Latest / Modern Day Missionaries / Secrets, Shame, and the Risk of Telling the Truth: The Silent Battles Missionaries Face with Dr. Janeen Davis

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Secrets, Shame, and the Risk of Telling the Truth: The Silent Battles Missionaries Face with Dr. Janeen Davis · Modern Day Missionaries

0:01
Welcome to Modern Day Missionaries, a podcast created for missionaries by missionaries.
0:06
I'm your host, Stephanie Gutierrez.
0:08
This podcast is brought to you by Modern Day Missions, which services more than 1100 missionaries in over a hundred nations, with an exceptional fundraising platform that makes support raising simple and seamless for missionaries and donors.
0:23
Some struggles just feel too risky to say out loud.
0:26
As a missionary, you're in a position of influence.
0:28
You represent Jesus and the church.
0:31
But what happens when your inner life starts to unravel when you're battling things like pornography, depression, same sex attractions, spiritual doubt, and the fear of being disqualified keeps you silent.
0:43
In today's episode at Dr.
0:45
Janine Davis joins me to talk about why missionaries often keep secrets, the cost and rewards of sharing them, what restoration could actually look like, and how to become the kind of person or team that makes it safe for people to come clean.
1:00
If you've ever wondered what it would cost to finally say it out loud, this episode's for you.
1:05
Stephanie Gutierrez: Janine, it is so good to have you back with us on the podcast.
1:09
Janeen Davis: Thank you so much, Stephanie.
1:13
Stephanie Gutierrez: We always have such a good time and we're always talking about conflict and like spicy subjects and I love it.
1:18
Stephanie Gutierrez: I love it because, um, we were just talking about this beforehand.
1:22
Stephanie Gutierrez: You have this really fun side to you and you're this peacemaker and we talk about really controversial or difficult things and that combination I think is powerful and it's probably one of the reasons I just.
1:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: Enjoy you so much and why I think you're called to do what you do, Janine.
1:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: That's just my
1:39
Janeen Davis: you so much.
1:41
Janeen Davis: Yeah, I really do just wanna have fun, and I don't know if this is a useful reference, it's pretty old, but there used to be this show on TV called The Biggest Loser, and it was a bunch of fitness coaches helping people rapidly lose weight, maybe in an unhealthy way.
1:54
Janeen Davis: I don't know.
1:55
Janeen Davis: Um, but.
1:57
Janeen Davis: There was one coach on there, Jillian Michaels, who like really screamed in everybody's face.
2:01
Janeen Davis: And I was like, man, that's the one I would want.
2:03
Janeen Davis: 'cause I don't want anyone to put up with my baloney.
2:06
Janeen Davis: Um, and I wanna be like the gentle Bob, like, you know, kind and, and patient.
2:12
Janeen Davis: But I think what I need for myself is the Jillian, like hardcore, let's go, go, go, you know, kind of person.
2:18
Janeen Davis: So as, as is, uh, a little bit, I think the theme of what we're gonna talk about today.
2:24
Stephanie Gutierrez: Mm-hmm.
2:25
Janeen Davis: We are complex.
2:26
Janeen Davis: Nobody's just one thing.
2:27
Janeen Davis: And sometimes there's different versions of us.
2:30
Janeen Davis: The version of me that wants the hard, um, don't put up with any excuses, kind of, um, coach for myself versus the type of gentle patient person I wanna be for others.
2:42
Janeen Davis: And, uh, sometimes that self version can accidentally slip out in the wrong direction, so I have to watch that.
2:50
Stephanie Gutierrez: Well, and yeah, and like you said, you just alluded to that we're talking about spicy stuff again today and, and it's stuff that I think it's applicable.
2:57
Stephanie Gutierrez: We don't be spicy for the sake of being spicy.
3:00
Stephanie Gutierrez: We talk about challenging things because we wanna help missionaries.
3:03
Stephanie Gutierrez: So for all of you missionaries who are listening, I.
3:05
Stephanie Gutierrez: We are gonna go into some of these silent battles that you guys face, like confession, control, shame, I mean, some of those kinds of things.
3:13
Stephanie Gutierrez: And the courage to be known, why it's hard to find some of those safe spaces and how we can find them and how we can be those safe spaces for others.
3:22
Stephanie Gutierrez: So Janine, I just wanna kick it off like what are some of the struggles missionaries carry that don't fit into the normal Christian box?
3:30
Stephanie Gutierrez: Like the kinds of things we feel like we're not even allowed to mention here, but we're gonna mention them.
3:35
Janeen Davis: Okay, well then that's a fun way to start off.
3:38
Janeen Davis: We'll definitely start with sex and sexuality.
3:41
Janeen Davis: Like, it's gonna be all the things, it's gonna be all the things that you might have learned from a young age, um, are not polite, uh, public.
3:52
Janeen Davis: Topics for conversation.
3:55
Janeen Davis: These are the things, and so the challenge is have we ever learned to talk about these things?
4:01
Janeen Davis: Maybe no.
4:02
Janeen Davis: Maybe all we've ever learned is don't ever talk about it.
4:06
Janeen Davis: That's we, we carry so much into our mature adult Christian lives that are really just the childhood version of things that never got revised.
4:15
Janeen Davis: And so there are areas of our lives that I think stay in immaturity.
4:20
Janeen Davis: Of course I think of that as it relates back to the conflict space.
4:24
Janeen Davis: We have a very childlike framework for understanding forgiveness a lot of times, and thinking apologies are something that can be mandated by my mom, and so can also be mandated by hr.
4:35
Janeen Davis: And we just like carry these ideas forward and they're, they're childish.
4:40
Janeen Davis: They're not matured into a deep relationship that starts with the Lord and then flows out toward others.
4:45
Janeen Davis: And so in these topics as well, we live.
4:50
Janeen Davis: With, with big pockets of our lives that are not allowed to be said, the things that must not be named the unmentionable things.
4:58
Janeen Davis: And I think a lot of it is because we've never learned how to talk about those things and it feels very high risk.
5:06
Janeen Davis: And we've seen, we've seen it cost people when these things are exposed.
5:13
Stephanie Gutierrez: Oh yeah.
5:13
Stephanie Gutierrez: I think every missionary knows a story of somebody who was finally brave enough to bring something to the light and they got pulled from the field or they didn't, and then it just like completely imploded and blew up their ministry.
5:26
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I wanna just say too, like we're not talking about this stuff to be gratuitous.
5:29
Stephanie Gutierrez: Like so we can just have a.
5:31
Stephanie Gutierrez: Be like, Ooh, we're wild on this podcast.
5:33
Stephanie Gutierrez: No, we're talking about this.
5:34
Stephanie Gutierrez: 'cause it needs to be talked about.
5:36
Stephanie Gutierrez: We're talking about, because otherwise missionaries are being yanked from the field too soon or they're imploding out of fear of speaking about them.
5:44
Stephanie Gutierrez: Okay, so you mentioned one sexuality.
5:46
Stephanie Gutierrez: What are some of the topics in sexuality that we feel like we're not allowed to talk about as missionaries?
5:54
Janeen Davis: Well, anything that you can think of that would make you blush is on the list.
5:59
Janeen Davis: Any words, any topics, these are the things and we all know them.
6:03
Janeen Davis: And the challenge is that we're gonna need to move the line, particularly because, um, I.
6:13
Janeen Davis: It is undeniable that exposure to pornography is happening across the board at pre-adolescent stages, which has a long term effect on people as they grow, you know, as they move through, uh, puberty and adolescence and into adulthood when they have been influenced by high speed, rapid access.
6:36
Janeen Davis: Um, to specifically things like pornography or, uh, commonly for women erotica.
6:42
Janeen Davis: Um.
6:43
Stephanie Gutierrez: And explain what AKA is if somebody might not know
6:45
Janeen Davis: Well, we might just differentiate that between, um, a visual stimulation for pornography and more of a storyline and, um, space for filling in the gap and inserting yourself into the, the, the main character of the story, uh, as erotica kind of storylines, more storylines than visuals in terms of what's, what's prompting that?
7:11
Janeen Davis: Um, uh.
7:13
Janeen Davis: Response
7:14
Stephanie Gutierrez: Which could be like a, a romance novel or it could be a, you know, an erotic television show where there's a lot of romance and sex
7:23
Janeen Davis: I didn't think I was gonna talk about this, but here's an exa, here's a real real example from from the field.
7:30
Janeen Davis: Um, I don't know how many I.
7:34
Janeen Davis: People understand this concept of maybe a mission, uh, uh, a guest house.
7:39
Janeen Davis: There's, uh, like places around the world where, where if you're on the field, you know, you have kind of access to guest housing where it's maybe run by an organization and it's a place that we can stay or when we're coming somewhere from medical or whatever.
7:51
Janeen Davis: Okay, so guest house.
7:53
Janeen Davis: Concept that is often stocked with by the missionaries for the missionary kind of stuff.
7:58
Janeen Davis: And I remember there was an annual meeting once where um, the women were separated from the men and that generally has a tone of the men have stuff they're supposed to talk about.
8:08
Janeen Davis: So the women I.
8:09
Janeen Davis: Should, I guess just talk about something too, but we don't really have the agenda of the guys, you know what I'm talking, like, has anyone been a part of that?
8:16
Janeen Davis: Okay, so the women are chitchatting and I bring up, uh,'cause I'm member care, so I'm, I'm, I'm leading this situation.
8:24
Janeen Davis: Uh, and so we bring up the topic of shame and what it is to live with a secret shame and how that can isolate us, which is certainly what we're talking about, Stephanie.
8:35
Janeen Davis: But in this topic, somehow what comes up.
8:39
Janeen Davis: Is the content of the books in the guest houses.
8:43
Janeen Davis: Because if you bring up, uh, romance novels that I started with erotica, and then what we have to understand is back in the day there when there was Christian bookstores, physical Christian bookstores, and I know that digitally, now that's, it's a different thing.
8:57
Janeen Davis: But there are authors whose names come immediately to my mind that their whole career is Christian romance novels.
9:06
Janeen Davis: And what became apparent in that day, it got a little out of hand and almost turned into like a book burn, book burning or something like that.
9:13
Janeen Davis: But because people were like.
9:15
Janeen Davis: If we're gonna be honest about what women are primarily using, uh, in kind of a different form of pornography, which we didn't have the, the words to say erotica at that point was it's Christian romance novels because they're stirring the heart and it's creating this wonderful fantasy of a romance.
9:34
Janeen Davis: And the women are.
9:36
Janeen Davis: That is, that is creating the effect in women.
9:39
Janeen Davis: That was the very thing we're talking about.
9:41
Janeen Davis: And they're like, we need to get these outta the guest houses.
9:44
Janeen Davis: And, and again, I am actually not trying to put a template on anyone that says, um, I.
9:53
Janeen Davis: Where I feel conviction and where I might struggle.
9:57
Janeen Davis: The world needs to accommodate that.
9:59
Janeen Davis: And let's go ahead and burn all the Karen Kingsbury books or whatever.
10:03
Janeen Davis: I, if that's something like that, you know what I mean?
10:05
Janeen Davis: Like these, these something, there's, there's a Christian theme in the romance novel that, that somehow made it are, what are you thinking when you hear me say this, Stephanie?
10:15
Stephanie Gutierrez: I'm to totally intrigued'cause I like when I said romance nobles, initially I was, I was thinking of the ones with like big old sex scenes in them, but you're mentioning just romance novels in gen, not even in general Christian ones.
10:27
Stephanie Gutierrez: And that's an interesting thought.
10:28
Stephanie Gutierrez: I think that to me makes me really think about how temptation is so specific to each person and that's where it is.
10:34
Stephanie Gutierrez: It's not a black and white thing.
10:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: So something that's like maybe innocent to somebody else can stir something in you.
10:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: So.
10:40
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah, this is okay.
10:41
Stephanie Gutierrez: This is a good opportunity for all of us to go, okay, what actually is this a temptation for me?
10:44
Stephanie Gutierrez: What actually is dragging me down and how can I not impose that on somebody else?
10:48
Stephanie Gutierrez: But be honest with myself.
10:51
Janeen Davis: So an area of shame can be, um, this sense that Christians, good Christians should be immune to certain things.
11:02
Janeen Davis: So the shame in this kind of a setting would be.
11:07
Janeen Davis: If apparently all the other Christians can read Christian romance novels and just like, praise Jesus for how that rugged against a man came to the Lord halfway through, or whatever the storyline is, you know, then, then what's wrong with me?
11:23
Janeen Davis: That there's arousal here and there's something, there's, there's, there's a additional.
11:28
Janeen Davis: Feeling laced with that, that, that I think is bad and wrong.
11:31
Janeen Davis: I can't say that.
11:32
Janeen Davis: I could never confess that because that's perverted.
11:36
Janeen Davis: I mean, if we're really gonna say the words where there's a lot of shame, the things that we're not supposed to say at the dining table, especially for people that have really lived.
11:46
Janeen Davis: Most of their lives in the Christian culture in some way, there are things that they have never experienced a mature or righteous con conversation about.
11:57
Janeen Davis: They've never heard it discussed, and so it feels like anything, anything in the realm of talking about desire or arousal.
12:09
Janeen Davis: very shameful.
12:10
Janeen Davis: Something that must be hidden because there's an instinct.
12:13
Janeen Davis: I've never heard about this.
12:15
Janeen Davis: This has never been discussed in any church setting.
12:18
Janeen Davis: I've never seen any big books being recommended by everyone about this, so this must be something horribly wrong with me.
12:26
Janeen Davis: I can never tell anyone about.
12:28
Janeen Davis: Now I see this.
12:29
Stephanie Gutierrez: too because like, so I'm thinking as you're saying this, like the, the more of a good girl or good boy that you were per se, and I use that term, you know, loosely on the field, your shame threshold is lower.
12:43
Stephanie Gutierrez: So if you haven't had maybe a lot of these experiences that other people haven't had, even things that might feel like, what are you kidding me?
12:49
Stephanie Gutierrez: How's that even a big deal to you can, can produce shame in you?
12:54
Stephanie Gutierrez: You know, my mom and I used to always like laugh.
12:55
Stephanie Gutierrez: This is like.
12:56
Stephanie Gutierrez: Kind of related, kind of not like we would always say, you know, good girl's gotta rebel somehow.
12:59
Stephanie Gutierrez: So we wouldn't wear name tags at small group events.
13:02
Stephanie Gutierrez: You know, like, like we're not wearing name tags or like, you know, sit in the back sometimes and we're like, my gosh, we're so bad.
13:11
Stephanie Gutierrez: But like my point is when you have been good and not all missionaries are the way we all come from different backgrounds, but I think sometimes you end up on the mission field and you've kinda lived a more straight laced life, at least for some of our missionaries.
13:24
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah, you're gonna maybe experience shame, um, very easily.
13:30
Stephanie Gutierrez: And what's the product of that?
13:31
Stephanie Gutierrez: You're not gonna wanna talk about it, like you said.
13:33
Stephanie Gutierrez: So maybe a good question for us is, what are we not wanting to talk about?
13:37
Stephanie Gutierrez: What is producing shame in us?
13:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: What are we keeping quiet about?
13:40
Stephanie Gutierrez: We think if I told somebody they would think it was so bad.
13:45
Stephanie Gutierrez: Hmm, this is good.
13:47
Janeen Davis: I think what you just said is really important, and I think this is really where I wanna go with this topic.
13:52
Janeen Davis: And we can be patient as we go there, but this is an important thing, what you just said, they're gonna think, I'm so bad.
14:00
Janeen Davis: We do have an innate culture of judgment in the church and I think that is really what fuels this.
14:07
Janeen Davis: It's not, it's not not knowing how to talk about these things.
14:11
Janeen Davis: It's understanding that if you say certain things, you will be judged.
15:11
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah.
15:13
Janeen Davis: And that, I think that is the, the lack of familiarity and practice of confession partnered with the lack of familiarity and practice of non-judgment.
15:29
Janeen Davis: They go hand in hand in, in an outcome.
15:32
Janeen Davis: Then that is that we do not have regular practices that we're seeing in church communities of real.
15:41
Janeen Davis: Repentance and confessing our sins to one another.
15:45
Janeen Davis: So when we sense that a sin is, uh, socially unmentionable, you know, one of those things that, that we don't talk about over the dining table like
15:55
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah,
15:57
Janeen Davis: that, we, we then assume if I share this one, there will be consequences and.
16:05
Janeen Davis: And, and it's judgment.
16:07
Janeen Davis: Judgment is one of the core consequences.
16:09
Janeen Davis: I mean, I think there are things that we are comfortable talking about over the dining table or around any small group group.
16:20
Janeen Davis: Well, I hope at least any small group, but, but struggles with common struggles that don't have as much of a stigma to them, like depression and anxiety.
16:31
Stephanie Gutierrez: Oh, I was gonna say like an easy one, like overeating people, like, oh my gosh, look it, I ate too many brownies again.
16:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: It's like, ha ha, ha, ha ha.
16:36
Stephanie Gutierrez: Like, we, we
16:37
Janeen Davis: back on the diet.
16:38
Janeen Davis: Yeah, sure.
16:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah.
16:40
Stephanie Gutierrez: But like, okay, you've just brought up anxiety and depression.
16:44
Stephanie Gutierrez: I mean, that's starting to, it's becoming more acceptable now,
16:47
Janeen Davis: Yeah.
16:48
Stephanie Gutierrez: kind of riding that line.
16:49
Janeen Davis: Yeah.
16:50
Janeen Davis: But I think that, I think that at least people can admit, maybe more so with anxiety than depression actually, but people, there seems to be an acceptance to that, that.
17:02
Janeen Davis: It's so undeniably prevalent everywhere, and especially in younger populations right now, that there's no point in having judgment about it because apparently everyone has anxiety.
17:13
Janeen Davis: Right?
17:14
Janeen Davis: So I think that this, the prevalence removes some stigma, but when we're not aware that the prevalence of pornography use and, and feelings of compulsive and addictive patterns of pornography use, we're not aware that that's.
17:28
Janeen Davis: Way more prevalent than anxiety.
17:31
Janeen Davis: So we're not aware of the prevalence.
17:33
Janeen Davis: So then we think it must just be me.
17:36
Janeen Davis: There's something wrong with me.
17:38
Janeen Davis: I'm gross this, these and, and plus how it, where are these things experienced?
17:44
Janeen Davis: We can experience anxiety in public settings.
17:46
Janeen Davis: Go ahead.
17:47
Stephanie Gutierrez: sorry, I have a question for you.
17:48
Stephanie Gutierrez: Do you think it's because we.
17:51
Stephanie Gutierrez: Perceive anxiety as being something that kind of happens to us or depression as something that happens to us because of our environments, whereas something like pornography or same sex attraction or any of that, that that is like a choice that we make.
18:05
Stephanie Gutierrez: Is that the perception
18:07
Janeen Davis: I think that could be a great insight.
18:10
Janeen Davis: I think.
18:12
Janeen Davis: And, and surpri.
18:13
Janeen Davis: Interestingly enough, it's not true.
18:16
Janeen Davis: Like if I'm treating anxiety, I'm I am or any of these kind of things, I say a phrase like this often, which is your emotions are the product of the story you are telling yourself.
18:31
Janeen Davis: So if you wanna feel different, tell yourself a different story.
18:36
Janeen Davis: No, that is different than how we may initially intuitively experience things like anxiety or depression or anger or frustration or irritation.
18:45
Janeen Davis: Is that external circumstance that thing made me feel this or that or the, the, the school schedule of my, that my kids are trying to keep up with is making me anxious.
18:56
Janeen Davis: Right.
18:57
Janeen Davis: Like, so we perceive it as something that's that.
19:00
Janeen Davis: Is exogenous, like it's, it's originates outside of us and happens to us rather than an endogenous experience that that starts from within.
19:10
Janeen Davis: And so a lot of times counseling is helping us.
19:13
Janeen Davis: Feel empowered to change it by realizing there are things happening inside of me that I, I can, I have the power to change that can then help me to experience, um, less of this, or not experience it like this anymore.
19:29
Janeen Davis: But you're right.
19:29
Janeen Davis: I think some of these things that seem more shameful, um, and less mentionable maybe can be.
19:39
Janeen Davis: More easily explained as there's something wrong with me, which of course is a way of understanding what is.
19:43
Janeen Davis: Shame is I'm bad, as opposed to guilt I did something bad.
19:49
Janeen Davis: Shame is I am in my essence bad, unacceptable,
19:53
Stephanie Gutierrez: It's weird how we classify them.
19:55
Stephanie Gutierrez: You know, it makes me think of, I remember reading the book Freakonomics years ago, and they were talking in Freakonomics about this study they'd done and where they were comparing kids dying of, okay, and I'm, please nobody get mad at me for saying this.
20:09
Stephanie Gutierrez: I am just saying a study.
20:10
Stephanie Gutierrez: So don't, I don't wanna get e email me, give me feedback.
20:14
Stephanie Gutierrez: But don't get mad about this.
20:15
Stephanie Gutierrez: The, the study simply showed, um, uh, kids dying from guns in homes and kids dying in.
20:22
Stephanie Gutierrez: Uh, pools, uh, from falling into swimming pools and homes, and they were just looking at the facts of things.
20:28
Stephanie Gutierrez: There was no political, the whole point of the book is they're not political.
20:31
Stephanie Gutierrez: They're just looking at studies and they were showing how um, kids are more likely to die of drowning in swimming pools in their homes.
20:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: And they were saying that, that's just hard sometimes for us to conceptualize because dying of a gun.
20:47
Stephanie Gutierrez: You know, from a gunshot is a violent death where a swimming pool, there's just something equally tragic, but it just feels, somehow, it feels less, like it's not violent in our minds.
20:58
Stephanie Gutierrez: And so we, there's just things that we do with that because of that.
21:02
Stephanie Gutierrez: And, and same thing like, okay, so let's think about emotions.
21:04
Stephanie Gutierrez: You've talked about the emotion or the experience of, um, anxiety or fear we could say is an emotion.
21:12
Stephanie Gutierrez: And then there is the emotion of anger.
21:14
Stephanie Gutierrez: So.
21:15
Stephanie Gutierrez: Currently, anxiety is acceptable to talk about.
21:20
Stephanie Gutierrez: Anger is less acceptable because anger, again, I think it feels more violent.
21:24
Stephanie Gutierrez: It feels it.
21:25
Stephanie Gutierrez: It creates a different image or picture or story in our head.
21:29
Stephanie Gutierrez: And same thing, like you think about pornography or masturbation or same sex attraction.
21:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: It creates this picture or story in our minds that we don't wanna see or think.
21:41
Stephanie Gutierrez: Whereas overeating or other acceptable things like you talked about, we're like, Hey, that's just.
21:48
Stephanie Gutierrez: Something we all deal with.
21:49
Stephanie Gutierrez: It doesn't feel dirty or violent.
21:52
Stephanie Gutierrez: Does this make sense what I'm even saying here?
21:54
Janeen Davis: Absolutely I, when you mention anger as an example of maybe a less acceptable emotion to admit to, that surprises me or, or that that challenge is a way that I think about anger.
22:11
Janeen Davis: Because I frame that as something that I hear people eagerly and readily express, primarily through social media, where it seems like our go-to way of talking about any opposing I.
22:27
Janeen Davis: Viewpoints to our viewpoint on a topic as with anger and condemnation.
22:31
Janeen Davis: And actually I think that directly feeds into the instincts that we have, that we cannot show up authentically in our local body of believers.
22:43
Janeen Davis: We're here for mutual discipleship and yet we cannot show up fully, authentically in that setting.
22:49
Janeen Davis: Um, I think partly because of very common.
22:55
Janeen Davis: Patterns that we have that show that it's not safe for you to say certain things.
23:01
Janeen Davis: We're gonna come down hard in advance with our judgment and condemnation about viewpoints so that everyone will know.
23:10
Janeen Davis: They better not, um, endorse that viewpoint because we preemptively, um, excluded it as a possibility for Christians.
23:21
Stephanie Gutierrez: Righteous anger is totally acceptable.
23:22
Stephanie Gutierrez: We, we
23:23
Janeen Davis: Oh, that's, that's right.
23:24
Janeen Davis: That's what we call it.
23:25
Janeen Davis: Righteous anger.
23:26
Stephanie Gutierrez: yeah, but don't talk to me about being furious with your kids or furious with, I mean, there's, there's again, some things are okay, some things are not okay.
23:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I do think some of it has to do with consequences.
23:38
Stephanie Gutierrez: Like the consequences of certain things are.
23:41
Stephanie Gutierrez: Certainly, uh, bigger than others, but still, sin is sin and struggles are struggles.
23:48
Stephanie Gutierrez: So what do we like, what do we do with all this?
23:51
Stephanie Gutierrez: I'm a missionary listening to this, and I'm like, okay.
23:53
Stephanie Gutierrez: Like, yes, I, I totally resonate with what you're saying, but like, the reality is if I bring some of this stuff up, I do have to deal with the consequences of that.
24:04
Stephanie Gutierrez: What do I do?
24:06
Janeen Davis: Okay.
24:07
Janeen Davis: I think that's really important.
24:09
Janeen Davis: Talking about consequences and maybe first, let's start by considering what our.
24:16
Janeen Davis: Biblical role is in one another's lives, is it to, um, create fabricated consequences for each other to induce moral choices?
24:30
Janeen Davis: I, I'm gonna propose No, it, what is the role that God calls us to play in one another's lives?
24:39
Janeen Davis: Is it to induce just.
24:43
Janeen Davis: Create consequences that will, um, assure at least me, that you will operate as I believe you should.
24:54
Janeen Davis: And if you don't, there will be punishment.
24:56
Stephanie Gutierrez: so I punished you to make myself feel
24:58
Janeen Davis: I think it's a way to control each other.
25:00
Janeen Davis: I think it's a way to control the narrative.
25:01
Janeen Davis: I think it's a way to control lifestyle and a lot of this we might say is biblical, but we have very little comfort allowing.
25:10
Janeen Davis: Other people to land in different lifestyle places that do not directly connect with a specific command from God.
25:19
Janeen Davis: But the challenge is we want it to, right?
25:21
Janeen Davis: We want to live our lives, um, out of conviction and we often.
25:28
Janeen Davis: Learn those convictions from our families of origin and our upbringing, and it's all twisted together with morality to the point that then we think all of my lifestyle convictions are biblical.
25:41
Janeen Davis: Which means if you land in a different place, uh, that's not, that's wrong.
25:47
Janeen Davis: You are wrong and you're not being biblical or you're not being a good Christian.
25:50
Janeen Davis: And I, I kind of want the Christian world to align with my view of how Christians are supposed to act based on really just the home I grew up in or whatever.
26:01
Janeen Davis: So I don't want you to be allowed to do that.
26:05
Janeen Davis: You know, I wanna just say a neutral, stupid one.
26:08
Janeen Davis: Um.
26:09
Janeen Davis: Like, I don't want people to be allowed to wear shorts to church.
26:14
Janeen Davis: People should show respect.
26:16
Janeen Davis: So if people do that, because I want to instill in my kids a sense of kind of more formal and humble reverence to the gathering of the body and to worship, I wanna instill that in my family and in my kids.
26:29
Janeen Davis: And I do not want someone else out there.
26:32
Janeen Davis: Doing something that undermines this message that I'm trying to say, which is good Christians show respect and reverence to God in, in their words, and even in their dress.
26:43
Janeen Davis: So this person can't be wearing shorts because it's undermining this, this kind of simple absolutist way that I want my kids to understand the world.
26:52
Janeen Davis: And so I'm gonna make comments.
26:55
Janeen Davis: I'm gonna make comments maybe to other people, but certainly to my family.
26:58
Janeen Davis: I can't believe that way that person's dressing.
27:01
Janeen Davis: Here's what I think we do this, this is all over the place, and this is something that I wanted to talk about with this idea.
27:08
Janeen Davis: Where does this come from?
27:09
Janeen Davis: Why do we have a problem of confession?
27:12
Janeen Davis: I think it's because we've, we've chosen to have a culture of, of judgment instead of a culture of confession.
27:18
Janeen Davis: I don't think you can have both.
27:20
Janeen Davis: I, I think that people will, whether we, we agree that they should or not, like human nature shouldn't be this way.
27:27
Janeen Davis: Okay, that's helpful.
27:28
Janeen Davis: That's fun for you to say, but that's not, that's not helpful and it's not, doesn't do anything human.
27:33
Janeen Davis: This is just how people are gonna work, whether you like it or not, is if they believe there's gonna be judgment and consequence for them being honest and transparent.
27:42
Janeen Davis: They just won't be honest and transparent.
27:44
Janeen Davis: So what you haven't done is you haven't actually won their heart.
27:48
Janeen Davis: You've just shown you are not a safe place for them to be honest and transparent, or maybe the church is not, which means all of those things will never have a chance to be worked on to be.
28:00
Janeen Davis: To be wrestled with the help of brothers and sisters, they're gonna have to carry that alone because we've decided we would rather just be very hard-nosed and say, absolutely not, and this is not okay.
28:13
Janeen Davis: And if somebody does this, we're gonna, there's gonna be punishment and consequence and judgment, and there's gonna be effects of this.
28:21
Janeen Davis: W what we're doing then, what we have to realize we're doing as, as a church or as um, a ministry team on the field.
28:29
Janeen Davis: When we make hard statements that rule out someone's ability to struggle with something, we are not actually helping them, not struggle with it.
28:37
Janeen Davis: We are just telling them they have to struggle with that alone and they have to be fake and act like they're not.
28:42
Janeen Davis: That is effectively what we are doing as we have this culture of judgment.
28:48
Janeen Davis: So.
28:49
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah.
28:50
Stephanie Gutierrez: So, okay, Janine.
28:51
Stephanie Gutierrez: No, that was really good.
28:52
Stephanie Gutierrez: Um, so what things, so, so, okay.
28:56
Stephanie Gutierrez: Missionaries are, are oftentimes overseas or on the field or in a different setting.
29:00
Stephanie Gutierrez: So like the struggles just feel amplified sometimes, you know, when they're in those settings.
29:05
Stephanie Gutierrez: So what struggles should missionaries.
29:09
Stephanie Gutierrez: Try to struggle through it with support on the field and when do they need to, to be pulled or to go back?
29:18
Stephanie Gutierrez: 'cause I'm, we've got, you know, two listeners, our primary listeners are missionaries and then of course we've got our member care folk and they're going, okay, but when is it time where they really do need to be off the field?
29:29
Stephanie Gutierrez: Or I've, I've talked to some missionaries recently who they're like, we don't know that we can fight this battle here where we're at.
29:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: How do you make that distinction?
29:37
Stephanie Gutierrez: Struggle here.
29:38
Stephanie Gutierrez: Struggle there.
29:43
Janeen Davis: I think.
29:47
Janeen Davis: We're, we have to, we're dealing with a few different factors.
29:51
Janeen Davis: One is this idea of qualification for leadership.
29:55
Janeen Davis: So if we see missionaries as people that are in a leadership position, then we're going to have a certain standard of righteous living.
30:08
Janeen Davis: A standard of submission to God's word and God's commands that we want them to be following in order to be a sent out ambassador of the gospel essentially.
30:21
Janeen Davis: Because effectively on the field, uh, we are, we are often innately in leadership positions, in the eyes of locals.
30:30
Janeen Davis: Even if the ones that would send us out are a little mixed feelings about.
30:35
Janeen Davis: Us being in leadership positions on the field that we wouldn't be allowed to hold back in the States.
30:39
Janeen Davis: But I'm not gonna go down that path right now.
30:42
Janeen Davis: Either way, we are in leadership positions.
30:45
Janeen Davis: We're seen as extra authoritative in cross-cultural environments a lot of times.
30:50
Janeen Davis: So that goes into what are the qualifications for someone to be in a position of authority and influence and leadership and what?
31:00
Janeen Davis: And then this is where it starts getting tricky.
31:02
Janeen Davis: What type of sins are they allowed to struggle with and are they not, I mean, are we holding them to the qualifications for elders or or what?
31:12
Janeen Davis: You know, and I think, here's something that I think about because I am the one that people say things to that they can't say to other people in their lives.
31:22
Janeen Davis: You know, as a counselor, I hear a lot people telling me that this is the first time they've ever told anyone these things.
31:29
Janeen Davis: I hear that all the time,
31:31
Stephanie Gutierrez: same.
31:32
Janeen Davis: which means these things are going on, whether you want to let them go on or not, and that, I think that is just a, a fact that I wanna keep coming back to is we, we are not truly removing these struggles from the lives of missionaries by telling missionaries they're not allowed to have these struggles.
31:54
Janeen Davis: Are you, are you following me?
31:56
Janeen Davis: I, we are naively thinking that if we say, well, missionaries, we, missionaries on the field are not allowed to struggle with pornography.
32:05
Janeen Davis: If you're struggling with pornography, then you need to go back home and deal with that.
32:08
Janeen Davis: Or, um, wherever the line is.
32:11
Janeen Davis: If you, uh, cross the line while getting a massage in Southeast Asia, like, I'm not trying to again be inflammatory, but I'm just trying to think of the most common
32:22
Stephanie Gutierrez: to be real.
32:23
Stephanie Gutierrez: You're being
32:24
Janeen Davis: Then you're, you're gonna need to deal with that off the field.
32:27
Janeen Davis: We're not gonna, okay, fine.
32:31
Janeen Davis: You can say that, but what is the result of that?
32:34
Janeen Davis: Does that mean that anyone who crosses that line leaves the field?
32:38
Janeen Davis: I'm gonna tell you as a fact know.
32:41
Janeen Davis: It just means that when people, when people cross that line, they, they hold it as a secret shame and they don't tell anyone and they stay on the field.
32:53
Janeen Davis: Almost always,
32:55
Stephanie Gutierrez: Hmm.
32:55
Janeen Davis: um, unless they got caught at one point like that.
32:59
Janeen Davis: But, but usually that's not the first time.
33:01
Janeen Davis: They don't get caught the first time, which means what you're really doing is saying the worst sins that you can struggle with, you're not gonna get any support for.
33:10
Janeen Davis: We will support one another with mild sins, but major sins.
33:14
Janeen Davis: We are effectively gonna require you to keep those secret because we refuse to tolerate.
33:22
Janeen Davis: Admit that Christians struggle with this, and if you do, you we're gonna punish you.
33:27
Janeen Davis: We're gonna send you away.
33:28
Janeen Davis: Well, okay.
33:31
Janeen Davis: I think there's just a little bit of naivete happening.
33:34
Janeen Davis: We want to believe that good Christians are okay struggling with these deeper character formation things, but we're generally on the path to holiness, and we don't want to consider the possibility that someone is more than one thing and is conflicting things at the same time.
33:54
Janeen Davis: But I believe that is possible and.
33:56
Janeen Davis: Not unusual.
33:58
Janeen Davis: Someone can love Jesus and want to obey his word and make a horrible decision or be stuck in a compulsive behavioral pattern of pornography.
34:07
Janeen Davis: It's just such an easy example of pornography.
34:09
Janeen Davis: But a new growing trend is gambling, addiction and deep debt, and they can love Jesus and also be caught up in a pattern of, of gambling.
34:23
Janeen Davis: And we want to believe that a good mature Christian doesn't have that struggle.
34:28
Janeen Davis: They can have this struggle, but they don't have that struggle.
34:33
Janeen Davis: And this is based on cultural, um, comfort.
34:40
Janeen Davis: This is what we're comfortable with and not what we're not comfortable with.
34:43
Janeen Davis: This is not based on reality.
34:45
Janeen Davis: And I think here's, here's something, if, if we can get down to, to some core elements of this.
34:51
Janeen Davis: Here's some things that perpetuate this that are psychological truths, universal psychological tendencies, and, and very easy to observe.
34:59
Janeen Davis: There's a human tendency that we all have toward oversimplification and dichotomous thinking, which means as, as human beings, the way our, I'm not trying to be secular here.
35:10
Janeen Davis: I'm saying the way our, our, the organ of our brain is wired and works is for efficiency, rapid.
35:20
Janeen Davis: Quick understanding and the way that our brains are able to understand information, all this information in the world very quickly, is through, we might use the word stereotypes or categorizing things, putting things into big, broad categories.
35:34
Janeen Davis: And the way this becomes problematic in our relationships and with within the church is we wanna categorize people as good or bad.
35:45
Janeen Davis: And so, I mean, is that enough to just say it like that, holy or corrupt?
35:51
Janeen Davis: And this is, this is done on a large scale.
35:54
Janeen Davis: This is done on a local scale.
35:55
Janeen Davis: We want to oversimplify things and put people into maybe one or two boxes and putting people into boxes and the way that we demonstrate to one another that we put people into boxes, perpetuates this pr, this pattern.
36:11
Janeen Davis: So here's what I mean by this, and I think this is, this is maybe challenging and can.
36:16
Janeen Davis: Possibly convicting, but also important to say because it leads to what do we do about it.
36:21
Janeen Davis: Okay, so I'll say it as like a challenge.
36:26
Janeen Davis: Maybe we need to try to stop handling tidbits of information we have about one another, or people in our small group, or our church, or church leaders or our denomination or on the national news as though that one piece of information gives me the authority to define someone by it.
36:46
Stephanie Gutierrez: Hm.
36:47
Janeen Davis: Say that's who they are and that's what they're worth.
36:51
Janeen Davis: Oh, I, you know, whatever it is, you know, the, uh, yeah, a denominational leader, someone that's, that has a large platform and is speaking about some Christian topic like within Christian circles, and they say that.
37:07
Janeen Davis: So when I demonstrate to people in my circle that I am.
37:13
Janeen Davis: Confidently willing to reduce that person who's an image bearer of the creator, God called the same as me by his mercy to be his child.
37:27
Janeen Davis: And I think that this piece of information, this theological stance, this political stance, this whatever, gives me the authority to reduce them down to my judgment about that, and then talk confidently in my judgment of them.
37:44
Janeen Davis: Is teaching and re reinforcing in our community that that is what you can expect too.
37:52
Stephanie Gutierrez: Hmm.
37:52
Janeen Davis: That we are going to reduce people and their worth and their value and their whole character, their complex character, down to the sum of one, maybe the worst thing they ever did, or the sum of one struggle that they're having.
38:07
Janeen Davis: Oh, that guy or that lady.
38:10
Janeen Davis: That did that or said that or believes that, yeah, I don't want you to be around them.
38:14
Janeen Davis: Like their whole character is defined by that one thing.
38:17
Janeen Davis: And I think that's important to realize that there is a deeper, broader consequence to these patterns of the way we talk, especially about people that maybe we don't know.
38:31
Janeen Davis: Or the, the pastor of the church or someone else at the church in our family car on the way home.
38:37
Janeen Davis: That's more of an maybe American setting, maybe not, but the way that we give ourselves permission to speak with criticism and judgment and condemnation about another person as though that's what they're worth.
38:51
Janeen Davis: They're just the sum of this.
38:53
Janeen Davis: One thing that I don't like, and I'm confident and able to speak like that.
38:56
Janeen Davis: What we're doing is we're reinforcing every day.
39:01
Janeen Davis: An underlying message that is if you step outta line, I'll do the same to you.
39:08
Stephanie Gutierrez: Wow.
39:09
Stephanie Gutierrez: What an important place for us all to just begin, like to, to just take an evaluation of our words.
39:14
Stephanie Gutierrez: What is it that I'm saying about people?
39:17
Stephanie Gutierrez: Um, and especially people who have fallen in some way, shape, or shape or form.
39:21
Stephanie Gutierrez: 'cause we all have, we all have sinned in so many different ways.
39:26
Stephanie Gutierrez: Pro every single day.
39:28
Stephanie Gutierrez: And so what are the ways that we're talking about others?
39:30
Stephanie Gutierrez: Because you're right.
39:31
Stephanie Gutierrez: That's, that's what we're teaching our kids.
39:33
Stephanie Gutierrez: That's what we're teaching our teammates when we speak that way.
39:36
Stephanie Gutierrez: And we're reinforcing that message in ourselves.
39:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: You know, I was thinking as you were talking Janine, about, um, soldiers that get sent off to war.
39:45
Stephanie Gutierrez: And how when they come back so often they have a physical or an emotional, um, injury of some sort.
39:53
Stephanie Gutierrez: And we're at a place now in society where we're not shocked by that.
39:57
Stephanie Gutierrez: If a soldier comes home and has PTSD, like there is some grace that's extended there because we're so thankful they put their life on the line.
40:04
Stephanie Gutierrez: And when I think about that in terms of missionaries, it almost feels like.
40:09
Stephanie Gutierrez: Could we do the very same thing because we lauded these missionaries and put them up on these pedestals?
40:16
Stephanie Gutierrez: Um.
40:17
Stephanie Gutierrez: There are these amazing people who have gone out to fight the war, to spread the gospel, to do the thing, and the second they fall, all of a sudden we're shocked.
40:27
Stephanie Gutierrez: Like we're just shocked.
40:29
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I'm like, why are we shocked?
40:30
Stephanie Gutierrez: I mean, you and I have lived as missionaries, so we're not shocked.
40:33
Stephanie Gutierrez: But other people, they're shocked that they've fallen when they've actually gone to some type of a battle.
40:38
Stephanie Gutierrez: So the likelihood of them experiencing that kind of stuff.
40:42
Stephanie Gutierrez: Actually, I think goes up.
40:45
Stephanie Gutierrez: That's not an excuse for any type of sin for anyone.
40:49
Stephanie Gutierrez: But golly, it, it helps us extend a lot more grace if we can realize they put their life on the line for the gospel.
40:56
Stephanie Gutierrez: Could I be a little bit nicer and sweeter and more grace filled as I help them through whatever it is that they're going through?
41:03
Stephanie Gutierrez: 'cause I'm not rescuing sex traffickers on the other side of the world.
41:07
Stephanie Gutierrez: I'm not living in a community where this.
41:09
Stephanie Gutierrez: Particular temptation is rampant.
41:12
Stephanie Gutierrez: I'm not feeling that type of particular stress on my family and marriage.
41:16
Stephanie Gutierrez: If I was, if we just think like, what if that were me?
41:19
Stephanie Gutierrez: If you're, if you're not a missionary listening to that, what if that were me?
41:24
Stephanie Gutierrez: What would, what would, how would I react?
41:25
Stephanie Gutierrez: And if you're one of the missionaries who didn't have that temptation and you came back still, it's not going well.
41:30
Stephanie Gutierrez: I didn't, so it doesn't mean that they should.
41:33
Stephanie Gutierrez: Well, maybe you served at a different time or God gave you a different kind of grace, or you have a different type of personality.
41:40
Stephanie Gutierrez: Um, but yeah, thank you for bringing that up.
41:43
Janeen Davis: Yeah, that's good.
41:43
Janeen Davis: It's like it's, we need to assume that soldiers and, you know, and people in the spiritual battle are gonna come home wounded.
41:51
Janeen Davis: And the only question is, you know, in what ways rather than when they fall and, and they struggle in certain ways.
41:58
Janeen Davis: If it comes out to say something like, I thought I knew you.
42:03
Janeen Davis: Is the most naive and unhelpful thing to say because it means that one, one piece of information about them or one failing in their life redefines everything else about them.
42:16
Janeen Davis: And thank God for the gospel of grace that says the opposite.
42:20
Stephanie Gutierrez: yeah.
42:21
Janeen Davis: You know that I'm not defined or limited to the worst thing I ever did, but rather I have hope and I'm in progress.
42:28
Janeen Davis: I'm not just a static sin and that defines me and that's who I am now.
42:33
Janeen Davis: I'm not static.
42:34
Janeen Davis: I'm in progress.
42:35
Janeen Davis: And so I'm struggle with different things at different times.
42:38
Janeen Davis: Some acceptable, some unmentionable maybe, but, but if we can have just a, a better understanding of.
42:49
Janeen Davis: The course of life rather than judgment about someone being in a Valley Valley expect it and not think that it undermines everything else that we, that we knew about them or entrusted them to.
43:02
Janeen Davis: I think one thing that that can motivate us is, is this idea that when you name something, it loses its power over you.
43:09
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes.
43:10
Janeen Davis: So the, the gift of confession, which is a command that God has given us, like this is his, these are his gifts to us for our good is when we, when we do find community, and maybe we do little tests along the way to see how do, how do people respond with this and that, and are they, is this mutual?
43:29
Janeen Davis: Are they taking risk too?
43:30
Janeen Davis: Are we growing in vulnerability to the point that we've learned?
43:34
Janeen Davis: They're here for me as my brother and sister and fellow, fellow traveler in this journey and race that we're trying to win.
43:42
Janeen Davis: We're not trying to find penalties on each other.
43:44
Janeen Davis: On along the way.
43:45
Janeen Davis: We are running to win and we want each other to win.
43:49
Janeen Davis: So, so as we can grow in trust, we can, we can.
43:55
Janeen Davis: We can earn that in one another by, by being mutual.
43:58
Janeen Davis: And a really important thing to understand is I don't get to do that if I'm not allowed to name the thing.
44:05
Janeen Davis: When it, when it goes unnamed, it still has power over me.
44:08
Janeen Davis: But to name something, to say it out loud immediately has this effect on us that I'm not as bound by it anymore.
44:15
Janeen Davis: So that's, that's, I think that's just an important thing to, to think about.
44:20
Janeen Davis: Yeah.
44:20
Stephanie Gutierrez: we can't keep this stuff inside.
44:22
Stephanie Gutierrez: So for any missionaries who are listening, who are dealing with any of the things we mentioned or anything else, like getting it out, saying it, and maybe that is with a trusted friend, maybe that, um, maybe you have a space in your missions organization where it is safe to say that and you don't have that fear of them pulling you.
44:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: That's amazing.
44:41
Stephanie Gutierrez: Maybe you do.
44:41
Stephanie Gutierrez: Well, there's organizations like Vallejo that provides counseling where they get missionaries or we, even at Modern Day, we have two, um, we have two counselors who provide free counseling to missionaries and they're not connected to any organization.
44:54
Stephanie Gutierrez: So there are spaces to have these conversations, but it's.
44:58
Stephanie Gutierrez: Gotta come out.
45:00
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I think too, we have to just get like tired enough of our sin that we are willing to take the risk to say that.
45:07
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I know that that's easier said than done, but like, what's the option to live with this and let it slowly eat me away from the inside or take the risk to find a space to be able to share that.
45:20
Stephanie Gutierrez: Um, do you have any thoughts on that?
45:24
Janeen Davis: Yeah, I mean, I think that's, we want it from both sides.
45:27
Janeen Davis: We want to encourage people to take the risk because your, your life is at stake.
45:31
Janeen Davis: You can just sit here and, and, and live holding the secret shame and struggling with things indefinitely, or you can name it and.
45:39
Janeen Davis: We wanna encourage people to, to recognize the value of confessing, even if it's scary.
45:45
Janeen Davis: But we also wanna encourage the same people and everybody else to like lower the risk, don't make it such a costly thing, and that that comes with deciding that, you know what?
45:58
Janeen Davis: There may be natural consequences to this sin, but it's not gonna come from me.
46:02
Janeen Davis: So I'm not going to, I'm not going to hold this oversimplified version of them.
46:08
Janeen Davis: I'm not going to define them by this.
46:10
Janeen Davis: For the rest of our relationship, I'm gonna recognize, yeah, this is one thing about them and this struggle.
46:15
Janeen Davis: This struggle is real, but everything else I knew about them is also still real and, and they chose to trust me.
46:23
Janeen Davis: So my response rather than.
46:25
Janeen Davis: I can't believe that and I'm so disappointed.
46:27
Janeen Davis: And how do you think, how do you justify that Biblically?
46:30
Janeen Davis: No.
46:31
Janeen Davis: My response is, whoa.
46:33
Janeen Davis: Thank you for sharing that with me.
46:35
Janeen Davis: Thank you for trusting me with that.
46:37
Janeen Davis: I'm gonna sit in that space with you.
46:40
Janeen Davis: I'm not your jailer and your prosecutor and your judge, and now I'm gonna decide what the consequences need to be.
46:47
Janeen Davis: Honestly, I think it would be okay to let the Holy Spirit work in them and let our role just be to, to sit with them in that space and walk alongside of them and maybe ask questions like, what is the right environment for you to, to overcome this and how can I support you in that?
47:06
Janeen Davis: Do you think that you need to.
47:10
Janeen Davis: You, you know, consider, um, surrendering even your call maybe and consecrating your calling to ministry right now, consecrate, as in to submit to the rule and authority of God and just place it under his other, his ruling.
47:28
Janeen Davis: Like, will you surrender even your calling to the Lord for his holiness and for the sake of your sanctification and, and transformation like.
47:37
Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes.
47:37
Janeen Davis: What do you need to do to, if holiness is the goal?
47:41
Janeen Davis: Not job stability, not, um, respect and honor from people that may not respect you anymore, but like, if holiness is the goal, what do you need to do?
47:50
Janeen Davis: And how do I help you be brave and obedient to walk toward that rather than, I'm sorry, I'm gonna, we're gonna need to remove you from ministry.
48:00
Janeen Davis: Like, not that, not
48:03
Stephanie Gutierrez: restoration.
48:04
Janeen Davis: Yeah, if the goal is restoration, you know it's God's glory and, and I'm not denying that there are some struggles that there's just not the support available to work through that on the field, but more and more in our virtual world, maybe there is.
48:22
Janeen Davis: I just, I would love for us to slow down from being fast on consequences and slow down and, and allow that person to have more of a role in those kind of decisions where we're sitting here and we're trying to fix our eyes on God and his glory and his holiness, and let that be the thing that influences any decisions rather than, um, here's our decision.
48:50
Stephanie Gutierrez: And Janine, you're calling us into a messy, into a messy
48:53
Janeen Davis: Oh, it's so messy.
48:54
Janeen Davis: I'm
48:54
Stephanie Gutierrez: it is.
48:55
Stephanie Gutierrez: And organizations like black and white and rules.
48:57
Stephanie Gutierrez: And if this happens, and this happens, and this happens, and I understand because there's legal implications that people get concerned about, or there's like, well, if this happened and I didn't say something about it, then what?
49:07
Stephanie Gutierrez: And that that is a reality of the world we live in too.
49:10
Stephanie Gutierrez: And so what I appreciate about this conversation is you are not giving people an exact thing to do.
49:17
Stephanie Gutierrez: I think what you're trying to do is challenge people to think in a different way.
49:20
Stephanie Gutierrez: You're trying to challenge missionaries to take that risk and find those spaces and.
49:26
Stephanie Gutierrez: Saying You're not alone in this.
49:27
Stephanie Gutierrez: And then with people on the care side, challenging them to not just default to what's written in the booklet, maybe have even as an organization, have some new conversations like, how could we handle this differently?
49:39
Stephanie Gutierrez: How could we handle this on more of a case by case basis rather than a knee jerk?
49:45
Stephanie Gutierrez: This is what we do because like what is more beautiful than a restored Christian?
49:51
Stephanie Gutierrez: Than a Christian who has been through something?
49:54
Stephanie Gutierrez: Horrible and on God's brought them through on the other side and they have a story to tell whether that was a crisis that happened or a sin that they walked through.
50:03
Stephanie Gutierrez: When God redeems and restores you, like he just amplifies your story that much more.
50:08
Stephanie Gutierrez: Now, we don't seek out sins stories so that we can have a great story on the other side, but God and His grace wants to use those and how sad if we're losing out on all of those stories and all of those lives, and like you said, people who.
50:23
Stephanie Gutierrez: Whose lives and stories are so much bigger than the mistake that they made.
50:27
Stephanie Gutierrez: So thank you for bringing this in and going there with me.
50:30
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I'm sure we've ruffled a lot of feathers today.
50:33
Stephanie Gutierrez: And I, I know we're both okay with it.
50:35
Stephanie Gutierrez: I'm a harmony and peace gal, so there's a little piece of me that's like, oh, I hope you still like us and know our heart.
50:40
Stephanie Gutierrez: And also if you don't, that's okay too.
50:43
Stephanie Gutierrez: 'cause if this stirs conversation, good.
50:46
Stephanie Gutierrez: Good.
50:47
Stephanie Gutierrez: Let's have the conversations.
50:48
Stephanie Gutierrez: 'cause we want missionaries to thrive on the field, so we're looking for every way we can to help make that possible.
50:56
Stephanie Gutierrez: So I love what you do, Janine.
50:58
Stephanie Gutierrez: I love what you have to say in the way that you say it.
51:00
Janeen Davis: It's always fun, isn't it?
51:02
Janeen Davis: I mean, if we're gonna give somebody one thing that they could do, whether they're struggling with an unmentionable or just a normal or anything, how do we go deeper and how do we start to invite deeper layers in our relationships with brothers and sisters?
51:15
Janeen Davis: Is maybe start talking about instead of, you know, what are you, what is, what are you hearing about in the word or how can I pray for you?
51:21
Janeen Davis: That's going to typically prompt pretty.
51:24
Janeen Davis: Sanitized answers.
51:26
Janeen Davis: But what if we say, Hey, if you think about what, what you're looking at on your phone and social media and, and entertainment and, and who you're talking, talking to, anything about these days, any part of your life, if you're looking at all the parts of your life right now, uh, what part of your life do you feel is least conse consecrated to the Lord right now?
51:46
Stephanie Gutierrez: Hmm.
51:47
Janeen Davis: And let's have that conversation, you know, and, and let's lead with vulnerability.
51:53
Janeen Davis: I think somebody has to go first, no matter which side you're on with this, somebody has to go first, so let's go first and let's, let's just benefit so much more from this wonderful sibling relationship that God has invited us to have with one another.
52:09
Janeen Davis: That's, that is my exhortation for the day.
52:12
Stephanie Gutierrez: Amen.
52:13
Stephanie Gutierrez: What a great note to end on.
52:14
Stephanie Gutierrez: Janine, thank you again for coming in, challenging the way that we think, as you always do, and, um, in, in a really Holy Spirit inspired way, I believe, and given us new things to, to do, to think and to pray into.
52:28
Stephanie Gutierrez: I appreciate you.
52:29
Janeen Davis: Yeah.
52:30
Janeen Davis: Thank you.
52:31
Janeen Davis: You too.
52:31
Janeen Davis: It's always a pleasure.
52:34
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: Hey, missionaries, I've got a question for you.
52:36
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: How are your finances on the field?
52:39
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: Also, are you feeling supported by your senders?
52:42
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: At Modern Day Missions, we make it simple for missionaries to receive donations and for their donors to give.
52:49
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: As the largest independent missions organization in the US, we process donations for more than 1100 missionaries to and from countries.
52:58
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: All over the world, helping them get on the field and freeing them to focus on what they're called to do.
53:04
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: And we also create and connect missionaries to resources that help them flourish on the field, like this weekly podcast, fundraising, coaching, and our resource packed newsletter.
53:14
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: So connect with us at Modern Day dot org to explore our free resources and discover how we can serve you.
53:20
Stephanie Leigh Gutierrez: We're so glad you joined us today.
53:22
Mhm.