Marvin Sapp, award-winning gospel artist and pastor, recently shared his heart on the spate of Christian ministers committing suicide and suggested that the issue of mental health was “taboo” in the urban community. The Michigan minister also revealed that if it were not for his late wife’s expertise in and advocacy for psychological well-being, he also might have taken his own life three years ago when the mother of his three children passed away.
“I can be honest and say I absolutely understand what these men of God have gone through. The pressures of pastoring and being in the publics eye, losing someone you love and all of that. I find after reading through their stories that all of them are similar to mine in one way, shape, form, or fashion. If it’s the pressure of ministry, if it’s the pressure of losing a loved one, whatever it may be,” Sapp said.
“I look at their situations and I say to myself, ‘What was it that caused me to stand, even when I could folded just as they did?’ People always say the pressure will cause a pipe to burst,” he added.
Pastor Isaac Hunter, who resigned last year from the Orlando megachurch he founded after admitting to an affair with a staff member, was found dead in his apartment on Dec. 10. Summit Church confirmed that its founding pastor had taken his own life with a gun and at some point written an undated suicide note saying, “I have become what I never wished to be, a burden on those I love the most.” Hunter’s wife had been previously granted a restraining order against him on the claim that his erratic behavior and drinking had left her “fearing” for her life and the lives of their three children. The court order reportedly prohibited Hunter, 36, from his family’s home and Summit Church.
And in November, a 42-year-old pastor shot himself inside his vehicle in the driveway of his Macon, Ga., home in-between church services. The Rev. Teddy Parker, Jr., was reportedly taking medication for manic depression and avoided sharing his difficulties with his Bibb Mount Zion Baptist Church congregation.
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article courtesy of TheBelleReport.net
Pastor Marvin Sapp Talks Mental Stability and How His Wife Saved Him From Suicide was originally published on praisecleveland.com
