Pastor Eric
My role as a spiritual advisor is to specifically look at the well-being of how people perceive themselves, how individuals perceive their surroundings and so I spend quite a bit of time really listening and trying to understand exactly what they’re seeing in their mind, expressing out of their heart and I believe that being a spiritual advisor really affects the emotional as well as the physical because I believe all things transpire out of the spirit. And so if a person has a healthy spirit then regardless of whatever illness or situation they’re dealing with I believe that they can overcome that.

The thing that I believe people don’t know about mental illness is the person. And it takes a tremendous amount of time and a tremendous amount of patience to get to know the actual individual outside of the many symptoms or many stresses that continually plague their lives. So if individuals would take the time to really listen close and not be so bothered by the actual illness then they would really recognize that there’s a human being that’s really worthy of a lot of love and has a tremendous capacity to live. My encouragement to other clergy, other pastoral staffs is to get education, to get some understanding on the topic of mental illness, and that would give them a real good foot in the door to minister life to those individuals struggling with mental illness.

Say it out loud means awareness. It means hope. It means the opportunity to get into a person’s life in a way to become what they were predestined to be, what they desire to be. That’s what Say it out loud means to me.