Church & Mental Health with Laura Howe

What does it look like for the Church to become a true place of hope, healing, and care when it comes to mental health? In this week’s conversation, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen are joined by Laura Howe, a clinical social worker and founder of Hope Made Strong and the Church Mental Health Summit, a free online event coming up on October 10, 2025.

Laura shares her journey into bridging faith and mental health—born out of frustration and a longing to see the Church rise to its calling as a safe, caring community. Together, they explore the unique role the Church can play in mental health support: not as a replacement for clinical care, but as a vital presence of peer support, belonging, and discipleship that helps people feel seen and held.

This episode touches on:

• How churches can move beyond programs to cultivate a culture of care
• The power of peer support as the “missing piece” in mental health conversations
• The theological and cultural obstacles that keep communities from engaging suffering honestly
• The very real challenges of compassion fatigue and burnout for leaders—and practices for resilience

Whether you’re a pastor, ministry leader, caregiver, or someone longing to see your church embody greater compassion, this conversation offers both hope and practical wisdom for building communities where people can truly experience the canopy of care we all need.

About Our Guest:

Laura Howe is a clinical mental health social worker, addictions counselor, and project manager. She has spent her 15-year career supporting and serving the marginalized and suffering in her local community.

In 2019, Laura launched Hope Made Strong, an organization dedicated to helping the local church care for their communities without burning out. In 4 years the team at Hope Made Strong has grown and together they are serving churches all over the world with online courses, cohort groups, trainings, events, and a podcast.

Laura is a refreshing voice in the faith and mental health space; upbeat, practical, with a strategic lens. If you are looking for resources to support your ministry leaders and congregation Laura and Hope Made Strong is a go-to resource.

Laura is also the organizer of the Global Church Mental Health Summit, a free online event happening October 10, 2025. With 50 speakers from around the world, including Dan Allender and Wendell Moss from the Allender Center, the Church Mental Health Summit is a FREE online event that equips you to support mental health with practical tools and faith-rooted care. Get your tickets at: https://www.churchmentalhealthsummit.com 

Episode Transcript

Dan: Rachael, when we talk about mental health, one of the places we know it’s hardest to engage that topic happens to be what?

Rachael: Unfortunately a place many of us have spent a lot of formative time. The church.

Dan: Yeah. And again, what we would argue and what I think most people would want to know is that it’s the place that it is safest, most honored to engage the issues of the heart, the mind, the body. And yet I think it’s one of the great tragedies and that is it’s often the place that’s most difficult. So our guest today, Laura Howe, first of all, welcome Laura. I’ll introduce you in a moment, but just it’s so good to have you here. And our task is to invite people to think about how they can engage the issues of their own life and the lives of those they care for. In the context of the believing community, the Ecclesia, the church, and you are a remarkable therapist, you are a podcaster and maybe most impressive, you are actually have an organization called Hope Made Strong where your design and desire is to see something of the reality of the growth of the mind and the body and mental health in the context of the church. So as I said to you before, that requires a certain wild imagination and maybe a fundamental madness to have a heart to do that. So welcome and tell us how you got into this crazy and lovely dream.

Laura: Well, thank you so much for the invitation. It’s an honor to be here, honor to connect with you both. I am a clinical mental health social worker. I hail from Toronto, Canada and I, like many people in the faith and mental health world, did not intend to be in this space when I began my career, but found myself in this spot of advocate, bridge, collaborator and coordinator out of a necessity, out of a frustration or an anger or a space where I just saw, wow, we could do so much better. As a social worker, one of the roles I had, the honor and privilege to do is to develop peer support, support in the clinical setting where I worked here in Canada. And what I found myself doing was essentially manufacturing what was happening organically in the church, but maybe we didn’t realize how transformative peer support can be. And so that’s what began this journey to Hope Made Strong and to the church mental health summit and honored to be among friends and colleagues and see where God brings us because I think people are hungry and itching to have this conversation, but maybe just don’t know how to navigate the nuance of it.

Dan: Well, we’ll come back to the summit in a bit, but just to let people know that in a week from now, on October 10th, this global summit, and I am so privileged to have a very small part to be part of that unique conference. And when I looked at the remarkable people who are going to be joining this, it’s really deep and sweet honor to be part. But before we get there, when you think about doing the work of bringing mental health into the concept of the church, I want to know what has it been like, what do you do and what are you facing as you do so?

Laura: Oh man, there are so many areas and so many areas of growth and so many areas to celebrate too if we want to give a holistic picture of the church in ways that we support mental health. And something that I have noticed is there’s a tendency to over clinicalize care. As a clinician, I absolutely believe there is a space and a spot for the expertise and the need for clinical workers, but we have minimized or maybe just didn’t know what we had or available to us when we look at the community that the church can offer. And so I think that has been the trend in the last three or four years is the church has begun and was forced to look inward and say, who are we and what do we really offer when we strip away everything, when we remove the music or we remove the building and we remove the programmatic features of the church that we know so well, who are we and what are we offering to our communities? And so there’s this resurgence, I believe a resurgence where the church is saying, hey, we want to be known as a local hub of health and healing and hope and connection for our neighbors and for our communities. And I’m just really honored that so many churches have reached out and said, how can we become safe spaces? How can we show up well, and what I mean by lead well and show up well it’s how can we use best practices? How can we be healthy in the space of caregiving and how can we offer a deep well of services and supports and resources? And so that’s really what we strive to do is equipping churches to serve and lead well in their neighborhoods. And we hope to go beyond the programs. There’s a ton of amazing programs out there, but the uniqueness of Hope Made Strong is that we focus on strategy on systems, on management and administration. Probably the things that people, the caring individuals are trying to avoid policy and procedure and budgets and intake forms, all the things that feel like they get in the way of the relationship. But I think that they facilitate great relationships and that’s where care really happens is in the relationships.

Rachael: I would love to hear more. It’s encouraging for me because my experience in my located-ness, this still a great area of struggle for a lot of churches and obviously we’re here in the United States, Dan is in the Pacific Northwest, I’m in Philadelphia in the Mid-Atlantic region. Certainly I think I have seen an increase of churches taking mental health seriously and wanting to be a presence of hope and healing and some of my own story experiences that usually at least historically has come at a very narrow here’s, you need to have more faith, you need to believe better, you need to modify your behavior more. And so I would love to hear what you’re seeing and not as a downer, but yeah, what are some of the obstacles that come for communities that it’s not just, oh, we don’t have the right skillset, but what are some of the theological obstacles or just imagination, obstacles that come into play that I’m sure the churches that are seeking you out for support seeking have maybe started to overcome or are finding a different way through.

Laura: And while I don’t know your whole story, Rachael, or probably even more than a millimeter in depth, I can relate to some of the things that you’re saying and that I fell into this work because of the frustration of my own church experience where you show up on Sunday and God is good all the time and all the time God is good. Meanwhile, my life and my family circumstances certainly would not be described as good. And so there was shame or guilt around feeling bad or struggle. And so definitely that is been entrenched and we’re trying to unlearn all of those things that have prevented us from having those deep and fulfilling and enriched relationship with Christ. And I think that is a pattern that I’ve noticed along the way. I guess where we are at with Hope Made Strong is we’re meeting people where they’re at in the shifting of that thought pattern or that mindset. And so maybe it’s a survival or safety instinct of not to go into the space of fighting the battle. I certainly will shout the anthem that the church is the place for hope, but I definitely don’t engage a lot in the conversations with those who do not believe that. But we’ll meet people where they’re at when they’re ready to say, you know what? The church has a role to play in this conversation of mental health. What that role is, I have no idea. And that is where most people are at that I connect with is that we’re past the point of believing that mental health is a real thing, praise Jesus. Because we need to acknowledge, that’s the first step, that mental health is real and valid, and it’s the human condition of struggle and suffering. And now it’s the discovering of, okay, what is the scope of our work? What is the boundaries that we can work with? What is our role to play ethically and theologically? And I am not a theologian. I will leave that line of questioning to the theologians. I have no theological background, but I love Jesus and I’ve grown up at the church and I feel like the church is a great place to connect and be loved

Dan: And press a little further into, there are churches that absolutely would say by following Jesus, you don’t need to think about mental health because just following Jesus is sufficient for mental health. Then you’ve got I think a deep and good middle ground where people would say, oh, we know people need help, but let’s send them to the people who need help, which would be broadly speaking, the therapeutic community. But I think you are inviting us into that playground that no, there is no disparity between being able to invite people into a therapeutic process with people who have degrees and experience. But you’re saying that the body of Christ can participate in addressing not just your own, but other people’s mental health issues. How?

Laura: Yeah, imagine a friend, you going to a friend and saying, Hey, I’m really struggling with this. And they say, whoa, that’s a lot. I have a lot on my plate right now. You need to go talk to someone else. Here’s their number. If someone did that to me, I would feel so much rejection and I would feel so uncomfortable talking about anything in the future. And that’s what’s happening when as a church, we don’t step into the space with people and all we do is refer. Yes, we acknowledge that’s a problem, but that’s not our problem. And there’s so much rejection to that. And so yes, absolutely there is a space for the church to be able to come alongside and walk with people and connect with people. It’s both and right? We can be present as the church and as a community both and alongside with the clinical specialists, how we talk about that at Hope Made Strong is in a model of care that as human beings, we all engage and access care in similar patterns. Everyone has unique ways of doing it, of course, but there’s similar patterns where we start off with some self-care, right? We listen to music, we go for walks, we have pets, we cook, we play basketball. There’s so many different ways that we tend to our needs have baths, whatever it is. And then we connect with our community. This is our family and friends. Maybe this is a book club or maybe it’s a Bible study, but we really don’t talk about care, but we connect with other people in our lives. This is why I think children’s sports are so popular right now because it becomes a community for people. It meets that emotional need for people. And so the church obviously is that we are a community people. We excel at that in the church. And then the next level that we engage in care is peer support is we intentionally go to someone seeking support. We become vulnerable and we share something that could be out for a coffee or a walk or over text. And I think it’s that peer support, that secret sauce. It’s the prevention. It’s before professional care, it’s before clinical care that we long for. And there’s so much goodness that comes in that peer support. When I had kids, I didn’t go to my pediatrician or the baby nurse from the community. I went to my aunt and my mom and my friends who had kids and asked from them, what did you do? How did you do this? So it’s accessible, it’s relatable, it’s friendly. People are receptive. So I really think that is a space that the church can show up in, but the church can show up in all of the areas. The next one, I’ll just quickly continue the full scope of the model of care, and then we can chat about whatever area. So the next level, it’s kind of like a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where the next one is professional care. These are specialists in a specific area. They might not be clinicians where they diagnose, but maybe this is where pastoral care can fit in because they’re specialists in the interpretation of scripture and meditating on scripture and spiritual formation and all of these spaces, or maybe it is a financial literacy. These are specialist information and this is a great space and one that I think is a bit more familiar with some churches. And then in the final or at the very top or bottom, depends on which way the triangle goes, is the clinical care, the specialist care, and that’s the clinicians. And just like the triangle narrows to the more specialists, so does the need, the fewest number of people need the highest level of care. So if the church can engage in self-care and talk about forgiveness, talk about Sabbath, talk about rest, talk about resiliency and fear and anxiety, and give people the tools to be able to use those meditative and spiritual formation practices for themselves. Amazing. And our communities are in rich spaces of communities and our churches. And then peer support is I think the missing piece. So anyway, that’s when you say how does a church or where can the church show up? I think in every degree and in every area, the church has a role to play. It’s just what is your church’s capacity and resources to be able to do it.

Dan: Yeah, brilliant. And I said many, many, many years ago as I was working with a couple, and it felt like we would make progress in the context of the therapeutic work and then it would come back in many ways the next week worse. Now that could have been my therapeutic failure, could have been a lot of other things going on. But what we began to note was things got much worse depending on what happened at church that Sunday. And it came to name that in one sense as a therapist, I’m no better than the community that you’re swimming in weekly. And so when they were hearing sermons that really dismantled indirectly everything we were doing therapeutically. It just became so clear that our communities in some sense of the word support or violate the larger work of growing in mental health. And again, I think there are churches tragically that are very opposed to engaging the human heart outside of the narrow band of a kind of very wicked strict fundamentalism. But the vast majority of people listening to this podcast would be in that category of, alright, so how do I think about engaging in peer networks in the context of the church? And what have you done and what have you found helpful to grow peer networks in the church?

Laura: Yeah, it’s a great question because I think if you want to Christianize or some people are like, how do I get my leader, my church leader on board with this? I say, just say the exact same thing but call it discipleship. I really think that is what discipleship is becoming more like Christ and exploring all these spaces when we look at peer support its engaging people through mentorship or coaching that helps journey people on the road to discipleship and connecting our lived experience of the world to our faith. ‘Cause those are not always congruent. Those do not always jive together. Sometimes you’re like, okay, the bible says this but I’m experiencing that. What’s up, God, what’s going on here? So it’s helping navigate those situations and we’ve gotten into the habit to look and to put in programs in replacement of relationship and discipleship. And if we can plug in a small group for this topic and a small group for that topic, then we can check the box that we have a care ministry or we have a mental health ministry. And I would love to challenge that thought and say that care happens through relationship. The program is just facilitating relationship. And so if you can look at every area of your church and say, how are we fostering the values of belonging, purpose, and hope, then that is how we shift from programs that care to a culture that cares. And I think when you shift the mindset from programs that check the box of saying, I have a mental health ministry, I have a peer support ministry to say how can I greeters our ushers, our cafe team are our kids ministry team, how are we fostering that sense of belonging, where you’re safe here, that you are valued and that you’re a part of a community, the purpose that you have giftings and callings that we want to enrich and learn about and grow with you in and hope that through God is faithful and life sucks sometimes, but God is faithful through it and we’re going to get through this together and stories of hope, testimony of God’s faithfulness. And so rather than saying how can we check the box of mental health ministries, how can our church facilitate relationship because that’s where care happens.

Rachael: Yeah, it’s making me think of, I was just in a season of suffering probably during the COVID pandemic and I had moved across the country right before COVID, I got married, became a stepmom, and we had a significant loss. And one of my friends said, may the canopy of care over you, we just as loud or louder than the suffering you’re experiencing. It wasn’t like a may your suffering cease. There was some sense of yeah, the suffering’s not going to cease. We’ve lost something precious and that suffering is not going to just evaporate. But what is it like to be held in that a tangible canopy of care? And I think in our line of work, what we see is a real kind of unique suffering for people’s mental health is the impact of abuse and trauma. And in many ways it’s not surprising to me that some churches are really reckoning with how do we have a different kind of presence? Because I actually think people are really traumatized. And certainly here in the United States with some of the policies and realities that we’re bearing, the trauma is not going to be evaporating anytime soon in a more collective way, but also deeply in people’s personal lives. And I would just be curious when you guys are working with folks I know social workers, one of the things I love about social work is it does have such a system mindset, right? It’s not just about the individual, but it’s like how’s this work together? What are the more systemic realities that might be bringing, bearing a cost on mental health that is not just the person’s disorder but the disorder of the system? And I would just love to hear how you guys are equipping folks who are saying, yeah, we want to do this, but you know what? I’ve got a lot of trauma as the people… I think helpers and ministry leaders have a lot of trauma and when you’re dealing with mental health, sometimes the needs can be really acute, the impact of trauma in a person’s capacity and how they’re coping and how they’ve come to cope. So I’ll be curious what you all are seeing and how you’re equipping folks to engage the impact of trauma on mental health and how that shows up in community. I think it can feel overwhelming at times.

Laura: Very overwhelming. I was just having a conversation. We have an online community and one of the people asked a question about imposter syndrome. And I think that’s a familiar feeling that we all have is how can I care for others when I am suffering so much? How can I show up in really hard spaces when I don’t have the clinical training? I don’t know what to say. I am a lonely fill in the blank care person. And so how do I show up for these people? And I wish I had a lovely answer that’s all wrapped up in a bow, but I said, you know what? I’m feeling that way too, friend. I am experiencing that as well is God has put us on this earth and if we’re willing to dream it and we’re willing to put everything aside, he is going to call us to something pretty major. And that’s going to feel overwhelming and feeling that as well. And so one of the areas that we talk about in our care ministry cohort, which is like, it’s like a mastermind for care leaders where we bring care leaders into a small group and there’s about 20 of them that meet and we’re from all over the place with all different size churches learning from one another, all different denominations. And we’re learning, okay, what are ways that we can create systems and cultures of care? And one whole module is talking about wellness for the leader, compassion fatigue, burnout, caring for teams. I have lived experience of fairly acute compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma that required time off work sick. And so it’s no joke, it impacts and can be debilitating to many different areas. And as a ministry leader, when you’re experiencing the numbness or the cynicism that comes with compassion fatigue, it can feel like you’re disqualified from ministry that who am I to be able to care for people when I’m feeling this way, when I’m suffering so much?But we don’t talk about the workplace hazard of a carer a lot in ministry. It’s just the mission it, it’s the go and make disciples all is great, not minimizing that at all. But the reality is is that in other workplaces they wear hard hats or boots or they have safety trainings for the hazards in the workplace and as caregivers, the hazards, compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma and burnout and we don’t talk enough about that. So we talk a lot about that on the care ministry podcast and then in our cohort and in our community because it is a reality for so many people that we are wounded healers, we are showing up with our own scars and hurts and biases. And so how do we, I authentically connect with someone without sliming everyone with our trauma or oozing our wounds all over everyone. And it’s challenging. It is very challenging and it is a reality and it takes a sensitivity to be mindful of that. We talk about keys to resilience, so areas to build some skills and build that muscles of resilience, not that it’s one and done, but it’s an active process. It’s an active practice over time to stay sensitive and to stay forward facing. When you feel that tension between what is my current, how am I feeling versus what is being asked of me.

Dan: So much of the small group movement I think in the U.S. has the righteous and deep desire to do more than just open the text, talk about it and depart after having snacks. But the moment you begin to open up the reality that “my marriage is not as I would wish,” you’ve already addressed the imposter syndrome. I don’t know enough or I’m too in one sense broken to step into the life of others. Resilience is in some sense a key phrase here. How do you invite people through that module through, I know it’s too quick to put as four core principles, but I think resilience is one of those things we’re talking about because we’re all aware, we don’t seem to have sufficient resilience to continue in the madness of what this world seems to be throwing at us. So I think it’s one of the reluctances for people to engage peer to peer. Yeah, I don’t know enough. I’ve got my own struggles, but how do I stay in it once I get in it?

Laura: Are you speaking about the leader or the person experiencing the struggle?

Dan: Both/and.

Laura: Both/and. I was going to say or both/and, and of course it’s both/and because we are all leaders and we are all experienced struggle, resilience is like that unicorn, it’s like that work-life balance. It’s like does this truly exist and is this actually possible? I am not quite sure, so I don’t want to just be really flippant about the hard work of building resilience. It’s gritty, it’s hard, it’s not easy. It’s like losing weight. It’s like we know the things we need to do, but goodness is it ever hard to do. And so we talk about seven keys to resilience and obviously there’s no time to go through all seven and our module on caregiver fatigue, and that is almost a month long. It’s about three weeks long. So lots, we go into it quite deep with people, but there’s some things that we forget that we often talk about self-care as being smoothies and spin class and things like that but I was like, I’m going to be honest, there’s been a time when I was in the throes of compassion fatigue, crying at commercials and yelling at my kids cause they were asking for help and I was just so tired of people asking me for things and asking for help that smoothies and spin class were so far out of the reach. So to me, eat, sleep, move is self-care, eat sleep, move sleep at night when we need to sleep and move during the day, I just move at all and then eat at regular times real food at a table. We eat in cars, we eat at desks, we eat… So take self-care is really tending and caring for the physical needs that we have and we mislabel that. It’s really back to basics and it’s amazing how much benefit it comes from back to basics. Another key to resilience that we talk about is having fun. We don’t have fun. Everything has to be assigned an accomplishment or a to-do list or a checkbox. And I am the queen of lists on my list. I write make a list so that I can check one more thing off the box on a…

Dan: I do the same. I love that.

Laura: I love lists. My list in my notes app is, oh, it’s my favorite thing. So I’m a big… and I struggle with value coming from what I produce. That is something that childhood trauma right there. So I am a part of this conversation, but we miss having fun and there’s so much restoration that happens when we do things for joy and for beauty and we miss that out on that as leaders. And so resilience isn’t, I think resilience is less of a bouncing back and resilience is more of getting stuck for a shorter period of time. I don’t know if that tracks with people or theologically, but to me I’m just like, I just want to be stuck for less time. I want to be able to get through things. You don’t want to avoid suffering. I think we’re in this space because we’ve avoided suffering and lament and this is why we have such little resilience, but it’s being able to process and get through things in a healthy way. And to me that’s what resilience brings. And there’s seven keys and they’re the obvious ones like connect with people and have rest emotionally, socially, all the introverts say amen and physically. And so yes, I think there’s a lot to be said around resilience.

Dan: Well, I want to make sure we’ve got ample time to jump into this really major event coming up on October 10th. So your Global Church Mental Health Summit. Talk a bit about how it came to be, what you’re hoping to accomplish and what folks can do to be reflecting on these kind of matters through that venue.

Laura: The Church Mental Health Summit is really focused on equipping ministry leaders to support mental health. And we want to do that in an accessible way. So on October 10th, World Mental Health Day, we’ve created this online event that’s free for anyone to be able to attend. And we have seen close to 20,000 people across 130 different countries engage in the content. And so that’s really the goal is how can we engage ministry leaders with good content. Each year we feature around 50 speakers, ecumenical from all different lived experience, expertise, walks of life, ages, denominations, and countries. This year we have people from every continent representing, well not Antarctica, but… from every continent.

Rachael: It would be really cool. If there was someone in Antarctica who was like, I am all in on church mental health.

Laura: That’d be amazing. Oh my goodness, that would be incredible. But I think there’s something to say of learning from people’s different experiences. So we have people who are authors, we have clinicians, we have nonprofit leaders, we have those with lived experience and diagnoses. We have people from.. who are professors, we have people from all different walks of life sharing how, tools and practical strategy. So this is not a theological conversation, this is a practical conversation around what you can do. And we ask the speakers how… offer something that someone can use in a conversation next week, really practical, hit the ground kind of stuff and each session’s around 20 minutes so it’s digestible and you can invite all of your leaders and have a watch party share with your teams to say, hey, kids min, here are four different talks that we want to connect with on kids ministry or leadership here that we want to talk about spiritual formation and this and that and allow you to be able to use those. We have a few ticket, well, we have two ticket options that are premium, but those premium ticket options give you longer access, not different access. So it’s the same content. We don’t want to put great resources behind a paywall, but so everything is free and available on October 10th.

Dan: Wow. First of all, how do you sleep?

Laura: Well on October 10th and 9th I don’t, but we have a great team. You guys are sponsors of this event. We have a lot of our team is, this is not the Laura Houwe show, let me assure you of that. We have a great team and collaborate and I think that is the beautiful thing of this event is that it’s ecumenical. We have people from all different denominations. If you look even at the speakers and the sponsors, you’re going to see representation from all walks of life and all corners of our Christian faith. And it’s a coming together, it’s a common ground where we can all say, you know what? This is important. Let’s connect. Let’s resource people. And it takes a whole group, a whole village to raise the church. We’ll say, I don’t know if that even say, I just came to mind.

Dan: Well, I go back to the enormity, just walking through the website to see the different topics, the different speakers, the breadth and depth is profound. So if a person really wants to say, okay, I love my church. I think we’re doing some really good things, what can we do better? What can we advance and grow? This is just a superlative opportunity to take whatever you’re doing and getting a little bit further along. And so to dream this, first of all, that’s my point about your sleep, just dreaming it and beginning to then say how in making the yes, indeed, you have a remarkable team or you would not be able to have accomplished already what you’ve done, but it requires usually somebody pretty much starting the dream and moving and that’s what you’ve done.

Laura: Yeah, it feels like I’m a passenger on a roller coaster and God is just taking me on this journey of high highs and low lows. My goodness, it has been started in 2020, so this is our sixth year hosting this event. A very wise friend of mine was like, you should do an event. Because I was like, man, the church sucks with mental health. We’re brutal. We’re terrible at this. We need to do better. I’m going to do a campaign, online campaign for World Mental Health Day. And she’s like, you should do an event. It’s COVID, everyone’s at home, you should do it. And that was the first one in 2020 and we had 2000 people and then last year we had close to 10,000 people. So it’s really cool to see where God has brought this and it just shows that the hunger for this information and it’s global, the fastest growing place is Africa and Asia. They are hungry and desperate for this information and we have rich resources here in North America, but they have very few. So it has been such an honor to connect with those in that the Global South will say and to be able to provide those tools, like people reaching out in Pakistan where they’re like, Hey, I would be imprisoned if I shared this, but as an HR manager, I’m kind of the chaplain and I’ve been using this. It’s just the stories are incredible. And so if you want to start somewhere… Success for us is not how many people show up to the event. It’s good for marketing, not going to lie. It’s kind of cool for marketing, but that is not success. Success is when someone puts something into action and are able to take the next step, however small or big that next step is. And if that is having a conversation with your neighbor or your leader or hosting a watch party in the evening or taking notes and journaling, whatever it is, the next step for you is a beautiful and wonderful service and act. And we hope we can come alongside and equip you to be able to do that.

Dan: So just to be clear, on the 10th, people can step in and listen to three or four talks…

Laura: Or 50 if they’d like. That’s a lot of information.

Dan: But if they want to be able to go longer and deeper into far more, then there’s a process by which the website will take you to be able to do that. And so I think in that sense, it creates the best of both worlds. If you want a sample, you got a good sample, you want to be able to get a really full fledge meal, well it’s going to take you a little longer, a little further into that labor. And so that is again, both a brilliant, foolishly mad and beautiful plan you have created. And we are beyond honored to be part of that. I’m certainly honored to do my 25 minutes. You said 20 minutes. I just want to be clear, I just did mine and I stopped…

Laura: 25 minutes is fine because it’s like Netflix where everything is pre-recorded, you just log on and watch whatever you want. So there’s no schedule. Just whatever you serve is fine. We’ll eat it up. Lemme tell you,

Dan: Our people told me 25 minutes finish. And so I did go 24 minutes and about 44 seconds. So I felt like I cheated a little bit with those 16 seconds. But overall, or is it 26? I can’t count all to say…

Rachael: We all have the ways our trauma and mental health manifests.

Dan: A little OCD showing up a little bit all to say Again, we are so honored to be with you in this process and we will be praying that it be not just successful in a marketing sense, though I agree with you. It’s no small matter. But even more so that a few people, massive a number of people will get that sense of there’s so much more than we can be doing. Agreed. So thank you Laura.

Rachael: Yeah, thank you.

Laura: My pleasure.