How to Love People Better Through Holistic Mental and Spiritual Care

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Jim Davis
Welcome to as in Heaven season three. My name is Jim Davis. I’m your co host and the pastor of Orlando Grace Church. And I’m joined by a new co hosts today making her one time appearance just for this episode, my wife of 18 years Angela. Angela has a Master’s in Counseling from reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, which, as you will quickly see, hopefully, is what uniquely qualifies her to jump into this, this conversation. We’re joined today by someone you might not know. But I think you should know. Ben Kent. Ben also graduated from reformed Theological Seminary with both an MA in Biblical Studies and a Master’s in Counseling also from reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. He practices as a licensed mental health professional in private practice with the cardia Center here in Orlando. And he serves on staff as a pastor at new city, Orlando, PCA church, Pastor formation and mission with our friends over there, Damien sheeter, Michael Allen, and many others. It is a great church over there. And Ben is also pursuing a PhD in counseling. And on a personal note, I do just want to say, in all the craziness of 2020 and 2021, Ben was a huge blessing to me and others over to Orlando Grace Church, really to help understand what people were experiencing during that turmoil, both at a psychological and a physiological level in the church, and it greatly helped us to minister better to them. So, Ben, thank you for all you’ve done. Thank you for joining us here today.

Benjamin Kandt
So glad to be here. Thanks, Jim.

Jim Davis
Well, if you’ve been listening, you know that this season on the podcast, we’ve been talking about living in a new context in the US called the great deed churching, as somewhere between 30 million and 50 million people who used to go to church regularly do not attend anymore, which is changing so much about both the church and the very fabric of the society that we live in. We commissioned Dr. Ryan Berge and Dr. Paul Joop, both PhD sociologists to do the most comprehensive nationwide quantitative University reviewed, that’s a mouthful study ever done on people leaving the church. And we found that mental health is an issue the church must understand and engage in phase three of our study. And if you don’t know what phase three means, go back and listen to episode one and two, that very helpful to that end. But in phase three of our study, we looked at the mental health of D church, evangelicalism and it became clear that anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts were all major factors in the lives of the D church, we asked them to rate themselves on a scale of zero to 100 in these areas. And this is important, because we’re going to revisit it with zero being very negative and unhealthy and 100, being very positive and healthy, and they scored 39 on anxiety 34 on depression, 35 on loneliness and 25 on suicidal thoughts. So those low numbers indicate that they those are negative numbers, they are more unhealthy in those areas. So hopefully by this point, you can see why Angela is CO hosting this episode as she is both a pastor’s wife and a mental health professional. All right, first question, Ben. One thing we do talk about in our book, is the correlation between church involvement and mental health which is both fascinating and very complex. But I want to focus our time here with you been on equipping the church to engage mental health Well, now let me as a caveat, caveat, I do want to say that I love something we talked about before this. Your church is booming. It’s growing it you’re having major capacity issues. And you made the comment that the pastor’s are the least excited about the growth not because you don’t value people but because you so value spiritual formation, you want to make sure that you are able to do this and while I’m sure you welcome growth, you want it to happen in a way where you can sustain the the spiritual formation of your people. So can you talk about spiritual formation and how it addresses the whole person and what that means for mental health?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, well, the place where I like to jump off here is the great commandment right? Jesus says that the definition of greatness in his mind or the definition of human flourishing is to love God with all of yourself. That’s your heart, your soul, your mind your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself and so if that really is the where we’re aiming, when we talk about spiritual formation, then there’s a there’s even a complexity of the human person that Jesus names in that command itself right? Of course, he’s borrowing that from Moses and and so why I think that is relevant is that we cannot isolate one of those things and say, you know, whole person formation is, is really just the mind. It’s just the intellect it’s cognitive it’s, or the other side is like whole person formation is really just having the right feelings. Or, you know, as soon as we start doing that, we begin to parse out a person in a way that can be unhelpful. And so to think about spiritual formation, addressing the whole person is, is really important for mental health, because increasingly even people that are not disciples of Jesus, but experts in the field of mental health are saying, the mind, which is what mental health is about, is actually a more holistic thing than just your brain. In fact, Dan Siegel, he’s a well known interpersonal neurobiologist would say, it’s this emergent system of your brain, your body and your relationships. And so all three of those things, to have a proper mind to have good mental health, your brain, your body, and your relationships all have to be kind of working together in harmony. And what emerges from that is, is there’s wholeness and well being what he would call integration. And so what that means for spiritual formation is we want to address people’s their brains and understanding how does their brain actually form? We want to understand how is their body a key factor in how they’re being formed, more and more to the image of Jesus. And then how do their relationships, shake them form them in, either in the direction of becoming more like Christ or in a different direction. And so those three components I think, are important. I was actually in a conversation with a congregant years ago, this was during 2020. And, and she was, she had had some significant childhood trauma. And and she was feeling pretty bad because she was devoted to the Scriptures reading the Bible regularly and, but but felt like there was just this block this disengagement between her and reading the word in a fruitful way. And so I invited her I said, Hey, what would it look like if the first like 10 minutes before you open up your Bible, you just create some space. And you take some deep breaths in on your exhale, consider yourself kind of just relaxing into the mercy of Jesus, and then open up your Bible. And so what I was doing was, I was trying to say, you know, to say it a different way, people have called it the triune brain, you’ve got kind of this, this upper part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, which is, frankly, where most reformed, evangelical spirituality addresses. So this is good theology. This is kind of giving maps of reality, this is helping you to understand how doctrine works. And, and that’s really important. But you also have this kind of middle brain, this limbic system, where you we as mammals, this is really important, because this is, this is where we get our drives for our behaviors is where emotion just shows up our appraisal of good and bad this is where so many things happen in that middle brain. And then you have the lower brain, which is your brainstem, where fight flight freeze happens, all those kinds of things. And so, so what I was doing in that moment was a saying, Hey, you kind of have to work at the lowest level necessary, but you kind of want to work at maybe the highest level possible. And so, in that moment, we couldn’t work at this higher level, we needed to address this lower level of if she’s in a constant state of panic when she opens her Bible, because some of her childhood trauma was spiritual in nature, then regulating her system, being able to kind of use her breathing to tell her lower brain, hey, you’re actually safe right now, even though the Bible has been used in really harmful ways, right now you’re safe with it. Right now you’re in a space where it’s actually can be a source of life and, and not a source of death, like it’s been in the past. And but that requires addressing the whole brain or the whole person in that way.

Angela Davis
Ben, thanks so much for just given a great explanation of the holistic growth of a person really appreciated how you did that. Obviously, as both a licensed counselor and a pastor on staff at a church, you can understand the complexities of that. I would love to know how you’ve seen that relationship work well, and how it hasn’t worked? Well.

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, well, I often say I don’t know if I could be a pastor without my counseling degree. And I don’t think I could be a counselor without a theology degree. And some of that is because as a pastor, I’m just I’m in the work of caring for souls of being with people of I’ve seen them formed into the image of Jesus and, and that requires a nuanced understanding of the human being something that, by the way, has historically been true of pastors. They were the, the psychotherapist of their day. And now I use that word, intentionally. The two Greek words that are Suquet and therapists, which is soul healers, they were the ones administering soul hearing healing for millennia before you know the 1800s when we invented psychotherapy, and so there’s something to that, that that I think a good pastor is going to want to increasingly understand the the depth and the complexity and the mystery of the human being. I genuinely believe the only thing more mysterious than In the human soul is God Himself. And so there’s just a depth before before you when you sit in the presence of a human being that is, it’s incomprehensible and so, so that to have kind of trite explanations of things is, is just a no go is that at best, you know, not helpful at worst, it’s pastoral malpractice. And so what I’ve loved about being in both realms is, there’s a lot of different things, but they’re mutually reinforcing. And I find myself regularly being in my counseling, practice thinking, Wow, man, you really need a good church. And I find myself being in my pastoral role thinking, while you really need a good therapist. Something about this, the congruence between those two spaces that really matters?

Jim Davis
Well, I love how you said, I wrote it down, we want to operate at the lowest level necessary and highest level possible, will trauma, trauma is going to be a limiting factor in both of those areas, especially the highest level possible. And so traumas. Also, in our studies, we saw that the traumas of various kinds do factor into D churching, in many ways, and I note the word trauma, it can be overused in some circles, and it can be underused in some other circles. So would you mind just defining trauma for us and help us understand how it relates to the issues of deconstruction and D churching?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, well, trauma, from what I understand comes from a Greek word meanings, meaning a wound. And so we use it in the physical sense, still, we talk about a traumatic brain injury, or we’ll talk about something that was, you know, some sort of a trauma unit, right, that that deals with these significant wounds to people’s bodies. But the way it’s used increasingly is as a soul wound of sorts, this way in which our wounds or our souls are wounded. And so you spoke to this, which I think is important that that trauma as a term is experiencing what’s called concept creep right now, which is its its range of meaning is slowly expanding. And it’s expanding in ways to encompass less severe phenomena, things that actually historically would not fit the diagnosis of PTSD according to the DSM. But are we’re increasingly seeing actually these responses that people are having, they actually bear some resemblance to a trauma response. And so we’re beginning to expand that definition a little bit more. And so why I think that is important to say is that we have to hold attention here and the tension is, is that in certain areas, trauma has become social currency. And, and so I’m very cautious to over apply it because if you do that, it becomes meaningless. And the people that have actually experienced significant trauma and are carrying around the the soul wounds, you kind of cheapen what they’re what they’re experiencing. On the other hand, these are the spaces that probably under use the term, I genuinely believe trauma seems to be legitimately on the rise and needs to be tended to and addressed, not least of which within the local church and, and so pastors, you know, the language nowadays is that I think pastors should probably be leaning into becoming trauma informed that they’re aware of what this is and how this affects their congregants. So if you have, you know, a military vet that comes into your your congregation, and is behaving in unusual ways, because maybe he has some some vestiges of traumatic symptomology, from, from his warfare, like, you might actually want to know that he might not just be being sketchy, he might be genuinely doing what he needs to do to maintain a sense of, of safety in the gathered worship space, like not letting people sit behind him not letting you know, leaving before everybody gets up and being the last one to get there. He’s not just late to church every Sunday, right? That kind of a thing. And, and so people have used the language of, of lowercase t, or a little T trauma, which is, you know, things like a relationship breakup that that you feel like you should be recovering from, but you’re not, and it still has negative effects on you months later, or the loss of a pet or growing up in a home environment that isn’t abusive in any way. But you experience ways in which you try to perform to find people’s affection and attention because you’re in this environment where that was actually modeled to you. And that was the way it was set up. And so you could call this little T traumas. But then we have big, big T traumas, which, you know, combat plane crashes, sudden, unexpected loss of loved ones, various things like that would would include. So this is the way I conceptualize it. There’s kind of this trauma triangle, if you will. There’s three E’s, you’ve got the event, you’ve got the experience of the event, and then you’ve got the effects of the event. And so this isn’t new to me. This is a framework that’s been used before but but why I think it’s so helpful is that you can have a traumatic event that is not traumatizing. That’s really important. And so some people can experience a traumatic event and not be traumatized by it. Other people can experience a traumatic event and have it be traumatizing. And so then you have to ask, well, what’s the difference? What what makes the difference in that? And the answer is their experience of that event. So experience really matters. And Sue Johnson record this, in her book hold me tight, she’s got this great reference to a study that was done by Chris Fraley, and colleagues at the University of Illinois where they found evidence that in in 911 survivors, so the people that were in or near the World Trade Center on 911, they studied them. And 18 months later, they realized that people who avoided depending on others, they were struggling with flashbacks, irritability, depression, significant levels of what we would call traumatic symptomology, that the event was clearly a traumatic event, the experience was then traumatizing. So now the effects were showing up as a traumatic diagnosis, right. But this is what’s crazy. So there was other people that they studied 18 months later, who compared to them actually appeared to be better, more well adjusted, more kind, more humble had more meaning and value and in the significance of life, dependent on the relationships and depth of relationship that had grown like they actually experienced what we call post traumatic growth as a result of the World Trade Center attack. And so why I think that’s so important is then the experience, what they’ve shown is the difference in the experiences, do you have securely attached relationships, where you can bring that event that occurred? And you can process it real time with people who will, you know, in therapy world, I learned this because somebody said, Hey, what does it mean to hold space, my therapist is telling me to do this, I’m like, okay, that’s totally therapy language. But people who can hold space, create a space for you to show up with all of the things that that traumatic event stirred up for you and to be held there emotionally, physically, even if that’s appropriate, that actually enables somebody to metabolize the traumatic event in a way that the that it doesn’t have to be, have traumatic effects on them over time. I think that that is, is so important, and very under spoken about, which is a big deal. We need to talk more about trauma, resilience before the events happened, and and post traumatic growth after the events happened. And both of those things really matter.

Angela Davis
Ben, thanks so much. That was such a helpful just understanding of the different types of trauma that people can can experience. So I really appreciated what you said, in thinking about that. Unfortunately, the church today can be seen as a place where you go to be entertained, or a place where you go to get good theology. But clearly, God intends more for his people. Jim and Mike studies show that a significant number of people left the church because the messages just weren’t relevant to their life and their struggles. So specifically, 12% of the church evangelical said this and 16% of bipoc. And looking further, they found this was actually a really strongly held view. So when it comes to various kinds of traumas, like you just explained little t, big T, or just overall life struggles, what does it look like for the church to be a healing community?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, well, if it’s okay, I’ll start with kind of an inverse of that and show. Just even in my own experience, I was a part of a church over a summer, I was just living in somewhere for the summer in. And it was a fairly large church. And, and I had had some concerns about one of the pastoral staff. And so I brought those concerns up. And this is, you know, very truncated version of the story brought those concerns up, and was essentially like, dragged before the senior pastor with a bunch of the staff. And I’m in my 20s, right. And so I’m kind of, um, the definition of young, restless and reformed. So I’m taking this as my standard moment. It wasn’t that but I thought it was right. And so I’m just, you know, I opened up First Timothy three, I’m reading this and I, hey, this isn’t he didn’t qualify like, this is a big deal. I’ve got two witnesses, three witnesses here, like, and so I’m bringing a charge against an elder in a real way, according to Scripture, all those things. And words like this, were spoken to me by the senior pastor, I am the commander here, and everybody does what? And, and so there was, you know, language I wouldn’t have had that I have now there was clear evidences of gaslighting there was ways in which me and other family members of mine were shoved out of the congregation. I mean, it was a significant event. But all the while I had a best friend who I was regularly interacting with about this. So here’s the securely attached relationship that I’m processing this with, to where I actually don’t think I experienced what was a potentially spiritually traumatic event. I don’t the effects of it have an effect that haven’t been been Trump traumatizing in that sense. And so what I would what I would mean by that is, I don’t have black and white thinking about church about pastors. I think some pastors are great something thinks some could get better. I think that we have a hard job and so I think that most of them are probably doing the best they can. But I give that as an example of this was a community that then could created a way in which they siloed off those pastors to where nobody can bring any kind of charge against them. In any event, again, I was taking official biblical routes to do that, which I think is important. And so you know, about seven years later, that pastor that I brought the accusations against, got fired and moved on to another church in a different town, and was caught recording young women in the shower, and is now insisting, and so that would have been preventable. Had we actually attended to what happened when I brought up charges, almost a decade prior to that, but it wasn’t. And so in those moments, then all of those emotions stir back up for me, when I find out that he’s in jail for what had happened. And I’m feeling anger, I’m feeling some sense of like, what if I would have been more clear? What if I would have been more insisted, like, all that stuff starts showing up. And so then I begin processing that developing, you know, in real relationships with people to talk through it. So so that’s an inverse of what a healing community looks like. It’s got a lot of a lot of symptoms of the dominion of darkness, not the kingdom of Jesus, that God’s beloved son.

Jim Davis
Well, let me even I’m gonna interrupt you and just say how important that is because people don’t have It’s easy in that situation to assume I’m wrong. They’re the church leaders. I’m wrong. I think it’s so important that we give categories to people experiencing the kinds of, you know, hesitations or smells off, or even like, I really believe it, whatever it is to know that they should listen to their gut in this situation. So sorry to interrupt, but I just think that is so important for people to hear, because I’ve seen people as they’ve learned those categories. Just all the lights come on, and the radars go off.

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, well, and to some extent, I think about when I reflect back on that, for me, I’ve always been a Bible guy, like I take the Bible very seriously. And I think it was, I was taking scripture seriously and looking at this man and saying, you don’t measure up to the qualifications of an elder, First Timothy three and Titus one. And then I was taking scripture seriously and saying, there’s a, there’s a appropriate pathway to do this. I go to my brother, I tell him his fault. He rejects it, I take some witnesses, that doesn’t work. I bring it now to the church to the authority in the church. And now this is my experience there. So So I think that that’s really important is like, the scriptures are actually giving me a sense of ballast. It’s not me and my my appraisal of the situation, because David says in Psalm 19, who can discern His errors, right? I take that seriously. And I have a try to lean into epistemic humility on these things. Like I don’t know what I don’t know, right. But I’m taking the Bible very seriously and trying to use that, to guide my actions. And so to talk about how the church can be a healing community. I think in one sense, I would say we are a healing community. That’s our vocation. You think about being the body of Christ, when Jesus was walking around, you know, a couple 1000 years ago on earth, He you could summarize his ministry, he would did two things, he was teaching and healing everywhere he went. That’s what the kingdom looked like when it came in. And so we, you know, in kind of westernized evangelical churches, we do a really good job with the teaching ministry of Christ. But we’ve been given the healing ministry of Christ to and so we need to take that seriously as well. So so in some way, I’m doing the Paul thing where it’s like, well, we just need to be who we are, we are a healing community. So let’s live into that more. And so practically, I think praying through the book of Psalms is one of the most important spiritual practices, and I would say, psychologically, spirit, well, like practices for psychological well being I’ve ever had in in, you know, ancient fathers, like Augustine and Athanasius, would tell us to, to mirror what we see in the Psalms, because they mirror what they see in us. Or to, they literally use the language of the therapeutic use of the Psalms. And so because because I’ve thought about the amount of trauma that God’s people have experienced throughout the last, you know, five or 6000 years. And I think they didn’t have the knowledge that we have now of what’s going on, that we learned from fMRI machines, for instance. And so how did they metabolize that trauma in ways that they the, the experience, and the effects weren’t, weren’t traumatizing? And I think they have things like communal laments, praying through the book of Psalms, things that we can see in the black church. And America did this, especially during slavery and after slavery, that there was a sense of being able to cry out and vocalize, give voice to the voiceless within us. So there’s something really profound about that. And then the other thing I would say is, create small spaces in your churches, where people can learn to embody the fruit of the Spirit, the Beatitudes, First Corinthians 13, whatever you want, because all of those things are going to be conducive to securely attached relationships. And when I say small spaces, I mean smaller than your typical small group. I mean, closed, I mean, probably ideally, gender specific, but you could probably have men and women together in that space, depending on the function of it. And so I think that kind of space is really important where people can experience what we call a corrective emotional experience. They can develop securely attached relationships. And by the way, I don’t mean that the pastor’s in each of those, I think that the people of God being the people of God is so important in that space.

Jim Davis
I can already tell you, I have taken more notes during this podcast, and I have taken in any podcast so far. So thank you this is this is fascinating. I mean, I probably have enough questions to fill up a whole season just on this. But you know, I will say in the churches, I’ve pastored, I’ve been blessed to have counselors in my midst. And there are a lot of things I’m not good at. But I am good at knowing, largely knowing when I’m out of my depth. And counselors in my myths have been such a blessing in many ways, you’re one of those. So a game changer. For me, I kind of referenced this at the beginning a couple years ago was when you introduced me to the window of tolerance and the physiology of anger, specifically, I’m looking at things and reactions, you know, the saying we use here is that it feels like there’s more fire than wood. And I don’t understand why. And so you just gave me by understanding the physiology of what was going on, it actually gave me a whole lot of grace for people who are struggling the pandemic, the cultural changes, the political turmoil, whatever it is that we walked through all of it. So would you explain those two things? And how understanding these things can contribute to, to healing community?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, absolutely. The window of tolerance is essentially helping us it’s a tool to help us understand how the nervous system works. And so, you know, angels, fools rush in where angels do not try to kind of a thing, I, I don’t know anything about neuroscience, about physiology, like in any counselor who thinks that they do, all they’re saying is they’ve read a bunch of people who’ve done a really good job simplifying it for the rest of us. So let me just give that caveat. But what I understand is, the nervous system has kind of a gas pedal and a brake. Again, this is layman’s terms for me. And so you’ve got the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. And so the gas pedal kind of dials you up, it gets you ready to again, if there’s a fear situation, to fight to flight, into, basically activates you. So your heart rate increases your breathing, kind of goes more quickly, you feel maybe red in the face, because your blood is kind of rushing to your extract out from your extremities to these places that need the most blood. And so that is a an appropriate response to a threat. And you’re you were created by God with this, you’re wired for survival, this is supposed to happen. Now, you also have a system that kind of pumps the brakes on that, which helps dial that back down and make you calm, brings you into this place where you are, the window of tolerance is ideally this space where you’re both alert, but calm, both of those things are happening at the same time. Now, sometimes we can get alert but not calm, which would be called hyper arousal where we’re so dialed up. And these are the things that would be overtly look like anger, they would look like rage, they would look like this desire to fight. It’s defensiveness, it’s attacking people. It’s most of Twitter. It’s, it’s all the ways in which we see people getting kind of dialed up in that moment, and it’s your physiologic physiology is helping you to fight off a potential threat. Well, what’s hard is that because we’re such social creatures, as mammals, as human beings, we perceive social threats are as dangerous to us as physical threats. So if I’m going to be socially ostracized, that’s as dangerous says that I’m going to be attacked by an animal that can overpower me. Yeah. And so what that means is, our amygdala doesn’t make it doesn’t differentiate between, oh, this is somebody you know, trashing me on Twitter versus Oh, this is a snake kind of slithering across the path that I’m walking on. It reads it as threat and it responds with this kind of this proper survival mechanism. But what what happens is that most of us, we live in a cultural moment where we’re surrounded by threats, inundated with them in ways we haven’t been before. Social media, 24 hour news cycles, all these things, where we are constantly perceiving threat stimuli. And so we’re constantly reacting as if we’re in danger. Now, if some of some of the listeners though, your response to threat is not to get dialed up and to get angry, your response is to actually check out which is the lower end of the spectrum what we call hypo arousal. So I said, the window of tolerance, you’re calm and alert, well, when you’re just calm but not alert, that’s when you get low into some people, they kind of check out in conflict or or they essentially numb out maybe they need to go you know, have too many snacks or maybe they need to go just like veg in front of TV and that’s the way they’re kind of processing threat stimuli. They’re they’re actually getting going low instead. And so for listeners, you can kind of imagine this or you can google window of tolerance but But you think of scale of one to 10. One is low, that’s about as hypo aroused as you can get 10 as high that’s as hyper aroused as you can get. The sweet spot is between four and seven. That’s kind of your window of tolerance. Now, if you’ve been traumatized, and you carry around PTSD symptomology, your window of tolerance may have shrunk to where you really only have, you know, five and six. So,

Jim Davis
that’s actually hadn’t thought about that, that makes a lot of sense.

Benjamin Kandt
And so when we use the language in our cultural use of the language of being triggered, what they’re saying is, hey, it’s more easy for me to experience stimuli as threatening than somebody who hasn’t been traumatized. Because my window of tolerance has actually shrunk. And so particularly to the D church, if you’ve been traumatized in a church environment, the pastor makes an off color joke, right? Probably not appropriate, maybe he shouldn’t do it. Plenty of people might stay in their window of tolerance, and give him the benefit of the doubt. Because you know, love believes all things First Corinthians 13. But somebody might say, that was not okay. Because there were no tolerance just to create space for something like that. Is shrunk so much that they’re either they get furious, they get hyper aroused, or they check out, they’re like, I’m done. I’m out. I’m not doing this anymore. This is just just another example of what I’m familiar with.

Jim Davis
I mean, I love so much about that, because you’ve defined triggered, I didn’t even think to go there. But that is another term that’s overused, or underused, and you define it really well. And unfortunately, Angela, and I speak it. Well. This is an unfortunate part. It’s Angela. And I do speak at marriage conferences with family life. That’s fortunately, unfortunately, I have made comments that I’ve seen people in your giving. And it pains me to think about the examples and I don’t want to repeat them. But it’s helped me grow in my understanding of how I communicate how I pastor, and I’m just really, that you’ve defined very well, what that looks like. Alright, so I also am, yeah, I’ve been thinking about 911, the people who do better insecure detachment, and holding space. And so it makes me think for about six years now, I’ve had this question that I consistently ask people in mental health and even at these family life conferences, I’ll ask all the mental health professionals to raise their hand and I’ll ask him this question. If all of your clients had someone in their life, who loved them, knew them well, and listened? Well, how many of your clients would you know, would no longer need you? And it’s consistently between 50 and 100 100%? Now, I think it depends on therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists how niche your your thing is, but the overwhelming majority would say the overwhelming majority of their clients would not need them if they had people in their lives with these gifts. So it seems clear that listening is not only important, but in in many cases, the most important gifts you can give somebody. So can you talk to us for a minute about what it looks like to be a good listener?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I often think in my pastoral work, I’m trying to, I’m trying to create and form a church, that puts me out of my job in my therapy work. And so that’s not entirely true. There’s some severe and acute cases that I don’t think a church would ever probably have the ability to treat. But I do think the lion’s share of people seeking mental health care right now could be dealt with through good listening. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer actually, whose dad, I believe, was one of the foremost psychiatrists of his day in, in Germany. So this isn’t like the 1930s. In his book life together, he’s got this quote, that it’s just, it’s marked me, given that I kind of have a border stalker between these two worlds of the clinic and the in the church. And so Bonhoeffer says this, the pagan world today know something about persons who often can be helped only by having someone who will seriously listen to them. On this insight, it has built its own secular form of pastoral care, which has become popular with many people, including Christians, but Christians have forgotten that the Ministry of listening has been entrusted to them, by the one who is indeed the great listener, and in whose work they are to participate, we should listen with the ears of God so that we can speak the word of God. I think I couldn’t say anything better than that. So I can just unpack how that worked for me as a pastor but also training congregants. I think that if you can just get it in your mind that as a pastor, and as anybody, using essentially offering soul care to somebody else, that your job is to first and foremost, listen with the ears of God, so that you can speak the word of God, that that combo is really important, and that is even the priority of first I listen with the ears of God, then I get to speak the word of God. And so when I train, on listening, we just did this in February in our congregation, we had a learning community on Soul care, but it was essentially listening to point out but nobody would show up for that. So, I don’t think at least so. So what we did was we essentially broke, we taught some basic listening skills, we broke people up into triads and had them, practice them with one another. And we had licensed counselors and counselors and training, supervising those triads and giving them feedback on that. And so one of the things that happens when you when you’re trying to listen, is your own stuff shows up when you’re trying to listen to somebody else. And we all know this in that kind of age old example of somebody, you know, tells you they just got a cancer diagnosis. And, and somebody is quick to respond with a scripture. That might be that is true, because it’s the Bible, but in that moment, actually kind of ran roughshod over that person and wasn’t really, the Bible talks a lot about a word fitly spoken, or Ephesians, I think four talks about that you that you speak a word that, that it might give grace to those who hear it, but but there’s this nature of being well timed in the Proverbs, and in the book of James, have the words you speak have to be well timed, and I think that’s appropriate. And so listening, well, we taught a bunch of skills, but here’s just two of them. One is what we call restatement, which is, you essentially just restate back to that person what you heard them say. So Jim, I heard you say a moment ago, that you you get this really cool opportunity to speak at conferences in front of large groups of people, which is incredible privilege. But sometimes you’ve said things that you’ve regretted, because you’ve, you’ve seen the way it’s impacted people, that wasn’t your intention, but but that impact was there, and, and you feel some of the sorrow for that. But what I just did was restated back to you what you said to me, using my own words, not purposefully not using your words, because I’m kind of trying to fill out the nuances of it. And you might say, actually, you know what, I don’t regret it. What I do think is, I actually feel a sense of I wish that I would have would would spend more time with people before I would teach them at these conferences, or, you know, you might say, it’s like, oh, great, now I’m understanding you better, because I’m listening. Well, now to be able to restate back to you in words that you would actually recognize and be able to say, Yeah, that’s true. And so restatement gets you so far. And the second one is just ask curious open ended questions. And so you just, here’s one of my favorite one. Wow, what was that like for you? Right, like, so I just reached out to Jim. And I say, hey, so Wow, what was that like for you to find out that sometimes people hear your words differently than you intend for them. And then you can respond however you want to. And then I could restate what your response was. Ask another question. And so there’s just this like, ability to kind of to step into the human soul by restating and asking good open ended questions. But here’s the thing. I’ve, I’ve counseled people who were on the narcissistic personality spectrum. And they’ve taken these things, tools and tricks and therapeutic interventions that I’ve taught them, and they’ve wielded them in manipulative, hurtful ways. So here’s the thing that really matters here. The Spirit of God bearing the fruit of, of his have that spirit in us is so important to listen, and well, you actually have to love the person across from you, you actually have to be patient with the fact that they’re not where you want them to be, you actually have to have a sense of peace about you, which you know, in the systems literature is called a non anxious presence. Like you have to have these things in the listening to other people. Otherwise, you could do these things and actually use them, like people listen, in order to defend themselves, people listen or to fix other people, people listening or do lots of other things besides love the person in front of them. And I think listening is the first act of love.

Jim Davis
Well, just to illustrate your point, or I guess, like nail it nail, you made your point perfectly to give an example of how it’s hitting me right now. When, when I was, I guess I was in my late 20s, we had just had a child, we were going back to the hospital for I think it was like the two week checkup or whatever. And we had some friends that were at the same hospital, and they had just lost their first child. And I remember texting an older, wiser, godly man. And in my youth and zeal, I said, I need a Bible verse for them. And he said, I don’t have a Bible verse for them, but I have one for you weep with those who are weeping. And that’s just always stayed with me. And if we’re going to connect this to season two, when we talked about issues of race and justice, there were many African Americans and people of color who had experiences and in some cases traumatic experiences, that when they would go to the leaders in the church and communicate those experiences, they weren’t they didn’t there was there was not restatement or asking curious questions. There was a trying to tell them why what they feel is not the way they should feel. So then then they feel shut down and stupid for feeling maybe the way they feel or just misunderstood. So just I say all that say thank you. I think you’re dead on and I think you described you explained it really Well,

Angela Davis
I love that statement that you said earlier, just that we need to listen with the ears of guide so that we can speak the word of God, that was really powerful. Even just realizing that our foremost job is to listen, that’s great for pastors, that’s great in general, just for any church member. So thank you for that advice. I even love how you did basic listening skills at your church like that is a great just thought, for our church for any church, just having that training, time of learning basic listening skills, restating skills, using open ended questions. And then overall, just listening with an attitude of love, not for self defense, not for being defensive, but just in an in an effort to love someone. So I want to take the opportunity to just look at it from a negative point of view for a minute. Jim and Mike studies show that a portion of people the charging do so because they don’t feel seen. And they especially don’t feel heard by their church leadership. Maybe they’ve have a narrow window of tolerance, like you were explaining earlier, or maybe not. But what are some examples of the damage that not listening? Well can do?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, well, I do think that the, the language of secure attachment comes from this emerging literature, John Bowlby was kind of the beginning of it, it’s just developed over time. And the most helpful kind of handles that people put on it, um, Dan Siegel says that there’s these four S’s. And so the the first one is, is that people are seeing that they’re, that they’re soothed that they’re safe. And then that leads to them being secure. Okay. And so when I’m listening to people, I want them to be seen and saved and soothed in the conversation. And so what happens when people are not being listened to well, is they don’t feel one of those three things, or all of those three things. They might feel as if somebody has an agenda. And really what they’re doing is trying to, again, I said, Listen, in order to fix that person. Now, let’s be clear, if somebody comes to me with like, debilitating anxiety, I don’t want them feeling that anxiety anymore. But people aren’t problems to be fixed, right, the person is to be loved. And so the, the way in which they come out of that anxiety counterintuitively is typically not through tips and tricks and techniques, primarily, it’s through being loved in a relationship where they’re there. They feel emotionally held by somebody else. And so the the reason why I find that to be helpful, you know, I said, Dan Siegel gives us those three acids, making secure attachment. Sue Johnson, and her work with couples would say that there’s an acronym ar e, which is, are you there? Are you accessible? That’s the question. Are you with me, which is responsive? That’s emotional responsiveness? And are you engaged? Are you for me? And so when we’re listening to people, we want them to know I am here. I’m not I’m not somewhere else in my head. I’m not somewhere else on my phone. I’m actually here with you right now. And then the second one responsive is actually maybe the hardest for some people, which is, are you emotionally responsive to me? Are you tracking with me emotionally? If I am totally, if I’m telling you, you know, my trauma story, but I am telling it like a documentary. There’s, there’s a disconnect that’s there. And who’s emotionally responsive in that moment will be like, Wow, you just told me something that makes me want to weep. But you told it to me as if you were, you know, narrating a NatGeo documentary, can you help me understand, like, what what is going on in that, right, and you do that with utmost kindness, that can be really, that can be really dangerous, feel dangerous for that person, and because they’re exposed. But the other way that exposure works is they can feel seen, they can feel like somebody who genuinely is for them, genuinely loves and cares them to actually see them right now. And maybe they’ve gotten away with telling their trauma story as a documentary for years now. And nobody ever really saw them in that way. And when people when we experienced that, especially if it’s in the context of somebody who genuinely loves us, it’s like for us and once our are good, that in and of itself is healing that in and of itself kind of begins reworking some of the ways in which our trauma has wounded us, it begins to do some healing work in us. And so I just, you know, again, for those of us who are pastors that are listening, I come back to the fact that nine, there’s something like 980 questions that are asked in the New Testament. And Jesus asked over 300 of them. So let’s just get this straight. Over a third of the questions asked in the New Testament, were asked by Jesus, and he was asked 183 questions of which he only answered three, which is, has all kinds of reasons why he might have done that, you know, hiding His Messiahship until it was his time, all this kind of stuff. But there’s something really significant that if you’re just like, hey, I don’t care about all this psychology, stuff, like whatever. Tell me the Bible. What is Jesus? I would say, well, a third of the questions asked in the New Testament were asked by Jesus, he knew how to listen. Well. Francis Schaeffer was asked one time, you know, the great apologists of the 20th century, if he had an hour to spend with a doubter a skeptic we could say the de churched How would he spend that time, he said I would spend 50 to 55 minutes, listening well and asking good questions. And I’d spent the last five minutes trying to say something of the truth. And so he knew the proportionality. He knew what it meant to listen with the ears of God so that he might be able to speak the words of God. And so, pastors out there, get your proportionality, right, that, that you just think about the number of words in the Bible, I don’t know how many there are, like hundreds of 1000s of words in the Bible. But then compare that with how many words God the Father has listened to that have been prayed for the last, you know, however many 1000s of yours that human beings have been praying since Genesis for God is a listener. First and foremost, he listens with his with his incredible ears of attention. And he speaks he’s a speaker as well, but but that that ratio actually really matters in how we care for souls.

Jim Davis
Man, I love that. I really appreciate it. You mentioned earlier, I remember how you said it. You didn’t say like this, but there’s certain things that are out of pastors paygrade. You said it a different way, probably a nicer way. But that’s the truth. There’s certain things that we’re not trained to do, whether it’s time training, gifting, whatever it is, there are times when it requires the help, in my opinion of a mental health professional. Now there would be churches, who would argue that that’s never the case. So it can, can you I guess, it’s kind of twofold. make the case that tell me if you agree, my statement is true, that there are times when we need the help of a mental health professional, and then be did I do one, then B? Okay, A, then V. Then when would I know that I’ve hit that time? That is time to have somebody like you or somebody else come and and help?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, such a good question. Well, I do agree with your the way you started, which is there are times when pastors are out of their deaths. And pastors have, you know, this, in our day and age, the kind of the pastoral contract that happens, somebody comes to your church, and they’ve got all these loaded assumptions and expectations about who you’re gonna be as their pastor, that oh, by the way, you as their pastor never signed on the dotted line in agreement with, but you’re supposed to be a TED talker, and a therapist, and a CEO, level executive leader, and I mean, just listed, right? You’re supposed to be all things to all people. And I mean that in the most negative way, not in the way Paul meant it. And so and so in this particular category, one of the things that is helpful for me living in both the clinical world and in the ecclesial world, is that I can see where each of them have their best benefits and deficits. And I can see better where I, I find myself clinically thinking that I just wish you had a good church to be a part of, and I don’t see anybody from, from OGC, or new city for what, that’s where it’s so. And so I say all that to say there’s something too, when, when I when I find myself thinking that what I really want is, I wish you had a group of people around you, that knew you in the other, you know, 24/7 of your life that I don’t get to see you for the 50 minutes that I see you once a week. And so just think about that in the first place. And so really, what I what I would love for pastors to increasingly do is not be the primary soul carers in their congregation, I want them to equip their people to primarily be the the frontlines of soul care. And so that really matters to me. Because when you’re seeing accounts, that’s really good.

Jim Davis
I feel very, I feel free. Sorry, I just wanna say, I just feel free, just that statement. Keep going.

Benjamin Kandt
No doubt. And I think it’s so important. And so, so you might have said this, I’m gonna go, Jim, if you think about Ephesians, five apostle, prophet, evangelist, Shepherd teacher, different interpretations of what’s going on there. But I believe that those are active gifts that God is Jesus has given to His church today to equip the saints to do the work of ministry. And so somebody might be a phenomenal teacher, very gifted teacher, and maybe they’re even apostolic or evangelistic. And so they have that gift set. And they know I’m actually not the guy you want to sit with. If your marriage is in crisis, that’s really important for that person to know. And for them to bring in plenty of counselors that I know would be happy to do this to come into a church and to equip people in the congregation who actually have shepherding gifts, or gifts of mercy to actually use those gifts and express them in the life of the church in in really meaningful ways. And so, so So I’m, I’m kind of answering the question differently than maybe what you were originally asking. But I would say the first thing I would say is I want to take the pressure off pastors to be that for everybody. You have people that are gifted shepherds, and gifted and mercy and help equip them help get whatever equipment they need, and release those gifts within your church because those are the people that can actually do the the kind of you know, I think about it this way community is food, its sustenance. We live off of it healing community therapy coming to see me in my clinical practice is medicine. Now some people will need medicine the rest of their life, right If you think about somebody who’s maybe has diabetes or something like that will regularly need to have insulin injections for the rest of their life, but some people only need medicine for a season, and then they go back to living on the sustenance, which is food. And so the problem I see is that a lot of people try to live off of counseling, as if that’s their sustenance, because that’s where they’re known and loved and seen and secure, and felt, and all these things are so important, because they don’t have that in their local church. And I would say you’re trying to get more out of that space than what it can offer you. And then when you’re over here, some people might actually need acute medicine in order to get through this virus that they have, or this, you know, this bacterial infection rather that they have or this, you know, and so then you send them over here. So some examples, severe addiction, eating disorders, complex, PTSD, trauma, that is, those things are kind of intractable, and there’s not much progress being made through the ordinary means of grace of prayer, and Scripture and community, then I would say, in that situation, those are the people that I would want to refer out to see a counselor, and somebody who’s ideally specialized in that realm, because they’re going to have eyes to see things that we as pastors, even myself, not specialize in one of those areas wouldn’t have

Angela Davis
Alrighty, Ben, one last question. And one that is personal to me as a pastor’s wife, we have to mention that church systems can place a lot of pressure on pastors to have the answer to their problems, or as you said, be the primary provider of soul care. Pastors usually generally want to help people in their congregations. But you know, they’re often criticized for not helping enough, which in turn can make them feel like a failure. And I love how you talked about equipping church members to be able to provide good soul care, but there are situations or even crises that do require the pastor. So do you have any practical advice for pastors on how to navigate you know, just the complexity of being helpful and stepping in but also not being triangulated? into situations?

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, such a good question. Well, there’s a there’s a part of me that feels it’s not impostor syndrome, but it’s something like that. Because I as a pastor, I’m regularly just repenting of this and identifying it and asking for forgiveness and, and trying to lean in in the most helpful and healthy ways. And right now, um, you know, apprenticing myself to Jesus currently present tense in the fact that, you know, there’s a section in Luke five, when people are, he’s becoming more famous, more well known, and to crowds are gathering around him, they can’t wait to hear him, that’s a teaching and to be healed of their infirmities. That’s the healing that I mentioned earlier. And what does Jesus do? He would withdrawal to desolate places to pray. And I just, I don’t know how he made that decision. Like, what what person did he see a leper and he’s like, Hey, I’m gonna I’m gonna heal you but the paralytic behind you not getting healed. That’s what I’m leaving, like, how he did that blows my mind. And I’m genuinely like, regularly, you know, the disciples Teach us to pray. I’m like, teach me how to say no to the appropriate things and teach me how to say no to being pulled in and triangulated, like you did. And so I think from his life, we can see that there was a way in which he, he drew life from his communion with the Father, that enabled him to minister out of deaths that he didn’t have in and of himself. I think there’s something really important about that for pastors. And so you use the word triangulated. So I’ll draw on systems theory for a moment here and say, it’s really important for pastors to remain differentiated from the people that they care for. So differentiated is set, contrasted from pastors that get in meshed with their congregation, which means if you’re not okay, I can’t be okay. If you’re anxious, I’m anxious. If you’re, if you’re sad or angry, then I get sad or angry sometimes with you for being sad or angry. So that would be an enmeshed relationship between a pastor and a congregant. But the other side is detached, or detached relationship, where you are, maybe you’ve got a green room, maybe you’ve got security that protects you between the services, so nobody can talk to the pastor, maybe, you know, we have these things. And so so you’re so detached from the people that you actually don’t, is that you know, Romans 12 tax of you don’t know how to weep with those who weep, you don’t know how to rejoice with those who rejoice. We say we talk often about how pastors have to have an among this, that this ability to be among the people that they’re caring for and be to know them and to be known by them in meaningful ways if they’re really going to care properly. And so, so what I said was, the goal is differentiation, which is, if you find yourself where you’re more emotionally kind of overwhelmed by the emotional overwhelm to the state of your congregation, maybe maybe you’re losing people and you find yourself losing sleep over that. You’re probably a little bit more in mesh. And so I would just say lean towards the middle, lean towards differentiation lean towards, hey, what would it look like for me to create a monthly day where I don’t do any pastoral work, I get out of town. I spend time with me and Jesus my Bible in a journal and I just pray and seek God’s face and ask him to spirit to search my heart to surface things that are there. that are unhealthy that are showing up in our pasture. That would be a way to kind of move away from being unmatched. If you’re if you’re detached, I would say, find a clear way in which you can enter into the lives of some of the people around you. And do some of these listening things just hold space for them, create space for people to tell you what it’s like to be them. I’m really helped by Steve Cass has a book on leadership. And in systems theory, I can’t remember what it’s called right now, maybe you guys remember. And he says a triangulated relationship is any relationship where there’s, it’s a three person relationship that should only have two people in it. And so I love that pastors get this all the time somebody comes to the pastor and tells them something about their spouse, but they can’t tell their spouse. And so, you know, this is pastors are under HIPAA compliance, we have privileged information, which is not the same thing as confidential information. But that’s important. We have to steward that well. And so one of the ways I do that is I say, Okay, are you going to tell them or am I, and and I want to encourage you, I want to equip you, I want to do whatever, I’ll be there in the room as you tell them, whatever it takes. But we’re going to get me out of this triangle right now. Because this triangle is unhelpful and unhealthy for everybody. And nobody’s doing well as a result of it and including you. And so if you want to tell them that information that you just told me, I will do everything I can to support you, and encourage you in doing that. But if you don’t want to tell them that, I will do that, and I’ll usually give them a timeframe. Hey, within the next, you know, 72 hours, I’m gonna give your husband a call, I’m gonna give your wife a call, I’m gonna let them know what you told me. I’m just telling you now that that’s gonna happen. And you can tell me if you want to do that instead. That’s totally okay. But we’re not going to do this triangulated relationship here, because it’s not helpful for anybody.

Jim Davis
Well, Angela is she was writing a message in the live notes. That’s how we sometimes communicate it. And she was saying, this is so good. And there’s so much burnout, pastoral burnout over this very issue. So I, you know, I, I want you to know that we started this podcast. And the reason that I that I enjoy hosting this podcast so much is because we are learners, we have a set conversation, there’s a narrative arc to each season, beginning, middle and end, we want it to be a conversation. But I’m very much a learner. And you have hit the absolute bullseye of what we want this podcast to be. So I, I just can’t thank you enough for what you do. Again, the listeners if you’re in Orlando, he cardia new city Presbyterian Church, awesome people, they’re doing awesome things. And and so I just just can’t thank you enough, Ben.

Benjamin Kandt
Jim, and Angela is such a gift to be with the two of you, and I love this podcast. So grateful to be on it. So I’m honored.

Angela Davis
Ben, thanks so much for being on. I truly appreciate it all that you said. And just the wisdom that you brought you nailed this topic on the head. Really appreciate it.

Benjamin Kandt
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.

Jim Davis
Well join us next week as we are joined by David Platt from McLean Bible Church in Washington, DC to talk about political syncretism, and the effects that it is having in the church and what we as church members and church leaders can do to have a more faithful biblical position and relationship to the politics of our nation. Blessings.