Making Space for Mental Health in the Church with Daniel Whitehead

How can the church support people and their mental health well? Can the church move beyond offering simple platitudes or just referring people to professionals and moving on? Can we better become a community that knows how to listen, stay present, and walk alongside people in their suffering?

In this conversation, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen welcome Daniel Whitehead, CEO of Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries, to explore the complicated intersection of faith, suffering, and mental wellbeing. 

Drawing from his own experience of pastoral burnout, Daniel challenges our tendencies to love a good testimony. We gravitate toward tidy stories of suffering overcome, where everything gets better in the end. But faith doesn’t mean our struggles are always resolved—or that we have to stay in a place of victory.

Supporting mental health in the church isn’t about replacing professional care. It’s about asking what happens between therapy sessions, when someone is navigating the ordinary, difficult hours and days of life. 

Listen in for a conversation about honest stories, faithful friendship, and how the church can become a place where people don’t have to be “better” to belong.

About Our Guest

Daniel Whitehead is the CEO of Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries. His other roles include being an adjunct faculty member at Regent College in Vancouver, BC; serving as a committee member on the International Network on Theology & Mental Health; and being a member of the advisory group for the Centre of Spirituality, Health & Disability. Previously, Daniel spent 10 years in full-time vocational ministry, including eight years as senior pastor of a church. Daniel hails from the UK and now resides in Vancouver. He is married to Annie and has two children. He is also a certified mediator and holds a double master’s degree in theology.

Find out more about The Sanctuary Course and other resources at sanctuarymentalhealth.org.

About the Allender Center Podcast

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here.

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org

Episode Transcript

Dan: How we think about the reality of what it means to mature, what it means to grow as a human being, and in this broad and almost amorphous category of mental health. How do we engage the reality of mental health in the context of ecclesial communities, the church? It is not easy, is it, Rachael?

Rachael: Easy’s one word. no, it’s not easy and often not accessible or permissible, I guess I would say. Yeah.

Dan: No Not only accessible, permissible, it’s ambivalent to say the least. So what we have as an immense privilege is to have a dear friend of mine, Daniel Whitehead, who is the CEO of a Vancouver-based remarkable organization called the Sanctuary of Mental Health and Ministries. And you know, I can’t begin, Daniel, without two things. Number one, apologizing on behalf of my country to good Canadian friends. I won’t even say why, because it might get us into political issues, but just to say, so sorry. Nonetheless, I had just one of the sweetest days of just hanging out with you, Daniel, just talking. And they’re very remarkable things that your mind and heart ponder. So to say, to have but forty some minutes with you after having almost a full day of just conversation feels already frustrating to me, but I am so grateful to be able to introduce you to our family of people who listen. So Daniel, welcome.

Daniel: Thank you, Dan. It’s such a joy and an honor to be with you both.

Dan: Well, as we jump in, I I you know, you’re an Englishman and you are a Canadian, but you you are one of those who just has from my standpoint just a global sense of the brokenness of this earth, but also something of the wonderful and glorious work of the gospel and bringing about healing. And so I just, like how do we introduce you to our world? Like how did you get into this somewhat complex and somewhat troubling work?

Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. I mean the, to make my life a very short version, which is not something you’re generally for, but I will in this instance. So growing up in England became a pastor of a church at a young age when the senior pastor died really suddenly. And so again, my whole journey into the church in that sense was a trauma story. and then taking years to unpack that left me sort of eight years later burnt out. and I didn’t have language or permission for that. So I went on this quest, moved to Vancouver to study for a year, and that was eleven years ago. And then along the way I needed money to feed my children because we had no money. And someone said to me, Have you thought about not for profit? And I’m like, No, because I need money. Why would I do not for profit?

Dan: Right exactly. Oh my gosh. We could go on that riff for a long season.

Daniel: But anyway I did because I am I in that sense I guess maybe I’m stubborn. I can’t resist God’s call. And so there was this moment when I pursued this opportunity, the first one I pursued with a little non-profit called Sanctuary. And after four or five months of lots of interviews, they eventually offered me the job and I said, Can I just take a week to just pray this through and really think if this is and so yeah that’s all right but but we went for it and yeah I have been staggered at the the the journey I have been on and the the kind of spaces that have opened up and it I think it is literally just my willingness, my naive willingness, to say yes and this deep desire in me to find a cause to fight for so I don’t know if I found the cause or if the cause found me, but I think my own lived experience has played a big part in how I find myself in this role.

Dan: Yeah. Well and again I love the reality from just a long, beautiful day with you of, like you weave the reality of your own story, but also that pastoral experience which was both sweet and horrible, heartbreaking and yet you saw such goodness of what the church can bring. So it feels like you can’t leave what the church holds, but there is something that you have known needs to be engaged. And certainly Sanctuary gave you that potential to be able to talk about mental health. So if I were to put it as bluntly as this, like mental health conversations in most churches feel like trying to take the proverbial, I don’t know, what is it, the round peg into the square hole or something? Vice versa. Like, how come it doesn’t work?

Daniel: Yeah. There are so many ways that I mean, I can think of a few things that jump out of me, a few headlines. I think even the beginnings of the science of the mind or the beginnings of psychology set the church off on the wrong footing. You know, Freudian psychiatry, you know, and Freud as a master of suspicion, you know, I think that at the time where the church was drawing away from culture and becoming deeply suspicious of science and so I think there’s that route, which a tricky one to unpick. I also think, you know denial is, at the time seems like a really great way of dealing with a problem. Like let’s just pretend it’s not a problem. Cause it ’cause it’s too painful to even act like this is real. And if this could be real, what else about the world that I’ve been shaped to believe is true? What else might not be real? So I just believe that God is good and people who love him have good things and God can fix everything like this and healing and curing are the same thing. So and I don’t mean to sound unkind, but I, that’s what I’ve witnessed again and again is just this desire to close our ears and eyes to the realities that are patently obvious. They’re just in front of us. Which I think, I always say like that tactic is necessary in wartime. but in peacetime it will just mess you up and everyone else. So, and I think sometimes the language in the church can be about wartime. We’re always at war, so there can always be this justification for it, like it’s an emergency, and I just go. Yeah, I don’t think this is making us very healthy by ignoring the pain that’s in our own lives and those around us.

Rachael: Yeah, I mean, just when you’re saying that, like part of what I’m thinking, and I think this is what you’re putting words to, but if I’m putting words in your mouth, Daniel, you can tell me. But I do think like mental health confronts like that question of like why is there suffering in the world? In such an embodied particular and like embodied in a relational way and like in our own bodies that yeah, it kind of forces a confrontation with that question that I do think in a lot of our faith formation and faith structures we want to stay far away from. Because it’s scary and it asks us to really wrestle with suffering in the world. And I think in so many ways we like to kind of pretend like, no, that suffering exists out there with the, you know, troubled people who need Jesus. And somehow when Jesus enters your life and becomes a part of your, of who you are, just all things cease to be. And it just makes me think about when I was twenty-one, I quit running like I was a long distance runner. I quit running in college. And I think I had always been anxious. It’s like it wasn’t like, and now I have anxiety, but I think the sheer volume of the anxiety that I was able to kind of keep at bay came rushing in in a really profound way. And similarly, I’ll keep my story short. But I ended up going to the doctor finally and being like, I need help. And he was like, and he was a Christian, he was a believer. And he was like, you know, just like you, if you had diabetes and you needed insulin, or like if you needed glasses, like would you utilize those things? You know, like your brain is a part of your body. Your biochemicals are a part of your body. Your mental health is actually like a part of your whole person that God cares deeply about. But I do think, even just in my own personal life, was such a feeling of like, because we think of our spirituality as very esoteric, and therefore we think of our mind and our mental capacities as like we just have to believe the right things and everything will change. I did really feel like, and I was being told this by the church, if you need other help beyond like the word of God to manage your anxiety. I mean, don’t you know “do not fear” is the most common phrase of the text, you know? Like if you just believe these things, and it did really feel like I’m a failure.  I’m in sin. Like my doubt is, you know, wicked. So there is a way when we don’t have, like the categories or the awareness of what even like. What are we talking about when we talk about mental health and what’s possible? Then it leaves people with their actual real pain and suffering being only coded or interpreted as like a sin or like a moral failure. And so it just heaps in my mind, heaps heavy burdens on already burdened people. And I’m sure in your work, you’re running into like both ends of the spectrum with churches where it’s either A, the it’s kind of like we we just don’t even engage this it’s not something we talk about or think about or encourage or like on the other end of the spectrum we have all the answers for mental health and so you can trust us for everything. And I would just love to hear more in your work with faith communities. Like how are you engaging these polarities and you know what do you think the church needs at such a time as this?

Daniel: Yeah, I well I think it’s remarkably actually the way we do it, albeit through a slightly different medium, is remarkably similar to the work that you guys are doing at the Allender Center. When I sat, when I came to Sanctuary, it was a little local ministry and I said to my one colleague at the time, I said, We need to make a resource that any church in the world could pick up and use to help them build a framework and a language. To know even how to engage the subject. And so a big part of Sanctuary’s story in our workshops was lived experience. We elevate the voice of lived experience. You always have someone sharing their story. And my colleague said, Well, how will we do lived experience if we’re gonna have a resource that people can use? And I said, We’re gonna go and film stories. And she’s like, How will we do that? And I went, Well, in my undergrad, I made films, so I’ll do it. And so amazing set of circumstances, and I found myself two months later sitting in front of an Anglican priest who shared her story of losing her husband to suicide. And as I sat with her in that space, the space was so thick with God’s presence that I thought I had led a pseudo-charismatic church for eight years, and I have never felt the weightiness of God’s presence than in this moment. And so I came back to my colleague and said, I learned through this first interaction that a person’s story is the most sacred and holy space. Like take your shoes off, get on your knees. This is, you know. So I learnt I learned that through experience. So when I then later engaged with the Allender Center and Dan’s work, and I’m like, there are other people who have found this to be true as well. I’m not just the only one that’s found this. So this has become a mantra of Sanctuary’s work. But I think in how churches engage, I think it’s really interesting and this is quite a common one. Churches will say without even engaging in Sanctuary’s work, they’ll say, we love Sanctuary. We love, we love, I’ve heard about Sanctuary, because one person mentioned it to someone, but they’ve never done the course, they’ve never read the blog, they’ve never in listened to the podcast or anything. But they’ll say, Yeah, we’re our church, we love mental health. We refer people. Like we have a great referrals list. And yeah, I know, right? So you go, Yeah, I mean, listen, having I think churches should have referrals lists, but but if you’re referring people to absolve yourself of the discomfort of sitting with a person’s story, and if you can’t be a good friend to someone whose story isn’t everything was bad, now it’s good, let’s move on, then we have a massive problem. And we actually have a massive theological problem. There is a big elephant in the room. So I think people honestly they need permission, they need the beginnings of a framework to know how these different threads intersect. And they also need the language to go, this is how we talk about it well, and this is how we don’t talk about it well. So yeah, I don’t wanna simplify it, but I think the church has to start somewhere, and I just think it’s too overwhelming to know otherwise to know where to start.

Dan: Well, two weeks ago our pastor shared that they had hus his wife and he had started playing pickleball and joined a tournament. And he described the losing process of new pickleball players and the loss. And he’s a really kind and gentle man, but he was really pissed. And the contrast of his failure. Because some knew that he was a pastor of a church on the island where pickleball was invented. But his description of his own failure in the context that his wife was one of the most generous and giving presences, and she got an award for being the most supportive, even though they lost, the most supportive player of the match. The ability to tell stories on yourself, the ability to let people know that your own brokenness shows itself, but in that humility to be able to bring the reality that I don’t know any pastor who doesn’t struggle in his marriage, doesn’t struggle in many ways on every level that the rest of us do. Yet that very reality that there is a presumption of a kind of posture of holiness that even if we know you’re not, we don’t want you to slip into the realms of our own human struggles. We need you on the pedestal, but on the other hand, it seems, and maybe it’s a bit cynical on my part, but there’s such joy in pulling people down, but also the demand that they be risen above us. So when you’re interacting particularly with pastors who are central to engaging mental health, not just as a therapist, but how they preach, how they teach, the kind of theology they inculcate in the context of their community. How do you engage pastors who are in, I think, the most difficult job on the face of the earth?

Daniel: Mm. It’s so true. I mean, I think we always talk about the power of story. And I always say, you know, like there are certain practices in the church. In fact, there was a book made. There’s a coffee table book somewhere. It’s actually on my coffee table, probably only mine and my mum’s, but there was a book made which is a compilation of Gen Z stories. And this is all pertaining to faith, but it’s by a big organization that isn’t trying to anyway, it’s not trying to drive people to church. It’s trying to help people find Jesus. And I was one of the interviews they did, and they contacted me afterwards and said, we’d love to include your quote in our book. I’m like, Great, what’s the quote? And they sent me the quote, and I’m that’s gonna be fun. Just out of context, just taking that quote and putting it there. Because it’s basically me just dumping on the idea of testimony. Like, testimony is dangerous. So in this book there’s just a picture of my face. And then testimony is really dangerous. In churches, we, you know, because what we do is we tell, you know, everything was bad, now it’s good. Now and then we implicitly say to that person, now, if ever it goes bad again, please don’t come up and share that. Because the story’s finished now, great. We good? We agree? Right. You’re not sharing again. Unless you’ve got another bad to good, and then we’ll let you share. So you know, I kind of think. That’s the one of the things we talk about in the course that we’ve created is like how we steward testimony is really important. And of course the irony is for someone who is struggling, especially a pastor, to be struggling with any kind of inner dissonance or struggle, to articulate that in a public forum, to confess that, which could always be weaponized against them, I know, but that’s kind of what happened to Jesus. So that is sadly part of the calling. To confess that and to say, and yet here I am, is literally a description of faith. I mean that is faith. To just say everything was bad, now it’s good. I’m not sure that’s faith. I think that’s literally like just a cultural, a modern cultural storytelling trick. It’s nothing to do with faith. So I mean anyway, you guys have got more to say about that, but that’s one thing we encourage people to do is to share the story when it isn’t wrapped up, when it is messy. Because that gives permission to others to do the same.

Rachael: Yeah, when you’re saying that, it makes me think about how I think deep in our subconscious, we feel like we’re responsible. Like when you think about testimony of making God look good. 

Daniel: We’re like the marketing team. 

Rachael: Yeah. Like, like somehow the God of the universe, yeah, can’t handle if like we’re like, I choose God, and yet I’m in this season. And I’m still here and I still believe God is with me would make God look bad. You know, like, well, no, I think exactly what you’re saying. And side note to being a teenager in the Southern Baptist Church and hearing testimonies from the like you could probably hear that. The like guys who would come to our youth events and be like, I did drugs, I partied, I drank, I was like a rock star. And then I met Jesus, you know, and my life changed. I think we were all like, I don’t know, like Maybe you could have a really cool life and then you can meet Jesus. Like, kind of sounds like we’ve done this the wrong way. Like, I got ripped off. 

Daniel: Yeah, I was gonna say, you’re like, I feel I feel so sad for you. It sounded so good.

Rachael: I felt like, man, like I’ve been doing this since four. I should have like sowed some wild oats and then come to the fold. I’m just, you know, I’m teasing, I’m teasing. But I do think you’re right. Like we don’t understand that there is something really powerful about God’s faithful presence with us, even in the midst of our suffering, and we’re afraid people will go, Well, that’s not a good God, or that’s not a powerful God.

Dan: Well, as you think back, Daniel, to what you endured in in the context of taking on leadership at a at a young age after a traumatic loss, a death, and then as you kind of look back to the experience of where you came to that point of burnout, what how would you describe sort of what got you to that place of again, collapse is too strong a word, but but on the other hand, enough enough awareness, I cannot bear this anymore.

Daniel: Yeah. I think what happened I mean I would say listen I’m not about to do the testimony thing and but all pretend that everything’s great. But I grew up, I definitely felt like I grew up in a home where I was enough, right? Where I was loved, I could depend upon the love of others, that that was unconditional. So in that sense I think that has been a bedrock for me to take risks in my life, which is why at 32 I can just move to another country with no money and work it out. So, and I’m grateful for that. But leading a church, I realized how rare that kind of environment was. Like one in a thousand rare. I didn’t know that. So I was naive in that sense. So I think I got to a point of such self loathing where I no longer felt enough for me. And I realized one day when my wife Annie said to me, she said, I cannot remember the last time I saw you smile. And I realized it had been at least one year that I had felt any emotion. So I was just numb. I was just faking it. And again, Dan, you know me well enough to know that laughter and tears are things that I love partaking in. They come very naturally to me and they can oscillate very quickly. So I think that’s when I knew, and I remember praying this prayer. I sat on the edge of my bed. the best prayer I’ve ever prayed, I think, the most authentic one. And I was sobbing at just how wretched I felt leading a church. And I cried out, and it was angry, right? I screamed at God. and if he were in the room as he was, but imagining him, it would be in his face. I would have been a millimeter away from his nose. And I said, find someone else to lead this church. I’m not doing it. And the minute I gave myself, and this was self-work that no one was guiding me through, but it’s a peculiar one, right? I didn’t have anyone holding my hand. This is just me, I am retrospectively looking at what I did, going, that was really good. Well done, Daniel. Well done for allowing yourself to but yeah, so that’s when I made plans to to leave. And I did. And I left. And I left with wounds and I left limping off. It was not a big grand wow, look at everything. It was the most embarrassing and humiliating. It was awful. That’s how my time leaving a church ended.

Dan: Well, and again, to me, the integrity in that. Some might say, well, you failed, but in that ownership of no one is meant to live with, in some sense, the word callous. And not saying you were calloused, but that there are callouses. There are defensive structures that indeed kept you in, but also, in some sense, drowned you. And I think that that survival structure that often is existing for anyone, not just pastors, but where you just begin to go, I am dead. And if this is life, I think that contradiction is something of what we what we see and experience in Luke 15 with the prodigal who comes to his senses, meaning he owns his body, owns the reality that the smell, the taste, the sound of eating the food fed to pigs is not what he’s meant for. So that juxtaposition between you’re dead, but there’s something alive that is calling you beyond I don’t think many pastors, frankly, I don’t think many people are allowed to enter into that kind of ambivalence so that it is felt sufficiently to, in a sense, sense, like in almost a 12-step sense, where you’ve come to the end of the things that enable you to be able to make it, quote unquote, through a day. I just think that’s stunning integrity. And again, to think about the movement from there to coming to Regent to now teaching a Regent at times, to look at what you’ve created with regard to the Sanctuary movement and offering stories. How are people engaging what you’re offering? I know that’s a setup question, but I still know that there is both good and ill that comes your way.

Daniel: Yes. Yes. Well, obviously we have resources like the Sanctuary Course, the Sanctuary Course for Catholics, the Youth Series. These are plug and play resources that help churches have better conversations. So we get beautiful stories of people around the world. They’ve been used in a hundred and thirteen countries so far, saying how amazing this has been, how powerful it’s been, how it’s helped this change things. We have all of that. But I’ve also, it’s not as explicit as that. We’ve not had people message me emailing us to tell us how terrible it is. Like no one’s ever done that. But there are doors that clearly close. And actually often, do you know what’s funny is I can think about people that I… so I’m very liberal with friendship. I think friendship should be a very liberal endeavor. I think, which means you have to risk someone slapping your hand away. But I am very liberal with how I use friendship. Not because I don’t think it devalues it. I just believe that that’s actually my gift of friendship is the most precious gift I can give another person. And I’ve known the power of friendship in my own life of how that has healed me. So there’s a whole journey I could talk about there. But I can think of situations where I’ve offered friendship to someone. I think, oh we’re friends. And then they just don’t talk suddenly they just don’t talk to me anymore. And then you hear third hand that, well, you know, they’re more traditional in their views or something, and you know, in the Sanctuary course, it there is a story of someone who you know there’s an Indigenous lady and she’s praying and she’s using an eagle feather as she prays. And to me I just go there is absolutely no hope that, if that represents a certain tradition, that tradition I’m just gonna say it. Can I say it? Okay. That tradition, if it engages the mental health space, it will only create way more harm. It is not able. It is not actually able. And I don’t say that to be cruel. I really don’t. But unless you can actually meet a person in their story and remove all of your, it should be like this. You should think like this. You shouldn’t do that. Unless you could just meet a person, which is exactly how Jesus meets each of us, you haven’t got a hope of helping them heal. And of course, if we get close enough to actually hear a person’s story, again, I don’t think there’s a person who is imbued with the spirit of God that if you actually hear a person’s story, what they’ve been through, you don’t have a heart of compassion. If you if you’re not saying, my goodness, I cannot, then again, I’m like to me it just doesn’t mirrors. And I’ve probably gone a bit further than I normally allow myself to. Maybe that’s my stage of life. But those are some of the situations I find I could almost, you know, tear my clothes and start screaming like, Why? You know, stop doing this. So yeah, we’ve we I definitely I’ve encountered mixed reactions to to our work.

Dan: Yes. Well, I’m impressed that you haven’t gotten letters and emails.

Daniel: Maybe I will now. I don’t know.

Dan: I idon’t think we have a stack, but I think we, what’s your response to that, Rachael?

Rachael: You know, we do invite a kind of honesty, so maybe people feel indebted to speak their truth in honesty. Yeah, but I feel that like I’m I feel the deep sadness of that. I feel the rage I have because I have my own wounds. And I’m pretty high functioning, so I’m also like, if I bear those wounds, I can’t imagine what some people bear in certain contexts. But I think where I find my question for you is so let’s say you have a pastor who’s maybe or a church leaders or even a faith community or denomination that’s kind of in that middle ground, you know, where they actually do have a heart to want to be transformed. And obviously I want people to go check out your courses and check out your resources. But what are some of the ways in which you’d give them an imagination that feels like, okay, we can take this out of the overwhelm, you know, of like what we’re inviting you to do. Yeah, but I’m just thinking about the person who’s listening going, I do like, I do want to lean into this more. Does this mean I’m gonna have to become like a therapist or a licensed mental health counselor? Like, you know, what are some of the ways you would say, no, here’s some imagination for like what we’re inviting you to grow in?

Daniel: Yeah, absolutely. And that and that is one of the number one questions that gets asked is like, we don’t have anyone trained or I know Bob’s a therapist, he can do it. And I and I go, Well Bob can facilitate a Sanctuary Course if you want, but it’s not, it is an educational resource. It is not therapy. We know our lane. Now, having said that, I can’t pull the wool over your eyes. If you gather a group of people and create a safe space for them to share story, then generally good things happen, but it is not therapy. It is an educational resource. And it’s written by our amazing team so skillfully that actually if you can facilitate a Bible study, you can facilitate the Sanctuary Course. You don’t need any specialized training to do it other than you need to be able to make sure that people are sharing the air, like no one’s dominating. You need all the skills you’d need to facilitate a Bible study. And there are countless testimonies of people who have entered in and managed to do it. And I think, very similar actually to what, having been someone I’m proud to say who has attended a Story Workshop at the Allende Center, which is remarkable. In a similar way, what we’ve found is people who go through the Sanctuary Course together at the end are almost like, What can we do now together? How do we how you know, let’s all get matching tattoos. You know, it’s that kind of –

Dan: Now you are in Vancouver, you know.

Daniel: Yeah. But it’s you know, it’s that kind of energy that comes out of a group that meets. So yeah, and the funny thing as well is some people go because they’re like, my I’ve got an uncle who lives with depression or my friend, she she has anxiety, I should go. And then in the second week you realize like, I’m not here for my friend or my uncle. I’m here for me. And I have mental health. I have experienced difficult things. So I think that’s the beauty of the course, the way it’s written, it disarms people and realizes, this is a conversation for everyone, not just a select few.

Dan: But I think your point for me, Rachael, is that I won’t even name the ministry, but I had been invited to be on a radio show many decades ago. and they asked me to engage the topic of sexual abuse. Apparently they had so much mail and so many phone calls that it flooded their reserves. And this particular individual said, Well, well, we won’t have him back on because we can’t manage what seems to happen when this topic gets addressed. And again, I, you know, we all live in institutions, organizations, and you have to tend to the resources that you have. And I say that, and then the next sentence of, well, to choose to say we won’t address this issue because we can’t manage is the very essence of why I think so many pastors and frankly so many leaders in the church. It’s like we know that if we open up this proverbial Pandora’s box, that there will be things that we cannot engage quickly and easily. And that then comes back to the judgment that people often feel in leadership, like. You’re asking too much of me to, in one sense, be the end-all be-all, including your mental health. So I get why there’s this notion of referral versus engagement in the body. Yet I know that you have had to address that both as a pastor, but also interacting with so many ecclesial worlds. How do you help people hold the tension of this?

Daniel: Hmm. Yeah, I think Dan, one of the things that people often assume, because of the pre existing framework that exists implicitly and sometimes explicitly, is this idea that, you know, yeah, okay, great. So let’s train some Christian therapists. So we have you know, or let’s train some Christian mental health people. And to again to which I would say you can you can if you want. There’s I mean there’s this that’s fine if that’s what you want to do. But I don’t know that the world right now, the world needs more Christian therapists. No offense if you are one, if you’re training, go for it. What the world needs is an army of good friends. That’s what the world needs. And you go, if God were to design a community to support the current mental health crisis, it would look a lot like the church of the Bible. It would honestly look so much like it. It’s so ironic. So I’m like, can we do that? Because I think that’s the challenge, isn’t it? That many of us, we’re shaped by our our theological traditions, all of us are, and we love them. Most of them. But we come to a place where we’re implicitly shaped to understand this is good, this is bad, don’t do this, don’t do that. There are ways of rereading scripture. And there are very skilled people that can help us to do that. And I would include, you know, Dan Allender as one of them, where you suddenly see, you know, the last 20 years we’ve learned more about the human brain than in the rest of human history, probably. And when we read the biblical text in light of that knowledge, not everything in the Bible is an abstraction. Some of like the renewal, the renewing of the mind or generational curses. These things are actually like they’re actually good mind science, you know, generational trauma, the laying on of hands. This is about proximity. This is about, you know, being embodied and being close to each other. There are all of these things that the Bible actually supports if we go back and kind of read it differently. So I do think there is a gap there to in a more in a bigger way. And the Sanctuary Course does it in its way. Dan and the Allender Center do it in their way, but there is a way I think to give permission to people of the book to re-understand the book in a way that is just practically more helpful to helping people

Dan: Again, the genius of simply bringing it back to friendship. And again, we’re a growing friendship, the two of us. I go back to the day that you spent with Becky and I, and it’s one of the sweetest days of the last six months. Generative. I mean, ideas, thoughts, directions, conversation. It’s like taking time, and I may not be one that does that well, but taking time to allow the liquidity, the generosity, the movement of hearts in conversation. Instead of it being 20 minutes, 30 minutes, hour, lunch, depart. But what I believe many of our forebearers had were opportunities. Even over dinner that lasted for two or three hours, to be able to hold hearts, minds. And both Becky and I said after your departure, I don’t know if we felt as refreshed, prepared in some sense to continue on. So the fact that we’re not talking technique or even a particular way of engaging the issue of mental health. We’re talking about what does it mean to be a good friend? And I think that captures both certainly a therapeutic, but a psychological sophistication, but the depths of what the scriptures bring with the word hospitality.

Rachael: Well, I was just like, I think even some of the research is showing, like just on a purely research, that like let’s say you have a good therapist or you’re seeking psychiatric care, those are such intentionally so contained, regular but contained and people who have friends, family, pastors, mentors, whatever, companions. Right? People who have companions in the daily and the day in and the day out and the mundane, you know, like in real life, because psychiatric mental health care intentionally is not happening like, you know, you’re not like, like, I wanted my therapist to come to my wedding because we went through so many things together for me to get to that place. And I was also like, I don’t want my therapist at my wedding because that would be weird. You know, so it’s like, I’d have to manage too much. So the research really is showing people thrive and flourish so much more when they have that kind of companionship and hospitality in seasons of suffering and in even in seasons of healing. And not that we need research to compel us, but I just find it really interesting that the church has such capacity and is meant to be a people who are companioning, even when the resources feel thin, right? And that we could trust there might be a grace there to be with ourselves and other people in places where we go, I don’t know if I have the resources here. Or, you know, like I don’t feel like this is helpful. Like I don’t, you know, I don’t think my presence is helpful right now. But there like actually is something really powerful about I absolutely think you’re right about friendship. Yeah.

Daniel: Yeah. And it’s the story of the church. This is our story. This is just recapturing it and taking it back because we’ve lost it, right? We’ve become an institution over a group of friends who are following our friend who in John 15:15 says, I no longer call you servants, I call you friends. And like this to me, that’s like pivotal. Like, why did no one why is that not on bumper stickers or on little bands around our, like Jesus calls us a friend? We are friends with Jesus. Which suggests reciprocity. Like it’s mind-blowing. It’s this. So I’m like, that’s the thing that I think we should gather around and center around is the innate need for friendship as relational beings and the offer of Jesus to say, you know, you who are in many ways nothing like me, I now call you friends. And in that I am endowing you with a likeness that reminding you that. In some ways you in some ways you’re not like me, in other ways you are just like me. And and and so I yeah, I think and the church has a long history of doing that. That’s why there’s a church at the center of every town, city, and village in the west where the church anyway. That’s why it’s there, because the church would meet real needs, real needs that society’s going through. It wouldn’t just hide away.

Dan: Well, my friend, let me just say the gift you are to the body of Christ and what you have created and what I sense you will continue to create. You are one of those deeply theologically, deeply embedded in story, but you are an entrepreneur creating goodness on behalf of the people of God. So we will have more conversations. Again, grateful for your life.

Daniel: Thank you both. It’s been a joy and I look forward to those future conversations.