This is one of a series of BipolarBrave Awards exclusive interview posts for May, celebrating those raising awareness for mental health. The series will showcase those who won or placed in the annual BipolarBrave Mental Health and Faith Awards I host through the BipolarBrave blog.
Kay cofounded Saddleback Church with her husband Rick in Lake Forest, CA in 1980 where they served until Rick’s retirement in September 2022. After the death of her son, Matthew, who lived with serious mental illness for most of his life, she founded Saddleback’s Hope for Mental Health Initiative as a way to support individuals and family members of loved ones with mental illness and suicidal ideation. In 2019, Kay started BREATHE, a ministry to support parents of children with serious mental illness. BREATHE events include weekend respite retreats, online retreats, and free Zoom calls with mental health professionals.
Kay was a board member of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and is active in mental health/suicide prevention efforts in Orange County, CA. Kay is the author of Sacred Privilege: Your Life and Ministry as a Pastor’s Wife, Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough, Say Yes to God: A Call to Courageous Surrender, and the coauthor of Foundations, a popular systematic theology course used by churches worldwide. Her children are Amy, Josh, and Matthew (who is in Heaven), and she has five grandchildren.
Kay graciously let me interview her for the BipolarBrave blog to speak to her accomplishments and efforts in the faith and mental health movement. I’m grateful for her and the work she has faithfully followed the Lord in over the years.
Why did you start your ministry?
After the death of my son Matthew in 2013, I felt a passion to minister to other individuals and families who’d gone through what we had. I began to speak at suicide prevention events and particularly had a heart for the faith community to see, know, and care for people with mental illness. At Saddleback Church we started the Hope for Mental Health Ministry and the Hope for Mental Health Community. It’s a time for families and individuals to gather every month to listen to accurate psychoeducation, build community and relationships, and explore faith in the part of the journey with mental illness.
In 2019 I started a ministry called BREATHE, which was to guide families walking on this journey, particularly the moms, especially those struggling with their faith. The purpose is to gather in a retreat setting to be pampered, cared for, and listened to. Our five goals at the event are to connect people to their bodies, their emotions, God, each other, and beauty. All five of those are a holistic approach to learning how to flourish on this mental health journey with your children. The Saddleback ministry is broad, and the BREATHE Ministry is specific to moms and dads.
In a few sentences, share your ministry’s measurable achievements.
Hope for Mental Health Community initiative at Saddleback Church has held two global conferences. We’ve held monthly Hope for Mental Health Community gatherings since 2018. Through Covid we went online and still met monthly. We’ve been back in person since 2022. Since then, we’ve started multiple support groups at the church for families living with a variety of diagnoses. We’ve put on six BREATHE retreats and held several monthly calls through the years reaching hundreds of families.
What are your future plans for your ministry? Anything noteworthy to give us a heads-up about?
In January of 2024, I started a nonprofit called Hope for Brighter Tomorrows that will take the BREATHE Ministry and expand it. We plan on respite retreats, free monthly Zoom calls, a private Facebook page for parents, and the development of private local chapters around the country. From there we will have curriculum and leadership with alumni moms. We’ll expand our website so we can have more families participate in it.
We are thrilled God has provided this way to bring beauty from the ashes of Matthew’s death. They’re not equivalent, to be clear. Matthew died, and I will miss him every day of my life. At the same time, God is true to His Word, brings beauty out of our most horrendous losses. That speaks to His goodness and mercy, and I am grateful for that. We don’t want others to walk through adversity alone.
Saddleback will continue to run Hope For Mental Health and I’m a volunteer for that.
