TWK Board of Pension Commits $1 million to Mental Health

Abril de 2025

In October of 2023, the Tennessee-Western Kentucky Conference formed a Mental Health Cohort to review current resources, explore best practices, and ask generative questions on how to address clergy mental health challenges in our conference. The cohort consisted of laity, clergy, and a wide swath of mental health professionals, including therapists, social workers, chaplains, and more. Their work together resulted in the creation of four strategic priorities:

Improve clergy well-being across the TWK.
Equip those who care for, supervise, and support clergy.
Resource laity and local congregations to care for the mental health and well-being of each other and their community.
Foster a culture of well-being across the TWK that promotes wellness and health connection.

As the team fleshed out the programmatic goals of these priorities, they also developed a budget that would be needed to implement the plans. In December of 2024, the Connectional Table affirmed the work of the team, committed to including the budget in the 2026 budget request, and sent a request to the Council on Finance and Administration (CFA) to consider if there could be a way to fund these priorities in 2025. CFA heard the details of the plan at their January 2025 meeting and unanimously agreed to explore ways to find funding for this important work.

One idea that arose from CFA was to ask the Board of Pensions and Health Benefits (BPHB) if they would consider funding these priorities in 2025 from their reserves. The BPHB’s operating manual lists their guiding principles, which includes the statement that “we should provide our clergy with comprehensive family health care benefits to include physical health [and] mental health.” When a request for $200,000 for 2025 mental health funding was brought up at the BPHB meeting in February, a board member asked, “Could we do more?” The Board then voted unanimously to fund this initiative at $250,000 each year from 2025 through 2028, for a total of $1 million!

“In 1990, my father-in-law, Rev. Ed Britt, was appointed as Director of the Pensions Campaign for the then Tennessee Conference, which raised money to shore up our pensions reserves. That campaign, the leadership of the Board of Pensions, and the wise management of funds since then all helped put us in a position to be able to fund this initiative,” said Mark Hagewood, TWK Conference Treasurer.

“This mental health initiative is a beautiful example of what it means to be a connectional, collaborative church,” Hagewood continued. “The Mental Health Cohort, Connectional Table, Council on Finance and Administration, and Board of Pensions all worked together to launch and fund this initiative, which directly relates to one of our conference’s five Discipleship Priorities.”

Details about the various programs, including the application process for well-being grants and clergy renewal leave, will be shared later this month.