Since 2020
Hello Ministry Friends,
Here is a short summary of the 3 main projects that we are curerntly working on in the C-Mental Health project:
1) www.globalcycleclub.com (98% done - fully online now. Join in!). This websites functions to encourge movement through bicycle riding and as a project and cause fundraising site where people of any athletic ability can slow down their lives, sign up to ride once in a while (or as hard and often as you like) to raise awareness and funds for healthy faith and mental health projects and ministries. This site will grow over time. You can join today to get started, even if you don't bike all the time. Connect to Strava after registration and your rides will record automatically, anytime you use Strava.
2) www.globalwalkingclub.com (50% done). This is a copy of www.globalcycleclub.com for people who rather walk than bicycle. It follows the same idea as Global Cycle Club. It encourages a healthy movement approach together with prayer and minduflness to supporti your favorite mental health ministry project.
3) www.cmentalhealth.com (20% done). This site is our mothership, our destination: at the core it comprises an open-source resource platform that allows pastors and missionaries to download and access free and donation-based, dynamic mental health ministries support content to improve the lives of pastors and missioanries themselves, their congregations, and the communities in which they serve. The focus is on dynamic, indigenous content to prevent what happens often, a Western-based professional writes a book and assumes it will work in most cultures. It often does not and the content can be even inappropriate for the local church.
How we started:
Capri and I, Ingo, have used our counseling skills to support pastors and missionaries for many years now, even before we became missionaries with NI. In the last 5 years the vision emerged to go beyond our our own efforts and our one-on-one support for pastors and missionaries and meeet the growing demand for mental health resources and counseling locally and globally. This goal cannot be achieved by, for example, Ingo and Capri writing a book on the topic. Print books and other tradiational resources are too slow to adapt and often outdated after a few years (Example: see the Russian aggression against Ukraine and how fast the needs changed there within days and weeks).
C-Mental Health (our current project) seeks to estbalish a dynamic, open-source web-presence that offers a one-stop resource center for pastors to establish mental health ministries and for the support of missionaries and their work locally and globally. In this effort we look at these three questions to assess needs:
- What are the predominant mental health needs of the pastor/missionary and his/her family on a personal level?
- What are the perdominant mental health needs of the congregation?
- What are the perdominant mental health needs of the community in which the church is located?
Be a part of getting C-Mental Health established and growing. Thank you!
Ingo
