EP063: Mindy Caliguire, Soulcare, & The Freedom of Letting Go

episode 63 of the church digital podcast powered by stadia church planting hey this is our one

year anniversary the podcast we've literally been doing this for one year now it's a weekly podcast

i'm going to do bad math here we're on episode 63 52 weeks out of the year okay so during

coronavirus we've been a little hyped up and we've done a lot of podcasts like two to three a week

it's been a lot of fun and the reason honestly that we're doing so much podcast is a you guys

are eating it up and engagement's been awesome but on top of that there's so much to talk about

and there's so much that i personally am experiencing talking to individual churches

looking at what's happening online where our attention points are where our successes where

our wins where areas of improvement i just i want to share it so yeah we're on episode 63

over a stretch of 52 weeks that's awesome this is a really interesting podcast it's it's it's a little

bit of a topic and i was nervous of how it was going to come out um but i'm really really glad we did it

i'm going to be honest um church we're struggling to keep up like and let's let's just talk about it

let's embrace it because chances are people on your church staff if it's like the majority of churches

that i've been talking with um we're all struggling keeping up and and more often than not staff seem to

be close to breaking points i've already seen uh several uh emotional breaks across several churches

in the amount of time in this covet season because let's be honest we're trying to take this

physical church model of creating content and instead of doing that one hour on sunday we're trying to do that

one hour sunday stretched across seven days a week maybe even multiple times a day seven days a week

and there's pros and cons to that and i don't even want to get into the philosophy because that that's

not the point of this podcast what i do want to get into is how is it affecting our souls not not the

not the listeners us as pastors us as church staff us as the people who are are pastoring who are

shepherding who are passionately caring for people in this environment because while the god is breaking

the church model not church but the model of church that we're doing while god's breaking it in this season

inadvertently we ourselves are being broken by the same process and we church we pastors we church staff

we have an opportunity to respond in different ways and this this is really the heart of the

conversation that i wanted to get into with this podcast so we're bringing in um somebody who i have

immense respect for in this area mindy callaguire so mindy um has an organization she works with called

soul care it's not all she does she's former willow creek used to uh she's uh very heavily involved

with glue as well as a number of she's on staff with glue and is involved with a number of other

non-profits and so she's uh very well spoken in a number of different leadership and ministry areas

but her passion as near as i can tell comes into this area of caring for souls caring for staffs for

pastors uh in this area well written uh and on this topic as well over the years those you used to know

me from the bookstore i sold her books at the bookstore like so she is is well versed in this area

and it has been an honor for me in recent weeks and months to get to know her better and even as

as i've learned how to adjust my ministry the ministry of the church digital the ministry through stadia

church planning how i've adjusted that in context to some of the guidance uh through stadia as well as

through soul care so i am super glad that you guys are here in this and i'm honored to have mindy be

the one year anniversary episode here at the church digital podcast so here you go bringing in mindy

calaguire from soul care um a number of different organizations as well as myself jeff with the

church digital and a conversation that i'm calling soul care and the freedom of letting go all right

everybody here you go i really want to dive into um you know not to use the the catchphrase but but

it's soul care so we're in this coronavirus season but i don't even think it has to be about coronavirus

we we as as pastors as staff um you know so often we're we're in this burn the ship mentality there's

a service every sunday there's always urgent needs we're always engaging with people we're getting calls

after hours we're working with volunteers um and just at a sensitive level um you know there there's

literally i just blogged it 2011 holy week i worked 98 hours my wife had just come out of the urgent

emergency room off of having a tia stroke we had two kids under the age of three there was literally no

one else on staff and and after that happened i'm working 98 hours my wife didn't love me my kids

literally didn't know my name um and what should have been this this just honoring of god production

that i created uh across five campuses i don't know 30 plus services um was actually the low point of my

life because i did everything but honor god because it cost uh it cost my marriage it cost so much more

than what the the ministry was and so there there's there's this tension i can tell you within the uh

the online pastors i actually had a meeting with some online pastors the other day and the and somebody

said okay so what's the number three or four and i just kind of looked at him we're like what are you

talking about like what's the number three or four um and and i was like i have literally have no idea

what you're asking me how many hours of sleep are you getting a night three or four and and and

the average consensus in the room was four a couple were five at the point i was six but there there

are still like three three hour people and that's not a that's not a healthy place to be no but in

the season of of coronavirus there's there's urgency behind it there's infrastructures that aren't in

place and it's so easy like even with my own life it's all right i gotta flip it it's just gonna be a

season and and i'm gonna burn out here uh because i've got to meet this need but then when i look at

like my wife and my kids who are like okay it's good for a season but then they start hitting the

proverbial wall before i hit the proverbial wall tensions start to get high and my kids are learning

the lesson that daddy cares more about ministry than he does me which dear god let not be the

lesson that my kids learned from me in the season boundaries tensions like how how do we as staff kind

of manage through stuff like this because it's not just me that's feeling this especially in this holy

week that we're going through how how do we survive how do we thrive how do we manage some of these

things from from an employee level like there were seasons back in the 2011 i was afraid if i didn't

give the 98 hours i was going to lose my job and and my wife even understood at that point she's like

you got to do what you got to do because you don't want to get fired maybe getting fired actually would

have been the best thing for me in that time because it would have enabled me to have this

with with my with my family yeah and so yeah like what hearing all that like what what thoughts do you

have for for someone like me or someone else that that's out there because this tension is something

that we're all especially in this coronavirus season and post as we try to figure out how to rebuild

church what advice do you have yeah well that's a huge open open question uh and i want to validate

what you're saying and describing and maybe share a little of my own experience as well before getting

into a more practical thing which we can definitely do but um my church that i'm part of right now uh has

i i talked to our senior pastor a couple maybe a week ago and he said that the staff had not taken

a day off in three weeks as they're scrambling to redo everything and they're pretty attuned to the

need for their own souls i hope they're getting more sleep than you were describing was the

average of the people on your call but they uh they're they're definitely struggling and and our church

had had had had to right there's there's this moment of like okay it can't go on like this forever but if

if something doesn't change in the next 24 hours we're not gonna be able to connect with our community

so i i definitely understand the urgency and the the seriousness with which um pastors and leaders are

struggling with this issue and my my context prior to this did not involve any um a global reversal of how

church was happening and everyone having to scramble accordingly but i think you know you know a little

bit about my own story but i my husband i were church planting in boston in the early 90s and

everything that i believe about the care of the soul and how to lead your own soul um for soul health and

then create cultures and systems that allow team members to thrive and not just like get burned out

um came from the really hard tragedies of that day now that day that moment that season of my life

um so more about that i can say if that's ever helpful but it was enough of a serious wake-up call

uh you used the phrase uh before before we started about becoming in touch with one's mortality and for

me that was absolutely the case i was 29 years old when i lost my ability to do most anything and um

you know was holding various huge responsibilities for our tiny little church uh we weren't running 30

services or anything but um we've maybe had 30 people most weekends but but um but all the things

behind the scenes all the finances all the communications i was leading probably three

different small groups and just holding all that together my husband was in a really rough place

that he's written about you've met jeff uh since um he's written about it since but he you know was

struggling with probably a pure straight-up depression and i think there's probably a lot of pastors right

now who coronavirus virus has caused a very inconvenient exacerbation of what was already an underlying

malaise of some pretty deep on health that was probably just barely below the surface of making it if

if the data that's come to us from studies like this one on resilient ministry i don't know if you're

familiar with that no came out of a body of research that the lily foundation had done okay it's a really

uh a pretty strong uh compelling case uh bottom uh subtitle says what pastors told us about surviving and

thriving so those very words you were using earlier and a really significant body of research and came up

with five characteristics of pastors that make it and that are always there and present when people are

resilient to the ups and downs of ministry as we've always known it in the past uh and when those things

are absent uh it's really difficult to stay stay the course and so if you can imagine that many pastors

around the country around the world we're already at a pretty unworkable pace unworkable system of

how do i know if i'm successful how do i balance needs of my family etc etc um this i'm sure has has

created a whole next level of chaos i've wondered how many pastors uh have have felt like they finally get a

chance to rethink everything because there was never an excuse to rethink everything when you're just

accountable to your leaders or your denomination or whatever and there's never a moment to go this is

crazy we should think about something new so i'm hopeful that in the middle of a terrible circumstance

that's impacting our entire world my hope is that this is giving the body of christ some pause even

as we're working to get online some pause on what it is we're really trying to do in the body of christ

what pastors are fundamentally called to toward their people so there's a moment for that but a lot of

probably the people on the call are just exhausted right now and not really necessarily thinking big

aspirational things i know i i serve on the the leadership team of our church here in in lewisville

colorado as a as a volunteer uh it's our sort of the equivalent of elders and the uh we had a meeting

on sunday night virtually obviously and we were doing the same thing only usually we go through

numbers about the finances and attendance and now it's like well how do we measure attendance you know

i think our pastor was in on your facebook group which was great thank you for answering his questions

um and and having completely new conversations about what what the direction of the church will be but at the

very end tail end of the night we probably spent another 40 minutes just sort of starting to dream

like if we imagine the day six months 18 months from now we don't know what it is but how how might

who we are be different right anyway those are other questions but back to your main question about how to

i i do i get so excited about maybe new wineskins being formed that help the message of the kingdom

get to people's hearts and souls in ways that are different than what the last 50 years 70 100 years

have been mostly marked by large one-to-many gatherings that have left usually some level of discipleship

and evangelism a little bit outside the walls of that experience notable exceptions but by and large and

what if this mash-up this incoherent moment that we're in opens some new doors to that and i know

that's what you're excited about as well but back to the question at hand um and in part because i so

greatly value and treasure that future vision for the church i can't ask your listeners our listeners

more uh than i ever have in all of my years of ministry with soul care to please prioritize the

well-being of your own soul the only way we get to those reserves those quiet levels of listening to

god's direction for the future the courage to innovate to do something new the headspace to get out of the

way we've always done it even to move against fear uh all of that only emerges out of a healthy soul

is only going to come when we are deeply connected to god as our real time in the moment source of life

and that is that is what has been on offer since the first century as jesus you know here we are in holy

week it was the last supper when in john 15 he and beyond he was introducing a new way of being

for once he was no longer physically present and that is so significant to us in our day

as it was to them he's on the verge of his departure which of course they don't

couldn't fully understand nor would we have if we were had been there but he is telling them look there

is going to be a new way of of being with me from which you can receive your life i am that vine i am that

source you are branches and if you remain if you remain connected to me not if you know truth about

me not if you study the bible really hard about me not if you in your head can analyze things really

well if you remain in me connect it imagine this here's a here's a vine it's in the ground it in

and of itself has life and that connection is like this and when that connection allows this this is so

crazy to air draw this but to from that life source of my elbow rooted into the ground

the flow through this point of connection and out here that is where fruit is born that's where courage

is expressed that's where love and forgiveness and generosity and all those things gifting teaching

evangelism all those spiritual gifts they are a manifestation of god's spirit being at work in us

right and through us what happens when life gets hard and we get running and gunning and all of a sudden

we haven't had a day off in three weeks and we all that we just disconnect we don't mean to

it's it's benign none of our none of our truths or beliefs about god have changed one bit we still would

probably most pastors truly take a bullet for what they believe and know to be true and i that sounds

maybe crass but i don't mean that in any trite way there is an unwavering devotion to the truth of

who god is to the mission of the gospel to the calling on their life right that stuff is sort of out here

but when when we've disconnected we've lost our source we've lost our energy and then we start

doing really weird stuff out here we lose our capacity for courage we lose our willingness to

be patient or loving or to focus on um on someone else's goals rather than our own agenda right there's

so many dark things that start to dominate when we've lost that connection and that reconnection and

and why it's so interesting to me that in that last supper jesus returns to that metaphor again and

again and again right remain in me and you'll bear much fruit apart from me apart from me you can do

nothing right and you know why why did he keep saying that over and over again it's like can you imagine

like you know sending your kid off to college or if you went off to college and you go out to

dinner with your mom and dad uh and you know everyone has cell phones now but imagine that

they had a way to say at dinner slide me across the table here's a cell phone or special line to get

in touch with me you know call me call me whenever you need it call me and you know six times during

the same dinner you'd be like okay i get it how many times during that last supper did jesus return to this

metaphor wow on the eve of his actual no longer being present with us or with them but putting into

motion a way of us relating to god ever more because of the cross because of the resurrection

because of the indwelling of the holy spirit so when i think about what it means to care for your soul

and we can get into practical ways to do that but guys nothing matters as much as deciding that you

want to live like this connected in real time so even as you're listening to me right now you can at

the same time be saying hey god thank you thank you for this day thank you for what's going on uh around

us we don't understand it thank you that you've given me these volunteers or leaders or people to shepherd

thank you for my family anything you want to be want me to hear through what mindy and jeff were talking

about today we can be prayerful and the minute we do that it's as intimate as the air we're breathing

the stuff around us we're right back in a place of connection anyway so i'm talking a lot but that's

what i think about is soul care jeff it's like staying connected there's a lot of humility at that

point right because you know so often and i'm guilty of this i'll make it about me there there have been

seasons of my life where i got my identity out of my ministry uh it was an area that i loved i was

passionate about it i i saw the world differently and and all of a sudden i found myself serving in

this i i i i world instead of um being humble and broken before god to reshape me in the way that he

wanted and i fought for the things that i wanted instead of even taking the time to ask god is this

is this what you want and and as a result i found myself like working hard to create this this ministry

and these opportunities that may have been more self-directed than than god focused so what what

does that that tension of humility look like while we're trying to take care of ourselves if it's all about

us we won't have a felt need to connect with god because we will believe that we in and of ourselves have the

answers and i find that the closer we come to that enduring connection with god the more natural humility

actually is because we have greater awareness of our brokenness our limitations we're more honest with

ourselves and it's one of the sort of deaths i think that we die is to the the idols that we hold

some of which are building our own kingdom um but those things uh they they start to look comical even

when we're connecting with god it's like oh really that's that's your uh that's your top priority

oh really you you know how to bring this church uh through coronavirus and you don't need any help

all right that's up to you you know those are the kinds of things that i think god has a great sense

of humor but it's just like all right that's that's your call you you get to choose but i think that the

delight the joy the we're we're we're made for humility we're made to have a right-sized view of

ourselves and to relate to others in great love and freedom when we have a right-sized view of ourselves

when we have a disoriented heart or a false self that we're bringing into the world that could look

very prideful very chest-pounding you know all the things that we see uh in the research around

narcissism is that uh people who exhibit narcissistic traits which is a character disorder it's a terrible

it's really thought of as a as a disease uh it is people who have that disorder are suffering terribly

they are terrified inside they deal with tremendous levels of shame and guilt and it's not to be taken

lightly if if you're finding yourself in that place that looks like the characteristics of that because

certainly god can heal us and free us um all of us have that we're all on that continuum at some level

but oh jeff the the joy and freedom that comes from humility is incredible because then you just get to

be an ordinary human being and uh and god gets to be god and when we are rightly ordered in our minds

about who god is and who we are we i don't need to have a negative view of myself i don't i have a i think a

a right-sized view of myself um and that's one that god loves and is wild about but it's not an over

inflated view of myself and i don't i think one of the lessons i learned in uh in boston when everything

fell apart was it one of the things that i i'm wired with is pretty high uh i don't know i'm pretty

analytical i can i think a lot i am fast mentally and all those kind of things and i think i realized

that the crisis that i had gotten myself into was in many ways the exact result of how i had been living

with an over inflated view of my own views of my thinking and uh with the help of some friends who

were in my small group at that time and uh had been part of 12-step communities i came to understand the

the fallacy of depending too heavily on my perspective of what was even real

i had made a lot of decisions based on what i thought was real and i had landed myself exactly

in a very very unhealthy unworkable place and it was a refreshing if a little bit of a blow to humility

or to pride um which is a grace when that happens uh it was a it was a hard realization to come to

and i i i think i still hold to it is that my sense of what i think is real is inherently flawed

it's inherently flawed and that doesn't mean i'm a bad person it doesn't mean god doesn't love me and

can't use me i just i see through a glass dimly i do not see i certainly don't see the future i barely

understand the reality of the past if you think of that movie what was it called vantage point

that showed the same incident from like eight different perspectives it's like

i don't have every perspective i can't and that's just the logical constraints never mind

the the brokenness that i bring to what i think i see so humility is the freest place in the whole

world i highly commend a path toward uh toward free and willing surrender and humility um andrew murray that

little tiny book he wrote i think in the 1800s on humility is just delightful um if anybody's looking

for a resource on that uh it's um it's challenging you read it and go wow this is i want to aspire to this

this kind of a life um so yeah we uh we are free to the extent to which we have a right-sized uh view

of ourselves and god and i think under those circumstances the more free we are the more okay

we are with just being who we are uh the more available we are for god to work through us in some pretty

powerful ways i'm thinking of there was a time um i was can i tell a silly story go for it uh yeah it

won't take too long but i was asked to when i first joined the staff of willow creek i was working for

john orberg in spiritual formation and he and ruth haley barton had just published through the willow

creek association of course called an ordinary day with jesus and ruth had left the staff to join or to

found the transforming center which is an amazing ministry and i as sort of the person who inherited

some of the content and the teaching responsibilities was invited to asbury seminary to do a day-long

workshop reviewing and going throwing all the content on an ordinary day with jesus which basically talks

about how do you incorporate normal spiritual practices into daily life which is kind of what

we should be talking about as soon as i'm done telling the story and uh and and so the guy that

picks me up from the airport uh the night before is just making to chat with me along the way and he's

like so where'd you go to seminary and i said well actually i i didn't go to seminary my husband went to

seminary he went to dallas seminary and i took some courses while we were there but i was in the

marketplace um doing sales and some technology companies and so he he you know just i i said in

fact i you know everybody says i got my pht for putting hubby through and uh he just appropriately

laughed and didn't think anything of it so i'm in the room the next day they're recording the whole

thing and broadcasting it live there's probably a hundred people in this little this little

auditorium kind of thing and he gets up and introduces me as having a phd from dallas seminary

yeah and i was like oh no this is not good i can't like it's being recorded i cannot let

that go out there but i also don't want to insult him he's just trying to give me a nice introduction

so i got up and and tried to as quickly as i could just say uh you know actually told him about you

know my husband dallas seminary i got the phd for putting hubby through i'm just an ordinary girl here

to talk about an ordinary day with jesus and we went on from there but it's kind of a blessing to just be an

ordinary person like how do we just even if i had a phd i which i don't i would still just be an ordinary

person and that's what any of us is um okay so practical ways to care for your soul is that what

you want to talk about as i said first you have to decide what you want and that may not seem very

practical but i would recommend getting out a journal and on one left hand side of a page start noticing

reflect back what are some of the symptoms of how my soul has been that seem a little on the darker side

i've been impatient i can't sleep at night i am worrying constantly i was snapping at my kids

i um have these lustful thoughts that won't go away like whatever it is just list out what are the

symptoms of disconnection that are going on currently not conceptually just currently for you

and we're all a mixed bag so you're going to have things on both sides but on the other side of the

paper i want you to reflect where are there signs of life that are currently in my life where are there

symptoms of the spirit at work where did i have joy where did i experience

some courage where did humility come to me in a time of interaction with someone where

was my spiritual gift at play the value of creating those two lists and noticing what's current for

you is that you then can be like okay this this is where i am right now and in all likelihood you're

going to want to be moving towards the list on the right and away from the list on the left but what

we normally do in that moment is start to think about oh well how do i be more joyful and how do i stop

thinking about things i shouldn't think about how like we start to try to solve the symptoms of how the soul is

but that doesn't get us back to connection so the first step though is to assess that so that you have

that sense of what's at stake in your real life and why caring for your soul is really going to matter

then i want you to start experimenting what things help you actually connect with god and when you're

helping your team members or anything else like that those are these are all good ideas for that as

well but start with yourself like right now just take that leader hat off you don't need to solve for

everybody else right now what does this need to be like for you what things help do you need to i mean

we're all sort of in this quarantine moment like where is a corner of your house that for 10 minutes

you can set your devices down set your books down set your journals down don't even do any of that

and see how well your body can just rest loosen up your shoulders put both your feet on the ground

take a deep breath or three pay attention to that and then just see can you be quiet can you just rest

in god's presence can you not be productive but just be with god that is one practice for me

learning how to be silent especially in the morning that is not only very helpful to me but the difficulty

of getting into it is usually a barometer for me of how my soul is doing um but it has been a very

transformational practice for me so writing out in a journal getting some time for silence super

important what is there something i mean we're so limited right now and i totally understand that but

like do you need to take a break from your news feed for a two-hour window and say i'm i'm just

intentionally going to not pay attention to that right now do you need to negotiate with your spouse or

kids or team members that you need sleep you need at least six hours of sleep you might need more than that

what would it be like to make sure you get that i think those are the places where you choose to take

time to sleep choose to take time to connect with a ministry peer who can you call who can you hop on

a zoom call and just laugh pray together do something that connects you relationally to

a friend um but deciding to do those things guys you're already going to be thinking of all the other

things you should be doing and you don't have time to do those wow right and that's that's going to be

the game changer of how that's where humility comes in do i believe that letting go of all my producing

long enough to be silent for 10 minutes or hop on a 20-minute call with a friend

or get three more hours of sleep than i did last week each night do i really believe

that it's all up to me or that by taking care of my own body and soul that god can work through me

and do whatever he wants and you the sooner we let go of that guys the sooner the sooner we let go of

it the more freedom and life there will be on the outside and all those exciting visions of what the body

of christ can become during and through this crisis they start to open up to us because you're open

you're open the world doesn't need i don't care how smart you are the world does not need your smart

hard-working solutions there's enough of that and it it's not going to be enough we need your your

life connected to god's life walking in freedom and joy and peace and openness and creativity

and courage and that is only going to consistently come from a place of deep connection so figure out

what it takes for you to stay connected to god it might be completely different than any things i've

said but you'll know it by its fruit yeah what what's interesting in this whole conversation is it was

like honestly half of me was expecting you to say you know spend time with family spend spend time with

this but even before you got to the to the family level it's it's you know fix yourself first like

work and solve these problems internally with you but before you get to to the family level you want

jeff i love my family i do love my family but if i'm not operating from a place of connection with god

my family doesn't want anything to do with me because i'm no fun to be around i am i mean it's like

don't inflict yourself on the people and things you care about if you're not operating from a place of

centeredness and connection to god because i mean again that's the humility like what on earth do i

have to offer the people i actually love if i'm operating out of drivenness anxiety fear manipulation

like that's what i'm that's who i'm bringing into those family meetings and if i am running on gasping on

fumes and have nothing to offer there's not a ministry spouse related to anyone who's ever hearing this

who would not prefer you to go back and hang out with god until you have something

not to bring like here's what i heard from the lord but something to bring that you're more solid you're

actually a more solid person you're not a shell of who you used to be because god is filling you up from

the inside i mean my husband would be like you know years ago we were just sort of learning how

to do these things he'd be like mindy i'm having such a rough time i think i need to just go away for

it could be a few days i don't know you know all these things and i mean i've got like a baby and we're

trying to raise money and all this stuff and i'm like go like go and don't even come back until you

and god have sorted this out because you're not helping and it's like of course we love our families

but what are we bringing to them when we're operating in such places of deficit we just we have nothing

to give we just don't you know that's that's well said does that surprise you jeff does that surprise you

that i would focus on the inner part first rather than how to connect with your family well it and

i'm gonna i'm gonna call myself out a little bit here um it that that's been a lesson that i've i've

learned over time and and honestly the times where i've been healthiest emotionally um and and physically

even was when i was putting myself through that the um and this is my 42 year old knees can't do

this anymore and i'm discovering that even like today in the season but i used to run and and running

for me i would even do like up to half marathons and oh wow training oh yeah training regularly like

that's impressive and and so i was just i was in a better physical state yeah but like i i wouldn't even

like we have earbuds and music sometimes but oftentimes i would just be turning that off and

just focusing on god in the conversation and it was it was funny i always felt weird in the moment

just being transparent i felt weird in the moment to be like at nine o'clock at night when amy's

putting the kids to bed and i'm like all right i'm gonna go for a run see you later and i come back

and the kids are already asleep and i thought hey like you know don't you like feel am i am i leaving

you should i stop doing this and my wife's like no keep going exactly because she's seeing she's seeing

the fruit of of me caring for myself in that situation and even in seasons where i felt it

was counterproductive it was actually very productive yeah one of one of the things that

just transparently that i'm wrestling with in this covid 19 season that we're in is what what is that for

for me in in the midst of what is the thing that i can do where is the escapism that that i can

escapism may not be the right healthy word but this this idea of isolation with yeah like i i have um

my kids and they they do this where uh we bought a um i don't know actually what it's called we'll

link to it in the show notes but it's like a a kitchen safe that's got a timer on the top and so

like i bought it to penalize the kids like when they're bad put their ipads in there and say like

no ipads for like eight hours or a day you dial in the timer and then it locks it in for the amount of

time well i'll be honest the number one device that's in that is my phone because because the

kids at this point they're like yeah we we want daddy time put the phone in there and so like 30 minutes

two hours you know regardless it's it's just it's it's isolated you know the air the airpods go in

there the watch goes in there it's it's it's full lockdown as yeah but it's it's try to find the ways

to move that you know not just for the family but but for yourself as as well to get you yeah get you

girded in that here here's the thing that i've i've learned in this season is um historically coming

out of the 2011 season uh when my life was was not healthy um victories i was claiming for for my own

and so i was like look at all the stuff that i had done and what's interesting is if victories are mine

then failures the failures of my life are mine as well um if my victories are not mine but god's

then i'm blessed to be able to say that my failures are not mine that but they're god's and and he's in

control and so if he's in control my failures are a lesson that's allowing me to be more in tune to

where he would have me go it has a purpose and the purpose is god's not mine to figure out and so if

you're talking about freedom you know the more that we're in tune to god the more that we're giving him

the pluses and the minuses the more that he's able to shape us in our broken state and so the the more

that we can just stay you know broken it was funny i i blogged recently i was like the the church is

broken um not the god church but the usa the modern model of church today is broken and that was such a

honestly it was a controversial blog post i had people texting me are you sure you want to say that and

i'm like yeah i think i'm okay with that because i'm not saying god's church no i'm saying just how

how we as humans are executing it and that we need to we need to learn something in this in this season

but i would love for us to learn it under the guidance of the holy spirit amen not a self-guided

witch hunt where we start deconstructing and pulling apart and everything else but let how do we have

that curiosity and openness god show us it feels like this might be a little broken what what is there

for us to see i'm thinking of one other spiritual practice i do want to share do i admit it go for it

okay i put this on the soul care instagram uh last week so you might have seen it there but many many

years ago like over 30 years ago somebody gave me a prayer in a little thing at a bridal shower so like a

like 100 years ago and it's so faded now you cannot even read it but it was a prayer and i think of this

as one of the practices that i do practice almost like pretty much every day whenever in the day i

remember too but it's a daily prayer of surrender and you were we've been talking about humility about

whether it's my vision or god's vision all these things this prayer and the words to this prayer have

been with me daily for many many years and um i just want to read it as something we can put it in

the show notes as well i actually don't know the source it's probably from somebody important but

i don't know who because they didn't write it down but it just says jesus i am a humble lowly servant

take me take all of me add anything take anything away at any cost and with any price

make me make me yours completely and wholly may i not be remembered for the shape of my face or the

way i wear my hair or the people i know or the crowds i've addressed may i be known for loving you

for carrying a dream for building bridges to the lost and broken and hurting in this world may i live

this day today as if you jesus were in my place may everything accomplished in my simple life bring honor

and glory to you and then this really hard part at the end to take my human faults and failures

and use them to remind those who know me that only you are god and i will always just be mindy

there have been days when i had received great gifts and blessings and so the idea of saying

add anything take anything away

those are hard things to pray sincerely

but i think the sort of the arc over time of that prayer over my life

has been very healthy

reorienting daily

and transactional at a level of me choosing do i really want to say this to the lord today

and the oftener i do the more i

i have sensed the winds of his spirit throughout my life in ways i could never have

planned or intended or sought after and for me a daily prayer of surrender

is a very practical doesn't take four hours doesn't take 20 minutes

you can do it while you're making breakfast or writing a sermon

you can just pause and re-surrender yet again your whole life to the one in whose hands you are so safe

so loved so known and so cared for

yeah i actually have no idea how to come how to say anything more to that like it's uh just even the

poem and all that coming together that was that was beautiful thank you for sharing that

um we're gonna we'll put uh we'll put a photo of it on there the thing that i love is um i actually

couldn't read it like it's so uh when you held the frame up it's so oh i can't either yeah i mean it's

so worn and weathered and when she recited it for a second i thought like she was reading it but

she's like staring right at the webcam and so like this is not this is something that that's worn on

your heart this is memorized this is this is part of the culture of of who you are um and and i love

that i have um just at a personal level i have a bumper sticker and and actually i bought out the

store of of the bumper sticker and i've got maybe 30 of them stockpiled so i bought 50 of them a

couple decades ago and it's and it's this uh it's a john 330 uh you know he must become greater i must

become less and it and it's this uh basically the bumper sticker i literally have it on my desk right

here and so i had to look down just to reference but it says it's not about me uh just living

living the the life that way um and allowing um allowing god to shape all the aspects of it

and taking care of realizing that you have to take care of yourself in that system so that you can be

uh the the the leader the the spouse uh that god called you to be the the father uh the mother the

parent that god had called you to be that's that's so beautiful um mindy uh so thank you very much for

the time i know that you've got a lot of things going on in your world uh soul care if somebody

just briefly somebody wanted to connect uh yeah yeah yeah yeah on the there's a soulcare.com is our

website and we have a team of people now who are also providing services to leaders uh spiritual

direction leadership coaching but there's just a lot of resources on the site just for anybody and then

so you can sign up to get our email distribution there if you're interested um we also have uh

because of a team that's coming around soul care one of whom is my daughter-in-law uh she has been

doing an incredible job on our instagram feed so i really feel like uh people are getting some value

out of that i used to never tell anybody about it because it was like completely dormant and lame but now it's

cool and so uh yeah it's just the at soul underscore care um for that or myself mindy calaguire on instagram

just love to stay connected to this conversation we love talking with leaders about how they're actually

doing we are never surprised we're never happy but never surprised at the true levels of pain

disorientation and that kind of stuff that many leaders are holding i've had conversations with

leaders from around the world for many years now and i can tell you with great confidence no matter where

you are no matter how dark your circumstance may seem there is nothing beyond what god can meet you in

and even just be with you in a painful place and eventually guide you from there but your soul

like the writer of proverbs says above all else we have to guard that innermost

part of who we are for from it comes your life and ultimately your leadership amen

well mindy thank you for the time jumping on this um we're going to land the plane right

there because i don't think it could be said better uh for for mindy this is jeff at the church digital

thanks for jumping on the podcast and we'll see you next time uh here on the show y'all have a good day

see you guys