Are Christians Staying Silent As Communities are Being Fractured by Mental Health?

Why churches must take a role in the mental health crisis.

One of the things I’ll always try to do with Examined is address recent current events from a Christian worldview while they’re still fresh-ish. My goal is always to publish a new article weekly for our premium community and monthly for our free community. But, when there’s a current event worth addressing, I’ll address it even if that means an additional article that week. So, this is one of those weeks…

On May 17, 2025, a homemade explosive was detonated outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California. The bomber, a 25-year-old named Guy Edward Bartkus, had no criminal record. No gang ties. No previous acts of violence.

But what he did have may have been equally as telling. He had a history of isolation, deep emotional instability, and a string of disturbing online behaviors that went unaddressed.

The Palm Springs bombing wasn’t just a security breakdown. It was a systemic mental health failure that we’ve come to see all too regularly.

As the investigation unfolded, Police Chief Andy Mills publicly acknowledged that warning signs had been visible in online forums and chatrooms. Bartkus had been radicalized in plain sight. And still, no one intervened.

That’s the kind of oversight communities continue to experience but can no longer afford.

There’s a Real Cost to Disconnection

Incidents like this don’t erupt out of nowhere. Regardless of how we try to coin it, these situations are developed slowly in the corners of isolation.

I love how Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, made the connection clear: “Our terrorism problem is as much a mental health issue as it is an ideological one.” That observation should shake every church leader to the core.

This isn’t just a secular or cultural issue. It’s equally as much a leadership issue. And it’s one the Church is uniquely positioned to address, but we must become willing to lead differently.

And we should be willing to step in. It’s what Paul calls us to do in the book of Galatians.

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”
— Galatians 6:2 (NIV)

Paul’s letter to the Galatians was never designed to be a stand for community kindness. He wrote this as a direct mandate for Christian responsibility.

He’s writing to believers who were dealing with internal division, legalism, and a growing disconnection between what they professed and how they lived. So, to address it, he calls on people who call themselves followers of Jesus to bear one another’s burdens. Not just the easy ones. Not just the one’s you’re comfortable with. All of them.

This verse reminds us that spiritual maturity is measured by how we carry the weight of someone else’s pain. That includes emotional pain. Mental health struggles. Unseen battles that rarely get shared on Sunday morning.

To ignore that responsibility is to abandon part a MASSIVE piece of the gospel.

Community Violence Grows Where There Is Space for It

This is important to understand. Every time a person falls through the cracks, it’s not just a failure of the system. It’s a failure of the community.

What happened in Palm Springs is tragic, but it isn’t isolated. Community violence rarely erupts without warning. More often than not, it begins in the space between people, especially when individuals feel invisible, misunderstood, or cut off from meaningful connection.

The amazing people working on this case found that this young man was influenced by a suicide pact with a friend who had died shortly before the attack. This detail matters. It exposes the deeper issue: unprocessed grief, isolation, and a lack of grounded community made this individual more vulnerable than anyone realized.

And that’s what made him dangerous.

If healthy relationships are absent, destructive ideologies take root.

It’s similar to how a wildfire spreads. All it takes is a spark, dry ground, and no one watching closely. That’s how unchecked mental health issues become social crises. When they exist unchecked for long enough, disaster begin to take root.

Intercession Can Lead to Intervention in Mental Health

I’m not trying to stir the religious pot, but spiritual care is incomplete if it ignores psychological suffering.

Churches have always been places that people turn to in times of crisis. Grief. Divorce. Addiction. Abuse. You name it, it’s in church. But the kind of crisis we’re facing now requires more than well executed worship services and good intentions. It demands practical leadership and deeper discipleship.

Faith communities are uniquely positioned to notice early signs of distress. We see people regularly. We hear their stories. But too often, we miss what’s happening beneath the surface.

That has to change.

Churches must become bridges to professional mental health support instead of barriers to it.

This is really big reason that we are launching our One City Counseling Center. It’s a fully licensed, faith-rooted clinical counseling practice designed to meet people where they are, spiritually and emotionally. It’s not a replacement for prayer or pastoral care. In fact, we hope it’s makes spirituals disciplines more accessible and authentically used. We view our counseling center as a partnership with Christian focused clinical counselors to help people heal fully.

Churches can no longer afford to stay silent on mental health. We have to lead.

We Have to Identify the Gaps in Discipleship

Here’s what I’ve learned in dealing with suicide in my own family: if you don’t know what to look for, you’ll never see the warning signs.

Addressing mental health as a church doesn’t mean trying to become therapists. In fact, the last thing communities need are churches pretending to be something they’re fully unqualified to be. Instead, addressing mental health should mean creating systems of care that connect spiritual community with clinical wisdom.

Here’s what that looks like:

1. Train People for Lay Care that Matters

Churches need trusted leaders who can identify when someone is slipping into a dark place. Not to diagnose, but to discern when it’s time to connect that person to help.

These leaders don’t have all the answers, but they do know how to connect people with a path that leads to help.

2. Build Community Focused Engagement

People on the fringe of a mental struggle typically won’t come to your next potluck. You have to build bridges to them before their pain turns from inwards to outward. This is accomplished by helping them see you’re okay walking with them through their struggles.

Offer support groups. Host grief recovery nights. Connect isolated individuals to healthy social spaces. Allow small groups to be formed around curriculum that addresses these struggles.

And don’t miss this…When someone stops showing up to small group, don’t assume they’re “just busy.” That absence could be the start of a spiral.

3. Normalize Mental Health Conversations

Here’s where I think we’ve done a great job as a church. We have to allow our people to have permission to engage in the tough conversations around mental health. Preach it from the pulpit. Post about it online. Integrate it into your discipleship tracks.

The more we talk about mental health in the open, the less shame people feel in asking for help.

4. Create a Referral Network of Christian Counselors

Build relationships with local counselors, clinics, and healthcare providers. Develop a vetted list you can reference when someone in your care needs professional help. Don’t just set it up, create a relationship with your counselors and bridge the gap between church and counseling.

When mental health becomes part of the discipleship conversation, healing becomes part of the culture.

The Palm Springs tragedy should serve as more than a warning. It should wake us up. We’re no longer in a world where churches can opt out of the mental health conversation.

This is the time to build systems that carry people through crisis, not after it happens, but before it begins.

We’ll never stop every tragedy. But we can build communities where fewer people suffer in silence. We can notice the warning signs earlier. And we can respond in ways that reflect both the compassion of Christ and the wisdom of sound leadership.

That’s the kind of church the world needs right now. And it’s the kind of leader you’re called to become.