Serene Jones, author of Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World begins her story on a normal Sunday morning, sitting in the back row with her friend Leah, a relatively new attendee to church. When the service approaches time of communion, the pastor begins explaining the Biblical significance of the bread and wine Jesus shared with his disciples the night before his crucifixion. The pastor explains how the broken bread symbolizes Christ’s body and the wine symbolizes Christ’s blood, both of which He gave for us. At this point, Leah abruptly gets up and rushes to the nearest exit. Curious about her friend’s sudden departure, Jones follows to find Leah in a panic elicited by the pastor’s words.

Scripture can be interpreted differently depending on one’s lens. Trauma is one such lens that powerfully dominates the interpretation and understanding of God’s character and the implications of scripture. Jones quickly realizes that what is a typical church tradition in her congregation, hearing the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, elicited fears so daunting and traumatizing to her friend that she had to leave. This powerful story reminds us that part of the role of church leaders, pastors, and ministers is caring for congregants struggling with trauma and/or mental illness. Caring for this population of congregants should include ministering to them in a way so they too can experience God’s love and redemption. Congregations have a wide variety of resources to draw upon, including scripture, to foster care for depressed and traumatized individuals.

Churches strive to be safe places for individuals and families struggling with loss, grief, trauma, or mental illness. However, they do not always take the appropriate measures to demonstrate they care. People struggling with mental illness or trauma may have trouble receiving messages of God’s love and grace, or messages about the significance of hope and redemption. Instead, they may feel as if God is mad at them and they may feel guilty or isolated as a result of these feelings. Congregations can respond by helping survivors of trauma and mental illness embrace new imaginations using the psalms. Serene Jones demonstrates how the psalms bring “to light sorrows and fears hidden away in ‘lurking places.’ Speaking the unspeakable. Giving language to a heart whose pain has made it speechless.” (51)

The psalms of lament are particularly powerful for individuals struggling with trauma and/or mental health. Psalms of lament do not guarantee everything will be fine or convey a better plan from God; rather, they capture the raw emotion behind trauma and use the language of the traumatized. The psalms of lament give trauma survivors and the mentally ill the opportunity to embrace the healing power of grace by “accepting the promise that God has made to be ever present to them in their suffering and, in being present, to redeem and transform their plight as they stand ‘groaning’ before the Divine” (52). God acts as the witness to their pain and embraces their brokenness. Imagery depicting God’s open arms and receptive ears penetrates the hearts of traumatized survivors and instills a sense of peace that imagines a God who is safe and a God who knows and holds the pain of their trauma. Psalmists articulate God’s promises for individual deliverance and embrace prayer as the mode in which God acknowledges pain worthy of being lamented and mourned.

Congregations can also care for survivors of trauma and mental illness by highlighting Biblical narratives of hope through sermons. In Mark, there is an encounter between Jesus and a man with an “unclean spirit”. The story begins in Mark 1:21, where Jesus is in Capernaum and begins teaching in the synagogue. He sees a man in the crowd who has an “unclean spirit” and immediately orders the spirit to depart from the man’s body. The interaction portrays Jesus as a compassionate teacher who pursues people who are struggling. Jesus reaches out, listens, and shows compassion to individuals struggling with mental illness. He prioritizes this man’s needs in the church that Sabbath morning over anyone else’s. Mark’s narrative of Jesus casting out the unclean spirit reassures trauma survivors that they are not forgotten nor alone in their suffering, but are heard by God who deeply cares for them and loves them.

Emotionally and spiritually healthy congregations seek to care for groups who are hurting because of trauma and/or mental illness. Churches have the unique opportunity to care for children and adults who have encountered trauma and/or mental illness. They are specially equipped with Bible passages to surround the traumatized with support. Psalms of lament or Biblical narratives of hope are ways for church leaders to enter into the dark places where survivors of trauma and mental illness stand and offer words of hope and healing to their circumstances.

Source:
Jones, Serene. Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. Louisville:
    Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Print.


* Interested in learning more trauma-informed best practices? Visit the ICTG training menu to purchase ICTG’s most popular resource guides, assessments, modules, seminars, and more.

Rev. Dr. Kate Wiebe and Doug Ranck, along with the many other ICTG blog contributors, have already noted that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are widespread across all racial groups and socioeconomic strata. The ACE study's concluding results, executed by CDC- Kaiser Permanente in 1997, presents staggering research that pessimistically foreshadows the future for youth experiencing abuse, neglect, or other household challenges. The CDC describes ACEs more broadly as traumas relating to physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, emotional or physical neglect, and household challenges such as violence, substance abuse, mental illness, incarcerated family member, or divorce in the home.

ACEs follow a dose-response pattern, which means that the symptoms are directly correlated to the frequency of exposure to the stressor. Therefore if a child experiences multiple ACEs, they are at a higher risk for an exhaustive list of physical and emotional health issues such as substance or alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and heart disease to name a few. With the prevalence of ACEs and their unavoidable consequences, it begs the response of grace and compassion rather than one of punishment from educators, Sunday school teachers, and youth ministers.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, doctor and research advocate for childhood adverse experiences, states that "toxic stress is the changes that happen in the body as a result of being exposed to high doses of adversity in childhood." Both children and adults are exposed to stress each day in which our fight or flight hormones are activated regularly. These hormones are innately good because they instigate our reactions to possible threats or dangerous situations. In the unfortunate circumstance in which a child experiences chronic stress on a daily basis, the fight or flight hormones become fixated in a continuous loop and fail to be appropriately metabolized. Dr. Harris suggests that the frequency of stress leads to a physical reshaping of the brain. When students encounter high amounts of stress, the neocortex of the brain, the part responsible for impulse control, is impacted. Children begin to lose control of their emotions and behaviors because what was once stabilizing their various feelings is now under acute toxic pressure. Children will react to both minor and major threats with vigilance, disrupting a child's daily rhythm.

The ACE study demands an educated response to how we interact and engage with the youth in our communities. As a future educator and past student participant in church youth group, I have been interested in researching how schools are responding to the trauma in children. Schools around the nation are adjusting their programs and systems to cater to their youth who are survivors of trauma.

Crocker College Preparatory School in New Orleans is one such school recognizing the effects of trauma. Crocker Prep understands the unique consequences of ACEs and intentionally seeks to help traumatized youth in classroom settings. The teachers are more informed about ACEs and seek to understand students who misbehave or have outbursts as "sad, not bad." School administrators and teachers at Crocker Prep have altered their disciplinary system in order to uproot the true problem rather than offering punitive measures to an event or instance they could not control. They found that detentions and suspensions for behavioral violations were not effective because the misbehavior was not the problem, but rather the trauma at its origin. The number of detentions and suspensions dramatically decreased over the school year in which the new rules took enactment and grades significantly increased among the students. Teachers and parents noticed students complaining less frequently about physical pains or trouble sleeping when their trauma was more directly attended to and teachers took note that students were more present in class and were not withdrawing from class activities. Like schools, congregations looking to become more trauma-sensitive must adopt the similar measures to meet the emotional needs of their youth.

Re-framing the way we view and understand troubled youth calls for a gracious and compassionate response. While working with troubled youth may be frustrating and discouraging, grace and compassion can help us reconstruct the ways we address, process, and talk about bad behavior. Compassion shifts questions like, “What is wrong with this kid?” to “What happened to this kid?” The different language transforms how we understand our youths' stories and marks the desire to express compassion before pressing judgment. “What happened to this kid” is a question that demonstrates that the trauma is responsible for the misbehavior and is not an identifier of character. Trauma has the physiological power to dictate emotion and physical action and it is our responsibility as educators, youth pastors, and Sunday school leaders to teach students, with grace and compassion, how to regain control over their behavior.

How can we as youth pastors, Sunday school teachers, and educators adopt a compassionate response to children and adolescents experiencing trauma?

* For more information on caring for children and youth after trauma, visit our youth ministry tools and training page.
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Sources:

1. Cdc.gov

2. Katy Reckdahl, "A new movement to treat troubled children as ‘sad, not bad.'" The Hechinger Report, New Orleans.
http://hechingerreport.org/a-new-movement-to-treat-troubled-children-as-sad-not-bad/?utm_content=buffer10b3d&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

3. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, Video "Stress Factor" http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/02/healthcare-diversity-video-burke-harris-000300?utm_content=bufferfcbf2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Ted Talk, "How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime"  
Twitter Page resources

4. Melissa Hellmann, "This Town Adopted Trauma-Informed Care—And Saw a Decrease in Crime and Suspension Rates" by from Yes! Magazine

5. "The Brain Science Behind Student Trauma"
By Bruce Perry from Education Weekly
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/12/14/the-brain-science-behind-student-trauma.html?qs=TRAUMA

Libby Baker is a student at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, graduating in May 2017 with a degree in Liberal Studies. She will be entering a teacher credential program in the fall to move closer to her goal to become an elementary school teacher. Libby will be a spring intern with ICTG and with be working closely with Rev. Dr. Kate Wiebe. Libby is passionate about being an agent of reconciliation in her community and is excited to participate in how ICTG can be a resource to peoples and congregations experiencing trauma.