This Doctor of Ministry project explores how congregations can serve as sites for restoration and healing for individuals living with mental health challenges. The thesis is based on the author's own experiences as a pastor and her family's story and explores how stigma and dehumanization in medicine, society, and the church create brokenness and fracture relationships. Using psychological studies of mental health, historical accounts of societal systems of oppression, and theological anthropologies of personhood, this thesis demonstrates that stigma and dehumanization are socially constructed, fear-based means of maintaining social order that contradict scripture and God's relational kingdom.

Using a practical theological approach, the thesis draws on biblical passages from Genesis, the Prophets, and Gospel healing stories to demonstrate the presence of dehumanization in scripture and God's ongoing resistance to and repair of it. Then, through the lens of an African philosophy called Ubuntu, a relational theory of healing developed by John Swinton, and the Christian tradition of radical/biblical hospitality, this thesis develops a relational theology of personhood where healing is defined not just as the reduction of symptoms but also as renewed relationship, belonging, and co-agency.

This thesis provides a critical assessment of denominational policy and initiative documents on mental health, focusing primarily on the ELCA and examining their theological depth, implementation potential, and limitations. Based on this analysis, this thesis creates a context-specific, evidence-informed strategy document for Grace Lutheran Church in Mendham, NJ (a Reconciling in Christ/Stigma Free congregation). This strategy outlines theological education for staff and volunteers, reducing stigma in the community, collaborative work with mental health providers, embodied and digital expressions of radical hospitality, and structures of support, advocacy, and evaluation.

In conclusion, the thesis asserts that churches have been and continue to be uniquely positioned to represent the relational Kingdom of God for those experiencing mental health struggles. Through the integration of Ubuntu, radical hospitality, "thick conversation," a rich theology of the cross, and Imago Dei, congregations may transition from being complicit in silence regarding stigma toward active faith-formational accompaniment, becoming communities where individuals do not suffer alone and where healing (not necessarily cure) is perceived as hopeful participation in God's redemptive work.