59. Why My Feelings of Church Hurt Won't Go Away, an Interview w/ Dr. Nate Brooks

Welcome back, everybody, to the For Freedom podcast in 2022. It is a new year. It's a new episode, and we got some new things coming this year we're excited about. But we had a good time sort of relaxing, taking a break over the holidays. James, how was your holiday break, your Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's? Yeah, well, we had an extended time away from the podcast, and we got to spend multiple times with the family. We were in Texas for Thanksgiving, and then we spent with my family for Christmas and Allison's family for Christmas. Her parents got COVID, and so they had to leave Christmas early. But we all did get to spend time together. And then we went to many, many different families. I think I put like 1,500, 1,600 miles on my vehicle just in North Carolina, driving around, going crazy, seeing family, having church. And then we went to Gatlinburg with our teenagers for the new year, rang in the new year with Andy Mineo and Skillet and all those guys, and just had a great time of enjoyment with our teenagers and teaching and really doing some intentional discipleship with some young adults as well. So it was a great time with that, and definitely got to spend some quality time with our family. Hudson growing, getting older, crawling, almost walking. And so it's definitely an exciting time in the Saifert household. How about you, John? How was your time with family this past holiday season? Oh, we had a good time. The Thanksgiving trip didn't go like we wanted it to, and we had the stomach bug hit my family before we got there, so we had to turn around and come back, and that was an eventful trip. That was a quick two days, and then we were able to make it back to them at Christmas. I had surprised my parents and had a good time there. I love Christmas, love the holidays, and we just had a good time. Good time to rest and recoup and think about things doing in the church, and then you're doing some things, what we're going to do in the podcast, and had some conversations about that. But, you know, back in the swing of things this week, back in the swing of things. And so we're excited about today's episode that we're starting off the new year with. James, you actually, it was a different setup. We recorded this last month. Yeah. And so you tell them a little bit about sort of what was going on with you that day that we ended up recording. Yeah, so that was over some break that we had, and so I actually had Hudson that day in the office. It was a misplanning on my part. And so maybe Hudson was in there with us. You may hear him a little bit in the recording. But what you're going to also hear is I had a bad mic issue. I don't know what was going on, but my mic was not cooperating with my computer. And so there was some drawn-out, mumbling, gurgling sound going on. So I limited my talking on the episode, and mainly it was John and Nate Brooks is who we had on. And we began talking about Church Hurt. And he gave us a great connection with a future episode as well that we're going to be lining up with him and someone else. And so I really enjoyed listening to it. I was very preoccupied with Hudson. And so just to forewarn her audience, you're not going to hear me a lot because of that. But it is a great episode. Yeah. And so we're going to go ahead and play that now. So here is our interview with Dr. Nate Brooks from Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte on his article that he wrote on recovering from Church Hurt. I do not mean to be mean. I do mean to be mad. You obey your pastor. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got... Hey, if you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. But you know, there's something like that local Newcastle, that independent from the middle of the century, separated King James, that I believe that you've got a lot of damn things, you've paid on a free tribulation to the man of the Baptist Church. I still believe there'd be a cold day in hell before I get my talents from a woman. I'm a preacher. The young preachers that do love God get pulled off in the cabin is, and I'll fight it. I'll fight it. I'll fight you in the parking lot over it. I'll get personal with you. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom Podcast. A podcast that is part of the RFP Network, that seeks to bring freedom in Christ from the spiritual abuse of legalism in the independent fundamental Baptist movement. Now here are your hosts, John Holyfield and James Saifert. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of Scripture. But the defining principle in Scripture is love. And now I'm not saying that all men who sit under that teaching will become abusive. But what I'm saying is the ones who are abusive will be drawn to that sort of teaching. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. Bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. Yeah, so we are excited today to, we're excited about the topic, and we're also excited about our guest today on the podcast. And so we're having Nate Brooks on the podcast. Nate, I'm sorry, let me pull up your bio here. Dr. Nate Brooks is, he's an assistant professor of Christian counseling at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. And I know for some of our listeners it may seem like we're going through their staff. We're not intentionally going through their staff to interview, although that probably wouldn't be a bad idea. But Nate and his wife live in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and they have two sons. Welcome to the podcast, Nate. And tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. Oh, thanks so much for having me here, guys. It's a blessing to be with you all and love the topic that we're talking about. So thanks for reaching out with the invite. So I'm an assistant professor at RTS, primarily focusing on training counselors and pastors, how to help their congregations with the scriptures in terms of growing Christlikeness and being transformed. My wife and I are originally from California and have slowly but surely been migrating east. And I think our next, move would have to be the Outer Banks. And then after that, Iceland, I think, would be the next habitable thing. So hopefully we're stuck here. So we're members at Lake Wiley Baptist Church, the small Southern Baptist Church down here. And my bio is out of date, I guess, because we actually recently added a little girl, Alethea, into our household, who keeps us slightly dabbling in insomnia, but a whole lot of humans as well. Truth. Is that right? That's the Greek word for truth? Yeah, that's right. We figured that if there's one thing our world could use a little bit more of, it was truth. That's good. And so we picked Alethea. That's good. I forgot to mention our other guest. For those that are watching on YouTube, you've already seen it. For listeners, you may hear him. But we got Baby Hudson with us as well. So James has got his eight-month-old with him. That's right. I'm on that duty, and it's exciting to meet someone else with an eight-month-old. We're having a baby boom in our church right now. We've got, I think, three or four people pregnant right now, and so we're going to have a full nursery. And possibly a couple more here soon to have babies around. So just so you know, James is with us, but he probably won't talk as much. He's got a different setup today, but he's there. And so we've got Dr. Brooks on to talk today, and he wrote an article for the Biblical Counseling Coalition, the Biblical Counseling Coalition website, and they did a series on church hurt, sort of a mini-series of articles, and they had different authors write. And so Dr. Brooks wrote an article titled, Why Won't My Feelings of Church Hurt Go Away? And so we read it, and James and I absolutely loved it. We think that there was a lot in here that could be helpful to those that listen to our podcast and part of the RFP community. And so I guess I wanted to start off, Dr. Brooks, with sort of asking, you know, what's your experience and why writing this article for the Coalition? That's a great question, John. And, you know, one of the things that really has gained some attention in our culture is this concept of trauma. And, you know, it's not a word that we see used in the biblical text. But, you know, the Bible was written to us as human beings, and it expects us to come with our lived experience, not as something that's determinative of what's in the Bible or what the Bible means, but it's written to us as humans. And, you know, we've just kind of recognized, being human, that there are things that can happen to us as people that have deep, long-lasting effects that impact us in ways that we struggle to understand. And as I started doing my counseling practice, I began to recognize that there were certain kinds of cases that the trouble seemed deeper or almost outside of a person's direct control in a way that others weren't. So I remember one of the first cases I did was a police officer who was shot multiple times during a drug bust. And it was fascinating. The only reason he didn't die was that his badge deflected the slug from the handgun, you know, your stereotypical movie thing, but realistically, that is what happened. And in counseling him, just kind of a lot of his feelings of panic, of anxiety, of insomnia, of kind of hyper-arousal, hyper-awareness, of loss, of all kinds of these things didn't go away. And he was being faithful. And that just, I didn't necessarily feel too equipped to counsel him well. And that actually led me to do some more trauma studies. Currently enrolled in a program, getting a certificate from a Christian counseling organization that focuses in, and, you know, it's just because as I've lived in the cases that have come to me and even some events in my own family's life, you know, this idea of church, spiritual abuse, and trauma kind of connected. And that led me to write that particular article. And I've been doing kind of spiritual trauma-oriented cases for a little time now here in Charlotte. Well, that's great. And then, you know, specifically, we have had a lot of our episodes, but today we want to discuss church hurt, and as it relates to your article, you wrote a definition that hurt coming from abusive leaders, members, and cultures. We want you to sort of unpack that just a little bit. What does that mean? How can we define that a little bit more when it comes to understanding that hurt from people that have been in people's lives? Yeah. Yeah, you know, I had a mentor once tell me when we were going through some difficult church situations that there is no church, or there's no hurt like church hurts. There's no hurt like church hurts. And, I mean, certainly there's other things that can happen to us that are grievous, and the whole point of that comment isn't to undermine anyone else's or devalue anyone else's experiences of difficulty. But really, when you think of church hurt, one of the reasons it's so terrible is because it takes something that's supposed to be life-giving. And honestly, for most of us who are faithful Christians, wrap itself around all kinds of different areas of our life, right? Like we receive a lot of our spiritual nourishment from the church, as we're designed to. And we have a lot of our close friendships in the church. And we have some financial ties to the church, whether in terms of things we've invested or ways that people have invested in us or potentially being on staff, things like that. There's also kind of we're oriented around the growth of the kingdom of God. And his church is a significant part of that, the primary vehicle of that. And so even kind of how we design our lives or what we'd say that the purpose of our life is, is wrapped around our local church expressions. And so because of those things, the issue of church hurt, it cuts deep. It cuts deep because it impacts so many different avenues of life, right? Like if I get in a, like if I were to purchase a car and get swindled by it, it may hurt me financially and it may tick me off a little bit, but that's not the same kind of magnitude of hurt or trouble that church would be. So as I talk about that in the article here, I define church hurt as coming from abusive church leaders, members, and cultures. So maybe I'll just take that one at a time. So when I say, so church hurt is simply referring to the damage and the feelings of pain that are done to you, that are done to a particular person. And then it's coming from abusive church leaders, right? I think one thing we want to be super clear on is that authority is not evil. Authority is not bad. Authority is something God designed. In fact, littered throughout scripture, there are commands for us to obey our authorities and to obey with joyful obedience so that it's not terrible being an authority over us. I think at the end of the book of Hebrews is one place and good godly authority is something that God's given to us human beings for our betterment. But in our sin-scarred world with sin-scarred humans, sometimes that authority can be twisted. So a church leader becomes abusive or church leaders become abusive when they begin using their authority for their own benefit, their own agendas, and not towards Christ. And specifically, when we're talking about spiritual abuse, oftentimes the word of God and divine things are used in order to leverage people's behavior, in order to leverage people's beliefs. And oftentimes it can be cloaked in the language of kind of Christianity, but its end and its goal is the exploitation of someone at the hands of a church leader. That's kind of abusive church leadership. But that can also be done by members, right? Members of a church can abuse a pastor to use God's word, to harangue him or harangue his family, to exceed kind of, to expect things of him that God's word does not expect of him. And then when it comes to cultures, that's simply speaking of the fact that, you know, a church is a combination of leadership and members. And sometimes kind of the expectation of getting baked into a church that just the way that the church does business, if you will, winds up being exploiting to people who may or may not be members themselves. Yeah, and I think that sort of, this whole concept is really on the forefront of a lot of people's minds with, you know, the popular podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. And, you know, I know there's differing opinions on sort of the take on that, but it is sort of shining and sort of a light on church culture and leadership and abusive leadership. And, you know, I think one of the things that also complicates and compounds abusive church leadership is that many times the manipulation factor of that, you define it as that pastor's or that leader's agenda becoming the primary thing, but it's real easy for them to manipulate the attendees of connecting his agenda with what God says, the direction God says that we should go. And so that confusion really can like just mess people up of them whenever they want to go to another place or go to another church. It's like, how do I know the difference between this is God's way and this is the pastor's selfish agenda? And I mean, oh, that's so true and it's so difficult because, you know, you don't walk into a church and be like, yep, this is one that's abusive. It just doesn't wear it that way. I mean, I'm sure there are some that you could, but for most folks, that's not the way that it is. And because most churches aren't going to put on their marquee, we exist for the glory of Pastor Brian or whatever, right? Which I'm pulling Brian out of thin air there. That's not connected to anything I've ever seen personally, right? But no church is going to put that marquee there. And indeed, in Christian circles, you know, there are so many kind of stock phrases that play really well. and you mentioned Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, right? You think of what that ministry kind of was founded to be, to reach individuals who are primarily on the outskirts of church culture in order to help them see the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ. That's a good goal. Right. But when the chips were down, it ultimately proved that that was a second, that was a means to accomplish a real goal which never would have actually been stated. Right. Right. I love how you said that authority is not bad at itself. It's all throughout scripture. At times when we get it, we sometimes lash out at authority and we say, well, all authority is bad. All XYZ is bad. It's that typical pendulum swing we get hurt by the swing goes through. All this is bad. And it's good to recognize that. It's good to understand that and go through these things. I'm glad you said that. I really, really helped out. John, what are you about this next question? Go ahead and ask him that. Okay, so this is one that you started off sort of talking about about your experiences and I think this is would be a good time to sort of dig into this because it's really something that James and I have not done so far in the podcast. And we talk a lot, we have talked a lot about spiritual abuse on this podcast but we haven't got into this idea of trauma. And in your article you sort of talk about a concept that I have not, actually, I'll be honest with you, I haven't seen sort of said before. I agreed with it but I was also at the same time I'm like, ooh, I wonder how people would respond to that or receive that. And that is the idea of like the big T or little t trauma as it comes with spiritual abuse or church hurt. And maybe you could unpack that a little bit more for us. Sure. Yeah, okay. So, you're right. There's a lot of different responses to this kind of language. Even in publishing this article I had some folks say don't use this language and I had other folks say use this language. So, we are kind of wrestling with how do we describe this? And I chose to use the language that kind of has some currency out there in the circles of trauma and abuse care. So, this concept of big T and little t trauma, let me just walk through it. So, when we think of trauma we tend to think of a large life-threatening event where someone perceives that they are going to be significantly harmed or are significantly harmed. Right? So, to choose kind of a few different snippets of it, a big T trauma would be something when we say big T we're saying like a capitalized T. Okay? So, for those who are listening here it's just a capital first letter T. Trauma. if you will. So, something like that would be anything from kind of perhaps soldiers' experiences in combat to an individual who suffers a violent sexual assault to someone who is held at gunpoint during a robbery and ironically in the middle of writing this article actually I experienced a big T trauma myself where I was in a significant car accident with a deer going about 70 miles an hour and it was something that was potentially life-threatening there had my windshield not held the way that it did thankfully. Right? So, those are the kind of situations where there's a definite life-threatening situation where someone perceives that this could do significant bodily harm to them or such. that's connected to post-traumatic stress disorder and how there are certain ways that kind of the human mind, body, soul tend to respond to those events like that. Not every human does it but many do. Now, the concept of little t trauma and this is trauma with a lowercase t little t trauma is an attempt to describe something and that's that actually the majority of individuals who develop post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms have not had a life-threatening event. And so, you can develop the symptoms of this and by saying symptoms, I don't mean to medicalize this per se. I'm simply saying that this is a pattern of human behavior, of human trouble. You can develop these patterns of human trouble without having had a specifically life-threatening situation. And so, as researchers have sought to understand this, it's just the recognition that there are things that can happen to us, significant manipulation, significant suffering and loss that can produce in us trauma responses without us actually qualifying for something like post-traumatic stress disorder, which requires a life-threatening situation. Right, and I think those are really good. I remember just listening to Curtis Solomon teach on this subject, and he talked about how, you know, this is really, this is really something that we, especially the Christian community, need to not just understand, but I think I want to be careful how I use the word, but embrace, because this is how God designed our bodies and our brains to, you know, in a sense to protect us. And, you know, I go back to this illustration that Carter Solomon shared explaining this, and that is, you know, you have a soldier who is in, you know, in wartime, maybe over in the Middle East, and is doing patrol, a bomb goes off, or an IUD, it goes off, and, you know, all of the things, it's like his brain takes a snapshot of the event, and so there may have been this thing over here, there may have been a person over here wearing this thing, there may have been a red car coming by right when it happens, and so five years down the road, he survives five years down the road, driving down the road in the States, sees a red car, all of a sudden, that snapshot comes back, and those signals are going off, and so when we're talking about this in the concept of church hurt, you know, what you were just explaining can happen where somebody may have experienced this type of manipulation or spiritual abuse, but then they think things are okay, they're going, and they come to a church, and then the pastor says one little phrase, or there's a hymn that is sung, and it's just, the tense up happens, and it's like, those are actually things, maybe it would be the phrase, or the hymn are actually really good God-honoring things, but for that person, oh man, it can be paralyzing. Yeah, and honestly, you know, I mentioned that my wife and I ran into a church that was not on the extreme side, but certainly kind of mild to moderately abusive in some ways that we wound up leaving, and, you know, even two Sundays ago, we had a hymn sung in our new church that we love and trust implicitly, and the hymn popped up, and instantly inside of myself, the feelings were there of what it was like to be at that previous church because that hymn was that former senior pastor's favorite song, and we would sing that, I kid you not, three times a month, and even just the melody of this God-honoring, Christ-exalting hymn that I used to really love all of a sudden creates those same feelings as I'm sitting in a new environment that I had in the old environment in a way that is beyond my control. So what you're talking about there, John, those examples are exactly right. Yeah, and I know this may lead into the last, but let's interject just a tad bit, and I want to throw us off course just a little. Nate, how would you say, what would, I mean, how should we respond to those things? I mean, should it be something that we should be like, you know, go to the church, listen, this really bothers me, I wish you guys wouldn't do it, or should it be something that we say, you know what, there's really nothing wrong with that thing, but I need to start working on processing this and taking care of, you know, you know what I'm saying? How do we, is it a problem on this end? Is it a problem on our end? Is it just the way it is? How do we process that? Yeah, and that requires, I think, a certain degree of nuance and care. So I think the first thing to do is to recognize that it's not a crisis of faith in you, right? Like, it's not a crisis of faith. I think sometimes, you know, in our, in our Christian circles especially, we tend to think that perfect peace inside us is proof of godliness, and any kind of upheaval inside of us is, is proof of ungodliness or lack of faith or something like that. That's really good. Yeah. And it's just not true, right? I mean, you, perhaps Jesus' greatest moment of faith was in the Garden of Gethsemane. as he's staring down the cross saying, I don't want to do this, right? In his, in his human nature, he's staring at this saying, I'm going to do it. But Jesus doesn't skip to the cross. This isn't a happy event for him. He sweats, is in such turmoil that his sweat, his sweat drops to the ground as if it's drops of blood. And, I mean, my goodness, he's, he's almost undone there. And yet, is that not almost the greatest evidence of faith we have in Christ, in Christ's life revealed to us. And so, you know, for my friends that I counsel who are struggling with, struggling with, with the impact of spiritual abuse, I want them to understand that it's not a crisis of faith that's going on in you. In fact, the fact that you're there is sometimes the greatest sign of faith that I can see because you're walking into something that you know could be triggering. And we tend to avoid those things. So, you know, in terms of, in terms of going, stepping back to being in a context like that, I think there's a couple things that I want to think through. So, for the person who is struggling, I think we have to recognize it's not a trouble if you are so overwhelmed by a particular trigger that you just need to step out for a little bit. It's okay, right? Like, our churches are supposed to be places that are, I mean, there are many things, but there are hospitals for people who are struggling with all kinds of different things. I teach classes on response to sexual abuse here at RTS. And I'll give a warning at the beginning of my classes. Hey, guys, we're going to talk about some detailed things that perhaps if this connects with your narrative in some way, you need to step out for a little bit. That's totally fine. I'm not bothered by that. That's actually a sign of righteousness of saying I'm not ready to deal with this yet. Now, I think for, so I wouldn't necessarily say, hey, look, as a church member, this particular hymn is triggering to me, so can we not use this hymn at all, period. You know, as a church member, I still have a responsibility to the rest of the church. And if this is something that's God honoring, you know, it's okay for me to struggle and everybody else do well. We don't want to be so individualized in our Christianity that we lose the benefit of the church for the benefit of us. I would say, you know, as someone who's a leader in churches, you know, if you're in a situation as a church leader where you have perhaps a significant number of people coming out of a certain context that join your church, it might be helpful to know if a significant chunk of your church is triggered by something, perhaps step away from a particular hymn or a particular expression simply for care for them. You know, you brought up Horizon Fall of Mars Hill. I lived in Pacific Northwest for about 14 years, so I feel like I have some investment up there. And, you know, there were one of the impacts of it, I haven't heard the last episode yet, so perhaps the talk about this, was that other churches in the area were suddenly flooded by, you know, there are accounts of churches whose members or whose attendance doubled overnight because of refugees from Mars Hill. What do you do with that as a church leader, understanding that you just have a whole bunch of people whose church blew up and a lot of people who are, you know, asking all kinds of hugely significant questions. Well, you know, I probably wouldn't go and preach through Song of Solomon because that's what the last pastor did in a horrible manner, right? So as a church leader, you want to, I'll go on record and say that was a horrible manner, right? I was a little bit slow on the table, but that cracked me up. Right? So you just, I mean, as a church leader, you want to care for the people who are there. And if you have an influx of people that particular things are really hard for them, well, maybe we step away with the history in our church, in church history that surely we can find things that are helpful for everybody. Does that answer your question, John? I think that was great. I really do. I think that that was phenomenal. And I don't know how long we've been at this, but if we want to get back to the article, what would you say, let's say somebody's listening to this and they say, you know what, what you guys are talking about, especially the little t trauma, that's me. What would you say maybe some practical, I think this is sort of the biblical counseling, right? Hope and help, hope and help. And we're always wanting to offer help, but we also want to have hope along with the conversation as well. So what would be something practical that you think that you could give them? Yeah, so maybe just a few things. I think the first thing is I do like the little t trauma language because it gives words to our experience. and that's really helpful, right? So the questions may be rolling around inside of you, which is, I don't think that this new pastor is manipulative. I don't think he's a skunk. But man, every time he comes up and talks to me, my heart just flops and it falls down to the pit of my stomach. Why? Well, it's something of a trauma response, right? Because that's how you would respond to the previous pastor. Why is it so hard for me to look at anyone in church leadership and not have those feelings of mistrust? Well, it's a trauma response. Why is it that, why is it that I get a migraine headache driving to church every single Sunday? Physiological trauma response, right? And these things don't mean you're crazy. Honestly, one of the first things that I usually do for my people on counseling with the issue is just look at them and say, you're not crazy. And most of them wonder if they are. These are good, faithful people. In fact, oftentimes the people who get traumatized the most are the people who are most invested and most faithful because they're the ones who are closest to the fire and got burnt or were saved in their deepest, the longest. So first is just recognize you're not crazy. Recognize that these are normal responses. I think the second thing is to take honest stock of where you are right now. Now, different events hit people differently and the level of trauma response is not directly tied to the strength of the event that happened to you. And so, you know, this just takes wisdom. Okay. And I don't want, part of me, I want to be really cautious in how I say this. Okay. For some individuals, I think it's entirely appropriate for you to step away from church for just a little bit of time, go for a hike in the woods on Sunday morning, listen to a sermon of a pastor that you trust and call it good. Right? Now, that's not the end goal, but sometimes we need to step out and clear our head for a minute. Okay. I've suggested that to folks. This isn't a hard and fast number or anything like that. I said, hey, go do that for two, three weeks and then come on back. I think it's a problem if we stretch it and never return to church. I think someone, you know, two, three years out, they're not in a church in a year out, perhaps we're in, I would at least want to have some conversations about that, but it's okay. It's okay to go to another church and sit in the back of the church and not really talk to anybody and just be there. It's okay. Right? Like, in working through these things, being in locations can be significantly destabilizing personally and to give yourself time to give yourself grace, be patient and know that it will fade. I think another thing that's important to recognize is that, you know, when it comes to trauma, the worst thing you can do is practice what we call avoidant behaviors. So, avoidant behaviors would be behaviors that you engage in to avoid being around things that are personally challenging. Now, we don't want to put ourselves in the spot that we're, you know, totally cracking up, but, you know, I mentioned that really significant impact with the deer. One of the things that I've, it's actually on the road in between my house and my parents' house to live eight minutes up the road. And one thing I've been intentional to do is to drive that road several times. It was really tempting to go the long way, which is like 15-minute way, and not go on that 15, not do the shorter route. It's been really tempting to have my wife drive it instead of me when we're headed that direction. But I've intentionally done it because I have to work through that in order to kind of get past the valley of the shadow of death, if you will, in order to kind of return. And slowly but surely, it's become more normal. I've driven it a couple times recently and forgot that I was there. And I've driven it a couple times and really kind of felt a little more panicky on it. But it's decreased from what it used to be. And, you know, it's important to go sit in church. It's okay if you're just sitting there. You know. Or just corrupt and love all things. And you want to, you know, you want to work on being part of God's people. But it may take time. And I think the third thing to recognize is that we can't simply will this away. You know, in working with individuals who struggle with trauma, they don't want to be there. And they don't want it to be like this. They want it to be joyful, to walk into church. They want it to be joyful. They don't want any inhibitions. But we just have to recognize that as human beings, we can suffer in such a way that makes it so we can't simply will the trouble away. And to be patient and to entreat the Lord's help. But the goal isn't to get rid of trauma symptoms. The goal is to be faithful in the midst of whatever we're going through. And sometimes faithfulness looks like Job where we say, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart. The Lord's given, the Lord's taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And sometimes faith looks like Peter getting out of the boat and walking on water. And other times faithfulness looks like saying, Jesus, I forgot to have faith. Help. Right? As Peter's drowning. And all of those are faithful responses. And that's what God looks at. So, you know, if you're someone that's been deeply involved in church, you know, grandchildren's ministry, led Bible studies, it's okay for you to step back from that for a while. It's okay if things never quite are the same way that they were. Right? Sometimes we can be hurt in ways that continue to have echoes in us. One of my favorite books out there is a book called The Cup and the Glory. It's written by Greg Harris. He's a professor at Master's Seminary or was. He's retired now. And he, it's a book on suffering. And one of the illustrations that he uses is he was teaching at a different seminary. And every single day he would look out at the end of his work day at a bunch of beautiful hundred, hundred year old oak trees. They were like one of the highlights of his, one of the highlights of his teaching there. And then there was a tornado that came through and uprooted all of them and tore them all down. And he just recognized that, you know, things will never quite be the same here. Not for another hundred years. I'll never see that again. And as, and as he kind of mourned realizing that he, he stepped out of his office to go to his car and realized that he could see just brilliant painted sunsets of the brightest oranges and deepest purples and, you know, just all sorts of beautiful hues. And he'd never seen that sunset before from that spot because the oak trees had blocked it. Wow. And, you know, he said, you know, I miss those trees. I do. And yet at the same time, there's a different kind of beauty that I'm able to enjoy every single day now because of the tornado. And that's just something that I've always parked in the back of my head and given to folks at all councils that, you know, the goal is not to get back to where you were because you can't. There are things that you've lost that you'll never recover. But what God can do is work towards building new pictures of beauty. And there may always be that tug in our hearts of things that we've lost. And I'd be surprised if they weren't there because that meant that they meant something, right? That those relationships meant something. That church community meant something. You probably have a lot of memories there of kids being baptized or upon their professions of faith or, you know, just where you met your spouse. Those things can't be, those memories have now been colored and they can't be uncolored necessarily. But what we can do is create new beautiful memories of the places that the Lord uses to help us and heal us. That's really good. James, do you have something? No, that's awesome. And I think that those three points are really practical, very applicable of how they can help their life. And, you know, just what you said about where your wife at. You know, me and Jim, we shared our story of where we went to college and how it's different than it is and is now. Sometimes we question those things, but we can look back and we can reflect on the good that came out of it. The good that came out of that hurt, my salvation in that independent Baptist world and just the things that Michael Ministry was in the independent Baptist world. And so there's great things that have happened and I don't have to throw everything out, but there are going to be some times where something happens and it brings back that memory, that hurt, that pain. We tried to reflect. So I think that's great stuff. Can I piggyback something on the back of that, James? Are you okay with that? Go ahead. Okay, because I want to talk about one word that's become super hot in the world right now and that's the word deconstruction, right? So what you just mentioned there is part of that conversation because, you know, you came to faith. You experienced a call to ministry and ministered in and met your wife in those contexts. And, you know, when something happens or usually a series of things that happens, but kind of when stuff happens that makes us look with a different vantage point on that, we can start to wonder was all of it a mirage? Was all of it fake? And, you know, sometimes this word deconstruction is used to talk about walking away from Christianity. And, you know, I understand those who do, who stare at all of that and say, yeah, because this part of it was foul, because this part of it was putrid, because this part of it was rotten, I can't trust any of it. And I have a lot of compassion for people that do that because a lot of times these stories of deconstruction are driven by horrible personal hurts. But we're followers of Jesus Christ, aren't we? And we aren't able. We're like the disciples, right? We stare at Jesus and say, to whom else will we go? You have the words of eternal life. And I think one thing that is important is that if you are walking these paths, have another faithful Christian to walk alongside with them. Because when we're deep in the midst of kind of traumatic events of personal hurt, of pain, we all get kind of squirrely, don't we? We even see that with Job. I don't know exactly where he turns the corner, but it's somewhere in the 20s, somewhere in like Job chapter 20-ish. He starts going from God's faithful to how dare you. And we all have a tendency to do that, don't we? Where we lose our way. And so if you're in that spot and you're asking those questions of, man, what if this, and trying to untangle things, I perhaps like the word untangling a little bit more than deconstruction for those of us who are Christians, right? As we're seeking to untangle what part of this was legit and is true and what part of this was not legit and harmful, have another Christian to walk alongside. Have it be someone who's mature. Have it be someone who's taken some knocks in life. And they will be able to help guide you in some ways. Don't find a 22-year-old college grad who's just been a life coach, right? Find someone who's been seasoned. I love that. I love that. That's all. You just don't understand how sometimes those things just hit on point for us. Right? Yeah, find someone who's been seasoned, who's faithful, who's taken some knocks about the head and has come out the other side. And, you know, it's a messy process to disentangle our, you know, the things that were helpful from the past and things that were hurtful from the past. Yeah. And so it's wise to have someone walk alongside you. Yeah, I can give a personal example for that because I think James has been good for me because there's, I tend, I have tended over the years to really look back and just like be hypercritical of everything that I experienced. And, you know, James and I have had conversations over the past year to where as time goes on, I can look at more and more things that I'm thinking, okay, wait, that was a positive. And we were having a conversation the last time I was out there about how, you know, one of the things, my frustrations was that my theological education was not, you know, it was awful. And I felt like, you know, I've always had this desire. I wish I would have been able to go to a seminary and get some of that. And, you know, our ministry experience thus far has brought me to sort of a realization. I said, you know, I think a lot of these guys, you know, that are coming from a lot of these centers getting fantastic theological educations, but I think some of them are missing a little bit on just the practical loving people thing. And I was like, James, if there was one thing we did get where we were was how to love people and minister to people. And James was like, yeah, you're right. And it was, it was one of those moments where I was able to, you know, and I'm not sitting there like, listen, my word is not gospel and, you know, an evaluation of all seminaries. But what my point is, is that I was able to get to a point to where I was like, you know, that's a positive that I got from there. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I went, some of the schools that I have attended in the past, I would certainly disagree with, you know, theologically or even in certain cultural moves that they've made and things of that nature. You know, but every single school I've been to, it's taught me to love the Bible. It's taught me to trust what's in there. It's taught me to care about people. And I think you're so wise there, John, to say, you know, if we ever reach a point where we're saying it's all bad, well, maybe we've zigged a little bit too far and need to zag back a little bit because the, and especially in situations of church hurt, and this is one of the most confusing things for people, is that oftentimes the most hurtful leaders are the ones who have shaped us and sometimes the most helpful ways. Right? And so, it takes time. It takes time to dare back something. And I can see how actually, the sum total of this person's ministry was not helpful. But man, I wouldn't be who I was. I wouldn't be who I am apart from the investment they made in me. Right. And they actually built some things in me really helpful. And now, it's the part of me that is walking in rejection to the hurt that they did. You know, like, if you've got a leader who burns bridges, well, you become, and perhaps you become someone who really focuses on investing in the next group of leaders instead of hoarding all kind of power and authority to yourself and treating anybody who's a rival. In many ways, that's actually a response to what the Lord allowed you to learn that person. Some negative examples that we see in others. ... ... ... ... ... ... I think I read in Steve Weyer's book and I think he was actually quoting Wayne Mack and that was the idea that that time heals all wounds is absurd but to process and get healing from those wounds it takes time that's right yeah absolutely that's one of the books i assign in one of my classes here that putting your past in its place i assume yeah very very helpful book james do you have any uh closing comments yeah one of the can you hear me yeah one of the things that i thought was very interesting i want to just say um was that wife when when we went through our uh coming out of the ivy i guess you would say um she struggled with um her former pastor and i mean that's who brought to the lord his pastor's wife the one that led her to the lord baptized her everything and there were things as far as the king james bible that was so dogmatically preached and when when he had used in a version different than that she went to him we we actually went out to arkansas to meet with him because she said i don't know what i can be anymore as a kid you said you said this is the only way and i believe that that and now pastor my spiritual hero is doing that that else is wrong what else is not right that you've said um and it was good time for her her she expressed expressed that with james i don't know what i can believe anymore i don't know what i can trust anymore and so uh it was simply just going and having a conversation and processing and walking through that um that was that was helpful for and so so what you were saying but really appreciate that's we have a time delay i don't think so okay i couldn't understand most of that i'm sorry it's all right it's all right i think uh i think i'll put like a thing at the beginning of the episode to say that we had some audio glitches but i think that the content today has just been so worth it anyways and i think people will be able to get through some of the the the recording difficulties because i think this is helpful and i think that this is something that um is a lot of people are experiencing and a lot of people are really thinking about right now as we said earlier but uh dr brooks do you have any final things that you'd like to leave us with today uh uh maybe just this is that when i'm caring for folks who are dealing with with church hurt i think we need to remember one thing really clearly well there's many things need to remember clearly but i think one thing that's most hopeful is that one day our god will dwell with us in perfection once again and that our our imperfect churches here uh are a shadow of the glory that is to come and you know the the new church that you step into it will cause you hurt to some degree people that aren't perfect they'll be challenging relationships at points there'll be moves made by leaders that you may disagree with it doesn't mean that it's abusive it doesn't mean that it's aniculate doesn't mean it's the church that you were at before and i think all of our church hurt points us back towards the fact that we are strangers and aliens here is that this world is not our home and that our greatest hope is the realization that one day we will be with god in absolutely perfect bodies absolutely perfected souls surrounded by those who've been absolutely perfected and so no matter how dark it may be no matter the challenge no matter the hurt that you're carrying i would just encourage you continue to walk forward in faith and faith is ultimately the hope that one day all things will be made new including you thank you so much and uh thank you for your ministry and thank you for your work that you're doing out there and just you know listening to your story about how you came to this i i appreciate you know that you dug into the subject and you you know did some research and were able to uh provide this and you know god's work and working all of this together for someone to to receive you know help and be pointed back to him and so that was our goal and uh i thank you dr brooks for being with us today taking the time to be with us and um man i am so thankful that dr brooks was able to come on james that was that was some really good material it was and i'm looking forward to re-listening that as you can tell and as i said at the opening part uh i was distracted and so i'm looking forward to re-listening to that and getting some nuts and bolts and really be able to um uh process some of that information again and so i hope it helped you guys and uh hope if you have any comment or feedback you want to let us know about or maybe there's a specific topic that you want us to dive into uh we're looking at some of those topics and we're wanting to um capture those and really talk through them uh me and john have been brainstorming on some things but maybe there as we've been talking some of these topics uh there's maybe a topic that you've had a problem with or maybe there's a topic that you've struggled with in your spiritual journey that we can help you out with uh during this time shoot us an email at uh for freedom ministry at yahoo.com is that right for freedom it's for freedom at yahoo.com for freedom at yahoo.com you can shoot us a message on facebook or twitter and we'll respond to those um or if you go back to episode 20 or whatever i put my cell phone out there and uh hey i've actually had several people who've texted me and i've appreciated it and i've loved being able to talk i've got a marine or a chaplain in uh arizona new mexico area who's reached out to me who's actually started uh a for freedom worship service and that's what they're calling it which is awesome we definitely endorse that and we love that and so if you want to reach out to us feel free reach out to us at any time we would love to have your feedback yeah one other thing we're doing too just because of the business of our schedules we just found that we haven't been able to it's been a real struggle right now uh with the business of ministries and how both of our ministries are picking up to be able to present um material or adequate material um every week so what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to go to bi-weekly so every other week have an episode and i say try because hopefully we can get that done but what i'm saying i guess what i'm saying is is that the every thursday dropping an episode is not going to happen anymore just because we just don't have the time uh to get it done there's there's we we value this we're going to continue to do this because we know that it's it's been helpful but at the same time we have to prioritize uh different things and where god's got us in our lives and right now um family and uh the pastoral ministry that james and i both serving in uh have to take priority over this thing and so we're very thankful to everybody who listens and listen i'm gonna say this we're very thankful to everybody who's listened and then shared an episode to someone else that they thought that could help but we are truly like just totally thankful that you would think that one thing well that an episode that we've done would help someone else and so we're thankful to everybody like that everybody in the rfp network the guys for letting us be a part of that and have a voice in that that area so um i know that may be disappointing to some but that's where we are and you know hey if it comes out that things are just like lining up and we're getting interviews like this this we may do uh week a week to week so yeah it may you may get four in a month it just depends on our schedule and how we're at and how we able to balance family and stuff um and there may be some one-offs where i have an interview with someone or john has an interview with someone or uh we come across a great sermon that we put on here uh that helpful to us you know we're just exploring some ideas and some things that can help um easy our load a little bit uh and so we want to deliver big thing is deliver quality content uh to help you and to help uh our audience so yeah that's right and uh i think that's going to be it for today we're going to come back again with another episode we're excited about that interview another interview that we recorded uh last month during our break and so uh we're going to be interviewing brad bigney the author of the book gospel treason uh but until then until next time james to god not the pastor be the glory thanks for listening to the for freedom podcast to find more content like this please visit rfp network.org to find more podcasts like this one resources and meetups to encourage you on your journeyrew

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