Latest / Mental Health and the Mission of the Church / From Crisis to Culture: Building a Mentally Healthy Church | Part 1

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From Crisis to Culture: Building a Mentally Healthy Church | Part 1 · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Could you or anyone you know benefit from an app that provides very personalized coaching and good practices specific to one's life rhythms that helps people with ADHD excel in life?
• 0:11
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• 0:24
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• 0:26
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• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was breaking down.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I can remember sitting on our little front porch thinking, I can't do this anymore.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: And my sister actually was there with me.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like, me, we need to get maybe go somewhere and just to the hospital.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: You used to look at her and you're like, she is not going to a hospital.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and then there was just nothing beyond that.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, well, if we're not going to the hospital, then what are we gonna do that will, you know, help?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_05: He remembered vividly a conversation she had with you where she said, We're not okay.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_05: Our church is not okay, our staff's not okay.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_07: But I gotta be honest, I was most husbands or wives, they don't know what to do with it, they've not experienced it.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_07: So we tend to give these cliche bumper sticker answers.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_07: Well, just do this, just do this kind of thing.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_05: This is weird.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_05: She's asking me questions.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_05: Christy's the patient here.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: After several minutes of asking me questions, she asked me if I'd ever heard the word narcissism.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_05: I freaking blew up.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, man, I don't know what you've been telling him.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, I ain't here for this.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_05: This ain't about me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_07: Listen to what Chip's saying.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_07: You may not have a wife who deals with depression, you may not have a husband who deals with it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_07: You do have issues that ping off of other people's issues and make you ineffective at connecting and resourcing one another the way God intends for you to.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_07: Every breakthrough you want starts with you.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_07: The greatest hindrances to you enjoying the future God wants you to enjoy are inside of you, not outside.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_07: They're inside, not outside.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, this couple here is leading a large church, and while they were building it, these things were going on.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Today we have another pastor named Chip.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So don't get confused.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: This pastor Chip is joined by his wife, Christy, and together they share a story many of us can learn from.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: They were leading a very large church, yet personally they were deeply unhealthy and heading towards burnout.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Christy fell into a deep depression while her husband struggled both to understand the depth of what she was experiencing and to recognize the unhealthy patterns in his own life that were contributing to the strain they were under.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: With the help of their friend Chip Judd, along with therapy, medical care, prayer, and some significant life changes, they began to experience real healing, guided by God's grace.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Their journey revealed a powerful truth.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Understanding mental health is essential to leading well in the mission of the church.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: In part two of this conversation, releasing next, Pastor Chip and Christy will share how this journey has reshaped their personal life and their approach to ministry.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Brittany Gardner, part of the team here, and you're listening to Mental Health and the Mission of the Church with Pastor and Counselor Chip Judd.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: I met Jesus in that therapy room, and he was able to speak differently over me.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_04: Hey, the last epis last episode we did when you were uh uh introducing the guests, you said really, really, really, and then you gave these guys two really's.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just pointing that out.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_07: All right.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_07: All right, well, I don't know why.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_07: It's an award kind of system.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_07: Uh this is the Mental Health Admission of the Church podcast.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_07: I'm Chip Chud.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_07: Got some uh really cool guests that we've known each other.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_07: Gosh, what would you say, Chip?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_05: About 10 years now or yeah, at least maybe, maybe a little more, Chip, but maybe even 15, but somewhere somewhere in that in that range.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_07: I'm at I'm at an age where, dude, time just is weird.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_07: Well, this is Chip and Christy Henderson, and they pastor Pine Lake Church in the Jackson, Mississippi area.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_07: They've got a really cool story they're gonna share with us.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_07: And I hope you find it um encouraging, informative, challenging.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_07: We're just looking forward to it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_07: Is it a tiny little church?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_07: But what do you got, about 150 people?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_05: Something like that.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that's right.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_07: No, it's actually quite large.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_07: We don't throw around numbers because we don't want to be all about that, but it is a really large, uh regionally impactful, and even beyond that, it in the circles chip moves in, and Christy, they would be influencers for sure.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_07: We just want them to influence you today.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_07: Bless you, Chip and Christy.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_07: Really good to see you, first of all.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_07: We really want you to tell a story.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_07: Obviously, it's a story that fits in with uh our our purpose, our agenda, what we feel like is our mission, which is bringing mental health and uh awareness of it, sensitivity to it, handling of it in uh partnership with the church's mission to make healthy, uh risk-taking, world-changing, intimacy-enjoying followers of Jesus.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_07: And I know that's what you're all about.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_07: And I believe your story is gonna really help people see that connection.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_07: Chip and Christy, um, anything you want to say about yourself?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_05: No, nothing, nothing necessarily.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I would say, Chip, man, you know, when when we encountered you, you know, 10, 15 years ago, like you say, man, we I can't remember either.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I'm at the point where where gears just turn into I don't even know what.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um man, I I honestly would say to you, Christy and I were talking about it uh just uh before we got on the uh the the podcast, to say, you know, she remembered vividly a conversation she had with you where she said, Hey, our we're not okay.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_05: Our church is not okay, our staff's not okay.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um and so she's she could see it, and we'll get into that.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_05: But I gotta be honest, I was clueless to to really what your heart was.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: And so, really, since then is really what when I would say my our journey really began in earnest, you know.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: And and so I I hope and pray that, man, if there are you know people out there who'd be listening, um, sometimes you don't know what you don't know until God knocks upside the head and you start to see it.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_04: So, how did y'all make the connection?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: Did y'all just hear about Chip and reached out?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I think we had had connection.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_05: My initial connection was with a guy named Mac Lake.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um this was this was uh a long, long time ago.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_05: We'd gotten connected through leadership network um with Seacoast.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um so that was back when Jeff was still there, uh Surratt.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_05: We um got connected church-wise then, and I think Mac may have been the connector because there was something stirring in our church a long, long time ago.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_05: Again, clueless.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_05: We'll we'll get into it.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_05: I know clueless, but I think Chip was a step in the direction toward the idea of inner healing, uh things like that, that we were we were using words we had no idea what they meant.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: Now you look back and go, wow, that's that's it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_05: That's it.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_04: And Chip was this one of the churches that you actually traveled to and met with the staff, met with Chip and Christy, and did kind of your consulting deal.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think it started uh with uh a marriage weekend.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_05: That's right.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's right.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_07: And then of course you have conversation and one thing leads to another.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_07: And yeah, that's true.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_07: Uh let me make a note here for anybody listening.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_07: Today's gonna be about their personal story, uh, but we're gonna do a second episode about how all of this has affected them as leaders in the sense of how how they wake up in the morning, how they see themselves, how they see God, how they how they embrace the call and assignment that's on their life, but also how they how they live it out, the kind of culture they're trying to build now, how it's affected their vision, their strategies, their structures and systems.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_07: In essence, and this is why I'm so excited, it's it's the it's the beautiful mix of a heightened mental health awareness and understanding and application mixed with applying that to the mission they feel called to, pastoring a church.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_07: And I'm just stoked, man.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_07: I'm stoked for today, and I'm stoked for that episode that I think we're gonna do tomorrow.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_07: Chip and Christy both, I just appreciate the heck out of you guys and appreciate.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_07: I you know what?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_07: I I I I want to say this.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_07: I just appreciate the friendship over the years.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_07: We don't we don't connect a lot.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_07: It's one of those relationships that when you do, it feels like you just saw each other last week.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_07: I never wanted to be like a traveling speaker guy.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_07: I I wanted to be a guy who comes in and builds relationships, friendship, and yeah, there's money exchanged and all that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I gotta make a living.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_07: But um, it's just so much more than that, and I love it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_05: Well, look, we would pay you to be our friend.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that's right.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_07: I'm a I'm a paid friend.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_07: You're a paid friendship.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_07: Thank you.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_07: And by the way, by the way, the rent's going up, man.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_07: I hear you.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_07: I hear you.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_04: And just a quick ad if you would if you would like Chip to be your friend and you're listening right now, we've got a a link for you in the show notes that you can be Chip's friend.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_04: And the prices are out there.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_04: I'm totally kidding if you are hearing this.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not, I'm not worth it, by the way.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_07: Whatever cough, I'm not worth it.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_07: The friendship cost.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_07: Christy, what are you thinking as we get going here?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: You know what?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: I just have so much gratitude, really, for you, Chip.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like we said, just you know, the Lord was working way upstream for us by putting you in our life.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that that goes with a lot of work on your part.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: And by work, I mean like inner work for your own personal self and your own family.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And so um, I don't know, I'm just sitting here, kind of surreal moment and um with a lot of gratitude.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_07: Well, interestingly, it's it's very timely for you to say something like that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_07: Uh post my surgery at all, it's it's kind of like rebooting my life, yet with a renewed sense of the clock that's ringing.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_07: Um and uh and feeling a little bit, you know, I've been out of circulation for almost two years.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_07: And uh, you know, feeling a little bit like, you know, do I have anything left to give?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_07: That was really, really sweetly impactful.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, appreciate it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, indeed.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_07: Uh Joey, why don't you push us off in the story?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know if you have a way you want to lean.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: I just I don't know anything about your story other than the uh a very general basic, and I just wanted to briefly share that I've had my I've had an extensive background with mental illness stemming from childhood, dealt with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_04: And then in 2019, it was a full-blown mental health crisis, ended up in the hospital for a week, and I was pastoring one of the Seacoast campuses at the time.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, Chip's been by my side, you know, for gosh, I think 13, 14 years.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_04: So he was obviously very instrumental during that season.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I and I will say that thank, thank the Lord, situationally, my life has continued to get harder and harder.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: But since that mental health crisis, I think I could say that the the physiological depression has pretty much dissipated, which is just I can't, I I never thought I'd be able to say that.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Whereas the anxiety piece is something that I still have to navigate and and and figure out.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: But usually when I'm really sad, I could say, this is situational.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_04: This would make anybody sad.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_04: So, but I think that overlaps so much as far as situational and physiological.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe I'm totally wrong, but it it feels like the depression side of things is something of my past.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_04: Man, it was a 30-year hellish run, though, for sure.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: Just ups and downs and all of that.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: So whatever the story is, I'm sure that I can relate to a good bit.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_07: And again, just to throw a teaching moment in there, Joey's battles with depression and anxiety are generational.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_07: Um very clearly, father dealt with the same stuff.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_07: He has since he's recently passed away, actually.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_07: You know, that's some of the stuff that we want to awaken the church to.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_07: That there's a lot of dynamics to mental health and spiritual health.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_07: Well, Chip and Christy, why don't you uh I'm sure you thought about it some, but and I'm sure you've told your story before.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_07: Uh why don't you jump in there and just start telling your story?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_07: And we may interrupt you occasionally.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: I just said, can I go first?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um just just because everything that you just described about your journey so resonates with mine.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I guess my mental health journey goes back to birth, you know, and even before uh that and the generational piece to that um is is part of that as well.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: So just grew up in a really, I would say as a uh in a fear-based um environment.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: And um so yeah, yeah, totally.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, your nervous system is being developed and um formed um in those first zero to three, I mean, primarily, and then beyond that, it's just like stacked on top of that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's kind of the foundation.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so um, even at birth, um, just looking back through therapy at what was going on, you know, in my home um at the time of my birth, that informs a lot about how my nervous system, my emotions, everything about me was touched by that.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so it makes sense.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a lot of compassion that I have for the people that were in my life then, my family of origin, um, my father in particular, just with his um battle with brokenness and his um battle with depression and self-medicating and um just all of the dysfunction uh there.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: And so um I'm the fifth of five children and I've I have a twin brother.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of that uh plays a part also just in my core beliefs that I've had to address.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: And that was um just a feeling of insignificance or being pushed aside or not important.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I have three older sisters.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: The youngest was nine at the time of my birth, and then uh my brother, my twin is a is a was a boy, is a boy, is a guy.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: And my dad, you know, so long to have a son.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_03: And so once he was born, and the story was told over and over.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously I couldn't remember um explicitly the memory, but the story was always hey, go tell Vince that he's got a boy now and we don't care what the other one is.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was just like it it really defined something in me, and especially the fact that they would tell the story over and over and over again.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so just the chaos that was going on um in in the family, in the room, you know, with my parents, dysfunctional uh relationship, relationships outside of their marriage, and uh just, you know, a lot of walking on eggshells as I grew up, grew up in the Catholic church where um amazing things about the church.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but in particular, my experience was uh fear also, just not getting it right, like forced to go and even go into confession.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: You got to go to confession.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't I didn't know what to confess, so I made stuff up, so I'd try to get it right.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but just that constant feeling of I'm not good enough, like I can't get this right.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, going to church and then going home and the uh incongruency of that experience as well.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: Just like, what in the world?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, who is God and how does he see me?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: And it just affected every part of my life.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_04: Christy, real real quick.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: So the that was what was told when your brother was born, those words were uttered, and then you're saying for the rest of your life when people told the story of y'all's birth, they said, Yeah, you know, when your brother was born, we basically said it's a boy and we don't care.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's the story that was retold, and you heard that as a kid.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: And by the way, I grew up Catholic too.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm like, is is this is this my sister over like a soul sister over here?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_04: I grew up Catholic and I had made stuff up for confession, also.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Are you serious?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't ever have to make anything up.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_07: I I wasn't Catholic, but I wouldn't I wouldn't have had to make anything up.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's you know, that was part of the my um I was just a a sweet little girl.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was just a innocent child and um thrown into the mix of lots of pressure and dysfunction and trying to perform and not ever feeling like I'm gonna get it right.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: And so my depression started, my first, I guess, memory, like true explicit memory of being depressed was at seven years old and just riding down the road in my dad's truck going, This is it, like nothing's gonna change.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's you know, I guess the definition of depression is just that hopelessness and the overwhelming sense of nothing's gonna change.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: This is my life.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_04: Seven years old.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: And I needed help.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't have language for that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't have, I didn't have a safe place to process any of that.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't, you know, I couldn't, there was nobody to go to.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And um, you know, even in my family, it was just uh that that was the nature of our family.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: You just didn't talk about how you felt.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, otherwise you'd kind of be in trouble for that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: So that was another traumatic marker, you know, just a constant sense of fear without being able to process.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_04: So and you weren't thinking this, you know, something that Chip reminded me of when I was in my mental health crisis is Joey, you got to remember this is something happening to you.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_04: And at seven years old, you weren't thinking, oh, I'm struggling with something that's upon me.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: You're just thinking, I'm sad and and this is all life is gonna offer.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like sucks.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_04: Seven years old, I just can't imagine that.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I I I can trace mine back to middle school, and I think of years before middle school way more fondly, because I'm like, wow, my my childhood, uh, you know, I remember just how carefree and and happy I was, and that you know, kind of ended in middle school.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_04: I cannot imagine seven years old.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_04: I know it's been a long time, but gosh, I'm so sorry.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_04: Wow.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thank you.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, thank you.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_05: There's a lot of fear just growing up too.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: You know, like at night, you would be scared and what that was like.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he knows all my story and just the the kindness that he has shown to me, you know, as we learn to tell our story.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: It uh it's helpful to know that people know you in that way.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: And it was, it was a lot of fear.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's there was a sensitivity, I feel like, that God gave me um in design for spiritual things, even and the feeling and the sensing of there's darkness here, like a tangible darkness in my home.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: To have to face that or hide from that, you know, and try to be safe from that was just it was overwhelming.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I could remember like yesterday, you know, the the presence of that in my home down the hallway, trying and then, you know, trying to get through the hallway at night in my fear, and then my mom just saying, There's nothing to be afraid of, go get back in your bed.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, uh you just I don't know, you need care and you don't get it, and then things get stuck.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so that was a that was the beginning of a lifelong battle of um depression and then the anxiety that goes that kind of went along with that.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_07: So I would assume, uh, and again, I don't know this part of the story, but I would assume from then till I don't know, maybe even into your marriage with Chip, but when when would you say you started to see light at the end of the tunnel?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_07: In other words, start to receive some help, some understanding.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, when did you even have words for it?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like when did that happen when you're like, oh, this is this is something I'm dealing with?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess it was pretty early on in our marriage that I started, you know, just trying to figure out, not really being able to figure out, but going, God, something is wrong with me.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it felt a lot like failure on my part, like I'm flawed, I'm whatever.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was a lot of shame around that.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but as far as a light at the end of the tunnel, um, I would have pockets of time, you know, just with the Lord or circumstantial stuff that would kind of bring me back up out of, you know, the the depths of depression.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_03: And um I I did seek out help probably after we moved here.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_03: That was my first time to sit with the counselor, um, which was helpful.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it was not enough.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like it, it was more like, hey, let's try to look at uh life differently.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Let's let's think about the positive things, you know, in life.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: But there was never that deep level of healing, you know, that happened.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_03: So there were bright spots and like, okay, maybe the clouds are gonna part, but then it would kind of go back into that undercurrent.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_07: So the timing issue, you seven seven years old, and what what you're saying is you really didn't start pursuing help until several years into your marriage.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_07: How old were you when you got married?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was 18.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, barely 18.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_07: So Mary and Chip Mary and Chip probably increased the fear.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_07: You know, you were probably like, wow, what am I doing?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there was that moment, Chip.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_05: There's no doubt.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_05: There's no doubt, no doubt.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, no, no, no.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, honestly, God brought him into my life, and that was one of the the brightest seasons of my life was in my teenage years when we were dating because it was fun and like passionate and you know, thing, it took my mind off of all of my pain for a long time.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_07: How old were you when you met?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: This is gonna get back into the scandal of Pastor, you know, Dayton, the kid, and uh you can tell.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_05: Uh no, no, no.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_05: I'm five years older than Christy.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_05: So uh served when I was in college, went back to serve a church in her community.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_05: We were both actually born in that community.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_05: We were both born in the same hospital uh in in a little small town of Mississippi.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_05: But uh I think Christy was probably 15, 16 years old when we met.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_05: I think we started dating.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_05: I took her out on her 16th birthday.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_05: And so we dated for a couple of years.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_05: She went to went to college and I proposed to her on her first day of college.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's cool.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_05: So that's it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, so the scandalous part, and and Joey, you don't necessarily have to cut that that part out.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_05: But, you know, again, uh, small town, Christy was not technically in my youth group.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_05: She's Catholic.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_05: I was at a at a Baptist church, but certainly she was a part of and friends around, you know, uh her friends were were a part.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_05: And so uh yeah, that was was uh back in the day, yeah, just where we were, is a place you found yourself, you know, and you look back and you wonder what what were her parents thinking?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_05: Because there was, you know, it was fully out there in the open, above board, and they're they're like blessing that.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_05: But I, you know, there was just a lot, a lot that you look back on and go, wow, it was wow.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_07: Chip, when did you first have the thought there's something you might not use the word wrong, but you know what I'm trying to say?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_07: What when did you first like, hmm, my wife doesn't bounce back or I don't know something?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_07: What was your first clue that you you got something going on here?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_05: You know, honestly, Chip, I was so clueless.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so clueless.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_05: And and no framework, and I'll I'll get into my my story in a little bit, but no framework for depression, no framework for sadness and stuff like that.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I I think in seminary, so whenever I we got married, Christy uh came to seminary where I was uh after her first year of uh first semester of college, I guess.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and and there was tension because um, you know, I would go to class and after class, man, I'm ready to go to the gym, I'm ready to go, you know, work out and do stuff.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_05: And Christy was at home with nothing, nobody.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_05: She wasn't working yet.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_05: And she's waiting on me to come through the door so we can be together.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm trying to get out of here.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_05: And she's like, no, stay here.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so that became that was probably one of the first places where I'm like, you know, there's tension there.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, you just you learn ways to cope with that, but it was it was not healthy.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_05: But, you know, that's probably the first time that I would say, just like, hey, you know, I wonder why.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_05: Uh again, please here in my mind back then, I'm not saying now, why is she so needy?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that that would have been my mindset.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so I'm an avoidant, and so we'll get into that a little bit at some point.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_05: And so whenever things start to come at me, I'm like, ah, I gotta get away.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_05: And so it just pushed me away, which only touched her what we now know is ambivalent.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_05: She wants me even more now at times.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so it just, it just was, when I tell you it was a nasty mix of soup for our lives to come together.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's why we were attracted to each other because we were so opposite.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it's in God's design, and God in some ways wants us to be strengthened by each other's strengths and weaknesses that attract us to each other.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_05: But once you get married, it's like the enemy takes those differences and makes it a wedge to try to push you apart.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_05: And for a long time I thought, man, she doesn't really, she's not really for me.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_05: You know, she doesn't really, she don't, she's not really on my side.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and now I know differently.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_05: But but that was probably the first time chip when we were in seminary.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_05: Then um, I I would fast forward to after the birth of our uh last child, our son Reagan, who's now 23 years old, coming up on, I think.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_05: She got officially diagnosed with postpartum depression.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_05: And my my sense was is once a doctor told her you have depression, it's like, man, the you know what hit the fan.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it just all started coming out.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_05: So that was, I think, the first time that those words were spoken.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_05: And I gotta be honest, I was, I was a terrible husband.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I'm just saying, I didn't understand depression.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, this is this is this is how broken I was.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, what do you got to be depressed about?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, you're married to me.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that's right.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_05: That's literally what I'm what I'm thinking.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_07: So you won the you won the lottery, man.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_07: What are you talking about?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_05: I'm I'm saying our our kids are healthy, our church is, you know, thriving, uh, it's growing, whatever.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_05: All these external markers that you would look at and go, hey, why why would you even be depressed?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_05: But not understanding the wounds of a soul.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_05: And again, I had no place for that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_05: And so for a season, I didn't understand it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, well, cheer up.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I'm I gotta go to work.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_05: And I would go to work because that's where I was getting affirmation, which is part of my brokenness.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_05: And then, you know, there came time where I resented, I resented the depression because it was ruining our sex life.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_05: It was ruining our, you know, we couldn't plan things, we couldn't do things at times.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_05: And again, that's not always, but I'm just saying there were moments when that that would be true.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_05: And Christy's trying to, you know, she's trying to serve and bless me, but I'm I'm not I'm not understanding it.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_05: Then there have been other iterations of, you know, when I tried to serve it, I tried to serve her in her depression, but it was still, it was out of, it was from a good place, I would say that, but it was still me trying to serve her because she is what we've said, you know, she's the identified patient.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_05: She's got issues.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_05: So let me serve her like a good, you know, pastor would.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_05: And there was some goodness in that, but it wasn't Chip until I began to see my own brokenness that I could actually embrace her for where she was, how she was, and really us start to heal together.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_07: When you say that, and I thank you for sharing all that, because I knew if I if I said I knew you'd get there because most husbands or wives, depending on which piece of the puzzle you are, they don't know what to do with it.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_07: They they don't they've not experienced it.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_07: So And unfortunately we we tend to like give these cliche bumper sticker answers.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_07: Well, just do this, just do this kind of thing.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_07: So a minute ago you said it wasn't until I I kind of started to recognize my own issues.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_07: Um play with that a little bit.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_07: Like what you know, what like what what's what did you start to realize about yourself, and how did that give you more uh compassion for Christy?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so so I would say in that season, what you just said chips spot on, in that kind of that third season of, hey man, I'm just gonna serve or I'm gonna soldier on here, and God had given me a word, like legitimately, God gave me a word, he was gonna heal Christy.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_05: But I still I had no concept of what that meant, or even for for me.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I was I had a list of things that when she starts to spiral, I'm gonna do these five things.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_05: And so it, but it was it was the list.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_05: It was what you do.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_05: When we were in uh in 2019, Joey, uh amazing that you said in 2019 is when your moment happened.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_05: 2019 was a pivotal time for us, August of 2019, is where we really hit a dark night of the soul, the wall, whatever you want to call it, there the life's gotta change.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_05: And uh Christy wound up going to the Houston Medical Center for a week, and that was very helpful.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_05: And then a little over a month of intensive outpatient therapy in California.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_05: And uh we told our staff this whole story yesterday, so it's it's kind of fresh on our minds.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, when we when she was in California, I was there and I was invited into one of the sessions.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_05: And this is she'd been there probably a week or so uh since then, and going every day, eight hours a day.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_05: Therapist started asking me questions.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm like, this is weird.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_05: She's asking me questions.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_05: Christy's the patient here.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_05: And after several minutes of asking me questions, she asked me if I had ever heard the word narcissism.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_05: I freaking blew up.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_05: I'm I looked at Christy like, what have you been telling these people?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_07: Like, like literally?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like literally just said, hey, man, I don't know what you've been telling him.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, I ain't here for this.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_05: This ain't about me, that kind of stuff.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_05: So I know now, I know now what that is.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_05: But that was the that was a moment, Chip, where it was a place where I at least honestly was willing to look at myself and go, okay, what if there is crap in my life that I have buried?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_05: I have worked like a champ to keep you at arm's length away from it.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_05: I put up this protective barrier, ain't nobody getting in.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, our marriage journey now, we would say it's Genesis 2.25.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: Adam and Eve were both naked and not ashamed.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_05: That's the goal.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_05: That's what we want to be.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_05: But I can tell you, I was covered and hiding like a boss.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_07: All right.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_07: Now you didn't realize all that in two in two minutes.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_05: No, I did not.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_07: What happened in that moment when they started to poke you?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_07: What happened?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_07: You got angry.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_05: Well, there was it was rising up in me.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so now again, I believe God's work for me, God works upstream.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_05: We had met you.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_05: We had been hearing about inner healing.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_05: I got in Mike Plunkett.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_05: It talked about emotional healing, and then I liked that.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_05: I'd read a book by Rusty Rustenbach on listening and inner healing prayer.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_05: So it was in my orbit, but I never really thought I have broken places.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_05: But something happened then where I feel like honestly, the Holy Spirit said, What if she's right?
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_05: What if she's like?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_05: And so I wrote down, I somehow I went back and I wrote down what the what the lady said about narcissism.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I and God began to, it's just like the spirit was beginning to say, you can see yourself in that.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, again, this is not necessarily that big a deal, but I don't believe I am a full-blown narcissistic, you know, narcissism pathological, but I believe everybody's on the scale, and I was way further toward that end than I wanted to admit.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: And so I started to, that's when I began to look at my life and ship.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_05: That's when I became not just more compassionate toward Christie, but I had to be compassionate toward myself.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_05: And I had to be compassionate toward my parents, and had to let God shepherd the little boy that got wounded and broken inside of me that was hiding behind success, um, accomplishment, looks, achievement, affirmation of other people, all these things that I was getting, you know, legitimate needs met from illegitimate places.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_05: Couldn't see my wife for what she really was and couldn't empathize with her in that place.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_07: So oh yeah, yeah.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_07: And let me take another side trip for a second.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_07: Listen, man, if you're a leader listening right now, and everybody's a leader, meaning everyone's influencing someone in some way, and leadership is influenced.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_07: But I do mean if you're a leader like a church leader, pastor, listen to what Chip's saying.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_07: Listen, listen.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_07: You may not have a wife who deals with depression, you may not have a husband who deals with it, you may not have a kid or whatever.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_07: You do have issues that ping off of other people's issues and make you ineffective at connecting and resourcing one another the way God intends for you to.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_07: Here's the deal, man.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_07: Every breakthrough you want starts with you.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_07: Every breakthrough you want starts with you.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_07: The greatest hindrances to you enjoying the future God wants you to enjoy.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_07: The greatest hindrances between you and the future God wants you to have are inside of you, not outside.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_07: They're inside, not outside.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_07: And and and again, we don't want to get all weird about chip's place of ministry, but I mean, this dude, this couple here is leading a large church, and while they were building it, these things were going on.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_07: As they continue their story, you're gonna see how that continued.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_07: In fact, it God continued to bless.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_07: But the base from which they operate, which is their marriage and their family and their own personal journey, changed dramatically.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_07: And I guess you can correct me, but I bet they're enjoying their days like they'd never thought it was possible to enjoy.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_05: You know, Chip, I'm reading right now in my uh Bible reading plan, starting in Genesis, beginning of the year.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_05: I'm reading right now about the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and and really God spoke into me yesterday.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_05: Just, you know, I've seen it before, but it was just fresh.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_05: That man, these guys were extraordinarily blessed.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: Extremely blessed.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_05: God is promising to bless them.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_05: And they were extremely broken at the same time.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_05: We tend to say either you're blessed or you're broken.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_05: But what I'm saying to what my experience is, and what I would say to anybody who's listening, is you can actually be extremely blessed and have extremely broken places at the same time.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_05: But if you don't deal with those broken places, they can ruin the blessing.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_07: Absolutely.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_04: Chip, what you what you just said to these guys is it's crazy how apparent it is that Chip was able to be a more understanding husband and kind of move their marriage in the right direction by being more empathetic to his wife once he realized he's got stuff he's got to deal with.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's that's crazy what you said.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, just having heard what they shared.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_04: That's yeah, that's something else.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_04: I I want to I I want to connect some dots real quick with Christy.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_04: So up until the doctor saying you had postpartum, were you in any sort of regular, whether it was taking medicine or regular regularly seeing a therapist, like were you doing anything proactive on behalf of your mental health?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, I wasn't.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: I was just kind of trying to keep my head above water.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_04: Just surviving.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_04: But you did know I'm struggling with depression.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_04: Or okay, yeah.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: I I mean, I knew that, yeah, even even if I didn't say the words, like I knew that there was something there.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, and and again, just to reiterate the shame that was around that.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, because we're talking what, uh how how many years ago?
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_04: Because now we're in a day and age where I mean, mental health, it's coming up on 25 years ago.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, coming up on 25 years ago.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_05: So I think 2002, 2003.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I would go so far as to say with the younger generation, there really is no stigma with mental health.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there really there just isn't.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I have kids and it's it's something that their you know peers talk about very openly and candidly, but 25 years ago, we're it's a game changer.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, a completely different culture in America as far as how we saw mental health and mental illness for sure.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_03: I can remember around that time, just I was breaking down.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I can remember sitting on our little front porch and thinking, I gotta go.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I can't do this anymore.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_03: And my sister actually was there with me.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_03: And she was like, Me, we need to get maybe go somewhere and just to a hospital, you know.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_03: And this is just kind of like where I think your mindset was.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: You looked at her and you're like, she is not going to a hospital.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, and then there was just nothing beyond that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, okay, well, if we're not going to the hospital, then what are we gonna do that will, you know, help in this moment?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: And um, it's kind of a blur after that.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: I don't really even know what happened, other than I was hoping like to take a step towards some relief.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: But anyway, that again, that's indicative of like where we were, not just as a couple or as a family, but just the times of, you know, if I went to the hospital, what would that look like for for him or whatever that was?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_05: And for us, you know, and again, you look back on it, you're just living out uh the life that you have and and what you've learned in the family of origin, the culture in which you've been brought up in.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_05: And so again, I don't understand it, I don't get it, I have no concept of how deep this is and how real and debilitating it is.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_05: And so I'm like, nah, I have no place for that in my framework for life and living.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_05: And so again, part of what I look back on with deep regret and repentance to say, you know, man, forgive me for being so unavailable, inattentive, and unaware of even what she was going through at that time.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: And and I think, you know, in that in that season, once Reagan, our son, was born, she did get diagnosed with postpartum.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's probably when officially Christy started taking some medication and going to either counseling or psychiatrist, psychiatric psychologist.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_05: I don't remember the soup, you might can can say that.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_05: But even in that chip, that became in itself um a part of an issue for us over time.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_05: Just because what was meant to be helpful ended up from the medicine side, because we we didn't know what we didn't know, from a medicine side, um it it just wound up being a part of what led us to a a really crisp a real crisis in 2019.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_07: Explain that.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_07: What do you mean the medicine side?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_07: What do you mean that led you to the crisis?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, doctors will prescribe anything.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, they'll they want to help you, they want to bring relief.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: There's such a our our chemistry, our body chemistry and the way we metabolize and all of those, like the the side effects of some of the medicines that um we tried, you know, over the years, my body did not respond well to.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: It may have numbed out, you know, the pain a little bit, but there was never it was never really helpful for me.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, fast forward to to the crisis of of 2019, um, uh it had just been a terrible cocktail offered to me of medication.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um, without, you know, now there's DNA testing and all of this stuff that kind of helped you know what what your body can um metabolize and be helpful with.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: But also what we've come to understand is like medicine can help support you while you do the work of therapy, you know.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: But if you don't have the combination of the two, then you're just dependent on a medication to try to help heal you.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: And it just was not that was not effective for me.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: And it ended up being um a real dangerous situation as far as the medicine goes.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_04: Listen how listen how stupid this is.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_04: For the once I knew that I had depression, it was my senior year of college.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: That's when I had words for it.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_04: And for the longest time, I said, I don't need therapy because there's nothing wrong with my thinking.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_04: There's just something wrong with my brain.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_04: So all I need is medicine.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_04: And now having been the recipient of just such good, rich therapy, I'm like, how did I go so long without?
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_04: Because you're you're so right.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_04: And I I would I would hear the science that therapy and medicine is just a dynamic duo, you know, when they're complimenting each other.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, well, that's not for me, because I I think perfectly fine.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_04: And now I realize I still don't think perfectly fine.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: I'm on a journey of getting better and better.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_04: That's right.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and that's part of the part of the the issue for I think church people, people like me, they just didn't know any better.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_05: I I think uh I would say with the medicine Christy wound up on, she would say to me at times leading up to 2019, the the August the 4th, she would say, something's off.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not right.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_05: And so the medicine she was on, both highly addictive.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_05: So they're intended for short-term use to help you get those prices.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_05: But like alcohol, the initial height is is awesome.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_05: But then your body needs more and more of it, and the and the return is less.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_05: So she's she's on a medicine that was intended for short term for seven, eight years.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_05: And so wow.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_05: So she's got one medicine bringing her down, she's on another medicine trying to bring her up.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's this constant yo yo.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_05: The medicines she was prescribed were addictive.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_05: And it was, man, God gave us a a great doctor in Houston that that we've become friends with.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_05: Christy, especially, who's an addiction specialist, neurologist, and he's the one that introduced us to the idea that you don't want to be on anything that's going to be addictive like that, and your body can't metabolize certain medicines.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_05: Let's find out the ones that they do.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_05: Now, that said to Christy's point, the medicine is to help you, and it's awesome.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_05: You should take it.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_05: You should take medicine if that's going to help you.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_05: But until you do the deeper work of therapy, and again, I don't want to go down this rabbit hole too far, but for guys who may have listened this far, uh, or maybe listen and go, hey man, this is kind of woo-woo, you know, just pray over that thing, slap a Bible verse on it.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_05: Here's what I say to you.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_05: There are two Greek words for healing in the Bible that I'm aware of in the New Testament.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_05: One is the Greek word eaoma, which means healed in a moment.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_05: Jesus can touch you and you can be healed in a moment.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_05: But the other Greek word you guys probably know is therapeuo.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_05: It's therapy.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_05: And just like we would go to physical therapy, if you've got a sciatic nerve problem in your in your back, just like you may go to have a bone set in your arm and have to do some PT for your shoulder, therapy is not a bad thing.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_05: It's actually a gift.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_05: Our souls get wounded.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_05: I'm reading today in Mark 14 where Jesus says to his disciples, in the garden, I am troubled, I am distressed, and I am grieving in my soul.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_05: That's Jesus.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_05: So you need a therapist, a person who is a good soul doctor to help you, just like a cardiologist for your heart, a neurologist for your brain, uh a doctor for your soul, is called a suke.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_05: That's your soul, that's a Greek word, a psychologist.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so I had to, we had to get over the stigma of even that.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that man, we're going to a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_05: And again, the the hope is that they understand, man, they're going to try to help you with the with the Holy Spirit to heal, not prescribe you something just to get you through another day.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_05: And not everybody, and again, I'm not throwing anybody under the bus.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_05: I'm just saying Christy's spirituality was such that she knew that she wanted the Lord to heal her in the therapy.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_05: In the place we went, they weren't necessarily, they weren't all believers, weren't even necessarily believers, but her heart was grounded spiritually.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_05: And so there was, we we learned to use the medicine.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_05: She she began to, I would say, I feel like I'm putting words in your mouth, but the medicine was helping, but she was doing her work toward healing it.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: So when it comes to 2019 and the recovery of it and and the aftermath and and all of that, do you currently see that time as something in your rear view, like a storm that you weathered?
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_04: That's something in the past that you got through.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_04: How did y'all get through it?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_04: And how did you get to a place where you're like, oh wow, we're we're actually aware of what we need to be doing and how we need to be thinking.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_04: And obviously we're we're never gonna perfect that, but you guys seem to be in a really good place right now.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like what was the journey to get to where y'all are at right now?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it was definitely the wall, like to look back and see it as a storm, yes.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: But I think it was um the a place where the Lord allowed us to, you know, land in that spot and to know that we have to not just try to get over the wall, but we had to go through the wall in order for us to get to a different place, a different reality, a a different way of living.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: And by necessity, like we didn't go, okay, I think that we'll go, you know, get some therapy now, or we'll go.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_03: It stopped us dead in our tracks.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: It was a pivotal moment, you know, and even in that month of gaining tools, you know, that the Lord gave me in order to not just cope with life, but to move through this and to go back into those places that needed, I met Jesus in those spaces, in that therapy room.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_03: And he was able to speak differently over me rather than the things that I've, you know, had locked in and uh and was having to having to deal with, you know, as far as thought patterns and everything.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, after leaving California, um, I spent, you know, a month out there doing that.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: I knew I was coming back into um an environment that had not done the work, you know, that had it was still toxic and dysfunctional and not 100%, but a lot of that was there.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_03: And so a lot of what I did at the very end of that was like, okay, Christy, like we got to prepare ourselves to go back into that.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: And so it was really like a stopping point, a dip, like the wall, let's start going through it.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: I got through, covered through a lot of stuff, and then walked into a space that I knew we were about to have.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: I just felt like the Lord was gonna have to do a work beyond that.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so it has been a journey beyond.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: So it is not like in the rear view mirror that was okay, we overcame that.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: Now we're good.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: It was really the starting point of, it was a stopping point of what was, and it was a starting point of what is right now.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so there was a lot that had to um be addressed.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: And for us personally, you know, relationally, for him to start his own, you know, deep dive into his own emotional and I would say mental health journey because it is, it's your mind, it's your body, and it's your spirit.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, for him to to take that dive too, and then for that to again become something that the Lord would use to change a cult to change a culture around us.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I would say, Joey, to that, 2019 was a moment where I think Christy had a uh I would say in biblical terms of death and resurrection.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_05: She went into, she went into that season one way and emerged a different person with a different spirit, heart, you know.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_05: And again, in infancy, she's grown through that.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_05: I was not there.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_05: Again, in 2019, she's the identified patient.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_05: That was really where uh I was aware there were things on my radar, but I was not ready yet to look at myself.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_05: My crisis came in 2021 when uh our elders told me that our staff was in an unacceptable condition.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_05: And there's a lot to that.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_05: We can talk about it more if you want to.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: And we had to fix it.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_05: But the fix meant I had to look at myself because I was the leader.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_05: I had allowed it.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_05: What were the broken things in me that allowed that to happen for so long?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_05: Where Christie had been for years saying, hey, things are not okay at church.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_05: It something's off.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_05: People are leaving wounded.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_05: We're we're this is not good.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_05: And I would tell her, again, part of my journey was stay in your lane.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_05: You don't understand, you know, that kind of thing.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_05: But in that crisis, where it was honestly, uh, it was so in my face that I couldn't avoid it.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_05: I started then to say, I got to get help on me.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_05: How did this happen?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_05: How did we get here?
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_05: How did I get here?
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_05: How did I allow this to happen?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so there was this convergence.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_05: Christy and I had started growing together better in 2019, um, better, but it couldn't actually happen until I looked at my own crap and my own broken heart and actually had to, you know, step into that.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_05: And that was very difficult to do, but it was clearly God's grace and the best thing ever to bring us graciously to this point of breaking.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_05: And again, a lot of blessing and a lot of brokenness, all in the soup.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_05: But that's when I would say for me personally, I began to say, okay, it's me.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_05: You know, Chip to your point a while ago, you know, the breakthrough you want is inside.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't, I didn't want to hear that.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, so uh it's it's hard to hear that.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, what's wrong?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_05: Man, every indicator of our church is up and to the right.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_05: Baptisms, attendance, budgets, buildings, expansion, everything's up and to the right.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_05: And in the midst of some really good stuff God was doing, there was extreme brokenness behind the scenes.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_05: Our backstage life and what was going on was extraordinary, extremely messed up.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't want to hear it until I had to hear it and I had to face it.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_05: And then the healing had to be had to be in me.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_05: The tip of the spear for everything God's done at our church sits right here.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_05: Like God is God started this journey with her, and now we walk in the wake of that, even as a church staff and body, um, now because of what God did in her and how God has opened us up, opened me up, and now, therefore, uh us up in our church.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_05: This is this is now the way we're gonna do life.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_05: This is the way we're gonna lead.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_05: Now everything's changing.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_05: And it got real hard.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_05: It got worse before it got better, I'll tell you that.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_05: But we're five years into this journey.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_05: It's hard to believe.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_05: And uh I feel like for the first time, uh, you know, Chip, you and I were talking, Joe, we were talking, uh, we haven't added any campuses because why would we want to multiply such extreme dysfunction and toxicity?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, five years now into the journey, I feel like we're probably on the starting line of saying, okay, maybe we do have something now that would be worth multiplying because it's real.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_05: The front stage and backstage uh life of our staff by this are incongruence.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_05: There's they're incongruence.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_05: There's integrity there, not perfection.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_05: Please hear me, not perfection.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but there's integration of soul health with the things that we're attempting this to do in kingdom work.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_04: Can you just briefly elaborate on what your elders meant when they said to you that your staff was in unacceptable condition?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh when people would leave our staff, we would always celebrate, hey, God opened another door, they're gonna go, you know, serve their family, they're gonna go do this or that.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_05: The truth was they they were worn out, they were exhausted, they felt like they were not seen, not heard, they felt like they were being prodded all the time.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so what the elders came back to us after um doing us a very brief uh short uh survey of some of our staff, they came back and said, Look, the pace is unsustainable.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_05: We lead out of fear, not out of love.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_05: We are a high control, uh low empowerment leadership model, and we value policies over people.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, other than that, you're great, right?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_05: Those four themes become, and then so if if if if if there's anybody out there, it can happen at any level.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, we were so caught up in the machinery of uh a really large church.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_05: And again, the shadow became we were trying to build a brand, not be a church.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_05: And that's so crazy to look back on now, but I see it so clearly, that's inadvertently where we got to.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_05: But when you start doing that, you're you're working out of your flesh, not out of revelation in the spirit.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_05: You're driving people for result, not being sensitive and to to people and seeing them and loving them well.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_05: And we just got there to a place where our elders, again, they're they were a part of the soup too.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_05: Um we've all had to say, God forgive us.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_05: God forgive us.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'll say one little thing.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: Can I mention all of that?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, all of that.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: So true.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things as a creative person, um, just wired in a creative vein.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like that's that's kind of my I I saw no one was able to use their creativity.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody was allowed to dream and to try to live out the dreams and live out the calling, really, that God would the visions that people would see.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's that was part of the control was it had to look so much a certain way.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_03: Then the empowerment piece, and that was one thing that grieved me more than anything, um, as a creative.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_03: Any idea that was brought to the table, if it wasn't in alignment with what was already decided that it was going to look like, it was tossed out.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: And so, and I'm thinking as I looked, you know, back, God creator, the ultimate creator, that is created in his image.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_03: And if that is suppressed in a person's life, yeah, that is a deep darkness that has come against a culture and a team, a family, a person.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I feel that in a really deep way.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_05: So decision making was so concentrated at such a small, small place at leader in in the Pine Lake organization that everything under that was you're just following the plan.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_05: You're just running the play.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_05: You're just following the playbook, but nobody could make a decision, nobody could change it.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_05: And and so again, it was it was a sick place to be for us and became very unhealthy.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_05: And uh, yeah, thank God for our elders who you know were willing to say this was not it, and we got to fix it.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's neat the transformation that you guys have had and how and are having how that affects culture and the people.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I'm stating the obvious, but how impactful that is.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_04: And I just a bizarre thought experiment.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_04: Just imagine if you guys never walked beyond the, oh, we'll just pray for the depression and it'll go away.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you're prideful, we'll just pray and that will go away.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, imagine if that's the theology you guys were working with that all you have to do is pray and God'll do it.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_04: There's no hard work to be done.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you guys would be stuck back where you were.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no doubt.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_05: And and look, we're we're for praying.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_05: And again, God can heal in a moment.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_05: He can.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_05: I agree.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_05: And if you're gonna be true, and this is this this is part of my wiring, if you're gonna be honest with the text of the scripture, you have to acknowledge that there is a Greek word for healing, which is therapy.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's transliteration, it's therapy.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_05: So if you don't have room for that, if you don't have room for 1 Peter 1.22, where it says, since you have in obedience to the truth, purified your soul for a sincere, no pretending, no faking love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_05: If you can't acknowledge that as part of a discipleship process, you're missing it.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_05: And you're gonna disciple people's heads, but you're gonna miss their souls.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where I lived for a long time.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_05: But now I and we want to have our heads and hearts discipled to Jesus, not to the culture, not to our parents, not to Southern Baptist or whatever your flavor may be.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_05: You're influenced by all that.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_05: But I want to be disciple to what Jesus said, and that is body, soul, and spirit.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_05: He is able to sanctify you entirely.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_05: Spirit, soul, and body is the way Paul says it in 1 Thessalonians 5.23.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_05: This is grounded in the word, and God uses people and resources to bring healing.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_05: It's called sanctification.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's what it is, it's the sanctification process.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_05: My soul was sanctified the moment I received Jesus.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_05: I have no doubt about that.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_05: My position in Christ is set, and my practicality of working out what Christ has done for me, the healing He has for me, takes time and work.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_07: It's it's all throughout scripture, man.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, it it is.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_07: We basically we've we've taken the culture that we live in, the world, and laid it over scripture and interpreted scripture through our culture instead of the other way around.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_07: I did want to remind anybody listening that we're gonna do another episode.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_07: So if you're listening to this episode somewhere, you'll be able to get the next episode, and we're gonna talk about how this has affected Chip and Christie's leadership, the culture, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_07: And uh so I just want to say side by there.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_07: You know, whatever, I'm full of these one-liners.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_07: Picked it up from a book years ago.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_07: The culture of an organization, culture of an organization is the behavior of its leaders.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_07: The culture of an organization is the behavior of its leaders.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_07: It's not what they say it is, it's not what they hope it is, it's not what they write out after a planning retreat.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_07: The culture is how they do life one day at a time, how they treat people, how they see themselves.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_07: And it's and it's mostly sub-or unconscious.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_07: Another phrase is this one you teach what you know, you reproduce what you are.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_07: So what happens is if we we fill our head with all the correct knowledge, let's say, but what comes out of us is all that unresolved, unfinished, unprocessed hurt, and and we don't even see it because you know we feel at home when the outside matches the inside.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_07: Well, if I'm all jacked up on the inside, it's not gonna appear unusual or abnormal to me if the outside's all jacked up.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, just I'd love for you to chew on this one.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_07: Jeremiah 1:10.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_07: You know, set you over nations and kingdoms.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_07: And then he says this scripture says this to root up, pluck up, pull down, destroy.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_07: Root up, pluck up, pull down, destroy, build and plant.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_07: What does anybody notice immediately?
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_07: Four of the six, two-thirds, are destructive.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_07: One third, two of the six is constructive.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_07: What am I saying?
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_07: In Chip Chad's paradigm of reality, that's the perfect picture of spiritual growth.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_07: Spiritual growth is two-thirds getting rid of what's already there.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_07: One-third adding new stuff.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_07: Because if you don't change what's there, the parable of the sower, the the the word's gonna come, but it's it's gonna be by the road, meaning you're not even aware enough to appreciate it.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_07: Number two, it's gonna hit rocks.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_07: What's rocks?
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_07: Unprocessed pain.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_07: It's gonna fall among thorns.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_07: What's that?
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_07: That's the distractions what you said earlier, Chip.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_07: That's learning to get the right need met the wrong way.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_07: It's all through scripture, man.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_07: It is all there.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_07: Kind of all wrapped around this.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_07: I believe the Father's love and what we're talking about right now is is the key to the next move of God.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_07: I think the world's gonna want what we have when what we have is bringing us into a healthier place.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_07: I would say that heretofore, historically, our lives don't really look that much different.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_05: They don't.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_05: And Chip, I, you know, the I'll trust you on the math of the two-thirds, and I I I would agree with that.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_05: I think in my mind, what I see is that you have to uh uproot, tear down, pluck up, and destroy, and then build better.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_05: Oh build, build, build from there.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_05: And I think what my uh upbringing and my culture is is you just build on top of whatever's there as if that doesn't matter.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_05: You know, what good's it gonna be do me to go back and look at the past, the past, and the past.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's not even affecting me now.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_05: We have a a friend who likes to say the past isn't the past.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_05: It's not really the past, the past is the present, you know.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_05: And when you bury pain, you bury it alive, you know, it those kinds of things.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I think for me, I was one of those guys that for a long time would go, what use is it to, my mom and dad ain't got nothing to do with me.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_05: You know, what happened to me when I was six years old has nothing to do with me.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_05: And and that's where I would say to God's point in Jeremiah, no, actually it has everything because that's the you know, the framework, the the strategy, the lies you believe, the ways you're trying to get legitimate needs met in illegitimate ways, until you go back and unearth that and pull that crap up by the root and get it out.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's just gonna keep giving bad fruit no matter what.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_05: If grass can grow through the sidewalk, your bad past is going to come through no matter how much spiritual stuff you lay on top of it.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_04: Chip, I I have been playing around with this verse.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_04: I know we got a wrap, so I'll I'll make it quick.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_04: But I and I think it's uh I Jesus said it a few different ways in a parable, but I think it was basically finding a beautiful pearl and then selling everything you have and giving up everything you have just to have that pearl.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_04: To me, recently in my spiritual walk, that that is so connected to mental health and peace of mind.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's basically if we believe God's kingdom is here in the now that we can take hold of it, that's what I want.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_04: I want peace of mind, I want good mental health, I want joy, and I'll give anything up and do whatever it takes to have that.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_04: And that's something that's been on my mind for this last week or two.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_07: Christy, let me ask you a question.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_07: I know we got to wind up.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_07: How tangibly that in your daily life together, as as Chip has begun to deal with his issues, how is he different?
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_05: Oh Lord.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean so different.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think a a willingness to lean in.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_03: I think just even when he affirms who I am as a person, the way I was designed and created, and the fact that I'm actually um in partnership with him, you know, in life.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_03: I feel brought in and loved.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there is the more compassion he's had for himself, learn to do that and seeing the compassion of God, then he has been um just a uh he's a compassionate man now.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel that on a daily basis, really, you know, and just seeing it how the willingness that he has to step towards people.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_03: We're used to it was just like he didn't want to go there with people.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he would be in a counseling session with another person and just was very um that would just drain him.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_03: And so now there is a true love that he has for me, for our family, and um and also for the people that he leads.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_03: So I see it.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: I see that in him.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, man.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_07: Well, this has been really awesome.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_07: Appreciate the courage and and and really just commitment to the Lord that makes you want to share this.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um, Chip, I I I don't know.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_07: And again, forgive me for the presumptuous of this statement, but do you realize how bad leaders need to hear what you guys are talking about?
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, I do actually, Chip.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, once once your eyes get open, you see it.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_05: And so and I don't say that in a judgmental sense.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_05: I say and Chip, I think they are aware of it in the depths of their heart, but they're afraid to address it because what does that mean?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_05: Will they lose their job?
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and thank God for our elders who had extreme grace and patience for me.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_05: Thank God.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where I think, again, the whole church culture that we live in outside of the Pine Lake culture, I'm saying the church, big C church, the culture has to be can we help people become real all the way to the core?
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_05: I think pastors want it, but they don't know how to get it.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_03: I would I when you said bad leaders, I I think I would just use the word broken leaders because uh one of the things that's been most healing for me as far as like woundedness by the church or by people in the church, the most healing part for me was the forgiveness part.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I couldn't like I tried so hard to work through the emotion part of it, but the spirit, like the deepest spiritual part of healing for me was learning like to be able to forgive.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_03: And there and the way the Lord, like the place I can remember almost like where I was sitting, he said, see them as children, and you'll understand why they have wounded you so deeply.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_03: It makes sense.
• 1:08:53
  SPEAKER_03: And so to visualize the person as a man or a woman grown just being whatever is hard.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's hard to forgive.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_03: But to be able to look at them and see them as children in their own trauma or brokenness or woundedness, I can forgive that child.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that is just a that is who they are.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so that that has been um freeing for me.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_07: Well, Chip and I, both of you, Chip and Christian, outgrowth of my life in ministry for all these years is to just build a coalition of people that want to create the safety, the awareness, the skilled people to help.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_07: But the bottom line is to gradually incrementally, or God just shazam.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_07: I just believe this.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_07: You know, we'll talk all the time about organizations that rise to the level of the leader.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_07: Well, in the context of our conversation, that ought to scare the crap out of us.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_07: Um but what it also does is inspire vision.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_07: Like, what if God's putting together uh connections and people and little pockets all over the place to make it safer for a leader to say, hmm, there might be something wrong with me.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_07: There might be work I need to do on me.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_07: Then of course we've got to have the people around that can actually help with that journey.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_07: I'm excited.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_07: I'm I'm excited about the future because I I do believe leadership's critical.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, your story is just another example of how the changes you allow God to do in you multiply in the lives of others.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_07: You know, 1 Timothy 4.16, you know, uh meditate on these things, persevere in them, and and here's the phrase they love, and your your progress, your progress, not perfection, will be evident to all.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_07: And then he says this amazing statement, and it will ensure salvation, or one translation says guarantee salvation to those who hear you.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_07: And that's all like God said to me one time to the degree you'll allow me to set you free, I can use you to set others free.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_07: Gosh, what could happen is more and more leaders get set free.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_07: Well, well, wow.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_07: Wow.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_07: Wind us up, Joey.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_04: Well, I'll just say that the next episode that we will drop will get into more of the beautiful weeds of mental health and mission of the church and what it looks like now doing ministry with this new understanding of having walked through what Christy and uh Chip have walked through, just having a brand new understanding.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, it sounds like a replenished spirit, and honestly, sounds like brand new vision based on what you guys have learned and walked through.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_04: I'm excited to hear about that in the next episode.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you guys for listening.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to Mental Health and the Mission of the Church.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: If this episode was helpful, share it with someone who might need it.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can also follow Chip on Instagram at Chipjud and find free resources for your spiritual and mental health journey at chipjudd.com.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time on Mental Health and the Mission of the Church.