Is Ministry Outpacing Formation? : Chuck DeGroat

Full-Text Transcript

Jason Daye
Hello, friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of FrontStage BackStage. I am your host, Jason Daye. And each week I have the opportunity to sit down with a trusted ministry leader, and together we dive into a topic to help you and pastors and ministry leaders just like you really thrive in both life and leadership. We are blessed to be a part of the ministry of PastorServe, where we have the opportunity to walk alongside pastors and ministry leaders. I am really excited to welcome back to the show an incredible ministry leader, Chuck DeGroat. Chuck is a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary. Chuck is a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, an author, and a retreat leader. He’s also the founder of the Soul Care Collaborative. Now, he has written a number of books, and I have really enjoyed reading through his latest, Who You’re Becoming. I’ve enjoyed it so much. So many fresh perspectives, fresh insights, and even some incredible new terms and words that Chuck has shared with us, including one that we’ll get to “fauxnerability”. And so, be sure to be listening for that as we dive into that. At this time, I would like to welcome Chuck to the show. Chuck, welcome to FrontStage BackStage.

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah, good to see you again, Jason.

Jason Daye
Good to see you, Chuck. It’s always a pleasure to sit down and speak with you. You have so much to offer the church, and really, I just want to thank you for your work with pastors and ministry leaders, those who are serving on the front lines of ministry. You are a brother in doing this work, much like what we do at PastorServe. You care about the souls of those who are serving, and so like-hearted, like-minded. I absolutely love the work that you do, brother. So let’s talk about Who You’re Becoming, because this is one of those topics that, when we’re speaking of those who are serving in ministry, oftentimes, we think a lot about what we’re doing. And when we think about seminary, Bible college, preparing for ministry, a lot of the focus is on what you’re going to be doing in ministry. But, Chuck, as you and I well know, who we are, who we’re becoming as we serve, is so incredibly important. So, talk to us a little bit about this idea of becoming and how that ties into our life in ministry.

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah. Well, it’s really about our formation, and I know you’re passionate about that. I’m passionate about that. I don’t think either one of us think that formation happens quickly, or that it’s microwavable, and yet, what we see so often, especially if you do this work with pastors and ministry leaders, is that for so many of them, their formation was fast, it was pragmatic, and it was efficient. I remember now, more than 20 years ago, when I was still in Orlando, Florida, ministry leaders, a prominent ministry that was sort of housed down there. Many of them who’d become Christians in college and who were thrust into ministry right away, and that was a part of their training. That was a part of their apprenticeship. Go and do likewise, you know? But so many of them were burning out after five, seven years, and coming to see me. And so the origins of this book really go back quite a ways, and even to my own formation. I was really blessed to have good formation in the sense that while I was in seminary, the guy who is in my position now, the pastoral care kind of person at a different seminary, called me out, said, Hey, buddy, you need to do your work, and if you don’t do your work, you’ll likely be dangerous to the church. And so I was able to do some more formational work over the course of the next few years, but even still, as you know, I mean, I’m 56 now, and there are days when it feels like, have I grown up at all? And so, yeah, formation happens slowly, and this is a book about how that process happens.

Jason Daye
Yeah, I love that. And Chuck, you were really blessed to have someone who was willing to call you out early on, because also often, as you mentioned, young leaders are kind of thrust out there, and you use a term in Who You’re Becoming. You use this term “ripened”, and you talk about this idea of ripening. So, I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that idea of what you mean by this idea of ripened, and how that relates to early in ministry kind of being thrust out there.

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah, ripening is a word that might be new to some of your viewers, listeners, but for me, it’s one that goes back a little ways. Some folks may know the name. Oh, why am I blanking? James Finley. He’s a contemplative. He was with Thomas Merton at the Abbey at Gethsemane. And it was years ago on a silent retreat with Finley, where he was talking about our ripening. And I noticed that I listened more closely. He was talking about what we might call sanctification. Many of us are familiar with language like that, but I think by shifting to the language of ripening, he was offering a metaphor of that sense that as fruit ripens, it can’t be rushed. Now, the interesting thing about that is, as I was doing a bit of research, I realized, what do you know? Here in the United States and in other industrialized countries, there is a process of artificial ripening. I did not know this until about a year ago, where they inject gases into fruit, the fruits that we love, to more quickly ripen them, and they lose texture, color, and flavor. And I thought that’s just it. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re injecting ourselves with these gases to more quickly ripen when it needs to happen slowly. I served as a pastor in San Francisco, and I remember when we drive up to wine country with my daughters, they’d want to pick grapes, and we’d say they’re not ready yet, and they’d say, Well, how do these grapes become this wine? And we’d say that it’s a really slow process. That’s what we’re talking about here. But, well, slow is not sexy in the ministry world, right?

Jason Daye
Right. So this idea, you talk a lot about character, obviously, and you talk about this idea of character breaking down, and so these kind of go hand-in-hand. How does character break down?

Chuck DeGroat
Well, in a sense, I mean, where I’d want to start is how character is formed in our earliest years, right? And so there’s this sense that who we are today began a long, long time ago, and we’ve got to trace the pattern of that story. Now, for some of us, the habits that we learned become, for some of us, dysregulated ways of being in the world. Now, speaking from a nervous system perspective, these catch up with us. They caught up with me at 42. I landed in the hospital as a result of my perpetual dysregulation in ministry, and this is even after I’d done my work. I’d become a therapist. I mean, there was more to be done. And so, I think what ends up happening is that there is this sort of breakdown that happens over the course of time, where the things that worked for us for a while no longer work for us. And I think that’s how I’d imagine it, is that for many of us, we get to this place that we need to pay attention to. It might be a crisis point of some kind. There might be some sort of disruption in our lives or to our ministries. Perhaps it’s a failure, or perhaps things are just not going as well as you thought they’d go. Maybe it’s something in your marriage. All the things that you see and I see quite regularly. I think the question is, what do we do with that, right? And I think, for many of us, it’s like when it comes to the character conversation. As I invite them in the midst of this disorientation, in the midst of this breakdown, to think about the opportunity, what this means, and how they might grow through it. For some of them, they’ll double down. They’ll go back to the earlier habits because that’s the only reality they know. All they know is to put their head down and work really, really hard. All they know is to grow bigger, faster, and stronger in their ministry context. Some won’t slow down long enough for the kind of ripening that we talk about. But if there is this moment where they allow this breaking down that we’re talking about that leads to a formation, we might switch metaphors to the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, and whose body breaks down in the chrysalis. If they allow for that breakdown, which is scary, as you know, there can be a transformation. And we, folks like us, get to be stewards of that transformation. That’s one of the things that I love doing more than any other thing that I get to do is to sit with women and men, in particular, in ministry who, their old life, their caterpillar life, is breaking down, and something new is emerging. They don’t quite know what it is, and they’re kind of mad at me for it. But something new is emerging.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely.

Jason Daye
Hey, friends, just a quick reminder that we provide a free toolkit that complements today’s conversation. You can find this for this episode and every episode at PastorServe.org/network. In the toolkit, you’ll find a number of resources, including our Ministry Leaders Growth Guide. This growth guide includes insights pulled from today’s conversation, as well as reflection questions, so you and the ministry team at your local church can dig more deeply into this topic, and see how it relates to your specific ministry context. Again, you can find it at PastorServe.org/network.

Jason Daye
When you’re talking about these challenges that we’ve kind of carried, some of these habits, these things that aren’t quite regulated in our lives, one of the things that jumped out at me when I was reading Who You’re Becoming, you talked specifically about spiritual practices. And something that jumped out at me is you wrote about this idea that sometimes we begin to take on spiritual practices when we’re not quite ready to take on those spiritual practices, which was absolutely fascinating for me, Chuck, when I read that. And I had to reread some of this, because you’re talking about some of these that we’re not quite ready for because we have some of these things in our lives that are not quite regulated, right? So, I’d love for you to expand upon that because I found that really, really fascinating.

Chuck DeGroat
I mean, we could spend an hour just talking about this. I mean, the practices that we offer, the practices that we engage need to be attuned to where we are, to our bodies, and this was new learning for me about 15 years ago, as I began to pay attention more and more after my breakdown. As I began to pay attention more and more to my body and to the human nervous system we can place spiritual practices on top of dysregulated nervous systems. And then what you get is you know a guy comes in for some care, some spiritual direction, and you say, why don’t you just let me just practice some Sabbath, or why don’t you just do some contemplative prayer? And it becomes another thing to do in a sympathetically dysregulated nervous system, which, if people are watching, I’m spinning my hands right now. It’s life that looks a little bit like a hurricane or a tornado, and many of us in ministry, frankly, we know what that life feels like, right? And so, it’s that dysregulation, it’s that nervous system in what I call chronic storm that needs to be addressed in a different kind of way. There may be spiritual practices that are appropriate. It might just be that contemplative prayer is appropriate for this person in sympathetic dysregulation, but maybe that just becomes something that, and this is what they’ll tell me is, oh, I tried that for two or three minutes, but I can’t sit still that long. Or I tried to do a four-week sabbatical, but I created a podcast or I wrote a book during my sabbatical. So, this is where we need to pay attention to what’s happening at the level of what I call the autonomic engine, the engine of your nervous system, and many of us are not aware of that autonomic engine. In fact, I’ll have a lot of pastors tell me I’m not anxious. I’m fine. I can handle things really well. But underneath, there’s that dysregulation that we’re talking about.

Jason Daye
So, this was fascinating to me, Chuck. How do we, as pastors and ministry leaders, who might be watching, listening to this right now, they might be like, wait, Chuck, you’re talking to me. Like, I resonate with this, okay? Or maybe we’re working with people or discipling people, that we’re like, yeah, I recognize this. But we’ve been accustomed to saying, Oh wait, no spiritual practices, you live in them long enough, then you know, this is what we do, right? So, how can we begin to identify some of those things and begin to match spiritual practices that make the most sense with where we are, or process through this?

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah, I mean, I think often it begins with a bit of diagnostic work around what’s happening at the level of that autonomic engine, my previous book was called Healing What’s Within, and I wrote a couple of chapters on this. One of the chapters, the third chapter, if I remember right, is the chapter where I talk about the dashboard, the many symptoms that show up in our lives. And I talk about the dashboard in terms of thoughts and feelings, and your body, and your behaviors, and your relationships, and your experience of God, and how the dashboard points to what’s happening at the level of the engine. And the funny thing is that I’ll be sitting, I’m in my seminary office right now, and I’m looking over at my couch, peeking over at my couch where a lot of pastors sit. And I’ll ask them to sort of fill out the dashboard, and they’ll say, I think I’ll probably come up with like two or three things, but there aren’t a whole lot of things on my dashboard. And they’ll go home, and they’ll come back the next day because I do these five-day intensives, and they’ll come back with 20 or 30 things on their dashboard, right? And then we’ll sit with the dashboard and we’ll notice that, oh yeah, that gut pain, that indigestion, that heartburn, the constant neck ache, the sleeplessness, the headaches, the sadness that just doesn’t seem to go away, the avoidance of a number of people in your church, they just start to add up, right? And they’ll sort of wonder with me, what do I do? That’s where we begin. And so we’ve got to do a bit of diagnostic work. We’ve got to do some assessment around: Are you living in what I call chronic storm? Sympathetic regulation – that’s the gas pedal of the nervous system, where it’s go go go go go. Are you living in chronic break mode? I call that fog, where it’s like you’ve shut down. Some of your listeners may know this. I certainly knew this. Where there was a season in my ministry where it was like, stick a fork in me. I’m done. I can’t get out of bed. I don’t have the energy to do this, or are you in a loop where it’s like go go go go go? This is what I did for a long time, too. Go go go go go, and then shut down on the weekend and call it Sabbath, when it’s really just numbness. If you can begin to identify those patterns, well, then we can begin to think about what’s most helpful to you. But I’m not gonna throw Stations of the Cross at you. I’m not gonna throw the Ignatian Examine at you, unless I know that it matches what your body needs.

Jason Daye
Yeah, that’s good. That’s super helpful. Super helpful. Love that. So, I want to jump into fauxnerability. That term fauxnerability. Help us understand first what it is. And how does it show up? And why do we need to be aware of it, right?

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah. Well, fauxnerability is a word I’ve been using for a number of years. Faux, F A U X, to name the pretense of vulnerability. That sense that… you and I have lived long enough to know that about 30 years ago when I was coming up in ministry, there was a lot of skepticism about vulnerability, about being known, sharing your life. I mean, we would whisper behind the scenes about things like pornography. God forbid we talked about alcohol abuse or addiction. And there was some skepticism about therapy and psychology. Now, we’re living in a much more highly psychologized and therapized world, right? And I’ve watched pastors use the Enneagram, for instance, or attachment theory, and their styles of attachment in ways, or just general stories about their lives. I’ve seen pastors do this, but therapists do this as well. All sorts of people in care professions and everyone else. We have ways of kind of sharing our lives, and social media highlights this all the time. Where it’s sort of like it sounds as if he’s being really honest. You know, like he’s telling me that he’s a perfectionist because he’s an Enneagram one. And he’s telling the story in his sermon about what that looks like when he’s not great around his kids. He must be a really good guy. And yet, behind the scenes, what we discover is that there really isn’t that kind of self-awareness that has led to humility. Behind the scenes, he’s a bully to his staff. Behind the scenes, he’s living a contradiction, and there’s some sort of an affair he’s having, or an abuse of a substance, or something like that. And so, what’s happened is that we’ve learned the language of openness about our lives, but we’re using it in service of drawing people in and winning them over and sounding authentic, you know? And so it’s a faux vulnerability. It’s also sort of a faux authenticity, and I call it an airbrushed authenticity. You know, it kind of looks nice, and it draws you in. But I think what you notice after a while is, actually, it feels inauthentic. There’s something about it that feels kind of manufactured.

Jason Daye
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Jason Daye
Yeah. Now, what’s fascinating about that, Chuck, is as I was reading through that, I couldn’t help but think about some of our younger generations and what they are recognizing about the church. I mean, these are conversations that I’m having with my kids, my young adult kids, and I was thinking through that. I feel like they are picking up on this because they are sensing that, right? They’re sensing this as like that airbrushed, you know, that it’s a little photoshopped. You know what I mean? Like, there’s this sense of yeah, I’m being real because I’m trying to connect, but there’s this little… it’s not really authentic. It’s kind of being used in a sense. So, Chuck, let me ask this: How does a pastor or ministry leader who is serving and has heard this and who thinks they’re being authentic? Thinks like this is what I’ve been told. This is what I feel like I’ve been trying to do, but needs to check themselves. How do we process through this to be like, okay, wait a second, am I being real? Am I being authentic?

Chuck DeGroat
What I often find, because I end up doing work with a number of these men in particular, I do work with women who are pastors and in ministry, too. But a lot of men, they’ll tell me, I’ve got so many friends, I’ve got tons of people in my life, but what I’ll discover is that they’re not really known. They don’t experience a true vulnerability. When I think of vulnerability, I think we’re only capable of being truly vulnerable with a few people in our lives. Folks that think that they can be vulnerable with 20 or 30 people, I think this that’s where they’re missing something, right? And so, I think that the kind of vulnerability that can be shared is, first, grounded in your deepest relationships. I know a lot of pastors. In fact, here at Western Theological Seminary, we’ve got a conference every year called Doxology. Eugene Peterson was really connected to this seminary, and Win Collier runs this, and pastors who are grounded in these Kingfisher groups where they’re sharing vulnerably with one another. I see spaces like that for pastors and ministry leaders. The spaces that you cultivate, Jason. Where from that grounded place, well, then now I can discern what I want to share about what’s going on in my life. But I often make the distinction between vulnerability and openness. Don’t call it vulnerability if you’re sharing it from the pulpit. I can be open about my life. In fact, people when I do conferences and stuff, they’ll say you’re so vulnerable, and I’ll be pretty quick to say, actually, I’m vulnerable with about five people in my life. What I shared was stuff I share in a variety of different contexts, but it’s stuff that I’ve decided to be open with. I’ve discerned that these are stories that I can tell. I’ve gotten permission from my family members, right? But vulnerability, no. I’m actually not going to disclose those things in the context of a retreat or a conference.

Jason Daye
Yeah. I think that’s a really important distinction, and it’s helpful because it helps us understand when we’re kind of fooling ourselves. You know what I mean? And if we step back and really dig down into, as you said, who are those core people in our lives that we’re truly honest with, and can also be truly honest with us? I think is incredibly important. We understand what true vulnerability is.

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah, that’s right.

Jason Daye
Absolutely. There’s something else that I loved as I was reading through. You talked about this differentiated leadership. And you talked about it being modeled by Jesus. And you’re very specific and spent some time on this differentiated leadership. You talked about the idea of how it’s stabilizing, how Jesus’ leadership was stabilizing. I’d love for you to kind of help us walk through this differentiated leadership and how we can lean into this in the way we lead.

Chuck DeGroat
I mean, it connects well because we’re talking about a grounded leader, someone who’s rooted and grounded in love. That prayer of Paul in Ephesians 3, right? And someone who is so grounded that there’s that sense that he or she can speak from their own authentic voice, not a performative voice, not a “what do you need to hear from me, Jason?”. But from a place of real conviction. This is kind of the definition of differentiation: from a real place of conviction, while at the same time maintaining healthy connection with others. And I think what we find with people who aren’t differentiated is they often do one of two things. One is they live lives that are pretty cut off from others, and we know people in ministry like that, when you’re undifferentiated and you’re isolated. And sometimes that’s a matter of survival for some pastors. They’ll say to me, I’m just so tired of people. I can’t do this anymore. But then there are some who are fused or enmeshed, as we say, which is to say I’m sort of lost in everyone else. I don’t really have a sense of my yes is no longer an authentic yes. I say yes to everything, every opportunity that I get, right? And those are the pastors who are often exhausted. And both kinds of undifferentiated leaders are dysregulated, as we were talking about earlier. In other words, their nervous systems are stuck in storm or fog, or some combination of both. Differentiation isn’t a light switch that you turn on. I probably would sell more books if I had the like how to become differentiated overnight. It’s like good exercise, good eating habits. It’s something that you grow in, and it often takes some work. It takes, as we were talking about, some of the dashboard work around your nervous system. It takes some work around your own story. Because we often learned to cut off or lose ourselves and others at a very early stage in our lives. I know that’s what I learned very early on is, Chuck, you were born into this world to be the glue for your parents’ marriage. And so I learned to be tuned in at a very early age to whatever was going on between Mom and Dad. Lo-and-behold, I became a pastor and a therapist, right? But it’s like I had to wake up to that at some point and say the danger for me is not to cut myself off. The danger for me is to lose myself in this work, to never say no, for instance, and never set a boundary. Hey, I’m available to you. I’m just a good pastor who’s available. And I think part of what Jesus models for us is that I can show up and be fully present and offer something of myself, and then I will pull away and I’ll pray. My days are measured in a sense, you know? And I often joke with my students that if I were the Trinity, and I were strategizing the best way to sort of evangelize the world, Jesus would have stayed a lot longer. There would have been some sort of headquarters established. Jesus would have made himself a lot more available. But it seems horribly inefficient to have a public ministry for three years, to walk past people who you could have healed because you need to go pray or be with your disciples, and to be crucified after those three. I mean, just not a great Trinitarian plan, but I do think that this says something about some sort of model of differentiation there.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. As I was reading through that section, one of the things that I was highlighting was this idea of how Jesus’ model was really a stabilizing factor in everywhere that he showed up. It was stabilizing. Can you talk to us a little bit about how that leadership, how that presence, was stabilizing?

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah, I mean, I think of it. We use the language often of a non-anxious presence, right? I think that those who’ve done the work that we’ve talked about today, who slowly shifted from storm and fog, the dysregulation of storm and fog, to a place that I call home, that rooted and grounded place. When you operate from that grounded place, that rooted place, that anchored place, you are like a tuning fork in whatever system you’re in. Your calm presence radiates within that system. When you’re operating from that more dysregulated place, you and I both are familiar with systems where there’s a lot of anxiety. I tell the story in there of some work I did in a particular system where there was an older woman on staff, and I’d noticed, because I was doing some consulting, how disrupted she was. And as I spent some time with her later as part of the consulting work, I realized that there were some anxious dynamics within the context of the staff where she felt like he was the harsh dad. She was probably 20 to 30 years older than this man, but she experienced him as this harsh father in her life, much like her own father, and she was sort of unwittingly reliving the dynamics of her family – a really anxious and tumultuous family of origin. That pastor was leading from a place of anxious presence. He was dysregulated, but in his mind, he was faithful, and he was leading the charge for the sake of the mission, the kingdom, right? And so, the systemic health took him recognizing how he was showing up and making the decision to begin to do his own work for the sake, not only of himself, but for the larger system.

Jason Daye
Yeah, Chuck, as I was reading through that, it’s interesting to me to think through this stabilizing presence, right? Especially when we look at a lot of, oftentimes, let’s say, church leadership is looking at this idea of impact, okay? And so they’re looking at, like, how do we make this big impact? So, oftentimes, you’re looking at this idea of big impact almost as destabilizing, right? So those two things kind of come against each other. So I was wondering if you could speak into that, and maybe how we look at how we in ministry show up as a church, and maybe how do we posture ourselves in ministry? How do we think about impact in ways that more closely align themselves with the idea of impact, yes, is important, but how do we bring those two things together?

Chuck DeGroat
I mean, there’s almost an impact idolatry today, though, if you think about it, right? Sort of the sense that it’s got to be big, and it’s got to be measurable. And I think one of the most important books for pastors nowadays was I think written probably 20 years ago. You maybe know it. It’s called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by a historian named Alan Kreider. And it’s about in those early first couple of centuries, they weren’t looking at impact. They were looking at what it means to be a faithful presence right where we are in our very small groups, with the reality of persecution within the Roman Empire. What’s it look like to invite someone to our table? What’s it look like to meet a need for someone else? What’s it look like to take in the baby that a family is looking to discard, which they would have done back in the first, second, third centuries, and more? And so there was a sense that it was like we’re going to be faithful to what we’re given right here and right now, in a non-anxious way. There wasn’t some sense of we’ve got to take the gospel to the nations. Let’s go, you know? I think that’s part of what’s happened is, and this is a lot of wiser people than me have written about this Christendom kind of mentality, this post-Constantine mentality, where it’s now we’re in power, we’ve got to take the gospel to the world, perhaps even by force, and we become modern-day crusaders – to use one of the most gruesome historical events, right? We become modern-day crusaders for the gospel, who measure our impact in terms of baptisms, attendance, and things like this. Well, that’s exhausting. And most of the time, when I do this work, and I’m working with a pastor who lives in that kind of ecclesial orbit, they are exhausted, and their nervous system is dysregulated, and they’ve got some story of like this is the way I was living. I’ve never been formed for anything other than bigger, better, faster.

Jason Daye
Yeah, absolutely. And what’s most interesting, Chuck, is when we look throughout history, even in our contemporary world, the places where the church is having the most dynamic impact. If we look at the church in China, the church in Iran, it’s the places where the church is doing exactly what the church was doing in the first, second, and third century. I mean, it’s just wow. Okay, interesting, fascinating, isn’t it? That yeah, I think the early church was onto something.

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah, it’s dangerous. I mean, power is dangerous, right? And I spent the summer reading Pope Gregory, like everyone else who’s listening right now. Sixth century Gregory the Great, really important figure who we don’t talk about much because Augustine lived about 100 years before him. But Pope Gregory, who is constantly warning ecclesial and political leaders about the dangers of power. When you’re in power, there’s this temptation of vain glory. There’s a temptation of performative spirituality. He was a monk turned leader, and so he brought that monastic sort of mentality. And I think there’s something about here we get back to slow. Here we get back to it’s not all on you. It’s not your job to save the world. And I think for probably a lot of us of our generation, Jason. I know for me back in the late ’90s, it was voices like Eugene Peterson that were really helpful that slowed me way down. Frederick Buechner and Henri Nouwen and others like that.

Jason Daye
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Chuck, this has been an absolutely fantastic conversation, as it always is when we get to hang out. As we wind down this conversation, you have the ears and eyes of men and women who are serving on the front lines of ministry. I’d love to give you the opportunity. What words of encouragement would you like to leave with them?

Chuck DeGroat
Yeah. Well, I mean, as people know, I wrote another book on narcissism in the church, right? So, you know, we hear and hold painful stories in our work often, but I think you likely would say this, too. We also are privy to the really hopeful ones. The pastors who will never be spotlighted because they’re faithfully serving in a smaller context, and they don’t need the attention, they don’t talk about it on Twitter, and all the things, right? But I think the really good news is, and I feel like I need to say this more. Even my students here at the seminary want me to say this a bit more. I feel like the really good news is that there’s a lot of good and faithful work being done. A lot of good and faithful pastors out there. Yeah, there are stories and there are outlets nowadays. There are journalist outlets, right? That are telling those stories regularly, and yet, you will likely not hear. But Jason and I will hear the stories of really faithful pastors, and just trust that there’s a lot of goodness, not just here in the United States. I mean, I think you’re telling stories, and I know stories too, internationally, where things are happening. Those stories probably need to be told more, too. But, you know, we are drawn to dumpster fires and traffic accidents more than we are drawn to stories of hope, which is kind of sad. But be encouraged that there’s a lot of hope.

Jason Daye
Absolutely, love it. Chuck, it has been a pleasure. Your latest book, Who You’re Becoming, is absolutely fantastic. Want to encourage people to check it out. And for this episode, and every episode, we create a toolkit that complements the conversation that Chuck and I just had. In the toolkit, you’ll find a ton of resources, including a Ministry Leaders Growth Guide, which has insights pulled out of this conversation and questions so you can dig more deeply into the topic that we just discussed. Find that PastorServe.org/network. You’ll also find in there links to Chuck’s books, including Who You’re Becoming, his most recent book. So, please be sure to check that out. Again, that’s at PastorServe.org/network. Brother, it’s been a joy to have you back on the show, and look forward to our next conversation.

Chuck DeGroat
Well, hey, thanks for taking some time on a Friday, Jason. I know you and I are both ready for the weekend. And thanks for the ministry and the work that you do.

Jason Daye
All right, thanks, brother. I appreciate you. God bless you.

Jason Daye
Here at PastorServe, we hope you’re truly finding value through these episodes of FrontStage BackStage. If so, please consider leaving a review for us on your favorite podcast platform. These reviews help other ministry leaders and pastors just like you find the show, so they can benefit as well. Also, consider sharing this episode with a colleague or other ministry friend, and don’t forget our free toolkit, which is available at PastorServe.org/network. This is Jason Daye, encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well.