- Coming up on American Black Journal, our Black Church in Detroit series examines the role of the church in helping teens and young adults who are struggling with mental health.

We'll talk about some of the causes of depression, loneliness and anxiety among young African-Americans, and how the church can provide refuge and resources.

A really important topic, so don't go anywhere.

American Black Journal starts right now.

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The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

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(light music) - Welcome to American Black Journal, I'm Stephen Henderson.

Today we're continuing our series on the Black Church in Detroit, which is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History.

As we wrap up mental health awareness month, we're taking a look at the church's role in helping young African-Americans who struggle with their mental health.

Historically, the church has been a place of refuge for the black community during really difficult times.

So how can it lead the way on improving young people's mental health?

Here's my conversation with Minister Mikiah Keener from Triumph Church and Seminarian student Ashley Lewis.

So this is a really important conversation to have this month, mental health awareness month.

I'm the father of two children who just got out of teenage years and now are gonna be in their early 20s.

So I remember all of these questions and all of these challenges that kids these days face.

And the thing that I have struggled the most with is how different they are from the things that I can remember struggling with when I was a teenager, I don't know, some 40 years ago.

I don't wanna talk about how long ago that was, but it's just different now.

And there are all kinds of things that we don't have... We didn't have to think about then that we do have to think about now.

So I guess that's where I want to start.

Ashley, we'll start with you.

Tell us about what you hear from young people here now, what you see with them and how different it all is.

- So, I like to start off by saying that teen suicide has been identified as a national crisis, and so much so that even the Biden-Harris administration is really doing a lot to really counter this.

For me personally, it hits home because my son, who's 13 years old, and he's a young black male who goes to a predominantly European school.

I don't subscribe to black-white, but European school.

And what I've noticed is the impact of AI, so if you look at the history of the black church.

When you talk about anti-black or racism manifesting, there were signs, there was this overt manifestation of it.

While some of it is still overt, a lot of it is covert.

So my own son, I didn't even know he was dealing with depression, thank God they had those forms with the doctors when they do their annual physicals, because I had no idea, but part of it was because of bullying.

And he talked about how in social media, those algorithms, he was noticing within his friend group.

And so then there was all of these different racial, and not just towards African-Americans, but towards other racial ethnic groups as well.

And so as a result, the bullying began to increase not only through the perception of anti-blackness within social media, but also in terms of manifesting within his friend group.

And so what I think is, or what I'm seeing is I'm bringing more present to is the fact that the black church is still the pinnacle point of making sure that our children actually understand what is it, what is Christ rooted, which is grace, mercy, humanity, but also what's African centered, knowing that you actually are community oriented, that you come from a long lineage that transcends the European slave trade that began our history, which actually doesn't begin there.

I could go on and on, but the reality of it is a lot of the history told in America only starts with the narrative of slavery.

So getting back to our actual roots and the great dynasties of which we come from to actually build and cultivate the identities of our children is more necessary now.

And I don't wanna go too far 'cause I'm sure you have other questions, but I thought a great deal about my 13-year-old, my five-year-old, and my six-year-old.

One is in Todd's assembly, one is in children's church, and one is in teen church.

And in each one of those spaces, they're being taught to speak up for themselves, to advocate that they're not bad, that they're inquisitive, really transforming really the perception of especially black males, especially in the school systems as well, is really important and I think it's something that is a good space for churches to really build that identity for our young men and young women.

- Mikiah, tell us what you see at Triumph and what kind of things you hear and notice with young people.

- Absolutely, I think that's a phenomenal question.

So one of the things I see, and to be honest, not only at Triumph, but just within my community, being a 26-year-old that does a lot of activity in the Metro Detroit area, a lot of our young people are eager for God, they're eager for Christ, they're eager to be a part of a church.

They're eager to be a part of that community.

They just don't know where to start and I think that is the role of the church, especially in this season is to hold their hand and give them a GPS.

I think that's what the church should be.

It's a GPS to kind of just help young people navigate and walk through life.

A lot of them have questions about mental health.

A lot of people raise up questions about depression.

Is God mad at me because I'm depressed, because my mental health is declining?

And so I think that the church should serve in a role of holding their hand and walking with so many young people and just guiding them to what that looks like to integrate faith and mental health.

- Yeah, so Mikiah, I wanna talk a little about the hesitancy in our community to acknowledge that mental health is a real concern and a concern not just worthy of voicing, but worthy of seeking help for.

There's a lot of stigma that attaches to it and that gets magnified I think sometimes in our community.

How do churches help young people kind of confront that part of it by just saying, look, it's okay, however you feel, you need to talk about it.

- Absolutely, I think too, just understanding that God has left us with the Bible, the word is God.

And so starting with the most important thing, the word, and being able to draw and pull from the word scriptures and principles and lessons to make applicable to today's situations and different battles because even though it is a document or a text or a book that is old, it's timeless.

And so there's scriptures that we can pull from.

I mean, even the Proverbs talk about seeking wise counsel.

So I think when we start at the word that, again, it's a navigation system, it's a guide to help people address those principles and those questions because a lot of the answers that people are looking for is found in a book that people won't open up and read.

And I think that if we start with the word of God, it helps us to have a more clear understanding of some of the things and the battles that we deal with, especially on a mental level.

- Yeah, Ashley, have you noticed this hesitancy with your kids or in other kids in our community?

- I do believe there is a hesitancy in the black community as a whole.

So I'm at Fellowship Chapel, born and raised there, and I recognize that it's a very different culture.

And what I mean is that we broke off from a Protestant church.

And that environment is considered a spirit or a principality and that it can just be prayed away.

Whereas in Fellowship Chapel, my experience there since being seven to being an adult, to even now really working to become an ordained minister within the church, the reality of it is not only do we recognize it, but we're creating and cultivating the spaces for the connection of resources.

Not looking at the minister or not looking at their pastor as the end all be all for mental health resource, but we are more of a conduit.

And I think really just bringing in those conversations as part of the infusion of our Christian education programs, we also have a lot of mentorship training programs that we have.

And so all of these groups, and even the adult ministries, because black men specifically don't always have the space to be able to share.

And then really addressing for black women, our role as caregivers and for me, I'm sandwiched.

I have young children, I have a mother with dementia.

And so how do you navigate all of that?

And so to me, I do see it, but I think that what I will say is that we have to get to a space where we're comfortable to say I think that this might be a good resource for you where we're a resource conduit and not just saying, oh, that you can pray certain things away.

Not to dismiss prayer.

I believe in God, and I love that this the intersection of the stories as Sister Keener just said, but I will say and I think about Job and I look at Deborah every day, like there's so many good biblical stories that you can pull from, but I also recognize that there are certain issues that we have to deal with 'cause we're in a society that unless we seek that biblical indoctrination every day, those biblical stories, and also have something to feed us our identity every day, it's hard to counter AI.

AI is a built-in algorithm that we all are like we are not acknowledging it, but it's uncontrolled.

It just picks up on our behaviors and that's what we're being fed.

And so transitioning even beyond the mental health piece is also...

I believe the church's job is to also call into where is our society going to be in terms of the ethics of AI?

Where is it going to be in terms of the ethics of these algorithms that we know are impacting not only us, but our children as well.

- Ashley, you talked earlier about the difference for the three children you have.

One who's a teenager, two who are younger.

I want to have you address how you introduce them to this idea of being upfront about mental health and being honest about how they feel and knowing that there's a safe space to do that in the church.

- What I will say is that one thing I love about fellowship, and you got a blend, church is church, church is full of people.

But one of the things that I love is that we encourage our children to be children.

That even our plays aren't perfect, right?

Sometimes the kids get up there and they forgot their lines and we encourage them anyway, but them hearing themselves on a microphone does something for them.

And for me, what I will say is that each child is different and at each developmental stage, they need different things.

So my younger two, I will say one is very outgoing.

So with him, it's getting him to have the temperament to be able to process his emotions, which means giving him the space and also explaining why.

It's not just to shut it down and say no or yes.

It's more, okay, so we're going to do this because, and giving them expectations.

My middle one is a lot of working on his really identity work, building his confidence, making sure that he understands who he is and that he has the ability to take up space 'cause that's the middle kid.

And I would say, well, my oldest, because he is a teenager, is really, really working hard on the identity work, on really cultivating who he is because I just found out recently I'm black and Italian.

I was adopted by a black family, but I just found out that I was black and Italian.

And so that made me present to the fact that we can't be either or, I can't hate one side of me.

I have to actually embrace both and say, this is humanity.

We all come from the Eve gene.

And so teaching him that too in a space where his peers may look at him differently because he is a black male.

Teaching him to love them still.

And also teaching him that he is still everything that God has created him to be, that he's powerful, that he can create, and that he's intelligent, like really pushing forth to him not only scriptural examples, but our examples in our history.

I feel like sometimes we forget, like we are a powerful people who have overcome so much, and yet we're still joyful, we're still kind, we're still great giving people, so really embracing those stories so that he can learn from those as well.

- And Mikiah, tell us how that looks at Triumph and with the children you interact with.

- So we actually have a ministry called Promised Land that gears towards, well, I will say from infant all the way up until 17 years old.

And one of the things that I love about just being a part of Triumph and serving under the leadership of Pastor Ken Lock is the time and attention and the effort that he puts towards children.

I mean, down to the very music that we select, the very program, the very lesson plan, everything is so critical and it's all for the makeup of making sure that the children are being taken care of and that they're in good hands while they are in our care.

And so I really just love how children oriented the ministry is and where we're headed, just trying to make spaces and opportunities for these kids to thrive, to know that they are safe, to know that they are in good care.

I mean, I've been just blessed to be able to serve high schoolers in this season.

And so I've been able to teach 14 to 17 year olds every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

And just being able to be consistent and walk with them and talk about God, and talk about the Bible and answer questions that they have and build relationships with them and see them open up more and more each week because they learn how to trust us as ministers and as their promised land teachers.

It's beautiful to see their growth and their love for God, even as young people.

And that's only possible because of where they are and the environment that we provide for them to thrive in and to open up in.

- So I wanna spend the rest of the time talking about the more serious instances we see of mental health challenges with our teenagers.

Ashley, you started off talking about the suicide rate, which is very distressing of course, and how the church gets called to intervene at that level when there really is a crisis and you've gotta do something to get a teenager back on track.

Mikiah, I'll start with you this time.

- Yes, absolutely, and forgive me because I don't know exact numbers, I don't know data, but I do know real people in real situations where I've actually had to intervene in because people were so close to just ending it all and throwing in a towel and being able to just be a servant in the moment, even if that meant just being a shoulder to cry on, even if that meant just sitting on the phone, even if that meant just praying for somebody.

I think it's so important for us as servants, because that's what we are.

I mean, a lot of us throw titles around, bishop... At the end of the day, we are servants and disciples of Christ, and that is our job.

That is what we are expected to do by God, is to step in and go and sit in those dark spaces with people and be able to help to pull them out of those dark spaces, whatever it is that led them there.

Whether it's a failed relationship or just different mental health challenges, poverty, whatever the root cause is is just being able to sit with them in those spaces and kind of just figure out where they are.

Sometimes people just wanna know how much someone really does care about them.

And when we are able to take time out of what we're doing to just be attentive, we don't even understand how much that could really have an impact on saving.

Even if it's just one life it matters, saving a life.

And I see suicide just in conversations, especially with so many young people.

And that is heartbreaking and scary to see that people who haven't even fully lived life yet are ready to end it.

And so we definitely have that question to address.

What do we do, what does the church do to help these young people?

What are the tools and the resources that they need?

Where is the limited access, what are they missing?

What are those key missing components that are causing them to feel like this?

- Yeah, so Ashley?

- So what I'll say is, 'cause I love hearing about what Triumph is doing, and I love just hearing what black church is doing.

And I wanna encourage anybody watching this, you could drop your children off with us.

We are going to literally care them and grow them because I even thought about the Girl Scouts.

We have all these mentorship programs, we got piano players, we got all these money Pro Money Matters programs.

But what I wanna say is that what we don't recognize with mental health is that it's not just an issue that can be solved solely by the church, which that's why I'm grateful to be under the leadership of Pastor Anthony, Pastor Reverend Dr. Anthony, because he constantly reminds us that our call is not just to say be a Holy Hope dealer or to say God bless you, but to also do the political action that is required to cultivate the society so that our youth can thrive.

And so I'm constantly thinking about what are the structural changes that we need within legislation and guidelines and you look at Detroit Public Schools, what kind of intersects can we have there to where we are actually helping our children address mental health issues?

As I was really preparing for this conversation, I saw too that there is a decrease in the number of mental health professionals in schools, which is not only a huge concern, but also because they're supplementing with AI.

And what ends up happening is in our communities, when they actually have a mental health crisis, they call the police, which we know can lead to a prison to school pipeline.

Unfortunately, for our children and specifically for our black boys, we see them being targeted even more.

And so, one of the things that I thought about with the churches, it is cultivating their identity.

It is giving them access and exposure, but also it's our job to actually politically call for legislators to not just come on Sunday and ask for us to vote for them, but to actually do the work to help our children thrive in a society that really is harming them through algorithms.

And AI is not good or bad, it is truly just a tool.

It's just AI, it is, but how we use it and the way that it's created can create biases that actually harm our children.

And to me, that's what I don't see enough in the national conversation about teen suicide is when you talk about anti-black propaganda and how that's being spread throughout the internet now and how that's negatively impacting our young black youth at an alarming rate.

- Go ahead McKay, I thought you see-- - I said amen.

- Amen, I mean that question of how we deal with things like AI and social media, it's everything.

And that is the thing that I was talking about upfront, that when I was a kid, we just didn't have that and watching your own children try to figure that out, it's just really hard.

And you need some resources to be able to sort it out for 'em.

How does the church do that, Ashley?

- So at Fellowship, what I'll say is, I think it's part and parcel.

Again, we are really big into building their identity, Christ Rooted African Center, but it's also, we can't be church knights.

And what I mean by that is, so when our teenagers come in, or even some of the younger ones now, because parents were giving them phones at an earlier age, we collect them when they come in because you can't actually feel the presence of God... We've even gone to the point of having our First Lady, she does mindfulness meditation.

And also, one of the things that I think is really important when you talk about, and I loved you mentioning Pastor Ken Lock and what he's doing, Reverend Dr. Constance Simon who's over Christian Ed fellowship, she's very intentional about what we teach the children.

So the lessons are really giving a stereotype because we know that black people are not all the same, that everybody doesn't grow up in a one parent household.

They're all these narratives that are fed to us are not always true and then getting them away from the idea of prosperity gospel and into actually that Jesus was all about helping the poor that we were actually called to really transform society like Jesus flipped tables because they were trying to tie salvation to tithing and to taxation and to let them know that no, your salvation is tied to your relationship with me.

And so that's the kind of relationship that we're really looking to cultivate through our educational programs because if we don't teach them, they'll go out into the world and they won't come back and they'll be lost.

- Mikiah, we've got about two minutes left, but I wanna give you a chance to talk about that as well with social media.

- Absolutely, with the social media piece, and I was just thinking about it when you all were speaking about it 'cause I think about as a 26-year-old sometimes how caught up I can get in social media where I'm like, okay, wait a minute.

You've been on TikTok how long?

Now let's go ahead and get back to productive.

Imagine what that looks like for a middle school child or a high school child and imagine the toll that that takes on their mental health, or the comparison.

Oh, I wanna have this car, I wanna have this house.

I wish I lived...

It's too much accessibility for people that young.

And so we do have to talk about, okay, where do we draw the line?

Where does it stop?

Where is enough enough or even getting a little more just creative.

What platforms can we create as Christians where if they are gonna spend this much time on tablets and phones, because the truth of the matter is they're not going anywhere, how do we build apps and platforms where they can use that are friendly and that are safe and that can cultivate an environment for them to grow, even if they are on there for hours at a time, because that is what we're dealing with so maybe what can we do?

What can we create, what can we put out there to make sure that if they're gonna have this much accessibility and time to spend on these tablets, that they have safe apps and platforms that are available, just like Instagram and TikTok, BeReal and Snapchat is available.

So just making sure that we're having their best interest in mind 'cause social media is only gonna get...

It's not going anywhere.

- Ashley Lewis and Mikiah Keener, it was really great to have both of you here on American Black Journal, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you so much.

- That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care and we'll see you next time.

(light music) - [Narrator] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia and Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of American Black Journal in covering African-American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and American Black Journal partners in presenting African-American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you, thank you.