Tag Archives: Mental Health

Centering Prayer: A Conversation with Dr. Brian Russell

Dr. Brian Russell is the author of Centering Prayer: Sitting Quietly in God’s Presence Can Change Your Life, a uniquely rich resource for spiritual formation that draws on meaningful traditions of the church across centuries. For those sensing the need for fresh practices to widen or deepen their prayer habits, Centering Prayer beckons with wisdom that outlasts stale New Year’s resolutions. As Lent begins to appear on the horizon, Centering Prayer is poised to enliven the pilgrimage to Easter with practical, theologically nuanced guidance.

Recently Wesleyan Accent delved into the topic of centering prayer with Dr. Russell, who is Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary.  

Wesleyan Accent: At times, folks who are most familiar with Christianity as it is practiced in North American Protestant churches are surprised when they encounter something that seems new but is actually shared ancient tradition. Or people can spend thirty years active in a local church and still feel uncertain about how to pray privately. How would you describe contemplative prayer to them? And how would you describe centering prayer as part of that tradition?

Brian Russell: I can include myself in your example. I grew up in the church. I was forty-two years old (and thirty-six years into my Christian experience) before I learned about the contemplative tradition and began to practice centering prayer.

I think it is critical to emphasize that contemplative practices in no way replace traditional forms of prayer or the other means of grace that help us to grow in our relationship with God. I still pray with my own words or with printed prayers from Scripture and modern worship resources. The foundation for centering prayer is the faith delivered to the saints as witnessed in Scripture and embraced by believing communities.

Contemplative prayer is a form of prayer that focuses on being with God rather than using words to talk to God or make petitions of God or even to listen for God. Contemplative prayer is practiced in silence. We simply sit in silence apart from our own thoughts, desires, and concerns. Our intention is to experience God’s presence and love. In his book The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discovering Your True Self, Robert Mulholland, Jr. defined contemplation as, “the practice of stilling ourselves before God, moving ever deeper into the core of our being and simply offering ourselves to God in totally vulnerable love.” (p. 97)

Centering prayer is a method for stilling ourselves for the potential of a deeper encounter with God through contemplation. God’s presence is always a gift; centering prayer is not a way of manipulating an encounter with God’s love. It is simply prayer done in silence without words.

But as soon as we sit in silence, we discover that our minds remain active and caught in continual thought loops. Silence is literally deafening because of our mental chatter. Centering prayer as a technique teaches a way to surrender our thoughts as we become aware of them. The goal of this surrender is the opening of ourselves to experiencing God as God beyond our thoughts.

How do we practice centering prayer? It’s simple to describe, but it takes patience and practice. Here are the basic instructions:

  • Select a prayer word that you can use to recenter whenever you become aware of your thoughts. I recommend that we use “Jesus” as the prayer word as it is Jesus before whom we are sitting in silence. However, others find words such as “love,” “surrender,” “Father,” and “Spirit” among others to be powerful.
  • Find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably for the duration of your prayer time.
  • You can practice centering prayer any time of day. I typically spend twenty minutes in centering prayer as soon as I finish my first cup of coffee in the morning. My wife Astrid and I sit together as a way of beginning our day.
  • Set a timer. I typically practice centering prayer in twenty-minute blocks. Select whatever time period you are comfortable with. I started with short three to five minute sessions and slowly worked up to twenty minutes.
  • Close your eyes and simply sit in silence. Whenever you become aware of a thought, feeling or image, simply say “Jesus” (or whatever word you chose) in your mind as a means of surrendering the thought. The goal is not mindlessness. It is not possible to shut off the mind. However, you will begin to experience short “gaps” in the endless stream of thoughts. It will be in these gaps where you may experience God’s presence in new ways. I say may because we cannot control God. We simply sit in silence with the intention to be open to God’s gift of contemplation.
  • At the end of the centering prayer session, relax for a few moments. I find it helpful to offer prayers of gratitude and then pray the Lord’s Prayer or one of my own.

WA: A while back I heard a great interview on the “economy of attention,” about how much your attention, my attention, is worth to companies. When there’s so much noise, when notification pings compete for our attention, when screens dominate our days, “centering prayer” seems exceptionally counter-cultural – and also seems like a way to quiet sensory bombardment. How does centering prayer help remind you you’re a human, not just a commodity?

BR: The practice of centering prayer is about being. There is no doing involved. Centering prayer teaches us to surrender our attention. We embrace the intention of sitting in silence in order to be with God. When our practice becomes habitual, we slowly become even more aware of the chatter in our minds and all of the noise in the world. But there will be a key difference: the disciplines of “resist no thought, retain no thought, react to no thought, and gently return to Jesus with our sacred word” go with us into the world.

Overtime, we begin to be mindful and present even during the busy-ness of our lives. The same discipline of learning to surrender thoughts to God in silence will carry over to how you listen to a colleague, family member, or friend who needs your attention; how you respond to the inevitable interruptions of life; how you react to conflict; and how you focus on your work. You will slowly find that you notice small details and experience the world in richer colors. Others will likely observe a more calming presence and availability in you.

In terms of the noise of our world, I’ve found that the more I practice centering prayer the more conscious I am of the subtle ways that our world robs us of our most precious gift to God and others: our time and our attention.

WA: Early in the book, describing the season in which you discovered the deep value of centering prayer, you comment that during your personal dark night of the soul, “my ability to think clearly had departed.”

What a word to so many people right now who are in shellshock from the past couple of years: nurses, doctors, pastors, teachers, those who are drowning in grief from the loss of loved ones. Alongside mental health tools like trauma-informed therapy and medication, what in particular might people find in centering prayer when they feel fractured or numb or horrified in their own dark nights of the soul?

BR: For me, centering prayer allowed me to find freedom from a mind that would not shut off. At the darkest parts of my season of the “dark night of the soul,” I didn’t need more information or mental stimulation. I ruminated non-stop on negative thoughts and worst-case scenarios. I was inconsolable.

But I found silence or, better put, silence found me, and in the silence I rediscovered the God who created me and who loved me unconditionally. Experiencing God’s unabashed loved for me when I felt at my lowest was transformational. God’s love cut through the noise. While I still experience times of incessant worry and anxiety, I gained an awareness of the excess and often negative chatter in my mind. In these moments, I sometimes encountered God’s loving presence directly; beyond words. I think that centering prayer can serve as a type of “Divine therapy,” as Fr. Thomas Keating described it. It does not substitute for human-to-human therapy or medication, but I believe it can work in tandem to increase their effectiveness. I’ve personally received tremendous benefits from trauma-informed therapy. In my case, I am certain that my long-term commitment to silent meditative prayer and deep intentional journaling greatly enhanced the results of therapy, as the Divine Healer had already broken up the soil of both the conscious and unconscious wounds that I carried.

WA: You mention in one place that in centering prayer, “surrendering our thoughts to God is our sole contribution.” I could imagine that statement causing some squirming; Americans so often take pride in our ability to put our best foot forward or feel that somehow we’ve paid our own way. We’re not always gracious recipients, preferring to be the ones building or giving. What do you think Christians need to learn or re-learn about our own poverty?

BR: Centering prayer allows us to see ourselves as God sees us. But to experience this level of awareness requires that we surrender even our thoughts (good or bad) to the God who loves us.

There are two deep and helpful truths that exist in a sort of paradox. These truths are expressed in the form of two prayers that I say daily. The first is the Jesus Prayer. It has ancient roots in the early church: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. Amen.” The second is a modern prayer composed by Macrina Wiederkehr, a Benedictine monastic: “O God, help me believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is. Amen.” I learned of this latter prayer from Maxie Dunnam.

The Jesus Prayer reminds us of our core lostness and ongoing necessity of God’s grace and mercy. There is no way to earn grace and mercy. We come before God empty-handed, with a posture of surrender.

But we also need to understand that God breathed life and abundance in each of us too. Wiederkehr’s prayer opens us up to the beauty and potential of a life surrendered to God in which we walk moment-by-moment in grace as persons created in God’s image. We are free to embrace our gifts and talents without the fear, guilt and shame that tends to either paralyze us and make us play small or drive us to earn or prove our “enoughness.”

WA: Traditionally, there’s this beautiful pattern of retreat and engagement, solitude and companionship, that push and pull spiritual formation like the coming and going of the tide. In centering prayer, when you brave silence with God and sit with what you find there, how does that shape the way you then go out and engage with others?

BR: One of my favorite quotes that I live by is from my mentor Alex McManus. He taught me: “The Gospel comes to us on its way to someone else.” The prayer of silence allows you to see yourself as God sees you. We discover both our need for grace as well as the beauty and potential within us. When we experience the gaze of God on our souls and discover God’s deep love for us as his sons and daughters, we begin to see others in the same light. In fact, encountering God in the silence and accepting the reality that we’ve personally been unconditionally loved and accepted transforms the way we see others. We are freed to love others as God has loved us. My mentor and former colleague Bob Tuttle taught me this: “Show up, pay attention; God has way more invested in our ministry than we do.”

So instead of silence and solitude being a practice that excludes mission, it is one that empowers engagement with the world. What I’ve experienced must be shared. Moreover, as God has changed me through the sanctifying work that occurs during centering prayer, I am free of more of my own “junk” that previously marred my witness and ability to serve as the hands, feet, and mouthpiece of God’s abundant and holy love.

Brian D. Russell, Ph.D., is Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. Learn more about his role as Coach for Pastors and Spiritually-minded Leaders by visiting www.brianrussellphd.com.

Featured image courtesy Fragile James via Unsplash.

Ministry Grief, Loss, Compassion Fatigue: A Conversation

We’re pleased to share this recorded conversation created as a resource from The Wesleyan Church Department of Education and Clergy Development. Although this was created in the spring of 2020, the topics remain pressingly relevant for pastors. The discussion ranges over concerns including grief, being tired, leadership, fight-or-flight responses, loss, anxiety, and identity.

This excellent discussion on disruption, crisis, and impact on leaders was led by Executive Director of Education and Clergy Development Rev. Russ Gunsalus, Dr. Toddy Holeman, Professor of Counseling and Chair of the Counseling and Pastoral Care Department at Asbury Theological Seminary, and Rev. Dave Higle, Director of Clergy Care for Education and Clergy Development.

Click play below, and scroll further for excerpts from this discussion.

As Dr. Toddy Holeman elaborates, “We’ve all had losses as a result of being at home, closure of gatherings. If you think about the losses, it’s natural for us to feel this unusual, unexpected sense of sadness and loss, lamenting what we don’t have. That’s a grief that everybody experiences, just put the adjective in front that describes your context.

I read an article recently on ambiguous loss. A death is a clear loss. This is ambiguous loss. It leaves us feeling unsettled, off-kilter. The article used the words ‘uncanny loss;’ when no cars are out, it’s a weird sense. It leads to anxiety. I’m sure that’s part of what all of us are feeling – the unknown future. Will we go back to business as usual – assuming there’s a usual? A result of this bumping up of the known against the unknown – a lot of us will feel fog-brained, foggy, carrying around with us a constant sense of alarm. It’s a combination of, ‘I don’t know what to think, I’m having a hard time making decisions, I’m on edge.’”

Later, she observes, “Part of our problem is our anxiety is a future-oriented feeling – projecting ourselves into a future we have no control over. The best way to go through those uncomfortable feelings is to go through them. Recognize they’re temporary. They ebb and flow. Let them come in. You might cry – welcome to the human race! Experience it in that moment, recognize what’s going on, and treat yourself with the lovingkindness God offers to you – we don’t serve a God who’s shaking his finger at us. Keep your eyes open: God is on the move. Whenever there is major world disruption, God is on the move. Have open ears and eyes to catch up to where God has already gone before us.”

Featured image courtesy Chris Montgomery via Unsplash.

Unwanted Holiness

As the United States screeches with discord and distrust, the people in pulpits and in pews are exhausted. Some had loved ones piloting evacuation flights out of Kabul. Others have spent long hours working in crowded ICUs, nurses or chaplains or doctors breaking down in tears. Firefighters on the West Coast have their pick of blazes incinerating once-lively trees to ash, and in some parts of the South, the power is beginning to blink back on. Who wants holiness if it looks like this?

Somewhere along the line, we get the idea that holiness requires energy. Sure, we know that sanctification is a gift of grace to be received. Naturally. Countless Christians in the Wesleyan Methodist tradition have experienced some kind of moment in which God comes to us to do something in our hearts that we are powerless to do ourselves. We know this. We know that works of piety and works of mercy – spiritual disciplines, caring for poor, broke, or incarcerated people -we know those actions don’t create holiness. They are a response to grace; they make room for the Holy Spirit to continue to work in us and through us. We know that sanctifying grace is a gift.

And yet.

It is easy to get the idea that holiness requires energy.

How will you grow if you’re not getting yourself to a Bible study or small group? How will you foster the grace of Christ at work in you if you aren’t seeking out ways to serve others, at the food pantry or through the altar guild or volunteering with, heaven help them, the junior highers?

Of course churches need volunteers.

Of course you want to grow in holiness.

But the hundreds of pastors, church leaders, professors, and chaplains I know do not feel an overabundance of energy right now. Between executive function fatigue (decision fatigue) and constantly putting out fires and choosing between making 50 percent of people angry or the other 50 percent of people angry and attempting to construct any kind of planning or scheduling with a viral variant that’s 1,200 times more transmissible than the original COVID-19 strains, there are very few pastors with the energy they think they need to be holy. There are very few nurses, doctors, or nursing home workers with energy for anything other than showing up and doing what has to be done.

Can holiness look like this?

Can holiness look like exhaustion, burnout, panic attacks, depression, crisis intervention, peace-keeping – even numbness?

Can I tell you something?

Some of the holiest people I’ve seen in the past 18 months have looked just like that. Some of the sweetest anointing has enveloped leaders who are tired, grieving, exhausted, burned out, or even numb.

You do not have to have energy to be holy.

This is something elderly people in long-term care facilities already know. It’s just something most people don’t want to have to learn personally for ourselves – because energy is power; control; agency.

And if you’re asking, dear God, how can my numb trauma be holy? then I invite you to listen to an audio version of 1 Kings 18 and 19 – when Elijah the prophet is in a showdown with the prophets of Baal. God honors Elijah and sends fire from the sky. But afterward, Elijah’s life is on the line. He is exhausted. He runs. He curls up too tired to do anything to protect himself. Fed by divine intervention, he runs more, to take shelter in the mountain of God. And God does not come to Elijah in an impersonal show of force, in crashing theophany. God gently arrives in the still whispering rustle, and Elijah is safe to pour out his heart and his heartbreak. After he does, God quietly reminds him that as alone as he feels, he is not alone. And to relieve Elijah’s burden further, he directs him to Elisha.

It seems to me that one of the most tender moments in these two chapters comes in 18:30 – “Then Elijah said to all the people, ‘Come here to me.’ They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down.” The prophets of Baal had been frantic, mutilating themselves, calling on Baal. But when it is Elijah’s turn, there is a sense that this is an act of grief, a labor of love: rebuilding what had been torn down, taking 12 stones and building an altar “in the name of the Lord.” (v. 32) What do you rebuild? You rebuild what you love. Where there is grief in the ruins, there is hope in the rebuilding. But it is manual labor: hard work, smashed fingers, bruised thumbnails, a sore back. His hands must have been so tired, his muscles strained. What a beautiful labor of love. No frantic shrieking; just the loving repair of what had been in ruins.

What an offering to give to God: smashed fingers, bruised thumbnails, a sore back – an altar that had been desecrated, repaired.

If you believe holiness requires energy, it will be easy to believe you can detect when it is you are being or acting holy. But most genuine holiness, I am convinced, accompanies your lack of awareness of it. It is accidental – incidental. It happens behind your back, when you’re not looking. It shadows you on your off-days.

There is a holiness of proximity that has nothing to do with energy.

It is proximity to Christ, and it is proximity to the overlooked people Christ loves.

You do not have to have energy to be in close proximity to the quiet warmth of Jesus Christ.

Elijah collapsed and didn’t care if he lived or died, after running away. It was God who enabled him to travel: “the journey is too much for you.” (19:7) When he reached the mountain of God – he slept. (19:9) Only after he rested, did God ask him what brought him there. Elijah’s strained brain chemistry could not detect the presence of God in the overwhelming sensory stimuli of loud sounds or shaking ground or bright light; he did not have the energy for that. So God whispered.

The holiness of proximity is standing, sitting, or lying in the safe presence of God, however you feel, however you don’t have the energy to feel.

There is also a holiness of proximity when you draw near to people others are ignoring. Mother Teresa exemplified this well. The embodiment of the Beatitudes is a sacred thing to witness. Blessed are those who mourn; blessed are the merciful. When you care for sick bodies or cry with grief-stricken loved ones, you are in the proximity of the blessed ones; you are blessed when you are merciful to them.

You do not have to have energy to be holy. Your exhaustion, your grief, your numbness – none of those things keep you from being holy. Whether or not you feel the presence of God, you are so close to the side of Christ that you shine when your back is turned, when you’re not even aware of it.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

What are you doing here, Elijah?

Featured image courtesy Marek Piwnicki via Unsplash.

A Trauma Survivor’s Advice for Surviving a Global Crisis

Our Wesleyan tradition holds a rich heritage of understanding the way the whole of our created being functions. We share a long history of encouraging one another to health and wholeness in every way, just as our God designed. We believe that we are responsible for the well-being of not just our souls, but our bodies and our minds as well, in line with the command to love the Lord our God with all that we are. Sometimes that becomes difficult in times of hardship, adversity, and trauma.

As a survivor of both extended childhood trauma as well as  intense crisis situations as an adult, including my time working as a crisis responder for a domestic violence agency, I have learned some things about the effect trauma has on my brain. In the years of healing I have engaged, I have learned some key truths about trauma and times of crisis. These have helped me during this year of incredible global turmoil and an astounding level of transition and crisis in my own personal life. I’m hopeful that the things I have learned on this journey can help others to care for themselves and others well in these challenging times. Here’s my best counsel for surviving times of crisis:

Now is not the time to make large decisions.

When you are going through a traumatic situation, your survival depends on being able to make the kind of in-the-moment decisions that ensure your short-term survival or well-being. Sometimes this is a necessary sacrifice to make, but sometimes our choices are not as limited as they seem when our survival-focused brain gets involved in the decision process. While your brain is focused on the crisis at hand, it is blind to other details that are critical to consider when making large decisions. Emotions also tend to become difficult to manage during times like these, and emotions can alter and even drive your decision-making process in ways that are less than ideal. Survival situations can make it very tempting to choose options that solve short-term problems but create much larger, long-term issues.

If you must make a big decision during this season, here are some tools for overcoming the shortfalls in your brain’s crisis response:

1. Take your time.

Give every large decision 24 hours at minimum to consider and pray about your decision. You need time to hear from God at the very least. It is harder to hear the more noise there is in your life, and crisis is loud. The bigger the decision, the longer you should deliberate about your choices. Besides, that gives God time to act! You wouldn’t believe how many problems He solves without our intervention.

Physiologically speaking, time gives your emotions time to calm down and gives those immediate-release adrenaline-related chemicals time to dissipate in your brain, leaving your thinking much clearer. You’ll be much better able to look at your situation objectively and see more of your options when you are calmer. Reactions are rarely helpful; responses are  needed. The difference between a reaction and a response is time.

2. Take a nap.

You cannot think clearly if you are hungry, tired, or stressed. Sometimes you can’t do anything about being stressed, so while you are observing suggestion number one above, take the time to give your body some good rest, good nutrition, drink some water, and take some time to release some stress before approaching your big decision. Nutrition, hydration, and rest will make all the difference in the world in your brain function, so it is going to drastically change your ability to make a sound decision.

3. Take a poll.

Involve as many people who are wise and trustworthy in your decision as you can. They can see things that you cannot. During a crisis, your brain will be hyper-focused on certain details, leaving you blind to others. Finding a broadened external viewpoint can be immensely helpful in making a sound decision, but you can’t achieve one on your own from inside your situation. You need other people for that. Besides, they may have access to or knowledge of solutions that you don’t. You can make up for the flaws in other people’s opinions by choosing a wider variety of people from several areas of your life to include in your decision. Just remember that ultimately, your decision is yours to make, and your inner circle should be supportive and loving, not controlling and manipulative.

Now is not the time for a New Year’s Resolution.

Hear me here. We are coming up on the end of the year, and January is closing in. I, for one, will be glad to see an end to 2020, but global apocalypse rarely observes the Gregorian calendar, such as it is.

Perhaps the most traumatizing part about being in a crisis situation is when you don’t know how long it will last.

Aside from the impending new year, how many of us have shamed ourselves for gaining the dreaded “Covid 20?” We have abused ourselves for everything from gaining a few pounds to being less productive at work and school. What’s worse is taking a fearful half-glance at the relapse and overdose rates for those struggling with addiction and the suicide rates for those struggling with severe mental illness.

The truth about the brain in trauma is that it will adopt any type of mechanism that is readily available in order to help you survive and cope with what is happening. A lot of these, we call “negative” coping mechanisms (think  substance abuse, promiscuity, gambling, risk-taking, cutting, etc, but also things like shopping, overeating, biting your nails, and other behaviors we use to make ourselves feel better when under stress). Some of these so-called “negative” coping mechanisms should never be engaged: I would never recommend that someone indulge a drug addiction in order to get through a crisis situation. Someone who relapses while in a crisis situation deserves support, treatment and love; relapse is very understandable, but obviously it would cause more damage than any good it could possibly do.

However, some of these less-than-ideal coping mechanisms don’t cause much damage. If biting your nails can help you get through a terrible year, then don’t beat yourself up for munching away. Bite your nails shamelessly if it helps. You can break that habit later when your situation and anxiety level are manageable. If you gained your Covid 20, love every inch of your fluffy self. You can hit the gym later when your energy isn’t devoted to getting through this. The same is true for all of you who, like me, were afraid to say that they actually lost weight during this pandemic due to stress and other factors! Regular exercise and nutrition are important, and they help during times of high stress. We have to remember, though, that gaining (or losing!) a few pounds is not something to beat yourself up about. Be as healthy as possible and love yourself while you are weak. Make space for yourself to be okay with being imperfect.

Now is the time to play.

You heard me right! In the midst of a crisis situation, the pattern we tend to follow is to pile all the work onto our shoulders and carry it as far as we can humanly go. We all have to pull from our reserves of strength from time to time and do what has to be done. Humanity’s history is full of people achieving the seemingly impossible in the face of great adversity. This is something we highly value as noble, and rightly so. However, we need to remember that trauma is caused by high levels of stress over extended periods of time.

In order to counteract and reduce the trauma your brain is taking in seasons of crisis, you actively need leisure. Leisure pursuits (hobbies and things we do to relax) allow our bodies to come out of that stressed state and begin to relieve those stress-related hormones, replacing them with the hormones that come from laughter, deep breathing, loving relationships, and relaxing or positively-stimulating pursuits. Leisure time will make your work time much more productive and will allow you to help your mental health through this crisis season.

Maxie Dunnam ~ A Brand New Year: How to Leave Your Stuff Behind

Do you ever wonder how to leave your stuff behind? Loren Eiseley was one of my favorite writers, a distinguished anthropologist and essayist with the eye of an artist and the soul of a poet.  He saw beyond the surface and had that rare double gift which enabled him to enter deeply into an experience and then share that experience with us. In one of his poignant vignettes from boyhood, he shares a moment of time that bears timeless truth. 

Eiseley was 16, and one day he leaned out the second-story window of his high school and saw an old junk dealer riding in a cart filled with castoff clothing, discarded furniture, and an assortment of broken-down metal objects. A broken-down horse was pulling the cart.  As the decrepit figures passed below him, Eiseley had a sudden sense of what time means in its passing. He wrote: “‘It’s all going,’ I thought with a desperation of the young confronting history.  No one can hold it… we’re riding into the dark.  When my eye fell upon that junk dealer passing by, I thought instantly, ‘save him, immortalize this unseizeable moment, for the junk man is the symbol of all that is going or gone.’”

After that, Eiseley said he could never regard time without a deep sense of wonder. He sought to receive every moment as a kind of gift that was only his.  It’s an image to consider as we begin this new year.  Let’s look at our scripture lesson, found in Genesis 45:1-28, which you can read here.

Tucked away in this story of Joseph’s sojourn into Egypt is a verse packed with far more meaning than appears on the surface. It is a word that carries a whole wagon-load of goods for reflection. It teaches us an eternal truth that we do well to consider as we move into the New Year. It is helpful in practicing how to leave your stuff behind.

Rehearse the story.  Sold into slavery by his brothers, Joseph found favor with the Pharaoh and became one of the trusted officials in Pharaoh’s court.  A strange irony of fate (the providence of God, of course) brought Joseph and the brothers who had betrayed him together again.  A famine ravaged the land of Canaan, the people were without food, and they came to Egypt to buy food from the Pharaoh.  They soon learned that the person with whom they dealt was the brother they sold into slavery, so the tables were turned.  Here they were, asking food from the person they cast away. 

When it came to Pharaoh’s attention that Joseph’s brothers came, it pleased him. He instructed Joseph to bring the whole family from Canaan, promising to give them the goods of all the land of Egypt. It is at this point we find the power-packed verse.  Do this, said Pharaoh: “take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come.  Never mind about your belongings, because the best of all of Egypt will be yours.”  I like the way the King James’ version translates that. “Regard not your stuff, for the best of all the land of Egypt will be yours.”

Regard not your stuff.  

There’s all sorts of meaning in that.  One translation renders it, “leave your stuff behind.”  Now some of us who have moved a good bit, like Methodist preachers, know what that means. We moved from Mississippi to California years ago.  Moving across the continent made it even more difficult to decide what stuff we were going to take and what stuff we were going to leave behind.  Moving is expensive.  My wife, Jerry, collects rocks, and she had bushels of them.  She knew better than to get into a discussion about taking those rocks from Mississippi to California.  Do you know how heavy rocks are?  So Jerry did a very cunning thing.  She packed her choice rocks into kitchen canisters and cake tins and brought them along.  The movers were mystified, I’m sure, as they handled those cake tins and canisters, and I learned of it long after I had paid the bill!

“Regard not your stuff,” said Pharaoh, “leave your stuff behind…for the good of all the land of Egypt is yours.”

By the time most of us get to be adults, we have accumulated a great deal of stuff – all kinds of stuff.

We’ve learned so many wrong things, stored up so much misinformation, learned to respond in so many destructive ways. We’ve adopted all the biting, snarling, snippy styles of relating, become secretive and cynical.  We carry a lot of stuff around, and it burdens us down.  It’s hard learning how to leave your stuff behind. We get all glued up in our limited world of habit. 

So this word of Pharaoh to Joseph’s brothers is a good word for us, particularly as we begin this new year: leave your stuff behind. What is some of the stuff you need to leave behind as you begin the new year?  What can you drop off your weary, bending back to make your trek into the New Year a bit easier and far more meaningful?

Leave behind self-pity. 

Self-pity is a burden most of us are unwilling to drop off.  Someone hurts our feelings and we carry our hurt with us forever.  We’re treated unfairly and we never forget it.  Something happens in our family and it seems to us like we’re being put down: someone else is receiving special treatment, so we get a kind of complex.  We suffer physically and we get the idea that the whole universe is out to persecute us – such an easy snare to fall into! As long as we carry this burden of self-pity, we can blame our failures on someone or something else.

To go through life with the burden of self-pity is to go through life hampered.  It is to stumble along at an uneasy, faltering pace, so we need to leave the bundle of self-pity behind us.  We need to stride into the future, not with self-pity, but with self-affirmation.  And when we rehearse the gospel, we know that we can do that because the whole of Scripture, especially the Gospels, is an affirming, not a destructive word.

Jesus said that not even a sparrow fell to the ground without the Father taking note. Then he added, “you are of more value than sparrows.” And how extravagant is this? “The very hairs on your head are numbered.” Each of us is a unique, unrepeatable miracle of God, and there is a place in God’s heart that only I can fill…that only you can fill.

“For thee were we made, oh God,” said Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”  No wonder he said that; the psalmist himself had captured it long before – “You have made us a little lower than the angels, a little less than God, and crowned us with glory and honor.” 

We don’t need to go into the New Year with self-pity because God is on our side.  To let go of self-pity is to begin practicing how to leave your stuff behind. God created us. And God is going to be with us.

Leave behind illegitimate responsibility.

The next bundle of stuff we need to leave behind is illegitimate responsibility.  I’m talking about the responsibilities which we rigidly claim for ourselves, but which don’t legitimately belong to us.

Our journey will be more meaningful if we can determine that there are certain responsibilities that are ours; these we will accept and give our resources to.  There are other responsibilities which we simply have to leave with others and with God.  Parents, there is a limitation to the responsibility we can take for our children.  We must do all we can to nurture our children to live productive, helpful, meaningful, Christian lives.  But beyond a certain time and place of nurturing, we must commit them wholly to God, and leave with them and with God the responsibility for guiding themselves.

This is conditioned by a special word to young parents. A Chicago suburbanite put on a last spurt of speed to catch his train but missed it.  A bystander remarked, “if you’d run a little faster you would have made it.”   “No,” the suburbanite replied, “it wasn’t a case of running faster, but of starting sooner.”  Young parents, you can’t begin too soon to relate a child to God – to demonstrate clearly to your children your own commitment and values.  We can’t depend wholly upon the church to instill within our children a love of God’s Word.  That won’t do it;  of course the church has a responsibility, but parents are primarily responsible. When we have been faithful in our parenting, we can leave our inordinate feelings of responsibility for our children behind.

There are responsibilities that we can and must assume – but many of us are weighed down by responsibilities that don’t belong to us. We must leave them behind.

Leave behind cancelled sin. 

There’s a lot of stuff we ought to leave behind, along with self-pity and illegitimate responsibility. What stuff do you still need to leave behind? We can’t name them all, but let me mention one other bundle that we need to cast off as we stride into this New Year: the bundle of cancelled sin.  The phrase comes from Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Oh For A Thousand Tongues To Sing.”  He claims that this is the work of Christ.

He breaks the power of canceled sin,

He sets the prisoner free;

his blood can make the foulest clean;

His blood availed for me.

Scores of people who beat a steady stream to my study door for counseling are burdened down by cancelled sin.  Somewhere in the past, they did things, got involved in situations, and were caught in relationships about which they feel morbid guilt.  They carry this around as an inside burden which no one knows about.  But like a malignancy, it grows and spreads until it poisons the person and brings a sickness like death.

The heart of the gospel is that God through Christ forgives our sins, and our sins are cancelled by God’s grace.  But obviously, this fact and experience are not enough.  Cancelled sin still has power – destructive power in our lives.

How then is the power of cancelled sin actually broken?  How do we leave this burden behind?  There is one key: confession and inner healing.  I believe that under most circumstances, not only confession to God but confession to another is essential for healing and release from the power of cancelled sin. 

This is the reason James admonishes us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another.  Once we confess to a minister or to an intimate friend or group, we don’t carry the burden alone.  The poisonous guilt that was bottled up inside is now released.  The cleansing and freedom that comes is wing-giving.  Forgiveness and acceptance are confirmed in our lives and the fear of others knowing who and what we are is taken away.

A medical analogy works well here. When an infection appears somewhere on the body, antibiotics are given.  If these do not destroy the infection, usually the infection is localized and has to be lanced.  The surgeon uses the scalpel and opens the boil in order that all the poison can be drained.  Confession is something like the surgeon’s scalpel.  When we honestly open our lives in confession, all the poisonous guilt that we have bottled up within has a chance to flow out.  Confession becomes the cleansing process by which the self is freed from the power of cancelled sin.

Now there are two requisites for redemptive confession – one, you must trust the person or the group to whom you confess; and two, your confession must not be destructive to another person.  We cannot disregard the health and wholeness of another in order to seek our own release.

The big point is that the burden of erased wrongdoing is too great for us to carry into the New Year.  You can leave that stuff behind, because God forgives.  God loves you and accepts you.  And if you’ve not experienced the release from cancelled sin, if the burden of it is still with you, you may need to find a person whom you love and trust with whom you can share.  Open your life to them, and allow the poison to flow out in your honest confession. Remember the promise of John’s gospel: “if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.”

I want to invite you now to use your imagination. Picture yourself with a big trash bag. Move through every room of your life; select the stuff you need to leave behind. I’m talking about self-pity and illegitimate responsibility. 

Put it into the trash bag.

What cancelled sin still has power over you, what hidden hatred, what frustrating fear, what devastating doubt, what powerful prejudice?

Put it in the trash bag.  Do it.  Act it out in your imagination. 

Put it into the trash bag.

Is there an unresolved relationship with a husband or wife, a parent or a child, a neighbor?  Is there a jealousy you’ve never brought out into the open? 

Put it into the bag. 

It could be any number of things.  You know what weighs you down, and what stuff you don’t need to take into the New Year. 

Put it into the bag.  Be specific in identifying and visualizing all the stuff in your mind to put into that bag.

Now stay with me in your imagination.  Get in your mind the picture with which we began  – the junk man with his cart filled with cast-off clothing, discarded furniture, all sorts of abandoned useless things.  Do you see it in your mind?  He’s passing by. 

In your imagination now, throw your trash bag onto the junk wagon and let it be taken away. 

Have you done it?  In your imagination, just cast it onto the junk wagon to be taken away.  Be silent now and enjoy the relief and release of getting rid of that burden. Keep the image of the trash man in your mind for a moment, taking all your trash away.  Now substitute for the image of the junk man, Christ himself.

Do you see him?  Jesus. Listen.  Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 

Leave your stuff behind – all your junk.  Leave it.

You are forgiven.  Your failure and weakness are accepted.  Your past is buried in the sea of God’s loving forgetfulness.

Go into the New Year with Christ, and go joyfully.

Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Valuing Your Pastors: Snapshots of Clergy Appreciation Month

It is October, which for pastors is Clergy Appreciation Month. Recently I polled clergy on their experiences of Pastor Appreciation in the midst of ministry. The results managed to surprise me.

I was curious to know answers to what I thought was a fairly straightforward, simple question: what’s one of the most meaningful gifts or gestures you received for Pastor Appreciation? As an afterthought, I included – or an awkward gift or gesture?

It was surprising to see the percentage of clergy who have never experienced any organized appreciation initiative, alongside the number who (though technically counted as having received Clergy Appreciation) received maybe one or two cards, years prior.

The point of surveying clergy was not to reinforce an idealized perspective of pastors. I’m rarely surprised by pastors, though it happens from time to time. But for every self-promoting or self-aggrandizing or corrupt or predatory pastor I’ve known, I’ve known many more who continue to show up week after week because they love God and they want people to see God, love God, and love others.

However, clergy burnout rates in North America are quite high, while available Sabbaticals are often under-utilized; a number of pastors leave ministry, and clergy mental health is frequently under assault. Recently, a tragic case of a high-profile pastor’s suicide hit the news. The factors contributing to burnout, clergy drop-out rates, and mental health struggles are complex, and no one event or initiative is a cure-all. Congregations should have high expectations for their pastors’ integrity, hard work, and growing maturity and leadership. Congregations have a right to expect to be treated with care, honesty, character, and respect.

But some of the gestures clergy have pointed out as most meaningful also reflect the particular challenges they face:

  • A pastor who receives a perceptive personal gift feels seen and known in what is often a lonely role
  • A pastor whose kids are included as recipients in Clergy Appreciation sees the hidden family cost and sacrifice being noticed and honored
  • A pastor who receives a deliberate daily prayer initiative senses renewed energy to face daily spiritual battles for which they crave Divine wisdom and insight
  • A pastor who receives specific notes mentioning examples of the impact of their ministry fights the fear that they’re not making any difference through the waves of criticism, tragedy, and pressure they encounter in the pews

In my informal poll, I reached out to North American Protestant Christian clergy, weighted heavily toward Wesleyan Methodist pastors working in local congregations (District Superintendents, Bishops, or General Superintendents were not included this time). They represent regions across the United States. The group includes both women and men in active pastoral ministry as solo, senior, or staff pastor or chaplain. Among responding clergy were Caucasian, Black, and Latino pastors. Pastors from multiple denominations responded, including AME Zion, AME, United Methodist, Wesleyan, Nazarene, and Episcopalian. Congregation size varied, as did denominational form of organization – congregational voting on a pastor vs episcopal appointment by a Bishop.

  • Roughly 65% of respondents have experienced some kind of recognition, gift, token, or event for Clergy Appreciation month, which is good. However, this ranges from getting a Hallmark card or gift certificate once or twice from individuals in a congregation, to organized events, lunches, gift baskets or sporting events tickets, to each staff member receiving a thousand dollars in gift cards.
  • About 20% of respondents had never served a congregation that observed Clergy Appreciation month but had received formal, organized recognition or appreciation at other times or milestones, like a milestone anniversary year at a congregation or when the pastor was moving away.
  • About 15% of respondents had never served a congregation that organized a formal recognition or appreciation initiative, either during Clergy Appreciation Month or at any other time.

Regardless of the monetary value of gifts, respondents repeatedly affirmed that some of the most meaningful gestures were personal, or illustrated what each member was able to give in their own capacity, or expressed the specific impact a pastor’s ministry had made.

Further, a couple of respondents explained that Clergy Appreciation is rarely or never observed in some particular contexts: church planting (where a congregation is new, not yet established, and often is completely unaware of Pastor Appreciation month), and chaplaincy positions (where a clergyperson is appointed outside of a traditional congregation in settings like hospitals/hospice, law enforcement or fire departments, athletic teams, or the military). For chaplains and church planters, there may be a higher likelihood of falling through the cracks, despite their roles being particularly heavy with crisis encounters (chaplains) and with entrepreneurial launch risk (church planters).

An aside: not all clergy want Pastor Appreciation recognition – sometimes they fear it looks self-serving to visitors, or they’ve grown to dread resentful comments about needing a salary at all or interactions that feel quid pro quo. Most pastors wouldn’t want the kind of “PreachersNSneakers” attention some celebrity pastors have been receiving about the perception of their wealth or what they do with it. But the vast majority of pastors serve congregations of fewer than 500 members, and the majority of those serve in churches with 200 members or fewer, so it’s unlikely the rural Illinois pastor down the street is rocking a $4,000 pair of shoes while layoffs are occurring across town.

While certainly care should be exercised, pastors as effective leaders must work toward being able to inhabit a place of comfortable, appropriate vulnerability. And that’s what being willing to receive something is: you are allowing yourself to be impacted by another person. This is a vital trait for clergy to exercise, who so often are the ones in the position of giver – giver of time, resources, counsel, insight, and leadership. When you let people give, it breaks down walls and barriers easy for wounded clergy to keep up; it reinforces to congregations the value of expressing and communicating gratitude, positivity, and appreciation; and it allows people to give from whatever scant resource they’re able. If you tell a church you don’t “need” anything from them, you’re robbing the five-year-olds of the opportunity to practice showing gratitude through their Crayola art. You’re telling the 85-year-old that she can’t do anything valuable for you, that she has nothing of worth that you need. And you’re telling people with limited income that their banana bread doesn’t have a point – when maybe that’s the best thing they have to give. So let them give it. Or else never preach on the feeding of the 5,000 or the widows’ mites again.

Here, then, are a few takeaways from pastors’ responses on what Clergy Appreciation gestures have been most meaningful (or sometimes most awkward). They’re relevant to leaders like District Superintendents or Bishops, active and retired pastors, and laypeople wondering where their congregation falls compared to other churches.

Pastors’ experience of Clergy Appreciation Month varies so widely it seems almost solely shaped by individual congregational lay leadership.

Church size, area of the country, denomination – none of these determine the likelihood of whether or to what extent a congregation will observe Pastor Appreciation. No one leadership style or pastoral personality or temperament seemed to shape the likelihood of whether or not a particular clergyperson had received gestures of appreciation. Sometimes length of tenure appeared to have some correlation – the longer a pastor had stayed in once place, the more likely they were to have been honored in some organized or deliberate way.

Pastoral Appreciation habits on a church-by-church basis seems further illustrated by the fact that some churches don’t observe any formal recognition of Clergy Appreciation Month in October, yet have a healthy practice of regularly encouraging their pastor at other times of year. Yet rather sadly, for at least one minister, a congregation with retired denominational leaders and pastors attending was the only church they served that hadn’t recognized Clergy Appreciation (perhaps illustrating the principle that, “a prophet has no honor in his own hometown”).

When denomination, region, and church size don’t significantly determine whether or not a congregation organizes regular Clergy Appreciation initiatives, the spectrum of experiences is quite wide. Lay leaders exercise a great deal of influence and leadership, and factors like congregational culture and health likely inform attitudes, proactive communication, and a sense of pride, ownership, and gratitude.

Consider some statements from currently active pastors:

“I did not even know it was Pastor Appreciation month. I do not think I have ever received a gift for it. Is that weird?”

“I only recall having received one gift from a lay person at one church I’ve served. It had a gift card, which was nice!”

“Church plant congregations have no idea about Pastor Appreciation month!”

“The best was tickets to an NFL game. It was on a Sunday, so the church gave us the weekend off! It was really nice.”

“My church decided to make Pastor Appreciation a really big deal one year (I had been at the church for six years). Normally, I might get a card or a gift certificate from random church members. This particular year, they gave me a different surprise every Sunday during October. The first week at the end of the service they gave me a big bucket full of goodies. One week, they gave me a big box full of notes of encouragement. So very thoughtful. They also bought a new desk for my office, repainted it, re-carpeted it, and redecorated it. They also gave me a framed picture of my face made out of words that describe me.”

“They gave each of us and the lead pastor over a thousand dollars’ worth of gift certificates to the dinner theater, the fanciest steakhouse, and a bed and breakfast.”

There are a couple of dynamics likely to produce an awkward Clergy Appreciation experience.

There are a multitude of ways to show appreciation with sensitivity, creativity, and personality, as some beautiful examples below show. However, a couple of situations can create awkward Clergy Appreciation experiences.

When a congregation recognizes a Senior Pastor to the complete exclusion of other staff members, it can be awkward for everyone. Consider these experiences:

“Only recognizing senior pastors makes it look like the congregation doesn’t think the other pastors are doing ‘real’ ministry.”

“My church has this sweet sign, Our Pastor is #1! A bit awkward though since it’s singular, and we have two pastors on staff.”

When themed gifts pile up for clergy who have to pack and move regularly. While teachers receive apple-themed decor, keepsakes, ornaments, dishes, and more, pastors sometimes have a similar challenge.

“My spouse gets awkward ones all the time. Just random crosses and church-y things that will collect dust.”

“Please, no more crosses or Bibles. I’m set!”

When social insensitivity potentially sours a well-intended gesture, pastoral appreciation shifts from being relaxing to presenting new challenges to be solved.

“It was great when people offered to watch our kids so we could have a date night – until it was a person we were not comfortable letting care for our kids. Declining was awkward in those moments.”

“One thing I’m aware of in our social media age is that some pastors are going to be in pain as they watch other churches shower their pastors with gifts, and then watch their church go silent. Pastors, out of a sense of excitement and gratitude, post it on social media. Sometimes, despite the good intentions, I wonder if it leads to comparisons as one pastor compares his $25 gift certificate to another pastor’s trip to Hawaii.”

Sometimes the awkwardness has a more sinister edge, so if your pastor seems a little wary during Clergy Appreciation month, remember occasionally there are circumstances going on behind the scenes, as with one respondent in active ministry:

“I have a stalker who is sending me things. The Superintendent is about to have a cease and desist letter sent.”

Despite the number of ways expressions of gratitude can become awkward, take them as helpful notes but don’t let them keep you from showing appreciation to your own pastor. As you’ll see below, even a short note can stick in the clergy mind for years and encourage a tired pastor to keep going.

The most meaningful gifts were personal, reflected individual ability to give from the resources they had, or included notes about how their ministry mattered or the impact of their work.

No one goes into ministry for the salary; still, it is moving to see what moves the average minister. Consider these creative gestures from a variety of congregations of varying size, with varying resources, and why they mattered to the pastors who received them:

“One year, our board planned an entire weekend of services including kids’ church, youth, preaching, music, scheduling volunteers. Our staff was invited to simply come and participate. It was amazing to come without responsibility and be a part of our morning worship services. It truly was a gift of time and appreciation. Imagine a whole week that our staff was able to realign our efforts because we didn’t have to plan weekend worship services. It was great!”

“I personally appreciate the thoughtfulness more now than I did in years past. Having gone through a tough pastorate, acts of service and love mean more to me than they once did.”

“One of the most meaningful gifts I have received for Pastor Appreciation month was a picture of my grandmother framed with a poem written by one of my members. My grandmother passed two years ago during Pastoral Appreciation month. The gift made me cry.”

“Honestly the money and gifts are always appreciated. But when people have written about the difference one has made in their lives…those make everything so worth it.”

“Our church does prayers for your pastors for the month of October with a prayer prompt each day. A lot of the cards and notes I get say that people are praying, and I believe they are, especially with the prayer prompts. They include our family in the prayers so that means a lot.”

“I had a church member who knew that I like deer meat, but also that I don’t like to hunt. He killed a deer and called me to pick it up, but all I had to transport the deer was my small compact car. So I stuffed this deer carcass into the trunk of a Corolla to have it processed. It was all pretty crazy! But it was an incredibly kind gesture.”

“The most meaningful was an appreciation lunch; there wasn’t enough in the budget to give cash gifts, but the members still wanted to show their appreciation. They decorated the hallway and tables with signs. The children made cupcakes for us. The most meaningful part was the gesture from the kids who made cupcakes, because it was the sense that everyone has the capacity to give – they gave from their hearts and their own means.”

“The most meaningful – I think what people have said in the cards they give me when they express their appreciation for my ministry, and the support they offer.”

“When I was single, one congregation brought me meals every day for a month.”

“This year they gave me a gigantic card that had lots of color and glitter, it was so me! I think that’s what I like best, it is so hard to get surprises past me, and they always seem to do it.”

“We’ve also had people get our kids gift cards, to take the family out for dinner – Steak n Shake and Wendy’s – it made them feel special, that they could ‘plan’ and ‘prepare’ dinner.”

“My most used gift – someone gave me and the other pastor each a large Yeti cup with our names on them. I used it all the time and never worried about losing it on Sunday.”

“Stained glass from old church windows (when they remodeled or repaired windows). We have these from two different church buildings. I get emotional just thinking about it.”

“I remember my children lighting up when they found a basket filled with goodies on the porch. It makes me happy when my kids feel loved.”

What a variety of ways to express appreciation for clergy.

Who can you thank this month? If you’re a layperson, have you thought about the pastoral staff at your church, or chaplains in your region? If you’re a pastor, have you thought about your District Superintendent or Bishop and how you can express appreciation without coming across as overly ambitious or self-serving? If you’re a District Superintendent or Bishop, have you thought about the chaplains or church planters in your care who are less likely to be recognized with organized efforts of appreciation?

This month, who can you thank?

And if no one has said it, or is likely to say it –

Thank you. For all you do, seen and unseen. For not giving up or growing embittered or coasting. For offering the gift of character and integrity. For carrying a spiritual burden for the people under your care. For not laughing at the Sunday Schoolers’ macaroni art. For staying calm while someone your parents’ or grandparents’ age sobs on your shoulder in grief. For accepting your 385th decorative cross with a smile. For carrying the knowledge of the heartbreaking Scandal that’s About to Hit before anyone else learns of it. For taking on seminary debt and still having criticism leveled at your preaching by people who themselves are terrified of public speaking or have never preached 52 times a year. For plunging that one toilet, again.

You are seen, and appreciated, and celebrated.

Thank you to all the clergymembers who took a few minutes to share their experiences.

Featured photo from justmeasuringup.com/kidsthankyoucards

Interview: Mary DeMuth Talks “We Too” with Carrie Carter

Author and church planter Mary DeMuth has been featured on CNN and in The Washington Post.

Note from the Editor: Wesleyan Accent writer Carrie Carter recently interviewed author and church leader Mary DeMuth about her new book on sexual abuse and the church, We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. DeMuth’s tradition is not alone as American Protestant church life has been rocked by the faith community’s own #metoo moment, #churchtoo. From megachurches to historic denominations, the ripple effect of revelation has been far-reaching. Wesleyan Accent extends gratitude to clergy spouse Carrie Carter for shining the spotlight on this new resource.

Warning: This interview includes references to sexual abuse that some may find a trigger of traumatic response.

I grew up in a faith community where abuse was not spoken of, where sex was a taboo topic in any context. So as one can imagine, my understanding of sexual abuse was quite simplistic well into adulthood.  How could a man or woman of God do such horrific things? I confess that it was easy to feel smug when scandal rocked the Roman Catholic Church, because somehow I felt like Protestants were different.

They’re not. At all. How arrogant of me to think so.

It took a little longer for the corner of that rug to be lifted, but all that filth is the same. Sexual abuse is a darkness that has pervaded the Church for centuries. No branch of faith is above another when it comes to the pervasiveness of sin. The flames of sexual abuse have scarred people I love. People who trusted and were burned.

For this reason I jumped at the chance to review We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. We Too is now available for purchase, and it was written to help those in ministry leadership to understand the far-reaching effects of sexual abuse and how to support to those on the healing journey. It was truly an honor to interact with Mary and to hear her thoughts on a topic so vital for our ministry leaders right now.

CARRIE CARTER: For those who might not be familiar with you, tell us a little bit about your story.

MARY DEMUTH: I am a sexual abuse survivor. When I was five years old, neighborhood teens repeatedly raped me over the course of my kindergarten year. My father was a predatory man as well. And I found myself during a lot of my childhood being approached by predators. I spent a lot of time running away from those who wanted to steal from me. I met Jesus when I was fifteen through the ministry of Young Life. I have been on a decades-long healing journey since then.

CC: Was We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis written as a response to the recent issues that have been exposed to light in the evangelical world, or was it a work that was already in process?

MD: In some ways it’s been in process for decades. I have been speaking about this issue a very long time, but it has finally gotten teeth because of the evangelical scandals of late. I am grateful that Harvest House Publishers took a huge risk in publishing this book. 

CC: Was there anything during the research and writing of We Too that you didn’t already know? If so, what impact did this new knowledge have on you?

MD: I’ve been seeped in this for decades. But I was particularly surprised at the numbers outside the United States. In other cultures, the numbers are significantly higher percentages of women and children being exploited. Consider this: “Some 35% of women globally have experienced some form of sexual violence, though because of the nature of secrets, this number is most likely underreported. For some countries, the statistics are even more shocking: 57% of Bangladesh women, 77% of Cambodian women, 79% of Indian women, and 87% of Vietnamese women and 99% of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment. Remember, harassment is not the same as sexual violence. Harassment involves innuendo, inappropriate comments, and unwanted sexual solicitation. 120 million girls globally have experienced forced sex. 750 million girls will be married before their eighteenth birthday.[1]” (Excerpt)

CC: What was the most difficult section of We Too to write? What made it difficult for you?

MD: Recounting the first story in the book where I was abused by a doctor, and then telling the story at the end of the book of when I returned to the scene of the crimes [that occurred] when I was a five year old. There are so many fears in making those stories public, and the shame still looms.

“We all know someone affected by sexual abuse. Sadly, the secular media has shown more compassion than the church toward sexual abuse survivors. There is a holy reckoning unfolding before us in the church. People are fed up with secrecy, covering up, and the sheer proliferation of abuse—both inside and outside the church. It’s time for the church to become what it should be: a place of security, not shame; humility, not pride. By standing with survivors of sexual abuse, we can build a community of kindness and restoration—a place where God’s people are healed and made whole.”

Excerpt, We Too

CC: As the spouse of a ministry leader, I received no training on practical ministry, let alone how to minister effectively to sexual abuse survivors. What do you feel is the most important thing for us, as ministry spouses, to know?

MD: That, most likely, everyone you minister to is affected by this issue. It either happened to them, or they love someone who has had this story. The best thing you can do is err on the side of belief, listen, weep alongside, and pray. If there is an outcry from a minor, you must report this to the authorities. Instead of viewing sexual abuse survivors as drains on your energy, look at them as tutors to teach you what it means to turn to Jesus and lean on him for sustenance and strength. They have SO MUCH to teach us about discipleship.

CC: After reading We Too, I feel it is going to be a vital tool that needs to be on the shelf of every ministry leader’s library. Have you written any supplemental material or do you have recommendations for other resources to help navigate this crisis?

MD: I am in the process of writing a video study and guide. Two other great resources: The Child Safeguarding Policy for Churches and Ministries by Boz Tchividjian  and churchcares.com.

CC: For churches that are ready to put protocols in place for the protection of children, is there an organization that you recommend for assistance with those protocols?

MD: Yes, netgrace.org. I also have an extensive list of resources for pastors and ministry leaders here: wetoo.org/pastors 

To read DeMuth’s “8 Reasons Why the Church Doesn’t Like to Discuss Sexual Abuse,” click here.

[1] Meera Senthilingam, “Sexual harassment: How it stands around the globe,” CNN, 29 Nov 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/25/health/sexual-harassment-violence-abuse-global-levels/index.html

Edgar Bazan ~ A Hard Reset

What do you do when a phone freezes, stops working, or is unresponsive? You toss it to the ground, step on it really hard, and make sure is completely crashed, right?

Well, probably not. Most likely you do what most of us have done: we reset our phones to reactivate its functions, we don’t discard it. Depending on how bad it is, we may remove the battery, or do a hard reset which restores the factory functions, deleting everything in the hard drive. It’s not a good situation, but you get your phone back and start all over again.

Have you thought about your life along those lines? That sometimes we need some kind of reset when life gets so thick and unbearable that we stop functioning in healthy ways and find ourselves thinking, behaving, or making choices that are not good for us or the people we care about? In such times, what we need is a fresh start. I know I do sometimes for a variety of reasons, and maybe you do too.

Why bring this up? Maybe you have a bunch of stuff going on in your life right now that keeps getting in your way and keeps you from fulfilling what you know is God’s plan and calling for your life. You may have regrets, remorse, or guilt, the sadness of unmet goals and past disappointments that distracts you from seeing a future for your life to the point that you give up hope, saying: I am broken, I will never be whole again, there is no future for me, I gave that up long ago. These experiences and memories from the past threaten to overpower us to the point that what happened in the past is ruining our present and our future.

The sad part of it is that we think it’s normal, that we just have to deal with it. In a way, we do have to deal with the not-so-positive happenings in life. But here is the trick: we are not called to do this alone.

God wants to work his good will in everything that happens in our lives, and God is in the business of making things new, in transforming the old into a new creation. Our God is a God of opportunities and new beginnings. Our God is a God of the ultimate Reset.

Do you need a reset today, a new way of living, of moving from what was to what can be? If you feel purposeless, broken, or like a frozen, unresponsive phone, then it is time for a reset, and you are not alone.

Now how do we do this? Well, let’s learn together.

The scripture for today is 2 Corinthians 5:17. It is just one verse. And it says,

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

Let’s get some context first.

Like us, the Corinthians were struggling with many problems and difficulties. One of them was living into their new identity as followers of Jesus. As new believers in Christ, they were becoming a part of a new way of living that was in drastic contrast to their old ways. The Corinthian Christians needed to be reminded of this and encouraged constantly about their faith, to not give up and give in to the old ways of living before they knew Christ.

For this reason, in this text and within the context of the letters to the Corinthians, Paul talks of a “new creation” as the transformation that takes place in us that makes us to be “born again,” meaning, saved from the condemnation of sin and death, and the evil powers of this world, to become people of God: children of light with a restored and new life.

However, there is always conflict when you have two elements at odds, in this case the old versus the new. There is a sort of battle between these opposing elements. The moment we embark on our new life, the old yells back at us, reminding us who we were, what we did, or what happened to us, with the only intention of holding us back by discouraging us and putting in doubt our worthiness.

For this reason, a common struggle Christians face today as much as back then is to fully leave behind the old and fully embrace the new. Although your soul has been saved, maybe your mind has not caught up: a part of you is still stuck in the past, in the old, in the very thing about which God has said: “you are the one talking about it, I don’t even remember that anymore!” In other words, what happens in practice is that the devil will always bring up your past to discourage you, but God will always remind you of your future to encourage you to keep moving on.

So when I talk about a reset in this context, I mean the ability to embrace and move into the new things that God has for us by not allowing the hurts of the past to hold us back. Becoming new creatures, as Paul says, is the ultimate reset for anyone, “for everything old has passed away and everything has become new!”

But this is one of the most difficult practices, isn’t it? How do we move away from the old? Is it possible?

I think it is, but we have to change it. What do I mean by “change it”? Like changing the past? Yes, like changing the past.

At first this sounds like a contradiction. How can we change something that already happened? But why does the past matter at all? What is the past to us today? What do we get to keep from something that already happened? Why does the past have so much power over us?

Well, because of the memories; we get to keep those –either the bliss or the trauma.

When we talk about the past, it is really the memory that we are talking about. The story that runs on a loop in the back of our minds of what has happened. This is critical because the past – those memories – only exists in our mind; but they have a direct effect on what happens today and will happen to us in the future. Why?

Because they define us. Although those events may not even matter anymore, they have so much power and control over our minds that they affect our decisions.

Recently I learned about epigenetics, the science that tells us that we are the sum of our experiences, that what happens to us – mentally, physically, emotionally – affects our biological composition, which means that everything that happens to us lays itself like tire tracks tattooing itself across our body-mind and literally making us the product of what has come before.

For example, an experience of trauma from the past seen through a certain lens can physiologically create stress responses like cortisol, stress hormones, and anxiety. All these responses may exist today –even if the event took place many years ago. According to epigenetics, we are the product of what we were and what we continue to allow to affect us today. That is why it is so hard to let the old go. Because it is tattooed all over our lives and we think that that is normal. And the more we replay it in our minds, the more it takes over us, printing itself all over our lives, defining who we think we are.

This idea led me to ask the question, “can we change what has already been, meaning our past experiences? Can we remove those unhealthy marks out of our lives?”

I think we can.

Here is something amazing: our cognitive framing, our interpretation of reality, our use of thoughts, memory and language to frame our past experiences, even how we speak about them, can actually allow us to change our very past experiences. The story we tell, the story we choose to tell about what has happened, can change what has happened insofar as it may change how we respond to those very experiences today.

Of course, we can’t change the facts of the past; but we can change how we feel about the facts and how we allow them to affect us today. So, if the past can affect you negatively today, perhaps you can change the past positively by changing your response to those negative past experiences by reframing them and seeing them through a different lens.

While we can’t ignore the past – it happened – we can reframe it into a story of redemption by looking at it, by talking about it, by thinking about it through the lens of Jesus’ love and grace. We change our past by allowing it to be redeemed.

This is the reset we need! We stop keeping our future a hostage to our past. We free our future by allowing God to redeem our past and reframe our whole lives around a new story with the hope we get through Jesus Christ. We don’t let our past get in the way of our future anymore. We break the cycle of oppression. We don’t choke on our fears and disappointments but rework these experiences through our faith in Christ. And in turn, we output all of our stories from the past into a story of redemption, knowing that we are more than we were because of what has happened to us today, because of our faith in Jesus the Christ.

I believe that there is a lot more for us in our lives that God wants to bless us with, but we don’t see it because we continue to allow an unredeemed past to dictate our future. And just like the Corinthians, we may find ourselves with a new faith but old thinking, old behaving, old brokenness marking us for life.

We can’t ignore the past. It is never going to go away, as long our memories of it exist. So, change it; redeem it; let the gospel of Jesus, the Word of God, bring healing into your past and transform it into a beautiful story of redemption. Don’t let it haunt you anymore. Look straight at those fears, unmet goals, disappointments, and hurts, and say: you are forgiven, you are redeemed.

I know this is not easy at all. The brokenness from the past holds us by making us feel as if what has been must always be. But here is the truth. We were never created to live defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed lives defined by feeling unworthy. We were created to be the ultimate reflection of God’s self, full of light, life, and goodness. Let us stop building on brokenness and start building on hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, and acceptance. Let us allow our past to be transformed into a story of redemption, where our decisions of today reflect our hopes for the future and not our fears and brokenness from the past. Remember, new faith with old thinking does not work well. So let’s also stop acting on the brokenness of our past, and start living in the power of the new life Christ makes possible for us day after day.

Finally, let us be certain of this: what God is offering to all of us today is a wonderful thought: the best days of our lives haven’t happened yet. We are not here by accident. This is your confirmation. Everything is going to be alright. God is making a way for you right now. All you have to do is to welcome God’s Word into your life, so it can speak new life into your mind and soul, reframing your feelings, thoughts, and everything from your past that has been getting in your way for so long.

I invite you to frame your life, your whole self, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, in the love God has for you, in the grace that has been bestowed on you. That is our reset!

Be encouraged today: you are going to make it. Your life still lies ahead of you. You are becoming as you keep on living and walking the pathway Jesus sets before you. Go ahead. In the words of Toby Mac: “You’ve got a new story to write and it looks nothing like your past.”

Amen.

Michelle Bauer ~ Desperate for Mercy: Shouting All the More

 As Jesus approached Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard the crowd going by, he asked what was happening. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stopped and ordered the man to be brought to him. When he came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord I want to see,” he replied. Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus, praising God. When all the people saw it, they also praised God. – Luke 18:35-43

Have you ever felt like you had to yell to get God’s attention? Take a moment to imagine yourself as the man trying to get Jesus’ attention. What might motivate you?

The man begs Jesus to have mercy on him. What about the man’s request do you think catches Jesus’ attention? Jesus was trained in the Scriptures and knew what Micah 6:6-8 teaches about mercy. How did Jesus’ response to this man demonstrate what it looks like to love mercy?

It is a challenge to be seeing impaired in any time and culture. But what do you think life was like for a blind person 2,000 years ago? In what ways might he have suffered? In what ways are you suffering right now? God invites you to talk to him as honestly as you can about your pain.

Everyone in this story seems to be annoyed with this man, except Jesus. What do you think made Jesus stop and talk with him? Take a moment and picture Jesus stopping to talk with you about your need.

“What do you want me to do for you?” What do you think about Jesus’ question to the man, whose need seems so obvious? Today, what would you like Jesus to do for you? How does it feel to ask him? Take a moment and listen for a response.

What would it be like to be instantly healed in your area of greatest suffering? What is it like to wait to be healed in this area? How is God showing mercy to you as you wait?

Wesleyan Accent ~ Love God with All Your Mind

 

This weekend we feature a sermon on loving God with all your mind. Enjoy this teaching from guest preacher Sue Sweeney on grace, lectio divina, and neuroplasticity at Catalyst Community Church in Rowlett, Texas.

This sermon begins around minute mark 23:00.

 

 

 

Note: the Featured Image is from WikiMedia and is titled “Pensare.”