Suicide prevention goal of Soul Shop
More than 25 clergy and lay church leaders attended Soul Shop, a one-day training session focused on increasing awareness about suicide and starting dialogue about it in churches, at the Jacksonville Community Center on Tuesday.
The Arkansas Department of Health, the Arkansas chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Interfaith Arkansas hosted the daylong event, which was led by Michelle Snyder, director of Soul Shop and co-author of Life, Death and Reinvention: The Gift of the Impossibly Messed-Up Life.
“There’s a way in which [suicide] gets talked about as an individual choice, and I would say we can’t deny that — we can’t deny that there’s an individual element in people making a choice whether or not to take their own life,” Snyder said during the training. “What’s also true is that there are community decisions involved as to whether or not a person ends up killing themselves. There are ways in which communities can be protective against suicide, and ways that communities can put people at risk.”
Among the goals of the training are that of creating “soul-safe communities” in which people feel comfortable talking about feelings of isolation, emptiness and other factors that can contribute to suicide, Snyder said.
According to Christopher Epperson, a co-chair of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Arkansas chapter and a member of its national board, the training was a test run for five such events planned to be held in Arkansas next year.
For more information about Soul Shop, visit soulshopmovement.org; for more information about the Arkansas chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, visit afsp.org/chapter/ afsp-arkansas.
Pulaski Heights United Methodist Church is set to host author Jen Hatmaker and singer Nichole Nordeman at a stop in Little Rock on their Moxie Matters Tour, at Robinson Center Performance Hall, 426 W. Markham St. in Little Rock, at 7 p.m. Monday.
Hatmaker is the author of The New York Times best-sellers Of Mess and Moxie and
For the Love; Nordeman has won nine Dove Awards including female vocalist of the year and songwriter of the year.
According to a news release, the pair will share stories that will offer “hope for people who are grappling with change and feel they may have lost their moxie.”
Tickets are $34 or $49 for standard seating; and $99 for tickets that include a meetand-greet and reserved seating at the front of the auditorium, and can be bought by visiting moxiematterstour.com.