Podcast appearances and mentions of chuck degroat

What happens when character formation breaks down in church leadership? Steve Cuss and psychologist-theologian Chuck DeGroat work through the hidden dynamics behind pastoral burnout, narcissism, and the slow erosion of integrity. They explore how unexamined coping mechanisms shape identity, why church boards often miss red flags, and what it really takes to create a culture of safety and true accountability. Steve and Chuck offer tools for healthier leadership—inside and outside the church. Resources mentioned in this episode include: The work of Chuck DeGroat at Western Seminary Explore the Soul Care Institute The work of Michael Gurian Chuck DeGroat's When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse Chuck DeGroat's Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self Chuck DeGroat's Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering Sign up for Steve's Newsletter & Podcast Reminders: Capable Life Newsletter Join Steve at an upcoming intensive:  Capable Life Intensives Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when character formation breaks down in church leadership? Steve Cuss and psychologist-theologian Chuck DeGroat work through the hidden dynamics behind pastoral burnout, narcissism, and the slow erosion of integrity. They explore how unexamined coping mechanisms shape identity, why church boards often miss red flags, and what it really takes to create a culture of safety and true accountability. Steve and Chuck offer tools for healthier leadership—inside and outside the church. Resources mentioned in this episode include: The work of Chuck DeGroat at Western Seminary Explore the Soul Care Institute The work of Michael Gurian Chuck DeGroat's When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse Chuck DeGroat's Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self Chuck DeGroat's Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering Sign up for Steve's Newsletter & Podcast Reminders: Capable Life Newsletter Join Steve at an upcoming intensive:  Capable Life Intensives Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In this conversation, Michael is joined once again by Chuck DeGroat—pastor, therapist, and author—for an honest and hope-filled exploration of what it means to truly heal from the inside out. Together, they discuss Chuck's latest book, Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself and to God When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering.Diving deep into the heart of spiritual and emotional disconnection, the episode unpacks the journey of finding our way “home”—to our true selves and to God—especially when life's wounds and weariness leave us lost or cut off from real care and love. Michael and Chuck reflect on their own experiences of brokenness and restoration, exploring practical wisdom from therapy, Christian spirituality, and neuroscience.You'll hear how our bodies, behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and relationships all tell the deeper story of our lives, often pointing us to places within that need kindness and attention. Michael and Chuck also reframe some of the most familiar questions in Scripture—not as interrogations fueled by shame, but as invitations from a compassionate God who pursues us with curiosity and love.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at info@restoringthesoul.com Thanks for listening!

Send me a text! I'd love to know what you're thinking!In his newest book, Chuck DeGroat offers a deeply personal account of his journey of being fired from a ministry position and the stress surrounding that experience that ultimately led to a life-changing health crisis. But it was that crisis that showed him the much deeper inner healing he needed.In this episode, Chuck DeGroat discusses not only his experience of deep inner healing, but also the need for inner healing for all of us who are ministry leaders.THIS EPISODE'S HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:Chuck DeGroat highlights his experience with the autonomic nervous system and its role in managing past trauma, indicating how unresolved trauma can manifest in physical and emotional symptoms.Engaging with our bodies helps reveal unaddressed shame and grief, which many individuals, including pastors, tend to bury.Chuck DeGroat shares his story of being fired from a church, leading him to recognize the necessity of inner reflection and healing for effective ministry leadership.Neglecting emotional health often leads to physical symptoms, illustrating the body's way of signaling unresolved emotional turmoil.Chuck DeGroat describes his journey from placing blame externally to focusing on internal work, which allows for more authentic healing.Constant activation of the sympathetic nervous system can have detrimental effects on one's health, indicating the importance of addressing stress and trauma.Chuck DeGroat encourages pastors and leaders to engage in regular practices that foster a calm and centered emotional state, aiding in spiritual insight and leadership.Successful healing involves consistently attending to emotional and physical cues from our bodies, signaling deeper underlying issues.Chuck DeGroat explains practices that help individuals transition from a survival mindset to a state of calm connection, enhancing overall well-being.Regular and intentional understanding of our body's signals is crucial for maintaining emotional health and preventing future burnout.Addiction often serves as an attempted solution to address deeper inner wounds, which requires a more nuanced understanding in the context of spiritual counseling.Chuck DeGroat discusses the value of acknowledging and understanding one's inner child to achieve authenticity and awareness in spiritual leadership.Differentiating between various parts of oneself allows for a clearer understanding of internal struggles and promotes healthier decisions.Effective spiritual and emotional growth requires addressing core issues beyond behavior, thereby promoting sustainable change and authentic leadership.RELEVANT RESOURCES AND LINKS:Chuck DeGroatWestern Theological SeminaryBooks mentioned:Healing What's Within, by Chuck DeGroatWhen Narcissism Comes to Church, by Chuck DeGroatRelated episodes:82. Narcissism and Spiritual Leadership, with Chuck DeGroat206. The Healing Power of Pilgrimage, with Jon Huckins254. Endless Expectations and Emotional Exhaustion, with Jonathan HooverClick HERE to get my FREE online course, BECOMING LEADERS OF SHALOM.

While the work of self-awareness begins with pursuing a better understanding of our lives and stories, so many of us can stop there. As licensed therapist, author, and professor Chuck DeGroat and I talk about today, we often keep this awareness in past-tense, not understanding how our bodies are still holding these stories. We can ignore symptoms and bodily sensations like hypervigilance, sleeplessness, or exhaustion telling us the story of where we really are. And our bodies never lie. They often give us the best data about what's happening within. Chuck brings such beautiful storytelling and teaching to this conversation as he shows us what it looks like to practice awareness and attunement to our inner experience, and how to pay attention to what our bodies are telling us. Check out Chuck's book Healing What's Within Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email Learn more about writing coaching Watch this episode on YouTube Grab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm Fine Connect with me on my website Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__

Please enjoy this interview with Chuck Degroat for his new book “Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering” Learn more at chuckdegroat.net

If you're feeling the weight of past trauma and struggling to heal, then you are not alone! The journey to healing from abuse and trauma is often filled with challenges, and finding the right tools to navigate this journey can be overwhelming. But what if there was a resource that could guide you through this process and help you cultivate well-being? In this episode, you will be able to: Explore the transformative power of therapy in healing from abuse and trauma and reclaiming your well-being. Uncover the impact of narcissism in church leadership and gain insights into navigating the complexities of this issue. Discover the invaluable benefits of professional mental health support and how it can positively impact your healing journey. Understand the profound connection between attachment issues and trauma recovery and how it influences your healing process. Embrace the role of self-regulation in effective leadership and learn how it can enhance your personal and professional growth. My special guest is Dr. Chuck DeGroat Dr. Chuck DeGroat, a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the podcast. With a background in therapy, spiritual direction, and as a licensed therapist, Chuck specializes in navigating issues of abuse, trauma, pastoral and leadership health, and doubt. His profound insights and compassionate approach make him a thought leader in the space of healing from workplace abuse and trauma. Chuck's dedication to helping individuals understand and heal from the impact of abuse and trauma, combined with his extensive experience in training clergy and consulting with churches, makes him an invaluable resource for anyone seeking insight and guidance in their healing journey. The key moments in this episode are: 00:00:02 - Introduction to the Podcast 00:01:40 - Chuck DeGroat's Background 00:03:22 - Evolution of Chuck DeGroat's Approach 00:11:03 - Faux Vulnerability in Church Leadership 00:13:09 - Misuse of Self-Work for Immunity 00:13:40 - Dysfunctional Dynamics in Churches 00:14:58 - Toxic Leadership and Manipulation 00:19:06 - Nervous System Dysregulation 00:22:10 - Healing Attachment Wounds 00:25:52 - Transformation and Non-Anxious Presence 00:26:17 - Recognizing Patterns of Toxic Behavior 00:27:24 - Accountability and Systemic Change 00:29:15 - Rebuilding for the Future 00:30:49 - Understanding Shame Dynamics 00:35:15 - Rediscovering the Goodness of the Heart 00:39:20 - Men Doing Deeper Work 00:40:02 - Bullying and Women 00:41:15 - Complimenting Each Other's Work 00:41:39 - Encouraging Curiosity and Healing 00:42:42 - Embracing Curiosity and Healing 00:53:11 - Finding Healing and Freedom 00:53:32 - Hope in "Healing What's Within" Trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within. - Chuck DeGroat Order Healing What's Within by Dr. Chuck DeGroot on his website chuckdegroat.net or through major book retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository. Join the Patreon community at www.patreon.com/aworldofdifference to access exclusive content, one you don't want to miss an exclusive with Dr. Chuck DeGroat. Listen to our first episode with Dr. Chuck DeGroat about his book When Narcissism Comes to Church Explore additional resources recommended by Dr. Chuck DeGroot at the end of each chapter, such as Dan Allender's To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Life and Frederick Buechner's Telling Secrets. Engage in introspective and mindful practices to support your healing journey, such as deep breathing, visualization, EMDR and brainspotting. Gift Healing What's Within to friends or loved ones who could benefit from the valuable tools and insights shared in the book. Connect with us: https://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.com Linkedin YouTube FaceBook Instagram Threads Patreon Bluesky TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're feeling the weight of past trauma and struggling to heal, then you are not alone! The journey to healing from abuse and trauma is often filled with challenges, and finding the right tools to navigate this journey can be overwhelming. But what if there was a resource that could guide you through this process and help you cultivate well-being? In this episode, you will be able to: Explore the transformative power of therapy in healing from abuse and trauma and reclaiming your well-being. Uncover the impact of narcissism in church leadership and gain insights into navigating the complexities of this issue. Discover the invaluable benefits of professional mental health support and how it can positively impact your healing journey. Understand the profound connection between attachment issues and trauma recovery and how it influences your healing process. Embrace the role of self-regulation in effective leadership and learn how it can enhance your personal and professional growth. My special guest is Dr. Chuck DeGroat Dr. Chuck DeGroat, a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the podcast. With a background in therapy, spiritual direction, and as a licensed therapist, Chuck specializes in navigating issues of abuse, trauma, pastoral and leadership health, and doubt. His profound insights and compassionate approach make him a thought leader in the space of healing from workplace abuse and trauma. Chuck's dedication to helping individuals understand and heal from the impact of abuse and trauma, combined with his extensive experience in training clergy and consulting with churches, makes him an invaluable resource for anyone seeking insight and guidance in their healing journey. The key moments in this episode are: 00:00:02 - Introduction to the Podcast 00:01:40 - Chuck DeGroat's Background 00:03:22 - Evolution of Chuck DeGroat's Approach 00:11:03 - Faux Vulnerability in Church Leadership 00:13:09 - Misuse of Self-Work for Immunity 00:13:40 - Dysfunctional Dynamics in Churches 00:14:58 - Toxic Leadership and Manipulation 00:19:06 - Nervous System Dysregulation 00:22:10 - Healing Attachment Wounds 00:25:52 - Transformation and Non-Anxious Presence 00:26:17 - Recognizing Patterns of Toxic Behavior 00:27:24 - Accountability and Systemic Change 00:29:15 - Rebuilding for the Future 00:30:49 - Understanding Shame Dynamics 00:35:15 - Rediscovering the Goodness of the Heart 00:39:20 - Men Doing Deeper Work 00:40:02 - Bullying and Women 00:41:15 - Complimenting Each Other's Work 00:41:39 - Encouraging Curiosity and Healing 00:42:42 - Embracing Curiosity and Healing 00:53:11 - Finding Healing and Freedom 00:53:32 - Hope in "Healing What's Within" Trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within. - Chuck DeGroat Order Healing What's Within by Dr. Chuck DeGroot on his website chuckdegroat.net or through major book retailers like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository. Join the Patreon community at www.patreon.com/aworldofdifference to access exclusive content, one you don't want to miss an exclusive with Dr. Chuck DeGroat. Listen to our first episode with Dr. Chuck DeGroat about his book When Narcissism Comes to Church Explore additional resources recommended by Dr. Chuck DeGroot at the end of each chapter, such as Dan Allender's To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Life and Frederick Buechner's Telling Secrets. Engage in introspective and mindful practices to support your healing journey, such as deep breathing, visualization, EMDR and brainspotting. Gift Healing What's Within to friends or loved ones who could benefit from the valuable tools and insights shared in the book. Connect with us: https://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.com Linkedin YouTube FaceBook Instagram Threads Patreon Bluesky TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

God has the same definition of narcissists as we do: “lover of self.” Today we unpack how the ancient myth of Narcissus ties into God's truth about pride and selfishness, and we ask, “is there any hope for a narcissist to get into heaven?”Hear previous messages and find our social media at https://WeirdDarkness.com/Church! Please share this podcast with your friends, family, and co-workers, and post a link to this episode in your own social media! Thank you, and God bless!MENTIONS, SOURCES, AND LINKS…BOOK: “When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse,” by Chuck DeGroat: https://amzn.to/4fVvSQvOriginal article: https://www.crosswalk.com/slideshows/what-would-jesus-say-to-a-narcissist.html(Over time links can and may become invalid, disappear, or have different content.)===Darren Marlar is a licensed minister through the Universal Life Church: https://www.themonastery.org. Find his other podcast, Weird Darkness, in your favorite podcast app at https://weirddarkness.com/listen. “Church Of The Undead” theme music by Epidemic Sound.==="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46===Find out how to escape eternal darkness at https://weirddarkness.com/eternaldarkness===Weird Darkness® and Church Of The Undead™ are trademarked. Copyright © 2025.https://weirddarkness.com/cotu-whatwouldgodsaytoanarcissist/

In this foundational episode, we kick off our series, Surviving and Thriving After Trauma, by exploring what trauma truly is—and isn't. As the term “trauma” becomes more prevalent in everyday culture, it's essential to clarify its meaning, dispel myths, and offer tools for understanding and growth. Throughout this series, we want to bring clarity, validation, and encouragement to those navigating the complex impacts of trauma. While it's true that trauma means different things to different people, John, Lynn and Austin will answer the following questions: What is trauma? What is the impact of trauma? What are some myths about trauma? What does the Bible say about trauma? Some of the impacts of trauma include: Emotional dysregulation  Self-protective walls to prevent future pain Internal fragmentation (compartmentalizing emotions) Defense mechanisms in relationships (rationalizing, blame-shifting, projecting) Coping mechanisms (numbing behaviors or perfectionism) Disconnection from the body  This episode will also dispel some common myths about trauma such as: Myth #1: Talking about trauma is a sign of weakness. Myth #2: We are fragile and can't recover from hardship. Myth #3: Trauma affects everyone the same way. Myth #4: There's an easy way to heal from trauma. The truth is that the Bible has a lot of say about trauma, using different words: suffering, hardship, distresses, trials, sorrow and brokenness. Using biblical realities along with psychological insight, this episode will provide essential understanding for those seeking healing from trauma.  Tune in to our next episode: “How do I Heal From Trauma?” and share this episode with someone who might benefit from a deeper understanding of trauma. Resources: Suffering and the Heart of God by Diane Langberg. Healing What's Within by Chuck DeGroat. Try Softer by Aundi Kolber If you enjoy listening to With You in the Weeds we'd love to hear from you! You can email us at withyouintheweeds@thecrossingchurch.com or leave us a review. For more great content from the team you can subscribe to our newsletter at withyouintheweeds.com and follow us on Instagram @withyouintheweeds. 

Welcome to the Pinkleton Pull-Aside Podcast. On this podcast, let's step aside from our busy lives to have fun, fascinating life giving conversation with inspiring authors, pastors, sports personalities and other influencers, leaders and followers. Sit back, grab some coffee, or head down the road and let's get the good and the gold from today's guest. Our host is Jeff Pinkleton, Executive Director of the Gathering of the Miami Valley, where their mission is to connect men to men, and men to God. You can reach Jeff at GatheringMV.org or find him on Facebook at The Gathering of the Miami Valley.Chuck DeGroat, PhD, LPC - I'm a follower of Jesus, a husband to Sara for 29 years, and father to two amazing daughters. I serve as Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI.  I'm also a faculty member for the Soul Care Institute.I'm a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, author of five books, and retreat leader/speaker. As a therapist, I've specialized in issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and navigating issues of doubt and dark nights on the faith journey.  I'm also a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America. I pastored in Orlando and San Francisco before transitioning to training and forming pastors. I also train clergy in issues of abuse and trauma, conduct pastor and planter assessments, facilitate church consultations and investigations of abuse among pastors and within congregations. 

In this episode, co-hosts Martha Tatarnic and Loren Richmond Jr. reflect on the past season and share personal insights from their ministry journeys. Martha opens up about the challenges of transitioning back to ministry after a focused writing sabbath, touching on key themes like clergy mental health, food insecurity, and economic pressures that have shaped the season's conversations. Loren and Martha celebrate a major milestone—200 episodes—reflecting on the podcast's beginnings as a COVID project and its growth into a valued resource for church leaders. They highlight standout episodes, discussing topics such as the evolving landscape of church leadership, the importance of diversity and inclusion, and the benefits of team ministry in building strong faith communities. Throughout the episode, Loren and Martha stress the podcast's mission to provide companionship and support for those navigating the complexities of ministry.   Episodes Referenced: Pastoral Health Roundtable: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/pastoral/ Elizabeth Schrader Polczer: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/elizabeth-schrader-polczer-on-rethinking-mary-magdalene-part-1/ Yolanda Solomon: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/solomon/ Chuck DeGroat: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/the-primal-wound/ Casey Tygrett: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/casey-tygrett-on-why-remembering-matters/ Grace Ji-Sun Kim: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/grace-ji-sun-kim-on-making-church-less-white/ Allison Milbank: https://futurechristian.podbean.com/e/alison-milbank-on-why-small-and-local-might-be-the-churchs-way-forward/     Presenting Sponsor: Phillips Seminary Join conversations that expose you to new ideas, deepen your commitment and give insights to how we can minister in a changing world.  Supporting Sponsors: Restore Clergy If you are clergy in need of tailored, professional support to help you manage the demands of ministry, Restore Clergy is for you!   Future Christian Team: Loren Richmond Jr. – Host & Executive Producer Martha Tatarnic – Co-Host Paul Romig–Leavitt – Associate Producer Dennis Sanders – Producer Alexander Lang - Production Assistant

Chuck was in his first pastorate, crushing it, seeing lives restored. Then he had a disagreement with the senior pastor and was fired. He was livid, wanted justice, andstuffed all the painful emotions. Eventually he ended up in a hospital, terribly ill because “the body does keep score.” Chuck DeGroat is the Pastor of Pastoral Care and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI. We have a powerful conversation about his latest book, Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself, and to God, When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering. Also in this healing conversation, when Chuck was younger and read the 3 questions God asked Adam and Eve after they fell, “Where are you? Who told you were naked? And did you eat of the tree?" Chuck took those questions as coming from an angry God. Now he understands these are questions God asks us to invite us back home into his perfect love. Share this life-giving conversation!Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshow/wgnbSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chuck DeGroat returns to the podcast to discuss secrecy and exposure in leadership, how your body keeps score of trauma, and how the 'go mode' that makes many leaders successful can sometimes lead to their undoing.

Join us this week as author and speaker Chuck Degroat unpacks three questions out of Genesis 3! “where are you?”, “who told you?”, and “where do you run when you hunger and thirst?”… For more information visit www.onefellowship.church. For Charleston and beyond!

What if the core problem in most humans these days isn't that we think too highly of ourselves, but rather that we live with an underlying sense of worthlessness, alienation, and disillusionment? In this episode, Chuck DeGroat joins the pod to talk about his book Healing What's Within and the concept of Internal Family Systems theory. Sharing from his  background as a therapist and pastor, DeGroat explains the importance of befriending our different parts and becoming aware of how they show up in different situations. DeGroat emphasizes the significance of connecting with our true selves and living from that core. Exploring the classic "fall" narrative in Genesis 3, DeGroat proposes the theological concept of a primal wound and the importance of understanding the underlying story and biography behind harmful behavior. He emphasizes the need for pastors and church leaders to have support groups and close friendships to navigate the challenges they face.  Chuck DeGroat is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he also serves as the founding executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program. He is a licensed therapist, spiritual director, author, retreat leader speaker, and faculty member with the Soul Care Institute. As a therapist, he specializes in navigating issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and doubt and dark nights on the faith journey. He trains clergy in handling issues of abuse and trauma, conducts pastor and planter assessments, and facilitates church consultations and investigations of abuse. Before transitioning to training and forming pastors, Chuck served as a pastor in Orlando and San Francisco. He and his wife, Sara, have been married for 30 years and have two adult daughters. Book Buy Link Chuck's Website Chuck's IG Chuck's X   Presenting Sponsor: Phillips Seminary Join conversations that expose you to new ideas, deepen your commitment and give insights to how we can minister in a changing world.  Supporting Sponsors: Restore Clergy If you are clergy in need of tailored, professional support to help you manage the demands of ministry, Restore Clergy is for you! Future Christian Team: Loren Richmond Jr. – Host & Executive Producer Martha Tatarnic – Co-Host Paul Romig–Leavitt – Associate Producer Dennis Sanders – Producer Alexander Lang - Production Assistant

Chuck DeGroat's name has become somewhat synonymous with work on narcissism in the church. But as he and Steve Cuss discuss, DeGroat is devoted to shining a light on wholeheartedness and internal integration.   DeGroat and Cuss talk about anxiety—specifically around dying—and the way that age often brings with it a concern for one's legacy. They talk about experiencing pain through work in church settings, noticing emotions that arise in ourselves and others, and coming home to God and ourselves—all while considering the impact of secondary trauma on people in pastoral and helping professions, ways to distinguish between shutdown and rest, and our response to the invitation of God. Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guests include: Chuck DeGroat Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self by Chuck DeGroat When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat  “Narcissism In The Chair”  Internal Family Systems model The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God by Steve Cuss Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs by Steve Cuss “Always Beginners” by Thomas Merton Experimental Theology with Richard Beck The Enneagram Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir … of Sorts by Ian Morgan Cron Click here to ask Steve a question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chuck DeGroat's name has become somewhat synonymous with work on narcissism in the church. But as he and Steve Cuss discuss, DeGroat is devoted to shining a light on wholeheartedness and internal integration.   DeGroat and Cuss talk about anxiety—specifically around dying—and the way that age often brings with it a concern for one's legacy. They talk about experiencing pain through work in church settings, noticing emotions that arise in ourselves and others, and coming home to God and ourselves—all while considering the impact of secondary trauma on people in pastoral and helping professions, ways to distinguish between shutdown and rest, and our response to the invitation of God. Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guests include: Chuck DeGroat Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat Wholeheartedness: Busyness, Exhaustion, and Healing the Divided Self by Chuck DeGroat When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat  “Narcissism In The Chair”  Internal Family Systems model The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God by Steve Cuss Managing Leadership Anxiety: Yours and Theirs by Steve Cuss “Always Beginners” by Thomas Merton Experimental Theology with Richard Beck The Enneagram Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir … of Sorts by Ian Morgan Cron Click here to ask Steve a question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/g3j3C25thlcMuch research has been done to address individual trauma. But what happens when trauma is collective—when an entire congregation, for example, is betrayed by a pastor they trusted? In this edition of The Roys Report, Kayleigh Clark, a pastor and a pastor's kid, discusses the impact of communal suffering, which church leaders often overlook. Kayleigh, a doctoral student at Kairos University, is completing her dissertation on congregational collective trauma and paths towards healing and restoration. And what she's learned is ground-breaking for churches that have experienced pastoral abandonment or moral failure and are struggling to recover. As was explained in the popular book, The Body Keeps the Score, unhealed trauma—if unaddressed—will manifest itself as physical and psychological ailments in our bodies. Likewise, unaddressed trauma in the Body of Christ will also manifest as corporate dysfunction and pain. But as Kayleigh explains in this eye-opening podcast, this doesn't have to be the case. Healing is available. But it requires congregants and spiritual leaders who understand trauma and don't try to charge forward before the congregation has healed. Given all the unhealed trauma in the church, this is such a relevant and important podcast. It's also one that discusses dynamics Julie knows all too well, as someone who's in a church with others who've experienced deep church hurt. She discusses her own experience in the podcast, which could be a prime case study. Guests Kayleigh Clark Kayleigh Clark is founder and director of Restor(y), which exists to journey with churches on the hope-filled path of healing and restoration. She completed a Master of Divinity at Northeastern Seminary and is currently a Th.D. Candidate at Kairos University with a focus on the interplay between psychology and theology. Kayleigh and her husband, Nate, love exploring the outdoors with their son near their home in Rochester, New York. Learn more about Restor(y) online. Show Transcript [00:00:00] Julie: Much research has been done to address individual trauma, but what happens when trauma is collective? When an entire congregation, for example, is betrayed by a pastor they trusted. According to my guest today, the impact of communal suffering is often overlooked, but the body of Christ keeps score. [00:00:22] Julie: Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And joining me today is Kaylee Clark, a pastor and a pastor’s kid who’s well acquainted with the beauty, joy, pain, and heartache that exists within the church. Kaylee also is a doctoral student at Kairos University, and her dissertation work focuses on congregational collective trauma and paths towards healing and restoration. [00:00:50] Julie: She also is the director of ReStory, a ministry to help churches heal and embody the hope of Jesus, especially after experiencing a devastating loss or betrayal. I had the pleasure of meeting Kaylee about a week ago, and I was so excited by her insights and the work that she’s doing that I was like, you have to come on my podcast. [00:01:10] Julie: So I am thrilled that she can join me today, and I know you’re going to be blessed by this podcast. I’ll get to my interview with Kaylee in just a minute, but first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, the Restore Conference and Mark Horta Barrington. If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. [00:01:30] Julie: So, Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor, or pastor, there are a few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church. But the Restore Conference, this February 7th and 8th in Phoenix, Arizona, is designed to do just that. Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary DeMuth and Dr. [00:01:50] Julie: David Pooler An expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Toe, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly, and more. For more information, just go to Restore2025. com. That’s Restore2025. com. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. [00:02:17] Julie: Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to buyacar123. com. [00:02:37] Julie: Well, again, joining me today is Kaylee Clark, a pastor and doctoral student who’s studying congregational collective trauma and the paths to healing and restoration. She’s also the founder of Restoree and she’s a wife and mother of a beautiful baby boy. So Kaylee, welcome. It’s just such a pleasure to have you. [00:02:56] Kayleigh: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be with you today. [00:03:00] Julie: Well, I am just thrilled to have you on our podcast and I mentioned this in the open, but We talked last week and I was just like, Oh my word, everything that you’re doing, your work is so important. And it’s so where I’m living right now. [00:03:15] Julie: And I know a lot of our listeners are living as well. And so I’m thrilled about it. But as you mentioned, your work is, is unique. We’re going to get into that, but I am just curious, this whole idea, collective trauma, you know, ministering. To the church. How did you get interested in this work? [00:03:33] Kayleigh: Sure. Um, so I am fourth generation clergy. [00:03:37] Kayleigh: So great grandpa, grandpa, my dad, and then me. So are all pastors. Uh, and so I’ve just always known the church, uh, pastors have also been kind of my second family. I’ve always felt at home amongst the church and amongst pastors. Um, but when you grow up in the parsonage and other PKs will know this, uh, you are not hidden from. [00:03:58] Kayleigh: The difficult portions of church and the really hard components of church. And so then when you add on to that, becoming a pastor myself, you know, my eyes continued to be open, uh, to some of the ways that church can be a harmful place as much of it as it is a healing place. And I began to kind of ask the question, well, well, why, um, what is going on here? [00:04:21] Kayleigh: Um, particularly because when I served and we’ll get into more of this, I think, but when I was serving in my first lead pastor, it’s. So I’m a really young, I was like 27 when they, or 28 when they entrusted me when I first lead pastorate, which is kind of wild. And so they kind of threw me in and what they do with most young pastors is they kind of throw us into these dying churches. [00:04:44] Kayleigh: And so, right, it’s a small. Church with, you know, it’s dying, it’s dwindled in numbers. And so this is my first kind of lead pastorate. And, you know, I read all the books, I’m a learner, I’m a reader. I, you know, I know how to do all the things. And so I’m reading all of the books on how to revitalize a church and raise a church up from it and all those things and nothing is working. [00:05:06] Kayleigh: Um, and it started to kind of really raise my attention to, well, maybe there’s something else going on here. Um, And, and maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions when we’ve been approaching the church. Uh, and so, uh, again, I’m a learner, so I was like, well, I’m just going to go back to school. If that was the only way I knew how to figure this out. [00:05:25] Kayleigh: So I landed in a THD program that focused on combining the studies of trauma theory with theology. Um, and my undergraduate degree is in psychology, so it felt kind of like a merging of my two worlds. Um, and it was there that I encountered collective trauma and. Really in an interesting way, studying, um, more like childhood development trauma. [00:05:46] Kayleigh: But anytime I looked at it, all I could see was the church, um, and seeing the ways in which there might be a bigger picture. There might be a bigger story going on here. And maybe there’s some collective congregational trauma underneath the, these dying, uh, declining churches that we just aren’t aware of. [00:06:04] Julie: So, so good. And this is the thing that, that just stuns me. When I, I, I do an investigation and the top pastor gets fired, sometimes all the elders step down, but the church, it’s, it’s unbelievably rare for one of those churches to thrive afterwards. And I, and I think so much of it is they think, Oh, we got rid of the bad apple. [00:06:29] Julie: And they have no concept of how that toxicity, one, you know, the toxic, often bullying way of relating and everything was, was taught and learned and trained throughout. But then there is that trauma and, and I just, I think of Willow Creek Community Church, I went to their, it was like a midweek service where they were going to deal with, Supposedly, the women who had been sexually harassed and abused by Bill Heibel’s, the previous pastor, and they didn’t even name it. [00:07:08] Julie: They didn’t name what had happened. They didn’t go into what had happened. They didn’t apologize to the women. The women became like this amorphous something out there, the women, you know? Um, and, and then they talked about, they had a repentance time, like we’re supposed to repent for his sins. It was the most bizarre, unhealing thing I had ever seen. [00:07:27] Julie: And I couldn’t imagine how after something that dysfunctional, a church could go, okay, we’re back, you know, reach the lost, you know, seeker sensitive church. It was just bizarre. Um, so, so much of your work is, is resonating with me. And again, We’ve seen a lot in and it’s really important is dealing with individual trauma and which is super important work. [00:07:53] Julie: Um, and my last podcast with Chuck DeGroat, we talked a lot about that. We talk a lot about that on a lot of podcasts, but we often don’t address again, what’s this collective trauma that, that, you know, that it actually has a social aspect. So talk about why is it important that we begin addressing collective trauma and not just individual trauma, though, you know, obviously we each need to heal as individuals, but collectively as well. [00:08:24] Kayleigh: Yeah. So collective trauma is a newer field, even in psychological studies. So it’s, Not as old as individual trauma studies, and it actually became more popular through the work of Kai Erikson, who’s a sociologist. He’s not even a psychologist, but he studied collective trauma in kind of what he refers to as unnatural disasters. [00:08:43] Kayleigh: And so these disasters that are experienced by communities that have a human, like, blame component. So it was due to somebody’s negligence due to somebody’s poor leadership due to somebody’s abuse, and it’s on a community. And so Kai Erickson notes the, the social, he calls it the social dimension of trauma or collective trauma. [00:09:03] Kayleigh: And what he, he details there is that collective trauma is anything that disrupts and ruptures the, uh, relationships within a community. Distorting and taking apart their, uh, he calls it communality instead of community, but it’s their sense of, like, neighborliness. It’s their sense of being together. It’s their, Their shared identity and their, their shared memories are all now distorted. [00:09:26] Kayleigh: And so I think when we’re speaking specifically about the church, and when we’re looking at religious trauma and congregational trauma, we need to remember that the church is first and foremost, a community. And so sometimes I think that’s missed in our kind of American individualism. You know, a lot of people kind of view spirituality as this individualistic thing, but the church is a community. [00:09:48] Kayleigh: And so when we come together as the body of Christ, you know, when wounding happens, when trauma comes, it breaks down the relationships within that congregation, which really. is what makes it a church. The relationships are what make that a church. And so when trauma comes in and disrupts those and starts causing the divisions and the distrust and the he said, she said, and the choosing of sides and the church splits and all of these things have these ripple effects on the community. [00:10:19] Kayleigh: Um, and they really are, are traumatizing. And so what happens is that if we don’t deal, if we’re only dealing with the individual trauma, In part, that’s usually dealing with people who have left the church, right? And so usually the people who are seeking individual healing from their religious trauma, who are able to name that, who are able to say, I went through this, have often stepped outside of the church. [00:10:42] Kayleigh: Sometimes just for a season, which is completely understandable. They need that time away. They need time to heal. They’re, they don’t, feel safe. But what we’re missing when we neglect the social dimension of religious trauma are often the people who stay are these congregations who can’t name it yet, who can’t articulate that what they’ve gone through is religious trauma, who who maybe are still trying to figure out what that means. [00:11:07] Kayleigh: Often it means that we’re missing, um, you know, these, these the church that I served in, you know, isn’t one of these big name churches that’s going to get, you know, newscasted about. And they can’t necessarily name what happened to them as religious trauma because nobody’s given them the language for it. [00:11:25] Kayleigh: And so we’ve often missed these, these declining churches. We’ve missed because we haven’t remembered that Trauma is communal that trauma is relational. And so we need to, yes, provide as much care and as much resourcing as we can for the healing of individuals, because you can’t heal the community if the individuals don’t know. [00:11:44] Kayleigh: But we really need to remember that the community as a whole. impacted, and that especially when we’re talking about the church, we want to be able to heal and restore those relationships. And to do that means we have to address the social dimensions of the religious trauma. And so [00:12:01] Julie: often the people that, that stay aren’t aware of what’s happened to them. [00:12:08] Julie: Are they not even aware they’re traumatized? [00:12:11] Kayleigh: Right, right. Yeah. [00:12:13] Julie: Yeah. You introduced this, this concept, which is great. I mean, it’s, it’s a riff off of the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which, you know, um, just an incredible book by, uh, Dr. Vander Kolk. But this idea that the body of Christ keeps the score. [00:12:33] Julie: Describe what you mean by that, that the body of Christ keeps the score when there’s this kind of trauma that it’s experiencing. [00:12:40] Kayleigh: Sure. So you kind of alluded to it earlier when you were giving an example of the removing of a toxic pastor, right? And then just the placement of a new pastor. And so often what happens in these situations where there’s spiritual abuse or, um, clergy misconduct or any of those things that’s causing this religious trauma, the answer seems to be, well, let’s just remove the. [00:13:00] Kayleigh: Problem person. And then that will solve everything. Um, well, what happens is we forget that trauma is embodied, right? And so you can remove the physical threat. Um, but if you remove the physical threat or the problem person, but this congregation still has this embodied sense of trauma in which they perceive threat now. [00:13:23] Kayleigh: So they’re reacting to their surroundings out of that traumatized position, because that’s what the collective body has learned to do. And so you see this, um, It’s a silly example, but I use it because I think people see it a lot. So you have a new pastor come in and the new pastor has a great idea, at least he or she thinks it’s a great idea. [00:13:46] Kayleigh: And it probably has to do with removing pews or changing carpet color. Okay. And so they present this, what they think is just a great harmless idea. And the response of the congregation is almost volatile and the pastor can’t figure out why. And often, unfortunately, what pastors have kind of been taught to identify is that they must just idolatry. [00:14:11] Kayleigh: They just have the past as an idol for them and they need to kill this golden cow. Right. And so it becomes this theological problem. Sure, there might be cases where that is the truth, but often I would say that there’s, um, a wonderful. So another great book on trauma. It’s more on racialized trauma, but it deals a lot with historical trauma is, um, rest my Mac mannequins book, um, my grandmother’s hands and in it, he addresses this historical trauma that is embodied and he quotes Dr. [00:14:42] Kayleigh: Noel Larson, who says, if it’s hysterical, it’s probably historical. In other words, if the reaction to the thing happening doesn’t seem to match, like it seems out of proportion, either too energized or not enough energy around it, it’s probably connected to some kind of historical trauma that hasn’t been processed. [00:15:03] Kayleigh: And so we see this a lot in churches who are having a hard time being healthy and flourishing and engaging with the community around them. And. The reason why is often because they have this unhealed trauma that nobody’s given them language for. Nobody’s pointed out, nobody’s addressed for them. Um, and so it’s just kind of lingering under the surface, unhealed, unnamed, and it’s informing how they believe, how they act. [00:15:33] Kayleigh: Um, and so this is really What I mean when I say the body of Christ keeps the score is that the body of Christ has embodied this trauma and it’s coming out in their behaviors, in their actions, in their values, and our pastors are not equipped to address it from a trauma informed perspective. They’ve only been given tools to address it from maybe a theological position, or this kind of revitalization remissioning perspective. [00:16:02] Kayleigh: That often doesn’t work. [00:16:04] Julie: There’s so many things I’m thinking as as you’re talking. I mean one. to come in and do something. And then because people react to, I mean, basically that’s shaming them. It’s guilting them to say, Oh, you have an idol or what’s wrong with you that you can’t get on board. And the truth is they don’t know what’s wrong with them. [00:16:23] Julie: They, they don’t. And, and they’re hurt. And all they know is you just, they’re hurt and now you’ve hurt them. So now they don’t trust you. So way to go. Um, but I’m thinking maybe because we brought this up and I don’t mean to beat up on, on Willow Creek, but I’m thinking about. When the new pastor came in, and I don’t think he’s a bad guy, um, you know, they, they were bleeding money. [00:16:45] Julie: Obviously they, they did not have the resources they did before. So one of the first things they did was they centralized, which meant the campus pastors weren’t going to be preaching anymore. They were going to be pumping in video sermons. Here’s the pastor that people trusted on these campuses. Now, that person’s not going to be preaching, which then of course, all of them left. [00:17:06] Julie: They ended up leaving and the trauma you’d now it’s trauma upon trauma. And it just seems like, especially in so many of these churches, you bring somebody in and they want to move somewhere like, right. They want a thriving church. What they don’t want to do is be at a church and sit in your pain. And yet. [00:17:27] Julie: Unless that’s done, I mean, can these churches, I mean, can they move forward? I mean, what’s going to happen if you come in and you don’t? slow down and say, these people are hurting and I need to, I need to be a shepherd. Then that’s the other thing. It’s so many of these mega churches, and I know this isn’t unique to mega churches that this happens, but I, it’s the world in which I report so often is that these mega churches are very mission vision, five year plan oriented and what they’re not capable of doing. [00:17:59] Julie: I think so many of these, you know, and they always bring in the, the pastor. That’s a good orator, maybe not a shepherd at all. In fact, some of these guys even say, I’m not a shepherd, which that’s another, yeah, I mean, but, but to actually, they need a shepherd at that point. Right. I mean, these, these people need it. [00:18:20] Julie: So, I mean, again, what, what do they need to do? And what happens if they don’t do some of these things? [00:18:28] Kayleigh: So the thing that I have really been drawn to, especially as I study Jesus, and I look at what it means to be trauma informed in the pastorate. So I, I do believe that God is still working through pastors. [00:18:39] Kayleigh: Um, in fact, there’s a really beautiful section of scripture in Jeremiah 23, where God is addressing abusive shepherds and God’s response is, I will raise up new shepherds. So God still wants to work through shepherds. There is still a place for a pastor. The problem is, is I don’t think we’ve taught pastors how to lead out of a posture of compassionate curiosity. [00:19:03] Kayleigh: And so if you follow Jesus and you look at the way that Jesus interacts with hurting people, it is out of this beautiful, humble posture of compassionate curiosity. And so I was always struck by like, he asks the blind man, what do you want me to do for you? And it always seemed like a. That’s a strange question. [00:19:20] Kayleigh: Like, he’s blind, Jesus. What do you think he and often it’s preached on, like, well, we need to be able to tell God what we want. And that’s maybe some of it. But I think it’s also the truth that God knows that it can be re traumatizing to somebody to tell them what they need and what they want. Right? So what we learned when we studied trauma is that it’s not. [00:19:40] Kayleigh: So especially when we’re talking trauma caused by abuse is that abuse is so connected to control. And so what has often happened to these victims of religious abuse of spiritual abuse is that they have had control taken from them entirely. And so when a new pastor comes in and tells them, this is what you need to get healthy again, and never takes the time to approach them from this. [00:20:02] Kayleigh: posture of compassionate curiosity, they can end up re traumatizing them. Um, but our pastors aren’t trained to ask these questions. And so, so often if you read, you know, and they’re well meaning books, you know, they’re, they’re trying to get to what’s going on in the heart of the church. They’re trying to get back to church health, but so many of the books around that have to deal with. [00:20:23] Kayleigh: Asking the church, what are you doing or what are you not doing? And trauma theory teaches us to ask a different question. And that question is what happened to you? And I think if pastors were trained to go into churches and ask the question, what happened to you and just sit with a church and a hold the church and, and listen to the stories of the church, they, they might discover that these people have never been given space to even think about it that way. [00:20:52] Kayleigh: You know, where they’ve just, they’ve had abusive leaders who have just been removed or they’ve had manipulative leaders who have just been removed and they’ve just been given a new pastor and a new pastor and nobody’s given them the space. To articulate what that’s done to them, um, as individuals and as a congregation. [00:21:09] Kayleigh: And so if we can learn to, to follow Jesus in just his curiosity, and he asks the blind man, what do you want me to do for you? He, he says, who touched me when the woman reaches out and touches him. And that’s not a, it’s not a question of condemnation. That’s a question of permission giving. He knows that this woman needs more than physical healing. [00:21:28] Kayleigh: She needs relational healing. She needs to tell her story. And by pausing and saying, who touched me? He provides a space for her to share her story that she’s never been able to share with anyone before. And I think if we were to follow that Jesus, as pastors and as leaders, we would begin to love the Bride of Christ in such a way that would lead to her healing, instead of feeling the need to just rush her through some five year plan to what we think is healing and wholeness, and what actually may not be what they would say is what they need. [00:22:02] Julie: So many things you’re saying are resonating with me. And part of that’s because, uh, like I said, we’re living this. Um, I, I told you last week when we talked that our, our house church was going on a retreat, first retreat we’ve ever had. We’ve been together a little over, well, for me, I came in about two years ago and I think they had been meeting maybe eight or nine months before then. [00:22:29] Julie: Some of the people in our group, Um, don’t come out of trauma. Um, you know, one of our, one of the couples in our church, uh, they’re like young life leaders, really just delightful, delightful, delightful people, but they haven’t lived the religious trauma. One couple is, they’re from the mission field and they had a great missions experience. [00:22:55] Julie: The only trauma they might be experiencing is coming home to the U. S. The truth is they love the mission field, right? Um, and then. The remainder of us come from two, two churches, um, that, that had some sexual abuse that was really, you know, mishandled and the trust with the leaders was, was broken in really grievous ways. [00:23:19] Julie: Um, and then there’s me on top of having that, um, living in this space where, I mean, I just report on this all the time. And so, but one of the beautiful things that happened in this, in this group is that it did have leaders when we came into it and it triggered us. Like, you know, and for us it was like, oh, here’s the inside group and the outside group. [00:23:47] Julie: Like, we’re used to the ins and the outs, right? And, and we’re used to the inside group having power and control, and the rest of us just kind of go along with it. And, and we’re, we’re a tiny little group. Like we’re 20 some people, right? But, but it’s just, and, and we’re wonderful people. Wonderful people. [00:24:02] Julie: And yet we still like, it was like, mm. And um, and so. The beautiful thing is that those leaders recognize, like they didn’t fully understand it, but they said, you know, I think we need to just step down and just not have leaders. And I didn’t even realize till we went on this retreat what an act of service and of love that was for them to just say, were laying down any, any agendas we might’ve had, any even mission or vision that we might’ve had. [00:24:35] Julie: And for one of, you know, one of the guys, it was really hard for him cause he’s just like, Mr. Mr. Energy and initiative. And, and he was like, I better not take initiative because like, it’s, it’s not going to be good for these folks. Um, and on the retreat. So then, I mean, it was, it was really a Holy Spirit. [00:24:54] Julie: experience, I think for all of us, because there definitely was a camp that was like, okay, we’ve had this kind of healing time, but can, can we move forward a little bit? Like, can we, can we have some intentionality? And then there were part of us that were just like, oh my word, if we, if we, if we have leaders, why do we need leaders? [00:25:12] Julie: We’re 20 something people. Like we can just decide everything ourselves. And, and there really was somewhat of an impasse, but it’s interesting. The things that you said for me, And it was funny at one point. They’re like, can’t you just trust? And, you know, kind of like, what, what are you guys afraid of? You know? [00:25:29] Julie: And the first thing that came out of my mouth was control control. Like we’re afraid of control, um, or I’m afraid of control. Um, but what was so, so. Huge for me and I think was one of those again, Holy Spirit moments was when, you know, I was trying to like make a point about power dynamics, like you don’t realize power and like we have to be aware of how power is stewarded in a group like this because everybody has power. [00:25:59] Julie: If you don’t realize as a communicator the power that you have, like I’m aware now that because I can, I can form thoughts pretty quickly. That I can have a lot of influence in a group. I’m aware of that. And so, you know, there was even like a part where I was leading and then I was like, I can’t lead this next thing. [00:26:17] Julie: I’ve been leading too much, you know, and then we, and then we gave, we, somebody had a marker and we gave the marker to, to, um, one of the guys in our group who’s fantastic guy. And, um, And at one point, so, so anyway, I was talking about power and, and one of the guys was like, well, I don’t, I don’t really see power. [00:26:35] Julie: I don’t need. And I’m like, you have it, whether you realize it and you have it. And what was huge is that one of the other guys that sort of a leader was a leader was able to say what she’s talking about is real. Everybody has power. This is really important. And he was quite frankly, somebody with a lot of power in that group because he has a lot of trust, used to be a pastor. [00:26:57] Julie: Um, and for him to acknowledge that for the rest of us was huge. And then this, this other guy, I mean, he said at one point, Oh, well, you know, so and so’s holding the marker right now and he has power, doesn’t he? And I was like, yes, you’re getting it. That’s it. That’s it. Thank you. Because he’s like, you just reframed what we said and I wouldn’t have reframed it that way. [00:27:22] Julie: Like I wouldn’t. And I’m like, yes, exactly. It’s like, and it was like, it was like the light bulbs were going on and people were starting to get it. Um, and then another key, key moment was when one of the women who, you know, wasn’t, you know, from our church where we experienced stuff, who said, can you, can you tell me how that, how that felt for you when we used to have leaders? [00:27:46] Julie: And then for people to be able to express that. And people listened and it was like, and I was able to hear from this guy who felt like he was, he had a straight jacket, you know, because he, he like wants to use his, his initiative. Like he, he. You know, and God’s given that to him. It’s a good thing, you know. [00:28:07] Julie: And all I can say is it was just an incredible experience, an incredible moment, but it would not have happened if, and now I’m going to get kind of, it wouldn’t have happened if people cared more about the mission than the people. And they didn’t realize the people are the mission. This is Jesus work. He doesn’t care about your five year plan. [00:28:41] Julie: He doesn’t care about your ego and the big, you know, plans that you have and things you can do. What he cares is whether you’ll lay your life down for the sheep. That’s what shepherds do. And what I saw in, in our group was the willingness to, for people that have shepherding gifts to lay down their, you know, not literally their lives, but in a way their lives, their, their dreams, their hopes or visions, everything to love another and how that created so much love and trust, you know, in our group. [00:29:22] Julie: And we’re still like trying to figure this out, but yeah, it was, it was hugely, it just so, so important. But I thought how many churches are willing to do that, are willing to, to sit in the pain, are willing to listen. And I’m, I’m curious as you go in now, there’s so much of your work has become with ReStory is, is education and going into these churches. [00:29:52] Julie: You know, normally when this happens, And you told me there’s a, there’s a name for pastors that come in. It’s the afterpastor. Afterpastor. [00:30:00] Kayleigh: Yes. The afterpastor. [00:30:02] Julie: How many times does the afterpastor get it? And does he do that? [00:30:07] Kayleigh: So the problem is, and I can tell you, cause I have an MDiv. I went, I did all the seminary. [00:30:11] Kayleigh: I’m ordained. We don’t get trained in that. Um, so, and there is, um, like you said, so you use this guy as an example who has the clear. Initiative gifts. So they’re what would be called kind of the Apostle, um, evangelist gifts in like the pastoral gift assessment kind of deal. You’ve got the Apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. [00:30:34] Kayleigh: And right now there’s a lot of weight kind of being thrown behind the Apostle evangelist as kind of the charismatic leader who can set the vision. And so most of the books on pastoral You know, church health and church are written kind of geared and directed that way. Um, so we’re really missing the fact that when we’re talking about a traumatized church, what you really need is a prophet shepherd. [00:30:57] Kayleigh: Um, you need somebody who can come in and shepherd the people and care for them well, but also the prophet. The role of the prophet is often to help people make meaning of their suffering. So if you read closely, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, particularly who are two prophets speaking to people in exile, what they’re really doing is helping people make meaning of that suffering. [00:31:17] Kayleigh: They’re helping people tell their story. They’re, they’re lamenting, they’re crying with them. They’re, they’re asking the hard questions. Um, and they’re able to kind of see between the lines. So prophet, Pastors who have kind of that prophetic gifting are able to see below. They’re able to kind of slow down and hear the actual story beyond the behaviors, right? [00:31:35] Kayleigh: So the behaviors aren’t telling the whole story, but we need eyes to see that. And so the problem, I would say, is that a lot of well, meaning pastors simply aren’t taught how to do this. And so they’re not given the resources. They’re not given kind of the, um. this like Christian imagination to be able to look at a church and say, okay, what has happened here and what healings take place here? [00:31:59] Kayleigh: Um, the other problem is, you know, we need to be able to give space. So denominational leaders need to be able to be okay with a church that maybe isn’t going to grow for a few years. And I think that is whether we like it or not. And we can say all day long that we don’t judge a church’s health by its numbers. [00:32:19] Kayleigh: But at the end of the day, pastors feel this pressure to grow the church, right? To have an attendance that’s growing a budget that’s growing and. And so, and part of it is from a good place, right? We want to reach more people from Jesus, but part of it is just this like cultural pressure that defines success by numbers. [00:32:36] Kayleigh: And so can we be okay with a church that’s not going to grow for a little while? You know, can we be okay with a church that’s going to take some like intentional time to just heal? And so when you have an established church, um, which is a little bit different than a house church model, it can be. A really weird sacrifice, even for the people who are there, because often what you have is you have a segment of the church who is very eager to move forward and move on and and to grow and to move into its new future, and they can get frustrated with the rest of the church. [00:33:15] Kayleigh: That kind of seems to need more time. Um, but trauma healing is it’s not linear. And so, you know, you kind of have to constantly Judith Herman identifies like three components of trauma healing. And so it’s safety and naming and remembering and then reconnecting, but they’re not like you finish safety and then you move to this one and then you move to this one. [00:33:36] Kayleigh: Often you’re kind of going, you’re ebbing and flowing between them, right? Because you can achieve safety and then start to feel like, okay, now I can name it. And then something can trigger you and make you feel unsafe again. And so you’re now you’re back here. And so, um, um, Our churches need to realize that this healing process is going to take time, and collective trauma is complicated because you have individuals who are going to move through it. [00:33:57] Kayleigh: So you’re going to have people who are going to feel really safe, and they’re going to feel ready to name, and others who aren’t. And so you have to be able to mitigate that and navigate that. And our pastors just aren’t simply trained in this. And so what I see happening a lot is I’ll do these trainings and I’ll have somebody come up to me afterwards and go, Oh my goodness, I was an after pastor and I had no idea that was a thing. [00:34:18] Kayleigh: And they’re like, you just gave so much language to my experience. And you know, and now I understand why they seem to be attacking me. They weren’t really attacking me. They just don’t trust the office of the pastor. And I represent the office of the pastor. Okay. And so sometimes they take that personally again, it becomes like these theological issues. [00:34:38] Kayleigh: And so helping pastors understand the collective trauma and being able to really just take the time to ask those important questions and to increase not only their own margin for suffering, but to increase a congregations margin for suffering. You know, to go, it’s going to be, we can sit in this pain. [00:34:58] Kayleigh: It’s going to be uncomfortable, but it’s going to be important, you know, learning how to lament, learning how to mourn. All of these things are things that often we’re just not trained well enough in, um, as pastors. And so therefore our congregations aren’t trained in them either. You know, they don’t have margin for suffering either. [00:35:14] Kayleigh: Um, and so we need to be able to equip our pastors to do that. Um, and then equip the congregations to be able to do that as well. [00:35:20] Julie: So good. And I’m so glad you’re doing that. I will say when I first started this work, um, I was not trauma informed. I didn’t know anything about trauma really. And I didn’t even, you know, I was just a reporter reporting on corruption and then it turned into abuse in the church. [00:35:38] Julie: And I started interfacing with a lot of abuse victims. who were traumatized. And I think back, um, and, and really, I’ve said this before, but survivors have been my greatest teachers by far, like just listening to them and learning from them. But really from day one, you know, it’s loving people, right? It really, it like, if you love and if you empathize, which You know, some people think it’s a sin, um, just cannot, um, but if you do that and, and that’s what, you know, even as I’m thinking about, um, within our own, our own house church, there were people who weren’t trained, but they did instinctively the right things because they loved. [00:36:28] Julie: You know, and it just reminds me, I mean, it really does come down to, they will know you are Christians by your love. You know, how do we know love? Like Christ laid down his life for us. He is our model of love and, and somehow, you know, like you said, the, in the church today we’ve, we’ve exalted the, um, what did you say? [00:36:49] Julie: The apostle evangelist? The apostle evangelist. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, we’ve exalted that person, um, you know, And I think we’ve forgotten how to love. And too many of these pastors don’t know how to love. They just don’t know how to love. And it’s, it’s tragic. Because they’re supposed to be I mean, the old school models, they were shepherds, you know, like you said, like we need apostles, we need evangelists. [00:37:16] Julie: But usually the person who was leading the church per se, the apostles and evangelists would often end up in parachurch organizations. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I think the church needs all of those things. Um, and, uh, But yeah, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve left that behind, sadly. And there’s nothing sexy about being a shepherd. [00:37:37] Kayleigh: Yeah, no, I, all, all of the Apostle, I mean that, well, the whole thing is needed, um, and it’s most beautiful when we just work together, and, and when they can respond to each other. So, I mean, me and you’re an example in your house, you’re a visiting example of this. You can’t, even if just listening, you have some clear Apostle evangelists in your group, right? [00:37:54] Kayleigh: I mean, Um, right? And so you have these people wired for that, and yet they’re able to, to learn and respond to some of the people in the group who have more of those prophet shepherd tendencies. And so I think that that’s really what, and that’s loving, right? So we should go back. It’s just loving one another and learning from one another. [00:38:17] Kayleigh: And knowing when to lean into certain giftings and to learn from others giftings. This is why it’s the body of Christ. And so when a component of the body of Christ is left out, we can’t be who God’s called us to be. And so when we neglect the role of the shepherd and neglect the role of the prophet or minimize them, or see them as secondary, then we’re not going to do called us to be. [00:38:44] Kayleigh: You know, we may need all of it to come together to do what God has called us to do. God is working in this church. He’s worked all through this church. He has established it and called it, and He’s going to use it. But we need to be learning how He has built it and how He framed it. For me to love one another and not elevate one gifting above another. [00:39:07] Julie: And it’s interesting too, you mentioned the office of the pastor. Um, I know as we were discussing some of this, we have one guy who’s very, I mean, actually our entire group, and I think this is probably why we’ve been able to navigate some of this. It’s it’s a really spiritually mature group. A lot of people. [00:39:26] Julie: who have been in leadership, um, which sometimes you get a lot of leaders together and it can be, you know, but this hasn’t been that way because I think people really do love the Lord. Um, and they love each other. Um, but one of the things that was brought up, um, is Is the pastor an office or is it a role and have we made it into an office and, and what we realized in the midst of that and I, you know, I, I’m like, well, that’s really interesting. [00:39:57] Julie: I would like to study that. And I find there, there’s a curiosity when you talk compassionate curiosity, I think there’s also a curiosity in, in people who have been through this kind of trauma. There’s a curiosity in, okay, what, what did we do? that we did because everybody said that’s how we’re supposed to do it. [00:40:18] Kayleigh: Yeah. [00:40:18] Julie: Yeah. Do I really have that conviction? Could I really argue it from scripture? Is this even right? And so I find even in our group, there is a, there is a, um, there’s a curiosity and maybe this is because we’re coming through and we’re in, you know, I think a later stage of healing is that now we’re like really curious about what should we be? [00:40:44] Julie: Yes. Yes. What should we be, like, we, we want to dig into what, what is a church, what should it really be, and what, why, how could we be different? Of course, always realizing that you can have the perfect structure and still have disaster. Um, it really does come down to the character of the people and, and that, but, but yeah, there’s a real, Curiosity of, of sort of, um, digging, digging into that. [00:41:10] Julie: And, and let me just, I can ask you, and, and maybe this will be a rabbit trail, maybe we’ll edit it out. I don’t know. Um, , but, but I am curious what do, what do you think of that idea that the, the pastorate may be a role that we’ve made into an office and maybe that could be part of the problem? [00:41:27] Kayleigh: I think that’s a lot of it. [00:41:28] Kayleigh: Um, because when we turn the, the pastorate into an office, we can lose the priesthood of all believers. So that I think is often what happens is that, um, you create this pastoral role where now all of the ministry falls on to the pastor. And so instead of the pastor’s role being to equip the saints for the ministry, which is what scripture says, the scripture describes a pastor as equipping the saints for the ministry. [00:41:56] Kayleigh: Now the pastor is doing the ministry, right? There’s, there’s just all of this pressure on the pastor. And that’s, that’s where I think we start to see this. The shift from the pastor being the one who is, you know, encouraging and equipping and edifying and, you know, calling up everybody to live into their role as the body of Christ where we’ve seen. [00:42:19] Kayleigh: You know, I have a soft spot for pastors. Again, I’m like, they’re all my relatives are them. I love pastors and I know some really beautiful ones who get into ministry because that’s exactly what they want to do. And so what has often happened though, is that the, the ways of our culture have begun to inform how the church operates. [00:42:40] Kayleigh: And so we saw this, you know, when, when the church started to employ business In kind of the church growth movement. So it’s like, okay, well, who knows how to grow things? Business people know how to grow things. Okay. Well, what are they doing? Right. And so now that the pastor is like the CEO, people choose their churches based on the pastor’s sermon, right? [00:43:00] Kayleigh: Well, I like how this pastor preaches. So I’m going to go to that church. Um, so some of it is. So I would say that not all of it is pastors who have like that egotistical thing within them at the beginning. Some of it is that we know that those patterns exist. But some of these men and women are genuinely just love the Lord’s people and then get into these roles where they’re all of a sudden like, wait, I, Why, why is it about me and others, this pressure to preach better sermons and the person down the road or, you know, run the programs and do all of these things instead of equipping the people to do the work of God. [00:43:38] Kayleigh: And so I think it’s, it’s about, and right, I think it’s happened internally in our churches, but I also think there’s this outward societal pressure that has shifted the pastor from this shepherding role to the CEO office. Um, And finding the, like, middle ground, right? So again, like, we can swing the pendulum one way and not have pastors. [00:44:05] Kayleigh: Or we can swing the pendulum the other way and have pastors at the center of everything. But is there a way of finding, kind of, this middle ground where people who are fairly calm and gifted and anointed by God to do rich shepherding can do it in a way that is Zen sitting that church that is equal famous saint that is calling the body of Christ to be what it is called be. [00:44:27] Kayleigh: And I guess I’m, I’m constantly over optimistic and so I’m convinced that there’s gotta be a way , that we can get to a place where pastors can live out of their giftings and live by their callings and live out of their long dreams in such a way. That leads to the flourishing health of the church and not to its destruction. [00:44:45] Julie: Yes. And, and I think if it’s working properly, that absolutely should be there. They should be a gift to the church. Um, and, and sadly we just, we haven’t seen enough of that, but that is, that is, I think the model. Um, let’s talk specifically, and we have talked, or we might not have named it, um, but some of the results of this collective trauma. [00:45:08] Julie: in a congregation. Um, let’s, let’s name some of the things. These are ways that this can, that this can play itself out. [00:45:17] Kayleigh: Sure. So when we’re talking about congregational collective trauma, one of the main results that we’ve talked about kind of in a roundabout way is this lack of trust that can happen within the congregation. [00:45:27] Kayleigh: And this can be twofold. We can talk about the lack of trust for the leadership, but it all also can be lack of trust. Just, In the congregation itself, um, this often happens, particularly if we’re looking at clergy misconduct that maybe wasn’t as widespread. So I think this is some of what you’ve kind of talked about with Willow Creek a little bit, and I’m, I wasn’t in that situation, but I’ve seen it other places where, you know, in our system, the denominational leadership removes a pastor. [00:45:56] Kayleigh: And so what can happen in a system like that is that denominational leadership becomes aware of abuse. They act on the abuse by removing the pastor. And what you have happening is kind of this, um, Betrayal trauma or this, you know, bias against believing. And so because the idea that their clergy person who they have loved and trusted, you know, shepherd them could possibly do something that atrocious. [00:46:24] Kayleigh: That idea is too devastating for them to internalize. So it feels safer to their bodies to deny it. And so what can happen is you can have a fraction of the church. that thinks it’s, you know, all made up and that there’s no truth to it. And they began to blame the denominational leadership as the bad guys or that bad reporter that, you know, the [00:46:45] Julie: gossip monger out there. [00:46:47] Julie: It’s so bad. [00:46:48] Kayleigh: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you have this split. Now, sometimes it literally splits and people will leave. Um, but sometimes they don’t and they all stay. And so you have these fractions of people who believe different things about what happened. And so now there’s, there’s a lack of shared identity. [00:47:08] Kayleigh: So I would say one of the key components of collective trauma in a congregation is this mistrust, which is often connected to a lack of shared identity. And so they can’t really figure out who they are together. What does it mean for us to be a community to get there? Um, and so trauma begins to write their story. [00:47:27] Kayleigh: And so when we talk about the embodiment of trauma, one of the ways that that works in individuals, and this is like a mini neuroscience lesson that many of your listeners are probably aware of, because I think you have a very trauma informed audience. Audience, but, um, you know, that it, it makes us react out of those fight, flight, or freeze responses. [00:47:46] Kayleigh: And so that happens individually, right? So something triggers us and all of a sudden we’re at our cortisol is raised. We’re acting out of the, uh, you know, those flight flight places that happens communally too. So a community gets triggered by, you know, a pastor again, having what they think is just a creative idea, you know, but maybe it triggers that time that that pastor. [00:48:09] Kayleigh: Had a creative idea that was, you know, and ran with it without talking to anybody and just like wield the control and manipulated people. And now, all of a sudden, this pastor who thinks they just have this innocent, creative idea is now seen as manipulative. And what are they going to try to do behind our backs? [00:48:27] Kayleigh: And what are they going to try? And, and. What are they going to take from us? Right? And so trauma, trauma takes from people. And so now they’re living kind of out of this perpetual perceived fear, perceived threat, that something else is going to be lost. And so when you have a congregation that’s constantly operating out of, you know, this fight, flight, or freeze response. [00:48:52] Kayleigh: Collectively, I mean, how can we expect them to live out the mission that God has given them? Um, you know, they’re not, they’re not there. They’re not able to, um, they’re not able to relate to one another in a healthy way. And so we, we see a lack of kind of intimate relationships in these congregations, right? [00:49:09] Kayleigh: Because so the Deb Dana, who has helped people really understand the polyvagal theory, when we’re talking about, um, trauma talks about your, your, um, Nervous system, your autonomic nervous system is kind of being like a three rung ladder. And so in this three rung ladder, you have the top rung being your ventral bagel state, which is where you can engage with people in safe and healthy ways. [00:49:32] Kayleigh: And then you move down into kind of your sympathetic nervous system. And this is where you’re in that fight flight freeze and then dorsal bagels at the bottom. And in those two middle and bottom, you can’t build these deep relationships. And again, deep relationships are what make a church a church. And so if you have a congregation that’s stuck in these middle to bottom rungs of this ladder, they’re, they’re fight, flight, freeze, or they’re withdrawing from one another. [00:49:54] Kayleigh: You’re, you’re losing the intimacy, the vulnerability, the safety of these congregations to build those kinds of relationships. And so I would say that, that distrust, that lack of shared identity and that inability to build deeper kind of relationships are three kind of key components of what we’re seeing in congregations who are carrying this collective trauma. [00:50:16] Julie: And yet, if you work through that together, like I will say right now, I feel a great deal of affection for, for everyone. Uh, in our house tours because we went through that chaos together, but also it was, it was an opportunity to see love and people lay down their lives for each other. So to, to be able to see, I mean, you begin writing a new story instead of that old story that’s been so dominant, you know, that you have to tell, you have to work through. [00:50:50] Julie: Yeah, you do. And, and, and you have, you do. I love where you say, you know, people need to, to hear that from you. Yeah. I think that’s really, really important for people to have a safe place. But then at the same time, you can’t, you don’t want to live the rest of your life there. You don’t want that to define, define you. [00:51:09] Julie: Um, and that’s, that’s what’s beautiful though, is if you work through it together, now you, you’ve got a new story, right? You’ve got, you’ve got Dodd doing something beautiful. Um, among you and, and that’s what he does. [00:51:23] Kayleigh: That’s why we call our organization Restory. Um, it is a word used in trauma theory and in reconciliation studies to talk about what communities who have experienced a lot of violence have to do is they have to get to a place where they’re able to, it’s exactly what you’re talking about with your house churches doing is you guys have kind of come to a place where you’re able to ask the question, who do we want to be now? [00:51:45] Kayleigh: And this is this process of restorying. And so what trauma does is in many ways, for a while, it tries to write our stories. And for a while, it kind of has, because of the way that it’s embodied, we kind of, it has to, right? Like we have to process like, okay, I’m reacting to this. trigger because of this trauma that’s happened. [00:52:05] Kayleigh: So how do I work through that? You know, how do I name that? How do I begin to tell that story? And so we, and we have to tell the story, right? Because I mean, trauma theory has been the dialectic of traumas, but Judith Herman talks about is it’s very unspeakable because it’s horrific, but it has to be spoken to be healed. [00:52:22] Kayleigh: Right. And so with this trauma, it can be hard to speak initially. But it needs to be spoken to be healed. But once we’ve done that, once we begin to loosen the control that trauma has on us. Once we’re able to speak it out loud, and then we can get to a place individually and communally where we can start to ask ourselves, Who do we want to be? [00:52:45] Kayleigh: And who has God called us to be? And no, things are not going to be the way they were before the trauma happened. I think that’s the other thing that happens in churches is there’s a lot of misconception. That healing means restoring everything to the way it was before. And when that doesn’t happen, there’s this question of, well, well, did we, did we heal? [00:53:06] Kayleigh: And we have to remember that we’re never going back to the way it was before the trauma happened. But we can begin to imagine what it can look like now. Once we begin to integrate the suffering into our story, and we begin to ask those helpful questions, and we take away the trauma’s control, now we can ask, who do we want to be? [00:53:24] Kayleigh: And we can begin to write a new beautiful story that can be healing for many others. [00:53:29] Julie: A friend of mine who has been through unspeakable trauma, I love when she talks about her husband, because they went through this together, and she often says, he’s like an aged fine wine. You know, and I love that because to me, no, you’re not going back to who you were, but in many ways who you were was a little naive, little starry eyed, a little, you know, and, and once you’ve been through these sorts of things, it is kind of like an aged fine wine. [00:54:01] Julie: You have, you’re, you’re aged, but hopefully in a beautiful way. And, you know, I, I think you’re way more compassionate. Once you’ve gone through this, you’re way more able to see another person who’s traumatized and And to, you know, reach out to that person, to love that person, to care for that person. And so it’s a beautiful restoring. [00:54:26] Julie: And we could talk about this for a very long time. And we will continue this discussion at Restore, [00:54:33] Kayleigh: um, because [00:54:34] Julie: you’re going to be at the conference and that was part of our original discussions. So folks, if you wanna talk more to Kaleigh , come to Restore. I, I’m, I’m gonna fit you in somehow because , I’m gonna be there. [00:54:46] Julie: you’re gonna be there. But do you just have a wealth of, uh, I think research and insights that I think will really, really be powerful? And I’m waiting for you to write your book because it needs to be written. Um, but I’m working on it. , thank you for, for taking the time and for, um, just loving the body. [00:55:07] Julie: And in the way that you have, I appreciate it. [00:55:09] Kayleigh: Well, thank you. Because, you know, when I heard about your work and your tagline, you know, reporting the truth, but restoring the church, you know, I was just so drawn in because that’s what we need. The church is worth it. The church is beautiful and she is worth taking the time to restore. [00:55:24] Kayleigh: And I’m so thankful for the work that you’re doing to make sure that that that happens. [00:55:28] Julie: Thank you. Well, thanks so much for listening to the Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’ve appreciated this podcast and our investigative journalism, would you please consider donating to the Roy’s report to support our ongoing work? [00:55:47] Julie: As I’ve often said, we don’t have advertisers or many large donors. We mainly have you. The people who care about our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church. So if you’d like to help us out, just go to Julie Roy’s spelled R O Y S dot com slash donate. That’s Julie Roy’s dot com slash donate. [00:56:07] Julie: Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to the Roy’s report on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. [00:56:29] Julie: Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more

This week, we're diving deep into the psychology of connection and healing with author and therapist, Chuck DeGroat. Chuck's insights on the root causes of disconnection, the role of trauma, and the power of self-compassion offer a profound perspective on personal growth. In this episode, you'll learn why our modern lives often leave us feeling isolated and overwhelmed. Chuck will guide us through practical strategies to calm our nervous systems, break free from self-hatred, and foster deeper connections with ourselves and others. Whether you're seeking to heal from past trauma, improve your relationships, or simply understand yourself better, this episode offers invaluable insights. Join us as we explore the transformative power of connection and self-compassion. Episode Links Show Notes Buy my NEW BOOK "Healing What You Can't Erase" here! Invite me to speak at your church or event. Connect with me @WINTODAYChris on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

What happens when we truly listen to the signals our bodies send us? Dr. Chuck DeGroat joins us for a transformative conversation on healing, self-awareness, and spiritual connection, inspired by his latest book, "Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering." Together, we explore the powerful metaphor of an inner dashboard and how it can guide us toward the self-care we often neglect. We discuss everyday practices for finding peace and fostering a sense of home within ourselves, even in the face of life's pressures. Through personal stories and practical techniques, we encourage you to engage in ongoing self-care and to create a grounded state of being, making this dialogue a resonant call to nurture inner peace and heal hidden wounds.Order Chuck's New Book: Healing What's WithinSupport the showBegin Your Heartlifter's Journey: Visit and subscribe to Heartlift Central on Substack. This is our new online coaching center and meeting place for Heartlifters worldwide. Meet me on Instagram: @janellrardon Leave a review and rate the podcast: WRITE A REVIEW Learn more about my books and work: Janell Rardon Make a tax-deductible donation through Heartlift International Learn more about Young Living Therapeutic-Grade Essential Oils and the Aroma Freedom Technique: HEALINGFROMTRAUMA

On this week's episode of The Allender Center Podcast, licensed therapist, professor, and author Chuck DeGroat returns to discuss his latest book, “Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering.” In this deeply personal and insightful conversation, Chuck explores the profound journey of healing from trauma, especially when it's caused by circumstances beyond our control. After the release of his previous book, “When Narcissism Comes to Church,” Chuck was flooded with messages from people dealing with wounds that weren't their fault. This prompted him to ask: How do we move from being defined by what happens to us, to understanding the transformation that happens within us? In “Healing What's Within,” Chuck invites readers to encounter God as a compassionate witness to their trauma, offering unconditional kindness and presence in whatever state they find themselves. If you're seeking hope and healing on your journey, we highly recommend this book, which is available wherever books are sold.

Lantz Howard and Chuck DeGroat discussed the importance of curiosity and self-reflection in personal growth and development. Chuck emphasized that curiosity may arise at different stages of life, such as when transitioning from one's twenties to thirties or forties, and that it's essential to confront larger questions about meaning, purpose, and mortality. He also highlighted the significance of having courageous conversations with others, even if they may not be ready for them immediately. Chuck shared his personal journey of growth and surrender, expressing his desire to become more spacious, present, and connected. He encouraged others to embrace this journey and to seek guidance from those who have already experienced it. Grab a copy of Chuck's latest book for you or a friend. https://www.chuckdegroat.net/books -- Lantz Howard is a professional coach for high-performing men to create a passionate marriage and a killer business (without losing their soul). www.lantzhoward.com

If you've ever struggled to set boundaries or wondered why it's so hard to respect them in others, this episode is for you. We dive deep into how to set and receive healthy boundaries, and why so many of us confuse healthy limits with toxic behaviors. Spoiler: setting boundaries isn't selfish—it's necessary for healthy, thriving relationships. But that's not all. When our boundaries are shaky, complicated emotions—like guilt, resentment, or anxiety—often arise. And instead of dealing with them, many of us reach for quick fixes: we numb. We avoid confronting those tough feelings that boundaries bring to the surface. Today, I'll break down why we numb, how to recognize it, and the steps you can take to stop avoiding your emotions and start healing. This episode covers: * The difference between healthy boundaries and toxic behaviors * How to communicate boundaries without guilt or shame * Practical ways to receive boundaries from others gracefully * How to recognize when you're numbing emotions (and what to do about it) * Why boundaries and emotional numbing are deeply connected—and how to untangle them You deserve relationships that nourish you, not drain you. This episode will help you understand the power of boundaries and guide you toward emotional freedom. Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here. Want to receive free bonus content? ⁠⁠Sign up for my free weekly email here. If you enjoyed this episode, you'll love: Episode 24: Boundaries, the Spectrum of Toxicity, and a Note About Evil Episode 26: How to say "No" to toxicity Thanks to our sponsors: Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today. Healing What's Within by Chuck DeGroat is now available wherever books are sold. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BESTOFYOU and get on your way to being your best self. Get 40% off your first order of Sundays. Go to SundaysForDogs.com/BESTOFYOU or use code BESTOFYOU at checkout. Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive 35% off with code BESTOFYOU. Music by Andy Luiten Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we talk with Chuck DeGroat, therapist and professor, about the vital role of compassionate community to help people heal from pain and trauma. We discuss the relationship between our bodies and emotions, as well as the need for curiosity when walking through a healing journey. Become a friend of the podcast by subscribing! Our subscribers are invited to quarterly zoom calls with the hosts, and they have exclusive access through Patreon messages which allows them to ask questions and make suggestions for episodes. Subscribers are also automatically entered into drawings for free books and resources given away by our sponsors. But most importantly, for just $3 a month you become part of the family of friends that keep the Counsel for Life podcast going! Your small membership fee helps to cover the production costs encountered by hosting a free podcast. Thank you for choosing to become a friend of the podcast we are glad you are here and are grateful for you! (Memberships automatically renew each month and can be cancelled at any time.)To learn more, visit our website: www.counselforlifepodcast.com

Fresh off of Jonathan's sermon this past Sunday from 1 Corinthians 14 we discuss some frequently asked questions about the spiritual gift of tongues! JM's Album Of The Week: The Smile - Cutouts Bradford's Book Club: Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself and to God When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering by Chuck DeGroat

Even as followers of Jesus, stuff happens to us. And more than that, stuff happens within us as a result. Your personal dashboard may start showing yellow lights or even flashing red lights, indicating things are not well. It's time to pay attention. In this very personal and practical episode, experienced counselor, author, pastor, and professor Chuck DeGroat rejoins Dr. Carol to talk about how to address those warning lights, find healing for what's going on inside, and reconnect with oneself, others, and God.  Connect with Chuck DeGroat on his website, Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. Find Chuck's book Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering       Check out my previous conversation with Chuck DeGroat - How to Deal With a Narcissist Dr. Carol loves to hear from you. You can leave her a confidential message here.

Join us on the podcast as we welcome therapist and author Chuck DeGroat to discuss his transformative new book, Healing What's Within. We all face challenges that leave their mark on us, often leading to buried pain that we struggle to acknowledge. If you feel disconnected from your true self, you're not alone.In this episode we'll delve into:How to gently confront what's keeping you stuckThe relationship between your body and emotionsFinding real rest and renewal in your connections with God, others, and yourselfTune in and discover how to heal from within! Don't miss it!  We have many more amazing Enneagram for Moms resources at www.enneagramformoms.com. FREE Enneagram resources here: https://www.yourenneagramcoach.com/podcastresources Find an Enneagram Coach - https://myenneagramcoach.com/ Become an Enneagram Coach Course - https://www.yourenneagramcoach.com/bec #Enneagram #PersonalityTypes #EnneagramCoach

Even if you're lined up with meaningful work you enjoy, if you're burning the wick at both ends in any way, your central nervous system doesn't know how to respond and your body may be experiencing trauma. If you're feeling weary on the journey of life or faith at all, make sure you take a deep breath with us and shift back into health as we invite the esteemed author and professor Dr. Chuck DeGroat on the podcast today to address helping you to find safety with yourself and with God as we share healthy rhythms for you and your marriage and family as well. Show Notes: Chuck is a follower of Jesus, a husband to Sara for 30 years, and father to two amazing daughters. He served as Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI and is also a faculty member for the Soul Care Institute. Chuck is also a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, author of five books, and retreat leader/speaker. As a therapist, he's specialized in issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and navigating issues of doubt and dark nights on the faith journey. He also trains clergy in issues of abuse and trauma, conduct pastor and planter assessments, facilitates church consultations and investigations of abuse among pastors and within congregations. You can learn more about my books at the link below and his newest book is available for pre-order now. It's called Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself and to God When You're Weary, Wounded, and Wandering. Visit the website. www.ChuckDeGroat.com Get Chuck's book + his Pre-order bonuses today (one day before launch!)! https://www.chuckdegroat.net/preorder-new-book

Like many of us, you carry a weight of buried pain. You feel secretly fractured within. There's a constant churn of unprocessed feelings of shame, anger, grief, or loneliness. But it doesn't have to be this way. Chuck DeGroat is the Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI.  He is also a licensed and practicing therapist, a spiritual director, author of five books. He wrote When Narcissism Comes to Church and his newest book just landed in early October Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself and to God When You're Weary, Wounded, and Wandering. (Oct. 8).00:00 Introduction to Healing and Spiritual Formation00:42 Meet Dr. Chuck DeGroat: Author and Therapist01:38 The Journey from Narcissism to Healing03:30 Understanding Trauma: Beyond the Outrage05:19 The Power of Personal Story in Healing15:55 Exploring the Genesis Examine23:38 The Core Message: Healing from Within28:09 Reflections and Future DirectionsFREE Attaching to God SummitBuilding Emotional & Spiritual Health by Attaching to God: Register Free NOWStay Connected: NEED spiritual direction or coaching that aligns with this podcast? Connect with Cyd Holsclaw here. Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources. Support the podcast with a one-time or regular gift (to keep this ad-free without breaking the Holsclaw's bank).

In this episode, Chuck DeGroat dives into the wounds we all carry and the journey of healing what's within. Chuck shares his own story of disconnection and isolation, and how he learned to pay attention to the dashboard of his thoughts, emotions, body, behaviors, and relationships to uncover the deeper wounds beneath the surface. He unpacks the power of secure attachment and how we can find our way back to that sense of belonging, worth, and purpose - not just in our minds, but in our very bodies. Whether you're a high-capacity striver or someone just trying to survive, this conversation will invite you into a transformative process of becoming more grounded, regulated, and connected to yourself, others, and the God who loves you. So get ready to lean in, because this is going to be a powerful and practical exploration of healing what's within. Chuck DeGroat is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he also serves as the founding executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program. He is a licensed therapist, spiritual director, author, retreat leader speaker, and faculty member with the Soul Care Institute. As a therapist, he specializes in navigating issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and doubt and dark nights on the faith journey. He trains clergy in handling issues of abuse and trauma, conducts pastor and planter assessments, and facilitates church consultations and investigations of abuse. Before transitioning to training and forming pastors, Chuck served as a pastor in Orlando and San Francisco. He and his wife, Sara, have been married for 30 years and have two adult daughters.Chuck's Book:Healing What's WithinChuck's Recommendations:The Secret Language of the BodyTrauma StewardshipHome TonightJoin Our Patreon for Early Access and More: PatreonConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.usGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Threads at www.facebook.com/shiftingculturepodcasthttps://www.instagram.com/shiftingculturepodcast/https://twitter.com/shiftingcultur2https://www.threads.net/@shiftingculturepodcasthttps://www.youtube.com/@shiftingculturepodcastConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowFriar TimeThrough meaningful interviews and heartfelt conversations, Friar Time, hosted by Fr....Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

What do you do after someone hurts you? How do you heal the pain that lingers inside of you? This is such an incredibly helpful, honest and vulnerable conversation with my friend and fellow therapist Chuck DeGroat, author of the brand new book Healing What's Within. Chuck taught us so much about the harmful realities of narcissism in his book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, and now he's helping us heal the lingering wounds. Here's what we cover: 1. The moment that launched 5 years of inner chaos for Chuck 2. 3 surprising questions God asks to each of us 3. How Adam & Eve were manipulated 4. The first step when dealing with narcissism 5. How take feedback from others 6. How to ask for what you need from others Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here. Pre-order Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself--and to God--When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering If you enjoyed this episode, you'll love: Episode 97: I Shouldn't Feel This Anxious—Insights on Trauma & Healing with Monique Koven Thanks to our sponsors: Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today. Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive 35% off with code BESTOFYOU. Music by Andy Luiten Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Chuck DeGroat is on the podcast today as we explore understanding what is trauma, the 3 questions from Genesis 3 that open us up to healing the wounds within us in order to become ourselves again, and the intersection of spiritual trauma and stages of faith. Chuck ends our time by leading us through a practice together.    Chuck DeGroat is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he also serves as the founding executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program. He is a licensed therapist, spiritual director, author, retreat leader speaker, and faculty member with the Soul Care Institute. As a therapist, he specializes in navigating issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and doubt and dark nights on the faith journey. He trains clergy in handling issues of abuse and trauma, conducts pastor and planter assessments, and facilitates church consultations and investigations of abuse. Before transitioning to training and forming pastors, Chuck served as a pastor in Orlando and San Francisco. He and his wife, Sara, have been married for 30 years and have two adult daughters.   Chuck's newest book - Healing What's Within Find Chuck on X, Instagram, Threads ChuckDeGroat.net   ---------- To help support Mike and his work, which includes this podcast, as well as his ability to offer discounted coaching, consulting, and preaching to churches, you can make tax-deductible donations to: “WE Ministries” And mail it to: Mike Goldsworthy 6285 E. Spring St #474 Long Beach, CA 90808

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/v_OzUDcA3u0If you're like a lot of folks, you look put together on the outside. But inside, there's a constant churn of unprocessed shame, anger, or grief. Little by little, you're becoming disconnected from who you really are. But professor, author and licensed therapist, Chuck DeGroat, says it doesn't have to be this way. And on this podcast, he invites listeners to take the journey to true healing. You may know Chuck as the author of his very popular 2020 book, When Narcissism Comes to Church. But in his newest book, Healing What's Within, Chuck opens up about one of the most traumatic experiences of his life—when he got fired from his job at a church. Chuck did what a lot of us do when we're experiencing excruciating pain—he pushed it down and soldiered through. After all, he had a family to support and career to salvage. But eventually, that trauma began to manifest in his body. And he found he could no longer ignore the pain—or rely on his means of coping. He had to confront the profound disconnection he felt from himself, from others, and from God.  With the heart of a caring pastor and expertise of a licensed therapist, Chuck shows the way to hope and healing for the deep wounds within your soul. Guests Chuck DeGroat Chuck DeGroat is Professor of Pastoral Care and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, and a faculty member of the Soul Care Institute. He is a therapist, speaker, consultant, pastor, and author of several books including When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. Chuck is married to Sara and has two daughters. Learn more at www.chuckdegroat.net Show Transcript Coming soon Read more

In this thought-provoking episode, we dive deep into the themes of connection, vulnerability, and healing with Chuck DeGroat. Drawing from his rich experience as a therapist and author, Chuck offers insights into how we can move away from shame-based narratives and toward a more empowering understanding of ourselves and our relationship with the divine. Join us as we explore the importance of community in healing, the reframing of addiction, and the transformative power of imagination in our spiritual journeys.   Chuck DeGroat is a seasoned therapist, author, and professor known for his work in clinical mental health counseling and his insights into personal and spiritual growth. With a background in pastoral ministry and a deep understanding of human psychology, Chuck offers a unique perspective on healing, connection, and the inner journey. His latest book, Healing What's Within: Coming Home to Yourself and to God When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering, provides a roadmap for those seeking to reclaim their worth and reconnect with their true selves. Key Points The Importance of Connection: Exploring the impact of disconnection on our lives and the necessity of vulnerability in healing. Reframing Suffering: Understanding suffering as a universal human experience rather than a personal failure. Imagination in Healing: Utilizing creative visualization to foster a sense of safety and connection with God. Redemptive Remembering: The practice of recalling moments of grace to counteract negative internal narratives. Rethinking Addiction: Viewing addiction as a response to deeper needs rather than a behavior to condemn, and fostering curiosity about our motivations.

Host Heather Creekmore and Dr. Tamara Rosier offers invaluable insights into navigating relationships with narcissists and understanding the crucial role of boundaries. Here are three key takeaways:

Today's conversation is a fascinating deep-dive into celebrity culture with Katelyn Beaty, editor and author of Celebrities For Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, & Profits are Hurting the Church. We explore the dynamics of celebrity culture and its profound effects on both the church and our personal sense of worth and mission. Here's what we cover: 1. The importance of developing an inner locus of control 2. How celebrity culture impacts the church 3. Parasocial relationships & influencers as attachment figures 4. Reevaluating what true success looks like 5. How to discern trustworthiness in people you follow Check out Katelyn's book Celebrities for Jesus here Find Katelyn's conversation with Chuck DeGroat on celebrity and narcissism here Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here. If you enjoyed this episode, you'll love: Episode 119: Drawing Strength from the Past —The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance with Dr. Jemar Tisby Thanks to our sponsors: Register for Broken to Beloved Conference Go to www.organifi.com/bestofyou today and use code BESTOFYOU for 20% off your order today. Right now get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription - but only for our listeners - at Babbel.com/BESTOFYOU. Go to thrivemarket.com/bestofyou for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! Visit cozyearth.com and unlock an exclusive 35% off with code BESTOFYOU. Music by Andy Luiten Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're feeling the weight of past trauma and struggling to heal, then you are not alone! The journey to healing from abuse and trauma is often filled with challenges, and finding the right tools to navigate this journey can be overwhelming. But what if there was a resource that could guide you through this process and help you cultivate well-being? In this episode, you will be able to: Explore the transformative power of therapy in healing from abuse and trauma and reclaiming your well-being. Uncover the impact of narcissism in church leadership and gain insights into navigating the complexities of this issue. Discover the invaluable benefits of professional mental health support and how it can positively impact your healing journey. Understand the profound connection between attachment issues and trauma recovery and how it influences your healing process. Embrace the role of self-regulation in effective leadership and learn how it can enhance your personal and professional growth. My special guest is Dr. Chuck DeGroat Chuck DeGroat is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he also serves as the founding executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program. He is a licensed therapist, spiritual director, author, retreat leader speaker, and faculty member with the Soul Care Institute. As a therapist, he specializes in navigating issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and doubt and dark nights on the faith journey. He trains clergy in handling issues of abuse and trauma, conducts pastor and planter assessments, and facilitates church consultations and investigations of abuse. Before transitioning to training and forming pastors, Chuck served as a pastor in Orlando and San Francisco. He and his wife, Sara, have been married for 30 years and have two adult daughters. Listen to our previous episode with Chuck DeGroat on EPS 42. The key moments in this episode are: 00:11:03 - Faux Vulnerability in Church Leadership 00:13:09 - Misuse of Self-Work for Immunity 00:13:40 - Dysfunctional Dynamics in Churches 00:14:58 - Toxic Leadership and Manipulation 00:19:06 - Nervous System Dysregulation 00:22:10 - Healing Attachment Wounds 00:25:52 - Transformation and Non-Anxious Presence 00:26:17 - Recognizing Patterns of Toxic Behavior 00:27:24 - Accountability and Systemic Change 00:29:15 - Rebuilding for the Future 00:30:49 - Understanding Shame Dynamics 00:35:15 - Rediscovering the Goodness of the Heart 00:39:20 - Men Doing Deeper Work 00:40:02 - Bullying and Women 00:41:15 - Complimenting Each Other's Work 00:41:39 - Encouraging Curiosity and Healing 00:42:42 - Embracing Curiosity and Healing 00:53:11 - Finding Healing and Freedom Trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within. - Chuck DeGroat Pre-order Healing What's Within by Dr. Chuck DeGroat on his website chuckdegroat.net. Join the Launch Team. Join the Patreon community at www.patreon.com/aworldofdifference to access exclusive content, including additional insights from Dr. Chuck DeGroat. Explore additional resources recommended by Dr. Chuck DeGroat at the end of each chapter, such as Dan Allender's To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Life and Frederick Buechner's Telling Secrets. Engage in introspective and mindful practices to support your healing journey, such as deep breathing, visualization, EMDR and brainspotting. Gift Healing What's Within to friends or loved ones who could benefit from the valuable tools and insights shared in the book. Follow the podcast here: https://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/aworldofdifference/ https://www.twitter.com/@awodpod https://www.youtube.com/@aworldofdifference https://www.facebook.com/A-World-of-Difference-613933132591673/ https://www.instagram.com/aworldof.difference https://www.patreon.com/aworldofdifference Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this third conversation in our series on belonging, Sarah talks with Chuck DeGroat (professor, licensed therapist, & author of Healing What's Within) about how so many of us live “habitually disconnected.” Together, they explore what it might look like to pay attention to our internal landscape and longings as a means of finding our way back home to ourselves, to God, and to each other.Find episode notes and ways to connect with Sarah at sarahewestfall.comConnect with Chuck at chuckdegroat.netHuman Together is written and recorded by Sarah E. Westfall and is produced and edited by Ben Westfall. Theme music is “Sit with Me” by Sarah Scharbrough.

Host, Lisa Colon DeLay bring you a guest interview conversation with Chuck DeGroat on Trauma, Connection, Desire, Possessiveness, Healing, and more.

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/XKwF1N--a00For more than two decades, Patrick and Mary DeMuth faithfully served as lay leaders at Lakepointe Church, a megachurch in the Dallas/Fort Worth area pastored by Josh Howerton. But as concerns about Howerton grew, Patrick and Mary found they could no longer stay in good conscience. And now, they're dealing with the anger and grief so many so-called “church refugees” feel. In this edition of The Roys Report (TRR), Mary DeMuth joins host Julie Roys to talk about navigating church bewilderment. This is a condition more and more Christians are experiencing today, as scandal and corruption are increasingly seeping into the church. And if you caught the previous TRR podcast with Amanda Cunningham, you heard about many of the concerning issues at Lakepointe Church. This is the church where Mary and Patrick served for 23 years. How do you deal with righteous anger? How do you navigate the grief? How much is okay to say, and what is gossip? How do you find another church home when you're dealing with feelings of betrayal and lack of trust? How do you avoid getting in the same situation again? These are crucial questions, which Mary—an internationally known author and a repeat speaker at our Restore Conference—admits she is wrestling with. And, as is so characteristic of Mary, she engages these questions with grace, wisdom, and a passion for truth and justice. Sadly, many churches have created a culture where it's not okay to talk about leaving a toxic church. But as Mary explains in this podcast, the church won't get better until we talk about it. Believers must begin to evaluate and process the toxicity in churches—and how we can truly become the Body of Christ. Mary has recently developed a Church Hurt Checklist to help people understand their situation and begin to process and articulate it. Download it free at marydemuth.com/churchhurt Guests Mary DeMuth Mary DeMuth is an international speaker, podcaster, and author of over 40 books, fiction and nonfiction, including The Most Misunderstood Women of the Bible and We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. Mary lives in Texas with her husband of 30+ years and is mom to three adult children. Learn more at MaryDeMuth.com. Show Transcript Julie Roys: For more than two decades, Patrick and Mary DeMuth faithfully served as leaders at a megachurch in the Dallas Fort Worth area. But as concerns about the current pastor grew, they found they could no longer stay in good conscience. And now they’re dealing with the anger and grief so many so-called church refugees feel. Julie Roys: Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And today, Mary DeMuth joins me to talk about navigating church bewilderment. Sadly, this is an issue many Christians are dealing with, as abuse, scandal, and corruption increasingly seem to be seeping into the church. Julie Roys: And if you caught our last podcast with Amanda Cunningham, you heard about many of the concerning issues at Lake Point Church in the Dallas Fort Worth area, where Josh Howerton is Pastor. This is the church where Mary and Patrick served for 23 years. And if you missed our prior podcast, it was a real eye-opener and I encourage you to go back and listen to that. Julie Roys: Today’s podcast is a sequel to my podcast with Amanda, but rather than exposing the issues at Lake Point today, Mary is going to be discussing the aftermath of leaving. How do you deal with righteous anger? How do you navigate the grief? How do you know how much is okay to say? And what is gossip? And how do you find another church home when you’re dealing with feelings of betrayal and lack of trust? How do you avoid getting in the same situation again? Julie Roys: These are crucial questions and ones that I know many of you are dealing with today. And so I’m so looking forward to diving into this topic with Mary DeMuth. But first I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington. Julie Roys: Are you passionate about impacting the world so it reflects biblical ideals of justice? The Talbot School of Theology Doctor of Ministry program is launching a new track exploring the theological, social, and practical dimensions of biblical justice today. The program equips students with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual foundation needed to address social issues with wisdom and compassion. Julie Roys: Justice has become a key issue in our culture, but more importantly, it’s an issue that’s close to God’s heart. While it’s clear the Bible calls God’s people to pursue justice, we must be guided by His Word within that pursuit. Talbot has created this track to do just that. As part of this program, you’ll examine issues such as trafficking, race, immigration, and poverty. Julie Roys: And I’ll be teaching a session as well, focusing on the right use of power in our churches so we can protect the vulnerable, rather than harm them. So join me and a community of like-minded scholars committed to social change and ethical leadership. Apply now at TALBOT.EDU/DMIN. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and quality. That's because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys: Again, joining me is Christian author and podcaster, Mary DeMuth, and many of Mary from her excellent books like We Too: Discussing the Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Church, and also her memoir, Thin Places. Mary also was a guest speaker at our last Restore Conference in 2022, and she’ll be speaking again at our Restore Conference in Phoenix in February in 2025. So we’re super looking forward to that. Julie Roys: But she joins me now to talk about something that’s been a very painful process for both her and Patrick, and that is leaving her church of 23 years, Lake Point Church there in the Dallas Fort Worth area. So Mary, Thank you so much for being willing to talk about what I know has been a really difficult journey. Mary DeMuth: Thanks. I certainly prayed about this conversation and what I’ve noticed in this space is that a lot of people in the middle of it. are not articulating how they’re feeling because there’s this general pressure from churches that you leave that you aren’t supposed to say anything. And I think there’s a difference between, and we’ll talk about this, I’m sure, throughout this episode, but there’s a difference between leaving quietly and running around gossiping about things. Certainly, those are two different things. Mary DeMuth: But I think what we’ve done is we’ve created a culture of silence; you can’t talk about it and literally we won’t get better unless we do talk about it. So that’s one reason why I am having this conversation today, because this is not a completed story. This is a messy story. I’m in the middle of it. Mary DeMuth: I am heartbroken, and I don’t have all the answers. But I wanted to give word to those of you that may be in that same space, that may be hurting and don’t have words to say about it. And maybe I can articulate some of those things for you. Julie Roys: And I so appreciate that. I find that people often are willing to talk about experiences years after the fact, when they’ve worked it all out and they can tie it all up in a neat bow and we can all go, Oh, that’s so nice. And here’s three ways that you can apply this message. But I knew you were going through a really painful thing that it was messy. You’ve been tweeting about it, or I should say posting on X. Julie Roys: You’ve been very open and honest with your pain. And I really appreciate that. And I love the topic. You actually gave me the title for this, about navigating church bewilderment. And I love that word bewilderment because I feel like it really captures the confusion, the real disillusionment, and then the grief and the pain. Julie Roys: All of these things bound up in one. And so we’re going to get to all that and unpack all of that. But I think to understand the depth of it for you and for Patrick, first I have to understand how deeply vested you were in this church. So talk about what this church has meant to you over more than two decades and the roles that you played in it and the community that you had. Mary DeMuth: Yeah, we’ve been there for 23 years, and we immediately started serving the moment we landed there. And we also were the first non-IMB, it was an SBC church at the time, and we were the first non-IMB missionaries to be sent out from Lake Point. Julie Roys: Define IMB for those who . Mary DeMuth: Yes. International mission board. So typically SBC churches send, they don’t really send their own missionaries. They sponsor IMB because all the money comes out of the SBC into this fund for the International Mission Board. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to be actually supported because we believed that people who paid prayed. And so we were not IMB, but Lake Point sent us out. So we were church planters in the South of France for a couple of years. And honestly the leadership there at our church, even though we weren’t going through our church, they were the ones that helped us through a really untenable situation. And our loyalty to that church was because they put us back together when we got back from the field.. Mary DeMuth: So much pouring in and so much love. And so we have been a life group leader for 20 of the 23 years. The only three years we weren’t was when we were in France, planting a church. And then I have run a couple of conferences, interestingly enough, called the Re-story Conference, which was very similar sounding to the Restore Conference. Mary DeMuth: And I also recorded a Life Way study at Lake Point for an audience. And then my husband was an elder at the church for five years. And so we have led mission teams all over the world for Lake Point. We have definitely been in the upper levels of volunteer leadership all these years and have enjoyed a lot of conviviality and fellowship. Mary DeMuth: And I never never. I always bragged about my church. It never crossed my mind that there would be a day that I wasn’t at that church anymore. And so as of December of 2023, we are away from there and making our way into a new space. Julie Roys: And I’ve talked about this on this podcast, but we’re in a house church with, some of the folks in our house church were at their previous church for over 30 years, and the amount of pain and loss and especially when you’re, when you’re our age, early 40s. Julie Roys: That’s it. It’s early 40s. No, when you’re a little bit older and later in life and to be at this point where you’re starting over is not at all where you expected to be, and it’s pretty tough to be there. You retain some of the friendships, but everything’s changed. And it just makes for a really really difficult road that you never planned to be on. Julie Roys: Your church; and this is a lot of the reason behind you leaving, changed dramatically in the last 5 years. Stephen Stroop was your previous pastor. And in 2019, I believe Josh Howerton came in. Your husband actually was on the elder board that approved him, right? Mary DeMuth: Yes. Yes. And we’ve had to work through that as you can imagine, because that’s painful to think about. And just to expand a little bit about the why is the basic reasons why we left. There’s a lot of things. As an author, as a published author and as a speaker, the plagiarism was just grating on me and I couldn’t stomach it, but that wasn’t the main reason. Mary DeMuth: Although it’s still very problematic to me. What’s more problematic is that they don’t think it’s a big deal and they don’t see it as sin, and I just disagree. But the two things that we, the two main things that caused us to walk away, one was we were told by leadership, by upper-level leadership, that there was no place for us to serve. Mary DeMuth: And that was really, that was about a year ago. And so it took us about a year to make that decision. Like we were still serving in our life group, but there were things that God has put in us as church planters. And as me, as an author and an advocate that we have a lot that we would love to be able to offer, and to have that cut off when we feel like we’re in the prime of service right now. We weren’t asking to be paid. This is all volunteer, but we were told we couldn’t. Mary DeMuth: And then the second thing that was kind of the straw was all of the crude words and the misogynistic statements that started around 2022 almost every sermon. And as an advocate for sexual abuse victims and as an advocate for women, I could no longer be associated with that church because it just didn’t, I just couldn’t be associated with it. Mary DeMuth: I have stood in front of the Southern Baptist Convention, and I have spoken and advocated, and I have been chewed up and spit out for it. And if I’m going to a church that is marginalizing women, it does not make sense. And so no place for us to serve, big, huge problem. And then I just couldn’t be connected with a church that had that kind of reputation. Julie Roys: Those reasons are huge. and make an awful lot of sense. The plagiarism as you said, the crude remarks, the misogynistic remarks. And for a lot of folks, if you’re like, what are they talking about? I do encourage you to go back and listen to our last podcast with Amanda Cunningham, where we went over a lot of these things that Mary’s talking about that have happened in her church. Julie Roys: I’m sure there’s people listening, and they’re like, okay, that sounds really, really awful. But how do you know when you hit that tipping point? Because I remember talking to you a couple of years ago and me going, Hey, is this really your pastor? I’m seeing some stuff. How is this your pastor? And you’re like we’re serving, and we love our life group. I get it. I totally, totally get it. But how did you and Patrick, how did you get to the point where you’re like, this is the tipping point, no more? Mary DeMuth: We decided we went into this together, so we decided that we both had to have the same decision. We weren’t going to have one of us leave and one not leave. We were going to do this together. So that took a year of a lot of conversations. And we saw those red flags when you saw them. So we’ve seen them, but as you mentioned, the model of Lake Point used to be, it seems to be shifting now, but it used to be church within a church. And so your life group was really basically what you’re doing, Julie. It’s a small gathering of people where there is someone who teaches, and there’s someone who’s the missions coordinator. And there’s someone who, it’s that’s how, like your church is that group. And so we felt a deep, strong connection to our group. And we felt like we were the pastors of that church within a church. Mary DeMuth: The model has shifted. And I don’t know, it has never been articulated publicly, but it seems from the exterior looking in that it’s more becoming a franchise model, which is where you create this mother church, and it can be duplicated like MacDonald’s in any context. Therefore they may not have that idea that it is church within a church anymore. It has to be something replicatable on all other campuses. And so we began to see this shifting of, this is no longer church within a church, which is really what kept us there. We had people we were serving. And then honestly, I just couldn’t stomach sermons anymore. I couldn’t walk into that building anymore. Mary DeMuth: And as everything became a spectacle the longer we were there, it was all about Sunday morning and the spectacle that it had become like a circus, and I could not find Jesus there. And I would sit in the audience. We had beautifully. articulated and performed auto-tuned worship. It was beautiful. It sounded amazing. There was a lot of rah-rah-rah. There was a lot of energy and it felt like Ichabod to me, like to me as a Christ follower, a mature Christ follower of many years, I couldn’t feel the presence of the Lord anymore. And for me, that’s what is the point of going to a church, if that has happened to you? Mary DeMuth: I’m not saying that other people aren’t experiencing the Lord there. I’m not saying that other people aren’t becoming Christians there. They are. And that’s probably the most problematic part of this whole thing is that they are easily able to point to numbers that are flowing in through the front door, ignoring all of us that have left out the back door. Mary DeMuth: And because it is successful, therefore they can just call me names and malign me or people like Amanda and others, and they can dismiss us because look what God is doing. Julie Roys: And Amanda talked about that same thing about the church within a church and even how each of the churches had different women’s ministries. Julie Roys: And I think about it, it was so personal because people are different and they all had different campuses, have different makeup, they have different cultures and now, this franchise model where you go in, you order a Big Mac, and you get a Big Mac. That’s what you’re used to, right? Julie Roys: But is it? And probably our conversation today, we probably don’t have enough time to really delve into this, but this is something I have been thinking more and more about, is it even church if you have a place where it, maybe a Christian organization and maybe a Christian organization that blesses a lot of people but is it a church where you say to members of the body, we don’t need you, we don’t need your gift, and you can’t serve here? If we have a pastor who doesn’t even know people’s names, if we don’t have that kind of shepherding, is it even a church anymore? Mary DeMuth: I’ll back up before I answer that in that I’ve, been overseas and, anyone that’s been overseas and gone to a McDonald’s overseas knows they have different categories. So even franchises like McDonald’s in France has McWine, right? Or McVine. McDonald’s even understands contextualizing the hamburger to the person, and to the people. So that’s an odd thing for me that there would be this idea that you can just, this is the model and we’re superimposing it on all sorts of different economic people and people in different cultures, and we’re just gonna superimpose it there, which seems super weird to me. Mary DeMuth:  On the, is this a church? We have to just go back to simplicity, which is, are we celebrating the Lord’s Supper? Are there sacraments there? Is the word of God being delivered and is it? Mary DeMuth: And then deeper than that, are  disciples being made? because there’s a big, huge difference between converts who hear something. And I think about the parable of the soils, they hear it, they receive it with joy, they have no root and then they walk away. We’re not teaching a theology of suffering in most of these bigger churches for sure. Mary DeMuth: But I think we need to remember that a church is supposed to be a place of koinonia, a place of fellowship, a place where we are iron sharpening iron, and a place of discipleship where people are not just converted, but they are just doing the slow work of people pouring into each other’s lives. That’s discipleship. That’s not a top-down model. That’s not pastor to congregation. That’s person to person. And when a church gets so big for its britches these things can fall through the cracks. Mary DeMuth: Now, Lake Point had done a very good job of doing that discipleship piece through their vehicle of a life group. But as things have shifted, we’re seeing a lot less of that. And again, I haven’t been there for six months, so they could be doing it. I don’t know, but just from my perspective today that’s something that’s been difficult to see. Julie Roys: You alluded to this earlier, this idea of leaving well. It’s hard to leave well and even to define what leaving well is. I will say there was one church that my husband and I ended up leaving and it was over a theological disagreement that we just felt we couldn’t bend on. And at the same time, we felt really pulled to another church. They actually had us come up and explain why we were leaving and gathered around us and prayed for us. Julie Roys: That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen where it was just like, differences and God makes calling you here. We want to bless you as you go. And you’ve met a lot to this church and we mean a lot to each other and let’s just bless each other. It was so beautiful, and I don’t know why this can’t happen more. But usually it’s just a lot of pain and a lot of heartache And when you talk about leaving well, what it usually means to a lot of people, and I’ve heard even Christian leaders talk about this. When you leave well, you just keep your stuff to yourself. Julie Roys: The issues that you had, you suck them under, and you don’t speak about it. And honestly, I think that’s part of our problem in the church is that we don’t talk about our problems. And so we wait till they become a major scandal or crisis. And then they really blow up. And we allow abusive pastors just kind of reign; to continue doing what they’re doing. Julie Roys: So talk about this concept of leaving well. Obviously, you’ve chosen to speak rather boldly about what happened there. I think really from a heart of love and concern for both the church and the people there, not just to vent how you’re feeling. But talk about that and how you’ve come to the decision you have about that. Mary DeMuth: First, I’ll say there’s been kind of  an unholy silence. We were pretty high up and we have not been followed up with, and the very few times we were invited into those spaces, it was difficult. So there is that. I would encourage church leaders to do what your former church did, because I think there’s a lot to be learned. Mary DeMuth: I also need to say that we didn’t leave from a position of canceling and of immaturity. There’s one thing if you’re like a church hopper and you’re like, just running around with a consumeristic mindset like, what do I get in this for me? A lot of people that are leaving churches are being accused of being that. But the ones that I know that have left this church are mature, deep believers in Christ who are seeing so many red flags. Mary DeMuth: And the reason I articulated it was because I was running into people who were brokenhearted and didn’t have words for it. And somehow through the grace of God and through his power and his ability, I was able to say the things that people were feeling so that they would no longer feel alone. I would rather have been silent if the Lord hadn’t put his hand on me. Mary DeMuth: I would rather grieve this alone and quietly, but I have seen a lot of really good conversation and ministry happen because of this. I’m not out to harm the reputation of the church. I will never tell someone to leave a church unless they’re being abused, obviously, that’s their own decision. Mary DeMuth: They have the autonomy to make that decision between them and God. But I do want to be a listening ear and an empath for those who are bewildered at the church they’re going to that no longer looks like the church they used to go to. Julie Roys: So tell me what is gossip because this is what is, this is the word, I’ve gotten called this myriads and myriads of times. But what is gossip? And clearly you don’t believe this falls into that category. Why? Mary DeMuth: It’s not gossip to share your emotions about how you’re reacting to an abuse. That is actually being a lot like Paul. And if you look at the letters throughout the epistles in particular, you see Paul saying things about churches. Mary DeMuth: And so if we’re going to talk about gossip, we’d have to call him a gossip because he was constantly calling out, Hey, listen, those Judaizers, they don’t really have it right. Oh, listen, this Gnosticism isn’t good. And that guy’s having sex with his mother-in-law. These kinds of things are, he’s very clear. Mary DeMuth: These are not untrue things he’s saying. These are actually true statements. And underneath all of that is a desire for the church to be the body of Christ and to be holy. It’s not slander because it’s telling the truth. And it’s always with a desire to see God do good work in the local church. And if she is straying, if you love her, you will say something about it. Mary DeMuth: Now there’s a manner in which you can do that. You can be really caustic. You can speak the truth without love, but we are called to speak the truth with love. And I believe that we have conflagrated speaking the truth in love with gossip, and those are two different things. Gossip intends to harm the reputation of another or of an entity; telling the truth in love tries to help that institution have a mirror and see what’s going on. Julie Roys: The motive is really important, although I always get frustrated when people try to judge other people’s motives because the truth is, you don’t know somebody else’s heart. And that’s something I never do. I’ll talk about actions, but I don’t know someone’s heart. Only God knows the heart. But I know that’s something I constantly check myself about is my desire for repentance? is my desire to see these leaders repent? 100 percent, and I know you well enough to know that you would be absolutely thrilled and would extend grace if the leaders who have hurt you so deeply would repent of their sin and would change their ways. I know that and I’m sure you pray for that, that you and Patrick are praying right now for that. Am I right? Mary DeMuth: Absolutely. That is  underneath all of this, is just a desire to see the local church healthy and to see her lift up the name of Jesus. And we also just want to again put up a mirror of is this representing the kingdom of God or is this representing something else? And that’s what we were coming to find. Patrick and I both were. The kingdom’s upside down. It’s counterintuitive. It’s the least is the most. And the most is the least. It’s not about building platforms. It’s not about being the winner. It’s not about Christian nationalism. It’s none of these. I don’t even like those two words together. Mary DeMuth: It’s not about power. Jesus willingly laid down his power and he considered equality with God, not something to be grasped. He made himself nothing. And when I see a lot of these big churches and not all of them, but a lot of them where it is very male leader centric celebrity driven. And really about, we want to be the coolest people with the biggest numbers. Mary DeMuth: I don’t get it. They’ll point to Acts chapter two. They’ll talk about how many were added to the kingdom on that day. They’ll call that a mega church. It was not a mega church. People were still meeting in homes. So we just have to be careful. I’m not against mega churches. I actually think that there’s a place for them. Mary DeMuth: Over the years, they we have had the benefit of a megachurch that can go into a community and say, oh, you need a church building, here you go. Like they can do some things that a littler church can’t do. So I’m not against the megachurch, but there is something fallible in the model, the consumeristic model, that is causing all of this anguish. Julie Roys: And I’d say the leadership model. Because we have imported a leadership model that’s of the world and done the exact opposite of what Jesus said, don’t be like the Gentiles who lorded over them, but instead, whoever wants to be first should be last, whoever wants to be greatest should be least. Julie Roys: It is the upside-down kingdom, and we’ve forgotten that. We’ve become just like the world, and we count our success the same way as the world. And we’ve seen this going, it’s been going on a very long time, and I think the megachurches get a lot of the criticism because they’ve. been kind of doing it in spades in an awful lot of them and then exporting these values to all the smaller churches who are wannabes, right? Julie Roys: So you even have smaller churches that are trying to do the exact same thing and they think it’s right because it’s successful very much in the American model of success, which is bigger and better. Before we go forward, there is something I do want to ask you, though, and I would be remiss if I didn’t. What was it about what you and Patrick that you were doing that they didn’t want you serving? Mary DeMuth: I don’t know. They just didn’t want us. That’s what’s been hard is, it’s a speculative, I just don’t know. And I’m willing to be talked to about those things, of course. Like if they feel like something that we’re not godly enough or we’re, or I’m too public or whatever it is, I don’t know. Mary DeMuth: But I do know this, I do know this. When we were told this, what we learned was that they had been morphing from a church that had a lot of lay leaders to a higher control situation where only people who are employed by the church could be in charge of ministries. And so, you can control that. If you can control someone's salary, you can control the whole thing. Mary DeMuth: And so we were just told there is no place for you because we’re not on staff. So that’s probably my guess at a reason is that we were not controllable. And the statement made to us is I’ve got 30 other people just like you that are well trained and that have gone, my husband went to seminary, and all that, but will never use them. We will never use them. And basically, you just need to get over it. You will never be used. Julie Roys:  What a waste of resources. Unbelievable. The kingdom is not so well resourced that we don’t need every single person; that God didn’t give gifts every single one of them to be used. Julie Roys: But I will say, I’ve seen this happen before. And the beautiful thing is, people get dispersed, people like yourself and like Patrick, too often churches that are very needy very welcoming. Like Oh, thank God. It’s like Christmas come early, come to Moots, come to our church. And I’m sure you’re experiencing that because I can’t imagine not wanting you and Patrick at my church. It’s just shocking to me. But yeah, that is a benefit of it. It’s the church in Jerusalem getting persecuted. Then they went to the ends of the earth, and we can do that. Julie Roys: One of the things that I’ve seen be a silver lining, if you can call it that, in these sorts of situations is you’re a church refugee, but there’s a lot of other ones out there, too. And there can be a great deal of deep fellowship. And, in many ways, that’s what RESTORE is. It’s a gathering of a lot of not just refugees, a lot of helpers and pastors and people who are allies who just want to know more. But. There’s an awful lot of us there that have been hurt by the church, and there’s just this beautiful, sweet fellowship. Julie Roys: And my understanding is, and Amanda alluded to it in our last podcast, that you guys have served as pastors to these refugees. Would you talk about that sweet group that you were able to love on and pastor through this and just help them? Mary DeMuth: Yeah, we definitely were praying, and we just kept coming upon people. And in particular, people who had been employed but had been harshly fired in very traumatic ways. And we just felt so deeply. I mean for us, it’s sad and we were highly involved and it’s sad, but it wasn’t our job. And so we just had this empathy for those folks. And so we gathered as much as we knew, we put the word out quietly. Mary DeMuth: We gathered people for several weeks and met with them. And these were people that some were still there, and some were not, and some were walking away from Jesus. It was just the whole gamut of a wide variety of people in a lot of pain. And what we wanted to do was just to help them know our first session was called, You are not crazy. We just wanted them to know. that what they had seen and experienced was real and validated by the rest of us. And then we’ve just been walking through Chuck DeGroat's information about narcissism in the church and narcissistic church systems. And then talking about what is a safe person and what is a safe system. And then praying and crying and grieving and giving people the space that they are not allowed to have to get out all this junk that’s inside of us because it’s been so, so painful. Julie Roys: And I want to get to the safe system and the safe person, because I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening who would like that information as well. Julie Roys: But let’s talk about the feelings first, because when this happens, there is. Again, we talked about bewilderment. There’s just this mix of negative emotions that you don’t know what to do with a lot of times. One is anger and anger in the church has been one of these emotions that we just don’t deal with very well. And I’ve said this numerous times, but this is one that we’ll get. We’ll get thrown back in my face and people say, you sound like you’re angry and I’m like, darn I’m angry. Why aren’t you angry? Why wouldn’t we be angry when these awful things are happening in the church? And yet again, as a Christian, we feel guilty when we’re angry. So how have you dealt with your own anger, and helped others who are dealing with similar anger? Mary DeMuth: The first thing that we did was we process outside of the circle of the church because we needed to know if we were going crazy. Is this normal? Are these things that we’re saying? Is it a big deal? Or are we just being babies? We definitely did that. And then it’s been the prayer of let this anger fuel something beautiful, because I do believe that great movements of God happen because there’s injustice and we are angry at the injustice. Mary DeMuth: I often joke that I write a book when I’m angry, so I must be a pretty angry person at book 52. There’s injustice in this world and our God is righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. When we do the work of making note of people who are being hurt and oppressed and harmed, we are doing the Lord’s work. And so that anger can be a fuel to doing positive things Mary DeMuth:. Now, I also just want to say, it’s okay to be angry. I’m angry and I have been angry and I’m processing that with friends and I’m processing it with my husband and with the Lord. Rightfully so, because I see so many people, to use Mark Driscoll’s frustrating phraseology, the people behind the bus. I’m meeting so many people behind the bus that are getting the bus is backing up over the people. Because not only cause when if you say anything, if you dare to say anything, you will get run over again and again, you will be accused of all sorts of things when really your desire is to see people set free and to open the eyes of people that are being harmed so that they no longer have to be in that system anymore. Julie Roys: And what a great deal of fear these leaders must feel. to behave that way that you have to annihilate people who say anything negative. I’ve gotten quite comfortable with people saying negative things. I just want to make sure if there’s truth in it, that I take it to heart. It’s okay, but in the end of the day, you’ve got to be okay with who you are before your Lord. And those closest to you who will tell you the truth when you’re veering off. That desire to control that desire that you have to shut down negative communication. I can’t imagine living in that much fear that you constantly are doing that. And yet that’s what we see. Julie Roys: And that whole thing about feeling like you’re crazy. So much of that’s because you’ve been told you’re crazy. You’ve been told that because that’s the gaslighting that happens when you say there’s a problem. No, there is no problem. You’re the problem. Mary DeMuth: It’s back to the emperor with no clothes. We all see the naked emperor and only a little kid says he’s not wearing any clothes. And we’re like Oh, yeah, but there’s this like kind of delusional thing or czarist Russia, the Potemkin village. If you know what that is, it was a village that was just set up like a movie set so that when the czar went by he could see that this Potemkin’s village was actually a really cool place, but you open the door, you walk through, it’s just mud and dirt on the other side and some horses grazing in a field. Church is not a Potemkin village. It should never be. It should not be a facade that we are trying to hold up by shaming people who say negative things. The church is a living, breathing organization. It is the body of Christ. Mary DeMuth: God does not need to be defended. He can do just fine by himself. And this fear that you talk about is very real because it’s about human empire. Whenever we build our Roman empire on our cult of personality and our particular views about things and not on the word of God and not on studying the word of God, then we will be threatened by anyone who says anything negative because that will eat away at the foundation of our FACO empire. Julie Roys: Very well said. That is very well said. Let’s talk about grief. And I was reminded of the Kubler Ross Stages of grief. And let me see. Those are denial, which is often where we start, right? When things go wrong, anger, the bargaining we can work this out somehow, right? Depression and sink into that deep depression. This is just so sad. And then there’s acceptance, which is that last one. And it’s not like these are completely linear because what I found is you go through, oh, I’ve worked through to acceptance. No, I haven’t. I’m back at anger again. Julie Roys: Something will happen. it'll put you right back there. So it’s not completely linear, but how have you moved toward acceptance? What does acceptance look like? And maybe that’s a long way off but talk about where you’re at in that whole process. Mary DeMuth: I think a lot of people are in this space. There’s a lot of loyal people and that’s where the bargaining comes in. And a lot of the people I’ve talked to are like, yeah, I never go to that church anymore, like to the services, but I’m here because of my small group and they’re my church. There’s this, that we were in that space for a really long time. We can make this work. This is our church, not that other part is not the church, but it’s all together. Mary DeMuth: So once we got to the decision and made the decision, then the depression set in for sure. And I think I’m still there working my way through it of thinking that I was going to be there the rest of my life. As a person who grew up in a really difficult home and met Jesus at 15 years old, the church became my family. My family was not my family. And the church was the one place where I could go to be loved, to be healed, to be worked, just to work through my salvation with fear and trembling. And so, to walk away from something that you’ve been at the most we’ve ever been at a church is 23. This is the longest we’ve ever been somewhere to walk away from. It felt like I lost my limb. I lost my family, my father’s in the faith, my mother’s in the faith, my aunts, and my uncles in the faith. And then to be villainized for just having eyes to see what the heck is going on, has been devastating, devastating. So I’m still in the grief phase and I don’t cry much about it because I’ve sometimes just shoved it way down deep because I did not ever expect that I was going to have to leave a place I loved so much. Julie Roys: There’s a, I think it’s a short story and I should know the name of it, but it’s about someone, a man who goes to a cemetery and he sees a woman just weeping and weeping, and he’s there to visit his partner who had died. I don’t think he had actually married her. But he realizes in that moment that the person who’s grieving, who’s crying and just sobbing is the richer person. Because they had loved deeply and he had never loved that deeply. And I’ve thought about that, I lost my mother over 20 years ago and she was so special and I never like, I hear some people talk about their mothers, and how difficult or what I never felt that way. My mother was just a joy, but it was so hard to lose her, but it was hard because I loved her so much. Julie Roys: And I think, I’m so grateful for you that you did have that church experience where you were loved so deeply, where you loved deeply, and I’ve got to believe that God will provide that family again. It will be different. And I know I just feel so blessed by our church family that we found in this wasteland or out of the wasteland. Julie Roys: But it’s been really, really special because I don’t have to explain anything to these people. They understand the world I work in. They understand. It’s just, it’s really been a gift. And I think it’s been a gift too. And I know you have adult children. I’m glad I had these adult children because they’re a blessing in ways that they couldn’t be and a support in ways that they couldn’t be when they were younger, when we had to be everything to them. Julie Roys: And I’m glad I’m not dealing with, and I know a lot of people are,  is what do we do for our kids now? And then there’s that pressure to find something for your children right away. And that makes it really hard. But as believers, we are taught, Hebrews 10:25, let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but all the more as the day of the Lord approaches, let us encourage each other and all the more as the day approaches. I have found sometimes that can be used as a club against people who are just grieving, and they’re dealing with a great deal of betrayal trauma at this point. Julie Roys: And now we’re going to hit them over the head and say, you better be in church on Sunday. When they walk into a church and it just triggers, it’s a trigger for them. I believe in fellowship. I believe in the church. I love the church, but I am concerned about the process of helping people reengage after they’ve been wounded so profoundly. Julie Roys: So speak to this process of finding a new church home, or even having the freedom for a period of time to say, I don’t know. I don’t know that I can do that right now. Obviously, there is a danger if we’re out of fellowship for too long. But speak to that person who right now is outside of fellowship and really afraid to reengage with it. Mary DeMuth: Yeah. First, you’re super normal. And if you’ve been wounded in a terrible community, the stakes are pretty high, when you walk in, especially if you’re triggered or traumatized by walking into a building. I don’t know that I could walk into a big church right now. Like I just don’t think I could, I think I would have a hard time with that. Mary DeMuth: So for us, how we went about it and everyone’s going to be different, we did want to land somewhere because we just feel like we’re in that stage of, we want to serve the church. And so for our little parameters, and I think it’ll be different for every person. Ours was, it needs to be local. And we’re hoping that there will be people there already that we’re friends with. Mary DeMuth: And since we’re in a little town, right? So there’s, 1 billion churches and little towns in Texas, right? So we had plenty to choose from so many, and we didn’t even get to all of them, but that was our parameter in choosing a home. In fact, we just officially joined a church yesterday. So it did take some time to get to that place. But I just want to let you know that it’s normal to be scared, to be triggered, to be in pain. Mary DeMuth: Don’t let it stay there. You are wounded in a negative community and the Lord is very frustrating and he asks you to be healed in good community. That’s hard. But a relational wound requires a relational cure, and that’s one reason why Patrick and I have been pouring into people who are hurt because we want to be that safer relationship for people to be falling apart or hurting or ask really blunt questions and be really ticked off. Because I believe people are healed in community when they’re wounded in community. Julie Roys: 100%. And I know when I came through just so much grief and pain and church hurt. I know a lot of people go to therapy and I’m not against therapy, but I was like, I don’t need to talk to this about this with a counselor. It’s just not like that. I need to be in a community where there’s love. I need to see beauty in people like again. And even though I’m afraid to be vulnerable on some levels at the same time, I’m compelled to be vulnerable because I know until you do that, you can’t heal. Mary DeMuth: When we met with the person who became our pastor and there’s a multiplicity of pastors in this particular denomination, but we sat across from him and we told him our story and he just listened, and he dignified the story. And then he said this, he said, we just want to love you. And I just immediately just, I was like, what? you don’t want to use me? Cause we’ve been in leadership positions in the church for so long, our whole adult lives we’ve been in those positions and for him to say, we just want to love you. And that was foreign to me, but that was the beginning of that healing journey. Julie Roys: I had a pastor at one of the churches we visited when we were in this search process. And it was at a very large church I would say it’s probably a megachurch, and we sat across from him and he said a very similar thing. It was really wonderful. And he said, “I think you guys have been wounded deeply, and you need a place to heal. And we do just want to love you. What was interesting is when I came back to him with a follow up email, because part of me is like wait, this is a megachurch. Am I insane? Julie Roys: I’m just like looking at it and being like,  I don’t think this is at all what I want. And then I emailed him. I said, we want a pastor. Would you be able to pastor us? And then he basically declined as nicely as he could; like I’d love to be, but I can’t and I’m like I don’t need a small group leader to try and pastor me. I was just kind of like of course, you can’t because you have the corporation to run. And so that is again a fundamental issue that I do have with the mega church. Julie Roys: One thing I found and I see it here, because I don’t know how many people in the Chicago area who have left Willow Creek and ended up at Harvest. They’re like, wow, di I know how to pick them! They’re going from something that’s become familiar. And if you became a believer at Willow, then that big model, that big service, whiz bang entertaining sermon or inspirational talk, whatever you want to call it. Julie Roys: Although I’ll say at Harvest, he preached he discipled people. I know a lot of people from Harvest that were discipled shockingly by a really depraved pastor. But I see them going from what they’re used to. And it’s almost like when I see people who grew up in a dysfunctional home and thank God you didn’t do this, but they often then replicate that in their own home, or they’re attracted to that same kind of dysfunction in the next home. Julie Roys: And I’ve seen it with churches and I’m just like, why are you going to the same model of church that you just left? And I see that there’s this thought in their head that it’s just the one bad apple. That’s all it is. It’s the one bad apple, but basically there’s nothing wrong with the system. Julie Roys: I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system. So speak to that. Do you think, I know you’ve got some pretty strong opinions now about celebrity megachurches, even though you said some megachurches we’ve seen work. Do you have some thoughts about the model of church and what makes a safe church? Mary DeMuth: Yes. So many thoughts. I’ll start with a story. In the early two thousand, I went to my first Christian writers conference before I was published and on the airplane on the way there, my story flashed before my eyes and I said, Lord I’ve withstood a lot of trials. Like I’ve gone through a lot of trials. Mary DeMuth: And he said clearly to me, you have withstood many trials, but will you withstand the trial of notoriety? And that has stayed in my mind all these years because fame emaciates, fame makes you think that you’re better than other people and that people exist to serve you rather than you equipping the saints for the work of service. Mary DeMuth: And when the systems are in a place, typically what happens is the ego takes over. There’s something deep within the narcissistic system. And in the narcissistic pastor, they have this wound that they can’t fill except by acclaim. And then it’s like a drug, so they have to keep being acclaimed. They cannot have negative things said about them. Mary DeMuth: Therefore, the next thing they’ll do is they will dismantle the elder board, or they will significantly reduce the influence of the elder board that exists or completely dismantle it altogether. They will gather yes-men around themselves who will only say positive things to them that are not in their context that cannot see them do the bad things And who are other megachurch pastors. So there’s just this like cabal of megachurch pastors that are sitting on each other’s boards saying you can do whatever you want and have fun. Mary DeMuth: That system is ungodly and that will cause the fall of many leaders, which we have already seen over and over and over. It’s like a broken record of sameness. It keeps happening. Why? Because I think we are creating a church structure from a pyramid, which if you look in the Bible, the Israelites left Egypt, but were still looking back at it. One person at the top, one Pharaoh at the top, one supreme ruler, and then everybody has to fit into that system underneath that pyramid. Mary DeMuth: Whereas the kingdom of God is the opposite of that. It’s an inverted pyramid. The kingdom is of people that are last to are not acknowledged. And I think we’re going to be super surprised at where they are standing in line and the new heavens and the new earth, the people with all the acclaim are going to be way at the back. The people that nobody knew about that were silently and quietly serving the Lord are going to be at the front of the line. And we’re going to say, tell me your story, I want to learn from you. Mary DeMuth: But these structures cause the downfall of many men who do not have the character to hold up that structure. They’ve been given leadership responsibility without having maturity, and therefore they are stealing sermons. They are harming people with their words. They are demonizing others. They are all sorts of things you talked about last week. They’re doing those things because they have to keep their empire because their ego needs it so badly. Julie Roys: And the other thing is, and we can’t really even go into this, although I know you see this too, because you run your own literary agency, is that the evangelical industrial complex needs these celebrity pastors to function. So they need the publishing companies need the celebrities so that they can publish them, so that the megachurches need the celebrity to fuel their model of that great attractional speaker that can be everything. Which again, does just feed into the narcissism and it attracts the narcissism. Julie Roys: We like the narcissist. And the whole entire moneymaking empire runs on these narcissists and these celebrity pastors. And so it’s not just even the pastor himself who needs to be a celebrity, but it’s this system that needs celebrities. And at some point, Mary we’ve got to deal with this and evangelicalism, or we’re just going to keep doing this over and over and over again. Mary DeMuth: And I believe the Lord is bringing judgment on those systems. And we’re seeing that in publishing as well. I think it’s a broken system. We make these requirements of how popular you are to be able to be an author. In the nineties and before, it was really about can you write a good book? Is it theologically sound? Do you have a good mind? Do you have a heart to minister to others? And now it’s how many social media followers do you have? Which is you can buy those. Mary DeMuth: So what does that even mean? I hate being a cog in the Christian industrial complex, both as an author and as a literary agent, but as an agent, I feel like I’m championing projects that would otherwise not get sold. That are more global voices people that are marginalized and not often given a voice. So that’s why I have a literary agency. Cause I’m trying to have those voices platformed. Julie Roys: Before you go, I want to ask you also about, we’ve talked a little bit about a safe church, but what makes somebody a safe person as you’re trying to process this? Mary DeMuth: A safe person is someone who doesn’t speak initially, who is an active listener. Who doesn’t jump to conclusions, who doesn’t feel the need to defend the church that you are leaving, who doesn’t say things like Hebrew says don’t forsake your assembling together. Those kinds of like cliche, like super cliche oh, you better do this instead of just meeting you in your grief. Mary DeMuth: A safe person doesn’t try to change your state. They come alongside you into your state and they weep alongside. And that to me is so powerful. People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember that you were there with them in the pain. And we’re just willing to say, yeah, that hurts. And, oh, that must’ve been very painful. Just that empathy piece. Julie Roys: And they won’t shame you for deconstructing. They’ll walk with you; they’ll allow you to process. And I hate that when I see that. I see it on social media all the time, people denigrating people who are deconstructing and I’m like, maybe if you didn’t do that, maybe they wouldn’t be walking away from their faith. But again, deconstructing, I think takes a lot of different forms. I think for a lot of people that have gone through it; they’ve come back to a richer faith that stripped of maybe some of the baggage that they had previously. Julie Roys: Before I let you go, because I know a lot of people listening are in this place of just really, really  struggling and in a lot of hurt. And I know you have names and faces for those people too. Would you be willing to just pray for them and what they’re going through right now? Mary DeMuth: I will. And I’m just going to mention, I have a free resource, MARYDEMUTH.COM/CHURCHHURT. And it’s a hundred statements about things that people feel when they’re going through church hurt so that you can share it with a friend and check off the ones that are you, and then have a good conversation about it. Julie Roys: Wonderful. What a great resource. Thank you. Mary DeMuth: Yeah. Okay. Let me pray. Lord, thank you for loving the least of these. Thank you for leaving the 99 and chasing the one. Thank you for being counterintuitive. Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. Thank you for your grace being sufficient for us and your power is made perfect in our weakness. Mary DeMuth: Lord, forgive us for these systems where we are worshiping strength, power, and numbers when that’s nothing to do with your kingdom. Reorient our lives and our hearts to what is your kingdom. Help us to hear your voice in the midst of the madness and the muddledness of what this has become. I pray that you would send friends to my friends who are suffering in the aftermath of spiritual abuse and church hurt. Mary DeMuth: I pray for hope Lord in these kinds of situations, it can feel like a death, and it feels very hopeless and sad. I pray for comfort and pray all of this in your beautiful name, Jesus. Amen. Julie Roys: Amen. Mary. Thank you so much. And how beautiful that even in this you are ministering to others through it. So I am just so grateful for you and for Patrick and for what you bring to the kingdom. And thank you so much for being willing to talk so vulnerably and bravely. So thank you. Mary DeMuth: Thank you. Julie Roys: And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and I want to invite all of you to our next Restore Conference in Phoenix in February 2025. Julie Roys: This is one of the most healing gatherings I know of, where you won’t just hear from amazing folks like Mary DeMuth and Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Tove, and Dr. David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. But you’ll also meet lots of other people who have gone through similar experiences, and I’ve found that just being in that kind of community is so healing. Julie Roys: And so powerful. So please come. I would love to meet you there. To find out more information, just go to RESTORE2025.COM. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. Julie Roys: And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Mental health continues to be a taboo topic in many churches, but today's guest - Chuck DeGroat - has spent years as both a pastor and a psychologist. He brings insights on how the tools of psychological study can be an asset for the church, but also how the rich tradition of soul care in the Christian tradition has a role to play in the lives of those seeking mental wellbeing.

Chuck DeGroat returns to the Untangled Faith podcast with host Amy Fritz to explore the transformative work of moving from self-awareness to self-regulation and how our response to shame changes everything. “I call the work that I do sometimes excavation work, because we're removing rubble. . .There's a lot of rubble that has kept me inwardly oriented and not as merciful or more prone to bitterness than prone to justice as I do my own work. And as I identify these parts of me that are self-protective, and befriend them and bless them and offer peace to them, there is a sense in which we all can live from that deep heart God created us for in love, goodness, faith, gentleness, meekness. . .And so I often say in the work that I do, the greatest asset is that I'm working with image bearers.” - Chuck DeGroat   In this episode we: - Address the repercussions of the Calvin University president's resignation and its ripple effect on community leaders. - Discuss the need for self-awareness in understanding one's actions as incomplete without self-regulation - Discuss the delicate balance between speaking out on issues and exercising prudence in engagement. - Unpack the concept of shame, its link to narcissism, and the importance of having strategies to work through it. - Share personal stories that highlight our relationship with shame in relationship dynamics. Other Episodes you might enjoy: https://untangledfaithpodcast.com/2022/07/13/46-when-narcissism-comes-to-church-guest-chuck-degroat/ https://untangledfaithpodcast.com/2022/08/10/51-celebrities-for-jesus-guest-katelyn-beaty/ Support the Show: Subscribe to my newsletter: https://untangledfaith.substack.com Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/untangledfaith This podcast is sponsored by Faithful Counseling. For more information and 10% off your first month, visit Faithful Counseling- https://faithfulcounseling.com/untangled Where you can find me: Youtube channel- https://youtube.com/channel/UCPfFk-I6QShXXvEpSFaJOvg https://untangledfaithpodcast.com https://instagram.com/untangledfaith  https://instagram.com/amyhenningfritz

Welcome to the Pinkleton Pull-Aside Podcast. On this podcast, let's step aside from our busy lives to have fun, fascinating life giving conversation with inspiring authors, pastors, sports personalities and other influencers, leaders and followers. Sit back, grab some coffee, or head down the road and let's get the good and the gold from today's guest. Our host is Jeff Pinkleton, Executive Director of the Gathering of the Miami Valley, where their mission is to connect men to men, and men to God. You can reach Jeff at GatheringMV.org or find him on Facebook at The Gathering of the Miami Valley.Chuck DeGroat, PhD, LPC - I'm a follower of Jesus, a husband to Sara for 29 years, and father to two amazing daughters. I serve as Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI.  I'm also a faculty member for the Soul Care Institute.I'm a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, author of five books, and retreat leader/speaker. As a therapist, I've specialized in issues of abuse and trauma, pastoral (and leadership) health, and navigating issues of doubt and dark nights on the faith journey.  I'm also a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Reformed Church in America. I pastored in Orlando and San Francisco before transitioning to training and forming pastors. I also train clergy in issues of abuse and trauma, conduct pastor and planter assessments, facilitate church consultations and investigations of abuse among pastors and within congregations. 

On this episode: Pablito and Rob bumper. Nate and Aaron may be striking or joining SAG. Pablito considers mug shots. Our Guest: Nate and Aaron interview our guest, Chuck Degroat. His experience includes: Professor of pastoral care and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary in Holland Michigan, author, pastor, therapist, spiritual director, husband, and father. Narcissism expert Chuck teaches us about the differences between narcissist behavior and narcissistic personality disorder. He explains the nine faces of narcissism. Understanding how narcissism can be a way of coping with pain. Chuck also briefs us on the history of narcissism in the church and ways to heal and recover. Links:   Chuck Degroat Book: When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse Sponsor: Life Works Counseling   If you have thoughts or questions that you'd like the guys to address in upcoming episodes or suggestions for future guests, please drop a note to piratemonkpodcast@gmail.com.   The music on this podcast is contributed by members of the Samson Society and www.fiftysounds.com. For more information on this ministry, please visit samsonsociety.com.  Support for the women who have been impacted by our choices is available at sarahsociety.com. The Pirate Monk Podcast is provided by Samson Society, a ministry of Samson House, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. To help support the vision, please consider a contribution to Samson House.

Revd Dr. Chuck Degroat is a licensed therapist, as well as a Professor of Pastoral Care and Christian Spirituality, and Executive Director and Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary. He is the author of many books, including When Narcissism Comes to Church, Leaving Egypt, and Toughest People to Love. In this episode we begin our series on “trauma” with an introduction to trauma. We explore some definitions of trauma, various misunderstandings of trauma, trauma and resilience, typical trauma responses, and how to begin processing our own trauma. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Dr. Madison Pierce, Rev. Dr. Chris Porter, Dr. Sydney Tooth, and Dr. Logan Williams. Series Disclaimer: This series explores the concept of “trauma,” its sources, and its expressions from a range of perspectives. Some of our guests are licensed mental health professionals; some are those with formative experiences of trauma; and others are those who explore trauma through various theoretical frameworks. We hope that this series provides useful information to all that enables them to begin to be trauma-informed and to love others and themselves better. Our series is by no means meant to replace the important work of one-on-one time with a trauma-informed professional.

In this engaging podcast episode, Beth McCord, founder of Your Enneagram Coach, talks to Dr. Chuck DeGroat about his experiences as an Enneagram Type 4.FREE Enneagram resources here: https://www.yourenneagramcoach.com/podcastresources ✅ Learn how counter-type fours navigate a wide range of emotions internally while often presenting a controlled, sunny exterior. ✅ Understand the unique journey of highly sensitive men in a society that doesn't always value their emotions.✅ Discover how our contradictions can become valuable lessons in personal growth and leadership.✅ Navigate the fine line between healthy emotional expression and escapism, and find safe spaces to express yourself—a journey essential for your growth!Thank you to our guest!Chuck DeGroat (Type 4)Website - www.chuckdegroat.net Social Media - @chuckdegroatFind an Enneagram Coach - https://myenneagramcoach.com/ Become an Enneagram Coach Course - https://www.yourenneagramcoach.com/bec #Enneagram #PersonalityTypes #EnneagramCoachIf you're enjoying this content and want to take your Enneagram journey to the next level, we invite you to check out our free EnneaWhat minicourse. In EnneaWhat?, Beth teaches you what the Enneagram is, how to find your Type, what it means to become A.W.A.R.E. and how to you can begin effectively applying the Enneagram to your life.Enjoy our FREE EnneaWhat Mini Course. Just click this link to start now.

This week on the podcast, I am joined by spiritual director, therapist, and author Chuck DeGroat, to talk all about narcissism, including its defining traits and characteristics, as well as ways both churches and individuals can heal from and prevent abuse from narcissistic leaders. The conversation in this episode is inspired by the topics and themes of my book "A Jumble of Crumpled Papers".   Get your copy of “A Jumble of Crumpled Papers” here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0BCD5PMX5/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=      Connect with us! Austin's Instagram: www.instagram.com/austin_noll  Podcast's Instagram: www.instagram.com/crumpledpaperspodcast  Email us at crumpledpaperspodcast@gmail.com   Check out "When Narcissism Comes To Church" on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/When-Narcissism-Comes-Church-Community/dp/1514005093/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13E08F8H84H8F&keywords=when+narcissism+comes+to+church&qid=1701658469&sprefix=when+narc%2Caps%2C114&sr=8-1    Get in touch with Chuck! www.chuckdegroat.net 

The Integrity Crisis in Today's Churches [ mini-series ] In Part 4 of our mini-series on Integrity in the Church, Chuck DeGroat talks about the signs you work for a narcissist, how to tell if you're a narcissist, why church planters are prime candidates for narcissistic leadership, and the problem with hyper-therapeutic culture. Show Notes Preaching Workshop On The Rise Newsletter

Carey Nieuwhof shares his thoughts on the crisis of integrity in today's churches. In this short episode, Carey also previews what you can expect in the upcoming Integrity series. Guests will include Dr. Henry Cloud, Katelyn Beaty, Chuck DeGroat, Winn Collier, Eric Peterson, Collin Hansen, and Tim Keller. Subscribe to the On The Rise Newsletter