurt.

It’s natural to look for a way to cope with pain, but nothing heals or satisfies us like God can.

Psalm 145:16 When you open your hand,
you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.

Psalm 16:11 (NIV) You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Whatever you may have found to cope with your hurt and pain cannot satisfy or fill you like God can.  I am sure you already know how your coping keeps coming up short and I understand why you keep turning to it, but there is something better.

If it’s an easy fix, it’s probably not what you need, just a coping measure that covers up the shame and stops the bleeding for a moment, but it will not heal the scar. I do not want you to go away from this thinking that it’s only a spiritual battle to be fixed but that there are physical and mental things that need to be addressed correctly.

We must remember that God took care of Elijah’s physical needs first.  He gave him rest and food. He satisfied him.  He strengthened him and then encouraged him to get back out there.

What are you using to cope? Are you looking to find satisfaction in that or in Jesus?

When was the last time you took a break, a Sabbath?  A vacation? Or just took a good nap?

How’s your physical health? Maybe it’s time for a check-up.

And while you are at it, sign up for therapy.

Don’t turn to the world any longer but come to God for a snack and nap. And remember it’s not just a small snack; it’s a whole feast!  Start to care for your physical and mental needs, do the deep work on healing.

 

 

 

Chapter 14: A Church for the Depressed

“I promise you, there is something worse out there than being sad. And that’s being alone and being sad. Ain’t no one in this room alone.” – Ted Lasso

In one of the most unexpectedly tender moments of Ted Lasso, a discouraged locker room falls silent as Ted names a truth most of us live but rarely say out loud: sadness is hard, but sadness in isolation is unbearable. Despair grows deeper when it’s forced into the dark. Pain becomes heavier when we believe we have to carry it alone. And for so many people, Christian or not, that’s exactly what depression feels like: not just sadness, but sadness with no witnesses.

What Ted says to a room full of athletes is what every church should be able to say, without hesitation or shame: Ain’t no one in this room alone.

But too often, churches accidentally become places where people hide their depression instead of healing within it. We learn to sing louder than our pain. We memorize verses faster than we admit our fear. We show up smiling, hoping no one notices the quiet exhaustion behind our eyes. Depression becomes something to “fix,” “pray away,” or “push through”—not something to be carried together.

Yet the story of Scripture paints a different picture. God meets Elijah under a broom tree, not with rebuke but with rest and food. David pours out his despair in the Psalms with brutal honesty. Paul admits to being “crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure.” Even Jesus, in His darkest moment, asks His friends to stay awake and sit with Him.

Depression is not a disqualification for belonging. It’s not a threat to faith. It’s not evidence that someone is spiritually failing. Depression is simply part of being human in a broken world—and the church is meant to be the safest place for broken humans to belong.

The question, then, is not whether depression exists in our churches. It does. The real question is whether we will be the kind of community that forces people to hide it… or the kind of community that sits beside them in the dark.

The first truth we have to name is this: depression is already in the room. It does not live “out there” somewhere in the world; it lives in our pews and chairs, our small groups and worship teams, our prayer rooms and children’s ministries. Depression touches pastors, leaders, volunteers, students, and new believers.

It shows up in the people who look strong, the people who lead worship with passion, the ones who always greet others with a smile. The myth that “Christians shouldn’t be depressed” only increases the shame when depression inevitably arrives. The church often avoids talking about depression not because it doesn’t care, but because it feels unprepared or afraid of saying the wrong thing. But pretending it isn’t present doesn’t make it go away—it just pushes it farther into the dark.

Realize that at a minimum 5% of your church is currently feeling like life is not worth living, and that those who do not feel like that, have someone in their life who does, and they need to know how to help them.  They need to know that its ok, its human, and that Jesus himself had to walk through it.  That they are not alone and they are in the best place to heal and find support while in it.  This won’t happen if these conversations are had in private, but we have to open up and talk about this from the stage. (I originally wrote pulpit, but I don’t have a pulpit when I preach… so small café table, ipad, ipad stand, note card, confidence monitor… I think you get it).

We have to talk about it more often.

We need to stop being churches trying to model a perfect life and be churches that model an authentic life. One with struggles and real emotions. We need to point out that scripture shows real people struggling with all sorts of real things like we do. I get it. We don’t talk about it at church, because we don’t know what to do about it.  It’s one of the main reasons I weep as I write this book because I think of all the times, I wish someone had talked about this as I silently suffered.  I want to give voice and help churches to be able to know what to say and how to support those who need it.

As I shared in chapter 2, the Bible does not shy away from this topic. So many of our Bible heroes experienced this deep darkness.  In the very same stories that we share to show the triumphs, we can talk about the darkness of the human experience as well.

How many people know that Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel and experienced the gentle whisper of God, but didn’t know that in the middle of that he wanted to die?

Or that Moses after seeing God move in so many mighty ways, and though he was the leader of hundreds of thousands of people, he was so burdened that he would rather die?

Or that Jonah, after repenting and deciding to be obedient, possibly committed suicide because that’s the last bit we hear about him?

Or that Paul admits he was “crushed and overwhelmed beyond his ability to endure,” reminding us that even apostles tasted depths they couldn’t climb out of alone.

And what about Jesus Himself entering the garden of Gethsemane with anguish so deep that He asks His closest friends to stay awake and sit with Him?

The Bible is far more comfortable with sorrow than most churches are.  The biblical story is not embarrassed by human despair; it embraces it, dignifies it, and makes room for it. We must become communities that are comfortable with sorrow, suffering, and discomfort.

If depressed people often feel unsafe in church, it’s rarely because a church intends harm, it’s usually because of misunderstanding. Well-meaning believers sometimes misuse Scripture, offering clichés that minimize pain: Just have more faith, Give it to God, or The joy of the Lord is your strength, as if the presence of sadness is the absence of spirituality.

This is what Job’s friends did.  They showed up in the most caring and present way, but then went on to offer the wrong advice, and were very pushy about it.  They ended up being rebuked by God and having to ask Job for forgiveness.  God told them that they spoke lies about Him. I believe their advice to Job is not untruthful advice for someone who is caught in sin, but that was not Job’s situation.  Have you realized that by trying to force healing, or assuming sin is causing someone’s depression, or telling them to just get more joy, is possibly misrepresenting God?

There’s also an unspoken pressure in many churches to perform emotional positivity—to sing louder than your pain, to smile through worship, to give testimonies that highlight the breakthrough and skip the middle. Add to that a lack of mental-health literacy, where Christians confuse depression with sin or assume it can be prayed away, and you get a community that loves deeply but doesn’t always understand how to respond compassionately. Ignorance isn’t malice—but it can still wound.

So what does a church for the depressed look like?

It begins with a church that makes space for lament. Lament is the biblical language for pain, and it is shockingly absent in many modern worship services. More than one-third of the Psalms are laments, an entire book of the Bible is dedicated to lament, and nearly every prophetic book contains extended sections of grief.

A church that welcomes lament gives people permission to bring their tears, their doubts, their exhaustion, and their honest cries before God. It teaches lament psalms, practices prayers of sorrow, and treats grief as a sacred offering. It’s a church that knows you can be fully loved by God and fully sad at the same time.

Second, it is a church that listens before it fixes. People don’t need quick answers—they need presence. They need someone who will sit with them, ask gentle questions, and resist the urge to explain their pain away. Trauma-informed listening becomes part of the culture: “with” comes before “why.” Compassion outruns correction. Pastoral presence matters more than performance.  The church needs more of Job’s friends that can show up and weep with those who weep.

When I was at my very lowest, battling daily suicidal thoughts, I brought it up to one of our church leaders, who oversees multiple churches.  I told him how suicidal I had been and how hard it was for me to do anything for the last few months, and I was met with little empathy and the fix of well maybe its God telling you it’s time to move on…. Yeah, I don’t think God was like, let this guy be suicidal so he can get the hint that his assignment is up here…

This is the problem we run into in a lot of churches that there is a lack of good theology around suicide and depression and understanding on how to fix it.  Instead of listening to understand and hear me out, it was over spiritualized into something outside of the character of God.

Third, a church for the depressed is honest about mental health. It’s a place where sermons mention depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, not to shame, but to normalize. Leaders model vulnerability by sharing their own struggles and valleys. When pain is spoken aloud by those on the platform, it releases permission for those in the seats. Shame loses its power when suffering has a language. If scripture, via our Bible heroes, doesn’t shy away from these topics, we would be wise to be open about our struggles or invite those who do struggle to speak as well.

Fourth, it is a church with practical pathways. This means offering support groups, partnering with Christian therapists, providing crisis-care plans, and being explicit about when someone should seek professional help. A church for the depressed doesn’t treat prayer and medication as enemies, it sees them as companions. It has policies and resources so no one suffering feels lost or alone. Healthy schedules are understood and offered from staff to volunteers.

At our church, no volunteer is scheduled every week, they all get at least 1 Sunday off a month, to create rhythms of healthy rest to avoid burnout and give them a week to be filled. Boundaries are communicated and understood from the top down. Recognizing that we are all human and all of us are susceptible to this. We also work with a local Christian therapy office, to provide affordable therapy to those who cannot afford it.

Fifth, it is a slow church, a church that refuses to rush healing. Depression does not obey our timelines, and neither should the expectations we place on people. A slow church recognizes that mental and emotional health deserve the same patience, dignity, and care we give to physical healing or disabilities. It creates space for people to walk their journey at the pace God is leading, trusting His timing and His will in the healing process.

A church for the depressed celebrates small steps, honors the long journey, and gently stewards patience as a form of love. It protects people from harmful theology by teaching a robust theology of suffering, one where God is not a punisher but a companion in the dark, and where hope is not forced but nurtured.  That Jesus is a co-sufferer as Hebrews tells us.  Jesus suffered through the same testing we experience, and we should expect suffering to be part of the human experience.  Don’t hurry people out of suffering but point people to Jesus in it.

Finally, it is a church that carries hope without rushing it. Hope is not a demand; it is a gift. It is something we hold for each other when we cannot hold it ourselves. In a community of faith, hope becomes communal: when my hope is small, yours covers me. When yours fades, mine lifts you. Resurrection is not just a doctrine, it’s a shared heartbeat.  A church that understands that hope is built. It’s a process not inevitable and comes alongside the hopeless to help construct hope that is needed to become resilient in the world.

At its core, a church for the depressed is a community that understands one simple truth: no one heals alone. Friendship becomes a lifeline, small groups become safe circles, and leaders model transparency that makes weakness normal instead of shameful. The church does not replace therapy, nor does it pretend to solve depression. But it offers something that therapy alone cannot provide: a place of belonging, a spiritual family, a community of presence.

There is this little secret that John shares in one of his letters.

No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. – 1 John 4:12

He says “no one has seen God but.” John is offering a way that people can see and experience God, and that is through loving each other.  The full expression of God is experienced and seen when followers of Christ love each other.  The world needs to see this! Let me tell you that when I’m at my lowest moments, and someone still chooses to love on me, that’s the deepest kind of love.

The most loved we ever feel, is when we feel least deserving, yet someone chooses to love us. Now imagine if a whole church community did that for those within your community.  People would be coming to God left and right. I am positive that’s why the church grew early in Acts, when the world saw the church living in this kind of community.

And when the church gets this right, it becomes one of the most powerful witnesses to the heart of Christ. Because Jesus’ promise “I am with you always” is meant to be experienced through His people. We are the hands that sit beside someone in the dark. We are the voices that whisper the reminder: You are not alone in this room.

Depression may linger longer than we wish. Healing may be slow and uneven. But the church that chooses to stay, to sit, to carry, and to hope alongside the hurting becomes a place where despair loses some of its power because despair cannot overcome a community committed to loving like God loves.

At its heart, being a church for the depressed is not about programs or strategies, it’s about people who refuse to let one another walk through darkness alone and are not afraid to talk about it openly. It is a community that practices presence, patience, lament, and grace long before it offers solutions. But churches are not abstract ideas; they are made of individuals, ordinary believers whose quiet acts of compassion become lifelines for someone else’s survival. The kind of church we long to become begins with the kind of friend each of us chooses to be. And so, the next step is deeply personal:

How do you walk alongside someone you love who is hurting?

How do you sit with them in the valley when you cannot pull them out of it?

How do you carry hope on their behalf when they cannot feel it themselves?

The movement from community care to one-on-one care is not a shift in strategy but a continuation of the same truth: healing happens when someone stays. Let’s talk about what that looks like, up close and face-to-face.