By I’ve asked ChatGPT to suggest the Top Ten Disruptive Trends for Ministry by 2030, and some strategies to address them. This is an experiment in seeing how we might use ChatGPT in ministry (See more here). Everything in this post is generated by me, 100%, apart from the Chat GPT response which I’ve highlighted in blue.
I asked:
“I want you to be my research assistant. I am the pastor of an evangelical church in London. From the vantage point of 2030, what will be the ten most disruptive trends for churches and pastors? Bear in mind that the UK, and London in particular, is very different from North America. For each one, give me some actionable strategies.”
Here’s answer #4:
4. Mental Health Crisis and Emotional Wellbeing
- Trend: Mental health challenges, already significant in urban contexts like London, will likely worsen due to economic pressures, loneliness, and societal fragmentation.
- Disruption: Pastors and church leaders will increasingly be called to act as frontline responders to mental health crises, often without adequate training or resources.
- Challenge: Supporting growing mental health needs in the community and congregation.
- Normalize Conversations About Mental Health:
- Preach and teach regularly about emotional and mental wellbeing.
- Host workshops with qualified mental health professionals.
- Train Leaders in Mental Health First Aid:
- Equip pastors and volunteers to recognize signs of mental health crises.
- Build referral partnerships with mental health professionals.
- Create Safe Spaces for Healing:
- Provide pastoral care groups focused on grief, trauma, and anxiety.
- Offer prayer ministry alongside professional support.
So what do we think?
I reckon ChatGPT has once again nailed an issue which we need to be thinking and praying about. That thinking will involve quite a bit of deliberate and informed reflection.
It’s undeniable that the mental health and well-being areas are increasingly being raised as ones of concern. That’s evident if you keep half an eye open to the ‘Health’ sections of any news source. I’d observe that the issue was both exacerbated and made more visible by lockdown and its associated trends (which AI did not identify), but also societal changes have effectively doubled the audience for the issue.
Why do I say the audience has doubled? Because what was once an arena largely ignored by men, it is now something that men feel much more comfortable talking about. Magazines, blogs, online, the issues of fragility and resilience, vulnerability and emotions, are much more normal to encounter. In fact it’s often the same people who occupy the ‘physical fitness’ space who will then occupy the ‘mental wellness’ space. Plausibility in the first area allows them plausibility in the second.
It’s often the same people who occupy the ‘physical fitness’ space who will then occupy the ‘mental wellness’ space.
The ones I have in mind are mainstream and secular; if they have a philosophy to draw on its either Stoicism (which I will come back to, because I reckon it’s everywhere), or lightly digested Zen Buddhism, often connected to an open approach to some version of yoga and mindfulness.
And, yes, the pressures of urban life are likely to continue to put strain on people’s mental health,
So we need to process whether churches and/or their preachers need to tool up as a front-line response. And I have thoughts.
I am very grateful and impressed with the Biblical Counselling Movement here in the UK. I took one of the lower grade modules and found it to be enormously enriching and informing.
It gave me an increased understanding of people’s pain, processes, progress and so on.
It also made me realise that this is a different kind of ministry to a secular counselling model, because its foundation is that the person being counselled is already a disciple, and wanting to grow in Christlikeness. That means that the Counsel being offered falls broadly into the category of Wisdom, one person sharpening another, teaching one another, praying for one another and so on.
The tension, then, is how one would counsel someone who is not already a disciple? How to come alongside the grief-stricken, unless it is to offer the gospel of resurrection hope?
I reckon that there are four challenges here which should really prod those of us who are preachers and pastors, and encourage the rest of us as well.
Four challenges
First, my preaching must deliberately enter this space, because it is one which is biblically rich and open to being filled. I come from a country which is famously emotionally quiet, with a preference for the downbeat and gently negative. As a disciple and disciple-maker I must resist that cultural pressure, and stretch my emotional life to match the bible’s richness.
And that’s true of the downbeat and deathly as well as the exuberant.
I must learn to be ‘diagnostic’ and ‘therapeutic’, in the way Martyn Lloyd-Jones so famously modelled, applying his analytic skill not just to text and context, but to personal need and to God’s answers and healing truth.
As the saying goes, when we preach we must go fishing in deep waters.
Second, our church’s patterns must develop a richer range of options for people to find help and healing. We did try dedicated small groups ones and it was not a brilliant success, because there was a gap between the depth of the need which was suddenly revealed, and our/my capacity to meet it. Developing even the smallest of teams with the interest and expertise would be a good challenge.
But – and it’s a big ‘but’.
But – and it’s a big ‘but’. I have two good friends who in the last eighteen months have gone through major traumatic episodes. Way beyond even the normal despairing moments that normal pastoral life encounters. Where I have felt seriously out of my depth.
Some hurts need expert intervention. I know that that is true for physical pain, which is why we have hospitals as well as first-aid kits. The same pattern applies to the brain, the mind, the heart, the will – however you construe the inner ‘us’
So third, churches need to support and encourage the work of properly trained and qualified expertise who can handle massively deep issues and needs. Note: I am not saying that they cannot be handled biblically, I am saying it requires a biblical expertise that I as a biblical generalist do not have. and if I blunder in as a well-meaning amateur, I’m as much use as a well-meaning Scout grabbing a scalpel.
If I blunder in as a well-meaning amateur, I’m as much use as a well-meaning Scout grabbing a scalpel.
So critically, fourth, open question still to process: what do I think about referring Christians for secular counselling? Do I make the decision on the need of the person, or the model of counselling being offered, or something else? How do I get to find out enough about a model to decide if it’s value-neutral, or good-enough, or I’ll need to walk alongside this person as they go through it, or don’t touch with a bargepole
This is one of those areas where I have fond it helpful to use ChatGPT’s prompts as identifying ‘something I need to think about’, and to do it with just a pen and a notebook (link). It helpfully posed the question, but I don’t think it has fully parsed the answer.
As a trend, think it’s spot on. I’m not persuaded that it’s disruptive; rather, a prompt do better what we should be doing.
If you’d like to think more about the place of counselling in preaching and the need for deep application, I have written Cutting to the Heart
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