Counseling and the Church: How Pastors and Congregations Should Work Together (Dr. Steve Stuhlreyer)

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Everyone you call them make a difference. In mental health. Columbia International University offers graduate counseling degrees that combine professional excellence with Biblical truth from associates. Through doctoral program, CiU prepares you to bring healing and wholeness to others through a biblically based framework of compassion and care. Whether it's their carep accredited Masters in Clinical Counseling or their PhD in counsel or Education and supervision. You'll learn from experienced faculty who integrate faith with real world application to cultivate a Kingdom impact through disciples who counsel, teach, and train. Whether you're starting your journey or advancing your career, CiU's counseling programs equip you to serve others both professionally and spiritually. You can visit CiU dot edu to learn more about making a difference in mental health through christ centered education. That's CiU dot edu. Hey, everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined today by doctor Steve Stolereyer. He is a professor of counselor education at Columbia International University, and we're going to be talking a little bit of today about counseling and the church, specifically what counseling looks like with pastors and how congregations integrate counseling sort of into their overarching ministries.

00:01:42
Speaker 2: So welcome Steve to the podcast. Thanks for reading on the show.

00:01:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, James, thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

00:01:50
Speaker 1: Give me, give me and I guess everybody listening a little bit of your background. I know you've done a lot of work obviously in counseling, but you've had a lot of experience with the local church as well, so I kind of filled us in on where you're at.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, so about thirty two years ago, I came to Christ and immediately fell a called to ministry, and in that call I assumed and rightly so, that it was kngre Uastel ministry to be a pastor. So I went and trained for pastoral ministry. I went to Bible College, did all those things that were necessary, and came back to the city here in Cincinnati and was part of a church planning team and then also became after about five years of serving at that church in various capacities on the pastoral staff, became a lead pastors and was a lead pastor for about three years. When I knew that the Lord is calling me back into the melial health field, I say back into that. That's the work I was doing before I came to Christ, and so I got called back into that and pursued education master's degree PhD eventually in the counselor and councilor education fields. It's currently very involved with my local church, not on staff as a pastor, but very much involved in leading the men's ministry, helping with the team of people leading a discipleship ministry within the church. I also get involved with a more kind of regional Midwestern men's ministry, so I'm on the leadership team there and try to help guys who come to Christ are experiencing some healing to get plugged into a church and to get disciple to maybe have some lad counseling and try to get them integrated into the church. So that's kind of in a nutshell my experience. I love to teach and I love this disciple people and especially men of the church.

00:03:56
Speaker 1: How do you see I mean, this is something that the more I've talked to people who are in counseling, so I mean I knew some folks even at when I was at Moody Bible Institute, they had a counseling program, and I talk with the folks who were involved there, and then even having a conversation with like Ben Matthew just yesterday he was he was on the podcast. And one of the things that I find is there's so much feels like there's so much carryover between counseling and discipleship. And obviously these are distinct fields, but I'm wondering if you can kind of talk through how you see those things sort of overlapping and where the counseling skills and maybe even the orientation, uh you know some of the tools and tricks that you've used in counseling, would you know you see carrying over into discipleship.

00:04:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, what a great question then. And I know Ben as you know. I know Ben as well, where colleagues at Plumbia International University and a great guy. And he and I and said Scott, who I believe you've had on the podcast, have had conversations around what is the what's what's the difference if there is any between discipleship and counseling. And I say that if there is any, because there may be an incredible amount of overlap. I do. I do think that we in the church, and myself included, have maybe unintentionally created this divide between discipleship and counseling like it's one or the other, and I think it's both. I think I think there's great overlap. I think the way that we think about it, as I've talked to Ben and Seth and hopefully not put any words in the routh, but I think kind of where we come to is we say, you know, really, counseling is about, in a very simplistic way, it's about repairing hurts from the past or current maybe addictions or or sexual trauma or whatever is going on in a person's life, kind of repairing some of that, helping heal emotional wounds it, you know, helping people get connected into say a medical professional of medication is needed whatnot. And discipleship really takes a person from current status going forward. Okay, that's an easy way to create a dichotomy in our head about discipleship and counseling. But I'm not sure that it's not a false dichotomy that really, you know, a lot of what discipleship can be is to kind of reach back and help men and women and kids and teenagers kind of repairs some through God's grace and the power of His word and prayer and all those things really heal up their own emotional wounds for wonder reason or another. You know, it's kind of hard to pinpoint a specific way to do it because there's so many needs out there. Yeah, you know, so what we find toned discipleship, and I'll talk about counseling in a minute. Really the most effective counsel discipleship rather process is one to one disciple ship. It's relationships, right, you know, one of the and I don't know if if we want to get down this rabbit hole or not. But you know, in a right now, we're experiencing a development of AI in the counseling field, and some people are creating there I don't even know what they call it chat boxes or something like that. Alert so it creates like a virtual gene spencer. And now now you're my counselor. But it's AI doing it right right, And what that misses, what that whole process misses, is the real human touch that we need for healing, you know, one on one, looking in your face, looking at your eyes, knowing that I could disappoint you if you're my counselor, let's say, or if I'm your discipleer or vice versa. We can't disappoint each other. But AI, you can't do that. The AI is always going to affirm it. So so I'd say to kind of bring this back around the one of the most powerful things with discipleship is the one on one in relationship, and that in and of itself, and a lot of psychological research points us out that in and of itself brings healing in disciples well, counseling is not frankly not significantly different. It's a I'm kind of a key friend. Right, So you're my client, right, you're my client. You come into my office and we're talking, You're looking at my face, you know, you see my body language, and vice versa, and it's one to one, face to face, hard to heart. A counselor is one who is going to show compassion and empathy and all those things to a client that a discipler should show, or a good discipler is going to show to their person, to their disciple, leave if you will. So there certainly is a big distinction here that there is a two psychologists and I'm gonna I can't recall their names. To psychologists in the nineteen sixties kind of blew up the field, the psychology field by concluding in research that really a compassionate friend, that a person may have compassionate friend and relationship is just as effective as a psychologist is for therapy reasons. So what does that tell you? That tells you that the relationship, in a discipleship relationship or a counseling relationship, that is the key to helping people, you know, receive healing to grow closer to Christ or whatever. That person particularly need, particularly needs. I will say this kind as a caveat. There are some people, probably twenty to thirty percent of people whose mental health issues are severe enough that they really do need you know, the situation may be incredibly complicated if they really do need to come to see a counselor who has some significant training in this area and maybe you know, maybe get some medication that if appropriate. But outside that twenty to thirty percent or people, most people will will actually improve their mental well being simply by being in a relationship. Yeah, and so the counseling, in my view, the counseling discipleship continuum. Perhaps there's a huge overlap there. And sometimes I think the church, and I've been a pastor, I've been on both ends. I've been a church, I've been a pastor, and I'm a counselor and counselor educator. What we've done in the church sometimes, and again I think inadvertently unintentionally, is we made this division where there really shouldn't be oneted disciples and counseling division of dichotomy which really doesn't need to be there.

00:10:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's helpful because what I think I hear you saying is you know, there's this huge area of overlap between the two, but then there isn't the sort of outlying areas where you might say, yeah, sort of an everyday discipler may not really be equipped to deal with some of the pathologies that people walk in with, and so if you're trying to disciple those out, yes, there's always room for the grace of God, but there's also a space for human expertise in these matters and really intervening in ways that would remove some of the hurdles that people might have that are otherwise just going to stay there that would help them advance in their discipleship.

00:11:31
Speaker 2: But for the by and large, it makes intuitive sense to me.

00:11:35
Speaker 1: Just everyone else I've talked to, you know, even just some folks I've had on in the past, talk about the increase in people who are coming to them for help that don't really have those major problems that they're dealing with.

00:11:53
Speaker 2: How do I handle the stressors in my life.

00:11:55
Speaker 1: I'm a little anxious, I'm feeling depressed, I'm struggling with aging. I mean, these are things that all of us go through, and you know, without a solid relationship to sit down and talk with somebody, they can become pretty burdensome. And so this guest was telling me, and I can't remember exactly which conversation it was, but they were basically saying, yeah, I'm kind of a paid friend. I'm sitting and I'm talking to this person. They're offloading some of this stuff to me. But they don't have any particular problem pathology that you would pinpoint and say you need X, Y or Z. They really just need to process some things.

00:12:35
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and that's been my experience. I would say, well, currently I have a small private practice. I see about ten people a week or so because most of my focus is at the university. But historically I had a pretty large practice that I was seeing thirty to thirty five people a week or so. In a mystery of the practice, et cetera, et cetera, and I would say, I try to askimate this one time I'm and I think I came up with with the number of about seventy five of my case load is what I would call the worried. Well, these are people who don't have a diagnosable condition, or they do. They have something pretty mild. We might in the Council of the world, we call it an adjustment disorder. Okay, Well, one of my former clients's father with whom he was close passed away. So he's experiencing grief. Hey, that's expected. So he could be diagnosed, and I did diagnose them with an adjustment disorder, and then we could build insurance and then we have a treatment plan. And he did meet that criteria. But he might be what is considered a worried well. Somebody who's in the worried well category. That would probably take up two thirds of three quarters of most therapist caseloads. And so what what a great idea to be able to see in two churches and pastors, could we include within your discipleship program, in small group ministry, whatever you have set up in your church, could we train train listeners people who can disciple and to listen and discipleship, by the way, it's much more than just intellectual, and that's certainly part of it. Is, Hey, let me teach you about the New Testament. The book romans what Christ has done for you, but it's also hey, let's walk together on this journey where you might your father passed away. I know what that's like. My father's passed away. Can we just walk this journey together and just have people trained to listen if that were to happen. And I think and there's a movement for that to happen to to themselves out of Regent University and other people are really working on creating a helping churches create a culture in which the church can minister to the mental people with mental health issues and most health issues. So that's kind of happening. As church has become more and more successful at that, then that opens up my caseload if I was carrying a full caseload, opens up my caseload now for the complicated cases. Right so, right right now, if you are a pastor James and I'm have a full caseload, and you'd say, Hay, Steve, I have so and so who's sexual abuse survivor and they just got out of a domestic violent situation. Can you see her for him? I would say sure in about three months, because my caseload is so full, and every counselor I know is as full as they want to be, like they can't take anybody else. And what a wonderful thing for the church to really be able to develop some kind of counseling ministry counseling slash and deciples ministry so that they the church can really be what it's intended to be, which I think is a, among other things, a hospital and sanctuary for people to bring healing and draw closer to Christ. And the more complicated severe case has come to people who are highly dreamed.

00:16:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

00:16:21
Speaker 1: It kind of leads me into another question I wanted to talk with you about. You know, I've read some of the State of the Pastor's Report, and you know, what are pastors concerned with? How does And then there's been some theological reflection around loneliness and pastoral ministry, the lack of friendship for lead pastors particularly, And I've kind of experienced that in I grew up in more rural churches, and so, you know, even though the pastor is sort of part of the community, he's the one that everybody leans on, there isn't a lot of necessarily reciprocation all the time of hey, he's got needs too, who's.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: Of meeting them? He asked.

00:17:00
Speaker 1: Almost at least some of the people that I dealt with, it felt like they had the sense that they needed to sort of stand apart right and be a pillar as opposed to being down in the mess all the time. And so I'm wondering, you know, when you think about the sort of worried well, where would you put pastors in this mix?

00:17:22
Speaker 2: Our pastor is a big part of the worried well.

00:17:25
Speaker 1: And they're just not getting the help that they need because they're so busy trying to sort of shepherd the flock that they never take time to take care of themselves.

00:17:34
Speaker 2: Like, what's that dynamic from their perspective?

00:17:38
Speaker 3: I would say the answer is yes with an asterix and exclamation points, and you know, yes, yes, yes, yes, they're part of the worried well. They're feeling lonely. What's interesting is I just this morning the timing of this conversation. This morning, I just finished reading a dissertation, or at least review of the literature for one of more students who's who is doing a dissertation around the effect of well in summary mental health with pastor's wife. She's a pastor's wife herself, and so I just reading through all the review of the literature, and as she commented and talking about the pastors themselves feeling lonely, feeling burned out, discouraged, having no real friends, meaning meaning, hey, I can disclose, I can just be open with you as possible if I'm struggling with lust issues. I mean, what pastor is going to go to their congregation and say, oh, man, there's some really attractive women in my church and I'm lusting after them. Of course they're not going to do that. And my experience as a pastor and knowing a lot of pastors and loving a lot of pastors, knowing them well still to this day I'm ha been in pastoral ministry for twenty years. They will tell me privately, I would never go to my denomination to tell them, hey, you know, I'm dealing with burnout or I'm depressed, or my my relations my marriage is really rocky at this point, my kids are acting the full or whatever may be going on. And so the as a consequence, pastors really do really are lonely. They are really lonely, They're hurt. They they'll know who to go to. Most counselors haven't been pastors. I play a unique role that I have been. And Ben Matthew uh And And says Scott had been in elder boards and things of that nature. So they have some you know, the three of us, and there's others to play a pretty unique role in that we've had our feet in both worlds. Yeah, but most pastors won't go to counselors because they don't understand what the counselor doesn't have an understanding and what does be a pastor. A lot of pastors will tell me, and this, this is a phrase that you've heard before. I'm sure that they feel like they live in a fishbowl. They're always there's all. They were always expected to be available. Either kids misbehave, then it's catastrophic, you know. And there I had an instant when I was a lead pastor. My oldest daughter was about three or four years old, and we had we had an outreach to the community and then it basically involved a meal, big meal. We had about one hundred people from the community in this church, about fifty so we had about hundred people from the community come in that and and I was loving it. I'll I just it was amazing to have all these people here and building relationships. My kid, my oldest was three or so, she was was walking around and we had an infant son, and I wasn't really paying attention to my daughter. And then she she walked outside the building like she had opened the door and walked out, and I went and looked and saw those shoes going out. And before I could get to her, when the board members went out and got her and like ripped her in the building and pointed at her and said, if you ever do this again, I'm going to spank you. I said, no, you're not. You're not touching my daughter, right. But but but that's the the pastors a lot, and and who do I go to unburden myself too at that point? You know? So so we a lot of pastors, in my experience with work with pastors as a counselor, a lot of pastors are angry because they don't have relationships with people primarily or when and if they had, they'd gotten hurt by these people. There are exceptions, of course, there are people who pastors who are doing really well, they have good friendships. But a lot of pastors I find really do fall in the word well category because of these issues. But also also know a lot of pastors who really meet the diagnosis, the diagnostic criteria for post tramatic stress disorder, bring generalized anxiety disorder for depression, you know, so they maybe have more complicated presentations if you will and need to come see accounsetor so. So of course, the consequence of this, Jeames, I don't say this and not the consequence of this is that unhealthy pastors don't lead church as well. Yeah you can't. We're limited. That's not knock on pastors. And there's just some limitations to an unhealthy pastor.

00:22:32
Speaker 1: No, I mean the blocking, the blocking and tackling, the basic blocking and tackling could probably get done right. You know, you're gonna deliver your sermon every Sunday, You're gonna you know, you're gonna make their appearances where you need to. But there's there's definitely a longevity problem, yes, and there.

00:22:49
Speaker 3: Is a.

00:22:51
Speaker 2: You could basically say, just a basic heart problem.

00:22:54
Speaker 1: Right without that connection within a congregation, and I would I would say it's the same with a lot of different leadership as it. Right, when you lose those relationships, you yourself aren't sort of feeling energized by what you're doing, you know, those kind of things when you're just sort of feel like you're behind the eight ball all the time. You're never in a great place to be thinking forward and transformatively. You're almost always in sort of this reactive defensive mode, which just doesn't do good things for creative thought or critical thinking or compassion or anything like that. You know, So it makes intuitive sense. I wanted to kind of dig in. You said something about, you know, pastors having this PTSD and depression and those kind of things. Do you find that how do you link those two? So you've got the worried well who are just sort of like under the pressure, maybe even the normal pressures of ministry and this is going to be maybe something that's short term for them. They need a little something to get by and they're going to be better and it's.

00:23:56
Speaker 2: Okay, But are there some.

00:24:00
Speaker 1: You know, when you when you think about that PTSD, the depression, all those kind of things, is that an evolution from the worried well into that? So in other words, the context of the ministry is sort of pressuring so much that you're just holding on to hurts, you're holding on to, you know, whatever trauma you may have experienced, and they're probably you know, I can envision some ministries where there is a lot of trauma, not like the sort of he was mean to me and now I'm frustrated kind of trauma. But you deal with death and life issues. An awful lot of ministry like this is trauma.

00:24:39
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And at the risk of being provocative, let me say this, Yeah, certainly there's this would be I would have to say the minority of pastors. But I know pastors personally that I've been encouraged to wear bulletproof vests when they leave their house and come to church, and the wiser kids are, you know, threatened. So certainly that's not true of all pastors. And but there's enough of that that's happening to where that that in and of itself could be a triggering event for a PTSD diagnosis, that my life is threatened, life of my wife, my children are threatened, That in and of itself could be a triggering event towards PTSD. The vast majority of it of what what I see in pastors, and I again know just knowing pastors and counseling quite a few of them, is it's it's very much a trauma response. When you're dealing with life and death issues all the time, or you post something online that seems pretty innocuous. You know, it was pray for this thing that this big cultural event that happened over here. And then you get you get people from the culture or from the community rather or within the church saying you know, you are and fill in the blank, you are this, you're that, and there's there's very little relief in some cases for pastors. So it's not a common then for pastors just kind of like reel it in and say, I'm not gonna say anything potentially controversial. So I'm just i mean understandably, so if you're getting beat up by Mike, type in every round at some point and say, okay, I'm stepping out of the ring. I'm just gonna I'm not gonna do this anymore. So, so people do experience. Pastors certainly experience like a trauma response frequently or depression, our anxiety, and it can to go to your question, does it evolve from the worried, Well, it certainly can. Of course, as we find this with counselors as we train them at Colembian International University and certainly it's other universities are training master's level clinical counselors. That the reason why some people come into counseling and the reason why some people come to pastoral ministri is because they themselves have experienced mental health issues or trauma or difficulty and they have found, in the case of counseling, maybe they've been through a counselor themselves. I've seen a counselor themselves and have overcome. I've worked through whatever the issue might be. In they sense, wow, this is amazing. I'm going to be I want to do this for other people, so I'm going to be a counselor. And I also think that's probably true for pastors. People who go into the pastoral ministry is they've experienced the cred of life, the pain, the suffering of life, and a pastor, a church ministry really impacted them. So then they say, well, I think God's called me into that, and they go training become a good minister. But then they carry into pastoral ministry a lot of those past traumas pastor depression, anxiety and whatnot, which, by the way, can be very beneficial. When my father died in twenty twelve, I was counseling a guy whose father or his mother I'm sorry, was dying of cancer and died. She died a couple of months after my father did, and I was close with my dad, he was close with his mom. So just the fact that I had that experience gave me a level of understanding that I wouldn't have had prior to that. Some people come to counseling and they're great counselors because they they not only know it in their head, but they know it in their parts, if you will, and say what the pastoral pastors and so then you combine all this stuff together. Maybe they come in with some hurts and trauma anyway in the pastoral ministry and had the experience of living in a fish bowl, having your life threatened, or having just the pressure of day to day pastoral ministry kindra useul ministry. And then it's probably not a surprise then that they that they might experience meal health issues and many of the function Like you said, hey, maybe they can just block and tackle. Yeah, they can do their stuff, but what about Monday through Friday where they're struggling and so so I do see I do my experience as a pastor myself who probably really struggled to burn out and some level of mild depression and anxiety and insecurity. Really, I go back to the friend issue. I really didn't have any real deep friends who understood. The good friends I had were not in pastoral ministry, so I would they didn't understand it, and the other pastors wouldn't talk about it.

00:29:57
Speaker 1: Let me ask, Because i just became an elder at my church, so I've known the pastor there for maybe five years ish, and so I've been thinking about, you know, aside from just some of the administrative skills that I can bring and hopefully plug in and help the church, how do you how do I, as an elder sort of make sure the pastor is okay? Like That's one of those kind of questions that I've been sort of noodling about in my mind and so wondering if you have any advice, Like, elder to pastor. I've not been in pastoral ministry, but I've been in ministry circles my entire career, Christian nonprofits and then academic you know, Christian academia. I've worked in churches, been you know, volunteered those kind of things. So it's not like I'm unaware of some of these dynamics, right, But this is a different sort of relationship than I've ever had with anybody, and it you know, I don't think there's going to be any sort of weird relational problem.

00:31:00
Speaker 2: I don't sense there will be.

00:31:03
Speaker 1: But it is different being the guy in the congregation who the pastor can call and get a cup of coffee with and trust that, you know, anything that's said at the table is going to stay at the table, right, versus being an elder And so just wondering if you have any advice for that particular situation. I'll pick your brain as a free counseling session here.

00:31:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just give me your credit card number. Yeah, I'll give So let me ask you questions for clarity's sake. So I know there's different exclusiologies. So is the elder board? Does the pastor is report? Can he be fired by the elder board? Is there that power dynamic?

00:31:42
Speaker 2: There is? There is?

00:31:44
Speaker 3: Uh?

00:31:45
Speaker 1: And so yeah, the elder board can dismiss the pastor. The elder board is you know, oversight of the budget and generally the direction and mission of the church, those kind of things. It's certainly not any deeper than that. In the organization. You know, we don't we don't deal with other staff or anything like that. And the pastor is on the elder board as well, so it is much more of a I might call it a team.

00:32:10
Speaker 2: Oriented approach, right where we're really there.

00:32:13
Speaker 1: To make sure that the pastor has the supporting needs, the ministry is going in the right direction it's supposed to be going, and that the the administration of the church via the budget is appropriate.

00:32:24
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So the question is how can you help the pastor, your pastor in the role that you're playing. Yeah, I think it comes down to just have a relationship with them, as easy as that sounds, having a having a non professional relationship with them, as easy as that's. As simplistic as that sounds. It's also true that that allow and making it clear with a pastor. And I'll say this, I'll tell the story of my pastor making it clear of the pastor that a when when you want to have a cup of coffee, I'm still that guy, and I'm going to separate out. You know, my role is the elder and we're on the elder team with I just care about you as an individual as a person. So let's just talk. And so my pastor so our church government may be slightly different. The pastors the chair of the board we call it, and the board members are elected, and so it's a little bit of a team approach. But he's the guy. He really is the guy, and so there's that power dynamic. The board can't hire and fire the pastor. And so my pastor has been very upfront with the congregation, thankfully, about his own dealings with anxiety and depression and physical health issues. He's very open, very appropriately open to the congregation. And I do, as an asside, I do tell him all the time that his name is Justin. I'll say, Justin, you've done more for the mental health of your congregation by being open about it than anybody else could ever do. If you'd spend thirty seconds saying, yeah, I'm seeing a counselor for anxiety, I'm just making that up. He hasn't said that, uh, that that does more for our congregation than anything else. So, so what what Justin talks about. He has very close relationships with his board. I'm not on the board, he's very close relationships with the board and with me and several other people where they will just go out and not talk about church ministry. He'll talk about family, you know, his family, he's been on the mission field, et cetera. You just talk about life. The Bengals. I'm in Cincinnati, so the Cincinnati Bengals and they're struggling right now. Or Chicago, Europe and in the Chicago area right.

00:34:47
Speaker 1: I'm near Saint Louis and no football, but okay, we kind of all right. The Bears, you know, the Titans somewhere in that range.

00:34:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so the Bengals is lost of the Bears. Just so you know, you just talk about life and stuff else God gets the mind going. So I think that's the biggest thing is relationships without strings attached. Yeah, and yeah, that takes time to build up too. I mean I think, and I was this pastor too, that you get cautious. You get hurt so much by people that you poured your life into that you remain cautious about anybody that says, hey, I just want to be your friend. They've heard that before. Your pastor probably has heard that before fifty times, and forty eight of those times the person has hurt them somehow. And so just know it takes time to say, hey, I'm just gonna I just want to be your friend. What can I do for you? Can I take you to the ballgame? Or can we just hang out no strings attached? And you know, one of the things that we do from the past or year, i'd lead the men's ministry here and so I'm discipling men and we have a twenty five guys or so that come on every Wednesday night and we do that. We do our disciplisal. Thing we commit and that we commit to. We have a let me back up a little bit with some contexts that in our men's ministry, we we believe that the men should be stepping up and not usurping the women's servant roles and leadership roles necessarily, but men generally don't step up into any leadership role in the church. I don't mean like position. I mean I'm going to do this thing because the church needs it. So so we decided that that the men of the church needed to pray for our pastor. That sounds really good, right, and we all should do that. Except we said to justin we're going to we would like to come to your office, you know, thirty five minutes before service starts, come in your office, lay hands on and you pray for you. We're in. We're not getting any pastoral council. We come in, we pray for you, then we leave. We're there, five minutes, we're gone. I never had that as a pastor. Nobody ever did that. And so I recognize the importance of not having that. And he recognized the importance of having that. He's in circle by group, and so that that's just I say that to say, it's relationships. My pastor knows he can count on twenty five men who will keep his hurts secret. Yeah, you know, on or them that way, and that's a friendship and that's what most pastors need.

00:37:29
Speaker 2: That's great.

00:37:31
Speaker 1: Well, we got we got about ten minutes left, and I kind of wanted to pick your brain a little bit on your work with Men's Ministry.

00:37:37
Speaker 2: So you know, there's a lot going on right now. Scott Gallaway just put out a book.

00:37:42
Speaker 1: On you know, men and you know the difficulties young men are having nowadays. I don't really you're familiar with that, but interesting stuff, and it seems like it's resonating. Like this has been around for the last at least five years. I've been kind of following it and so my my concern just so you can kind of understand my perspective on it and then you can chime in one way or the other. A lot of the things that I see happening within Christianity to talk about Christian manhood feel more like machiesmo to me than actual manhood. And what I mean by that is that what it is to be a male disciple of Jesus tends to get lost and sort of this cultural matrix of this is what it looks like to be manly.

00:38:31
Speaker 2: Right.

00:38:32
Speaker 1: A lot of times I'll talk about it like if I can bench more than you, I'm manlier than you are. And I just think, like, you know, when I say it like that, people think it's ludicrous. But so many times if you just analyze what's actually being said to young men, this is kind of what's being said to young men. It's like there's an Instagram reel that I see occasionally. It says, hey, some of you need to hear this. If you don't have big muscles, you're not worth anything, you know, like, and it goes it's like meant to be sarcastic, but I think there's some truth to it. So that's kind of how I feel like a lot of times when we're dealing with young men, what we're trying to do is get them to be, you know, sort of a Christianized version of an Andrew Tate or something like that, where it's it's very much bravado, it's very much you know, boldness, but it isn't as nested in discipleship as it needs to be. So that's from my perspective, and I'm wondering if you'd have correctives to that, whether you resonate with it, and what your experience has been actually dealing with young men in your discipleship too.

00:39:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question. It's a big thing that we deal with in the within the men's ministry, from guys who are twenty five to guys who are seventy five in the men's mistry and working together with this white age range and the men at the different end of the different end ends of the spectrum don't, at least the men I interact with don't think very differently. You know. I think if we think of the like the normal curve, I think we have two extremes. I think we have the the the enterteats of the world. What I would call and I really don't like the phrase from a couple of years ago, toxic masculinity, right, But if there is anybody that's toxically mascul it might be somebody like the ers in the world, you know where where you know the macheese most stuff like I got to just dominate. And then the other end of the spectrum is to be a man is to be as be weak, need a man, be pambyan's fine lists, and just not stir any trouble at all. And I think when we when we look at our model, at who's Jesus Christ, who's a man? Of course, Jesus was incredibly kind and compassionate, loving obviously, I mean that's the gospel. But he was as strong and a man's fan like there's a there is a what I mean, a man's ban I'll describe what that means, not the toxic masculinity thing there's and I'm I'm forgetting where this is located at in scripture. But Jesus as a teaching and the religious jew religious Jews don't like it, so they go to throw them off a cliff. And what does Jesus do. He walks right through the crowd, and I don't think it was a mystical you know, like they roll on by some spiritual mystical event. I think Jesus was just a man and it's like, no, you're not gonna mess with me, right, So so I think that I think in the middle of this normal curve, there's this place where men are called to be kind and compassionate and loving. But you can do that fiercely, and it seems like a like it's a paradox almost that how could he be fiercely kind? That means I'm going to I'm going to give everything I got to whatever God's called me into. I have a one of the guys in thee in the men's group men's Ministry that I lead, he's an engineer, and so he's very much in his head loves Christ and he tears up like that, you know he was. He was really burdened when he first came to the Men's Ministry to say, well, I'm not a man's man because I cry easily. And what was really great is one of the guys that would be classified as come a man's man said no, no, no, no, that's that's how you're wired. I go after that with all you got, you know, whatever it is. Maybe it's maybe it is working out and being a football player, maybe it's being an engineer where you're maybe more introverted. Whatever. So so what I what I think of like in men's ministry, men need to and and you're welcome to disagree. I think what what men need and what I'm seeing of the men in my men ministry need is somebody give them permission to go hard after whatever God's called you into. Ye and whatever that looks like. I mean, I'm old and gray. It got a gray beard. You know, I'm tall, got knee issues, back issues. It's like, so I have some physical limitations from playing I got all that from playing sports. But I have some physical limitations. So but that doesn't mean I'm not a man because I go hard after the things that I believe strongly in and and I think, I think what our culture has done largely, and what the Church has done largely is e masculate men like men. You can't be who you are, you have to be this picture of this quiet miss mister Rogers, God blessed Fred Rogers, like the mister Rogers caricature. And I don't think that's what most men want. I don't think that's what the picture of Jesus that we see. We see somebody who is strong, compassionate, driven to achieve his mission and does it in a way that people were attracted to him. People all sorts were attracted to him, not just like the machiesmo guys. Yeah, so I think that's maybe more from my perspective, that's more the middle road.

00:44:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's unful, And I do tend to agree. I mean, I think individually we have a particular arc that God has given us, and it's you know, liking to go to the gym or having tattoos doesn't make me more masculine than anybody else. It makes me what God made me. And and I think that, you know, I always look at it. I think it's kind of comical. I'll read some I read different stuff on you know, from folks who are dealing with masculinity, and you you know, some of it.

00:44:56
Speaker 2: I hear a lot.

00:44:56
Speaker 1: About camping and being out in the wilderness and shooting things, and.

00:45:00
Speaker 2: I hate that stuff.

00:45:03
Speaker 1: Give me a holiday in and you know, you know, I'll take subway, you know what I mean, as long as I don't have to kill it in neat it myself.

00:45:11
Speaker 3: I'm good, right, I'm with your brother.

00:45:14
Speaker 1: And so you know, there's just some of those like sort of stereotypical things, and I'm like, we're applying this into these discourses on masculinity, and I can't help but think it's doing a disservice to people who might go, well, that's not me.

00:45:30
Speaker 2: Just like this gentleman you're.

00:45:31
Speaker 1: Talking about, I cry, you know, I cry easily, and that's not masculine. It's like, well, but that's you, and you're a man, and so you know, it doesn't have to be masculine.

00:45:41
Speaker 2: I think that's part of the problem.

00:45:43
Speaker 1: It's like, you're a man, you do that, you own it, right, be who Christ is calling you to be.

00:45:49
Speaker 2: That's cool, that's great.

00:45:51
Speaker 1: But I think sometimes we're just applying some of these other things on top of that that it don't make a lot of sense. It sort of skew our perception of it.

00:46:02
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do too, And I think as I counsel men, you know, most of my clinical case lead right now are men or pastors. Male pastors do men's ministry. I'm part of this more regional men's ministry. And probably James. The most consistent message that the men give me is that they feel like they're not enough, they're not good enough, or you feeling like they're not something enough. Maybe this is generally enough. And so when when when I get in with them and say, well, okay, the word enough kind of implies that there's a standard that you're measuring yourself against. Right, what is that standard? And most people, and I recognize this my own life, going back to probably when I was training about forty and I began to look at maybe a midlife crisis. Maybe it began to look at what am I measuring myself against? And most men they answer the same way I did. I have no idea, yeah, so and some men do to know, and I have an idea like I'm not a good enough basketball player compared to whom James Lebron James, right, you're right, you're not, so you're right. Yeah, that's it's more realistic. I mean, I'm fifty fifty eight knee and back issues. Okay, let's make this realistic. And but most men, and myself included, it's like I don't even know what I'm measuring myself against. So consequently, how do I even know if I'm enough? Right, So, so with men's discipleship, counseling discipleship, I really try to help men to identify, you know, the standard being Christ. Yeah, he's almost an unrealistic standard in the sense that he was perfect, but he is the model, okay, Right? And how are you wired James versus Steve versus you know, Billy or Sammy or whoever, how are you wired? What was I called you into? Then let's establish a more reasonable standard for yourself to measure yourself against.

00:48:08
Speaker 2: When I think that's beautiful because.

00:48:12
Speaker 1: If you're familiar with an Asia arts work on the metic desire and those kind of things, right, He basically talks about, we always have a model that we want to imitate, and when we pick up let's say we pick a human model, we almost always end up in competition with that human model, because ultimately our desires are shaped toward the things that that model's desires are shaped toward, and we end up competing for the same things. We want to not just be that model, we want to overtake that model to become that model.

00:48:45
Speaker 2: And then he argues that this doesn't happen with Christ.

00:48:48
Speaker 1: And part of the reason it doesn't happen with Christ is because the mechanism for becoming like Christ involves self sacrifice, It involves humility, it involves you know, it involves these things of like sort of letting yourself go and just be as opposed to trying to leverage into something. You know, it's not a competition to become more christ Like. As soon as you're making into a competition, you're kind of doing it wrong, right, you know. And so just I think it's really beautiful when we put Christ as the model in the plumb line, because then that is that gives us then different mechanisms to pursue that model than we would normally have and we choose any other model.

00:49:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really good. I like that a lot. I hadn't thought about it in that way, but that's true. I think I think men as men again. I think some men, and I would probably say myself included when I was younger, expected to be not be Christ in the idolatrous kind of way, but just to have everything figured out. Yeah, then you find in life. I find in my life. Then maybe James, you have to perhaps maybe most men have, most people have the closer you get to Christ, the more you see yourself right as you really are. Even I think I'm farther away from Christ than I was when I came to Christ, which of course I don't think is true. But you start to see yourself for who you really are. And having come to Christ at a later age, my later twenties, I remember what that was like to live without God and then then be saved a lot of things for changing me and then start really to explore my inner world to say, man, I have a long way to go, and thank God for his grace and is forgiveness of mercy.

00:50:45
Speaker 1: Well, Steve, I've kept you over time. I think that's actually a really good place to end on God's grace.

00:50:51
Speaker 2: And his mercy. And so I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

00:50:56
Speaker 1: Thanks for all the work you're doing and counseling and men's ministry and pastoral ministry. It's really fantastic to talk with you and just so appreciate you being on.

00:51:04
Speaker 3: So thank you, Yeah, thank you again. Thanks for the opportunity. Jams.

00:51:08
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right, everybody, Well, we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Come on back and we'll have some other great conversations and guests and hopefully Steve. I don't know what you're open to it, but i'd love to have you back, so it'll be great. Yeah, all right, very cool. All right, thanks everybody. We'll catch you on the next episode.

00:51:28
Speaker 2: Take care.

00:51:29
Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.