Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to the Church. Renewal Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:06

I'm Matt. I'm Jeremy.

Speaker 1: 0:08

Leaders carry family baggage patterns of conflict avoidance, expectations and wounds into their ministry. This episode unpacks how family of origin dynamics shape leadership instincts, blind spots and identity. Using biblical examples and practical tools like genograms, jeremy and Matt explore how unresolved family patterns resurface in church systems and why honest reflection is necessary for growth, clarity and healthier leadership.

Speaker 2: 0:39

We're going to talk today about doing your own family of origin work. Which, matt? What did you want to give the title? What was it? She got it naturally, ah she came by it honestly.

Speaker 3: 0:52

She came by it honestly, which is a phrase that's used in the South where, say, a child might look a lot like a father or a mother, have similar sort of traits or relational patterns, would say she came by it honestly, yeah, and actually all of us do. That's why doing family of origin work is so important is to realize that actually all of us come by our traits honestly in that way almost inevitably. This was an emphasis in your training in your seminary, right, Jared. So tell us a little bit about why you think this is important.

Speaker 2: 1:27

Well, let me first say that one of my daughters was asking me about that thing that makes us sin. Isn't it called the sin, naturally? And I was like yep, it definitely is Sin naturally yes, that's what Paul called it.

Speaker 3: 1:38

It was the sin, naturally Sin naturally, yes, that is quite right, well done.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Oh, so there's this concept of reactivity we've talked about a little bit. Reactivity is when I, instead of responding to what's going on around me, thoughtfully, trustingly, with integrity, based on who I am, who I've been called to be, I instead go and it's that response, it's that clutch, that emotion, it's that instant. If you read the literature, especially if it's based on an evolutionary psychological perspective, it's going to say it's happening in our limbic system. It's that alligator brain.

Speaker 2: 2:21

It's that immediate fight or flight or freeze thing. And when you look at neuropsychology, there's very good evidence that says if you stop long enough to actually verbalize what is it you're experiencing, that moment, it it will elevate that brain pattern to your prefrontal cortex where you can actually then be self-governed instead of reactive. And that's the difference here between reactive and responsive. A reaction, I can't help, that's a reflex. It happened because there was a stimuli In terms of a system. There was an input. The output is reaction.

Speaker 2: 3:06

However, when we talk about systems, especially if you look at organizational psychology, it's not just input-output, it's input-transformation-output. There's a transformation that happens in the middle here, the middle term, yeah, where the input was X you did whatever. To me, the output is my response. X you did whatever. To me, the output is my response. The transitional part of the transformation is where I take that input. I filter it through a perspective, my worldview, a belief, a set of patterns that I've established in my life and my behavior then flows out of that. That's my output.

Speaker 2: 3:43

So what I'm looking at this and I'm saying each of us come into wherever we are with an identity and a set of unique baggages that we inherited from someone else, typically our parents, typically our siblings, typically our family of origin. So this could be kind of frou-frou for someone. Let's do some family of origin work and someone just turned this off right, okay, hopefully that person comes back. For everyone else, I want to suggest here that the best way to be prepared for the problems that you're going to encounter with how you react to things is to think about what shaped how you react. Yes, before you get there. Yep, and I like the way you say it. You say, if you don't deal with problems from the past and the present, you're going to have to deal with those same problems in the future.

Speaker 3: 4:37

Yeah, you're just going to keep doing them the same way in the future. Yeah, you have to reflect on the past and the present for the future to be different.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Yeah, yeah. So that's where we are and when we're talking about pastors in particular, because that's where we're focused here. A pastor is not magical some kind of dispensation from God where all of a sudden, he's cut free from the experiences he had as a non-believer or in his family growing up, or his dad's alcoholism or his parents' divorce or the sexual abuse that he committed or that he was the victim of.

Speaker 2: 5:21

It's all right, there Right, and he brings it in and it might be nicely packed up, tidily packed into a box that he puts into a corner and puts other things on top of, because he's managed it. But something's going to happen and that box is going to.

Speaker 3: 5:37

it's going to pop open, pop open like a jack and somebody's going to figure out how to push that button and make that box pop open here I, I am.

Speaker 3: 5:44

You can guarantee it, ministry. Somebody will find that button and push it Because God wants you to grow. There it is, god wants you to grow, god wants you to deal. You see this recurring pattern in the patriarchs, in the scriptures, where it's lying after lying, after covering, after lying, after fear, your mistrust, and it just they got it honest. They saw dad do it, so they did it. Yep, right, and we all have that. It's not just the patriarchs and the scriptures, we all have that. I still avoid highly conflictual situations because my parents had a lot of conflict growing up and it was scary and I just walk away.

Speaker 2: 6:23

So, david, in the springtime, when the armies go out to war, he's feeling good about himself and he goes out to go, people watching. Yeah, and we all know what happened. Right, for anyone who doesn't. David is supposed to be at war with his army, leading them as a good leader. Instead of doing that, he's at home. He goes up on the roof Kicking back, he's watching a woman bathe, which I'm told can attract men's gazes and possibly stimulate their passions. And as a result of David's not governing himself through all of this, he reaches out to Bathsheba, he brings her into his home, he sleeps with her, he impregnates her, he covers it up by killing her husband, and David's family watches all this. Now there's two parts of the story here. The first part is David's response when he's confronted with a sin. Nathan comes and says hey, bad things happened. Here's a parable. I'm not going to tell you. Here's a parable. I'm not going to tell you is a parable until I get to the end.

Speaker 2: 7:25

And you're going to be, like, oh, that's really bad and something needs to be done about that. That person deserves death. Nathan's going to then say, yeah, you're the man. And David's going to respond very much like a non-anxious presence and say, ah, you're right and I'm wrong. David, who's written at this point a whole lot about who God is and who God has called him to be, and who God is to David and who David is to God, david knows at this point I was wrong, and the best thing for me to do at this point is to acknowledge that before my creator, before my maker, and say I'm going to throw myself into your hands.

Speaker 3: 8:03

This is how we get Psalm 51.

Speaker 2: 8:05

This is how we get Psalm 51. This is how we get Psalm 51. And then David's child dies and David is mourning while the child is still sick. And then the child dies and David stops mourning because he's still in God's hands and he says why should I continue seeking the Lord for him to change his mind? God made his mind up. He carried out what he said he was going to do. It's my fault, and now it's done, and it's not that I don't hurt, but we move forward.

Speaker 3: 8:37

He owned the consequences of his transgressions.

Speaker 2: 8:41

On the other hand, david has several sons, because David has a myriad of wives Not quite as many as Solomon, but more than enough to shake a stick at and Amnon, one of his sons, is doing his own thing and falls in love with his half-sister, tamar, and pretends to be sick and asks David to send Tamar to him To feed him so he can get better, because, quite honestly, he's a pretty despicable half-brother and he rapes his sister and then he despises her as soon as he gets away. The scripture is really clear. It says that Amnon loved Tamar. It doesn't shy away from that. But it also says, as soon as he got what he wanted, he despised her and sent her away. Well, tamar had a brother. His name was Absalom and you probably recognize his name. He was declared king. It divided the kingdom of Judah. It sent David on the run. It led to David's closest allies becoming some of David's worst enemies, because David valued the life of his son over leading the kingdom and over the lives of all of his army.

Speaker 2: 9:55

And I'm really truncating a story here, but it's so full of family baggage bearing fruit in the present because it wasn't dealt with in the way and at the time it should have been. And David's not the only example. That story doesn't end there either. That story continues through Solomon and then with Rehoboam, just passing down the generations. I'm smart enough to do this my way, and, oh yeah, it does mean that the kingdom is going to be torn from my hands and there's going to be strife from now on.

Speaker 2: 10:32

David's not the only example. We can look at Abraham, we can look at Isaac, we can look at Jacob, we can look at Adam and Cain. All throughout scripture, what happens in the family has an impact in the family and then is magnified in the community, where that family is supposed to be leading and caring for the people. Now we fast forward to where we are today In the church. That same dynamic happens. We are today In the church. That same dynamic happens. And so the challenge here that I want to explore is how do we recognize this in such a way that we can identify where the hurdles, where the pitfalls are, to be able to see God do the work he wants to do in us, so that we can be the people he's called us to be in the community where we lead?

Speaker 3: 11:33

So when you're a Christian leader, you're a pastor, you're leading a Christian business or an organization. Recognize that when people come together, they're bringing the synthesis. What they're bringing together is the synthesis, at least in part, and maybe to a great degree, depending on how much people have taken responsibility for understanding and and seeking transformation under the spirit in relationship to their family of origin. Right, and people have different degrees of maturity and some people have listened to this. This will be the first time that they've ever been told this. There's fewer and fewer people like that. But when you're leading as a pastor in a church, you're leading a group of people's families and the effects that they've had on them as they're expressed in the present. So both of my parents came from abusive families. My mother's dad was tyrannical, he was paralyzed in the Second World War and she was the only child they had and it was a very, very difficult experience. My dad's parents both of them were alcoholics and my grandmother was a violent enough drunk that my dad's parents, both of them, were alcoholics and, um, my grandmother was a violent enough drunk that, um, my dad's one of two older siblings two older siblings, two younger siblings, two older siblings take the took the same sex sibling into their home as soon as they got married, and they got married as quick as they could. There is no way that both of my parents, having that kind of background, didn't influence what their kind of relationship was like or what impact that had on me. Right, right, so my wife and I have spent since we started down this journey. My wife and I have spent a fair amount of time talking about our families and how they have affected us as people, how they affect the way that we think about ourselves and what motivates us, what scares us, what we move towards easily, what we move away from. I grew up on 20 acres in the woods with two introverted parents and an introverted brother. It's no wonder that crowds are still something that is difficult for me. It's still completely, it's still very, very foreign. I don't like big groups. I'm an extroverted person in a small group or one-on-one, but in a large group I'm the wallflower because I still feel very inexperienced at it and it's very uncomfortable for me. That is completely out of my family of origin. My wife grew up in the gymnastics gym with oodles of people and crowds, cheering and all kinds of things. A party is her favorite place Completely different because her family of origin was completely different than mine. And so we go to parties together because it's my survival mechanism. Is that serious Go network for me? She brings the sparkle to the party and it's wonderful. It's absolutely great that we have figured out how to take those differences in our families of origin and figure out how to forge a quite good relationship ourselves and try and give to our kids something that is different than either one of us received in our families growing up. So we've tried, julian and I my wife is Julian, julian and I have tried to take this very seriously and try and understand this dynamic for ourselves and also, I think, for me as a leader. I've tried to understand.

Speaker 3: 15:05

In our last episode episode we talked about differentiated from outcome. Well, why am I a very outcome oriented person? Well, that was the family I grew up in. It was all about outcome. My parents weren't obsessive thankfully they weren't, but they definitely pushed us towards outcomes, and it's no mystery then that the way that Satan would be interested in beguiling me was around outcomes, because that was the way that my family was tilted. So why is this important for leadership? So, jared, what happens if you don't deal with your family of origin stuff as a leader, as a christian leader, you, you inadvertently, and oftentimes, uh, unwittingly, and without recognizing it, repeat the same pattern unconsciously, not unconsciously, that's absolutely correct and you can't see it.

Speaker 2: 15:59

It's a. It becomes a blind spot. It is the same part. It's like having a limp because one leg is shorter than the other. But it's all you ever know. I'm blind in the eye.

Speaker 2: 16:11

Exactly what do you mean? I walk this way because I'm a crab, but you're not a crab, and it's the unconscious part, it's the blind spot here, that that makes it so difficult, because what you're talking about still goes back to identity. I was handed this. It is my identity. Whether right or wrong, my identity is in your case. I grew up under parents who grew up in a very abusive situation. Right, that's a part of your identity. That's not the identity that God wants you to have, that's not from your Heavenly Father, but it is nevertheless a part of your identity, and so you carry that yes.

Speaker 2: 16:59

Absolutely Right and because A it's a part of our identity. B oftentimes we are unconscious of it, we end up C reenacting it. And D when it's pointed out, it generally will trigger a fight or flight response or freeze Yep, and that will lead to its own cascade of problems. I'm a conflict-averse person and I can't say by virtue of my personality, because I don't think that my personality is necessarily conflict-averse but I grew up in a home where I had a non-conflict-averse parent and I had a logical parent, and I'm not saying that it followed gender norms, but I'm not saying it didn't either. I'm not saying anything. And I'm going back to my dad. We laugh about it now, but my dad would would very logically lead us through correction. And I realized only after I was older that my dad would often give us either or fallacies, as he was walking us through this logic, and he wasn't doing it to be mean, he wasn't doing it to lie to us, he was making it clear, he was doing black and white thinking and I at that point point wasn't smart enough to realize he was engaging in some black and white thing. You know generalizations. I'm like you know, if I'd come back and said, yeah, but this he, he would have dealt with that there. I didn't realize that that was going on, and so I didn't realize that. What I learned to do was think in black and white patterns that do narrow and constrict the options that are actually available. I have to go looking for them now, and when someone presents them.

Speaker 2: 18:58

I had this this morning. I had a child who was doing something. I gave them a direction. Apparently, they follow the direction, but then something else happened, and so all I knew is that they continued doing the thing that I had directed them away from, and after three or four interactions over this, I was naturally angry, because all I know is I'm being ignored, and now I'm being argued with by the person who's justifying what they did, kind of like Adam to God, except I'm not God and so I call this kid over and I say all right, number one. I am angry now because what you're doing is wrong, and it's only at this point that that child gave me new data. I did that, but then the thing died, and so now I'm using this. Okay, now I have new information. What am I going to do with that?

Speaker 2: 19:52

And this is what confronted me as I'm standing there in my kitchen being confronted by this Jer, what are you going to do with this new information? Are you going to ignore it and say it doesn't matter? Because I'm angry? Because you did argue with me. You didn't give me information. You didn't give me information.

Speaker 2: 20:04

You didn't come at this in good faith to share with me what was going on, in the spirit of cooperation and obedience to my authority as your father to walk in the way that I've directed you to. You have been resisting and fighting me, and this is just a technicality that you're trying to get out on, and I'm not going to let you do that, because you know I'm God in your life See Zeus with lightning bolts. This would be black and white thinking. Or am I going to recognize that the scenario that you just gave me is different than what I thought it was? And I can use that now to talk about what you did actually do and where that needs to change, and also recalibrate my response, both of anger and response, in terms of whatever consequences may or may not need to be given. And thankfully, in this moment I'm happy to say I did the right way. Maybe it's because I had enough sleep, maybe it's because I didn't have enough sleep, I don't know. But whatever was it was, you know that time I'll give myself.

Speaker 3: 21:06

The Lord enabled you to go by the right way.

Speaker 2: 21:09

Now that's. There's all kinds of blind spots. If that's a blind person who's physically blind I am I am painfully aware that I have blind spots because my blind spots cause me to walk into and off of things that I don't see. That causes physical pain. I recently started a Substack post and this is not apropos of anything, but to say I posted a story where I was walking with one of my kids and walked into a street sign. I had my cane with me, I was sweeping like I should be, but the way it lined up the cane hit, but I was moving fast enough that my hand hit the sign immediately after, and so I'm checking my hand to make sure it's not bleeding. And my kid's like you didn't see that and I'm like I did see it. I saw it. I saw it. It was on purpose and the truth is I didn't. I knew it was there. I was walking so as to avoid it and I still walked into it and it was painful. And these are the opportunities that I have to either walk in humility, acknowledging reality I have a blind spot or to walk in pride no, I saw that. I chose this. This is the better way. You'd understand if you were as smart as I was. Everyone should walk into a pole this way. Just trust me on this, matt. Go, try it. Walk into a pole, walk off the stage. Those patterns are learned in your family, they are.

Speaker 2: 22:41

So that's identity, right, why? Why would I do that? Because the other side of this coin, identity acceptance, my acceptance in my mind, is tied to am I guilty of this? Am I responsible for this? Am I culpable? Have I measured up? I can either hide my blind spots because I'm afraid that they're going to disqualify me, or, like David, I can say nope, that's true, that's on me and I're going to disqualify me. Or, like david, I can say no, that's true, that's on me, and I'm going to throw myself into the hands of the god who gave me identity and has told me he's accepted me. And I'm going to look to the cross, where christ became the curse for me. He bore my sin, he took my shame. There is no condemnation. I am fully accepted in the beloved. And so I throw myself onto mercy and I say Lord, you were right again. I am weak dust, but you know my frame and you're able to do with weak dust what I can't do. So I give myself to you and like you, matt, I have spent a lot of time evaluating how I became the person I am, what were the things that happened in my life, and I've done this through genograms.

Speaker 2: 24:08

So a genogram just for the sake of discussion here. A genogram is a family tree that has added to it several layers. If you think of a legend on a map that has different things, you lay over these layers of the types of relationships and experiences that have happened in your family. In the classic genogram and family systems theory, you're going to go back at least three generations and you're going to put dates of death and dates of birth and major family experiences. If your family went through a house fire, it's going to go on there. If your mom had a miscarriage, if your wife had a miscarriage, it's going to go on there. If your mom had a miscarriage, if your wife had a miscarriage, it's going to go on there to all these things they're all going to go on there

Speaker 2: 24:52

yep, because it maps out major life experiences and as you put the multiple generations in there, you begin to see patterns. Oh, there was a divorce here and there was a divorce there in that generation. And there was spousal abuse in that first generation and there was spousal abuse here in the second generation. And I'm seeing a similarity in personality and in responsiveness to particular critical factors. Okay, there's a pattern here. Okay, there's a pattern here. Once we see a pattern, we're more equipped to be able to say if not, I know what to do. We can at least say okay, well, I know what to watch for, right. And then the second step of that is well, now, what do we do about it? How do I control myself so that we can adjust this pattern moving forward?

Speaker 2: 25:44

The second, uh, the second tool I've used and you may have used the same one is just a life timeline. You can do this for your own life, you can do this for the life of your family, but just the same way, you went for a timeline when you were in school and you started with the Egyptians and Romans or whatever. You start with your family. Here's my birth. What are the major family events that I experienced personally, because those things will have shaped you. I'll tell you what this is not. This is not going back and blaming the past. Right, so that you can sit here.

Speaker 2: 26:20

Trying to take responsibility in the present. Actually, it's absolutely what it's doing. If you do this and all you do is get really angry with your parents and call them up just to tell them that you're cutting them off, sit with that for a while but come back to it because that's not going to help you. This is about understanding the things that have shaped you. This is Simba in the Lion King seeing his father in the sky saying remember, know where you came from. This is exactly what you talk about in the church health assessment. Understand where you came from, how you got there, so that you can understand where you are now and how you can move to where you want to be.

Speaker 3: 27:02

You're doomed to repeat the past in the future unless you reflect on the past and the present. The only way the future can be different is if you reflect on the past and the present, because then you become conscious of things and you can begin to apply the gospel to your temptations, your tendencies, your identity, your acceptance, so that the future is not trying to seek those things because you already have them.

Speaker 2: 27:29

I want to ask you this You've coached a lot of pastors. I'm assuming that you have probably encouraged pastors and leaders to go through this, not just and you do a sort of a church history, but I'm guessing you've probably encouraged pastors to do this for themselves in their own lives. What have you found as you've? What are the things that stand in the way for a pastor doing that, for a church leader doing that, and what are the things that have helped someone who is resistant to this frou-frou kind of stuff help them to get a little bit more skin in the game?

Speaker 3: 28:09

Yeah, I mean I have helped a lot of pastors reflect on their family background and this is becoming less prevalent in time, for which I'm thankful. But I think that there was a generation of people where it was, or multiple generations of people was kind of like that's unimportant. You know who cares that I grew up unbelieving. You know it, didn't. You know that's unimportant. You know who cares that I grew up unbelieving. You know it, didn't. You know that's not who I am now and that's not what I'm interested in.

Speaker 3: 28:33

And I think that that kind of dynamic is going away, which I think is good, because I think scripturally you can very easily establish that things follow in families. I have a buddy whose mom got pregnant out of wedlock and when he was 20, he got a gal pregnant out of wedlock and that daughter that was born to him, that's right. When she was 20, she got pregnant out of wedlock. They subconsciously passed through that the way to deal with your loneliness is to have sex with somebody who you hope will love you. This is very present. It may not be that distortion in your family, but there's some distortion because we try and deal with the anxiety of living in a broken world as broken people among other broken people.

Speaker 3: 29:17

In some way or another, every family is dysfunctional. That's actually really important to realize. It's not just that family that was divorced Well, really important to realize. It's not just that family that was divorced Well, they're really dysfunctional. No, yours was too. Mine was very stable, despite my parents' background. They were very thoughtful, they were very loving. My brother and I have experienced the blessings of them being thoughtful in their parenting and we've. You know I've talked about this numerous times Our parents set us up for quote unquote success in the world and we've experienced that because of the stability that they gave us, that now we've been able to bring into our families and bless them in that way for to the next generation.

Speaker 2: 29:56

But but you, you would also say that your parents had their own dysfunction.

Speaker 3: 30:01

Absolutely. They were terrible with conflict and the effect that that had on me was that I chose to react to that by emotionally cutting myself off, and I've spent the last 35 years trying to become more emotionally attuned to things. Most of the people that I work with right now they're like what? There is no way that that was ever you and I'm like. I'm telling you that that was me. There are still many times, um, I coached a guy what's today? Uh, today's saturday.

Speaker 3: 30:31

I coached a guy on monday and we had a very intense, difficult conversation. He's coming to grapple with stuff about his growing up experience and I went on. I had lots to do on monday, lots of people to talk to and stuff to get done. I was getting ready to come on this trip because I've already been gone for four or five days from home. But on Tuesday morning driving to the airport, I cried for him and for his family and prayed for him because of how much he had to grapple with.

Speaker 3: 30:59

The emotion of it didn't hit me until the next day. I am grateful that the emotion of it hits me now, but I don't know that it will ever be contemporary. Some people have the ability to cry right there in the moment with somebody. That's pretty rare for me. I usually have the emotion the next day as close as I get to it. That's great, because going from numb to that is marvelous by comparison. So there are great gifts my parents gave us, but this one was because they were immature themselves emotionally and how to deal with difficult emotions. You know, that was the way that I reacted, was I cut myself off and now I had to learn how to grow up emotionally. But that has helped, because as I have become more attuned to my own emotions, I've also become much more attuned to other people's emotions, and so people now rightly perceive me I am a high empath, which is bizarro from where I started, but it's because the Lord can change us.

Speaker 3: 32:05

But you have to know what would maturity look like? How has your family affected you and what's the path to walk between where you are and what it would look like to be a maturing disciple of Christ, including in the shaping of the way that you intuitively react to things in your emotional life. Right, Because it's what you picked up in your family.

Speaker 2: 32:42

So, practically, let's say there's someone listening right now who you know. Okay, they're not fully convinced, but they're not totally turned off. What's one step? You would encourage them to take the first step to say, hey, just try this, see if you get something out of it. And if you do, maybe look into this further.

Speaker 3: 32:52

So I would look at the worst failures that you have and try and evaluate. Why did that happen? And I almost guarantee you that it's something that came out of the family that you grew up in. And I think once you have that first sort of like aha moment and you go, oh, the reason I blew up at this person, the reason I avoided that, the reason this pattern's there in my marriage, the reason that I struggle with whatever it is that you struggle with, that's not Jesus. When you feel anxious Could be food or sex or exercise or sleep or whatever people substitute all kinds of things for how to deal with the, the anxiousness that they feel inside, that's not going to jesus. Once you realize that, you go, oh, I got that honest from my family, then it sort of opens it up a little bit. How should they do that? Um?

Speaker 2: 33:48

I think this notebook and paper yes yeah.

Speaker 3: 33:50

So I think that, um, I think there's a couple of different ways. It kind of depends. Some people, um, can read a book and kind of come to an aha. Some people it's going to be in dialogue with a trusted friend, and notice I said notice how I said it may not be yet in dialogue with your spouse, because you may actually have picked up some bad patterns in relating to your spouse and trying to open up this conversation with them may not be goodness, it may reinforce bad things. Yeah, but somebody that you can trust to help draw this out of you.

Speaker 3: 34:23

And the way at least that I found that people helped me in the early stages of this was help me understand why and help sort of try and draw out of you why, why do you think you reacted that way? Where do you think that comes from? Did you ever see that pattern in your family? And that, if you have a trusted friend who can, or a counselor who could help draw that out of you, jared's recommendation about writing your life history, even just your own life history, is very, very instructive Because you will, simply, by the exercise of doing that, you'll remember stuff. You'll remember things that shaped you, especially painful things that shaped you that will give you hints as to oh, that's why I do that, and once you begin to have some of those ahas, you're going to realize how much your family shaped you, and there's really great things about the way your family shaped you. There are also difficult things, and they're the things that are probably biting you in the butt right now.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Okay, lightning round one book.

Speaker 3: 35:30

You'd recommend to go along with this yeah, so, pete's, because there is emotionally healthy discipleship the thing you're working on right now for yourself yeah, my uh grandparents I told you, um struggle with alcohol.

Speaker 3: 35:46

It has been a temptation since I got to be of age for me to be tempted to use alcohol in ways that are not helpful. It's not surprising that that's the case. There's probably something that everybody uses, even approval, so that's something where I'm trying to be very, very attentive yeah, to my relationship. Now I'm a presbyterian, alcohol is okay for us. It may don't be scandalized by that, but it's yeah. My relationship uh with alcohol is a very important thing because you cannot get drunk, which is absolute disobedience and I don't get drunk Purposefully because I know that's disobedience but you can not get drunk but still use alcohol wrongly, and that's exceedingly important. So I'm paying attention to that.

Speaker 2: 36:35

Pineapple belongs on pizza or not.

Speaker 3: 36:37

My wife says yes, we are in a broad disagreement about it.

Speaker 2: 36:45

So we've got Scazzaro's book. I'm going to throw one out there. Milan and Kay Yurkovich wrote how we Love, which I would recommend. If you're looking for a book to look at to help you come up with some questions to ask as you're looking at your own life, I would recommend this book. It takes a family systems approach and attachment theory and, from a from a christian biblical perspective, helps us understand how we have been shaped, by how we have experienced comfort. I gave a. The first sermon I ever gave I may have shared this with you was out of second corinthians one. You've been comforted with a comfort and we comfort out of that. I love the word comfort there in Greek. What it always makes me think of is that coach on the sideline who's calling out to his player you can do it, move this way. We've got this. I'm here for you. It's not just sympathy. It's sympathy, it's exhortation, it's instruction, it's presence, because that shapes us so deeply. I would encourage that.

Speaker 1: 38:00

Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching. Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them. We believe that there's only one fully sufficient reason that, this day dawned, jesus is still gathering his people and he's using his church to do it. When pastors or churches feel stuck, our team of coaches refresh their hope in the gospel and help them clarify their strategy. If you have questions or a need, we'd love to hear from you. For more information. Go to our website, flourishcoachingorg, or send an email to info at flourishcoachingorg. You can also connect with us on Facebook X and YouTube.

Speaker 1: 38:38

We appreciate when you like, subscribe, rate or review our show whenever you're listening. It can be hard for churches to ask for help, so when our clients tell us who referred them, we'll send a small gift to say thanks. All music for this show has been licensed and was composed and created by artists. The Church Renewal Podcast was directed and produced by Jeremy Seferati in association with Flourish Coaching, with the goal of equipping and encouraging your church to flourish wherever God has called you. Bye for now.