What character formation is required for soul care professionals, people like therapists, pastors, or spiritual directors? And what does this mean for everyone who follows Jesus?
It is humility and hope, says Dr. Chuck DeGroat. It is doing your work, the work on yourself.
Today we talk about how so often (like pastors) therapists in training receive little character formation even while they receive the information needed to diagnose and remedy mental illnesses. Dr. DeGroat talks about his own pastoral and therapeutic training, how counselors (like pastors) are often taught how to help others without learning to help themselves ("doing your work"), and how cultivating humility and hope will go a little way in solving this problem.
Connect with Dr. Chuck DeGroat here.
And see his new Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
Or join Cyd and Geoff in their new Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formation and Relational Neuroscience.
Chuck DeGroat is a Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI. Chuck is a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, and author of five books, one of which is When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. As a therapist, he specialized in issues of abuse and trauma, and pastoral (and leadership) health.
Join Attaching to God Learning Cohort: Quieting an Anxious and Avoidant Faith.
Stay Connected:
What character formation is required for soul care professionals, people like therapists, pastors, or spiritual directors? And what does this mean for everyone who follows Jesus?
It is humility and hope, says Dr. Chuck DeGroat. It is doing your work, the work on yourself.
Today we talk about how so often (like pastors) therapists in training receive little character formation even while they receive the information needed to diagnose and remedy mental illnesses. Dr. DeGroat talks about his own pastoral and therapeutic training, how counselors (like pastors) are often taught how to help others without learning to help themselves ("doing your work"), and how cultivating humility and hope will go a little way in solving this problem.
Connect with Dr. Chuck DeGroat here.
And see his new Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
Or join Cyd and Geoff in their new Doctor of Ministry in Spiritual Formation and Relational Neuroscience.
Chuck DeGroat is a Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI. Chuck is a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, and author of five books, one of which is When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. As a therapist, he specialized in issues of abuse and trauma, and pastoral (and leadership) health.
Join Attaching to God Learning Cohort: Quieting an Anxious and Avoidant Faith.
Stay Connected:
[00:00:15] Geoff: What character formation is required for soul care professionals, people like therapists, pastors, or spiritual directors. And what might that mean for every one of us who seeks to follow Jesus? That is what we are talking about today. This is the embodied faith podcast with Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw exploring a neuroscience informed spiritual formation brought to you by grassroots Christianity, which is seeking to grow faith for everyday people.
Today, we are very excited to have Chuck DeGroat on the show with us. He is a professor of counseling and Christian spirituality, as well as the executive director of the clinical mental health counseling program at Western Theological Seminary, which is in Holland, Michigan. And we're all actually in Grand Rapids, Michigan, not in the actual.
Same physical place currently, but Chuck is also a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, author of several books, one of which you might've heard of, which is called when narcissism comes to church, healing your community from emotional and spiritual abuse. And as a therapist, he is especially interested and concerned about issues of abuse and trauma as well as pastoral and leadership health.
Chuck, thank you so much for being on with us today.
[00:01:27] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah, you guys, it's good to be with you. And you didn't mention that you're going to be starting a doctor of ministry cohort with the seminary that I
[00:01:35] Geoff: I didn't
[00:01:36] Chuck DeGroat: which I'm very excited about.
[00:01:37] Geoff: well,
[00:01:38] Cyd: excited about it too.
[00:01:39] Geoff: Sid and I are launching DMIN, a doctoral ministry in relational neuroscience and spiritual formation, which we're very excited about. You can find all that in the show notes. So yes, Chuck was a instrumental in kind of recruiting and asking us to do that.
So we're all so we're all starting programs that are very, or working in them that are very interested in soul care, spiritual formation, the relational kind of neuroscience and everything that's teaching us. So you have. Been a pastor, you were trained to be a pastor, but then like you your life took a right turn you, and then you became trained as a therapist and you worked both as a pastor, as a therapist, and now you're in the academic world, you continue both all those hats.
And so you really have a perspective on all these kind of all the things that are happening in the mental health world, how it affects pastors. All of us, as well as, and this is what I'm really interested in for this conversation, as well as the training of therapists and counselors moving forward.
So we're just going to mine all your expertise and ask you questions. So the one that piqued my interest, we were out to breakfast and you were talking about the values and you said what I really want. Is to form the character of these counselors and therapists within the Christian soul care tradition, but you wanted to form the character and you mentioned the words hopeful and humble. And just before we press play, you mentioned that, and I think this is related that therapists and counselors are gaining. More power and influence in culture, but also in a sense over people, and maybe that's not the right alongside people, but power and influence like pastors, 50, a hundred, 200 years ago, pastors were like the apex of influence, power, control of, hopefully in a mature and healthy way.
But that's shifted for all sorts of reasons, which we don't have to get into. But now therapists are in that position. And I think you've felt like this is something to be, shepherded, like, how do we, so could you fill that in just a little bit, like what were your guiding principles for why you set up the program to focus on those things?
[00:03:45] Chuck DeGroat: It really goes back to my own formation. When I was in seminary, I was a pretty arrogant seminary student, and it was the counseling program at the seminary that did its work on me. The primary professor in that program was also contemplatively formed in his own sort of past formation.
He was a close friend of Brennan Manning. He brought in people like Gary Moon, David Benner. I got to be spiritually directed by Gerald May for a season. These are really important people in my own formation. And so here I was in my mid twenties and the program itself invited me to take a good hard look at.
Parts of my life that I hadn't looked at. Parts of my story, my shadow side. It was incredibly humbling. The program that I went through, not least because I was in a complementarian space and the vast majority of women in my program are. people in my program were women naming what they experienced for me in terms of my own how I showed up, even my own misogyny.
And I, to get to an answer to that, it really, it's really connected to my own story and my own formation and the kind of formation that I've been able to be involved with in, in a couple of different churches that I've served at and now at the seminary for the last 10 years. And yeah as we think about.
And this gets to your point that you were making, Jeff, as we think about the formation of therapists for this next generation. When I was being formed as a therapist, very few people in the church felt very good about therapy, right? There were a lot of critics. And here I was an ordained minister trying to invite people into these spaces of vulnerability, growth, change, transformation.
And I was getting a ton of pushback back in the mid to late nineties. Today, a lot of people are talking about therapy and the importance of therapy and knowing their personality types and their Enneagram energy and all this stuff. And I think with that therapists particularly, and I'm, I've contributed to the conversation on narcissism and abuse in the church, but therapists have grown in their own voice and power.
Particularly as we named some of the. Big and real problems within the church but a lot of the counseling programs, we can get more into this if you want to don't develop the person of the therapist. They're taught personality theories, developmental psych pathology, things like this.
Oftentimes cognitive behavioral therapies, but Very not very often are they invited to do their own work. Maybe I should put it that way, right? And yeah, we have, we're using the words humble and hopeful to name aspirationally what we long for in the character of therapists that we train.
That we would realize as therapists, our power and we've got significant power. I realized this not just as a pastor, but as a therapist, like things I say to people behind closed doors, they take that and they run with that. So if we're talking about the possibility of separation or divorce, or we're using words like narcissism or abuse there's immense power that we hold in the room to, to name things that.
That become realities in people's lives as Sid suggested before we started recording. And those are some of the reasons why this is important to me.
[00:06:58] Cyd: Yeah. If you think about, anybody who's, who knows anybody who's going to therapy, I, it's very common for people to talk about my therapist says that, or my therapist thinks that I should, or my therapist told me to. And so what you're saying is so true that therapists do have this power.
We're going to people because we want. help. We want someone to speak into our life. And you're right. There's incredible power. I feel that too, even just as a spiritual director and a coach. And as much as I try to stay out of the way and let people interact with God and, evoke awareness and let the spirit be at work.
There is still I recognize that my words carry a lot of weight. Yeah, so I appreciate what you're talking about with this hopeful with this, needing to have people be shaped. Themselves. It makes me think about too that in one of my coaching trainings, in the power of Embodied transformation is what the course was called.
And we learned that, and I wish I could quote the research. I don't know exactly where it is. I know it's there, but that when people experience the presence of another person, it's less about the skill or what they're saying. Or the conversation, the content of the conversation, it's 80 percent the person and who the person is and how you feel in that person's presence.
And so what you're talking about, this shaping of the person. Is 80 percent of what we're doing when we're with people. And so if we're neglecting that and we're just talking about content and skill and the sort of technique we're missing the bulk of what people experience.
[00:08:36] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah. As we're developing this clinical mental health counseling program, we've identified these values of relational, relationally oriented, trauma informed and rooted in the Christian soul care tradition. And what you just named is that relational orientation, that interpersonal orientation, what happens in the room, what happens between people, which is deep.
Very different than a more sort of cognitive behavioral orientation. Let me just help you change the beliefs, the lies that you're telling yourself, right? You actually have to be aware of what's happening within you if you engage in more, more interpersonal ways. And that means you've got to be doing your own work.
And you've got to be aware of your own shadow side. And so that's harder work. That's not work by the way that the insurance industry recognizes quite as much because it's longer term work. But I think it's it gets it how we were created. We were created in and for relationship, right? And and so we are and it's the orientation that I think we all share around a kind of relational neurobiological approach to people, to human beings.
That that this is the way we heal. This is the way that we flourish in and through relationship. And so I'm excited about that part of it.
[00:09:49] Cyd: Yeah. That is exciting. I love hearing you say that because I often am saying to people, Jeff and I say we, when we're teaching in our attachment cohort and we often say you didn't get these attachment wounds in a vacuum. They these wounds came from being in community like in your early formation, and the only way they heal is through being in relationship.
Yeah.
[00:10:11] Chuck DeGroat: Your earliest school of formation was your home, right? Where your parents your caregivers. And yeah. And so that means that how we conceive of formation, in a seminary master of divinity program and a counseling program is very important. And as you guys teach those attachments show up in all different kinds of ways.
And so as we invite 24 students into this who knows how it will show up and. The work that we'll need to do with one another. But that's the fun of it. There's not just like a curriculum that we download into people's brains. It's a work we do together.
[00:10:43] Geoff: Yeah. So when you're talking about helping people do their work or look at their shadow side, one, and this is like really. This is terrible. So here's my shadow side coming out. Like part of me is relieved. I'm like, Oh, I was trained as a pastor, as a, at a seminary. And we get a lot of people rightfully criticize the.
Personal formation of pastors. We learned the Bible, we learned theology, we were in church practice, but like that soul care or that formation of the individual oftentimes is lacking. And then secretly I was like, so that happens to therapists too. I'm so relieved. So anyway, all to say we live in the West where we're very cognitive idea bound, and we think better ideas will change everything.
And that's, clearly that's not the case but yes. So that's my
[00:11:29] Cyd: Although I've, although I sense that shifting generationally, I think that, like people in their twenties and thirties have less respect for the ideas and more respect for the people who've done their work.
[00:11:40] Geoff: Yeah, for
[00:11:41] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah,
[00:11:42] Geoff: For
[00:11:43] Chuck DeGroat: I will say though, Jeff, in my PhD program, which was filled with therapists, I've been in some very unhealthy, sort of misogynistic male spaces in previous sort of ecclesial spaces that I occupied. It may have been the unhealthiest space that I've been in that PhD program that I went through in psychology.
with other therapists who, by and large hadn't done their work. I was stunned when they had said they had never been in therapy themselves. That's very dangerous.
[00:12:12] Cyd: Yeah, that, that makes me think of, when Richard Rohr said, if we don't transform our pain, we will surely transmit it.
And what a scary place to be transmitting pain when you're supposed to be in a position where you're, the other person is supposed to be healing from their pain and you're unconsciously transmitting your own.
That's. scary.
[00:12:35] Geoff: and pastors do that too, for sure.
[00:12:37] Cyd: Absolutely.
[00:12:38] Geoff: So this idea, that a therapist at the highest levels would never have gone to therapy. So I suppose that speaks to maybe the humble kind of word there. Could you fill that out a little bit more? What are you hoping that people will be able to receive or live into so that then they can offer it when you use that word humble, like what are they, what's happening in them or.
[00:12:58] Chuck DeGroat: I think as we do the work, we encounter places of weakness, of challenge, as you're sitting with another person, if you've never experienced some sense of, I don't know where to go right now then, See a therapist. I remember experiencing that and ours was a highly relational program that I went through back in the day, something that we're trying to model here.
And I sat with co therapists and we would debrief often afterwards. And there would be this sense of, I had no idea what to do after the first seven, seven to 10 minutes, where to go, what questions to ask what are we doing here anyway? What's our vision for flourishing? There are all kinds of questions, and I think a lot of times those are swept under the rug as students are given competencies, right?
Here are techniques, here's a modality here are particular questions to ask, And I think we were invited in my own formational process, we were invited in to those very questions, like those are the very questions that will allow you to see the portal through which you're, you'll do your own work.
And for me, Recognizing that I had come from an MDiv world where I had a lot of the answers and I was stepping into a room where those answers were not satisfying, like I wasn't going to download the very thing that I learned in my systematic theology class the hour before, maybe, or the day before, right?
But I was to sit, I was to listen, I was to attend and attune at a different level, and I had no idea what that meant, even to attend, attune, pay attention just. Give me the answers and let me download. That seems easy. And there's work for us to do as we personally and individually recognize places in which, where we need to grow.
Does that
[00:14:45] Cyd: Absolutely. It does to me. That's been instrumental in, training as spiritual directors and as coaches too of just the, like one of the things that when I'm training others in spiritual direction or coaching, I'm always saying, like the most important place to start is you've got to stay open to what God is doing in you.
[00:15:03] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah.
[00:15:04] Cyd: as you're seeking to be trained to come alongside others and help them notice what God is doing in them, don't forget, that God is doing stuff in you all along the way. And constantly being, noticing, what's going on in me during this conversation and where do I feel, convicted and struggled and confused and challenged
[00:15:25] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah.
[00:15:25] Cyd: yeah
[00:15:26] Geoff: I, so I know Sid does this as a coach and spiritual director when she gets to that, in a meeting, she gets to that I don't. I don't have the next brilliant question or the next to do list that will help them move this forward, but I know at least I hear, Sid, then it becomes more of like a prophetic or a spiritual, insight moment where you tell me what you think, Sid, she just listens where Jesus, where do you want to go next, and just wait, and I don't know, is there a component like that for In your, since this is a Christian program, is there like components like that where you're just, you will be, in humility, asking students or, as a therapeutic resource ask the spirit of God, what's it do?
Is that something, or is that not something for you guys?
[00:16:07] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah but with that too, not in a technique, he way either, right? Like you first have to get to those places in your own life where, not just sitting with another, but in your own life, we've all come to those places where we get to a place where it's I don't know where to go, what to do.
I've hit a wall. There's a something underneath that feels desperate, even chaotic. Where do I Go. How do I engage that? Do I just double down and get back in control? Or do I listen more deeply to what's going on in those subterranean layers, right? And all of us are invited to do that kind of work.
And I think when we're in the room, sometimes, in fact, with clients, I can tell you some of the best moments have been when I get to a place where I say out loud, I'm not sure where to go next. How are you feeling the same stuckness that I'm feeling? And there's this sort of ah and oftentimes we recognize that we were trying really hard, and the reality is that people are not.
Problems to be solved, right? And sometimes we treat people like that, right? That like we're like it's some sort of, we're in some sort of detective movie, right? And we're trying to find the answer to the puzzle, the the answer to the riddle, right? People want riddles. They're not problems to be solved.
They're mysteries, image bearing mysteries to be engaged at a personal and relational level with a lot of patients. And that's where humility comes in. I think Jeff, right? I if, I'm a bit embarrassed that I think early on in particular, I use words to describe what was going on in people.
Even diagnoses that I felt like I had a high degree of certainty about. And now I'm ashamed that I said these things out loud, right? But I was a fairly young therapist and pastor and despite my formation, I had this sense that I need to call this what it is in the moment, right? Or I need to, yeah.
Place a label on what's going on and this work, I think maybe both of you in doing the work as pastor spiritual director, you'd probably agree that it takes years for us to die to those those pathways of probably neural pathways of certainty and control that we live out of.
Right.
[00:18:12] Geoff: I think that stating out loud I don't know what to do next is so powerful one because it speaks to your own work of humility and then being able to rest in uncertainty. And if you're feeling stuck With somebody it's because both cognitively, but also, viscerally or in the bodied limbic residence or whatever, like you're all feeling stuck, like we're all stuck together now because whatever you were sharing, I don't know how to process that.
And, and whatever it brought up in me because of what you shared, I don't know. So we're all stuck. But then saying that out loud, having the. The humility, but also the courage to say that out loud. It does this wonderful thing to the person who hears it, who then can be like, you can say that out loud.
You're allowed to say, I don't know what comes next. And then it's like for that. And it's yeah, it's a secret. Like we just shared this secret, it's okay to say, I don't know what to do now. And then we can both just not know together. Or, and then you shared online a little bit ago that you work with pastors, and I, you tell me if this is true in some therapeutic worlds of people who never apologize, pastors who never will say, I am sorry that I did that. Or I said that, or I was wrong, whether it's a content information thing or whether it's, I acted poorly or, and I think that's another the like humility kind of markers.
It's just being able to say that was wrong. I did. And then, yeah. So anyway, so either
[00:19:37] Chuck DeGroat: There are these layers of psychic defenses, right? Survival defenses, you might say your friend Jim Wilder wrote the book, The Enemy Mode, right? There are these ways in large part because of our Stories of formation, right? That we may not even be conscious of that keep us guarded and protected.
And in that kind of enemy mode, I don't want to apologize. I don't want to acknowledge that, right? That we need to become aware of. I entered my counseling program in that very mode. And I put up more defenses as my counseling professors were trying to invite me to take them down. I felt very insecure.
I felt very vulnerable. I wondered what's going to happen if I move toward vulnerability, if I take down those walls that I've used to protect me. And yeah, it's the work of being human, being vulnerable. And it's, that's why I think when we use words like humble. Hopeful. We are trying to invite an imagination for a different way of being with one another that rejects these pathways of
And control and diagnosis and all the things that I think give us a false sense of power as therapists, spiritual directors, pastors, and caretakers of the soul.
[00:20:49] Geoff: Yeah. So about that second word, then hopeful, because we were talking about being humble, creating that space of uncertainty. What are you hoping to get into people out of accenting like this hopeful aspect?
[00:21:02] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah it's interesting. You mentioned this, the narcissism book that I wrote, right? And I did a podcast recently with some pastors who said, we hadn't read your book because we just assumed that it was a takedown of clergy pastors, right? And then we read it and we realized, Oh, no, you were just trying to define the landscape and offer honest words for what's going on.
And We didn't realize that you were a pastor and you're very hopeful about the work of pastors and the work of the church. And the reality is that I think in a day where there is this massive reckoning going on like Phyllis Tickles said years ago in the great emergence that every 500 years there's this rummage sale, there's this massive reckoning.
It was the Reformation. Now we're in a time of reckoning again. It's very easy to say all pastors are bad and all, maybe even all spiritual directors because somehow you're still connected to that, that that system, that tradition that abused me, and actually we're wanting to train women and men to Enter into the church with hope, right?
To be to be the prophets, priests and kings, right? Who are honest, who create spaces of vulnerability where people can know and be known. We we're not looking to tear things down. We're looking to be honest in our work. We're going to name abuse where we see it. I think counselors are a unique place to see systemic issues as well not just in families, but in institutions, we're going to name these things, but we're not going to do it for the sake of tearing the whole thing down.
And so I, I think that I'm excited about seeing what that means. When we use words like this Okay. We use them aspirationally. Now, obviously, as women and men participate in this program, they're coming with their stories of pain, right? And they're going to come to us with I don't feel much hope.
I see lots of clients in spaces like this. Chuck, you want me to be hopeful, but I'm not experiencing a whole lot of hope. Okay. I'm not here to change your mind on that, but I do hope that the work we do and I've long had this hope within me that the work I do is not just about tearing down.
The first book I wrote was called Leaving Egypt, Finding God in the Wilderness Places. And part of what I said in that is that in this work that we do, we can leave people in the wilderness and say, the wilderness is the destination. And actually, we've got to go through the wilderness to get to the promised land, to get to the land of hope.
And so will we be able to walk with people to these places of hope in their own lives and for the sake of the church?
[00:23:36] Geoff: Yeah. I was just reading a book on the entangled brain and how our emotions.
[00:23:40] Chuck DeGroat: Of
[00:23:41] Geoff: Yeah, Of course I was but they were talking about losing fear of phobias this author and what he was saying, he says, the science says that you don't unlearn a fear, you just learn something else. And and that made me think we're always moving forward as people.
And and moving forward. Has to be some sort of constructive goal or hope or purpose or destination that you're moving toward because you, you don't just let go of the past. And if you've read any habit forming books, they always say this you can't just stop a bad habit. You have to actually start a new habit.
And this is the same thing is you can't just let go of a hopeless situation. You actually have to move toward something else. And I think. A lot of times we can and pastors do the same thing. We just call it sin, instead of trauma or, like it's that bad thing we're trying to leave.
And it's, we're always focused on not doing that thing or getting over the past or, fixing that pain and unlocking it. And that's all true to an extent, but I think most of the relational neuroscience is saying like in community, you have to be. Putting on something new. And of course, Paul always said this, right?
Put on Christ, put off the old self, put on Christ. We're always moving forward. And so I just, when you said that you wanted to cultivate hope in therapists, I was just like, Oh, I love that. I just love that. Instead of looking at all these things, go ahead. Sit.
[00:24:59] Cyd: Yeah. And even if I work with people a lot about you can't change what happened to you. You can't change the past, but you can change the story you tell about it. So I'm even just thinking about sometimes that hope comes from just being able to talk about it differently and tell a different story about what that, what the place is for that.
in your life and how you will carry that going forward. And that's a lot of what people do when they're in therapy too, is I've got to learn to tell a different story because this story is not one that's, that I can live in. Yeah.
[00:25:31] Chuck DeGroat: that's right.
[00:25:32] Geoff: Right.
[00:25:32] Chuck DeGroat: That's right. Yeah, I find it really helpful even as we talk about trauma to say that trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens within right? You were abused, but it manifests with this imprint of trauma and we can do the work of moving toward. Being more rooted and grounded in love.
It's centered in our window of tolerance, navigating out of those sympathetic storms and the dorsal fog that we find ourselves in to a place of steadiness center home, that window of tolerance and from that place. I think from that connected place where we are rooted and grounded in love something happens.
We become more compassionate, creative, curious, hopeful energized by the spirit for this kind of this work that I think we're all called to do. But that's not manufactured, right? And people have to do the work of identifying the trauma, navigating out of the storms within discerning the story they're telling themselves. And I think all of us know in the work that we do that's not easy. So we're not looking to spiritually bypass here. We're not looking for like simple band aids, quick truth bombs over Twitter. We're looking to do the work of forming women and men for depth for hope, for love, for faith, and I'm excited about that work. I love doing this. You you do a lot of this too, Sid, I know. And I often find quite jealous of your husband, by the way, and his brilliant mind. I do find myself more at home in the messiness of people's lives, and I often love feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where we're going, like just being in the dark with a client and wondering, okay, there's nothing, not a whole lot I can do.
I've got resources. We really do need to trust in the dark right now. Those are some of the happiest moments for me when I get to be invited into people's lives. And now I realize we're going to be stewarding the lives of 24 counseling students in this program now in that, on that same journey.
So yeah, it's pretty exciting.
[00:27:33] Geoff: Super
[00:27:34] Cyd: that is really exciting. So who can apply to your program? Is it, do they have to have a bachelor's in psychology or like what are the, who are you
[00:27:43] Chuck DeGroat: accredited bachelor's degree. Yeah. An accredited bachelor's degree, but it doesn't need to be in psychology. I'd say people who are discerning. a call to this kind of work and who have that bachelor's degree should check it out. I think it's valuable to have done your own work at some point.
Now there, there will be people applying who are 22, 23 years old and people who are applying who are 62, 63 years old. And sometimes there are folks who have done more work at 23 than 63 and vice versa, right? And so I do think that we're looking for people who are intrigued by this kind of vision, if you're coming in for just give me the pat answers so that I can go and fix people were probably not the program for you.
Not only that, it's not a two year program, but it's a three year program which allows us to do more of that formational work. Also allows the program to be more accessible to people who may need to work full time or people in minoritized populations who, you know, just. Don't have the cash on hand to invest in a two year program and go all in for a full load.
And we're trying to trying to create the program, even by virtue of the three year program provides a lot of space to do this interior work, which is, by the way, the work of the Christian soul care tradition, not simply the domain of, a psychological tradition that that started in the late 19th
[00:29:09] Geoff: So I wanted to ask about that because you were talking about being relationally oriented and trauma informed, but then also situated in the Christian soul care tradition. Can you say just briefly what that is?
[00:29:19] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah. It's just to say people were asking these questions and having these conversations and interested in what goes on in people's hearts, lives, stories long before the advent of modern psychology. And I often go all the way back to St. Augustine, the first autobiographer who, wrote a story in meticulous details detail in nine chapters And the 10th began with the words, te.
Let me know myself. Let me know you, O God, and many others. My, my great hero in the Christian tradition is St. Teresa of Avila who I think is the greatest 16th century reformer. And her interior castle is a work of self knowledge. It's a proto developmental psychology even. And so we're going to tap into these deep resources of the church.
Before, before we. Before the contemporary language of disorder. Early desert mothers and fathers were talking about the disorders of the soul and created a taxonomy an early sort of psychopathology. And so we're going to talk about that early taxonomy and how it connects to our contemporary ways of understanding what goes on within.
And so there's a lot to be mined there.
[00:30:28] Cyd: Wow. I want to join the program. I just want to go to school for the rest of my life, forever and ever.
[00:30:33] Geoff: So what a lot of people would think of as like the spiritual formation tradition, the monastic writing or the ascetics as well as the mystics. And so you're calling all that. And I really like that you call it the soul care tradition. Because that is, because psychology is just like the study of the soul, right?
That's what those words mean. And I was always like, you didn't theology in the Bible, haven't we been doing that way before the discipline, the modern discipline of psychology? So yeah, so
[00:30:57] Chuck DeGroat: Search me and know me, Oh God.
[00:30:59] Geoff: So I love that. So thank you so much for taking some time. To be honest, I'm like, we should do this more often.
And I'll have all the information in the show notes for people who are interested or maybe listeners, no people who would be interested, please forward this on to them. Cause then Western would be very excited.
[00:31:18] Chuck DeGroat: And thanks for leading a D min for us, you two. I'm so excited about it. People are so interested in it. They can't believe we're like hosting a topic like that, that they can study these things with YouTube
[00:31:30] Geoff: I was Andrew Arndt, I was talking about his podcast last week and he said, it's like, Western is the Hogwarts of like seminary. They have all these really cool programs. That's what he, that's what he wrote me. So I don't know if that's a good endorsement or a bad one, but yeah we're really excited about Western.
Excited about you. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to do that.
[00:31:49] Chuck DeGroat: Appreciate you guys. Yeah.
[00:31:51] Geoff: All right. Where can people find you or find what you're up to and the things you've written and are doing?
[00:31:56] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah. Here at Western or at chuckdegroat. net. And then I'm on the kind of typical social media sites, not TikTok. I haven't figured that out, but
[00:32:07] Geoff: You can let your daughters teach you. All those will be in the show notes as well as the new program that you're starting. Thank you everyone for listening or watching if you're on YouTube and please share and subscribe and and do all those, fun things. To get the word out about this.
Thanks again, Chuck, for spending some time with us.
[00:32:22] Cyd: you.
[00:32:22] Chuck DeGroat: yeah, you guys, great to be with you.