Integrative Approaches to Christian Spiritual and Mental Health Formation
Is migration a form of trauma? How does the migration experience of the first generation continue to affect the second and third generation family members? How do these formative social conditions challenge our Christian practices of spiritual formation, discipleship, and leadership for the Asian American faith community?
This two-day, hybrid mental health conference, organized by the Center for Asian American Christianity, takes our intergenerational family stories as a point of departure for understanding the pressure points of Asian American life. Asian American church life and Asian American family life often reflect each other: the joys and pains of one are found in the other. Migration helps explain why church life and family life for Asians in the US have much in common.
This conference will examine how migration and loss impact the mental health needs of the Asian American community across different generations. The first day of the conference will host plenary presentations on the joys and pains often associated with migration and how this sets up issues of relational conflict, intergenerational misunderstanding, contested normative values, and different mental health and spiritual needs between generations.
On the second day of the conference, we will probe more deeply how these intergenerational family histories shape our Christian formation. In particular, we will host three distinct tracks in (A) spiritual formation, (B) race and Christian discipleship, and (C) leadership development for the Asian American faith community. Each track will have several workshops that provide practical strategies and skills. The target audiences for these tracks are Asian American soul care providers, discipleship leaders, lay leaders, pastors, and ministry leaders.
We are doing something new this year.
On Saturday, we will host three simultaneous workshop tracks. Feedback for the 2023 mental health conference expressed desire for more topics to be discussed. In response, we have organized three tracks: spiritual formation, race and discipleship, and leadership development. Each track has three workshops for a total of nine workshops on Saturday. All of these tracks occur at the same time, so it is up to the attendee to decide which track to pursue and which workshops to attend.
Whether attending in person or online, attendees can mix and match workshops as it suits their interest. All registered attendees will have access to video recordings after the conference is concluded.