- Starting price
- $27/mo or $279/yr
- Free tier
- No
- Platforms
- Web · On-demand video and audio · Team viewing
- Developer
- Church Growth Workshops / Kenny Jahng
- Launched
- 2020
- Updated
- Aug 16, 2026
The verdict
Thrive and Cultivate gives church teams a practical way to build mental-health vocabulary through more than 130 short sessions, Christian clinicians and ministry voices, worksheets, a training calendar, workshops, and resource libraries. It is education, not certification or care: churches still need licensed local referral partners, suicide and abuse protocols, role boundaries, supervision, accessibility, and policy that protects people when conversations surface real risk.
Try Thrive and Cultivate ↗Opens thriveandcultivate.com
Thrive and Cultivate is an on-demand mental-health education membership built for pastors, ministry staff, and volunteers. Its catalog covers burnout, self-care, anxiety, depression, loneliness, grief, trauma, suicide prevention, stigma, spiritual wounds, and healthier church culture.
Kenny Jahng co-founded the project in 2020 during the pandemic, beginning with a free virtual summit and developing it into an ongoing library. Current public pages advertise more than 130 sessions across nine tracks with speakers ranging from pastors and ministry leaders to counselors, psychologists, and psychiatric clinicians.
The membership adds group discussion worksheets, a digital magazine, a resource library, mental-health FAQ videos, a suggested staff-training calendar, keynote workshops, audio recordings, and new team material through the year. Sessions are generally ten to twenty-five minutes and may be shown to a team.
We reviewed the public catalog, membership inclusions, FAQ, about page, and blog without purchasing access or watching every session. We did not verify the credentials and evidence behind every presentation, continuing-education recognition, captions and transcripts, update dates, clinical review, or how member questions and sensitive discussions are handled.
✓ The good
- Church-specific framing - topics and examples address pastors, volunteers, ministry culture, and congregation care
- Large practical library - 130-plus short sessions make staff training easier to schedule
- Range of voices - clinicians, nonprofit leaders, pastors, and lived-experience advocates cover complementary angles
- Team materials - worksheets, calendar, workshops, audio, and resource library support facilitated use
- Active free content - the public blog extends learning beyond paid membership
✗ Watch out
- Not clinical qualification - video completion does not prepare a volunteer to diagnose, treat, or manage crisis
- Speaker variance - credentials, theological frames, evidence quality, and role boundaries differ across sessions
- No permanent free tier - full access requires a recurring monthly or annual membership
- Non-refundable policy - the FAQ says membership is non-refundable even though it can be canceled
- Public safeguards are limited - referral, suicide, abuse, confidentiality, consent, and discussion protocols need stronger documentation
Best for
- Pastors and church teams beginning a structured mental-health literacy and referral conversation
- Staff meetings that need short expert teaching plus guided discussion material
- Leaders addressing burnout, shame, loneliness, grief, trauma awareness, and stigma without pretending to provide therapy
- Churches already connected to licensed clinicians, crisis services, and safeguarding professionals
Avoid if
- Someone needs immediate crisis response, suicide intervention, abuse reporting, diagnosis, medication, or therapy
- The church expects a video library to qualify pastoral staff as mental-health professionals
- No named leader will vet sessions, facilitate safely, manage disclosures, and maintain a local referral directory
- You require accredited continuing education, a clinical curriculum, formal assessment, or supervised skill practice
What Thrive and Cultivate is
Thrive and Cultivate is a training and resource membership. It is not therapy, diagnosis, a crisis line, medical advice, suicide assessment, abuse investigation, mandated-reporting counsel, clinical supervision, accredited degree, licensure, or proof that a staff member is competent to treat mental illness.
Before team use, name a facilitator and boundaries: training is educational, disclosure is optional, confidentiality has limits, emergencies go to local services, abuse follows law and policy, and referrals go to appropriately licensed and theologically suitable professionals.
Why short church-team training can change culture without creating therapists
A ten-minute session can give leaders shared language for burnout, shame, anxiety, trauma, listening, and referral. Repeated in staff meetings, the material can reduce silence and replace simplistic spiritual explanations with more compassionate first responses.
The goal is not amateur treatment. A healthier church recognizes distress, listens without coercion, responds spiritually within role, protects safety, and connects people to qualified care. Every training should end with what the church will do—and what it will not do.
Expert session library: curate a path instead of browsing randomly
More than 130 videos span nine tracks and speakers with different clinical, pastoral, nonprofit, and personal backgrounds. Sessions are short enough for individual or team viewing.
Select sessions against a written objective, verify speaker credentials and claims, note theological assumptions, and sequence foundational boundaries before high-risk topics. Do not assume every presenter or older summit recording carries equal authority.
Worksheets and training calendar: discussion needs psychological safety
Group discussion sheets and a suggested team calendar help churches turn videos into recurring staff development rather than a one-time conference binge.
Tell participants they need not disclose diagnoses, trauma, medication, family stories, or counseling. Avoid recording personal answers, separate supervision from therapy, and provide a private route to qualified support after the meeting.
Workshops, magazine, FAQs, and blog: build a referral-ready library
Membership includes keynote workshops, a digital magazine, FAQ videos, audio, and a resource library, while the public blog addresses stigma, theology, pastoral loneliness, anxiety, shame, trauma, and belonging.
Use the material to maintain a local directory with emergency numbers, licensed clinicians, low-cost services, child specialists, addiction support, domestic-violence resources, disability services, and denominational safeguarding contacts. National content cannot supply local pathways automatically.
Pricing
Monthly membership
$27/mo
Full on-demand library, workshops, worksheets, magazine, resource library, FAQs, and team materials.
Annual membership
$279/yr
The same All-Access membership at a lower effective monthly cost.
Public blog
Free
Selected articles on pastoral mental health, trauma, suffering, anxiety, shame, and church care.
All-Access costs $27 monthly or $279 annually. Both renew until canceled and unlock the on-demand session library and membership resources.
The FAQ says virtual and in-person Thrive and Cultivate events are included for members without an additional event fee.
Teams may watch sessions together and download or share designated resources for team training, but account credentials and copyrighted videos should not be redistributed beyond the license.
Membership is described as non-refundable. Confirm trial language, renewal date, cancellation steps, access after cancellation, church-size rights, and downloadable-resource retention before purchase.
Where Thrive and Cultivate falls behind
Create curriculum paths by role and risk, with prerequisites, learning objectives, evidence notes, assessments, facilitator guides, and clear “not clinical training” outcomes.
Publish speaker credentials, conflicts, source lists, recording date, review date, captions, transcripts, correction notes, and accessibility status for every session.
Add ready-to-adapt church protocols for suicide, abuse, domestic violence, child safety, confidentiality, referral, documentation, emergency response, and postvention with legal-review warnings.
Provide denominational and cultural adaptation guidance without collapsing clinical evidence into one theological account of suffering or healing.
Clarify license scope, privacy, member data, discussion data, cancellation, refunds, download rights, account sharing, and organization pricing on durable public pages.
Thrive and Cultivate vs. Sanctuary Course vs. Mental Health First Aid
Thrive and Cultivate offers a large church-leader video library and ongoing membership. Sanctuary Course gives churches a structured small-group curriculum on faith and mental health. Mental Health First Aid provides standardized skills training with instructors and a certification process, though it is not Christian formation.
Choose Thrive for broad recurring staff development. Choose Sanctuary for a finite guided congregational conversation. Choose Mental Health First Aid for a more standardized response framework and skill practice, then add church-specific theology and pastoral boundaries separately.
A strong church may use all three at different layers while maintaining licensed referral relationships and formal safeguarding. None makes a volunteer a therapist or replaces local crisis and abuse procedures.
The bottom line
Thrive and Cultivate offers church leaders something more useful than vague encouragement: a large library of short expert sessions, discussion tools, a team calendar, workshops, FAQs, and ongoing resources designed for ministry settings. It can improve language, reduce stigma, and help a staff recognize when to listen and refer. Its limits must be explicit. Watching videos does not create clinicians, and spiritual care cannot absorb suicide, abuse, trauma treatment, diagnosis, or medication questions outside qualified roles. Build a curated training path, verify speakers and claims, protect disclosure, maintain local referral and emergency lists, and treat the membership as one layer in a much larger care system.
Alternatives to Thrive and Cultivate
Frequently asked questions
How much does Thrive and Cultivate cost?
All-Access is $27 per month or $279 per year. The membership renews until canceled.
What is included?
Members receive 130+ sessions, keynote workshops, worksheets, a digital magazine, audio, FAQ videos, a resource library, a suggested team calendar, and additional releases.
Can I watch with my church team?
Yes. The FAQ explicitly encourages team viewing and provides discussion resources for staff meetings and larger screens.
How long are the sessions?
The public FAQ says sessions range from about 10 to 25 minutes.
Is the membership refundable?
The current FAQ describes membership as non-refundable, though it can be canceled through the member account.
Does it train therapists?
No. It builds awareness, language, and church-care strategy; it does not provide clinical licensure, diagnosis, treatment qualification, or supervised practice.
Can it help in a mental-health emergency?
Recorded training may help a church prepare, but an active emergency requires local crisis, emergency, safeguarding, and qualified clinical pathways—not the video library.
Sources & further reading
More Teaching & Theology Websites
Life.Church Open NetworkOne of the church world’s most generous resource libraries, serving leaders since 2006 with free sermons, curriculum, creative files, worship material, training, partner content, and ministry apps—but “free” is a tightly scoped noncommercial license, not open ownership or permission to edit and repost everything.
The Odin ProjectA completely free, open-source path from web-development beginner to portfolio-building full-stack learner—excellent for disciplined self-study, demanding in time and independence.
BibleProjectA nonprofit studio that turned the entire Bible into animated explainers, free seminary-grade courses, and a deep-dive theology podcast - and somehow gave it all away.
Lessons.ChurchA genuinely free, open-source curriculum platform with 1,167 video lessons from preschool through adult, printable resources, classroom scheduling, presenter mode, TV caching, and volunteer access—but each church still needs to review doctrine, permissions, safeguarding, account governance, and recovery before Sunday depends on it.
Christian Classics Ethereal LibraryThe Christian Classics Ethereal Library is possibly the oldest Christian site on the internet, and it is still the single best free source for the public-domain canon - from Augustine to Spurgeon, with the entire 38-volume Ante-Nicene and Nicene-and-Post-Nicene Fathers in the middle.
Christian History InstituteThe quiet workhorse of popular church history publishing for forty years - and almost everything they have ever printed is sitting online for free.