Q&A from Ministering to the Church during a Pandemic: A Conversation with Church Leaders
Mustard Seed Generation’s webinar series launched its first episode on May 1, 2020 with a focus on church leaders. The following is an edited excerpt with three questions from the Q&A. The panel was moderated by Pastor DC Choi of YoungNak Church and featured Pastor David Larry Kim of Harvest KPCO, Pastor John Huh of New Mercy Community Church, and Youth Pastor Amy Hao of Jubilee Presbyterian Church.
Pastor DC Choi:
How can a church care for those experiencing loss and grief during this pandemic? I’ll begin with Doctor John Huh who has a degree in pastoral counseling. What insights do you have about how to soul-care for those who are dealing with loss right now?
Pastor John Huh:
This comes to the topic of care and counseling for our members who have faced extreme loss. We haven’t lost any members of our church, but our members' parents, uncles and aunts have passed away from COVID. We're in Northern New Jersey, about 30-40 minutes from New York City, and half of our members are healthcare workers who are working in hospitals on the frontline, so we're constantly talking about this. How do you deal with loss? I don't know if there's a simple answer to such a complex question other than what we can do as pastors and church leaders, which is to provide care and counseling and show them that we love them.
When I teach courses in pastoral care and counseling for future pastors, the training is to prepare and be ready to deal with some of the losses you've personally dealt with in your own life – not that it's going to exactly be the same for others, especially during COVID-19, but you have to be in tune with some of the losses that you've personally dealt with to be able to best empathize with others going through loss. Once again, it doesn't mean that we can understand exactly what they're going through, but it's the perfect time to contact families and individuals who have gone through loss and let them know, “Hey, I may not know exactly what you're going through, but I am here for you.”
And practically, what can you do? Many funerals are being canceled, and you and the family members can't visit the ones that have passed away. So physically, I don't know if there's much you could do. But I think it is time to encourage these congregation members who hopefully feel comfortable enough to share their experiences with the church, so that everyone can pray together and love on and encourage each other. Church leadership can create these venues so that it's easier for people to reach out and share how much they love those experiencing loss and grief. At our church, we've been showing more care to those who are especially directly affected by COVID through many more calls, flowers, and socially distanced visitations to the family.
“Churches need to formulate, if they didn’t already, a plan to connect and create a network with counselors nearby. You need to be able to find the types of mental health professionals nearby who can partner with your church and ministry.”
But one thing that the church is really struggling with right now is how and who these people can reach out to. Churches need to formulate, if they didn't already, a plan to connect and create a network with counselors nearby. You need to be able to find the types of mental health professionals nearby who can partner with your church and ministry. This way people are not receiving care only from the church community -- but they really need to be able to process some of those losses with professionals. I understand that the majority of the churches don't have that set up already, and this can be a challenge. But hopefully, pastors feel this pressure and a burden to do so even after the COVID crisis ends, and it still won’t be too late. Call some counselors up. In fact, find out who the counselors are in your church and among your friends. A lot of these counselors, especially those who are dealing with grief and losses, will do counseling sessions online. Another way churches can participate is by paying for those sessions. Don't ask these counselors to just do it for free, although I'm sure many of them would. Rather, churches can provide for financial needs and even include counseling in the ministry budget. This is with the understanding that taking care of our mental and emotional health is directly related to our spiritual health. I hope that churches are really preparing to think about this much more seriously.
Pastor David Larry Kim:
One of my friends is going through a sermon series on the particular emotions and challenges that the COVID-19 situation has brought up – things like addiction and abuse. One of the things he also mentioned is grief. Similarly, from the pulpit or whatever platform we have, pastors can teach to give people the permission to grieve, to share grief, and to embrace grief as the gift that it is. In Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzero says embracing grief is what enlarges our soul to be able to love others and to engage in the depth of compassion. I think what Pastor John was saying is that we have to be willing to explore those areas of grief so that we can enter into it. Right before COVID hit, our church was going through a series on emotionally healthy spirituality. And for me, much of the process was exposing my soul, hurt, pain, and difficulty in my journey towards emotional, spiritual, and mental health -- and it involved seeking therapy and counseling. Thankfully, because I live in the city where I went to seminary, and many of my friends went through the seminary’s counseling program, I have people that I can refer to, which has been a gift to me because it's kept me sane in a lot of ways.
Obviously, as pastors, we want to be there for our people. We want to be able to walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death. But at a certain point, we realize, “I am not the person to take you to the next level – but there is someone who is able to.” And so like Pastor John said, having a network of counselors available is absolutely crucial -- for our own mental health and sanity as we seek to shepherd the souls of our congregation, but also for our parishioners as well.
Pastor DC Choi:
Pastor Amy, being in youth ministry right now, I'm sure you have some parents who share struggles with you or even students who may share with you what they don't share with their parents. Have there been any students who have reached out to you regarding mental health during your two months of quarantine, and how have you guided them to address their struggles?
Pastor Amy Hao:
As I listened to Pastor David Larry and Pastor John, I kept nodding my head because I feel like counseling is such a big part of ministry. I also act a bit like a counselor for my students. Even without the COVID crisis, I have students with family members who are suffering from cancer or are just having a really hard time mentally. Thankfully, God has brought these students to me, which was my prayer when I began ministry because I have a pretty large-sized youth group. I said, “God, I'm limited. I'm finite. I don't have the bandwidth to have a deep relationship with all of the students. But I pray that you would bring students to me if I especially need to serve them. Or if you could at least make them known to me so I can refer them to somebody else.” Knowing you have other people to lean on who can offer wisdom of the same kind, or even better wisdom than you, is really important. So that's something I'm currently working on as well -- making sure I have other trusted people that I can refer my students to. I usually refer students to professionals if they require serious counseling and need some immediate guidance. It's also a bit more challenging for me to counsel my male students, so I refer them to other male teachers or trusted friends who have a heart for youth. Otherwise, I try to build a daily conversation with my students on how they're doing. That seems to work best for youth students because if you just suddenly reach out and say, “Hey, how are you doing? What are you struggling with?” They usually don’t open up. So I've been spending a lot of time texting and calling students. I've also taken over all of the small groups and do Zoom meetings everyday with my students to make sure that my presence is still felt in their life, even if it’s virtually, and to make sure that they know I am here for them.
Pastor DC Choi:
Next, we have a question from someone who’s trying to connect with their church leadership but seems to be hitting a huge barrier. This struggle seems to be one more unique to Asian American churches. From what I've seen, Western American churches seem to be more open to counseling and to not see it as taboo. But I have seen even discouragement from Asian American church leadership in letting their flock go to professional counselors. And so I would love to hear any of your thoughts regarding the potential barriers when trying to encourage and recommend professional counseling to church leadership.
Pastor John Huh:
This question brings up the reality of the situation. If you read the history, there has always been a huge divide between the disciplines of psychology and counseling versus theology and spiritual disciplines. And especially among Asian American churches, there definitely is some cultural taboo that we have to fight against. One part of it is that pastors and church leadership don't want to let go of the reins of what they consider good leadership, which is “I will take care of all my flock, and I don't know if I can trust anything outside of our church community. I don't have the time, resources or energy to check out all these other people.” But I would like to tell pastors and leadership, “Look, you can't do it by yourself, and you know that deep down inside. So you have to reach out.” And sometimes, you're not going to really jive with some counseling centers, and some counselors might have a different philosophy in how they take care of people. But you still have to be open-minded enough to understand that you might not know what's best for your congregants, and the congregants should have the freedom to receive different types of help other the type of help that only you and your church provide. So a challenge for pastors and church leadership is to find and speak to the counselors in the nearby counseling centers – have coffee, buy them lunch, and hear from them what they're doing in their work, what they're experiencing, and what their challenges are. It's a huge benefit for the church.
“So a challenge for pastors and church leadership is to find and speak to the counselors in the nearby counseling centers – have coffee, buy them lunch, and hear from them what they’re doing in their work, what they’re experiencing, and what their challenges are. It’s a huge benefit for the church.”
I'll give you an example. In Northern Jersey, we've been fortunate enough to have a tight-knit group of pastors who meet, share, and pray together monthly. After 10 years of building relationships, pastors began to start saying to me, “We have these congregants that I'm wanting to refer, but I don't know who to refer them to.” So recently, five churches got together to create a separate nonprofit counseling network group with 12 professionals, whether pastoral counselors or licensed clinicians, psychiatrists, and psychologists who are Christian but don't necessarily do Christian counseling. We met up with these counselors one-on-one, bought them coffee or a meal, and heard their stories and testimonies about why they decided to begin counseling. And what you realize is that they went [into the field] in order to serve the church and to serve God. But oftentimes, those counselors, people with these giftings, are not utilized at all in the churches. They're thrown in, maybe at best, into prayer teams and welcoming teams -- and once again, there is nothing wrong with prayer and welcoming teams. But it's time to create a new "department” for counseling -- different areas of need that we have to address. But I think the church leaders do have to be at the forefront.
Last thing, if you're a counselor yourself, I think there are three practical things that you can do right now. One, please send resources to the churches and pastors that you have relationships with -- resources, such as books that you really loved, reading links, or mental health-related articles -- and hopefully, pastors will respond positively. Second, I hope that you can offer counseling services online, perhaps at a discounted rate, and be in touch with some of the pastors about offering counseling. And thirdly, I think you can try doing some kinds of self-care projects online, such as videos talking about hot topics like how to deal with depression when you're currently home alone or how to navigate relationship issues -- I'm getting a lot of phone calls at 11 PM, 12 AM, 1 AM from couples who were pulling their hair out because maybe we're not made to spend this much time together all the time. We need some tools and tips on how to navigate through these areas. And if you're a professional counselor with those tools, hopefully you can connect with churches to provide those tools.
Pastor David Larry Kim:
Pastor John is the counseling guru, so I don't have much to add -- but one of the things that we did at a pastor's gathering for our denomination is to invite Pastor John to come and share some teachings [on mental health]. And I feel like you could offer a similar service as a mental health professional or counselor, especially during times like this: “I would love to share about grief and how to process through COVID-related grief.” Perhaps there can even be a workshop that gives pastors who aren't familiar with mental health counseling an understanding about what kind of services are offered and how they’re biblically relevant and practical. I think that would be helpful.
“But about 10 years later, he said to me, ‘David, do you think I need to see a counselor?’ So things change. We do begin to realize the need for counseling and it’s only going to get better...”
I would also like to tell the person who asked the question to keep on doing what they're doing because, as PJ said, it does get better and people will eventually respond when they need to. I also fought a lot of battles in the journey towards removing the stigma in the Asian American church. During seminary, all of us were encouraged by my seminary to go seek counsel as future pastors or missionaries. One, so that we would know the value of counsel in our professional lives and could help counsel others. And two, also so that we could work through issues that have not been worked through -- default, blind spots where you have no idea why you do the things that you do. As a seminarian without money, the counseling fees were $120 for a 50-minute session. When I asked my senior pastor [for financial assistance], he's like, “Heck no, ain't no way that our church's going to pay for that. I had an issue with my parents, and I got beat by my dad. I just prayed, and I'm fine now.” That's what he said. But about 10 years later, he said to me, “David, do you think I need to see a counselor?” So things change. We do begin to realize the need for counseling and it’s only going to get better, especially with more advocates like Pastor John and also because it's being a lot more talked about with celebrities, athletes, and Korean pop stars dealing with mental health. So I appreciate the person who asked this question for their heart and expertise. I would just encourage them to please keep on doing what they’re doing because we need people like them in the fight, and we need to partner with people like them.