The Pastor Who Helped Me Start It All

Look back to the show for caregivers about caregivers hosted by caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberg.

This is hope for the caregiver you're the nation's largest radio program for family caregiver 877-655-6755. That was also Gracie sing and rejoice evermore. If you want to see more for music what to hope for the caregiver.com. Lots of stuff out there in some big stuff coming down the pike is are new CDs coming out and just check it out. She is a wonderful singer and captivated me a long time ago and I've been trying to keep up with her musically ever since that introduce a special guest this is my pastor for more than more years and he liked to admit Jim button from Nashville, Tennessee.

Stevens Valley church later Jim how you feeling well and I'm doing okay.

I'm glad to have you with us are some things I want to talk about with you and so much of what I do on the show live about a line she does that she wait to hear some of the news, it's that she's got with this record that was one of them and there's there's there's some more stuff that you gonna really flip over, but so much of what I do on the show. You and I banged around in many a conversation more probably more conversations if you did you like to admit that you spent with me and I could tell you for now will not get a better class of frigates, but pastoral care has been a big part of my life. My dad's a pastor and you have shepherded Gracie now through some mighty troubling waters over our almost 20 years together, as is under your leadership and lot of pastors, art comfortable with some of the things that I always thought you know part of the job the clergy was still visiting the sick, and in the homebound, and so forth particular hospitals. Yet, that seems to be changing a little bit for a lot of clergy members their outsourcing that have you noticed this trend as well. I like broad sweeping generalizations, but I think there is a new type. I think pastors right were a new type of preacher initials on critical I don't mean to be unfair, but they want to write books and they want to be on the stage and they want big crowds global notoriety which you know is not anything inherently wrong with those things but what you're getting at.

Certainly agree with that, the old-fashioned pastor who visits the sick and who comforts those who mourn and minister to the lonely hidden ministry. Is it hidden it's despairing well in a lot of bad.

I do see that trend will I know that in our case, you know you assessed I think is only appropriate that you gave us our membership valves thing while Grace was actually physically in the hospital bed.

We were in the hospital that held appropriate for us to to take those vows of church membership while were in the hospital that that's them and that why should the been impressed but but even if you been a pastor for almost 40 years.

My dad's been pastor for now almost 60 years and this idea of going to the hospital of going to the infirm shutting that's not exclusively in the domain of the pastor but the pastor sets the tone for how these people are to be treated and their caregivers, and I I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on some unexpected benefits to that pastor to that preacher to that minister by immersing themselves in the suffering of others. In that role because I think that there are some, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on that of a what what are they going to do to these young seminarians are coming out. It's okay look yeah it did the big pulpits and all the big lights in the books and all the stuff that's very exciting. The great music program, but don't overlook this because here's what can happen when you do this and you can you can unpack that couples want to where you pastor grow.

You have arrived Peter were all where all work in progress there. And pastors need to be growing as well.

Coaches need to be improving his coaches not just acquire the coaches to and pastors need to be broadening your learning and growing in their I think there's a great benefit that comes his way, as we go where the pain is, and we younger men who don't think about their own mortality.

Very often, but to acquaint themselves with the one who has borne our grief and carried our sorrows by going where the plaintiff by going where where where all uncomfortable their artworks decide I got here. I have never felt like I did a good job when I was in the subject crisis situation worse. You want to wave the magic wand you want have just the right were just the right for just the right prayer to pray every time without fail. I have left the situation something to myself rather sheepishly. I just didn't do well now that I just didn't have that's that's a 100% of time.

That's why I have felt but there aren't words decide you just you just need to be there and you're there you grow and attend another benefit.

I think it makes your preaching better. I think if you walk with people that are hurting you go where the plaintiff has worked for. We never goes to a hospital just for recreational purposes only hospital in or something bad going on but I guess I the best part about hospitals leaving that it it makes us better people make better preachers were more in touch with reality. The relationship strengthened up in the hospital a few times you been there many times. Gracie, a lot of court. Don't you remember the people to come to see you what this time which member that they cared enough to show up and down relationship cracks another step forward. So I think it that I Greatly grown up. Like I like it makes our preaching better well and that's what I wanted to have a somewhat you to be able to offer that it will put this out of the podcast and about with podcast is freezing the letter website hope for the caregiver.com get this because I want young folks are coming out of our seminaries to understand what this looks like that this is not a drudgery chore. But this is an opportunity for you to grow as a minister and and you and I'm gonna be speaking over at the local hospital here in Bozeman, Montana next month and they're having dividing all the clergy and from around the home county. It's a special annual thing they do and and I'll be up speaking to that and in the sprints sponsored by the hospital chaplain and and I have a real heart for these folks were doing this because I I get it I been on the receiving end of this you know more times and I want to remember in reasonable times I can count. And so that I think this is important, I think you're right. I think it does change the sermons and I want these info so they don't have to come up with the great new cool sermon topic kind of thing you know Christian ministry is is hard work. It is, it is rolling up your sleeves and getting into the achiness of of a lot of people's lives and nowhere does that kind of present itself in such a way. Graphic ways it doesn't.

Hospitals you never want to go hit or miss your mom is understood. We don't we don't visit the sick and the afflicted and the mournful in order to become better preachers grow more, but it's a side benefit happened because we have the right thing that the baby will eat all clever love people, where were shepherds of our Aurora flock. Jesus you know the left. The 99 to go to the Pearl about laying the nine on the one that was lost and striving that filing is a great model for us to show individual attention to know people by their names.

Jesus said my sheep know my voice and so really being invested in people's lives don't care how big the church is or how small it is. A pastor should be someone who has a real heart for people: they did out of the instinctive really I don't have staff and one time until minute basket motivated hospital and he said it should for him. It was like up pulling his fingernails off and never have forgotten that and wondered maybe very gifted, very gifted speaker and teacher and very well-liked that he just had an aversion to walking to the door to the hospital. Now Gracie could see was that it was like to live my legs off so she seemed she would've said that well I needed to hear that she she coded one time and it was it was a pretty dicey situation looked over she was blue and I was just just reading the Saturday and and and I'll send a list and sheet she had literally turned blue, and in I got the nurses encode the code team and in the week they were able to resuscitate her and get her and save her life and is all this drama was going on and there were nurses and are now standing right there beside diddly they nastily think I still got there late. They all knew me at that point and looked to the doorway. There was our friend Larry dear Kelly Associates, are there any just stood there any just looked at me and you could just see the compassionate and he was about, you know you you to guess, not pastors and they when they all that they took Gracie down to intensive care. From there and and so forth.

This would leave the room in your seat. Didn't he didn't say anything, just put his hand on my shoulder and he just looked at me and that's it that's all it takes. That's all you have to do is just like you said you show up Larry while a wonderful letter about her past outlook dropped what he was doing in the twinkling of an I remember one time one of our members was sick and not in Murfreesboro which was about 31 Equipment Dr. from natural and I went looking for Larry and he was gone and I found that it gone to Murfreesboro to see this man so it was very instinctive for Hammond and that's that's why I know.

God give us different gifts, but somewhere in there very distracted the heart to me of what a pastor is not. It is more than a preacher he's a he's a human being allows only human beings and and conflicts and struggles, but is calling ultimately to love, though she deleted the still waters in green pastures and handout to walk with him, even without a shadow of death.

That's what I guess were there with me is is it gotten really really dicey and you you didn't ignore me in order to see Gracie you sell both of us and and that meant the world to me to change the way I look at a lot of things and it's helped shape this show in the whole outreach we have with family caregivers.

I want to switch gears just a little bit because we had tragedy in the pastoral world and that Jared Wilson took his life. Last week, and he was a young minister who was very open about his own mental health issues and his depression and so forth.

One of things I do on the show is that I deal with caregivers who were dealing with somebody who are in relation somebody has mental health issues, and I don't think we think of pastors being that way but a lot of pastors do struggle in this area. They struggle with depression. The struggle with really hard things and talk about that a little bit in your expense because you you been doing this a long time.

Jim pastors hurt, they are as a people, your flesh, but my dad's a pastor, your flesh and blood and a lot of pastors feel that sometimes maybe it's a sign of weakness for them to reach out for help, professional help, so I have but it's not remembering that a lot of help.

Sometimes slow sometimes friendships and relationships, but I fully understand what that young man, I've never suffered clinical depression, but been around people who do. And even without suffering clinical depression in the ministry, but just in life you know that I've been really great really euphoric and the lows conveyed just devastating and crushing in more than any I was conveyor my favorite stories in the Bible is well known, really, but it's so around first Samuel 30 and David Ms. Manna been fighting somewhere in their own way home in Wallingford on the Amalekites came to town and burned all their houses or let it burn them all down to the women and children And immediate read between the Landon and David Ms. Manna. Come on over the hill probably smell smoke you now and I get home and Meredith crawled lately. Assuming of course that to their wives and children are dead and killed. They hadn't been unfortunately Jack known this, but I think the Bible so David wept until he could wait no more. In the midst of all of his personal sorrow AVE had a near mutiny on his hands. The man talked of stoning David. They blame the poor guy, what does Amalekites that done, not fighting a war and he comes home, and you get it all suffering his own grief because what happened in and here is about ready to play in creditor and Charlotte have a session meeting with pastor and is a little verse little verse. David says to the praise of brand-new 85 which is that was his way of trying to discern the will of God and it says that he encouraged himself or he strengthened himself depending on which version great. He he encouraged himself in the Lord and I think that such a beautiful David was somehow able to read the Bible, as it were his day, and with almost chaos and all this grief he was experiencing in his own life on the line. He found a place of quiet rest. He strengthened himself in the Lord and as he read that he thought trying to discern the will of God.

He said boys will still get the Amalekites and battle weary, though they were and fatigue.

They hopped on their horses in one-off equipped Amalekites and rescue their wives and children so that great encouragement to unit now how can we break it loose around her, but you can find strength in the Lord and the worst of times. Our extremity now is you have the opportunity and the I know you been low not been well that's the message of this show right there that that particular passage that we can do that. It is available to us. It's hard-working.

We can't, we can't somehow just magically pulled us out of the air we weave it.

It is hard work to do it and it takes a great big step of faith to trust that God is moving that the chaos doesn't have to go away for us to be at peace with what God is doing and how firm a foundation soul that on Jesus at blame for those you will not he will not desert to expose that sold all hell should endeavor to shake. He will never never never never forsake up love that hymn. I think of how firm a foundation and David. David added the main healer between a rock and a hard place.

There yeah will Jim this is this is my love having you come on the show and it means a lot that you took the time on this and I want you to just have this conversation fairly regular because I am convinced in order to effectively minister to family caregivers. The church has got to be at the front of this in you know. Thank you for helping equip me for this and and and thank you for helping me understand these things little bit more because if the church is not out front of her characters were elicited the world right the governor of Virginia immediately go to listen to when it comes these things and so thank you for helping us just just knock these ideas around and and for you pastors out there, take, take heart to these words go out in and see the suffering. If you're not dealing suffering yourself personally go see someone who is it will change your life it will, it will change your understanding of the gospel and Jim, thank you so much for being a part of this today and it means a lot in one quick question one click what I'm what I'm low got really good looking golf course. All the mountains and things look like beautiful therapy on the envelope when I'm low, you have a horse warming.

Come on out here. We got a horse race algebra from the little rascals with addicts way back that's that's the way this is Jim Bob and Stephen's Valley church in Nashville, Tennessee and up up at the website out of the podcast. Stephen's Valley church.com. If you're in the middle Tennessee area and you need a good church home.

I want you to go there because these guys have cared for me for a long time listed out.

I got to about the show sponsored by stating with hope. It is the presenting sponsor of everything we do here and stayed with hope Gracie not found this meeting many years ago was born out of her vision to provide prosthetic limbs to her fellow amputees and that's what we do we we we collected use limbs from all over the country and they go to local president Tennessee and it's run by core civic and is one of their many faith-based programs and a faith-based programs help prevent prisoners coming back to present. That's the whole point of it lower that recidivism rate and inmates volunteer to do this and we disassembled those legs all the way down sometimes to the screw level. We take all these materials and that we ship them over to West Africa where we partner with the government of Ghana for almost 15 years and we provide these raw materials to them and we purchased other materials that we go over there ourselves, and we been training and working with them for years to help them better care for their own amputee population and EEC if I if I give a leg to me and he's got a wall, but the teach a man how to make lakes and equipment to make legs hundred you can walk, but if we do both of those things while pointing them to the gospel. Then they can be standing with hope and that's the whole point of this and it's it's a great program you can to get more the faith-based programs, a core civic has core civic.com they been an amazing partner to work with in these inmates love doing this.

What you got to standing with help.com today and take a look at it see what were doing here you can be a part of it and if you like what you hear and on the show and if if if you find this message to be compelling and meaningful to you and and if it's like a cool cup of water to you as a caregiver in a dry and thirsty land get involved with sponsored you can find links to the books out there. The podcasts is free. There's music at 30 listen to you can download that we get the blog we got somebody thinks we offer to fill caregivers see our our our ministry stating with hope is for the wounded and those who care for the and and it's it, it's rich personal to Gracie and me at it is, and so we when we did this and we lost all this is okay were to draw from our own expense. Gracie draws from her own experience as an amputee. She gives of of her own journey so people can lean on the same hope that she clings to, and that's what I do as well with articular outreach hope for the caregiver. That's the book that's everything page number at a time. Well, I mean, there's always next week. There is, indeed, they will have this out of the bike is little later on tonight or tomorrow will depend on how fast I get it done. Hope for the caregiver.com.

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