The Unpacking: Whole-Life Discipleship, Part 1

Open the original episode on Substack for the synchronized transcript.

0:04 Bye.

0:11 Greetings and welcome to episode three of the rebooted Faithful Presence podcast. So glad you could join us. I'm your host, Michael Langer, an ordained minister and founder of Faithful Presence, a ministry in Washington, D.C., equipping servants and leaders working in government to flourish in their faith and work. It is good to be back,

0:30 but let me just tell you, as the Grateful Dead once wrote, what a long, strange trip it's been. Between these last two podcasts, it seems like all chaos has reigned in my life. seasonal allergies, which I'm still adjusting to in rural Virginia, scheduling. There was some travel that was unexpected.

0:49 My mother-in-law came to visit and is still here and love her to death. So glad she could be here. But about four or five days after she came, she fell down the stairs. And what we didn't realize then is that she had broken her hip.

1:02 And so a week and a half ago, we ended up going to the doctor. Doctor said, yep, it's broken and we need to do a hip replacement. That happened last Tuesday. And so that has taken up a fair amount of my time and my wife's time and reorganizing our schedule. And then my dad,

1:19 who's a disabled veteran back in Iowa, has also had some health issues that have required my attention. And one of the things that I have learned over the course of the past 15 years in ministry is that priorities matter and personal life matters. And we have really wanted to focus on that.

1:35 And so the podcast took a backseat, but we're back. Here's what our plan is. In order to catch up, what we're going to do is release four, you heard me right, four podcasts in in the next two weeks. So last time what we discussed was mainly about Washington, the situation, the problem,

1:53 the implications of what is broken in Washington, and then the need for addressing those. And we talked about how Faithful Presence seeks to do that. What we want to do over the is kind of unpack both our mission and vision statements. Now, our mission statement, which is really what do you do,

2:17 and that is what we are attempting to do anyway, is provide whole life discipleship for the whole of life to the whole of Washington. And a portion of our last podcast focused on what it means to do that in the whole of Washington. What we really want to drive into this particular episode is our vision.

2:39 How do we go about accomplishing our mission? And here's our vision. Again, equipping all servants and leaders in our nation's capital to flourish as they participate in Christ's mission of making all things new through intentional, spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, cultural, and missional discipleship. and to resource the local church in fostering an appropriate biblical approach to

3:11 political engagement among their members. And so here's what our plan is. What we're going to do is we're going to look at each one of those seven facets of whole life discipleship over the course of the next two podcasts, both of which will be released this week. And let me just tell you a little bit about this.

3:32 Spiritual discipleship is critical, and the missional aspect of discipleship is also critical, and those are two appropriately very much talked about aspects of discipleship within the Church. But it's these facets in the middle—emotional, relational, vocational, ideological, and cultural—that I believe are just as important— And we want to focus on those.

3:58 There's not really any, I would say, any rhyme or reason to why they're ordered that way. But we are going to talk about each one of them in the order that I've laid them out there. And then the other thing I want to say is, in a previous podcast,

4:10 what I'd said is we're going to do all of these at once. And then in the subsequent episode, what we would do is I would talk about how each one of those kind of came to be and through my own personal experience and

4:24 What I think would be easier and kind of maybe make more contextual sense is to talk about each one of them separately and at the same time tell a little bit of my personal story as we move through each one of these. So with that said, let's begin. I want to start with spiritual discipleship, and of course,

4:44 all discipleship starts here because all discipleship starts with receiving the gospel. This is what Jesus says to his disciples as he's about to ascend to the right hand of his Father in heaven after his earthly ministry, after he's been crucified and risen from the dead and spent time with his disciples.

5:05 He says to them this from Matthew 28. I'm sure it's familiar to you. He says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

5:22 And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. And what we're talking about here is the wedding of both discipleship and conversion. What we're talking about is this radical transfer of our position from one kingdom into And both Paul and Peter address this in their letters.

5:45 In Colossians 1, verses 13 and 14, Paul writes this to the Colossian church. So Paul is talking about being transferred from the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of his beloved Son. Peter says something very similar in 1 Peter 2, verse 9. He says, You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,

6:19 a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. So what I believe here is important is that placing a priority— on engaging seekers, and seekers are those people who are perhaps interested in the claims of Christ,

6:41 or they're examining what Christianity may have to say about various things. This is important, as is engaging skeptics, people who maybe believe they know what Christianity stands for and have rejected it, or just are not interested at all. But in order to make disciples, we have to engage seekers and skeptics,

7:05 because part of making a disciple is this conversion, this being transferred from one kingdom into another. And so it's not just about focusing on people who are already professing Christ. and teaching them to obey all that he has commanded. It is also about reaching out to new people, seekers and skeptics.

7:25 And this makes sense for me because my conversion story, I did not grow up in a Christian home. I came to faith at 17 years old. I was maybe for a time a skeptic, maybe a seeker, but I think more of a skeptic. I'd had a lot of kind of tragedy in my life.

7:44 I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about Christianity and about God. And I became a Christian in Rocky Mountain National Park in 1984. I went with my senior class trip led by Dick Peters, my history teacher. And we ended up in Glacier Basin Campground there in Rocky Mountain National Park.

8:05 And right next to us was a Baptist youth retreat. And that night, I got invited by some very attractive young ladies to attend their campfire, at which point their youth pastor laid out the gospel in a way that I had not heard before, but in a way that made absolute sense to me.

8:24 I gave my life to Christ. I professed faith in Christ. I repented of my sins. I began to follow Christ, and man, oh man, I was on fire. Got involved in an organization called Campus Life. I started going to church.

8:40 I got a bunch of friends, and it was amazing, but by the end of my senior year, I That flame had precipitously faded. I ended up going to the University of Iowa in 1985, changed my major multiple times, and finally settled on binge drinking and was able to complete that course of

9:01 studies about midway through my second semester when the registrar just wrote me a letter and said, you know what, I think you've done all you needed to do here. You should go find anything else to do. And I did, which included going to community college for four years of night school and then

9:16 going back to the University of Iowa. But there's this wonderful scene. So there's this wonderful scene in one of my favorite movies, High Fidelity. It's got John Cusack in it, Lisa Bonet, Sarah Gilbert, got Tim Robbins, Lily Taylor. It's a fantastic film from, oh, I think it's about 2000. John Cusack, the main character,

9:39 one of my favorite actors and Cub fan, stars in this film as a small record shop owner. And Jack Black is one of his quote-unquote employees, and they're having this conversation one day, and Jack Black says, I wonder, is it better to burn out? or fade away.

9:58 And if I was John Cusack, my response would be, well, actually, it's better to endure. It's better to endure. And if it is better to endure, then what we need is whole life discipleship for the whole of life in the whole of Washington, where we are asking Christians to live as elect exiles in a posture of faithful

10:21 presence where While they participate in God's mission of making all things new. It is exhausting work. It requires endurance. And that's why we want to come alongside them. To help them proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. But for this to work... requires intentional discipleship.

10:45 And it's this very intentional discipleship that we see in Jesus's ministry. It starts as Jesus is walking and he calls his disciples. This call to discipleship starts with Jesus saying, follow me. And over the course of three years of teaching and learning, It ends in Acts chapter 1 with Jesus saying to them, you will be my witnesses.

11:10 So there is in the ministry of Jesus a three-year process of discipleship for the 12, or at least for the 11. When I grew up in Iowa, there was a grocery store there called Hy-Vee where there's a helpful smile in every aisle. And one of the things about Hy-Vee is no matter who you are,

11:30 no matter what your background is, you start as a bagger and you work your way up from there. There is no jumping the line, so to speak, at Hy-Vee. And Washington, D.C. is very similar. There is no, usually, no jumping the line. You normally start maybe as an intern or you start as just a legislative assistant.

11:50 One of the things you're doing is just answering the phone, listening to people gripe and complain. You're moving between offices, gathering signatures, doing really... kind of the lowest tier of labor, not that it's unimportant labor, but it's kind of the lowest tier of labor on the hill, and you slowly work your way up.

12:11 There is a process of learning how to do what it is that you are called to do, and that is exactly what we're talking about with whole life discipleship. And this process is unpacked by Peter, who had actually endured this training process himself. He writes in 1 Peter about this series of contrasts he sees in discipleship.

12:36 In 1 Peter 2, verses 2 and 5, he says, Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. And here he's talking, this first contrast is about our cravings. Peter's contrasting the worldly cravings,

12:58 this vice list from Galatians that we've talked about, of jealousy, envy, greed, malice, all of which are often, not universally, not always, but often seen as in the political context here in Washington, D.C. Using these actually often results in positive results. And so what Peter's doing here is he's contrasting worldly cravings or maybe

13:26 worldly vices with spiritual cravings. He says, crave pure spiritual milk. The question, of course, is what is pure spiritual milk? And I think pure spiritual milk is not just the word, but is all of the teachings of Christ, of walking with him, of learning, of learning about him, about how to live in this world,

13:49 not just through scripture, but through his people, through the church. And so Peter's asking them to contrast their worldly cravings with spiritual cravings and to long for the pure spiritual milk. You know, when I was little, I loved Captain Crunch Crunch Berries, Captain Crunch Peanut Butter, but here's the thing.

14:12 Although they're part of a healthy breakfast when combined with juice, toast, milk, all of which are the healthy part of the breakfast, the Captain Crunch is not because it's basically... sugar as you grow into adulthood you realize that you really just can't eat captain

14:29 crunch all your life if you want to be healthy you have to eat things that taste like gravel sometimes like grape nuts which is actually a wonderful breakfast if you put a little sugar on it. So the question here then is, what are you feasting on? What are your cravings?

14:42 And then Peter wants them to make a second contrast. He continues, he says, as you come to him, a living stone, he's talking about Jesus, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house. And here's this second contrast.

15:02 He's contrasting our identity. He's asking them to consider... What is being built, and who is doing the building? Are we building something for our legacy, for our empire? And do we see that we are the person doing the building? And in this phrase, you see that it is a complete reorientation of our perspective that Peter's calling for.

15:27 It says, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, which means, one, we are not the builder, we are the brick, and two, we are being built up into a spiritual house again. for christ not for our own legacy not for our own empire and we have an excellent

15:49 picture of this an illustration of this in genesis 11 and genesis 12. in genesis 11 which many of you know is the tower of babel story you have god's people who have been kicked out of the garden because of the sin of adam but yet the the creation mandate has not changed

16:08 They are still supposed to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth, to rule it and subdue it. So that has not changed. They're supposed to fill the earth. But in Genesis chapter 11, it says that they come to this valley of Shinar and they're like, why would we want to go anywhere else? It's awesome here.

16:26 You know what we should do? We should build a tower to the heaven. so that we can make a name for ourselves. That's what it says in Genesis chapter 11. So you have these people who have basically decided, we understand what God's purpose is for us, but we don't like it.

16:42 What we want to do is we want to make our own name great. We want to stay here. We want to do what we want to do the way we want to do it, and we want want to make a name for ourselves by building a tower to the heavens, to reach up to the heavens,

16:58 to basically impress not just themselves, but God, which if you think about it is insanity. God is not impressed by anything that they're going to do. And so you have then in Genesis chapter 12, which seems a bit like you're getting whiplash because all of a sudden there's this guy, Abram.

17:17 The Lord comes to him and says, Abram, go. Go from your family, from the place that you know, and go to a land that I will show you. And this is a foreshadowing, of course, of Christ. But what we see here is that the point that God is making to the people of Genesis,

17:33 both those in the Tower of Babel as well as Abram, is, you are here for me. I am building something wonderful, and I am using you to do it, and you are a brick. And that doesn't mean you're insignificant. It means you're unbelievably important and have a wonderful role to play.

18:03 But one of the things that it also uncovers is when he says you are being built up as a spiritual house, we have to recognize that we are not the only brick, that the weight that is born upon us as a brick is the same weight that is born by those next to us, those underneath,

18:20 those above us. Craving pure spiritual milk is important because the strength of us as a brick, what we are able to endure matters. And so we need to take our discipleship seriously, as well as the discipleship of those around us. And again, you know, to focus this back on Washington,

18:39 there are all kinds of pressures in Washington to build your own empire, to build your own kingdom, to focus on yourself, to use other bricks to serve your purposes. And so again, I would ask that what we do here is assess not only our cravings,

18:58 but whether those cravings are helping or harming our role as bricks in what God is building. And then this third question, this third aspect of discipleship that Peter is contrasting is our purpose. He says, as he goes on in 1 Peter, He says that your role is to be a holy priesthood,

19:19 to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And here the contrast is between having a worldly purpose, building up our name, and a spiritual purpose. which is to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And here Peter is not just talking about what happens in worship on Sunday. He's talking about all of life.

19:44 He's talking about the way we live our lives in our families, in our communities, in our neighborhood, and in our work. He's talking about how we relate to other people. He's talking about everything that we do being offered as a spiritual sacrifice, as an act of worship, which takes our work,

20:04 which maybe we tend to see as futile or unrecognized, uncelebrated. And it says, no. It doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about your work. Your work is a spiritual sacrifice. So this spiritual discipleship, this matters. This has got to be the starting place of all whole life discipleship. But here's the problem. But here's the problem.

20:28 We now have a generation of believers who are steeped in what Christian Smith refers to as moral therapeutic deism. And what I want to do here is I just want to read you a section out of a book by Kendra Creasy-Dean, who talks about this. And here she's actually quoting Christian Smith.

20:49 And here's what Christian Smith says about moral therapeutic deism. He says, moral therapeutic deism is, in the context of our teenagers' own generations and denomination, in that context, it is actively displacing the substantive traditions of faith, of conservative, black, and mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism in the United States.

21:16 It may be the new mainstream American religious faith for our culturally post-Christian, individualistic, mass-consumer, capitalistic society. And basically, here's what Christian Smith is saying. The church has really not done a good job of discipling its children, its youth, the people that have been entrusted to it to disciple.

21:41 And so what we've ended up with is a generation of people who see Christianity as important for kind of moralism, being good people. It makes them feel good about themselves, thus the therapeutic aspect. And deism, which is basically that, yeah, God exists, but he's kind of out there doing something and doesn't really relate to me.

22:03 There's not really a personal relationship. It's a disconnected relationship. And so this idea of moral therapeutic deism is devastating to the role of Christianity in our culture today. So Kenda Creasy-Dean, in this book, what she says is, in Almost Christian, and again, you need to keep in mind that this is a 10-year-old study. Kenda Creasy-Dean says...

22:29 The most likely explanation for moral therapeutic deism is that we reap what we sow. We have received from teenagers exactly what we have asked for. Assent, not conviction. Compliance, not faith. Young people invest in religion precisely without. what they think it's worth, and if they think the church is worthy of benign whateverism and no more,

22:57 then the indictment falls on us. And again, this is 10 years ago. These people were in youth groups 10 years ago. These people are working on the Hill and in government agencies and in think tanks and in policy centers now. People who think that what the church is is worthy of benign whateverism.

23:19 And so when we think about the faith or maybe we say worship, Why aren't the people in Washington acting more like Christians? The reason is the church has failed them. And so we reap what we sow. Discipleship starts in churches, which is part of the reason why Faithful Presence wants to very actively work to

23:42 resource local churches in fostering a biblical approach to political engagement among their members. And that requires deep, deep discipleship. Douglas Hyde, who is a former communist who converted to Christianity in England in the earlier parts of the 20th century, and as he was exploring the claims of Christianity as a former communist and a

24:05 former communist leader in England, one of the things that perplexed him is why there wasn't the type of training in Christianity. that there was in communism, because communism wanted the whole of a person's life from morning until evening. And one of the observations he makes in his book, Dedication and Leadership,

24:25 is communism asked for the whole man and got it. Christianity asks for far less and also gets it. A book that I'd love to recommend to you is a book called The Drama of Discipleship by a dear friend of mine, Dr. Greg Perry, who was my professor when I was in seminary as a New Testament professor.

24:44 He is now the vice president of Third Millennium Ministries that seeks to offer theological education to people around the world for no charge. and he is the president of Third Millennium Seminary. He wrote a wonderful book called The Drama of Discipleship, which is really about how do we as actors, if we see ourselves as actors,

25:07 how do we properly fill our roles? How do we know what our role is in the cast and maybe the grand narrative of redemption? How do we know what our role is, what the director expects from us, so that when opportunities come, for us to improvise, we can improvise appropriately. And then on this topic of discipleship,

25:27 in an upcoming episode, one of these episodes that we're going to be releasing over the course of the next two weeks, we're going to talk to a friend of mine, a seminary friend, seminary colleague, a person who I have known for 16, 17 years, Reverend Patrick Allen, who pastors Chapel Gate Presbyterian Church here in the DMV area,

25:48 he used to be the youth pastor there and is now the pastor in charge of discipleship. And we're going to talk to him about this segue, this important kind of role that happens between youth and adult discipleship and what he has seen over his time there. So spiritual discipleship is an ongoing and intentional process of participating in

26:13 the Christian formation of individuals that God has called as ambassadors of his kingdom to serve and lead in his mission. In other words, spiritual discipleship is necessary but not sufficient for whole life discipleship. Okay, and so now we're going to start to unpack the rest of these, and again, the order really doesn't matter. I mean,

26:38 the order does matter for us for printing purposes, but I think you could take any of these five and move them around. It's kind of like a sandwich. You've got to have bread on both sides, but the way you stack stuff in the middle, kind of up to you,

26:48 but the way we're going to take them is the way that they are in our vision statement, which is spiritual, emotional, relational, vocational, and ideological cultural and missional discipleship so the next one we want to talk about here is emotional discipleship and just quite simply emotional discipleship takes seriously the narratives of scripture emotional discipleship is essential it

27:13 is overlooked it is talking about this intersection between mind and soul and it's using scripture and scripture says God's people are a mess emotionally. God's people are struggling with sins of envy, of lust, of greed, all manner of things. And they are struggling with mental health issues, biochemical imbalances, some because they've been sinned against. Think of David.

27:43 David lusted after Bathsheba. That led to murder. That led to his depression and his confusion. And a number of psalms, there's 150 psalms, and a number of these psalms not only examine, but they actually encourage us to talk about our mental health. Psalm 42 and Psalm 43,

28:07 which I think go together in a very particular and unique way, and we'll talk about that probably in an upcoming podcast. But three times during that psalm, the psalmist says, why so downcast, O my soul? Why in turmoil within me? There's even an assessment that happens in the middle of that where the psalmist says,

28:26 my soul is downcast. that there is a deep sense of depression. He says, your waves and your breakers are washing over me. Basically, I can't endure it anymore. That's Psalm 42 and 43. Psalm 88 says this, darkness is my closest friend. So if somebody tells you that the Bible doesn't speak to depression,

28:50 They are just absolutely wrong because the Bible is filled with stories of people struggling with their emotional health. The prophet Elijah went out into the wilderness because he wanted to die, because he was so overwhelmed and exhausted by what he had been called to do. You have Peter's insecurity.

29:10 He himself constantly trying to prove himself to everybody around him because he was so in need of affirmation. Look at it this way. In Genesis, if you take your whole Bible, if you've got a Bible, you want to grab it, you probably don't. Maybe you're on the bus, the red line, whatever it is. But here's the thing.

29:28 Genesis 1 and 2 is mankind in the garden. Revelation 21 and 22 is mankind in the new heavens and new earth. In both of those settings, God is dwelling with us. There is no pain. There is no more death, no more crying, no more sadness, no more malice, no more envy, no more manipulation of people,

29:47 no more self-centeredness. There's no more sin. Everything between Genesis 3 and Revelation 20 is where we live. And so if somebody says to you, how are you doing? The answer, I'm not doing okay, is completely fine. And not only that, it's kind of expected. Depression is certainly not our normative state, but it is absolutely real.

30:11 One of my frequent conversation partners, at least in print, is a gentleman by the name of Chuck DeGroat, who is an ordained minister. He's also a clinical therapist. His books have just helped me tremendously in life. And in his book, Wholeheartedness, Busyness, exhaustion, and healing the divided self, he says this. It's about his own journey. He says,

30:34 when I took the risk to get counseling during seminary, my inner critic chimed in again. Chuck, you're being silly and stupid. Therapy? Really? Get over it. And yet, something, some other deeper voice told me to stand in the contradictory feeling. When I started my counseling sessions, first I blamed my parents. Therapy often goes in this direction,

30:58 and it's often necessary to talk about our family of origin. and its impact on us with a wise counselor. But sooner or later, we realize that mom is no longer standing over us demanding that we clean our room, and dad is no longer sighing with disapproval when we can't figure out how to start the mower.

31:18 In fact, we recognize that the voice isn't outside of us, but within us. It's become integrated into what one writer calls our own internal family system. The many parts of us that do battle vying for the lead role in our inner being. Eventually, we need to address this inner bully, our inner critic, But often we don't.

31:43 We medicate it. We drink too much to numb its impact. Sometimes we even bless it in the name of some distorted version of religious duty, grateful that we can beat ourselves into obedience. At other times, we name it as an enemy. We do this in some distorted version of a spiritual warfare theology,

32:02 believing the voice to be a demon or a spiritual menace. Or we may overcompensate with a kind of libertine, throw caution to the wind approach saying, I don't need rules and responsibilities and duties. It is my life and I'll do what I want. But treating the inner critic as an enemy only serves to empower it more.

32:22 So how do we address this inner critic? Researchers are discovering that compassion is the key. University of Texas professor Kristen Neff, like Brene Brown, devotes her life to understanding our complicated lives. And like Brown, she believes compassion. that we're exhausting ourselves by attempting to perfect ourselves. There is so much more gold in that book.

32:45 I would just absolutely commend it to you. But what you see here is an ordained minister, a reformed minister, talking about our... spiritual, emotional health and needing to work through it and to talk through it and to take it very seriously. So here's why this matters. We have people coming to Washington.

33:07 Most people who come here desperately want to make a difference. They want to make things better. They desire to serve and lead, but that desire ends up being subverted and twisted by their own emotional brokenness and By trying to constantly fill a void that was intended only for Christ, they're carrying unresolved family of origin issues,

33:28 emotional and sexual abuse, chemical dependencies, and other mental health struggles. All of these have just completely skyrocketed in the last 10 years, and absolutely, positively, COVID has just amplified all of this. And what's more, we need our leaders to be healthy and to not wound people any more than they're already wounded because those people need help.

33:52 We need emotionally healthy leaders. And it is very, very hard to play your role if you're sick. And so for me, this facet of emotional discipleship, it's very personal. I won't get into all the details on this episode, but in 2018, when I moved to Washington, D.C.,

34:07 I was very excited to start ministry in Washington after spending a number of years doing pastoral ministry. But I also moved here planning to die. I had convinced myself that I had a pretty advanced form of cancer. I was having a lot of abdominal pain and had been having it for a number of months,

34:26 almost about a year and a half. And I was sitting in... in a room filled with pastors. I think this was probably in October. I was sitting in a room filled with pastors, and a therapist, a counselor named Diane Langberg, had come to talk to this group of pastors, including myself,

34:43 about the important role of properly addressing child sexual abuse as it happens in the church, and the importance of reaching out to the police and to proper authorities and not trying to manage it yourself like you see And we see so many churches have tried to do with just absolutely disastrous impact.

35:01 And what Diane Langberg talked about was adverse childhood experiences. This is a clinically researched, peer-developed, scientifically studied approach to identifying trauma in children. There are 10 questions on this questionnaire. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to read them to you.

35:22 And what I want you to do is just kind of think, how do I relate to any of these? Are there any of these that are true of me? Because that's what I was doing as I'm sitting in this room taking notes about how to minister to people who've been abused. She's saying, listen, here's why this matters.

35:41 Because abuse does psychological damage to children. It actually rewires their brain. And that sexual abuse of a child, is one of 10 components of an ACEs score. And here's the question. Under the age of 18, in your home, question number one, did you feel that you didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes,

36:04 or had no one to protect or take care of you? Did you lose a parent through divorce, abandonment, death, or any other reason? Did you live with anyone who was depressed, mentally ill, or attempted suicide? Did you live with anyone who had a problem drinking or using drugs, including prescription drugs?

36:29 Did your parents or adults in your home ever hit, punch, beat, or threaten to harm each other? Did you live with anyone who went to jail or prison? Did a parent or adult in your home ever swear at you, insult you, or put you down?

36:47 Did a parent or adult in your home ever hit, beat, kick, or physically hurt you in any way? Did you feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were special? Did you experience unwanted sexual contact such as fondling or intercourse? Okay,

37:08 so perhaps I should have mentioned that this is going to be a little bit of a maybe bordering on our podcast, but I can't imagine a lot of school children listening to it. And so here's the thing. About half of the population has at least one ACE score. And the number goes up.

37:27 Once you get to four or more, however, the number of early deaths because of cancer, drug addiction, imprisonment, homelessness, mental illness, all those factors just go up exponentially to the point of near unfunctioning. People live in basically what's called a permanent stress situation.

37:51 Unfortunately, I'm in the top half of 1% of the country because my ACEs score is eight. I'm not going to tell you which one of those are true of me, but eight of them are. And what I didn't know when I moved here was that I was falling apart because of my ACEs score.

38:10 So I eventually went into the doctor believing absolutely that he was going to diagnose me with an advanced form of cancer. And I was kind of looking forward to it because, quite frankly, I was just done. I was just exhausted and tired of being stressed out all the time. And I am so thankful to this doctor who,

38:28 for 45 minutes, just questioned me about my family medical history. And then he wanted to know about my family's mental health history and my childhood. And at the end of that, he said, you know, I would bet my entire medical license on the fact that you are actually physically healthy.

38:46 but that you are suffering from a severe anxiety disorder caused by complex trauma. And within a week, I was on 100 milligrams of Zoloft. Over the course of the past three years, I have gone through three rounds of therapy. And it has, honestly, most days I feel like I am living somebody else's life. I basically was,

39:09 for the first 52 years of my life, a highly dysfunctional PTSD survivor with an acute anxiety disorder who somehow had managed to stay married and have a job. I was helping many, but my life was literally falling apart and I felt like dying every day. And so I am very, very thankful for that.

39:28 for people who care about people's emotional health, and I'm aware that there is Christian pushback and skepticism on this, and I want to address that. There is something called common grace and general revelation. Things like cognitive behavior therapy, family systems therapy, attachment disorder therapy,

39:45 and even trauma therapy come to us not out of some mystical New Age world, but But out of common grace and general revelation, much of this has been clinically and analytically studied. It's been peer-reviewed in published journals. I want to just commend to you several wonderful books on the topic of emotional health. Peter Scazzaro,

40:06 who I love to read, has written two great books, Emotionally Healthy Leadership and Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. Chuck DeGroat has written a number of books, including Out of Egypt and Wholeheartedness. Henry Nowen, a pastor, written, again, a number of books. One of my favorites on this topic is Wounded Healer,

40:25 which is about people in ministry who are wounded doing ministry. Any of the works by Diane Langberg on adverse childhood experiences would be helpful. And then Bessel van der Kolk's book, The Body Keeps the Score, is a book about how complex trauma actually impacts the brain and the way the brain

40:46 wires and the way the brain processes information and the way that is impacted negatively if those trauma events happen as children. All that to say, it is okay to say, I am not okay, all right? Okay, so the last one I want to talk about today is this relationship between emotional discipleship and relational discipleship.

41:09 Throughout Scripture, we see these pictures of how important relational discipleship is. In the garden, we were living in unity with God. It was beautiful. Adam was loving his spouse. The spouse was loving her husband. They were in perfect unity with God, even in their work, in their vocations. But through the fall, through disobedience,

41:31 all of that is disrupted, and mankind began living in disunity with everyone, both with their spouse, with those around them, and with God. Adam went from saying, this is flesh of my flesh, to basically trying to blame the whole thing on her and on God by saying, this woman that you gave me is responsible for this.

41:51 How quickly things changed relationally. You have their own children. Cain kills Abel. You have Jacob stealing Esau's birthright. Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery. David kills Bathsheba's husband to cover up an affair. His children rape their own sister. Relational sin unravels until the entire kingdom falls apart. And then you get to the disciples. In Mark chapter 10,

42:24 which is one of my just favorite chapters in the entire Bible, you see all of this relational chaos going on. You have James and John coming to Jesus saying, hey man, uh it occurs to us that we've basically given up everything to follow you so we

42:41 want you to do for us whatever we ask and jesus says well what do you want me to do for you and james and john say yeah well we would like to sit at your right and left hand and of course jesus's response is famous he says you know you don't

42:53 understand what you're asking for that's already been appointed for two guys because i'm going to go to jerusalem i'm going to die and there are going to be people on my right and left hand it's not going to be you two bozos

43:01 But what you see here is that they were willing to just go directly to Jesus to ask to be advanced, to ask to have positions of authority. After spending three years with Jesus, they thought this is our opportunity to get ahead of everybody else. And probably one of the reasons they went to Jesus is they're like, look,

43:20 Peter is constantly showing off. We've got to put something in there. We've got to try to get some of the glory that Peter seems to be getting for ourselves. And then as Jesus is working through this kind of, what you call it, kangaroo court, so to speak, as he's about to be judged and crucified,

43:37 Pilate gives the people an option. He says, you know, you can pick Barabbas or you can pick Jesus. And you know that the people pick Barabbas. And the question is, why do they pick him? Because Barabbas was an insurrectionist. Because if they wanted to throw off the yoke of Rome,

43:51 it seemed like getting in bed with Barabbas was the way to do that. Not Jesus. He didn't do what they had asked for. And then you move into the letters and you see the letters to the Corinthians, which was a church that was planted by Paul that was completely messed up,

44:08 filled with factions and infighting and people showing off. And what we see is that just in general, the church is a mess. That the instruction of God and how to worship him that is given in Leviticus, love your neighbor as yourself, and is repeated by Jesus, seems to be the thing that we have the most trouble with.

44:28 And then as you do a deeper dive into the New Testament, you see Paul and Peter both talking about our relationships in Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter. Both Paul and Peter address what are called house tables. this how to live in society. And house tables, it should be said, was a common thing.

44:47 Many families in the first century had a list of house tables of rules and responsibilities of how to live as a virtuous member of the Roman Empire. They had them mounted in their house. And so when Peter and Paul are talking about the relationship between citizens who are governed and those who govern,

45:11 between husbands and wives, between masters and slaves, between parents and children. They are addressing common kind of ways of living in society that were well known, except they were recasting them in the terms of Christianity with specific focus on people who were on the downhill side of these power differentials. Citizens, not the governed. Wives, not husbands.

45:35 Slaves, not masters. Children, not parents. And while some of them do mention these other people, the focus is on the people on the lower end of those relationships. And what is amazing about these is the fact that Christianity was even addressing women and slaves was absolutely unheard of in the Roman Empire.

45:56 And so this is why this matters. Those serving and leading in government are operating in a world filled with uneven power differentials, where relationships are used as a commodity for gain and agendas. And what we need to find is peace in our role, peace in our role as the

46:15 actors, actors in the grand narrative of redemption, at peace in our roles. And as Greg Perry, Dr. Greg Perry talks about in his book, that we know how to act appropriately in our role. And what this means is that relational discipleship is essential for working in our nation's capital because Washington, D.C. is a city built on relationships.

46:38 And in order to do that, we need to have a biblical approach to conflict resolution and a humble posture of love towards our neighbor. Now, about 70 years ago, sociologist Robert Nesbitt wrote in a book, The Quest for Community, a passage that I think is very applicable here. I'm going to read this to you.

46:58 It's going to be the last thing I'm going to read to you during this, but I think it speaks directly to what we're talking about here with relationships and and how they impact our role as disciples. Here's what he writes. He said, there is a higher rate of suicide among Protestants, among urban dwellers, among industrial workers,

47:19 among the unmarried, among, in short, all those whose lives are characterized by relative tenuousness of social ties. whose lives are characterized by the relative tenuousness of social ties. That line is important. He goes on to say, when the individual is thrown back upon his own inner resources,

47:42 when he loses the sense of moral and social involvement with others, He becomes prey to the sensations of anxiety and guilt. Self-destruction is frequently his only way out. At the present time, in all the social sciences, the various synonyms of alienation have a foremost place in studies of human relationships.

48:08 investigations of the unattached the marginal the obsessive the normless and the isolated individual all testify to the central place occupied by the hypothesis of alienation in contemporary social science in addition to that that's 70 years ago and very little has changed if anything it's just been amplified it seems like

48:32 A recent Barna study on relational health said that the number of people who say they are struggling with a recent broken relationship and that that relationship brokenness is having a significant impact on their daily life is over 50%. And so now consider the implications of navigating Washington ill-equipped

48:53 relationally to even be involved in trying to navigate policy discussions because you are relationally a wreck. And thankfully, the Bible says much about how to pursue good and address healthy relationships. And this is what is necessary. Focusing on our emotional and relational health is what is necessary if...

49:16 Our goal is to do what Peter says, which is to grow up into our salvation. And this is one of the reasons why at Faithful Presence, one of the things that we absolutely want to do in the future is to hire a clinical therapist on our staff to come alongside people who need help and need somebody to

49:37 talk to who's a professional. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to put a placeholder right here, and we're going to come back to this in our next podcast. Next week, God willing, we will discuss the remaining four facets of whole life discipleship, vocational, ideological, cultural, and missional.

49:57 as well as the evolving role each has played in my own life and journey. If you enjoyed this podcast, give us a review to help us out with those algorithms which help more people find us. We'd love to hear from you. Drop us a line. You can find us on our website, faithfulpresence.org. Until next time,

50:14 I'm Michael Langer saying, may our Father make you one as he and his Son are one, so that the world will know that he loves them and sent his Son for them. Amen. See you next time.