Suicide Prevention in the Church: A Biblical Guide for Pastors (David Gilleland)

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer and I'm joined today by a new author, David Gilland. David and I have been friends for a lot of years, but he's also a former pastor and he's worked with suicide prevention for a very long time and then just recently got his biblical counseling certification. And he's written a new book called Holding Hope, a biblical guide to suicide prevention for church leaders. And we're going to be talking through that today. This is a really important topic. I've had Jeremy Stahlmacher on who does a lot of this work with vets who come back from war and they're dealing with sort of the post-traumatic stress of that. And so this is just something that I think plagues an awful lot of people. And so, David, welcome to the program, man. And thanks very much for writing this book.

00:00:48
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for having me. What a cool way to start my Friday. It's just... Like talking to an old friend, it seems like our journey from over the years has really brought us on quite a journey.

00:01:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I agree. No, this is cool. I was glad to hear you writing a book. I mean, I'd kept up a little bit with what you were doing, obviously with the pastoring. And then I'm not as familiar with all the work that you've done in suicide prevention. And so I'm just interested, you know, talk a little bit through what led you to this project? What, what professional experiences did you have? What pastoral experiences did you have? And, and then what would, what would prompt you to say, Hey, people really need to see this in book form.

00:01:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean, I wrote holding hope, um, because I saw, I had kind of the, like you said, I had two parts of my life, right? I had the, the, the secular and the, the Christian and they're not supposed to be separated, but I really needed to bring these things together. Um, And so I was suicide prevention program manager for the military, for the National Guard, for the Army Reserves for nearly a decade. And in the midst of that, I somehow became a pastor. I have to trust God on that one. But all those years of pastoral ministry and biblical counseling, and suicide prevention all came together. Uh, when I was at my church, I got called, they know me as the suicide prevention guy who's now their pastor. And one of the first things that happened was one of my congregants said, Hey, is my brother in hell? Uh, cause he killed himself. And as I'm talking to pastors and I'm asking them, you know, who do I, who do I go to when somebody's, um, when they need counseling for something. Right. So it was kind of a combination of all these different elements creating this perfect storm because the church leaders were telling me, well, I keep a stack of business cards for a Christian counselor on my desk. And I saw a lot of farming in them out. And when I started asking them, well, what kind of suicide prevention training did you get in seminary? And they're like, yeah, we, I don't, I don't remember hearing that word in seminary.

00:03:16
Speaker 1: Right.

00:03:17
Speaker 2: And so I just wanted to help church leaders kind of bridge that gap between wanting to help and knowing what to do, right? I'm not trying to turn pastors into mental health professionals. I wrote the book to help equip them to recognize warning signs, feel more confident in having those difficult conversations, being able to respond compassionately and connect people with the help they need.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think for people who don't, no seminary education right seminary education is um a very you can think of it like a specialized discipline and so you get um fairly you get some widening in like a master of divinity or something like that where you might learn some preaching you might learn some ministry skills and you usually have a counseling class thrown in there but it's one class And so you compare that to the difference of you working with suicide prevention for over a decade. And most people are never going to get, even in a pastoral counseling class, you're not going to deal with suicide prevention more than like, let's say, a week, maybe two. And so they just don't have that specialized depth that you've developed over time. And so I think this is a great way to bridge between what you had been doing professionally and then what you were thrown into pastorally.

00:04:42
Speaker 2: Right. And, and, you know, the, just because we don't talk about suicide in the churches doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Right. I mean, people who are struggling are already a part of our churches are already a part of our communities. Um, some of them may be sitting in the pews, but some of them may be leading ministries. Uh, I believe I quoted a Barner research study where like 20% of pastors, uh, had suicidal thoughts.

00:05:10
Speaker 1: Right.

00:05:10
Speaker 2: Um, So it's something that's real, but also it's a subject that can make us extremely uncomfortable, right? We're afraid to say we might say the wrong thing, and so we say nothing, right? Or we're so uncomfortable with it, we throw out, you know, maybe you should pray more or here's a scripture, you know, for you. And that's not to, you know, to diminish those things. They are important. But, you know, this kind of cultural dig at Christianity with the thoughts and prayers is there for a reason. It's because a lot of times people, when they're in that discomfort, they offer something that will get them out of it quickly. Right. And so what I'm saying is that the church doesn't have to know everything to begin helping. Right. We just need to be willing to acknowledge that suffering is real and it exists. It's in our churches. Let's ask honest questions and walk with people rather than kind of leaving them in their pain. We can't care well for a struggle that we refuse to acknowledge. Yeah.

00:06:27
Speaker 1: I want to hop into some of the theological stuff, but I thought I'd ask this question first. When you think about suicide in the church, there's obviously the gap between you know, comfort and discomfort. There's a gap between understanding and even being able to spot the warning signs and, you know, having some sensitivity to, oh, I think this person may actually have a bigger problem than just the thoughts and prayer line is really going to address. Like there's a skill gap there. But do you also see a sort of a social stigma? I mean, it just strikes me that the question that gentleman asked you when you came in, you know, my brother committed suicide, is he in hell? this has a really deep sort of sin-oriented stigma to it. And you sort of fold that into, I don't know, a bigger trend like in the United States, you know, we should be self-sufficient. We should be able to care for ourselves. We should be able to handle our own problems. Like how much of a stigma do you think holds the church back from really addressing this issue and recognizing it as not just a not just a present problem, but something it should deal with?

00:07:45
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I think the church is uniquely qualified to help people in this space. We're supposed to be hope dealers, right? Or what's the old pastor saying? The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, right? We are the place where people come with their pain to get hope, to to deal with their brokenness through Christ. And so I think one of the cultural things that you're talking about is... So in suicide prevention in the secular world, in the military, it's not just about prevention and postvention and intervention. It's about helping to reduce stigma and taboo about even talking about the subject. And in our churches, we especially.

00:08:36
Speaker 2: I have no comparison about international churches, but it seems like in American churches that cultural model that we have of self-sufficiency, of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, all of that has seeped into the church. And so we spend a lot of time talking about victory in Jesus, and I am more than an overcomer, and that we should have joy, joy, joy in our hearts, right? And that's not a lot of... that's not reality for a lot of people in our pews sometimes. And I think they get, they may feel like they can't express those thoughts or even confess their sins in church, because that might be seen as weakness where we've kind of built this culture of, of strength in Christ, which we do have. And let's not forget that, you know, a lot of the Psalms are about lament. You know, I think the Bible is, is remarkably honest about suffering. I was just reading Psalm 88 the other day, which is so heavy. I mean, this guy is in deep despair, right? He's despondent. And there's no neat wrap-up at the end of it. But I know that you'll make everything better. No, this is in the pit. He's lost his friends. Everything is bad. And, and so I think that we, we neglect some of that stuff because we're afraid maybe that that's off putting.

00:10:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:10:14
Speaker 2: And I think we, we, should be allowed to have more honest conversations about suffering and suicide. And yeah, I mean, is suicide sin? I believe the Bible make a case that it is, right? The Bible places great value on human life, like from Genesis 1 on. And I also think, though, that we need to be careful, right, not to turn this kind of complex theological question into into a simplistic verdict about a suffering person's eternal destiny, which was the case with this. And different denominations have historically treated this subject differently. So I'm just saying that our responsibility as the common everyday pastor on a Tuesday afternoon or Friday morning, when that crisis comes, our responsibility is to protect life, offer compassionate care and help that other person, you know, receive support.

00:11:18
Speaker 1: And it's worth saying, I mean, when you, even when we think about the value that the Bible places on human life and thinking about suicide as sin, anybody you're talking about or anybody you're talking to regarding suicidal thoughts has yet to commit the sin.

00:11:38
Speaker 2: Right.

00:11:39
Speaker 1: And so you're always dealing with it preemptively when you're dealing with it with a person, which is sort of a great position to be in. It's unlike many other sins that we might deal with, right? Where someone who has committed adultery or someone who is addicted to pornography or someone who has committed some sort of a crime or what have you, where the deed is already done and now you're dealing with fallout. So I would think a lot of times when you're looking, you're identifying these signs, you're dealing with something now proactively that doesn't necessarily, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but doesn't necessarily lend itself to just the blunt observation. Hey, suicide's sin, you shouldn't do it. You sort of have to work around it. Yeah, exactly.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, I was I use the illustration in the book and I've used this a million times. I was a pastor during COVID, which is, you know, is like PTSD. Just talking about thinking about it. But, you know, and so you're in a church and any pastor that was a pastor during COVID or really anybody during that time can relate to. There are very strong opinions on whether you should mask or not mask, whether you should have in-person attendance or not. whether you should vaccinate or not vaccinate. Statistics say this. Statistics say that. I know this, right? This was my lived experience in those two or three years of 2020 to 2022. I did more funerals in those three years than in the other, you know, five, six years of my pastorate combined. There was not a single funeral that I did where a statistic would have brought comfort to a family member that was grieving, right? I don't care what you believe about vaccines or what you believe about COVID. When that person has lost their loved one and they are suffering, your opinion on it doesn't matter. What matters is that we have hope in Christ and God is near to the brokenhearted, right? The Bible speaks to those things. It speaks about human suffering. It doesn't pretend that faithful people never experience anguish or fear or discouragement or despair, right? So I think we can take these spiritual realities seriously while also recognizing that emotional, physical, relational, situational distress is real. And it's not our job to base someone's faith just on what pain they're experiencing, right? Our job is to care for them faithfully. And so I hope I answered your question. I started.

00:14:35
Speaker 1: No, that's helpful.

00:14:35
Speaker 2: I started kind of rabbit trail. It's just a danger. No, no. Former pastor.

00:14:41
Speaker 1: Well, no, I know that helps. I mean, I think you've got two chapters and I appreciated the way you align them. Chapter three and chapter four, you have chapter three, suicide in scripture, tragedy and warning. And then you have is suicide a sin, a pastoral and doctrinal response. And part of what I thought when I was reading through those chapters was, I thought to myself, I bet pastors deal a lot more. This would just be my bet. I have no statistics to back this up. But my bet is I bet pastors deal a lot more with people who have lost someone to suicide than they actually deal with people who are thinking about committing suicide.

00:15:19
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah.

00:15:20
Speaker 1: And part of the reason we frame the question or the answers the way we do is because we're thinking it through from the perspective of a survivor, not through the perspective of someone who's struggling with this. Right.

00:15:32
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, one of the dangers we can run into in the. When we look at suicide, there are people who are in that mindset that think what they're doing is the right thing. I'm doing this to remove the problem that I am on my family. You know, there's this almost nobility to to what I'm what that person is considering. And I can tell you from dealing with people in the aftermath of suicide, that is never the way it is perceived, right? I've done, I've trained literally over a thousand soldiers and veterans on suicide prevention. And one of the first things we do in those trainings is we take some space at the very beginning to just talk about what our feelings are about suicide and what our experiences have been with suicide. And every single time, James, there is somebody in those discussions that start crying or emoting in some way because they've never been able to talk about it. But so many of them have a line that they can draw to somebody in their life that's suicided. Whether it's a family member, you know, I had one lieutenant, she just started crying beside me because her husband's suicided. She didn't feel like she could she was allowed to talk about it because it would be seen as a leadership failure or something. But her biggest question was why, you know, I never understood why. And, and in, in the Christian context, we think that, I think there's this underlying implication that if, if you're a real Christian, if you really have enough faith, that's not something that you would do. But that's, you know, that's not, that's not really biblical. You talk about the examples I listed in the book. There are five suicides that I found. But conversely, I also found five men in the Bible who were suicidal, but then did not kill themselves, right? So, you know, you have the famous Judas and Saul, but also Saul's armor bearer and Zimri and Ahithophel, some of these like odd kind of things. But you also have the Jonas, right? Or maybe the most famous Elijah under the broom tree in 1 Kings 19. And Moses wanted to die at one point. Job is clearly a picture of suffering. But these people all turned to God, whereas the other ones didn't even really acknowledge. They just saw no hope whatsoever. And so I think that's really where the needle moves is when people are in that suicidal frame of mind, they don't see any hope for tomorrow being any different from the days before it, right? Nothing is going to change. And that's where more people lean towards suicide than away from it. One of the trainings that I do is we kind of explain how suicide is a big deal, right? It's a very heavy choice. It's a very difficult choice to make. Most people, even those that have survived suicide attempts, will tell you that they didn't really want to die. But life is also really hard right now, right? It's very heavy. It's very difficult. And it's so hard that taking yourself out of life seems like an option and so all what we do what i do in in this training is say that there is a third much safer option and that option is um to stay safe for now right you don't have to know you can't solve somebody's life problems in one conversation all you need to do really in that moment is just take the one next step. What can we do to keep you safe for now while we plug you into some of this other stuff, right? So again, I'm kind of wandering here, but that's leading more to the practical.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: I guess. No, I think that's really helpful. I mean- We were talking before the interview and I mentioned the conversations I'd had with a gentleman named Benjamin Matthew on these ideas of deaths of despair. And he echoed some of the things you're saying. This idea that life just isn't going to get better is really a characteristic of despair. That it doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter where these things go. There's no real realistic way in which my life is going to change for the better. It's going to be this until I die. And that sort of draws death a little closer because you start to frame yourself in these perspectives where you say, if nothing about my life is going to get better and I can't do anything to effectively make my life better until I die, why not just move death forward and save everyone the trouble? And I don't know that maybe you can help with this, but It doesn't feel selfish to me. Like that logic doesn't feel selfish to me. It doesn't feel like I would like to exit this life because life is getting way too hard for me. And, you know, just damn all the people that care about me. It feels more like you described, like they're thinking, wow, I'm such a burden on people. I'd love to unburden the people that I love from just having to deal with me.

00:21:36
Speaker 2: Right. And that's part of that rationalization process, right? We can't, I mean, the life in us, we are image bearers of God. To end our own lives is really a very unnatural thing for us to do. And so it's like with any other sin in the sense that we have to find a way to justify the way we're feeling or the actions that we were taking. We know that, you know, I know that going to the buffet for the sixth time is wrong, but, you know, I justify that by saying, but I spent $ 30 for this buffet and I need to get, you know, all of it. And I know that's like, you know, a little bit flippant, but it's the same kind of principle, the underlying principle, right? There's a need to rationalize And I think that when we get into that kind of a head space where death seems like the only option, we have to find some way to rationalize that because it's just not natural. And the way we do that then is to say, I don't want to be a burden on so-and-so. Another example of somebody in one of my groups, um, when we talked about how a suicide affected you in your life, when they were a child, when they were in third grade, right? Now, this is a 30-year-old soldier. When they were in third grade, one of their elementary school teachers killed themselves. And they were children. They didn't really understand all of that. But he said for his whole life, he and others that he had talked to from that class wondered what did they do wrong to make Mr. So-and-so, suicide, right? To kill themselves. They took that on, even though that, you know, this guy, it probably was completely separate from the classroom, but those actions have incredibly deep ripple effects that we can't even see most of the time, especially if you're in that space, because you are very self-focused, right? It's not that you're selfish. It's that you're focused on yourself so much. All of those biblical accounts are I gave of, of suicides in the Bible, none of those people were looking to God. They were all focused on themselves, right? Whether it was humiliation, loss of power, loss of control, um, loss of, of position, you know, there was some kind of loss, but it, it was something that they weren't saying, um, God can change this, right? God can do something different here. Um, And, you know, in Saul's case, probably the army would have come and killed him anyway. And, you know, they killed all of his kids. They probably would have killed him anyway. But maybe not. Yeah.

00:24:42
Speaker 1: And Saul is such an interesting test case, because when you read his sort of narrative arc throughout the whole book, what you see is him making decisions based on his fear of the people. Right. As opposed to his fear of God. And so this ending for him is consistent with what we see across that presentation of him through his whole life, which is he now has nothing. He recognizes, just like you're saying, that there's no one else around to protect him. The battle is lost. He's done. And so he's not going to allow himself to be taken in by people he doesn't trust, that he is afraid of. He is just going to kill himself. And he sees it as, I have no hope because I have nothing left in a lot of ways. I mean, I think that's a consistent read across his whole life. Whereas you look at the way that David operates, and this is the contrast to the whole book, David is the one who fears the Lord. Even when he makes mistakes, he tends to lean back into God. the Lord and look to God for some sort of stability and hope. So even when he's running from Absalom, right, he's refusing to kill Shammai. Like all of these areas, David is still sort of sitting back saying, no, I still have some scruples about me that God is going to bring me through this and that I have faith in him. Then I just need to act consistent with what that is. But there is a real deep orientation there. difference between Saul and David that makes Saul's ending make perfect sense within the narrative.

00:26:31
Speaker 2: Right. He believes that this is the end. He believes that this is the action he should take, right? There's nowhere where he's really saying, God, what do you want? I became a master trainer in this applied suicide intervention skills training model, international credential model. I say it's the Cadillac of suicide prevention. And one of the things they train you on is to listen to turning points when you're having a conversation. Like, look, where is that life spark speaking, right? Where is there something? And one of the examples that they give you is that the person at risk says to you, all I can think, the only thing I can see right now is to die. All I want to do right now is to die, right? And so where do you find a turning point or a spark of life in that? Which is incredibly difficult, right? All I want to do right now is die. So what do you do with that right now? Right. So you say, OK, that's that's how you feel right now. Is it possible that tomorrow you might feel differently or a year from now things might be different or 10 minutes from now you might, you know, things might be different? And so it's really a matter of to get that focus off of themselves to think about what if. It's more like what if. What if God did something, right? And how many times do we see in life where people struggle and struggle and struggle and struggle? And just like at the moment they give up, something good happens, right? Just like at the moment they give up. Right. It speaks to our, you know, going back to kind of the culture of the church, is we talk a lot about submission and surrender, but we don't do it really well, right? Jesus is my Savior, yes. Jesus is my Lord, well, you know, when it's convenient for me, right? And that's kind of Saul, right? Jesus is my Lord, except I want to do all these other things, right? And so really, do we trust God? And I'm not saying that people who are in that suicidal space don't trust God enough. I'm saying that they need to continue to trust God, even when they can't see it, even when they don't know. Because I don't know, you know, when I listen, when I do interventions and people are talking to me and they're in that space, brother, I'm telling you, their life is hard. Their problems are real. And sometimes life really does suck for them. Sometimes it's self-inflicted. Sometimes it's external circumstances. But at the end of the day, God is still in control. God is still sovereign. We don't know what God is doing in that suffering. And sometimes it's in that suffering, it's in that place of despair where we actually gravitate. closer to Him. We grow closer to Him in the valleys than we do in the mountaintops. But we all want the mountaintops because that's where it's comfortable and where it's easy. But it's not necessarily where we grow. And God wants us to grow more in Christ's likeness. And those are the places when we Our nature is to want to turn from him. God has given up on me. I quit. Where we really have an opportunity to lean into him. So I have this kind of a funny story that I tell about when I was taking teams to El Salvador, we had to raise money to go on mission trips. And we were two weeks away from going on this mission trip and we were $ 10, 000 short. And the money was due right now. And I went to a good friend of mine, James Spencer, and I said, James, why would God, you know, let me let me fail, bring me all this way. And James said something to me that changed my whole perspective. He said, what makes you think God wants you to succeed? And I had no answer for that. It's just that that's the the the way I learned church, I wasn't a Christian as a kid, right? I learned church as an adult. I learned church culture first. And it had never occurred to me that God might want me to fail. He might need me to fail so that I grew more in Christ's likeness so that I might grow closer to Him. And so, you know, when somebody's in that space, that may be exactly where God wants them to be, unfortunately. I mean, it's hard, but God is in it for our best interest, for his best interest. Right. And we need to submit to that. We need to surrender to that. And we need to say, I don't understand this right now. Maybe I don't need to. Maybe I just keep showing up. I keep praying, even though the prayers are hitting the ceiling and bouncing back, even though I feel like I'm talking to myself, whatever, you know, God, I'm just going to keep, I'm just going to keep coming. I'm going to keep showing up every day. And, and that's what, And that's where he needs us to be.

00:31:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. We had a conversation, well, my pastor's been doing a sermon series and part of it's in 1 John. And one of the things you find in 1 John is this really interesting, compelling verse of 1 John 1.9. You know, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgiveness our sins and cleanses of all unrighteousness. And when you start to realize, and the way I can talk through it with my small group is, If you look at the Old Testament law, the Old Testament law has these prescriptions of how we're supposed to act, right? It does present an ideal. I mean, when you look at the Ten Commandments, there are these prohibitions that say, hey, don't do these things. This is sort of pushing you toward the ideal of society. And yet there's this entire apparatus in the tabernacle that's given to make atonement for sin. And so the law doesn't assume that we stop sinning. The law assumes that we're going to need these moments to really pivot and seek God and seek forgiveness and seek atonement and make up for some of the things that we don't do that are ideal. And I think there's an interesting parallel between the way you're talking about sort of the suicide stuff and that dynamic. Because so often I think we just want to think that the Christian life, like once we receive Christ and the Holy Spirit, we should just be perfect. And there are times when we feel a lot of guilt about that. But the reality is that there's always this mechanism for forgiveness. That's why confession, as in 1 John 1, 9, can become a marker of a Christian life. Because it's assumed that we're going to sin and that we need to be confessing that sin and moving forward. But that suggests that the Christian life is lived in a, not a dark place, right? But a place of brokenness and sin and suffering that we walk through. It's not, hey, if you just had bigger faith, you wouldn't sin at all. It's never talked about in the New Testament, never talked about in the Old Testament. It's always your faith is demonstrated by your willingness to confess your sin, repent and follow God in a different direction. And so these darker moments of our lives really are, I think, intended to draw us closer to Christ. It's just about the way we respond within them. And some of the examples you've suggested, like Job, great example of it. But even as you read that book, you realize Job is struggling with this. He's not, it's not a straight line for him. Like, I know exactly what's going on. Let me give you my three-point sermon on how to deal with suffering, right? Like, He's going through it, man.

00:34:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:34:44
Speaker 1: So I think there is a way of dealing with anguish. And I think it's just a really crucial point. Let me let me ask you this, because I think this is an interesting I want to get to this. We've talked a lot about, you know, sort of the dynamics of suicide prevention, the dynamics of despair. What are some of those early markers, right, that you would say churches need to be looking out for? As they're, you know, looking at it, you're looking at your congregation or you're looking at your friends in the congregation and you're saying, wow, this person is really struggling. How do you even notice?

00:35:23
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of times. So if somebody comes to you, you know, straight up and says, hey, I'm thinking about ending my life. How lucky are you that it's that is that bold and clear? And that they trust you that much to bring something so heavy to you. As you were talking, I was reminded of one of my counselees that said he doesn't feel comfortable confessing his sins in church, right? I need to talk to you and confess my sins because I don't feel like I can do that in church, which is exactly where we're supposed to be doing that. But some of the things are common sense and they're statistically correct. There for a reason. Giving away all your possessions, right? I tell people look for wide changes or broad swings in emotions or behaviors. So we think that everybody who's depressed is going to be suicidal, which is not true, right? Not everybody that suicides is depressed and not everybody that's depressed kills themselves. But it does statistically, depression is one of the signs. I'm reminded also of a time when there was a chaplain in the National Guard who was a very, pretty serious guy, not particularly friendly, just somebody who was gruff a lot. that came to a prayer breakfast and was totally different. I'm happy, you know, shaking everybody's hand, talking to everybody, and then went home and killed himself. And so sometimes if somebody's in a place where they're not doing well, and all of a sudden they flip and everything's fine, that may be an indicator that in their mind, they finally stepped across that line mentally. I'm going to do it. I've committed to it. The pressure's off. now. Right. So, so, so Biden swings in behavior. Um, I think we tend to, um, so pastors can sometimes miss what people are saying because it's couched in spiritual language. I can't wait to get to heaven. I can't wait to, you know, meet Jesus. Um, but it's also more obvious things like, I, I think people would be better off without me. I don't need to be here anymore. Um, I think every pastor ever has probably experienced this too. When somebody is in embracing their sin or feeling despondent or in despair or depressed, you start seeing they quit showing up for church. They start isolating, getting away from Christian people. I have a friend and she will gladly admit this. She'll say, when I, when I want my sin, I quit going to church because I feel convicted when I'm at church. So I quit going to church so I don't have to feel that guilt and conviction. And so when people are feeling suicidal, they may not feel like they have the joy, joy, joy of Jesus in their heart. And so they stay away. So look for people who are isolating themselves. I would also say that community, I believe, is one of the strongest ways that churches can create a protective factor for people who are, uh, considering suicide as an option and that participation doesn't necessarily equate community. Um, you can have somebody that shows up every day and hands out the bulletins and goes home and isn't alone and, and, and feels completely isolated from everybody else. So, um, I think it's just a matter of knowing your congregation, right? Knowing what's going on in their lives, uh, Take any kind of loss seriously. Loss of job. Had one guy that was going to prison. Loss of freedom, right? We even had one woman who lost her pet, and that loss had her considering suicide as an option. Because that, you know, her life was wrapped up in this dog. So any kind of loss is something to at least minister to or to speak into or to check in with, right? Check in with your people a lot, things like that. And also, I say in the book that, and I know I'm slipping more into the practical side of this, but I think it's really important to ask very directly about suicide. If your Holy spirit, Spidey sense, whatever's going off, ask the question and ask it, um, very directly, very clearly. Don't say things like, uh, clearly don't say, are you thinking of doing something stupid? Right. That, that demeans the person that diminishes there. Who's going to answer that? Right. Yeah. Yes, I am. I feel like I'm totally, thank you. Um, But also don't say things like, are you thinking about hurting yourself? We say it like that because we want to soften it on ourselves, honestly. But the person that's in that suicidal space is thinking, no, I'm thinking about ending my pain. I'm in pain. So I'm not thinking about hurting myself. I'm thinking about stopping the hurting. And this is how I'm going to do it. I say be very clear, very direct. Are you thinking about suicide? And if they say yes... then you have some steps that you can take. If they say no and you believe them, then you have still checked in on that person and you can still walk with, doesn't mean you're like, okay, good, good to go. See you next Sunday. Right? You can still speak into that person's life. You can still help them with resources. You can still connect with them and follow up with them. So it just gives you a, a, a point to, to know the, the, The way you can for sure know somebody is suicidal is simply to ask them. That's the short answer. That's the long answer to your short question. That's how you know is that you ask them. Yeah.

00:41:54
Speaker 1: And some of the warning signs are just like these wild behavioral changes. And I don't mean wild like there are these shifts in behavior that that should signal to us that there's something going on there that's worth probing.

00:42:14
Speaker 2: Right.

00:42:15
Speaker 1: That we need to start paying attention to this person and not assuming that they're okay because the gruff chaplain who is now, you know, exuberant and hang, you know, friendly and all those kinds of things. We sit back and say, finally, this guy's not a, you know, he's not being a gruff jerk anymore. That's great for us. But we need to take the further step and say, I wonder what's going on with him.

00:42:40
Speaker 2: Right.

00:42:41
Speaker 1: This change has occurred.

00:42:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.

00:42:44
Speaker 1: And so we need to be watching for some of those behaviors, watching for language. The way people frame and talk about themselves, even flippantly, is probably something to tie into. You know, if we're hearing things like, oh, yeah, my kids don't need me anymore or something like that, that can be just normal parenting transitional stuff. But it could also be something quite much deeper and more serious.

00:43:14
Speaker 2: And the way we find out is to ask. And I'm telling you that if the person is still alive, they have not obviously committed themselves to the idea of suicide. They are. So they are throwing out lifelines. in some form or fashion, whether they're subtle or obvious, they are throwing out these pleas for help in some way, whether it's in a conversation or whether it's an action or a behavior or whatever. There is something going on that you can hold on to to say, I need to at least check in with that person. So I have never asked somebody directly about suicide that has gotten mad at me for asking. I've either had people say yes, and you can see the relief on their shoulders. Yeah, I am, you know, and I don't know what to do with that. Right. That's fine. At least I know where I'm at now. Or they say, no, no, not at all. Not even close. Right. I'm not, I'm not thinking about that at all. And that's cool too. Cause then I know again where I'm at with it. Um, and I don't ask everybody I meet, are you thinking about killing yourself?

00:44:26
Speaker 1: Like a third question. So what do you do for a living? And are you thinking about, yeah.

00:44:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, a lot of it, you just have to, I mean, I would say trust your intuition, watch for signs and really know your, know your congregation, know your people that you minister to what's going on with them. There are people that are elderly that are maybe have some kind of medical issue in the hospital in deep pain and deep suffering. And they just want it to end. Um, that you would never think, you know, a super saint, that you would never think would be suicidal. And even if they don't have the means to do it, you can still have that conversation with them. They may have that feeling of, I want this to end, I want to die. And then as a pastor, how do you speak into that? You know, with the hope of Christ. So it gives you an opportunity to have some really good, solid biblical conversations with people and really minister to their hearts.

00:45:19
Speaker 1: And in all those congregations, conversations that you're having, all those sort of tips that you're providing is a picture of community that I don't think we necessarily, it's very difficult to actually articulate what community is when we talk about it, because I think sometimes we get into that sort of space of, well, it's just, you know, sort of a vague circle of friends that can get together and enjoy a meal or what have you. But this sort of community that catches this is one that is has developed instincts for one another where these micro changes, small statements that there's a level of intimacy there that really you have to see in order to understand there's an underlying problem here that needs to be addressed. There's an underlying change here that needs to be addressed. And I'm hoping it's a good thing. I'm willing to recognize it's a bad thing. Either way, I'd like to find out what's going on.

00:46:18
Speaker 2: Exactly. And, And, you know, one of the things as a bivocational pastor, one of the things I told my church right off the bat is that, look, I work full time. I have a family. I am not the pastor that's going to fix the plumbing, preach on Sunday, mow the grass, visit everybody in the hospital. You know, I can't do all the things. This is not a one person job, right? This is an everybody. This is an everybody awareness kind of thing. So community might be the Sunday school teacher. that's got six people in, in, in his class. Right. But he knows what's going on in their lives through prayer requests, right? How are we praying for each other? What's going on? And they can, at least this book is for them too. Right. I don't think that there's a person that I cannot train to do suicide intervention. We all have the skills to do it. We just don't necessarily have the knowledge because we haven't been shown the knowledge. And it is so taboo. We, we choose that to avoid it.

00:47:20
Speaker 1: Right.

00:47:21
Speaker 2: Um, instead of, of saying, okay, how do I quit myself to, um, to feel confident? Because when, when, when you ask somebody if they want to kill themselves and they say, yes, it sucks the air out of the room. I mean, it just, there's a weight to it. And so, um, a lot of people, if they don't, if they're, if they're not equipped, they panic.

00:47:46
Speaker 1: Right.

00:47:47
Speaker 2: Um, In the Army, you don't take kids from high school and give them a uniform and drop them in a combat zone because they would freak out. You train them, right? You train them, you equip them, you prepare them for that possibly bad thing. So when that bad thing does happen, they rely on that training. Same thing with suicide prevention, right? We talk about it, we educate ourselves about it, we prepare for it so that when it happens, we know what to do, right? We're not as freaked out about.

00:48:19
Speaker 1: We don't have a ton of time left, but I want to, I did want to talk a little bit about the biblical counseling. My experience with biblical counseling has been, uh, less than stellar. Just personally, I had a pastor back in the day when I was in high school and he was a biblical counselor. And the experience was basically like, um, you're doing things wrong. Here's a Bible verse. You should meditate on it and obey it.

00:48:44
Speaker 2: Right.

00:48:45
Speaker 1: And, and there is a, There is an underlying dynamic to that that I get, right? Obeying God's word is never a bad idea. And so, sure, like I get that. How do you approach biblical counseling? Is that a, was my experience common or is there a better way of thinking about biblical counseling? So I guess I'm wanting you to give your understanding of how you do biblical counseling, especially in this realm. Because it seems to me that the way I've experienced it just wouldn't really work that well.

00:49:18
Speaker 2: What's your deal? is, is, is walking me to the edge of a minefield and asking me to walk forward.

00:49:24
Speaker 1: Um, it's exactly what it felt like.

00:49:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Because, so I just went to the ACBC, uh, annual conference in, in Germantown, Tennessee. And there's actually this very, uh, political schism between in the in the biblical counseling world of you know if if the bible is sufficient or the bible plus you know don't throw the baby out with the bath water with some of these mental health stuff things and my gosh there's such a line in the sand over that and and um there are people that are very passionate about it um i believe that the Bible has everything we need for life and for godliness. I also believe that there are people who might need more than I can offer them as a biblical counselor. I don't think it's an either-or question. And this is what I tell pastors, too. I was the pastor that had the stack of business cards on my desk for a Christian counselor, not a biblical counselor, just a Christian counselor, which, you know, some diehard biblical counselors would just be, you know, clutch their pearls about on their desk because I did not feel equipped to help those people. I think the roles can actually complement each other. So for instance, and I'm going to use this illustration, if I break my arm today and I am going to go to the hospital. I'm going to talk to a nurse and a doctor, and I'm going to get a cast on my arm. I'm not going to go to a biblical counselor to give me a verse about brokenness to pray over, right? When people come to me and they say, I'm on this medicine, I'm on this medicine, I don't tell them quit taking their medicines. I'm not a medical professional. I am not a licensed clinical counselor or psychiatrist. I'm a biblical counselor. I can tell you what the Bible says about your issues. And I think those, all those things have a place in a person's life, depending on the person, depending on their circumstance. I think pastors, church leaders, biblical counselors can bring spiritual care, biblical encouragement, you know, great advice. stuff on working with heart issues and an ongoing support of community. Mental health professionals can bring assessments or treatments within their training and scope of practice. And we need, I think, we need to recognize that there are situations where pastoral care alone isn't sufficient. But I also don't believe that referring someone for professional help is a failure of ministry. I think it can be an important expression of loving that person well. And I want churches to understand that both what they can do and what they need to do to bring others alongside of them. So I come home from the hospital, my arms in a cast, and I can't do certain things. My church might be able to bring meals. My pastor may be able to come visit me in the hospital or, you know, some friends from church might be able to come over and help me do some chores or something like that. I think they go hand in hand, right? We can work together. I have people that I counsel that, um, they only want biblical counseling and that's fine. I'm not going to refer them to anybody else. I'm going to share what the Bible has to say about their issue, what it has to say about their heart. And yeah, maybe I might give them, well, not maybe I'm going to give them some biblical things to meditate on and, and to, to let the Holy spirit do his progressive sanctifying work in their hearts. Um, But I've also had people tell me this isn't for me, you know, and I say, that's fine. It's not for everybody. So I hope that answered your questions. I'm not a clinician. I'm a biblical counselor. And I feel like I'm going to stay in my lane and not presuppose what other people can or can't do. Yeah.

00:53:47
Speaker 1: No, it's interesting. I mean, you describing that schism is actually really helpful because It would remind me of I just came back from Switzerland on this Reformation tour. And a big part of the Reformation was you had the folks who were saying, let's only change what really needs to be changed. And so, you know, Luther. he wasn't going to get rid of all the ritual and all the art and all the symbology in the church. That wasn't his plan. And so that's in part why you have Lutheran churches that look a lot more Catholic than let's say you're running the mill Baptist church, you know, because there was another wing of the reformation that said, no, all of it needs to go. And it feels like that, you know, you, the way you describe that schism and biblical counseling, it's like, that's what it feels like. You have one side that's a little more radical and just saying, no, we got to get rid of all of it. It's only Bible versus the other side that's saying, well, no, like this is really crucial, but we shouldn't just throw everything else out too. And so that's helpful. I think my encounter was probably with one of those folks who was a little more, let's get rid of all the rest of it and just do this. Which was, again, I can see the wisdom in it. I don't, I wouldn't reject biblical counseling out of hand. I think for me at the time, I could have used some additional different help.

00:55:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:55:10
Speaker 1: And he was very unwilling to give it.

00:55:13
Speaker 2: Very unwilling to give it, right? Yeah. If I'm talking to somebody and they say, Pastor, I feel like taking my own life. And I say, Yeah. do you have a plan? Yes. It's, it's six o'clock. There's a six o'clock train and it's five 45 and I'm walking to the, to the tracks. Right. Um, I will, I'm going to call nine one one. Yeah. Right. I'm still going to minister to that person. I'm still going to walk with them. I'm still going to be there for aftercare. But if, if, if it's imminent and urgent, I'm still going to call nine one one. I mean, there's a reason that those things are in place. Just like, You know, like in the tabernacle and the setup for sin, right?

00:55:54
Speaker 1: Right.

00:55:55
Speaker 2: There's a reason that it's there. And I think we would be foolish to say, well, it's 545. Let me counsel you on the way to the track and see if you change your mind. Maybe that works. But I'm going to call 911, just me personally. And I'm going to stay with that person. I'm going to love that person. And I'm going to encourage them. I'm going to support them. as they go to the hospital, I'm going to go with them. I'm going to be there when they get out of the hospital. I'm going to minister to them. I'm going to love them. I'm going to support them and encourage. I want to do biblical counseling with them. Right. Yeah. But in that moment, in that context, I may need to call 911 and get some, yeah, you know, some, some hands on that person to keep them safe because ultimately that's what we want to do. Right. We want to keep the person alive. So, yeah.

00:56:44
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, bro, um, This has been a great conversation. And I know you're a little nervous about the interview, but you did a great job. It was awesome. I mean, your mastery of this material and your understanding of how to work with these folks and help churches recognize when someone might be in trouble, like you've just got so much depth of experience with it. And so appreciate you sharing that. I would encourage everybody who's listening, go out and check out the book. Even if you don't know someone right now who's struggling with suicide, this is good sort of prophylactic stuff to have in your back pocket to understand, like, you may be missing signs right now. And so great book by a great guy who's got a depth of experience in these matters, Holding Hope, A Biblical Guide to Suicide Prevention for Church Leaders. It's available on Amazon. The links will be in the show description. Um, anywhere else we can route them to find out more about you, David, um, Amazon author page, obviously it's, it's linked to the book, but any other, any, anywhere else they can find more about you?

00:57:47
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you asked. I do have a website, uh, www.davidgilland.com. So D A V I D G I L L E L A N D.com.

00:58:01
Speaker 2: And what I've done on there is, is a resource tab. that has all of the appendices from the book, like for the church suicide policy, for emergency plans, all that stuff is there for free download PDF. So, you know, you don't have this little six by nine thing. You don't have to retype it. You can just download it and do it for your church. There's also a paid resource on there, which is a workbook. that goes along with the book that, interestingly enough, uses Saul as a case study for the whole book, chapter by chapter. We walk with Saul kind of through that. And then you can also get on there if you want me to come do some training at your church or speaking to your church, anything like that. All that can be booked on the website, www.davidgillen.com, and the book is there as well. You can check it out. Cool.

00:58:51
Speaker 1: Okay, both those links will be in the show description. So I'd encourage you to check them out. Buy the book, check out David's website. And again, thanks for being here, man. This has been great. And we'll close it off there. But hope everybody enjoyed this very important topic. And um we'll catch you on the next episode of thinking christian take care everybody