A pastor praying for a grieving young man.

Source: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels

Carol has been so worried about her high-school son, who has started experimenting with drugs, that she can't sleep.

Jerome thinks this might be the final straw in his marriage, and he struggles to function at work.

Romana has been lost in a cloud of grief since her sister was killed in a car accident three years ago.

According to the Pew Research Center, 97% of African Americans believe in God, and nearly 80% are affiliated with a religion. Of those who attend church services at least a few times per year, 60% attend a primarily Black church.

From a cultural perspective, the church is an essential aspect of Black culture. For many, social support, love, and connection come from their relationships with members of their church family. We celebrate, support, and grieve as a community.

But what happens when deeper issues arise? Where do we turn when we need more than a listening ear? Most Black people go straight to their pastor, and there's one reason why: intimacy.

The Role of the Pastor in the Black Church

For African Americans, the pastor is an extended part of our family. We don't just believe that it takes a village to raise a child; we believe that it takes a village to navigate life. And the pastor is included in that village. In fact, they are an integral part of it, which is why we feel so close to them. They have visited us by our bedside when we were sick in the hospital or shut in at home. Most times, the pastor in the Black church knows our entire family. They know that your sister is a recovering alcoholic and that your cousin has been engaged more times than you can count.

Yes, we rely heavily on fictive kin—people who are close enough to be considered family but have no blood relation to us (Carter, 2019). Typically, they are intimately involved in family affairs and knowledge. We survive and thrive with the support of immediate and extended family as well as play cousins, aunties (who are actually just women whom your mother grew up with), and godsisters and godbrothers (or the children of your parents' friends).

And we like it this way. It's a centuries-old tradition that has been creating aspects of health in our community for generations.

In the Black church, the pastor isn't just invited to family weddings because they will marry folks and to funerals because they will eulogize folks. We invite pastors to graduation parties, baby showers, house blessings, retirement parties, and birthday parties. And they do their best to oblige.

Our pastors are a part of our extended family, which is why it's so easy for us to go to them when life throws us curveballs, as opposed to a trained professional. It's an easy choice to make when you have a problem: Go to the trusted, extended family member who has a history of being supportive of you rather than a perfect stranger.

There's only one problem: The issues that Carol, Jerome, and Romana are experiencing include symptoms that could be a part of a mental health disorder. They need to be assessed and treated by a professional mental health provider. That's not the pastor's lane.

Spiritual Guidance and Mental Health Treatment

The pastor's lane is spiritual guidance and support. It is not psychology, which is the study of the human mind and behavior. And it's not mental health treatment, which is the application of scientific techniques and interventions to treat emotional and psychiatric problems.

It's certainly acceptable to ask the pastor for prayer, and sometimes they may even have professional referrals to offer. However, to expect your pastor to provide treatment or consultation about a mental health concerns would be like expecting them to perform heart surgery on you or diagnose your ear infection.

If you believe that God has given everyone gifts that we are responsible for honing and developing, you can appreciate your pastor's and your therapist's separate gifts. The good news is that spiritual guidance and mental health treatment are not mutually exclusive. In other words, you can use your pastor for spiritual support and also go to therapy.

Therapists Do More Than Listen

Many people think that therapy/counseling is just about listening, which is why it seems just as easy to bring mental health issues to the pastor. While active listening is the basis of what we do, it certainly is not the extent of what we do. Tanesha Mayo, a licensed social worker in private practice in Columbia, Maryland, says that therapists are "managing our own thoughts/emotions, actively listening, assessing our clients' thoughts/emotions, and focusing on problem-solving."

As a practicing psychologist, I'll add that we are filtering through a set of techniques and interventions to employ in the moment to address symptoms, making behavioral observations, using assessments and inventories, identifying triggers and trauma responses, challenging dysfunctional thoughts, pointing out discrepancies between identified feelings/thoughts and behaviors, and more. Oh, and we do all of this in a judgment-free zone while staying present in the moment.

The intimacy we feel with our pastors is integral to our growth and development. We love them and know they have our best interests at heart. However, they aren't all things to all people. They have gifts and talents that they have curated through education and experience. And so do mental health professionals.

The healthiest pastors are those who recognize their limitations. They know the difference between spiritual support and mental health treatment and they make referrals often. No matter how much we want to believe it, our pastor's life experience doesn't make them any more of a therapist than being good at math would make them an engineer.

And even if your pastor has training and licensure in a mental health field, they still shouldn't be your therapist. For mental health professionals, it's unethical to be in a multiple relationship with a client. That is, a pastor should not be in the role of pastor and mental health therapist for the same person, even if they are trained to do so. Your pastor should remain in the role of pastor and support you to the fullest extent of that role and also refer you to a mental health professional.

Being a good therapist involves training, education, and experience; therefore, we should leave spiritual guidance to our pastors and mental health treatment to our therapists.