​How is your congregation generating goodness in the world today?

A lot of people in the world, and particularly in the United States, feel distraught. They worry about having a job, having a home or shelter, getting a good education, having health care, and being safe – let alone being happy, feeling free, or having wealth to share.
 
We witnessed this weekend how millions of people voted for the current administration and how millions of people marched against the current administration. Interestingly, many congregations today have members from both of these groups. They are struggling to bring reconciliation within their own walls, as well as in their communities. 
 
Loving a neighbor as yourself is a primary commandment. Perhaps what's most striking about the command to love one's neighbor is how it requires crossing so many arbitrary human-made lines . . . lines of faith, economic status, ethnicity, politics, and education. Learning how to love the person most different from you – to provide for them – stretches our capacities greatly. How is your congregation doing that now, in light of so much division? What's working best for you? 
 
As a Christian pastor, I also see how the story of the Good Samaritan inherently is about responding to trauma as well. Being a good neighbor means responding to the wounds my neighbor has with effective care.
 
This weekend, as a country, we were presented with a lot of wounds in front of us. People who voted for the current administration, who have long felt forgotten and ignored. People who voted against the current administration, who have long felt forgotten and ignored and now fear it even more. And people who feel a wide range of other experiences, much of which is based on pain from the past.
 
There are many people hurting. Many who have been hurting for a long time. The State of the Union is beleaguered, at best, and there is a tremendous amount of work to be done to stabilize it.

And, through all the pain expressed this weekend, millions of people witnessed glimmers of hope. Hope in joining together with people of like-mindedness. Hope in hearing a neighbor's story and thinking about their perspective in new light. Hope in deciding to fight for the rights and benefits of a neighbor, more than just one's own. Story after story keeps emerging across the country of a people who seek out liberty and justice for all. 
 
What is your congregation doing to participate in building up your community and the nation? It what ways are you making a difference for greater health and well-being?
 
At ICTG, we’ve found, in part, the work health and well-being gets done most often through individual or small group efforts that add up to great collective movements. They include:

• Being a trustworthy reliable adult for the children and youth in your home, congregation, and community
• Listening to survivors and valuing their accounts
• Upholding and encouraging the use of adequate safety measures and effective resources for healing
• Practicing habits and rituals proven for growth (including healthy diet, exercise, sleep, prayer and meditation, contributing consistently to community, strong work ethic, and being a life-long learner)
• Celebrating with friends, family, and colleagues regularly

When these things are developed, crises, trauma, and disasters are far less likely to occur. When they do occur, groups practicing these things are far more resilient.
 
In the days ahead, may we all work toward building more healthy, vibrant communities. We all know the world could use a lot more them. 

This past weekend I was at a large youth gathering where I prayed with a young guy whose father was likely headed to prison and whose mom had abandoned the kids. Imagine how he feels about all the time at home this Christmas season.

For others the holidays are grim reminders of past events or divorces or deaths. Others are just flat out stressed. Purchasing presents, expensive travel/hassles, shorter days and less sunshine can bring on depression or seasonal affective disorder.

In 2008, the American Psychological association did a poll revealing eight out of ten Americans anticipated stress during the holiday season.

For those who are already experiencing depression, sleep disorders, anxiety, feelings, memories and more the expectations connected with the Christmas holiday bring even more anxiety. The songs, the pictures, the movies and stories all paint idyllic scenes of warmth and love. One writer in the Washington Post said, “Norman Rockwell images of large, smiling families gathered around a Christmas tree are deeply ingrained into our holiday mythology, which holds that every Dec. 25, parents and grandparents and siblings put differences aside and band together like the closing scene of 'It’s a Wonderful Life.'" Living up to this in the midst of trauma can feel overwhelming.

What is the role of the youth leader in helping teenagers to safely navigate the “holiday ocean” which sometimes is calm and other times very turbulent?

Here is a short - and likely incomplete - synthesis of the best ideas I have seen or researched for how a youth leaders can create a climate of healthy response and safety:

1) Provide a space where the challenge of the holidays is acknowledged – Don’t solely talk about the excitement of the days off and the celebration of the holidays. Let your youth know you are aware for some this will be a difficult time. Invite them to let you know how to pray for them in their circumstance. Be available to pray with them and/or point them to leaders who could be available at different times during the holidays so students can reach out.

2) “Bring it down a notch” – Don’t be a part of the problem with over-programming during an already busy holiday season. Church communities sometimes contribute to the stress of youth and families in failing to consider the larger schedule going on around them. Show your youth community the importance of play and rest so they don’t barrel into the Christmas break sick and tired.

3) Challenge your youth, leaders and families to create different memories – Youth leaders can come alongside youth and families by encouraging them to create different experiences over the season. People love to have traditions but some of those traditions are tied to traumatic events or create undue stress. Diplomatically and strategically offer alternatives. One of the best gifts youth and families can give to each other is creating new memories together.

4) Give youth the opportunity to make a list of what they might like to do during a holiday season – Through this exercise you can see what they value and perhaps help them walk toward realizing some of their dreams and desires.

5) Work alongside youth to create an exit strategy – Give tools to youth who may need a “way out” of the stress or trauma they experience. Thinking through options in advance gives them hope and lessens the anxiety of what might be coming.

6) Encourage living in the present – Jesus reminds us “Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 5:34b, NRSV). Your youth have legitimate worries about what may be coming given their history but you can be a “cheerleader” for helping them live one day at a time making it be the best it can be.

7) Direct people to www.psychcentral.com/holidays  or the National Child Traumatic Stress Network for more resources – These links offer more thoughts and insights.

Congregational care and ministry can be exhausting. In addition to the demands of care and ministry, faith leaders must also keep up with personal responsibilities. Caring for so many people at the same time requires a lot of emotional energy and attention. Quickly, individuals can become tired, stressed out, and exhausted. In a tired state, individuals may begin to cut corners, especially related to self-care. These shortcuts can become unhealthy habits that facilitate fatigue and emotional exhaustion that can compromise one’s ability to care.

Aristotle once said, “We are what we repeatedly do.”  What Aristotle did not say is, “We are what we do once or twice. . .”  Wishful thinking may lead some to hope that habits can be created overnight, or that doing something once or twice will be sufficient to achieve a goal or outcome, like rejuvenation and renewal. Unfortunately, self-care cannot be packaged into a pill to be taken once or twice bi-weekly. Instead, self-care is a habit that must be done repeatedly. 

Self-care is like exercise. The more you do it the better you feel, and the more likely you are to keep doing it. However, it is easy to get out of shape. Taking one day off can turn into two; two to three; and then an entire week has lapsed. Self-care, like exercise, can also become a burden – something else to do on the checklist. Whether you’re struggling to get back into the swing of self-care habits or looking to begin self-care habits, here are a few points that can help get you started.

1. Discover what self-care activities help you to feel rejuvenated.
    Create rules for your self-care activities that can help you be more intentional and focused  
    on the quality of your self-care.  For example, watching TV may seem like a self-care 
    activity, but you may be unintentionally wasting this time by flipping through channels for 
    thirty minutes, never finding a show you really want to watch, and getting frustrated in the 
    process.  A simple fix for this might be to only watch recorded TV shows during this time, 
    rather than spending your valuable self-care time channel surfing.

2. Mark it down in your calendar.
    Intentionally plan for a self-care habit.

3. Say “no” to one thing this week.
    The flip side to saying “no” to requests or activities may also require you to begin to ask for
    help.  Asking for help builds relationships and strengthens relational bonds – most people
    want to help!

4. Determine if you are an introvert or an extrovert.
    If you are an introvert, schedule alone time for personal enrichment.  If you are an 
    extrovert, be intentional in surrounding yourself with people who will energize you.

5. Set realistic goals that can quickly become habits.
    Do not set a goal too high too soon.  This can quickly lead to discouragement and leave 
    you feeling more exhausted and depleted.  Start small and remember that habits happen   
    one small step at a time.

“The American Psychological Association’s (APA) study on stress found that nearly half of America’s kids are stressed.  This is bad news because it means unhealthy amounts of stress hormones are coursing through the developing brains of these children and that causes learning and behavior problems.”

How is that for an opening few lines in a blog I recently read?

According to this blog, the human brain does not fully develop until about age 25 so there is plenty of room for vulnerability in the adolescent years. The area of the brain most vulnerable to stress hormones is the prefrontal cortex. Here is where intelligence, learning and impulse control are located. When stress hormones enter the picture, struggle ensues.

Further, the same blog cited a study that found “91 percent of kids say what stresses them most is how stressed their parents have become, and 69 percent of parents were oblivious to the impact their level of stress is having on the kids.” Ouch!

This lines up with the findings from a study by the Families and Work Institute which found that what kids want most is “stress-free parents”. Kids are quite adept at picking up on a parent’s stress level. Kids look for non-verbal cues, like sad expressions, heavy footsteps and/or consistent fatigue.

What shall we do then? I submit a few ideas as logical solutions, flowing from the findings above:

• Appreciate the vulnerability of the teenage brain – This cannot be over-emphasized. The adolescent brain is constantly shuffling and its doors hang wide open for emotional and cognitive “guests” to enter. Teenagers are finely tuned to see events, words and emotions larger than we imagine. Our response may be: “No big deal.” Their response may be: “Biggest deal ever.”

 

• Understand the traumatic effects of stress – Even the mildest form of prolonged stress can have long lasting effects on our psychological state. Youth who experience stress at school and then come home to stress find little to no solace anywhere in their known world. The enduring struggle to rise above the stress has traumatic consequences.

 

• Lower your stress level – Our best practice, as parents of adolescents, is to work on lowering our levels of stress. As we take care of our physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual health, we operate more efficiently in providing safety and care for our children. This is especially true with managing our stress. It is an illusion to believe we can mask or hide our stress from our teenagers, a group for whom which almost everything is magnified. Care for yourself and you will be caring for your teenager.

 

• Spread the word and care as a community – Lowering stress in one’s own life is not easily accomplished in a vacuum. We need to educate those around us about the traumatic effects of stress on youth. By involving our community in the conversation about stress and youth, we can begin creating a more caring and accountable community. The results could be widespread, with parents hanging out with low-stressed parents who together are rearing low-stress kids.​

While the idea of compassion fatigue can conjure up an image of an empty tank, as though we can just 'run out' of compassion like a care might run out of gas, there's also an opportunity to think of compassion as a renewable resource, to borrow a phrase from Institute Advisor Jessica Carle. An individual caregiver might struggle with compassion fatigue, but when compassion is enacted in community, the loneliness of the caregiving burden can be addressed more effectively.

Compassion literally means to suffer with mourners or survivors. As compassion-givers work alongside compassionate colleagues, rather than in isolation, they share burdens and multiply healthy impacts that counter debilitating effects of trauma. They create and expand relief and buoy spirits.

Moreover, when compassion-givers honor mourners and survivors, they discover and witness to the expertise of those who are suffering rather than only the expertise of those offering care. By recognizing mourners and survivors as experts in their unique experience of trauma and healing, and sharing best practices with one another rather than doling out prescriptions, compassion-givers also receive nourishing kindness and compassion. 

Along with being part of a community of care, Carle has noted how practicing self-compassion while offering compassion to those who are mourning or surviving trauma acts like an antidote to fatigue.  
Self-compassion goes beyond self-care; it encourages us to show kindness to ourselves, rather than judgment, and to connect with the reality that all humans are limited and imperfect. These efforts can help us remain in the crucial relationships of support that will sustain us in our caregiving efforts.
As more and more faith leaders today are practicing forms of compassion, including nonviolent protest of institutionalized harm, building community after violence, and creating new forms of community care, pacing and bolstering themselves with practices of self-compassion and community will increase resiliency and counter fatigue. 

Here are some examples of a few more best practices: 

• Communicate regularly with trustworthy colleagues who encourage and inspire you
• Practice healthy habits, including eating well, sleeping, and exercising
• Sing, pray, dance, and create art to express your experience and remind yourself of blessings in life
• Consider what it means and find ways to bind your wounds, even as you bind the emotional and spiritual wounds of others
• Seek out and request opportunities to be blessed and restored by other leaders 
• Find ways to partner with colleagues to build community resilience

What else have you been finding to be helpful in and around your congregation? Share in the comments below. 

Let me tell you the story about one graduate student who reached out to ICTG for help with researching ministry leaders' experiences with trauma. 

Steven is a middle-aged pastor at a large, urban, mostly African-American church. He believes congregations play vital roles in disaster response and community care. So much so, he went back to school for an MBA at Fresno Pacific University to gain further skills in community development and management after disasters. 

For his final group project, he secured permission from his school to use ICTG surveys to sample leaders and measure how aware, prepared, and responsive congregations were to disasters and traumas they encountered. His group surveyed 31 congregations in Louisiana, Missouri, and New Jersey, where community-wide disasters occurred between 2004-2011. These congregations represented the following denominations:

Adventist
Baptist
Catholic
Episcopal
Evangelic Free
Lutheran
Methodist
Pentecostal
Presbyterian
Non-Denominational
Unitarian Universalist

They also included 3 rural churches, 9 small town churches, 6 suburban churches, and 13 urban churches. Membership included 19% multi-ethnic backgrounds, 4% Central or South American backgrounds, 15% African-American, and 62% Canadian- or European-American. 

The project revealed several key insights that more ministers should know about.
For example: 

Many congregations experience more than one trauma or disaster within a few years. 54% of the congregations surveyed experience two or more collective traumatic events within just 5 years of the hurricane or shooting they first reported. 

High turnover rates exist among ministry staff following traumatic incidents. Within only 3 years of the first incident, 62% of the ministry staff among these congregations changed, including one pastor dying of a heart attack. 

Membership and stewardship radically change following traumatic incidents. Nearly 80% of the congregations surveyed had between 100-2100 members the year before the first disaster occurred. 56% of them decreased in membership as much as 20% in the first 3 years after, even as financial giving increased 70%. 

We need more projects like Steven's to provide congregations with the information they need to face what's ahead. Surveys like this one significantly help clergy and lay leaders better assess their congregation's current practices and increase resiliency to withstand the pressures of collective traumas.

Want to support more innovative students like Steven and create more projects that get congregations information and tools they need?

• Support financially – It takes ICTG $60 / month to support a graduate student with materials and mentoring. To contribute to all or part of these costs, become a monthly donor today. 
• Participate in a new research project – In an effort to expand resources and inform congregation leaders, Associate Professor of Psychology, Cynthia Eriksson, is working with a team of graduate students at Fuller Theological Seminary's Graduate School of Psychology to survey of ministry leaders about their own encounters with trauma care. The survey takes about 30 minutes. Take it, and pass the link along to other ministers you know. 

The boards, staff, and volunteers at ICTG heartily agree with Steven – congregations can play vital roles in disaster response and community care. Especially when they are informed and have access to tools they need to promote safety and growth. ​