PODCAST 118: The Church, Mindy Caliguire, and Mental Health

Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with you, churches that are out there. One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering through Stadia Church Planning. We want to help you. We want to help your church learn to thrive, grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally. We've seen about 200 churches go through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it.

Culture is changing within these churches. They're understanding what it is to thrive. They're understanding how to grow people, how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season, and they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space. There's no secret sauce to doing a digital strategy. There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy. There's no secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply. It takes work. I'm not going to lie, but through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, we connect you with churches. We give you some content. We coach you along the way to help you make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply your church along the way.

This is a great opportunity for your church. We would love to have you be a part of it. For more information, check out stadiacurchplanning.org slash digital. Stadiachurchplanning.org slash digital. P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L. All right. Hey, that's it. We're going to get you back to that episode right now. All right, church. Here's what I need. We're going to check the whole tech aspects. We're going to leave that at the door. We're not thinking with that aspects of our brain. We're going to turn on. We're going to turn on our brains, and we're going to focus a little bit here on our souls. Hey, it's Jeff with the Church of Digital, powered by Stadia Church Planting. I'm excited about this conversation.

We've talked a lot about mental health through the podcast, blogs, podcast, web streams. Early, mid-2020 in the COVID season, there was a lot of attention driven towards mental health. But what's interesting here in 2021, January, February, honestly, I had a couple side conversations with people. Hey, what's the church's role in mental health? How do we do this whole mental health thing in context of even broadcasting services, church online? Are we damaging people? What are the issues that people are going to have coming out of this season because we're doing so much church online, because they're in isolation? As a church, as a pastor, is it our role to tend to all of these people with their mental health, to the people who follow us, the people who are engaged in our church?

Are we tending entirely to their mental health? At what point do we hand it over to someone who's more clinically trained? And it's funny, the more that these questions came up, the more that I'm like, I have no idea. I've never really had these conversations. I don't know what that looks like. And so here's honestly, I was like, hey, let's do a podcast on it. Yeah, we're a church online. We're a digital church, technical, digital discipleship. That's normally our realm. We're going to pause a lot of that. We'll come back to some of it. But the heart of this really is the church and its response, how it handles mental health situations. So to be honest, I brought in and actually one of, I looked at this lady, Adrienne Feldman from North, she's a digital pastor at Northeast Christian Church up in Kentucky.

I looked at Adrienne, who was one of the pastors who was asking a lot of questions. And I said, congratulations, you're now a co-host, at least for this episode. And I've been excited to let Adrienne kind of dig in here and ask questions because she's wrestling with a lot of these questions in context at Northeastern, Northeast, excuse me. And we're interviewing Mindy Caliguari. Now, Mindy's no stranger here to the podcast, longtime supporter of the church, digital, had her on a podcast talking about mental health in context of church online and individuals a while back again, and really wanted to do a deeper dive with Mindy, giving Adrienne, a digital pastor on the front lines of ministry, really an opportunity to dig in and ask questions.

So we got Mindy Caliguari with soulcare.com, Adrienne Feldman from Northeast Christian Church, Ray D'Armis, a digital pastor, you know, regular co-host here from Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the church digital and stadia church planning in a conversation that I'm simply calling the church and mental health. Okay, everybody, here you go. So our story with mental health at Northeast goes back, gosh, probably two and a half years, we started having real solid conversations about mental health and about what the church's role in mental health really looks like. And at the time, it was really uncharted territory in a lot of churches, especially here locally. We were not finding a lot of those resources.

I was not yet on staff. I was shoulder tapped to be part of a focus group that started putting together sermon series around mental health because of my own personal experiences with mental health. So that's where I kind of enter the process. But we did a sermon series on mental health in the fall of 2018. And we centered that really around people who are experiencing mental health challenges of any kind. We took on a whole spectrum of issues from anxiety to suicide to substance misuse, all of those kinds of things. And then about six months later, we realized we hadn't gotten all the way there to where we wanted to be. So fast forward six months, I'm now on staff, we put together a second sermon series and really focused in on caregivers and people who love people who are experiencing mental health challenges.

So we did those two sermon series and the response was huge. I mean, we saw people coming into our church from other churches because they hadn't found a place that had been working to kind of destigmatize mental health challenges. And also we saw a couple of people make the decision to give their life to Jesus because they finally felt like they were safe someplace, that it was okay to struggle with their mental health and still have a relationship with God. So we saw a really positive response from that. And then the train wreck of 2020 hit and we realized that we probably needed to keep responding to mental health, not as a one-off sermon series, but as something that was a part of our culture, a part of our DNA, something that we really do and we do well.

So during the initial stages of the COVID crisis, we started having Zoom conversations where we would talk about mental health with our people over Facebook. We'd have a chat, they could send in questions, we'd bring in some professionals and have those conversations. And people were just hungry for resources, hungry for spiritual comfort, but also connection with real technical resources, physical resources and plug them into counseling and all of those kinds of things. So we came through 2020 only having done just a handful of those conversations and right now are hitting 2021 with this idea that we need to lead that charge and we need to be the church in our community that says, we see you, we recognize the challenges that you're experiencing, and we want to stand in that gap that is between the purely spiritual and the purely medical side of mental health.

So we're trying to figure out where our role is and where we need to stay in our lane and where we need to be connecting people with professional resources. That's awesome, which is really brought into this place where you're starting to now ask more questions. How can we lead out? What is the church's role? And so you were in a Facebook group asking some questions that I was in. And this is a really interesting topic. And so I started to explore with you on Messenger some of these questions and you just blew up the thread of all of these different things that you're wrestling with. And of course, I'm like, well, dang, I don't have any of these answers. Who do I know? And of course, Mindy Caliguire, who's been on the podcast before, you know, a friend of the show, a friend of mine, the Church Digital, very involved in Stadia.

It's like, hey, we want to bring in Mindy, soul care into this conversation because this is a whole bunch of stuff I don't know. And maybe Mindy does or maybe doesn't, but maybe she's at least more educated in this conversation and can point us in the right direction. So definitely glad to have Mindy on. And this is the great part. Ray and I are like, gonna step back. And so we want to learn from this conversation. Adrian, like I'm excited for Adrian to take over the podcast, call this an interview for future podcasts that may be down the road. But let's start to, you know, give you the opportunity to just dig in here, ask some questions of Mindy, and we'll see where we get here in the podcast.

Okay. Yeah, I love it. You're ready to be in the hot seat, Mindy? I'll try. Yeah, I just, well, and I will say, you know, this is the reason I'm glad you thought of me, Jeff. I'm very honored. I do get into a lot of these conversations, not as a, like, I'm not a licensed clinical therapist. I'm not a PhD from anywhere. But with the work I do with soul care, and then the work I do with a lot of different churches and leaders, and especially, as you said, Adrian, this last year, this has become a massive topic that I've been privileged to be part of a lot of conversations about it. So sometimes I'll be saying things I've just learned from others and others, you know, things that I've observed over many, many years of a lot of different kinds of ministry contexts.

But it's an honor to be with you. And Jeff, kudos for throwing this topic out there in such a pronounced way. And Adrian, way to go. Like, you are leading the charge on the future of where the church can go in this. So, like, way to go on that. That's impressive. Everything you've just described is amazing. Well, we're really excited to be a part of it. I know that we have seen such a response, and we have seen people in the church say, we need this. We need help, and we don't know where to go, and we don't know what to do. And we've been told for our entire lives that it's a sin to struggle. So, let me start there, because it's a question we always get asked. Go for the jugular, girl! Is it a sin to struggle, Mindy?

Oh, my gosh. As I was anticipating some of these questions, I was thinking, like, what is the church's role? And I think part of the challenge is we've had a mentality that, you know, there's an answer for everything in the Bible, and the thought is that, yeah, it's a sin to struggle. Like, I hadn't heard that phrase, and it just makes me achy and a little twingy inside to hear you say that. Man, mental health, a part of what I think the church can do, and what I think you're seeing in your church is we can start to normalize a topic and set some definitions and parameters around it that has been largely either ignored or, worse, misrepresented or miscast in many Christian contexts and to many people's great harm, I think.

And we've missed a massive opportunity to serve. A friend of mine, I don't even remember which one it was, would talk about how, like, mental health is, you know, the brain is an organ in your body, right? Just like your liver is and your kidneys are and your lungs are and your skin is. And it has the ability to have illness just like any one of those other organs in our bodies. And we wouldn't think it was sin to be sick with lung cancer, right? You would never, or unless you said you shouldn't smoke cigarettes, but I mean, like, seriously, we would never have that callous and unkind and sort of judging way of treating almost any other illness. We understand the body has various, um, domains of health or sickness.

And when, when part of the body is sick, you don't, you don't judge it because you have eczema. You don't judge it because you have, you need corrective lenses for your eyes. Like that's not, that's not, that's not a thing. But with mental health, um, especially because it's so invisible and it can show up with symptoms that we don't know what to do with or how to make any sense of, um, I, I, maybe I can understand a little bit. I mean, the whole culture at large hasn't really known what to do with mental health. So the church is just a subset of that. But as more and more information is coming out, I would love to believe that the church could be literally at the vanguard of helping research, helping understand, helping diagnose, helping provide treatment, helping provide care for the caregivers and those who are suffering.

Like we should be in that place of leading this conversation, not resisting it. Anyway, that was probably more than you were asking for, but that's, that's how I see it. I wish, I wish the church could help normalize this conversation. Well, so what was, I want to know more about how we can do that because Adrian, to me, your church has gone already above and beyond what I hear most churches doing in terms of mental health, by even addressing it. Um, and, and even going as far as bringing in experts, right? Because so many churches try to say, well, the Bible is more than enough, man. So here is your handbook and here's your guide to mental health. Just open up the Psalm, whatever. And I can already see Mindy rolling her eyes and you're right to, because before God called me into ministry, he called me into medicine.

I was pre-med. And so when I, when I started to look at brain science and take a look at some of this stuff, and then I went off to seminary and I even appreciated that even at seminaries, they were even talking about medication and how far a pastor can take somebody in our limitations. The churches, for whatever reason, don't like hearing that. And so Mindy, where's a good place for churches and even for a pastor to get started with helping our congregation? Well, I think the first place to start is studying, like learning. Like there's a lot of people who are writing good things about brain science. There's accessible content out there about mental health that any pastor, I mean, we should see this as a dimension of our responsibility in shepherding in the same way that you would think, I should probably know a bit about relational dynamics.

If I'm going to advise people or teach people about what the Bible says about that, or just how life is and how to, how to navigate relational, you know, situations, well, wouldn't we also hold the same goal to love God with our mind? Go learn, go learn about this stuff. I was, I was looking up, a friend of mine does a lot with mental health in her church, and maybe we'll talk about this later on in the call, but they have a lot of things right at the top. Oh, wait, maybe I didn't write it in my notes. I'll have to go find it. But there's a whole Institute for Mental Health, right? There's very accessible resources that are things that, you know, it's on us to do the work of integration, okay?

If this is how the brain has been created by God, and if this is what can go wrong or how it heals, and those things are coming from sources outside of seminary, we go and learn, and we discern, and we say, how do I digest this? How do I metabolize these truths and bring them out to my people? Like a sermon series is a great way to do it. I was just on a call yesterday. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this whole resilient church leaders or resilient church leadership effort that's going on through the Billy Graham Center and came out of some things that Ed Stetzer had pulled together a gathering around mental health in December of 19. And then, and that's got a whole ton of great content around that.

And so as an offshoot from some of those efforts, we were doing this resilient church leadership and there's clinical therapists that are part of that, et cetera. But this idea came up in yesterday's conversation as we were talking about journaling of all things of like, how do you, how do you handle different emotions and what's the value of journaling? And one of the, women on the call, she's an organizational psychologist, she used to be the provost at Wheaton. And she, she talks about the feeling wheel, right? That's a, that's a whole like feeling wheel. I can send you the link if you're interested. That helps people name different emotions, right? And the, the, another guy on the call is the, was the chair of the marriage and family therapy department at Wheaton is now at DePaul has been a pastor.

And he said, you know, one of the things I recommend is for pastors to actually preach through the feeling wheel. Like that is an example of normalize things. Not like this is the range of human emotion. Here's some names that we put to these things. Here's how they come out in healthy ways. Here's how they can be misfiring and what that might look like in your life. Like we have a phenomenal opportunity as pastors to put a content agenda in front of our people that can really bring a lot of help that those are some of the places I would recommend beginning is like, learn, start learning, start having conversations, learn how to have a conversation with somebody who's depressed and is following Jesus and is still depressed and still struggling with depression three years in.

And there were no easy answers. And how, how, how are you as a representative of God into the life of this congregant, how are you going to talk to them? And if you just never talk to anybody that's in that place and you don't have the empathy necessary to start addressing these issues. Anyway, I'm rambling on, but those are some of the things that occurred, occur to me that I would recommend before you stand up and try to do anything in your church before you try to teach a sermon series, before you try to set up a counseling center or whatever is your right, like correct level of addressing this topic, become a student. Yeah, I love that. So for me, one of the things that I struggle with, and I don't know if other churches are having this struggle, but I assume that they are.

You're talking about preaching through a feeling wheel or learning how to have these conversations with people, but how do you delineate what is the church's responsibility and what is absolutely not? How do you make that call? How do you, how do you decide how to approach these situations? Well, that would be part of what you want to be learning as you're on this learning journey, because, and it's not like, just like most things in life, you're not going to like be walking down this path and all of a sudden see this big red line on the ground that says like, go no further. It won't be that obvious. And, but there are really important resources for understanding where someone can come alongside someone who's struggling and where you should know when to refer.

It's like one of the most important things is to know what you know, know what you don't know and know when to refer. And so building up as you're studying, building up a list of who are the professionals in your area that can be referred out to with confidence is a really important piece of the learning as well. Because when we try to take on more than we should, I mean, you were in medical school, you, you know, like that's just, that's some sacred territory. And one thing that I've always felt is that churches, Christians, pastors, disciplers, any, any of us can in very well-meaning ways misdiagnose what people are dealing with. And then we make our little recommendations that amounts to almost like a spiritual malpractice when you are misdiagnosing and, and advising people in a direction that at best may not help them.

And at worst may cause harm. It's important to know where that line is and to, and to seek to know when you're getting close to it and what you'll do once you encounter that line. And not, not just, I think the thing is we all want to run away. It's like, I don't want to go anywhere near that line. So I'll never talk about it. I don't want to go there near that line because I don't want to give someone a bad recommendation. I don't want to. And it's like, okay, we, we can't just like put our head in the sand and pretend this doesn't exist. Like we've got to get to where that line is and then figure out how to help people. Maybe that, that line right there, spiritual malpractice. Oh boy, that'll preach.

I mean, I got like a thousand sermons off the top of my head. Many of them involving John chapter nine, right. Where the disciples are coming up to Jesus and they're saying, Hey, this man's been blind since birth. Was it because of something his parents did? Was it because of something he did? And I think often we make the same mistake. I've been guilty of making the same mistake of approaching an issue in somebody's life and saying, well, man, it's there, there's, there's something that you did here. How can pastors avoid that problem moving forward and make that adjustment in terms of their counseling with individuals? I mean, that, that is a, that is a deep issue that you're raising. Um, I think we have an affection for easy, simplistic answers.

And I think we, um, have shied away from the more nuanced, uh, realities of the integrated and often quite broken interior life of us as humans and dealing with brokenness, dealing with, be it, you know, volitional, like the soul, the soul is a pretty complex thing, right? Soul care, you know, Dallas Willard had this beautiful way of describing all the dimensions of the soul, which is basically all the dimensions of our personhood, right? There's a mind and our emotions and our thoughts and our relational context, even dimensions of the physical body, which we don't normally think of as peace of the soul, but in his way of understanding biblically, the soul is what integrates all these different dimensions of personhood.

And when the soul is diminished, those pieces of who we are start to fail and fall apart. And those are his exact words. And so when we start giving, you know, in my view, sometimes three cent answers to million dollar questions, that's where that spiritual malpractice can kick in. And I, I've, I don't know if anyone on this call, it's been an interesting, um, touch point in my life, but I, if you've ever been misdiagnosed medically, um, I was so angry at this, this doctor and we were living in Massachusetts at the time. Uh, my kids had a rash. It was really terrible. It wasn't getting better. And then I would notice that like, if it was on this part of their arm, then like the part that would be in contact when they were playing or certain, then it would show up here.

And I, and then it was transferring to the other kids and my husband and I started and it was like all these things. And I go into this doctor, sorry to be vetting my thing, um, or venting. And they, um, this, this doctor is looking at me and going, I'm telling him all the reasons. He's like, well, it's obviously contact dermatitis. You have, you have poison ivy or poison oak or it's, you know, one of these things. And I was like, okay, but I don't think it's that because of this and this and this and this. And I listed off all the reasons why having studied those things, I didn't think it was it. And he kind of looked at me and goes, well, what else could it be? And I bit my tongue so hard. I was like, you're the one with the MD, buddy.

I'm paying to talk to you. Don't you ask me what else it could be. That's your job. I mean, I was, I had small children. I'm sure I had had not a night's sleep in years. So I, hopefully I didn't actually say what was going through my head, but I feel like that's that. And, and, and all the things he told us to do, none of it helped. And when we finally got to one doctor who pieced together the stuff, they figured out this very atypical, wouldn't have expected it thing was gone in a matter of days. And like that has a nice turnaround story. Some of the stuff with mental health doesn't have a nice, oh, we finally solved it. And now it's all better and better. But nonetheless, the, the pain and the hardship we cause by giving three cent answers to million dollar questions about why is this happening?

What, what, like just, it doesn't usually take but two or three levels in of, of inquiry to realize that most things are not as black and white or as easy as we'd like for them to be. And I mean, I hope that's not terribly shocking news to any of your listeners, Jeff. But, but we, we must think wisely and well about why people do what they do. And when we try to slap a Bible verse on, and I used to do this, so I get it. But I mean, it's like, I've talked about this metaphor as well, but like when somebody comes into your small group or into your church, your counseling office, and they're just bleeding all over the place, right? They're, it's just, they've got a non-physical wound, but it's bleeding everywhere, right?

And I think the reaction most of us have is like, oh my gosh, you're bleeding. It's going to get blood all over my office. That's, can't be good for you. It's not going to be good for anybody. How do I slap a tourniquet on that thing? And a lot of times we use Bible verses as tourniquets on wounds, expecting that it's going to stop the bleeding. And it doesn't. I don't think that's how Jesus intended for his precious living word to be used. And so integrating what does scripture say that could help, that could bring healing, that could bring help is a, is a very important question, but man, we cannot give three saint answers to million dollar questions. So you're telling me that Philippians 4.13 is not the answer to everybody's problem.

Might be the answer to all your problems, but not anybody I've known. I don't know. I've heard it a lot. People have given me that so many times and I'm doing great. Every time I wear the t-shirt, like it's awesome. My life is great. As long as I'm wearing the t-shirt. I've also seen shirts where people hit home runs. So I just want to make sure. One of the reasons I care about this so much is while we were in Boston in those years, Jeff knows this story and I won't, I won't go into it in detail, but my husband and I had planted a church and he was a total golden boy. We met when we were at Cornell, he went to Dallas Seminary, we interned at Willow Creek, we church planted, we involved with Campus Crusade, like all of the brand name, you know, things.

He was a, you know, football player, Sigma Chi fraternity boy. Like, I mean, he was just this golden boy, had never failed really in his entire life. And we go off to Boston, which is a kind of a hard place to do a kind of a hard thing with church planting. And we did it in the most difficult way possible, which is to do a parachute drop into the city, not knowing anybody with no financial resources or oversight or anything. So not that shockingly, we quickly came to the end of ourselves, but didn't know that. And Jeff, he's written about this, you know, and talks about it quite openly, but he was probably in a full on, started maybe as a situational depression, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and probably converted within weeks to a chemical depression, which was probably lasted 10 years.

Because we didn't have any language for that. We didn't, I mean, what do you mean? Like we didn't even have a imagination that such a thing could happen. All I knew is he was angry all the time, couldn't get out of bed in the morning, like things that now we might know to pay attention to. But at that point we just didn't. It was like, come on, buck up little camper, like get going, you know, cry me a river. Like it's hard. Great. Just totally not, not sympathetic at all. And that, that, um, ache of watching someone you love suffer so tremendously. But then after a while, this is the caregiver challenge. Like you just get tired of trying to hold them up and then you're exhausted. And then you're trying to hold the family together and keep the support coming in.

And I mean, it was just really, really hard. And so I, I, I think that what I've learned from medical professionals is if you're in a situational depression, like things are hard. You've been knocked around a bit. It's like, oh gosh, it's hard to keep your energy up for as little as three weeks. And I thought this was so ridiculous that I have confirmed it every time I'm around like clinical people and they have confirmed every, when you're in a place that's that hard for as little as three weeks, your brain's chemistry goes, all right, here's the new normal. And your body will actually start reinforcing your depressed state, even though it maybe wasn't your like forever and ever always state, but it is now.

And that's usually when I talk about that phrase, um, spiritual malpractice, because in dealing with soul care, I'm often challenging leaders and anyone myself to, to stay connected with God. What are the spiritual practices that help with all that? And those things matter and they are good. But if you're dealing with somebody who's in a true chemical depression, you've, you've now got to address that on, on both levels or more holistically, I guess is the right way to say it. And yeah, it's just important. I don't know. There's a lot to be said there. What I love is that you, I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing your story and what you guys went through. I, it raises a really important question and one that I think that we're going to hear a lot, especially in 2021, as we hopefully start to emerge from the pandemic.

Um, what are pastors looking for who are starting to experience genuine mental health crisis? What red flags are we, are we looking for as church leaders? I know we've, in my own circles, I feel like I see maybe once a week, maybe more, um, pastors who are stepping down from ministry because they are so burnt out that they can't take it anymore. Um, and that, that's a real thing that's happening. So what are we looking out for? Yeah. I mean, those symptoms from, of burnout are, are pretty kind of telltale and they're very similar to symptoms of depression and things that, you know, 2020 has foisted upon us in a whole new way. And what pastors and anyone, uh, would be, would be looking for. So they looking at their own lives or looking at their spouse or looking at key leaders within their team, et cetera, it's that fatigue that isn't going away with sleep.

It's a tendency to start isolating, um, which we're all isolated now anyway. Right. So that it's just compounded with so many things, the sort of, they call it COVID brain, right? Like the, just the decision fatigue that has become, you know, it's pivot and then pivot again. And then we go back in person, but we have to have our fallback thing. And then is everybody six feet apart? And what does the state say this week? And what does the government say that? I mean, it is exhausting. Um, other, yeah, just sort of this, like, can't think straight, can't solve a problem. Can't, doesn't find enjoyment. Even things that used to bring a lot of joy, like hobbies, there's falling flat, spending time with your kids just not resonating.

Like any of those things could be true on a, a rough day. You had a hard day. Of course, you don't feel like hanging out with anybody, but when it's been like a long time and you just feel like, I just don't even want to go out. I don't want to walk in my street because I don't want to say hi to anybody. When you feel those kinds of pulling away from your life, when you're feeling panic from the minute you wake up in the morning, right? It's just tightening in the chest. So those kinds of feelings, first of all, let's say good news is there might be ways to help that. And maybe it doesn't have to stay that way. One of the things I'm encouraged about Adrian is actually, I'm, while it's sad that so many are leaving pastoral ministry right now, and I have heard my share of those.

I'm glad that people are making what I hope are life-saving decisions, life-changing decisions at the right time. And I hope they're finding the support they need. I wish they could enter into the recovery they need, possibly where they're at, but that may not be possible or available to them. And I, I, the headlines that break my heart are the ones that end with a far worse result. And we're having too many of those as well. So that, that's the stuff that I look at pictures and I go, that could have been, that could have been us. Mindy, I resonate with that. I went through everything that you're describing, not this past year, actually years ago when we had launched a location and expectations.

And really what it came from was expectations weren't met. Expectations were then raised by overseers. And really what it came down to was we were kind of, we were an unhealthy staff to begin with. We were kind of an unhealthy place. Part of my worry is yes, I'm concerned for pastors, but I'm also concerned for, because unhealthy leaders means unhealthy team too. And an unhealthy leader can't help an unhealthy team get to a place of health. Right. And so it just trickled. It's the whole hurt people, hurt people down the way. And so how can some folks maybe lead up in terms of recognizing that their leader is hurt. All right, I need to give him some space, but he's coming down on the rest of the group and we're already dealing with enough.

Yeah. Well, you know, I can't give you a three cent answer to that. That's a big, that is a big and very real question. But here's what I will say. Henry Cloud has said this a lot. And I, and I find it a good way to thinking, to think about problems that start to feel so sort of contained, like they're, they're just in a container right now and there's no outside input. And so as a, as all that toxicity stays in the container, it can't get better. And so one of the keys that's needed in a, in a contained system is to open the system up and opening a system up will introduce change. It will probably be resisted. There's any number of ways that that can be resisted. But what I would say, if somebody is in a, serving on a team where that leader's coming in hard and they're, you know, this person's going like, you're not well, but I'm guessing that conversation isn't going to go well.

So like, maybe there's a different conversation that needs to be had, but how does this person find some support outside of that system? How do they find a therapist, a spiritual director, a coach? Now I'm, I'm blurring lines that, um, that when you open yourself up to some other person and you're in a closed system, that person can also sometimes help you get the right help. Like I've met with spiritual directors before who listen, process with me, were helping me in my own journey with God. But when it came to a couple of things I needed to process, they wisely said, Oh, there's that line. There's that line. And here's who I want to refer you to. Do you see what I mean? But if I had stayed in my contained system, I would not have known that that other resource is what I needed, nor would have I had access to it.

So sometimes you just got to reach for what, what it could just be a ministry peer that's unrelated to your context, but where are you starting to give voice to what's not working in a nonjudgmental place. You might have to start writing in your journal, like back to yesterday's conversations, but you got to write in your journal, like this is actually really bad right now. And here's what's bad about it and not cross it off and go, God works all things together for good for those who love him. Like, don't cross it off. Let that thing surface, look at it and go, all right, who can I talk to about this? Is it a friend who's in another state? Is it a spiritual director? Is somebody at soul care or Jimmy Dodd's organization or any, any others?

There's so many amazing caregivers out there, but if we stay silent, you know, I learned a lot from people in 12 step communities they have this great phrase. We're only as sick as our secrets. Wow. That's good. Wow. And there's so much power in the diffusing ability to diffuse really toxic stuff. Cause like in that scenario describing, you know, there's a team, there's me, there's other team members, and there's our senior leader, like going back to our topic of mental health, that could be operational in all of these people to some degree. Right. And you're never going to be able to diagnose it in like, in its pure form. Although sometimes we feel like we're making progress when we sit around an armchair, armchair diagnose ourselves and others, but that's not really going to bring us progress.

What we need is to start opening the system up to help. Yeah. Cause, and this was just my experience, you know, but you know, many of you were kind enough to tell us your story. Uh, my experience was exactly what you described, the panic attacks, the whole thing, just kind of dealing with some of that. And as I talked to more and more pastors, I know by God's grace, I got with a licensed Christian counselor. She helped us work out a whole lot of stuff. There were a whole lot of issues that I, that I dealt with in the past that weren't completely unearthed that combined with all the stuff that I was going with currently that I had to let go of. Uh, things as simple as Ray, who builds the church?

Is it Jesus for you? What does the Bible say? Don't tell me what your leadership books say. Tell me what the Bible says. And that kind of thing right there too, for a lot of church leaders, for some reason it does, you know, we talk about like practical theology for some reason it doesn't resonate. We, we buy into the whole cultural thing of, but what I do matters most. I build the church. That's pressure. That's not what God has given us. And we will crumble under the weight of it. Let me, I want to pull a thread, maybe not in that direction, but it's in the same vein a little bit. And, and I'm, I'm speaking in generalization. I don't want to come, come across judgy and I'm not speaking of any, any one organization.

When I ask this question, is it wise to spin off a counseling center attached to a church and have specialists work towards that? Or is that a cop-out where we, the pastors, we, we need to be training ourselves, our, our staff and our people to address those things specifically. I literally could make either argument right now. And so I'm, I'm curious at what level are we, you know, um, business offloading, you know, crowdsourcing to somebody else instead of taking care of our own responsibility, or is there wisdom and understanding, Hey, here's the line of what I'm really capable of. Let, let someone who's a professional take care of that. How, how are we as a church supposed to respond? Like, like what, what do we do here?

Oh, I got so many thoughts. Um, our church had a counseling center. Um, it was on our property, this little, actually it's funny. It was this little like house that sat in the corner of our property and it was okay. Um, but what we learned was that we were spiritual professionals, not mental health professionals. And so ultimately what we decided to do was close down the counseling center and build a strong partnership with a, with a counseling practice that is in our city. And so we have warm, close relationships with counselors in our city, but it is not a part of our church. Now it wasn't in the name of saying like we were, we were just passing people off to mental health professionals because we didn't want to handle it, but it was a way of kind of creating a real hard line.

Like these are the things that we're going to keep in house. We are here to provide for you spiritually and love you and care for you and be here for you. But sometimes we are going to find that line and we're going to need to cross it and we need to hand off. And now what we're trying to do right now is learn how to identify that line. So one of the things that we're doing is, um, a couple of us have done the mental health first aid training through the organization called mental health first aid. And what we plan on doing is actually, um, I am hoping to be certified as an instructor for mental health first aid. Another one of our pastors on staff will also be certified and we're going to train our entire staff on mental health first aid.

And what it does is it teaches you how to identify crisis situations and hand them off in an appropriate way while also providing encouragement and support and love for people within what is safe for us to do. So counseling centers, I'm not a huge fan, but I think it's really great to have close, close relationships with mental health professionals in your area. I would, yeah, I would agree. I think if you have the capacity as a church and you feel called to it, like, I don't think every church should do always the same thing. Like each church has a different set of giftings and, and, and sort of, uh, assignments from God in their particular community. But I would say that if you have a counseling center, make sure you have like trained actual counselors there and don't, don't mistake putting somebody who can listen well and think of Bible verses that relate to that and don't call that true clinical care.

Um, so I, I think that's, that, that's, that's what I would say. I found the name of the other organization. Can I, there's a church, um, a friend of mine, uh, is one of the co-pastors that, um, I think it's called St. John's downtown. It's in Houston, um, and a really, you know, predominantly African-American church. And they've done a ton over the years in more like, um, homelessness and, and feeding the hungry and all this kind of stuff because of their location and where they're at in downtown Houston. But she was the first person who I remember probably 13, 15 years ago, we were at an event together and just building a friendship. And she was telling me their church's story, but that they were starting to realize that most of the homelessness that they were encountering had its roots in mental health.

And that was the first time I had ever heard anybody make those connections. And so what does that mean for them to truly serve the community if they're not getting after the, the deeper core issues? And, and you can't even know that that will, that help will help, but you could at least start to more, um, circumspectly be addressing the problem. And so there's a North, a national Alliance on mental illness, NAMI. Are you familiar with that? Right? So they have a partnership with this church now where they're training facilitators and in partnership with the church, they were working with, it's just right on their, on their website, but it says, are you interested in serving as a support group facilitator in 2021?

Do you want to be part of a national movement helping people who live with mental illness? Do you want to contribute to real change in the mental health system? Join us for training provided by this organization. And so I think that's another example of these pastors, mental health isn't their domain knowledge, but they're partnering with somebody that can help them learn and then help their church think about how to address their unique community strategically, but with great wisdom. And, and I, I just, I thought of them and, and just thought I could mention that as an example, but so your church is partnering with, you know, an organization and a counseling clinic in your community. And I know of churches that have done a lot of those different things.

Most of them that I'm aware of, smaller churches will have a list of licensed clinical therapists in their area. And I think that's, I don't see that, Jeff, back to your original question as like offloading responsibility. I think it really is part of a, a comprehensive, like imagine a church is teaching through, here's what can go wrong in the world. You know, here's, here's all the things that can go wrong. And here's, here's the things that were really well-suited to help you with. And we will walk with you on this other stuff. That's a key thing. I've had in, in small groups, women that were like, okay, they were going into counseling for some reason or beginning medication for depression or another, you know, whatever it was.

And it's, it's not like they were like shunned out of our small group. Cause now, now you got your therapist. You don't need us anymore. It was like, no, all the more like, Hey, bring what you're learning. How can we support you in this? How do we, how do we walk with you in this? It wasn't a, a removal from community or an absence of our, I think still important role as the church in their life. We just, we're helping them find the next right thing, but not abandoning the relationship. I would love to jump in there for a second and just endorse a couple of the things you just said. Um, we have done some work with NAMI here in Louisville and they're an outstanding resource. So, um, for anybody who's listening out there, um, I am confident you can find a chapter of NAMI that is local to you and they have, we've been able to partner with them and have them come in and help us do groups on site.

Um, they came and did a panel with us with our, um, I think our second mental health series back in 2019. They're an outstanding organization, but also, um, speaking to, to going and getting counseling and stepping outside of just the pastoral counseling, the, the counseling that I've done in my own life with my own therapist has absolutely been life-saving. I'm a person who has repeatedly been in a dangerous mental health crisis. I am a multiple suicide attempt survivor. Um, and because of that, one of the things that my community that knows me and loves me needed was for me to have professional help because not only did I have someone I could go to who could safely guide me through that healing process, they also got a resource that they could reach out to.

So when I'm in crisis, my husband doesn't have to wonder who do I call? What do I do? Am I going to take her to the emergency room? He can start with my counselor, someone who knows me and my mental health history, but also who is a professional. So I just want to endorse that kind of across the board going to counseling can be so effective. And if the, the pastors who were walking alongside me hadn't said, you need professional help. I can't tell you that I would have made that decision. Adrian, um, Mindy can, I just want to ask, cause we, you know, on the show, we deal a lot with search online with digital. Um, so often, uh, especially as an online pastor, you know, for a church, because we're not in the same city.

How can I help refer people who maybe are in a completely different state to help get them the help that they need? If I don't know their area, I don't know the complete situation. Um, what are, what are some of the tools that I can do first and foremost, if they're suicidal, but then second, in terms of, uh, uh, for those who need long-term care or, or just that next step beyond this pastoral counseling stuff. Huge questions. Adrian, you must live with this cause you are pastoring an online community as well. What, what is your, what are your, what's your pastoral care look like when somebody raises their hand with something really hard? Yeah. So it's not a thing that happens frequently for us, but when it does happen, my first go-to is always going to be that national suicide helpline.

Um, no matter where you are in the country, when you call that number, they can route you to people who are close by, who can talk to you and help you get through that crisis moment, help you make the right call in that time. Um, but then beyond that, it's not unusual to be able to do a quick Google search to locate very local resources, but you can also always call 911. And I, I hate to, to jump right to 911, but it is an option. Um, but that suicide helpline, it's a national phone number. Um, it might be a good thing to put in the, the notes for the episode. That's, um, 800-273-8255. As a pastor, it's a good idea to store that in your phone, log it as a, as a phone number that is in your contacts.

So it is always there. You can text it to somebody. You've got really easy access to it. I also keep numbers in my phone for, um, for local mental health resources, but also mental health resources that are local to people who are in pockets where we got a lot of people. So here in Louisville, if I've got a lot of people in Cincinnati, I want to keep those Cincinnati numbers really close for me. Yeah. We're going to put all these links. Sorry, Mindy, real quick. We're going to put all, there's so many resources that have been dropped. I haven't said it, but we'll put all that in the show notes, including that, that, that number. So thank you. Go ahead, Mindy. That's good. You know, sometimes a phrase or a word can be really helpful to learn.

And for me in walking with a lot of different people, um, some of whom were, uh, close enough to, they weren't quite suicidal, but they were close enough that they just said, Hey, I, I need you to know I'm not doing well kind of thing. And, uh, which is really hard to be on the other end of a call like that. And so that's the scenario you guys are talking about. Um, one of the things I, I, I will offer, um, just because I remember it seeming to be valuable then, and I'm sure I had some basis for it, maybe from having done some research around suicide at that time, but it always seemed helpful to me to always thank someone for choosing to talk about it. And it's like, when you're like, your toes are like cringing in your shoes and you're trying to do everything you can to stay composed and not freak out.

But like, you can always say, I'm so glad you're talking and I'm so glad. And to try to keep a conversation going rather than because it's so uncomfortable, be like, ah, okay. Uh, like I, I, I confess my own immaturity, um, at times, like I would rather bail out of a hard conversation and, and then, you know, send somebody else in and to really just enter into that moment. If they're willing to talk to you to keep them on the line while you look up other phone numbers and while you do other things, but just to validate, Hey, I'm so glad you're talking about this. You don't, I would imagine I'm not a professional, maybe Adrian can say more, but like, there's probably terrible things that you shouldn't say in those moments.

Um, but I, I've always felt that when, when you can encourage someone to keep validate their, what they're saying and, and then keep them talking is really important. I mean, there's more coaching that comes around suicide, um, not threats, but the right word of like somebody starting to say things like that. And there's more like asking really specific, like, do you have a plan? And you know, all, all these kinds of things, but I'm not, I'm not an expert on all that stuff. But what I can say is I have found it so helpful, useful at times to just pause and be able to thank someone for talking. I think, um, along with those questions that you were talking about just then Mindy, um, it's when you've got somebody who you think might be suicidal, this is like really counterintuitive, but to literally ask them, are you feeling suicidal right now?

Um, people think that that might put ideas in their heads or, or, or kind of steer them down a wrong path. That's actually not true. It's actually better for them. And this is like a scientific fact to ask that question. Are you thinking about taking your life? Do you have a plan to do some harm to yourself? It's okay to ask those questions. In fact, in times in my life, when people have asked those questions have been the times we've been able to get me really, truly the help that I needed. So authentic, thanks for sharing all that. Well, let me, let me ask this question. I mean, typically this has been a topic for us, uh, off topic a little bit off brand, the church digital, we usually talk church online.

I think mental health is important. Um, but maybe let's try to bridge it here. So, I mean, a couple of questions I wouldn't want to ask maybe, maybe first off here in this, in this COVID season, obviously there's been a radical shift towards church online, something like 10% to 70% of churches are now broadcasting as a result. So hundreds of thousands of churches are moving. Don't even know what the numbers are, but millions upon millions of people are now engaging in digital space, um, where maybe they were physical, if, if anything before. What is this doing to our mental states? Like, and, and, and we can unpack this and I don't want like the hour long answer, but more of, of like, you know, I don't want to like be here for all another hour, but, or maybe we do that as another show, but, but like, seriously, just what do we as digital pastors and specifically me as the guy who's consulting with churches and helping hundreds of churches figure out how to do this?

Like, what are we doing to these people? Are we doing anything to these people by doing church digitally, by having them do church in their home? What do we need to be on the lookout for? Um, the tendency in online church is to stream, like just broadcast rather than to try to build community around church. That is the knee jerk. That is what a lot of churches who are doing online church for the very first time are doing. It's all about getting that stream up with the weekend service. Don't worry about the rest of it. Just, just make sure that the service is online, that people are seeing what is happening in the room. But one of the things that is, um, catastrophic to someone who is experiencing any sort of mental health challenge is that isolation from community.

So whenever we kind of miss the mark on building community through church online, we lose those opportunities to really love people and experience community with them. I mean, there's no question about whether or not we can experience community online. We're doing it right now. Um, people have been doing it over the course of the last year. My kids are like upstairs right now playing, uh, Minecraft on their computers while on a zoom call on another device. Like community can still happen online. Even our youngest kids are learning that and it's not ideal. It is not the best way to do community, but it is a way to do community. And so when we lose our focus about what the church is meant to be, a group of believers worshiping together and, um, and we're just broadcasting those services, we're gonna, we're gonna not be a part of the solution.

I wouldn't say we're hurting people with just watching church on a screen, but I would say we're not part of the solution unless we're building community around church online. Love it. Love it. Love it. She said that. Well, but you know, Jeff, that's why I have been such a huge fan of your body of work and thought leadership in this area because you've never been an advocate of, um, using online technologies just to broadcast. And I know that's never been your passion. You have seen the move to digital as an opportunity to move people actually out of just consuming church, even if they're physically in person and actually become an engaged participant in a community, which is what you're describing, Adrian.

And I, I, that you, you won me over. So hook, line and sinker with that. Uh, yes, you totally did because I began to realize that perhaps the opportunities for discipleship and true relational context for growth could actually be catapulted forward because of digital environments that are just never going to happen when you've got 800 people in a room, all looking one direction at each other's back of each other's heads. And I feel like the opportunity in the body of Christ has not been like this for 500 years to figure out out a different, a different, a different, like categorically different way of being that has relationships at the center with authenticity at the center with actual challenges that I am going through today in this house, under this roof with these relationships.

And where is God meeting me? And how is my church helping me with that? I want us to be figuring out how the church gets smaller, not bigger, how relationships get fewer, not more, how they get more authentic, not more pretense. We've all had enough of that. Um, but the one other thing I would add to what Adrian said, and I just loved everything she had to say, um, is I, I feel like because of the mental health, um, dangers, like let's just call it out. Let's say, Hey, you might be in engaging in our church, in your living room, and you haven't been out of your house in two months. I've talked to coworkers in another context that I work in that have not been out of their homes in months. And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.

I, but we all have different sort of thresholds of, of what we feel safe with and whatever. And they've just not, they've not gone anywhere. And I'm like, wow. But how does that become part of the messaging that's putting, put out on that stream? Hey guys, you might have this. And if you felt this, this, or this in the last week, we are here for it. We are here for you. Here's a big fat button on your phone. Go hit it, go text this, put a QR code up there. Gives us a, you know, like, let's just be real about it. Let's talk about it. Let's leverage these amazing communication platforms we have and use them to get people on the right path. And without judgment, without all that, you know, well, if you really can't hold your life together and Jesus isn't enough for you, then we have this counseling center.

Like, no, first order a business. And especially when pastors are able to say, Hey, this has helped me and my family. I've heard of some pastors who are being very, very vocal about their own journey. Guys, that is, that is gold. Not that you would ever misuse that or mistreat your own story or feel like you owe it to your church to be more authentic than you feel comfortable with. Like that's a really, like have a spiritual director or a coach or a therapist guide you through what to bring forward and how, but that's part of this idea of normalizing. Like how, how do we gain a collective vocabulary about what this all is and what soul care, the cure of like, historically the term soul care was like the care of souls and the cure of souls.

And it was the domain of the church. People, we need cure. We need care. That's not wrong. It's not bad. That's what we're here for. That's, that's deep. That, that, that, that was really good. Thank, thank you for that. But by the way, that's the best opportunity in 500 years, we can't, we got to, we got to steward this well, right? Like we can't, can't blow this opportunity. Tell me this, and I want to land the plane on, on this. Sticking with this whole church online thing, what specific symptoms? So I'm a digital pastor. I'm trying to pull people in isolation. I noticed a guy's not, not in small group. Is, is he really busy or is, is there something else? We're utilizing, you know, tools like Zoom, tools like Facebook groups may, may or may not be hard, hard to read.

How do I, you know, there's a lot of digital pastors out there. How, what, what are they looking for to start to read? Because maybe they're used to reading in physical space, but we can't anymore. So how are we reading this digital? What are some of the telltale signs maybe that we should be seeing through some of these digital tools? Jeff, I actually don't know that. I'd love to explore that. I'd love to have maybe some of your digital pastors come back and tell us what does reading a room digitally look like? What does, what does subtle or significant disengagement look like? I, I, I don't actually know. I wish I had a really good answer to that, but I, I don't know, but I think because it's so new, there's probably some in your audience who are, who are experimenting with, with that.

Maybe there's a, you know, if somebody hasn't, this is a cool stuff, you know, being with glue, I, you know, the superpowers of what you can do with tech. Like you can have automated things kick out if somebody hasn't done a certain thing in a certain amount of time. Now they may ignore it. It doesn't mean they're going to see it or respond, but there might be cool things you can do that no matter how somebody reads a room or thinks they're reading a room, they're not. Adrian, do you have any, any thoughts, experience vibes? I mean, I'm perfectly willing to say we need to do that on another conversation with, with the podcast here to try to figure out how to read the room and dig into that. But just what, what's been your brief experience as you've been doing this for a couple of years?

Well, so one of the things that I have seen over and over and over again, both in mental health and in digital spaces is that it's really hard to get a read on how someone is for real. If you don't have a relationship with them, I have thought so many times about, it must've been the first conversation I had with Tyler Sansom at church anywhere when he was talking about how important it was to know the names of the people in their church online, because building relationships with people helps you know when something's different or off. I think in ministry, we get really used to people just dropping off and disappearing. That's a thing that happens. Somebody just decides I'm out and they stop coming to church or they're just not part of it anymore.

So we expect that sometimes. But if you know that person, you have a relationship with that person, you're still going to ask that question, even if it's probably just that they decided they didn't feel like doing small group anymore because you were getting on their nerves or whatever it was, you know, but making sure that you are building relationships is going to help you start to identify those things. So of course, if somebody just falls off the face of the earth, all of a sudden, you want to start asking that question, hey, I missed you. Because when you say that you're saying, I care about you and I want you to be here and be a part of this. But also, and you may not be able to tell this online, sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.

But when somebody suddenly starts acting very differently from how they have always acted and the way that you know them to behave, that is a sign that something's just not right. And whether it is a medical or like a biological mental health challenge, or just a weird day, like they still need you to reach out and, and be Jesus to them. So I would always err on the side of showing up and asking if they're okay, even if I am not totally sure if what I'm seeing is a sign that something's wrong. Yeah, have that relationship and have it be strong enough to have those awkward conversations, even if you're not sure. Love that. Man, I have learned so much in this podcast. I've never heard of the mental health first aid training.

I'm literally googling that. And I will be checking. I didn't even know that existed. Something like that existed. And then so definitely we'll be at least starting with that. Hey, we're gonna land. This has been an incredible conversation. Thank you for this. Maybe just even as we're landing the plane. Ray, any closing thoughts on your side? I really felt like that, like Adrian, Mindy, you guys did such a wonderful job helping break this down for, for everyday pastors like Jeff and myself. And, and really for so many people out there that are ministering to their congregations, um, because I get it. We're all afraid because we don't understand it. Right. Like that's that we, we have to start there.

We, you, you may even be like me where you're struggling with some of your own issues that you're afraid to kind of dive into the issues of others because well, I'm a leader and we're supposed to brave it through, you know, we kind of buy into some of that ourselves. And so this is where we really need to take a step, step back and step back into our humanity and admit first what we don't know and then humble ourselves enough to do exactly what Mindy and Adrian have talked about and learn. And so thank you so much. I look forward to more conversations about this moving forward because this directly impacts church, but for sure church and digital spaces, I can't tell you both how many times I've dealt with congregants and people who are beyond the scope of the care that I can provide.

But even then they're, they're, they're looking and they're hungry and they want to know that God loves them and that God sees their brokenness and sees their broken situation and acknowledges it for what it is. And so thank you guys. Thank you so much for sharing this today. Uh, Adrian, you've done a great job hosting today. Thanks for filling in with that. Um, Landon, the plane, any closing thoughts on your side? She's done. She's shaking her head. She's not even unmuting the mic. She's out of gas. I talked a lot more than I meant to. Um, no, I'm just really excited that we got to have this conversation. Um, like I said before, as a suicide attempt survivor, this is something that will always be near and dear to my heart.

I care so much about making sure that people have access to mental health resources. And I know that it is only Jesus, right? Like Jesus is the reason I'm here, but that doesn't mean I didn't also need a super counselor and a lot of great people around me. So, um, starting this conversation, having these conversations, I think it's important. I just want to encourage any of you who are starting to have those conversations for the first time, don't give up. You're going to feel like you're hitting a lot of roadblocks, but there are people out there who want to walk this path with you. I want to help you start bringing Jesus into the mental health conversation. It matters. Mindy, thank you once again for coming and jumping on the show.

It's always, it's always great when you come in and you bring such a breadth of knowledge and wisdom on mental health. And so very much appreciate you coming in, um, landing the plane. Any closing thoughts? Just that, um, I'm thinking back to what Ray was saying earlier about the virtual environments that we're in. And I think a lot of the caregivers that exist out there are exploring being available in virtual ways as never before. And so I don't know whether it would be helpful, the stuff that we're doing with soulcare.com or if anybody needs like another place they can go to try to get help, um, you know, visit our website, reach out to me or any of the ones on our team. And then there's a lot of other organizations that are equally, um, sort of gearing up to provide, um, really safe places, even in a digital way, um, to address these things.

So, you know, a lot of pastors are like, I don't have time to go find a counselor in my city. I don't know who to talk to, all that kind of stuff. Well, there's ways, there's resources that, um, might actually be better suited to the complexity of being a pastor going for counseling in a local context. So the digital stuff is really important. Spiritual direction, coaching, counseling, all those things can be really helpful. So anyway, I can help. That's what I wanted to say. I'll, I mean, I'll give testimony to that. I've, I've done counseling through soulcare, soulcare.com, uh, worked with the people there and, uh, was awesome. Uh, in, in a digital, I'm a digital guy. Okay. So maybe I'm a little slanted, but having those conversations, working through that stuff in digital space, um, without the, the risk of going in local and, and, and I'm okay with local.

I wasn't an issue, but I didn't have to worry about that. It wasn't, it wasn't awkward. It was just, Hey, let me, let me jump on this and have that conversation. It was so good. And so many, I just, I've seen so many things go South and people were like, Oh, I just didn't know where to turn because they were embarrassed by something in the local space or even with their own church. And, uh, you know, honestly, I think that the line to close it off was, uh, Mindy, I think you said, it's like the, um, uh, the, the powerful of the secrets. What was the line? Oh, we're only as sick as our secrets or only as sick as our, as our secrets. I like that might be tattoo worthy. It's been a while since I've had a tattoo worthy quote dropped here on the podcast, but that right there, um, I'm not going to give Mindy Caliguire credit for saying it because I think she heard it from somewhere else, but that's a very common, no, no, no, no, no, very common phrase in 12 step communities.

All right. If you want Jeff to get that tattoo, please donate to Stadia. I will definitely donate for that one. Put your Venmo out there. We'll all support it. I tell you what, I'll, I'll put my link to, to donate towards Stadia for Jeffrey to help Jeffrey continue to do a ministry and church planning efforts through Stadia. And if, if we saw some traction there, I may or may not get that, get that tattoo. Assuming my wife will have to do marital counseling. If I get the tattoo, I'll just say it that way. And, uh, and we're going to wrap the plane on that with the idea of Jeffrey getting a tattoo. So, Hey, for Ray, for Adrian, for Mindy, this is Jeff with the church digital podcast and Stadia church planning.

Um, thanks for joining here on the pod and we'll see you next time here at the show. Y'all have a good day.