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Counseling and the Church: How Pastors and Congregations Work Together (Steve Stuhlreyer) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking
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Speaker 1: more about making a difference in mental health through christ
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Speaker 1: centered education. That's CiU dot edu. Hey, everybody, welcome to
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Speaker 1: this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and
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Speaker 1: I'm joined today by doctor Steve Stolereyer. He is a
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Speaker 1: professor of counselor education at Columbia International University, and we're
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Speaker 1: going to be talking a little bit of today about
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Speaker 1: counseling and the church, specifically what counseling looks like with
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Speaker 1: pastors and how congregations integrate counseling sort of into their
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Speaker 1: overarching ministries.
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Speaker 2: So welcome Steve to the podcast. Thanks for reading on
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Speaker 2: the show.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, James, thank you for having me. I appreciate
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Speaker 3: the opportunity.
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Speaker 1: Give me, give me and I guess everybody listening a
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Speaker 1: little bit of your background. I know you've done a
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Speaker 1: lot of work obviously in counseling, but you've had a
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Speaker 1: lot of experience with the local church as well, so
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Speaker 1: I kind of filled us in on where you're at.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so about thirty two years ago, I came to
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Speaker 3: Christ and immediately fell a called to ministry, and in
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Speaker 3: that call I assumed and rightly so, that it was
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Speaker 3: kngre Uastel ministry to be a pastor. So I went
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Speaker 3: and trained for pastoral ministry. I went to Bible College,
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Speaker 3: did all those things that were necessary, and came back
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Speaker 3: to the city here in Cincinnati and was part of
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Speaker 3: a church planning team and then also became after about
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Speaker 3: five years of serving at that church in various capacities
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Speaker 3: on the pastoral staff, became a lead pastors and was
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Speaker 3: a lead pastor for about three years. When I knew
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Speaker 3: that the Lord is calling me back into the melial
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Speaker 3: health field, I say back into that. That's the work
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Speaker 3: I was doing before I came to Christ, and so
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Speaker 3: I got called back into that and pursued education master's
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Speaker 3: degree PhD eventually in the counselor and councilor education fields.
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Speaker 3: It's currently very involved with my local church, not on
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Speaker 3: staff as a pastor, but very much involved in leading
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Speaker 3: the men's ministry, helping with the team of people leading
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Speaker 3: a discipleship ministry within the church. I also get involved
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Speaker 3: with a more kind of regional Midwestern men's ministry, so
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Speaker 3: I'm on the leadership team there and try to help
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Speaker 3: guys who come to Christ are experiencing some healing to
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Speaker 3: get plugged into a church and to get disciple to
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Speaker 3: maybe have some lad counseling and try to get them
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Speaker 3: integrated into the church. So that's kind of in a
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Speaker 3: nutshell my experience. I love to teach and I love
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Speaker 3: this disciple people and especially men of the church.
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Speaker 1: How do you see I mean, this is something that
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Speaker 1: the more I've talked to people who are in counseling,
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Speaker 1: so I mean I knew some folks even at when
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Speaker 1: I was at Moody Bible Institute, they had a counseling program,
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Speaker 1: and I talk with the folks who were involved there,
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Speaker 1: and then even having a conversation with like Ben Matthew
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Speaker 1: just yesterday he was he was on the podcast. And
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Speaker 1: one of the things that I find is there's so
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Speaker 1: much feels like there's so much carryover between counseling and discipleship.
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Speaker 1: And obviously these are distinct fields, but I'm wondering if
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Speaker 1: you can kind of talk through how you see those
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Speaker 1: things sort of overlapping and where the counseling skills and
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Speaker 1: maybe even the orientation, uh you know some of the
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Speaker 1: tools and tricks that you've used in counseling, would you
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Speaker 1: know you see carrying over into discipleship.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, what a great question then. And I know Ben
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Speaker 3: as you know. I know Ben as well, where colleagues
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Speaker 3: at Plumbia International University and a great guy. And he
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Speaker 3: and I and said Scott, who I believe you've had
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Speaker 3: on the podcast, have had conversations around what is the
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Speaker 3: what's what's the difference if there is any between discipleship
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Speaker 3: and counseling. And I say that if there is any,
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Speaker 3: because there may be an incredible amount of overlap. I do.
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Speaker 3: I do think that we in the church, and myself included,
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Speaker 3: have maybe unintentionally created this divide between discipleship and counseling
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Speaker 3: like it's one or the other, and I think it's both.
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Speaker 3: I think I think there's great overlap. I think the
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Speaker 3: way that we think about it, as I've talked to
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Speaker 3: Ben and Seth and hopefully not put any words in
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Speaker 3: the routh, but I think kind of where we come
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Speaker 3: to is we say, you know, really, counseling is about,
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Speaker 3: in a very simplistic way, it's about repairing hurts from
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Speaker 3: the past or current maybe addictions or or sexual trauma
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Speaker 3: or whatever is going on in a person's life, kind
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Speaker 3: of repairing some of that, helping heal emotional wounds it,
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Speaker 3: you know, helping people get connected into say a medical
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Speaker 3: professional of medication is needed whatnot. And discipleship really takes
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Speaker 3: a person from current status going forward. Okay, that's an
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Speaker 3: easy way to create a dichotomy in our head about
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Speaker 3: discipleship and counseling. But I'm not sure that it's not
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Speaker 3: a false dichotomy that really, you know, a lot of
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Speaker 3: what discipleship can be is to kind of reach back
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Speaker 3: and help men and women and kids and teenagers kind
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Speaker 3: of repairs some through God's grace and the power of
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Speaker 3: His word and prayer and all those things really heal
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Speaker 3: up their own emotional wounds for wonder reason or another.
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Speaker 3: You know, it's kind of hard to pinpoint a specific
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Speaker 3: way to do it because there's so many needs out there. Yeah,
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Speaker 3: you know, so what we find toned discipleship, and I'll
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Speaker 3: talk about counseling in a minute. Really the most effective
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Speaker 3: counsel discipleship rather process is one to one disciple ship.
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Speaker 3: It's relationships, right, you know, one of the and I
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Speaker 3: don't know if if we want to get down this
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Speaker 3: rabbit hole or not. But you know, in a right now,
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Speaker 3: we're experiencing a development of AI in the counseling field,
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Speaker 3: and some people are creating there I don't even know
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Speaker 3: what they call it chat boxes or something like that.
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Speaker 3: Alert so it creates like a virtual gene spencer. And
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Speaker 3: now now you're my counselor. But it's AI doing it
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Speaker 3: right right, And what that misses, what that whole process misses,
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Speaker 3: is the real human touch that we need for healing,
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Speaker 3: you know, one on one, looking in your face, looking
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Speaker 3: at your eyes, knowing that I could disappoint you if
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Speaker 3: you're my counselor, let's say, or if I'm your discipleer
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Speaker 3: or vice versa. We can't disappoint each other. But AI,
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Speaker 3: you can't do that. The AI is always going to
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Speaker 3: affirm it. So so I'd say to kind of bring
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Speaker 3: this back around the one of the most powerful things
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Speaker 3: with discipleship is the one on one in relationship, and
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Speaker 3: that in and of itself, and a lot of psychological
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Speaker 3: research points us out that in and of itself brings
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Speaker 3: healing in disciples well, counseling is not frankly not significantly different.
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Speaker 3: It's a I'm kind of a key friend. Right, So
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Speaker 3: you're my client, right, you're my client. You come into
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Speaker 3: my office and we're talking, You're looking at my face,
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Speaker 3: you know, you see my body language, and vice versa,
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Speaker 3: and it's one to one, face to face, hard to heart.
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Speaker 3: A counselor is one who is going to show compassion
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Speaker 3: and empathy and all those things to a client that
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Speaker 3: a discipler should show, or a good discipler is going
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Speaker 3: to show to their person, to their disciple, leave if
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Speaker 3: you will. So there certainly is a big distinction here
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Speaker 3: that there is a two psychologists and I'm gonna I
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Speaker 3: can't recall their names. To psychologists in the nineteen sixties
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Speaker 3: kind of blew up the field, the psychology field by
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Speaker 3: concluding in research that really a compassionate friend, that a
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Speaker 3: person may have compassionate friend and relationship is just as
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Speaker 3: effective as a psychologist is for therapy reasons. So what
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Speaker 3: does that tell you? That tells you that the relationship,
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Speaker 3: in a discipleship relationship or a counseling relationship, that is
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Speaker 3: the key to helping people, you know, receive healing to
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Speaker 3: grow closer to Christ or whatever. That person particularly need,
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Speaker 3: particularly needs. I will say this kind as a caveat.
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Speaker 3: There are some people, probably twenty to thirty percent of
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Speaker 3: people whose mental health issues are severe enough that they
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Speaker 3: really do need you know, the situation may be incredibly
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Speaker 3: complicated if they really do need to come to see
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Speaker 3: a counselor who has some significant training in this area
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Speaker 3: and maybe you know, maybe get some medication that if appropriate.
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Speaker 3: But outside that twenty to thirty percent or people, most
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Speaker 3: people will will actually improve their mental well being simply
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Speaker 3: by being in a relationship. Yeah, and so the counseling,
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Speaker 3: in my view, the counseling discipleship continuum. Perhaps there's a
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Speaker 3: huge overlap there. And sometimes I think the church, and
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Speaker 3: I've been a pastor, I've been on both ends. I've
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Speaker 3: been a church, I've been a pastor, and I'm a
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Speaker 3: counselor and counselor educator. What we've done in the church sometimes,
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Speaker 3: and again I think inadvertently unintentionally, is we made this
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Speaker 3: division where there really shouldn't be oneted disciples and counseling
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Speaker 3: division of dichotomy which really doesn't need to be there.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's helpful because what I think I
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Speaker 1: hear you saying is you know, there's this huge area
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Speaker 1: of overlap between the two, but then there isn't the
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Speaker 1: sort of outlying areas where you might say, yeah, sort
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Speaker 1: of an everyday discipler may not really be equipped to
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Speaker 1: deal with some of the pathologies that people walk in with,
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Speaker 1: and so if you're trying to disciple those out, yes,
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Speaker 1: there's always room for the grace of God, but there's
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Speaker 1: also a space for human expertise in these matters and
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Speaker 1: really intervening in ways that would remove some of the
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Speaker 1: hurdles that people might have that are otherwise just going
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Speaker 1: to stay there that would help them advance in their discipleship.
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Speaker 2: But for the by and large, it makes intuitive sense
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Speaker 2: to me.
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Speaker 1: Just everyone else I've talked to, you know, even just
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Speaker 1: some folks I've had on in the past, talk about
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Speaker 1: the increase in people who are coming to them for
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Speaker 1: help that don't really have those major problems that they're
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Speaker 1: dealing with.
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Speaker 2: How do I handle the stressors in my life.
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Speaker 1: I'm a little anxious, I'm feeling depressed, I'm struggling with aging.
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Speaker 1: I mean, these are things that all of us go through,
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Speaker 1: and you know, without a solid relationship to sit down
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Speaker 1: and talk with somebody, they can become pretty burdensome. And
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Speaker 1: so this guest was telling me, and I can't remember
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Speaker 1: exactly which conversation it was, but they were basically saying, yeah,
12:19
Speaker 1: I'm kind of a paid friend. I'm sitting and I'm
12:21
Speaker 1: talking to this person. They're offloading some of this stuff
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Speaker 1: to me. But they don't have any particular problem pathology
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Speaker 1: that you would pinpoint and say you need X, Y
12:31
Speaker 1: or Z. They really just need to process some things.
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Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and that's been my experience. I would say, well,
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Speaker 3: currently I have a small private practice. I see about
12:41
Speaker 3: ten people a week or so because most of my
12:44
Speaker 3: focus is at the university. But historically I had a
12:48
Speaker 3: pretty large practice that I was seeing thirty to thirty
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Speaker 3: five people a week or so. In a mystery of
12:54
Speaker 3: the practice, et cetera, et cetera, and I would say,
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Speaker 3: I try to askimate this one time I'm and I
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Speaker 3: think I came up with with the number of about
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Speaker 3: seventy five of my case load is what I would
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Speaker 3: call the worried. Well, these are people who don't have
13:13
Speaker 3: a diagnosable condition, or they do. They have something pretty mild.
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Speaker 3: We might in the Council of the world, we call
13:19
Speaker 3: it an adjustment disorder. Okay, Well, one of my former
13:22
Speaker 3: clients's father with whom he was close passed away. So
13:26
Speaker 3: he's experiencing grief. Hey, that's expected. So he could be diagnosed,
13:31
Speaker 3: and I did diagnose them with an adjustment disorder, and
13:35
Speaker 3: then we could build insurance and then we have a
13:37
Speaker 3: treatment plan. And he did meet that criteria. But he
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Speaker 3: might be what is considered a worried well. Somebody who's
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Speaker 3: in the worried well category. That would probably take up
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Speaker 3: two thirds of three quarters of most therapist caseloads. And
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Speaker 3: so what what a great idea to be able to
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Speaker 3: see in two churches and pastors, could we include within
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Speaker 3: your discipleship program, in small group ministry, whatever you have
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Speaker 3: set up in your church, could we train train listeners
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Speaker 3: people who can disciple and to listen and discipleship, by
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Speaker 3: the way, it's much more than just intellectual, and that's
14:22
Speaker 3: certainly part of it. Is, Hey, let me teach you
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Speaker 3: about the New Testament. The book romans what Christ has
14:26
Speaker 3: done for you, but it's also hey, let's walk together
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Speaker 3: on this journey where you might your father passed away.
14:34
Speaker 3: I know what that's like. My father's passed away. Can
14:37
Speaker 3: we just walk this journey together and just have people
14:40
Speaker 3: trained to listen if that were to happen. And I
14:44
Speaker 3: think and there's a movement for that to happen to
14:47
Speaker 3: to themselves out of Regent University and other people are
14:53
Speaker 3: really working on creating a helping churches create a culture
14:58
Speaker 3: in which the church can minister to the mental people
15:02
Speaker 3: with mental health issues and most health issues. So that's
15:06
Speaker 3: kind of happening. As church has become more and more
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Speaker 3: successful at that, then that opens up my caseload if
15:14
Speaker 3: I was carrying a full caseload, opens up my caseload
15:17
Speaker 3: now for the complicated cases. Right so, right right now,
15:21
Speaker 3: if you are a pastor James and I'm have a
15:24
Speaker 3: full caseload, and you'd say, Hay, Steve, I have so
15:29
Speaker 3: and so who's sexual abuse survivor and they just got
15:33
Speaker 3: out of a domestic violent situation. Can you see her
15:37
Speaker 3: for him? I would say sure in about three months,
15:43
Speaker 3: because my caseload is so full, and every counselor I
15:46
Speaker 3: know is as full as they want to be, like
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Speaker 3: they can't take anybody else. And what a wonderful thing
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Speaker 3: for the church to really be able to develop some
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Speaker 3: kind of counseling ministry counseling slash and deciples ministry so
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Speaker 3: that they the church can really be what it's intended
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Speaker 3: to be, which I think is a, among other things,
16:07
Speaker 3: a hospital and sanctuary for people to bring healing and
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Speaker 3: draw closer to Christ. And the more complicated severe case
16:15
Speaker 3: has come to people who are highly dreamed.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
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Speaker 1: It kind of leads me into another question I wanted
16:24
Speaker 1: to talk with you about. You know, I've read some
16:26
Speaker 1: of the State of the Pastor's Report, and you know,
16:29
Speaker 1: what are pastors concerned with? How does And then there's
16:33
Speaker 1: been some theological reflection around loneliness and pastoral ministry, the
16:37
Speaker 1: lack of friendship for lead pastors particularly, And I've kind
16:42
Speaker 1: of experienced that in I grew up in more rural churches,
16:45
Speaker 1: and so, you know, even though the pastor is sort
16:48
Speaker 1: of part of the community, he's the one that everybody
16:50
Speaker 1: leans on, there isn't a lot of necessarily reciprocation all
16:55
Speaker 1: the time of hey, he's got needs too, who's.
16:58
Speaker 2: Of meeting them? He asked.
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Speaker 1: Almost at least some of the people that I dealt with,
17:04
Speaker 1: it felt like they had the sense that they needed
17:07
Speaker 1: to sort of stand apart right and be a pillar
17:10
Speaker 1: as opposed to being down in the mess all the time.
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Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering, you know, when you think about
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Speaker 1: the sort of worried well, where would you put pastors
17:21
Speaker 1: in this mix?
17:22
Speaker 2: Our pastor is a big part of the worried well.
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Speaker 1: And they're just not getting the help that they need
17:28
Speaker 1: because they're so busy trying to sort of shepherd the
17:31
Speaker 1: flock that they never take time to take care of themselves.
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Speaker 2: Like, what's that dynamic from their perspective?
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Speaker 3: I would say the answer is yes with an asterix
17:41
Speaker 3: and exclamation points, and you know, yes, yes, yes, yes,
17:45
Speaker 3: they're part of the worried well. They're feeling lonely. What's
17:47
Speaker 3: interesting is I just this morning the timing of this conversation.
17:51
Speaker 3: This morning, I just finished reading a dissertation, or at
17:55
Speaker 3: least review of the literature for one of more students
17:58
Speaker 3: who's who is doing a dissertation around the effect of
18:05
Speaker 3: well in summary mental health with pastor's wife. She's a
18:09
Speaker 3: pastor's wife herself, and so I just reading through all
18:13
Speaker 3: the review of the literature, and as she commented and
18:17
Speaker 3: talking about the pastors themselves feeling lonely, feeling burned out, discouraged,
18:23
Speaker 3: having no real friends, meaning meaning, hey, I can disclose,
18:28
Speaker 3: I can just be open with you as possible if
18:31
Speaker 3: I'm struggling with lust issues. I mean, what pastor is
18:36
Speaker 3: going to go to their congregation and say, oh, man,
18:39
Speaker 3: there's some really attractive women in my church and I'm
18:42
Speaker 3: lusting after them. Of course they're not going to do that.
18:44
Speaker 3: And my experience as a pastor and knowing a lot
18:47
Speaker 3: of pastors and loving a lot of pastors, knowing them
18:50
Speaker 3: well still to this day I'm ha been in pastoral
18:53
Speaker 3: ministry for twenty years. They will tell me privately, I
18:57
Speaker 3: would never go to my denomination to tell them, hey,
19:03
Speaker 3: you know, I'm dealing with burnout or I'm depressed, or
19:07
Speaker 3: my my relations my marriage is really rocky at this point,
19:11
Speaker 3: my kids are acting the full or whatever may be
19:14
Speaker 3: going on. And so the as a consequence, pastors really
19:20
Speaker 3: do really are lonely. They are really lonely, They're hurt.
19:25
Speaker 3: They they'll know who to go to. Most counselors haven't
19:29
Speaker 3: been pastors. I play a unique role that I have been.
19:33
Speaker 3: And Ben Matthew uh And And says Scott had been
19:36
Speaker 3: in elder boards and things of that nature. So they
19:39
Speaker 3: have some you know, the three of us, and there's
19:42
Speaker 3: others to play a pretty unique role in that we've
19:44
Speaker 3: had our feet in both worlds. Yeah, but most pastors
19:48
Speaker 3: won't go to counselors because they don't understand what the
19:51
Speaker 3: counselor doesn't have an understanding and what does be a pastor.
19:55
Speaker 3: A lot of pastors will tell me, and this, this
19:57
Speaker 3: is a phrase that you've heard before. I'm sure that
20:00
Speaker 3: they feel like they live in a fishbowl. They're always
20:03
Speaker 3: there's all. They were always expected to be available. Either
20:07
Speaker 3: kids misbehave, then it's catastrophic, you know. And there I
20:13
Speaker 3: had an instant when I was a lead pastor. My
20:16
Speaker 3: oldest daughter was about three or four years old, and
20:19
Speaker 3: we had we had an outreach to the community and
20:22
Speaker 3: then it basically involved a meal, big meal. We had
20:25
Speaker 3: about one hundred people from the community in this church,
20:28
Speaker 3: about fifty so we had about hundred people from the
20:30
Speaker 3: community come in that and and I was loving it.
20:34
Speaker 3: I'll I just it was amazing to have all these
20:36
Speaker 3: people here and building relationships. My kid, my oldest was
20:40
Speaker 3: three or so, she was was walking around and we
20:42
Speaker 3: had an infant son, and I wasn't really paying attention
20:46
Speaker 3: to my daughter. And then she she walked outside the
20:50
Speaker 3: building like she had opened the door and walked out,
20:54
Speaker 3: and I went and looked and saw those shoes going out.
20:57
Speaker 3: And before I could get to her, when the board
21:00
Speaker 3: members went out and got her and like ripped her
21:01
Speaker 3: in the building and pointed at her and said, if
21:05
Speaker 3: you ever do this again, I'm going to spank you.
21:08
Speaker 3: I said, no, you're not. You're not touching my daughter, right.
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Speaker 3: But but but that's the the pastors a lot, and
21:16
Speaker 3: and who do I go to unburden myself too at
21:20
Speaker 3: that point? You know? So so we a lot of pastors,
21:24
Speaker 3: in my experience with work with pastors as a counselor,
21:27
Speaker 3: a lot of pastors are angry because they don't have
21:31
Speaker 3: relationships with people primarily or when and if they had,
21:36
Speaker 3: they'd gotten hurt by these people. There are exceptions, of course,
21:40
Speaker 3: there are people who pastors who are doing really well,
21:42
Speaker 3: they have good friendships. But a lot of pastors I
21:46
Speaker 3: find really do fall in the word well category because
21:51
Speaker 3: of these issues. But also also know a lot of
21:56
Speaker 3: pastors who really meet the diagnosis, the diagnostic criteria for
22:00
Speaker 3: post tramatic stress disorder, bring generalized anxiety disorder for depression,
22:06
Speaker 3: you know, so they maybe have more complicated presentations if
22:12
Speaker 3: you will and need to come see accounsetor so. So
22:15
Speaker 3: of course, the consequence of this, Jeames, I don't say
22:18
Speaker 3: this and not the consequence of this is that unhealthy
22:21
Speaker 3: pastors don't lead church as well. Yeah you can't. We're limited.
22:26
Speaker 3: That's not knock on pastors. And there's just some limitations
22:29
Speaker 3: to an unhealthy pastor.
22:32
Speaker 1: No, I mean the blocking, the blocking and tackling, the
22:35
Speaker 1: basic blocking and tackling could probably get done right. You know,
22:38
Speaker 1: you're gonna deliver your sermon every Sunday, You're gonna you know,
22:41
Speaker 1: you're gonna make their appearances where you need to. But
22:44
Speaker 1: there's there's definitely a longevity problem, yes, and there.
22:49
Speaker 3: Is a.
22:51
Speaker 2: You could basically say, just a basic heart problem.
22:54
Speaker 1: Right without that connection within a congregation, and I would
22:57
Speaker 1: I would say it's the same with a lot of
22:58
Speaker 1: different leadership as it. Right, when you lose those relationships,
23:03
Speaker 1: you yourself aren't sort of feeling energized by what you're doing,
23:08
Speaker 1: you know, those kind of things when you're just sort
23:11
Speaker 1: of feel like you're behind the eight ball all the time.
23:13
Speaker 1: You're never in a great place to be thinking forward
23:17
Speaker 1: and transformatively. You're almost always in sort of this reactive
23:20
Speaker 1: defensive mode, which just doesn't do good things for creative
23:25
Speaker 1: thought or critical thinking or compassion or anything like that.
23:30
Speaker 1: You know, So it makes intuitive sense. I wanted to
23:33
Speaker 1: kind of dig in. You said something about, you know,
23:35
Speaker 1: pastors having this PTSD and depression and those kind of things.
23:38
Speaker 1: Do you find that how do you link those two?
23:42
Speaker 1: So you've got the worried well who are just sort
23:45
Speaker 1: of like under the pressure, maybe even the normal pressures
23:49
Speaker 1: of ministry and this is going to be maybe something
23:51
Speaker 1: that's short term for them. They need a little something
23:53
Speaker 1: to get by and they're going to be better and it's.
23:56
Speaker 2: Okay, But are there some.
24:00
Speaker 1: You know, when you when you think about that PTSD,
24:02
Speaker 1: the depression, all those kind of things, is that an
24:06
Speaker 1: evolution from the worried well into that? So in other words,
24:11
Speaker 1: the context of the ministry is sort of pressuring so
24:14
Speaker 1: much that you're just holding on to hurts, you're holding
24:18
Speaker 1: on to, you know, whatever trauma you may have experienced,
24:22
Speaker 1: and they're probably you know, I can envision some ministries
24:25
Speaker 1: where there is a lot of trauma, not like the
24:28
Speaker 1: sort of he was mean to me and now I'm
24:30
Speaker 1: frustrated kind of trauma. But you deal with death and
24:33
Speaker 1: life issues. An awful lot of ministry like this is trauma.
24:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And at the risk of being provocative, let
24:43
Speaker 3: me say this, Yeah, certainly there's this would be I
24:48
Speaker 3: would have to say the minority of pastors. But I
24:53
Speaker 3: know pastors personally that I've been encouraged to wear bulletproof
24:59
Speaker 3: vests when they leave their house and come to church,
25:04
Speaker 3: and the wiser kids are, you know, threatened. So certainly
25:12
Speaker 3: that's not true of all pastors. And but there's enough
25:15
Speaker 3: of that that's happening to where that that in and
25:19
Speaker 3: of itself could be a triggering event for a PTSD diagnosis,
25:25
Speaker 3: that my life is threatened, life of my wife, my
25:28
Speaker 3: children are threatened, That in and of itself could be
25:33
Speaker 3: a triggering event towards PTSD. The vast majority of it
25:38
Speaker 3: of what what I see in pastors, and I again
25:42
Speaker 3: know just knowing pastors and counseling quite a few of them,
25:46
Speaker 3: is it's it's very much a trauma response. When you're
25:50
Speaker 3: dealing with life and death issues all the time, or
25:54
Speaker 3: you post something online that seems pretty innocuous. You know,
25:59
Speaker 3: it was pray for this thing that this big cultural
26:02
Speaker 3: event that happened over here. And then you get you
26:05
Speaker 3: get people from the culture or from the community rather
26:08
Speaker 3: or within the church saying you know, you are and
26:12
Speaker 3: fill in the blank, you are this, you're that, and
26:16
Speaker 3: there's there's very little relief in some cases for pastors.
26:20
Speaker 3: So it's not a common then for pastors just kind
26:23
Speaker 3: of like reel it in and say, I'm not gonna
26:25
Speaker 3: say anything potentially controversial. So I'm just i mean understandably,
26:31
Speaker 3: so if you're getting beat up by Mike, type in
26:34
Speaker 3: every round at some point and say, okay, I'm stepping
26:38
Speaker 3: out of the ring. I'm just gonna I'm not gonna
26:39
Speaker 3: do this anymore. So, so people do experience. Pastors certainly
26:47
Speaker 3: experience like a trauma response frequently or depression, our anxiety,
26:51
Speaker 3: and it can to go to your question, does it
26:54
Speaker 3: evolve from the worried, Well, it certainly can. Of course,
27:00
Speaker 3: as we find this with counselors as we train them
27:03
Speaker 3: at Colembian International University and certainly it's other universities are
27:08
Speaker 3: training master's level clinical counselors. That the reason why some
27:12
Speaker 3: people come into counseling and the reason why some people
27:15
Speaker 3: come to pastoral ministri is because they themselves have experienced
27:19
Speaker 3: mental health issues or trauma or difficulty and they have found,
27:23
Speaker 3: in the case of counseling, maybe they've been through a
27:25
Speaker 3: counselor themselves. I've seen a counselor themselves and have overcome.
27:29
Speaker 3: I've worked through whatever the issue might be. In they sense, wow,
27:34
Speaker 3: this is amazing. I'm going to be I want to
27:36
Speaker 3: do this for other people, so I'm going to be
27:38
Speaker 3: a counselor. And I also think that's probably true for pastors.
27:42
Speaker 3: People who go into the pastoral ministry is they've experienced
27:47
Speaker 3: the cred of life, the pain, the suffering of life,
27:51
Speaker 3: and a pastor, a church ministry really impacted them. So
27:55
Speaker 3: then they say, well, I think God's called me into that,
27:59
Speaker 3: and they go training become a good minister. But then
28:02
Speaker 3: they carry into pastoral ministry a lot of those past
28:07
Speaker 3: traumas pastor depression, anxiety and whatnot, which, by the way,
28:11
Speaker 3: can be very beneficial. When my father died in twenty twelve,
28:18
Speaker 3: I was counseling a guy whose father or his mother
28:20
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, was dying of cancer and died. She died
28:23
Speaker 3: a couple of months after my father did, and I
28:26
Speaker 3: was close with my dad, he was close with his mom.
28:30
Speaker 3: So just the fact that I had that experience gave
28:34
Speaker 3: me a level of understanding that I wouldn't have had
28:37
Speaker 3: prior to that. Some people come to counseling and they're
28:40
Speaker 3: great counselors because they they not only know it in
28:44
Speaker 3: their head, but they know it in their parts, if
28:47
Speaker 3: you will, and say what the pastoral pastors and so
28:50
Speaker 3: then you combine all this stuff together. Maybe they come
28:53
Speaker 3: in with some hurts and trauma anyway in the pastoral
28:56
Speaker 3: ministry and had the experience of living in a fish bowl,
29:00
Speaker 3: having your life threatened, or having just the pressure of
29:04
Speaker 3: day to day pastoral ministry kindra useul ministry. And then
29:10
Speaker 3: it's probably not a surprise then that they that they
29:13
Speaker 3: might experience meal health issues and many of the function
29:16
Speaker 3: Like you said, hey, maybe they can just block and tackle. Yeah,
29:20
Speaker 3: they can do their stuff, but what about Monday through
29:24
Speaker 3: Friday where they're struggling and so so I do see
29:29
Speaker 3: I do my experience as a pastor myself who probably
29:35
Speaker 3: really struggled to burn out and some level of mild
29:39
Speaker 3: depression and anxiety and insecurity. Really, I go back to
29:45
Speaker 3: the friend issue. I really didn't have any real deep
29:47
Speaker 3: friends who understood. The good friends I had were not
29:50
Speaker 3: in pastoral ministry, so I would they didn't understand it,
29:53
Speaker 3: and the other pastors wouldn't talk about it.
29:57
Speaker 1: Let me ask, Because i just became an elder at
29:59
Speaker 1: my church, so I've known the pastor there for maybe
30:06
Speaker 1: five years ish, and so I've been thinking about, you know,
30:09
Speaker 1: aside from just some of the administrative skills that I
30:12
Speaker 1: can bring and hopefully plug in and help the church,
30:17
Speaker 1: how do you how do I, as an elder sort
30:20
Speaker 1: of make sure the pastor is okay? Like That's one
30:24
Speaker 1: of those kind of questions that I've been sort of
30:26
Speaker 1: noodling about in my mind and so wondering if you
30:29
Speaker 1: have any advice, Like, elder to pastor. I've not been
30:33
Speaker 1: in pastoral ministry, but I've been in ministry circles my
30:37
Speaker 1: entire career, Christian nonprofits and then academic you know, Christian academia.
30:43
Speaker 1: I've worked in churches, been you know, volunteered those kind
30:46
Speaker 1: of things. So it's not like I'm unaware of some
30:48
Speaker 1: of these dynamics, right, But this is a different sort
30:52
Speaker 1: of relationship than I've ever had with anybody, and it
30:56
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think there's going to be any
30:58
Speaker 1: sort of weird relational problem.
31:00
Speaker 2: I don't sense there will be.
31:03
Speaker 1: But it is different being the guy in the congregation
31:06
Speaker 1: who the pastor can call and get a cup of
31:08
Speaker 1: coffee with and trust that, you know, anything that's said
31:10
Speaker 1: at the table is going to stay at the table, right,
31:13
Speaker 1: versus being an elder And so just wondering if you
31:17
Speaker 1: have any advice for that particular situation. I'll pick your
31:20
Speaker 1: brain as a free counseling session here.
31:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just give me your credit card number. Yeah,
31:26
Speaker 3: I'll give So let me ask you questions for clarity's sake.
31:30
Speaker 3: So I know there's different exclusiologies. So is the elder board?
31:35
Speaker 3: Does the pastor is report? Can he be fired by
31:39
Speaker 3: the elder board? Is there that power dynamic?
31:42
Speaker 2: There is? There is?
31:44
Speaker 3: Uh?
31:45
Speaker 1: And so yeah, the elder board can dismiss the pastor.
31:50
Speaker 1: The elder board is you know, oversight of the budget
31:53
Speaker 1: and generally the direction and mission of the church, those
31:56
Speaker 1: kind of things. It's certainly not any deeper than that.
32:00
Speaker 1: In the organization. You know, we don't we don't deal
32:02
Speaker 1: with other staff or anything like that. And the pastor
32:05
Speaker 1: is on the elder board as well, so it is
32:07
Speaker 1: much more of a I might call it a team.
32:10
Speaker 2: Oriented approach, right where we're really there.
32:13
Speaker 1: To make sure that the pastor has the supporting needs,
32:16
Speaker 1: the ministry is going in the right direction it's supposed
32:18
Speaker 1: to be going, and that the the administration of the
32:22
Speaker 1: church via the budget is appropriate.
32:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So the question is how can you help
32:28
Speaker 3: the pastor, your pastor in the role that you're playing. Yeah,
32:34
Speaker 3: I think it comes down to just have a relationship
32:37
Speaker 3: with them, as easy as that sounds, having a having
32:40
Speaker 3: a non professional relationship with them, as easy as that's.
32:44
Speaker 3: As simplistic as that sounds. It's also true that that
32:49
Speaker 3: allow and making it clear with a pastor. And I'll
32:53
Speaker 3: say this, I'll tell the story of my pastor making
32:56
Speaker 3: it clear of the pastor that a when when you
32:58
Speaker 3: want to have a cup of coffee, I'm still that guy,
33:02
Speaker 3: and I'm going to separate out. You know, my role
33:06
Speaker 3: is the elder and we're on the elder team with
33:09
Speaker 3: I just care about you as an individual as a person.
33:11
Speaker 3: So let's just talk. And so my pastor so our
33:16
Speaker 3: church government may be slightly different. The pastors the chair
33:20
Speaker 3: of the board we call it, and the board members
33:22
Speaker 3: are elected, and so it's a little bit of a
33:24
Speaker 3: team approach. But he's the guy. He really is the guy,
33:28
Speaker 3: and so there's that power dynamic. The board can't hire
33:32
Speaker 3: and fire the pastor. And so my pastor has been
33:37
Speaker 3: very upfront with the congregation, thankfully, about his own dealings
33:43
Speaker 3: with anxiety and depression and physical health issues. He's very open,
33:47
Speaker 3: very appropriately open to the congregation. And I do, as
33:51
Speaker 3: an asside, I do tell him all the time that
33:53
Speaker 3: his name is Justin. I'll say, Justin, you've done more
33:56
Speaker 3: for the mental health of your congregation by being open
33:59
Speaker 3: about it than anybody else could ever do. If you'd
34:01
Speaker 3: spend thirty seconds saying, yeah, I'm seeing a counselor for anxiety,
34:05
Speaker 3: I'm just making that up. He hasn't said that, uh,
34:09
Speaker 3: that that does more for our congregation than anything else. So,
34:13
Speaker 3: so what what Justin talks about. He has very close
34:16
Speaker 3: relationships with his board. I'm not on the board, he's
34:21
Speaker 3: very close relationships with the board and with me and
34:24
Speaker 3: several other people where they will just go out and
34:27
Speaker 3: not talk about church ministry. He'll talk about family, you know,
34:32
Speaker 3: his family, he's been on the mission field, et cetera.
34:37
Speaker 3: You just talk about life. The Bengals. I'm in Cincinnati,
34:40
Speaker 3: so the Cincinnati Bengals and they're struggling right now. Or Chicago,
34:45
Speaker 3: Europe and in the Chicago area right.
34:47
Speaker 1: I'm near Saint Louis and no football, but okay, we
34:51
Speaker 1: kind of all right. The Bears, you know, the Titans
34:55
Speaker 1: somewhere in that range.
34:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so the Bengals is lost of the Bears.
35:00
Speaker 3: Just so you know, you just talk about life and
35:02
Speaker 3: stuff else God gets the mind going. So I think
35:05
Speaker 3: that's the biggest thing is relationships without strings attached. Yeah,
35:09
Speaker 3: and yeah, that takes time to build up too. I
35:12
Speaker 3: mean I think, and I was this pastor too, that
35:17
Speaker 3: you get cautious. You get hurt so much by people
35:19
Speaker 3: that you poured your life into that you remain cautious
35:24
Speaker 3: about anybody that says, hey, I just want to be
35:26
Speaker 3: your friend. They've heard that before. Your pastor probably has
35:29
Speaker 3: heard that before fifty times, and forty eight of those
35:32
Speaker 3: times the person has hurt them somehow. And so just
35:36
Speaker 3: know it takes time to say, hey, I'm just gonna
35:38
Speaker 3: I just want to be your friend. What can I
35:41
Speaker 3: do for you? Can I take you to the ballgame?
35:42
Speaker 3: Or can we just hang out no strings attached? And
35:48
Speaker 3: you know, one of the things that we do from
35:51
Speaker 3: the past or year, i'd lead the men's ministry here
35:53
Speaker 3: and so I'm discipling men and we have a twenty
35:57
Speaker 3: five guys or so that come on every Wednesday night
35:59
Speaker 3: and we do that. We do our disciplisal. Thing we
36:02
Speaker 3: commit and that we commit to. We have a let
36:07
Speaker 3: me back up a little bit with some contexts that
36:10
Speaker 3: in our men's ministry, we we believe that the men
36:13
Speaker 3: should be stepping up and not usurping the women's servant
36:17
Speaker 3: roles and leadership roles necessarily, but men generally don't step
36:21
Speaker 3: up into any leadership role in the church. I don't
36:27
Speaker 3: mean like position. I mean I'm going to do this
36:30
Speaker 3: thing because the church needs it. So so we decided
36:33
Speaker 3: that that the men of the church needed to pray
36:35
Speaker 3: for our pastor. That sounds really good, right, and we
36:39
Speaker 3: all should do that. Except we said to justin we're
36:42
Speaker 3: going to we would like to come to your office,
36:45
Speaker 3: you know, thirty five minutes before service starts, come in
36:48
Speaker 3: your office, lay hands on and you pray for you.
36:51
Speaker 3: We're in. We're not getting any pastoral council. We come in,
36:55
Speaker 3: we pray for you, then we leave. We're there, five minutes,
36:57
Speaker 3: we're gone. I never had that as a pastor. Nobody
37:01
Speaker 3: ever did that. And so I recognize the importance of
37:05
Speaker 3: not having that. And he recognized the importance of having that.
37:11
Speaker 3: He's in circle by group, and so that that's just
37:13
Speaker 3: I say that to say, it's relationships. My pastor knows
37:17
Speaker 3: he can count on twenty five men who will keep
37:22
Speaker 3: his hurts secret. Yeah, you know, on or them that way,
37:26
Speaker 3: and that's a friendship and that's what most pastors need.
37:29
Speaker 2: That's great.
37:31
Speaker 1: Well, we got we got about ten minutes left, and
37:33
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted to pick your brain a little
37:35
Speaker 1: bit on your work with Men's Ministry.
37:37
Speaker 2: So you know, there's a lot going on right now.
37:41
Speaker 2: Scott Gallaway just put out a book.
37:42
Speaker 1: On you know, men and you know the difficulties young
37:46
Speaker 1: men are having nowadays. I don't really you're familiar with that,
37:49
Speaker 1: but interesting stuff, and it seems like it's resonating. Like
37:53
Speaker 1: this has been around for the last at least five years.
37:56
Speaker 1: I've been kind of following it and so my my
38:00
Speaker 1: concern just so you can kind of understand my perspective
38:04
Speaker 1: on it and then you can chime in one way
38:06
Speaker 1: or the other. A lot of the things that I
38:09
Speaker 1: see happening within Christianity to talk about Christian manhood feel
38:13
Speaker 1: more like machiesmo to me than actual manhood. And what
38:20
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that what it is to
38:22
Speaker 1: be a male disciple of Jesus tends to get lost
38:25
Speaker 1: and sort of this cultural matrix of this is what
38:28
Speaker 1: it looks like to be manly.
38:31
Speaker 2: Right.
38:32
Speaker 1: A lot of times I'll talk about it like if
38:35
Speaker 1: I can bench more than you, I'm manlier than you are.
38:38
Speaker 1: And I just think, like, you know, when I say
38:40
Speaker 1: it like that, people think it's ludicrous. But so many
38:45
Speaker 1: times if you just analyze what's actually being said to
38:49
Speaker 1: young men, this is kind of what's being said to
38:53
Speaker 1: young men. It's like there's an Instagram reel that I
38:56
Speaker 1: see occasionally. It says, hey, some of you need to
38:59
Speaker 1: hear this. If you don't have big muscles, you're not
39:02
Speaker 1: worth anything, you know, like, and it goes it's like
39:04
Speaker 1: meant to be sarcastic, but I think there's some truth
39:07
Speaker 1: to it. So that's kind of how I feel like
39:09
Speaker 1: a lot of times when we're dealing with young men,
39:11
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is get them to be,
39:14
Speaker 1: you know, sort of a Christianized version of an Andrew
39:17
Speaker 1: Tate or something like that, where it's it's very much bravado,
39:21
Speaker 1: it's very much you know, boldness, but it isn't as
39:25
Speaker 1: nested in discipleship as it needs to be. So that's
39:28
Speaker 1: from my perspective, and I'm wondering if you'd have correctives
39:33
Speaker 1: to that, whether you resonate with it, and what your
39:36
Speaker 1: experience has been actually dealing with young men in your
39:39
Speaker 1: discipleship too.
39:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question. It's a big thing that
39:42
Speaker 3: we deal with in the within the men's ministry, from
39:45
Speaker 3: guys who are twenty five to guys who are seventy
39:49
Speaker 3: five in the men's mistry and working together with this
39:53
Speaker 3: white age range and the men at the different end
39:56
Speaker 3: of the different end ends of the spectrum don't, at
40:00
Speaker 3: least the men I interact with don't think very differently.
40:03
Speaker 3: You know. I think if we think of the like
40:05
Speaker 3: the normal curve, I think we have two extremes. I
40:09
Speaker 3: think we have the the the enterteats of the world.
40:13
Speaker 3: What I would call and I really don't like the
40:16
Speaker 3: phrase from a couple of years ago, toxic masculinity, right,
40:20
Speaker 3: But if there is anybody that's toxically mascul it might
40:23
Speaker 3: be somebody like the ers in the world, you know
40:27
Speaker 3: where where you know the macheese most stuff like I
40:30
Speaker 3: got to just dominate. And then the other end of
40:32
Speaker 3: the spectrum is to be a man is to be
40:35
Speaker 3: as be weak, need a man, be pambyan's fine lists,
40:38
Speaker 3: and just not stir any trouble at all. And I
40:42
Speaker 3: think when we when we look at our model, at
40:47
Speaker 3: who's Jesus Christ, who's a man? Of course, Jesus was
40:53
Speaker 3: incredibly kind and compassionate, loving obviously, I mean that's the gospel.
40:59
Speaker 3: But he was as strong and a man's fan like
41:02
Speaker 3: there's a there is a what I mean, a man's
41:05
Speaker 3: ban I'll describe what that means, not the toxic masculinity
41:08
Speaker 3: thing there's and I'm I'm forgetting where this is located
41:12
Speaker 3: at in scripture. But Jesus as a teaching and the
41:17
Speaker 3: religious jew religious Jews don't like it, so they go
41:20
Speaker 3: to throw them off a cliff. And what does Jesus do.
41:24
Speaker 3: He walks right through the crowd, and I don't think
41:27
Speaker 3: it was a mystical you know, like they roll on
41:30
Speaker 3: by some spiritual mystical event. I think Jesus was just
41:33
Speaker 3: a man and it's like, no, you're not gonna mess
41:35
Speaker 3: with me, right, So so I think that I think
41:39
Speaker 3: in the middle of this normal curve, there's this place
41:42
Speaker 3: where men are called to be kind and compassionate and loving.
41:48
Speaker 3: But you can do that fiercely, and it seems like
41:52
Speaker 3: a like it's a paradox almost that how could he
41:57
Speaker 3: be fiercely kind? That means I'm going to I'm going
42:01
Speaker 3: to give everything I got to whatever God's called me into.
42:05
Speaker 3: I have a one of the guys in thee in
42:07
Speaker 3: the men's group men's Ministry that I lead, he's an engineer,
42:12
Speaker 3: and so he's very much in his head loves Christ
42:17
Speaker 3: and he tears up like that, you know he was.
42:21
Speaker 3: He was really burdened when he first came to the
42:23
Speaker 3: Men's Ministry to say, well, I'm not a man's man
42:25
Speaker 3: because I cry easily. And what was really great is
42:29
Speaker 3: one of the guys that would be classified as come
42:31
Speaker 3: a man's man said no, no, no, no, that's that's how
42:34
Speaker 3: you're wired. I go after that with all you got,
42:38
Speaker 3: you know, whatever it is. Maybe it's maybe it is
42:41
Speaker 3: working out and being a football player, maybe it's being
42:44
Speaker 3: an engineer where you're maybe more introverted. Whatever. So so
42:49
Speaker 3: what I what I think of like in men's ministry,
42:52
Speaker 3: men need to and and you're welcome to disagree. I
42:56
Speaker 3: think what what men need and what I'm seeing of
42:59
Speaker 3: the men in my men ministry need is somebody give
43:02
Speaker 3: them permission to go hard after whatever God's called you into.
43:09
Speaker 3: Ye and whatever that looks like. I mean, I'm old
43:12
Speaker 3: and gray. It got a gray beard. You know, I'm tall,
43:16
Speaker 3: got knee issues, back issues. It's like, so I have
43:19
Speaker 3: some physical limitations from playing I got all that from
43:22
Speaker 3: playing sports. But I have some physical limitations. So but
43:27
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean I'm not a man because I go
43:31
Speaker 3: hard after the things that I believe strongly in and
43:34
Speaker 3: and I think, I think what our culture has done largely,
43:38
Speaker 3: and what the Church has done largely is e masculate
43:40
Speaker 3: men like men. You can't be who you are, you
43:45
Speaker 3: have to be this picture of this quiet miss mister Rogers,
43:50
Speaker 3: God blessed Fred Rogers, like the mister Rogers caricature. And
43:54
Speaker 3: I don't think that's what most men want. I don't
43:57
Speaker 3: think that's what the picture of Jesus that we see.
44:00
Speaker 3: We see somebody who is strong, compassionate, driven to achieve
44:08
Speaker 3: his mission and does it in a way that people
44:12
Speaker 3: were attracted to him. People all sorts were attracted to him,
44:18
Speaker 3: not just like the machiesmo guys. Yeah, so I think
44:22
Speaker 3: that's maybe more from my perspective, that's more the middle road.
44:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's unful, And I do tend to agree. I mean,
44:28
Speaker 1: I think individually we have a particular arc that God
44:33
Speaker 1: has given us, and it's you know, liking to go
44:38
Speaker 1: to the gym or having tattoos doesn't make me more
44:40
Speaker 1: masculine than anybody else. It makes me what God made me.
44:45
Speaker 1: And and I think that, you know, I always look
44:47
Speaker 1: at it. I think it's kind of comical. I'll read
44:49
Speaker 1: some I read different stuff on you know, from folks
44:53
Speaker 1: who are dealing with masculinity, and you you know, some
44:55
Speaker 1: of it.
44:56
Speaker 2: I hear a lot.
44:56
Speaker 1: About camping and being out in the wilderness and shooting things, and.
45:00
Speaker 2: I hate that stuff.
45:03
Speaker 1: Give me a holiday in and you know, you know,
45:06
Speaker 1: I'll take subway, you know what I mean, as long
45:09
Speaker 1: as I don't have to kill it in neat it myself.
45:11
Speaker 3: I'm good, right, I'm with your brother.
45:14
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's just some of those like
45:16
Speaker 1: sort of stereotypical things, and I'm like, we're applying this
45:19
Speaker 1: into these discourses on masculinity, and I can't help but
45:25
Speaker 1: think it's doing a disservice to people who might go, well,
45:30
Speaker 1: that's not me.
45:30
Speaker 2: Just like this gentleman you're.
45:31
Speaker 1: Talking about, I cry, you know, I cry easily, and
45:34
Speaker 1: that's not masculine. It's like, well, but that's you, and
45:37
Speaker 1: you're a man, and so you know, it doesn't have
45:41
Speaker 1: to be masculine.
45:41
Speaker 2: I think that's part of the problem.
45:43
Speaker 1: It's like, you're a man, you do that, you own it, right,
45:47
Speaker 1: be who Christ is calling you to be.
45:49
Speaker 2: That's cool, that's great.
45:51
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes we're just applying some of these
45:53
Speaker 1: other things on top of that that it don't make
45:58
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. It sort of skew our perception
46:01
Speaker 1: of it.
46:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do too, And I think as I counsel men,
46:04
Speaker 3: you know, most of my clinical case lead right now
46:06
Speaker 3: are men or pastors. Male pastors do men's ministry. I'm
46:12
Speaker 3: part of this more regional men's ministry. And probably James.
46:16
Speaker 3: The most consistent message that the men give me is
46:21
Speaker 3: that they feel like they're not enough, they're not good enough,
46:26
Speaker 3: or you feeling like they're not something enough. Maybe this
46:28
Speaker 3: is generally enough. And so when when when I get
46:31
Speaker 3: in with them and say, well, okay, the word enough
46:36
Speaker 3: kind of implies that there's a standard that you're measuring
46:39
Speaker 3: yourself against. Right, what is that standard? And most people,
46:43
Speaker 3: and I recognize this my own life, going back to
46:45
Speaker 3: probably when I was training about forty and I began
46:49
Speaker 3: to look at maybe a midlife crisis. Maybe it began
46:52
Speaker 3: to look at what am I measuring myself against? And
46:56
Speaker 3: most men they answer the same way I did. I
46:58
Speaker 3: have no idea, yeah, so and some men do to know,
47:03
Speaker 3: and I have an idea like I'm not a good
47:05
Speaker 3: enough basketball player compared to whom James Lebron James, right,
47:11
Speaker 3: you're right, you're not, so you're right. Yeah, that's it's
47:14
Speaker 3: more realistic. I mean, I'm fifty fifty eight knee and
47:17
Speaker 3: back issues. Okay, let's make this realistic. And but most men,
47:22
Speaker 3: and myself included, it's like I don't even know what
47:25
Speaker 3: I'm measuring myself against. So consequently, how do I even
47:29
Speaker 3: know if I'm enough? Right, So, so with men's discipleship,
47:34
Speaker 3: counseling discipleship, I really try to help men to identify,
47:40
Speaker 3: you know, the standard being Christ. Yeah, he's almost an
47:45
Speaker 3: unrealistic standard in the sense that he was perfect, but
47:49
Speaker 3: he is the model, okay, Right? And how are you
47:52
Speaker 3: wired James versus Steve versus you know, Billy or Sammy
47:58
Speaker 3: or whoever, how are you wired? What was I called
48:00
Speaker 3: you into? Then let's establish a more reasonable standard for
48:06
Speaker 3: yourself to measure yourself against.
48:08
Speaker 2: When I think that's beautiful because.
48:12
Speaker 1: If you're familiar with an Asia arts work on the
48:15
Speaker 1: metic desire and those kind of things, right, He basically
48:18
Speaker 1: talks about, we always have a model that we want
48:21
Speaker 1: to imitate, and when we pick up let's say we
48:25
Speaker 1: pick a human model, we almost always end up in
48:28
Speaker 1: competition with that human model, because ultimately our desires are
48:32
Speaker 1: shaped toward the things that that model's desires are shaped toward,
48:36
Speaker 1: and we end up competing for the same things. We
48:39
Speaker 1: want to not just be that model, we want to
48:41
Speaker 1: overtake that model to become that model.
48:45
Speaker 2: And then he argues that this doesn't happen with Christ.
48:48
Speaker 1: And part of the reason it doesn't happen with Christ
48:50
Speaker 1: is because the mechanism for becoming like Christ involves self sacrifice,
48:56
Speaker 1: It involves humility, it involves you know, it involves these
48:59
Speaker 1: things of like sort of letting yourself go and just
49:02
Speaker 1: be as opposed to trying to leverage into something. You know,
49:09
Speaker 1: it's not a competition to become more christ Like. As
49:12
Speaker 1: soon as you're making into a competition, you're kind of
49:14
Speaker 1: doing it wrong, right, you know. And so just I
49:19
Speaker 1: think it's really beautiful when we put Christ as the
49:21
Speaker 1: model in the plumb line, because then that is that
49:24
Speaker 1: gives us then different mechanisms to pursue that model than
49:28
Speaker 1: we would normally have and we choose any other model.
49:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really good. I like that a lot. I
49:36
Speaker 3: hadn't thought about it in that way, but that's true.
49:42
Speaker 3: I think I think men as men again. I think
49:46
Speaker 3: some men, and I would probably say myself included when
49:49
Speaker 3: I was younger, expected to be not be Christ in
49:53
Speaker 3: the idolatrous kind of way, but just to have everything
49:57
Speaker 3: figured out. Yeah, then you find in life. I find
50:00
Speaker 3: in my life. Then maybe James, you have to perhaps
50:03
Speaker 3: maybe most men have, most people have the closer you
50:07
Speaker 3: get to Christ, the more you see yourself right as
50:11
Speaker 3: you really are. Even I think I'm farther away from
50:15
Speaker 3: Christ than I was when I came to Christ, which
50:17
Speaker 3: of course I don't think is true. But you start
50:19
Speaker 3: to see yourself for who you really are. And having
50:23
Speaker 3: come to Christ at a later age, my later twenties,
50:27
Speaker 3: I remember what that was like to live without God
50:30
Speaker 3: and then then be saved a lot of things for
50:33
Speaker 3: changing me and then start really to explore my inner
50:37
Speaker 3: world to say, man, I have a long way to go,
50:40
Speaker 3: and thank God for his grace and is forgiveness of mercy.
50:45
Speaker 1: Well, Steve, I've kept you over time. I think that's
50:49
Speaker 1: actually a really good place to end on God's grace.
50:51
Speaker 2: And his mercy. And so I really appreciate you being
50:55
Speaker 2: on the podcast.
50:56
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the work you're doing and counseling and
50:58
Speaker 1: men's ministry and pastoral ministry. It's really fantastic to talk
51:01
Speaker 1: with you and just so appreciate you being on.
51:04
Speaker 3: So thank you, Yeah, thank you again. Thanks for the opportunity. Jams.
51:08
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, everybody, Well, we will catch you on
51:11
Speaker 1: the next episode of Thinking Christian. Come on back and
51:15
Speaker 1: we'll have some other great conversations and guests and hopefully Steve.
51:19
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're open to it, but i'd
51:20
Speaker 1: love to have you back, so it'll be great. Yeah,
51:23
Speaker 1: all right, very cool. All right, thanks everybody. We'll catch
51:27
Speaker 1: you on the next episode.
51:28
Speaker 2: Take care.
51:29
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
51:31
Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
51:33
Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
51:36
Speaker 1: you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network.
51:40
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