Being an Animal Cracker Pastor

Mike Leake 1 Comment

“Seriously?!?!”

This is what I grumble as I open up my $1.29 bag of six potato chips. I know that bags of potato chips are known for looking full but delivering mostly air. But six chips?

Don’t get me wrong, they are luscious. Just as the little jingle says I can’t eat just one. But if this degenerating trajectory of chips per bag continues it looks like I am going to have to learn to eat just one chip. A bag of chips looks like it ought to be a filling snack. It only taunts me and makes me have to look elsewhere.

This isn’t true of animal crackers. You can buy a bag of animal crackers at Wal-Mart for under two bucks. Opening these bags has a different disappointment attached to them. When you open this bag of joy typically 40-50 animal crackers fly through the air and onto the floor. They are so filled to the brim that they can’t help spilling out everywhere. Yeah, some of their treasure is wasted; especially, for you wimpy germaphobes that don’t follow the five second rule. But they fill you up.

I want to be an animal cracker pastor instead of a potato chip pastor.

A potato chip pastor projects much and offers little. He’s alluring. He’s somebody you want to bring with you to the Super Bowl party. But at the end of the day he’s really only filled with hot-air. Yeah, he might satiate a few people. But he doesn’t fill anyone. At the end of the day he leaves his congregation having to look elsewhere for sustenance.

The animal cracker pastor might be a little bland and boring to some. But he will fill you up. He’ll do what a pastor is supposed to do; namely, “feed my sheep”. He is so overflowing with the gospel that some of what he says will just spill onto the ground. I’d rather be a little bland but overly helpful than scrumptious but disappointing.

There is probably a lesson in here too about under-promising and over-delivering instead of the other way around. But for me when I think about a bag of chips filled with hot-air I pray that my ministry isn’t similar. I pray that the Lord so overwhelms me with His love and gives me such a vision of Himself that I can’t help but overflow in the lives of others.

Be an animal cracker pastor.

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The potato chip illustration is an extension of a point that Zack Eswine makes in his book Sensing Jesus. Give him all the credit and me all the blame.

Resources for Mental Health Issues

Mike Leake 1 Comment

A good friend emailed me over the weekend asking for resources on a Christian response to mental health issues. I figured that more people than just this one are asking this question. Therefore, I thought it might be wise to compile a list of resources for mental health issues.

There are many different views of Christian counseling and mental health issues. Dr. Eric Johnson has edited a very helpful book called Five Views of Psychology and Christianity. It can be a little technical at times but it might be a helpful place to start. My particular view will be reflected in the books that I have suggested. My theology and philosophy of counseling/mental health issues is very similar to that proposed by CCEF.

A resource list like this could be vast. (For a really short list skip to the bottom). I decided to organize it by asking one central question: How deep do you want to go?  (Click on the links to buy the book)

Introductory: I’m just curious or I need quick help

The best introductory book on depression is David Murray’s Christians Get Depressed Too. My review is here.

Another book that might fit in the next section as well is Redemption by Mike Wilkerson. This deals with a vast amount of issues related to mental health (including things like abuse and addiction). My review is here.

If you want an introductory book on various mental health issues that gives an answer to whether it’s a biological condition or something else there are none better than Ed Welch’s book Blame it On the Brain.

For those dealing with sexual abuse a good resource is Dan Allender’s Wounded Heart (though I wouldn’t agree with quite everything in there). Another solid resource is Rid of My Disgrace.

Often mental health issues are the result of not dealing with the past. Steve Viars has a great book for this: Putting Your Past in It’s Place. I have also found great help from Kerry Skinner’s book The Joy of Repentance (he has a couple other books too that might be of help after you read his book on repentance).

What if you can only get one book? If you are depressed and need help get Murray’s. For anything else either Wilkerson’s Redemption or Welch’s book on the brain.

Practice: I want to help

It’s a lengthy book but one of the best books for thinking through day to day counseling (that ought to happen with every member ministry) is Paul Tripp’s book Instruments in the Redeemers Hands. I hand this to everyone that says, “I want to help people”.

Another very helpful little book is the one written by William Cutrer: The Church Leader’s Handbook. This will book has a little bit of everything.

If you want to help people with mental health issues you need to consider the works of David Powlison as well. Seeing with New Eyes and Speaking Truth in Love.

Though I believe he at times overstates his case you can find great help from the work of Jay Adams.

Ed Welch has also written a decent amount of books that will help with specific issues. He has dealt with depression, addictions, fear (my review here), codependency, and shame (my review here).

If you can only get one: get Instruments in the Redeemers Hands.

Theology: I want to go deep in thinking through mental health issues

If you really want to study counseling and mental health Eric Johnson has written a massive book on the Foundations of Soul Care.

Again, I think he overstates his case at times but Jay Adams’ book Competent to Counsel is one that you have to read through if you are going to consider Christian counseling and understanding mental health issues.

I haven’t read this one yet but I think Heath Lambert’s book The Biblical Counseling Movement After Adams is one that needs to be considered as well.

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These are only a few of the resources available. Honestly, it seems that at present we are doing decent with having books at a macro level of mental health issues. What we are not yet thriving in is having micro level books on specific issues like Asperger’s Syndrome. Right now secular counseling seems to be leading the way on some of these issues and that scares me. So, I would say if you really want to understand mental health issues and biblical counseling pick up a few of these resources and get a healthy big picture theology of Christian counseling. Then pick up books on the specifics once it becomes necessary or they become available.

This list is overwhelming. So read this article:

Counseling and the Authority of Christ by Russell Moore

Then buy these three books that will give you a start:

1. Paul Tripp, Instruments in the Redeemers Hands

2. Ed Welch, Blame it on the Brain

3. Mike Wilkerson, Redemption

Evil Doesn’t Make Sense

Mike Leake

It’s Monday.

We’ve mourned through the weekend the tragedy of Newtown, CT. On Monday people will begin giving solutions. We will offer suggestions for change. We will map out strategies for preventing such actions from happening again. We will continue to ask questions, but on Monday we will begin trying to solve them. Today we will try to make sense of this madness.

And it is with such resolve to make sense of evil that I am reminded of these words from Christopher J.H. Wright:

“God, with his infinite perspective, and for reasons known only to himself, knows that we finite human beings cannot, indeed must not ‘make sense’ of evil.  For the final truth is that evil does not make sense.  ‘Sense’ is part of our rationality that in itself is part of God’s good creation and God’s image in us.  So evil can have no sense, since sense itself is a good thing.”

“Evil has no proper place within creation.  It has no validity, no truth, no integrity.  It does not intrinsically belong to the creation as God originally made it nor will it belong to creation as God will ultimately redeem it.  It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality.  Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled.  Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence that has made itself almost (but not finally) inextricably ‘at home.’  Evil is beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends us to understand.  So God has withheld its secrets from his own revelation and our research.”

“Personally, I have come to accept this as a providentially good thing.  Indeed, as I have wrestled with this thought about evil, it brings a certain degree of relief.  And I think it carries the implication that whenever we are confronted with something utterly and dreadfully evil, appallingly wicked, or just plain tragic, we should resist the temptation that is wrapped up in the cry, ‘Where’s the sense in that?’  It’s not that we get no answer.  We get silence.  And that silence is the answer to our question.  There is no sense.  And that is a good thing too.”

“Can I understand that?  No.  Do I want to understand that?  Probably not, if God has decided it is better that I don’t.  So I am willing to live with the understanding that the God I don’t understand has chosen not to explain the origin of evil, but rather wants to concentrate my attention on what he has done to defeat and destroy it.” (42-43, The God I Don’t Understand)

Wright’s entire book is a great reflection on the tough questions of our faith. It is one of the best books that I have read on the topic. You can buy it today.

Today in Blogworld 12.17.12

Mike Leake

Sharing the Gospel with Gay People

Mike McKinley gives some advice for sharing the gospel with those in the homosexual community. His third one is very similar to my suggestion the other day of doing battle on Baal’s court.

Rachel Weeping for Her Children—The Massacre in Connecticut

There have been many responses to the Connecticut tragedy. Here is Dr. Mohler’s response. “God, not the murderer, has the last word. For those in Christ, there is the promise of full restoration. Even in the face of such unmitigated horror, there is hope.”

Newtown: Time to Operate on a “Need to Know” Basis

This is an interesting take by David Murray on the Newtown tragedy. He says that “for most of us, it’s time to pull the plug and avert our gaze”. Noting that “It is deeply damaging to our short and long-term mental, emotional, and spiritual health to expose ourselves to such bloodcurdling details.”

Tolkien on Fairy Stories

My nerd friends will enjoy this one. I haven’t got to see the Hobbit yet, but I hope to very soon. This article is a defense of fairy tales and how they might draw us closer to the gospel than any other genre.

I have never seen anything like this before. Was anyone watching this game to know why this was even close to necessary?