Helping Church & Community Leaders With Mental Health Solutions

Pastoral care with clinical science matters in transforming lives and communities.

Turning Awareness Into Action: How Churches Can Support Mental Health

What You’ll Learn:

  1. Why mental health matters in a church context: Understanding the role of faith communities in supporting whole-person well-being.

  2. Ways churches can move from awareness to action: Including opening conversations, creating safe spaces, partnering with professionals, and offering practical support.

  3. Practical tips for implementation: Learn specific strategies for sermons, workshops, and establishing simple groups that serve those in your congregation and community facing mental health challenges - with real hope.

Mental Health Discipleship: A Whole-Health Approach to Resilience

What You Will Learn:

  1. The "Whole-Health" through Grace Model: Mental health recovery rests on a whole-health, whole-person model (spiritual, physical, mental, relational). Grace is the foundation for creating a safe space for growth.

  2. The Role of Discipleship (mental health recovery + resilience): How to shift from a "problem to be fixed" to a "journey of following Christ" through the challenge and building "mental resilience.”

  3. Overcoming Spiritual Stigma in the Church: Dismantling common misconceptions about mental health struggles with a lack of faith and discovering a greater meaning.

 
 

The “Support Group” Reinvented Into a Discipleship Growth Experience (with results).

What you’ll learn:

  1. Using the ancient Biblical discipleship model, how mental health support can be reinvented into a discipleship growth experience.

  2. Discipleship communities learn new perspectives and proactive tools that help reshape and restore life — with shared values and care.

  3. An example of groups in a war-torn environment with no mental health resources, but experienced proven trauma recovery.

The Solution for Mental Health and The Church (start video at 26:09)

What you will learn:

  1. How understanding and acknowledging burnout, anxiety, and depression through a faith lens helps you move toward healing.

  2. Practical steps the church can take to support emotional and spiritual well-being.

  3. Why community and shared faith “power together” can be a solution to mental and emotional fatigue.

  4. Scriptural grounding for perseverance and hope.

Excerpt from Training Workshop: Healthy Minds 101 — Tools to Respond & Minister to Mental Health Challenges.

“Understanding depression in the brain leading to stress-distress effect.”

ABOUT Joe Padilla, Cofounder & Executive Director | Mental Health Grace Alliance

Joe Padilla cofounded Mental Health Grace Alliance (MHGA) in 2011 with neuroscientist Dr. Matthew Stanford to address the lack of mental health support within Christian communities. Drawing on his years of missions, social development, and ministry—as well as his own journey overcoming childhood adversity and helping a family member achieve remarkable mental health recovery—Joe helped shape a new, innovative model that integrates Christian faith, clinical research, and compassionate care with lasting results.

As the primary architect of Grace Alliance resources and training, Joe has facilitated Grace Groups, provided recovery and resilience coaching to hundreds, and delivered training to thousands worldwide across churches, conferences, universities, seminaries, and medical and community settings. Four published studies document the positive outcomes of his work through Grace Alliance curricula, groups, coaching, and training.

To this day, Mental Health Grace Alliance groups have become one of the largest networks of Christian mental health groups worldwide and continue to grow, transforming lives, families, and communities.

All Mental Health Grace Alliance resources complement and promote professional therapy and treatment, and are not intended to replace or discontinue. (see full disclaimer).