CNLP 767 | Solving the Mental Health Emergency: Shaunti Feldhahn and James Sells on a Better Approach to Pastoral Care

Summary

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CNLP 767 | Solving the Mental Health Emergency: Shaunti Feldhahn & James Sells on a Better Approach to Pastoral Care

Podcast: The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast

Host: Carey Nieuwhof
Guests: Shaunti Feldhahn (social researcher, bestselling author), Dr. James Sells (professor of psychology & counseling, Regent University)
Date: November 18, 2025

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Episode Overview

Theme:
This episode dives deep into the mental health emergency facing churches and pastors. Carey, Shaunti, and Dr. Sells discuss the unsustainable pressures on pastoral care, the limitations of current referral-based approaches, and introduce a scalable, church-empowered model to support mental health that leverages lay listeners and trained community members. The goal is to help pastors and churches provide effective, caring, and relational support without being overwhelmed.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Weight on Pastors

• Pastors face constant, often invisible, emotional and logistical weight from congregational needs.
• Most parishioners underestimate the volume and intensity of support pastors are expected to give.
  Quote:
  “I just don’t think the average parishioner recognizes the weight... so much emotional stuff that every pastor has to juggle.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [03:22]

2. The Nature of the Mental Health Crisis

• Churches are overwhelmed by mental health demands—waitlists, unaffordable care, and insufficient professional resources.

• “Punt” is the default strategy: referring cases away to professional clinicians, but this leaves a relational gap and creates a ministry funnel out of the church.
  Quote:
  "It’s out of our capacity... so now without realizing, we jettison a large portion of ministry to go outside the church for care."
  — Dr. James Sells [07:50]

• Contradiction: 88% of surveyed pastors said their role is to refer out, yet 96% say the best way to promote mental health is through community.
  Quote:
  “We are creating a funnel out of the church... but the best way of creating great mental health is having a community of believers walking alongside one another.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [10:00]

3. The Scale of the Problem

• Nearly 60 million adults in the US have diagnosed mental illness; only half access help.
• Even with funding, there aren't enough clinicians.
  Quote:
  "Really, it's around 1 to 10,000—the folks seeking services and the folks available to provide services."
  — Dr. James Sells [12:07]

4. Technology & AI in Mental Health

• AI and chatbots (like ChatGPT) are being used for “companionship” and therapy, especially by young people.
• Real relational connection cannot be replaced by digital interactions.
  Quote:
  "When I asked for a puppy... they got me a stuffed animal. I told my mom at age 3, I want a heart that beats."
  — Dr. James Sells [18:29]
  “All that’s gonna happen if you’re getting into that space thinking of that entity [AI] as like, a therapist or friend, you’re gonna be more lonely in the end because you’re a real person.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [24:11]

5. A New Model: The Triangle Approach & Lay Listeners

• Introduction of the “Triangle Model”:

  • Top 5–8%: Acute, complex cases (schizophrenia, bipolar—clinician territory).
  • Middle (~30%): Ongoing recovery (antidepressants, active relapse prevention—semi-specialized).
  • Bottom (60–70%): “Everyone else”—common struggles, general pain, loneliness, marriage issues.

• Training lay listeners (non-professionals) with basic relational, listening, and follow-up skills (in as little as 6 hours of training) to walk alongside others—effectively multiplying the church’s caring capacity.
  Quote:
  “In six hours, we believe we can teach someone the basic skills of listening, how to pray with another, and a very basic problem solving strategy.”
  — Dr. James Sells [35:53]

• Example: A pastor connects someone in need with a trained lay listener who may share similar life experiences, creating instant empathy and support.
  Quote:
  “It was almost like you could visibly see a weight lift off of this pastor’s shoulders... it can be.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [28:19]

6. Group Models and Community

• Simple acts like shared meals, small groups, and open-invitation fellowship nights can dramatically address loneliness and pain, even in rural or under-resourced contexts.
  Quote:
  “We’re gonna have a meal, a little bit of teaching, worship, and small group time... now there are 500 people that show up every Friday night.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [42:21]

• Relational connection is often a more effective healing agent than professional intervention alone, except in cases of brain dysfunction requiring medication or specialist care.
  Quote:
  “Relationship provides hope, it provides meaning... and that in and of itself has a deep healing quality.”
  — Dr. James Sells [45:33]

7. Integrating Small Groups and Lay Care

• A healthy small group culture alone is not enough if it just refers pain away. Culture must shift to empower listening, empathy, and lay-level care.
• Small group leaders can be trained as lay listeners to spot symptoms vs. issues needing referral.
• The ultimate culture shift: everybody adopts baseline relational skills as part of Christian discipleship.
  Quote:
  “If you are a human being that follows Jesus, you need to be able to share Jesus... You need to be able to be comfortable sitting with another person in pain.”
  — Dr. James Sells [62:34]

8. Implementation & Culture Change

• Key to success: Pastors catalyze, but volunteers or staff lead the effort.

• Customization to each church’s DNA; one size does not fit all.

• Existing small groups integrate lay listening skills; initial points of contact funnel people to broader care networks.

• All resources and training are available at thechurchcares.com
  Quote:
  “The pastor initiates a cultural change. The program capacity is gonna be on the congregation.”
  — Dr. James Sells [80:07]

• Reports: Pastors experience a huge drop in personal burden when lay listening systems are implemented, freeing them to focus on other leadership roles.
  Quote:
  “One thing that they all said... the weight that’s off my shoulders. Because our church is actually doing the things that we always sort of hoped and had a vision for.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [79:31]

9. Church Growth & Evangelism Implications

• Mental health ministry is uniquely positioned to become a 21st-century evangelism lever.
• Churches offering this level of human care become magnets for both believers and seekers.
  Quote:
  “Mental health ministry is the evangelism method of the 21st century.”
  — Dr. James Sells (quoting Ed Stetzer) [86:43]

10. Final Words: The Universal Power of Listening

• 100% of issues benefit from caring, relational support, even if not “cured” by it.
  Quote:
  “I think 100% of issues have some need of listening... there is no human condition for whom having one caring person walk alongside... where that wouldn’t be helpful.”
  — Shaunti Feldhahn [87:57]

• The church needs to re-embrace its historic calling as a “network where that actually can happen... with a set of skills that people have to have in order for it to happen.”
  — Dr. James Sells [91:00]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• The “Weight” Pastors Carry:
  “The burden that's on pastor’s shoulders... there’s just an incredible burden placed on the shoulders of that person to carry a congregation.”
  — Dr. James Sells [05:56]

• On AI Therapy:
  “I want a heart that beats.”
  — Dr. James Sells [18:29]

• The Triangle Model Simplified:
  “Nobody gets a pass there. Everybody knows suffering to some degree.”
  — Dr. James Sells [31:36]

• On Pastoral Burnout & Scalability:
  “98% of pastoral care is having someone who cares. It doesn’t have to be the pastor.”
  — Carey Nieuwhof [38:07]

• On Reclaiming Church Community:
  “Everybody wants to open up a door at a tavern and have everyone say, ‘Hi Norm.’...The church can offer something that a mug of beer can’t offer.”
  — Dr. James Sells [66:31]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Pastoral weights and invisible burdens: [03:01–05:56]
• Mental health crisis & unsustainable “punt” strategy: [07:38–10:56]
• The triangle model explained: [30:13–36:49]
• Lay listening training: [35:47–36:49]
• The power of community meals/groups: [41:00–44:50]
• Medication vs. community (hope, universality): [45:07–49:51]
• Rethinking small group culture: [49:51–53:22]
• Implementing a scalable system: [56:00–59:14]
• How it shifts the pastor’s burden: [79:31–80:07]
• Evangelism and drawing seekers: [85:29–87:12]
• Final challenge and pastoral encouragement: [93:23–96:01]

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Resources & Action Steps

• Main Resource: thechurchcares.com
  • Free “Kit” available for those interested in starting lay care at their church.
• Book: When Hurting People Come to Church by Shaunti Feldhahn & Dr. James Sells.
• Get involved: Bring the idea to your leadership, volunteer to organize, or simply commit to being present and listening as a member.
• Training: Lay listening programs can be launched with as little as 6 hours of training.
• Cultural Shift: Every member is encouraged to learn the basics of empathy, presence, and relational care—lead by example.

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Episode Summary

This conversation lays out a practical, research-backed path forward for churches overwhelmed by mental health challenges. By tapping into the “bottom of the triangle”—ordinary but caring and equipped humans, not just professionals—churches can build a culture of mutual listening, support, and hope. The result is not only healing for individuals but a lighter burden for pastors, a more authentic church community, and a powerful, relevant witness to an anxious age.

This episode offers both a vision and a toolkit for church leaders longing to see mental health recovery not merely outsourced, but planted within the heart of Christ’s community.

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Transcript

[A]

The Art of Leadership Network. That was one thing that they all said like 100% of them, which was, oh my goodness, like the weight that's off my shoulders. Because our church is actually doing the things that we always had sort of hoped and had a vision for the church.

[B]

Welcome to the Carrie Newhof Leadership Podcast. It's Carrie here. I hope our time together today helps you thrive in life and leadership. This is, it's not going to just help you, it's going to help a lot of other people. Today I tackle with Shanti Feldhan and Dr. James Sells what to do about the mental health emergency. If you're a church leader, you're probably overwhelmed by the rising number of people who come to you and say, can I have your time? Can we just talk? And maybe you're just referring people to counselors. Well, what do you do with all that? And for most church leaders, even me, you know, when I was leading a church day to day, it was overwhelming. And the reality is a lot of it never gets treated right. The wait times are too long, it's too hard to get on your calendar. And you took one class on counseling like you're not a pro counselor. So we're going to be talking about all that and more and there's a really cool solution. I believe in this so much that I wrote the forward to their new book. I think it's just going to help. And there's a lot of free resources for pastors. So. Hey, before we get to today's interview, I'm going to be spending a lot of time in Nashville this fall. Nashville and Franklin, bringing the podcast on the road, doing some pivotal interviews. It's going to be a lot of fun. I would love some restaurant, barbecue and coffee recommendations from you. And the best way to get them to me is to follow me on Instagram. So I'm Carrie newhoff on Instagram. DM me. I actually read the DMs on Instagram. You know, actually talk about this in this interview that a lot of the time I just don't even read DMs anymore. My team does a lot, but I don't. I do on Instagram. So follow me on Instagram and we'll stay connected between episodes. I'll also probably be sharing an awful lot about that trip in November and December. So anyway, quick bio. Shanti Feldhan, received her graduate degree from Harvard University, was an analyst on Wall street before becoming a social researcher and best selling author. Today she applies her analytical skills to investigate eye opening Life changing truths about relationships both at home and in the workplace. And Dr. James Sells is a professor for the School of Psychology and Counseling at Regent and the Rosemary S. Hughes Endowed Chair of Christian Thought in Mental Health Practice. He received his BA in Social sciences and secondary education from Biola University, his MA from Wheaton College, and his Ms. Ed in counseling from Northern Illinois University, and his PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Southern California. So you got a lot of expertise here, but a very practical solution. Let's dive right into my conversation with Shanti Feldhan and Dr. James Sells. Shanti. James, welcome. It's good to have you.

[C]

So good to be here.

[A]

Great to be with you.

[B]

Yeah. So pastors are carrying a weight. A lot of people. So from where you two sit, what do you see pastors carrying that most people wouldn't understand or even notice?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, do you mind if I just jump in?

[C]

Jump in and I'll follow you.

[A]

I have been talking to pastors for the last two and a half years. Jim has as well. And this has been based on a study of more than 2,000 pastors to figure out what are they carrying. And I just don't think the average parishioner recognizes the weight. Like of all the different things and so much emotional stuff that every pastor has to juggle. Jeff and I were just speaking at a little church in Pennsylvania and the pastor was like, I just like every couple of hours we get another phone call in asking for if I can meet with somebody about you, about their.

[B]

And this was in the mega church?

[A]

Yes. No, these, you know, just little two, three, 400 member churches. And you know, these are the churches. And I just don't think the average person in the pew recognizes that.

[B]

You know, it's interesting. And Jim, I want to hear what you say in a minute. But like, you know, I stepped out of the lead pastor role 10 years ago and I think about how this works because, you know, now I just do a podcast and you know, run this company, but their whole inbox is I completely ignore. If you email, like message me on Facebook, I don't know when the last time was I checked Facebook messages. LinkedIn, I never go there. X if you're messaging like, I know I have a social media team and everything, but I can do that right now. I don't know that I could do that if I was a pastor, you know, because everywhere you look like I'm active In my Instagram DMs, that's about it. But otherwise I just ignore everything. Pastors don't have that luxury. Or at least they don't seem to have that luxury, do they?

[C]

Yeah, they do not. Two pieces come to mind. One is a conversation with a pastor in California who said, we have not had a healthy, normal family show up at our church in 20 years. And he was not saying, speaking of it, really, like, people are coming with needs and people are coming to the church. Like, he wasn't trying to demean the people that come to his church, but rather to pummel the myth that says only nice families show up here. The needless ones come to church. He's saying everybody that comes is hemorrhaging each in their own unique way.

[A]

In some way. Yes, in some way.

[C]

And then I link it to what Paul said in Corinthians. And above all else, this is a gross paraphrase. I carry daily the burden of all the churches. The weight that is on pastor's shoulders kind of dates back all the way to the first church. And the weight on the first church planter. There's just an incredible burden placed on the shoulders of that person to carry a congregation.

[B]

So you guys have spent a lot of time with pastors, and we're gonna do a deep dive into mental health and the crisis that's emerging. Which, by the way, I was telling you, I'm working on a book on AI. I think AI is gonna make the mental health crisis worse, significantly worse, because it personalizes, like, we've only been dealing with static images and videos, but when it's interactive and number One use of ChatGPT in 2025 is companionship or things therapy, I think it's going to mess with people's heads at a level that we haven't seen. And then the average pastor hears that, and they're like, all right, I quit. I can't deal with it right now, let alone if it got worse. Right. So what are you discovering about how churches handle mental health? And then I want to get into maybe a better model. And I was excited about this enough to take on the project a little bit with you and write the foreword to your book. So this is something. I feel like I want the church to benefit from this. So let's just go there. What is the problem with the mental health crisis as it stands right now?

[C]

In a word, I would say when you asked, how do pastors manage it? Punt is the most succinct way of saying it.

[B]

What do you mean by that, Jim?

[C]

It's out of our capacity. It overwhelms our church resources with complexity. Let's give it to the clinician, the one with a license, the one with office hours designated to attend to these things every day. So now, without realizing, we jettison a large portion of ministry to go outside the church for care when we're trying to bring them into the church for.

[A]

Care without intending to.

[B]

Right. So Shanti, what's your take on that? Because I think, I mean, I did that a lot. My joke was that we kept five full time counselors employed just by all the punting that we did as our church grew. And part of it was, I mean, I went to seminary, I took one class in counseling. And I don't have a personality that like, you know, I can sit with a friend, but if there's a constant sea of people through my office, I'm dead. At the end of the day. I got nothing to give my family. I sit with my counselor sometimes. I'm like, how do you do this all day? They're like, it gives me energy. I'm like, it killed me. I quit. It's too much. So what are you seeing, Shanti?

[A]

One of the most striking things that we saw on the survey because like I said, we ended up doing this research project with more than 2,000 pastors and church leaders.

[B]

Yeah. Not a small sample.

[A]

Yeah. And we worked really hard to get a wide stream of the church.

[B]

Yeah. This isn't just like the charismatic or non denom or mainline. You did a scientific sample.

[A]

Yeah, we worked really hard to try to get a really good cross section. And we were basically trying to figure out what do the church leaders think about what's going on and what are their needs and perspectives. And one of the biggest big things that we saw was this contradiction where 88% of the pastors either agreed or somewhat agreed that their primary job, if something is psychological rather than spiritual, which, by the way, that's a bit of a false distinction.

[D]

Right.

[A]

But that's the way that a lot of people think about it. But 88% said their primary mental health job should be to refer to a specialist, should be to refer out to somebody who's trained for this. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right. Like, Jim is a clinical psychologist. He's been training these folks for years. But without intending to, we are creating a funnel out of the church. And those Same Pastors, where 88% said, My primary job should be to refer, maybe talk once or twice, you know, have a few meetings and then refer. 96% of those same pastors said, but the best way of creating Great. Mental health in the church is having a community of believers walking alongside one another.

[B]

So we're sending them away, but we want them to be part of this community.

[A]

Exactly, exactly. And so that was the biggest thing that I saw, is this contradiction. And I think pastors just don't necessarily realize there is another option.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So I'm caught in that. Like that. Totally. I would have checked the boxes in exactly the same way. And I wouldn't even give meeting one or meeting two. It's just like punt. And then, yeah, you should get involved in a small group. You should serve here. So what are the. And I don't blame anybody for doing that. I did that. And I mean, once in a while, you know, it's sort of that do for one what you wish you'd do for everybody. So there was always someone, and still pretty much is to this day, someone that I'm journeying with personally. Like, I'll do that for one. I just can't do it for everybody. Right. And when you lead a big church or even a small church, I mean, 150 people, you're overwhelmed with the mental health needs of your church. So what is wrong with that answer?

[C]

It is a good answer, but it is impossible to meet the need at that level of care. Even when you're referring to. To your Christian clinician who might sit in the balcony of your church every Sunday and be a part of the community, those folks also are overwhelmed and overrun with the mental health need. I interacted with a group of clinicians a few years ago, and I said, imagine your work. If you were responsible for 10,000 people, how would you attend to the needs of the most crucial. And what would you do with everybody else? Because that's about the proportions we have of the folks seeking services and the folks available to provide services. Like, really, it's around 1 to 10,000.

[B]

And that is a problem. So let's get real. I mean, you're a clinician, Jim. Every time I said, hey, I think you should go for counseling. Whether it was a marriage issue, mental health issue, whatever it was, guess what the number one objection was. Don't have any money.

[C]

Don't have any money.

[B]

Don't have any money. Don't have money for it. Everybody has money for everything except what they really need, right? So we set up a fund so that we could fund the first, you know, give a stipend or fund a few sessions or that kind of thing. Even if you do that, what is the problem?

[C]

The problem is that the number of People utilizing their funds, utilizing church funds, utilizing insurance reimbursements, still overwhelms our capacity. Capacity to provide care at the professional level.

[B]

So it's sort of like the medical profession. There's just not enough doctors to go around, not enough specialists to go around.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Even if you had all the money in the world, you can't get in. Right.

[A]

Long wait lists. Well, actually, can we share a couple of numbers because.

[C]

Go ahead.

[A]

Sorry. Being a data nerd, I can't help it. But like for example, right now, according to the latest government statistics, there's almost 60 million people who've been diagnosed with a mental illness of some kind. Now that doesn't even include in the US adults, I should say that doesn't even include adolescents.

[B]

A third of the population.

[A]

Yeah, it is. It's about 29% or 30% of the population. Yeah. And that is diagnosed mental illness. That doesn't even include like, I'm seriously anxious about flying or I have a marriage issue that's really, you know, a concern. And so, and here's the problem. You have almost 60 million in that bucket. Only half of those 30 million are getting any kind of help. And there's 30 million people standing outside the clinicians offices in line. And many, as you pointed out, they can't afford it anyway. And so this is an opportunity. As we've been talking to all these pastors, we found there are thousands of churches that are already stepping in and saying maybe we in the church can be part of the solution here.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by ecfa. So, you know, as ministry ramps up this fall and holiday season, there is a higher risk for leader burnout. You know that. And that can create financial and reputational risks for ministries. Well, I've got Michael Martin from ECFA here to talk about how ministries can better care for their leaders and build trust. Michael.

[D]

Hey, thanks so much, Carrie. First thing I want to say is I have great empathy for the leaders you're talking about because I'm one of them, know what it's like to serve in ministry and experience, you know, the unique pressures and the challenges that come with leadership. And so ECFA is really investing in proactive care and health for leaders. And how can we help promote greater flourishing in ministry?

[B]

I know that's an important value for you, but like, what specifically can leaders listening, ministries listening do about it?

[D]

Yeah, so, and this is [e-mail] leadercare. You can check it all out. But one of the unique things that ECFA is offering coming from A place of We've done a lot of work in the board space and so uniquely, how can the governing boards come alongside leaders? We know that relationship at times needs work. There are boards that have challenges with leaders, but they really carry, we feel like have a unique not only a responsibility, but an opportunity to come alongside leaders and help invest in that proactive care and support. So we're just trying to make conversations around Leader Care easier to have, more natural for boards and leaders to work through.

[B]

Well, that's great. You can visit ecfa.org leadercare to learn more and download free resources that will set your congregation up for success. Leadercare is ministry care. This episode is brought to you by Compassion. Living this life as a surrendered believer in Jesus, I get routinely challenged by what it means to have compassion for others. You know what? In leadership, your heart kind of goes numb. Not to simply have knowledge, right? Not just feelings and opinions about the challenging things that you and I see and experience every day, but really to be moved by our faith in Christ to a spirit of generous and compassionate living. That for me is a discipline. And I wonder for you how it's going. Right? Do you feel a deep sense of compassion? Can you imagine what might change if you actually did so to help with this, I've spent years building strong relationships with experts around the world and what it means to put your faith into action. So I have found that when I partner with compassion and I meet the kids that we're actually sponsoring, we have several kids that we sponsor in Guatemala. There's a part of my heart that opens that otherwise remains closed. It has moved me to a level of compassion that I wouldn't have experienced even after three decades in leadership. If you want to learn more, you want to open your heart, head on over to compassion.comcare that's compassion.com Carrie. And open up your heart this holiday season. So my tongue is firmly planted in my cheek when I tell you I have a solution. Has nothing to do with your project. ChatGPT number one use of AI is therapy. That solves it, right? No, break it down. What's wrong? What are the limits of that?

[C]

Yeah, they're not human. Basically, that's it. It's depersonalized. And it takes me back to a story of my childhood. When I asked for a puppy and my parents, I was like three or four. My parents got me a stuffed animal and I said, it just doesn't do it. And I told my mom at age 3, I want a heart that beats. I got my puppy by the way the next birthday.

[B]

Okay, good, good, good.

[A]

Can I, can I, can I jump in really quickly, Carrie? Because Jim said something to me after you had raised that issue about the AI when we were talking about the forward to the book and some of these other things. And I asked Jim. This was a, you know, off the record conversation. So I hope Jim doesn't mind me mentioning this, but he actually said something that I went, oh, my word. This is one of the issues with AI. It's not just that. It's, you know, hey, it tells you everything you want to hear and some of the tragedies that have come from that. The way that you put it, Jim, is that when I'm talking to a computer, I'm not going to disappoint my computer by raising these issues. If I raise these things with my parents, I'm going to disappoint them. If I share this thing with my spouse, they may think like, I'm a failure and ChatGPT isn't going to have its feelings hurt. And so there's this temptation to go into that as a relationship. And then really, you're obviously, you're turning over your mental health to an entity that doesn't have a heart, as Jim put it.

[C]

Yeah, it doesn't have a soul. And there is so much of healing power that comes from just the real relationship. And as much as we try to objectify the therapeutic process and take the personhood out of it and to see this as client and not take these issues home with me, we are in this because we are good carers of others and that's our compassion. We want to be present with people's pain and we want to have to actively filter those pain out so it doesn't overwhelm us. But we are real people, and anybody that is engaging with me or any therapist is engaging with the blessing of a real person that knows my story.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm not going to disagree with you. And I think we are on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mental health problems created by AI. And that's why I'm writing my new book.

[C]

Book.

[B]

But there's a younger demographic listening. I read a stat recently. I can't quote the source, but something like, majority of teenagers are using artificial intelligence and have created a chatbot. Right. Some kind of personalized version of whatever AI they happen to be using. And a significant percentage of them prefer the chatbot's companionship to human companionship. In other words, I'd rather talk to my chatbot than I would to my mom, to my sister, to my friend, to my classmate, to my teammate, just from a psychological standpoint. And again, we don't know. We're creating stuff that we don't understand. Right. What are some of the. Where we're sitting right now, potential problems with that? And I want to get back to what we're going to talk about initially, but I think we have to talk about AI because it's snowballing, falling. Right. Like, since the book came out, AI is bigger than it was when you were writing the book. And what's your professional opinion about, you know, when, as a culture, we start to prefer the companionship of a bot over the companionship of a person?

[C]

I don't believe there is. There is ever a sufficiency in anything less than another human being that will sit and express the empathic eye contact and the voice tone and the breathing and the touch of one human to another. And that's an irreplaceable entity. And you can facsimile it. You can make it feel really close, and you can make some wonderful substitutions, but you can't replace the real thing.

[B]

Shanti, what do you think?

[A]

I'm thinking about the Surgeon General's report a couple years ago where the Surgeon General of the United States basically said, loneliness is an epidemic, and it is more damaging physically than all these other pretty significant physical maladies, like, you know, cardiac issues, et cetera. I mean, I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, that the quantification was that the impact of loneliness was equivalent on the body of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

[B]

Yeah, that's a stat.

[A]

And I don't see how. I can see how ChatGPT can be absolutely helpful for certain things. But all that's gonna happen if you're getting into that space thinking of that entity as like, a therapist or a friend, you're gonna be more lonely in the end because you're a real person.

[B]

The appearance of intimacy, you know. Yeah, I'm with you and this story, and I want to get into some more questions. Kind of gets to the model that you're talking about. I've read the book. I read to the end, so I know where this is going, but thank you. You know, I just got back from five days off the grid in Montana with mostly CEOs. There's one other pastor there, and I just got invited on this trip by a friend. We were off the grid. It was fly fishing. It was at refugee. They do a great job of what they're doing, and we're sitting around dinner. Big, huge table, 20 guys. It was all guys on this trip. It was a guy's trip. And I really got, like, convicted of something then. It's irrelevant what it is right now, but it was like, that was my big moment on the trip where I felt like God was doing something. And it was very emotional for me. And I kind of talked in a broken voice with tears in my eyes. And I didn't even look up, right, because I'm like, oh, gosh, here I go. I'm crying. And I don't do that very often, particularly in public. And when I looked up exactly what you were saying, Jim. Every single eye on that table, people were craning around other people to break contact. And I texted the group this morning just to say, I will. That image of everyone listening intently. Hugs. Conversations after that will be seared in my mind for years. And I use AI every day. That's nothing that any chatbot I could create could give me. So I'm sold on that. But it goes back to the original problem, which is here we have it. You're either vast majority of churches, 85%, less than 200 people. So the pastor's trying to take this on while preaching for Sunday and reaching new people and all this stuff. They get overwhelmed or we punt. I love that phrase. It's just like, here's a list of qualified counselors and here's a bursary to get you started or whatever. That's not enough. So what is the alternative? Like, where do you go when you're overwhelmed? And let's assume that this gets worse, because I think it's gonna get worse.

[C]

Chanti, share the story that you created with that pastor alternative path story that fits perfect to Carrie's question.

[A]

So Jeff and I, there's a church that we're going to be doing a marriage conference at in the Midwest in a few years. Sorry, my husband, Jeff, and I do a lot of.

[B]

No, his name's Jim. Okay, Jeff, your husband.

[A]

Okay, go ahead, Jeff. My husband. And I was on the phone with the senior pastor. It's a fairly large church, probably 1500, 2000 people. And we were talking about this project, about the release of the book and all of that. And he just, you could tell, like, his shoulders slumped a little bit. And he basically said, he said, it's so hard to know what to do. He said, you know, this was a Monday. He said, for example, yesterday after I preached, he said, there was a woman who came up to me in the lobby with Tears in her eyes, and said, pastor, I have to. Can I get on your schedule? I have to come talk to you. I was sexually abused as a child, and it's just impacting everything in my life, and I just. I need to speak with you. And he said, of course, you know, here's my assistant's number. We'll get you on the list. And he told me. He said, however, I'm thinking to myself, oh, my word, I'm not a specialist in sexual abuse. Like, I know I'm gonna, you know, listen to her, meet with her once or twice, and then refer her to a specialist. He's like, I'm not trained in that.

[B]

A hundred percent true, and.

[A]

Exactly. And I said, you know, let me give you a slightly different vision. Like, imagine that you could have said something just slightly differently. I said, imagine that when she would have come up to you, you would have been able to say, I am so sorry that that happened. I'm so sorry that that has been your story. And, of course, you know, we'll absolutely try to get you in. It may be a few weeks because, you know, the schedule's already full. But in the meantime, I'm gonna have Bonnie call you. Bonnie is our care coordinator, and she runs a group of people who are just lay listeners, and they walk alongside those with pain and come alongside people when they're in times of need. And I happen to know that one of those lay listeners is a woman named Maria who had that same story in her background, and she loves coming alongside other women who are walking through that. And so we're gonna have Bonnie call you within the next 24 hours, and she's going to hear your story, and we'll get you funneled to the right person. And you could tell the. It was visibly. We were on zoom, and it was almost like you could visibly see a weight lift off of this pastor's shoulders. It was like this concept wasn't something that they had, you know, really thought of as a thing before, and yet it can be. And this is what thousands of churches around the country really are putting in place, which is, how do we raise up lay listeners to come alongside the more basic needs or even come alongside some of the serious ones that are referred out. Right. Like, that person may be referred out, but they also need to be cared for within the church.

[B]

Can you explain lay listeners? What do you mean by that?

[C]

Yeah, that is someone who is not trained as a professional clinician and not even trained in. Let me take a step back and say, we've created what we call the triangle model. Consider the top 5 to 8% of those with serious mental health issues. Schizophrenia, bipolar disease.

[A]

At the top of the triangle.

[C]

At the top of the triangle, the very peak, the apex, the middle part of the triangle. About 30% are people who are in various states of mental health recovery. Maybe they're on antidepressants, they're continuing to see a clinician. Maybe they have a history of addiction and they are going to their accelerate recovery or regeneration or AA meetings. They've been sober for three years. Like they have ongoing care. They're managing their lives with, with a lot of buttressing, with some supports to keep them well. And then there's the bottom of the triangle. Like 60 to 70% of the population of people who know pain. Like nobody gets a pass there. Everybody knows suffering to some degree could.

[B]

Be lost a relative or sexual abuse or yeah, yeah.

[C]

Could be deficient parenting from childhood. It could be we lost a job. It could be my life did not work out as I planned. I am single and 45. That was a host of. Or I'm married in 45 and my marriage has not worked the way I planned. So a host, nobody gets a skip there. We all know pain. And to think then the clinician really is trained for the top part of the triangle and parts of that middle. And there are other folks who are not clinicians but are deeply trained like a Stevens ministry who has a year of preparation, they're good. And someone who oversees the Celebrate Recovery ministry. That person is well equipped to deal with addictions that come active and dormant. Addictions. If I could borrow a probably kind of a specialization. Yeah, we know what to do with this group of people. And then there is the masses underneath, like everybody that goes to church that interacts with other people. If you work in ministry with children, if you are a greeter at the front door of your church and you extend your hand and say welcome. If you hand out cups of coffee before the church service, if you just hang out and direct which way the people go for their Sunday school class or for the sanctuary worship service. If you interact with people leading a small group, you are a lay caregiver, you are a lay listener. You are in that capacity of leadership in ministry that says I am capable of listening to you in addressing your pain. I know I'm a mature believer and I'm a discipler, either active or non formal, a discipler of people within this church community. And I carry like the non commissioned officer ranking of a really, really big Army.

[B]

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[C]

Shared divorce care reboot. There's an abundance of great ministries out there.

[B]

So they've got some training with that. And then, and then you've got like, you know, hey, my life isn't working out or our marriage is tough or you know, I don't want to call them garden variety issues, but the stuff that everybody struggles with at one point or another. And you mentioned like, you know, you need a lay listener. So how much training does a lay listener get?

[C]

Like, how does that work in our program? Six hours.

[B]

Six hours of training.

[C]

Six hours of training and then ongoing conversations. Yes. And we want this to be a low shelf. Anybody can reach it. And in six hours, we believe we can teach someone the basic skills of listening. Teach someone how to pray with another. Not pray for another, but to engage with another around their pain and conversations with God. And a very basic problem solving strategy in which we can say, let's set a goal for next week and then let's get together again and talk and pray.

[B]

Okay, so is that like just to get a really clear picture of it? Is that like counseling 101? Is it more of a listening thing? Are you trying to solve the problem? Are you just coming alongside? Like what happens, happens?

[C]

We are coming alongside, we are being present with to share a story of One of our colleagues, Jen Ripley, who is the co director of the institute at Regent, where I work and oversees the Church Cares Project with me, a psychology professor, she was carrying a deep burden. One Sunday in her church. She sat on the balcony so she wouldn't be noticed and was just in a. Didn't want to talk to anybody. Here's a. She's a psychologist, didn't want to talk to anybody. But she was deeply stressed over something that was going on in her family. A woman named Kelly was in the balcony, too. Kelly and Jen were not friends. They were acquaintances. Kelly, after the service, moved over to where Jen was sitting and said, you look distressed. You want to talk? That was it.

[B]

That's it.

[C]

Yeah. That's your job as a lay listener. Like, to be able to be present with someone in pain. I'm not a counselor. I'm not a problem solver, but I can walk with you.

[B]

So I have a theory that I've used over the years and have taught it to church leaders. But I developed it when I was a pastor, and particularly when we hit the 200 barrier. And I realized, thanks to Warren Bird and Carl George, that the number one issue is pastoral care. It just doesn't scale. Like, one person cannot care for 200, 300 people, not sustainably. And one of two things happens. The church shrinks back down to a manageable level, 100, 150. Or the pastor burns out and the next person takes over, grows it back to 200, burns out, et cetera. It's just this cycle. Right. So I realized pastoral care had to change, and we experimented with different models. But what I ended up at is 98% of pastoral care is having someone who cares. It doesn't have to be the pastor. And it sounds like what you're sharing is a version of that.

[C]

That is a version of that. Yes. I want to duplicate you. If you're the pastor of First Church in. In any small, medium or large urban setting, want to duplicate you a thousand times and magnify your capacity to sit with the power of the gospel with another person.

[B]

Wow. I know. I felt that pressure to solve. That's a male thing, right? Like, I'm going to solve this, and I never really could, so.

[A]

So.

[B]

You know, Shanti, I want to. I don't know why I'm telling stories all of a sudden, but it took me back to something I hadn't thought about in years. And it was something my mom said. It was somebody that's now in their 80s, but apparently when we moved up to the area where my parents lived for many years. I was about 10, and we were checking out churches, and this one couple invited us over after church.

[C]

Church.

[B]

And they became friends, and they knew each other, et cetera. And it brought me back to my college years in Toronto, where we're single, or even when Tony and I started dating and then got married. We were the young couple in our early to mid-20s, et cetera, et cetera. And it was very normal, even in a big city like Toronto, if we went and checked out a church for an older couple to say, hey, you want to come over for lunch? I got a. A pot of soup on or some chili on. And that was in the 90s, and that hasn't happened. And I haven't done that, like, in decades. But that was more normal even 30 years ago, wasn't it?

[A]

It was. And it's interesting to see some of these churches that we're talking about where they're realizing, okay, I have to do something differently, because, you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And so what am I gonna do differently with our people? This is what I've heard from many different pastors and church leaders, and to some degree, a lot of clinicians who work in the church as well. And one of the things that people are getting creative about is, okay, if we're talking about scale, because, you know, maybe we have a few clinicians and maybe we have a few lay listeners that we've raised up, but we still need more. The numbers are just so big. Let's figure out how we can get people together in groups around meals. And it's interesting to see how often that has just exploded. And I'll give you one example that we mention in the book, because one of the things that we put in the book is some of the different models that we heard from the different churches of doing it completely differently. And one of my favorite favorite ones was this little church in the middle of a rural area with no clinicians anywhere nearby, you know, an hour to the nearest small city, you know, that kind of area. And they were having a massive problem with the opioid epidemic, right? Like, just tons of addictions. And the church finally went, we've got to do something. I don't know what to do, but we got to do something. And so they took the money that they had been saving to refurbish their sanctuary, and they hired somebody who had a little. A pastor and a counselor. He was also a licensed Therapist who had had a little bit of experience in recovery ministry and said, just start something. I don't know what to start, but just do something. And so he said, okay, here's what we're going to do. Friday nights we are going to have, for all comers, we're gonna have a meal, you know, and you can put in five bucks if you want, but we're gonna have like, you know, a basic meal and a little bit of teaching, a little bit of worship and a little bit of small group time. And just anybody can come. It's not just people with addictions. It's hurts, habits and hangups. It's anybody, right? So this church of four or 500 people, I think it was maybe 300 at the time, suddenly they open it up, there's 50 people there who come partly because it's dinner, right? Like it gets. It's a fellowship chant, right? Free meal and fellowship. And then there's a hundred, and then there's 200. And now today, this is only five, six years later, there are 500 people that show up every Friday night from all over the community. And it's because there's this opportunity for fellowship and belonging and community that people are just longing for. And they get the teaching and they get the small group time. And as a result of that, one thing which is so basic, as a result of that, he said, one of the patterns that they see over and over and over is that people who have real issues, who are on a wait list, which may be, you know, two months down the road to see a clinician, they come to the church or they go to the clinician and they say, you know what? What? I think I'm okay for now. Like, I'm going to this thing on Friday nights. I'm in this small group, I'm working it. I'm digging into the Lord and I think I'm okay for the moment. I'll get back on the wait list if I need to, but let me take myself off the wait list for the moment. And I thought, what a perfect example of how something so simple could end up resulting in a really big life transformation for some people.

[B]

Jim, does that compute? Like, if I'm plugged into a meaningful community? Is there any statistical evidence that mental health issues can resolve goodness simply by. Okay, take us through that now.

[C]

There'S a yes and no. When we have of brain dysfunction, a community does not eliminate brain dysfunction. When we have the serotonin imbalances, I don't like to use that word, chemical Imbalance, but I just did. So my apology to all my colleagues.

[A]

We're gonna get some angry emails.

[C]

Yeah, really. When we have serotonin disruption, relationship does not balance the brain. But relationship provides hope, it provides meaning. It provides kind of a sucre in the presence of pain. And that in and of itself has a deep healing quality. Now it's actually classic around the question of do you need talk therapy or do you need medication. And the evidence is medication works and talk therapy works. And medication and talk therapy for someone who has a generalized anxiety disorder works better than medication or talk therapy alone. So if you wanna say does relationship have the capacity to ease suffering? Yes, it does. In certain cases it does not remove it because there is still the brain malfunction that medication can help correct. Particularly then as it is corrected. It gives the person a better capacity to adjust to life and do self correcting after the medication has created a level of, a level of resilience so they can stay in the stress game a little bit longer without needing to just stay in bed or to remove themselves from any kind of work environment that creates another level of complication to their needs. Yeah, go ahead.

[B]

What? Like I'm thinking, and I'm not a mental health expert, but I have lots of friends in the field and we talk about this all the time. I have one particularly close friend who's working on a book and his argument is that a lot of the stuff that pediatricians end up diagnosing disabilities for or prescribing medication for. He says what he wants to do is just get the parents together and say, you guys just need to be a functional family, you need to have meals together. And definitely there are exceptions to the rule, but that the breakdown. His thesis is that the breakdown in, in the family unit, I'm not just talking about marriage and divorce, but even communication skills, togetherness is so profound a rupture that that's producing a lot of the mental health challenges that kids are facing. So when you look at that, I totally understand that people need medication for mental health, but there's a lot of stuff that no medication is going to cure. What does community and connection cure? That a pill, you know, makes a pill unnecessary.

[C]

It gives us in the best textbook on group therapy by Irving Yalom, a Stanford psychiatrist from a generation. I believe he's still alive, but no longer producing new material. He says, in essence, group. And you want to take from group relationship. So relational therapy, relational Interaction gives us 11 curative factors. The most important one is hope. The second most important One is the idea of universality, where, like C.S. lewis and his definition of friendship. What, you too. That is a therapeutic enterprise. That is a healing agent. When I realize that I am not alone and that this thing has a temporal quality to it, that I can work through this and get better because I see other people around me who are working through it and getting better. So those two things, and there's nine other additional factors that seem to be evident when there is a community of care.

[B]

Shanti. You know, churches, I can hear some pastors saying, great, we've already checked the box. We have small groups. We have, you know, 70, 80, 90% of our people. I know one church that has something like 120% of its weekend attendance in small groups. I mean, we have seen the prevalence of small groups go through the roof in churches, but we've also seen. Yeah, which is incredible. I'm in one. But we've also seen mental health continue to increase in terms of dysfunction and spiral, if you want to look at it the other way. So what would you say to those pastors who are like, oh, we already got this. We have small groups.

[A]

See, here's the issue. If the culture of the church is, oh, my goodness, I'm not a specialist, let's refer out to these great counselors that we have in our network, which, again, is awesome, right? Like, that can be very, very needed. But if that's the culture of the church, that's gonna filter to the small group. And so what often happens is, and Jeff and I, my husband and I were small group leaders for years. And so if people came to us, you know, in pain or in turmoil, it would be probably 70% chance that I'm like, okay, let me call the pastor. Let me get you in to see the pastor. Or, let's get you in to see the pastor, so they can refer you to a specialist. And it could literally just be that they're just having marriage issues. Like, they just. They don't know how to communicate well. And one of the things that we often, you know, sort of remind pastors who don't know, who don't maybe feel like they're allowed to tackle some of these things anymore, because the professionalization of mental health has made pastors feel like, that's not my lane. I'm not allowed to do that. We often will say, you know, specialization can be really, really handy. And yet that specialist. Remember, they're not allowed to come over to your house for dinner on Thursday night. Right. They're not allowed to be a Friend, they have their lane. And so what about for some of the cases that maybe aren't as significant where a couple with marriage issues, honestly, if they go see a specialist, if the specialist is doing their job, the specialist is probably gonna say, okay, here's your homework. Find a couple with a healthy marriage and go to their house for dinner every Thursday night for the next few weeks. Right? Like, find a couple to walk alongside you. And so we. One of the things we're telling the pastors is if every. If we are doing our job, we will be building that layer of and capacity for lay care and the culture of care within the church anyway. Even if we also continue, as we hopefully will, to refer out to the specialists, at times we have to try do both. And the small group leader, there is nothing in the small group leader that is going to make them go, oh, that's my job. Not just I need to refer out to somebody else. Unless you make it part of the culture of the church and unless hopefully the small group leaders are, hey, let's all go through this listening training. It's just a few hours. Everybody should go through this.

[C]

In these kind of terms that I think make it grasp. Able to be grasped by everybody. I see as a psychologist, people who are anxious and people who are depressed. And there's a criteria defining for me, anxiety and depression. And inside anxiety and depression is also worry, stress, sadness, and discouragement. Now, you too, are not therapists, and you don't have licenses to treat anxiety or depression, but you are perfectly capable of sitting with someone who is sad. Now, it just so happens that the same person that I treat for their depression is also sad. And so I can attend to the depressive state and give you the sad state. And there is a significant overlap between what I do and what you do. As Shanti just said, it's like you can do it at Starbucks over a chai latte and you don't need an appointment. You can do it on a walk through the woods of the regional park in your community. And there's no one that you bill. You can do it with an open Bible and a coffee pot at a kitchen table. And that is much more human than what I do. What I do is really, really weird. Like, I take on the professional role of a friend, but it's not a real role as a friend. It's a professional role with a set of disciplines to work with the most complicated levels of human pain. And I cherish that role and it's valuable and I don't want to demean what I do at all. What I want to do is I want to uplift what everybody else has capability to. But you give everything to me and I wanna give it back to you and say, let me take care of the stuff that's outside of your pay grade, but you take care of the stuff that's within your capacity as a church. You can do that far more effectively than I could ever approach it because of your capacity as a real friend.

[B]

So let's take a. A church scenario that would be very familiar to most listeners. Okay. You've got a couple hundred or over a thousand people in attendance. You got a functional small group system. Let's assume it's working well. They're doing Bible study, they're studying the weekend message. They've got a healthy percentage of people in groups, They've got volunteers, and they're operating as most churches do, which is you punt or it's like add your name to list because I'll see you in a month. Right. What did these changes start to look like? What do they have to do? Do they have to dismantle everything and start over again? What do they do?

[C]

Please.

[A]

No, no, no, no. Do you mind if I just jump in there, Jen?

[C]

You jump in.

[A]

Okay. I will tell you one of the common denominators that we heard over and over in the churches that had indeed taken that first step and gone, what does this look like? And we heard from them that a, it had to be led by somebody other than the pastor, because the pastor, every pastor I know, is the busiest person that I know. Right. And I just want to tell all the pastors listening to this, thank you. Because you are seen at least by many people who recognize that your lives are pretty overwhelming at times.

[B]

Is a key volunteer or a staff member then, or what is.

[A]

Well, no, here's what often happens is the pastor will stand up. I've heard this pattern over and over where either somebody comes to the pastor with this as a vision. And by the way, if you are listening to this and you are not a pastor, please pray about whether the reason you're interested in it is because you're supposed to go to your pastor and say, I want to you help. But it's either that they go to them or that the pastor stands up on stage on a Sunday morning and says, we really need to do something. In this space around mental and emotional health, I can't be the one that leads it, but we'll get this started in two Thursday nights. We're going to have a meeting. If you are interested in being part of this, come sign up for this meeting and see who God brings you. And it's fascinating to hear these stories of where people came out of the woodwork. Like, one counselor said she was a licensed counselor and she had been volunteering for two or three hours a week in the children's ministry. And she's like, this would be a better use of my volunteer time. And so she helped the pastor get something started, and they ventured, created a lay listening kind of program. And they now have, if I'm remembering correctly, something like 11 or 12 lay listeners. And they've just become much more purposeful about connecting people within the church, not just referring them out. And so that's what we're talking about. Find that person who can own this and help take it off your shoulders.

[B]

Do you do anything with the existing small group?

[C]

Absolutely.

[A]

Oh, absolutely.

[B]

What do you do?

[C]

Is. In the original model that we created in the church cares initiative, we said we're going to start with individuals and we're going to have a treatment plan of four or five weeks. And in that individual conversation between one worshiper and another worshiper. And after about four weeks, the vision is to integrate that person into a smaller community, a group, the worshiping or the listener worshiper. That person that's the caregiver, the listener within the church does not have a perpetual relationship with that person for the next 43 years of their life. Rather, like. I understand. And we have an initial problem solving strategy we're implementing, and we're going to create another. A broader community that can stand with you around the complexities of your life and so that you can stand with them.

[B]

And what does that community look like?

[C]

That becomes your small group community. That becomes your celebrate recovery. If there is an historic addiction or if there is a unique need that's in that middle level of the triangle. All of our small groups are there, but it's the introduction to. I can't get to a small group because I'm overwhelmed with my stuff.

[B]

Right. And they would disrupt the small group.

[C]

And so, like, good.

[A]

And they might. Yeah, exactly.

[C]

Let's bring soothing to your stuff and then integrate you with your stuff into this other community, with people who also have stuff. And let's all share our stuff and allow the gospel to do what it can do.

[A]

But there's another piece of this as well, Carrie, that I think is one of the things you were pressing in on earlier, which is when you say, how do you integrate the small groups? You can come at from the other direction as well, which is. This is an area where we say, train every small group listener in listening. Every small group leader. Excuse me, Train every small group leader in listening in this basic, basic skill set that is not huge, overwhelming, licensed counseling, whatever. But they will feel more confident and capable and will be able to have a much better sense for. Okay, is this something I can walk alongside with this person? You know, our small group can walk alongside, or is this rising to the level that actually, this is an example of something where I need a higher level of care. And so when you have a church that's very small group oriented. Oh, I think that's a slam dunk of just getting a little bit more skills development into the leaders of the church and especially that small group leader.

[C]

Yeah, there's another dimension too, around this concept, and that is our conversation is focused on developing caregivers, developing people who are trained, and this is their ministry. Well, what about if you interact with another human being in church? You need to be able to do this. Just like if you're a human being that follows Jesus, you need to be able to share Jesus with your neighbor. A basic capacity to know how to introduce someone to Christ. Yes, That's a fundamental Christian skill. You need to be able to be comfortable in sitting with another person in pain and not be overwhelmed and not feel like somebody else needs to do this. Who do I call? Yes, maybe for that complicated case, someone needs to take it for as far as you can go, but you walk the first steps.

[B]

Okay, so I'm starting to get a picture here. Basically, small group stay, but maybe there is a training, a reorientation that moves us toward better listening, better empathy, better carrying each other's burdens. You have a group, and it sounds like a handful to two handfuls of people who are trained lay listeners who take some of the more heavy needs cases. Listen, sometimes that solves it. Sometimes you could push them into the well, move them, not push, move them into the bottom of the triangle. Or if it's an addictions recovery kind of thing, into the middle or potentially. Wow, you need to go and see Dr. So and so. And they get the trained professional help that they need. Is that basically the model?

[C]

Absolutely, yes.

[A]

And there's about a thousand different ways that that plays out. Every church has a different DNA and it's go look different at every church.

[B]

Yeah, but the bottom line is that. And this sounds so basic, but it's basically what's disappeared, if my data is correct, over the last 30 to 50 years. What's disappeared from our culture is that community. You look at some of Scott Galloway, who's previous podcast guest, his data on loneliness in men and the number of friends the average man has compared to then, even as recently as the 1990s, it's just plummeted. You have the whole incel thing that's emerged. And basically, as you say, almost everybody has a diagnosis these days. But these are the people you're reaching. Right. When hurting people come to church. So when they come, you now basically train your church to listen. And a surprising number of the challenges I'm trying to get the right language or symptoms are dealt with on the ground just by having someone who cares.

[C]

Yeah, and this is actually, you mentioned an old idea. The mid-1960s, two psychology researchers, Truax and Kharkov, kind of like blew the profession up by saying our research indicates that, that well trained, capable listeners are frequently just as good as therapists. And there are exceptions and qualifications and asterisks on every one of those statements. But the fundamental idea dating back from research in the 1960s, now we're 60 years later, is, is people in loving relationship with other people get better. And to me, the humorous part, if you take three very famous sitcoms, Cheers, Friends and the Seinfeld Show, Jerry Seinfeld show, it all is the same basic storyline. Like, everybody wants to be able to slide into another apartment, your friend's apartment, like Kramer, without knocking. And like, this is my place. Everybody wants to open up a door at a tavern and have everyone say, call your name, high norm. Like we all long for that place to be accepted, to be received, to be understood. And, and the difference is the church can offer something that a mug of beer can't offer. There is a real solution. Yeah, there is a real solution in the presence of human care, in the presence of the gospel, that the Holy Spirit has a capacity to change lives.

[B]

So if you got a few more minutes, I want to take this to another level because this is a challenge that I'm seeing in the culture as well. So if you look at most church cultures in some even in their small group environment or Sunday school environment, you're going to have a teaching environment. In other words, let's exposit the meaning of Romans, chapter seven, blah, blah, blah, open your Bibles, blah, blah, blah, and then your small group is done. Right. So you're not exactly talking about that. That has a role. It's important. We need discipleship. We need all, all that stuff. But if that's all that's happening, then people aren't really being heard. The other problem I have, and I have another interview coming up on this show at the end of the year about the art of asking questions with J.R. briggs. I've noticed, and this has been a recurring theme with some guests, but my wife was out recently with just some people, spent the whole day with them, and she came back and said nobody asked me a single question. And it was one of those things, and we've seen this too, where it seems that and I don't know if there's social media is doing this. We're talking across each other or at each other or I think of it as status updates where I'm just telling you what I did on the weekend, blah, blah, blah, and then you just tell me what's on your mind and then I just give you my opinion on something else. We're not really connecting. And I wonder if we've lost the art of, of conversation. And so is some of that in the training that you're recommending? Does it address any of that? I mean, do you see the same problem? Because you can be in community but not be seen. You can be in community, not be heard. You can be in community and not feel loved. I think that's what I'm trying to drive at. What are your thoughts on that?

[C]

Yeah, Agreed. Emphasized. Yes. There is no doubt that we are talking about the capacity to be present with another and have that person who is being present have exceptional relational skills that knows how to sit and engage and be present, be focused on another person and not have an agenda that you carry or an appointment that you're really needing to focus on next, and you're looking at your watch and you're really on your way out or you.

[B]

Think you're depressed, wait until you see it.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But you're speaking of specifically the people who are in that role of, like a formal lay listener, like someone who, when you call the church office and you're in tears because your child is going off the rails and, you know, you have the equivalent of Bonnie, you have the care coordinator who talks to you and says, you know, I'm going to connect you with a lay listener that's sort of in that role of needing to be, have that special ability. But one of the things that I think Jim would agree with is that we're hoping that it trickles down to everybody in the church and you don't have to.

[B]

Culture. Right.

[A]

It becomes a culture. I mean, one of the examples of this that it still make it still cracks me up years later. Is my pastor when I was in grad school in Boston and he was, he did services in like the school buildings and stuff, you know, so students could, could have church. And so there was a office for the church that there was no church building attached. Right. It's just an office. And one day the, the Massachusetts tax assessor show showed up because you know, they're doing snap inspections to see is this a real church. And he walks in and he goes very suspicious to the pastor and he goes, where's the church? And the pastor said, I was legitimately confused for a minute. And he said, I answered him, well, some of them are at work and some of them are at school. And he's like, the guy was asking about the building. I was answering people. And that's the key, is that we are all the church. And no matter what our area of some people are going to be far more gifted and feel called to this area of lay listening. Some people are just going to catch a vision of hmm, you know, when the guy, you know, who I kind of know a little bit is standing next to me at the getting our coffee and I say, how you doing? And he goes, so, so instead of going, ah, have a good Sunday, I might say, tell me about that. What do you mean? You know, I might just press into that just a little bit. Imagine that difference.

[C]

Yeah, I related to take on to take off on shanti, what you just said. I had a convicting moment in when I realized my wife and I attend. We're empty nesters. We attend the 8 o' clock service. We get to church at three minutes to eight. We can. On the way into the sanctuary, we pass by the coffee bar, they've already poured it for us and I can grab my cup of coffee. Heather often grabs just a bottle of water. We walk in, we have our little place in our sanctuary that's designated in the first service as Jim and Heather's place. Almost like, like we bought this pew because that's where we always sit. And then at 9:15 when the service is over, we drop our coffee and our empty water bottle in the trash receptacle on the way out and we are in our car by 9:20 going home, having not spoken to a single human being. And I'm a licensed psychologist, I live in relationships and something is notoriously wrong there. I neither gave nor received. I just went and listened, raised my hands, bowed my head, I consumed, had a cup of coffee and got out. And even my offering is Taken out of my bank account by automatic withdrawal. So I don't even have to drop a check in an envelope anymore. It's instant and it's empty. Unless I am engaging with other people, it's empty.

[A]

But we have to build those relationships, right? You have to actually build them.

[B]

I agree that there are people who have spiritual gifts. It's like evangelism is a spiritual gift. I think everyone has the ability to say, hey, would you come to church with me? I think that's like an all skate, but there are other people. I can think of friends. I think I have. Evangelism isn't the top gift on my list, but I'm pretty comfortable in those spiritual conversations. I have friends. I mean, she would invite everybody and is very effective at it and never weird about it. Right? So that's awesome. But I imagine the same is true, true with listening, but at a base level, if you can get this into your groups, if you can get this into your host team, if you can change the culture in your church, just give us a snapshot. What does it mean to be listened to so that you're not just small talking, you're not just talking past each other about, this is what I did. Well, that's what I did and that's what I did. What does it mean to be listened to? What does it mean to. To have a meaningful connecting conversation that starts the journey of healing?

[A]

It's true kindness. It is caring about the best interest of the other person. And think about what an incredible opportunity it is for those of us who follow Jesus to have that vision and have more permission of. This should be part of our everyday. One of the things that, that Jeff, my husband, said a number of weeks ago when we were talking about this initiative and the church cares, is he said, you know, he got saved when he was 18. And it was those, you know, the late, great Planet Earth kind of era of Jesus is coming back any second.

[B]

You're gonna get raptured, better get saved.

[A]

Yeah, let's stand on street corners with tracks. And he's like, that was just so not. Not me standing on a street corner with a track. That's not the way that I feel like I can engage people in the name of Jesus. And he said, but what you're saying is now there are people who are hurting, who are coming to me and looking for the hope that I have. Like, wow, what an incredible opportunity that is for us to say, this is evangelism, this is discipleship, and people are coming to us with those Needs.

[B]

Play this out, how this scales, because I still have my pastor hat on. Once a pastor, kind of always a pastor. And I'm just going to speak for people who are wired my way. I listen to you, to somebody from. For half an hour and I do a good job and then where does my mind go? Who's next in line? And here we go again. And here we go again. So when you think about how this scales, where you've seen it play out, you got lay listeners, you've got the referral system working where it needs to work. And then you've got that bottom tier of the triangle where you've got hundreds or thousands of people who are just better at listening, better at embracing. Is it almost like one on one at that point where. Where you're not overwhelmed as a senior pastor, but in a small group, it's just like, oh, yeah, this guy goes for breakfast with this guy and this woman hangs out with this woman. So it's almost scaled on a one to one level. Is that where this goes ultimately?

[C]

Exactly. We have seen the most effective models emerge when it's not coming from top down, the pastor, but it's coming from the ground up, where a group of people say to a pastor, to an elder board or a deacon board, we want to do this. Will you bless us? And like, yes, we will announce from the pulpit on a Sunday morning, we will endorse you. Go. And then this organic capacity for one person to love another person and to practice, as Paul wrote in Romans, practice hospitality, which is not serving a meal, it's engaging in the life of another and having that person engage in your life, where we are healing agents to one another.

[B]

So this is like an infinite scale. If it's one on one, it doesn't matter whether you're 100, you grow to a thousand if you've got the systems in place. So nobody has a line. And even the lay listeners, you know, they have a manageable queue of people who come to see them. Correct?

[A]

Yeah. The pastors that we talked to that had put a system of some kind in place, which let me just emphasize again, everybody has their own DNA. So it looked quite different in different cases. But that was one thing that they all said, like 100% of them, which was, oh my goodness, like the weight that's off my shoulders. Because our church is actually doing the things that we always had, sort of hoped and had a vision for the church. Yeah, it just needed something like this in order to actually make it happen.

[C]

Yeah. The pastor initiates A cultural change. The program capacity is gonna be on the congregation. But the pastor has to initiate the creation of a culture. Culture. And towards that end, what we do in this project. And you can to pitch the website, you can find all this not just in the book, but the resources for how to do it are built out in the churchcares.com all one word. It's accessible.

[B]

The churchcares.com thechurch cares not. Oh, the church cares.

[A]

Yeah, the church cares.

[B]

Yes, the church cares.

[C]

Don't forget the the. And that takes you to what we developed over the past year and a half is the tools necessary for a church to do it if they want to. And we listen to churches hear what they have done. Asked if we can borrow what they're already doing. So from I think it was Scottsdale Bible Church. Their intake format was great. Can we use it? Yes. From a church in Kansas. Their grief ministry resources were great. Can we use it it? Yes. So we have collected resources that the church can use on their site. How to organize, how to train, manuals, videos, etc. It's all there. The pastor is the one that's going to say we're going to create a culture of care and we have some tools to dig the new mine as we go digging for gold. This is our, our resources to be able to go achieve this vision that we have.

[B]

That's great. So a couple more questions for you. Number one, I know what I'm doing. If this gets implemented, I'm going back to vision casting and preparing for Sunday sermons and maybe having breakfast with that one person once a month, something like that. That's pretty easy for me. But there's a lot of pastors who are wired more like pastors who are saying, hey, I don't want to be overwhelmed. I don't want to have, have my inbox blowing up every three minutes. But I would like to have some people that I'm connecting with. What have you found? Because this is in beta. You've done the research, you got some pilot projects. What are the pastors who are more pastorally inclined? How much do they stay engaged in this?

[A]

It's fascinating to see how the pastor basically has his own thermostat that right. Of what he can handle and what he wants to handle. And so I'm thinking of one pastor about a, about a thousand member church where they started a counseling ministry. And their particular model was let's have some lay listeners, but let's also have some actual licensed counselors who come into the church physically and that was part that was important to them and that's the way they set it up, up. And the pastor told me, he said, the thing that I find so interesting about this is that I now have these trusted people that I can refer someone to who actually physically come on site. And so they're now more connected to the church. Like it's more natural for them to come to church on Sunday. Right. And he said, and it also gives me a chance to be the first line of contact often where I go into it saying, absolutely, can I just talk with you for a few minutes? And he said, I get a sense whether this is somebody that I can help, somebody that needs to be talked to by somebody else or somebody that I need to refer. And he was very much, I want to walk alongside some of these people, but I can walk alongside this person, this person, this person. And this allows me to identify the people that I can walk alongside.

[B]

So basically you stay as engaged as you want to be without being overwhelmed.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. That's what we've heard over and over. This is not a magic bullet. Right. This is something that every church is going to have to kind of grapple with. What are we going to try to do? But what I hope pastors hear is that the goal is, is to take some of that burden off your shoulders and free you up to do the things that you feel called to do.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm, I'm going to be, you know, in my book on AI, referencing the model and the research that you have as I think a particularly helpful solution for the church. The church's future direction is human connection is sort of the thesis of my book in the Age of AI. But maybe it's too early to say because this has been like trial projects and beta and it's just out in the world now. But I can't help but think that this is going to have an impact on evangelism and church growth. That if the church really becomes this kind of place, people are going to come running for a refuge from the storm. Do you have any data on that or any insights on that early?

[C]

We have emerging data and a lot of n of 1 stories. 1 Anglican pastor who was an initial beta Tester Church of 125 people. And he said over the last six months I have averaged a call a day because I have in my log 180 to 200 phone calls of people coming, calling from outside of my church of 125. Like I need help with my marriage, I need help with My son or daughter who is exhibiting addictive behaviors I need help with. And like, we are overwhelmed. We're just a little church. And so that sense of mental health is the language of the 21st century culture and so to speak. Mental health in the church puts you in the language of the society and to have solution for care, care for solution for needs. The offering of care is kind of like the food bank in the Great Depression. And we'll just see the line for free bread, come to church. And that's Ed Stetzer saying, mental health ministry is the evangelism method of the 21st century tree.

[B]

Shaunsi, I want to ask you too. You had said you had seen people who maybe don't need medication right away and don't perhaps need to see a trained clinical psychologist, psychiatrist, kind of after doing, engaging in what we've been talking about, say you can pull me off the list for now. Maybe I'll go back on in a little bit, but you can pull me off the wait list to go see a special. Do you have any idea, Shanti, what percentage of the mental health issues that the nation is facing could be addressed or potentially dealt with through this base level of just listening without specialized care?

[A]

I'm gonna make every clinical psychologist like my co author here crazy by saying this, But I think 100% of issues have some need of listening. I don't think that there is any human condition for whom having one caring person walk alongside another, especially with the hope of Jesus, where that wouldn't be helpful. Now, is it going to be a solution for some. Absolutely.

[B]

For someone with schizophrenia, it's probably not going to be the whole solution. But for the majority of people who are lonely, marriage problems, worried about their.

[A]

Kids, but the person with schizophrenia needs someone to walk alongside too, right? I mean, and that's really where there's just a paradigm shift. It's just a vision shift of saying, oh, you know, for so many years we have been getting increasingly expert and increasingly specialized in, in mental and emotional health care and behavioral healthcare. And that's good, right? There's nothing wrong with that. But as that has happened, we've been building this wall in the church of oh, but that's not me. I'm going to toss it over the wall to the person who knows what they're doing. And what we're saying is actually, no, everybody needs a friend, everyone.

[B]

And specialization leads to fragmentation, right? It fragments us, and that's what we are. We're a very fragmented culture right now.

[A]

I had the most fascinating conversation A number of months back as part of a parallel research project that I'm doing on the habits of the most hopeful people. And I was talking to a woman who is schizophrenic and who. This was her life. She's on serious medication. She's got serious mental illness. And I sat with her for an hour just hearing her story. I learned so much from her about how she walks through life with this incredibly difficult situation, but with joy and with trust, and how, like, how she every morning writes a list of, here's three things that I am going to be grateful for today day as a way of getting through her day. And it's not just, hey, I can help these poor people who have these mental health issues. And instead it's like, no, these are real relationships, real brother and sister in Christ helping one another.

[B]

Right? Final word. Jim Ashanti.

[C]

Your last question reminded me of a real story of one of my closest friends whose brother has a serious mental health disorder. Related, similar to Shanti, how you just described. He was in a restaurant with his brother and found, first of all, he didn't get served. And second, when he finally got served, the server took the order, went right away to the cashier, rang it up, and left it on the table even before the meal came. And he realized as he was sitting there, I'm with my brother, who is offensive just by his image. People don't like him. And. And if this is not a way to even increase his life, despair because people don't understand or like him. No one wants to be in his presence, and I am, because I'm his brother. But nobody else cares for him, and they want him to disappear. And there's a population, all of us even not just the truly visually gruesome, but all of us feel that at different times. I don't know how to connect with this story. It's too gruesome for me to share. No one will understand. I am indeed alone here. And that is the message that the church has presented from the very beginning. Come here and park. This is where you belong. And so we're trying to create a network where that actually can happen with a set of skills that people have to have in order for it to happen. It's not gonna happen just because we're Christian. It's because we're capable of doing something. And we know we have resources to be able to equip us for the complexity that's gonna show up at our church. And we've thought through when we have multiple brains on problems that emerge because everyone is different. And it's not an easy care. It's hard to care for people. It's hard, which requires us to give attention regardless, to direct resources and to think and to plan and to prepare and implement.

[A]

Shanti, I just. I really want to speak directly to the pastor and say thank you. The pastors out there, you are leading the body of Christ, and nobody other than other pastors and people like Carrie get what your life is like. I know we don't, but we want to say thank you because we see little glimpses of what you carry every day. And this whole project is made possible because a major. Actually, it's pretty emotional. A major donor who has had family issues in this area, who loves the local church, stepped forward and said, we want to be able to create all these resources for free for the local church because of all that you do and. And give the church a chance to be the hero in this cultural moment that we're in. And so it's just. This is from us to you saying thank you for what you do, and everything that we have is yours.

[B]

That's amazing. So the website is thechurchcares.com thechurchcares.com There's.

[A]

A really specific tool that I'm going to suggest any pastor, any potential person who says maybe I should think about offering to explore this. It's called the kit. And if you go to the join US page on thechurchcares.com you can sign up to get the kit. And it's just. It's like all the stuff that Jim was talking about, you know, from this church and that church, and everybody needs an intake form and everybody needs a. This, you know, a screening for depression and every, you know, those are like, things.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's just. It's just for you to look through, take and adapt what would make it work for you.

[B]

And the book is called when hurting people come to Church. So I really appreciate it. This has been super, super helpful. I don't know why this wasn't there 20 years ago, but I'm so glad it's there now. And I think you lightened the load of a lot of pastors. Yes, implementation is going to take some work, but as this spreads from a few hundred to a few thousand to tens of thousands of churches, maybe we'll see people get healthier pastors not have that long line that, you know, we either love or dread and really appreciate all your work in this area. So thank you both so much.

[C]

Honored to be here. Thank you Carrie.

[B]

Well, I am really excited about this new model. I hope you found it helpful. Make sure you check out the free sites. We'll put everything in the show notes. You can find that at the Art of Leadership Academy. That's where we're keeping it these days. It's absolutely free to access, just create an account. We are not requiring a credit card or anything like that. There's over 13,000 leaders just like you in the Academy and we discuss episodes like that and we do it troll free. So it's awesome. We'd love to see you inside the Academy. Well, next episode I am going to talk to you about your time and I've got a new matrix. I mean I keep thinking about this. I don't know about you. My life changes every year and I am thinking about time and how to multiply your impact without adding extra hours. Got a fresh insight on that. Also coming up, Dr. Caroline Leaf, J.D. greer. Man, I'm excited for you to hear that one. Lisa Terkeurst, N.T. wright, David Ashcraft and then if you subscribe, you will not miss one beat for my 2026 church trends. We work way ahead. I've been working on those. I'm really, really excited about that. Hope our time together today has helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing. Thank you so much for listening. If the conversation was helpful, leave a review or comment wherever you're listening. Don't forget to follow and share it with a friend. We'll catch you next time. Hey, before we go today, just a quick word. Let's be honest. At a certain point, hustling harder doesn't help. You probably hit that wall, right? Right. I'm not sure about you, but when things aren't going particularly well or growing particularly well and I'm stuck, my gut reaction is just to double down and go harder. But what I've learned over time is you know what I need? I need an outside perspective. I need other voices to help me figure out what am I not seeing. Is there a better system, better strategy, like where are my blind spots? And you know what? You only learn from others who have been there. And that's why I created the Art of Leadership and Academy. It's an online community of growth minded leaders. It's growing every day and it's a very focused space where you can grow faster and lead more effectively. Now you'll get stuff like show notes for every episode, but even better than that, you get some quarterly free webinars with me. You get real dialogue with other church leaders. It's a troll free. I'm going to say it. Weirdo free environment. Okay? You're not going to get the kind of stuff you get on social media. We moderate the content very carefully and the community. So if that sounds like something you'd benefit from, real leaders trying to make real progress in real churches, I would love for you to join in. And you know what's super cool? You're gonna find people who are a step ahead of you, and you're gonna find people who are a step behind you. The people a step ahead of you are gonna help you. The people a step behind you, well, you can help them. And I'm in that community on a daily basis. So if that sounds like something you would love, it's totally free. No gimmicks, no tricks. Just sign up today. Visit theartofleadershipacademy.com or click the link in the description of this episode. A few clicks, you're in, and I'll see you on the inside.