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Sacred Series Toolkit: Becoming a Trauma-Informed Faith Community

By the Rev. Jessica Stokes, Associate Director of Partners in Health and Wholeness, Statewide Mental Health Advocacy

Thank you for viewing our toolkit! Please use the Sacred Conversations Toolkit: Becoming a Trauma-Informed Faith Community alongside our Part I and Part II recordings found below, which offer an overview of helpful strategies in becoming a trauma-informed faith community.

Sacred Conversations Toolkit: Becoming a Trauma-Informed Faith Community Part I

Sacred Conversations Toolkit: Becoming a Trauma-Informed Faith Community Part II

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Glossary of terms

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs): Traumatic events occurring before age 18, but notably between birth and kindergarten. ACEs include all types of abuse, neglect, and hardship endured by a child that impacts their social, emotional, mental, and physical growth.

Community Trauma: Collective trauma that is shared and experienced by people, often due to social inequities, lack of resources or adequate access to them, and disconnection from political and social efficacy.

Culturally Competent: The ability to productively interact, engage, and appreciate people from other cultures or belief systems.

Resilience: Tools that a person possesses, and builds, to neutralize symptoms of trauma, move forward in life, and grow. These tools encompass all types of intentional practices that improve a person’s well-being.

Retraumatization: When past trauma and related symptoms of that trauma are experienced again due to triggers such as people, incidents, environments, sounds, and other sensory input.

Stigma: A response and/or culture that is attached to a circumstance, person, or quality that evokes distance, ridicule, belittlement, and other negative feelings towards a person or situation. For example, stigma around mental health can cause secrecy or shame responses or an association of false concepts with someone living with a mental health concern.

Stigma-Reducing Language: Intentional language that empowers people, that focuses on the whole person instead of one aspect of them. Does not reduce a person to their diagnosis or trauma.

Strengths-Based Approach: Is a growth-based mindset that focuses on individual and community strengths and networks; this is a collaborative effort where needs are met holistically with a focus on empowerment, potential, and what can be improved.

Toxic Theology: This is a culture that can manifest in conversations, sermons, and norms of a faith community that include the “just pray harder” philosophy. While prayer is crucial, it should be part of a multifaceted approach that includes therapy and healthy support. Toxic theology includes the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality that contributes to the stigma of mental health concerns, placing undue burden and harm on individuals who need support, not more distance or critique. There are also unhelpful toxic platitudes that, even well-intentioned, are harmful, such as “That was God’s plan” or “It all happens for a reason” which can ultimately hurt a person’s faith and trust in God.

Trauma: The American Psychological Association defines trauma as “1. any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. Traumatic events include those caused by human behavior (e.g., rape, war, industrial accidents) as well as by nature (e.g., earthquakes) and often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place.
2. any serious physical injury, such as a widespread burn or a blow to the head.

Trauma-Informed Care: The foundation of productively addressing trauma within your community and utilizing universal trauma precautions (assuming everyone has experienced trauma so no one is treated differently). Trauma-informed care is a strengths-based approach that fosters recovery and healing through safe and collaborative relationships.

Trauma-Informed Faith Community: A faith community that practices trauma-informed care, and actively learns new ways of compassionately and effectively approaching trauma and mental health concerns. A trauma-informed faith community realizes the impact of trauma and integrates knowledge about trauma, and empowers community members.

Universal Trauma Precautions: Engaging with all people as if they have experienced trauma, and approaching situations as if trauma is possible, to prevent retraumatization. Also realizing how common and pervasive trauma is.

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Liturgy Examples of Addressing Trauma Within Worship

(Prayers, unless noted, written by the Rev. Jessica Stokes.)

Prayer for Resilience

Spirit of hope- Guide us, help us become aware of the ways that your love have sustained us up to this very breath. Help us become aware of the strength you have given us in our hardest seasons, the same strength carrying us right now. Help us see that strength and resilience in others. Help us show up for our community, for those who are hurting, for those who need hope. With the same compassion you give us, let us see ourselves and others with compassion. Amen.

Prayer for Creating a Trauma-Informed Community

God of refuge and strength- Be with us as we do this work, as we learn, create, and examine how we, as a community of faith, can ensure that this is a home for all people, of all experiences. Help us live out your love, center us in the hope that you offer to us, no matter what life brings. Be with us, as we do this hard work, as it may cause discomfort within ourselves and the larger faith community. Remind us that loving our neighbor and creating a community that is based on wholeness is worth every effort. In your love, Amen.

Prayer for Sustaining Our Work

God of daily resurrection, who is always renewing, creating-
Keep us moving forward, with you, towards wholeness
When we feel defeated, turn us towards your hope
When we feel alone, remind us of your presence
When we are angry, center us in gratitude
Amen

Taizé Prayer (by Brother Roger)

O risen Christ, you go down
to the lowest depths
of our human condition,
and you burden yourself
with what burdens us.
Still more, you even go
to visit those who have died
without being able to know you.
And even when within us
we can hear no refrain
of your presence,
you are there,
through your Holy Spirit
you remain within us.

Prayers of the People

Let us pray to the God of love:
We pray that our faith community will radically welcome all, and serve all, with all that a person is emotionally and physically-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

For those who suffer in mind, body, and spirit-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

For all who feel outcast by the church, are excluded, who are known only for their hardest seasons, who are seen as “too much” by society-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

For all the stigma that our society, faith community, conversations, and thoughts perpetuate, even unintentionally, forgive us, God. Help us correct this-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

For children who are experiencing trauma, give them strength and hope. Help us prevent trauma and better address trauma for all people-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

For all who are overwhelmed by trauma in their past, or living amidst trauma, send strength, clarity, and comfort-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

For all communities: congregations, schools, governments, public service, military, and more, to see how pervasive trauma is, and how it impacts every part of us-
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

In all this, we pray-
Amen

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Steps and Ideas of Becoming a Trauma-Informed Faith Community 

Expanded and tailored for faith communities from the “Six Key Principles of a Trauma-Informed Approach” by SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association). Consider the following:

  1. Safety
    This includes physical, emotional, and relational safety. Do people who have experienced trauma feel included within the worshipping community? What structures are in place to protect a person’s boundaries? Consider power dynamics in your faith community, and how it might feel to be vulnerable in your community, or feel vulnerable. Everything from pastoral visits, to divorce counseling, to child care, to being in need of money, food, or resources.
  2. Trustworthiness and Transparency
    Is authenticity and vulnerability valued highly within your community of faith? Are confidences kept? Does unintentional sharing of information happen, even with good intentions such as the example of a prayer chain, prayer requests?
  3. Mutual support
    Does the church go beyond being friendly to being a place someone can make friendships? Does your place of worship cultivate genuine shared vulnerability? Where a person can seek help without dealing with repercussions or power systems? Can this happen both in large group and small group settings? Are ministry leaders modeling self-care through their personal practices?
  4. Collaboration and Mutuality
    Is there a culture of learning and growth, where ego does not hinder new and healthier ways to do ministry? Does the church prioritize listening and being with those who have been deeply hurt by life?
  5. Empowerment, Voice, and Choice
    Are those who are ministered to also given the opportunity to share and teach? Is there an understanding that people with lived experiences of trauma bring value and wisdom to the worshipping community? Are they fully integrated into the life of the church and given a voice for self-advocacy?
  6. Cultural, Historical, and Self-Identity
    Does your faith community recognize the unique cultural issues often bound up with trauma? Examples of this include gender, race, nationality, and more. Is there room for the expression of faith and practice in ways that honor the unique cultural and historical backgrounds, and self-identity backgrounds, of those you seek to serve?

Guiding Questions

  1. How do you define trauma?
  2. There are many ways that trauma impacts a person, emotionally and physically- what are examples?
  3. In what ways have we individually and collectively limited “trauma”?
  4. What are examples of community trauma that you see?
  5. How can our faith community better address Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in our children and youth programming?
  6. What are some possibilities of trauma-informed care within your congregation?
  7. Name specific ways individually and collectively we can reduce stigma around trauma and mental health concerns.
  8. Specify ways to address trauma and mental health concerns in worship.

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Practical Ways for a Faith Community to Do This Work

  1. Address trauma in conversation: Many symptoms of trauma are connected with topics found in faith conversations: hope, despair, guilt, shame, low sense of worth, bitterness. Productive language is crucial. Practice language that destigmatizes mental health concerns, and invites people to become comfortable, safe, and empowered to trust.
    1. For example- use “whole person,” person-first language. Do not use diagnoses as adjectives. Ex: “She is schizophrenic.” Instead say, “a person living with mental illness” or “those with the lived experience of a mental illness or a mental health concern.”
    2. Utilize language in which people feel empowered and safe to talk about what is actually going on in their home, including spousal abuse, domestic abuse, etc.
    3. Language that pivots from “what is wrong with you,” to “what happened to you.”
  2. Faith communities often have established trust within a larger community. If a congregation takes the lead in informing communities about trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences and resources around ACEs, it will be very productive due to this established trust.
  3. Special worship themes on ACEs and destigmatizing language around trauma, whole-person language. Understand that preaching from certain passages might need extra sensitivity.
  4. Throughout children’s ministries, including vacation bible school and more: facilitate lessons and skills to complement school and home life with emotion identification. One way to do this is by using an emotion-wheel, which expands language and identification around emotions/ feelings. Validate how children feel and listen to what they have to say.
  5. Break down toxic theology (see glossary for more explanation).
  6. Critically examine how worship spaces and language might be hard for someone with trauma– music, physical embracing such as hugging, involvement in worship, where a child might feel pressured to go to the front, social pressure, etc.
    • Consider how physical touch plays a role in your worshipping community, such as the laying on of hands, hugging, etc. Consider how this might feel forced upon or expected of the members.
  7. Staff training: Any leadership training, including Stephen ministers, deacons, pastoral care team, and the greater church community can benefit from leadership training in trauma awareness to change the overall church culture.
    • Mental Health First Aid: a wonderful training that offers tools to help a person in a mental health crisis. Noted in the resources below.
    • Connections Matters Training: Connection Matters is a training that enables you to teach on trauma and ACEs. Noted in the resources below.
  8. Collaborate with other community leaders and organizations, particularly those that are addressing trauma well. Also work closely with other major facets of congregants’ lives including work, school, extracurricular, our children’s sports teams and practices, volunteer work, and more. It is important for churches to collaborate with school communities, by partnering with educators, parents, coaches, and other leaders. This is a great avenue for a church to partner with other community organizations.
  9. Find ways to practice compassionate listening together, maybe through an active listening workshop class. This might be out of people’s comfort zones but active listening is a needed skill in all aspects of life, and especially in becoming a trauma-informed congregation.
  10. Encourage and normalize therapy. Help those with socioeconomic barriers get professional help if it is what they are asking for.
  11. Host a screening and discussion of “Resilience: The Biology of Stress and The Science of Hope” Documentary Screening and Discussion. See resources section, below.
  12. Learn from a trauma-informed church. Find a community already doing this work well, and take note.
  13. Prepare a uniform, succinct referral process for all staff, including ministers, office managers, etc., to utilize. This referral system is a step by step system of how to meet people in need or crisis, with an index of phone numbers to local agencies that can meet a variety of those needs. The Rev. Jessica Stokes has a training on developing a proper referral system, email her at Jessica@ncchurches.org
  14. Promote the building of resilience: encourage congregants by teaching and modeling skills that empower during stressful situations, eliminate blaming, and instead reframe how we view those events. Included in the resources below is further reading on how to build resilience.
  15. Partners in Health and Wholeness and the PHW Mini-Grant: Collaborate with PHW to bolster your faith community’s health ministries and projects, including mental health. We can help establish and grow a mental health ministry, start your journey of becoming a trauma-informed faith community, and bring tools to help overall health: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
  16. Consider local community trauma: such as gun violence, collective loss, trauma around natural disasters and storms
    • Do a church-wide study of your local area’s history; look closely at statistics around violence and poverty, education levels, police brutality, and more. Consider this all with compassion.

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Resources

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