King’s Alumnus Publishes Book on a Christian Response to Clinical Depression
Somerville, who teaches Biblical Counseling at The Master's College in Santa Clarita, California, spent thirty-five years as a senior pastor and nine as a college professor.
Xulon Press recently published a book by Dr. Robert B. Somerville ’67 entitled If I’m a Christian, Why Am I Depressed? Finding Meaning and Hope in the Dark Valley.
Somerville, who teaches Biblical Counseling at The Master’s College in Santa Clarita, California, spent thirty-five years as a senior pastor and nine as a college professor. “I am firmly convinced that the topic of depression is not openly discussed among Christians because of the stigma attached to it,” said Somerville. But he believes that “this topic desperately needs to be addressed.”
He became convinced of the need for an open, biblically-informed dialogue on clinical depression after he went through his own nine-month struggle with depression. In his book, Somerville seeks to record the lessons he learned alongside God’s faithfulness to those suffering with depression.
During Somerville’s time as a student at King’s, Dr. Robert A. Cook was president of the College. “He conducted a daily radio Bible class entitled Walk With the King,” Somerville recounts. “Each day he ended that broadcast with this statement: ‘Walk with the King today and be a blessing today.’ That statement has never left me.”
Somerville further attributes his career direction to Cook’s influence. “In one chapel, he shared that as a pastor it was his specific goal to contact at least three of his parishioners each day to be an encouragement to them,” Somerville remembers. “That statement also stuck with me, and as I labored as a senior pastor for 35 years, I made it a special goal to be a blessing to some member of the flock every day.”
In 2009, Somerville experienced nine months of clinical depression—”or what the Puritans would call ‘severe melancholy,’” he says. “Every time I spoke on this subject, at least one person would tell me that they knew what I had experienced, but they never told anyone what they were going through, because Christians are not supposed to be depressed.”
Somerville decided to write down his experiences and what he’d learned so that others could benefit. “Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 1 that our God is the father of mercies and the God of all comfort, and that He comforts us in our distress so that we might share the comfort we have received from Him with others,” he says. “Jesus, the King, walked with me in ‘the dark night of the soul’ called depression. The purpose of the book is to share the comfort and strength He gave to me with others, and thus be a blessing to them.
The book garnered endorsements from popular Christian writers and speakers Dr. John MacArthur and Joni Eareckson Tada, and is available from the Xulon Press website or through The Master’s College Bookstore at discounts starting at 25% (contact Steve Yu at syu@masters.edu).