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
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What people are saying:
“That Scott knows a Christian approach to the arts and understands the nature of trauma-informed care should be enough to alert you to the immense value of this rare book. You should get it, and get another for your pastor or ministry leadership team. How to CARE is really built on that acronym in the title — it invites us to a Compassionate, Artistic, Response and Engagement. He unpacks each of these making the book not only a thrilling read but a literal handbook, a manual, a resource just loaded with ideas, suggestions, lesson plans, proposals, exercises. If you want something that is transferable, applicable, practical, you need this tool-kit of a book. Whether you are an artist or not, a counselor or not, this handbook for ministry with the arts will be exceedingly stimulating and useful. There is nothing like it in print.” —Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds
–Jason Leith, socially engaged artist, former director of Saddleback Visual Arts“How amazing would it be to see the arts rallied to bring healing to thousands (even millions) through the work of the church! As I read the manuscript of this book, I found myself thinking of person after person who would benefit from these exercises and couldn’t help but dream of what it would look like for churches to become lighthouses of hope in an increasingly dark world.
I have spent most of my adult life doing ministry with people who have suffered severe trauma, and I’ve written multiple books on helping people find breakthrough on their healing journey. I love the resource Scott has compiled here and highly recommend that every church that wants to step up and face this tsunami of pain in our culture seriously consider how to take the tools in this book and create ways to put them into practice.”
–Dr. Marcus Warner, president of Deeper Walk International, author of Understanding the Wounded Heart, Rare Leadership, The 4 Habits of Joy-Filled Marriages
“How to Care offers powerful creativity and art tools for responding to crisis, trauma, and mental health challenges in our communities. Collected from art therapists and expressive therapists, the proven art strategies illustrated in the book demonstrate how to offer healing using the arts. Focused on service and healing in a community context, this book delivers solution-focused strategies for groups of people who aim to help with compassion, creativity, and kindness. The authors call for a trauma informed faith and urge readers to step up and address the growing needs of all people in these troubled times. The challenge to people of faith is clear – action, compassion, and art are a powerful, humane, and deeply spiritual way of delivering service.”
—Amy Backos, PhD, ATR-BC, CEO of The Art Therapy Center of the San Francisco Bay, Author of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Art Therapy