Ever thought about the intersection of mental health and spiritual formation? We dive deep into this topic with Matt, who transitioned from community mental health, to worship leading, to pastoring and counseling. His unique journey presents a host of insights that challenge typical perceptions about the roles of therapists and pastors, and how they navigate the delicate balance of spiritual healing and guidance.
We examine the concept of 'performative Christianity' and its impact on our interactions. This episode explores the subtle yet profound differences between the roles of a pastor and a counselor, tackling the important themes of objectivity and intimacy in both professions. We delve into the vision of formation and how it plays a crucial role in shaping the pastoral and Christian counseling profession.
In our final discussion, we unpack the current trends on counseling and church integration, reflecting on the fears pastors may have in touching the mental health world. We talk about the longing to bring the tools of the profession down to the church level. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone interested in the overlap of mental health and spiritual formation, providing a fresh perspective on how these intersecting worlds shape our understanding of pastoral and Christian counseling. Tune in for an enlightening conversation and prepare to see the roles of pastors and counselors in a new light.
Ever thought about the intersection of mental health and spiritual formation? We dive deep into this topic with Matt, who transitioned from community mental health, to worship leading, to pastoring and counseling. His unique journey presents a host of insights that challenge typical perceptions about the roles of therapists and pastors, and how they navigate the delicate balance of spiritual healing and guidance.
We examine the concept of 'performative Christianity' and its impact on our interactions. This episode explores the subtle yet profound differences between the roles of a pastor and a counselor, tackling the important themes of objectivity and intimacy in both professions. We delve into the vision of formation and how it plays a crucial role in shaping the pastoral and Christian counseling profession.
In our final discussion, we unpack the current trends on counseling and church integration, reflecting on the fears pastors may have in touching the mental health world. We talk about the longing to bring the tools of the profession down to the church level. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone interested in the overlap of mental health and spiritual formation, providing a fresh perspective on how these intersecting worlds shape our understanding of pastoral and Christian counseling. Tune in for an enlightening conversation and prepare to see the roles of pastors and counselors in a new light.
Hey there, friends, dr David Hall here. Today, matt and I are going to be talking about the kind of world that Matt lives in, between of being both a therapist and also living in that pastoral space. As we talk about and unpack the dynamics of mental health and spiritual formation here in the Church Psychology podcast, that's an interesting line that we have to walk of what is a question of mental health, what's a question of spiritual formation. And I just kind of delve into this conversation with Matt as he has lived in both worlds, as somebody who works in a pastoral setting and also as a clinician. So that's what we're getting into today. Super great conversation. Hope you get a lot out of it. Let's slide into that intro music.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Church Psychology, a podcast of the Nagev Institute. We are mental health professionals looking at the intersections of social and behavioral science in the Christian life. Please connect with our free resources in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg. We would be grateful if you would follow, like or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you are finding us, and also leave us a review as we start. If we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our mind, it makes sense to work on our head space. Let's get to work. Welcome to Church Psychology. My name is Matt Schooneman. I'm here again with Dr David Hall. Hey David, hey Matt, we're doing it with you again.
Speaker 1:It's always good to be with you, even when it's not, it is when we're separate, we are together. You know it's never a part. Yeah, these episodes will probably be coming out close together. We've had a few weeks where we haven't met record. It's been Easter and then just navigating life, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know that when kids get sick you have to take care of them. I learned that it is. You have to take care of them, so it throws everything else out of the sink.
Speaker 1:I don't have children and Matt and I we work in the same office and a lot of our people we work with have kids, a lot of young kids, and it's just like y'all live in a Petrie dish.
Speaker 2:It's tough, it gets out of whack, it does.
Speaker 1:So, but it seemed to be on the min now. I hope it stays that way.
Speaker 2:No, they're good, yeah, and we're all good and healthy and I'm excited to be back recording this. Of course, anybody that's listening is probably like. I just listened to you like three minutes ago on the other one.
Speaker 1:But you know that's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Good for us.
Speaker 2:But the likely that yeah, well likely, it's going to be five years from now. These actually come out. So it's this little process. No, I'm more.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking quicker than that.
Speaker 2:No, we are good.
Speaker 1:So we're doing something slightly different today.
Speaker 2:We are yeah.
Speaker 1:I want to interview you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I mean you're generally in the host role, kind of leading the conversation, but there is a divergence in yours and my experience that I think is just interesting to kind of explore. So we're going to talk about today. So I have in my professional life I've been a therapist and I haven't been anything else. I was. I worked in restaurants before that, in grad school, but that wasn't a career. This is kind of what I mean?
Speaker 2:I mean, bartending is close to therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is in a lot of ways, but it was that's one role I've had and it's kind of been in that space and even as I've played different roles in that as I've been a professor, teacher, like, it's still within that world. You, on the other hand and I think this will be similar to maybe some of the people that are going to be connecting with this have have existed in in two worlds, in that you are a licensed mental health counselor and a supervisor, but you are also currently a pastor and have had that role and different types of pastoral roles within vocational ministry throughout your career as well. So it is so it's kind of a tale of two worlds we're getting into today, of because and so much of our conversations are supposed to be about this intersection point between ministry air quotes I give that because we're all in ministry, vocational ministry, or the work of the, the institutions of the church.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And mental health. So you've it's a tale of those two worlds, of and kind of your journey in them. So, yeah, yeah, that's so I guess, to start off and kind of thinking through through questions, like talk about your journey. I guess that's the most like from you know, from it's probably not to volunteer to the different places you've been in. So yeah, take us on a journey.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know, to tell a little bit about how I've been on this journey, there's been a couple of people in my life, some mentors even that have have commented both in encouragement and criticism of like, what feels like this, this winding road of my career.
Speaker 2:And even one of them said like sometimes following God is like following a bubble bee you don't really know which way it's going to go and that's what it's felt like for me, although at some level I think shepherding other people has been some of my MO, like just a natural bent that I have of helping others and guiding them, not necessarily like advice giving, but being compassionate and present and a listening ear. That's there's just been kind of throughout my life and so counseling holistically, I think, has been a natural landing place. But where I've done counseling has been somewhat of the the both and in the tale of two worlds. But before even I was in counseling, I mean I got my degree psychology, I was. I worked some in social work for a while. I had also a passion for worship music and you know, for some of my college age years and my young 20s I was worship leading in places and really felt like that was in a sense by the Lord's calling. In a sense I was somewhat directionless in that space and didn't really know where I was going. I just knew what I enjoyed doing at some level. And so I graduated college and was a well undergrad and I was able to get a job at a local community mental health agency and at that place I had people that were my supervisors, that said to me or were starting to get their degree in counseling, and the things that I was doing with these kids and their families were good in a sense of like helping them find resources and, you know, trying to be helpful with their behaviors. But it felt like for me that I was just giving band-aids to really big problems that were being addressed. I didn't have the skills to do it and so I felt like counseling process would be where, or the counseling degree would be where I would find the most skills in that, and anybody that's been through graduate work, you do get some, it's not. You still come away feeling like, am I ready to do this? Like no, no, and I think I got most of my skills and training from doing the work and being mentored by really impactful counselors.
Speaker 2:I always have had a heart for ministry and so I've always tried to find the way between the two spaces, and so for most of my start was in the kind of mental health sphere, not the church world. Then I got this random opportunity to help pastor a church, a really small church of like 50 people. Not I was kind of the associate and the worship pastor for a couple years, so I kind of took a break from counseling or I was using that space to kind of feel out my church background or my church the kind of ministry bug I guess and then also complete my degree in counseling. But then I left there and went back to the community about health agency as a therapist I thought, okay, here's where it's really I'm going to find impact, because I think for me it's always been impact. Where can I find the most impact in things? And there I did. But it burned me out Like I was a young therapist learning the ropes, seeing probably upwards of 30 clients a week, which in counseling world is a lot at the lot.
Speaker 1:And so people hear those numbers and they think like well, that's 30 hour a week job. No, that's 30 clients.
Speaker 2:There's all the paperwork and there's all the emotional wear of dealing with 30 unique difficulties and kind of bearing the weight of those, because they're families and couples and so many things represented in those 30 encounters and so what happened?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I gained all the hours I needed for licensure, which was kind of a big reason. I was in that space too, and I was approached by a man who then became like a really dear friend and mentor who offered me an opportunity to because I was still itching for like I got a, not a have to be, but I wanted to be in the ministry somehow because at at the community mental health space I could not talk about God's impact. Now, there were there were a handful, maybe there were a couple that were like I want to talk about this as part of my thing and that was great. But I knew that a lot of the problems within it should be attributed to how they view themselves and who God was to them, those types of things. So my mentor at the time has remained that for me. But he tamed me and was like what if I could offer an opportunity where you could do maybe some worship here and counseling here and get into the church world again as a pastor? I did, and it was really helpful to kind of get my feet in there.
Speaker 2:So I started working at a local church where I still work, but that whole process has been a wave of different things because I came back to the therapy world, and so it's always this and, to sum it up, I've always lived in the tension of the two worlds, and maybe we'll talk about it in a minute of the why. But there's something with both that are crucial, I think, to the advancement of the kingdom, and that's where I kind of landed in the why. I've held the tension because I started to see the goodness in both, and so now I work with David at Haven, I'm a supervisor, we do Negev, and then I pastor some at a church, mainly in the counseling realm, because that church finds value a lot in the integration of mental health and faith. But I also help lead some of the men's ministry stuff there. So it's just I have a lot of hats, I guess. Big closet, big closet of hats.
Speaker 1:So it's the yeah, a lot good there. Something to highlight that you said in different pieces of that, matt, and kind of, I think, came up as a theme of we talk about where we feel drawn, and there are two themes I heard you talk about in that. One was the sense of where did you find your joy and enjoyment? What was you know in leading, worship and being with people? So joy was one part and then impact was the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I would say that's a deep part of wiring for all of us. We want, for the way that we spend our energy and our time and whatever, to matter and we want to have joy in it. And joy I even mean kind of beyond the sense of like, are you having fun? Right, that's something I've got a lot of people in my life that talk about like, well, are you having fun? Is this fun and fun's great? I like fun, yeah, but fun is not synonymous with joy. Joy is something, as I understand, that runs deeper. Yeah, comes from a sense of satisfaction, even in adversity, that joy can exist when you're deeply unhappy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because there's a sense of yeah of itself. Cs Lewis talks about joy as a form of desire, but it's a form of desire that, in desiring the thing, it is more enjoyable than the fulfillment of anything else, and it's kind of a searching process, and I think that's how joy and a desire for impact kind of meld and come together. And the tricky thing is, though, is there are these desires that we have? But what another theme I heard you get into is kind of the description of the realization that all of us hit is our finite capacity as humans and the finite abilities that certain spaces provide, and we have a sense that there's more. Whatever we're doing, there's the sense that it could be more, and I'm sure that when you transition from community mental health as a case manager's, social work kind of role, and then you finished and you got more credentials and more schooling, and we're back in a different role, I'm sure the role is the therapist in some ways felt like it allowed you to go deeper and have more impact than maybe some of it before.
Speaker 1:But you get there and it's like, well, but there's still more, there's still more, and I think a lot of people that work in so many of even though I've not been in vocational ministry I've had a disproportionate amount of my close friends have been I've a lot of close people in my life that that's their work, and I think that's a reoccurring theme. I hear for them too, it's not even that they don't feel that they're having impact, but there's this kind of driving forward and I think it's a restlessness that is good within certain parameters, I think, one that we also have to assess and examine in ourselves. And what am I looking for? And, in the deep cut in it, what are the ways that I may be trying to step into the role of a sovereign God when I'm not?
Speaker 2:I think it's a really important point, because there's a level to which my wrestling was beyond the what I wanted to do, or even deep. Well, I mean, it was attached to Deep Impact, but it was not the 1997 movie, but my joy is a great movie it is a good movie.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I love like this is. This is tangential. I love apocalyptic movies. I don't know what is about them, but maybe it's this whole sense of like the world has to finally band together because there's nothing else you could do. Like deep. What was the one that came out with it? Deep?
Speaker 1:Armageddon.
Speaker 2:Armageddon.
Speaker 1:The one was an asteroid, one was a comet and that was the like. But they came out the same year at the time. It's so funny.
Speaker 2:It was so funny, anyway, to be an asteroid. I wanted to. I wanted to do that. I wanted to really deeply impact people's lives, but what I found and this is a newer revelation this is only maybe months old, but a sense of I have a role to play in this. I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't get the responsibility and honor of being God to these people and we talk about this concept of a Messiah complex you know of. I want to save them from their troubles. I want to be the, you know, the white knight, the Superman, the hero, and it's to some level there's, there's goodness in that desire. Like I don't want to, I don't want to shoot people down that have that kind of drive, but we have to put ourselves in perspective of what our role is. I think we get to be a part of the process, I get to be a tool or an instrument in God's movement, in this person's life, but I do not get to be God to them, I don't get to be the savior, and that's something that I've had to kind of wrestle with, because that drive has impacted a lot of my choices, I think in what kind of vocation I do, whether that's within the church walls or if that's within a community mental health agency or as a private practice, you know, practitioner, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:I think some of that stuff has driven my decisions and again for those listening that's it's not a bad thing to want to help somebody or even be like I would love to be the hero in the story. There's something good about that. But if that's what we drive for, then it almost even becomes selfish ambition of why I'm doing the work. So I can feel this way, not that I deeply impact something, and so that's been some of my journey of the why I've, I think, wavered at times and felt some of the pull in different directions, but I think God's redeeming that in me and it's been a process for sure.
Speaker 1:Be yeah, good stuff. I mean there's some things that Matt and I come to these conversations with that are scripted, but then other things we're just having a conversation and so I don't normally, it's just a conversation. And, but not wanting you. And so, even as I listened to, as you share, like it's wanting to, like huh, like I want to digest, and but also realize that my pondering what you're saying is not a good use of recording time, but if you move on with the conversation please, I do think it's this we're constantly, I think, in if we seek wisdom, we're constantly trying to find that line between where I stop and the infinite begins, whether it's God himself or or even just the, the expansive creation that is beyond me and that things are in, but to recognize one's limits, it's.
Speaker 1:It's both very humbling but also very liberating, because as you talk about this journey is I've not experienced an exact parallel with you, because we're talking about your role in vocational ministry and but I've experienced it in other ways and after the initial sting of the, the humility that is forced upon you, in that I find there's great relief. I find I don't try to carry as much and it's one of the things we talk about in this, in this field, like it's easy to be overly burdened and I think a lot of that is we expect. We're trying to fill this void. We're trying to I think I don't recall your exact phrasing map but to lift or to take off the burdens of somebody else. And it's not ours to take necessarily, it's ours to be companions with them and to, to, to commiserate, to encourage, to support, to walk alongside, but we don't get to take their packs.
Speaker 1:Church psychology is a production of the Negev Institute, a research resource and teaching initiative that aims to provide Christian communities with practical education and consulting to faithfully speak to our needs in mental health, relational science and human habit and behavior.
Speaker 1:A great way to support Negev is to start a free membership in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg and then stay connected with our email newsletter to hear about new classes, publications, live forums and in-person events. Again, you can find all that at churchpsychologyorg. So to to transition out to the next question, I have so, and this is something that I still think about and I still try to define it but how would you describe in your experience, the difference between a therapist and, let's say, even a faith-based Christian therapist and a pastor, and what? What is the difference between that? And we'll take out, we'll say that this, the, the therapist, is working in a faith-centric space. And let's say the pastor I don't mean a preacher, I don't necessarily mean the CEO of a church, even sort of thing Like where you're doing pastoral care as an associate or family minister, for things like that yeah, what's the difference?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and some of the disclaimers that you have. I think one thought would be that not all pastors can be counselors. You know, like there are you mentioned the preacher there are still giftings and we can maybe in later time talk about what are spiritual gifts and what those look like, and how does that relate to even your personality and how the gifts that God has given you? And I think that there's a level to which you have some pastors that can't be counselors and you definitely have counselors that can't be like pastors. There's a level of ability to hold. Maybe it's even maybe not pastors but like preachers. Or you know, they're not maybe great educators or great upfront speakers, but they're amazing at the one-on-one, you know. So there's some of those distinctions and I think people for the most part understand those, but that's kind of a higher level thing. But if you get down deeper, let's say that they're more closely aligned. You have a pastor who has a counseling gift and then you have a counselor who has a Christian faith and wants to utilize that within a setting and maybe even has a Christian focused counseling center.
Speaker 2:You know there are some, especially in the South. Here we have different counseling practices that are very forward statement of we are Christian based. You know, and we're going to use that as our model Not everywhere in the country can do that. You know, there's even laws now that have been kind of I would. I don't know how you claim this, david, but they're almost murky waters, like it's hard to kind of dig out what is the law as it relates to certain things. But there's things related to even like who has governance over your yeah, it does become tricky for your license.
Speaker 1:Yes, because ultimately, if you're licensed, you're licensed by the state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in the United States, yeah, You're governed by the state as a, and so you have to follow the rules and regulations of the state. Now, as a pastor, you're governed by the church or the conference, or what are other examples.
Speaker 1:The nominations or the diocese or whatever. Yeah, there's somebody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you're governed by them and they have a different set of rules that may give you more freedom to talk about certain things, and so those are some of the kind of logistics of the separation. But even as you get down deeper, the heart level things, I think what kind of separates the two at times is the focus of three crucial elements of, I think, whether you want to call it disciple making, being evangelical, like just the act of walking alongside someone in the hopes that they come closer to Christ. Now, as a Christian, we believe that for everybody, no matter if you're a therapist or not, I think that in the counseling realm you have such. You play within the sole workplace and so it's like we're there. We don't have to necessarily go through angles of business or teaching or engineering, like all these things. That kind of are at the surface that, okay, if I get connected to that way, then maybe as a friendship grows I can kind of dig deeper. Like as a therapist, people are coming to you to expose their soul and say like, hey, here's what's going on. Now they may not claim it's a soul thing, maybe it's their mind or their heart or their, but it's whatever. The infysical parts of them are struggling. They bring it to the table.
Speaker 2:And so as a Christian, whether you are a pastor or not, I think there are three crucial elements of things that you do and this was told to me by somebody, so it's not original to me. But you water, no, you seed, you water and then you harvest. I think within the pastoral place, the primary focus is usually leaning on the watering and harvesting. You have people within that realm normally, at least in the South, it's less evangelical here, like there's more like church hopping, and so you have people that come to your space as a pastor or a pastoral counselor who believe what you believe and they just need help understanding it deeper. So then sit here watering some more of it and then eventually you become a place where you can harvest that or see the harvest. At least man, they're really producing fruit now, like that's amazing to see.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes within the therapist realm it's more leaning towards the seeding and watering. I will I may not see, especially the people that come see me percounseling, that are not believers. I have an openness and oftentimes an excitement for those that don't believe, and it's not that I try to convert them by any means, but I wonder how God uses me, the Spirit uses me in that session to plant seeds in this person's life or entice them to himself. Again, I'm not trying to convince them or sway them in any way that they need to know Christ. That's not my role, and especially being governed by the state. It may not be a legal role, but the thing that I can do is be faithful to what the Spirit guides me in and how I help this person with my training and those things and prayerfully consider like okay, these may be seeds that can then be harvested way down the line. Does that make sense? Sure.
Speaker 1:And so I'm pondering. I'm going back to what I was saying before. I'm writing things down as we're talking and so I'm pondering but I can't take the long therapist's pauses. But no, I affirm and agree with a lot of what you're saying. I have a few different kind of thoughts, that kind of come in Some I want to speak to kind of the legalese in it. There is some of that absolutely, and I say this is a native southerner.
Speaker 1:I see pros and cons in kind of the space that we live in, because you talk about the church hopping and I think that's the issue too, of that. I think a lot about one of the things that's difficult in more socially, religiously conservative spaces Stuff can be very kind of performative. I find where it's how it looks versus how it is. Because I think of people I know that run Christian counseling centers. One group I know outside of Portland Oregon. I did some supervision once with a woman who she worked at the only Christian counseling center in Vermont that was labeled as Christian counseling, vermont's only civic estate, and people found that part of it is that you stick out more and I think that's something. But there are cons and pros in both different spaces One of the ways that I, as a non-pastor, that I've thought of or articulated the difference.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot of relevance to we talk about the seeding, the watering and the harvesting, because I do think about particularly the front in sorts of things. More seeding and watering in counseling Because it's rare. It's rewarding but it's rare where you work with somebody as a counselor and then somehow you get to see their life later, that they've wrapped up with you and something comes up and I've had that happen. I've been a counselor long enough that I've either people have reconnected with me or I just see out in social spaces a former client of mine and evidence of them thriving and I could see connections between the things that we got into in counseling and how that and that's really rewarding. But typically we don't see that as much. One of the ways I think about it is that we are very much about method and less about direction. I think a lot about how CS Lewis and Mere Christianity, who had a much more limited understanding of psychotherapy and part of that was the world of psychotherapy was much more limited with Lewis' writing.
Speaker 2:It was first happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but CS Lewis talks about this idea of he talks about psychoanalysis, and it's this idea. He uses the example of somebody who has paralyzing fear in wartime. Therapy can help them maybe get over their paralyzing anxiety or their panic attacks. The moral decision then becomes well, what do I do now? Do I choose to be brave and stand up to danger, or do I still flee? And one is an issue of form. So when we're dealing with people with debilitating depression, anxiety, deep relational dysfunction, so many different things, what we're trying to get into is we're kind of like emotional or relational engineers. We're trying to work on the structure. Yeah, and part of how I understand Christian formation is what sort of building we're going to build. That's kind of the vision and the direction. This is the vision for what this building needs to be, and here maybe some raw materials we're going to bring in and that's a lot of the discipleship, the pastoring sorts of things. I think of this. Some of what we do is more kind of fine-tuning, engineering or architecture of like okay, how's this arch going to work? We know that we want to arch, we have material for the arch, but we're having issues with it supporting the way and there are things that and so we get in. More precisely, I think it's a certain pieces.
Speaker 1:I think when a lot of pastors refer to us, to me, definitely it's because it's not that the pastor doesn't have. The pastor has a vision of what the end result should be. What they are recognizing when they refer them to me is they don't necessarily have the tools to fulfill that vision. In this specific instance. That's true. That's one way that I think about it is we're also much more specialized in the sense of we exist in professional license, mental health. There are rules about Our profession is called dual relationships. I can't be buddies with my clients and honestly, that's kind of sad for me. Sometimes I have clients that I would love to be able to be friends with in the real world, and sometimes it's a great gift.
Speaker 2:Other times it's great, but there are different reasons for that.
Speaker 1:Some of it is. What we offer is a sense of objectivity and one of the things I say is intimacy and objectivity work in different directions. The more intimate you are with somebody, sometimes you lose objectivity. Where I think of the pastoral role, of being kind, of this more organic, lived in sort of thing. But the benefit of what we do is I've had pastors refer to me and have said I cannot say to this person what needs to be said to them because they're on my elderboard or because they're too big of a donor in the church and I'm not. And the example I'm thinking of didn't come from moral cowardice Like this was. They were just being practical. But they're like you don't work for them in that way and you can probably say to them the things that I can't say or they may be able to hear from you the things that they won't hear from me. So, but I think the role's overlap and I think that's one of the points. It's not this vast world's apart.
Speaker 2:I think there are there's points of overlap and there's points of difference, and for you there's constantly thinking through which is which Right, and that's a challenge, and, you know, within our theme of tension is always tense, of just knowing which role to hold. You know, in the church, in my work as a pastor, I have approached it more as an integrationist and kind of with the recognition of my tension, and so I don't always see things the same. But what that does, though or not see things the same I don't always kind of have the same reaction to things that other pastors do Like at times. You know this is not a shot at any pastors, but at times there's a sense of like oh, that's too hot for me, I'm going to send that to like a professional, you know, and I hold it a little bit longer. Maybe you know, there are times I try to find the boundary is a better way to think for me to think of is this within the confines of what I need to do within the church, or do I need to send them to someone to where I could technically do it in my hat as a counselor in the community? But I need to hold some of these boundaries for different reasons, and there's a lot of reasons for that. However, there's a general theme that is similar.
Speaker 2:That I think pastors should also hear is that there's a level to which people are going to bring you stuff, and, as the world continues to struggle, they're going to continually be stirred up in some way, and so they're looking for people to guide them, to shepherd them in some way, and to whatever level the pastor can do. That, I think, is really important. However, for various reasons, as you may be suggested like they're on the elderboard, they're a big time donor. They're you know, I don't, in a sense, sometimes pastors, and this is not a criticism, it's a confession that I have. I want community as much as everyone else does within my church body.
Speaker 2:The problem, though, is being a pastor or being the lead pastor. Even I'm not the lead pastor, but, like for those that are, it's a lonely space, and I think that one of the commonalities between a counselor and a pastor is that it's naturally lonely. You get so much of someone's deepest stuff, yet you can't reciprocate and have them hold your stuff. You hold a different position. In a sense, you are the leader of them. I feel I'm a leader of people, but from a more individualistic place than a group place, and so there are times, even at church.
Speaker 2:My church is fairly large but I stand in the back and feel kind of awkward because I know a lot of people's stuff but I can't, like I can't go and talk to them. They sometimes come talk to me and I love that. It's a funny. It's a funny story. My wife and I have been married for about 12 years and in that 12 years I've been kind of in this profession and growing in it and as I've been working at the church more and more, she has got this tactic Whenever someone comes up and talks to me, she kind of feels all the heat or she doesn't like, she's not. She has learned this kind of thing of because I've acted super awkward, but she's like who?
Speaker 1:is that.
Speaker 2:And I'm like.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know, but what she will do is she'll just kind of be like calm, collected, until that person introduces themselves to her. But it's just funny because we have to play these games, because there's so much like confidence that people like I want the space where they come and talk to me whether it's as a pastor or as a therapist that to be confidential. I want it to be a place of safety and so because of that, it makes regular interactions with Joe over here like weird, you know. So it's all that I'd be saying. It's a lonely, it's a lonely profession, either way you take it.
Speaker 1:It absolutely can be. It's one where it's easy to exist without peers, true peers. Everybody is either someone being shepherded by you, both as a therapist or a pastor, or a superior in the sense of, particularly in the things that feel more vulnerable to us. That, me, being honest, is not without cost. It's not about any number of things, yeah, yeah, because the messaging can be, you know you need to be honest.
Speaker 1:this needs to be a safe space. But the reality is, you know, there are things that Matt or I could do and if we told certain people it would affect our ability to work, our ability to hold licenses. Now, I'm not saying we've done anything that needs to have a license to take away. The point is is that the caution?
Speaker 2:that you had to take.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of caution. And then, and going to the sense of we hold you know it's, it's, I realize in different church settings confidentiality may be treated differently. In therapy it's pretty set by law of we can't talk, I can't acknowledge, people are free to acknowledge me out, and I have to navigate that because ultimately we live in a medium sized city and I inhabit at least a pretty small part of it Like my life, my, I don't see clients from all over the city necessarily. There's a disproportionate amount of people that live within the same area. We go to the same grocery stores and see each other at the same restaurants and I see clients all the time and fortunately my wife's a therapist and so she, she knows the navigation process and uh, but it is just this, but it's this funny set apart thing.
Speaker 1:A few more questions I want to touch on. Yeah, so you've talked about different things, but how we kind of see the world, where do you see it evolving at this point? Because I've thought a lot about the evolution of how people see therapists Since I've been in the field. It came from. I never felt like it was shameful to be a therapist, but people didn't talk about their own therapy, definitely like they do now, and people talk about their own therapy and it's it's a badge of honor in a way that very different than it was, you know, 15, 16, 17 years ago when I was early in the field. People talk about like, oh yeah, my therapist is such and such and this is what it, and so I see people being much more into therapy and people a lot less into church, and that's what factor I see.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, that that's an interesting point.
Speaker 2:I've, you know, I've actually read up on some of this and I think some of the trends that are happening are that younger generations are looking to counseling not just for their own you know health needs, but for their spiritual needs as well. There's been a it's the great deconstruction of, of the Christian faith that's been occurring over the past handful of years In that phrase look it up if you want. You may know about it if you're listening to us and we'll probably talk about it at some point. But there's, in that deconstruction there's been a hesitancy to trust the system of church, the function, the hierarchy, the, the leadership. But they still long for spiritual guidance of some kind, and so what they usually find it in is in therapy, and so I think that that's even been kind of the sway to see that younger generations are more it's not just for their spirituality, but they're more open and kind of even like flaunting their therapy, like my therapist said, that's I'm doing this, you know like, and so it is definitely swung to a place of kind of a badge of honor in their therapy. Now I've had some people like that, definitely people that have seen me as kind of their quote unquote spiritual guide. They wouldn't necessarily say it, but I think I've seen that and not been connected to a church body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's been a real interesting trend as far as the church, and we may have talked about this before, but there there's a both and of like how the church views counseling. On one hand it's been very open to the integration of things and I get a little bit of that from my church's model on that. But then on the other there's there's still a resistance which is real kind of interesting to me to to see, and I believe maybe more so as it relates to our culture in our in the Southeast. There's been more. I wouldn't necessarily say it's like a split like this, but I think that there's definitely like still two camps. One that's like yes, counseling is very important and maybe you lean to overly important. Then there's like the other side which is you know, you don't go to counseling, you may end up. You do these things, you trust in God, you know that kind of stuff as well, and so I don't know where we'll be in years to come. But I do think that it'll be interesting to see how churches utilize whether their own staff, if they're larger, to kind of produce mental health needs, because that's going to be present no matter what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like the, the increase in mental health issues and crises have continued to progress over the years, and it's been a lot for churches to deal with. Yeah, and I think what they're probably going to do is rely on local spaces, like, like group practices or individuals that they know and trust, and they're going to send them to there rather than try to get into that, because I think, to be honest with you, I feel like for the majority of the pastors that I know, there's a little bit of like fear as it relates to touching the mental health world. Yeah, and maybe it. Maybe it's the unknown and ununderstood I don't know how to say that Misunderstood but there's a level to which that feels too hot for them still, and so they're going to send it out to people that they trust instead of kind of engaging it that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to some level, you know, not to. I don't want to. I want to be careful how I say this. Even within the church that I'm a part of, we have a counseling center, and I think that pastors at times are too quick to send people to us, rather than address the issue with whatever skills they have first and then send it to us if need to be. So that's still the trends that I'm seeing. It still feels too hot, I think, to most church pastors, goers, that kind of stuff, and to be fair to them, I mean it's getting intense. I mean I don't know about you, david, but there's it's hard to get people into my schedule. Oh yeah, well, it's, it's, we are, we are booked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I see that from therapists everywhere, and part of it, I think it's a combination of objectively, there's data to support this People are living with more anxiety and the negative effect and there are lots of different things affecting that and plenty of things we're going to talk about in the future.
Speaker 2:I've got opinions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we also have data.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's fair Data off of opinions. Yes and but.
Speaker 1:I think that is meeting the wave of a greater acceptance and interest and openness to seeking mental health services and I think those two things combined affect that. Yeah, we're really booked, but yeah, it's the. The future is unpredictable. We can see trends, but it's it's hard to know exactly how we want it to be.
Speaker 1:But part of what we desire for this podcast and what I do with the Negev Institute is we want to that latter point. We want to distill down as much as possible what we have from our field down to the church level, and I just we don't just mean like the paid staff, but just the. We mean the church in the sense of the community of believers, of how we can, we can translate and quip with the tools out of our profession. Because there is this gap in some of its fear. Some of it is it feels overwhelming, some of it is ignorance. But final question I want to end with so you have a time machine and you're able to go back and talk to your younger self, and let's assume that we're not dealing with any like time loop issues, that that you're able to, that the universe isn't going to deconstruct in this process, that your younger self is going to accept that this is you speaking to them without Everything dissolves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, is this back to the future type time machine or Avengers in game type time machine? You can choose, you choose Okay.
Speaker 1:You can choose, but they, they spend a lot of time avoiding each other back to the future and then, and then the multiverse happens in the. The multiverse, yeah, so let's just assume that, for the sake of simplicity, that you're able to communicate the download with your younger self, got it? So let's go ahead and do a quick review of this. What is it? And let's say you know, at the beginning of this journey, let's say you and your early 20s, what would be the key things about this top, about the idea of life is a therapist, life is a pastor, life at the intersection between the two, what would you want your younger self to understand? That you feel you, you know now.
Speaker 2:Do what Well, excellent ideas. I may have to just brainstorm with you, but I think it is in the realm of two things One is to well, one has to inform the other, to trust kind of what God is doing in your heart. And then there's a sense to which I think, placated or was swayed by the opinions of others and I did not listen to myself well, to know who I am, what my giftings are, to trust those, to know them as strengths and even hold my weaknesses with a sense of purpose and trust that God was even going to use those. For the long parts of my 20s I was trying to deeply hide any weakness because my fear was that if I were to expose the weakness then I would let everybody down. It would all come crumbling down, and so you can imagine the pressure that that felt like. And so I think to trust God more would be one message. The other one then would be and this is, I think, what I would share with anybody right now.
Speaker 2:Being a pastor has been a great gift, but in being a pastor I have realized that it's not everything I've wanted it to be. You know, there is kind of this sense of if I could get there, then it would all feel right, and it's never felt 100% right. We talk about good enough. There's been a place to which it's, in the moment, felt good enough, but I guess my message to everybody else is this sense of we're still tools and instruments and we're not the whole salvation of the world, and my pride to take a hit on that, to say like I could have been, I don't know.
Speaker 2:One of my first jobs out of school was not in the mental health realm, it was actually at a local security system place. I was a monitor of alarms. Now, if I stayed there forever I probably would die Like it was just not my thing. But the thought that I had, that I would give my elder self would be like you don't know what God could do through you in this space to deeply impact someone else. You don't have to be everything like this pastor, this great person, this great leader to make impact. You can make impact in small ways, quiet ways, and so I think I would love for my younger self to know that more, because then I think the grasping for things would be less.
Speaker 1:For me to reiterate what you said as we closed out, and what I heard and what I feels just kind of thing in the moment, is that this idea that your ministry isn't something that's going to happen, it's happening now and whoever's listening to this that is absolutely true. Ministry is not something in the future, it is in this moment, as finite beings that inhabit time and space and a certain like now. That doesn't mean we don't have aspirations, things we want to grow towards, things we want to become more skilled and competent in. That is good. We are called to do that. However, ministry is not something later, it is now. It may look different later than it does now, but it doesn't change the fact that now is just as much it and I am just as guilty.
Speaker 1:I've done that in so many places in my life where I'll kind of future book something. This is when I'll truly be able to live in this fruit of the Spirit. This is when I'll truly be able to have the impact that I feel I need to have. And again, I think it's good to dream. I think we're given good dreams, but if you're listening to this podcast while you're sitting behind the desk of monitors that are security company. You are in your ministry, not like forever necessarily, but in this moment you are.
Speaker 2:I needed to hear that at a younger age. If I was your therapist then I would have liked to hear.
Speaker 1:That's what you want to tell me. Maybe I would have thought to say it then. So, yeah, thank you everybody for being with us in the conversation today. Thank you, matt, for sharing and, yeah, you can catch more of these things as we have in the show notes, and peace out.
Speaker 2:Thank you again for being a part of our latest episode of Church Psychology. If you have enjoyed it, we hope that you will share this episode with others in your life, and please do remember to follow, like and or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you're finding us, and leave us a review. We look forward to connecting with you again soon.