Alright, it's Wednesday morning. We're going to
get started. At our church we start when
everybody gets there. We can't do that at
Electric Ship, so we have to start somewhat
on the clock. We'll begin with a prayer and get
right into today's topic. Father, once
again we are honored to be in your presence and
thankful to be your children. We thank
you for all the people in our lives who have
brought us to this point for your church,
your kingdom. We ask this morning as we talk
about your kingdom and your church that you
would fill us with love for your church and
fill us with wonder for what your church can
be. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen. My wife
over the past several years has become
a runner. My wife is a very, what's the right
word, physically fit person. Agile, mobile.
This morning at 5:30 she was teaching a weight
lifting class and I was asleep. But because
of that she's gotten into running and she last
year ran a marathon, things like that.
Last Thanksgiving I was sitting around with a
bunch of my cousins and stuff and we were
admiring I have a cousin who married his wife
when she was in high school was Miss Texas
Basketball and so we're all married to these
athletes and we were talking about how non-athletic
we all are and we began discussing next
Thanksgiving running a 5K, all of us, and I
began shooting
my mouth off about how fast I thought I could
run it. And so about two months ago I decided
I better get in some training. I play
basketball regularly but I don't do a lot of
out and
out running. So I began training and last
Saturday ran a competitive 5K here in town.
My wife and I both ran it. I beat my wife.
About how many seconds? Not many. And I was
an all out sprint. But what I realized
afterwards is the first time I've run a
competitive race
in 20 years since 8th grade. And it got me
thinking and I shared with some people at
church about the last competitive race I ran. I
want to share that with you as kind of an
entry way to what we're doing this morning.
When I was in 8th grade I've never been fast.
My high school basketball coach once told me,
Damon, you may be short but you're slow.
I've never been fast. So in 8th grade though I
didn't want to do off season football because
that involved lifting weights and I'm not
strong either. And so I decided to do track
and we got to try out everything. Discus, pole
vault, which is deadly by the way. The
only thing I could be remotely competitive in
was the two mile race. And the only reason
was because most people, that's just too far,
not even going to try. So there's only a few
of us who would even try out for it. So somehow
I made the team in the two mile and went and
we ran all the time and we ran these track
meets and I never did great. I would beat
some of the people but never finish high up or
anything. Well the last track meet of the
year was the district track meet and it was at
our high school. And we lived, the school
I went to is a small town, about 2,000 people.
And so at the track meet there's all these
people there. It's a lot of people for an 8th
grade track meet. And they all know you
because you're in this little town. And we're
running the two mile and my perception always
of the two mile was no one's paying attention
until the very end. I mean the people in the
stands, they don't want to watch 8th graders
run around the track for 15 minutes. It's
just boring. So no one's really paying
attention. Well there was one guy in the race
who was
really good from another school. We'd seen him
two or three times that year. We're all
jogging. He's running. He was really good. And
I, in another race earlier in the year,
he had lapped me right at the end of his race.
And I decided, I knew I wasn't going to win,
but my goal was to not get lapped. So it comes
around, I'm on my next to last lap, he's on
his last, and he's getting closer and closer.
We turn down the home stretch. I have the
hundred meters to the finish line plus another
lap. He has a hundred meters and he begins
going into his sprint to try to, you know, set
his best time or whatever. He's going
to win. He's way ahead of everybody. But he's
coming up on me. I don't want to be lapped.
So I go into a sprint and I still have another
lap to go. Well I go into the sprint and we
are sprinting and the crowd starts going crazy.
They think, oh, this is it. This is, we have
a guy who's going to, you know, and I mean we
are, and he is right beside, and I am just
everything I have as fast as I can. I beat him
to the finish line. The crowd goes nuts.
I mean really, they're just, oh, not you know.
And then of course I break into a slow jog
for, and you feel the crowd. As I break into
that, they realize, oh, he's in tenth place,
not first place. Yeah, victory lap. That
feeling, that sprinting as fast as you can to just
stay ahead. When I talked with somebody on
Sunday about that being the last competitive
race I ran, probably more adequately describes
the internal things that go on with someone
who is addicted. That is how I felt almost all
the time, that I was sprinting to keep
from getting lapped. That I'm juggling all
these things in the air to try to just stay
on above the water. And it is a draining
feeling. That next lap, all these people pass
me. Because
I was out. I had given all my energy just to
try to keep from being lapped. And so while
I was probably in, I think, eighth or ninth
place and probably would have stayed there,
I ended up in thirteenth or fourteenth because
I didn't have the energy to stay ahead of
the other people. I think that that is how a
lot of addicts feel. They are giving everything
they can to just stay in the race. Today, we're
going to talk about what church leaders
can do to help the church be a place where
those people no longer have to sprint. Where
they can find rest. Or as we call it here,
homecoming. Where they can find a place where
you don't have to keep sprinting to be ahead.
Where you are accepted for the fact that you're
in tenth place and that's okay. We're going to
talk about the role of church leaders this
morning. And we chose the word leaders because
I don't think anymore we're under the illusion
that this would involve only elders. That this
involves anyone in the church who is
in a position of leadership, whether formally
or informally. And so we're going to talk
about what church leaders can do to help the
church be a place where homecoming can happen
for addicts. Now let's go to the next slide.
Let's try this. We are indeed frozen. We are
having technical difficulties. We are frozen
in space and time. That's okay. You have on
there, at least a little bit, we're going
to talk. Alright, the first thing should be, if
I'm correct, create an open environment.
Create an open environment. This involves what
we actually say. And the first thing
I want to talk about is what can be said from
the pulpit. Yeehaw. How do you make this thing
work? Go to a slideshow. How do you spell
slideshow? Right there. Look at that. There's
a brief review of all of the last few days.
This is going to be really good on tape. Did
we summarize Monday and Tuesday? They don't
need it, they know. Create an open environment.
What we say matters. And what we don't say
matters. We'll talk
about that. If it can't be said from the pulpit.
The first thing I want to talk about is what
we actually say. Can you say the word porn in
the pulpit? You obviously can. Will you
say the word porn in the pulpit? The guy at the
lectureship last night said this college
roommate was doing his business and that was in
a lectureship. Was it Wade? Yeah. He lived
across the hall from me for two years. So I
think if we can say doing is business, I think
we can say porn from the pulpit. Well I think
you can too. And I think you have to. Because
of our history, we reside in a place where what
is said up front matters dramatically.
And so the willingness to talk about certain
issues from the pulpit is so important because
it opens the environment to talk about such
things. So porn, masturbation, affairs, voyeurism.
I know that for most, the first time that's
said in the pulpit people. Because they're
surprised to hear it there. But once it is said
there, it creates this, we can talk about
that. We can say that. The preacher said porn.
So I can say porn. It gives us freedom. What
about the kid that goes home over lunch and
says, Mom, Dad, what's porn? Now that's one
of the things you really have to think about.
For instance, at our church, my son decided
a year ago, about a year ago, he's seven, that
he was going to not go to kids class
anymore. He was going to be, because he wanted
to be in where the sermon is. So I know every
week Grant is going to be sitting there
listening to what I have to say. And we just
have decided
with Grant to be fairly open. He knows a lot of
things that you might say, I don't know
if a seven year old, but there are, it's going
along. He's around other kids at church whose
parents are involved in some pretty serious
lifestyle issues. He hears about it. On the
one hand, there's that. I also do think you do
want to protect children somewhat. You
don't want a child going home scared that their
mom is sleeping around. That sort of
thing. So there are some boundaries you might
have to draw. You might decide that this Sunday
we're really going to talk about sex addiction.
And so we're going to talk to the adults beforehand
about whether they want their kids in church or
not. It will be interesting to see which
of those adults actually show up, knowing what
you're going to talk about on Sunday.
I always wondered that if we really announced
what we're really going to talk about, how
many people would show up. But I think you have
to create an environment where those
things can be talked about. But not just those
things. Not just sexual addiction issues.
It has to be an environment where we talk about
things like mental illness, depression,
drug abuse. It has to be an environment where
from the pulpit we're willing to talk about
the struggles people have because they've been
sexually abused or physically and emotionally
abused. Because we're not just opening the door
to talking about pornography. What we
want to do is open the door to talk about the
reality of people's lives. Lots of sex
addicts find the beginnings of that in sexual
abuse. And so I don't think we just want to
be willing to talk about pornography. We want
to be willing to talk about the trauma that
led to it. Because what we want is healing, not
just for the pornography, but for the
trauma that led to it. And so if we're going to
do that, we have to be willing to talk
about it. So what we say from the pulpit is
very important. Along those same lines, the
unspoken rules are the strongest. And I know we
probably all know that. But we have unspoken
rules at church about what can be said and what
can't. Maybe the unspoken rule is you
can come down and confess, but don't say what
you actually did. It's good to confess,
but sometimes people need to say it. They need
to say it.
Damon, let me interrupt your train of thought
here. What about the rule from days gone by,
maybe even going on now, that there's a
relationship between the public nature of the
sin and the
public nature of the confession, so that if you
know it, keep it general. If a heck of
a lot of people know it, then make it specific.
Critique that if you will.
Wow, I think that's really bad. In that, I
think what we're wanting to do, now I'm not
saying somebody comes down front and you say,
well, you tell me what you did. But people
need the freedom. If someone is really going to
seek healing, they need the freedom to
be able to seek that in a way that is most
beneficial to their healing. What they may
need is a group of people to surround them, and
that be the people they confess to from
within the church, not the whole church. Maybe
that's what they need. Maybe that's what would
be best for their healing. But if someone
really feels the best thing for their healing
is to share this with the church, I think they
ought to be allowed to share it with
the church. The problem is going to come when
the person comes down front and they really
want to share. I don't know if you come down
front at your church, however you do confession
or don't. But a person who wants to share with
the church, you know, I've been looking
at gay porn on the internet and I can't seem to
stop. Well, if the first time that's ever
been mentioned in church is when they come down
and confess, it is going to be insane.
It is going to be insane. No one's going to
have a clue how to deal with it, which is
why it has to be talked about before those kind
of things happen. Now, here's the deal.
Those kind of things are happening. So it needs
to be talked about like 10, 15 years
ago, but we don't really have that. So it needs
to be talked about now because those
issues are going on in people's lives. Here's
the last thing I want to say about that. I
personally know that I never heard pornography
talked about from the pulpit until I said
it. I assumed, wrongly, that that's just
something we don't talk about or deal with,
which is
fine until you're personally dealing with it. I
wish so strongly that in 25, 30 years
of going to church, someone had just gotten up
and said, pornography is out there. Some
of you are dealing with it. It's a struggle.
Whether this person had or not, we're open
to helping you with that. I wish I could just
have heard that one time.
I'm getting the picture that what we have here
is the elephant in the living room, and
if that wasn't true, I think this classroom
would be overflowing.
Right. It is the elephant. Since Monday, not
just from people in here, I've had so many
people talk to me and say, we're dealing with
this person in our church, but it's not out
in the open. It's very closed off. Think about
it. This pornography or sex addiction thrives
in secrecy. That's where it thrives. You don't
come home and tell your wife, I've been sleeping
around. That's the end of it, probably, or at
least the end of your marriage. It thrives
in secrecy. If the church is a place where it
is also secret, that puts the addict in
an extremely difficult spot. It puts the addict
in the spot that I think we often find ourselves
in, which is, hi, how are you? I'm great.
Inside, I'm secretly hoping this Sunday someone
will say, if you're really struggling with
this, we can help. Let's go with that.
The next thing is set the tone. This is how we
say these things matters. How we talk about
sex matters. I was talking to a minister
yesterday, a guy who I went to school here
with, and
he said that at the church he grew up at, he
was taught sex is bad. Then he got married
and found out it's not. It's good. He said that
he went through a time during his early
part of his marriage where he felt guilty for
having sex with his wife. It's not just
our willingness to talk about sex, it's how we
talk about it. Do we talk about sex as
something that is filthy, something that is
dirty? Do we talk about sex as something that
is beautiful, something that is wonderful? When
was the last sermon you had on the Song
of Solomon? It's not typically where we run to
for Sermon material. How we talk about
it matters. If we talk about sex addiction in
such a way as we say things like, boy, there's
some of y'all who are really addicted and
that's bad. Or do we say, we know that there
are people who are struggling with this, but we
want you to know there's hope and there's
healing and we believe you can be transformed.
It creates a whole different thought process
in a person. I'm not saying just put a positive
spin on everything. We never want to get to
a point where we're talking about affairs or
pornography or things like that and we're
acting like somehow they're okay. But no addict
thinks they're okay. That's not the problem.
What the addict needs to hear is there is
possibilities for healing. There is hope.
That you're not filthy just because you've done
something that we've talked about as
being filthy. The other day when Wayman was
talking about the difference between ingestion
like drugs versus identity. I mean, a sex
addict really, it is about their identity.
They feel dirty. They don't need us to tell
them they're dirty. They need to hear words
that say there's hope, there's healing, there's
a chance. And they need it said from the front
because, just in my opinion, this isn't
something that we're just sitting around
talking about.
They need it said from the front. Since this
has happened to me, I've found real freedom
to talk about sex and money in the pulpit. And
I do think they go together. But sex and
money in the pulpit because if we can't talk
about them there, where else can we? I'll
give you an example and then we'll go on to the
next one. This will be an example with
money. If your church only talks about
stewardship when you're preparing to build a
new building,
that sends a message. And the message it sends
is, although we don't say it, the message
it sends is, the only time you should really be
concerned about how you spend your money
is when it affects what this church wants to do.
Now, I know that's not what we really
believe, but if that's the only time we talk
about stewardship, that's the message we send.
And so if the only time we talk about sex is
with our teenagers telling them to stay
out of the back seats of their car, then that
sends the message that that's all that matters
about sex. We have to have a much broader, we
must set a much broader tone with the way
we talk. We're going to talk about some actual
processes of getting knowledgeable help. It's
not enough just to talk about it. We have to do
some things. And so Wayman's going
to talk about that. It kind of feels like we're
living in the theater of the random
since I edited the slide presentation at 7:00
before Monday morning and Damon has
edited it since we started this morning. So why
don't we go ahead and edit it further.
So I've got some bulleted points that just kind
of are popping in my head. My students
know that I'm very, very dangerous when I
haven't had enough to eat. I'm having too
much coffee. So Henson's brain stoked on
caffeine is not a pretty sight, which is a bit addicting
within and of itself. So let me back up and let
me give you a war story. Several years
ago, about three years after my wife and I
moved to Texas, I was given an enormous challenge.
Trust me, this will segue into church ministry
in just a moment. And the challenge was that
I was given the chair of a committee here with
TMFT, Texas MFT Association called Strategic
Planning Committee. Now, what they had in mind
for me, job description wise, was rather
simple, rather ignoble. I thought it was huge,
gargantuan, noble, recreate the arc and the
arc of the covenant and all sorts of other
things. And I didn't realize that they actually
had some money set aside for me as the chair of
this committee simply to go out and find
a strategic planning organization to help TMFT
construct its strategic plan. That would
have been real simple, hire somebody, do it,
get it done, bring it, report it. It's a done
deal. But what I did, given the fact that
nobody told me what the job description was
and how much money there was, I said, Geez, I
don't know how to do this. But I think it
would look like this. So what I did was I
pulled together people, friends, colleagues,
acquaintances from all across the state of
Texas. We met, we designed, we planned. We
polled what we would call our stakeholders, MFT
training programs. We polled academicians.
We polled, surveyed clinicians on and on and on.
We developed lots and lots of information,
even plugged it into computers to come up with
dominant themes. Met in the Metroplex
at the Hilton Hotel out by DFW for a three-day
weekend strategic planning process, which
was absolutely a thing of beauty. And I
couldn't believe that I was actually the chair
of this
wonderful group of people coming together to
make this thing work. And the really crazy
thing, this illustrates a point. Now, same
thing about me as the chair of that committee,
was that literally for 15 years, the product of
that particular committee's work served
as the strategic plan for the state of Texas.
It's like it was a simple process in their
minds when they appointed me, find somebody to
do it. But we didn't know what we were
talking about. So we went about the business of
doing it, actually saved money in the process.
But that strategic plan just kind of cast the
vision for what the MFT Association did
for the next 15 years, which really kind of
blew me out of the water. I said all that
to say this, that if we take the best, it's
kind of bull at this point, if we take the
best of human wisdom, and if we take the best
of the wisdom of God, then I think we're going
to plan. So that's bulleted point number one.
Bulleted point number two would be deconstructing
the language, the distinctions between
psychologizing and theologizing. Psychologizing
would say
that we push everything that we're talking
about through the lens of psychology so that
only a psychological perspective reigns supreme.
And I think that's really problematic for
people of faith, rightfully so. On the other
hand, the danger for us as people of faith
is the danger of theologizing. We push
everything related to what we're talking about through
the lens of theology so that it's only a
theological problem. And what we tried to make
sense of
back on Monday was this whole thing of
addiction is a very complicated thing because
it involves
biological pieces. If you don't believe that,
look at somebody's brain on cocaine and look
at somebody's brain high on sexual images.
Guess what? They look like. Just really red
and on fire. So I think we have to make sense
out of that because in our pool pits and in
our churches, we must have language of
Christian community. So as we're thinking in terms
of the previous slide of getting knowledgeable
help, I think we do put the best of human
wisdom and the best of the wisdom of God side
by side. So we're dancing between those one
foot in this world and one foot in that world,
kind of making sense out of it all. I really
like what Damon was saying about the whole
notion of implicit messages. And an author
I've come to read a lot over the last five or
six years or so is an author by the name
of Frederick Buechner. And his book Secrets,
he's a novelist, said, I just want to do something
for Christ. And so he goes to seminary, trained
Seminary and Presbyterian, a writer of novels,
an incredible, incredible writer. Anything you
read about him will be cool. But he talks
about the deadly nature of secrets. And a
secret he goes back to was that his father
committed suicide by asphyxiation and they
never could talk about it. And then later
in his life, as a married man, as a family man,
he has a daughter who almost dies from
anorexia. And he pulls together the linkages
between the deadly nature of secrets and his
daughter's life and death struggle with
anorexia. And in the middle of that, he tells a rather
curious story about how he really, really, you
know the story, made his mama mad because
he started facing his secrets and telling his
secrets while mama was still alive. Now
it was his dad who killed himself, but his dad
was her husband. And so again, you have
to kind of nuance that, but secrets are deadly.
And so if we secretize, so to speak, a theology
of the human being or theology of sexual, yada,
yada, yada, and then we put it in this
little box over here, we create secrets out of
it and we only let it out in bizarre moments.
Another random thought would be go and find the
book, The Gift of Sex by Penner and Penner.
Back when I taught sex therapy, we used that
book as a theological jumping off place. I'm
not sure if it's used now, but that book has a
really nice theology of sexual relations.
And I think a thing that kind of jumped back
one step further from that, if you heard Landon
Saunders speak on Monday night, he is playing,
I think, off of a Harvard chaplain, Vietnam
veteran, pastor, somebody by the name of Coffin.
Does that mean the name Ring a Bell Coffin?
We put people in them, but Coffin? Is that the
guy's name, Coffin? He's playing off
of Coffin's literature. When Landon says in his
eloquent, incredible way, get that CD,
get that DVD, when you get people right, you'll
get church right. I really like that statement,
no matter who, I wish I dreamed it up. But the
point is, I think Landon's right, when
we get people right, which means developing in
high-powered, cool words, our theological
anthropology right, then we're saying something
about God. When we get us right, and we get
God right, and then we get us and the God
relationship right, then we're gonna do the
doing thing, we're gonna do it really well. And
so I think that means that because we're,
we have a body, and we have emotions, we have
thoughts, we have experiences, Da-da-da-da-da,
we nuance those all within the community of
faith, and then we're judicious in terms
of how we talk about things, and we talk about
things. But kind of going back a little bit,
progressing a bit to the strategic planning,
human wisdom, God wisdom thing, I would think
that a first thing that we might ought to think
about doing in our churches is developing
a two-track kind of a system. Let's develop a
system that is preventative in nature, and
then let's develop a system that is remedial in
nature. And the preventative in nature
thing is about changing the culture of our
churches where we can talk about things that
matter. And the best way that I could
illustrate that when we talked on Monday, I
suppose it
was Sunday, who knows, who cares, was this
church in Memphis where they're actually
doing that. And the minister, the pulpit
minister is actually going to people and
saying, we're
in the business of kind of restoring the story
of our church, and da-da-da-da-Da, may I have
permission to tell your story? And so you give
me permission to tell your story, no
secrets, we negotiate, we talk about what it's
going to be, da-da-da-Da, and then I
tell your story. And then your story resonates
with your brothers and sisters in Christ,
and they begin to tell you their story, or you
begin to tell me your story because this
brother has allowed me within the context of us
to tell his story, and then stories
with all their meaning and all their
purposefulness get told. I think that's
something in the
direction of a cultural shift which would make
our churches a safe place to tell the
stories of our brokennesses. You know, we all
have them, you know, they look a little
different, they feel a little different, but a
church which allows us to get real, to keep
it real, you know what I'm saying, that sort of
thing. So I think we might, and so I say
that to say this, that if we go back and kind
of wed the notion of get it real, keep it
real, cultural shifts, telling stories,
truthfulness, getting out of the secret
business, strategic
planning, I would say organize a bunch of men,
organize a bunch of women who are wise
in the ways of strategic planning and develop a
strategy that says where are we going to
go and when we get there, what is it going to
look like, how do we get there, what are
the means of getting there, what are the
obstacles along the way, what are the costs,
what are
the benefits of getting there, what would that
look like, so we envision what that's
going to be and we develop processes over the
course of several years to get there.
That's a process I think that is more
preventative in nature. Now we can never really prevent
because sin and sickness, disease, addiction
are happening as we speak, but at least what
we've done, if we do that, we've laid the
groundwork for changing a context so that
people can really speak the truth of the pain
of their lives, they can really speak the
truth because they know they're going to be
loved and then we can speak the truth
and love. So that would be kind of the
preventative development of a safe place kind
of a context.
And then the other thing I think would be that
we develop another track which is about
remediation. When somebody falls off the
proverbial wagon, when somebody falls into the ditch,
when somebody finds themselves hip deep in the
pool of alligators, when somebody finds
themselves up to their rib cage in the swamp of
life, how do we pull them out, whatever
that metaphor or analogy would be, how do we go
about remediating and this is about
finding healing for the individual, for the
couple, for the family, for whoever is involved
there. And I think at that point we can kind of
kick into some principles. Let's talk
specifically out of this book. Now this book is
a bit dated. I mean nobody's dating yet
but it was printed in 1997. But I haven't found
anything better and again we're passing
around that notepad that has email addresses.
Where did that thing get back in the back?
So if you want a copy of our reference list,
name, email address, we'll send that out
to you the first of the week. And so Restoring
the Fallen, a team approach to caring, confronting,
and reconciling by the Wilsons, the Freesons,
and the Paulsons I think has a large schema
for how this thing might actually look. And let
me just kind of bullet some points. Develop
policies before they're needed. I have a son
who's a professional singer-songwriter
and back when he was an adolescent he used to
groan, roll his eyes, all that kind of
adolescent stuff. When I said, so what's the
plan? What's the plan? And now he comes
to me, he says, Dad, remember when I used to
da-da-da-da-da about your plan stuff? He
says, you know you're really right. He's, I'm
realizing now that if I don't
have a plan, I'm just kind of shooting in the
dark. Now he doesn't say shooting, but
that's another word. We're not going to use
that word on tape. So because we're kind
and we're Christian here and we maintain our
secrets. So developing policies before
they're needed. That's planning ahead. We've
already said this frequently in times
in worship and in educational time, spent on
church discipline and restoration in context
in Bible class settings and those kinds of
forums to talk about these things. Develop
teams in advance, teams of remediation, teams
of prevention. Training provided for people
who are willing to be involved at a personal
level. If eventually we develop the notion
of team, let's get teams ready and have teams,
roles, people, husbands wise, men, women,
couples who are trained in specific facets of
the team structure, knowing that their
role is not the whole thing, but part of the
thing. Disclosure and confession should happen
as quickly as possible within the context of
the church. Disclosure and confession should
happen as quickly as possible within the
context of the church. Kind of a sidebar here that
I'll be very quick about. We live in a culture
of psychotherapy and I'm kind of one of those
people who kind of benefits as a prof and as a
therapist off of the culture of psychotherapy.
But I know at the end of the day that I as the
professional who's being paid dollars
to spend my time with people and help them out
of their woes, I don't want to be the
only one that's hearing the secrets, right? We
don't want to be the only one hearing
the secrets. That is doomed to fail. And
there's a principle that applies there. If you're
a member of the body of Christ and your best
friend is coming to tell you and you're the
only one hearing the story, it's doomed to fail.
If you're the minister of the church,
you're an elder in your church, you're the only
one who's hearing the story of one of
your members, it's doomed for failure if you're
the only one who's hearing it. So disclosure
and confession as quickly as possible within
the body of Christ. Action should be taken
quickly when sin is disclosed. Wisdom says what
kind of action. When members leave because
of sin, efforts should be made to encourage
them to face their sin and to deal honestly
with the next church. We can let that kind of
stand. Again, that's in the book. Replace
the putting the past behind notion with the
idea of a regular spiritual health checkup.
So rather than park it, sweep it on the rug,
let's don't do that. The church's ministry
of reconciliation should include more than
simply stopping the sin itself. And I think
Damon has done a good job of noticing of noting
that in terms of functions of the team, still
on bullet number two, let me hit one, let me
about seven points. Honesty, discouragement,
encouragement, restoration of relationships,
management, healing, complete recovery. Honesty,
let's get it real, keep it real. Number two,
let's discourage further involvement with
and let's encourage leaving it behind, doing
healthy kinds of things. Number three, let's
restore relationships, husband, wife, father,
child, mother, child, family of faith. Let's
develop a system that kind of puts fences
around so as to manage the addiction. If the
addiction is to pornography and there's a
favorite video store that the person goes
to and buys videos, then let's build the walls
of Jericho, so to speak, around that place
and so that that person never goes there,
period, end of discussion. When he feels the
urge to go to that place, he calls somebody,
accountability partner. If internet porn is
the issue, you either get the computer out of
your house, you either put a cyber cop
on it, you put a tracking thing on it, you put
it out in the middle of the living room
where God and all these people know whatever
the world is that you're looking at, whatever
the hedges look like. The hedges need to be
consistent, flexible, but very, very clear
in terms of boundaries. Healing emotionally,
mentally, physically, spiritually, going back
to the depth of the pain of the trauma that
really gets the addiction going in the first
place. Healing of relationships. Complete
recovery, not just stopping. That's a whole
different thing. In terms of members of the
team, let me just kind of toss this out there
and then leave this for Damon to respond to.
This particular book, and we can certainly
debate about this until the cows come home, and
they're going to be coming home in about
15 minutes. Well, no, we're going to be
leaving, but we're not cows. Never the pulpit menace
is a curious notion that this book says. Never
the pulpit minister. Key elders, deacons,
and spouses. Let's make this a couple kind of
adventure. Number three, lay persons with
training. Number four, professional members of
the body. And then finally, a therapist
who's a consultant. So never the pulpit
minister. We might wonder about that. Key
elders, deacons,
spouses, key leaders. Lay persons with
training, which means we got to strategize,
plan, train.
Professional people who are members of the
body, and a therapist who is a consultant.
So again, a therapist who's a consultant is
going to have to nuance state regulatory
board, state licensing, regulations, and that
sort of thing. We all live in the world of
HIPAA, right? We go in to see a doctor, we sign
these forms, we read it, whether we read
it or not. It all says the same thing. Just
kind of like, doctor this versus doctor that.
So we live in a world of HIPAA, which says that
a professional violates confidentiality,
going to be in serious, serious trouble if a
therapist is a member of the team violating
confidentiality without permission to do so you
have to nuance kind of the role of
the therapist and these other team members.
Just say a couple of things, and then we want
to try to have time for questions, but let me
give you a few specifics of kind of what
some of that looks like. When I went into
recovery, we did not have internet at our
house for five years. When I talk to people and
I say, you know, I'm really addicted
or whatever, and one of the things that I say
is, well, stop the pipeline that's coming
into your house with it. You'd be amazed at the
anti-reaction to that, because that's
one of those things that's just become assumed.
We have all these assumptions about how that
my life has to work like it is, except I need
to get rid of this. But the deal is, your
life is not working. So working it like it is,
and just like Wayman said, we're just
going to get rid of that, and everything else
is going to stay the same. It does not work.
And so as you're working with people, you have
to consider their whole life, their whole
life. What is it that is here? I mean, we're
talking about married people, and if someone
has a sex addiction, do you see how complicated
that then becomes? Because they're having
sex with their wife, is that part of their sex
addiction or not? Those are issues you
have to deal with. You have to deal with issues
of accessibility. One of the things that was
key for me was, especially early on, was what
Wayman was just saying about building some
hedges. Free time for an addict is a killer.
Unaccounted for free time, just forget it.
So I, for a while, when I went back to work,
now remember I was working at the church,
but I went back to work, I would say to a
minister or an elder, I'm leaving to go home.
They would call my house 15 minutes later. Now
to me, that's slightly embarrassing and
childish as a human, but it protected me
because I knew one of these elders who has put himself
on the line for me is going to be calling my
house in 15 minutes. I mean, I'm running
red by to get home. But it also gave assurance
to my wife, and it began building that trust.
I hate cell phones. I carry one all the time so
that my wife can
call me at any moment and she can hear my voice
and know where I am. Preventative measures,
putting things around the person, helping them
be accountable is not just a means of
holding them down, it's a means of giving them
freedom. Now I didn't see that at first.
It was really hard. I really understand it now.
And while some of those I do not have
to call now, no one calls my house when I'm
going home from work, but I don't have unaccounted
for free time. I just don't. And really what it
really is, that's become a habit. It's
just become a habit at our house. What's been
interesting is my wife has fallen into it
as well. She doesn't have unaccounted for free
time. Not that she doesn't have an addiction,
but we've made that a mutual thing for us. And
boy, it's been really wonderful. And it's
really built trust back into our relationship.
But there's lots of things, lots of little
things like that that make a big difference for
people. One of the things kind of on the
next slide I think that I was going to mention,
if you push it one more time I think it will
come up. One more time maybe. Yeah. Along with
accountability, we want, this is a process
of discipline and celebration. And it requires
both. It requires discipline for the person.
And sometimes that discipline, for instance in
my case, was very much a building some
hedges and creating accountability. And
sometimes it was a little, hey dude, get your
act together.
And people need both. But it was also some
discipline for other people. Some, here's
how you're going to deal with this. It was a
couple of people who were called into the
elders and told, you're going to stop talking
about this with other people. Man, for me
that made me feel great. Because I wasn't the
only one in trouble. You know, no one
wants to go to the principal's office about
themselves. But really what made me feel great
was the elders were looking out for me and my
family and wanting other people to be involved
in the process in positive ways. And that's
really good. But there also has to be times
of celebration where we validate what's
happened. This can be a long slog. It's not
going to
happen in a couple of weeks. So there needs to
be times of celebration. And I'm not just
talking about a special song service in honor
of sexual addiction. Although, if we're in
AA or NA or OA, we get tokens. I read this
incredible story the other day about a person
who got a one-year sobriety Token, a token for
one year of sobriety. And that person
gave it to her therapist as a point of
gratitude. So if our recovery friends can do
it, why
can't I recovery people in Christ? Why can't we?
Let's celebrate. Let's
celebrate. If you have somebody who's an
alcoholic and they have an extent of sobriety, throw
them a party without alcohol. Throw them a
party. Maybe that's something now that's
probably missing from their life. That used to
be how they celebrated. And now we need
new means of celebrating. There was times
where, in my life, to be honest, I would go
through a very stressful time. Really, things
are hard and working hard. And the way I found
relief was through my addiction, to have
something else now, a way to enjoy and have fun. And
it's great. On just two Sundays ago at church,
I actually had a young lady in our church
who said she was celebrating two years. She was
celebrating her birthday. I didn't know
it was her birthday, because it's not really
her birthday. But it had been two years since
she had found freedom from self-immunization.
And she considered that her real birthday.
And that's great. And we should find ways to
celebrate like that, because God can really
do some great things in people. And when he
does, let's have a party. Let's invite the
whole church and say, I remember years ago, I
was actually at Highland. This was when
I was in college. And Nino Elliott was leading
singing on Sunday. And he was at that time
25. He was 25 years old. And someone got up and
said, Nino is 25. Isn't that great? But
Nino represents, in him being 25, the fact that
Bill Nash has 25 years of sobriety. So
they brought Bill up. And then you could see it.
The last time Bill Nash took a drink,
raging alcoholic, was when Nino was born. And
there was something about that that just
made you go, wow, I want to be a part of
whatever this is. And so we need to develop processes
that get us to that point. But if we don't
celebrate, if all it is is discipline and
work, it becomes very tiring for both the team
involved and the person involved. There
needs to be times of validation and celebration.
I want to, yes, wisdom and judgment is part
of that. You have to make wise decisions. We
were talking earlier. Sometimes there's
legalities involved with people. You have to be
wise about that. Oh, and I wanted to
share an image of, this is in, if you want to
know what restoration looks like, we need
more images of what true healing and
restoration looks like. We have lots of images
in our
mind of what people's falling apart lives look
like. Those youngest three children wouldn't
exist if people hadn't come alongside of my
family and helped us find healing. My daughter
there was born a couple of years into this
process. Her middle name is Grace, because
that's what we found. And so this is an image,
and it's me and my kids, this was a Mother's
Day gift to my wife this year. But this is what
is possible. This is the kind of healing
and restoration that can happen for people.
Before we segue out of here to get on to the
rest of our lives, I asked Damon if he would
share with us a bit, you may have already
said this while I was dreaming over here, but
what you're going to do with kind of
the next season of your life? I've been at New
Life where I have been a minister for
ten years, and in December, at the end of
December, I will no longer be the full-time
minister there. And one of the things that I'm
doing, starting to do now, but I'm planning
on doing much more next year, is going to
churches and talking about sexual addiction
issues. Not just, hey, let's talk about porn in
the pulpit, but talking about how churches
can be places of healing and restoration, doing
men's retreats. Now, I say men's retreats.
We're discovering that there's lots of women
that are struggling with this issue, too.
It's just really weird to do the men and women,
but doing a retreat where we sit down and
we really talk about these things, and there's
confession, and there's beginning processes
of healing, helping churches set up processes
of healing, helping leaders get good help
in doing that. So that is something that I'm
planning on dedicating a big portion of my
life to. If you're ever interested in that,
yes, I'm trying to, I need to make a living,
but I'm more interested in helping people find
healing like I've found. And so if you're
ever interested in that, please contact me.
I've started a website that is just starting
to get rolling. It's called Hopeforsexaddicts.c
Om, and it's going to be mostly resources for
churches, but I would love to come and talk
with your church leaders.
Like we said, this really is an elephant in the
room. It's an epidemic that is out there,
and I'm willing to use my story to say, let's
talk about this in some real ways. That can
be very freeing for people to hear. There's
somebody else who not only has been through
it, but has found some hope and some healing.
And so if you're ever interested in that,
I do have some cards. I'd love to talk with you
about it. We have one minute, questions,
please. You mentioned earlier that when you're
working to keep it out of pulpit, either with
the pulpit minister coming, not out of pulpit.
Right. The pulpit minister might come up with
a lot of assumptions as to why to do that, but
what are some of the reasons that you
would want to protect that person? Yeah, my
personal response to that, Bo, would be that
the pulpit minister for better or for ill
represents a person of power. That role is
so central to our churches, and you would
really want to empower by kind of disempowering,
so to speak. And so the person who's wrestling
with the addiction would want to know that
his or her story is not going to be publicly
whatever. And then the power of the pulpit
minister displayed within the context of a
community of faith that's more equal in sort.
I think there would be some inherent kind of
traps. You know, Damon may feel free to disagree
with that. Well, I think one thing is
oftentimes the Pulpit minister is an outsider. Everybody
else, your elders, your deacons, the people on
the team are all considered insiders. The
pulpit is a hired gun. I think there's some
danger there. Obviously, I don't think this
is a hard and fast rule. I think the other
thing is, and I notice this just at my church,
you know, we're a small church, but sometimes
if there's a conversation going and then I
give my opinion, that becomes the final say,
which I'm just trying to throw in like, oh
yeah, I think this. And I think sometimes the
pulpit minister, not on purpose, can short
circuit that kind of conversation. I think
there's a difference between the ministry
of the word versus pastoral leadership. Yeah.
We did more preacher knows about
what's going on with individual people, the
less he can, the less stuff he can talk about
in the pulpit because it's going to fill that
person that they're being targeted, whether
they bring up the person's name or not. Because
if you know everything that's going on, then
how are you going to challenge and give a
message without somebody being feeling like
they're offended? You know what I'm saying?
Look at them the entire time. I'm talking
to you. What do you do with a situation where
somebody has been found out, either because
they got arrested or you know, whatever, and
they're not repentant about what they're
doing? Do you move through this process a
little bit differently? Oh, very much so.
I think so, yeah. I think this starts with,
we're not real good with doing what Matthew
calls us to do about going to the person,
taking another group to the person, going
and eventually the whole church. I don't know
that we have to go through those formal steps,
but there needs to be a process of
confrontation. And I'll just give you an
example. We had
a young lady at our church one time who got
involved in a relationship that was really
bad, and several people had talked to her, and
I sat down with her one day at Subway.
Oh, it's a great place to have things like this
happen. And she told me, you know, we
all knew, several of us knew what's really
going on here. She knew we knew. And she said,
but I really feel like God is using me to
convert this person, that God, that this is
what God wants. And I just had to say, I just
said, no, it's not. God did not tell you that.
That's hard to say to a person, because we feel
so, but what she was saying goes against
everything we know or we think we know about
God. There has to be those times. And so yeah,
there's going to be people who, like my wife
said, the one thing that gave her hope all
along is I never said, well, this is just how
it is. This is just me. Just live with
the baby. That there really is a difference.
And we had to be wise about that, about knowing
if somebody is really repenting or not.
Like something was big, like the game of
dimensions, but...
And that's why we talk about getting
knowledgeable help. When it comes to things
like legal things,
you better get knowledgeable help. Luckily, my
prediction didn't involve any kind of legal
things, but that's where you got to dot your
I's and cross your T's.
Thanks for choosing to spend your three days
with us. We're honored that you would be here.
And blessings to you and your work.