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Faith, Psychology, and Authentic Healing: Chip Judd’s Journey Through the Charismatic Movement · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was gonna go to medical school, got saved, taught high school, went in the ministry, did some seminary work, and one day my wife and I were walking, the church was kind of struggling, and I said, baby, what am I any good at that I could get paid for?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, what about counseling?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: You do a lot of counseling.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: And believe it or not, I didn't know you could get paid for counseling.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Found out, yeah, you can get a master's degree, and I ended up going back to the citadel and got a master's, so I was a master's level trained counselor.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in this weird niche that I'm a pastor, but I'm also this counselor guy.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: As a consultant and coach, I've worked with many different kinds of churches.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen them from what I call behind the curtain, from a perspective the public doesn't normally see.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen really healthy, thriving congregations, and I've seen profoundly unhealthy, struggling ones.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen a perfect one.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm committed and excited about the church learning to use all the tools that are available to us in helping people experience the real freedom and lasting change that Christianity promises.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those tools have been discovered and developed in the mental health community based on psychology and other sciences.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's stop pretending we have all the answers.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Let's lead the way in building partnerships and learning communities that bring the mental health community and the church together.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're going to be working toward on this podcast and YouTube channel.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the mental health and the mission of the church community.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: On today's episode.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the stuff I've studied and learned about the brain, about relationships, cognitive therapy, all these different cool techniques, they are absolutely amazing.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish I could say the church found that treasure, but it would not be true.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Most of these discoveries in these areas of psychology and physiology, and I'm not saying Christians weren't maybe involved, but the church was not driving the heart.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not okay, man.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: I believe the conversation around the partnership between the mental health community and the mission of the church could be, I think it is, the most important thing happening in the church today.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: If we can get those two worlds working together, humbly submitting to what each other brings to the table, there's no telling what's going to happen in the next 10 to 20 years as the body of Christ becomes really healthy and represents Jesus better than we ever have in history.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I you know call it whatever you want, a seeker of the truth.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I got into Eastern religions meditation.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I read a lot of uh existentialism, philosophy, transcendental meditation, um, drugs.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how how much how much did drugs play into that?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like at the time, do you feel like drugs highlighted what you thought you were finding as far as it being truth?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh man, this all seems real because I'm finding some good stuff and I feel good.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, seriously, how big of a deal were drugs in your search for truth?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think they were much, Joey.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I I think I pretty much did drugs just to party, recreational, and yeah, just for the experience and uh uh just how they made you feel, you know.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I look to them to enhance my thinking or searching.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so listeners, what we want to do today is unpack pretty much the question: how did Chip Judd personally get to where he's at today?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Chip, you I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about you in front of everybody so you correct me if I'm wrong.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I, as as someone who considers himself a a friend and you're you know, you're a mentor, a pastor of mine, I think you do have a special combination of deep interest and knowledge of how the spiritual world works through the lenses of Christian faith.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you are just as much, it seems to me, educated and informed and even charged up about the scientific part of mental health and science and therapy and medication and and all of what chip would say is good stuff too.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so, where we want to go today is figure out how the heck did Chip get there.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Chip, you take this question and go wherever you want, but what what happened first?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Did you did you experience the peace of Jesus before you figured out, hey, Chip Judd as a human being can work on his own mental health, get better in how you think, have a healthier mass of tissues and how it operates.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like what happened first?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus's peace or Chip's realization that you can actually work on your mental health and get better?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I even saw mental health as an issue.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: I got saved a month after we got married, met the Lord.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was just a rascal.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring that word back, Chip.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: I like that word.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I was doing drugs, mostly pot every day.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and yet, deep inside me, I had a desire to live a life of character and meaning.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Got married, God forgive me, but I had plans to be with another woman after I was married.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's how jacked up I was.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But thank God I loved my wife, and that led me to the realization that I needed help bigger than myself.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I ended up getting saved about a month after we got married.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you mean by that?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You were you were and I and I don't mean to sound vulgar, you were planning like a one-night stand, or you were planning on pursuing another woman while you were married.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: What did you mean by that?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: We were just gonna have sex.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was just gonna be a hookup.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was working at a hospital and it was just gonna be a hookup.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: She knew it, I knew it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of like a catalyst in you being like, What in the heck am I doing?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I need I I need Jesus up in here.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was that a pivotal point?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what what am I doing?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: What am I thinking?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I married my wife.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: We consummated our marriage on our wedding night, and she drifted off to sleep, and I lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking that I had just ruined this woman's life.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I thought there's I there's no way I can not be with other women.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it just scared me because I love my wife.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: We'd heard about this little church, charismatic church.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now I didn't know that at the time.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know, I had hair down to my shoulder, even though I went to the citadel, this is about a year after I graduated.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I had hair down to my shoulders, rode a motorcycle, cussed like crazy, doing drugs.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: People wit two different people witnessed to me, and what they said was, we heard there's a new church in town that's really weird, and you're really weird, so you might like it.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so when we got back from our honeymoon, we went to that church and um I felt we left that first Sunday, and as we walked out the door to my my uh motorcycle, um, I said to my Southern Baptist wife, who was a Christian, I said, baby, I said, I don't know what it was.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Remember, I was I was spiritual, just not Christian.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Baby, I don't know what it was, but I felt something in that room I've never felt before.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, of course, in hindsight, now it was the presence of God, and about, you know, she was quite honestly because it was charismatic and you know, it was different, uh, she was like, you know, thank God we don't have to go back.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I told her, I said, I said, I I think we're gonna need to go back.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So about the third Sunday, uh I grabbed the pastor because this my my rendezvous was looming, and I grabbed the pastor and I said, Sir, I said, I don't know, I don't know what you people have, but I need it and I need it right now.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he prayed that took us in his little office, and we prayed that simple little what, 30-second prayer, and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh as we were praying that, I was praying, God, if you're who you say you are, please help me not rip this woman's heart out of her chest.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I just wanted God to help me be a decent man.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Here we sit 48 years later.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just been an amazing ride.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Chip, it's weird, man.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: The yeah, I just I'll chalk it up to the Holy Spirit, but there's just something about hearing stories of people getting caught off guard by a Holy Spirit experience that they've never experienced.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It just gets me every time, man.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It gets me a little gets a little choked up there.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what so it sounds as if it was there was a lot of coincidence in you and Colleen ending up in a charismatic church, and you you look back on those times, and my words, not yours, are embarrassed by some of the things that you've said and taught, and you know, just some of the extremes that you now want to see people more balanced with.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: What got you?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: What got you uh connected to the charismatic movement, whereas you became a pastor of people in that movement?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Something attracted you that was authentic because I know my friend Chip, and I know that you're not gonna dabble in something that isn't absolutely real for you.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I get the experience as far as you're saying, man, I feel something I've never felt like before, but what was it that that caused you to take steps forward in baptism of the Holy Spirit, praying over someone for healing and you know, slain in the spirit and all that stuff?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: What got your attention with that stuff?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think Joey, I I hate uh I hate fakeness, I hate hypocrisy.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, if I was gonna do drugs, I was gonna do them hard.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: If I was gonna chase women, I was gonna chase women.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I was gonna cuss, I was gonna cuss.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I hate I hate pretending.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think God just knew, and I would say this is true of everyone, unfortunately, that we don't think that way, but I think God knew I needed a Christianity that was real, that you could feel, smell, taste, touch, hear.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and I got by the grace of God, and I'm so grateful for it, I got born again into a situation, small little struggling church, really.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Pastor Fred Denham, a dear friend of mine to this day, um and loved the word of God and was hungry for God.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I would, I thought I was gonna go to medical school, got saved, and the desire for medical school just disappeared.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Pastor Fred would introduce me to people after I got saved, probably within three months of being a Christian.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he would introduce me to people and put his arm around my shoulder, and he'd say, Yeah, this is gonna be my associate pastor one day.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I'm haired onto my shoulders, I don't even know if I'd quit smoking pot yet.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna say, with weed on your breath.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, dude, you're out of your mind, man.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I had found something that arrested my soul.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'd found someone that was true, genuine, straight, authentic.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that was this Jesus.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and I was experiencing him in the worship and through the through the ministry of the word, and and then you bring the Holy Spirit in there, and uh, I don't know, it was probably within a year for sure, but let's say six to nine months, uh, baptized in water and then baptized in the spirit, speaking in tongues, and just wide open, man, just wide open, hungry for God.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, obviously a very experientially driven environment.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: But to connect back to your question, I just believe Jesus didn't just come in to tickle us or to give us these cool little experiences we could talk about, that they they were meant to produce results.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: They were meant to bring change, they were meant to transform us.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, by his grace, I just thought that way right from the beginning.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: I just was drawn to watching, like, you know, we'd have a service and God would do really cool stuff and the gifts would operate, and people would get up and say, Oh, I'm never going to be the same in Jesus' name.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'd hang around, we'd do church for a few months, and I'd realize a couple months later, that person's got the same issue.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're back getting prayer for the same thing, and that just bothered me.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it didn't, it didn't make me question God, it made me hungry, it made me want to read and think and pray.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And God, what are we missing?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: That just kind of became my my thing.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I read a little bit off the beaten path from what most people would read.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right from the beginning, God apparently has wired me, even as a child, to where people seemed comfortable talking to me.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as I got saved, people would I God started to use me in what you would broadly call counseling.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I started realizing there's there's processes going on behind their sin or their struggle, and it just intrigued me.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what's going on in there?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: What's super important about your story is that you, you know, the the buzzword nowadays is deconstructed.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like you deconstructed tons of former ways of faith, but then you held on to tons of stuff in in the same category of the spiritual things.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I guess what I'm getting at is do you look back on that season and toil with the fact that a lot of it was real and a lot of it was done poorly?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Are are both true?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I'd say done poorly.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think we I think we over-promised and under-delivered.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we we made everything sound like it should be quick, fast, thorough, done.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Boom.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Come up here, we'll come to this prayer line, we'll lay hands on you, and you'll never struggle with that issue again.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't like, I didn't like lying.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't I didn't like like, you know, that person still got that issue.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it didn't discourage me, it didn't make me like, well, this stuff's not true.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, for whatever reason, I started, I don't remember the year per se, Joey, but I started to connect different scriptures and different concepts and thought, well, wait a minute, this would kind of explain why that person isn't free yet.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started to see and I started to learn some simple principles.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Back then we called it inner healing, and you know, basically revolved around forgiving people for the hurt they've done to you and getting forgiveness for the hurt you've done to others.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, dealing with, we used to call them uh spirit, spiritual doors or something like that.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like how what have we done in our life that opened opened us up for the devil and his influence, you know, the occult.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, we we got pretty crazy with it, but some of it was legit.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started learning what I would now call very simple, black and white, do this and you get this result.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I just found it didn't always work that way.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: It it just made me hungrier, didn't make me frustrated.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that some of, and and we'll we'll we'll get away from the past here in a second, but do you think that some of the stuff that you said and or practices that you practice in the in your faith community, can you look back on some of that stuff and say that the Chip Judd 25 years ago, some of the stuff that he did and said was harmful to the work that you're up to right now?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that too harsh to old Chip Judd?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think I did, yeah.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I again, I think we were like I I would put it this way, Joey.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: One of my big beefs right now, to this day, and and I would say most pastors, Christians, counselors, mental health professionals, anybody that's in the sphere that we're talking about and going to be talking about for months and maybe years to come, we have to locate ourselves on a on a continuum, a polarity between what I would call over-spiritualizing and under-spiritualizing.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um, clearly back in the day, that day, we over-spiritualized everything.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And everything had a spiritual cause, a spiritual root, a spiritual solution.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the other extreme is to just put all that aside and we go with science, psychology, medicine, etc.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And again, for me, the truth is uh is this dynamic tension in the middle somewhere.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I'm I'm totally comfortable with that.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm totally at peace with the reality that, you know, the the right way to see it is it's a mix of what I call solid biblical Christianity and what I call sanctified psychology.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And all I mean by that is that you you take what science has learned and and and and don't be afraid of it and automatically like, oh, it's of the devil, but process it through a biblical worldview, scriptural principles, and you'll come out the other side with some really, really, really helpful stuff.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now that's further down my journey, but initially I just was kind of like we like shortcuts back then.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: We were always looking for shortcuts.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: How can I get set free in the quickest, easiest, pain-friest way, if that's a word?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So almost like uh for your for the the theology nerds out there, we like sanct, uh we like justification and glorification, but screw that sanctification stuff, man.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's too hard.
• 20:36
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or let's just do instant, instant sanctification.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Chip, am I overstating my observation that your experiences and your journey does amount to a very unique combination?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I know it's I know unique is typically a very positive complimentary word, so it may be uncomfortable to brag on yourself, but I'm stating the obvious though.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're a unique combination, right?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I'm I I wouldn't consider it bragging.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have I have pastor friends that introduced me that way.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I am a pastor.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I planted and pastored a church for 24 years, preached every week.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Way back in the 80s, we preached three times a week for crying out loud.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God we stopped that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: But the whole time, uh like Joey, I used to say I was a uh pastor who did a lot of counseling.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I would say there's potentially an argument that uh I was a counselor who just happened to be pastoring.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: But God saw fit for me to live my life with a foot in both worlds.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: What I read, what I thought about, what I pondered had a lot of the counseling spin to it.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And yet, you know, week after week I was planning a church and the church's strategy and mission and purpose and how to how to disciple people.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've been a pastor for 44 years.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole time I've been a counselor at some level.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now I didn't go back to school and get my master's until the late 80s, because that's kind of what happened, Joey.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I got saved in the charismatic movement.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: We we God did some really cool stuff with the inner healing and the simplicity of what we learned.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: God did some really good stuff, and then I just realized that um, you know, if you're a hammer, everything's a nail.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: So you you tried to make every person's problem fit in.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: The toolbox you'd learn.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if it didn't fit your toolbox, you kind of either pretended that it did or made excuses for why it didn't.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't okay with that.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I'm not saying that I was as intentional as this makes it sound.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: But in hindsight, it would just drive me to go to the counseling section of the bookstore, go to the psychology section.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, if you go way back, I wouldn't read anything that wasn't Christian.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now that changed drastically.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it was fun.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But uh it wasn't unit unopposed.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's what's really strange, Joey.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: That that I have to be honest, all my pastor friends and Christian friends weren't excited about it.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they even they even tried to paint back you into a corner to explain yourself, kind of like, what are you doing?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: What are you thinking?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Often.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Often.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Often.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who would want to give up a supernatural, instant miracle God for, oh, you mean I got to walk this out?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: You mean, you mean there's actually kind of hard, maybe even painful things I'm gonna have to look at and talk about?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, man, no, no.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, probably here's one of the best examples, Joey.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be talking to a pastor, particularly if they're from the charismatic word of faithy sort of environment.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, now I don't mean they're the only ones, but they were they were pretty strong on this issue.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'd say, well, maybe they'd say, well, what do you do when you're counseling somebody?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say, well, you know, we talk about your past and your family and whatever.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd say, well, that's all under the blood.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Which, you know, let's face it to a non-Christian, that's a pretty weird statement.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: But but let's forget that for the moment.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'd say, well, what exactly do you mean by that?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: And typically they would quote 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, which says, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what they'd say is, when I received Jesus, I was born again.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: I've been made totally new, all the old of me is gone.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to deal with that.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say, well, let me ask you a question.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Do you struggle with anything since you've been a Christian that you struggled with before you became one?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: You want to explain that to me?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I would I would get a lot of pushback.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's where it gets almost comical, Joey.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the people that I get the worst pushback from, you know how uh scripture says that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like Nicodemus snuck around.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's what would kind of happen.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'd get these calls at 10 o'clock at night.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's not almost comical.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's just that's just it'd be like, hey, hey, hey, dude, uh, you know, I know we I know I kind of disagreed with you about this council and stuff, but I was wondering if you got any time to talk.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then God would, and again, I'm so honored and thrilled, God would use me uh and and help the person or help their marriage or whatever.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um it was almost like a convert.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, oh, okay, I got a convert.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it was interesting how here's the point, Joey.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was interesting how, and unfortunately, we'd have to say historically, the church is resistant to science, uh it feels threatened by it.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it's interesting as I came through the 70s into the 80s and 90s, there was a definite slow, slow wrestling with where does psychology, where does counseling, where even and it took even slower medication type stuff, where does all that fit in the the pathway of healing and health and wholeness that we that we want for everyone?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was interesting, and and and honestly, it wasn't always fun.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now sitting here, you know, we've come a long way, I don't think we're there yet, but uh don't run into that overt resistance as much.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, every once in a while, but not as much.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it in these first few episodes, folks, and we're wrapping this first one up, we're gonna get into with Chip how did we, as in the science psychology community, get to where they're at?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: As far as Chip, you and I were talking at lunch, and we'll get into this on the podcast.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: But you talked about how the science and psychology community, they're not even interested uh in what we have to say about our interest in mental health because we've been giving the science community the cold shoulder for so long.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then how did the church get to a place of resisting science?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it feels like we are starting to come around a little bit.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we're gonna talk about these major cultural shifts.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, though, to kind of wrap this conversation up, Chip.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: When was or or was there a time where you felt and and you can remember when you felt really encouraged about wow, maybe the church is starting to turn a corner in how we interact with the psychology world?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a kind of a moment where you're like, aha, okay, it's finally happening?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that there was a moment that was like a tipping point per se.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was more like I implied a minute ago or inferred, whichever it is.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was just person by person, like you'd be talking to a pastor or a staff, the questions they asked or the comments they made, and you could just kind of tell that that they'd connected some dots and they they wanted to hear more.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And okay, okay, time out, dude.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Are you saying that that helps explain why I can't break this cycle or why my marriage is stuck in this way?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and I realized that they, whether they realize it or not, they were they were starting to embrace some of what psychology had discovered.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh let me say this, Joey, and you may it sound like what you we're gonna do in our next episode.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: We we may want to start with this at the next episode, but let me say it here.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my thing.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody says, well, well, what you know, what's your what what's your theology?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do you package all this?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: How do you make the two worlds compatible?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what I tell them.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I I strive to be a biblically sound, spirit-led, god-loving Christian who has married my Christianity with what I call sanctified psychology.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: I believe psychology starts wrong and ends wrong.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is, I would say that of virtually all science, all knowledge of any kind.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: Scripture says that the fear of the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you start a hunt for truth without God, you're already in trouble.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: So psychology starts wrong because God's not in the picture.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: God's uh perspective of humanity is not in the picture.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: Psychology doesn't acknowledge and deal with what I would call the lostness of man, the fallenness of man.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: And because of that, I said that psychology starts wrong and ends wrong.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because we start without the fallenness of man and a God who we want to be reconciled to, we don't need a savior.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we end wrong.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we, in essence, don't have a God, don't have a savior, don't have a fallen nature.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we're on this, we're on this raft, and our job is to figure out how to save ourselves.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it helps me to say to somebody, listen, man, don't throw psychology out.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, starts wrong, ends wrong.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the deal, Joey.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the middle, some of the stuff I've studied and learned about the brain, about relationships, cognitive therapy, all these different cool techniques, they are absolutely amazing.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish I could say the church found that treasure, but it would not be true.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Most of these discoveries in these areas of psychology and physiology were not, and I'm not saying Christians weren't maybe involved, but the church was not driving the hunt.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not okay, man.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: But now let's benefit from the hunt.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's allow the Holy Spirit to show us what parts of psychology, what parts of physiology and medicine can supplement and complement what we're doing in our efforts to help people become fully alive followers of Jesus.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I've just found if you marry mental health and the mission of the church, it's a dynamic duo, man.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, really powerful.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Chip, you were we're talking the psychological aspect of humanity, the spiritual aspect of humanity, and you're everybody knows that you're a pastor, have been a pastor for a long time.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any credentials on the scientific side?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or is this all just amateur seeking and reading books and everything, which is which is what I do, and I've it's super helpful.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not uh I'm not poo-pooing on that for people who look at it from more of an amateur perspective.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your friend, I know the answer to this question, but tell the listeners what your depth of insight and where'd you get your experience and to what degree is your experience?
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh undergraduate degree in chemistry, believe it or not, because I thought I was going to go to uh medical school.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um then got saved, taught high school for uh three or three years, went in the ministry, learned, grow, did some Bible, uh, some seminary work, but to be honest, I got about 20 or so hours into seminary, and I thought, what, why, why am I doing this?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because the you know, the church movement that I'm a part of, we're a part of, doesn't require that.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: And one day my wife and I were walking.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: I said to her, baby, the church was kind of struggling.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, baby, what am I any good at that I could get paid for?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, what about counseling?
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: You do a lot of counseling.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And believe it or not, I didn't know you could get paid for counseling.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sure enough, didn't even have the internet, believe it or not.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I started researching and found out, yeah, you can get a master's degree, and if you want, you could be licensed, etc.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Although in South Carolina you don't have to be if you're a pastor.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Sure enough, I ended up going back to the Citadel, where it's which is where I got my undergraduate degree, and got a master's, I think back then they called it a master's in community counseling.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it had to meet all the requirements the state of South Carolina had and all that kind of thing.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a master's level trained counselor.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: What I found was all the spiritual stuff that I'd learned was now kind of complemented by just really, really cool stuff.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, I had to spit some stuff out every once in a while.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: But man, I learned some good stuff.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and here's two big things that happened when I went back to school.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a room with unchurched people.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as a pastor, you don't get around a lot of unchurched people, and I fell back in love with the community that we were trying to reach.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing that happened is going to school to get my counseling degree at a secular school, not a Christian school, I learned their language to describe the maladies, the challenges, the hurts and wounds that a human soul can acquire.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: And what I didn't realize was God was enabling me and empowering me and motivating me to fall back in love with the community we were trying to reach.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I can speak their language.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can talk about psychological issues, spiritual issues from a biblical perspective and a psychological perspective.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't smart enough to do that on purpose, but in hindsight, it's been really, really fun to watch God use that.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm in this weird, you made reference to it earlier.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in this weird niche that I'm a pastor, but I'm also this counselor guy.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of cool to be able to represent both of those worlds, and that's what this whole thing's about, Joey.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: We want to get those two worlds talking to each other better, cooperating better, and and and building people better than we ever have before.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Me too.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited, man.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you that you haven't made reference to my age yet.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you will at some point.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I'm at an age where I'm just stoked, man.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's time.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna go this far, Joey, and I as I put it on the website.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: I believe the conversation around the partnership between the mental health community and the mission of the church, I believe it could be, I think it is, the most important thing happening in the church today.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: If we can get those two worlds working together, humbly submitting to what each other brings to the table, there's no telling what's going to happen in the next 10 or 20 years as the body of Christ becomes really, really healthy and represents Jesus better than we ever have in history.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now that excites me.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for your contributions and thanks for inviting all of us on this journey alongside you.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 38:32
  unknown: Come on.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in to Mental Health and the Mission of the Church.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on future conversations.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you found value in what you heard, we'd love for you to share it with a friend or on social media.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: It really helps us grow and reach more people just like you.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: So until next time, let's continue building better partnerships between the mental health community and the mission of the church.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: We'll catch you in the next episode, everybody.