Innermost Thoughts Christian Cancer Video Series
Hope for your cancer journey begins here
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Hope for your cancer journey begins here ✞
Watch our Innermost Thoughts series below!
After launching Cancer Companions in 2011, founder Karen Tripp saw a gaping hole in their resource package.
These videos were created to fill a gap in pastoral care resources.
Many of the church volunteers leading groups with Cancer Companion’s Seeing God in Your Cancer Journey Bible study were struggling to have deeper levels of interactions with the cancer patients and caregivers. Unlike traditional Bible study groups, pastoral care study participants often come with thick barriers to protect themselves from sharing or even acknowledging the level of stress they are carrying.
Karen wanted to create a dramatized video which led participants to think “that sounds like me” or “that does not sound like me.” The impact of these videos in a group is similar to a case study. By examining other people’s problems, we are able to discuss a pathway for our own.
Created in a way only a Christian Counselor could devise.
As a Christian Cognitive Therapist, Tripp began by analyzing her Seeing God in Your Cancer Journey Bible Study to identify the fears and worries each session addresses. They stretched from scan anxiety to isolation to facing the unknown and more. In addition, she listed the coping strategies recommended in the study.
Next, Tripp recorded interviews with eight different cancer patients/caregivers. With attention to the Bible study’s fears and coping strategies, she combined story elements from the interviewees’ struggles into three roles:
A young single woman with breast cancer.
A married man with teenage children and lung cancer.
A grandmother whose husband has throat cancer.
Each character also reveals different relationships with Christ.
The video series tracks these three characters from diagnosis and on through treatment.
The power of the script is Tripp’s use of specific quotes from the interview transcripts to add the raw honesty which comes from those in their battle with cancer. Repeatedly, participants are surprised to learn that the people in the videos are actors and not cancer patients/caregivers.
This style of video creates high levels of group cohesion and self-awareness naturally leading to more benefits for all who participate.
Cancer Companion’s Participant Impact Study Results
91% reported anxiety improved or greatly improved.
79% reported decrease in depression
74% indicated strong emotional resilience (compared to 35-40% for non-participant cancer patients)
Participants scored 104.6 on spiritual well-being (compared to 80-90 for non-participant cancer patients)
Learn more about the Seeing God in Your Cancer Journey Bible study HERE.