“Forty percent of the students in my senior-level university class have diagnosed mental health disorders,” she said quietly, “and I have an individualized learning contract from the disabilities office for each one.” She went on to describe how this epidemic has changed her role and her style as a professor.

During the eight years that I have just completed as a university chaplain, I have been overwhelmed by the tidal wave of mental health struggles among students. Similarly, whenever I attend educators’ conferences, I am struck by the standing-room-only crowds at breakout sessions focused on mental health. As you probably know, these anecdotal experiences are corroborated by statistical evidence.

I believe that Christian educational institutions are positioned to develop a sorely needed critical response to this crisis. We can offer the gift of embedding these challenges within communities that are shaped by grace. In other words, there is a unique gift that we as Christian educators are privileged to draw upon.

Grace-Shaped Communities

Grace is one of the most misunderstood terms in the Christian lexicon. At its worst, it is reduced to two things: (1) Jesus forgives my sin now and promises that I will spend eternity with him in glory; and (2) we can let others off the hook for their mistakes and sins (just as Jesus let me off the hook for mine). While there are seeds of truth in each of these understandings, if they are taken to represent the heart of grace, they seriously distort and undermine the fruit-bearing power of God’s gift to us through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Both of these reductions perceive the work of grace as the removal of personal negatives. The metaphor that comes to mind is a ship that picks up damaging barnacles that must be scraped off each time it returns to port. The negative is removed, and the ship sets off on the next voyage. Our sins are forgiven, and we begin each day with our Lord whose mercy is “new every morning,” (Lam. 3.23), washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Beautiful as this is, it is only half of the picture. The other half looks like this: the ship limps into port, and is hauled onto the dry dock. Its engine is rebuilt, steering mechanisms vastly upgraded, carrying capacities strengthened, and crew brought in for more training. Finally, when it is sent back to sea, it finds itself amidst a fully renovated fleet, equipped for service in ways it had never imagined.

It has become part of a grace-shaped community.

Grace is transformational. Grace grows humbly into the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Grace falls flat on its face, has the mud wiped off its face, and sets out again with humble courage. The power of grace refines us incrementally, step by step, as our brokenness is put to death and resurrection new life grows in its place. This difficult transformational process often leaves us feeling weak, aware of how needy we are; if so, the Lord assures us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12: 9).

Calvin G. Seerveld describes members of grace-shaped communities this way: “They have suffered hurt without rancor, are gently corrective toward wrong rather than judgmental, and do not try to set things straight as much as order affairs lovingly, intent upon carrying along joyfully any who may be weak, trustfully biding God’s timing. They live like people raised from the dead; they don’t have to prove anything to themselves or to anybody. They are not compulsive people trying to make good or to live up to requirements. They are subject to grace alone, and act clean, singularly pure amid all kinds of complexities that won’t go away.”

We who are Christian educators are stewards of grace-shaped communities. As we ponder Seerveld’s description, various situations and faces come to mind that embody his words. We have tried to prove ourselves and then recognized how we suffocated grace in the process. We have sought to be gently corrective and to order affairs lovingly. We know all about complexities that simply will not go away. We are stewards of grace.

Embodying the Details

What might such grace-shaping look like in our classrooms, and what difference would it make for those who struggle with mental health challenges? I would imagine it embodying these two dimensions:

1. Our communities have an enhanced capacity for respect.

I disciple a group of eight teenagers from our church. At our first meeting in September, I asked them what guidelines we should use as a group so that our little community would be a place that would help us mature in Christ. Laura replied, “Most of us have been together in Christian school and Sunday school since kindergarten, and we have formed long-held views of each other. In order for us to grow, we have to give each other room to relearn in a deeper way who each of us is.” I was moved by her wisdom. She was calling upon us to respect each other.

The word “respect” literally means to “re-inspect,” “to see again for the first time,” or, as Laura said, “to relearn.” The apostle Paul describes the role of respect in grace-shaped communities this way: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view…Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5: 16a–17). In other words, our work is to release our impressions of others—those things that strike us immediately, or our long-held perceptions—and we look more deeply to see the imago dei longing to be restored.

Our calling as teachers is to come to know each of our students well enough so that (a) we can imagine (just a little) what they will be like as finished new creations; (b) we can see the seeds of this finished work in them now; and (c) we can nurture those seeds on the way towards that completion. In other words, we live out Paul’s declaration that he is “confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of our Lord Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). That’s what the “regarding,” the “reinspecting” (respecting) that Paul calls us to looks like concretely.

As we model this in our classrooms, I’ve noticed that eventually such respect becomes contagious: it becomes the ethos that shapes our life together. Without even being consciously aware of it, many students value being respected so deeply that as they receive it they begin to reciprocate, and the oxygen in the room is filled with respect.

Then, the classroom becomes a safer place for those who struggle with mental health issues, a place where they are real persons and not labeled “problems,” a place where, as one common tagline in the disability world puts in, we “see the ability.”

Evoking such a community faces significant challenges. The fear that children and teens often have of those who are different easily leads to mockery. Some children cope with their own mental health challenges by becoming rigidly legalistic, making it harder for them to inhale “grace oxygen.” Even so, my own experience has convinced me that inviting a respect-founded ethos that begins with my modeling of it is the cornerstone of a grace-shaped community.

2. We practice disciplines that “unlock” the imago dei.

My former colleague at Dordt College, John VanDyk, used to say, “I don’t enter a classroom; we enter a classroom together—God and I; it’s always plural.”

This “we-ness” is the fruit of grace, and spiritual disciplines are the means that strengthen this bond. There is a unique set of spiritual disciplines that allow “God in me” (i.e., the Holy Spirit) to resonate with the imago dei longing to be truly seen (“regarded”) in my students.

This set of disciplines includes:

• Appropriate transparency. The teacher-student relationship rests on something deeper: the bond between brother and sister in Christ. This foundation allows me to regularly and easily interject little accounts of my own walk with the Lord into classroom discourse. I don’t call attention to myself; I don’t “bare my soul.” In a gently self-forgetful manner, my own heart becomes part of the classroom furniture.
• Slow-motion noticing. We who teach always have too much to do, and our hearts and minds are often racing. The DNA of grace is slow: it notices; it ponders; it reflects; it connects the dots. Gradually, clear-enough pictures take shape, which allow me to see and respond to the imago dei in each of my students.
• The permission-giving question. Most students are longing to be known (though they may pretend otherwise). I learn and practice the art of asking questions that give them permission to reveal themselves, while also leaving room to hide a little longer (if needed).
• The seemingly innocuous encouragement. Because “building on the good work that has begun” is central to our calling, naming that good work is essential. Such naming takes the“good building materials” out of hiding in the warehouse, and puts them out in the open on the construction site. Short, regular, low-drama affirmations gradually “sturdify” the imago dei.

When these four practices are woven throughout the day in a room filled with respect, a community is formed that begins to “smell” like the aroma of Christ (2 Cor. 2:14–15), a safe place for all, no matter what struggles they have. We’ve all heard the saying, “Normal is just a setting on the clothes dryer.” Grace frees us to embody this lovely reworking of an old pop psychology cliché: “I’m not okay, and you’re not okay, but Jesus lives here, so it’s okay.”

Grace and Mental Health

We need the best diagnoses that are available for students with mental health struggles. We need holistic treatment regimens that combine the wisest guidance we have for chemical, psychological, relational, and family history issues. We need special education teachers who leave waves of gentle patience in their wake.

But a touch of heaven arrives on earth when all of the above are enfolded within communities being transformed by grace.

Work Cited

• Seerveld, Calvin. “Real Faith: Living the Resurrection.” Christian Courier. April 2007.