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Finding Hope and Community in Times of Suffering with Pastor David Ruybalid
This episode dives deep into the importance of trauma-informed care within faith communities. We discuss the need for churches to shift their focus from outreach to nurturing spiritual formation and creating safe environments for healing.
• David Ruybalid shares his journey from a traumatic upbringing to becoming a pastor
• The significance of music in worship as a form of healing and connection
• Discussing the imbalance between mission-focused worship and formative practices
• Understanding the impact of religious trauma on individuals and communities
• Strategies for developing trauma-informed care within church settings
• The BLESS approach as a framework for nurturing conversations
• Examples of effective ministries addressing trauma and mental health
• Encouraging a culture of vulnerability and emotional safety in church environments
The metaphor that I was sitting on was I feel like we're feeding people McDonald's meals as opposed to full course meals. If it's a formational piece for them to go out, be formed in the way of Jesus and live on mission, we're like here's some cheeseburgers, you know as opposed to like stuff that's going to nourish their soul and transform them.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Tim Allman Podcast. It's a great day to be alive. I pray the joy of Jesus is your strength, that the love of Christ is fueling you for a life of meaning and purpose connected to your identity in Jesus, and that you're buckled up ready for a fun conversation. Today on the Tim Allman Podcast I have David Rubelid. Let me tell you a little bit about him. David has and maybe we'll start here, david.
Speaker 2:David has an extensive career in the worship arts community Performed, produced, mentored, artist, coached many artists. He also has been a leader on a podcast which he just told me right before we got going. It's kind of on hold for a minute Evolution of Faith. You could look it up some past podcasts, but we're also going to be talking about trauma-informed care. If you're in the Christ Greenfield community, we're walking through a series called Never Alone God's Presence in the Midst of Trauma. So that's where I think a lion's share of our conversation is going to go today. But how are you doing, david? Thanks for taking the time to hang out with me, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm doing great. Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know Right back at you. So let's start just a little bit of your story. Worship arts, kind of life in the church, Tell that story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was born and raised in Colorado Springs, which is like the home and mecca of evangelical you know, is only got focus on the family and all the ministries there. But my story was I was raised in a tighter niche of the Christian community called Christian fundamentalism. So if you understand, like Bob Jones Pensacola world, that was the world in which I was raised and kind of there were two things that I walked through that were kind of life altering for me. The first was in my church. My parents were one of the first couples to go through a divorce in like the history like 150 years of our church. My dad was on the board and so there was all kinds of stuff with that and so that shook me. But on top of that it was a very abusive, authoritarian environment, really unhealthy environment, and I was sexually abused in that environment as well. So I walked through some pretty gnarly stuff in you know, formative childhood years and when I was in high school I started getting into music. My dad realized that the way in which he could connect with me was through music. Being raised in fundamentalism you can't do rock and roll, music, drums, any. Any of that stuff is seen as sinful my dad reached out to me. We kind of connected because he had a history of like listening to old 70s bands and pulled his records off the shelf I didn't even know he had and he was taking me to go see Bob Dylan, the Eagles, those sort of things and it was really music that took me out of that kind of toxic church experience.
Speaker 1:I was raised in into a different experience at a church known as New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where you recognize some of the songs that came out there. But I kind of cut my teeth as a worship leader around 17, 18, musician 17, 18 age range. And it was that around then that I started getting hired by different youth groups, camps, those sort of things and, uh, yeah, so played music professionally for a while, tried going to bible college for a year, hated it, moved back and played music for I played for I don't know if excuse me, if you know who mark tedder is, he's, uh, ryan tedder from one republic's uncle. So I was in his band, he was my mentor for years, played with that guy, um, and, yeah, just did the music thing for years, got married, had a kid and at that moment I had to grow up and figure things out.
Speaker 1:So I took my first full-time salary position, moved from colorado to california, california, and then I zigzagged California to Phoenix, california to Phoenix. But it was that first time in Phoenix where I was serving on worship staff there in actually in Chandler and at Cornerstone, and that was where they basically said, hey, I think you might be called. Where they basically said, hey, I think you might be called to be a pastor, and I thought they were crazy and so I kind of entered into a, a kind of an ordination process with them. That took about two years and then what happened was, uh, after I was ordained I sensed God was asking me to lay the music side of what I was doing in a roll down kind of fought him on it a little bit honestly and then after that moved into a associate pastor role in California and then came back here where I serve up in Peoria.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and your context right now for listeners.
Speaker 1:Tell them about your context yeah, so, uh, I am, I'm an associate pastor, uh oversee discipleship and outreach at a. So here's, here's kind of the the unique situation with me. It's a non-denominational church out of, uh, it's a church plant with one of the pastors out of, community church of joy, which was was Lutheran up here in Peoria, and so we're non-denominational. I'm still connected with and have, like I joke, dual citizenship with the Anglican churches in North America and so I am part of the Anglican churches in North America, personally shared, or the bridge at a non-denominational church that still practices weekly communion and some of the you know word and sacrament stuff, and so it's kind of a fun, fun little venture. Yeah, are you connected to Keith?
Speaker 2:Andrews.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Okay, he's an Anglican friend of mine here on the on the East side of Phoenix. Anyway, thanks for sharing your story, man. So many, so many things. Going back to the role of music, you and I have a similar story. Like music was.
Speaker 2:I'm not a, I'm not a artist by any stretch, I just was a singer choirs and then early stages of contemporary worship, um, and it really played and I had to kind of lay it down. I say I lead worship, like I sing like once every quarter or something like that. Now I used to sing like two services or three services a week in my different contexts, so in different seasons. But there's something that's extraordinary. I mean the Bible talks about left up hymns, spiritual songs on the Lord, about hymns, spiritual songs unto the Lord. You know, there's something about joy and music.
Speaker 2:I had like and I'm not charismatic, necessarily, not that I'm going to get against the gifts of the Holy Spirit by any stretch, but being a very conservative confessional Lutheran denomination where we can be, I think rightly so and maybe not rightly so suspicious of those types of gifts, but like I'm brought to tears when I and I don't listen to as much contemporary music as I used to, I honestly am way more into classical music today and as I'm reading and writing and doing all those things. But I was on the way to church just yesterday, david, and some I don't know if the Holy Spirit or something said, hey, you got to listen to King of Kings. I'm not a Hillsong guy at all. I don't for a variety of reasons, but like that song and I could list a whole number of songs Like when it hits and the church of Christ was born and the spirit lit the flame, I'm just like a mess with Jesus and I was just so pumped to then like come and speak yesterday. So music still like touches my soul and all different types of and styles of music just touches me in a unique way.
Speaker 2:What is it about music? Even physiologically? Obviously there's a spiritual component, but physiologically it just changes the human heart. David, any thoughts there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's why the, the, the verse that you were quoting says teach and admonish one another in all wisdom through him. Uh, there's something about the, the, the, the musical portion that is, uh, has such a strong way of of, of shaping and forming us, I think. I think, and one of the pieces I think in kind of Lutheran world and and and Anglican world we might understand that I think that I missed for years, is the formational element of worship, Like, I think that a lot of churches nowadays they get the like, oh, the missional element, Like we want people that are not yet followers of Jesus to be able to kind of, you know, vibe with us and kind of, you know, a lot of seeker-sensitive churches will utilize those means for the sake of mission, will utilize those means for the sake of mission. But we, you know, in kind of liturgical world, we forget the formational. We remember that.
Speaker 1:I think that I forgot and didn't understand the formational piece, and I think it happens uniquely because of music. I mean, I think that's why that's mentioned there, it's mentioned in Ephesians, the same way as it pertains to being filled with the Holy Spirit. You know, be not drunk with wine in excess, it leads to debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, which leads to singing psalms and spiritual songs. So something about the you know, spirit filled people are singing people. It's just kind of the way it is. Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2:No, I couldn't agree more. And there is, we could go down this trail. Maybe we're not going to do it extensively, but that debate between the focus of worship I'm of the mind, just to kind of lay my cards on the table, face up that worship is for the formation of the believer. We're confessing who God is and what he's done one to another, and then we're being catalyzed through the forgiveness of sins to go offer that forgiveness and love to the world. I view Sunday, or whenever you gather, as a catalyst for mission rather than kind of the focal point of mission. Any thoughts?
Speaker 1:there. Yeah, I think that's kind of what I'm getting at is Sunday morning has the focal point in so many spaces has become mission that we don't hit the formation piece. Do you know who Glenn Packiam is?
Speaker 2:No, tell me.
Speaker 1:Glenn Packiam. He's at Rock Harbor now in California. He's like me where he's Anglican but in a non-denominational space. He was at New Life Church as well and kind of what wound up happening? He started asking different questions about worship. But he's he's a Durham guy. He has his PhD from Durham in, uh, in worship formation and uh, he writes.
Speaker 1:Check out some of his stuff. He writes very specifically about there's three paradigms in worship, uh, that we need to focus on, and we tend to just focus on expression and mission and forget about formation. But it's always the work of worship that brings about formation. If you're familiar with Lex Credendi, lex Ordonde's, it's it's the way we worship, the way we pray, the way we worship becomes what we believe, and so if we understand that, that'll change the dynamics and the way in which we think through worship. Uh, and you know, one of the things I as a worship pastor, before I kind of moved out of that space, I started asking those questions and I kind of the metaphor that I was sitting on was I feel like we're feeding people McDonald's meals as opposed to full course meals If it's a formational piece for them to go out, be formed in the way of Jesus and live on mission. We're like here's some cheeseburgers, you know, as opposed to like stuff that's going to nourish their soul and transform them.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and in our kind of ancient traditions, liturgical traditions, because we stand on the shoulders of the Western church, roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches as well. Obviously, I'm a product of Lutheranism 500, some years ago. Luther never wanted to be called Lutheranism, by the way, he just was returned back to the gospel. But what he was kind of frustrated with was the move away from all of the rites and rituals, the liturgies that had normed us. He was trying to pull us back. All the sacraments aren't bad, hold it up a little bit. And so we today have a very, I guess, well agreed upon, and I'm in a church that does both high church and I don't like low church, but more modern worship. But the form is there and the form is formative. You make your beginning in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. What's that all about? It's baptism, right.
Speaker 2:There's going to be a time in worship where we confess how far we are, on our own, away from God, and sometimes these are like words that are connected to scripture, or it's just. Someone gets up and says man, I've really made a mess of my life in this way, tied to the theme somehow. So confession, and then someone most often it's a pastor gets up as a calling to answer the word. I announced the forgiveness of Jesus unto you. You are forgiven corporately and we can go a little side note there too. I think confession and absolution is very, very huge, not just corporately but individually, and we could explore making that kosher again, I guess. And then we move on time and hearing of the word, obviously the proclamation of the word, and for us in our tradition it's law gospel. You're always going to hear. You're always going to hear about Jesus the work, the word and the way of you're going to hear about Jesus. The work, the word and the way of you're going to hear about Jesus. Whether the text brings them up or not, we're importing Jesus. He's on every, every page of scripture, right.
Speaker 2:So a good Lutheran sermon is going to have have law gospel proclamation and then we're going to have to spend time in prayer. We're going to celebrate the Lord's supper. We're going to have the Lord's prayer, the creed, and then the benedediction I need to go through and the blessing which numbers chapter six normally, which is the presence of God that goes with his people. It's a missional sending of the people out in the community with presence of God, image bearers of the king Right. So so that is our kind of form and I have to like walk through that because there are some, some people in my respective tribe and Lutheran church Missouri synod who think because we've uh, because we have modern instrumentation, we have no value for the formation of the liturgy and nothing could be further from the truth. So that's kind of our normal form, whether it's in a hymnal or on a screen or whatever, in your tradition Anglican. What kind of resonates or what's different in your experiences?
Speaker 1:It's really not much different actually in your experiences. It's really not much different actually. We make sure that at multiple times, yeah, the law is proclaimed, gospel is proclaimed, and we walk through. We say that within our liturgy there are kind of two peaks word and sacrament. And so the way we think through it is you have the ministry of the word, the ministry of the sacrament, and in that there's multiple proclamations of um, depending on what right you're utilizing, it speaks, you know, love, lord your god, with all your heart, soul, mind, love your neighbor as yourself. And then you go into the curia, you realize that we, we've missed the mark. And then there's a proclamation of the gospel, same thing as after the hearing of the word uh, normally, depending on on the right and and the congregation, uh, you know, we, we affirm our faith by uh, nicene creed at uh, baptisms it's normally apostles creed, because that we've. We see that as the, the baptism creed, with the language there Um.
Speaker 1:After moving out of that, we have times of prayer and then we have times of confession, absolution, passing of the peace as we move towards the table, and the table too has that moment of its proclamation of the celebration of the sacrificial lamb. And what I love about that movement in so many ways, compared to kind of some of the other traditions I've been a part of, is that the focal point is not on consumerism of so many things that you can't, it's the table. I mean you come to the table and then you receive. You know, you know it's again the gospel proclamation receive by faith, the grace, it's a gift offered, and so every week in that way the gospel is proclaimed in that way as well as you leave. But yeah, we kind of see it as two peaks. I don't know if you kind of see it that way, but it's the ministry of the word, ministry of the sacrament, but within that you see that same rhythm of proclaiming this love the Lord, your God, with all your heart.
Speaker 2:I fall short than the gospels proclaim, but yeah, I guess there's a nuanced debate in Lutheranism around what peak is higher. You know what gets primacy. I mean, some people argue that you got the altar right there in the middle. So obviously, even in our worship spaces and that's one of the biggest critiques of maybe modern contemporary worship is where's? Where's the altar right? Yeah, because you got drums. Is that we worshiping drums? Obviously we're not worshiping drums. But yeah, I really I think it's definitely balanced, are we? We have to hear the word, we're confessing people who are shaped by the word, which is Jesus, and then we're obviously shaped by the word becoming flesh and laying his life down for us and giving us his very body and blood for the forgiveness of sin. So, yeah, I like, I like two peaks, two peaks as well. Well, let's get into. I love it.
Speaker 2:We could, we could talk worship and those things for a while, but the lion's share of this conversation is going to be around trauma, informed care. I mean, in your story you kind of just walked quickly through some things. You're like, oh man, that's rough, that stinks, and you even mentioned a church like New Life. And I remember New Life from being in Colorado. I mean it was in the headlines and for the life of me I can't remember the pastor's name, but there was some tough stuff. I think that happened at New Life.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, you want to go into deeper things there and then, as we hedge, into religious trauma in the church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's a lot of things I kind of glossed over. I gave a snapshot. I've experienced, at least within ministry I've experienced it's pretty gnarly stuff. Yeah. So New Life if you don't know the story, ted Haggard was a founding pastor. He was a president of the National Association of Evangelicals and while serving in those roles, new Life I mean they were a 14,000-member church, huge their music. I mean. You know, you have songs like if I just name I Am Free some other ones, the Great I Am. I mean all these songs, I could just keep naming them.
Speaker 1:I used to work and play with Daniel Basher who wrote my God's not dead, he's surely alive. It was all kind of in the soup of new life there. And Ted Haggard, at a certain point it came out in 2006, that he had been visiting, as he went up to Denver to write his book. I was actually out at this time but my wife we weren't married yet, she was still attending New Life and all the band members were like my best friends and stuff. And so in 2006, yeah, it came out that Ted Haggard, as he was going to denver for writing his book, on those trips he was seeing a male prostitute and doing meth and so, and it was this, this, this male prostitute that uh, outed him because he saw him on an interview on the history channel, and so that was, that was I say not only for myself personally but for the entire city of Colorado Springs that just shook them because New Life had such a dominating presence in Colorado Springs and then a reach out nationally, and so that was crazy, crazy.
Speaker 1:And then, man, they brought in brady boyd, who was the. He became the lead pastor and shortly after there was a shooting. So a gunman walked in, there was a shooting and this is what got crazy. I I was at this point married the security guard that took down the gunman there actually worked for my wife, whoa, and so she actually, like our Christmas tree that we had for like the first 10 years of our marriage was a gift from her and stuff. So so all these things of this, what was kind of the you call it, like the evangelical Vaticanatican, uh, that I was intertwined with, there was just a lot of like pain and stuff from these situations that happened. Um, I remember my buddy, david lee, the keyboard player, calling me like literally the moment after he left after the shooting and, uh, and, and talking and talking with me, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, so much, uh so, and thanks for thanks for sharing that. That was kind of ancient history. I'd forgotten that story. I was a young pastor, um, just starting in Lakewood, colorado, and uh, and those, those shootings. What year was that shooting? Remind me.
Speaker 1:I think that was oh no, oh seven. Oh, I think that was oh no, oh seven, oh eight. Something might have been seven or eight, yeah yeah, I think it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started in in colorado in oh eight. I think I was already already there like 26 year old young guy just getting going. It was awful. And didn't didn't the shooter go from arvada down to colorado springs, didn't it wasn't the shooting in arvada first?
Speaker 1:yeah, so it was the yAM, the YWAM headquarters up there in your area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was kind of like the loss of innocence in that decade in Colorado, from Columbine to that shooting and the whole the, the shooting in the theater. It was very traumatic. There in Aurora it was around the same time. So, yeah, no, there's life is really really hard. The message of the sermon that I preached yesterday, david, was life is loss.
Speaker 2:And looked at the story of Job and Job's. Everybody knows kind of Job's friends and they do some good things, they sit with him, don't say a whole lot for, sit in grief for a week and then they say a lot of things. Basically, what they said is you're the problem, like you must have done something to tick God off. And then obviously Job's wife curse God and die. He says something that you should probably not tell your wife Job does. He says you're a foolish woman. I mean you might want to be more tactful than that. But yeah, I mean Job's story it's just consistent loss and that was really the through line was because we got to get to Jesus. Jesus is the better, perfect Job who had everything and then lost it all, even to the point of death on a cross, and through his resurrection we have life, as Christ has been raised, so will we be raised in all of our you say, fortunes? I guess in this life will be restored at the return of Christ, when we have perfection with God, self, others and the rest of creation. That would be pretty extraordinary. But in the meantime, we have to get better at caring for one another.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about the things that churches do that are not helpful in caring for those who are dealing and you could use a word that's in popular vernacular, I mean trigger, that could trigger, even in religious institutions, those that have walked through incredible trauma. So 24 million people suffer from PTSD. 8% of the population these are the two kind of stats were as we go through this sermon 8% of the population has some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and it's wild. So in our pews, chairs, whatever, there are people that are deeply hurting. One point, before I turn it over to you to help us get better at this, is when I'm preaching about pain, suffering and loss. There is a spirit. It's the comforting spirit. It's the comforting spirit, it's the Holy Spirit, but it's a spirit of grief that just falls upon a certain percentage of that room.
Speaker 2:I've been preaching in the last couple of months and there have been people who have been and this is strange in a Western context, but we are getting better at just loving people who are pretty much openly weeping in the midst of the message, as they're just processing whatever it is a loss of a loved one, an accident, whatever, whatever. And the Holy Spirit knows, and it's amazing. They come out of those experiences because worship is formation and they're like that was healing. I needed to just release all these things to Jesus. And that's not the only. Worship is obviously not the only place, but if we're not well informed about what it is we're doing and setting space for people to grieve with hope, I think we're missing it. We're offering, like you say, mcdonald's, rather than there's a new restaurant called Buck and Ryder Top Cuisine, which is people being able to heal at the feet of the crucified Jesus. So talk to us about how we can get better at trauma-informed care.
Speaker 1:David, yeah, within the church do you want me to speak specifically towards religious trauma or trauma in general?
Speaker 2:No, yeah, let's go religious trauma first. I mean that's the area you said. This has been your kind of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think well you rattle off statistics at kind of yeah, yeah, I think I think well, you, you, you rattled off statistics at kind of like a higher general level when it comes to religious trauma, which is when people experience stuff that overwhelms their system very similarly, but there's a faith piece attached to it, so it could be spiritual abuse, it could be kind of some of the teachings and ways within an environment. It has the same kind of impact on somebody, so to speak. One of the things and you kind of alluded to it with the Job piece one of the things that's really important for me is to make sure that discussion in the realm of like small groups and Bible studies, that there are parameters of kind of how that's going to play out, that the leader protects, and that there it is stated, sometimes before the discussion, sometimes sometimes, you know, I actually have a commitment that people sign both, both the the small group participants and the leaders that talk about how we're going to protect that time. And it's very similar to what you'd experience at like an AA meeting. Yeah, because one of the one of the issues that I've experienced while I've pastored people and complaints that I get normally has to do with when somebody opens their mouth to give advice and it hasn't been requested, and so for me, that is a huge practical way in which people can be protected from re-traumatization and feel support. So, right off the bat, that's where I would go.
Speaker 1:I think that one of the things that for me, has been really hard but needed is the balance of language that both accentuates the sovereignty of God but also accentuates the ability for the human to turn the human to choose to worship the human, to choose to respond.
Speaker 1:In that moment where there's so much, if you walk through religious trauma well, any trauma in many ways, but religious trauma in a faith space it feels like you've been stripped of that agency, and so one of the ways that I go about it when I lead oftentimes is I say, hey, you could participate, or as much or as little as you feel comfortable, to kind of give the person the ability to where I'm not going to command things of them.
Speaker 1:You know, like when I was in kind of the more modern rah-rah Jesus, you're like you know, lift up your hands, come on, shout it out, and you're like you're calling that, and what I've learned is the invitation model is way more important of like you know, hey, this is what's on my heart and I want to ask, if you're there and you feel comfortable I want to invite you to respond in this way, because agency has so been stripped and authority, uh, sometimes authoritarianism those sorts of things have been experienced by people in religious spaces and to offset it and say, hey, what's happening in your heart, you know, I want to invite you, if you're there, to respond.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Well, power works in the short term. And certain religious leaders, political leaders, leaders in the secularist, wherever you can tell people what to do. And often you know, because there's a small percentage of people who are actually like leaders of organizations. You know most people are just like, okay, I'm just a normal guy doing my thing, you know nine to five or whatever, so I'll go along to get along and I'll, you know, I'll come along as long as I know you have kind of my best interest at heart. But sometimes, sometimes leaders can declare through edict, resolution by a committee and that becomes that becomes the norm here and it can be very, very dysfunctional and really not in the way of Jesus. I mean, jesus is an invitational rabbi. Yeah Right, come and follow. I mean you can just come. If you want to come, just hang out. You know, see how I do it. It's game on.
Speaker 2:And he didn't think about the night Jesus is betrayed, like he's told his disciples this is what's going to happen Handed over, crucified, third day, three days later, rise again, he's told them, so they can have kind of peace. But they obviously forget in the midst of the chaos. But he doesn't chide, shame them at all. I'm thinking of the story of Peter, preached on the trauma of Peter's denial and the shame that could have just kind of overwhelmed him, crippled him, and the look of Jesus. Luke's gospel because I think three out of four talk about Peter's denial If someone fax checks me that could be all four but anyway in great depth. But Luke's gospel says and Jesus looked at him and then he went out and he heard the rooster and he went out and he wept bitterly. You remember that? Oh yeah, what did Jesus look at him for? Like, I don't think it was anger, I don't even think it was a look that would produce necessarily shame. I think it was a mixture, and you know this look, it's a mixture of just sadness I'm doing this for you but robust love, and I think love was the overarching look from Christ.
Speaker 2:And then obviously, the restoration of Peter and the mission that he sent Peter on, that Jesus actually pursued Peter. And one of my favorite points that I drew out of John's gospel was John tells Peter when they're in the boat they went back to their former vocation. Right, we don't know if this whole Jesus thing, this proclamation thing, even though he's alive, we don't know what day of the resurrection of the 40 days. It is, but nonetheless they hear him. When you catch anything he's thrown on the other side. This is very reminiscent of their initial interaction with Jesus.
Speaker 2:And then John is the one that tells Peter it's the Lord. If you remember that? John tells Peter directly. There's six of them in the boat. John tells Peter it's the Lord. We need more friends like John when we're walking through, because there probably was guilt and shame in Peter's story. At this point we say I'm just one who gets to point you to the presence of Jesus in the midst of your guilt and shame. And Peter doesn't cower in fear from Christ or shame, he jumps in the water. He can't get to Jesus quickly enough. So I mean the church is the living manifestation of the crucified and risen and reigning Jesus. We are the body of Christ and so I pray we start to emulate not just the work and the word but the way of Jesus, and it's an invitational way. Any response to as I'm kind of telling Peter's story there, david.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm what. What I'm actually what going through is. I'm kind of blown away because some of the way in which you are exegeting and pulling out is ways in which I mean you had one of the questions here I was going to say is the way in which we we see scripture, we see the elements of not only trauma but also what trauma produces. And so, right off the bat, I just want to say I'm loving that you're able to see that stuff within the narrative as you see it, because not everyone does, and so, right off the bat, I'm just appreciative of that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, oh yeah, thanks, man, that's kind. So you talked about parameters. Let's get into the details a little bit the parameters and the commitment. Could you give some details about what those parameters? We got small group leaders that are listening here, so, yeah, let's go through those.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I tell people, your job is not to teach, your job is to facilitate. Let the teacher teach. And so that could be. We have a couple of different types of groups. We have some that are curriculum based, that go off video. We do have some where there is a qualified teacher that does teach, but that person has been put in that place and affirmed by myself or our lead pastor.
Speaker 1:But the facilitator's role is to draw up discussion, and so I don't know if you're familiar with Alpha, do you guys? You're familiar with Alpha? It's a very similar model where our role is to get people talking and to honor them for what they're saying, and we trust that the Holy Spirit's doing the work in their life, and the only time in which we will correct them or bring something to them is if they ask hey, am I seeing this correctly? And so if you're familiar with Alpha, alpha is very much a hey, I'm going to trust the Holy Spirit here. We want to honor anybody who shows up in our room, in our space, and when we ask the questions, we're asking to draw out what's happening in them and what they're learning from the video, and we honor them. We thank them for sharing, we pass the ball instead of giving commentary on everything that everyone says it's just hey, what? What did you think of that? Oh, thank you so much for sharing. Hey, would you, would you know, turn to the next person, would you agree?
Speaker 1:And so some of the parameters for us are you're not the teacher, you're the facilitator, and the facilitator's role is to bring out conversation from people and not to run the conversation. So we tell people that if you're doing more than and we say 30%, that's even a high number, but we say, if you're doing more than 30% of the talking in that moment, you're talking too much. I would actually run that number down, but that was kind of the number my team landed on. So that's kind of the goal. We have different people, we have people that voted differently, we have people that come from different denominational backgrounds. All those things are really important for us to be able to honor and respect the other person. People have experienced loss, people have experienced all kinds of stuff, and so to honor them, just being willing to open up and share, and then not correcting, not shaming, not giving advice unless it's been asked, is kind of the way in which we you know I could pull up a commitment and read it to you, or send it to you if you want.
Speaker 2:No, that's good. That's kind of the heart of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the reason I'm laughing is because this isn't what church leaders were trained to do generally, right, I mean, if you go to seminary and you get ordained, you're the Bible answer guy, you're the talker right, you're a brain on a stick, you're a personality you know, and there's a part of me that can be this Do people really, really know who I am? You know all parts of me and do I have spaces where, like, I can just listen? One of the reasons I do the podcast is because I really like to. I like facilitating conversation more than I like telling people what to do. Yeah, you know, but but that's something that kind of the Lord put in me.
Speaker 2:But I think anything to like pastors who were like I don't, this seems foreign to me. I mean, cause we've been taught and it's not. There's nothing that I hear you saying that's against like or preaching. That definitely has its place. It's just for holistic care to take place, people need to have safe places where they can share all of their life, journey and receive and maybe we can go here and receive the love and prayerful presence of a brother or sister who and there's something mysterious here too the power of prayer over someone proclaiming their identity, inviting and this is one of the main, I think invitations in terms of trauma, if there is enough safety and this is probably better one-on-one or in a group of three if something really, really heavy has been shared and it feels like Jesus is not there.
Speaker 2:Right, jesus wasn't in that that room, um, and I'm thinking of yeah, I'm thinking of a really hard, hard suicide story right now in a room that just it felt really like Jesus wasn't, wasn't there. I've had to do work that family has had to do, to do work to invite Jesus in. You know, and that's the power of prayer, we just invite Jesus. What is Jesus doing? As he comes into that room of intense grief and loss? He's crying, just like we're crying right now. Anything more there, david? Yeah.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we kind of I could say a tool or an acronym that we say over and over to kind of help people embody the way of Jesus is the acronym BLESS. Have you ever seen somebody utilize that as it pertains?
Speaker 2:I have, but let's do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So B stands with begin with prayer, and we encourage people to pray for the people in the places where they live, work, study and play, because God's already doing something. People in the places where they live, work, study and play because God's already doing something. They're not going to make something happen, like really the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work. And so you begin with prayer.
Speaker 1:The L stands for listen, which is, I mean, right off the bat, your goal is, as you engage with people where you live, work, study and play, you listen. You don't start by talking, you listen, and sometimes listening involves asking questions, and so you're, you're drawing things out. My buddy, jr briggs he has a book, uh, I think, coming out. He has another one he wrote that was a little unofficial, but he's brilliant question ask like, and so the the better questions we learn to ask, the more we can draw things out of people. But listen.
Speaker 1:The E stands for eat because, as we see, jesus hosts meals and it breaks down barriers. But it also says that we all share in the same human needs, and so eat and then serve. Well, you don't serve somebody based on what you think they need. You serve based on what you've heard, by listening and spending time with them, and then the very last S is to share your story and God's story and notice it's the very last thing. And so you know, sometimes we feel like that should be the very first thing or the second thing. But begin with prayer, listen, eat, serve and then, as the Holy Spirit leads, and only if he leads you, share. So that's kind of how we tool our people to think through living out kind of the way of Jesus in their, their places and their context.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I love it as we're coming down the last little bit here. Can you give some examples of types of ministries? And I don't know if it's parachurch necessarily, but in our context we have CG Cares, classes for people walking through various struggles divorce, grief, finance, et cetera. So that's kind of our. We have Celebrate Recovery, we're starting all these types of ministries. So there's some examples. But do you know of some ministries that you've been around that are specifically toward this topic of trauma?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've been actually very just like you guys, very intentional to kind of have this in mind as we do ministry and what I'm thankful for. Not every church congregation, leadership, denomination, is open to these conversations, and so I've been very thankful that our, our congregation, our leadership as a whole has been so, with that, some of the things that I would say has been an act of God, allowing us to see what he's doing and put in place. We haven't, like, forced any of this stuff to happen. Um, we have actually have a counseling center that utilizes our space, and so it's kind of a cool thing that happened.
Speaker 1:I had a situation with a family member who attempted suicide because of how he was in high school, because of how the school trained the staff and the students and made this a usual conversation within their world at a public school. Somebody saw the way he said goodbye to them that day, called the police and it saved his life. But the trauma that led to that moment happened within a Christian school that didn't know how to handle him. And so in me, you'll find I'm not a cynical person when I get angry. In like a justice way, I want to build better things as opposed to tear things down, you know. And so with that it was kind of a driving force for me to have more partnerships with our families in our church. And in that period of time I had a volunteer for Alpha the previous year who committed suicide year, who committed suicide and I had sorry I had. It was literally I had somebody call me and say, you know, for her husband, do you know of any counselors? I'm like, well, bethany Bible is probably now now Phoenix Bible, I believe, is now probably the closest thing that I know on this end of the Valley, cause I'm everything I know is like East Valley from spending years there. And it was literally like that week, uh, dan Capel, who was running the counseling department for the rescue mission in town, knocked on my door at the church while I'm sermon prepping. He's introduced himself and said hey, would you guys be open to a partnership? I'm looking at starting a private practice and I'm looking for space. So we actually started with a relationship with him where we said you could use our space for free as you build your, your, your, you know counseling center in return for us having deals for our members to go. And then our board opened up a certain amount of money to also kind of pay for people that couldn't pay for themselves even with that discount. So that's one of the things that we did. Another thing in that, again, because we wanted to partner more with the families and some some of the families in our church were going through some gnarly stuff. Uh, we started what was called.
Speaker 1:We did our first ever last spring mental health, mental health summit where we approached the topics of grief. We approached, um, I talked about Jesus's anxiety, uh and uh. And then we had, uh, they talked about trauma and then they talked about we brought in Amen clinic to talk about brain development, so good. And so we, we hosted that which started us into where we're doing two to four times a year micro events. So we'll bring in a speaker. We had one on social media.
Speaker 1:Now we, we have one, uh, I don't know if you know chris morris is. He might be good guy for you to connect with. He's on this end of the valley. I didn't know. He lived here, he was an author. I followed talking about mental health and he's like hey, can I send you your my book? And I gave him my address. He's like you're in arizona, I'm in arizona we like 15 minutes away, so we've hung out a few times but bringing him in to talk about his story and he's a mental health advocate, seminary trained, really cool guy, but we're bringing him in. And so we have these little micro events where we not only invite our church but we invite. We have a partnership with a public elementary that allows us to invite people to our events. That's awesome. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:And then all the Christian schools in the area.
Speaker 1:I think and I'll say this on here that my experience because I graduated from Christian school, I went to two and then I worked for two years at a Christian school I think there's a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding within those circles that I've found around mental health, and so we try and hit the Christian schools up here.
Speaker 1:And then we have trauma-informed training for our youth leaders and we do it once a year in the summer right before camp. We've had kids that disclose rape, that disclose abuse, that disclose all kinds of things, and so we sit down for about an hour, hour and a half with all of the leaders there's normally about 20 of us that sit around the table and we do it in partnership with our counseling center and we do trauma, informed training and how to respond and how to know how to respond and read these situations. And then we have life recovery, which is like a celebrate recovery that meets on Monday evening. So those are some of the if you could hear kind of in my story of some of the things we've tried to purposefully put in place that I'm thankful for. Those are some of the things we're moving on within our community.
Speaker 2:So grateful for you and for the church and the wider church responding in healthy ways. And it's not a one size fits all, if you hear like there's a number of different ways. We're trying to meet people where they are. We're also looking to start a counseling ministry here. So you mentioned a few things I'm interested about Christian schools. We got a lot of people listening that are connected to some of our Lutheran schools. What were some of those ways that were not helpful? That we were training students, teachers, et cetera in the school context? Go deeper there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so in that story, specifically my family member. He was bullied at the school. Nothing was done about it and so there wasn't a response to bullying. There are certain laws that I've noticed because I'm actually still walking with this school and I'm it. There's a whole story here where, basically, I pushed them about a year and a half ago and they closed the door in my face Like, basically, like didn't want to talk about it. We're doing fine. Look at our ratings. You know, you don't know what you're talking about. Like it was a full, like gaslighting session and they've reopened the door for conversation with me because they're under new leadership where I might step in and actually help them do training, um, but, but, but what I found is them and some of the ones up around here, because some of the students, they're not quite in line with some of the legal um I could use the term parameters or expectations uh, with how to handle certain types of bullying. There was a death threat in this situation that wasn't reported, um, and then, and then one of the things right now, with every at least in the state of Arizona, every school and this includes private school is required to do mental health and suicide prevention training once every three years. This is one of those things where you know, I think that for a lot of times they're like, oh, we'll leave that up to you, the, the guidance counselor or the spiritual director. But it's like, no, every teacher like, yes, have, have a trained professional if that, if you have the budget to do so within your administration. But every teacher must at minimum be trained in conversation every couple years. Of this is what it means to be trauma informed. This is what it looks like. This is how, when you know when to report what this is how you handle.
Speaker 1:I had a student when I was there. I had a student when I was there say, hey, I've attempted suicide two times and I've. I had to respond, but it wasn't clear. I mean, I was on staff here. It wasn't clear how to respond. So I went to the spiritual director and to the counselor. They both told me two different things. And the counselor her concern was the school, school not getting sued.
Speaker 1:And I don't think after that initial moment I offered to call the parents. I called the parents After that moment. I don't think the school did any check-ins or walk alongside of that student's family after that moment. And so there's just a lot of these things where I'm like why is the public school system doing better? It's like if my family member was at this Christian school he wouldn't be with us right now, and that's just like a sobering, sad thought. It should be reversed. So those are just some of the things in there. Know your laws, make sure that you know what it, that everyone understands what mandatory reporting means. I think that's really important, um, know your laws. And then with that, with that, um, I just, you know, and there was, there was, there was re-victimization, you know, re-traumatization in in some of my family's attempts, the parents attempts to push the school a little bit, and it just, you know, wasn't, wasn't good. So yeah, yeah, and this is a school with high ratings where it's like that they kind of hide behind the ratings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah Pull of institutional preservation is strong.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And and hopefully we're confessing institutions. We don't in life, you know, I kind of help oversee a school. I don't run it day to day, but in my world the I, the principal, reports to me right. So, um, the quicker we can get to confession in those messy situations, the better. Like we, we ha, we didn't have all the details. We could have handled it different. Um, and we want to do whatever it takes to care for kids really, really well. Um, you couple a couple of closing. You, you did a presentation on Jesus anxiety. That that's provocative to me. Uh, what did you say? Where did you locate Jesus anxiety? Obviously the garden. But yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, luke 22,. Uh, the language in the Greek, yes, it says in agony, but it also can translate to anxiety and uh. And so I, I talked about what was happening in his body, but my where I, what I got to was to say to push against the idea of shaming for an anxious response, to push against the idea that if I have an anxious response in a situation, I'm struggling with continued anxious responses, maybe it's because of trauma, that I'm sinning or I'm not, I'm not responding in a way that God would like, or that my faith is in question. And that was really what I wanted to lead to.
Speaker 1:I think that understanding, you know Athanasius said, you know God became who we are so we could become who he is. There's something about the full new humanity that comes because of the incarnation and the work and faithfulness and ultimately, death and resurrection of Jesus. But with that comes things like Matthew four, where he's it literally says just right, there, he was hungry, like well, that tells me that he understands what it means to, to, to, to have the desires and the human experience that I have. But with that Luke is very clear that Jesus had a moment there before he was going to go to a cross, which was a torturous, traumatic event that he walked through.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I'm with you walked through. So, yeah, no, I'm with you. I think in other generations, when life was more volatile like we, everybody knows they're going to die but we live with this kind of you can kind of set death aside, right, and for those that are not Jesus followers, especially if you've got enough money, like some people are actually talking about defeating death by living. You know well, in a hundred 200 years You've heard about a lot of those kind of folks.
Speaker 2:But in the early church and then moving into the early Middle Ages, the monastic movement and then Luther and some of the reformers, there was this really palpable expectation and maybe Luther's story is a little bit different here because of the heaviness of the law wanting to get God off his back and being unable to do so by his one. There's going to be suffering. God's going to work through it. It's going to be suffering and loss. In the early church, my goodness, was there a lot of suffering and loss and persecution. You knew people who had lost their lives because they said Caesar's not Lord, jesus is Lord, right. So there was more evident suffering in the community, but also that there would come a season where there's a dark night of the soul. Have you done much work on the dark night of the soul, david, and how the Lord works in that way?
Speaker 2:It's not pleasant, it's not fun, but it's a very normal experience for people as they follow Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was at St John of the Cross and kind of his work was kind of where that's coined, ross, and kind of his work was kind of where that's coined. So, yes, I think that one of the things that we've done and I talk about this in many ways and I would love to get in this conversation, maybe future down the road, but I talk a lot about spiritual bypassing, how we think that God is only found in what's happy and good, and so we try and utilize Christian practices to sit there or find that place when in all reality we learn that Psalm 23, even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he is with us. And so I think, if we realize because I do, I think that our Christian goods and services, our contemporary Christian music, our Christian movies, those sort of things kind of drive us almost like everything has to have this like 90s sitcom bow tie of a resolve and that's just. Not only is that not real life, but we can miss out on knowing like experiencing Jesus.
Speaker 1:There's been three major seasons like Cairo seasons in my life where God has shown himself. The first was like unicorns and rainbows. It was beautiful and happy. The other two were just horrible hell and I think that if I would have, I could have missed where God was intersecting in my life in those moments. If I thought that, no, I just I gotta be happy, I need to bypass this and utilize fake Christian practices, I would totally miss out on just kind of the depth of the experience that I had with God in those moments.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's amazing to me how much Paul and the apostles talk about suffering and sometimes I think it's just really, really, really hard. I mean, one of my favorite verses is Romans 5, right One, two. Rejoice in your suffering. What? Because it does something in us, knowing that suffering produces perseverance and I think this is maybe an overlap with the secular sciences a little bit, because we want to grow in our resilience. I think a synonym for resilience is faith, trust that God will never leave you nor forsake you. Right, rejoice in your suffering, knowing it produces perseverance and perseverance Character.
Speaker 2:You're the type of person that can walk, as Luther says, one beggar telling another beggar where to find food. Like we're all just broken messes, we're all kind of trying to. If anybody says they got it all together and they figured it all out or they got the answers for whatever at any level, like you're just lying. All of us are just trying to make it. You know and do we want? Are we emotive? We're not brains in a stick, right, we're feeling things first and are some of those feelings oriented toward things that are very dysfunctional? Yeah, because we're broken and we need. We need the love and grace and mercy of Jesus and we need the kindness of a community of people who bear our burdens and say Jesus is right here, he's never going to leave you, nor, nor fors, and ultimately it's a move toward hope right In this world. You will have trouble. Take heart, I've overcome the world. Jesus breaks into the locked room of our cold, hard, faithless hearts and gives us peace. I'm alive. Death is not going to win. Death is put to death because I'm alive. And this suffering, this sorrow, this trauma, there's going to come a day when it's no more. So we just need to be a community and it's not trite, you know, I think, if people are listening to me like you, just talk right past the trauma. No, no, no. It's like sitting right here in this office, david, yeah, crying with people in the midst of unexpected things that have happened, people in the midst of unexpected things that have happened, and not in a trite way, but at in the, in the right way most of the time, just saying Jesus is, jesus is here and he he's weeping with you. Yeah, and, and we don't, we don't like to weep, especially in the West right, we want to move, we want to move right by it.
Speaker 2:I think too, in other cultures they had maybe maybe closed with cause. Some of this maybe are struggles culturally with handling loss and death. There's been some radical shifts culturally, david, since I became a pastor 17 years ago. There there used to be more of a viewing of your dead loved one right, and there was a healing element to that, the closing of the casket kind of and this goes back to some kind of ancient liturgies the pastor kind of leading the body into the worship space. You have a service, but then the pastor kind of leads the procession to the mortuary and to the graveside and there's a committal service.
Speaker 2:I remember doing all of these things, like it was a whole morning or whole afternoon type of experience to grieve with those who grieve. But now, man, like let's plan two months out for Aunt Sally's funeral and make sure everybody can get, like there's this elongated and then I never saw aunt sally I I don't normally get this fired up about this, I don't know why I am at this moment, but anyway. But but cremation is the normal, is the normal way right right now, and so I think generally we want to push grief and loss to the side, work right by it. But the church needs, I hope, is a place where we can cry with those who cry Any take on the shift culturally around the topic of death. David.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that there you go to Rwanda. Rwanda, for instance, has a museum to remember the genocide. We don't want to face those things, and so I think that that that mentality that runs deeper and farther it maybe, is playing itself in. I for me, you know, as you're, as you're talking, I mean I haven't been doing what I've been doing the way I've been doing it long, only a few years. I do a lot of funerals up here by Sun City. We have a lot of retired folk. There was one year where I did five funerals in six weeks.
Speaker 1:I do a lot of funerals and they all look different and some of them are minimal, some of them are simple celebration of life. They all look different and I could see what you're saying. I think grief is not something that we are comfortable allowing ourselves to feel and that's something I've had to learn because of my upbringing. In the last couple of years and my grandpa passed away, I went to his funeral out and sorry, and yeah, thanks, nebraska. And you know just the sense of like anytime somebody would cry sharing a story. There was this, but we gotta be happy. He's in heaven now, you know. And well, no, like we, we could sit in this space, and that's right, and that's good.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I definitely see within our culture we want to shy away from the hard stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good man. Hey, this has been a lot of fun. You're a dear brother, just getting to know you. I'm grateful for the Holy Spirit's work in your life, david, through hard things, to offer those hard things to the healing presence of Christ and to invite others to do the same. And that's what it means to be the body of Christ, loving and caring for one another and lifting our eyes up to Jesus, who's right there with us in the midst of hard stuff. If people want to connect with you and your ministry and hear more and kind of get more involved in your cause, it's all about networks, right? Um, in your network of of care and trauma informed care, how can they do so, david?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a couple of places. I mean, if you're in the Phoenix area and want to swing by life church, peoria, I'm up there every Sunday for the most part, but I'm very active on Instagram. It's David underscore Rubelid. My guess is you'll have my, my last name, somewhere in the notes listed here, so it's David underscore Rubelid on Instagram. And then I also am a co-founder of what's called the religious trauma network with I know you've had Janine McConaughey on here, but Janine, rebecca Drumsta, luke Renner, kind of the four of us launched this to kind of help survivors understand, educate, support them, but also help organizations and professionals build more trauma responsive spaces for both faith and, just you know, healing places for people.
Speaker 2:So yeah, Dude, so good. Thanks for the time and this was a blessing just to me Personally. This is a Tim Allman podcast. If you could like, subscribe, comment wherever it is. You take in hopefully Jesus centered, hope filled but honest conversations, like we're going to be setting up here. That is most appreciated. Follow us on YouTube Unite Leadership Collective. This is one of those two podcasts, and it's a beautiful day to be alive. In the midst of loss is my final word. Now, life is loss, but life in Christ, because he's the crucified and risen one life defeats in time our loss, and so in the meantime, we care for one another, pointing one another to Jesus. It's a good day. Go make it a great day by the power of the Spirit. Thanks so much, david. Thank you.