#20: Pastoral Depression

Dr. Smith:
Welcome to Peculiar People, a podcast where we examine what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in the days in which we are living. We value Peter’s exaltation and description of us. That we are a peculiar people. A chosen generation. A holy nation. That we should show forth the praises of Him who has brought us from darkness into the marvelous light. And so we are excited when we can come together and talk as followers of Jesus Christ about issues of our day and issues of our time. I’m excited today to welcome Pastor Brian Moss, who’s the pastor of the Oak Ridge Baptist Church in Salisbury, Maryland. Just a little bit up the street from Ocean City, so. He’s not a beach guy, but he’s cool, so I treat him like a beach guy. He has been the pastor there. Their church is a growing church. Their church is a church that baptizes new believers and the Lord is just bearing much fruit there and we’re so thankful for him.

I’m especially thankful for him because all kinds of people go to his church. Very few Christians, I think, match the criticism that Jesus received. That He was a friend of sinners and publicans. And, yet, He is our Lord and He was described that way. I am so thankful. The times I’ve been able to worship and visit at Oak Ridge and talk in a panel discussion, you meet all kinds of people. People from Maryland. People are are transplants. People from all states of life. People from all kinds of spiritual backgrounds. And so I celebrate his leadership and fruitfulness in discipleship desires in that area. So, Pastor Moss, thank you so much for giving us some of your time today. Welcome to Peculiar People.

Pastor Moss:
It’s my pleasure to be here, to be with you, and… Man, it’s just a weird time. No doubt about it. It’s kind of strange. I’m sure we’re all getting a little bit of the Zoom burnout kind of thing, but at the same time, honestly, what a great tool. Many of our staff have said they want to continue… We have a staff meeting every Monday morning and we did a little poll when the governor said we could start having meetings back in the office and that thing. And so we just said… Everybody said, no, we really like hanging out in our PJs and not having to get up early. So, we still do staff meetings every Monday. We look like the Brady Bunch across the screen. They really enjoy it. But when you invited me and said you were going to talk about peculiar people, I knew instantly why you asked me. As my wife would attest.

Dr. Smith:
How is that one brother? I always tease him. I call him Santa Claus. How is he doing?

Pastor Moss:
Well, that’s Pastor Gordon. We call him AKA The Beard. Pastor Gordon retired just this last year and he has decided to go back into the water. He was a waterman. So, he was a real man. He decided that he wanted to retire and go out on the boat and pass on the third generation of watermen to his son. He and his son are actually out crabbing every single Sunday. He texts me every Sunday morning to tell me that he’s praying for me and just to wish me well. So, it’s really, really cool, but we’re excited for what God’s doing in the next chapter. It was so cool that he said, “While I’m still healthy enough, I want to have an influence and an impact on my son’s life in this next stage.” I thought that was pretty cool. We’re excited for him and he stays in touch, but The Beard has passed on.

Dr. Smith:
Yes. Oh, wonderful. Well, watermen are cool. They’re very cool. Let me ask you this. A while back, in a day of platform building and a day of image maintenance and a day of all types of things in our society that aren’t healthy, and unfortunately even some of those things have infiltrated or influenced the church world, I opened up my email and I had a blog from a pastor of one of our churches here in the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware. The blog started off with, “I’ve struggled with depression off and on for many years now. Sometimes it’s been severe, but lately, it feels like it’s on steroids.” And I kind of have a… what I think is a loose, laughing, goofy kind of personality and I am always striving, I guess, to be up. A phrase people might use. I’ve been around you. You have been upbeat and high energy and all those kinds of things. And so it was fascinating to be brought into, through the written word, another aspect of life. And so I’ve been wanting to ask you and to talk about depression.

I think many people are hesitant to talk about issues of health beyond my blood pressure and my sugar levels. I think many people have an understanding of the fall. How it affects creation, how it affects… We won’t live forever. All those kinds of things. But somehow people struggle to deal with issues of emotional and mental health and see that as part of our makeup as human beings. And so I was fascinated by your blog and to get into that. But I just want to say, I read this months ago and, obviously, the word since then has been in the midst of a global pandemic. And so there are even more issues going on with people in all types of leadership roles, but I’m particularly thinking about pastoral leaders. And so just want to start out maybe asking you what led you to write this blog and how did you go through the process of saying, hey, I want to put this out there for other pastors and other Christians to benefit from this?

Pastor Moss:
Well, I appreciate you asking that. I’ve tried to do pastoral coaching for quite a few years. When we came to Salisbury, of course, we came to a very broken church. We were doing kind of what I would call a restart. We started from the ground up and we saw God bless. And so over the years, we were contacted by various pastors and, usually privately, they’d say, “Hey, can I just grab lunch? Or maybe just come by and stop by the church for a day?” Often, they would start out by asking questions around church growth, but the conversations always moved towards personal. They started to open up their heart and what I found is that people are blessed the most when we reveal our weaknesses and not our strengths.

Anybody can go on and on about how they’ve been such a great rock star. God did this and God did that. Honestly, even when I hear that… I had to a heart check for a minute because it feels like, man, I’m such a failure. That’s almost your first instinctive response because you think, man, they’re getting it done and what am I even doing? I’m out here doing nothing. But when you begin to open your heart and you just say, man, I’m struggling or, gosh, I’ve had this problem with my kids or my teenagers went crazy or I had this staff member who stabbed me in the back and I can’t quite reach it to get the knife out. People are responsive to that.

I remember for me, in seminary, one of the most impactful things that happened in my seminary education was the historical part. When I started reading biographies of the greatest Christian people in history, I found that they were more like me than I had imagined. Like, they had messed up lives. I mean, when I found out… You’re talking about missionaries like William Carey, who had locked his wife in a room and put her in straps because she was mentally insane. Guests would come over and they’d say, “What’s that scratching on the wall?” He’d say, “Oh, that’s just my wife.” You’re like, what in the world? And what I found was… I grew up in the Bible Belt. I found that we too often created these pictures of perfection that if you’re really a great, mature Christ follower and a great pastor, you’re tempted to paint a picture that’s not true. I believe that’s of the devil. I believe Satan uses… He manipulates us to try to keep us from being honest and from sharing what we’re really struggling with.

So, I found that grow the most or strengthen the most when we open up and we get honest and reveal. Now, I want to say that with balance. Because you’ve probably seen it as well. There is an overshare. And I’ve seen that as well. There is a time when you just… You’re putting too much out there and it’s not helpful. It becomes… almost brags in a wrong direction. It starts… whining or you’re trying to get attention seeking. But I just found that the best way I can help other pastors is to be honest about what I’m struggling with.

When we started the pandemic, I opened up to my network, posted a Zoom call early on… this was in March… and said, “How’s everybody doing?” I think we had about 20 guys join us that day. Overwhelmingly, the majority were like, “Man, I’m just feeling… I’m struggling. I feel like I’m in a cloud. I can’t get out of this thing.” I shared with a pastor two weeks ago… He’s across the bridge. He’s one of the ones that we coach. He was talking about the depression issue. He said, “Man, I’m going through it again.” It’s like a cycle. We feel good for a while and then it’s back because you realize, man, I’m still stuck in this thing. And I said to him… I said, “Man, it’s sort of like… I feel like with all these restrictions that have been placed on us by the government, it almost feels like I was convicted of a crime I didn’t commit and I’ve been thrown in prison for a sentence that they won’t tell me how long.” I think a lot of pastors feel that way. I think we feel as though… and I know… I even shared that… To be honest with you… Let’s get cathartic. Is that okay?

Dr. Smith:
Yeah, sure.

Pastor Moss:
I shared that on one of my social media outlets. It was one of the national ones. I had a barrage of negative comments come back that berated the fact that… Oh, man, you’re not embracing the God-given opportunity of this season and God’s opening doors and people are being saved and there’s a revival and how can you… When you go negative, it’s so bad. I finally removed it because I felt like, okay, they don’t know me and the reason they’re jumping into these conclusions is they don’t know my heart and that’s okay. I don’t need people to know me. But the second thing is I don’t ever want to discourage a pastor. That would kill my soul. I live to encourage pastors.

But what I realized the second thing… and I think you would agree, Dr. Smith… There really is this unwritten code that we have to play fake Christians and we have to smother everything in this positive light of spirit of God is at work and we don’t get honest. The previous generation reacted. The Boomer generation Christians, they reacted against the fact that we painted church as inauthentic and too holy and we’re hypocritical and we’re one thing on Sunday and a different thing… And so that next generation reacted and left church and that’s the way we said. We said, oh, the best thing is that the next generation will be authentic. What people crave now is authenticity. I still hear it to this day. They want to hear authenticity. What I found is that next generation, the Gen X and even the millennial pastors, I would call it… and I know I’m going to get in trouble for this. I would say we painted a fake authenticity. We created a new flavor of fake authenticity. Instead of painting it in all the holy talk and holy… We painted it in this new, where we’re cool and hip and we have a social media presence that doesn’t match our true character. I think that we still haven’t gotten honest.

Dr. Smith:
I think discipleship cannot take place until we get honest. Jesus says, “He that is whole does not need a physician.” Jesus told the religious hypocrites, “Y’all are blind and I would give you sight if you would just say, “We are blind.”” He said, “But since you won’t say, “We are blind,” I’m going to leave you blind.” And so a lack of honesty about how we feel and where we are is not helpful. I will say this. I think evangelistically, it’s not necessarily helpful when a watching world is hurting and is in pain and we paint a picture like, well, if you love the Lord, then all of this is great. No, I know people who have loved the Lord and they weren’t able to be in the nursing home when their mother was dying because of COVID regulations. I know people that love the Lord… One of my colleagues. You know him. Tom Stolle, my associate executive director. We had to count the number of people who could be at his father’s graveside funeral there in Queenstown. There’s legitimate brokenness and pain and hurt in the world.

I think one of the exciting things about your blog is you chose one of my favorite persons in the Bible, Elijah. There’s many ways where Elijah is a paradigm I like to look through. Because he stands on Mount Carmel and he stands down the prophets of Baal. He stands down the idolatry of Ahab and Jezebel. He stands down everything that is against God. He’s empowered by the spirit of God. He demonstrates the power of God and how the sacrifices are handled. He’s bold and courageous because he then makes sure that the false prophets are eliminated. I’m looking at all that and I’m like, “Yes! That’s my dude!” And then, in college, I remember reading past Mount Carmel. You’re like, who is this dude? So, who is the dude after Mount Carmel and what do you think that should say to us about the reality of spiritual… I don’t know what you would call it. Ups and downs. Or spiritual rollercoasters.

Pastor Moss:
It’s kind of funny because it only took one woman to mess this dude up. Just one woman and one threat and his world was rocked from that. There’s hundreds of great sermons on Elijah in 1 Kings 19 that talks about the progression of what happened to him, but the truth is, what I get and the big 30000 foot view, is that if it can happen to him, it can happen to you. His was situational depression and clearly there’s not a human being who ever walked the face of the planet who hasn’t dealt with situational depression. Maybe it’s not a chemical imbalance, but maybe it’s situational. COVID is the perfect situational depression that’s going to create depression in people who may have never had depression in their life.

And there’s a difference between being sad and being depressed. Just being sad means you can mentally tie your feeling of sadness to a circumstance that you know and understand you should feel bad about. Your mother dies or this situation happened. You feel sad about it and most of us know that. Most people, though, they don’t know how to deal with a cloud that falls on top of them. They want to feel good, but they can’t quite shake it. That’s what I was really describing in that blog because I was literally getting up every day and I would have the pep talk with Brian, but Brian would have none of it. I have to be honest enough to just say, man, this is something that I’m not going to just talk my way out or pep myself up. I’m literally going to have to forge forward in faith without feelings. When I studied the life… and I quoted Mother Teresa. 50, 60 years of feeling emotionally depleted, but forging forward. That’s real faith.

Real faith is not when I can conquer Baal on the mountain because I’m full of the Holy Ghost and I have the power of God in me. I think most Christians, honestly, think that they can’t do something great for God until they have a great feeling from God. And so they’re waiting. They’re waiting for the next revival, the next experience, the next camp meeting. The next thing that will stir a feeling so that they can move forward. But God’s in the business of using the people who don’t have the feelings, man. You just ain’t feeling it, but you know what? You just make a conscious decision. Hey, it didn’t feel all that good to hang on a cross. That just didn’t feel all that good. But it needed to be done to save people. Honestly, what Christianity needs is more people who recognize I don’t have to have all the feelings to move forward and to advance the kingdom. I don’t have to have all those feelings. Now, thankfully, because God is good and gracious, sometimes the feelings follow, but it’s not promised. That’s no promise there.

And maybe I won’t have all these googly feelings and get all the goosebumps. Maybe I won’t have that for quite some time, so the question I have to deal with is what am I going to do in the meantime? What am I going to do now that I’m waking up and the cloud is still there? That’s what I wanted to address in the blog was just recognizing that there are some very real things you can do. There are some very real steps that you should take that God took Elijah through. He took him through this process and there is great, great truths to be learned from what God did with Elijah that actually applies to every one of us when we’re in this funk. When we can’t quite get out of the cloud.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. One of the funks is I’m alone. Elijah says to the Lord, “Everyone has forsaken you except me.” I remember you mentioning faulty thinking. I remember you mentioning recognizing that you’re not alone. God pulls out the membership role and says there’s 7000 that have never bowed the knee to Baal. So, what is the role in challenging times… In times of depression or discouragement, what is the role of community and fellowship? I ask that in a culture where people are getting married later and there are more single adults and women outlive men so there are more widows in our society. And so, in the context of things that are going on, what is the role of community in all of this?

Pastor Moss:
Let me jump back to the mind for just a minute.

Dr. Smith:
Yes, yes, yes.

Pastor Moss:
Because I think it’s interesting that God didn’t correct Elijah the first time. The first time he said, “It’s just me,” God didn’t say, “Well, actually, no it’s not.” He didn’t actually tell him until God finished all the rest of his therapy. He didn’t say that until later. Here’s the point I believe that is really helpful. You cannot speak ration into the mind of someone who is becoming irrational by depression. Because what we want to do is… Somebody will say, “Man, I’m feeling this,” and they’ll say, “No, you’re not.” Well, how is that helpful? Or you’ll say, “Man, I feel like the church is never going to come back,” and you say, “Oh, yes it is, brother.” Can I just tell you? That’s not this great, positive confession. Honestly, it’s shallow. It’s not a good response to someone who’s feeling that way. It’s no different than telling a young mother who just buried her child… To say, “Well, God wanted a new flower for the garden.” Okay, that’s just not helpful. In fact, it’s completely unhelpful and you don’t speak logic and ration into someone who’s struggling with emotion and irration. Because they’re doing a head game still.

God dealt with the other things that were causing Elijah to get caught up in his head first. He dealt with the physical. Because he was physically depleted. He got some rest. He got him rebalanced chemically. He got him some food. He gave him a new mission. I need you to go off alone and get with me. He took him through some very serious steps before he finally said, “Oh, by the way, you’re not alone.” He didn’t do that until he was done. So, I do think it’s important when we’re dealing with somebody who’s really in that deep depression… Don’t just try to speak logic and say, “No, you’re not,” and all that. That’s what we normally do. That’s not very helpful.

Dr. Smith:
I’m sure you know this through your network and I know it certainly consulting. I often engage with pastors that are not eating well, not resting well, burning the candle at both ends. And so, obviously, the way they’re analyzing… whether they’re analyzing what’s going on in their community or whether they’re analyzing what’s going on in their congregation, they’re doing it from a deficit of physical health and a deficit of emotional health because of the way they have been depleting themselves. And so I think that’s very key. And I do think… Sometimes I think it’s superficial and I like that word that you used. Sometimes I just think people lack compassion and they just want to give you a quick answer to get you out of their way. That is certainly not loving your neighbor and that’s certainly not John 13:35, “A new commandment I give you that you love one another. By this, shall all men know that you are my disciples.” And it’s certainly not bearing one another’s burdens. I think it’s bad pastoral care to make someone think that their eight pound problem is really eight ounces.

Pastor Moss:
Going through that lesson, I think what we learn from those friends trying to quote comfort him, which they didn’t do a great job, is that the best way to help someone who’s in deep despair is to show up, shut up, listen up, and lift up. You need to do those four things. And you need to do them in the right order. You just show up. That’s the ministry of presence. You need to shut up. That means resist the urge to say things. Because, honestly, you’ll probably say the wrong thing. You need to listen up. That means just let them vent. I love that Job said, “A man ought to have a loyalty to his friends even if God did desert him.” Now, he knew God didn’t, but he said even if God had, you should still love me. You should still just love me for who I am. Not sit here, trying to cut me down. And then the last one. You listen up and then you lift up. That means take it to God in prayer and just lift that person up. Those are the right steps in the crisis.

Let’s talk about community for a minute. I tell in our membership class… In every membership class, I tell them if you join this church, but you don’t join a group, this church will let you down. It’s our absolute guarantee. Because what you need in your life is you need authentic loving relationships. The only way you’re going to do that is if you put in the hard work. And then I share my story in our class of when my parents were killed in an automobile accident. I talk to them about the power of how God got me through that by having a loving network and group of people who were there for me. They showed up in my life. They were there for me and walked through me.

But then I tell them this. You can’t build friends in a crisis. You have to do it now. Because the crisis is coming. But you have to build it now. Honestly, I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care if you do it in a group. I don’t care if you do it in a ministry team. I don’t care if you do it in some organization that you’re working in, in a nonprofit… Honestly, at the end of the day as a pastor, I just want to know you’ve done it. I want to know you have some people in your life that are going to hold you up in a season when you can’t hold yourself up. It’s the air in ministry. Somebody has to do it, but who is that? Well, honestly, at the end of the day, a lot of people get burned by churches because they think the church let them down. And you and I know the truth is they let themselves down by never creating loving community. If you don’t do it, then you’re in danger. You’re going to be in danger.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. Amen. You have to have brothers and sisters in Christ. I have been so… oh my goodness. I can’t describe my life as a Christian without talking about other people. In every way, shaped and molded. The old deacon that used to go to children’s camp and I was bad. The old deacon that used to tattle me and whoop my butt and then call my grandmother and tell her he whooped my butt. I just can’t imagine that. My pastor who ordained me to gospel ministry. Just hours and hours and hours and weeks and months and years of discipleship. I just can’t imagine… Wow. That’s a powerful statement because too many people have followed the autonomous individualism of our culture and really live isolated existences.

I will say one thing. I don’t know about pastors that you’ve interacted with, but I have told some pastors that this pandemic hasn’t caused some things to go on in your congregation. It’s just exposed some things within your congregation. If you value deacon ministry or however you touch people, this pandemic exposed that your congregation values being able to touch people. If you did not value that, then this pandemic exposed that as well. And so I think those relationships… When times are tight and people are being squeezed, those relationships really, really, really, really, really matter.

Pastor Moss:
You nailed it. What’s the old saying? When the tide goes out, we discover who’s been skinny dipping. And the truth is pastors are the worst at this. We love to preach community. We just don’t like to do it. At the end of the day, I think you and I would agree that many of the pastoral failures, the guys that have flamed out in the ministry, didn’t last in the ministry… We just celebrated 21 years this past week and the guys who flame out are guys that don’t develop raw, authentic, loving relationships. They don’t do it. They preach it. They give illustrations. But they don’t live it.

I remember in seminary they talked about… I don’t know if they do this anymore because I went to seminary back in the Stone Ages, but they used to say you don’t develop the deepest relationships within your own congregation. I remember hearing that… and even when I heard it in seminary, I remember thinking that doesn’t even sound very logical. When I got here on the scene and started in pastoral ministry, I threw that out like day two. I said, you know what? My wife and I had one of our biggest blowout fights. We moved 1500 miles across the country. Came here from Texas. We had a huge blowout fight and I remember thinking, man, I have a choice right now. I can either pretend to be Mr. Got it Together pastor, which is the temptation of the devil, or I can reach out to the… I only had 30 people in the church. Only knew about three men. And I said or you can swallow your pride, call those guys, and say, “Hey, I’m hurting.” And that’s exactly what I did. I never regretted it.

To this day, I believe it helped save the pastoral ministry. Because it was a decision I made to build my ministry on being authentic and real. Not a blubbering, whiny guy, saying, “Oh, I’m so terrible!” But an honest, genuine guy that can say, “Man, I just had a blowout with my wife.” Here’s the funny thing. You know how men are. They took me to a restaurant. I shared a little bit about that we had an argument. We didn’t say another word for like a half an hour. We just ate our food. Went home. I’m totally refreshed. My wife said, “What’d y’all talk about?” And I said, “Well, nothing really.” It’s just some guys hanging… All they had to do was look at me and go, “Yeah. Been there. Yeah. Had that.”

Truthfully, it is the trap of the devil when we don’t develop authentic relationships that will help bear us up. Jesus said, “I send you a sheep among wolves.” Well, what sheep in a flock is at the greatest risk? The one who moves the furthest from the flock. When you get into isolation, you are absolutely vulnerable. Isolation is the trap of the enemy. I believe with pastors especially. Especially pastors. They can get into isolation.

Dr. Smith:
Give me the Moss description of friendship. The reason I’m asking that is because sometimes I deal with guys and they have relationships, but all their relationships are with their mentees or their employees. And so they seem to really lack peer relationships. Give me a Moss definition of friendship. Or description, I should say, of friendship.

Pastor Moss:
Well, to be honest, I think there’s multiple layers. I think there’s more than one layer of friendship. Because I have a lot of friends and I would say that… When we’re talking about friendships, I would say that it moves in a layer at a time. If we’re talking about the kind of friendships that you need in a season of difficulty and supportive friendships, then I would say a couple things. First, you don’t need many. You only need a few. I would say I can count on one hand how many of those I have. They’re not all in this church. Some of them have actually moved in the last 21 years.

But I would say… You only need a few, but what you absolutely have to have is that you have to have gut level wrenching kind of… and I’m going to add one word here. Equivocation of communication. If I share my heart and soul and you just look at me the whole time and kind of go, “Oh, yes. [crosstalk] I’ll pray about that. I’ll pray about that,” but you never get vulnerable with me, we’re not friends. It has to be equivocated, where we are doing life together. I open up and you open up. There’s been guys that I’ll open up with and they don’t and you go, “Okay.” And I don’t shame them, but you make a mental note. You know that that’s not the closet tier level friendship that I can count on. That person is not going to be able to reciprocate that kind of friendship that I need.

So, I think it really has to do with you do the hard work of finding that friends that align with you. The chemistry is right. I’m the kind of guy who… I love to cut up and laugh and have fun and that kind of thing. And so it has to be some of that. It has to be a little bit of the… There has to be a chemistry there. There also has to be a camaraderie where you actually are working together or moving the same direction. I’ve had guys sometimes say they have… Not pastors, but I’ve had guys say, “Oh, my best friends aren’t in the church. In fact, they’re not even believers.” And I’m thinking, well, that’s great that you have those friends. In fact, I think you should. But it’s not great they’re your best friend.

Because when you hit… and for me as well. When I hit a place in my life where I’m questioning things… I’m questioning the ministry. I’m questioning my calling. I’m questioning marriage. I’m questioning… When I’m in that place, I need a brother who knows the Word. Because I have to have somebody who also will hold me accountable to the truth. They’re going to speak to me directly. Right to me. Like, “Dude, you know. You know God’s Word.” And they have to have an alignment. I just don’t believe a nonbeliever is going to give you what you need in those seasons. They may love you, but they’re never going to be able to point you in the direction that you need to go. So, I think that’s just a few of the areas. I’m not sure. What would you add to that?

Dr. Smith:
No, I think that’s so true. God has blessed my wife and I to have those types of relationships in every place we’ve served. As a matter of fact, my wife, she’ll still go on girl trips with women from the church. We planned it in Tennessee 20 plus years ago. I was real happy when I heard that early on, they’ll be close to people in your… When I heard that early on, I noted that there was no scriptural basis given on that. Jesus was very close to people. His disciples and Lazarus’ family and things like that. And then certainly when you read the end of a lot of those epistles, you realize that Paul had very, very extensive relationships with people whom he had shared the Gospel with. And so I realized that was some school of thought that didn’t have a biblical basis. Some guy got hurt and made a philosophy, but I tell you what.

Also, when I was younger, once you begin to hang around preachers, you realize, well, I think I’d rather hang around regular folk that aren’t preachers. We’ve had some of the best… No, seriously. I think the Lord… My wife and I can look back and we’ve raised our kids. I’ve been a pastor and we look back over relationships in congregations and it’s just been a gift of the Lord. Like you said, there’s different levels and everyone’s not the same type of friendship. But I think pastors can kind of self-isolate, number one, from that bad philosophy about how they interact with their congregation. And then, secondly, from a bad philosophy in ministry where they see other congregations and other pastors, particularly, as competitors rather than as fellow co-laborers in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Pastor Moss:
That’s probably the saddest thing that I’ve seen in ministry over the years. Unfortunately, it was easier for me… In the early years when the church was small and broken, pastors would trust me because I wasn’t a threat. But when our church started growing, I found that a lot of the pastors that are in Salisbury… the close ones. Most of them are not here anymore. But many of them were like… They didn’t want to be friendly anymore. And it just gets weird. I think we get so strange about it. Like we have to get all protective and protect our kingdom and all this kind of stuff. It’s weird. Satan does weird things to our head. Honestly, I think.. Hopefully, over the years, I think as you grow and mature in the ministry, you get over some of that stuff. Or at least I hope you do.

I tell my staff all the time… My executive pastor doesn’t like it, but I do say to them quite a bit, “Hey, guys. We’re all interims. Every one of us. This is not our church and this is not our position. We’re just passing through. At the end of the day, leave it better than when you came. And that’s what we want to do.” So, the truth is, we’re all interims. I’m 54. I’ve probably got another 10 years in me. I’d like to retire sooner, but I’d have to win the lottery that I don’t play, so. I think we just get hung up with so many reasons that hold us back from developing those relationships.

But I tell you. I mentioned my parents being killed in an automobile accident. When that occurred, I went through a weird season because I didn’t feel an immediate emotional impact. I didn’t feel it immediately. I was doing everything and our church was in one of its strongest growth seasons that we had had. The curve was moving up and it was a lot happening every week. So, I thought, man, I’m okay. I kind of just kept going and thinking it’s okay. I’m like, they’re believers. I did their funeral and said it’s going to be okay. It was about a year later when I crashed in a way that is just hard to even describe. It was a horrible crash. I didn’t even know it was there.

I’ll be honest with you, Kevin. I didn’t even know that it was underneath the surface until it came out in a way that I was embarrassed. I had a deal where I was doing a date night with my daughter and a guy pulled up and was honking at me. I’ll be honest. It was like out of a dream. I literally pulled off the seatbelt, flew open the door, jumped out, and started screaming at this guy. I was ready to fight this guy. Now, my poor daughter is in the car, crying her eyes out. Like, what happened to Dad? And I’ll be honest. I didn’t know what happened to Dad. I got back in the car and I was shaking and I was like… I don’t even know what happened.

That was when I knew that I had not processed. That I was in grief, but I had never processed any of it. I went to a therapist. I went to my executive pastor and said, “Dude, I need some help. And I have to go through this.” They loved me. They supported me. I went to therapy for about a year. I met with a pastor who was also a therapist. There’s something about pastors that understand pastors. That honestly helped me. I think a lot of pastors, if they would just realize, man, God needs you for the long haul. We need you for the long haul, so don’t avoid your mental health. Don’t avoid your emotional health. Be honest. Don’t pretend you’re something you’re not. Because you’re not. What did the psalmist say? We’re all but dust. You’re just but dust. You’re not all that. Be honest about it. You don’t have to be Superman to be a spiritual leader. That’s a calling. That’s a calling. God called that. He chose you. He could’ve picked something else, but he chose you. So, don’t lock yourself into that. Be honest enough to take care of yourself.

I had a guy here this morning. One of my best friends. He was on staff for a while, but he’s a great businessman. He said, “Man, we want you here for the long haul.” And you know what? He meant it. I was like, you know what? The only way that’s going to happen is if Brian takes care of Brian. The whole Brian. That means your mental, your emotional, and your physical. You need to take care of yourself and your diet and exercise, which, by the way, plays to your depression. So, I needed to make sure that you’re taken care of. That’s my word to pastors, man. They need you. Man, we need you in the kingdom. Honestly. Your church needs you. Your church needs you. It hurts a church when they lose their dad. When a church loses a pastor, it’s like a home losing a father. It hurts the church. They need you. We need you. The kingdom needs you. So, that means you have to take care of yourself.

Dr. Smith:
Amen, amen. Well, we certainly thank the Lord for you and your ministry. I just thought about that as you were mentioning that. We were certainly praying last year as the Lord brought you through some physical things. Obviously, when there’s physical challenges, there’s also emotional challenges with that. And so there’s multiple levels, brother, where we can just share this podcast and praise the Lord for your ministry and your faithfulness there in Salisbury. I want to encourage you to continue to continue to encourage pastors. Not only do you blog, you do a conference where you are, I think, tremendously generous and you try to encourage pastors all over region and share tools with them. You’re honest. You share, hey, this is what worked. This is what didn’t work. And so I think, through your conferences and through your blogs, you are a lover of pastors and I want you to know that I certainly see that as lining up with the New Testament and the way that many of the apostles sought to encourage others as they were beginning works for the Lord Jesus Christ in so many different places.

So, we praise God for your ministry. We pray God will bless you to be fruitful and fruitful. We thank you for your honesty in your blog. And we pray that this podcast will encourage pastors to be thoughtful about their mental health, about their emotional health, about their spiritual health, and about their physical health. And pray, finally, that it will encourage pastors to really examine the community that they have around them. Brother Pastor, the New Testament does not call you to be a lone ranger. The testimony of the gospel does not call you to walk this road alone. We pray that you have authentic brother and sister relationships in your life at different levels, as Pastor Moss has described. But we do pray that in times of discouragement and hurt, you can find friendship and brotherhood or sisterhood in other members of the body. And we also pray… On the other end, I’m thankful for friendships and relationships for the levels of accountability. I believe every Christian needs to have another person in their life who can say, “Hey, you’re wrong.” Believe it or not, when my late pastor died, one of the things I miss most was just somebody in my life that could say, “Kevin, shut up.” And so-

Pastor Moss:
Yeah, we still need a deacon that can take us to the woodshed.

Dr. Smith:
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Pastor Moss, thank you so much. God bless you and your family and Oak Ridge. We pray God will give much fruit during this challenging time.

Pastor Moss:
Thank you. My pleasure. If anybody wants to check out any of those resources, pastorbrianmoss.com. All the blogs, all the information for our conferences, coaching. All the stuff that we do is all located there. And if you want to contact me personally, I am always available for a pastor. 100%. You can contact me there and everything you need is right on that side.

Dr. Smith:
Well, thank you so much, brother. Pray that you have a good afternoon.

Pastor Moss:
All right, buddy. Thank you so much.

Dr. Smith:
God bless you.

Pastor Moss:
God bless. Bye bye.