A gap in training, not a gap in caring
Concerned Christians for Mental Health is a group of local pastors, ministry leaders, and church members working to close it — not just for the people up front, but for everyone in the room.
Why we started this
We kept running into the same problem. People around us were struggling, and none of us were equipped to help them.
Not for lack of love. For lack of training. Most of us were never taught what depression looks like from the outside, what to do when someone mentions they have thought about ending their life, or how to raise the idea of professional help without it landing like a brush-off. So we did what untrained people do. We prayed, we said something kind, and we hoped it was enough.
Sometimes it was. Often it was not, and we only found that out later.
The more we talked about it, the clearer one thing became: this is not a leadership problem. The person who gets told first is almost never the pastor. It is a friend, a parent, a coworker, whoever happened to be standing there on a hard day. Training only the people with titles leaves out nearly everyone who actually gets the phone call.
So Concerned Christians for Mental Health exists to bring qualified, licensed teaching into our community and open it to anybody who wants it — so that when someone is in trouble, the person sitting next to them knows what to do.
We would rather be the people someone tells than the people they avoid.
That takes more than good intentions. It takes knowing the words, the warning signs, and where to send someone when it is past what a friend can carry.
Three things we hold to
We are volunteers, not an institution. These are the commitments that shape what we put on.
Licensed teaching, not opinions
We do not teach this ourselves. We bring in practising, licensed clinicians and get out of the way. Good intentions are not a qualification, and mental health is a field where being confidently wrong does real damage.
Free, and free of strings
No ticket price, no offering, nothing sold at the back of the room. Nobody will ask you to join a church or leave your details with a vendor. If cost or pressure is the reason someone stays home, that is a reason we can remove.
Open to anyone
Church background or none, title or none. The people most likely to be told something hard are ordinary people going about an ordinary week, and an event that only trains leaders misses almost all of them.
Who we are
Pastors, ministry leaders, and church members from across Davie County and the surrounding area, working on this together rather than each church figuring it out alone.
None of us are mental health professionals. That is rather the point — we are the people this training is for, and we decided to stop waiting for someone else to organize it.
Our events are open to anyone, church background or not. If you would like to help, host a future course, or have your church involved, get in touch.
Our partner for this event
Dwell Christian Therapy & Training is a North Carolina practice with offices in Greensboro and Cary. It was founded by two clinicians, Kalie Moore and Lauren Bowman, after years in private practice and a shared conviction that the church and the mental health field were solving the same problems without talking to each other.
What they do
Two things, side by side. Their clinical team provides trauma-informed therapy across a wide range of specialties. Their teaching team trains communities to recognize mental health needs and respond to them well.
- Trauma therapy and EMDR
- OCD and anxiety treatment
- DBT
- Substance use
- Severe mental illness
- Marriage, family, and child therapy
- Perinatal and postpartum mental health
Why we chose them
Their teaching is clinically sound and unembarrassed about faith. They do not ask churches to check their theology at the door, and they do not ask clinicians to pretend the spiritual dimension is not there.
They also teach this particular course regularly, across the state. We are not their first audience, and that matters — the material has been tested on real rooms, not written for ours.
Dwell publishes its statement of faith and its full course outline at dwellministry.org.
The first one is November 5
Doors at 5:30, teaching at 6:00, at Triple J Manor House in Mocksville. Taught by Dwell’s licensed clinicians. Two hundred seats, completely free, open to anyone who wants to understand.
No ticket price, no offering, nothing sold. The only purpose is to help our community understand mental health better.
If you or someone you know needs help right now
Call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available 24 hours a day. In an emergency, call 911.
Concerned Christians for Mental Health is not a treatment or crisis service.
Concerned Christians for Mental Health is an educational effort. We do not provide diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or crisis intervention, and attending our events does not create a clinical relationship with Dwell Christian Therapy & Training, its clinicians, or Concerned Christians for Mental Health. If you need care, please contact a licensed provider.