Light Check: Before You Shine Out, Shine In - Laura Howe

All right. Hey everybody. Uh, we got to get going. Uh, got to catch up on some time. You know, it's funny. I don't know how to do a conference that um that starts and ends.

We always start on time. We never end on time. Um, we I pack too much stuff in a very short amount of time. So, that's on me.

Hey, I'm excited uh about uh this next partner we're we're bringing on. We're bringing on uh Dr. Tim. Dr. Tim Ye with True Center.

Hey, Dr. Tim True Center is an incredible uh assessment tool and uh I'm so excited that we're able to connect with Dr. Tim and bring him on here as uh as as we're doing uh this uh this recovery conference, this soul care conference.

And uh so Dr. Tim, how you doing today?

I'm doing well, Jeff. Thank you so much. It's so fun to be a sponsor now that we've gotten to know each other. And you took True Center yourself a year or so ago. And what what did you think about it?

Man, I tell you, I fell in love with True Center. Um when when I I took the assessment, it was the easiest assessment I've I've ever done. It was like, hey, tell three stories about yourself. And and so I listen, I love to talk about myself. And so three stories I can come up with, no problem. And then it was like answer some questions about those stories and and so I I answered those questions.

But really the best part of it like it nailed me. It told me things about myself and my motivations that I had never considered before and character flaws that I thought were like issues in my life. It pointed out that's not a negative. It's a it's a positive centered on motivations. And so, man, I I'm a huge fan of True Center.

Yeah. Well, Jeff, thank you for the partnership and I know it'll pop up even as we're talking opportunity. Uh because of the partnership, because of the generosity of Cherith, who's our parent organization, we are able to give free assessments um with True Center to anyone watching this live or even in recording.

I mean, uh we're so excited. We even have are trained someone Demarcus who are part who's part of church digital to give free coaching calls as well.

So we just want to bless your digital audience and the digital missionaries and leaders um with this very flexible tool but we think it's the most powerful assessment in the world that you've never heard of and we're thankful for the opportunity to talk more about it.

I know Demarcus is really excited about uh what he's been learning in Truth Center and Stacy and some others that have been exposed within TCD.

Uh we've been doing it within our equipping digital missionary cohorts as well getting some exposure to that. But you know, let's back up a little bit like what's the story behind Truth Center?

Where did this come from?

Yeah, so to date now we're now looking at uh we're we're the main sponsor for the Urbana Missions Conference. We have 10,000 students. I'm training 700 leaders, 50 plus organizations in preparation for Urbana. Well, that's, you know, 3 years of work. So three years ago what it was is I had written my dissertation you know on this assessment tool and I partnered with Bara to write a six-week curriculum and that got into the hands of um some key uh Christian philanthropists um who had later be become known their name was Cherith wonderful ministry and so they fell in love with the tool they said we want to bring this to the world to all the missionaries and mission projects that we support and leaders And so um then they hired me and so I left 27 years of pastoring and have joined Cherith and working really leading with True Center and also a sister assessment called motivated for mission.

So very similar but have a couple different uh focus that each one has. And so um it was birthed out of this partnership and the Cherith folk are are smart people and technology but they love Jesus. They love love love Jesus. They want to see his name become known around the world and they just see True Center as as a key to helping missionaries around the world flourish soul care uh godly spiritual formation in Jesus.

And so I'm excited to be a part of that and be be with you all today.

Yes, we I know on the screen if you're watching in Hubalo there's the link there take your free assessment that'll click in and where you can create an account and and and take the assessment. and it's part of all the assessments we're we're getting with the church digital and Demarcus or or somebody from TCD will be following up with you if you're watching on Twitch or on demand in other spots that I'm sure are popping up.

Uh it's uh the church.digitalenter tru ner true the church.digitalenter so um Dr. Tim, like obviously we're talking a lot about uh health in this uh in this conference um in and there's been a lot of stats and and stories that are that are come out of that.

What's like some some data related related to like ministry leaders health like what is there anything come to mind with you and in your ministry maybe that that you're discovering and working with?

Well, here here's the one data point that our friends at Cherith dug up for us that really drives why we created True Center and the Motivated for Missions sister assessment. It's because the data that we saw was that 70% of Christian missionaries are off the field. They they have not completed their assignment within 18 to 36 months. They're done. And we know being part of these wonderful mission agencies that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing um an individual or sometimes a couple or whole family to go be on the field.

And so to be off the field within 18 to 36 months is a is a mental health crisis, a soul care crisis. Uh it's a it's a financial crisis too. It really is poor stewardship on our part. And so, how could we use our assessment tools to help missionaries stay on the field longer?

And that includes digital missionaries.

And you know, Jeff, by taking it, you was able to reveal to you your sweet spot, how God has uniquely designed you to flourish, to be energized. And so we are finding that those who understand their true center, their their kind of motivational flow, they are able to flourish and stay on the field, stay engaged, they have healthy healthy uh conflict resolution on their teams, uh better relationships in their marriages.

So, but that one stat of 70% are off the field within 18 to 36 months. That was the stat that drove us to build True Center and motivated for missions with Jarth.

That's that's so good. You know, I I can tell you, you know, even even in my own life, knowing who I am um is is was so healthy and and helpful to know, hey, this is this is my strengths. This is my weaknesses. like awareness of that, you know, even at at the at the recovery level as as I've been going through this at a personal level, like it's good to know who I am.

And so to be able to say, "Hey, here's my motivations. Here's what I need to be aware of. Here's where I need to have maybe some accountability in my life because this is the negative side of of of what that that looks like." And so, you know, truly True Center, no pun intended, truly True Center was a was was a a key part of of my of my recovery because it started to bring awareness to like how God had wired me on the good side and and and even the bad side.

Yeah. Well, Jeff, I know I know that happened to you personally and Jeff, you are one of honestly hundreds of leaders I've spoken with with the same story. The Take True Center. They'll have a conversation with someone like me or someone like Demarcus or someone like you and we just listen and it's part of that soul care.

And I'm going to leave you with two quotes. I can put this in the chat. Anyone I can send even you know the slide deck that you Jeff you know I prepared. I said let's ditch a slide deck. let's just have a conversation. Um, but I can send you that with all my night nice slides and images.

But I'm going to leave you with these two quotes as we kind of wrap up. It's this. Pastor Rob Rhymer said this. You will never rise above your level of selfawareness. So sit with that one. You will never rise above your level of self-awareness. So you talked about self-awareness and what happens when you get that self-awareness.

You can see where you're stuck. You also can see where you're gifted. And you can lean in with the Holy Spirit. Just say, "Holy Spirit, help me address the wounds. Yes, but help me remember I am a wonderfully gifted child of God. You have put me on this planet for a purpose." And that's what True Center does.

And then the second stat I want to leave you as we wrap is comes from Parker Palmer and is this one. Self-care is never a selfish act.

I love that too because if God has put you on this planet for a purpose, he wants healthy leaders because healthy leaders lead healthy movements. Healthy leaders lead healthy teams. Healthy leaders have healthy marriages. Healthy leaders have healthy ministries. And so we're all about self-awareness. We're all about self-care because self-care is never selfish when you're doing it in Christ.

You're taking care of the of the temple of the spirit. you're taking care of the the foot soldier, right? In this battle in spiritual darkness, right? We're battling against it. We need to address our wounds. We need to even be reminded what are the weapons of warfare God has given me.

And we believe the motivational insights are part of God's design that we're supposed to access and pray about and and to keep get putting back in the hands of the Lord so he can empower us to use those motivational gifts not to hurt people, but to help and bless others.

So thank you Jeff for the opportunity to partner with you all even people watch watching the recording you get your free assessment get your free coaching call with Demarcus u you can reach out to me directly as well you know you guys have my info be happy to talk with anyone so thank you Jeff for the opportunity

Oh my my pleasure Dr. Tim. And so click on the link on the screen to get your free assessment. Uh if if you're not you don't see the link, that's fine. It's uh the church.digital. The church.digital/trenter tru ce ner. If you're in hubo at some point, click on that sponsor booth, swing down there.

You can grab some of the resources that Truce Center's got on there. Uh and some of the stories, Dr. Tim's links on there as as well. an incredible assessment. We do two assessments, Apest and True Center, and and excited about True Center's role in my life personally and in the lives of other missionaries moving forward.

Dr. Tim, sir, thank you very much for for joining us today.

And he's gone. Okay, very cool. Um, I think we cut him off mid-stream. At least it sounded midstream for me. Andy was a little trigger happy on the flip side. Dr. Tim, thank you. Dr. Tim's another guy that's been hanging out with us all day. He was actually leading a breakout in uh in the last conference and uh and and uh that was that was great. And uh Cherith looking at the the lineup.

Cher's one of our sponsors and Cherith looking at the lineup was like, "Hey, Dr. Tim would fit really well in this in this um you know, the soul care, the the mental health, the self-care uh kind of aspects of of what we're getting into today." All right.

Hey, our next keynote. I'm I'm excited about this. Laura How from Hope Made Strong. Laura How Barbara Carnero connected us to Laura How maybe two or three years ago. It's It's been a minute. And And it was funny like when Laura Cow Laura How first got introduced, we were just I was disconnected and and not um doing a lot of meetings and kind of overwhelmed.

And so we didn't get together till about a year ago. But Laura How through Hope made strong. Maybe you've heard of some of the stuff that she's doing.

Church mental health summit. It's actually an online conference centered around church and mental health. It's actually happening Friday, couple days away from when this is being filmed.

And so an incredible international conference. Um, very excited about some of the things that are happening. And Laura Howe, her organization and really her—she's like the catalyst. She's the curator that's making all of the church mental health summit. In addition to that, she's been an incredible connector for us, helping us dig into recovery and some of those methods.

She's actually the person that introduced us to Conrad Goober and the Project Exodus team. Well, we heard from Conrad, talked a lot about the church, and we heard from Nathan, Nate, also the church perspective, maybe some of the opportunities, the warning signs, the myths, some of the things that the church needs to address. Now, what's interesting with Laura's perspective here in this keynote—Laura is going to be talking not about the church, but about us as individuals, as missionaries.

You know, we talked a lot about light, especially in the first hour. The more that we shine the light in the darkness, we have to be prepared for that light to be shining on us. Like, and we need to be transparent enough to show what needs to be shown. Um, in that situation. And so as we're looking at the light, we have to be aware of that.

And so how do we strengthen that light? What does it look like for us as digital missionaries, as individuals to strengthen our inner light, especially centered around digital missions?

Now, Laura was not able to join us for this conference live. Um, I give her a pass. She was excited to. She wanted to. Um, she's doing an international conference in 48 hours and, like, she's in a secluded area, last minute cramming, all sorts of stuff. She was not able to make the conference live. Uh, but she did send this video that I want to share where she's going through her presentation.

So you can check out Google Church Mental Health Summit, churchmentalhealthsummit.com. That's Laura's conference there. Uh, for more information about that, we the church digital are huge fans and looking forward to opportunities in the future to partner with the church mental health summit. And I obviously love what Laura is doing in that space. But now let me introduce Laura Howe to you for this next keynote, uh, specifically talking about rooted in hope, strengthening your inner light for digital missions. Here you go.

Well, hello. Welcome to our session. My name is Laura Howe and I am really honored. Thank you, Jeff and the Church Digital team for inviting me to come speak to you about compassion fatigue, about burnout, about resetting you as a ministry leader so that you are able to have longevity in ministry. I am really excited. I hope that this presentation gives you practical actionable steps, tools, and strategies so that you can restore your soul and that you can have hope looking forward into ministry.

Ministry is hard. Serving is really challenging. And when you are online, when you are connecting with people, when there's vulnerability, when there's sharing, you hear and consume and are present for a lot of suffering.

And we often think that the suffering does not have an impact on us because that's somebody else's life. They're experiencing it. I'm good. You know, I—it's not present. I'm not involved in their life. But yet just being witnessed to, bearing witness to has deep impacts on our soul, on our well-being.

And I hope today that we can give you some practical tools to overcome that or to combat that. So let's get started. Let's start off with talking about the difference between compassion fatigue and burnout.

I think burnout is a term that is used widely. It's quite common. It's kind of become cliché almost a little bit. Oh, I'm burnt out. I'm weary. But the term compassion fatigue, that may be new, that may be foreign to you. So let's walk through the differences and why those are important.

So let's start off with burnout. Burnout is the combination between hopelessness, helplessness, and prolonged stress. So hopelessness is that feeling that nothing is going to change. It's going to be like this forever. Uh, you know, I have no control. Well, that's helplessness. I have no control over my circumstances. This is my lot in life. This is ministry work. This is, you know, I signed up for this. And then prolonged stress is that tension financially, relationally, uh, the workload, the time, the health, you know, the impacts on your physical health.

And if you have hopelessness, the feeling like this is never going to change, this is what you know you signed up for, hopelessness. If you have no agency or opportunity to influence the change and prolonged stress, then you—that is a recipe for burnout. If you have all those three things, you're probably experiencing burnout or at least the symptoms of burnout. And compassion fatigue is a little bit different.

We often call compassion fatigue the cost of caring, meaning that, you know, the workplace—many workplaces have safety issues like construction or something like that. They have hard hats, steel toe boots, you have vests. You know, even office jobs, we took, you know, safety risks and safety training before we could start. And we don't often talk about the impacts of caregiving. And this is what compassion fatigue is. It's the cost of care, of caring. It is the emotional and physical exhaustion from prolonged exposure to others' suffering and the inability or not having the opportunity to refuel.

And so these are different. So compassion fatigue is tied to the caregiving work that you are doing. So if you are a caregiver in your personal life, caregiver in your professional life, that constant giving out erodes your ability to care for yourself as well as you're eroding the ability to care for others.

A great example is that my husband works in the insurance industry and I am a social worker. And so when I was working as a clinician and working with those who are struggling with addictions and trauma and mental health struggles, I would come home and my husband's like, "Oh, I've had such a long day. The internet was out." And I had to walk across the office to a different printer. And I was like, "Oh, you poor baby." I had to talk to someone who was being, you know, sexually abused and struggling with homelessness and had no food. You know, I had no empathy for my husband's legitimately hard day because I was exposed to such significant or prolific trauma and suffering in my workplace.

And so that's just a small example of how being exposed to suffering impacts our ability to care and have empathy for others, but it also impacts our ability to care and have empathy for ourselves. You know, how often do we miss lunch or don't take our vacation time or come into work sick because people are depending on you? You're caring for others who feel like they're in a much worse off position or space. And so we minimize our legitimate needs to be able to care for others.

And these are all signs of compassion fatigue. And we think we're able to remove ourselves from the impacts of caring for others, but I equate it to being similar to that of being smoke from a campfire. When you go to a campfire, or maybe you call it a bonfire in your region, you try to avoid smelling like smoke. It's awful. It gets in your hair and your eyes burn and your smoke just of campfire. It's awful. So we avoid sitting where the smoke is.

But I can tell you that no matter how hard you try to avoid sitting in the smoke, if you are at a campfire, you are going to walk away smelling like smoke from the fire. And that is just what happens when caregiving. No matter how hard you try to avoid being impacted by the suffering of others, you are going to walk away with its fingerprints all over you.

And so let's talk about common symptoms or symptoms of compassion fatigue. Uh, let's see, symptoms of compassion fatigue. That's—let's go through. Oh, I'm like flying through these slides without even showing you. Here we go. Here are some signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue. The telltale sign is that minimizing others, the numbness of your own needs or maybe the numbness of others. Uh, a cynicism, an increased cynicism or irritability or anger. Um, silencing or avoiding topics of suffering because you're just at your max capacity. Another common one that I think many of us as caregivers have experienced is the inability to make decisions.

Like after work or after a long session online and you're just in it with someone, you walk to the fridge, you open the fridge and you're just like, I don't know what I need to eat. You struggle with that cognitive processing piece because you're overwhelmed. Your system is overwhelmed with the suffering of others. Um, and one that may not be as obvious to people is that the overengagement and over involvement in other people's lives.

Yeah. When we experience compassion fatigue, we tend to minimize our needs and over engage in others. We think things like, you know, God has put me in this person's life for a reason. I'm the only one that can help them. They don't trust anyone else. I need to be there. I have to be there. They're expecting me. And we overengage in others. There's a number of physical and behavioral and psychological or emotional signs here. And we don't often attribute these to the caregiving role.

Instead, we turn our fingers towards ourselves. We say, "I am a bad spouse because I am numbed out and don't want to talk in the evening," or I'm a bad parent because I am short-tempered when my kids are asking me for help because I'm done helping people, or I am a bad pastor because I am numb and I don't feel like sensitive to the Holy Spirit or sensitive to the needs of others, I should say, or I'm a bad, you know, friend because I'm avoiding situations and I'm isolating myself because I'm just so people out.

We turn our fingers towards ourselves and we blame ourselves when we're experiencing the side effects of caregiving. And if we are in these—if we are marinating in all of this weariness without the opportunity to refuel, it's going to cause issues. It's going to be a ripple effect, almost like a cancer or a poison that leaks into every area of our lives. And I share this out of personal experience.

I certainly have experienced burnout, compassion fatigue, moral distress, vicarious trauma, you name it. As a social worker, I feel like I have bought all of those t-shirts even though I did not want any. Uh, but this will impact every area of your life. Your friendships, your physical health, your career, your ministry work—it becomes seeping. It seeps through into our other areas of life.

So we want to be able to address those things. We want to be able to prevent those things. We want to be able to stop those from happening.

Uh, something I want to comment here or share is this conversation around moral distress. We often don't think about this as something like that prolonged stress, those added elements. If we are individuals who love the Lord and want to share the gospel, but we have certain values, beliefs or traditions and we are asked to go against those things or act on or be around things we fundamentally disagree with or are morally opposed to, then we can have it—it can feel very distressing for us. I'll give you an example of this so it's easier to recognize in your own life because I think we all experience this.

We just don't realize it. So one of my roles as a social worker is I worked in housing. My job was to find those with serious and persistent mental illness permanent housing so that they can thrive and become healthy and stable and engage in the community. And so I needed to help people find and remain in housing. But every once in a while, individuals would be harming the property or at risk of harming themselves.

And I would have to step in as a role of a landlord and become more punitive or potentially even evict someone because of their safety risks or they're just doing tremendous amount of damage due to, you know, hallucinations or delusions or their well-being.

And so at that point, my job and my role and my passion and interest is getting people housed so they can stabilize where there's moments in my role that I actually had to evict people and cause them to be unhoused.

And so this is moral distress when you believe something, but you're being asked to go against that. And another common one that I think we can all relate to is that we all value family and community and connection and friends, but yet as during those awful years of COVID, we were asked to isolate and not engage with people in person. And so as leaders and potentially as community leaders, you were asked to enforce that rule that goes against your moral or something that you fundamentally disagree with.

So moral distress has an impact on our well-being. Right. So let's talk about how to respond. We want to be able to respond there. What are some things that you can do to help respond to these feelings? And later we're going to talk about preventing those feelings.

So we can't get away. It's you cannot not experience compassion fatigue or burn or symptoms of compassion fatigue or burnout or be exposed to the potential of having those. It's like smoke from the campfire. You go close enough, you're going to be impacted. But we want to minimize the impact of caregiving and burnout on ourselves.

And so I want to introduce you to the red, yellow, and green scale. I wish I had a bit different name for this scale, but essentially I have not come up with anything else, but it is really difficult to come up with names with how we're feeling. Most people can't say anything more like happy, sad, angry, embarrassed maybe. You know, how do you name emotions? It's really challenging to come up with the language to name emotions.

And so let's use colors. Colors is something that we can attribute or connect emotions or feelings to. And we do this a lot with children in counseling. So describe to me how you're feeling. One kid one time said that they're purple. And I was like, "Dude," he was like seven years old. He was so funny. I was like, "Dude, there's no purple on this scale. Like what are you?" And he was like, "Yeah, but I'm sad, which is blue and I'm angry which I think is red and blue and red make purple and I was just like my goodness how incredible what amazing insight that this child had and was able to communicate how they were feeling that was a really complex thing and so we can create the same thing with our team with our family with our friends how are you doing and we can label that.

So obviously green, we're good to go. We have lots of energy. Yellow. Oh, it's been a big day, but you know, I just need a little bit of time to restore tonight. Maybe go for a walk, listen to some music, eat some good food, have a good sleep. Orange to red, we're getting into some danger zones. Orange is when it is you cannot kick this feeling of weariness. It is hitting you hard and it's starting to impact other areas of your life. So like your health like sleep or maybe your family and your work like my experience did and then red man red getting over there to red we are in crisis. We might not want to label that but it is negatively impacting multiple areas of our life and we can't seem to get ahead.

And so I want to share this scale with you so that you can communicate with your team and have those regular check-ins. So that is a big piece of preventing yourself from getting stuck in compassion fatigue symptoms. We want to be able to give yourself opportunities to restore and refuel. That is the antidote to compassion fatigue, being able to restore and refuel.

But how do you know? Sometimes it sneaks up on us. And so we want to be able to have these micro moments of reflection. I don't know about you, but whenever I sit down to eat food at a table, I'm always like, click, you need to pray for your food. This is ingrained in me since I was a toddler. We pray or probably even younger. We pray before we eat. We have this micro moment, this just one minute, thirty second, whatever moment to be grateful and thankful and take a breath before we begin our meal.

So an outward trigger sitting down for a meal is an outward action is triggering an inward reflection meal prayer. So we want to create this outward actions and assign it an inward reflection. So whether that's your commute home, whether that's turning on your computer, whether that's brushing your teeth, whether that's putting your shoes on, I don't care what it is, but try to if you can assign an action that you do on the daily to remind you and trigger you to think and reflect on how you're doing, how's your well-being, where am I at in the green, yellow, red scale, where am I at? And then recognizing what you need to do to respond to that.

So if you're sitting in the orange, maybe recalculate your calendar and fit in some restoration time. So we want to be able to have moments of reflection.

Another thing that is a red flag or ability to identify when we're not well is the must be nice syndrome. Must be nice syndrome is like when we hear of someone else refueling and restoring their soul and we say it must be nice if I had the time or the money or the friends or the capability to do that. It must be nice. So if you're there and you hear of someone getting a new game or playing golf or going on a trip or joining a book club or going on a date or something like that and your instant response is that must be nice to be able to do that, that's a yellow card or a red card. I'm not a sports person, so that's a flag red flag that you are low in resilience. You are low in refueling and we need to prioritize some time for that.

So when we look at what burnout and compassion fatigue is, burnout is around job satisfaction and hopelessness, helplessness, and prolonged stress. If you address one of those areas, you're going to feel relief. Compassion fatigue is the weariness and erosion of empathy for others and yourself due to the inability to refuel.

And the first step to be able to address those is recognizing when we are in those areas. And so we look at the green the scale the green yellow red scale and we look at must be nice syndrome and we want to be able to reflect in those micro moments of reflection.

So how do we address compassion fatigue and burnout? What can we do to prevent those things from happening or to prevent the smoke from impacting our life?

So what this is is building resilience. And resilience is kind of this unicorn word where it's like, does this really exist? It's like work life balance. Like I've heard this word, but I don't even know if it's really possible. Let me tell you, it is, but it is not something that is a one and done. You achieve resilience. You can put the plaque up on the wall and you're done. Absolutely not. Resilience is like a muscle. You all, we all have this resiliency muscle that we need to exercise.

So is your resiliency weak or your resiliency strong? And how are you engaging that? How are you building that up so that you're able to withstand the impacts of caregiving and bounce back or not get stuck as long?

We are all human. There are all moments of suffering that we experience. And I don't want to zoom past those so quickly. Lament and the theology of suffering tells us that it is beneficial to process and work through these are all prevention strategies so that the impacts of caregiving doesn't impact us and we get to that point.

So what is resiliency? Resiliency is the ability to prevent ourselves from getting stuck. And there are seven ways that we can strengthen the muscles of resilience. Seven ways. Now, I'm not expecting anyone. I don't do all seven. You probably there's people don't do all seven ways. Dig where the start where the ground is soft. Start with something that's easy. Build your confidence. Start feeling better. And then add these in. And these do help. I have some keychains here that, you know, people use as a reminder to what helps you as a it's a good reminder that if you're feeling weary, if those self-reflection moments are identifying, you know, I'm really actually struggling here more than I realized. Look at these seven and say, "Okay, how can I bring these into my life to help restore and refuel myself?"

So let's start off with self-awareness. Self-awareness is the ability to know who you are. Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses. Please do not put me in charge of numbers. This will make me so weary and I am not a numbers person and I'm not a kid person. Please don't put me in kids ministry. I will be worn out. It will deplete me completely. So that is not a strength of mine.

So know what your weaknesses and your strengths are and anticipate how you're going to feel. I have children. I'm around children. I'm not a horrible person, but I know that if I'm engaging in a like a classroom or a large group or I'm volunteering for my daughter's volleyball, I know that I'm going to need some downtime afterwards to restore. And so knowing and having the ability and the awareness of your strengths and weaknesses, there's nothing wrong with having weaknesses. We all have them. But knowing what are your preferences or your what refuels you or what depletes you is very very helpful and you can do this through different studies and skill sets. There's all kinds of things out there to be able to discover these.

All right, meditation. Meditation gets a bad rap because it gained in popularity through the new age movement. However, meditation is an action or behavior that is benign. It is neutral. It does not mean new age stuff. The Bible often talks about meditate on the word. And so meditation is the skill to focus your mind and thoughts. It's like equating it to like the channel changer. Meditation changes the channel in your brain.

So if your brain is constantly on the cycle of negativity and woe is me and I'm a victim and this is really overwhelming and you know life's not going great and finances and this relationship and you know if we are on this one wavelength track that is not healthy or helpful for us developing the skill of meditation how to control your thoughts and shift your focus to something else things that good and worthy and truthful like the Bible says then that is what we want to do.

We so meditation is the exercise that strengthens your mind and when you have this skill then you it really builds into your resilience or your ability to resist compassion fatigue and burnout.

Another one is staying connected. It is my goodness a basic human need is to be connected to other people. We are born and raised and created in community and it is very tempting to isolate when we are overwhelmed and to pull back and pull away when we're struggling or we're suffering. But if we engage in relationship and communication with just a few people, maybe your outpost leader or maybe you know in the WhatsApp chat or a friend or a family and just connect with them.

Maybe you want to share what you're experiencing, maybe you don't. But staying connected with other people and building that relationship and that trusted relationship is a great way to strengthen your resiliency muscle.

Um, this next one is self-care. We often think about self-care as like green smoothies, spin class, or running marathons. Those are self-care. That is not self-care to me.

Those are torture to me. That is not self-care at all. To me, self-care is eat, sleep, move. Eating real food at a real time, at a table, not in my car or at my desk or on the go.

And eating to nourish and fuel your body. Um, at appropriate times, not this binge and starvation stuff that we got going on here. Our body needs fuel every three hours.

So being able to, uh, you know, eat, sleep, move. Sleep, eating, sleeping at night, um, in a bed, um, for you know, seven to nine hours.

That's that is caring for your well-being. I know there's some people on shift work and things like that. So obviously we have to um manage with what life throws at us, but really movement. You don't have to go to spin class. You don't have to run a marathon, but having movement a part of your life every day. Eating and sleeping at normal times. These are tending to your physical needs, but you also have spiritual needs and emotional needs and social needs. And so self-care is really tending to those basic needs, not so much the extravagant or um sometimes costly um things that the world or consumerism has attributed to self-care.

So boundaries is a great skill to practice to build your resilience, knowing what is your responsibility and having the wisdom to say no.

So I saw a great thing that boundaries is controlling your behavior. Boundaries is not something you tell others. Um, that is like expectations or rules for others.

Boundaries is knowing what is within your responsibility and remaining in there. It's a little, I think it's connected to self-control, to be honest with you.

Boundaries is self-control. And that is a fruit of the spirit. We want to be able to have self-control to know what is within our capacity and having the wisdom and courage, oftentimes, to remove ourselves from things that are outside of that.

Now the next one is rest. Honoring your need to have emotional rest, physical rest, social rest, all of these um areas of rest. Rest is really important.

And rest just doesn't mean sleep. It's more of the restorative piece. So like um rest. I know for my church, we on long holiday weekends.

I'm in Canada, so on the holiday weekends, which happen mostly through the summer, our church does only online church, which I know many of you are probably a part of online churches, but this provides all of the volunteers weekends to have rest.

And I really think that's important. So having that mental rest and the social rest, all the introverts said amen to that, is really, really important for restorative.

And it builds your resiliency. So it allows you to be strong and allows you to be strengthened so that when you uh experience suffering or you're exposed to suffering, you have the strength and the ability to not get stuck.

Now, this one is one of my favorites and it's often forgotten. Just having fun, finding joy and pleasure in life is so important. Uh, everything it seems to be connected to a task or accomplishment or a result.

And you know, think about what you did when you were eight years old. Like did you ride a bike? Did you build forts? Did you love Lego?

Did you, you know, design dollhouses? I don't know, crafting. Like what did you do? Swim? Like what did you do when you were eight that you just loved for the pure enjoyment of loving to do that?

Bring that back into your life and you will, your tank will be refueled and you will be able to manage or withstand the impact of suffering of others and the thing and and the burnout prevention.

All right, so we want to talk a little bit about prevention. Let me just check my time. Yes, my time is going long. I apologize.

We want to be able to prevent compassion fatigue um because it will help us have longevity in ministry. It will help us um be healthy and whole in in many different areas of our life.

And so I hope these seven keys really gave you some practical ways or tools and places to get started so that you can prevent burnout and you can prevent um compassion fatigue from impacting your life.

I am looking for my slide. Here it is. So, if you would love, I would love for you to, if you want to reach out or connect more.

Um, uh, my name is Laura, as I said. Um, and I lead Hope Made Strong. I don't know if I said that or not, but I lead Hope Made Strong, which is an organization that really um helps churches develop care ministry strategies.

One of the courses we have is Finding Hope and Helping and this is a nineteen um lesson module. The modules are very, very short because it's meant for people who are burnt out and overwhelmed.

So if you, if there is, if you want to go deeper in this topic, definitely let's connect. I can get you a coupon code for Finding Hope and Helping this course.

The lessons, like I said, are under twelve minutes long. There's a whole workbook that you just download. Everything is online, self-guided videos. Um, but would love to connect with you to make sure that gets into your hand.

I have a podcast called the Care Ministry Podcast and this is really for care ministry leaders who are leading in their local church and then here is where you can find me.

Uh, so thank you, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to the TCD team uh for allowing me to be a part of this incredible conference and I hope this presentation was helpful and hopeful for you.

All right, blessings.

Hey, wasn't that great? Uh, that was a lot of information in in a little time and Laura presented all of that very well.

Hey, uh, we had we had a question come up and so let me uh let me go ahead and bring it on. Thanks is good.

Uh, anonymous. Oh, here it's it's not visible. Let me click it again. Uh, anonymous user. Uh, might that effect? I don't know what that effect is.

I didn't catch when it happened. Let's just say, you know, anything because it's really not relevant. What specifically might that effect be higher in religious groups than in secular places due to the expectance and pressure you put on yourselves like high biblical values, etc.?

Yes. I mean, whatever the negative connotation was that you were answering, you were asking about, whoever asked this question. Yes. Yeah. That is, that's part of the difficulties centered around ministry and and and to be honest, I'm I'm going to like pull from the two minutes I can tell you

uh about recovery because uh I'm I'm not the president. I'm just a client. Um, the the fact is it it relates on your your view of God.

If you view God as a a ruler, a a dictator, uh, someone, you know, about ready to whap you over the head with a ruler if you misbehave, um, then yes, you are are feeling that tension and you don't want it to come out and and you're wanting to hide as much as

you can lest be discovered. And note that can affect. That's that's your view of God. But it's also probably your view of of the church as well because some of you may have experienced that like I've experienced that inside the church.

Now if your view of God is is a loving, forgiving, gracious father. Well, now all of a sudden, okay, yeah, Dad, I'm I'm struggling here with this.

Dad, I I I don't know how to handle this. Dad, um, I'm I'm I'm broken. I cannot do this on my own. I I need, I I need your help.

Help me here. And and so the question really becomes, what's your what's your view of Dad in this? And by of course Dad, I mean God above, who actually your earthly father may represent your same view as your heavenly father.

That's a whole other conversation. We can go down that road on a different day. But hey, listen, very excited about Laura. Check out uh digital church mental health summit, whatever, and and find out information there.

Uh, conference is here in a couple days. I'm pretty sure it's it's happening on uh Friday. And so we've got uh a special guest coming up here in a second.

Stuart McFerson. I'm sorry, not Stuart McFerson. Stuart, Stuart, I just blanked on your name. Stuart McFerson is a completely different person. I didn't have it up.

Stuart Freeman, I apologize. Stuart McFerson was a a metaverse pastor who was over at uh Lakeland VR for years. Now he's planting a physical church somewhere up in I think Minnesota or Wisconsin.

But Stuart Freeman uh was actually a metaverse missionary for a a while in in VR Chat and is now also doing some work with um uh Jesus Film uh specifically with Next Steps and a number of of other projects.

You doing good, Stuart?

Doing good. Yeah, I'll just jump right in. Can you hear me? Okay.

Yeah, dig into it. There you go, sir.

Awesome. Uh, hey, everyone. Uh, my name is Stuart Freeman. Uh, for most of you, this might be the first time you've ever heard someone say what I'm about to say.

I came to know Christ inside of virtual reality. At that point in my life, I was at rock bottom. I was spending nearly all of my time in an app called VR Chat.

When you get deeper than the surface level, VR Chat isn't just a game. It's a place people run to when they don't know where else to turn.

They're looking for escape, for community, sometimes just to disappear. And that was me. Lonely, depressed, hopeless. But God met me there. Inside VR, someone cared enough to share the gospel with me.

That man was Jason Polling, the lead pastor of Cornerstone Church in Yuba City. He felt called to go into VR to point people to Christ.

Through him, I gave my life to Jesus. And then still inside of VR, he discipled me and helped me grow in my new faith.

Over time, God made it clear he was calling me back, back to the same community I came out of, to be a light in the very place he had rescued me from.

I started serving with Cornerstone's digital ministry team. And eventually, I was asked to join their staff as the director of VR Chat. For years, that was my role, walking with people in virtual reality, pointing them to the hope that I had found.

And many people came to believe in Christ. I simply imitated what had been done for me. I went to where people already were. I sat with them in their space and I told them the gospel.

The satisfaction they so desperately desired, the thing they were willing to fall into any kind of sin pattern to try and find, they came to know, is found in Christ alone.

The gospel changes lives. I've seen it in mine and I've seen it in many others. And so, an important question to me is what comes next for a person.

Sometimes a person's next step is hearing the gospel for the first time. Sometimes it's prayer. Sometimes it's it's growing deeper in their walk. But here's the tension I felt and maybe you have too.

How do you help people take their next step in digital ministry as big as it is and as big as your audience is while also not becoming a twenty-four-seven missionary who never has time to rest?

I'm speaking here right now not because I was asked to speak uh but because I'm a practitioner, someone on the field full-time reaching people in digital spaces and I personally believe in this tool.

I also believe every one of you should be thinking, how could I use this in my ministry? There's no catch. It's free. There are no pay to upgrade options.

This is a tool created by Jesus Film to help you in your ministry. I am going to screen share. This tool is called Next Steps.

At its core, uh it's a way to guide people forward in their faith journey, one step at a time. There are four main ways you could use it.

Evangelism, helping someone hear the gospel. Invitation, moving them into community or into an event, discipleship, guiding them to grow deeper in their faith, and prayer, helping them engage with God personally.

What makes this different is that it's interactive, kind of like a build your own adventure. People aren't just passively watching or reading. They're making choices. They're clicking through, reflecting, and being guided towards what's next. One of the ways I've personally used next steps is with prayer. I built a journey to send to the people who are praying for my ministry.

Instead of just saying, "Here are my prayer requests," I wanted to give them a way to spend real time with the Lord as they prayed. So the journey walks them through several of my requests with scripture and reflection to guide their prayers, turning a list of requests into a self-guided time with God.

And I'd like to show you part of that journey that I made. So what you see here is exactly what they would see on their mobile phone. It would take up the entire screen on the phone. And we see at the bottom here, they can click a button. It says begin prayer journey.

And I just want you to look at these. And I'm going to be quiet as we go through a couple of them. So that's sort of a little tiny glimpse. This journey is a lot bigger. Um, and it's specific for the audience. Awesome. Clicking on there, you can check out next steps with that button.

Um, but let's say that you want to focus on evangelism. Uh, and let's say I want to include a video, uh, one or maybe even multiple to do that. Uh, I want to show you how simple it is. So we see here the journey that we were just looking at. It looks very complicated. It's not. And let's say I want them to go from the very first one and I want them to then watch a video. So I'm just going to click add step and I'm going to add a video.

And you could use Jesus Films library. We have hundreds of videos you could use there. Over 2,200 languages on some of them. We have, you can go to YouTube or you can upload your own video. But let me say um my audience usually likes anime. So let's use this video. And I just want to go from 8 minutes 50 to 9:05.

And I want it to go from the first to the video and then to the one that was the second and then we see this here back what we saw earlier. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even though he dies, he will live. You all know the weight of doing ministry in digital spaces.

Next Steps is here to come alongside you. It's free, it's simple, and it's designed to help you guide people into gospel opportunities, community, discipleship, and prayer without carrying the burden of being online 24/7.

As soon as I add a step, it's live. People can also send you responses like prayer requests or questions, or the journey can lead straight into connecting with you personally with the click of a button.

Next Steps is fully customizable to fit your audience. It even has reporting. It tracks where people click, how long they stay there, and where they drop off.

So my challenge is this. Imagine what it could look like in your ministry. Go to nextstep.is and start creating your own journey today. Thank you.

Hey, thank you, Stuart. Um, an incredible—I was actually just offline with Andy backstage. Uh, an incredibly powerful tool. So simple to use. Maybe three, five years ago, you're paying $10,000 to develop a mobile app with any sort of functionality like that. And now it's free for people to utilize.

So an incredible resource. I'll go ahead and put the tool up. nextstep.is. www.nextstep.is. Uh, so go ahead and check it out there.

Hey, Stuart. Uh, just because I got you on here. Um, you hinted at your testimony. I know your testimony. Give um, give a three-minute version.

Um, okay. Uh, I was at the lowest point in my life after a six-year relationship. Um, it brought me to the point of giving up on the real world. And at that time, uh, throughout my whole childhood, I was a super gamer. I was gaming all the time. Uh, to the point of where like Xbox himself asked me to be an ambassador for them.

Um, and when I hit the point of wanting to give up on the real world, I wanted to go deeper. And VR is how I chose to do that. And so I jumped into this space and I started taking advantage of people. I started seeking after women to try and find satisfaction when I felt like ending my life.

And um, I would go into the depths of all that VR has to offer. And I know your imagination goes there. It's worse than what your imagination is going to, and it's happening daily in the space. And I was one of those people. Um, and in the midst of that time, uh, God gave me a Damascus road style experience. Um, and from that moment, I continued going in this VR space that I was spending 12 hours every day of my life in.

And um, I found Jason. Uh, Jason Polling, and Jason came to me in my VR home world and he told me the gospel and I gave my life to Christ. So that's a super short version. Um, and currently I'm actually working with Jesus Film Project and I am leading them as their VR evangelism and discipleship specialist. So I'm speaking into an even like higher up angle of how can we reach these people for Christ.

I love it. I can remember I had a conversation with Stuart McPherson. Stu, my gosh, that's understandable.

I'm sorry, bro. Uh, it's one is Stu, one is Stew, and for the life of me, uh, it's just it rolls off. But I had a conversation with Stuart maybe, uh, maybe two or three years ago I want to say, and uh, and Stuart's like, "Hey, I really want to try to figure out how to be a full-time digital missionary in the metaverse, like a metaverse missionary full-time. Um, how do I do that? Like, and you know, at the time we were putting the church digital together and the fundraising components and all that, and I was like, dude, I, there may be two people I know that have a full-time salary doing this digitally. And um, dude, like, prayed about it, and next thing you know I'm in Lisbon, Korea, and I look over at Jesus Films booth over here, and I'm like, wearing the headset, that's Stuart, dude, made it. He's working for Jesus Film, and so excited to see, man, you doing this. Um, the darkness that he's talking about, like, just even to borrow on this, is exactly why uh we were endorsing this idea of recovery culture, of care culture, of rebooting, of restarting. And I love the fact that JPO, Jason Polling, was there for you. Stuart was able to make that connection, and we want to also start to recruit, train, and develop other missionaries in digital, in gaming, in metaverse, in VR spaces to head towards that.

And so, as you know, you know, VR chat is completely different than any other platform. And, you know, virtual reality in all its darkness is different than what we're interfacing in in digital space. And so we really are trying to champion the idea of getting into that space. Uh, there's some plans that we have. Um, I don't want to get into it right now. You want to offline with me, I'm more than happy to do that, but we are out of time. But uh, click on that link, the church.digital/g to um, to get connected with us.

Any money that comes in over the next seven days, we'll earmark it specifically towards recovery in digital and, well, excuse me, we'll earmark towards recovery in metaverse gaming space, VR space. Uh, Stuart, man, I am so excited you were able to jump on this stream with us. Uh, feel free to connect with Stuart. Uh, get more information on the sponsor tab. We're going to take a break right now, but check out what's on the sponsor tab and dig into more information on Jesus Film on Nextsteps. nextstep.is. Uh, and so we're going to take a 10-minute break. My watch is dead. It's 3:51. Let's call it 4:00. Thank you, Stuart. Let's call it 4:00 Eastern.

So when the minute hand is up at 12, that would be 60. When it's 00:00 on the digital clocks, uh, let's come back to session five. We're back at 60. Okay. Thank you very much.