Lead Time
Lead Time
From Dysfunction to Health: The Relational Journey with Dr. Justin Hannemann
Dr. Justin Hannemann, founder of Grace Point Institute for Relational Health settles in for a deep and enlightening conversation. We uncover layers of his life as a husband, father, leader, and advocate for relational health. Together, we examine how relational health sits at the core of our connection with God, ourselves, and others, and how Grace Point Institute is helping mend the scars left by broken relationships.
Our conversation takes a fascinating turn as we dig into the intricate link between vocation and relational health. Driven by Luther's doctrine of vocation, we delve into the profound influence our roles in life have on our vocations. We touch upon an intellectual perspective on neurobiology, discussing how the fall has affected our central nervous system and led to relational dysfunction. Extracting wisdom from James K. Smith's book, "You Are What You Love", we ponder how our life liturgies shape us and consequently, the world.
As we wrap up our chat, the significance of confession, absolution, and grace in leadership and relational health comes to light. We dissect how insecurity and ego defense can infuse anxiety into leadership systems, and how confession and absolution can foster more secure leaders. With a backdrop of the importance of grace in counseling, coaching, and leading, we hope and pray for a generation that raises leaders who place relational health and love at the core of it all. Don't miss this insightful exploration into the power of relational health.
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Leigh Time is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective hosted by Tim. Ollman and Jack Calliver. The ULC envisions the future in which all congregations fully equip the priesthood of all the believers through world-class leadership development at the local level. Leigh Time taps into biblical wisdom for practical solutions to today's burning issues. Each podcast confronts real-time struggles facing the local church in a post-Christian culture. Step into the action with the ULC at UniteLeadershiporg. This is Leigh Time.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Leigh Time, tim Ollman, here with Jack Cowberg. We pray that the joy of Jesus is your strength today as you leader, whether you're in the church, out in the marketplace, are seeking to lead with joy and humility, the beauty and awe and wonder that you get to be alive on planet Earth right now and bringing love and joy, the fruit of the spirit, into whatever vocational environment you are occupying. If you're taking this in, maybe it's getting your water, getting your workout in, maybe it's in the car. I pray that just that abundance mindset given to you from the crucified and risen Jesus is what occupies your heart space today. Today you get the joy and honor of hanging out with one of my favorite people on planet Earth, reverend Dr Justin Hanneman and I go back to playing.
Speaker 3:We were 18, 19-year-old kids, concordia, nebraska Bulldog football. Justin was like a middle linebacker and I think he smoked me a handful of times as a quarterback, and then we also got to play baseball together for a number of years. So, so fun. He is an expert, first off, as a husband and a father, a father to four kids ranging in ages from sophomore down to. He's got a fresh kindergarten or three boys and a girl and a cat and he has been married. Gosh, justin, maybe 17, 18 years, something like that. Is that about where you're at?
Speaker 2:18, yep.
Speaker 3:And he is the leader of Grace Point Ministries. I'm gonna let him tell you about that, since I got to know you, justin, we'll talk about our college experience, anything you remember about college, before we get into the topic today, which is counseling anything to add.
Speaker 2:There are lots of things that I remember but like this is a podcast, so you'll probably be careful. I remember I remember us being the pre-seminary guys on the football team, you know, and it was a great team to be on, and I remember chasing you around and trying to hit you real hard in practice and you're being pretty elusive at that time.
Speaker 3:I'm running in fear. It was just fear inspired the whole thing. Yeah, what else?
Speaker 2:Nah, I remember, you know it was really neat to be at Concordia Seward, where it was really important that Christ and our faith was a piece of the football program, you know, having devotions and prayer. You know I just was with the team recently and they're carrying that on, and it's great to see that we have a tradition of turning out young men for the Lord and good husbands and fathers. So remember that, about football, baseball, same thing Lots of fun, lots of good friendships, you know, and friendships that have been maintained now 20 years, 20 plus years later. So lots of good memories from Seward.
Speaker 3:Amen, praise be to God and a shout out to all of our Concordias. You're pumping out a lot of women and men who are making a big time kingdom difference today. So since I knew you from a young age, you really cared. You were relationally attuned. I remember many drives to Concordia or from Concordia to Lincoln, you know, going to Starbucks. I remember at Barnes Noble going to hang out, maybe studying Greek, hebrew, et cetera, and I remember conversations with you. Like Tim, sometimes you say things and you don't say them in the nicest way and I you helped in mentoring. I'm serious. You helped in mentoring me, giving me a filter, just being a peer who spoke love and care and challenge into my life. So just wanna say thank you for helping to shape me toward that end and it's not surprising that you went into what you went into, not just as a pastor but as a counselor. How did you fall in love with counseling, justin?
Speaker 2:Well, before I get to that, I wanna return the words. You're a great friend and in this relational leadership podcast, everybody listening. Good friends are hard to come by and good men are hard to come by, and so I appreciated our friendship then and appreciate what you're doing now for the Lord. So Not at all, buddy man, that not be reciprocal. Yeah, with Grace's point, I pinch myself sometimes. It all went really quick.
Speaker 2:We just celebrated our 10th anniversary as an organization, so Grace Point Institute was founded in 2012 to function as an extension of the Healing Ministry of Jesus to care for people in his name. The full title is Grace Point Institute for Relational Health, and we named it that it's long name so that people would recognize that it's not just mental health or emotional health, but that we're working on relationships. And at the core of that is kind of a reflection I had quite a while ago, and Dr Cole later may be able to clear this up theologically. But for me I have trouble distinguishing between relational health and spiritual health, because when we're talking about spiritual health, we're talking about our relationship with God, ourselves and others.
Speaker 2:In our Lutheran theology we have the two kinds of righteousness, so that vertical righteousness, which is about a right relationship with God, and then that horizontal relationship and that righteousness has to do with our relationship with ourselves and with others our primary others and with creation. And so I kind of I layer it that way when I'm thinking about relational health relationship with God, self primary others, and then creation itself. And when those relationships are askew, we just know that life decays and connection decays and there are consequences for that. And so in our small way, grace Point, we try to push back against that, to try to help people have healthy relationships. Now, all of us are trained as and licensed as, mental health practitioners, counselors, marriage and family therapists, social workers, licensed drug and alcohol counselors, but we all kind of come from that relational lens and we've really protected, I would say, our DNA as Lutheran Christian caregivers.
Speaker 3:That's so good, Jack.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm super curious. I love your perspective on that and the idea of leaning into relational health and then that connection between spiritual and relational health. Do you? I'm super curious about this. Do you see this? Is this coming out from what you see as a gap maybe in ministries that if you think of, like the local congregation, that especially like, say, in LCMS context, we do a great job with worship, but are we as healthy as we need to be in promoting these horizontal relationships with each other? I'm kind of curious to hear your take on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just I very rarely juxtapose those against each other in the sense that these aren't different things, they're the same thing and like our worship life as Lutheran Christians in the divine service where God services us with his word and his gifts, that is part of the right relationship with him, and to neglect that it would be ridiculous and unhealthy and in the same way, extending that down and out motif. It's not an other, it's a continuation of God's love into the world, and so Luther in particular. Yeah, so it's this conversation about vocation and our doctrine of vocation I find to be one of the most useful counseling concepts ever, because we have that language from Luther that your vocations aren't for you, that your vocations are for the world, and it's how God loves the world, it's part of his ongoing creative act. Wengerin says in his book on Lutheran vocation it's part of his ongoing love and creative act in the world to have you live out your vocation.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, for me, relational health is rooted in our vocations as Christians, first as children of God, brought into his family through the waters of holy baptism, but also then living out the calling, that vocatio, on our lives, as in my case, husband, father, son, brother, therapist, and trying to be useful in that sense to God. And knowing too and this is one of the things that comes up quite a bit is in that doctrine of vocation is that the vocation is for others and the vocation is only for you, and so far as it makes you suffer, and then that suffering turn you back to God for the source of our comfort and support. And so, yeah, that's at the core of the relational health down and out.
Speaker 4:And I think sometimes what happens when relationships get unhealthy sometimes you may see this is that what people are expecting from each other is only the type of thing that you can expect from God, like God is the one that's putting you, he's making you right, he's giving you his righteousness and he's giving you this identity, then that actually equips you to give yourself away in your vocation to other people.
Speaker 4:But if you don't have that, then you're looking to other people to do that and that can create a lot of relational dysfunction. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, nothing to pour out when your buckets dry and God is the bucket filler. So you know, my wife and I talk about that, where we have our buckets and we pour into the marriage bucket hopefully, but God's pouring into ours and it overflows, hopefully, onto the kids in our community and God's the bucket filler for sure.
Speaker 3:That's so good. Yeah, the fall really did a number to us, didn't it, justin? I mean, you talk about those four quadrants, right? I mean that's what Genesis 3 did. It's our rebellious nature. We don't talk just about the fall, but it was an active rebellion against God. And then the repercussions have an impact on us, our view of self, our view of others and the way we manipulate creation. You know and this is where the heart of addiction comes in right we manipulate what God gave us a good gift toward very destructive ends. Do you talk about it in a lot of your counseling? Do you wrote a lot of it back to that original sin fall rebellious story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a tie-in to that for me. So I'm a big fan of interpersonal neurobiology, which is the study of how brains interact. So it's like the neurobiology so all of you can use that word at your next party but it really just is very simple. It's just the study of how brains interact and the social brain and like it occurs to me that our brains and central nervous systems, you know, weren't immune to the fall and in that corruption, you know, we had this like before the, before our rebellion, before the fall, we had this central nervous system that God made to experience him and each other and creation and all its goodness, and it was ordered correctly. And then the fall happens, and now our central nervous systems are really concerned with the self and it's concerned with being alive and having enough resources and being safe and all of these other things, and really quickly our central nervous systems really just focus on ourselves and that and that disintegrates relationships not only with God but with ourselves and with each other. And so for me, that tie-in to Genesis 3 is that we and this is in Col Wenger's edition, you can ask him about it but disorder disposition, that we have a disorder disposition, and I think.
Speaker 2:I think that's all the way down into our DNA, you know, and into our neurophysiology. And so when we talk about relationships, like we're talking about our reflexes, our relational reflexes, most of the time, most of the time we're not awake to what's driving our relational reflexes, we're not awake to the stories that we tell ourselves, to our assumptions, to our expectations. And so in therapy, you know, we're doing a lot of work on what are my relational reflexes, what form them, how can I orient those to the relational reflexes that Christ would have me have, that the Spirit working in me would execute. And lots of times you know that uncharitable, egocentric, ambitious spirit, lots of times when that becomes reflective, reflexive and automatic, we do a lot of damage to relationships. But when we recognize it we can kind of turn that back over to our Lord and the fruits of the Spirit start to work in us and we know what that's for relationships.
Speaker 4:It gets me thinking about Paul when he talks about flesh and spirit right. What are you putting your hope in? Some people are putting the hope in preservation of the body right, Trying to avoid death, trying to, with the short period of time that they have in life, create some sort of meaning and legacy, versus hope in the Spirit. What is the promise of the Holy Spirit? That you've been forgiven, that you have a new identity and a new eternal life that's being given to you.
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, and there's a deep, abiding security that comes from being formed in that, not only knowing it or thinking it, but being formed in it day in, day out. And I think of that, the book by James K Smith recently, you Are what you Love, and that formation in the life liturgies, that form, that kind of love shapes us and then in turn, like in that vocational way, shapes the world that we live in. For sure?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love that book. We're not brains on a stick, right. We're desiring things and we have. We have misordered, misordered desires. That's what the fall gave, and really you don't have to, just in a simple way, as it relates to parenting and how your team functions or how dysfunctional your team is. You don't have to teach a kid or a team to be dysfunctional, to want to be selfish, to preserve the self we have to. What are the habits that form us into the people of God? We really lean into, then, the subcon. We want the habits of Jesus, the fruit of the Spirit, to become the subconscious norm, rather than the other way around. Anything to talk about how we link neurobiology to our habits, justin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is kind of an area of writing and research and a lot of presentations for me, and so that question is maybe a small cast-off question, but it is a huge topic and would, I don't know, we come back for the 16-week graduate course on that. For me there's a lot of connections there and maybe the one that's most obvious has to do with the layers here. So when you think of a child like a baby, when they come into this world they're utterly dependent and the sensitivity of the caregiver has a lot to do with how that child's assumptions about the world get formed. And if the parent unit parental unit isn't very sensitive. So if you're talking about a mom and dad or a single mom or just a dad, ideally we have this beautiful picture of a mom and dad providing a lot of security to a child. Unfortunately, that isn't being raised up as what we optimal anymore, which I think is nuts. But it really truly is about that deeper security and those assumptions that get hardwired into us based on the caregiving we receive. And what I think is really neat about that is that the more we understand the brain and its formation over time, the more we understand how social it is and how relational it is, even in utero.
Speaker 2:And the more we discover that, the more we recognize that this relationship takes on a particular character, it takes on a particular quality, and that's when somebody takes responsibility for somebody else's security. So parents is easiest to see in a parent-child relationship, right. So, like this infant is utterly helpless and you can measure its life in minutes if it doesn't receive care, and so the parents are responsible for the child's security on the planet, period. And parents who accept that responsibility generally are sensitive, caring, and they develop their children well. Well, we say in, like the marriage ceremony that I'm taking responsibility for my wife's security. Now, am I responsible for all of the things or am I in control of all the things that would influence it? No, but I'm entering into that relationship, taking responsibility for taking it upon myself and vice versa. And so the hard part with, like the marriage relationship, becomes reciprocal. But what we recognize is that, like we would call that attachment security, that when somebody commits to being responsible for your attachment security, you can't be responsible for your own. And this mirrors how God took responsibility for our eternal attachment security to him by sending his son. And so when we love like that. It forms other people's expectations and assumptions, it makes them more pro-social, it makes them more emotionally intelligent, it makes them more sensitive. It produces the connection that all of us say that we want and that we, you know, give lip service to.
Speaker 2:But, like we were talking about before, the enemy to that kind of security is ourselves and our need to protect the self first. And we have a whole host of ego defenses that do damage to other people. We have a whole host of just selfish things and reflexes that hurt not only others but ourselves and hurt that security. And so when we're talking about leadership in particular, you know the insecure leader does a ton of damage and I travel all over the country consulting with churches and schools and you know district presidents and staffs and the insecurity among leadership.
Speaker 2:I would say there's a direct correlation, positive correlation, between the degree of attachment insecurity a leader has and the amount of like really unconscious damaging reflexes they have on their system. And so one of the things that I'm focused on, you know from the grace point so Grace Point has Christian counseling. We're definitely dealing with the close relationships, but on the ministerial health side, you know we talk a lot about the security of a leader and what that means and what that would look like. And sadly we have a lot. We're driven by a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety these days highest levels. You know that we've been recording and that insecurity leads to some really bad relational reflexes among leaders.
Speaker 4:Justin, just a follow up on that. We are the United Leadership Collective here and you brought up the word leadership and I am so super curious about this. You said the insecurity of leaders causes a lot of damage. How does that damage play out Like? What are the types of things that you see insecurity and leadership causing? Obviously, there's something that's happening to the person themselves, but also to the organization around them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so insecurity, like relationally, is what I'm talking about, and I'm not talking about a surface level, because some of the most insecure people I know look incredibly secure, you know, and I would say that that would be the most insecure, that would be my ego. Defense is to try to look super secure and hide behind some sort of fake until you make it kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Feeling more, most insecure, that's when I'll probably maybe look the most secure, ironically, but when I, when I'm able to acknowledge that I'm feeling insecure, I'm actually closer to security.
Speaker 2:So it's kind of hard. And so people who are untouchable, who can't say they're sorry, people whose ego defense is include pure rank avoidance of anything meaningful in relationship, the deep abiding imposter syndrome, the attempts itself repair, whether that be, you know, addictive behaviors and pulse control, these sorts of attempts itself repair to deal with the insecurity in a way that doesn't actually touch the security at all, like alcohol or gambling or pornography, the you know and or just emotional connections that transgress boundaries. That's a kind of a common one. So we have these, we have these ego defenses, we have these attempts itself repair that always kind of end up going horribly wrong. And when I'm thinking about the deeper meltdown of a system, that those processes have been going on for a long time and they've just been avoided and people haven't been held accountable, when you're talking in their chronic is what I would say. So whenever you see kind of a big blow up in a system, it's not like it hasn't been coming for quite a while.
Speaker 4:Yeah, anxiety can be contagious, right, especially if it's being role modeled by the leader, and I think another thing you kind of mentioned is that it's almost like a movement of confession and absolution vulnerability here. Confessing your insecurity, being vulnerable about it, is kind of the key cure to becoming the more secure leader, would you agree?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, so 100%. So that this, this challenge, that we have a relationship with ourselves, that's. That's what's kind of interesting postfall, you know, and I'm sorry to geek out on some of this, but like post postfall, this notion of like I'm naked, like how this self consciousness and this relationship then with the self is disordered at that point, you know, after the fall, and that seems to like really work its way into this equation. So we have this relationships with others, but when we have the disorder relationship with ourselves, the security continue, the insecurity continues to mount and we can't fix our relationship with ourselves. So then, like, what can we do? We're like, where do we go?
Speaker 2:Well, you have the words of eternal life. So we go to our Lord and we confess our sins and he drives us back to each other and says, no, like you're made right because of me and relationship, I forgive you, go and send no more, but go to your brother and confess your sin and receive that absolution. And like, the beauty of that is again, it's not either or, it's a both, and that restores your relationship with yourself. You can regard yourself as one, forgiven and restored, and that's like critical for security. So there is this, like external relational health that develops, but then there's also really profound psychological impact for having being able to regard myself as restored, and we have that in, we have that vertically through. Like that confession of solution though, though, like the sacraments teach us about our place, they tell us about our, our stead, about our standing, but we also have to like work that in our communities, like with each other, and that down and out motif for sure, and confession absolution like is the tool for being honest with oneself and with one another.
Speaker 3:I've thought for a long time, justin, this is so good that all of life is confession, absolution yeah for a miserable sinner. And I desperately need the love and mercy and grace, the new identity that comes about, just my identity, amen. And that then that then changes radically, changes our relationship with others and what I found if leaders, at whatever the top of the organization is, can humbly model having the vulnerable conversation with their team I think a lot of times you heard, you know, don't let them see you sweat, just keep it to yourself. You know it's lonely at the top, it is what it is. So there is wisdom, obviously, in disclosing the things that are going on, with the right people at the right time in the right way.
Speaker 3:Right, I mean, good boundaries on a team are very necessary, but my concern is that many people at the highest levels, not just of Synod but of churches or district presidents, do they have that father or mother, confessor, someone who can hear their sins and bring them out of solution, and then are they modeling. Hey, when I have sinned against you, when my tone has been off, it's not just what I said, but how I said it. I'm going to be quick, like the healthier the leadership system is, the church or the institution is, the quicker the head leader can get toward vulnerably asking for forgiveness, the healthier. That because they cascaded. It's crazy. It's like you know it's a neurobiology, relational neurobiology, like we are lemmings in many respects. Right, I mean, if we see something, we want to mirror that behavior. So if the leader at the top doesn't mirror that behavior, no one else is going to be feel safe to do the same on their respective teams. Anything to talk, anything to say about the cascading effect of confession absolution, justin.
Speaker 2:So that I mean there's a lot, there's a lot there too. Yeah, One of the things that sparks for me most immediately is, in every marriage seminar, marriage retreat that I do, every parenting class or parenting retreat that we do, that, the thing that ends up sounding so simple, but the thing that, like, people latch onto. After all the science talk is done, after all of the best practices are laid out, after all the tips and tricks and you know the books to read and everything else, it comes back to this pattern for life Connection rupture repair, connection rupture repair, connection rupture repair till Jesus comes back. Like you think, it's like church, spiritually, it's connection rupture repair. And, like you know, talking to my son, he's like well, you know, we go to church every Sunday, you know, and he thinks that's good and why do I have to do this and that and the other thing? Well, it's like how long are you going to go between reminders of who you are? And if you just neglect the repair after the rupture, right, you can wait seven days before you remind it of who you are.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's a good practice.
Speaker 2:Or, you know, if you're reminded of who you are every Easter or Christmas, that's not a good practice either. So it's not just about worship, it's about, like, the pattern of your mind on a regular basis, so like in marriage. I think, regularly airing what's going on in your heart and mind and risking a little rupture to the relationship is okay If you trust the repair and God has built in us through his word and as Christian people, through his word and through his divine service, just full assurance of the repair with him. Now we have to take the security there and move out into the relationships with others, because there's going to be this connection rupture repair and the repair is super critical and it's so easily avoided because it is the connection for the inevitable next rupture. That's how it goes. So, whether it's family life, whether it's church life, whether you're, you know, the leader of a team, or whether you know you're the leader of a district or a senate or a church body, like it is the practice of connection, rupture repair until Jesus comes back. That's the pattern.
Speaker 3:Dude. I mean this is the foundation of everything right how a leader gets this, this connection, rupture, repair and builds vulnerable relationships of meaning and trust and purpose and you can have everything else. I mean, I think this goes back to 1 Corinthians, chapter 13,. Right, you could. You could figure out all of these deep mysteries, theological excurses, what you could become the expert in a whole host of, but if you can't handle the relational connectivity and the inevitable rupture because of our sin, and then the need for confession and absolution, looking into a brother or sister's eyes and saying I have sinned against you and thought we're needing these respective ways, will you please forgive me? That tastes like vomit to most people's mouths. It just does not come naturally for us. So the quicker we can start to model, this is so huge. Anything to add to that, justin, as we get deeper, even in here.
Speaker 2:It's not only like a disposition but a practice that reinforces the disposition. So, but the thing that sabotages this process and this is what we were talking about earlier the thing that really sabotages this process is insecurity and the attempts to seek security where it won't be found. And this is where all the talk about you know vulnerability and connection and openness and all of that you know it launches from. But the core of it, the seed of that conversation, has to be understanding our relational reflexes and how we seek security in unhealthy ways, first for ourselves, usually at the expense of others. And I try not to have judgment or like a ton of antipathy for people's ways. I try to have it as much compassion as possible as I can for the ways and for the reasons why people would seek security in unhealthy ways. But the process of healthy connection, the dealing with like usually purposeful rupture, like every parent knows that they have to rupture their relationship with their child to move the ball forward. But it's like, is it meaningful, purposeful rupture for the purpose of a deeper, repaired connection? And to do that requires a lot of security in the relationship. You know, if you're in a marriage where you don't trust your spouse to like return with the desire to repair, then you're going to cope in a lot of unhealthy ways. And so the thing is there's just has to be a lot of training and conversation ongoing at nauseam about what it really means to connect, the ways we misconnect or deny connection, the ways we seek security and unhealthy ways, and then the ways to repair. Now there's some like.
Speaker 2:I have an apology and forgiveness model. I work in therapy. You know that has various steps. Sometimes it has to be that robust and and worked out, and sometimes it's just as simple. As you know, I was uncharitable to you earlier today and I'm sorry, please forgive me. I was grumpy, I needed a Snickers and now I'm better and I'm sorry and I asked for your forgiveness. But you don't even go that small little one without some level of security from the other person, and this is how intertwined we are and how much like like God's security for us. He took responsibility for us. Now we have to be the ones especially if we call ourselves leaders like to go in and give other people that security so that they can come out from behind their ego defenses and be real with us. And if we don't get that, then it doesn't.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes, and this is so good. So, coming down the home stretch a lot of times in in on lead time, here we talk about areas of function and dysfunction within the wider system which is the Lutheran Church Missouri Senate and you've presented at the best practices for ministry conference on this exact exact topic and as it relates to attachment. So if you'd go in deep to areas of function and dysfunction that you see and we'll be charitable here there's no names here, it's just the wider system that the Lord has created over almost 200 years of ministry nationally as a Lutheran Church Missouri Senate. Talk about that presentation and then maybe even two to three key steps that Senate leaders, pastors, laymen and women can do to improve our relational health here in the system of Lutheran Church Missouri Senate. Simple question, justin, real simple.
Speaker 2:That's too much. That's too much, tim, for the last few minutes. I don't know if I can pull that off. I think at the end of the day, like you know, I was looking at some of the kind of reflection questions that they had for for us and I think a lot of them tie together into a theme and it's. You know, my dad was a pastor would joke every once in a while in some of his lower moments as a pastor, that and he would say it as a cast off joke. So nobody take it seriously. But church would be great if it weren't for the people. You know, like I heard that, yeah, counseling as a therapist would be great if more for the people.
Speaker 2:Coaching, coaching 15 year old football players would be great if it were for the 15 year old football players and I think that, like no Senate there's, like the truth, that, like we're centers and the reason why I still love being a Lutheran, a confessional Lutheran, a Lutheran Christian, is is grace, is at the center, and so the secret, the secret to the connection, rupture, repair cycle is grace and that, and that, like I see that as written, you know, into how we have to function as a, as a, like an individual couple, family, an individual congregation or or or a church. Sadly, if if I were to say I also function in as an assistant to President Snow, the Nebraska district, so I'm executive assistant for Ministerial Health in the Nebraska district and I can speak, you know, here we've been working really, really hard to, to develop the kind of relationships where grace can be delivered. And if people are running from you, if they're super skeptical of you, if they're suspicious of you, if you've, if you've led in such a way as to seem manipulative, controlling, coercive, domineering, and they're running from you, then they won't even receive grace from you if you had any to give. And so we're, we're really working on relational health in in, in our district, where we can have honest conversations with each other, where we can try to be charitable to one another, to to, to assume the best of one another, to not read into the type of clothing somebody would wear, or or the tattoo on their arm, or the or or the way that they carry their, their Bible, or whether their Bible is Greek or or English. We really just have been working on dealing with people in connection and to do that in a gracious way. And that's easier said than done because we have shorthand in our minds, we have biases, we have reactions.
Speaker 2:We prefer sometimes in our sinfulness, to sit in the rupture and and to not want repair, or to or to say, if I don't have this kind of repair, I'm not going to do it. And I see that in our, in our Senate, a lot of ways that it's my, my vision of repair or no repair. I see that issue coming out of convention. I'm heartened by lots of things, you know. I'm disheartened by a few, the, the.
Speaker 2:You know I hate to see relational breakdown in our, in our church, even at the institutional level. It something just doesn't sit right with me. I tried to understand it. I'm trying to be. I'm a sucker for reconciliation, I'm a sucker for connection and in relationships. So I hate to see institutional breakdown that way. But there's two resolutions you know that I'd raise up as really important and, like the pastoral shortage resolution and and and the ministerial health resolution, obviously it's near and dear to me and the real question for me is are we going to be a church body that takes our resolutions as things that were resolved about or not? And if we are resolved about it, they're going to change behavior and that remains to be seen. So the call for me is definitely, on those two topics, that those rev resolutions would not just be on paper, that they're, that they'd have legs that are, that are time, talent, treasure would be directed at actually resolving them and not just putting on paper that were resolved about them.
Speaker 3:Dude, you said a lot there. I'm praying for those of us who know that. You all see story. We've got a pre seminary to seminary program that we're testing here. We're not, we're not ordaining, but some leaders are being radically shaped according to scripture and the conventions in in in a very beautiful way by vocational, co vocational, and churches need pastors and to fill pulpits to bring word and sacrament to folks, and I'm waiting for the pastoral formation committee to reach out. I sent an email actually originally and waiting on them and I know they got a lot going on, but we're very eager, as well as our district president, to have the conversation to explore ways to raise up, raise up leaders and the toward that end. I mean we're.
Speaker 3:You just look at the numbers and and it's not just the numbers of shortage but the quality and quantity of leaders. And I'm just praying for our generation, justin, to have a hand in raising up those within our generation and those younger than us who put relational health at the center, who put love and relational connection at the center and then recognize the variety of unique gifts that God has given. And whenever we talk about our respective gifts, right, justin, how God has hardwired us, how he's made us, what he's delighted in us to bring into the world. We also see our need for the gifts of the wider body of Christ. For those who are ordained and the lay men and women who are in our congregation. This abundance mentality just kind of opens up rather than a fear, but a lot of the decisions I see that are made it's based on fear and it's based on protection rather than abundance and an open-handed charity toward all that God is doing in the world. Anything to respond to there.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that I you know, that is an axiom. You know we have axioms in the Hannahman house and one of the axioms you know is we do things despite fear, not because of fear. That's one of our axioms, and I like it.
Speaker 2:I think, like when institutions you know not to get too particular, but like when institutions act out of fear and because of fear it's, they end up chasing their tail and, you know, manifesting the object of their fear. It's just a systemic kind of rule, it's a given, it's how it works in human systems. But when people do things despite their fear, most of the time the fear becomes a lot smaller and the object of the fear holds a lot less power to control the system. And I'm afraid that too often we act out of fear instead of despite fear. And whether that's the, you know, the pastoral shortage and all of the various issues relating to that, or whether it has or whether it's like a linked issue to that which is the actual health of our church workers, you know, if we do things because of fear, it will make the problem worse.
Speaker 2:But if we do things despite it and make the obstacle the way, I think we end up doing a lot better and secure people. And people are secure in their faith and secure in each other they won't do the reactive fear based thing. And if you see that, it's because that there's some insecurity and then so you have to back all the way up to that insecurity and say well, how do we resolve our security with one another and with our Lord so that we can move forward in faith and in peace without it? And that's where I'm at. Most of my time is back in that first kind of that antecedent insecurity. How do we resolve that so that we can develop healthy plans and implement them?
Speaker 3:Amen, jack, anything to add there?
Speaker 4:No, I've just been thinking about many, many leaders can be blessed by this conversation that we're having right now and the type of work that you've been doing, so I appreciate it, myself included. I just thinking about you know how hard it is, how hard it is to develop a healthy relationship with people. We've talked about the vulnerability, the confession that takes to become a secure leader. That's tough because when you do that you're opening yourself up potentially for people to use that against you. I can see why people are hesitant to do that, but how actually can we do that? It's our security in Christ that actually allows us to do that. So when that's there, then we're enabled to do that and become a different type of leader. But it takes a lot of conscious thinking about this type of topic and mentoring from people that are willing to point out the blind spots that we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean any of us in. I know for Tim. You know I don't know you as well, jack, but like anything that Tim and I have was given to us by loving others, like people who loved us.
Speaker 4:I can see that.
Speaker 2:And formed us in the faith and in family and in the church, and Tim and I have a similar story in some ways, and I just know that you can't manufacture security on your own. You can try, but you'll be miserable. It has to do with relationship, why there's such a hard call on all of us to be there for one another, to try to create it in one another. So when you say mentoring relationships, it could be formal, informal, but it's just. Are you a person of like peace that goes into the lives of other people and helps them seek that type of security? Or do you think security is some commodity that needs to be hoarded? And that's not true. It's not. It's there. It gives us in abundance. We need to share.
Speaker 4:There's an unlimited supply of it from God right.
Speaker 2:Exactly yeah, and that's the cross. You know, we look to it and find it.
Speaker 3:And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds and keep you in faith in Christ Jesus and then move you into this open-handed, curious, adventure-filled mindset in relationship with other people. Let's see what God's up to, let's see what he might, and just this radical humility. I get to be a part of God's work in the world. Are you kidding me? Like he knows all of me and yet he loves me and gives me a mission and a purpose that is beyond me, that is eternal. Like that's amazing, you know, and I would just pray for more of that sort of posture amongst all leaders at all different levels within our church, down to the grass-root, just every day. Follower of Jesus. Who's the mom just saying am I making a difference? No, your emotional connection, your care for providing security for your kids, like this is holy work, justin. You're creating the next generation of passionate Jesus followers. It's a big discount, like those of us who get up. It's funny.
Speaker 3:I was thinking that we don't have time to go into this, but maybe another one. But the difference is between men and women and how we. I think a lot of guys have a lot to learn from our ladies, right, because you're talking a lot about relational, emotional connection. This is what women are kind of hard-working to do, but men want to talk about vision and all this stuff up and we miss. We miss the foundation, which is emotional connectivity to one another. Any final comment on that? And then, as you comment on that, would you transition also to resources books? If people just want to dabble into this, justin, two or three resources, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean so a lot of times, you know, this message gets put down as too frou-fru and frilly and soft and you can't. It's not objective, you know enough, or measurable, or attainable. Okay, you don't put a time limit on connection, rupture repair, and so in that way it gets demoted in people's minds. But for me, I think of it, the relational health is the air you breathe while you're trying to do everything else. And so I believe in all of the you know good to great, and I love all the leadership gurus over time and I like to read their stuff and try to implement plans. But the substance, the animating, like we would say that the love of God animates us. Right, the love of God is what gives us animation for the kingdom, and it's not something other our love for one another. You know, it's not something else. It is that same love that we are called to love one another with. And that relational health, then, is the air that we breathe while we try to do what God is calling us to do. It's tainted by our sin, obviously, and that's where the confession and absolution comes in, but for me, most specifically when we were working on relationship with God self primary, others, others and creation. Grace is what makes it run and that is what you know fills my heart and animates me on a daily basis. Because the people that are coming and talk to me usually are in a place where the only way out is grace and the only way out of their trouble merits, the only way out of the trouble in the family, the only way out of the sin that has entrapped them is the grace of God and I want to be a purveyor of that. I want to be one who passes that along freely.
Speaker 2:There are lots and lots of really great books, resources. If you're interested in the interpersonal neurobiology stuff, everything by Kurt Thompson, he's got the anatomy of the soul, the soul of shame and the soul of desire. These books, I have to say, are fantastic Christian books on the topic. If you're interested in your own deeper kind of security, how it was formed, what you might be able to do about it, there's a wonderful book called the Relational Soul by Plass and Cofield. It's a great book. The Relational Soul like that one on the topic of attachment security At the marriage level, created for connection by Sue Johnson. It's a fantastic book on attachment in marriage and you can always check. Get in touch with me through relationalhealthorg. Relationalhealthorg is Grace Point's website.
Speaker 3:Justin, time is flowing, bro. I care for you. I just am honored to be your friend and the role that you have in shaping the relational health of our church body and beyond. A wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and I've heard that from a lot of different people. But your biggest superpower is your humility, is your ability to just step in and see it's a gift of God, bro and to communicate to a variety of different people and communities and leaders in a way that they can receive that. God has given you that gift and you're exactly right, it came from God and then it came from your family, it came from the people that were closest to you, that relational security to allow you to speak hard words in ways that hopefully, by the power of spirit, can be received and therefore not just individuals but whole systems can change. So thank you for bringing wisdom today. I'd love to have you back on into the future relationalhealthorg If you want to get connected to Reverend Dr Justin Handeman and his work.
Speaker 3:Jackets been a lot of fun. This is lead time sharing. It's, karen. Please like, subscribe, comment. Wherever it is that you take this in. I'll tell you what I'm going to be looking up some neurobiology books from Kurt Thompson. I saw him be doing it.
Speaker 4:I know Tim's going to geek out here. This is right up his alley.
Speaker 3:It's been super fun. Get ready, get ready, Jack. There's a book coming your way. It's going to be so spectacular.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know.
Speaker 3:Justin, thanks so much for this time and again. We'll be back next week with another episode of lead time and can't wait for the conversation to continue. Thanks, justin, thanks Jack.
Speaker 1:Please. You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collector. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theunitleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.