chuck degroat @chuckdegroat Twitter profile | Pikagi

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chuck degroat

@chuckdegroat

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Hoping to offer goodness & beauty in this digital wilderness | Professor @westernsem | Licensed Therapist | Author | 5 Day SouI Care Intensives | PhD Psychology

Grand Rapids, MI

https://t.co/S6pLzKqJJq

Joined November 2008

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 months

Imagine 5 days of care. 5 days for healing. Join me for a Soul Care Intensive. For sabbatical reflection. For marital reconnection. For spiritual abuse recovery. For trauma healing. For vocational discernment. For midlife exploration. For burnout restoration. To explore harm…

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

If you’re still stuck on *my rights* and not compelled by *how can I best love my neighbor*, you may have missed the plotline of the biblical story.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Post wisely over the next months. Contribute to discourse, not division. Check your facts. Resist memes and cheap digs. Create beautiful content. We can transcend the bitterness and be better, even when we disagree.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise. ~St. Patrick

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because (they) are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either. D Bonhoeffer

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

In 50 years of life and 25 years of ministry, I don’t think anything disheartens me more than Christians complicit in abuses of power and a contempt for truth in both ecclesial and political spaces where so much good is possible. A massive reckoning awaits us. Lord have mercy.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

Years ago a pastor began spiritual direction and counseling with me only to quickly end our sessions after I made a suggestion. He’d enjoyed an early morning CrossFit session and came in fired up - “God is calling me to plant churches across this region!” 1

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

So good! From a pastor: “I was interviewing for a multi site pastor position and they asked me for two words that describe me. The sample words they gave me for what they value in their organization were: ‘velocity’ and ‘capacity.’ 😳 I said “boundaries” and “ordinary.” 🔥

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

5 years

Recent stories of people leaving Christian faith remind me that the church fails to host disorientation. Tensions, contradictions, and confusion need not lead to an exit door but into the wrestling ring with God. The dawn emerges after the dark night.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

5 years

She was my teacher in that moment. Second, my task? To remained attuned to her. To honor her, even if that meant switching seats.Not to be some heroic/ godly empath, an unsolicited therapist. Simply to attune and abide.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

5 years

Sat next to a woman on a plane who is done with church not because she is lazy or “spiritual but not religious“ but because a trusted pastor abused his power and hurt her and the system protected him while discarding her. It was hard for her hearing that I was a pastor. (1)

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

5 years

Brief afterword: someone messaged me asking: how could you have helped her or shared a better gospel with her? First, in some ways I think she was there to share a better and more beautiful gospel with me, to convert me.Who gets to say that she is broken and I am well? 👇

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

6 years

A lasting, terrifying image I will carry with me from this dark season is of a President brazenly mocking a woman who’d shared the trauma of listening to her assaulters laugh at her. My hope: God "mocks proud mockers but shows favor to the humble and oppressed.” Proverbs 3:34

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Listen to your body. Rest. Eat and drink well and wisely. Do body scans. Take walks. Read Psalms. Take naps. Sip tea. Enjoy a bath. Read a novel. Check-in with a friend. Sit in silence. Drive somewhere to see Autumn colors. Watch a comedy and laugh hard. Pray simple prayers.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

We’ve justified all kinds of action, sometimes even harmful action, on the voice of, well, an activated fight-mode instead of the quiet whisper of God. As it turns out, spiritual discernment also requires bodily and emotional discernment. 4

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

“Curiosity is the lost art of the Christian faith.” — Eugene Peterson

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

I asked if we could listen, pray and discern over six months and then revisit this. That didn’t land well. I’ve seen many, including myself, mistake the voice of God for a neurochemical cocktail. Activated sympathetic nervous systems produce fierce emotions. 2

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

This. Wow. Just watch for two minutes. We lost my wife’s parents to Alzheimer’s within months the summer before last and my stepdad two weeks ago. So the tears came fast and furious this morning....

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

1 year

20 years ago this Fall I was fired from a pastoral position. It was brutal and humiliating. I had few words for what happened, little advocacy, and (for better or worse) no social media to share it with. What I learned through it all is that while there are the things that…

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Anxious leaders react, rage, retaliate, and retreat. Non-anxious leaders reflect, respond, reconcile, and rest.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

Activated nervous systems also demand quick actions. Of course, God is in our complicated neurobiology, but God isn’t our neurochemical high. We’re often so out-of-touch with our bodies that we don’t know the difference. 3

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” — Anne Morrow Lindberg

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Ouch, Fr Rohr: “Christians are usually sincere people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security.”

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

7 months

I’ve worked with hundreds of folks over 25 years from all different stripes, backgrounds and faith traditions, and you know who has the hardest time with @wademullen ’s great graphic below? Christian leaders. “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that…

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

A lament by a pastor at a gathering recently: “I’ve been pastoring the same church for over 15 years, and now I wonder if memes have more formational power over their lives than the spiritual and liturgical rhythms of our life together.”

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

If you listen to the latest episode of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, it’s painful but it’s not a one-off phenomenon. In my experience as a therapist over almost 25 yrs, the rape culture in Christian marriages is pervasive and was validated by teachers like Driscoll. 1/3

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Here’s what I’m hearing now: the therapists who’ve provided such good care in a traumatizing season are now really weary. So many conversations about finding their own care. Pray for those who showed up so faithfully to hold the stories and suffering of so many.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

But many of us just don’t even know where to begin on this. Changing this reality is just one piece of much of what needs to be done for renewed hope and healing in the church. (End)

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Today, while a kidnapping plot was revealed related to the Governor of MI, a pastor had his ministry hijacked by a powerful and wealthy contingent who threatened to leave, bankrupting the church. Not over the Trinity. Or worship styles. But over... masks. He’s out. 1/2

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

The body keeps the score, but even more deeply it keeps the Story - echoes of Eden deep within, an ache of longing, subterranean memory which holds a story of beauty and dignity even within profoundly traumatized bodies.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

“Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God, for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice, your mediocrity and materialism, your sensuality and selfishness that have killed his faith.” -Thomas Merton

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Character matters. Character matters. Character matters.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

So many takeaways from @MikeCosper ’s Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, but maybe the most significant - giftedness without character holds the possibility of immense harm to self and to the church. @CTmagazine

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

In the Book of Revelation, it's ultimately the love affair with empire that competes for the heart of the faithful. The faithful follow the way of the Lamb, choosing suffering over security, cruciformity over comfort. The same lines are drawn for every generation, any empire.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Authentic leaders do not require allegiance and do not need to proclaim, defend, or demand authority. When you encounter their humility, integrity, honesty, and strength, you simply want to be led by them. Trust emerges as you recognize character consistency over time.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

“What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.” — H Nouwen

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Daniel Goldman named empathy as a core feature of emotional intelligence. A core feature of narcissistic personality disorder is an absence of empathy. Given the current reckoning in the church, we need to be even more deeply committed to growth in and a ministry of empathy.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

5 years

... to come back to us. We, like Jesus, must go to her in her pain. Not disregard her. Not minimize this. But honor how a trusted pastor’s abuse and a colluding system made the church, of all places, the most unsafe place on earth for her. God help her, God help us. 💔 (end)

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Sin is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind. - Shūsaku Endō, Silence

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

6 years

A narcissist reads the Bible as protecting the authority of the powerful. But a healthy reading of Scripture sees God as unabashedly committed to those wounded by the powerful.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

8 months

When I work with pastors who are awakening to the harm they’ve caused, in almost every case they’ve 1) never addressed their own unresolved emotional issues and the harm they experienced, 2) were formed in formation-by-information cultures, 3) were formed in cultures where…

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chuck degroat

4 years

A phrase I find so painful every time I hear it: “Ask/invite God to show up.” No. God is already here. More near to you than you’re breath. Instead, what would it mean for you to show up?

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chuck degroat

3 years

“No one heals himself by wounding another.” — St. Ambrose

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chuck degroat

3 years

“Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to a place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.” — Henri Nouwen

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

As a seminary prof, I remind myself at this time each year that seminaries were born out of monasteries, not academia. They emerge from silence, solitude, communion with the word (Jesus) and meditation on the text. So I long again to show up with fewer words and greater presence.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

He shared Gal 5 and 1 Cor 9 to no avail. Their imagination has NOT been shaped by St Paul’s self-giving notion of freedom but American freedom. Ayn Rand, not Jesus. Before he packed his office, he confessed his failure of discipleship to them. He sacrificed his ego to repent.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

The majority of stories I hear today re: narcissism/abuse in the church don’t look like Mars Hill/Driscoll but often come guised in faux-nerability, where Gospel-talk, sin/brokenness language, personality styles/Enneagram, even therapy serves to immunize from accountability. 1/3

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Talked to a church planting network assessor yesterday with a strong emphasis on “gifts” and “skills” for planting and “character” didn’t come up until I brought it up. How can this be? Friends, this is another reason we’re seeing narcissism, abuse, unhealth among pastors.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Talmud

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

This Christian “musculinity” stuff trending is just toxic, disheartening, and deceptive. The implications for discipleship in those circles are scary. I aspire to this: “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.” 1 Thess 2:7 ESV

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chuck degroat

3 years

When I was pastoring in SF, we reimagined the work of the diaconate and opened wide the doors to therapy so that everyone in need could get care. I’d challenge churches to make sure the untold stories of survivors are heard and access w $ to good trauma-informed therapy is given.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Quote today from a weary pastor: “I’ve preached a just King and a peaceable kingdom for 15 years and it’s as if my congregation hasn’t been listening.” I hear this every single day from pastors. ‘Crisis’ isn’t too strong a word. A discipleship crisis, a clergy crisis.

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chuck degroat

2 years

I’m often asked if narcissism in the church is a contemporary phenomenon. No, it swims in the waters of imperialism, traffics in conquest, quietly proclaims manifest destiny, and cozies up to white supremacy. This can’t simply be fixed with personality tests and a sabbatical.

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chuck degroat

1 year

It's odd that a religion that carries the cross as its central symbol should produce a culture of people who consider suffering, whether it comes from a broken body or a broken heart, a violation of their spiritual rights. ~ Eugene Peterson

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chuck degroat

3 years

"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” Talmud

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

Trauma-informed Christians see the brokenness in the body - the collective - despite denials, despite white-washed histories. “The body keeps the score” isn’t just an individual reality, it’s our painful story that won’t heal until we acknowledge the ache across generations.

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chuck degroat

5 months

Don’t be fooled into thinking someone has strong character when what they really have is a strong persona.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Narcissism is not a "leadership style." I had a sick, here-we-go-again feeling while reading Kate Shellnutt’s piece on the removal of Steve Timmis as leader of Acts 29. But what stopped me in my tracks was this paragraph late in the piece...(read more)

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

There isn’t a narcissistic organization or church I’ve consulted with that hasn’t embraced an alternative reality. And I haven’t seen a single one change without addressing systemic issues, naming reality, and the courage of a few insiders willing to say... No More.

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chuck degroat

2 years

Certainty is not a fruit of the Spirit.

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chuck degroat

6 years

Henri Nouwen on the temptation of every pastor via Matthew 4. 1. The temptation to be relevant. 2. The temptation to be popular by doing something remarkable. 3. The temptation to be powerful in your leadership, to lead rather than be led.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

I am still trying to process my Mom’s text: “That’s what a President should look like.” My mid 80’s Trump-supporting Mom. She’s battling Covid-19, in part because “it’s not as serious as the media says.” She felt the difference. Policies matter. But character speaks volumes.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Hope rejects shallow optimism. Hope refuses cynical pessimism. Hope laments. Hope tells the truth. Hope names reality. Hope sees through the wilderness, and never ever goes around the wilderness. Be a people of hope.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

A young aspiring pastor said “I just want to be a godly leader.” My response: “Then begin by asking yourself how much you are willing to lose, let go of, suffer, grieve, become curious about, confess, unlearn.” Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground…

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chuck degroat

3 years

"Most of the trouble in this world is caused by people wanting to be important.” TS Eliot

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chuck degroat

2 years

“No one heals himself by wounding another.” — Ambrose of Milan

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chuck degroat

4 years

We’ve formed Christians whose identities are centered at the foot of the American flag and not in their baptisms, whose hungers are satiated in the capitalist marketplace and not at the Lord’s Table.

@richvillodas

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4 years

In the 20th century (generally speaking), “Protestant Christians set out to make America Christian and ended up making Christianity American.” - Stanley Hauerwas

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chuck degroat

3 years

People are looking for ears that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, for these Christians are talking where they should be listening. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

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chuck degroat

1 year

Trauma, at its core, might just be *suffering alone.* And that’s why on this night, of all nights, it’s immensely comforting to be met by a God who wouldn’t leave us alone, but meets us right where we are.

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chuck degroat

3 years

Self-deprecation, just as much as grandiosity, concerns me when I see it in church leaders, because while the latter is fairly transparent, the former masks as humility but can be just as manipulative, just as desperate for adulation and approval.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

3 years

What you don’t hear about are the stories of too many women spending thousands of dollars in years of therapy doing EMDR/somatic/other trauma work trying to heal. What you don’t hear about are nightmares, intrusive thoughts, chronic pain…and being terrified to love again. 2/3

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chuck degroat

3 years

Be gentle and know that you know nothing. —St. Teresa of Avila

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chuck degroat

2 years

“Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?” — Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands

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chuck degroat

8 months

There are so many reasons pastors feel taxed and overwhelmed, and as a pastor turned pastor-to-pastors I and others are deeply involved in the formation and care of pastors. But the reasons for the clergy crisis run deeper. Pastors are formed within individualistic,…

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chuck degroat

5 years

I checked in every so often. We talked a little. Thankfully she had tools to regulate. But I suspect she spent much of the flight doing the work of taking care of herself, which is sad and tragic. This is reality, folks. She’s not weak, not faking it. It’s not her job... (3)

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chuck degroat

1 year

There are a lot of trauma symptoms that we’re familiar with, but sometimes I think we need to pay more attention to things like chronic cynicism, certainty, critique…things that feel powerful and perhaps even righteous in the moment, but which actually do violence to our souls.

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chuck degroat

3 years

Jesus was a revolutionary, who did not become an extremist, since he did not offer an ideology, but Himself. ~Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer

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chuck degroat

1 year

If I had a dime for every time a young pastor said to me “I’d love to start a B&B retreat for pastors to experience rest.” And for every time I’ve said, “I suspect that’s what your soul longs for, though.” It’s tough to prioritize our own care, so we turn it into a ministry.

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chuck degroat

3 years

Your inner perfectionist needs Lent...needs the gift of limitation, vulnerability, and confession. It’s exhausting to continually keep shame tucked away, to pretend rage doesn’t rise up. Being right and being good all the time is wearying. In the dust, you’re simply the beloved.

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chuck degroat

2 years

If you listen closely, beneath the noisy cacophony trauma sounds within you is a melody that sings of your beauty, goodness, and deep worth. Before you were ever broken, you were - and will always will be - beloved.

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chuck degroat

4 years

I’ve found the Enneagram helpful since I first learned about it more than 20 years ago. But it tells me very little about my deepest identity “hidden with Christ in God.” It tells me much more about how I run from that deep identity.

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chuck degroat

1 year

As a prof of pastoral care/counseling, this website certainly gives me a lot of “what not to say and do” fodder. That TGC piece is neither generous nor good news IMO. It’ll show up in counseling rooms. Sadly those of us who do the work will be dealing with the painful fallout.

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chuck degroat

2 years

Deep humility. Deep worth. “Keep two pieces of paper in your pockets at all times. One that says 'I am a speck of dust.' The other 'The world was created for me.'” — Rabbi Bunim of P'shiskha

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chuck degroat

2 years

This is it.

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chuck degroat

4 years

Spiritual abuse is so dangerous because it uses scripture and spiritual words in service of self-aggrandizement and control of others. It hides under the cover of spiritual authority and compels loyalty.

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chuck degroat

4 months

“No one heals himself by wounding another.” ~St. Ambrose, 4th c.

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chuck degroat

4 years

There are many self help strategies being offered for exhausted leaders/pastors amidst Covid and cultural upheaval. May I suggest something messy and impractical - learning to grieve. Grief is an antidote to seething resentment, stagnant depression, burdensome anxiety.

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chuck degroat

3 years

Malignant narcissists are deceitful and cruel. They bully, berate, never retreat. They’re truth-twisters and finger-pointers. They mock “losers” but claim victimhood. “His mouth is full of lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.” Ps. 10:7

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chuck degroat

2 months

Years ago I began telling pastors who’d been required to step away from ministry for any variety of character issues that the best remedy would be to stay away from public ministry or any kind of spotlight for 10 years (give or take…). That just as they’d probably preached,…

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chuck degroat

5 years

Lent is not about going on a diet. Maybe this year, instead of fasting from chocolate or coffee or beer, you can go deeper - pay attention - monitor your cravings, attend to your guilt, choose presence over avoidance, living over numbing.

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chuck degroat

5 years

I could sense it and named it, which put her at ease slightly, but being #TraumaInformed I asked if she would prefer that I be re-seated or trade with someone else. Even the Directv feed with news was disregulating for her. All she sees is Xns disregarding the powerless. (2)

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chuck degroat

4 years

Empathy is the beating heart of a spiritually and emotionally healthy and fully alive human being.

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chuck degroat

4 years

I find that many pastors I work with are, by midlife, largely out-of-touch with their feelings and needs, mostly running on the fumes of performance and the shame failure could bring. Our work is to engage a reflective/ curious posture toward their inner lives and relationships.

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chuck degroat

4 years

A Eugene Peterson thought for a Sunday morning: “The Bible is forming you, not informing you.”

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chuck degroat

1 year

Sounds like it threatens job security to quote @JemarTisby these days, but he’s been one of my most important teachers from afar over these last few years, and he’s also one of the most humble and hopeful people I’ve met. If quoting Jemar gets you in trouble that’s good trouble.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

Remember you are dust. It’s not an insult but an invitation. Amidst your grasping and hiding, return. God doesn’t meet you at the top of the ladder, but on the ground, when you’ve fallen off.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

6 years

Trauma not grieved becomes stagnant in depression, numbed through addiction, projected through scapegoating, avoided through spiritual bypassing, spiritualized through a martyr complex. We live in traumatic times. Take care of yourselves.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

10 months

It’s my experience that the ecclesial spaces most committed to a theology of human depravity are often most resistant to name actual sins of abusive leadership, abusive systems, misogyny, and systemic racism. However it does serve to reinforce guilt-and-shame based loyalty.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

Someone recently told me that the word trauma is overused. Maybe. And maybe the Apostle Paul used the word "suffering" too much also? Trauma is the embodied experience of our unmetabolized, undigested sufferings. And friends, I see it all over place...and not least, right here.

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

2 years

Why is it that in the spaces most apt to argue for human depravity as a theological essential that I most often see a failure to reckon with real personal, relational, and systemic failure?

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@chuckdegroat

chuck degroat

4 years

The beauty of lamenting your pain is that your cynicism is refined into grief, your scapegoating is refined into trust, your anxiety is refined into rest.

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