How to CARE: Crisis, Trauma, and Mental Health Ministry with the Arts
By J Scott McElroy with Jen Alward
Believers know we should be responding to increasing crisis, trauma, and mental health challenges in our communities and the world, but we often don’t know exactly how.
How to CARE offers an innovative yet clear pathway for churches, artists, and Christian believers to respond creatively and compassionately to those who are hurting. It is a healing form of creative arts ministry, based on proven Art Therapy principles and practices, and done with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
It’s called CARE: Compassionate Artistic Response and Engagement.
In this handbook you’ll find:
- Over 150 creative arts ministry ideas, examples, models, and detailed directions for ministry to the hurting, plus access to a growing database online, contributed by professional therapists, artists, and ministers.
- Research-backed evidence for how the arts, creativity, beauty, imagination, and movement facilitate healing and ministry.
You learn:
- Why Christians and churches must respond with compassionate ministry to crisis, trauma, and mental health needs, and how the arts are excellent allies.
- How a developing a trauma-informed faith is the Christian way.
- How CARE Arts Ministry works. A creative model that is Holy Spirit Led, Trauma & Art Therapy Informed, Humility Based, and Exchange Oriented. And it can be facilitated by any believer, from “unartistic” lay person to master artist.
The godly concepts in How to CARE can have a profound impact on how congregations, artists, ministries, and Christian believers, see and CARE for those affected by crisis, disaster, and trauma events, and mental health challenges. How we creatively serve the “least of these,” remember the “widows and orphans in their distress”, and the beautiful, natural, practical ways the arts and creativity can facilitate healing and hope.
If you believe it’s time for Christians and congregations to step up and address the growing needs of these troubled times with compassion and creativity, How to CARE offers a way. Compassionate Artistic Response and Engagement (CARE).
See more at: CAREArtsMinistry.org