Category: Features

Continuing our series looking at groups with similar aims, Trevor Parsons meets the dynamic Christian charity Renew Wellbeing which, in less than a decade, has grown a network of 260 wellbeing spaces and places where it’s OK not to be OK

In 2010, full-time primary school teacher, mother of three, and enthusiastic Baptist church member and leader Ruth Rice had a breakdown. Suddenly, seemingly inexplicably, it was all too much.

With all that was going on in her life—all which she loved doing—she had simply “forgotten that I was a human being. Nobody else was terribly surprised when I had a breakdown, but I was! Because I hadn’t looked after myself very well. I’d been burning the candle at both ends, and to be honest, church was a big part of that. I wanted to change the world, and I wanted everybody to come to know Jesus, and I wanted to be the best mum and the best wife. And I wasn’t the best anything. And there was a day came that I just couldn’t get out of my bed.”

Recounting her story at a Renew Wellbeing training course for churches organised by the Diocese of London, Ruth says: “The straw that broke the camel’s back—and it still makes me laugh thinking of it—was just trying to think ‘what shall we have for tea?’ I slid down onto the kitchen floor and cried for an hour. I remember thinking: ‘This isn’t right—I’ll just have a little rest.’ And as it turned out I couldn’t function in my life for about a year.”

John Vallat shares his thoughts on the meaning and practice of our association’s operational name

“Being Alongside” is the operational name which was adopted by The Association for Pastoral Care in Mental Health some years ago. The meaning and practice of “pastoral care” may be the subject of debate. In this short article I am expressing my own views. My hope is that it may encourage others to in turn share their own thoughts, perhaps for future publication in our magazine and on our website.

I believe that an important element of pastoral care or support is “being alongside”. But what does this mean? One illustration is in the Servant Song written by Richard Gillard in 1977. It has been described by Charles Parvey, choirmaster at Holy Trinity, Malvern as being “an expression of the Christian call to community and friendship, marked by selfless service, walking alongside and bearing one another’s joys, sorrows and fears”. Here are some verses from the Servant Song:

The ever devoted Jamie Summers reflects on almost 30 years of involvement in our charity

In the early nineties I was running a drop-in centre linked to Hammersmith & Fulham MIND attracting up to 100 people a day, known as Consumer Forum. I had undergone a traumatic time in early 1992 being admitted to Springfield Hospital with cannabis psychosis—my treatment led to my changing career to work in mental health. Visiting the hospital’s chapel, which reflected my Christian faith, was then dismissed by some psychiatrists as symptomatic of mental illness. It seemed to me that my mental turmoil was tantamount to a tussle with God, who came to my rescue. In Autumn 1995 I met the charismatic Jeremy Boutwood, then Chairman of APCMI (Association for Pastoral Care in Mental Illness), and Pam Freeman at a Guild of Health seminar. APCMI’s ethos mirrored my conviction that much of mental ill health has a spiritual core.

In response to an increasing number of people arriving at Southwark Cathedral complaining of loneliness, the cathedral’s day chaplains asked Andrew Wilson to lead them in a group discussion on the problem. Here he shares his contribution to the meeting.

I based my contribution to the discussion around two books I had been reading in lockdown. By way of introduction I suggested that the experience of loneliness was universal, whether it be in the playground perhaps, or the workplace, or sadly even within the circle of family and friends. One commentator writes “ The experience of loneliness is as universal as hunger or thirst. Because It affects us more intimately we are less inclined to speak of it. But who has not known its gnawing ache?” Jesus himself shared in that anguish, as Gethsemane and Calvary lay bare. “Alone, and in silent tears,” he endured betrayal and stigma.

The two books I had read both explored the anatomy of loneliness. The one a novel long-listed for the Booker prize, Real Life by Brandon Taylor, a black, gay American writer, and the other The Shattering of Loneliness, by Dom Erik Varden, formerly the abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Saint Bernard in Leicestershire, and now returned to his native land, to become Bishop of Central Norway.