Mental Health: Come to Me, and I will Give You Rest
Most seminary-trained clergy are required to take courses dealing with psychology and counseling. However, in some traditions, these requirements are perfunctory at best. Therefore, a significant number of pastors are ill-prepared to deal with these issues unless they’ve had previous training or seek further training in this area.
Bridging the Gap between Black Churches and Mental Health
Churches that have historically served Black communities are uniquely positioned to address unattended mental health needs for African Americans.
Interview with Psychologist Alison Cook: Becoming Our Spirit-led Selves
Psychology can inform how we understand ourselves, how our minds work, how our emotions work, how our bodies work, and how our nervous system works. That doesn’t mean every pastor has to become a neuroscientist or a psychologist, but I think there’s so much great research on which to draw.
Raising Our Spirits Together: Q&A with Dr. Addie Weaver
Addie Weaver, assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan, believes churches can be part of the solution to our mental health crisis. For her, the delivery of mental health care to underserved groups, particularly those in rural areas, is a justice issue.
The Neuroscience of Teaching Christian Formation
Our human brains are made to grab onto knowledge that we can both apply in our lives and that is also efficacious—it makes a difference. It strikes me that too often when I’ve mentioned science and faith, people tell me, “That’s too heady for me,” which can mean that it seems abstract and academic, not related to the lives we actually live 24-7. Applicability and efficacy seemed like antidotes.
C.S. Lewis and Real Progress
The Bible often talks about not primarily forging ahead but about “return” as the way to grasp real progress. We have to get back to God… Since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, I’ve been wondering about what science and Scripture tell us about it means to turn around and make real progress.
But the Greatest of These is Love
While we tend to see love as an emotional imperative rooted in our human identity, science seems to pursue a logical argument to explain it away as a natural phenomenon stemming from biochemical processes in our brains. However, even as recent advances in cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience unravel human emotion’s complexities and provide a unique perspective into how we experience love, there is more to this equation.
Devotional: Our Minds and the Mind of Christ
I Corinthians 1:10; 2:16 10 “Now I appeal to...
Using the Tools of Psychology to Study Children’s Ministry
While children do think differently about the world, they also offer an interesting case study about how we communicate love… when we kind of back up the developmental clock and look at kids, we see that love is just as much an embodied interaction in a relational space. Even when we cover it up and rationalize it in adulthood, that doesn’t go away. For this reason, there’s value in thinking about what formation looks like for our 10-year-olds. They cry for the same experiences our adult hearts crave.
Does Neuroscience Allow Us to Believe in Human Freedom?
What’s going on with be debate about the existence of free will? Get caught up on the basics and emerging research.