Trauma is all around us. Here are 10 best practices to use as spiritual first aid tools to help your church become more trauma-informed.
By Jamie Aten and Kent Annan
Trauma is all around us. It can be difficult to recognize and even more challenging to know how to help. For all these reasons, we created Spiritual First Aid as a tool churches can use to become more trauma-informed. In this article, you’ll learn the 10 best practices we teach in our Spiritual First Aid certificate course.
1. Review all reports of church leader misconduct immediately
Make a response plan. Then review and act on all reports of church leader misconduct immediately. Being a trauma-informed church begins with those in leadership. One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of actual misconduct among church leaders that had at first been dismissed, denied, or even suppressed. At the same time, you can probably find examples of situations when false allegations have been made against church leaders. One of the reasons it’s difficult for churches to hold church leaders accountable is because most churches don’t have a plan in place for how to deal with allegations of inappropriate, toxic, or abusive leadership.
Keep reading this article on Lifeway Research.