Excerpted from When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis by Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells.

Great players are essential for great teams. But they have a lot of help from people who don’t wear the uniform. Behind the players are the coaches, and behind the coaches are the executives. These three levels exist in almost every arena—from disaster response units to sports teams to new ministries at a church.

The executive is the first decision maker, the one who says, “The buck stops here.” Pastors know that feeling. They make things happen, but they do so by casting the vision and ensuring that other leaders have what they need to carry it out.

Next is the manager who implements the vision and promotes the culture. We refer to this person (or people) as the coordinator(s).

Executives and managers (pastors and coordinators) put great players on the field. John McKissick, the winningest football coach of all time, said, “Coaches don’t win games, players do. Players don’t lose games, coaches do.”¹ Players are the lay caregivers prepared by pastors and coordinators to do the ministry.

As churches create effective, transformative mental health ministries, people with specific skills are needed in each of these roles: the pastor, the coordinator, and the caregiver.

A Pastor Who Models Vulnerability and Casts a Vision of Care

A ship’s captain doesn’t stand watch for inclement weather, a fire chief doesn’t put out fires, and a police chief doesn’t catch criminals. Instead, these leaders oversee, inspire, and resource the team. To address the mental health crisis effectively, a pastor—especially the senior pastor—needs to launch, direct, and empower their team. Their job is to be involved without being the one who runs everything.

One senior pastor that our team surveyed offered his top advice to those considering this kind of ministry: “Trust your leaders/lay leaders who have training and experience in this. Empower, support, and release them.”

Leading the church in this area of mental health also requires a unique stance: vulnerability. Being open and transparent about living in the same broken world as everyone else, with the same needs, is the most powerful—and perhaps the most challenging—thing a church leader can do to transform the culture of the church.

A Coordinator Who Creates and Conducts the Strategy

Once I was speaking to a group of about four hundred clinicians, presenting the need for the church to step into the gap of care around mental health. The attendees were about to be introduced to a new identity: not clinician, not counselor, but coordinator.

Seated at round tables with their peers, they described their lives as clinicians to the group. They introduced themselves by saying things like “I work in a [small, midsize, or large] private practice.” “I see about [five, ten, twenty, or thirty] clients a week.” “We are distinctly Christian in that we . . .”

With tens of millions of people not receiving the mental health care they need,² I asked them to think about what their practice would look like if, working out of the same office space, and with the same staff, they were responsible to care for ten thousand people each year instead of a few hundred. “If the responsibility to address the mental health needs of those in your community rested with you, what would you do?”

Looks of shock appeared on every face as they came to grips with the scale of need that existed outside their office doors. Then the room buzzed with conversation about how they would meet this task.

The broad consensus was that they would have to change their focus from being the provider of service to being the overseer of services that included different levels of care. One professional said bluntly, “One person can’t do all that—I would have to get a lot of help.”

That conversation helped form the basis for the coordinator role. The coordinator may be paid or a volunteer, a contractor or a staff member. Either way, they hold one or both of two key roles.

1. The coordinator is a decision-maker. This is the central person who conducts the intake with someone who is seeking help; they understand the need and ensure that the help seeker gets funneled to the right type of care at all levels of the triangle. The coordinator also supervises the lay caregivers.
2. The coordinator may also be the person running the ministry, taking the vision of the pastor and the leadership team and transforming those ideas into action.

Sometimes those roles are held by different people because they require different skill sets.

So who should be the coordinator? This person is often a clinician, well-trained coach, or a care pastor or staff member with some sort of relevant training. But we also have seen many coordinators who are not clinicians. Above all, the right coordinator grasps the idea of being responsible for the ten thousand. Rather than being the lone pastoral counselor, coordinators reproduce themselves as the care matcher, trainer, overseer, and supporter of the team.

A Caregiver Who Will Serve, Support, Strengthen, and Inspire

The third focus is the person who is actually offering care. The key is that these individuals ultimately care for the person in need through listening and the ministry of presence.

Caregivers can be found in every church; there are often many people interested in this ministry. They may go through basic lay listening training, or they may receive more involved instruction so they can provide lay counseling or coaching at the trained helper level.

Paul describes one of the qualities of an elder (or overseer) as being “gentle” or “patient” (1 Timothy 3:3 niv). That’s the image of a caregiver: someone who is has patience, is not overly reactive, and offers a calming presence. On our survey, one pastor offered this as her top advice to lay helpers: “Your response to someone, when they open up to you about their struggle, is key in helping them know that it is good to ask for help.”

Lay caregivers can’t and don’t fix things. (Good licensed professionals can’t fix things, either, and they don’t try; their job is to empower and equip the person to address those things themselves.) There is a beautiful theology underneath the “we can’t fix things for you” concept. It is the Holy Spirit who moves in the hearts of people, heals the infirm, makes straight the paths to justice, and corrects evil. As Paul writes, “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7, niv).

This passage challenges us to be the clay pots that contain and offer God’s power and authority. Paul also suggests that we know pain, suffering, and hardship so that we might reveal life. A good caregiver can promote life growth in others by letting the Holy Spirit work through the pain, being a comforter on the journey, and helping the person draw closer to Christ. That’s one reason most churches involved in mental health ministry see it as a key part of the discipleship mission of their church.

The greatest challenge for new caregivers—and the greatest relief for seasoned helpers—is the realization that we are not responsible for rescuing, fixing, delivering, and protecting everyone in their unique hardships. We are called to be present—to act as Christ’s ambassadors and let God move in difficult situations. Caregivers are given a front-row seat to the beauty of God being present in tragedy, suffering, and restoration.

1. Gary Burnison, “Coaches Don’t Win Games,” Briefings, no. 33 (2017): 6–7, https://www.kornferry.com/insights/briefings-magazine/issue-33/on-leadership.