[Music] welcome to the being known podcast with my friend dr kirk thompson and my friend the most beautiful man in the world pepper sweetie we are here to discover and explore what it means to be truly known by the most beautiful man in the world i i just i just listen i'm gonna bring back dr desire that's all i gotta say because he's he's around oh my gosh oh my goodness it's great to see you today kurt man it's good to see you i understand you got so we're recording on march 10th 10th 11th 11th yeah 11 yeah yeah um and you got weather coming it's yeah it's getting it's getting close to spring but winter's not giving it up it you know every it's crazy here because last saturday um nell and i took this amazing walk it was you know we're in t-shirts it's 70 something degrees and beautiful and then this saturday it's going to be 18 degrees and it's going to snow tonight and then next week it's in the 70s again so it's just this you know this battle between happens every year between uh winter and summer that is spring and it's just a it's a fight that happens and the front line of that pitched battle is covington kentucky it is right there right there that's the battle of the bulge right there god's country right on yeah well hey um just for our uh for our audience like we we know that also um we're missing we may we may we don't know if amy's gonna join us today at the end of our conversation she's joining us there she is giving her the option i wonder because like you know i mean she had foot surgery yeah and i'm thinking like and she said that she wasn't sure if she was going to be able to join us or not and i'm like what a pansy like how like like no commitment no i mean and it's her foot i mean right it's her foot i mean it's like my like my dad wisely would say it's too far from your heart to kill you i'll go even further it's not her foot it's her toe wow it's her turn a little yeah i mean yeah i i just yeah and i mean like and i'm thinking like look she so so you know she had this procedure surgery i mean so it's not you know it's surgery but i mean like look she was asleep the whole time like how bad can it be like you're not even awake for it's not like you suffer i think you're asleep right i'd like to have a nap in the middle of the day i would too right she came home she said she was sleepy you know when she came home like wow i wish i could have that life all right i can't if i i can't afford to be sleepy you know in the middle of the day right yeah right well she's she's going to join us uh if you are uh watching on youtube she will be here uh at the uh at the end of our recording here today yes whether she likes it or not that's right if we can't get as far as amy is concerned we can't get to the end of our recording soon enough fast enough exactly dang yeah so today yeah yeah go ahead so today we are uh taking on trauma okay first of all we are in the middle of this season this fourth season that well um that is uh all-encompassing trauma that you know we've we've been um we've been in this for a while and um and today we are uh going into the specific subject of trauma and the church um and uh kurt is titling this episode hospital acquired infection trauma in the church you have to explain that a little bit yeah well um i think uh first of all just again for our listeners i just want to acknowledge that this is a topic that's um uh that for many uh it will be um uh new territory um for many people many people haven't had uh an experience of trauma in the church uh but in many of you have had experiences within the church uh that have been really painful and we want to acknowledge that up front and acknowledge that once again as we talk about these things uh it's possible that you could find yourself feeling things things emerging um that you're familiar with but for some of you you might find that things are emerging that you have you know put away for you know years maybe even decades that start to show back up and we want we we want uh this our time to be a time in which we acknowledge uh when we're talking about trauma because this is the world that we live in yeah we're not trying to make it more or less than it is but we want to acknowledge it for what it is and also then encourage our listeners for you to seek help for you to connect with people that you trust whoever that might be and we hope that this episode provides some you know shed some light and some freedom uh because we don't just want to talk about what's bad we also want to talk about what uh what is the healing that jesus comes to offer to us uh not least of which in the very place that we sometimes would expect only good things to happen that being in the church and things quite the opposite sometimes do yeah and that's that's where you know some real real damage and hurt can trauma can happen yeah a couple of resources that we're going to be uh utilizing today um redeeming power a couple of books here redeeming power understanding authority and abuse in the church by diane langberg and when narcissism comes to church by chuck to go to grote yeah two really uh i mean i i know these folks personally they're they're just really deeply committed followers of jesus they're brilliant they're articulate they're funny they're warm they're caring and both have practices in which uh the work that they do with the people that they care for um is reflective of what you would read about in these books and so i would i would highly recommend that you uh you know pick up a copy of one of these one or both of these books and allow yourselves to be nurtured and nourished in the pages that you read there um i've we've titled this hospital acquired infection because as i was thinking about this uh episode i thought like oh my gosh like what i i uh there i'm sure there are uh equally effective or even better metaphors for this but i want to talk about this because i think um this really helps me make sense of what happens and there is a there is a thing in the medical field called hi hais right this hospital acquired infections and uh we begin though not by talking about the infection we begin with the nature of what the church is and we think about a mash unit for those of you who know about the sitcom from back in the 1970s um actually the robert altman film which was prior to that like late 1960s or something right yeah yeah yeah which was like this stunning like you know kind of like pulling the curtain back on things that were like not easy to look at i mean not maybe just to to embrace but like it was really challenging and but the mass unit a mobile army surgical hospital that's what the those words stand that's in many respects that the church is a hospital we are a mobile healing presence in a theater of war this is what we do saint paul uses the language that we do not fight against we are not in conflict we are not at war with human beings we are at war with principalities and powers but he does not flinch in talking about the notion that we are moving against the gates of hell in this real conflict albeit not one with which we have with other people we are really in conflict with evil and so i want us to be clear about our topic at a time in which what i would say there is uh for we've all maybe now become or many of us become familiar with the notion of deconstruction where people are for a lot of different reasons finding reasons to walk away from the church kind of deconstructing their experience of faith or the lives they grew up in the church experiencing and i i want to acknowledge that at the same time that there is a great deal to be reflective reflective on about the church for corrective purposes um it also becomes very easy for us to just simply throw the baby out with the bathwater without recognizing that the church is uh god's vehicle for his mission and there's no getting away from it like we are the mission uh and um in that way uh the hospital is god's way of being here on the earth and how are we going to live in that space when so much has been difficult so if we use that metaphor or hospital-acquired infection what is that we like to say in the medical field that it is what we call a nosocomial infection no sarcomere it's a highfalutin word that comes from two greek words gnosis or the word that means one who is ill who is diseased and coming and that's one who tends the sick so we're talking about an infection that is acquired by someone while in the presence of and context of those whose job it is to take care of them happens in hospitals and it's also important to know that these are infections that are not present a person typically there's no evidence of them coming into the hospital with it it might be incubating but for many people it is not something that they come in with although it might be incubating and you don't really know about it but many of these infections are ones that aren't literally acquired from their experience in the hospital and it usually comes in at about 48 hours after you're admitted to the hospital and it's associated with all kinds of things interestingly enough we get infections from catheters from central lines from surgical sites from ventilators we get all these instruments that are instruments of healing and everybody's doing the best they can and still people come up with these they still acquire these infections and what's significant about it is that they are they they tend to be some of the most difficult to treat infections once they're acquired they often are what we call multi-drug resistant infections you get the infection and then we throw all kinds of antibiotics at it and we can't get it stopped this then becomes a problem because people have to be kind of quarantined and like so that it doesn't spread throughout the hospital because once it shows up in a local a locus of a patient it now kind of collects a critical mass and now can be spread to other people through health care workers all kinds of ways in which this particular thing is really difficult i'm sure as our listeners are hearing this you're already imagining where we're going with this but it doesn't just spread within the hospital once that patient leaves sometimes patients have to be discharged from the hospital and they take the infection with them into the community and this then becomes a thing like the community now knows oh this patient or that patient acquired this particular experience this particular infection in that hospital like is the hospital a safe place for me to go like if i go and have surgery will this happen so in a similar way we get a sense of like well how this works with the church which we'll come to more explicitly in just a moment there are some other things though that are risk factors for why these infections show up number one that the infection control practices of the hospital like how well is the hospital itself making sure that they're controlling for infections like this the other thing that's uh that is that is a variable is like how vulnerable is the patient herself or himself to this what's their immune system like some patients may pick up one of these and other patients don't pick up one of these and then it also depends upon the various pathogens themselves that might actually be in the hospital right so you've got the hospital they're doing their work to try to you know do due diligence you've got the patients that come in with a certain vulnerability an immune system that might be at risk and then you've got these you know these pathogens these bugs that are actually somewhere in the hospital you can't know where they all are but you have to consider a hospital is a place where people who are people who come are sick like we don't like people don't go to the to the opera because we're sick uh i don't go to my job because i'm sick i don't go to the hospital to be entertained by the symphony i go because i'm sick and i go because i want i expect to be helped there but i'm also in i'm walking into a place where there are lots of other people who are sick and broken and i sometimes forget that the people who are taking care of me are human beings and those human beings also can be carrying illnesses that they may or may not even be aware of but we all show up together as it turns out in this centralized place where we are expecting to be healed and we don't expect to see hospital acquired infections coming after us there's another interesting thing about our the trajectory of our attention and our toward it and our posturatory in the in the medical community there was a time when you know we just we we became aware of like oh that patient got really sick while they were in the hospital or they they went home after they were in the hospital and they got sick even after they left we're like where'd where all this come from and initially of course you know this wasn't a thing that the epidemiological folks would have been aware of but over time you know in our in the last you know 75 80 years we became we become more astute more explicitly attuned to the fact that this happens this is going to happen and so we pay a lot of attention to it on purpose we don't wait just simply to react to it there are now entire uh you know medical missions that whose job it is to pay attention to the possibility of outbreaks of nosocomial infections in hospitals like that's their job our we're here to make sure that that kind of a thing doesn't happen so we move from the implicit experience of it to being explicit with it and here we're going to just start to make a bit of a turn moving away from the medical metaphor to who we are as followers of jesus and just acknowledge that when we read about the temptations of jesus in the wilderness in the early chapters of mark luke matthew we recognize that the writers of those synoptic gospels were giving a pride of place if you will to this experience that jesus had they give you the story of his birth and his coming into the world and then they let you know right from the beginning our king our chief operating officer of our our chief of staff of our medical community our great physician has himself endured a story in which we are now telling folks reminding folks you need to know this is a hospital and it's in hospitals where good things and beautiful things are being done that evil is going to come and double down on its work and those texts of jesus and his encounter with the satan remind us that we should not be surprised that evil is going to do its most effortful work in the very place in the very front line where his kingdom is being threatened and this is what jesus is doing and this is what the gospel writers are letting us know the trauma is what the serpent inflicted upon the first couple in genesis 3 and it was his every intention to do the same with jesus and if he couldn't get him in the wilderness then he's going to get him on good friday and everywhere in between we mention genesis 3 and evil's intent to do its work to use trauma in the very place in the hospital and we are reminded that in genesis 1 and 2 that these kinds of things happen because we were made as human beings we were made to have dominion over the earth we were made for power and authority diane langberg does a beautiful job in her book of talking about how abuse in the church trauma in the church is a function of the good and beautiful gift of authority the good and beautiful gift of power that has been bent we think that when we're talking about abuse and trauma in the church that it's like we're only talking about a bad thing but we have to recognize that like all evil evil in its parasitic nature it doesn't exist on its own it targets authority it targets power and wants to miss you wants us to misuse it for our own purposes we were given authority to rule and to create humans were given the authority to create and to rule together over creation over that part of creation that is not made in god's image and the way this is arranged is that like one of the ways that we as we've talked in other episodes one of the ways that our rule and our creativity is bound up being like god is in our very vulnerability we are asked to create with vulnerability and it is that vulnerability that is a doorway to creation and beauty that is the very thing that evil takes advantage of in its wielding of abuse of power and using that to traumatize those who are in the hospital we get to genesis 3 and we see deception we see lies we see as we've said before we see desire being disintegrated into devouring and we come to see how power and authority is misused we see it in the first couple we hear about it in the curses that he will be your master he will lord it over you men and women and your desire will be for him this is not a loving sexual desire this is a desire this is a devouring this is an undermining and men and women of all the conflicts that we've experienced as human beings in the course of human history none is more ancient than the war than the abuse of power between men and women but we then move from men and women to families we see cain and abel the first murder we move to the abuse within tribes jacob's sons themselves these 12 sons of israel they get into the promised land after a deliverance from the wilderness joshua ushers them into the promised land and they spend 400 years in conflict not just with the surrounding pagan peoples they they're in conflict with each other they're killing each other we move from tribes to the abuse of nations and races we think of isaac and ishmael we think of jacob and esau we think of african-americans and anglo-americans in our country we think of irish catholics and irish protestants we think of jews and gentiles we think of all the things all the ways that we then misuse and abuse power it was just saying power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely right right and the thing is there is always a power gradient in play anytime anybody is in close relationship with each other there's always a power gradient and you know some people will think you know it's like well if you think about if you think about a newborn you think like well there's nobody that's more vulnerable in the world than a newborn except if you're the parents of that newborn at two in the morning when that newborn starts to squeal you'd be surprised at how much power that newborn wields i mean to tell you you think like mold it's just it's just like it doesn't even have the maturity of a dog there it is in the crib and like i am out of bed we all have different spaces that we occupy in different relationships along this power gradient there are always people to whom i'm answering in authority and people who are answering to me even when we're not aware of it and this is especially true this is an important piece because when it comes to abuse those of us who are in the position of power and are misusing it are often quite unaware of the power that we have we we are not aware of what it is that we're doing and this is not an excuse but we're not aware of what it is that we're misusing this because we ourselves are wounded and so we find that the wounding takes place by the wounded and so we have people that come to the hospital that are in the church only to be wounded by those who are in some form of power but you know this is not pep this is not a just a modern day thing uh we would say that that that whole trajectory that we talked about from you know that nosocomial infection that whole trajectory from you know the the infections that take place in the hospital that are the most serious ones that we often encounter and the things that we have that that are making us vulnerable for it and the impact that it has and the risks and the contributing factors of all that there is a certain recapitulation that takes place within the church as it were we have those of us who come with spiritual need and we live in a power gradient with those with whom we are in relationship who are teachers and pastors and so forth and so on but we don't necessarily pay that much attention nor are we aware that that's actually taking place but as i said you know constantine charlemagne for those of you who recognize those names these are ancient names in which christian faith was you know welded together with power and all the rest and when that happens when power is put together with our christian faith we are always going to be at risk and so in some respects there is a certain irony to what we're talking about today because in some respects we would say like well why wouldn't this happen why why why why would we expect anything different not only that there is an interesting thing that happens from a from from the development of the mind standpoint this notion that uh you know the mind is as we like to say in our in interpersonal neurobiology the the the mind and the brain is one big anticipation machine from moment to moment to moment i'm anticipating and expecting certain things to be the way they are i expect to be able to pull my chair back when we're done and stand up and walk down the hallway and i i expect the floor just to hold me i don't think about that i'm not i'm not thinking about it explicitly but i'm living as if i expect the floor to hold me my experience of trauma in no small way is often a function of my expectation of life if i get t-boned in the middle of an intersection because somebody runs a red light i not only have to like deal with the trauma of what's happened to me physically but i also then find myself having my own confidence in my capacity to trust my own judgment right so so when you know they say the some of the biggest hurts come from those we love right and then you're hurt by someone that you love and that's one of the exact things that happens you start to look at yourself and say i can't trust i can't trust myself i can't trust myself to know who i can trust and all that exactly so we have this effect that takes place within the community right there's a there's an effect that then happens even in the community i like and i can say can i trust the church i i don't think i can trust it because look what happened and and i i just want to acknowledge um again i mean we've talked on some other episodes uh here we've given other stories like like like stuff happens in the church like you just can't make this stuff up you you can't make it up and like it's it's you're just we're just kind of incredulous of the mistreatment that takes place in terms of power abuse in terms of sexual abuse emotional abuse all in the name of god and what we find is that just like in the hospital acquired infections when it starts to happen it doesn't just affect the hospital it also then eventually affects literally the community that the hospital serves and we've heard countless stories of ways in which people have been mistreated in the church and the witness that it then expresses to the outside world is really painful and difficult the uh british uh theologian and missionary leslie knew again who has i mean has been as influential for me as anybody um you know was well known for saying that and especially he wrote this uh commentary on the gospel of john called the light has come which i would commend to all of our readers all of our listeners and he makes the point in there that from the beginning of time this isn't just about christians but from the beginning of time even in our primitive states as humans in no way do we assert our tendency to be god in an abusive devouring way than we do in our religious lives we are as much at risk if not more so of living out the curse of genesis 3 in our religion than in any other domain of life which of course makes it all the more like odd that jesus would entrust his mission to us i you know you get you get the sense of even even when in genesis 1 well let us make mankind in our image and you know we would assume that god sees church abuse coming and they decide we're going to do this anyway because we can't withhold ourselves from having humans share ourselves with us we want them to be loved we want them to have the experience of being loved and we know this is risky because we also make them in our image meaning that they're going to have the opportunity to decide what they're going to do we're not going to twist their arms we're not going to make them do what we want them to do we're going to love them and so we run this risk and so if this is where we are if this is the reality that we live in that we we live in a mass unit that has hospital-acquired infections what do we do how do we respond to this and this is where we turn to what i hope for us to experience as some helpful hopefully some helpful recommendations and this is where also um i would uh again go back and emphasize that you know digging into diane langberg and chuck degrott's books will be really really helpful because we're not you know we're not covering every jot and tittle or we're not providing an algorithm here of what you need to do in your particular uh story your particular situation but there are some things i think that are helpful for us to be mindful of and the first thing is we talk about being intentional and preemptive just like in hospital acquired infections where we say that now we assume that these things are going to happen in the hospital and so we have um we have committees we have uh particular things in place whose job it is to monitor this to watch this to be present to this we're looking for where evil is going to want to try to show up and so we like to talk about these three words that we've talked about in the consciousness domain of integration these three words of being awake alert and attuned are triple a features awake and alert and attuned to what evil is going to want to do in our hospital so we assume the ever-present potential for trauma in the church because we don't live in a neutral universe we don't live fearfully we don't live fearfully in the same way that jesus did not live fearfully but jesus took it upon himself to as we say when he went into the wilderness he didn't go there because the devil was looking for him he went there looking for the devil he was going to encounter the devil on his terms he wasn't going to go in fully fed fully hydrated he was going to go in on his terms and he's going to meet the devil in his and so when the devil shows up jesus isn't surprised and the other thing that is true about this is that our being alert or being awake alert in a tune is a way for us to explicitly engage in formation this process of things showing up in the hospital like this this practice like this is part of the deal god is not surprised by this god is not pleased about this and at the same time god is not afraid of it but god expects us to be alert to this so that it can be part of our formation when it does show up in first peter chapter 5 6-11 the writer talks about therefore be alert and be vigilant your enemy is constantly prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour and so be on the lookout for him this is not to say oh my gosh like there's power and sexual abuse waiting to happen at every turn it is for us to not be naive about the fact that once again you know going to church on a sunday being part of it like it is not a walk in the park what's like we are in the middle of a pitched war and the new testament makes no bones about this the other thing then that is important for us to recognize and to be aware of is this power gradient along lines in in our in our bodies of worship in our in our bodies of gathering there are people in leadership pastors priests elders deacons teachers administrators and so forth and that is on a gradient with followers the laity and each of us each person comes with our own story fraught with its own capacity of unfinished business we each do the pastor does the person who just walked in the door does we all come into the hospital right just like the physicians and nurses and so forth like they've got their own infectious agents that are hanging around them that may or may or not even be aware of saint ignatius uh the the founder of the jesuits uh you know developed what we call the daily examine it is a way for us on our listeners if you don't know about this i would like e-x-a-m-e-n the daily examine i would highly recommend this as a way for our own personal use away for our corporate worship use for us to become increasingly aware of and sensitive to like awake alert and attuned to our own stories and how our own stories can tend to draw us toward being in a position of being mistreated but also being in a position of easily mistreating someone so it's also important to recognize then that these hospital-inquired infections these things that happen in churches often don't happen like blatantly out in front of everybody quickly and it's where everybody can see it and it's obvious they're very silent they're very subtle this is how evil works in the same way that hais are often showing up and we don't know that it's happening until like the patient is 48 or 72 hours into their infection and so we have to be aware of the hidden nature of these things and also recognizing that just like in hospitals these abuses of power this these traumatic events that take place in the context of churches they're not taking place because people are there with the explicit intention of trying to ruin people's lives they often happen as a byproduct of of attempts at healing pastors who are really gifted preachers but who have their own story that does not allow them to lead without abusing their power administrators who are really effective at the accounting of the church but who also sees everybody else as a number all the different ways in which we experience this even in the course of it being in a hospital where all kinds of things that are taking place are instruments of healing presumably but can carry with them the darker side of things and again this whole notion of the give and take along the gradient that we are all contributing to these things sometimes and we're not often necessarily aware of this and so it's important for for all of us to be attuned to the parts of our stories but in particular leaders leaders are given a particular responsibility at having their house in order there's no question about this that it will be required of you to give an account in ways that would not be required of those who are not leaders it'll be required of us to give an account in that way you know so often i i've seen um leaders in the church make the huge mistake of isolating themselves you know and and um and so in that isolation um i've seen things uh sort of sneak up on them that they didn't realize was even there because they weren't right they weren't known by anybody they weren't you know and so then it comes out sideways and i you know i was in in a couple of different churches one big church split you know the church was left gutted you know and then uh another one that that fell apart after i left based on um you know a lot of it was the abuse of power and um people that didn't have that sense of thinking they had to have their own house in order the way you the way you speak of right well i think too you know i think of uh again this whole thing about you know i i you know a couple things come into mind uh you you think of particular institute like medical institutions like i think of cook county general hospital i think a mass general hospital these are hospitals that in the kind of american medical conscience consciousness are like you know they are in some respects like uh the holy grail like this is like this isn't my pilgrimage if i had to be in a hospital like well sure if mass general is where you'd want to be because there is so much knowledge so much institutional the mayo clinic there there's that in that truly has acquired over the course of you know you know at this point you know hundreds of years like more than the kind of institutional care and knowledge that you would think this is really what's where i want to be in many churches like we're drawn to churches we want to be in these places because we believe that if i go to this church like i've heard this pastor's preaching is off the chain and indeed it is right uh and so i i come with that again with that expectation like i'm an anticipation machine and i and i long to be seen sued safe secure and there's enough on the surface of this experience that i've had that would lead my brain to anticipate that the floor is gonna hold and often the leaders themselves as you as you rightly said like in in and it doesn't you don't have to be in a senior pastor you can be in other roles as well often people who are in leadership they themselves come to that place because they themselves are trying to get needs met and they expect to get their needs met by being in positions of power in which if they can wield that power they feel better about themselves and they're doing this because as you rightly say they're alone and they've been alone for some time this is a really common thing and this is why we then talk about the proper people and place that are necessary for our ability to live in these institutions and even to seek healing in these institutions so if we're a leader who are the people by whom you're known this is the being known podcast this is we we talk about this place of being known by others in the same way that the holy trinity represents a process of father son and spirit are known by each other and know each other to the fullest extent and then our being made in their image are made to be known in this way and in particular what is it like for us to be known especially if we're in places of leadership in hospitals we have what we call the m m board now this is not to be confused with a candy brand from mars for the mars company but the m m board is the morbidity and mortality board wouldn't you be i'd love to like hey hey what committee are you going to serve on i'm going to be on the morbidity and mortality committee yeah chairman of the board like yeah what are you going to be talking about i'm going to be talking about disease death and pathology and one of the things that an mnm board does they meet every week in a hospital and what they do is they review all the cases that went bad in the hospital now of course if you're the surgeon on the case that went bad if you're the internist on the case in which a person was you know developed sepsis like three days after they got into the hospital like it can feel like you yourself are just being put on trial because like oh yeah we're here to figure out like well what did dr thompson do wrong like what like how were your certainly and as it turns out with enough practice we recognize that every physician in the room has had the experience of being the victim of something going wrong and they don't meet to rake physicians over the coals they meet in order to better understand what happened and there are times when we would say yeah i i did not pay enough attention to what i did with with what i did with the sponge i did not pay enough attention to how i sewed that surgical that we did not we we gave him you know we gave him three doses of this we shut we probably should have given like but but the point is that that the board exists in order to enable the hospital to perform better they don't exist to punish people and cut them out they exist in order to ask the question what can we do better we're not here to shame you but we are here to name the things that have gone wrong in order for us to work really hard to not let that repeat itself it's really important for us to have our version of the m m board in places like in in these kinds of organizations and by that we mean like who are the people that we are inviting into our worlds who are asking us the questions not as uh inquisitions but as people who are coming to enable us to be seen safe and secure so that i can recognize where where am i perhaps making decisions making choices acting in ways that are actually me trying to work out my stuff my un you know the part of my story that i don't know that i don't know about but i'm acting it out i'm working it out in ways that are like that's been being harmful for others and so we want to use these kinds of relationships at every level of experience in a church every level experience in the church is going to need this a pastor is going to need to have people surrounding her or him that asks the question where are you there's four questions from the soul desire where are you what do you want are you willing to drink the cup like what are the parts of your story that are in play we want to we want to help you tell your story more truly so that you can tell the story of the gospel more truly not just by how you preach but also by how you live with the staff in this way we are as a body becoming alert and vigilant back to first peter chapter five this is what he asks he admonishes people to be alert to be vigilant and it also enables us to create boundaries in a merciful way and by bound we could we could talk forever and a day about that topic of boundaries about how pastors need to set boundaries how parishioners need to have need to be setting boundaries the whole in boundaries that enable us actually to function in the same way that the boundary of a cell the human cell the boundary of the cell wall which is you know it's porous you can but but it creates structure creates protection it enables that cell to function at its optimum but it also does so because it keeps certain things inside and keeps certain things outside the last thing that we'll say is that this this general topic is that i i invite us to come back to this notion that again it's easy for us to get kind of wrapped up in this notion of trauma in the church and all we see is darkness uh but i'm reminded of jesus high priestly prayer in john 17 in which he agonizes and prays for the unity of his followers unity not meaning necessarily even that they all think the same way or they all believe everything the same thing but unity in the sense that they treat each other in love they treat each other in love henry nouwen talks about the wounded healer in his book by the same title and that there is power in the wounded healer that for those of us who are in power our being attuned to our wounds and allowing our wounds to really be kept in front of us at all times in mark 2 17 jesus says it's not those who are well who need the doctor it's those who are sick and there are those of us who come into the church because we are sick and each of us even the leaders in the church have the parts of us that are still sick when we talk about jesus we don't just talk about his work we only ever talk about the work of jesus in the context of the holy trinity jesus doesn't ever he says i only do that which i see my father doing and so we see that the place and the power of community in both being protective but also healing it's not just protecting leaders from the flock or the flock from leaders it is also intended to create healing for everyone by bringing those parts of me that are still sick to the doctor on a regular basis when we read about in genesis this notion of being fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth that subduing is intended again to be of the things that are not human we are intended to subdue all that is chaotic and dark and that is not human we are intended to create redemptive moments in the face of trauma in fact we are called to repair the ruptures of the most tragic kind so for many of us here i would want you to know that at the same time that the church feels like the last place where you would want to be or go and i i want to say like first of all like i get it we get it we've all we've all been there we've all like i've been part of a church that has you know had ruptures that were relational in kind and set people fleeing and it's really unpleasant and for and in some respects it feels like like and from some of it like there hasn't been recovery right and i want to say that it still doesn't change the fact that jesus is coming for us and that we in the body of christ are the vehicle for this to take place that the body of christ is the healing hospital where we tell our stories more truly where we name with confession and we act with repentance and forgiveness where we are washing the feet of others i realize in this episode pepper we i you know we haven't you know given people the 10-step algorithm for what you do in every situation right but i i do want us to uh be mindful of the fact that uh a jesus uh continues to come for the parts of us that are sick and that have been wounded by the church look it wasn't like look jesus jesus knows all about trauma in the church because like he was living in it he was living in places where the pharisees were the ones who were you know putting the widows and the orphans like under the mat as they would say like you you strain out a gnat and the camel just walks through like so he knows what religious abuse of power looked like he knows what it's like to be in that place and yet he says i want you to pay attention to how i'm going to wield power uh and for those of us who are wielding the power he becomes the example and for those of us who have been traumatized he's also the source of that healing just before we get to um the application for this week i just want to quickly just give a picture uh when my um daughter was in the hospital when she was born um she was born premature uh which is a story we can tell another time but um she uh got an hai um and uh they had to run a picc line oh my gosh um up you know my rudimentary understanding is was up through her vein and into her heart right were they where they were pumping in the and there's just something about this line that's going right to the heart with the antibiotics there's a picture there that um it was the only way that she could be healed and it was risky they had to do it a couple of times like she had they pulled the pick out and had to go back in and in just the process of of even putting in the line right was a dangerous process for someone whose vascular system was so tiny i mean she was her legs were as big as my fingers you know when she was born so you can imagine right um and yet uh this was one of the best hospitals you know you mentioned these this was cedar sinai hospital this was an amazing hospital with one of the best nicu's i wouldn't have wanted to have been any place else with my daughter in l.a yep in l.a right i wouldn't have wanted to have been any anywhere else and have any others care and yet even there you know these things were happening right right yeah that's such a powerful story and because uh so many of us need pick lines exactly and we need and the only place we're gonna get it is cedar sinai right like we're not gonna get it from a street vendor you're not going to get it at your house you're going to get it in the very place where the infection showed up yep and that's hard and we just want to uh it's hard and jesus is uh uncompromising in his longing for us to be not just in the church but even allowing our lives as we are able and here i just want to say i'm not this is not some call for people to somehow be back in the church be or be back in some place where you've been mistreated and it's not safe to be and all those things we're not we're not advocating for that in any way shape or form but we are saying that at the end of the day it still will come back around to our having to come to terms with the fact that it is within the hospital setting that we in in in god's mash unit that he's coming for us so for our exercise uh folks we would uh first of all just want to invite you again to consider reading the two books that we've recommended and next and i know this can be tender i would just invite you to reflect on if you've ever had an experience or experiences in which you felt taken advantage of by another or realize that you've taken advantage of another in the context of what we would call like this church related power gradient if you've never done so if you've never had that experience consider speaking with someone you trust about your experience consider seeking with someone who you know has had that experience to give you a better sense of it and if you have had that experience but you've never talked to someone about it consider doing that and then we would invite you to consider the steps to take to begin the process of preparing the rupture that you've experienced in light of the guidelines that we've discussed here at the end of the episode and we want you to remember that jesus never gives up on the church even if we do and we might have like words for him at the end of the age about all this and so even though it may take time jesus wants you to be where he is and it's always in the business of bringing healing to the very hospital he has founded and is intended to be the house of healing itself [Music] there we have it thank you thanks kurt good to be with you so much it's really good to be with you yeah right on all right until next week until next time all right love you love you so amy you have a you have a uh a pretty recent um foray into the hospital so yeah yes and i just want to for those of us that have heard the beginning of this episode i just want to pull my chart wow i'm going to read my procedure wait all that all that paperwork for a toe oh okay i mean it's it's a toe for crowd i think it isn't and isn't it like you like your little toe like just a pinky toe why don't they i don't know why they don't just cut the toe off i think that would just be it's the one that goes all the way home all the way home this little piggy this one excision that's a good word that's a good that that holds some decision of soft tissue tumor on right foot on the side of the right foot on the side of the right foot there's no toe in there at all there's no toe wow there's no excision of tumor why did you tell us it was just your toe i did never mention that no i think that must have been under the influence of the drugs when you told us that you must have and so i didn't realize that i was gonna have to be on crutches until the very last minute it said no weight bearing for 2 uh 48 hours wow so i'm like okay am i going to do a mad bash for crutches so a friend did they give you crutches in the hospital when you when you left no they said byoc bring your own crutches are you wait are you serious yes okay i don't know what's happening over here this is not cedar sinai can we just say it it was not and thank goodness i didn't need a picc line but but so i borrowed crutches from a 12 year old and so they're ever since like that's awesome oh my gosh i'm gonna say like that's kind of tough to be like it's like you're it's like your bench over like you're 90 years old like just just to have why i mean i would just i would just want to hop i just i'd be like well like if i that's the crutches i got to use well and and i live i i'm on the upper level there's someone below me so i'm like okay i've dropped the crutches 12 times and when i do try to hop so yeah that's a whole thing but getting ready this morning like i get up early i go to the bathroom brush my teeth and an hour later i have about 10 minutes yeah it takes forever it does i mean it's not my toe oh i want to hear no i i'm it's like a lot of things like you you injure your shoulder or your wrist or you you know it's you have this kind of thing happen and suddenly you become aware of all the things that you that now take like an extra two hours to do just because they put me to sleep for 20 minutes yeah exactly yeah yeah and like i got i made coffee and then i'm like how do i get my cup of coffee and my body over to that chair oh my god i did it yeah well we trust that uh the path report will come back as we want it to and um yes yeah well and what i love i loved kurt that you mentioned um you i don't think we usually mention the name of the podcast on the recording but when you said this is the being known podcast yeah and like even this this this doesn't have to do with trauma but like scheduling my surgery i i yesterday was really my only option unless uh or three weeks from now but i thought okay we're recording i would rather do it a different time like i would rather do my surgery not the day before we're recording right i had to then i thought i don't know if we're going to be i didn't know what condition i'd be in this morning and it was like just all of that at one time would have given me tremendous anxiety like i've got to know if i can be on i've got to have it together um not be in a sweatshirt obviously you're not worried about that today i have settled in to my comfort level is very high go pep i know i see it i see it i see it i see him that fruit's hanging so low it's dragging on the ground i'm just gonna leave that one here i don't pick up rotten fruit off the ground i mean you know i i will go for the low hair you have your uh i have my standards standards yes thank you oh my gosh so what uh take any other takeaways aim from the episode yes that wasn't my only side your toes my toe yeah so okay i i wrote down the quote but the hospital is i mean the church is a hospital healing in the presence of war oh my gosh and i thought if it's anything less than that it is not the church that god intended right um and i thought of so i grew up in northern california petaluma between the six ages of six and eight my grandparents who were hugely influential in my life would take me to church every sunday morning and usually wednesday night and it was a church up on a hill there was this big driveway that led up to the church and had a big field in front and almost every sunday morning i remember mr bond was the pastor and he would always be out front grieving everybody and i remember just opening the door and leaving grandma and grandpa and my sister behind and i would just dash up the walkway to mr bond and he would pick me up he would hug me and it felt like he had waited he'd been waiting there until amy cella got here and i'm like oh my gosh that is my first memory of the healing of church because things were a little bit wonky at home and so this was like oh my gosh he is so excited i'm here and you know that's not everybody's experience and i'm thinking that is the church it to a little six-year-old you know that right that doesn't even know she needs it right well i think about you know uh think about the notion that in the body of jesus first disciples you've got the apparently appointed leader who betrays him utterly and then you have you know i i love already if you if you're watching if you're following the chosen you know at some point you know we're in we're introduced to the other character who also betrays him and the other character who betrays him judas um you know we are we are already being given the sense that this is a guy of deeply sincere faith and longing this is a guy who really really wants to do the right thing and you know betrayal i'm just saying like betrayal happens in the heart of jesus own community like you've got jesus himself in a community that himself over the course of three years can't prevent betrayal from happening and so you know we who you know it's easy to imagine gosh if it was only jesus who were in charge and we would say like well jesus was in charge and even there the behavior of those who were in the inner one of whom was in the inner circle throws him under the bus and this is what happens when we are willing to put ourselves in the path of vulnerability in this space where you know we where mr bond meets us and there is that certain risk that we take which is all the more reason why vigilance is so necessary for us and it's tricky i mean i take care of a lot of people these days for whom like this is the central traumatizing theme of their life the life that they lived in the family of god where really horrific things have happened not just when they were kids but even now like they're happening right now as adults and uh yeah well and then that makes me think of the m m board um and when you were talking about that i thought oh my gosh it's not a shame board right they're allowed to talk about and they're welcome and freedom to talk have freedom to talk about what went amiss what they should have done differently and what shouldn't have happened and that's our only hope right well and it's got to be in place from the beginning it's got to be in place from the beginning because you can't go in and do all this damage to people and then say okay let's put together this m m board and i mean i think the eminem board can the purpose of it is to stop it from happening right make it a healthier place right not just look back not just look back right preventative not right repair only right but but this is the other thing though too like the eminent board exists not just not just to anticipate and prevent things the eminem board exists because they assume it's going to happen yeah um but it is but but but the point is and this is where if if we have something if we have these kinds of a relational matrices in place where people are deeply where people are known it means that uh if if you are practicing being on the lookout if you're practicing vigilance you're far more likely to catch things when they are in their infancy where yes people might get hurt yes people might you know something might happen to which we would say oh my gosh i did that i'm gonna like we're gonna we're gonna repair that rupture right now or i i you know i was you know i had like a physical encounter with one of my parishioners i'm a male pastor i officially encounter with a female parishioner that yeah i probably like that was probably two two you know word came back from an elder that like you know when kurt you know when whoever like hugged me like he didn't feel like i'm like okay like i gotta i gotta i gotta have people who will say like okay what's what's going on what's happening and to be able to say yep yeah and that is requires all of us to be awake alert and attuned yeah right yeah right right and i don't again this is this is tricky because uh you know you want to be careful and not um you know somehow communicate that the victims are responsible for their own trauma right this is this is one of the bigger this is one of the more common things that then happens in i mean countless i mean i can't count the number of times in which i've taken care of people who something happens to them in the church they try to bring it up they try to address it and you know the leadership just doubles down and communicates the message that well if you'd only done this or you'd not done that if you know gosh then you know i mean these these this is not an uncommon this is not an uncommon experience for people to have and so again i think um you know anymore like if you were to build a new hospital you you wouldn't uh build it and start to practice and then wait and see if something's going to show up and then decide yeah i think we need an m m board right yeah yeah yeah yeah right so to your point pepper uh if you're gonna build a hospital like you you know one of the first things that you'll do organizationally is establish how are we gonna lead the charge at being attuned and vigilant with all the things that are gonna go wrong here because you know it it's it it's it's like if it's true that you know evil does its best work in the middle of good work being done then we would expect as i was saying earlier like but why would we be surprised that some of the most painful things that we imagine happening to human beings happens in the very place where the best work is being done yeah yeah and so but kind of like in our in our current cultural setting you know we have to be careful about this because in our current cultural setting becomes easy you know being a victim is is is very attractive um you know i'm now at a point where if i you know if i am distressed because i didn't get an a on my on my on my grade in my college my parents will like you know who donate money to the college will write and say like the professor needs to give my daughter an a because my daughter can't tolerate getting a b right i can't like i'm a victim of that i'm like i i am i'm easily offended i am fragile and so that is a thing that is happening at the same time that these other real traumas are happening and we have to be aware that uh you know and again i get back to i get back to dan allender's you know i think really poignant and provocative comments in one of his chapters in the very first book that put him on the map the wounded heart this notion that we actually have to as even as victims even as as real i have to repent from my practice of how i respond to having been traumatized because a lot of what i will end up doing is i will call my i will tell myself lies i will i will be in agreement with all these kinds of things and i will also continue to make other people responsible for my ongoing emotional distress 20 years later thank you and so it's it's tricky because we have to find the line between we have to name where the trauma has happened and at the same time i then have to recognize that i have work to do in the healing process and that and that process that healing process itself is gonna be is gonna require energy and effort like it's not gonna be a walk in the park and it becomes easy for me then to still hold responsible my predator uh the person who hurt me hold them responsible for everything that is now difficult about the work that i have to do and it's it's it's really tricky and so um that is tricky i mean yeah yeah i just have great empathy for somebody who has been abused in a way you know in that in that fashion and it's it's it's uh it's hard to um i know it's hard for people to separate you know that incident that happened with all the other things it's it's really hard right because yeah you know you see this is the impetus of what of what's caused all your problems right and um and it is true this is the other thing that is true that that makes that makes it all the more tricky and that is that in my experience um it is far more often the case that when a person experiences this kind of traumatic um encounter within the you know within the church you know unfortunately is far more often the case that those parties who are responsible are not willing to take responsibility are not willing to come back and repair the rupture and so in some respects it it does make that in and of itself though what the predator does what the power monger does is not in and of itself now the story of the victims the victim is going to have to like decide what am i going to do with my story it is still the case that when the abuser does not acknowledge or repent it does make the work of those who have been victimized that much heavier that much more difficult and and this is this is the piece that i think that is most i mean weighty and hard for me when i'm working with people who are in a system who are in a who are in a church a church that i'm probably familiar with because it's in my area and we get people that are coming from all kinds of places and the church leadership simply does not take responsibility for what has taken place and it's just it's maddening yeah that would make all the difference it would it would make it would and and and this is the thing like the church leadership is often very unaware of the potential for i mean the potential for unbelievably beautiful things to come out of this if you would only be willing to actually do the work of repentance yourself but you know the very fact that these kinds of things happened in the first place is kind of part and parcel of the pattern of those folks who were in those positions of power and uh you know they didn't get there overnight right and so and you know and and so unless they themselves are also willing to do the hard work of asking the question what happened to me instead of so that i can figure out what what i've now done to others it becomes it becomes really really really difficult yeah i think next season we take our joy [Laughter] laughter well that's right well you know like like we said like we said like it takes what less than three seconds to uh uh experience and embed shame in our neural networks and it takes about 60 to 90 seconds to do the same with joy and so we figure like well it's going to take a lot of time so we should take i think you're right every single episode every episode yeah all right guys thank you for today good you feel better amy thank you take care of that little this little piggy goes to the market yeah take care of that this little picture oh my gosh recording we're done all the way down [Music] this podcast is produced by kurt thompson pepper sweeney and myself amy cella audio production and editing is by keaton simons video production and editing is done by mark gould if you'd like to connect with us you can find us on social media at being known pod if you like this podcast tell a friend if you love this podcast tell everyone you know and please like rate and review wherever you listen be well be now you