Regent University’s Charis Institute Battles Mental Health Crisis Through The Church Cares Initiative

September 4, 2026

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (Sept. 4, 2026) — Regent University’s Charis Institute, housed within the School of Psychology & Counseling, is advancing the reach of The Church Cares, a ministry initiative that equips everyday believers to care, pray, and share in peer-to-peer relationships, providing churches of every denomination, size, and language with frontline resources to assist their communities with various mental health struggles.

The Church Cares initiative is a free-of-charge, peer-helping ministry co-directed by Regent University Professors and Charis Institute Co-founders Jim Sells, Ph.D., and Jennifer Ripley, Ph.D. It was built in response to the rapidly increasing demand for care amid an unprecedented mental health crisis. While clinicians and pastors are reaching capacity in the number of people they can care for, a largely untapped workforce sits in the pews of America’s roughly eight churches per zip code every week. The Church Cares was created to provide lay people with the tools necessary to walk with those in distress, while reserving clinical services for more serious cases.

“The core mission is to resource and prepare every church — English, Spanish, large, small, city, country, Catholic, Protestant — to sit comfortably with people who are in pain,” said Sells. “People decide to come to church because they can form community, and people will care for them in a high age of isolation. We’re finding the natural pull towards the gospel is through people in community.”

A Mission to Prepare and Unleash the Church

The goal of The Church Cares is to supply churches with organizational tools to prepare their members to offer emotional and spiritual support to those in need. All of their resources, including video training courses, digital workbooks, and consultations with trained psychology and counseling professionals, are offered free of charge, made possible by a three-year gift of startup funding from the National Christian Foundation to develop, train, and distribute The Church Cares resources nationwide.

With the near conclusion of its final year of funding, The Church Cares recently received a $64,000 gift to fund a full-scale organizational analysis, creating a sustainability plan that will allow the ministry’s core resources to remain free to churches while advanced trainings, certifications, and consulting services help fund the initiative’s next chapter.

“We have it built,” said Sells. “Now we’re looking for ways to support ourselves in the next couple of years to establish it, to grow our roots.”

Federal Recognition and a Seat at the Table

The Church Cares initiative model recently drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which invited Sells to deliver a presentation at a two-day conference in Washington, D.C. There, he joined roughly 100 professionals, including university and seminary faculty, addiction specialists, and leaders in foster care and human trafficking intervention, to explore how faith communities can partner with the federal government to extend the reach of mental health, addiction, and human services care.

“How can the government actually support the church to do the thing that is the broad-based need within the society?” asked Sells. “We are clearly providing a resource for the broader culture that is otherwise out of reach economically. If we had professional clinicians to attend to the full scale of mental health needs, we couldn’t train enough, and we couldn’t pay.” That goal of widespread economic reach served as an invitation for the federal government and the church to collaborate in addressing society’s needs and opened significant doors for The Church Cares.

A white paper drawn from the conference was presented to the HHS Secretary, the Director of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the White House for funding consideration. The conference served not only as a valuable opportunity to receive financial support but also to connect with like-minded organizations that share the goal of supporting every community in the nation.

“What we’re trying to do is see how many partners we can team up with,” said Sells, “saving the healthcare system millions while ensuring that no one faces their darkest moments alone.”

Tangible Resources that Make Ministry a Reality

The Church Cares has already created a full suite of free, ready-to-use resources for churches, available through their website, including:

The Church Cares Kit: A Quick Start Guide, Listener Training Workbook, and library of free training resources are designed to help any congregation launch a lay-care ministry.
The Listen Course: This video training series teaches interpersonal skills in care-related ministry. It has been newly re-produced to broadcast-quality standards and added to RightNow Media’s fall catalog, placing the course in front of nearly every evangelical church in the country.
7 Cups: The Church Cares: A partnership with 7 Cups, the world’s largest peer-to-peer, chat-based support platform, founded by former Regent Psychology Professor Glenn Moriarty, Ph.D., connects people who reach out for support online with trained listeners and care teams in a local church near them.

For churches ready to go further in their pursuit of care ministry training, The Church Cares also offers tiered advanced training at a modest cost. Level two offers an eight-week reading and discussion series on four books about care, while level three provides personalized coaching with expert feedback on listening skills. The initiative also maintains dedicated outreach leadership for Spanish-speaking and Black church communities, ensuring resources remain culturally and linguistically accessible through office hours available to churches in urban, rural, and multicultural contexts alike.

“It’s exciting to see churches creating sustainable structures to increase the care for their congregation and community through the good people who are willing to serve,” said Ripley. “One that most inspired me lately was a church that set up a listening and prayer tent in their food pantry ministry, where people who come for food are also experiencing the friendship and love of Christ through members of their church trained in listening and prayer.”

Looking to the Future of Care Ministry

The long-term vision of The Church Cares is to fully carry out its “cloud to the ground” strategy by distributing resources, training listeners both online and in person, overseeing ongoing training, and partnering with licensed mental health professionals for appropriate placement and referrals. Its model equips churches to become places where no one has to hurt alone, and where ordinary people bring extraordinary hope.

“The invitation is for anyone to look at the resources and to ask how this could be done in their church, in their faith community,” said Sells. “It’s already been paid for. It’s there. Contact us, and we can help you be successful in it.”

To learn more about The Church Cares initiative, the resources available, or how you can support their mission, visit TheChurchCares.com.

About Regent University

Founded in 1977, Regent University is America’s premier Christian university, with nearly 14,000 students studying on its 100-acre campus in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and online worldwide. The university offers associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in more than 150 areas of study, including business, communication and the arts, counseling, cybersecurity, divinity, education, government, law, leadership, nursing, healthcare, and psychology. Regent University has been ranked the No. 1 Best Online Bachelor’s Program in Virginia for 14 years in a row (U.S. News & World Report, 2026) and the No. 2 Top Military Friendly^® School in the nation (Military Friendly^® Schools, 2024-2025).

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