Church Congregations and
Professional Silos
-- Nothing ultimately
worthwhile will happen unless we start with understanding
the reality of each
other’s life. --
In the room were eight professional mental-health care workers laying out the extraordinarily
disturbing situation in our country of huge gaps in needed mental-health care
professionals. And then there was
me; I introduced myself as a
member of a local Lutheran church that recently had a Sunday adult forum on
mental illness. I mentioned that
it was one of the best attended forums in quite a time; the point being that there is
considerable interest in our churches for information (and presumably, action)
about this unfortunately all-to-private family health issue.
The conversation among the eight went on for an hour and a
half with thoughtful comments about the need to encourage more talented
students to go into mental health specialties, the need for more funding for
mental health services and the critical mental health needs for any kind of mental
health assistance in rural areas.
After my first introduction of why I was there, I did not speak
again. During the next hour and a
half, there was no mention of churches as a stage for addressing mental health
needs, no mention of prevention (what I
now call resilience) programs to
address at least some mental-health issues before they become a crises, and
certainly no mention of “lay” church members as originators of creative ways to
help address the mental health needs of their friends and neighbors.
I’m afraid that what I observed that day around that table
is what happens all too often – a kind of a professional “silo” approach for
addressing problems that surround those of us who sit in the pews week after
week. The professionals who were
at that table with me were thoughtful, competent, kind, and realistic. They brought with them the skills
they knew.
I mention this true experience in light of my focus on aging
and the church, because it is what often
seems to happen as we address issues that obstruct a community – like a church,
by first calling on professionals.
Clinical professionals are generally educated to help individuals. So when a community, made up of
diverse, unique individuals who struggle with their lives, there are few road
maps for how to pull together diverse professional “silos” in equal, shared
leadership with those of us who are in the midst of our difficulties. To the extent that we congregation
members put our hopes on a professional in our midst to solve our community-wide
problem, I fear we will continue to be disappointed in the outcome.
[The exception, of course, is
when our churches face financial challenges. There are legions of organizations eager for our business as
they put powerful social psychological science into action in order to
glean yet larger contributions from us all.]
If our mainline churches are disappearing, if our older
adults are invisible except when they have cancer, if our church culture
suggests that we keep secret our family mental health problems, who do we call
first to fix things; an expert with the biggest hammer perhaps?
Frankly, it is up to us and our family members, friends,
neighbors and acquaintances who sit with us in the pews, to begin by gathering
together experts from several disciplines, to talk openly, face-to-face
with us about what is on our mind, and to emphasize one thing at first – listening with
acceptance and respect to what each of us has to say.
Follow-up conversations can deal with the action steps – but
nothing ultimately worthwhile will happen unless we start with understanding
the reality of each other’s life.
Bruce
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