WEBVTT

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 Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I,

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 Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with

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 you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done

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 in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things

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 I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering

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 through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive,

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 grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go

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 through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it. Culture is changing within these

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 churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people,

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 how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season,

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 and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret

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 sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no

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 secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie,

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 but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities,

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 we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you

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 make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply

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 your church along the way. This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part

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 of it. For more information, check out stadiacurchplanning.org slash digital. Stadiachurchplanning.org

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 slash digital. P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that episode

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 right now. All right, church. Here's what I need. We're going to check the whole tech aspects. We're

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 going to leave that at the door. We're not thinking with that aspects of our brain. We're going to turn

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 on. We're going to turn on our brains, and we're going to focus a little bit here on our souls.

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 Hey, it's Jeff with the Church of Digital, powered by Stadia Church Planting. I'm excited about this

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 conversation. We've talked a lot about mental health through the podcast, blogs, podcast, web streams.

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 Early, mid-2020 in the COVID season, there was a lot of attention driven towards mental health.

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 But what's interesting here in 2021, January, February, honestly, I had a couple side conversations

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 with people. Hey, what's the church's role in mental health? How do we do this whole mental health

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 thing in context of even broadcasting services, church online? Are we damaging people? What are

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 the issues that people are going to have coming out of this season because we're doing so much

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 church online, because they're in isolation? As a church, as a pastor, is it our role to tend to

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 all of these people with their mental health, to the people who follow us, the people who are engaged in

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 our church? Are we tending entirely to their mental health? At what point do we hand it over to someone

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 who's more clinically trained? And it's funny, the more that these questions came up, the more that I'm

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 like, I have no idea. I've never really had these conversations. I don't know what that looks like.

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 And so here's honestly, I was like, hey, let's do a podcast on it. Yeah, we're a church online. We're a

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 digital church, technical, digital discipleship. That's normally our realm. We're going to pause

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 a lot of that. We'll come back to some of it. But the heart of this really is the church and its response,

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 how it handles mental health situations. So to be honest, I brought in and actually one of,

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 I looked at this lady, Adrienne Feldman from North, she's a digital pastor at Northeast Christian

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 Church up in Kentucky. I looked at Adrienne, who was one of the pastors who was asking a lot of

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 questions. And I said, congratulations, you're now a co-host, at least for this episode. And I've

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 been excited to let Adrienne kind of dig in here and ask questions because she's wrestling with a lot of

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 these questions in context at Northeastern, Northeast, excuse me. And we're interviewing

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 Mindy Caliguari. Now, Mindy's no stranger here to the podcast, longtime supporter of the church,

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 digital, had her on a podcast talking about mental health in context of church online and individuals

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 a while back again, and really wanted to do a deeper dive with Mindy, giving Adrienne, a digital

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 pastor on the front lines of ministry, really an opportunity to dig in and ask questions. So we

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 got Mindy Caliguari with soulcare.com, Adrienne Feldman from Northeast Christian Church, Ray

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 D'Armis, a digital pastor, you know, regular co-host here from Christ Fellowship Miami, and

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 myself, Jeff, with the church digital and stadia church planning in a conversation that I'm simply

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 calling the church and mental health. Okay, everybody, here you go.

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 So our story with mental health at Northeast goes back, gosh, probably two and a half years,

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 we started having real solid conversations about mental health and about what the church's role in

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 mental health really looks like. And at the time, it was really uncharted territory in a lot of

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 churches, especially here locally. We were not finding a lot of those resources. I was not yet on staff.

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 I was shoulder tapped to be part of a focus group that started putting together sermon series around

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 mental health because of my own personal experiences with mental health. So that's where I kind of enter

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 the process. But we did a sermon series on mental health in the fall of 2018. And we centered that

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 really around people who are experiencing mental health challenges of any kind. We took on a whole

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 spectrum of issues from anxiety to suicide to substance misuse, all of those kinds of things.

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 And then about six months later, we realized we hadn't gotten all the way there to where we wanted

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 to be. So fast forward six months, I'm now on staff, we put together a second sermon series and really

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 focused in on caregivers and people who love people who are experiencing mental health challenges.

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 So we did those two sermon series and the response was huge. I mean, we saw people coming into our

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 church from other churches because they hadn't found a place that had been working to kind of

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 destigmatize mental health challenges. And also we saw a couple of people make the decision to give

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 their life to Jesus because they finally felt like they were safe someplace, that it was okay to struggle

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 with their mental health and still have a relationship with God. So we saw a really positive response from

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 that. And then the train wreck of 2020 hit and we realized that we probably needed to keep responding

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 to mental health, not as a one-off sermon series, but as something that was a part of our culture,

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 a part of our DNA, something that we really do and we do well.

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 So during the initial stages of the COVID crisis, we started having Zoom conversations where we would

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 talk about mental health with our people over Facebook. We'd have a chat, they could send in

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 questions, we'd bring in some professionals and have those conversations. And people were just

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 hungry for resources, hungry for spiritual comfort, but also connection with real technical resources,

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 physical resources and plug them into counseling and all of those kinds of things. So we came through 2020

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 only having done just a handful of those conversations and right now are hitting 2021 with this idea that

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 we need to lead that charge and we need to be the church in our community that says,

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 we see you, we recognize the challenges that you're experiencing, and we want to stand in that gap

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 that is between the purely spiritual and the purely medical side of mental health. So we're trying to

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 figure out where our role is and where we need to stay in our lane and where we need to be connecting

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 people with professional resources.

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 That's awesome, which is really brought into this place where you're starting to now ask more questions.

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 How can we lead out? What is the church's role? And so you were in a Facebook group asking some

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 questions that I was in. And this is a really interesting topic. And so I started to explore

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 with you on Messenger some of these questions and you just blew up the thread of all of these

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 different things that you're wrestling with. And of course, I'm like, well, dang, I don't have any of

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 these answers. Who do I know? And of course, Mindy Caliguire, who's been on the podcast before,

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 you know, a friend of the show, a friend of mine, the Church Digital, very involved in Stadia. It's

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 like, hey, we want to bring in Mindy, soul care into this conversation because this is a whole bunch

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 of stuff I don't know. And maybe Mindy does or maybe doesn't, but maybe she's at least more

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 educated in this conversation and can point us in the right direction. So definitely glad to have

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 Mindy on. And this is the great part. Ray and I are like, gonna step back. And so we want to learn

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 from this conversation. Adrian, like I'm excited for Adrian to take over the podcast, call this an

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 interview for future podcasts that may be down the road. But let's start to, you know, give you the

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 opportunity to just dig in here, ask some questions of Mindy, and we'll see where we get here in the

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 podcast. Okay. Yeah, I love it. You're ready to be in the hot seat, Mindy? I'll try. Yeah, I just,

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 well, and I will say, you know, this is the reason I'm glad you thought of me, Jeff. I'm very honored.

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 I do get into a lot of these conversations, not as a, like, I'm not a licensed clinical therapist.

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 I'm not a PhD from anywhere. But with the work I do with soul care, and then the work I do with a lot

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 of different churches and leaders, and especially, as you said, Adrian, this last year,

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 this has become a massive topic that I've been privileged to be part of a lot of conversations

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 about it. So sometimes I'll be saying things I've just learned from others and others, you know,

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 things that I've observed over many, many years of a lot of different kinds of ministry contexts. But

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 it's an honor to be with you. And Jeff, kudos for throwing this topic out there in such a pronounced

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 way. And Adrian, way to go. Like, you are leading the charge on the future of where the church can go

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 in this. So, like, way to go on that. That's impressive. Everything you've just described is

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 amazing. Well, we're really excited to be a part of it. I know that we have seen such a response,

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 and we have seen people in the church say, we need this. We need help, and we don't know where to go,

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 and we don't know what to do. And we've been told for our entire lives that it's a sin to struggle.

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 So, let me start there, because it's a question we always get asked.

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 Go for the jugular, girl!

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 Is it a sin to struggle, Mindy?

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 Oh, my gosh. As I was anticipating some of these questions, I was thinking, like, what is the

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 church's role? And I think part of the challenge is we've had a mentality that, you know, there's an

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 answer for everything in the Bible, and the thought is that, yeah, it's a sin to struggle. Like, I hadn't

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 heard that phrase, and it just makes me achy and a little twingy inside to hear you say that.

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 Man, mental health, a part of what I think the church can do, and what I think you're seeing in

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 your church is we can start to normalize a topic and set some definitions and parameters around it that

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 has been largely either ignored or, worse, misrepresented or miscast in many Christian contexts and to many

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 people's great harm, I think. And we've missed a massive opportunity to serve. A friend of mine,

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 I don't even remember which one it was, would talk about how, like, mental health is, you know,

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 the brain is an organ in your body, right? Just like your liver is and your kidneys are and your

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 lungs are and your skin is. And it has the ability to have illness just like any one of those other

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 organs in our bodies. And we wouldn't think it was sin to be sick with lung cancer, right? You would

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 never, or unless you said you shouldn't smoke cigarettes, but I mean, like, seriously, we would

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 never have that callous and unkind and sort of judging way of treating almost any other illness.

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 We understand the body has various, um, domains of health or sickness. And when, when part of the body

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 is sick, you don't, you don't judge it because you have eczema. You don't judge it because you have,

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 you need corrective lenses for your eyes. Like that's not, that's not, that's not a thing.

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 But with mental health, um, especially because it's so invisible and it can show up with symptoms that

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 we don't know what to do with or how to make any sense of, um, I, I, maybe I can understand a little

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 bit. I mean, the whole culture at large hasn't really known what to do with mental health. So the

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 church is just a subset of that. But as more and more information is coming out, I would love to

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 believe that the church could be literally at the vanguard of helping research, helping understand,

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 helping diagnose, helping provide treatment, helping provide care for the caregivers and

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 those who are suffering. Like we should be in that place of leading this conversation,

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 not resisting it. Anyway, that was probably more than you were asking for, but that's,

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 that's how I see it. I wish, I wish the church could help normalize this conversation.

00:14:10.400 --> 00:14:14.840
 Well, so what was, I want to know more about how we can do that because Adrian, to me,

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 your church has gone already above and beyond what I hear most churches doing in terms of mental health,

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 by even addressing it. Um, and, and even going as far as bringing in experts, right? Because

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 so many churches try to say, well, the Bible is more than enough, man. So here is your handbook and

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 here's your guide to mental health. Just open up the Psalm, whatever. And I can already see Mindy

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 rolling her eyes and you're right to, because before God called me into ministry, he called me into

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 medicine. I was pre-med. And so when I, when I started to look at brain science and take a look

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 at some of this stuff, and then I went off to seminary and I even appreciated that even at

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 seminaries, they were even talking about medication and how far a pastor can take somebody in our

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 limitations. The churches, for whatever reason, don't like hearing that. And so Mindy, where's a good

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 place for churches and even for a pastor to get started with helping our congregation?

00:15:03.740 --> 00:15:12.020
 Well, I think the first place to start is studying, like learning. Like there's a lot of people who are

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 writing good things about brain science. There's accessible content out there about mental health

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 that any pastor, I mean, we should see this as a dimension of our responsibility in shepherding in

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 the same way that you would think, I should probably know a bit about relational dynamics. If I'm going to

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 advise people or teach people about what the Bible says about that, or just how life is and how to,

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 how to navigate relational, you know, situations, well, wouldn't we also hold the same goal to

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 love God with our mind? Go learn, go learn about this stuff. I was, I was looking up, a friend of mine

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 does a lot with mental health in her church, and maybe we'll talk about this later on in the call,

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 but they have a lot of things right at the top. Oh, wait, maybe I didn't write it in my notes.

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 I'll have to go find it. But there's a whole Institute for Mental Health, right? There's very

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 accessible resources that are things that, you know, it's on us to do the work of integration,

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 okay? If this is how the brain has been created by God, and if this is what can go wrong or how it

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 heals, and those things are coming from sources outside of seminary, we go and learn, and we

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 discern, and we say, how do I digest this? How do I metabolize these truths and bring them out to my

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 people? Like a sermon series is a great way to do it. I was just on a call yesterday. I don't know if

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 you guys are familiar with this whole resilient church leaders or resilient church leadership effort

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 that's going on through the Billy Graham Center and came out of some things that Ed Stetzer had pulled

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 together a gathering around mental health in December of 19. And then, and that's got a whole ton of great

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 content around that. And so as an offshoot from some of those efforts, we were doing this resilient

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 church leadership and there's clinical therapists that are part of that, et cetera. But this idea came

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 up in yesterday's conversation as we were talking about journaling of all things of like, how do you,

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 how do you handle different emotions and what's the value of journaling? And one of the,

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 women on the call, she's an organizational psychologist, she used to be the provost at

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 Wheaton. And she, she talks about the feeling wheel, right? That's a, that's a whole like

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 feeling wheel. I can send you the link if you're interested. That helps people name different

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 emotions, right? And the, the, another guy on the call is the, was the chair of the marriage and

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 family therapy department at Wheaton is now at DePaul has been a pastor. And he said, you know,

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 one of the things I recommend is for pastors to actually preach through the feeling wheel.

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 Like that is an example of normalize things. Not like this is the range of human emotion. Here's some

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 names that we put to these things. Here's how they come out in healthy ways. Here's how they

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 can be misfiring and what that might look like in your life. Like we have a phenomenal opportunity as

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 pastors to put a content agenda in front of our people that can really bring a lot of help that

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 those are some of the places I would recommend beginning is like, learn, start learning, start

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 having conversations, learn how to have a conversation with somebody who's depressed and is

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 following Jesus and is still depressed and still struggling with depression three years in.

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 And there were no easy answers. And how, how, how are you as a representative of God into the life of

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 this congregant, how are you going to talk to them? And if you just never talk to anybody that's in

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 that place and you don't have the empathy necessary to start addressing these issues. Anyway, I'm rambling

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 on, but those are some of the things that occurred, occur to me that I would recommend before you stand up

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 and try to do anything in your church before you try to teach a sermon series, before you try to set up a

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 counseling center or whatever is your right, like correct level of addressing this topic, become a

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 student. Yeah, I love that. So for me, one of the things that I struggle with, and I don't know if

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 other churches are having this struggle, but I assume that they are. You're talking about preaching

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 through a feeling wheel or learning how to have these conversations with people, but how do you

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 delineate what is the church's responsibility and what is absolutely not? How do you make that call?

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 How do you, how do you decide how to approach these situations?

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 Well, that would be part of what you want to be learning as you're on this learning journey,

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 because, and it's not like, just like most things in life, you're not going to like

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 be walking down this path and all of a sudden see this big red line on the ground that says like,

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 go no further. It won't be that obvious. And, but there are really important resources for

00:20:11.060 --> 00:20:18.340
 understanding where someone can come alongside someone who's struggling and where you should

00:20:18.340 --> 00:20:22.020
 know when to refer. It's like one of the most important things is to know what you know,

00:20:22.140 --> 00:20:29.420
 know what you don't know and know when to refer. And so building up as you're studying, building up a

00:20:29.420 --> 00:20:37.340
 list of who are the professionals in your area that can be referred out to with confidence

00:20:37.340 --> 00:20:44.020
 is a really important piece of the learning as well. Because when we try to take on more than we

00:20:44.020 --> 00:20:49.220
 should, I mean, you were in medical school, you, you know, like that's just, that's some sacred

00:20:49.220 --> 00:20:57.200
 territory. And one thing that I've always felt is that churches, Christians, pastors, disciplers,

00:20:57.420 --> 00:21:04.080
 any, any of us can in very well-meaning ways misdiagnose what people are dealing with.

00:21:04.560 --> 00:21:11.220
 And then we make our little recommendations that amounts to almost like a spiritual malpractice

00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:16.500
 when you are misdiagnosing and, and advising people in a direction that

00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:25.080
 at best may not help them. And at worst may cause harm. It's important to know where that line is

00:21:25.080 --> 00:21:31.920
 and to, and to seek to know when you're getting close to it and what you'll do once you encounter

00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:35.580
 that line. And not, not just, I think the thing is we all want to run away. It's like, I don't want

00:21:35.580 --> 00:21:39.620
 to go anywhere near that line. So I'll never talk about it. I don't want to go there near that line

00:21:39.620 --> 00:21:44.020
 because I don't want to give someone a bad recommendation. I don't want to. And it's like,

00:21:44.200 --> 00:21:48.780
 okay, we, we can't just like put our head in the sand and pretend this doesn't exist. Like we've

00:21:48.780 --> 00:21:53.080
 got to get to where that line is and then figure out how to help people.

00:21:53.540 --> 00:21:59.000
 Maybe that, that line right there, spiritual malpractice. Oh boy, that'll preach. I mean,

00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:05.000
 I got like a thousand sermons off the top of my head. Many of them involving John chapter nine,

00:22:05.060 --> 00:22:08.880
 right. Where the disciples are coming up to Jesus and they're saying, Hey, this man's been blind since

00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:14.080
 birth. Was it because of something his parents did? Was it because of something he did? And I think

00:22:14.080 --> 00:22:21.880
 often we make the same mistake. I've been guilty of making the same mistake of approaching an issue

00:22:21.880 --> 00:22:30.780
 in somebody's life and saying, well, man, it's there, there's, there's something that you did here. How can

00:22:30.780 --> 00:22:37.820
 pastors avoid that problem moving forward and make that adjustment in terms of their counseling with

00:22:37.820 --> 00:22:44.260
 individuals? I mean, that, that is a, that is a deep issue that you're raising. Um, I think we have an

00:22:44.260 --> 00:22:53.720
 affection for easy, simplistic answers. And I think we, um, have shied away from the more nuanced,

00:22:53.720 --> 00:23:05.260
 uh, realities of the integrated and often quite broken interior life of us as humans and

00:23:05.260 --> 00:23:14.380
 dealing with brokenness, dealing with, be it, you know, volitional, like the soul, the soul is a pretty

00:23:14.380 --> 00:23:20.700
 complex thing, right? Soul care, you know, Dallas Willard had this beautiful way of describing all the

00:23:20.700 --> 00:23:26.400
 dimensions of the soul, which is basically all the dimensions of our personhood, right? There's a mind

00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:31.660
 and our emotions and our thoughts and our relational context, even dimensions of the physical body, which

00:23:31.660 --> 00:23:37.640
 we don't normally think of as peace of the soul, but in his way of understanding biblically, the soul is what

00:23:37.640 --> 00:23:46.640
 integrates all these different dimensions of personhood. And when the soul is diminished, those pieces of who we

00:23:46.640 --> 00:23:55.240
 are start to fail and fall apart. And those are his exact words. And so when we start giving, you know, in my

00:23:55.240 --> 00:24:01.080
 view, sometimes three cent answers to million dollar questions, that's where that spiritual

00:24:01.080 --> 00:24:08.880
 malpractice can kick in. And I, I've, I don't know if anyone on this call, it's been an interesting, um,

00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:19.020
 touch point in my life, but I, if you've ever been misdiagnosed medically, um, I was so angry at this,

00:24:19.020 --> 00:24:26.920
 this doctor and we were living in Massachusetts at the time. Uh, my kids had a rash. It was really

00:24:26.920 --> 00:24:32.680
 terrible. It wasn't getting better. And then I would notice that like, if it was on this part of their

00:24:32.680 --> 00:24:37.400
 arm, then like the part that would be in contact when they were playing or certain, then it would

00:24:37.400 --> 00:24:43.660
 show up here. And I, and then it was transferring to the other kids and my husband and I started and

00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:50.260
 it was like all these things. And I go into this doctor, sorry to be vetting my thing, um, or venting.

00:24:50.380 --> 00:24:56.640
 And they, um, this, this doctor is looking at me and going, I'm telling him all the reasons. He's

00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:01.620
 like, well, it's obviously contact dermatitis. You have, you have poison ivy or poison oak or it's,

00:25:01.660 --> 00:25:05.400
 you know, one of these things. And I was like, okay, but I don't think it's that because of this

00:25:05.400 --> 00:25:09.960
 and this and this and this. And I listed off all the reasons why having studied those things,

00:25:09.960 --> 00:25:14.460
 I didn't think it was it. And he kind of looked at me and goes, well, what else could it be?

00:25:15.240 --> 00:25:21.420
 And I bit my tongue so hard. I was like, you're the one with the MD, buddy. I'm paying to talk to

00:25:21.420 --> 00:25:28.000
 you. Don't you ask me what else it could be. That's your job. I mean, I was, I had small children.

00:25:28.120 --> 00:25:33.400
 I'm sure I had had not a night's sleep in years. So I, hopefully I didn't actually say what was

00:25:33.400 --> 00:25:41.580
 going through my head, but I feel like that's that. And, and, and all the things he told us to do,

00:25:41.580 --> 00:25:46.420
 none of it helped. And when we finally got to one doctor who pieced together the stuff,

00:25:46.500 --> 00:25:52.440
 they figured out this very atypical, wouldn't have expected it thing was gone in a matter of days.

00:25:53.900 --> 00:25:59.980
 And like that has a nice turnaround story. Some of the stuff with mental health doesn't have a nice,

00:26:00.140 --> 00:26:06.500
 oh, we finally solved it. And now it's all better and better. But nonetheless, the, the pain and the

00:26:06.500 --> 00:26:13.400
 hardship we cause by giving three cent answers to million dollar questions about why is this happening?

00:26:14.220 --> 00:26:22.560
 What, what, like just, it doesn't usually take but two or three levels in of, of inquiry to realize

00:26:22.560 --> 00:26:27.280
 that most things are not as black and white or as easy as we'd like for them to be. And I mean,

00:26:27.280 --> 00:26:36.500
 I hope that's not terribly shocking news to any of your listeners, Jeff. But, but we, we must think

00:26:36.500 --> 00:26:43.420
 wisely and well about why people do what they do. And when we try to slap a Bible verse

00:26:43.420 --> 00:26:50.240
 on, and I used to do this, so I get it. But I mean, it's like, I've talked about this metaphor as well,

00:26:50.240 --> 00:26:54.400
 but like when somebody comes into your small group or into your church, your counseling office,

00:26:54.400 --> 00:26:58.980
 and they're just bleeding all over the place, right? They're, it's just, they've got a non-physical

00:26:58.980 --> 00:27:05.640
 wound, but it's bleeding everywhere, right? And I think the reaction most of us have is like,

00:27:05.900 --> 00:27:11.120
 oh my gosh, you're bleeding. It's going to get blood all over my office. That's, can't be good for you.

00:27:11.180 --> 00:27:14.860
 It's not going to be good for anybody. How do I slap a tourniquet on that thing?

00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:26.120
 And a lot of times we use Bible verses as tourniquets on wounds, expecting that it's going to stop the

00:27:26.120 --> 00:27:35.640
 bleeding. And it doesn't. I don't think that's how Jesus intended for his precious living word to be

00:27:35.640 --> 00:27:46.660
 used. And so integrating what does scripture say that could help, that could bring healing,

00:27:46.900 --> 00:27:52.520
 that could bring help is a, is a very important question, but man, we cannot give three saint

00:27:52.520 --> 00:27:54.280
 answers to million dollar questions.

00:27:54.620 --> 00:27:59.180
 So you're telling me that Philippians 4.13 is not the answer to everybody's problem.

00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:04.960
 Might be the answer to all your problems, but not anybody I've known.

00:28:05.300 --> 00:28:10.820
 I don't know. I've heard it a lot. People have given me that so many times and I'm doing great.

00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:17.420
 Every time I wear the t-shirt, like it's awesome. My life is great. As long as I'm wearing the t-shirt.

00:28:17.440 --> 00:28:19.800
 I've also seen shirts where people hit home runs.

00:28:20.100 --> 00:28:21.020
 So I just want to make sure.

00:28:21.560 --> 00:28:25.440
 One of the reasons I care about this so much is while we were in Boston in those years,

00:28:25.540 --> 00:28:29.600
 Jeff knows this story and I won't, I won't go into it in detail, but my husband and I had planted a

00:28:29.600 --> 00:28:35.560
 church and he was a total golden boy. We met when we were at Cornell, he went to Dallas Seminary,

00:28:35.740 --> 00:28:40.000
 we interned at Willow Creek, we church planted, we involved with Campus Crusade, like all of the

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:48.200
 brand name, you know, things. He was a, you know, football player, Sigma Chi fraternity boy.

00:28:48.340 --> 00:28:52.800
 Like, I mean, he was just this golden boy, had never failed really in his entire life.

00:28:53.520 --> 00:28:58.700
 And we go off to Boston, which is a kind of a hard place to do a kind of a hard thing with church

00:28:58.700 --> 00:29:04.080
 planting. And we did it in the most difficult way possible, which is to do a parachute drop

00:29:04.080 --> 00:29:08.720
 into the city, not knowing anybody with no financial resources or oversight or anything.

00:29:09.360 --> 00:29:15.060
 So not that shockingly, we quickly came to the end of ourselves, but didn't know that.

00:29:15.860 --> 00:29:21.100
 And Jeff, he's written about this, you know, and talks about it quite openly, but he was probably

00:29:21.100 --> 00:29:26.760
 in a full on, started maybe as a situational depression, but it just kept getting worse and

00:29:26.760 --> 00:29:33.540
 worse and worse and probably converted within weeks to a chemical depression, which was probably

00:29:33.540 --> 00:29:40.620
 lasted 10 years. Because we didn't have any language for that. We didn't, I mean, what do you

00:29:40.620 --> 00:29:45.760
 mean? Like we didn't even have a imagination that such a thing could happen. All I knew

00:29:45.760 --> 00:29:49.540
 is he was angry all the time, couldn't get out of bed in the morning, like things that

00:29:49.540 --> 00:29:54.020
 now we might know to pay attention to. But at that point we just didn't. It was like, come

00:29:54.020 --> 00:29:58.300
 on, buck up little camper, like get going, you know, cry me a river. Like it's hard.

00:29:58.700 --> 00:30:13.100
 Great. Just totally not, not sympathetic at all. And that, that, um, ache of watching someone

00:30:13.100 --> 00:30:21.660
 you love suffer so tremendously. But then after a while, this is the caregiver challenge. Like

00:30:21.660 --> 00:30:26.740
 you just get tired of trying to hold them up and then you're exhausted. And then you're trying

00:30:26.740 --> 00:30:31.460
 to hold the family together and keep the support coming in. And I mean, it was just really, really

00:30:31.460 --> 00:30:41.700
 hard. And so I, I, I think that what I've learned from medical professionals is if you're in a

00:30:41.700 --> 00:30:47.480
 situational depression, like things are hard. You've been knocked around a bit. It's like,

00:30:47.480 --> 00:30:53.800
 oh gosh, it's hard to keep your energy up for as little as three weeks. And I thought this

00:30:53.800 --> 00:31:01.360
 was so ridiculous that I have confirmed it every time I'm around like clinical people and they have

00:31:01.360 --> 00:31:11.760
 confirmed every, when you're in a place that's that hard for as little as three weeks, your brain's

00:31:11.760 --> 00:31:18.440
 chemistry goes, all right, here's the new normal. And your body will actually start reinforcing

00:31:19.640 --> 00:31:27.580
 your depressed state, even though it maybe wasn't your like forever and ever always state, but it is

00:31:27.580 --> 00:31:34.240
 now. And that's usually when I talk about that phrase, um, spiritual malpractice, because in

00:31:34.240 --> 00:31:40.220
 dealing with soul care, I'm often challenging leaders and anyone myself to, to stay connected with God.

00:31:40.320 --> 00:31:43.940
 What are the spiritual practices that help with all that? And those things matter and they are good.

00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:48.780
 But if you're dealing with somebody who's in a true chemical depression, you've, you've now got to

00:31:48.780 --> 00:31:55.920
 address that on, on both levels or more holistically, I guess is the right way to say it. And

00:31:55.920 --> 00:32:04.300
 yeah, it's just important. I don't know. There's a lot to be said there.

00:32:04.860 --> 00:32:10.300
 What I love is that you, I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing your story and what you guys went

00:32:10.300 --> 00:32:14.320
 through. I, it raises a really important question and one that I think that we're going to hear a lot,

00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:21.460
 especially in 2021, as we hopefully start to emerge from the pandemic. Um, what are pastors

00:32:21.460 --> 00:32:27.920
 looking for who are starting to experience genuine mental health crisis? What red flags are we,

00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:33.780
 are we looking for as church leaders? I know we've, in my own circles, I feel like I see maybe once a

00:32:33.780 --> 00:32:38.420
 week, maybe more, um, pastors who are stepping down from ministry because they are so burnt out that

00:32:38.420 --> 00:32:42.520
 they can't take it anymore. Um, and that, that's a real thing that's happening. So what are we looking

00:32:42.520 --> 00:32:42.960
 out for?

00:32:43.480 --> 00:32:48.320
 Yeah. I mean, those symptoms from, of burnout are, are pretty kind of telltale and they're very

00:32:48.320 --> 00:32:55.680
 similar to symptoms of depression and things that, you know, 2020 has foisted upon us in a whole new

00:32:55.680 --> 00:33:02.640
 way. And what pastors and anyone, uh, would be, would be looking for. So they looking at their own

00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:08.260
 lives or looking at their spouse or looking at key leaders within their team, et cetera,

00:33:08.260 --> 00:33:15.900
 it's that fatigue that isn't going away with sleep. It's a tendency to start isolating,

00:33:15.900 --> 00:33:23.500
 um, which we're all isolated now anyway. Right. So that it's just compounded with so many things,

00:33:23.500 --> 00:33:30.480
 the sort of, they call it COVID brain, right? Like the, just the decision fatigue that has become,

00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:35.260
 you know, it's pivot and then pivot again. And then we go back in person, but we have to have

00:33:35.260 --> 00:33:39.220
 our fallback thing. And then is everybody six feet apart? And what does the state say this week?

00:33:39.220 --> 00:33:48.360
 And what does the government say that? I mean, it is exhausting. Um, other, yeah, just sort of this,

00:33:48.360 --> 00:33:58.560
 like, can't think straight, can't solve a problem. Can't, doesn't find enjoyment. Even things that used

00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:04.820
 to bring a lot of joy, like hobbies, there's falling flat, spending time with your kids just not

00:34:04.820 --> 00:34:11.520
 resonating. Like any of those things could be true on a, a rough day. You had a hard day. Of course,

00:34:11.520 --> 00:34:16.000
 you don't feel like hanging out with anybody, but when it's been like a long time and you just feel

00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:21.740
 like, I just don't even want to go out. I don't want to walk in my street because I don't want to

00:34:21.740 --> 00:34:29.660
 say hi to anybody. When you feel those kinds of pulling away from your life, when you're

00:34:29.660 --> 00:34:34.860
 feeling panic from the minute you wake up in the morning, right? It's just tightening in the chest.

00:34:36.140 --> 00:34:44.160
 So those kinds of feelings, first of all, let's say good news is there might be ways to help that.

00:34:44.360 --> 00:34:48.820
 And maybe it doesn't have to stay that way. One of the things I'm encouraged about Adrian is actually,

00:34:49.640 --> 00:34:56.200
 I'm, while it's sad that so many are leaving pastoral ministry right now, and I have heard my

00:34:56.200 --> 00:35:04.580
 share of those. I'm glad that people are making what I hope are life-saving decisions, life-changing

00:35:04.580 --> 00:35:11.820
 decisions at the right time. And I hope they're finding the support they need. I wish they could

00:35:11.820 --> 00:35:18.080
 enter into the recovery they need, possibly where they're at, but that may not be possible or available

00:35:18.080 --> 00:35:26.620
 to them. And I, I, the headlines that break my heart are the ones that end with a far worse

00:35:26.620 --> 00:35:37.600
 result. And we're having too many of those as well. So that, that's the stuff that I look at pictures

00:35:37.600 --> 00:35:43.000
 and I go, that could have been, that could have been us. Mindy, I resonate with that. I went through

00:35:43.000 --> 00:35:47.920
 everything that you're describing, not this past year, actually years ago when we had launched a

00:35:47.920 --> 00:35:53.480
 location and expectations. And really what it came from was expectations weren't met. Expectations

00:35:53.480 --> 00:35:59.820
 were then raised by overseers. And really what it came down to was we were kind of, we were an unhealthy

00:35:59.820 --> 00:36:05.820
 staff to begin with. We were kind of an unhealthy place. Part of my worry is yes, I'm concerned for

00:36:05.820 --> 00:36:11.680
 pastors, but I'm also concerned for, because unhealthy leaders means unhealthy team too. And an unhealthy

00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:18.320
 leader can't help an unhealthy team get to a place of health. Right. And so it just trickled. It's the

00:36:18.320 --> 00:36:24.080
 whole hurt people, hurt people down the way. And so how can some folks maybe lead up in terms of

00:36:24.080 --> 00:36:28.480
 recognizing that their leader is hurt. All right, I need to give him some space, but he's coming down on the

00:36:28.480 --> 00:36:34.680
 rest of the group and we're already dealing with enough. Yeah. Well, you know, I can't give you a

00:36:34.680 --> 00:36:40.800
 three cent answer to that. That's a big, that is a big and very real question. But here's what I will

00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:46.080
 say. Henry Cloud has said this a lot. And I, and I find it a good way to thinking, to think about

00:36:46.080 --> 00:36:52.260
 problems that start to feel so sort of contained, like they're, they're just in a container right now

00:36:52.260 --> 00:36:58.960
 and there's no outside input. And so as a, as all that toxicity stays in the container,

00:36:58.960 --> 00:37:07.340
 it can't get better. And so one of the keys that's needed in a, in a contained system is to open the

00:37:07.340 --> 00:37:14.980
 system up and opening a system up will introduce change. It will probably be resisted. There's any

00:37:14.980 --> 00:37:21.560
 number of ways that that can be resisted. But what I would say, if somebody is in a, serving on a team

00:37:21.560 --> 00:37:27.320
 where that leader's coming in hard and they're, you know, this person's going like, you're not well,

00:37:27.460 --> 00:37:31.560
 but I'm guessing that conversation isn't going to go well. So like, maybe there's a different

00:37:31.560 --> 00:37:37.600
 conversation that needs to be had, but how does this person find some support outside of that system?

00:37:38.380 --> 00:37:45.980
 How do they find a therapist, a spiritual director, a coach? Now I'm, I'm blurring lines that,

00:37:46.500 --> 00:37:55.000
 um, that when you open yourself up to some other person and you're in a closed system,

00:37:55.400 --> 00:38:06.980
 that person can also sometimes help you get the right help. Like I've met with spiritual directors

00:38:06.980 --> 00:38:15.340
 before who listen, process with me, were helping me in my own journey with God. But when it came to a

00:38:15.340 --> 00:38:21.800
 couple of things I needed to process, they wisely said, Oh, there's that line. There's that line.

00:38:21.800 --> 00:38:28.500
 And here's who I want to refer you to. Do you see what I mean? But if I had stayed in my contained

00:38:28.500 --> 00:38:33.780
 system, I would not have known that that other resource is what I needed, nor would have I had

00:38:33.780 --> 00:38:40.480
 access to it. So sometimes you just got to reach for what, what it could just be a ministry peer

00:38:40.480 --> 00:38:46.620
 that's unrelated to your context, but where are you starting to give voice to what's not working

00:38:46.620 --> 00:38:51.900
 in a nonjudgmental place. You might have to start writing in your journal, like back to yesterday's

00:38:51.900 --> 00:38:56.640
 conversations, but you got to write in your journal, like this is actually really bad right now. And

00:38:56.640 --> 00:39:02.180
 here's what's bad about it and not cross it off and go, God works all things together for good for

00:39:02.180 --> 00:39:07.960
 those who love him. Like, don't cross it off. Let that thing surface, look at it and go, all right,

00:39:09.320 --> 00:39:17.580
 who can I talk to about this? Is it a friend who's in another state? Is it a spiritual director? Is

00:39:17.580 --> 00:39:23.460
 somebody at soul care or Jimmy Dodd's organization or any, any others? There's so many amazing caregivers

00:39:23.460 --> 00:39:29.580
 out there, but if we stay silent, you know, I learned a lot from people in 12 step communities

00:39:29.580 --> 00:39:36.820
 they have this great phrase. We're only as sick as our secrets. Wow. That's good. Wow. And there's

00:39:36.820 --> 00:39:45.340
 so much power in the diffusing ability to diffuse really toxic stuff. Cause like in that scenario

00:39:45.340 --> 00:39:49.560
 describing, you know, there's a team, there's me, there's other team members, and there's our senior

00:39:49.560 --> 00:39:56.020
 leader, like going back to our topic of mental health, that could be operational in all of these

00:39:56.020 --> 00:40:03.580
 people to some degree. Right. And you're never going to be able to diagnose it in like, in its pure form.

00:40:03.580 --> 00:40:07.980
 Although sometimes we feel like we're making progress when we sit around an armchair, armchair

00:40:07.980 --> 00:40:13.640
 diagnose ourselves and others, but that's not really going to bring us progress. What we need is to start

00:40:13.640 --> 00:40:21.980
 opening the system up to help. Yeah. Cause, and this was just my experience, you know, but you know,

00:40:21.980 --> 00:40:26.420
 many of you were kind enough to tell us your story. Uh, my experience was exactly what you described,

00:40:26.500 --> 00:40:31.920
 the panic attacks, the whole thing, just kind of dealing with some of that. And as I talked to more

00:40:31.920 --> 00:40:38.000
 and more pastors, I know by God's grace, I got with a licensed Christian counselor. She helped us work

00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:42.860
 out a whole lot of stuff. There were a whole lot of issues that I, that I dealt with in the past that

00:40:42.860 --> 00:40:47.800
 weren't completely unearthed that combined with all the stuff that I was going with currently that I had to

00:40:47.800 --> 00:40:53.580
 let go of. Uh, things as simple as Ray, who builds the church? Is it Jesus for you? What does the Bible

00:40:53.580 --> 00:40:59.440
 say? Don't tell me what your leadership books say. Tell me what the Bible says. And that kind of thing

00:40:59.440 --> 00:41:04.540
 right there too, for a lot of church leaders, for some reason it does, you know, we talk about like

00:41:04.540 --> 00:41:10.400
 practical theology for some reason it doesn't resonate. We, we buy into the whole cultural thing of, but

00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:17.260
 what I do matters most. I build the church. That's pressure. That's not what God has given us.

00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:22.540
 And we will crumble under the weight of it. Let me, I want to pull a thread, maybe not in that

00:41:22.540 --> 00:41:28.060
 direction, but it's in the same vein a little bit. And, and I'm, I'm speaking in generalization. I

00:41:28.060 --> 00:41:33.040
 don't want to come, come across judgy and I'm not speaking of any, any one organization. When I ask

00:41:33.040 --> 00:41:42.460
 this question, is it wise to spin off a counseling center attached to a church and have specialists

00:41:42.460 --> 00:41:49.480
 work towards that? Or is that a cop-out where we, the pastors, we, we need to be training ourselves,

00:41:49.680 --> 00:41:55.100
 our, our staff and our people to address those things specifically. I literally could make either

00:41:55.100 --> 00:42:04.480
 argument right now. And so I'm, I'm curious at what level are we, you know, um, business offloading,

00:42:04.480 --> 00:42:09.360
 you know, crowdsourcing to somebody else instead of taking care of our own responsibility, or is there

00:42:09.360 --> 00:42:15.160
 wisdom and understanding, Hey, here's the line of what I'm really capable of. Let, let someone who's a

00:42:15.160 --> 00:42:20.140
 professional take care of that. How, how are we as a church supposed to respond? Like, like what,

00:42:20.140 --> 00:42:27.080
 what do we do here? Oh, I got so many thoughts. Um, our church had a counseling center. Um, it was

00:42:27.080 --> 00:42:31.620
 on our property, this little, actually it's funny. It was this little like house that sat in the corner

00:42:31.620 --> 00:42:39.880
 of our property and it was okay. Um, but what we learned was that we were spiritual professionals,

00:42:39.880 --> 00:42:45.500
 not mental health professionals. And so ultimately what we decided to do was close down the counseling

00:42:45.500 --> 00:42:54.400
 center and build a strong partnership with a, with a counseling practice that is in our city.

00:42:54.520 --> 00:43:01.900
 And so we have warm, close relationships with counselors in our city, but it is not a part

00:43:01.900 --> 00:43:08.040
 of our church. Now it wasn't in the name of saying like we were, we were just passing people off to

00:43:08.040 --> 00:43:13.020
 mental health professionals because we didn't want to handle it, but it was a way of kind of creating

00:43:13.020 --> 00:43:17.240
 a real hard line. Like these are the things that we're going to keep in house. We are here

00:43:17.240 --> 00:43:22.000
 to provide for you spiritually and love you and care for you and be here for you.

00:43:22.560 --> 00:43:27.380
 But sometimes we are going to find that line and we're going to need to cross it and we need to

00:43:27.380 --> 00:43:32.100
 hand off. And now what we're trying to do right now is learn how to identify that line. So one of

00:43:32.100 --> 00:43:37.600
 the things that we're doing is, um, a couple of us have done the mental health first aid training

00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:43.760
 through the organization called mental health first aid. And what we plan on doing is actually,

00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:50.340
 um, I am hoping to be certified as an instructor for mental health first aid. Another one of our

00:43:50.340 --> 00:43:54.600
 pastors on staff will also be certified and we're going to train our entire staff on mental health

00:43:54.600 --> 00:44:01.120
 first aid. And what it does is it teaches you how to identify crisis situations and hand them off in an

00:44:01.120 --> 00:44:09.780
 appropriate way while also providing encouragement and support and love for people within what is

00:44:09.780 --> 00:44:16.220
 safe for us to do. So counseling centers, I'm not a huge fan, but I think it's really great to have

00:44:16.220 --> 00:44:20.200
 close, close relationships with mental health professionals in your area.

00:44:20.660 --> 00:44:25.400
 I would, yeah, I would agree. I think if you have the capacity as a church and you feel called to it,

00:44:25.400 --> 00:44:29.140
 like, I don't think every church should do always the same thing. Like each church has a different set

00:44:29.140 --> 00:44:36.740
 of giftings and, and, and sort of, uh, assignments from God in their particular community. But I would

00:44:36.740 --> 00:44:42.640
 say that if you have a counseling center, make sure you have like trained actual counselors there and

00:44:42.640 --> 00:44:49.920
 don't, don't mistake putting somebody who can listen well and think of Bible verses that relate to that

00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:58.340
 and don't call that true clinical care. Um, so I, I think that's, that, that's, that's what I would

00:44:58.340 --> 00:45:02.920
 say. I found the name of the other organization. Can I, there's a church, um, a friend of mine,

00:45:03.020 --> 00:45:10.540
 uh, is one of the co-pastors that, um, I think it's called St. John's downtown. It's in Houston,

00:45:10.540 --> 00:45:17.620
 um, and a really, you know, predominantly African-American church. And they've done a ton over the years

00:45:17.620 --> 00:45:25.740
 in more like, um, homelessness and, and feeding the hungry and all this kind of stuff because of their

00:45:25.740 --> 00:45:32.560
 location and where they're at in downtown Houston. But she was the first person who I remember probably

00:45:32.560 --> 00:45:39.200
 13, 15 years ago, we were at an event together and just building a friendship. And she was telling me

00:45:39.200 --> 00:45:43.800
 their church's story, but that they were starting to realize that most of the homelessness that they

00:45:43.800 --> 00:45:49.360
 were encountering had its roots in mental health. And that was the first time I had ever heard anybody

00:45:49.360 --> 00:45:56.980
 make those connections. And so what does that mean for them to truly serve the community if they're

00:45:56.980 --> 00:46:03.020
 not getting after the, the deeper core issues? And, and you can't even know that that will, that help

00:46:03.020 --> 00:46:08.520
 will help, but you could at least start to more, um, circumspectly be addressing the problem.

00:46:08.920 --> 00:46:16.220
 And so there's a North, a national Alliance on mental illness, NAMI. Are you familiar with that?

00:46:16.580 --> 00:46:24.480
 Right? So they have a partnership with this church now where they're training facilitators and in

00:46:24.480 --> 00:46:28.560
 partnership with the church, they were working with, it's just right on their, on their website,

00:46:28.700 --> 00:46:33.480
 but it says, are you interested in serving as a support group facilitator in 2021? Do you want to

00:46:33.480 --> 00:46:37.700
 be part of a national movement helping people who live with mental illness? Do you want to contribute

00:46:37.700 --> 00:46:42.320
 to real change in the mental health system? Join us for training provided by this organization.

00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:48.480
 And so I think that's another example of these pastors, mental health isn't their domain knowledge,

00:46:48.480 --> 00:46:53.700
 but they're partnering with somebody that can help them learn and then help their church think about

00:46:53.700 --> 00:47:00.800
 how to address their unique community strategically, but with great wisdom. And, and I, I just,

00:47:00.920 --> 00:47:06.040
 I thought of them and, and just thought I could mention that as an example, but so your church is

00:47:06.040 --> 00:47:11.640
 partnering with, you know, an organization and a counseling clinic in your community. And I know

00:47:11.640 --> 00:47:16.780
 of churches that have done a lot of those different things. Most of them that I'm aware of, smaller

00:47:16.780 --> 00:47:24.460
 churches will have a list of licensed clinical therapists in their area. And I think that's, I don't see

00:47:24.460 --> 00:47:30.480
 that, Jeff, back to your original question as like offloading responsibility. I think it really is part of a,

00:47:30.480 --> 00:47:36.040
 a comprehensive, like imagine a church is teaching through, here's what can go wrong in the world.

00:47:36.040 --> 00:47:42.400
 You know, here's, here's all the things that can go wrong. And here's, here's the things that were

00:47:42.400 --> 00:47:48.700
 really well-suited to help you with. And we will walk with you on this other stuff. That's a key thing.

00:47:48.800 --> 00:47:54.080
 I've had in, in small groups, women that were like, okay, they were going into counseling for some

00:47:54.080 --> 00:47:59.900
 reason or beginning medication for depression or another, you know, whatever it was. And it's,

00:47:59.960 --> 00:48:03.680
 it's not like they were like shunned out of our small group. Cause now, now you got your therapist.

00:48:03.680 --> 00:48:07.340
 You don't need us anymore. It was like, no, all the more like, Hey, bring what you're learning.

00:48:07.540 --> 00:48:12.620
 How can we support you in this? How do we, how do we walk with you in this? It wasn't a,

00:48:12.620 --> 00:48:21.680
 a removal from community or an absence of our, I think still important role as the church in their

00:48:21.680 --> 00:48:28.720
 life. We just, we're helping them find the next right thing, but not abandoning the relationship.

00:48:29.080 --> 00:48:33.440
 I would love to jump in there for a second and just endorse a couple of the things you just said.

00:48:33.440 --> 00:48:39.160
 Um, we have done some work with NAMI here in Louisville and they're an outstanding resource.

00:48:39.160 --> 00:48:44.560
 So, um, for anybody who's listening out there, um, I am confident you can find a chapter of NAMI

00:48:44.560 --> 00:48:49.700
 that is local to you and they have, we've been able to partner with them and have them come in

00:48:49.700 --> 00:48:55.840
 and help us do groups on site. Um, they came and did a panel with us with our, um, I think our second

00:48:55.840 --> 00:49:02.060
 mental health series back in 2019. They're an outstanding organization, but also, um, speaking to,

00:49:02.060 --> 00:49:07.820
 to going and getting counseling and stepping outside of just the pastoral counseling, the,

00:49:07.820 --> 00:49:13.340
 the counseling that I've done in my own life with my own therapist has absolutely been life-saving.

00:49:13.340 --> 00:49:20.120
 I'm a person who has repeatedly been in a dangerous mental health crisis. I am a multiple suicide

00:49:20.120 --> 00:49:26.680
 attempt survivor. Um, and because of that, one of the things that my community that knows me and

00:49:26.680 --> 00:49:31.880
 loves me needed was for me to have professional help because not only did I have someone I could

00:49:31.880 --> 00:49:38.820
 go to who could safely guide me through that healing process, they also got a resource that they could

00:49:38.820 --> 00:49:44.040
 reach out to. So when I'm in crisis, my husband doesn't have to wonder who do I call? What do I

00:49:44.040 --> 00:49:49.520
 do? Am I going to take her to the emergency room? He can start with my counselor, someone who knows me

00:49:49.520 --> 00:49:54.020
 and my mental health history, but also who is a professional. So I just want to endorse that kind of

00:49:54.020 --> 00:50:00.240
 across the board going to counseling can be so effective. And if the, the pastors who were walking

00:50:00.240 --> 00:50:05.520
 alongside me hadn't said, you need professional help. I can't tell you that I would have made that

00:50:05.520 --> 00:50:06.020
 decision.

00:50:06.180 --> 00:50:11.920
 Adrian, um, Mindy can, I just want to ask, cause we, you know, on the show, we deal a lot with search

00:50:11.920 --> 00:50:17.600
 online with digital. Um, so often, uh, especially as an online pastor, you know, for a church,

00:50:17.600 --> 00:50:24.580
 because we're not in the same city. How can I help refer people who maybe are in a completely

00:50:24.580 --> 00:50:31.220
 different state to help get them the help that they need? If I don't know their area, I don't know the

00:50:31.220 --> 00:50:36.000
 complete situation. Um, what are, what are some of the tools that I can do first and foremost,

00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:43.300
 if they're suicidal, but then second, in terms of, uh, uh, for those who need long-term care or,

00:50:43.300 --> 00:50:46.500
 or just that next step beyond this pastoral counseling stuff.

00:50:46.980 --> 00:50:51.860
 Huge questions. Adrian, you must live with this cause you are pastoring an online community as well.

00:50:51.960 --> 00:50:56.280
 What, what is your, what are your, what's your pastoral care look like when somebody raises their

00:50:56.280 --> 00:50:57.460
 hand with something really hard?

00:50:57.460 --> 00:51:03.360
 Yeah. So it's not a thing that happens frequently for us, but when it does happen,

00:51:03.740 --> 00:51:09.660
 my first go-to is always going to be that national suicide helpline. Um, no matter where you are in

00:51:09.660 --> 00:51:14.340
 the country, when you call that number, they can route you to people who are close by, who can talk

00:51:14.340 --> 00:51:21.780
 to you and help you get through that crisis moment, help you make the right call in that time. Um, but then

00:51:21.780 --> 00:51:29.020
 beyond that, it's not unusual to be able to do a quick Google search to locate very local resources,

00:51:29.020 --> 00:51:37.020
 but you can also always call 911. And I, I hate to, to jump right to 911, but it is an option. Um,

00:51:37.020 --> 00:51:41.880
 but that suicide helpline, it's a national phone number. Um, it might be a good thing to put in the,

00:51:42.060 --> 00:51:50.620
 the notes for the episode. That's, um, 800-273-8255. As a pastor, it's a good idea to store

00:51:50.620 --> 00:51:55.460
 that in your phone, log it as a, as a phone number that is in your contacts. So it is always there.

00:51:55.520 --> 00:52:00.340
 You can text it to somebody. You've got really easy access to it. I also keep numbers in my phone

00:52:00.340 --> 00:52:06.380
 for, um, for local mental health resources, but also mental health resources that are local to people

00:52:06.380 --> 00:52:10.540
 who are in pockets where we got a lot of people. So here in Louisville, if I've got a lot of people in

00:52:10.540 --> 00:52:14.860
 Cincinnati, I want to keep those Cincinnati numbers really close for me.

00:52:15.160 --> 00:52:18.980
 Yeah. We're going to put all these links. Sorry, Mindy, real quick. We're going to put all, there's so

00:52:18.980 --> 00:52:23.020
 many resources that have been dropped. I haven't said it, but we'll put all that in the show notes,

00:52:23.020 --> 00:52:25.780
 including that, that, that number. So thank you. Go ahead, Mindy.

00:52:25.780 --> 00:52:33.780
 That's good. You know, sometimes a phrase or a word can be really helpful to learn. And for me in

00:52:33.780 --> 00:52:40.820
 walking with a lot of different people, um, some of whom were, uh, close enough to, they weren't quite

00:52:40.820 --> 00:52:46.620
 suicidal, but they were close enough that they just said, Hey, I, I need you to know I'm not doing well

00:52:46.620 --> 00:52:52.920
 kind of thing. And, uh, which is really hard to be on the other end of a call like that. And so that's

00:52:52.920 --> 00:53:00.400
 the scenario you guys are talking about. Um, one of the things I, I, I will offer, um, just because

00:53:00.400 --> 00:53:07.920
 I remember it seeming to be valuable then, and I'm sure I had some basis for it, maybe from having

00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:15.620
 done some research around suicide at that time, but it always seemed helpful to me to always thank

00:53:15.620 --> 00:53:22.960
 someone for choosing to talk about it. And it's like, when you're like, your toes are like

00:53:22.960 --> 00:53:29.060
 cringing in your shoes and you're trying to do everything you can to stay composed and not freak

00:53:29.060 --> 00:53:39.020
 out. But like, you can always say, I'm so glad you're talking and I'm so glad. And to try to keep a

00:53:39.100 --> 00:53:47.400
 conversation going rather than because it's so uncomfortable, be like, ah, okay. Uh, like I, I,

00:53:47.400 --> 00:53:53.980
 I confess my own immaturity, um, at times, like I would rather bail out of a hard conversation and,

00:53:54.100 --> 00:54:02.920
 and then, you know, send somebody else in and to really just enter into that moment. If they're

00:54:02.920 --> 00:54:11.040
 willing to talk to you to keep them on the line while you look up other phone numbers and while

00:54:11.040 --> 00:54:15.980
 you do other things, but just to validate, Hey, I'm so glad you're talking about this. You don't,

00:54:16.120 --> 00:54:21.400
 I would imagine I'm not a professional, maybe Adrian can say more, but like, there's probably

00:54:21.400 --> 00:54:27.980
 terrible things that you shouldn't say in those moments. Um, but I, I've always felt that when,

00:54:27.980 --> 00:54:35.920
 when you can encourage someone to keep validate their, what they're saying and, and then keep them

00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:42.280
 talking is really important. I mean, there's more coaching that comes around suicide, um,

00:54:42.460 --> 00:54:48.140
 not threats, but the right word of like somebody starting to say things like that. And there's

00:54:48.140 --> 00:54:55.680
 more like asking really specific, like, do you have a plan? And you know, all, all these kinds of

00:54:55.680 --> 00:55:01.040
 things, but I'm not, I'm not an expert on all that stuff. But what I can say is I have found it so

00:55:01.040 --> 00:55:07.060
 helpful, useful at times to just pause and be able to thank someone for talking.

00:55:07.400 --> 00:55:12.440
 I think, um, along with those questions that you were talking about just then Mindy, um,

00:55:12.760 --> 00:55:17.280
 it's when you've got somebody who you think might be suicidal, this is like really counterintuitive,

00:55:17.280 --> 00:55:24.200
 but to literally ask them, are you feeling suicidal right now? Um, people think that that might put

00:55:24.200 --> 00:55:28.520
 ideas in their heads or, or, or kind of steer them down a wrong path. That's actually not true.

00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:35.700
 It's actually better for them. And this is like a scientific fact to ask that question.

00:55:35.860 --> 00:55:39.500
 Are you thinking about taking your life? Do you have a plan to do some harm to yourself?

00:55:39.640 --> 00:55:43.580
 It's okay to ask those questions. In fact, in times in my life, when people have asked those

00:55:43.580 --> 00:55:47.540
 questions have been the times we've been able to get me really, truly the help that I needed.

00:55:47.740 --> 00:55:49.720
 So authentic, thanks for sharing all that.

00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:53.600
 Well, let me, let me ask this question. I mean, typically this has been a topic for us,

00:55:53.680 --> 00:55:57.340
 uh, off topic a little bit off brand, the church digital, we usually talk church online.

00:55:57.500 --> 00:56:01.500
 I think mental health is important. Um, but maybe let's try to bridge it here.

00:56:01.980 --> 00:56:07.460
 So, I mean, a couple of questions I wouldn't want to ask maybe, maybe first off here in this,

00:56:07.540 --> 00:56:11.820
 in this COVID season, obviously there's been a radical shift towards church online,

00:56:11.820 --> 00:56:18.440
 something like 10% to 70% of churches are now broadcasting as a result. So hundreds of thousands

00:56:18.440 --> 00:56:23.080
 of churches are moving. Don't even know what the numbers are, but millions upon millions of people

00:56:23.080 --> 00:56:29.580
 are now engaging in digital space, um, where maybe they were physical, if, if anything before.

00:56:30.640 --> 00:56:36.400
 What is this doing to our mental states? Like, and, and, and we can unpack this and I don't want

00:56:36.400 --> 00:56:42.820
 like the hour long answer, but more of, of like, you know, I don't want to like be here for all

00:56:42.820 --> 00:56:49.140
 another hour, but, or maybe we do that as another show, but, but like, seriously, just what do we as

00:56:49.140 --> 00:56:53.700
 digital pastors and specifically me as the guy who's consulting with churches and helping hundreds

00:56:53.700 --> 00:56:58.420
 of churches figure out how to do this? Like, what are we doing to these people? Are we doing anything

00:56:58.420 --> 00:57:05.120
 to these people by doing church digitally, by having them do church in their home? What do we need

00:57:05.120 --> 00:57:15.260
 to be on the lookout for? Um, the tendency in online church is to stream, like just broadcast rather than

00:57:15.260 --> 00:57:21.180
 to try to build community around church. That is the knee jerk. That is what a lot of churches who are

00:57:21.180 --> 00:57:25.520
 doing online church for the very first time are doing. It's all about getting that stream up with

00:57:25.520 --> 00:57:30.160
 the weekend service. Don't worry about the rest of it. Just, just make sure that the service is online,

00:57:30.160 --> 00:57:38.060
 that people are seeing what is happening in the room. But one of the things that is, um, catastrophic to

00:57:38.060 --> 00:57:44.060
 someone who is experiencing any sort of mental health challenge is that isolation from community. So

00:57:44.060 --> 00:57:51.080
 whenever we kind of miss the mark on building community through church online, we lose those

00:57:51.080 --> 00:57:57.380
 opportunities to really love people and experience community with them. I mean, there's no question about

00:57:57.380 --> 00:58:02.880
 whether or not we can experience community online. We're doing it right now. Um, people have been

00:58:02.880 --> 00:58:09.020
 doing it over the course of the last year. My kids are like upstairs right now playing, uh, Minecraft on

00:58:09.020 --> 00:58:14.460
 their computers while on a zoom call on another device. Like community can still happen online. Even our

00:58:14.460 --> 00:58:21.240
 youngest kids are learning that and it's not ideal. It is not the best way to do community, but it is a way to

00:58:21.240 --> 00:58:26.840
 do community. And so when we lose our focus about what the church is meant to be, a group of believers

00:58:26.840 --> 00:58:34.280
 worshiping together and, um, and we're just broadcasting those services, we're gonna, we're gonna not be a

00:58:34.280 --> 00:58:39.120
 part of the solution. I wouldn't say we're hurting people with just watching church on a screen, but I

00:58:39.120 --> 00:58:42.520
 would say we're not part of the solution unless we're building community around church online.

00:58:43.200 --> 00:58:48.220
 Love it. Love it. Love it. She said that. Well, but you know, Jeff, that's why I have been such a huge fan

00:58:48.220 --> 00:58:54.800
 of your body of work and thought leadership in this area because you've never been an advocate

00:58:54.800 --> 00:59:03.840
 of, um, using online technologies just to broadcast. And I know that's never been your passion. You

00:59:03.840 --> 00:59:11.600
 have seen the move to digital as an opportunity to move people actually out of just consuming church,

00:59:11.600 --> 00:59:16.920
 even if they're physically in person and actually become an engaged participant in a community,

00:59:16.920 --> 00:59:23.500
 which is what you're describing, Adrian. And I, I, that you, you won me over. So hook,

00:59:23.500 --> 00:59:29.980
 line and sinker with that. Uh, yes, you totally did because I began to realize that perhaps the

00:59:29.980 --> 00:59:39.580
 opportunities for discipleship and true relational context for growth could actually be

00:59:39.580 --> 00:59:48.100
 catapulted forward because of digital environments that are just never going to happen when you've got

00:59:48.100 --> 00:59:52.640
 800 people in a room, all looking one direction at each other's back of each other's heads. And

00:59:52.640 --> 01:00:00.160
 I feel like the opportunity in the body of Christ has not been like this for 500 years to figure out

01:00:00.160 --> 01:00:06.960
 out a different, a different, a different, like categorically different way of being that has

01:00:06.960 --> 01:00:13.000
 relationships at the center with authenticity at the center with actual challenges that I am going through

01:00:13.000 --> 01:00:20.140
 today in this house, under this roof with these relationships. And where is God meeting me? And how is my

01:00:20.140 --> 01:00:27.860
 church helping me with that? I want us to be figuring out how the church gets smaller, not bigger, how

01:00:27.860 --> 01:00:34.420
 relationships get fewer, not more, how they get more authentic, not more pretense. We've all had enough

01:00:34.420 --> 01:00:39.820
 of that. Um, but the one other thing I would add to what Adrian said, and I just loved everything she

01:00:39.820 --> 01:00:49.040
 had to say, um, is I, I feel like because of the mental health, um, dangers, like let's just call it

01:00:49.040 --> 01:00:56.500
 out. Let's say, Hey, you might be in engaging in our church, in your living room, and you haven't been

01:00:56.500 --> 01:01:03.160
 out of your house in two months. I've talked to coworkers in another context that I work in that have not

01:01:03.160 --> 01:01:09.120
 been out of their homes in months. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. I, but we all have different

01:01:09.120 --> 01:01:14.520
 sort of thresholds of, of what we feel safe with and whatever. And they've just not, they've not gone

01:01:14.520 --> 01:01:19.560
 anywhere. And I'm like, wow. But how does that become part of the messaging that's putting, put out

01:01:19.560 --> 01:01:24.240
 on that stream? Hey guys, you might have this. And if you felt this, this, or this in the last week,

01:01:24.600 --> 01:01:31.500
 we are here for it. We are here for you. Here's a big fat button on your phone. Go hit it, go text this,

01:01:31.500 --> 01:01:37.980
 put a QR code up there. Gives us a, you know, like, let's just be real about it. Let's talk

01:01:37.980 --> 01:01:45.220
 about it. Let's leverage these amazing communication platforms we have and use them to get people on the

01:01:45.220 --> 01:01:50.840
 right path. And without judgment, without all that, you know, well, if you really can't hold your life

01:01:50.840 --> 01:01:56.900
 together and Jesus isn't enough for you, then we have this counseling center. Like, no, first order

01:01:56.900 --> 01:02:01.180
 a business. And especially when pastors are able to say, Hey, this has helped me and my family.

01:02:02.300 --> 01:02:08.120
 I've heard of some pastors who are being very, very vocal about their own journey. Guys, that is,

01:02:08.240 --> 01:02:14.140
 that is gold. Not that you would ever misuse that or mistreat your own story or feel like

01:02:14.140 --> 01:02:19.080
 you owe it to your church to be more authentic than you feel comfortable with. Like that's a really,

01:02:19.180 --> 01:02:25.520
 like have a spiritual director or a coach or a therapist guide you through what to bring forward

01:02:25.520 --> 01:02:34.020
 and how, but that's part of this idea of normalizing. Like how, how do we gain a collective vocabulary

01:02:34.020 --> 01:02:42.140
 about what this all is and what soul care, the cure of like, historically the term soul care was like

01:02:42.140 --> 01:02:49.500
 the care of souls and the cure of souls. And it was the domain of the church. People, we need cure.

01:02:49.500 --> 01:02:54.420
 We need care. That's not wrong. It's not bad. That's what we're here for.

01:02:54.960 --> 01:03:00.400
 That's, that's deep. That, that, that, that was really good. Thank, thank you for that. But by the way,

01:03:00.460 --> 01:03:05.400
 that's the best opportunity in 500 years, we can't, we got to, we got to steward this well, right? Like

01:03:05.400 --> 01:03:12.700
 we can't, can't blow this opportunity. Tell me this, and I want to land the plane on, on this.

01:03:13.440 --> 01:03:21.600
 Sticking with this whole church online thing, what specific symptoms? So I'm a digital pastor.

01:03:22.060 --> 01:03:27.540
 I'm trying to pull people in isolation. I noticed a guy's not, not in small group. Is, is he really

01:03:27.540 --> 01:03:34.800
 busy or is, is there something else? We're utilizing, you know, tools like Zoom, tools like Facebook

01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:40.620
 groups may, may or may not be hard, hard to read. How do I, you know, there's a lot of digital pastors

01:03:40.620 --> 01:03:45.180
 out there. How, what, what are they looking for to start to read? Because maybe they're used to

01:03:45.180 --> 01:03:49.460
 reading in physical space, but we can't anymore. So how are we reading this digital? What are some of

01:03:49.460 --> 01:03:53.060
 the telltale signs maybe that we should be seeing through some of these digital tools?

01:03:53.540 --> 01:04:00.020
 Jeff, I actually don't know that. I'd love to explore that. I'd love to have maybe some of

01:04:00.020 --> 01:04:07.440
 your digital pastors come back and tell us what does reading a room digitally look like? What does,

01:04:07.440 --> 01:04:18.880
 what does subtle or significant disengagement look like? I, I, I don't actually know. I wish I had a

01:04:18.880 --> 01:04:24.780
 really good answer to that, but I, I don't know, but I think because it's so new, there's probably

01:04:24.780 --> 01:04:34.420
 some in your audience who are, who are experimenting with, with that. Maybe there's a, you know, if

01:04:34.420 --> 01:04:40.060
 somebody hasn't, this is a cool stuff, you know, being with glue, I, you know, the superpowers of what

01:04:40.060 --> 01:04:47.720
 you can do with tech. Like you can have automated things kick out if somebody hasn't done a certain

01:04:47.720 --> 01:04:52.080
 thing in a certain amount of time. Now they may ignore it. It doesn't mean they're going to see

01:04:52.080 --> 01:04:58.460
 it or respond, but there might be cool things you can do that no matter how somebody reads a room or

01:04:58.460 --> 01:05:01.160
 thinks they're reading a room, they're not.

01:05:01.840 --> 01:05:06.320
 Adrian, do you have any, any thoughts, experience vibes? I mean, I'm perfectly willing to say

01:05:06.320 --> 01:05:11.760
 we need to do that on another conversation with, with the podcast here to try to figure out how to

01:05:11.760 --> 01:05:16.240
 read the room and dig into that. But just what, what's been your brief experience as you've been

01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:17.220
 doing this for a couple of years?

01:05:17.580 --> 01:05:22.640
 Well, so one of the things that I have seen over and over and over again, both in mental health and

01:05:22.640 --> 01:05:28.740
 in digital spaces is that it's really hard to get a read on how someone is for real. If you don't

01:05:28.740 --> 01:05:34.580
 have a relationship with them, I have thought so many times about, it must've been the first

01:05:34.580 --> 01:05:40.420
 conversation I had with Tyler Sansom at church anywhere when he was talking about how important

01:05:40.420 --> 01:05:46.960
 it was to know the names of the people in their church online, because building relationships with

01:05:46.960 --> 01:05:53.060
 people helps you know when something's different or off. I think in ministry, we get really used to

01:05:53.060 --> 01:05:58.540
 people just dropping off and disappearing. That's a thing that happens. Somebody just decides I'm out

01:05:58.540 --> 01:06:03.840
 and they stop coming to church or they're just not part of it anymore. So we expect that sometimes.

01:06:04.380 --> 01:06:08.940
 But if you know that person, you have a relationship with that person, you're still going to ask that

01:06:08.940 --> 01:06:14.360
 question, even if it's probably just that they decided they didn't feel like doing small group

01:06:14.360 --> 01:06:18.940
 anymore because you were getting on their nerves or whatever it was, you know, but making sure that

01:06:18.940 --> 01:06:24.480
 you are building relationships is going to help you start to identify those things. So of course,

01:06:24.480 --> 01:06:28.780
 if somebody just falls off the face of the earth, all of a sudden, you want to start asking that

01:06:28.780 --> 01:06:34.180
 question, hey, I missed you. Because when you say that you're saying, I care about you and I want

01:06:34.180 --> 01:06:39.200
 you to be here and be a part of this. But also, and you may not be able to tell this online, sometimes

01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:43.940
 you can, sometimes you can't. But when somebody suddenly starts acting very differently from how

01:06:43.940 --> 01:06:49.480
 they have always acted and the way that you know them to behave, that is a sign that something's just

01:06:49.480 --> 01:06:56.940
 not right. And whether it is a medical or like a biological mental health challenge, or just a

01:06:56.940 --> 01:07:03.520
 weird day, like they still need you to reach out and, and be Jesus to them. So I would always err on

01:07:03.520 --> 01:07:10.200
 the side of showing up and asking if they're okay, even if I am not totally sure if what I'm seeing is

01:07:10.200 --> 01:07:11.700
 a sign that something's wrong.

01:07:12.060 --> 01:07:16.580
 Yeah, have that relationship and have it be strong enough to have those awkward conversations,

01:07:16.580 --> 01:07:22.260
 even if you're not sure. Love that. Man, I have learned so much in this podcast. I've never heard

01:07:22.260 --> 01:07:28.800
 of the mental health first aid training. I'm literally googling that. And I will be checking.

01:07:28.920 --> 01:07:34.020
 I didn't even know that existed. Something like that existed. And then so definitely we'll be at

01:07:34.020 --> 01:07:39.040
 least starting with that. Hey, we're gonna land. This has been an incredible conversation. Thank you

01:07:39.040 --> 01:07:43.280
 for this. Maybe just even as we're landing the plane. Ray, any closing thoughts on your side?

01:07:43.280 --> 01:07:49.660
 I really felt like that, like Adrian, Mindy, you guys did such a wonderful job helping break this

01:07:49.660 --> 01:07:55.440
 down for, for everyday pastors like Jeff and myself. And, and really for so many people out

01:07:55.440 --> 01:08:01.360
 there that are ministering to their congregations, um, because I get it. We're all afraid because we

01:08:01.360 --> 01:08:06.960
 don't understand it. Right. Like that's that we, we have to start there. We, you, you may even be like

01:08:06.960 --> 01:08:11.740
 me where you're struggling with some of your own issues that you're afraid to kind of dive into the issues

01:08:11.740 --> 01:08:16.460
 of others because well, I'm a leader and we're supposed to brave it through, you know, we kind of buy into

01:08:16.460 --> 01:08:22.100
 some of that ourselves. And so this is where we really need to take a step, step back and step back

01:08:22.100 --> 01:08:28.940
 into our humanity and admit first what we don't know and then humble ourselves enough to do exactly

01:08:28.940 --> 01:08:33.220
 what Mindy and Adrian have talked about and learn. And so thank you so much. I look forward to more

01:08:33.220 --> 01:08:39.340
 conversations about this moving forward because this directly impacts church, but for sure church and

01:08:39.340 --> 01:08:44.520
 digital spaces, I can't tell you both how many times I've dealt with congregants and people who are

01:08:44.520 --> 01:08:49.600
 beyond the scope of the care that I can provide. But even then they're, they're, they're looking and

01:08:49.600 --> 01:08:55.860
 they're hungry and they want to know that God loves them and that God sees their brokenness and sees

01:08:55.860 --> 01:09:00.700
 their broken situation and acknowledges it for what it is. And so thank you guys. Thank you so much for

01:09:00.700 --> 01:09:01.400
 sharing this today.

01:09:02.080 --> 01:09:05.420
 Uh, Adrian, you've done a great job hosting today. Thanks for filling in with that.

01:09:05.740 --> 01:09:10.340
 Um, Landon, the plane, any closing thoughts on your side? She's done. She's shaking her head.

01:09:10.540 --> 01:09:13.100
 She's not even unmuting the mic. She's out of gas.

01:09:13.560 --> 01:09:18.040
 I talked a lot more than I meant to. Um, no, I'm just really excited that we got to have this

01:09:18.040 --> 01:09:23.140
 conversation. Um, like I said before, as a suicide attempt survivor, this is something that will always

01:09:23.140 --> 01:09:28.200
 be near and dear to my heart. I care so much about making sure that people have access to mental

01:09:28.200 --> 01:09:35.940
 health resources. And I know that it is only Jesus, right? Like Jesus is the reason I'm here, but that

01:09:35.940 --> 01:09:42.160
 doesn't mean I didn't also need a super counselor and a lot of great people around me. So, um, starting

01:09:42.160 --> 01:09:47.180
 this conversation, having these conversations, I think it's important. I just want to encourage any of

01:09:47.180 --> 01:09:51.400
 you who are starting to have those conversations for the first time, don't give up. You're going to feel

01:09:51.400 --> 01:09:55.160
 like you're hitting a lot of roadblocks, but there are people out there who want to walk this path with

01:09:55.160 --> 01:09:59.860
 you. I want to help you start bringing Jesus into the mental health conversation. It matters.

01:10:00.340 --> 01:10:04.560
 Mindy, thank you once again for coming and jumping on the show. It's always, it's always great when

01:10:04.560 --> 01:10:09.960
 you come in and you bring such a breadth of knowledge and wisdom on mental health. And so very much

01:10:09.960 --> 01:10:13.980
 appreciate you coming in, um, landing the plane. Any closing thoughts?

01:10:14.380 --> 01:10:21.440
 Just that, um, I'm thinking back to what Ray was saying earlier about the virtual environments that

01:10:21.440 --> 01:10:28.380
 we're in. And I think a lot of the caregivers that exist out there are exploring being available in

01:10:28.380 --> 01:10:34.700
 virtual ways as never before. And so I don't know whether it would be helpful, the stuff that we're

01:10:34.700 --> 01:10:41.100
 doing with soulcare.com or if anybody needs like another place they can go to try to get help, um,

01:10:41.220 --> 01:10:48.220
 you know, visit our website, reach out to me or any of the ones on our team. And then there's a lot of

01:10:48.220 --> 01:10:54.960
 other organizations that are equally, um, sort of gearing up to provide, um, really safe places,

01:10:54.960 --> 01:11:00.780
 even in a digital way, um, to address these things. So, you know, a lot of pastors are like,

01:11:00.840 --> 01:11:04.600
 I don't have time to go find a counselor in my city. I don't know who to talk to, all that kind

01:11:04.600 --> 01:11:10.600
 of stuff. Well, there's ways, there's resources that, um, might actually be better suited to the

01:11:10.600 --> 01:11:16.740
 complexity of being a pastor going for counseling in a local context. So the digital stuff is really

01:11:16.740 --> 01:11:22.660
 important. Spiritual direction, coaching, counseling, all those things can be really helpful.

01:11:22.860 --> 01:11:24.840
 So anyway, I can help. That's what I wanted to say.

01:11:25.300 --> 01:11:29.040
 I'll, I mean, I'll give testimony to that. I've, I've done counseling through soulcare,

01:11:29.200 --> 01:11:35.960
 soulcare.com, uh, worked with the people there and, uh, was awesome. Uh, in, in a digital,

01:11:36.020 --> 01:11:40.800
 I'm a digital guy. Okay. So maybe I'm a little slanted, but having those conversations, working

01:11:40.800 --> 01:11:47.300
 through that stuff in digital space, um, without the, the risk of going in local and, and, and I'm

01:11:47.300 --> 01:11:51.100
 okay with local. I wasn't an issue, but I didn't have to worry about that. It wasn't, it wasn't

01:11:51.100 --> 01:11:56.500
 awkward. It was just, Hey, let me, let me jump on this and have that conversation. It was so good.

01:11:56.860 --> 01:12:03.600
 And so many, I just, I've seen so many things go South and people were like, Oh, I just didn't know

01:12:03.600 --> 01:12:08.040
 where to turn because they were embarrassed by something in the local space or even with their

01:12:08.040 --> 01:12:13.800
 own church. And, uh, you know, honestly, I think that the line to close it off was, uh, Mindy,

01:12:13.840 --> 01:12:19.460
 I think you said, it's like the, um, uh, the, the powerful of the secrets. What was the line?

01:12:19.640 --> 01:12:25.060
 Oh, we're only as sick as our secrets or only as sick as our, as our secrets. I like that might

01:12:25.060 --> 01:12:30.000
 be tattoo worthy. It's been a while since I've had a tattoo worthy quote dropped here on the podcast,

01:12:30.000 --> 01:12:34.400
 but that right there, um, I'm not going to give Mindy Caliguire credit for saying it because I

01:12:34.400 --> 01:12:39.600
 think she heard it from somewhere else, but that's a very common, no, no, no, no, no, very common

01:12:39.600 --> 01:12:45.000
 phrase in 12 step communities. All right. If you want Jeff to get that tattoo, please donate to

01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:53.060
 Stadia. I will definitely donate for that one. Put your Venmo out there. We'll all support it.

01:12:53.320 --> 01:12:58.020
 I tell you what, I'll, I'll put my link to, to donate towards Stadia for Jeffrey to help Jeffrey

01:12:58.020 --> 01:13:03.020
 continue to do a ministry and church planning efforts through Stadia. And if, if we saw some

01:13:03.020 --> 01:13:07.600
 traction there, I may or may not get that, get that tattoo. Assuming my wife will have to do

01:13:07.600 --> 01:13:11.680
 marital counseling. If I get the tattoo, I'll just say it that way. And, uh, and we're going to wrap

01:13:11.680 --> 01:13:17.540
 the plane on that with the idea of Jeffrey getting a tattoo. So, Hey, for Ray, for Adrian, for Mindy,

01:13:17.600 --> 01:13:22.300
 this is Jeff with the church digital podcast and Stadia church planning. Um, thanks for joining

01:13:22.300 --> 01:13:25.240
 here on the pod and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.