How We Serve
Empower Churches, Restore Lives: Healing Trauma Together
Trauma devastates communities, but Reclaim Life equips churches to bring healing and hope. Join us in transforming lives.
Scars of Trauma Impact Millions of the World’s Poor
Existing Help is Scarce
Every day, hundreds of millions suffer from trauma, leaving lasting scars on their hearts and lives. In the world’s poorest countries, where mental health resources are scarce, trauma shatters families and communities as wounded people wound others in a seemingly never-ending destructive cycle. City services are overwhelmed, and NGOs are moving out, leaving broken people feeling exposed and abandoned.
Transforming Communities: Unleashing Healing Within Churches
Churches are the most common place people turn to in a crisis, but pastors and leaders are often too burdened by their own wounds and lack the resources to help effectively. Reclaim Life provides essential tools and programs to heal trauma in the leaders and church body and empowers them to help others. As more area churches are equipped, their collective impact creates transformative change breaking past cycles and offering hope for future generations.
Equipping “Trauma Responsive Churches”
A Holistic, Three-Part Process
Our experiential learning and practical theological approach mean all learning is applied to real life.
Learning to Identify Trauma
Church Leaders and the Whole Operation of the Church
As a Church – Church leaders learn to identify trauma around them and experience the healing process themselves so they can heal and incorporate the practices into their own lives and relationships. Ongoing coaching helps them assess and redesign all areas of church life so broken people know they are welcome, be on a healing journey and serve meaningfully. Leaders are helped to reorganize the church or organization around helping broken people. This transforms the church or organization into a healing center, resulting in deeper impact, community-building, and activities that center around emotional and relational health and healing.
As a Network of Churches – All church leaders also grow through participation in the Trauma Responsive Church Alliance. Gathering regionally and worldwide, the TRCA offers group coaching, theological and practical studies, and a context to share learning and local resources.
Healing Begins in Relationships
HEALING MINISTRY THROUGH SMALL GROUP PROGRAMS – We intentionally begin in small groups because most people start healing in the safety of a small group and can be equipped with skills to continue the process. Learning is experiential and active, creating the most lasting change. Ordinary people are trained to lead, and groups are reproduced, giving the church more leaders and a group multiplying process that impacts many more people.
A Journey to Wholeness
PROFESSIONALLY TRAINED LAY COUNSELORS – People within the church are trained professionally with essential psychological principles and practices, fully integrated with biblical truths to come alongside people who are struggling. They walk them through a whole person counseling process, helping them grow in processing the brokenness in themselves, their families, marriages, and relationships. Lay Counselors are trained to organize and serve in a counseling ministry within their church.
What Healing Trauma Looks Like
God designed us to heal in relationships. Reclaim Life’s processes lead people to restore the three essential relational connections: with themselves, with God, and with others – relationships in the church, in their marriages, and their families.
Church & Community
Where there used to be judgment and rejection, vulnerable people find a place in church where they can truly be themselves, where leaders are transparent about their own struggles, and healing and transformation can flourish, impacting both our congregation and the wider community.
Families: Marriage and Parenting
Trauma from our past triggers conflict in our marriage relationship and parenting. Recognizing how our emotional wounds impact our marriage and parenting enables us to become more open and engaged with our spouse and better able to give the security and love our children need to grow to maturity.
Trauma Healing Tools for the Church and Community
Trauma Responsive Church Process and Alliance
Church leaders learn to recognize and heal trauma, transforming their churches into welcoming healing centers. With ongoing support from the Trauma Responsive Church Alliance, leaders grow through coaching and shared resources, fostering community and profound impact.
Relationship-Healing Small Groups
Because emotional healing happens through relationships, our core small group programs heal connections with ourselves (Breaking Barriers), with our partners (Enduring Love), and our children (Parenting with Presence).
Effective Counseling Ministry
Church members receive professional training that blends psychological principles with biblical truths, empowering them to support those in need. These Lay Counselors guide individuals through a holistic counseling process, helping to heal brokenness within themselves, their families, and relationships.
Trauma-Responsive Schools and Ministries
Teachers, rehab clinic staff, and caregivers trained to process their own trauma and reactivity can better guide children and clients towards healthy emotional development, rewiring their brains for lasting growth and healing.
