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Church Psychology
Mental Health Professionals looking at the intersections of social & behavioral science and the formed Christian life. Visit us for free resources and more at www.ChurchPsychology.org
Church Psychology
Church Psychology: Bridging the Gap between Faith and Mental Health
Ever grappled with the clash between faith and mental health? You're not alone. We're Matt and David, joining forces on the debut episode of the Church Psychology Podcast to tackle this often unspoken issue head-on. With our shared years of service at Haven Counseling Center and our respective backgrounds as a therapist/pastor and psychologist/teacher, we lift the veil on the desperate need for mental health resources within the Christian community. Plunging into the heart of the matter, we explore the tension between orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy, offering our unique insights on how to align with our true selves in Christ.
Strap in as we unpack the discord between secular psychology and biblically based church communities. You'll hear us shed light on the stark difference between superficial faith and deeply-held beliefs, sharing practical tools to nourish believers as they navigate life in their communities. We also touch on how creating spaces for grace, compassion, and vulnerability within the church can help dismantle the stigma around mental health. This episode is an invitation to join us on a journey to destigmatize mental health within faith-based environments, cultivate resilience and support each other in living out our calling.
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 headspace. Let's get to work Well. Welcome everybody to the Church Psychology podcast. My name is Matt Schooniman. I'm here with David Hall. Hey, David. Hey, Good to see you, Matt, Good to see you. This is our inaugural episode, David, of the Church Psychology podcast. It's been a long run in the making and I'm really excited to jump in with you on it. I can see the excitement on your face.
Speaker 1:I'm as well, we're here for it. What we wanted to do with in this episode for all those that are listening or even watching us is to really introduce ourselves first and foremost. We're excited about what we're bringing, but that doesn't mean that you know what we're bringing. And so to start that process of explaining that, we wanted to first kind of say hello, kind of a cold call, kind of introducing. And so first of all we'll introduce who we are, david, and then we'll kind of talk about our projects at hand. And so I'll start with that.
Speaker 1:But my name is Matt Schooniman, like I said, and I'm a therapist and pastor in the Knoxville Tennessee area. That's where we're from. David and I are both a part of a counseling center called Haven Counseling and I also work at a local church, and so I bring to the table things related to the counseling world but also to the theological, pastoral world, and so that's kind of who I am, and I've got a lot of heart for different populations. But we can get into those things later. But, david, why don't you describe who you are and we'll kind of dive deeper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i am a. as Matt said, we work together at a counseling center in Knoxville, tennessee. I'm a psychologist and teacher. I've not worked in vocational pastoral work before but I've been in the church, as we say, like my entire life. I grew up in church environment and it kind of been through, particularly in kind of someone my age I'm an old millennial in the kind of high bracket of that demographic generationally but kind of grew up through a lot of things that I think a lot of people who are engaging with this podcast or video would probably have experienced in their own life, of kind of the different society and cultural trends, both larger, greater society and also in the church, of kind of coming up through the 80s, 90s, 2000s And these are the best years.
Speaker 2:They're the best years, yes, best years for music, best years for lots of things And part of the met and my roles as well is we're with a group called the Nagev Institute, which is a group that's been set up to really with a vision to empower church communities in mental health resources And we'll talk and unpack some of kind of the why behind that. But yeah, i've worked as a mental health therapist my entire working career, basically adult life, since my mid-20s I'm in my early 40s at this point and have worked with it in that field, serving a lot of people who are in the Christian community, who identify as believers, and so these kind of intersection points between the worlds of mental health, both in the nitty gritty in the counseling room and also culturally in discussions around mental health, is kind of places that I've lived and worked And we just feel that there's a need to unpack this.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned the part about being a counselor for so long but finding a unique space of believers that are seeking out counseling.
Speaker 1:I've found that one of the unique parts that I think I've felt a little bit spoiled with is the church that I'm a part of The reason.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I would I'm saying this publicly now but I think that the part of the reason that they've kind of adopted me as a pastor is because of the counseling realm that I was trained in.
Speaker 1:But we recognize that not every church has a counseling center or even a strong grasp of mental health and the counseling process.
Speaker 1:I even had a friend I was talking to and he being a pastor at one point and just wanting to seek out some of his own help, and he had fear to express that to his other staff members because of the stigma that would be there. And so what I found is, even in our counseling center, david of the Haven realm, is we have a lot of believers coming to us and wanting to talk about these very deep issues, but wanting to do it through the element of their faith, and so it became. It's not necessarily niche, but it is a sense that there's a great need of church going believers, in this city at least, that are seeking out that type of care from a faith-based perspective, and so I think that that's some of what this comes from too. is that seeing that I don't know if I would call it a disconnect, but there's something that feels like they can't necessarily seek that out at their church? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you talk about the experience of being spoiled And it is like I've been very blessed to be in communities that have been very supportive of kind of the mental health process And it's been talked about from leadership standpoints and realized that's not everyone's experience And so there are a few overlapping things that are kind of driving Matt and I in towards these sorts of conversations. One is we're at an interesting historical junction in both what it looks like for the church and specifically in the United States where Matt and I are, but in the Western world more largely and the world in general. It's an interesting place. That's interesting. I mean interesting is kind of a plot way to describe what That was the most subtle way of saying Something that can often feel like a dumpster fire culturally and otherwise.
Speaker 2:And I say that and people are going to think about that means different things to them We identify as problems in our culture. Depending on who you are and your kind of place in the world, you might identify problems from different directions, but I don't know anyone I talk to of any ethnic background or political persuasion or socioeconomic status that doesn't identify major problems. I don't hear anyone saying like, oh, stuff's great. Yeah, no one's saying that. Yeah, there's that element in And there's an interesting posture culturally towards mental health. It's in a lot of ways we see it kind of replacing in from a humanistic, secular perspective, a lot of spiritual development and guidance, discipleship sorts of things. That therapy has kind of become the sanctification process And it's interesting.
Speaker 2:just in the times I've worked in the field I've seen a shift on both how inside and outside the church mental health is perceived. I think some of it's positive, i think some of it has some major caveats to it and just want to kind of speak to that. But I think that's one element of just. We feel we're at an interesting juncture in both church culture and wider secular culture to talk about mental health and Christian spiritual development. That's one.
Speaker 2:The other is in our work. Something that Matt and I have talked about being a mutual experience we've had is we feel very honored and appreciate being able to sit with individuals, with couples and families, and to kind of be with them as they're navigating what are very stressful things in their lives and in behaviors, emotions, relationships, what that looks like, and it's a great honor to, particularly when people have growth in the space that we share with them. But something that so many of us in the counseling world experience is the difficulty of scaling of that. We have only so many hours we can give to people one on one And Matt and I are fairly limited in our schedule of being able to see people.
Speaker 1:We're not fairly. We are limited, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we try things in the counseling space to solve it. I founded the counseling center I'm the director of it that we work in and we grow and we bring on people. Yeah, there's a sense that there's never going to be enough counselors that we can hire, that can provide enough services, and so part of what our desire is what are the things that we can distill down to people in pastoral roles, whether that's vocational pastoral roles or even just in volunteer, just what it is to be in a church community as a layperson.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think of the person that's a high school leader. He's 30 years old, he probably has his own kids. He's got no time really to do any of this research yet He's sitting with a bunch of 16 year old boys who are having the world thrown at them in a way that's so destructive. And I think about him and I think about like how difficult that is to navigate with them and the time it takes. I have little kids and I recognize that the time is gone, you have no time for yourself.
Speaker 1:But what if there are things out there and there are things out there but we want to continue to provide those things to the population around us or to other places that are easily accessible, so that you can kind of learn on these things and not have to whether get a doctoral degree or a counseling degree to be able to sit with these men, these boys, and help guide them into the sanctification process. So it's kind of aligning with what I think the goal of the church has been for so long. It's just recognizing that this is a complex time we're in. We want to provide those things to help distill it down in the midst of the complexity. So I just want to kind of anecdotally say that, because I think that those people are on my heart And so if you're listening to this or seeing this, that's who we're talking to. Is you want to provide this for you so that you have resources to navigate the leading of another?
Speaker 2:Can we plan on? just it feels like an endless amount of topics that we can dive into, of kind of looking at the angles of the state of the church and mental health. And, matt, you and I were talking before. We were recording this in early 2020-23, which is just a weird year to say out loud because it's the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been three years since everything shut down. It's crazy Yeah.
Speaker 2:But recently there was nationally the presidential state, the union, there was in our state, tennessee, the state of the state and talk about kind of the state of the church, and the state of the church is a big thing, yeah, and as it relates to what we do in kind of mental health and even kind of deciphering through what is mental health versus spiritual wellness, And that's stuff we grapple with with people because oftentimes, depending on your particular faith tradition or just how you grew up or how your church kind of talks about things or how you think about things, kind of what's the line between this spiritual problem? Is this something else? Is this something more related to my biology or something socially necessary, spiritual? And that's a blurry line at times And when we sit with people we're often trying to unpack that, but when we're being honest, i think it causes us to reflect ourselves.
Speaker 2:Because I've moved in my career as a mental health provider, things that I saw on a certain way have changed, because some of it, there are certain things that I treated as a little more dry and clinical and from a kind of secular, humanistic lens, that I've reevaluated in the context of my faith And it's not because I became a believer in the context of this, like I was trained as a Christian specific mental health program. I was trained in integration. But it's a moving thing And I think, as the culture throws different things at us, i think part of being faithful, mindful of these things, is we're constantly grappling with how do we approach this in a way that is both practical And that's part of how I see our work as therapists. It's kind of the practice of life And how do we practice our marriages or relationships with family members? How do we practice that? But how does that relate to this higher questions of who are we created to be And how is that continually playing out in our relationship with God?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you mentioned this kind of moving process and how you even kind of grew in your understanding of things. You're like, if we're too rigid in our kind of holding on to certain things, we can't move in that way And so often someone had once told me it's like following God is like following a bumblebee, like you, just you're everywhere. But I want to be clear to any of the listeners that this is not a bending or moving on the core beliefs of our faith. It is the bending of like how do we walk alongside someone in a sense of like them deeper, understanding those beliefs because they truly matter. I think, when you started talking about the idea of who we were created to be, our identity, the culture, i think, is what and we say that term culture because it's kind of, in a sense, that which is not the belief of the Christian faith like, and the kind of influences of that stuff is what I've seen is is affected our belief of self or who we are to God, and so that process of shoring up our belief of our identity is taken different practices, i think and be able to do that Because, as I have learned in my own process, i was not trained within a faith-based community And I learned a lot of great things about the counseling What I did.
Speaker 1:The problems that I found within that process was it was too self-focused on work Like I, almost like I was the God of my own universe. And as I tried to help people through that model, it worked temporarily but ultimately their issues persisted because they were not aligned with who they truly were. And so, just as a message to those listening, as kind of foundational spaces, that our heart would be to align with who you really are in Christ, the foundation of those things we hold true, so just to pinpoint on that one.
Speaker 2:This is when you find some people online and it's the question of am I letting heresy into vay, or on one side, or the other side is you know? is this a bunch of Bible thumping? And oh man, it's attention.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that we desire in this podcast and the work that Matt and I do in the Gev Institute is to really walk in the tension that pushes both orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the correct belief of orthodoxy, the correct action of. How are we living out these beliefs? Because is it in James, where it says faith without works is dead And but it not to be one of the, and then something that we bear witness to all the time is it's something that Matt and I talk about is even orthopathy, the being right in your suffering, because that's real. That is where, kind of where we are. So we, you know, we want to kind of talk through that from a biblical foundation that is also really interesting and engaging with the science of, you know, emotions and behaviors and relationships, because that's where Matt and I live and we believe in it.
Speaker 2:We believe that there are things that can be discovered and are knowable in the physical, temporal world we inhabit, but how to see that in its correct relationship with the transcendent God, and if that's something that you've thought about, that you've struggled with, we're there with you And it's less even that we feel that we're experts in it, but it's the trench that we are in all the time. It's where we're fighting and we spend a lot of time and a lot of energy kind of working in that. And even if we're just leading this conversation a few steps ahead, then we can still feel good about it And we might end up backtracking you and I may end up doing some episodes where we talk about something and we come back later. Be like you know you know what?
Speaker 1:No, just kidding.
Speaker 2:What are you wrong about? What's wrong about that? As you're discovering this, you know we're, we're. There are lots of things that we plan on talking about unpacking And we really hope that this can be an encouragement to you. That's the basic sort of thing We want to be a space where there's some conversations happening that, at least for Matt and I, aren't necessarily seen happening.
Speaker 2:We, you know, when I look at the kind of podcasting space, I see people talking about mental health. Oftentimes it's from a lay perspective and that a nonprofessional, you know, non-therapist talking about mental health And there can be wisdom that's gleaned from that. But it's a different angle, a different process. You know, I see people kind of talking about spiritual sorts of things. They don't necessarily have a strong mental health background or mindset And we just wanted to kind of speak into the space where we felt there was a gap and and.
Speaker 2:But at its core, how can we offer people that are trying to, that are, that are engaging in the life of a believer in community, as imperfectly in it, as flawed as that may look like? What are the practical tools that we can offer related to the work that we do? that can be an encouragement and, in whatever ways helps sustain you in the life that you're feeling called to live. Church Psychology is a production of the Nagev 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. A great way to support Nagev 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.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you talk about David, this tension, and I envision the conversations and I don't wanna speak to this as, like again, we're experts at this because I appreciate you saying it that way But it's more of a place. I think that we both choose to be. You know, i believe both sides and I wanna hold the tension between the two. I think so often is if we're gonna just to speak to the cultural norms for a minute is the divisiveness within the world around us is because we choose not to hold the tension between two sides that feel sometimes opposed. But I feel that, like now, jesus was very black and white with his teaching, But I think that he also held the tension between things that a lot of camps fell into both ways, you know, especially as he would speak to both parties of the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
Speaker 1:They were majorly opposed. Yeah, he would speak to things that would be holding the tension of you both. See it incorrectly. Now I don't wanna presume that, like we're gonna be speaking to the level of Jesus, so don't take that as the life.
Speaker 1:But there's, a sense of holding that tension, that we need more conversations, and so we wanna begin the conversations, but we don't wanna be the only ones having that. We wanna encourage you to have the conversations or to bring other experts on that will hold these conversations with us that hold the tension. And so I like that phrase so much of being in the trench, because it does feel like that at times. You know, this is we are cared for by God and he provides for us and comforts us, but that doesn't mean that this life is easy, and so so much of I think that the diametrically opposed are like the spaces that we fall into is just trying to make life easy for ourselves, because it's easier to think one way holistically than it is to hold the tension between the two, and so that's where we're going with that.
Speaker 1:David, i wanted to come back to something. We've used this phrase, and you know we're using this as ultimately a welcome in, but an introduction of other things we've been working on. Would you spend a couple of minutes just and maybe kind of repeating what you're saying? but talk about the Nagev Institute. What's the heart behind it? Because this podcast, the church psychology podcast, is part of an overarching umbrella of the Nagev Institute and something that we've been working on doing. So what? and maybe it's even we don't have a plan necessarily, but here's some ideas that we have kind of coming down the road.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely, yeah, so there's a great dramatic origin story in some ways, which I love Like well it's funny like someone who grew up in the well, someone who grew up in the church. I remember I grew up in the settings where the idea of giving your testimony was an important thing And I remember as a teenager feeling disappointed that I did not have a great testimony because I had never been in a bike or gang, i had not been selling drugs, i did not.
Speaker 1:Because at 14, it's amazing that you didn't.
Speaker 2:Well, i went to a Christian school and so we had weekly chapel and there were people, speakers, that kind of came in And I mean I was living wrong. I was, you can't believe what I was doing. I was selling meth out of my sixth grade home room and whatever it was. I never had those testimonies. I just I didn't either.
Speaker 1:I didn't either. Okay, say I did.
Speaker 2:My testimony was that I was my parents came to faith when I was an infant and they very purposely tried to raise me in faithful sorts of ways And I went through the Christian life of baptism and confirmation and Bible study And I had questions and things like that throughout, but I never left the faith. We'll probably do multiple episodes on just talking about the cultural concept of deconstruction And but I've gone through questions and so many different things And even Matt and I have kind of talked about like what is it that causes anchoring versus not? But anyway, I don't have a dramatic story that, but I do for the Gov Institute.
Speaker 2:This is your moment, This is your testimonial moment In 2019, before BC, before COVID, back when we traveled around without thinking about lots of different things that we think about. I traveled it was my first time visiting real. I went with my wife and my parents and we got to do a pretty extensive trip in different parts of the country And there are two things that struck me. One, the name. It's a Hebrew word but it means dry or dry place, and it's a geographic region in the Middle East That's a very dry place. It's in the south of the state of Israel And it's fascinating.
Speaker 2:I drove through it and you have it's dry and rocky and not a lot grows there, naturally, but it's amazing like there is. You drive along kind of the main roads and there are these different farms and Kubitsyn that have their dates was one of the main things growing. So you have like just brown and dry and all of a sudden and then they have these things kind of popping up in the desert And it's amazing that, with the right application, how a dry place can become very fertile, and even our willingness to step into a dry place, and so some of that picture was, i feel, that kind of it feels whether is or isn't, we feel like we live in a very dry place, kind of culturally and otherwise, but how that can be an amazing opportunity to for something to grow. And if you look at through the whole narrative arc of scripture, it's often in the great adversity that things really flourish. And there's actually psychology to that. Outside of scriptural wisdom there's concepts that will unpack at different points about anti fragility and resiliency and how pressure really does cause us to grow.
Speaker 2:So this was something I was contemplating And I had a moment praying at the Western wall on the Temple Mount and really feeling, but having that image of this idea of this dry place. And what was it in the? I was at kind of a crossroads and different career things at that point of really thinking about what is it I'm supposed to be doing. At that point I had worked as a teacher and as a therapist and felt meaning in the work that I did, but really having this sense of but what's this next season? What am I being called to? And it literally was being pressed against these giant stone blocks on the Temple Mount, praying that this began to form this, whether it was, you know, what was the line between my own creativity and the Holy Spirit or ego or whatever it is. Again, that's even going to relate to this, because I you know it becomes. How do we kind of discern those sorts of things? So that was the Genesis story, but beyond that it's simply the question of and as a journey in my time as a therapist, when I first started in my career at this point it was about years ago, there was a lot of hesitancy, i felt, for a lot of people kind of in the church and in church culture, towards counseling or mental health, and the barrier at the time was convincing people like no, this isn't bad, this isn't a bad thing, and that's not the problem I see anymore.
Speaker 2:I see, generally, i find that most people, even very conservative individuals, are open to ideas of counseling in ways that I never saw early in my career.
Speaker 2:The barrier is finding people are interested in the topic but it's finding sources that are mindful of the values of the communities being spoken to. There's a low trust factor between secular psychology and a lot of biblically based church communities And that distrust is well founded. Yeah, exactly, mental health is historically been the mental health profession has historically been fairly anti-religious, and that's been true in the past and it's true now, and people are interested and they want to know, like how do I communicate better with my spouse? How do I really encourage my children in ways that help them develop flourishing ways? How do I overcome patterns of addiction or compulsion? How do I have better emotional regulation and be less anxious? There's a desire for that, but how can I and I'm interested in what you have to say but is this going to be given to me in a way that chips away at my faith that well, this become a new God in my life?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let me pause you for a second because I think that where there is a development of desire to seek out their own counsel in these areas, it's still done outside of the church normally, because it's like this sense of like I know I need this or I think I need this, but I don't necessarily want to have that conversation with people in my church yet And some of that is that sense of like. I don't want to be exposed for having this about me. I don't want to be known in this way. I don't necessarily trust people to hold that information.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that have been there, and I think rightly so, even from the church's standpoint. Now we talked about how the counseling profession has necessarily been the most well-founded thing in like connecting you to God, but the same thing with the church has not been well-founded necessarily to allow space of vulnerability, unfortunately And I say that with all grace and compassion, because I've walked through a lot of that too in my own life of not really giving that grace and compassion. And so there's a both and and that even of like how people feel, maybe stuck, that I want to have biblically based understanding of these complex mental health issues right And to find that attention That is informed by that is grounded to that, but informed by what we, because there is a science in this.
Speaker 2:This isn't like an end, because, matt and I for those who are familiar with different theories of mental health and most people may not be there is a space called Biblical Counseling or New Thetic Counseling, which has this idea of, like we just see the Bible and that's it, and that's not where either of us work. Like we work from clinical theories, things that are tested, that weren't necessarily invented by believers That wasn't. And you know, do we do it perfectly all the time?
Speaker 1:No, but the same thing, i would say, yeah, i would say that, even though they may not be invented by believers, i've seen God use them And so it's kind of like I don't want to go down that path, but like who really invented it, who brought it to light? Yeah, and that's the God's work.
Speaker 2:I think through all these things, but go ahead To work out our face with fear and trembling is scriptural mandate And it's sort of like and this is something, as we've said we want to, matt and I want to be encouragements to those who are engaging us with this. But this is also kind of us exposing our own process of what is it to be, you know, licensed mental health clinicians who desire to work in the context of our faith and what we see as biblical truth, and how does it all emerge together And what are the things that we can share about our own thoughts and processes of kind of struggling with this that may be an encouragement and benefit to other people. So, but we're excited to go on this journey with y'all, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's, let's practically what should people be looking out for as it relates to whether the church psychology podcast or even the Nagev Institute moving forward. What could be things that like? hey, keep on the lookout for this.
Speaker 2:We're constantly looking at. What are the, what is the material that we can either direct people to, even just the curation process of, and what, when we find gaps, what can we create that helps answer or speak to some of these felt needs? You know there are lots of things Matt and I are very passionate about as teachers and the work that we do around you know developmental sorts of things for young adults, about the impacts of social media, of aspects of addictive behaviors, whether that's in substances or behaviors. You know eating, shopping, sex, so many different things.
Speaker 2:That represents so much of the time that we unpack this with people, of how to you know of we'd like to be able to share things about what are practically some practical tools that I can start implementing in my life so I can communicate better with my spouse. Yeah, you know how do I think about dating and kind of all these things that, as counselors, were kind of called to speak to and the church, in different ways, is kind of called to speak to and how can we, from our position as counselors, translate things that can be used by pastors, by lay leaders, by just people in their their own family lives that desire things that represent kind of a groundedness in the biblical worldview that still doesn't gloss over the pain points and kind of equips in that. So that's not concise, but that's No.
Speaker 1:Well, and, to that end, the vehicles of that, i think, are going to be this podcast, i think. At times you may see written articles of some of that, of this content. There are going to be trainings, i think, in the future, whether maybe you're a leader of one of the faith communities around us, maybe you're a pastor one, and you see us and you say you know, i would love for them to speak on this topic. We'd love to hear from me and let you know or and walk with you in them, and so I think there are going to be a lot of forms of this that we're dreaming up, of the avenues to which you can not just gain this knowledge, but to walk along in the harder conversations.
Speaker 1:I would even say it that way because I do want to. I do want us to provide content. You know, i want, i want there to be truth out there, at least in the sense that we feel God has directed us in understanding some of these things. But I want there to also be it not just this sense of I'm downloading information, but that I'm moving in a new space, of holding that tension of relating well to the people around me that God has put in my life, and maybe these are encouragements to do that. I'm not just downloading, i'm living in a newer or more grown way, where God is growing me up into himself, and so that's, i think, my addition to what you said about just what we want to be. Absolutely Yeah, what?
Speaker 2:was we wrap up.
Speaker 2:I like we said for anyone who's checking this out, we want this to be an interactive journey, to kind of echo something Matt was just saying, like we'll have different things that we really desire, not just for you all to download with or to just take in, but this to kind of be a conversation, because we are in our kind of piece of the world, we inhabit a certain geographic space, certain cultural spaces, and we want this to be an open conversation And we don't want this to be just, you know, two white guys explaining the world, but we really want to be open for kind of different, the different voices in the church in that, yeah, absolutely, and as you kind of and so I'm looking forward to this for Matt and I continue to talk about things for the other people will be able to speak to in this process And as you journey with us, even at the point, the time of recording we have, if you, you can find information on us at a churchpsychologycom.
Speaker 2:You can also go to the main website and the govinstitute or the govinstituteorg or a few different variations of that, you'll be able to find even some free resources we have available now And yeah, thank you for doing this And Matt will be an interesting ride.
Speaker 1:It will be David. Thank you, You know, and to all those that have listened, we're so grateful for you to join us on our first episode. We are encouraged by you and we hope to encourage you, So we will speak with you soon. 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 are finding us And leave us a review. We look forward to connecting with you again soon.