Latest / Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association / Episode 8: Sneaky Burnout With Immanuel Marsh + Free Resurrection Book + Top 5 Apologetics Books + Healthy Orange Creamsicle Soda Review.

Transcript

Episode 8: Sneaky Burnout With Immanuel Marsh + Free Resurrection Book + Top 5 Apologetics Books + Healthy Orange Creamsicle Soda Review. · Every Church Flourishing by the Great Commission Association

0:14
Speaker1: All about helping churches, leaders, and pastors find health,
0:18
Speaker1: encouragement, practical advice, soul care, and resources that work together
0:22
Speaker1: to build up your local fellowship and the broader kingdom of God.
0:26
Speaker1: Join hosts Dr. Michael Stewart, Pastor Chris Cole, and Dr.
0:30
Speaker1: Chase Thompson from California's SBC Great Commission Association as they explore
0:34
Speaker1: the frontiers of ministry and aim for the goal of making every church flourish.
0:38
Speaker0: Hey, welcome in to episode number eight of the every church flourishing podcast
0:43
Speaker0: by the Great Commission Association.
0:45
Speaker0: We have a great discussion for you today. We're going to talk about a sneaky
0:50
Speaker0: enemy of church leaders that may be constricting you right now and you don't even know about it.
0:57
Speaker0: We're also going to talk about a potentially delicious soda to review,
1:01
Speaker0: a resource for church leaders that literally sells for over 60 bucks,
1:05
Speaker0: but we're going to tell you how to get it for absolutely free,
1:08
Speaker0: very, very timely because it's It's all about Easter.
1:11
Speaker0: We're gonna review five top books for Easter on the resurrection to get you
1:17
Speaker0: ready for the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
1:21
Speaker0: And we've got more things as well. Well, hey, nothing is sadder than doing a
1:25
Speaker0: soda review by myself, but duty calls and it calls in the form of Zevia Orange Cream Sickle,
1:34
Speaker0: which is a very interesting beverage.
1:37
Speaker0: It is sweetened with stevia. And I picked this soda because as I'm recording
1:43
Speaker0: right now, it's 2.45 in the morning.
1:46
Speaker0: I just finished editing the main interview of the podcast, and it's due out
1:51
Speaker0: Monday morning, so it's way too late for me to drink anything with caffeine in it.
1:56
Speaker0: So I had this little treasure in the fridge, and it's time to give it a shot.
2:01
Speaker0: Zevia is sweetened with stevia, and stevia is a natural plant-based sweetener
2:08
Speaker0: that is 200 times sweeter than sugar, supposedly.
2:12
Speaker0: And it's supposed to be unlike some of the other artificial sweeteners.
2:17
Speaker0: It's supposed to be really pretty healthy.
2:20
Speaker0: And Zevia touts itself as having zero artificial ingredients.
2:25
Speaker0: And it uses natural colorants like a netto.
2:28
Speaker0: And it's gluten-free, which is no big deal because pretty much every major soda
2:34
Speaker0: in the United States is gluten-free.
2:36
Speaker0: But it's got zero fake colors, zero fake sweeteners.
2:40
Speaker0: And I don't care about all that. What I do care about is whether or not it tastes good, right?
2:45
Speaker0: So I grew up on Orange Crush and Sunkist, and I still remember the thrill when
2:51
Speaker0: our school vending machine in high school got Minute Maid orange soda.
2:55
Speaker0: It was like so popular. So I consider myself something of a connoisseur of orange
3:01
Speaker0: soda, and I hope this stuff is good. So let's give it a shot.
3:05
Speaker0: It's got a pretty good smell, not strong, not as strong as I would like it.
3:10
Speaker0: But it smells pretty fresh and citrusy.
3:13
Speaker0: Almost got a peach little smell to it. Maybe that's the creamsicle part. All right, here we go.
3:18
Speaker0: Wow. Yeah. Well, that's tasty. That's really good. Sweeter than I expected.
3:23
Speaker0: If you've ever had stevia before, you know it has a really good first impression
3:30
Speaker0: and maybe the second impression is not so great.
3:33
Speaker0: Nothing is quite like sugar that I've tasted yet in that kind of,
3:38
Speaker0: it tastes good at the beginning, it tastes good at the end.
3:41
Speaker0: Stevia's got a little bit of an aftertaste, and I've had Dr.
3:44
Speaker0: Zevia before, I've had other Zevia soda products, and honestly,
3:49
Speaker0: they're very healthy, so you feel good drinking them.
3:53
Speaker0: But I would say that aftertaste kills it a little bit.
3:57
Speaker0: Not nearly as good as a Coke Zero, which is kind of my go-to,
4:00
Speaker0: or Diet Mountain Dew, especially Diet Mountain Dew Baja Blast.
4:03
Speaker0: But this guy, I'm going to try again.
4:05
Speaker0: You can really taste the orange, really taste the creamsicle.
4:09
Speaker0: Like I'm really shocked that they got the creamsicle flavor down.
4:14
Speaker0: This is impressive. This is good.
4:16
Speaker0: This is an everyday drinking soda, especially at night when you're kind of winding down or whatever.
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Speaker0: So I'm going to give this four and a quarter Spurgeons out of five.
4:26
Speaker0: I'm impressed and I'm going to drink this ongoing in an ongoing way.
4:31
Speaker0: This is not just a one-time thing for me. This is a good drink,
4:34
Speaker0: especially because it's healthy.
4:35
Speaker0: And if you kind of combine the healthiness with the good taste,
4:38
Speaker0: you're really getting very close to a five Spurgeon soda.
4:43
Speaker0: But since we're just grading on taste on this podcast, we'll stick with four and a quarter.
4:48
Speaker0: So I told you earlier about a free book, and I'll tell you about a guy you've
4:53
Speaker0: probably never heard of, or maybe you have.
4:55
Speaker0: If you have, he's relatively new on the scene.
4:57
Speaker0: His name is Dr. Andrew Loke. Yeah.
5:00
Speaker0: And he's a double doctor. He's a clever dude.
5:03
Speaker0: He initially graduated with a medical doctor degree from the National University
5:07
Speaker0: of Singapore, and he worked for seven years as a medical doctor.
5:11
Speaker0: Then he went to Biola University in California, earned a master's degree in philosophy.
5:17
Speaker0: Clever guy, like I said, and then a PhD in theology at King's College in London
5:24
Speaker0: under the supervision of Alistair McGrath. And if you're not familiar with Dr.
5:29
Speaker0: McGrath, he is one of the top theologians and philosophers and apologists in Christendom.
5:34
Speaker0: He graduated from Oxford and Cambridge Universities and he was an Oxford professor. He mentored Dr.
5:41
Speaker0: Loke, who himself is a debater, a theologian, a scientist, and a philosopher.
5:46
Speaker0: And Andrew Loke is a fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion.
5:52
Speaker0: And his book is called Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
5:57
Speaker0: Now, I haven't read the book yet, but I just got it. And I'm very impressed
6:00
Speaker0: so far. His approach is, as it says in the title, transdisciplinary.
6:04
Speaker0: And he comes at the resurrection from a historical perspective,
6:08
Speaker0: a scientific perspective, a biblical studies perspective, and a theological perspective.
6:13
Speaker0: And he tackles the resurrection from all of those different vantage points.
6:18
Speaker0: And from what I can read of the reviews and what I've seen so far,
6:23
Speaker0: he does an excellent job of it.
6:24
Speaker0: If you want to find that book for free, you can go to Amazon and look for it.
6:28
Speaker0: Or I've got a link on our website, everychurchflourishing.com.
6:33
Speaker0: That's everychurchflourishing.com. Just look up the show notes for episode eight
6:38
Speaker0: and you can go there and hopefully it will stay free for quite some time.
6:43
Speaker0: Well, today's guest is great. And of course, you would expect me to say that
6:46
Speaker0: as the podcast host or whatever. but I'm not just saying that.
6:50
Speaker0: Emmanuel Marsh did a fantastic job in our interview.
6:54
Speaker0: This has honestly been one of my favorite interviews so far in the Every Church
6:58
Speaker0: Flourishing podcast. One of my favorite interviews I've ever done in over a
7:02
Speaker0: thousand podcast episodes.
7:04
Speaker0: He did so good. And I'm certain this is going to be very helpful and encouraging to you.
7:09
Speaker0: And that you will learn something about burnout and perseverance,
7:12
Speaker0: even if you think you're all good.
7:16
Speaker0: Even if you say, hey, man, all systems are go. I'm not dealing with burnout at all.
7:21
Speaker0: Because here's the thing, Emmanuel is a professional counselor who specializes
7:25
Speaker0: in coaching and counseling church leaders and pastors.
7:29
Speaker0: And he's an old friend and he's going to tell us that the signs of burnout are
7:35
Speaker0: subtle and a lot of people don't see them until it's too late.
7:41
Speaker0: And I think what Emmanuel is gonna do is equip us to know whether or not we
7:46
Speaker0: have burnout on the horizon. So let's go now to the interview,
7:50
Speaker0: and you'll hear more about him.
7:53
Speaker0: So pastors and church leaders, as we've been talking about on the podcast,
7:57
Speaker0: are kind of carrying more than most churches realize.
8:01
Speaker0: A lot of recent research shows that one in four pastors have seriously considered
8:07
Speaker0: leaving ministry in the past year, which is a lot for one year.
8:11
Speaker0: More than half of clergy have at some point between,
8:15
Speaker0: 2025 and 2020 considered leaving ministry. 57% say the role is overwhelming.
8:24
Speaker0: Only one in three serious church leader or pastor has somebody they say they can truly confide in.
8:31
Speaker0: And 18% of pastors, so like almost one in five, say they have wrestled with
8:38
Speaker0: really significant thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
8:41
Speaker0: And many of the people leading the church right now are in a place of exhaustion
8:49
Speaker0: and discouragement, hurting, and maybe nearing burnout.
8:53
Speaker0: And if the church is going to be healthy, then we got to take care of our pastors and our leaders.
8:58
Speaker0: And today's guest is Emmanuel Marsh, a guy I've known for many years.
9:02
Speaker0: He's with the Alabama Center for Pastoral Resilience.
9:06
Speaker0: And And rather than me tell everybody about you, Emanuel, how about you introduce
9:10
Speaker0: yourself and give us your background?
9:12
Speaker1: Thanks, Chase. Emanuel Marsh, from Birmingham, Alabama, still in Birmingham,
9:18
Speaker1: Alabama. I'm not as adventurous as you are.
9:21
Speaker1: I lived here my whole life, went to college here three times,
9:25
Speaker1: never moved out of the state, been married for 20 years.
9:28
Speaker1: I'm not a pastor, but I am a preacher and a minister.
9:31
Speaker1: Actually preached this past Sunday. I have one daughter who is 10 years old.
9:36
Speaker1: We have to pick up from school shortly.
9:40
Speaker1: And I don't know if there's anything else interesting about me,
9:43
Speaker1: but that's pretty much me in a nutshell.
9:45
Speaker0: Well, that's a good start. So Emmanuel and I have been on a lot of podcasts together.
9:49
Speaker0: Back in the day, we were part of the Gospel Friends podcast. He was the general.
9:55
Speaker0: I was Captain Crunchy, so he outranked me military-wise.
10:00
Speaker0: And that was, what, 10 years ago or so? We were on a lot of episodes.
10:04
Speaker0: But ever since then, I moved away since at some point you and some friends and
10:11
Speaker0: compatriots started the Alabama Center for Pastoral Resilience.
10:16
Speaker0: So I don't know much about that. Tell us a little bit about that mission.
10:20
Speaker1: So the mission statement is basically to help pastors lead with clarity.
10:25
Speaker1: And, yeah, we started probably in earnest around 2023.
10:30
Speaker1: But the idea had been kicking around 2019. So I'm a counselor by trade.
10:36
Speaker1: I've been a lot of things, a counselor, a teacher, but I'm a trained counselor.
10:40
Speaker1: That's kind of my moneymaker.
10:43
Speaker1: And my colleague Kent, he was a family counselor for a long time as well.
10:49
Speaker1: And he's also a preacher's kid. And so we've got between us,
10:53
Speaker1: we have some ministry adjacent.
10:56
Speaker1: You know, I've worked at churches. He was a sound guy at churches for most of
11:01
Speaker1: his life. And he's a preacher's kid. And so we're around a lot of ministry.
11:05
Speaker1: We've seen how the sausage is made, but really around 2020, you know,
11:11
Speaker1: when everything just was, I guess all hell broke loose is the best way to say it.
11:16
Speaker1: We were hearing from a lot of pastors. We saw more pastors come in for counseling in our,
11:21
Speaker1: kind of practices. And we were like, I wonder if there's something we could
11:24
Speaker1: offer just strictly for pastors.
11:27
Speaker1: And that's when we started kicking around this idea of working just strictly
11:32
Speaker1: for pastors, with pastors and for churches.
11:36
Speaker1: And we started doing that in earnest in 2023.
11:40
Speaker0: So the burnout statistics we're going to talk about in a minute would really
11:44
Speaker0: indicate that there is more and more of mental health, emotional health,
11:49
Speaker0: physical health need among pastors and church leaders.
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Speaker0: So in the three years or so that you have operated the Alabama Center for Pastoral Resilience,
12:00
Speaker0: what kind of things have you generally learned about pastors and church leaders?
12:06
Speaker0: Maybe some of the things you didn't know before.
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Speaker1: Well, some things I probably knew and just didn't realize how big of an issue it was.
12:14
Speaker1: But one of them is that pastors are very isolated.
12:18
Speaker1: They may have a lot of people around them. You got a public ministry,
12:22
Speaker1: people see you, they know who you are.
12:24
Speaker1: And they have people that look like friends and they call friends,
12:27
Speaker1: but they don't really let a lot of people in.
12:30
Speaker1: And so having an outside voice, somebody who's not in their congregation,
12:34
Speaker1: who's not in their church, or maybe not even in their state,
12:38
Speaker1: was pretty valuable for them.
12:40
Speaker1: And so I've known that pastors kind of play things close to the invest in general,
12:45
Speaker1: but I didn't realize how isolating that was.
12:49
Speaker1: I thought that was just kind of part of the gig. That's just what you do.
12:52
Speaker1: You're stoic, you're private. So that's one thing that I really realized,
12:56
Speaker1: like, okay, they're really isolated in a lot of ways.
13:00
Speaker1: Not everybody, but especially maybe the older generation.
13:03
Speaker0: Yeah.
13:04
Speaker1: I'm 47. I think younger pastors tend to keep friendships a little bit more,
13:11
Speaker1: you know, maintain them a little bit better than the old guard did
13:17
Speaker1: But that's that's one. Another one is that and you kind of hear the jokes about
13:22
Speaker1: pastor's families and and the, you know, preacher's kids or the reason they're
13:28
Speaker1: pastors because they come from some kind of dysfunctional thing. Yeah.
13:32
Speaker1: Well, that's not always true, but I didn't realize how much family influenced how a pastor functions.
13:39
Speaker1: And so there is a link between how your relationships are with your family and
13:45
Speaker1: in your, that's your family of origin,
13:47
Speaker1: extended family, and even your household, how much of that goes into how pastors
13:53
Speaker1: function in their leadership roles.
13:56
Speaker1: And so that one, you know, I knew it happened, but not to the extent that it
14:01
Speaker1: did. So that one was a big one as well.
14:03
Speaker0: Yeah, let's rewind a second. One of the things you said was that pastors have
14:08
Speaker0: a tendency, especially the older generation, of playing things close to the vest.
14:13
Speaker0: And I'm roughly your age, a few years older, and I remember being sort of mentored
14:19
Speaker0: and shadow mentored by a lot of different pastors.
14:22
Speaker0: And some of the things that they would try and teach, I should say,
14:26
Speaker0: our generation is exactly that, that you've got to be careful with church members.
14:31
Speaker0: You got to be careful to keep things close to the vest. There can be betrayal.
14:35
Speaker0: There can be church friction. People will use things against you, things like that.
14:41
Speaker0: I'll just be honest with you. I haven't, and maybe I'm an outlier here.
14:46
Speaker0: I haven't had a lot of issues like that.
14:49
Speaker0: You know, one of the ways you and I know each other is from Agape Baptist back
14:54
Speaker0: in Pinson in Birmingham, where David McConnell is the pastor now.
14:58
Speaker0: And back in the day, when I was the pastor of that church, one of my favorite
15:01
Speaker0: things was the Christmas messages that you and David would team teach together from time to time.
15:09
Speaker0: So I know you and I know him very well. I don't know that David,
15:13
Speaker0: Pastor David of Agape is a guy that keeps things super close to his vest either.
15:20
Speaker0: So along those lines, do you think that a pastor should keep things close to the vest?
15:27
Speaker0: Should he be more private with church members or should he be more vulnerable
15:33
Speaker0: or open? What's what's the best counsel there?
15:36
Speaker1: So this, this debate has been raging on. I've seen videos recently of pastors talking about it.
15:42
Speaker1: A matter of fact, Kent, my colleague, he just did a workshop on this very thing.
15:48
Speaker1: And he did a, he, uh, on our blog, there's like a little write up about this idea.
15:53
Speaker1: And I think it depends. I really do.
15:57
Speaker1: My personality is I like to be me all the time for better or worse.
16:02
Speaker1: I don't want to have to look respectable to the congregation and then be dying
16:09
Speaker1: on the inside or, you know, that's just my philosophy of ministry.
16:13
Speaker1: There's this idea of professional distance.
16:16
Speaker1: And so there's, you know, counselors have a similar thing. And so how much is
16:21
Speaker1: too much to share with your clients?
16:23
Speaker1: And I share personal stories with clients all the time.
16:27
Speaker1: And I think it depends on what you're sharing and why you're sharing it.
16:30
Speaker1: And so I think that there is a way to do it and to have friends in the congregation and it be okay.
16:37
Speaker1: But I also think there's an unhealthy way to do it as well, where it's,
16:41
Speaker1: you really don't have personal boundaries.
16:45
Speaker1: That's kind of comes from a different place. And so I don't know if there's
16:49
Speaker1: a right answer, but my bent is toward openness is better.
16:55
Speaker1: Because it takes the pressure off of you to have to be, I don't know,
16:59
Speaker1: Superman or perfect, you know.
17:02
Speaker1: So if I'm preaching, I'll talk about being depressed. I'll talk about marriage struggles.
17:07
Speaker1: You know, I'll appropriately share things. I don't think anybody is particularly
17:11
Speaker1: helped by me looking like I have it all together.
17:13
Speaker1: And so, but it varies. There are those congregations who will eat you alive
17:18
Speaker1: if they have personal information. But I just, I don't know if I'll worry about that. Like, you know,
17:23
Speaker1: Because those times, if that happens, they're going to do it regardless of,
17:28
Speaker1: you know, they don't need a reason. They just need the opportunity.
17:32
Speaker0: I love what you said at the beginning of that. It's you like to be you all the
17:37
Speaker0: time for better or worse.
17:39
Speaker0: I guess I've unconsciously adopted that policy.
17:44
Speaker0: It is fatiguing. it is emotionally hard to try to put on a face,
17:52
Speaker0: a front, and to act like you're some sort of a different person.
17:57
Speaker0: I worked at a seminary for almost 10 years with a bunch of pastors.
18:02
Speaker0: I taught some and helped out with the video, did all sorts of things.
18:05
Speaker0: But just in the course of my life, even though I wasn't raised in a ministry
18:10
Speaker0: household, I know a ton of pastors and I know them, you know,
18:13
Speaker0: behind closed doors, essentially.
18:15
Speaker0: And I know that there may be a few outliers that are genuinely what you would
18:22
Speaker0: think of as saints all the time.
18:24
Speaker0: These are people that almost emanate a glow like Moses did when he came away from meeting with God.
18:30
Speaker0: But most pastors are just normal people who sin and need Jesus. And I am that.
18:38
Speaker0: I'm in that category. And I don't want to put on a, I don't want to put on an act.
18:43
Speaker0: I don't, I'm not saying that it's some sort of noble, you know,
18:46
Speaker0: I'm not a hypocrite kind of thing.
18:47
Speaker0: I am sometimes a hypocrite, but pretending like I'm not pretending like I'm
18:52
Speaker0: some sort of saying it, like you said, it doesn't, it doesn't help anybody.
18:55
Speaker0: So I wear a blazer here in California pretty much every Sunday and I tuck my shirt in.
19:03
Speaker0: And I don't even know why that is maybe the the highest part of my fakery.
19:09
Speaker0: I am not a blazer shirt tucked in guy.
19:12
Speaker0: Yesterday, I did a podcast with a bunch of different pastors.
19:16
Speaker0: I was wearing a button down shirt and some jogging shorts. And you couldn't
19:20
Speaker0: say because you can only see from here up. I like to be comfortable.
19:23
Speaker0: And that's probably the one area where I'll compromise that a little bit.
19:27
Speaker0: But I feel like the church needs to see pastors, not who are spiritually immature,
19:33
Speaker0: Not who are sinning and swearing and having affairs and, you know,
19:37
Speaker0: alcoholics or sin is raging out of control in their life, but people who are
19:42
Speaker0: need Jesus and have weaknesses.
19:46
Speaker0: So in the course of your counseling with pastors, especially ones who are struggling,
19:52
Speaker0: worn out, discouraged or whatever, what have you learned about burnout and what
19:58
Speaker0: have you learned about maybe some of the keys of resilience and overcoming in some of your sessions?
20:05
Speaker1: First of all, you don't call it counseling. That's the first thing.
20:11
Speaker1: If you say counseling, pastor's not going to come.
20:13
Speaker0: We're going to talk about that in a little bit. because I agree with you.
20:16
Speaker0: Pastors are resistant to counseling.
20:18
Speaker1: Yeah, and what we do is really not,
20:21
Speaker1: counseling proper. We call it consultations or even coaching.
20:26
Speaker1: So burnout, the kind of genesis of it was when the psychologist,
20:30
Speaker1: and I can't remember his name, founded it, but the general idea is a state of
20:34
Speaker1: emotional exhaustion that's tied to workplace.
20:39
Speaker1: And it was first in like helping professions and, you know, nurses,
20:43
Speaker1: psychologists who were getting burnout.
20:46
Speaker1: It's since expanded to other things, but it's, and some people when they hear
20:49
Speaker1: burnout, they just think, oh, you work too many hours.
20:52
Speaker1: Yeah. But that's, that's not necessarily it. If somebody said,
20:55
Speaker1: hey, we want you to watch Alabama football for a living.
20:59
Speaker1: No, every Saturday, you got to be there, man. You got to watch pregame.
21:03
Speaker1: You got to keep up with scouting in the summertime. You know,
21:06
Speaker1: I don't know that you did, you'd get burnt out on that.
21:08
Speaker1: No, it's not about the job. Sometimes it's about who you're doing it with.
21:14
Speaker1: And so the emotional part is the part that, that people kind of overlook and
21:20
Speaker1: they just think it's, well, I work too many hours.
21:22
Speaker1: People who love what they do work crazy hours and don't get burnt out. So it's not hours.
21:30
Speaker1: You see the NBA players, they play basketball during the season.
21:33
Speaker1: And then in the off season, you know what they do? They play pickup games.
21:37
Speaker1: They play more basketball.
21:39
Speaker1: They don't get burnt out on it because they love it. And so the emotional part
21:43
Speaker1: is what is overlooked a lot of times. And the relational part.
21:48
Speaker1: All those are kind of tied together.
21:50
Speaker1: Not all the pastors that we work with are coming for burnout reasons. That's some of them.
21:55
Speaker1: Some people just kind of want to, I don't know, do something different.
21:58
Speaker1: They just kind of feel stagnant or stuck.
22:00
Speaker1: Sometimes people are just looking for some kind of direction,
22:04
Speaker1: you know, that's just like, I don't know what I'm looking for, but maybe this is it.
22:08
Speaker1: But there are a percentage of people who are just like, I am worn out and I'm
22:12
Speaker1: about to quit if something doesn't change.
22:16
Speaker1: And so that's a small portion of them. And there's a couple of reasons for that.
22:21
Speaker1: One, burnout's sneaky. I don't know if you ever experienced any burnout or got close to it.
22:26
Speaker1: You don't really know it's happening until it happens. And then you're like,
22:30
Speaker1: it's by the time you realize that it's already, you know, bitten you.
22:33
Speaker1: And so a lot of times pastors don't realize that's what it is.
22:36
Speaker1: They think I'm just tired.
22:38
Speaker1: I probably worked too long, too many hospital visits, and I just need a vacation.
22:43
Speaker1: And then they go on a vacation and they come back and they feel a little bit better for a while.
22:48
Speaker1: Then it's right back because vacation
22:50
Speaker1: does not do anything with emotional enrollment. relational issues.
22:53
Speaker0: Yeah, you're right.
22:56
Speaker1: Those people in your congregation who you didn't get along with before you went
23:00
Speaker1: on vacation, they are still there when you come back home, you know,
23:07
Speaker1: and their opinion of you has not changed.
23:10
Speaker1: So it sneaks up on people. And so the hardest part of our job is,
23:15
Speaker1: you know, getting to people before that happens.
23:18
Speaker1: I was talking to a pastor friend a couple of weeks ago, I was trying to recruit
23:23
Speaker1: for our next cohort. He's like, here's my problem.
23:26
Speaker1: By the time that I found out that somebody needs help, they've already blown
23:30
Speaker1: up their ministry. They've already left the ministry.
23:33
Speaker1: It's too late because you could have said something.
23:37
Speaker1: And that isolated and that insular piece comes to play in that because who do you talk to?
23:43
Speaker1: People who are used to being strong for other people and who are used to giving
23:47
Speaker1: wisdom to other people often don't like to be on the other side of the
23:52
Speaker1: of the table or the other side of the desk. And so by the time a pastor acknowledges
23:59
Speaker1: they need help, you know, something's already set in.
24:02
Speaker1: And then if they actually take the step to go find some help,
24:06
Speaker1: that is, I won't say it's not as rare as it used to be, especially with,
24:10
Speaker1: like I said, younger generation, they'll go to counseling, they'll go do something.
24:15
Speaker1: But burnout, it's sneaky because you don't see us coming and you think that
24:19
Speaker1: just an extended vacation or something like that will help, and it doesn't.
24:24
Speaker0: So do you think it's pride that pastors and a lot of church leaders are very
24:29
Speaker0: hesitant to admit they're in need or to seek counseling or to seek help?
24:35
Speaker0: I know it could be multifactorial, but what do you think are some of the prominent
24:39
Speaker0: factors that make it hard for pastors and high-level church leaders to seek help?
24:47
Speaker1: Well, one, most pastors are men. And so men in general don't like to seek help.
24:54
Speaker1: So if you just add that in, you've already.
24:56
Speaker0: Treated to that.
24:57
Speaker1: And I mean, I counsel mostly married couples and men.
25:00
Speaker1: And, you know, when a man comes in for counseling, I'm like,
25:03
Speaker1: okay, something's going on. He's not playing around.
25:07
Speaker0: Right.
25:08
Speaker1: So that's one aspect of it. There can be a pride element to it.
25:13
Speaker1: But another element that's close to pride, that's kind of pride adjacent,
25:18
Speaker1: going back to the playing things close to the vest, is a lot of these old pastors
25:22
Speaker1: are trained in reputation management.
25:26
Speaker1: Not necessarily character, but reputation. And so two different things.
25:32
Speaker1: Yeah, I need to look a certain way. And if this got out that I was needing help,
25:37
Speaker1: how will my people look at me?
25:39
Speaker1: How would, you know, my reputation in the community could take a hit?
25:43
Speaker1: And so the idea of needing help is kind of, it's anathema on several levels.
25:49
Speaker1: One, just being a man, we just kind of are stubborn in that way, I guess.
25:53
Speaker1: Then if somebody is prideful, there's that. But it's also just the reputation aspect.
25:58
Speaker1: Like this could ruin my ministry if people found out I was going to counseling,
26:02
Speaker1: you know, because keeping that look of, I don't know, having it all together is really important.
26:10
Speaker0: Yeah, that's an excellent point. Right. So do you think you think burnout is
26:14
Speaker0: the best word for this kind of thing that happens with pastors and other leaders?
26:19
Speaker0: You know, that makes me I guess when I think of burnout, I think of something
26:22
Speaker0: like a flame out where, like you mentioned earlier, somebody who's working all the time there.
26:27
Speaker0: They start out just with all this gung ho enthusiasm and energy and and they
26:33
Speaker0: they burn all the the midnight candles and eventually they just kind of break
26:38
Speaker0: down from exhaustion. I've seen that before in pastors.
26:42
Speaker0: I think it's pretty rare. I mean, I'm not saying pastors aren't driven people.
26:46
Speaker0: That personality type is pretty rare. But what I see more often,
26:50
Speaker0: I guess, the last few years is pastors and church leaders that are being slowly
26:57
Speaker0: kind of crushed and constricted to death.
26:59
Speaker0: It could be toxic things in the church or conflict.
27:03
Speaker0: It could be some sort of personal sin or whatever. but it's almost like you're
27:08
Speaker0: a squirrel or a rat and some sort of constricting snake has got a hold of you and it's just slowly,
27:15
Speaker0: slowly squeezing the air out of you and the life out of you and the will to lead.
27:21
Speaker0: And as you say, we pastors, we're not really fast to.
27:25
Speaker1: Recognize, hey, we're getting crushed here.
27:28
Speaker0: And by the time some people reach out, it's almost too late.
27:32
Speaker0: And I don't know if there's a better word for that, but sometimes burnout can
27:37
Speaker0: be like a really fast thing.
27:38
Speaker0: And sometimes it can be a really slow kind of grind, like the frog in the boiling
27:44
Speaker0: water. You don't know you're being burned up.
27:46
Speaker1: Yeah. And you bring up the appropriate word, to this idea of being choked and restricted.
27:52
Speaker1: A term that we use in our work a lot is anxiety.
27:56
Speaker1: And when we use that, we're not talking about a mood disorder or any kind of emotional.
28:00
Speaker1: We're talking about emotional reactivity, just that normal everyday fight,
28:05
Speaker1: flight, or freeze response that all God's creatures have.
28:10
Speaker1: The word anxiety, one of the roots, it's got several roots, but one of the roots
28:15
Speaker1: means to choke or to restrict.
28:18
Speaker0: I did not know that.
28:18
Speaker1: It's like arc
28:21
Speaker1: It's like a Proto-European word. And there's other variations of the different,
28:26
Speaker1: there's a Latin version that talks about being in a narrow place.
28:31
Speaker1: This idea, you see it in Psalm 118, the psalmist is talking about being in distress.
28:38
Speaker1: And distress is a word that means like a narrow, you're in this narrow place,
28:42
Speaker1: but God has put you in a wide open place.
28:45
Speaker1: And so that restriction has been lifted. it.
28:49
Speaker1: There is that idea of being squeezed, slowly squeezed.
28:54
Speaker1: And we get the word anaconda from this same root and angina,
28:58
Speaker1: which is like your heart issue, angst, all those come from that same root.
29:02
Speaker1: And so it is a slow process that you don't realize it until it's too late.
29:06
Speaker1: And then you're like, why am I so miserable?
29:08
Speaker1: We did a workshop on burnout for a church a couple of months ago.
29:13
Speaker1: And I gave an example of when I was working at a place and I didn't realize
29:17
Speaker1: that anything was wrong until I started throwing up in the parking lot.
29:23
Speaker1: And then I started to notice that I was fine when I woke up that morning,
29:28
Speaker1: but the closer I got to work, you know, just on that drive, the sicker I felt.
29:33
Speaker1: And that's, you know, I was like, okay, something's up. This is not, you know.
29:37
Speaker1: And so there is a sneaky element to it that you don't realize it's happening
29:41
Speaker1: when you think of something else.
29:43
Speaker1: And as men tend to do, you have a health issue, You may be more responsible
29:48
Speaker1: than myself or other men. Probably not.
29:50
Speaker1: Something's going on in your body and you're just, oh, that's weird.
29:55
Speaker1: I hadn't been there before.
29:56
Speaker1: It'll go away on its own. Going to get it checked out, it's like,
30:00
Speaker1: it'll go away. But it doesn't go away, and that's the thing.
30:03
Speaker1: You just keep getting squeezed.
30:05
Speaker0: Well, you know, you kind of wondered earlier if I've ever experienced burnout.
30:11
Speaker0: So let's talk a little bit about, given that it's sneaky and that most pastors
30:18
Speaker0: don't say anything until they're kind of deep in it, let's talk a little bit
30:22
Speaker0: about early signs of trouble.
30:24
Speaker0: Because I would say, I've been in ministry for over 30 years.
30:28
Speaker0: I've had troubles and frustrations and difficult things. and David and I often
30:34
Speaker0: talk about we should write a book about all the adventures we've had pastoring.
30:38
Speaker0: But to my knowledge, I've never gone through a season where I was burnt out or close to burnt out.
30:45
Speaker0: I love preaching. I love getting into the Bible.
30:49
Speaker0: I've never, I hate being bored. I have ADHD and being bored is one of my greatest fears.
30:56
Speaker0: And ministry is pretty much different every day. I kind of like that.
31:00
Speaker0: Most people maybe don't like that. I do like that.
31:03
Speaker0: And I've never found, or at least since I hit a point in college,
31:08
Speaker0: I've never really found the Bible boring.
31:10
Speaker0: But I do wrestle with anxieties and stresses and things like that.
31:14
Speaker0: I do go through dark periods of kind of a funk or darkness or what might even
31:20
Speaker0: be a wave of depression or something.
31:23
Speaker0: So I don't think I've been close to burnout. out, but I recognize listening to you.
31:29
Speaker1: Maybe I have.
31:30
Speaker0: So give us some early signs of trouble, some indications that the constrictor
31:37
Speaker0: is tightening its noose around you.
31:40
Speaker0: And so that maybe some of us guys who are stubborn and don't want to go to get
31:45
Speaker0: help, maybe we see some of the early signs and get help before we're totally crushed and wasted.
31:52
Speaker1: Yeah. And here's the trick of this, or what makes this tricky,
31:57
Speaker1: is that burnout is not an official diagnosis.
32:00
Speaker1: I think a couple of years ago, the World Health Organization,
32:02
Speaker1: if you believe in the legitimacy of that organization, they added a code for
32:07
Speaker1: it. But it's not an official diagnosis.
32:09
Speaker0: It's not in the DSM?
32:11
Speaker1: No, no, it's not. And a lot of its symptoms overlap with depression.
32:16
Speaker1: So, for instance, isolating yourself from certain people being more irritable than you, you know,
32:25
Speaker1: just on edge all the time, not finding joy in things you normally found joy in.
32:32
Speaker1: And so it's very difficult to really separate it because it has so much overlap
32:36
Speaker1: with depression. But what sets it apart is it's connected to the workplace.
32:41
Speaker1: You know, it's connected to the workplace. And that's what makes it different
32:45
Speaker1: than depression or something else.
32:46
Speaker1: But a lot of those early signs of those signs of depression are,
32:50
Speaker1: you know, they run concurrent with burnout.
32:53
Speaker1: And like in my particular scenario, when I was one of my old jobs,
32:58
Speaker1: I would be in my office and close the door. where I used to be more sociable
33:02
Speaker1: and I love this place. I used to go to work on my off day.
33:05
Speaker1: I wouldn't do anything like, aren't you off today? It's like,
33:07
Speaker1: yeah, but I was in the area. I just stopped by to say hello.
33:09
Speaker1: But then this came where I was, I was taking all the days off or I'd be there,
33:14
Speaker1: but I'd just be kind of a zombie,
33:16
Speaker1: a job where I worked a whole bunch of hours and didn't care and now I'm just
33:20
Speaker1: like, I'm working the allotted time and then I'm getting out of there.
33:26
Speaker1: And so just a shift in how you look toward the work, because the symptoms show
33:29
Speaker1: up at the job more than anything, at least it did for me.
33:33
Speaker1: But it's very hard to nail down what's burnout. But that emotional exhaustion,
33:38
Speaker1: I started coming home and taking naps on lunch break instead of eating lunch.
33:42
Speaker1: Wow. Wow. I was just like, I don't even want lunch. I'm exhausted. Take a nap.
33:46
Speaker0: So those are some danger signs that it's time to get somebody else involved
33:51
Speaker0: in your life if you're experiencing some of that.
33:55
Speaker1: Yeah. Yeah. Before it gets, I don't say too late, but before it gets worse. Yeah.
34:00
Speaker1: Because the longer you, if you are in a state of burnout, the longer you wait,
34:04
Speaker1: the longer where it takes you to get back to some sense of normalcy.
34:08
Speaker1: It's a long process.
34:10
Speaker1: And so you catch it on the front end, like most things, if you catch it early,
34:14
Speaker1: the prognosis is a lot better than if you catch it late. Yeah, there's a
34:18
Speaker0: Lot of wisdom in that health-wise, mechanic-wise, and pastoral leadership-wise.
34:25
Speaker0: So let's look at some statistics. And I'm going to read out a flood of statistics,
34:30
Speaker0: Emmanuel, and then ask you if they line up with what you guys are seeing in your practice.
34:36
Speaker0: 57% of pastors right now say the role is frequently overwhelming.
34:42
Speaker0: 47% say they feel the demands they often, so almost half of pastors often feel
34:50
Speaker0: the demands of ministry are greater than they can handle.
34:53
Speaker0: Slightly more than two-thirds feel like they must be on call 24 hours a day.
34:58
Speaker0: Two-thirds say they report feelings of loneliness and isolation.
35:03
Speaker0: Almost 20% say they have those feelings very frequently. over half of clergy,
35:10
Speaker0: like we said earlier, considered leaving pastoral ministry in the last few years since 2020.
35:15
Speaker0: In 2015, so just 11 years ago, 72% of pastors reported feeling very satisfied with their jobs.
35:24
Speaker0: But just seven years later in 2022, that number was right at about 52%. So 20% less.
35:31
Speaker0: Of course, some of that had to do with the pandemic, but maybe not all of it.
35:34
Speaker0: 65% of pastors do not utilize, as you kind of hinted at earlier,
35:40
Speaker0: a professional counselor, a therapist, or spiritual help.
35:45
Speaker0: And the percentage of pastors who receive any kind of personal support from
35:51
Speaker0: a team or a network of other pastors was 37% in 2015, which is still pretty low,
35:58
Speaker0: but it had dropped to 22% just seven years later. so.
36:05
Speaker0: Those are some pretty rough statistics that paint a picture of people going
36:11
Speaker0: through a tough job, feeling lonely and overwhelmed in the middle of it.
36:15
Speaker0: Is that anecdotally the kind of thing you're seeing?
36:19
Speaker0: Does your experience bear out with those numbers from Barna and Lifeway and
36:25
Speaker0: Duke University and Baylor University?
36:28
Speaker1: Yeah, I think I definitely think they're accurate because, I mean,
36:31
Speaker1: one, just the pastors that I've talked to, not even pastors who I've worked with.
36:35
Speaker1: With ACPR, but just factors I just know and talk to.
36:38
Speaker1: And they were like, oh yeah, you know, this, if I hadn't got counseling,
36:41
Speaker1: I would have, you know, I would have been, you know, I would have dropped out of the ministry.
36:45
Speaker1: I would have been done for. I've heard that a lot.
36:48
Speaker1: Ministry almost ate me alive. I had to get help if I didn't get help.
36:51
Speaker1: But that's a lot of the younger guys. The older guys are more reluctant,
36:55
Speaker1: but those numbers sound right.
36:57
Speaker1: And it obviously it picked up in 2020 because we're just in a more anxious world.
37:03
Speaker1: And that affects people and then pastors are people as well,
37:07
Speaker1: but it affects congregations and families and pastors are taking on a lot of that anxiety.
37:12
Speaker1: It's just part of the reason why we started this thing, because we were getting,
37:15
Speaker1: I remember talking to pastors who I didn't even know.
37:17
Speaker1: It's like, hey, this other pastor gave me your number.
37:20
Speaker1: My church is divided on mask or no mask. and churches were just dividing over
37:25
Speaker1: all these things, you know, lockdowns was a big one.
37:29
Speaker1: Should we close the church or should we leave it open?
37:31
Speaker1: Yeah. When were you in 2020? Were you in California? You were already in California. I was, yeah. Yeah.
37:36
Speaker1: Yeah. And so, so I don't know what your, what your experience was,
37:39
Speaker1: but it was depending on what church you were at here, it was some,
37:43
Speaker1: a lot of tension about what you should do and what you shouldn't do.
37:47
Speaker0: And there was a lot of that in California as well. Obviously,
37:49
Speaker0: I think we were much more cautious out here, but I have some pastoral friends
37:54
Speaker0: in the city, I think some of whom ultimately...
37:58
Speaker0: Lost their job over disagreements in the church over how to manage COVID.
38:04
Speaker0: I was very fortunate, graced by the fact that all our leaders were pretty much on the same page.
38:13
Speaker0: We continued to meet. We met outside.
38:15
Speaker0: I had the assistant police chief call me early on, and I hardly knew the guy,
38:21
Speaker0: but he called me and said, hey, listen, I just want to let you know,
38:24
Speaker0: pastor, that our police force is got.
38:28
Speaker1: A lot more
38:30
Speaker0: Important things to do than to go around and see if churches are meeting.
38:35
Speaker0: So you do with that information what you will. And I really appreciated that.
38:40
Speaker0: But honestly, we went through a season where we met outside most of the time and it was fine.
38:47
Speaker0: And then when they said you could go back in.
38:49
Speaker1: That was fine too.
38:50
Speaker0: We were cautious. I don't know if we were too cautious or what,
38:54
Speaker0: but there were other churches is that any mention of masks or whatever was civil war.
39:01
Speaker1: Yeah. Well, the state shouldn't be telling the church what they should do.
39:04
Speaker0: I generally agree with that.
39:06
Speaker1: Yeah. Yeah. But practically, you know, and I don't know if there's a right or
39:11
Speaker1: a wrong answer for that, but a lot of churches were divided over that.
39:14
Speaker1: And another thing was, you know, a lot of people just stopped going to church
39:17
Speaker1: in general during the pandemic. And that's not even talking about the racial
39:22
Speaker1: stuff in 2020 that divided a lot of churches.
39:26
Speaker1: Yeah. Why aren't you addressing this? Why aren't you talking about it?
39:29
Speaker1: Or why did you address it?
39:30
Speaker1: Why did you talk about it? And so a lot of that burnout spike in 2020,
39:36
Speaker1: we haven't recovered from that.
39:39
Speaker1: There's still, just heard recently, there's still people who are upset about
39:43
Speaker1: certain things or who are sensitive to certain issues that they want their pastor
39:48
Speaker1: to speak to or not to speak to? Are they mad that he spoke to it?
39:51
Speaker1: And so depending on, I remember talking to a pastor, this might have been 2021, and his
39:58
Speaker1: He said that, I thought my people were more mature than that.
40:01
Speaker1: And so he thought he had a mature congregation and that, you know,
40:04
Speaker1: going through the pandemic would be just, we'll do these precautions.
40:08
Speaker1: They're not a big deal, but we'll do it because, you know, we love our neighbor.
40:12
Speaker1: And he was surprised at the reaction he got. But he said, I thought they were
40:16
Speaker1: more mature than that. It's like, hey, you know me. You know who I am.
40:18
Speaker0: Well, to be fair to them, sometimes I think I'm more mature than I actually
40:22
Speaker0: turn out to be. So I can relate to those people.
40:25
Speaker1: Well, if you turn the heat up enough,
40:27
Speaker1: everybody has a point to where that maturity goes out of the brunt.
40:31
Speaker1: Yeah. It just goes down the drain and our brain goes to survival mode.
40:36
Speaker1: And, you know, we just act like a three-year-old. Everybody has that point.
40:40
Speaker1: Some people's point is a little earlier than others.
40:43
Speaker1: Yeah. And so I don't know that pastors were ready for that because they thought
40:47
Speaker1: that these are spiritually mature, you know.
40:50
Speaker0: I don't think any of us was ready for it. And really ever since then,
40:54
Speaker0: it's not just been COVID, it's been politics, it's been war,
40:58
Speaker0: it's been all this kind of stuff. And the church has been kind of in a almost
41:02
Speaker0: steady state of upheaval for the last six years in the West.
41:06
Speaker0: And I've talked to people who left their church because the pastor did not mention
41:11
Speaker0: X on Sunday morning, you know, so-and-so was killed or this incident happened
41:17
Speaker0: and my pastor didn't talk about it.
41:19
Speaker0: I'm out, you know, or my pastor did talk about it. I'm out. I've heard that
41:23
Speaker0: less, But that's definitely happened.
41:25
Speaker0: OK, so next week we will have part two of that fantastic interview with Manuel
41:31
Speaker0: Marsh, who just did a great job.
41:33
Speaker0: And honestly, the second part of the interview, I think, is even better than
41:37
Speaker0: the first part. I took more notes and quotes from the second part of the interview.
41:41
Speaker0: So you got that to look forward to. We're going to close out today with top
41:44
Speaker0: five apologetics books to prepare you for Resurrection Day Easter,
41:50
Speaker0: which is coming up, and two bonus resources.
41:54
Speaker0: So let's start out with, if you were to ask me, and I own all of these books,
41:58
Speaker0: I have a lot of books on apologetics and on the resurrection.
42:01
Speaker0: It's my favorite thing to teach about.
42:03
Speaker0: And I don't know if I would say I collect these books, but I've got 30,
42:07
Speaker0: 50, a bunch of books on the resurrection of Jesus. I'm going to give you my top five.
42:12
Speaker0: Some of these are not going to be surprising at all. You'll have heard of them.
42:15
Speaker0: And we've even talked about them on the show before. Number one is just a no-brainer.
42:19
Speaker0: It's Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I read that book in college.
42:24
Speaker0: In fact, I listened to it on tape first before I read it.
42:28
Speaker0: It was originally delivered as a series of radio broadcasts during the Second
42:32
Speaker0: World War, and it gives a great rational defense, not only of the resurrection,
42:39
Speaker0: but of Christianity in general.
42:41
Speaker0: And if you know Lewis, you know he's just a phenomenal writer.
42:45
Speaker0: His ability is to take high-level, extremely intelligent thoughts and make them.
42:53
Speaker1: Understandable and accessible by normal people like you and me.
42:57
Speaker0: Lots of people alive today and lots of even scholars from the past kind of credit
43:02
Speaker0: this work of mere Christianity as the catalyst for their own spiritual growth and awakening.
43:08
Speaker0: C.S. Lewis was a British literary scholar. He didn't start out as a Christian.
43:13
Speaker0: And in fact, it was under the witness and challenge of J.R.R.
43:18
Speaker0: Tolkien of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit fame, where Lewis came to faith and
43:23
Speaker0: he just excels at explaining the faith in a way that is on the one hand profound,
43:29
Speaker0: on the other hand, very practical.
43:32
Speaker0: Okay, number two, and this is kind of like the modern day mere Christianity.
43:36
Speaker0: I respect Tim Keller a ton.
43:38
Speaker0: He just died a couple of years ago. in my mind, Keller was maybe the best communicator
43:46
Speaker0: of the gospel in my lifetime.
43:49
Speaker0: Maybe you don't agree with every stance he took theologically,
43:52
Speaker0: but his book, The Reason for God, Belief in an Age of Skepticism,
43:57
Speaker0: has had a massive impact in America, in the West, particularly among people
44:03
Speaker0: that normally reject Christianity, urban professionals, secular readers,
44:08
Speaker0: highly college educated kind of people.
44:11
Speaker0: Keller did a great job with this book and made it sort of a bridge for people
44:17
Speaker0: who feel alienated by traditional pastoral biblical rhetoric,
44:24
Speaker0: but are open to reasonable explanations for faith.
44:29
Speaker0: He explains so many deep truths of Christianity in such a refreshing Sheen.
44:36
Speaker1: Deep way in this book. If you haven't read it before, go out and get it now.
44:41
Speaker0: Number three, you can pick any one of these. They're all good.
44:45
Speaker0: Lee Strobel's book, this is The Case for the Real Jesus. The Case for Christ is also good.
44:50
Speaker0: The Case for Easter, those are all good. Lee Strobel was a journalist.
44:55
Speaker0: You might have heard his story before.
44:57
Speaker0: And he goes and interviews scholars about Jesus and about the resurrection and
45:04
Speaker0: the way Strobel approaches these scholars.
45:07
Speaker0: Now, he goes after heavy hitters. These are guys that are really intelligent.
45:11
Speaker0: They got the academic chops, but Strobel handles it not like an academic discussion,
45:17
Speaker0: but like a newspaper interview, which makes it understandable and easy to grasp.
45:23
Speaker0: And on the one hand, understandable, easy grasp. On the other hand,
45:27
Speaker0: not lightweight, compelling even to skeptics.
45:31
Speaker0: It's a very approachable book that punches above its weight.
45:35
Speaker0: But number four is not as approachable of a book.
45:39
Speaker0: And I don't agree with British scholar N.T. Wright on every little thing,
45:44
Speaker0: but his book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, is the longest book I own
45:47
Speaker0: on the resurrection and almost certainly the weightiest and most academic.
45:52
Speaker0: Wright is one of the most prominent New Testament scholars of our age.
45:56
Speaker0: And this book on the resurrection of the Son of the God, it's hundreds of pages
46:00
Speaker0: long, very, very thick, not the easiest book to read, probably the hardest book
46:05
Speaker0: we're going to talk about today.
46:06
Speaker0: But if you want depth and range and really serious, comprehensive discussion
46:12
Speaker0: of the arguments for the resurrection of Jesus and the.
46:16
Speaker1: Criticisms for the belief in the resurrection of Jesus.
46:19
Speaker0: This is a comprehensive book that pretty much covers everything.
46:24
Speaker0: So if you're serious about any sort of study of the resurrection,
46:28
Speaker0: then you probably already own this book.
46:30
Speaker0: But if you don't, go out and get it right now and spend some time reading it.
46:35
Speaker0: It's deep, it's academic, but it's a necessity for anybody who really cares about this.
46:41
Speaker0: And then that gets us to number five, which is kind of somewhere between N.T.
46:45
Speaker0: Wright's work and Lee Strobel's work. And it's a book called The Case for the
46:48
Speaker0: Resurrection of Jesus by Dr.
46:50
Speaker0: Gary Habermas and Dr. Mike Lucona.
46:53
Speaker0: So Gary Habermas was my apologetic professor in seminary and one of my very
46:58
Speaker0: favorite professors of all time.
47:01
Speaker0: He is an amazingly gifted teacher and communicator. And at the same time,
47:05
Speaker0: he's somebody who is vulnerable and as genuine as they come.
47:10
Speaker0: He's also a good hockey coach. I never played hockey for him,
47:13
Speaker0: but this is the kind of guy I would want as my coach.
47:16
Speaker0: I wouldn't call Mike Lacona a best friend or anything like that,
47:19
Speaker0: although I would be honored to do so if it was true.
47:22
Speaker0: But I have recorded a few podcast episodes with Dr.
47:25
Speaker0: Lacona, and he came and spoke at our church, Valley Baptist,
47:28
Speaker0: for a weekend on the resurrection a couple of years ago.
47:31
Speaker0: And I got to tell you, in person, he was just a fantastic guy.
47:34
Speaker0: Whip smart, but also kind, patient, approachable, friendly.
47:39
Speaker0: And he spent tons of time at our church talking to the teenagers that came to
47:43
Speaker0: hear him speak about the resurrection. We went out to eat with him.
47:48
Speaker0: We hung out with him. And there was no big time kind of super smart scholar
47:52
Speaker0: and European kind of deal. This was a great guy.
47:55
Speaker0: There's a couple of things that Mike writes about that I don't necessarily agree with.
48:00
Speaker0: He says parts of the book of Matthew are legendary, just a couple of small parts
48:04
Speaker0: are legend adjacent. But you couldn't ask for a more down-to-earth,
48:08
Speaker0: smart and knowledgeable speaker who makes a fantastic case for the resurrection of Jesus.
48:15
Speaker0: And in this book, Habermas and Lacona utilizes the minimal facts approach that Dr.
48:21
Speaker0: Habermas kind of popularizes to defend the resurrection.
48:24
Speaker0: This will give you a real ability to interact with secular scholars,
48:31
Speaker0: professors, and really, really
48:32
Speaker0: smart people and make a compelling case for the resurrection of Jesus.
48:37
Speaker0: And not only that, it's not just an academic book. It uniquely addresses the issue of doubt.
48:43
Speaker0: I'll say that's really an important part of the book because when I had Dr.
48:48
Speaker0: Habermas as a professor, it was not much removed from, it was a few years after
48:53
Speaker0: his wife died from cancer.
48:55
Speaker0: And it was, I don't know how to say this in the right way, but the way he told
48:59
Speaker0: us about it, it was very vulnerable, very gut-wrenching.
49:03
Speaker0: And her death was not easy, and it was drawn out, and it was hard.
49:08
Speaker0: And here is a man who is one of the greatest apologists for Christianity in
49:14
Speaker0: our day, maybe the world's foremost expert on the resurrection, E.R. N.T.
49:18
Speaker0: Wright, and he loses his wife to a terrible cancer. And he just talked about
49:24
Speaker0: that in the most deep, real, gut-wrenching, but encouraging way. So when Dr.
49:30
Speaker0: Habermas talks about doubt, this is not a man who's never experienced it.
49:35
Speaker0: This is a man who has faced doubt eye to eye.
49:39
Speaker0: The deepest way possible. So he's no shallow faith cheerleader,
49:43
Speaker0: but a tried and tested man of philosophy and conviction with a faith that has been tempered in fire.
49:50
Speaker0: Give you a couple other books. It's a little self-serving, but I wrote a book
49:54
Speaker0: a few years ago, Easter Fact or Fiction by me, Dr. Chase Thompson.
49:59
Speaker0: You can buy it on Amazon. It is really not very like the other books on this
50:05
Speaker0: list. It's kind of short.
50:06
Speaker0: It's easy to read. It will give you 20 reasons to believe in the resurrection.
50:13
Speaker0: And of course, it quotes Dr.
50:15
Speaker0: Wright and Tim Keller and C.S. Lewis and
50:18
Speaker0: Dr. Lacona and Gary Habermas. But it gives you 20 reasons why I believe and
50:24
Speaker0: I'm persuaded that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
50:27
Speaker0: You can buy it on Amazon. I think I might make like a dollar or two when somebody buys it.
50:33
Speaker0: So I'm not telling you because I want to get rich from you buying this book.
50:38
Speaker0: But I did put a lot of heart and soul in that book.
50:41
Speaker0: And I do think it is a very easy to understand defense of the resurrection.
50:47
Speaker0: And if you don't want to spend any money, you don't want to read a book,
50:50
Speaker0: but you do want to go to a website, allow me to point you to the X page or the
50:56
Speaker0: Twitter page, as we used to call it, for VBC Apologetics.
51:00
Speaker0: That's Victor Bravo Charlie Apologetics, all one word, VBC Apologetics.
51:07
Speaker0: This is a Twitter handle run by Lonnie Robison, who is a scholar and a gentleman
51:13
Speaker0: and a deacon at Valley Baptist Church, and he interacts with all sorts of skeptics online.
51:18
Speaker0: He will interact with you, and he will post things that will be challenging.
51:23
Speaker0: Interesting, corny sometimes, and lots of fun.
51:27
Speaker0: So check out VBC Apologetics, and if you want to look at any of the books on
51:32
Speaker0: this list or get the free book I mentioned earlier by Dr.
51:36
Speaker0: Andrew Loke, all you got to do is come to our website, www.everychurchflourishing.com.
51:43
Speaker0: And that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening.
51:47
Speaker0: We will see you next week. Please do, if you get a chance, leave us a review
51:51
Speaker0: on Apple Podcasts and good day to you and Godspeed.