The intersection of faith and mental health: Miriam’s story

If there’s anyone qualified to prepare a series of workshops to equip pastoral caregivers, ministry staff and everyday Christians to better serve the mental health needs of their churches and communities, it’s Miriam* from New Leaf Centre. Yet if it weren’t for her six-month period as an ADM Fellow, the workshops simply wouldn’t exist.

A calling to ministry

Miriam had the privilege of growing up not only in a Christian family, but in a church that focused on cross-cultural mission. She was only seven years old when she told her family that she wanted to be a missionary one day. As Miriam reached her teen years, she grasped the hope and the difference that Jesus makes. She felt comforted knowing that while she has a role to play in trying to help the people around her, God is the ultimate carer.

After embarking on a social work degree straight out of high school, Miriam worked in the field for a few years before signing up as a ministry apprentice through AFES at the University of Wollongong. The next season of her life saw Miriam completing a Master of Divinity at Sydney Missionary & Bible College, before she and her husband headed to Taiwan as missionaries. Their time on the field was brief, however, and their departure unexpected.

“On return to Australia, there was a process of grappling with what God had intended in sending us there and bringing us back in such a short period of time,” Miriam shares.

Serving Christians through counselling

Following their return, Miriam worked for CMS, helping people make decisions around global mission—whether they were a good fit and whether God was encouraging them to head to the field. She was also studying a Master of Clinical Counselling. When that concluded, she started working as a counsellor, and ultimately ended up working as a counsellor both privately and at a large university.

“I wanted to be able to tap into helping those who are struggling with mental health and the whole concept of, ‘Where is God in all of this? How can I trust him when day to day life is such a struggle?’,” Miriam explains.

Miriam was encouraged to see the way God started providing opportunities that combined her varied experience in counselling, theology, cross-cultural mission and social work. She kept getting asked to speak on mental health topics in Christian settings, but preparation time was hard to come by.

“I was in a situation where the time that I had available to do this would be often at 10pm at night to midnight,” Miriam admits. “I just had no time in the day to carve out to dedicate to actually creating the content of these talks.”

A timely opportunity

When the possibility of an ADM Fellowship presented itself, Miriam couldn’t stop thinking about what a privilege it would be. The prospect of having time set aside, and a specific location to utilise— along with a cohort of people to walk alongside —felt like an enormous gift. When she also considered the financial funding, Miriam realised it was an offer far too good to pass up. And that has been affirmed for her ever since.

“Every day that I have walked into this Fellowship space has felt an enormous privilege,” she shares. “It has felt an enormous blessing. It continues to fill me with gratitude that this is an opportunity that God has given to me.”

Miriam has been in the office one day a week for six months. Initially, she brainstormed alongside Fellowships Development Coach Jessica Carroll Smith what the project would look like, and determined that it would turn out to be four workshops. Once a month she presented her content to the ADM staff, which has been invaluable to the process. Miriam is deeply grateful for the feedback that allowed her to clarify certain sections, or flesh out others.

She’s also been encouraged and inspired by the other Fellows. Her lunch breaks on days when she was in the ADM office were a chance to hear more about the other women’s projects, which has been a real joy.

Addressing mental health in the church

Now that Miriam has completed her Fellowship, she’s entering into a new stage of advertising her workshops to churches. The four topics are: ‘Loneliness and the gift of Christian friendship’, ‘Being sick and well’, ‘Trauma—when the past impacts the now’, and ‘Hope in the face of mental health challenges’. Miriam has also decided to offer a workshop she had prepared previously, titled ‘Understanding how people change.’ Each talk is around 60 minutes long, but can be adjusted to suit various formats. Miriam has designed for them to be presented to a church staff team or to specific congregations or groups, for example youth groups or church events.

It didn’t take long for Miriam to decide on her workshop topics. She has written each one of them as a response to a theme that repeatedly comes up in her work with Christian clients. Take, for example, the loneliness workshop.

“I see that loneliness is really endemic, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic,” Miriam explains. “I see a lot of clients who are suffering from social anxiety that is more acute than it has been in the past as a result of months of lockdown. They are lacking confidence in knowing how to relate and how to put aside the distress it causes to be in groups and to be friends. So I wanted to speak into that and to think, ‘What is unique and different about the Christian community in how we respond to this?’”

Miriam also includes practical tips and tools for how people can relate to each other well within Christian friendship.

The workshop on trauma was written specifically to speak into the subject through a gospel lens.

“I don’t think I’ve heard any sermon in my Christian life on trauma,” Miriam reflects. “And yet I think the Bible has a lot to say about how we can choose to continue to trust God and continue to hold on to hope in times where physical pain and suffering or emotional psychological pain and suffering are present.”

Miriam says this particular workshop will include training on trauma-informed preaching, teaching, and Bible studies. Given that there are passages in Scripture which are quite horrific and sad, she aims to equip pastors and leaders with the skills to help people who have experienced trauma to hear these hard passages with truth and grace.

Deep gratitude

Miriam is sure that these workshops would never have been developed without the ADM Fellowship. She says the gift of time and the gift of the resources at Mary Andrews College have been invaluable. The other gift has been one of prayerful support from the whole ADM team, the other Fellows, and the broader ADM community.

Miriam explains, “I have felt supported. I have felt valued. I have felt the enormous privilege and weight of being given a Fellowship, and it has been an enormous gift. It has been a real agent of God’s mercy to me in this period of life.”

If you are interested in having Miriam speak at your church, please click here.

*Miriam’s surname is withheld to protect the privacy of her work as a clinician.

This story was first published in the 2024 ADM Annual Review.