GYC Southwest 2025: Christ and His Righteousness

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GYC Southwest

Seminars

Stephen Bohr

Righteousness By Faith and The Final Conflict

Narlon Edwards

Medical Missionary Work and The Three Angels Messages

Gabriel Arruda

Broken Adventists - The Mental Health Crisis In The Church

Attachment Theory and Your View of Salvation

The title of this message is Broken Adventists, the Mental Health Crisis in the Church.

And I'm kind of letting the cat out of the bag with the first slide.

This is gonna be a very straight message, something that I hope that we will seriously think about, but I do believe we have a crisis in the church that I'd like to discuss.

So what does righteousness by faith have to do with mental health?

It's something that we simply cannot neglect.

I've had several events that have recently really affected me, really gotten my attention.

The first is that we recently did a evangelistic series in the community which I live in, which is South Lake Tahoe.

It was 2 weeks, rented a venue, handbills to the whole community, door to door work, all that stuff, but the whole series was on mental health.

And we had several mental health practitioners come out from a clinic that you may be aware of called Beautiful Minds Medical.

That's Brother David Jones there, that was just there, Dr.

Katie Cruz, Daniella Kuhn, who's kind of new to their staff recently.

And 2 weeks, the entire thing was on mental health.

You see, the classic 3 Angels message approach, at least in South Lake Tahoe, does not work very well as a upfront outreach to the community.

The community's just, based on our efforts and what we've produced over the last several years, they're not very interested in that, at least as an entering wedge.

So we've had to, as a church, be creative.

And so what we have ended up doing is we end up shooting for meeting people's needs.

And then as a result, eventually open them up to hearing the 3 angels' messages through typically small group or one-on-one Bible studies.

Through a providential series of events, I received a report that the hospital system in South Lake Tahoe did a survey of the entire community.

And what they found was that from their survey, 30% of the people in South Lake Tahoe said that they struggle with mental health.

And that's only the people that have been surveyed and that's not even the people who were not being honest about their mental situation.

So I said, we got to do something with mental health.

And so we did, we did this big mental health seminar.

We had a really good turnout from the community.

The community gave us very positive feedback.

But the response that I got from my own church was it really surprised me.

It deeply, deeply touched a number of people in our own congregation.

Now I have been doing Bible studies and ministering too.

We have a decent sized group of non-Seventh-day Adventists who are coming to our church regularly.

They're essentially part of our church family.

They've heard the 3 angels' messages 2 or 3 times in a row.

We've been through the studies with them over and over, but they've just been stuck.

For 1 reason or another, we've spoken to them about baptism and just let them know that, hey, you've learned the message.

We're here for you when you're ready for that step.

You've received Christ as your Savior, but they've just been stuck.

But something about this mental health seminar tipped them over the edge.

At the end of this mental health seminar, we had 4 baptisms, 4 people that gave their lives to Christ.

Some of these people we've been working with for 3 to 4 years.

And it just really got my attention, these people who were just kind of stuck, and there was something about how they got practically ministered to in that mental health seminar that just, it just tipped the scale for them.

And I thought, I think there's something here, there's a power here that I think we haven't been tapping into.

There's something that I've been missing in my ministry.

In addition to that, I recently, I have a friend who grew up Seventh-day Adventist.

I ran into him at the grocery store, and I said, hey, what's new with you?

And he kind of, you know, we did some small talk for a while.

He's like, hey, I feel comfortable telling you this.

He's like, I knew I could be safe enough telling you this.

And he went on to just describe to me, this gentleman grew up Seventh-day Adventist.

He grew up at a pretty well-known medical missionary center in the church.

And he just told me growing up what he saw a lot of.

He saw a lot of people that were not very nice to him.

He was a little bit socially awkward and they didn't know how to deal with him properly.

And he told me also about a not too kind of recent experience he had where he was at a pilot launch of a new Seventh-day Adventist medical missionary establishment.

Him and another friend of mine were there, and they were helping launch their new pilot program, they're gonna do the first 10-day program.

He said, Gabe, you know what we did the night before our opening of this new medical missionary center, their first 10-day program?

He says, we weren't preparing the rooms for the guests, we weren't preparing the meals, me and sister so-and-so, who I will leave unnamed, we spent the night before the opening of this center trying to convince the director, who's a doctor, and his wife not to get divorced.

That's what we spent the night before the opening of this Medical Missionary Center doing.

Convincing them, dude, please do not get divorced.

You just got to listen to someone at that point and just try to empathize with their experience.

So I said, but why did you get baptized as a Mormon?

And he went on to explain to me, you know what he did?

They helped him with his mental health, which I was really surprised of because, you know, the missionaries in that church, they're not really well known for that.

That's not like what they're well known for, but somehow, someway they did it.

He was able to see that he'd been hiding his inner soul his whole life.

And he had never let people in due to the fear that they would be disgusted by what they saw and that he would be rejected.

And that came out during this conversation with the Mormons.

And he's like, Gabe, I don't even fully believe in their doctrines.

I know it's kind of weird, but Gabe, they helped me.

They helped me like the Adventists were never able to.

She's an in-law from my deceased wife's side of the family.

Her name is Dara, Dara Ashley, and she has a ministry.

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Series

Seminars

Broken Adventists - The Mental Health Crisis In The Church

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Be Opened

35m

The Weeping Prophet of Hope

51m

The Strength of Vulnerability

1h 5m

Unfriended: The Enemy’s Lies About Connection

47m

How Does the Gospel Redeem Wounded, Broken Hearts & Minds?

50m

Radical Vulnerability

52m

The Gospel Will Prevail

49m

Do You Want to be Made Well?

1h 2m

A Call to Relational Evangelism

50m

Plenary

Following Your Roots

1h

Turning Wounds Into Scars, Part 2

1h

The Long-awaited Encounter

48m

Sound Doctrine