Issue 21: Interview with Christy Wimber
/In conversation with Christy Wimber
Interview by Jo Swinney
Christy has been immersed in the church for well over two decades – speaking, writing and training leaders, as well as leading the Yorba Linda Vineyard in California for over eleven years.
Christy became aware of the inadequacy of the church’s theology of suffering. As I (Jo Swinney) have struggled with depression and anxiety since I was a teenager, I have been hugely encouraged by her decision to use her significant platform to address this inadequacy. She openly admits to having thought poor mental health was a matter of weakness not illness, an attitude she believes was widely shared by other church leaders. She has now made it her mission to challenge that stigma and shift Christian culture towards an acceptance and openness about ongoing struggles with mental health.
Q When you stopped leading Yorba Linda Vineyard, did you have a sense of what your next step would be?
CW I had no idea. When you are pioneering, you don’t realise the stress and weight of it until you aren’t doing it. It took me a good year until I could just breathe a bit. I’ve taken two years where I’ve not been leading anything. I realised I was wearing so many hats and leading a church on top of all of that, so once the church was gone, it was actually quite a big thing off me.
I would have liked to have taken a break, but to be honest with you, I’ve had so many other difficult things, which is why I’ve taken longer than the year I was planning. I haven’t been able to just sit and ask the Lord what He’d like me to build next. I have so many other people I have to help.
Q You spoke at New Wine a couple of years ago about how the focus of the Vineyard had been on physical healing and that through a close friend, God showed you people need healing from mental health issues too. How do you now understand God’s heart towards people suffering from depression and anxiety and other mental health conditions?
CW I think it is more than just the Vineyard: the church in general had a wrong focus. I needed to have my life intersect with other people who operate with other theology and practices, in order to see some things that we were not good at. That’s what stretched my theology.
How God sees any of us is the same. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. We are all on the same playing field, just with different struggles. I would just relate it to Romans 8 – ‘all creation is groaning.’ We are all groaning in different ways and for all of us it’s different. But I don’t think God sees any of His kids [as] different. You know when you have kids, you love your kids the same.
Q One might be struggling at school and one with chicken pox but they are both suffering. You wouldn’t just deal with the chicken pox and leave the other out to dry.
CW Yeah. There is no favouritism.
Q Why do you think churches only pray for physical healing and not mental?
CW I think it just isn’t popular. You can put someone who’s had a broken arm or cancer healed on a stage. You can say ‘Oh my arm’s not broken!’ But you can’t put someone with mental ill health on a stage and say you got healed of bi-polar in this meeting. That’s unloving. So that is one major difference. We have got to redefine how we do ministry. What’s most important is that nobody is being left out.
Q Do you think stigma has something to do with it? You say that you used to equate depression with weakness – is that what a lot of people in the church think?
CW Yes. One aspect is that we tend to celebrate testimony. Rarely have I seen a testimony when the process of struggle is still a part of it. An ongoing struggle with depression doesn’t sell. At the end of the day people are attracted to quick fixes and instant miracles. To highlight that I am still in the struggle and give people permission to be in the struggle, that’s what we have to redefine. There’s just as much power in the person that’s struggling and pushing through, as in the testimony of the person healed from diabetes. It is all the same, isn’t it?
Q I often think about Job refusing to curse God. That’s the baseline. Today I survived: I didn’t kill myself and I didn’t curse God and that is a win.
CW It is a massive win. We have to actually redefine testimony, redefine power, redefine miracle, redefine struggle, redefine suffering – they all have to be redefined.
Q Can you talk about the UK-based mental health initiatives you are involved with?
CW Mind and Soul (a Christian charity) asked me to be on their board. They have an access pack to equip churches to talk about mental health – it is free. I also really love Liveability which crosses more into the secular world. It does a fantastic job of bridging the church with the community as it tackles broader issues – not just anxiety and depression but things like dementia and disability. It is present and walking it out and giving people community.
And the NHS – we need to honour those working in the health community. We need them and we need medication. I think medication is a gift from God. It is not a sign of lack of faith but the provision of God. A good balance – yes, we pray, but also we take our medication. If we need it, we take it. You’d take it if you needed it for your heart. What is the difference between that and taking it for your brain? As an American, I look at the NHS and think it is phenomenal. They have a lot of apps and free resources for mental health.
Q As you have travelled around the UK, speaking in different churches and meeting with leaders of various denominations, have you got any sense of a direction of travel?
CW I have been focussed on this for the last five years and this is the first year that I’ve felt really encouraged. More of the church, especially the charismatic church, is beginning to acknowledge that they need help. Churches and leaders have to first accept that help is needed before they (we) can readjust how we do things. Leaders don’t just change. Their world has to be rocked in a way that means they have to change.
The churches that won’t get equipped in the area of mental health in the coming years won’t be effective. It is that central to society. Everyone in church has someone they are caring for or they themselves have mental ill health. How can you serve them if you are not equipped to?
Q To ground this, what does it look like for a church to be equipped?
Every leader should learn more about mental ill health, so they can speak into it and break stigma. They should create spaces for people to get well. I also think they should tear down some of the walls we have up – darkness and secrecy make people sicker. It is the leaders’ responsibility to create a church in which people can be safe and share what they are struggling with.
This next season, I’m hoping leaders become more vulnerable about their own weaknesses because it creates an environment in which other people can share. If your leader never shares hardship, it creates an environment of ‘everything gets better and better’ so it silences the suffering.
Churches can hold practical events, for example, a gathering based on ‘what is anxiety?’ where a specialist from the NHS can come in and share. And then you bring faith into it. Okay, you are showing others that ‘we want to be there for you and we’re going to pray for you’. You bring the two things together.
People should be able to go to places that can include where they are with their own mental ill health, people should not feel separate from the church. I don’t like ‘Mental Health Sunday.’ You wouldn’t have ‘Diabetes Sunday.’ It creates more of the us and them. It’s a better idea to have a small group or a class about mental health and develop the idea that it is all of us together and whatever you need help with, go to that class. Go to that training. Doing those simple things will shift the church.
Q Do you have anything you would say specifically to preachers?
CW Preachers need to learn a new language and realise that words really matter. How we communicate healing to people has changed. If I was going to preach on anxiety, I would say, ‘Hey, just so you know, we are going to be looking at anxiety next week. So those of you that struggle with that, just know that so you can be aware before you come to church. And if it is too hard for you to come, then be released.’ We can’t just pray everything away, but we can use the language of ‘get the help you need’ and not the language of ‘quick fix’ from the pulpit.
One big thing I’ve realised is that it is not the church’s job to fix people. That is not the call of the church. We don’t even heal people – God does. It is our job to share in each other’s sufferings, not fix the sufferings. That’s 2 Corinthians 10. When we do that, it deepens fellowship and relationship. It is sacrificial to sit with people in pain, but it has to happen. That is what we need to learn how to do really well. Being present in the coming years is going to be vital.
Q You have a new book out, Wholeness: Changing how we think about healing, with a chapter by Katherine Welby-Roberts. What are your hopes for it?
CW Both Katherine and I wanted to talk about the things we know we need to talk about, that people are dealing with every day. My hope is that the book will start the conversations and that we, as the church, will become more honest and break the shame. We need space to get well in different ways. I hope leaders are challenged in many ways. And that people will say ‘Finally someone is writing about how I feel. Finally, I feel that I have a voice and I matter. This is all of us together.’
Q What is next for you? Are you going back into church leadership?
CW I do have some ideas but right now I need to pause a bit because of my family situation. You can’t actually talk about mental health and not be surrounded by it. So I am navigating that and it has to be a priority. But I’m also a builder so I am pretty sure that a building role will happen again sometime.
I have a TV show which began in June. We talk about mental ill health in that, as well as women in leadership. It is on Sky and TBN UK and it is called ‘Conversations with Christy.’
You can keep up to date with what Christy is up to on her website www.christywimber.com. Her book, Wholeness: Changing how we think about healing (Monarch) is out now.
