Increasingly in our culture today, having a willingness and an ability within the church to kind of come clean about what we're struggling with,

whatever it is, you name it, for all of us to be able to come alongside one another in those struggles against sin and to be the encouragement that we need.

That's actually an incredibly sort of mentally healthy community to be part of because nobody's

pretending. And you know if your struggle is with depression or your struggle is with anxiety or

your struggle is with suicidal ideation, that should be something that we as brothers and sisters

in Christ are able to come alongside one another and give each other the sort of love and encouragement that we need in the midst of all of those struggles.

Rebecca McLaughlin is a well-known speaker and author of a number of best-selling books, including confronting Christianity, Confronting Jesus,

Jesus through the eyes of women, and brand new from

Crossway, how church could literally save your life. Rebecca, thanks so much for joining me today

on the Crossway podcast. Thanks for having me. So the premise of this new book that you've written

is, I would say it's pretty bold. It's essentially going to church could literally save your life. And so I wonder

if you could just start by sharing some of the maybe high level stats or the high level insights

that exist today that we back that claim up. So I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the joys of that is being close to some of the top universities in the US, including MIT and Harvard.

And several years ago, I became familiar with the work that's coming out at the Harvard School of Public Health.

So this particularly guy named Tyler Van der Beale, who is leading a group there that's looking at the relationship

between religious participation, so what we might sort of historically have called

organized religion, and people's mental and physical health outcomes. Now, it's not the only

place that's looking at this, but it's certainly sort of one of the world-leading

institutions that's looking at these things. And contrary to many people's expectations,

I think, I mean, especially folks who like me grew up in more secularized environments where

there was this narrative that said, like, going to church is probably, if anything, bad for your

mental health. Actually, going to church is probably if anything bad for your mental health. Actually going to church every week is extraordinarily good for your mental health.

...