Dr. Jennifer Schwirzer shares how she started a missional business that trains Adventists how to become mental health coaches. She talks about Biblical meditation and how it was like for her to win 1st prize at Hyve’s Global Summit 2020.

<p>Dr. Jennifer Schwirzer shares how she started a missional business that trains Adventists how to become mental health coaches. She talks about Biblical meditation and how it was like for her to win 1st prize at Hyve’s Global Summit 2020.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hyve

The Hyve Podcast Season 2, 2022

Jennifer Schwirzer

Adventism’s Mental Health Network

Jesse Zwiker

Business or Vision

Jay Razzouk

That’s Worth More than Money

Lyndon Sweeney

Saving Time and Money Through Automation

The Jewish Secret

Rob Bertholf

The Academy for Missional Entrepreneurs

Rivelino Montenegro

Healing Chronic Wounds

Vincent Bujor

How to Reach Your Goals

So Dixon Chibanda, this psychiatrist, had 1 of his clients commit suicide because she couldn't afford the bus fare to go see him.

And So they did a short training with the grandmothers and put them on park benches, basically, in the villages.

And they would help people with depression and anxiety.

That is, in essence, what we're doing with the Bide.

We train people so that they can help other people.

That's what prepares us for the coming of Jesus.

So those of us who work in that line, helping people change their thoughts and feelings are evangelists in the truest sense of the word.

So we're doing mental health evangelism, I would say, preparing people for the coming of Jesus.

You're listening to season 2, And I want to introduce you to Dr.

Jennifer Scherzer, mental health professional, author of 14 books, TV host, and owner of a missional business called Abide Network.

Abide Network is a community of mental health coaches and professionals, and they go out and help other people with their thoughts and feelings, and basically do the work of character building.

It's kind of like a discipleship program focusing on mental health.

Close to a thousand people have gone through that program already and there are dozens of providers active at the moment.

And I was wondering, what made Jennifer start the Abide Network?

So when I was a young adult, which was a really long time ago, I had clinical depression.

But it was at a juncture in the history of my particular subculture within my church when people didn't generally go to counselors.

Or if you did, the only counselors you could see were local providers, local professionals.

And as a result of that, I kind of lived out in the country and in an area where there just weren't a whole lot of Adventists.

I couldn't never find an Adventist counselor.

And even had difficulty finding a local Christian counselor that I could afford.

And suffered with some treatable clinical depression for a number of years.

So when I got into, I raised kids and right at the point when the kids were gonna launch, I was wanting to go back to graduate school and I was torn between theology and psychology.

I've always loved theology, wanted to go to seminary.

But I asked my husband because I needed a job, like I couldn't just go to school for fun, I had to get a job out of it.

And I asked my husband, Would you like to be married to a pastor?

And then I decided I would go to school for psychology, because I'm such an obedient wife, you know?

And so I went to school for counseling, and it worked out well because at the time, I was already doing a lot of seminar presenting on like revival type weekends in churches.

I had done music ministry for a number of years, and so this would fit in well because I could work during the week and then I could go travel on the weekends, whereas you can't do that with pastoring.

And so I got the degree in psychology from Capella University, which is a secular university, by the way, and studied psychology on a graduate level.

And I noticed that while I studied it, I started learning things about the mind that really helped me.

And then once I started seeing clients after I graduated, that helped me even more because I was seeing people and I was helping people and I felt good about myself for doing that.

And then some of the depression started to go away as a combination of helping people, making sense out of all the depression I've been through by helping others, also knowing a little more about the mind, and then making more money than I had before.

Poverty can be kind of a hit in terms of depression.

I think for all those reasons, I started to experience relief from depression.

And I thought early in the game, you know, I'd really like to provide some kind of way that people who are like what I was, clinically depressed and unable to find services, could find services.

And I thought the only way we're gonna be able to do that is to do it virtually on the phone or the internet.

At the time it was Skype, but now it's Zoom that everybody seems to be using.

But those types of applications, I thought this is the only way we're gonna be able to do this.

Because I knew that Seventh-day Adventists overall, who needed mental health services overall would want a Seventh-day Adventist counselor.

Not because we think that non-Adventist counselors couldn't help us, but because We don't want to have to explain our worldview to the person we're going to be opening up our personal lives to.

Plus, there's this thing where Adventists want to be witnessing all the time to people outside of our faith.

And so if you're sharing all of your garbage with someone that's not part of your faith.

But for the most part, it was just that they didn't want to have to explain.

And they wanted to know that that person they were opening this very personal stuff up to was someone that would not only understand, but affirm what they believed.

Because sometimes the mental health issues have to do with inter-church relationships, politics, and sometimes have to do with some of the teachings and various things.

So Adventists overall, I would say, prefer an Adventist counselor.

So there's a business opportunity right there.

If you're thinking like a business person, you're like, here's a resource, here's a need, you want to match them up.

And so, that's kind of what I did without really knowing what I was doing.

I thought, you know, what we could do is like have a network and be able to provide because I had already gotten to the place where I couldn't take on all the clients that were coming to me.

I was a published author before I got into professional counseling and my books were out there and people heard.

I just saw how people heard about 1 Seventh-day Adventist who is now doing counseling and they're like, come at you.

There's just like fly on you know what, flies on you know what.

They started to come and they started to come.

And I realized, wow, you know, there's a market here, Not in the sense of wanting to make a lot of money, because that hasn't even happened to this point, but in the sense of wanting to connect a need with a resource.

So early in the game, I started to hand off some of my referrals to 2 other counselors.

And we got together, and we decided on a brand, Abide Counseling is what we called it initially.

We set that up and then over the next maybe 8 years, started to include other providers.

Now, at the same time I was doing a training, which was designed to be sort of the gateway training through which people would come to become part of this network.

And the training was called the Abide Helper Training.

And so I would do that training, people would take it, there's a certification process that they would follow after the training, it's a 1 day training.

So it's like this big information dump in 1 day, but then the people have to sort of internalize what they've learned and follow a process of supervision and coaching others, practice coaching, reading a lot of material.

When they're done with that certification process, then they get this certification and they can become part of the Abide network.

We added 123, over the years, a few more providers.

And then what started happening is, people would come and they'd want the training, even though they were professionals in the field.

And I would have this wrestle with something, you know, Should people who do not have a professional training be helping people with mental health issues?

And I really thought through that carefully.

And I thought, yes, because this is what we do with the physical health message.

We teach people vegan or plant-based nutrition, and we teach them how to bake plant-based entrees and bake bread and all this stuff.

And the people that do this are not, by and large, professional people.

They're, by and large, lay people that love the health message.

And we've empowered them within our churches to hold these cooking schools and nutrition classes.

Because they're not saying they're a professional, they're just saying that they're a lay person that happens to love eating this way, or living this way.

So I thought we can do the same thing with the mental health message that we're doing with the health message.

And that is empower the lay people to operate within their scope of practice, to raise the general health IQ of the community, and to provide help and support within their scope of practice.

So what started to happen is I started to train non-professionals and then we started to include non-professionals in the network.

So at this point, we have a sort of a division.

There's the professional providers and the non-professional and then really the only thing that distinguishes them besides their professional credentialing is that they charge, the professionals charge more overall.

And people get a choice when they fill out the intake form as to whether they want someone with a professional credentialing or not.

And we teach a big part of the training is on, you know, when to refer, like when it's outside of your scope of practice.

So we call the non-licensed, non-graduate degree providers coaches, whereas the others can use, you know, counsel or whatever their title happens to be.

But we call everything that we do mental health coaching.

All of the virtual work that we do, we call it mental health coaching.

For legal reasons, you're not allowed to counsel across state lines, at least not yet.

I think that's going to change, because through COVID, we've kind of learned that virtual works and it's effective and why not open up sort of the information highway where people could get services across state lines.

So we call it mental health coaching and we stay within a certain confinement.

Like if someone is, we wouldn't take on someone actively suicidal, for example, or someone with severe psychotic disorders.

We just say, this is outside of our scope of practice where we will help you find a local provider.

Series

The Hyve Podcast Season 2, 2022

Adventism’s Mental Health Network

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Three Angels’ Messages and Literature Evangelism

1h 16m

So…What Would it Take?

5. To Be a 21st Century Medical Missionary?

1h 1m

ASI 2013 Plenary Sessions

Blessed Beyond Basketball

1h 26m

Online or At the Door: Panel Discussion

1h 9m

Plenary Sessions

Student/Resident Panel: Keeping Your Faith Relevant and Urgent Throughout Academic Training

59m

The Hyve Podcast Season 2, 2022

The Academy for Missional Entrepreneurs

33m

End Time Soul Winners

49m

AMEN 2006 Friday Morning Breakout Sessions

Lifestyle Evangelism

1h 29m

God Means Business

Branding: How to Share the Gospel Through my Business

1h 17m

Plenary

Congenital Christianity

1h 47m

AMEN 2013: Plenary Sessions

Final Breakthroughs

1h

The Combined Work

1h 5m

Sound Doctrine