As business leaders, entrepreneurs, employees, and even ministry and church leaders, we all, at some point, reach a period of burnout, right? The relentless drive to pursue our duties and daily tasks sometimes lead us to a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion leaving us overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to clearly see our goal and our vision. But as sons and daughters of God, aren’t we called to live a life of peace and serenity while pursuing productivity in doing God’s work? Why then do we feel burned out if what we’re doing is God’s mission for us?
We explore this topic today with our guest Mindy Caliguire of Soul Care. With the realities of burnout rearing its head among people in ministry, herself once included, Mindy sees the critical need to address the issue. She suggests methods of centering oneself to avoid falling into weariness and breakdown. She details ways and programs that her organization offers help to people who are finding themselves stuck and in need of change and restoration.
Key Points From This Episode:
Links Mentioned:
Discovering Soul Care by Mindy Caliguire
Spiritual Friendship by Mindy Caliguire
STIR: Spiritual Transformation In Relationships by Mindy Caliguire
Download Free ebook: Write For Your Soul: The Hows and Whys of Journaling
Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard
As business leaders, entrepreneurs, employees, and even ministry and church leaders, we all, at some point, reach a period of burnout, right? The relentless drive to pursue our duties and daily tasks sometimes lead us to a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion leaving us overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to clearly see our goal and our vision. But as sons and daughters of God, aren’t we called to live a life of peace and serenity while pursuing productivity in doing God’s work? Why then do we feel burned out if what we’re doing is God’s mission for us?
We explore this topic today with our guest Mindy Caliguire of Soul Care. With the realities of burnout rearing its head among people in ministry, herself once included, Mindy sees the critical need to address the issue. She suggests methods of centering oneself to avoid falling into weariness and breakdown. She details ways and programs that her organization offers help to people who are finding themselves stuck and in need of change and restoration.
Key Points From This Episode:
Links Mentioned:
Discovering Soul Care by Mindy Caliguire
Spiritual Friendship by Mindy Caliguire
STIR: Spiritual Transformation In Relationships by Mindy Caliguire
Download Free ebook: Write For Your Soul: The Hows and Whys of Journaling
Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God by Dallas Willard
EPISODE 33
[INTRODUCTION]
ANNOUNCER: Imagine taking your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives, and leaving a godly legacy for generations to come. Get ideas and strategies to do just that when you listen to these personal stories from high-level Kingdom champions.
The Kingdom Investor Podcast showcases business leaders who have moved from success to significance, sharing how they use worldly wealth for Kingdom impact. Discover how they grew in generosity, impacted more lives, and built godly legacies. You'll find motivation, inspiration, and practical steps to grow as a Kingdom Investor.
Daniel White (DW): Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. This is your host Daniel White. And today we get to interview Mindy Caliguire. Mindy is the founder of Soul Care, an organization that works to change the narrative about deep unintentional soul neglect, through transformational leadership experiences, leadership coaching, and the soul care collective. They help leaders on their journey toward soul health. Jesus says if we abide in Him, He will abide in us. And through him. We will bear much fruit. In short, Mindy and Soul Care help leaders abide in Jesus. Without further ado, let's get right into the show.
[INTERVIEW]
DW: Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. This is your host Daniel White. And today I have Mindy Caliguire with me. Mindy, would you say hey to our listeners and tell us where you're coming from?
Mindy Caliguire (MC): Yeah, for sure. Hey, guys. I'm Mindy and I am in Boulder, Colorado, which is phenomenal and I love it. We lived in a lot of other places but Boulder is pretty epic.
DW: And then we also have David with us.
David Clinton (DC): Hello, everybody. Here in the northwest in Northern Idaho. Beautiful, the rain's starting. It's November 2nd when we're recording this. Happy to be here.
DW: Mindy, what do you have going on this week? Anything interesting?
MC: Always. There's always interesting things going on. I just came up today from Colorado Springs. I was leading, facilitating a retreat for a global organization down at the Glen Eyrie Castle if you've ever been there that's owned by the navigators. And it is one of the most iconic, beautiful environments to be there and just dealing with the souls of leaders, which I love to do. And then I came up here. This is probably my third or fourth meeting that I'm doing from our property here that we call Whisper Ranch. And I gave these guys a picture of the view from here. It's quite beautiful. We love having leaders out here. And actually two of my former colleagues from my marketplace job are actually out in the land doing some solitude today, which is just great.
DW: Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, the views are spectacular. So. So Mindy, would you tell us a little bit about what Soul Care is? And then we'll kind of get into your story. But before that, would you pray for us?
MC: Yeah, I'm happy too. You want me to pray now or give that quick little overview first?
DW: You can do the overview first, and then pray and then we'll go into your story.
MC: Great. So, yeah, so what is Soul Care? Great, great sort of question. I think of it as there's almost like three different answers to that. At one level, Soul Care is my own way of life. It's a way of living deeply connected with God and daily moments. So that my contribution in the world, my work, etc, my life flows from that place. So that's been my own resolve, and more will come out about that in my story.
Another level of the answer to what Soul Care is, I also feel like it's a message that I care very much to get out to as many people as possible because I find that many of us are really struggling in this area. And that's been true for a long time. But specifically, since the pandemic, it has been really, really more obvious that there is a need for the care of the soul. So, it's my own way of life but it's also this message that I feel compelled and desiring to bring.
And then the third level of the answer to that is it's now, you know, we've had soulcare.com for a number of years, and now there's a whole team of people coming around how to help God's people and any people meaningfully make this journey towards soul health, what I think of as soul health. And so they're now almost 20 spiritual directors and we have coaches and people that lead retreats and help people on sabbatical. And so there's a whole team and an organization coming up around this. We're piloting different things, working with different ministries and so it's really a fun season. Sad that it is as extremely important as it is right now. I wish no one needed to hear this message. But until that's not the case, we're happy to come together as a team, and see how we can support be part of what God's doing to give lift to this topic. So those are my kind of three levels of answer.
DW: Yeah, that's very informative. So thank you for that. And if you would pray for us, then we'll get to it.
MC: Delighted to. Alright, so wherever you are, unless you're driving, let's just pause and notice that God is with us right here and right now. Maybe breathe in and think about the fact that the things that concern us today are not, He's not unaware of. It could be financial concerns, relational concerns, strategy concerns, health concerns, whatever they are, our God knows and is with us in them. And so, God, our prayer to you, collectively, right now, whenever people hear this i' that you would infuse our imagination with the life you've designed us to live. Help us to know what caring for our soul would look like, what creating systems for the wellness of people's souls might look like. And to approach this not from drivenness or anxiety or anything else other than out of love. So, we pray this in Jesus' name and for His sake, amen.
DC: Thank you very much for the... Would you tell us a little bit about where you grew up? And how you got through your journey to where you are today?
MC: Yeah, what was the middle part? Where I grew up, I heard that part and what was the middle?
DC: And just how that, from where you grew up to where you are now? What does `your journey look like?
MC: Oh, guys, how old are the people you usually interview? This is a long answer for me.
DC: You can highlight whatever parts are interesting to you.
MC: I'll try to make it quick.
DC: People from 30 to 75 at least, so...
MC: I'm just teasing. So yeah, I grew up mostly in western New York, so south of Buffalo, small little farm town. And that was most of my sort of growing up years, big family. I was the oldest of seven kids and parents love each other, love our family, devoted to Jesus, on a journey throughout their, my childhood. And then met my husband while we were in school at Cornell University, and then he went to Dallas Seminary. I got the PhD for putting hubby through. And that's when I first started working in the marketplace, usually in technology, often in sales, worked at a lot of different places during those years when he was finishing his THM. And then we interned at Willow Creek doing a church planting internship in the early '90s. Willow Creek was only 15 years old at the time. And I know it's hard to imagine and then following that, we decided to go to Boston to start a church.
So, we did a hard thing in a hard place in the hardest possible way. We had no church planting organization, no sending entity, no care, nothing. And raised our own money, did the funds, I mean, it was a little bit nuts. And we spent the next 10 years there and midway through those 10 years was when I was confronted with the profound lack of well-being of my own soul which I had no imagination for, I had no idea what was even happening. But I had some pretty severe neurological symptoms that sidelined me. And, I was pregnant at the time with our second son and so I was hospitalized several times because all the things. That was probably you know the most formative experience for me in shaping my my conviction, my resolve, my insistence really on living differently than I had prior to that. Like I would say in ministry. I just did what I knew had helped me succeed in academics and in the marketplace and whatever. It's like you just keep pushing and pushing and driving and driving and, and use your intelligence as best you can and use your hard work and your strategy and all those things and I landed myself in a pretty bad place.
And I didn't have any other way of thinking about the work I was called to. I thought that was doing it right. In fact, I remember being so incapable of functioning for a season like I had these bizarre things going on in my optic nerve. And like, all these things were happening was bizarre. And, I remember, I remember in prayer, like telling God, this wasn't strategic. Because all the work wasn't getting done. Don't ever tell God this is not strategic. If you learn anything from this podcast, don't ever tell God what is and isn't strategic. So, um, anyway, I laugh now at my hubris, right? And nonetheless, he graciously led me out of that season. And as the healthier I got, the more my natural gifting and the spirits movement, and God just kept opening doors that I didn't even know existed for this message.
And I've had many different seasons since then. I'll try to give the highlight reel. I was invited to come back and join the staff of Willow Creek, working in spiritual formation with John Ortberg in the early 2000s. Our family, my husband's work was geography neutral at that point, we moved across the country. And I began working at Willow, although I was sort of very much not of the driven way anymore. I remember telling them in the interview process, it's like, you know, I do soul care now. Like, I don't do that crazy you're on fire stuff anymore. And they're like, no, no, we need that. And so I went there, stayed on the staff for a while, left for a season when my boys needed me at home and school, or while they were in some middle years at school.
And then joined the Willow Creek Association, some years after Reveal had been published which was this big research thing that was helping churches think differently about discipleship, and transformation. And I had started just introducing those findings in my teaching to church leaders, and pastors and whatever. Because those findings very much aligned with what I was trying to help people believe about spiritual journey, and how you help people, how you are on that journey, and how you can help others on it. And then, a couple of projects we were working on involve some significant technology. And I was serving on the executive team in the WCA. And then an investor came forward. And anyway, all of that turned into me and my team being moved out to Boulder to work with the amazing tech company that's based out here that is all Kingdom focused, that's doing a lot of good in the world right now as well.
And so I was with that team, in senior leadership there as well, for the last like nine years. Along the way, we bought this land, it's called Whisper Ranch. We're building it out. And then when the pandemic hit, it was like, all right, I started some conversations, some new conversations with the CEO and other leaders who I consider good friends about the need to focus my, best hours of my day toward trying to figure out how to give the biggest lift to this message and to helping people globally with the care of the soul. So that's kind of how I ended up sitting on a hillside in Boulder, Colorado. After starting out in a small town in western New York.
DC: Alright, it sounds like if I'm hearing you correctly, your experience when you were pregnant with your second was formative in this message being so important to you, and you being a champion for it, is that right?
MC: Yes. Yeah, that I mean, there's no way to overstate that. People then have said to me, you know, maybe there between Mindy and Soul Care and, like, from a structural standpoint, I'll need to figure that out. But it's like, I never wanted to be a teacher or a writer or any of those things. I was just trying to take care of my soul. And to me, the whole message and my own life are so interwoven, like I just, I almost can't think of my life without this way of life. And now for the sake of the organization, I need to think about things a little differently, but the truth of it is I often say that it's like, you know, the idea of something being seared into, you know, like something that just gets burned with intense heat, and then it changes forever, the nature of that thing. That's what it felt like my soul went through that season. It feels like it was seared. Even the allure of drivenness, the allure of "oh but if I could do was pushed a little harder, I might get more done", the allure of, "oh, I really am all that big of a solution to whatever's going on". The allure of those things has lost its allure even, almost like an alcoholic who starts to realize how destructive their addiction has been to their family, to their friends, to their business. And that hitting bottom when you finally realize how crazy you've been.
DC: And so, God took that allure, the luster away from you. You no longer wanted it.
MC: I didn't. And I have to say like I often say, God, please. I don't know that I wouldn't be susceptible to that again, right? Like we just never presume that we're so whatever beyond the thing. But thus far, and it has been many years, and I've been in some pretty intense environments since then. God has continued to meet me in the quiet places, he's continued to meet me in the stillness, and in the resolve to live and lead from health. And by God's grace, my hope is that that will continue.
DC: Why do you think it is that we, as Christians fall into this sort of thing?
MC: That's a very good question. Because when you think about how systemic even the realities of burnout are, in ministry in particular, it should start to cause us to think about this almost from a public health standpoint. Jesus came to give us life and life to the full. And the rather predictable outcome of being involved in ministry is that you're gonna burn out and lose that very light that brought you in ministry in the first place. I was just talking with a group of leaders earlier today or yesterday. That it's just it's like, it's just an assumed thing. If you get involved in vocational ministry, you're gonna be over-explained...
DC: Plan for what happens if you get burned out.
MC: Correct. And so your question is, how could we? How is that the norm?
DC: Right. How do we avoid this? How do we not get into it in the first place?
MC: I think Jesus's question of, you know, how could you benefit if you gain the whole world but forfeit your soul, and what could you give in exchange for it is a question we're not used to asking ourselves. Because we don't think that applies to us. We think that's the kind of question you ask someone who's far from God, who isn't, quote "saved". And the deeper I've gone in with that question, the more I absolutely believe, and I think the scripture demonstrates, that Jesus wasn't asking that question to people who might consider being in relationship with him. It's in Matthew 16, that's verse 26. And at the top of the paragraph, it's really clear, Matthew tells us, Jesus was talking to his disciples. He was not talking to the crowd who was thinking about following him he was not as we often use, use that verse as an evangelistic appeal. Like don't waste your life chasing after money and fame and fortune and miss eternity with God. It's usually what we mean. What's the benefit if you gain the whole world, but forfeit your soul.
But that's not that's not who he's talking to, he's talking to his followers. And the second clue that comes to us in that verse. And this is not directly answering your question. I'll get back to that. The second clue that comes in that verse is that the word for soul in the Greek is psuche. And that word in verse 26 is translated soul and in verse 25 is translated life. Now, there are two sentences, one after the other, obviously, same stream of thought. Jesus is saying, in what we associate with a high-challenged, discipleship verse, taken in isolation. If you will gain your life, soul, psuche, if you gain your life, you must lose it. But if you lose your life for my sake, you'll find it. And how could you benefit if you gain the whole world but forfeited your life, your psuche? And what could you give in exchange for it?
And I think in answer to your question, one of the things, one of the reasons we have so categorically missed the care of the soul as an imperative, as an assumed priority is that we have lost in imagination for what nourishes the soul that is in Christ. We sort of have a theology that says, as long as your soul is saved, the deal is done right, these are the words we've said. You got the deal done, you think of it as an inert sort of toggle switch that you flipped, right? That now the soul is not lost, it's found. It's not dead, it's alive and all those things are true. But most Christian, evangelical anyway, most Christian context I'm not saying this is true of every stream or every church out there or ministry, but most of the ones that I had been in, once a soul was saved, we didn't talk about anymore. There was no imagination. there was no rhetoric, there was no rationale for why you would prioritize your life around the well-being of your soul and let everything including your ministry contributions come out of that place. And so without that imagination, there's no surprise that nobody has aligned, no one has arranged their lives like this.
In fact, can I tell a fun story? It gives me great hope, actually. Because I want to see this change at scale in the next few years. I want to see this change at scale in the next few years. In the mid-1860s, I believe, in London, and maybe some of the areas around it, there was an epidemic of a disease that they called childbed fever. And during its peak, six out of ten childbearing women, six out of ten women died shortly after childbirth. Now, if you imagine the block on your street, I don't know if you have many people near you in Idaho or other places, wherever you are, right now, imagine what would happen in your neighborhood, if six out of ten women who had just had a baby died? What chaos does that create in an economy, in families? I mean, chaos. Loss of life, brand new newborn babies that need to be nursed. And I mean, I can't imagine the chaos. And, nobody knew where it was coming from. So, of course, the doctors were doing all the more to try to do autopsies on these dying mothers in order to try to figure out what was going on. Now, this was, people understood in the 1800s about the concepts of the microbiotic world that things were below the level of what was visible. But they didn't, the concepts of contagion hadn't yet come into sort of general scientific knowledge. And different people were researching these things in different places, but they hadn't collided.
But eventually, what they realized was that the surgeons doing the autopsies in the basement of the hospital were then going upstairs and delivering babies without washing their hands. It was actually the very people who had dedicated their lives to life, to healing, who had unwittingly been transmitting the disease that was causing this chaos. And not surprisingly because we're all this way a little bit. They were not too keen to see themselves as the problem. And so, there was even some resistance in that community, in the history, I've done some research on this, there was some resistance in that community to even recognizing their culpability in this tragedy. Eventually, the science became so compelling that they had to confront and realize what was actually causing this transmission. I don't even remember what the actual disease was. But I think it was just known as Childbed Fever. Guess how long it took to completely eradicate the death rate.
DC: How long?
MC: Several years. All it took, you know, they had no indoor plumbing, they had no hot water. So, it wasn't easy to figure out how to get hot water and soap into the hospitals. But when and as they did that, within I think it's like 18 to 36 months, not a long time, the death rates plummeted, there was no, there was no passing it on. It was just done. And all it was and this is the beauty of this illustration, all it was was some very simple practices. Maybe there was a little effort involved. But once you had an imagination for what was going on in the unseen, it was easy enough to arrange your life around best practice. It was easy to do it. And I believe that's what could happen in the body of Christ if we collectively increase our imagination about what's really going on in our relationship with God that allows us to live as Jesus invited us, as him as the vine and us as a branch and us literally connected in real time not to thoughts about God, not to knowledge we know about God but actually connected to the person of God in real time.
And that is what brings life into our souls. And yes, does it take a little effort, does it take a little bit of intentionality to weave our day to day living around the life of God? Yeah. But, you know, like the words of Joshua, you know, today I'm laying this before you, life or death? Choose life people, choose life. It doesn't take a PhD in spiritual formation, it doesn't take a six-month sabbatical. If you can get one of those, by all means do, but God's presence is as near as our breath right now.
DC: You mentioned some of these best practices. Would you share some of these best practices? I'm sure there's people who are burnt out or on the edge of burnout, who would love to hear ‘what do I do’?
MC: Yes, yes, yes. Well, when you breathe, you spiritually begin to take in from God's presence with you right here right now. His life and that sounds like kind of elusive and goofy, maybe, whatever. But different ways of prayer, different practices that help our souls like literally slow down, power down from the drive, drive, drive. Power down, and learn how to open up and rest in God's presence. It's not rocket science, you guys. I mean, I know many leaders who would rather figure out how to leap tall buildings with a single bound, leaders that would rather stay up for 48-hours nonstop to finish their strategic plan. Like, give them a challenge like that and they're good. Give them a challenge to go do two hours of silence and solitude and they'll, I have friends leaders like this, and it's become a running joke with one of them. I mean, he can do anything but for him to slow down and spend two hours with God that's not affective and useful and driving things forward. It's not rocket science. That's the thing. It's like hand washing, it's like, a little bit of soap, a little bit hot water, and you're good. It's like, how do you build 15 minutes of silence every morning?
DC: So, us that's in the leadership world, so many of us feel like, like a shark. If I stopped swimming, I'm gonna die. Like, always be moving. And it's hard to get our head around how simple that can be, to just slow down.
MC: It really, really is. Like when Jesus said, you know, your burden could be easy. The yoke could be easy, and there could be light. I mean, most of us, like we don't have to teach that to other people. But we long ago stopped believing that could be real. Well, what if we actually meant it? What if? What if?
DC: As you work with people and help them through this stuff with soulcare.com, what kind of changes have you seen in people's lives?
MC: Oh, come on. Mental Health, like their anxiety levels are brought down to normal levels of oh, that's alarming, okay, well, I can reground. Or I'm angry about something well, yeah, I feel it but it doesn't drive me. I see greater productivity and fruitfulness actually, in the things that they care about. Creativity increases. their sort of quiet confidence is restored, their imagination of how it's got to work and what's going on. They don't feel as isolated. Yeah, there's, there's tons of things that we notice. And then when like, I'm starting to get in touch with a couple of not just individuals, but organizations that are starting to kind of wrap their way of life around some of these ideas. And, I mean, people are finding that people who are on the edge of quitting jobs are actually staying and being able to contribute and bring some of the change that they thought was needed. They're not as victimized by the toxicity around them, they're able to actually bring energy into healing and supporting that. That's why I think what's possible is as dramatic a turnaround as what childbed fever was back in the 1800s.
DW: I'm just thinking about how difficult it is for me to slow down and really be still. Do you have any advice on like even how to do that?
MC: Yeah, yeah. So one of the practices that was taught to me when I was in my own recovery, and has been a bedrock of my way of life since. Different traditions call for different things. I just call it silent prayer. And an example of how it comes to us in the scripture would be from Psalm 131 verse 2 where the psalmist writes "I stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child on its parent's lap." So, you hear that intentionality. I have chosen to still and silence my soul. And a weaned child compared to an unweaned child. We don't need to get into the specifics, but a weaned child is with its parent. Because of the relationship, it's not demanding anything to meet anything, it just chooses to be there. And so, I was told to do this for 20 minutes, twice a day. And I was like, I had three young kids. I was like, I don't even get a shower every day, you got to be kidding me. But I was crazy enough and aware enough of how desperately I needed to try something, even if it made no sense whatsoever. And this didn't make any sense to me. That I at least tried out, I'll negotiate with it. I'll do 20 minutes a day, most days a week. And I think I did usually do five to seven days a week. And I had to wake up before the whole household, I had to arrange my life around finding that silence because it's not going to just like show up on your calendar.
And right, I mean, when do 20 minutes show up? Yeah, so that's not going to happen. So you have to arrange your life around it. And you set a timer and then it was explained to me? Well, I can give you a definition, if you want. So, the definition that was given to me was that it's a wordless way of resting in the presence of God, with an attitude of openness, contrition and longing. And I just feel like my soul even calms down when I hear that definition, a wordless way of resting in the presence of God, with an attitude of openness, contrition and longing. Now, the mechanism of it might sound even similar to other modes of what we could think of as meditation and things like that. I'm not a big fan of like opening your mind to the universe, and whatever is flying around. But this is a very Trinitarian, like, how are you resting your soul in God's presence like a weaned child on its parents? Like, how are you stealing and quieting your soul.
And our interior worlds are pretty loud, if you can get it quiet around you, it's still pretty loud on the inside. So the mechanism that was introduced to me that, again, is not unique, but it comes a little bit from the realm of mindfulness of how to fix your mind on a thing. So these are biblical concepts, to set your mind on a particular thing. Jesus, you know, and the Apostle Paul telling us to, you know, capture every thought. Captive, make it captive to the obedience of Christ, right? So what is what is that work that we do? That captures where our mind wanders to, and then brings it back to stillness and openness before God. So what you do is you set a time or whatever, and then you're gonna think about, discern, I like to even pray about one word, maybe a phrase, something very short. That for me, as it was introduced to me, and I would encourage you to do is representative of your current sort of longing, your current desire for God? Do you need peace? Is it healing? Is it stillness? Is it vision? Is it whatever, there's a bazillion words. It could just be the word grace or the word Jesus, whatever it is.
And as you sit in that silence, you let the ideas, the thoughts, the meanderings of your mind get still like turbulent water getting flat. And of course, that lasts for like, not even a nanosecond, right? And then you're like, thinking about things and whatever. And then the challenge is, as soon as you realize that your mind has gone somewhere, you use that word to just bring it back. Like, oh, alright, well, now I'm making a shopping list of things I need to get at Target this week. So like, No, this time is about grace. And you allow that word to bring you back to stillness. And then I'm arguing with somebody quite convincingly, I always win. Right? It's ridiculous. And then it's like, oh, wait, no, no, my mind is over here. No, no, no, this time is about grace. And you bring it back and make it be quiet. And you're in some levels, giving what I think of as like a silent ascent or permission giving to the spirit to move in your soul at a level below words, where you're not saying I even need to understand what you're doing in me. I just say have your way. I want to rest in your presence. I need healing. I need wholeness. I am coming to you just as I am. And for many leaders, myself very much included, our worlds are full of words. We're casting vision, we're teaching, we're correcting, we're recruiting, we're firing, hiring, we're doing all the things, negotiating. And we're used to depending on our words, and I have found it to be an incredibly healthy practice to let go of my words and to rest in God's presence in silence.
DC: I'm excited to try this.
MC: Yes, please tell me yes. Please do.
DC: I'm setting my alarm earlier tomorrow, and I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna try this. This is great.
MC: Good. Good. You have to shoot me an email, let me know how it goes.
DC: Okay.
MC: I wanna hear.
DC: You go ahead, Daniel.
DW: Yeah, this is just reminding me of, you know, I've had many conversations with my mentor who disciples me and, and just talking about how like, I'm such a doer, and like, I get all of my, like, identity even out of like doing things and accomplishing things. And so, you know, he keeps on telling me I have to be present I have to. And it's like, just so difficult to make that shift from doing to being. And I think that's what you're talking about. Is that right?
MC: Yeah, absolutely. We get addicted to our doing, we get addicted to being needed, we get addicted to the praise we get, for solving problems and achieving great things, even God things. Like when you layer in God doing not just any kind of doing, it becomes even more seductive, even more difficult to let go of, even harder to like, if you don't have a pretty strong compelling why it's important for you to sit and do nothing, you're never, you're never going to give yourself the permission to do that. And I just think it's the enemy's brilliant tactic to keep God's people suffocating for the life of God with it.
DW: This reminds me of you know, some of those conversations that I've had with different people who have been wildly successful and spend four hours in prayer or, like, you know, three hours reading scripture or just like, you know, and it's like, that makes no sense how you're spending half your day, like praying in silence like that doesn't. But it's like, when we abide in, in Christ, and in His Word, like, he brings the fruit. And so it's just incredible.
MC: The whole point Jesus was bringing right it's the Last Supper, he returns to this metaphor several times during one meal. But significantly, he knows more than anyone else at the table, what's about to happen. And he is trying to help compel them at that time. And now us centuries, millennia later, that there is coming, a way of relating to him that they can't wrap their heads around. They've only known walking with being with their rabbi. And he knows that's about to profoundly change. And he promises the Spirit, He promises, He prays over their unity. All those things we know from that beautiful. I've heard it called the Olivet Discourse. I'm not a theologian, I don't know exactly what it's called. But that whole thing in the Last Supper. But he's introducing this thing saying He is a vine, and we are branches, right. We get grafted in. And to the extent to which we remain connected in real time. We bear much fruit, but it's not because of how hard we're working on the fruit. It's because of the depth of connection.
And I've had fun doing some research. You know, my dad is a biologist and studied a lot of really cool things. And I thought, well, what if you could look at a graft, right? We know what a graft does. There's a vine could be grapes could be a tree could be a rosebush, but there's a thing that knows how to live and you choose the base based on its sort of ability to resist disease and the drought tolerant and all that kind of stuff, the thing that really knows how to live and then you get this branch that is going to create a certain kind of fruit or flower that you really want to happen. And so you have Master Gardener told me, you you create a wound in the base and create a wound in the branch. And you have to bind them together. So that it takes hold so that the life force from the one moves through this point of connection and into a completely different thing. Such that it gives its life, it gives its life for the fruit out here. I mean, you can just sit with that for a while, right? Yeah. And I thought, I wonder what it would look like if you could see that like, Where's the membrane? Where's the stuff in here become stuff in here. Like I don't know how that works. But there's pretty cool pictures online that I found that shows when a healthy graft has taken, that's what we're after. That's the vulnerability point and whether or not fruit is going to be born. I'm all about this.
DC: Because we're not producing it on our own, that we think we are, right?
MC: And then we get more like, I gotta go make more, and God wants me. I mean, we just we invent all these crazy things, usually out of our own trauma, our own brokenness, our own drivennes that has nothing to do with the invitation of the spirit.
DW: Yeah, it makes me think about how we're so driven. And like you said, running around with our hair on fire that we, and we asked God to help us and give us creativity or vision or, you know, ideas and different things. And it's like, are we even listening to God? Like, can he even tell us if he like?
MC: What if He's saying, "slow down and shut up"?
DW: Yeah, earlier this morning, when we were interviewing another guest, we were talking about just the speed that God moves at, and the book, you know, Three Mile An Hour God, and how, like, a lot of times, we just run ahead, and, you know, crazy fast, and it's like, maybe you should walk with God, you know.
DC: As you've been on this journey, from needing soul care to helping provide soul care, and I help people learn how to do this. Are there some things you've learned that maybe you didn't expect, along the way, surprising things?
MC: One of the biggest surprises that came early on in my own recovery was like, I kind of got the idea, okay, I need to find new ways to connect in real-time with God. So the logical sources of that were, of course, prayer, maybe different ways of prayer. But prayer obviously is talking to God. So we're connecting with God in some ways. So that that was an expected category. Similarly, engaging scripture. So the person of God showing up in God's word that was an expected category, now, maybe I needed and I did need to find new ways of engaging scripture, because sometimes when the Bible is your work, it's hard to have that be refreshing and life giving. So, I needed to find new ways of engaging scripture, and there are so many, but it was expected in terms of a category. The thing that surprised me, David was that I, I, I found I was having to having to negotiate new ways of relating to peers. Women who are in my small group, friends, other pastors' wives in that season of my life. And any pretense of having it all together was quite gone at that point for me.
And we were starting to read authors like Larry Crabb, that were suggesting that maybe we all need to sort of find a different way of relating. And Henry Cloud was writing books about safe people and his many years ago now. But I think one of the biggest surprises for me was finding that these ordinary relationships, it could be a professional relationship, a therapist, a coach, to spiritual director, whomever, but that through a human being imperfect and very much in process, just like all of us are, something of the living God was starting to shape and reshape who I was at the core of my being. And that took my breath away. I was like, wait, what? Like, I thought transformation was all about these, like practices that I go do by myself. And yet I was finding new energies, new life, new ways of thinking and being happening very much as a result of this different way of relating. And that really did surprise me. That I mean, yeah, and now of course, there's like Dr. Jim Wilder and other people have been writing about the neuroscience around this even the nonfaith context, the leading neuroscience people are all saying, our identities are shaped we are becoming who we're becoming in many ways, you know, you've seen the memes, you know, the five people, you are your friends, and I'll tell you your future.
Well, there's actually truth to some of that. Yeah. Are mirroring neurons, the way we respond to somebody who sees us if you think about somebody in your history, who just named you named your gifting named, you're calling called out something that maybe you didn't even believe was possible, and all of a sudden, it's happening and there is a power there that now if you look at the New Testament, think about why is so much in the New Testament about how we relate to each other. Well, there's more about how we relate to each other than about how you should go pray. Now we take examples from prayer. We see Paul talking about prayer all the time, but there's very few like other than Jesus giving us the Lord's Prayer. We don't have very many instructions, even like I just gave you one way of prayer, that maybe in the Hebrew culture, ways of prayer, were just sort of known. I don't know why. But most of the New Testament I read is about how to relate to each other.
So, anyway, I think that was a surprise for me now, more recently. That's a good question. I think I would say more recently, it started in like, 2008. And maybe it has only accelerated since then. A surprise for me has been how God works through these digital spaces, that at some level, we would have, I would have ended sort of snub my nose that like, oh, well, you know, of course, face-to-face is all that matters. And you have to be in a room. And, of course, that's ideal. But God moves through these digital spaces. I mean, that's why you're doing a podcast, right? Like this is, we've all come to see now, how God's Spirit moves outside of time, and space, and meets us in digital ways. And it's like a little, well, of course he does, right, there's a part of us it's like, compatible. Like, of course, if God is everywhere, then he's also here. But that surprised me when it first started to happen. I had my nose in the air a little bit about it.
The first time I was asked to teach an online course for I think it was spring Arbor, master's program in spiritual formation, leadership, and they wanted to go through one of the little books I've written on spiritual friendship. And so it took me forever to get into Blackboard. I mean, it was like way, you know, long time ago, clunky LMS. And, by the time I finally got in there, it was a couple of weeks after the course had started, I started reading the interactions that students were having with one another. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is the real thing. They are really considering these ideas. They are really engaging with God and each other. And it blew my mind. And that was circa 2008, this before Zoom before pandemic before all this stuff. And now. I mean, our team, we're trying to figure out how to leverage digital spaces with an eye to relational dynamics. Nobody needs more content, like there's enough content viewing out there. But when there's a relationship connected to it, that's cool.
DC: That's neat. Yeah, that is surprising.
MC: We need time learning. Yeah.
DW: So, Mindy, would you talk for a minute about what you're doing practically, like with Whisper Ranch and a couple of other initiatives that you have going on to really help leaders?
MC: So Whisper Ranch, I would say is, is still in a relatively early stage, we have three small structures that are designed to support people on day retreats, sabbatical, maybe an overnight or two, like I mean, one right now it's 120 square feet of beauty surrounded by natural beauty, but it's pretty off-grid. There's, there's some solar panels and electricity, but there's no plumbing and there's an RV up the hill. And that's we call it, the Whisper Ranch outhouse. But it's, it's early stage in terms of its development, but it's almost 27 acres of land with front range views that are epic. And we have, we're just saying to God, how do you want us to use it even until it finds its greater expression where someday I'll have a retreat house and groups can come in and use it and all that kind of stuff. But it's already finding its fulfillment and purpose without all the structures that we one day foresee. And the four words we use kind of as a North Star for the ranch are that it's about being, it's about belonging, it's about offering becoming, and about blessing. And so I think those are hopefully self-evident, but being as opposed to doing, as you mentioned, and a place to just just show up as you are and then not only show up as you are but show up as you are with a posture of welcome and invitation and that no matter what's true about you, you're welcome here.
The becoming is the spiritual formation part. Like what and my husband's a life coach and trains coaches, what is the vision that God's put over your life and even if you feel like you, that dream is dead, and you can't dream that dream anymore? What's the becoming? What's part of that? And then the blessing is not only that this will be a blessing the people who come here but how do we activate learning how to learning to speak the language of blessing to others in our lives, to co workers, to businesses to communities? How do we become agents of blessing and world. So those are what we're committing this space to, for leaders, and teams and that kind of thing.
And then some of the other initiatives like that's not directly related to soul care, like soul care, we use the ranch, there's kind of like, in our marriage, we have to do the yours, mine and ours. So, Jeff really runs his coach training and coach company, and I'm running soul care. And then together, we are sharing whatever the ranch is becoming. And it was very exciting and fun, completely unexpected journey. My sons, my grown sons are like, you know, mom, most of our friends, their parents are kind of like trying to figure out how to wind things down. You guys are just like crazy. Like, no, thank you. No. But with soul care, some of the initiatives we're doing there are figuring out how to come alongside organizations who care about the well-being of their teams, and figure out how to create some we have a prototype going on right now, that is a digital journey that embeds spiritual direction services into a cohort that's going through this curriculum, and we call it SOS, which normally means, you know, save our souls, you know, universal distress signal, but it's actually, we're broadening the meaning to Strengthening Our Souls, SOS.
And so we believe everybody needs strengthening of their soul, you may not be in crisis. But if you are in crisis, you're welcome here, and how can we help you. And so right now, it's just a one, like about a seven-week experience that we have some pretty amazing organizations that are partnering with us to take a cohort of people through it and give us feedback, because we'd love to figure out how to improve it and then offer this more at scale. If we can get the edges out of it, right. And so that's, that's one initiative that we're working on. And then there are some organizations where our team of spiritual directors and coaches meet with staff of that organization, and then the organization is actually funding for their employees to receive the services. So it's a great way to see HR start to admissions organizations, the same thing they call it member care, instead of like trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Thankfully, people are more trying to go how do we get preventative on this? How do we, how do we get on the on the front side, before there's a mortal blow up before there's a flame out before somebody is crashed and burned so bad? They, they're, we're losing people, not just from their vocation or their work, but from the faith. People are just saying, I'm done. And who wouldn't? Like I'm just grateful, I didn't trash my belief in God when I had to throw away everything else. That was just the grace of God. But like, there's a lot of people that aren't making that transition. And because they can't dissociate the toxicity in these Christian systems, from the person of Jesus. Yeah, thankfully, those are not one of the same, but I want to catch those people before they crash. And before they just leave.
DC: If we have people like that, who might be listeners right now, where can people go to, to be part of what you're doing to get help or served by you?
MC: Yeah, yeah. So soulcare.com Thanks for the shout out earlier. Yeah, it's still good to come. And there's a place on the navigation at the top that's like for individuals or for organizations. For the organization's part, we're doing very much on the download. So that's not very public on the website right now. But maybe by the time this is broadcast, it will be but the for individuals, anybody can go there and begin our process of getting matched to a spiritual director or a coach. And, and then there's free resources, journaling resources and stuff like that. There's an online community that we love inviting people into, it's called the Soul Care Collective. And people just go to collective dot soul care.com It's actually hosted on a platform called mighty networks. And we've got almost 900 people in there, we might be over that, from around the world who are part of it. And it's, it's like, we had like, you know, people joining, joining, joining, joining, joining.
And now, it's like, every week, we're having more and more people and I don't always know how they find it. But we're delighted to create some digital spaces where it's not all about my voice. It's not all about me nurturing this community. It's, we have a community manager who's helping support it, but the idea is that it's a collective, that people are contributing to it. They're receiving value from it and we just want to lift, give lift to this topic globally.
So those are some things you join the collective, you can go to soulcare.com, download some of the journaling resources. You can be in the process, there's a little questionnaire if you want to get matched to a spiritual director or a coach. We even have because I found that some people who really value spiritual direction or whatever it takes time to like find somebody and align schedules and everything, trying to take all that friction out. And so it's all in digital scheduling, you can, within minutes, get to a point where you've got an appointment on your schedule. Go over our list, see who you kind of want to match with. We even have like they're paid appointments, right? There's like anyone else. And it's, and you can even do like a subscription of like, okay, I want to make sure I have once a month that I have a spiritual direction appointment to put on my calendar, and we're finding it is working for people. And that was the dream.
DW: That's really cool.
MC: With books, I've written books.
DC: What books have you written?
MC: Discovering Soul Care, Spiritual Friendship, Soul Searching and Simplicity was a series with InterVarsity press. There's a book on Strategy for Transformation in Churches, that's called STIR published by Zondervan. It was a spiritual transformation in relationships. There's another that we self-published through the Willow Creek Association called Become, it's almost like a little monograph on the vision of transformation in the body of Christ. And then my husband and I, years ago, decades ago, wrote a little booklet called Write For Your Soul: The Hows and Whys of Journaling, in the website. Yeah. And then I'm trying to work on another one right now.
DC: This one doesn't have a title yet?
MC: No. Titles are hard. Titles are hard. I'm terrible at naming things. I hope somebody else comes up with a great title. But it'll be around with the idea of, you know, the Psalm 23, that God restores our souls, you know. What is living from a restored soul look like? What is recovering your life, which is Eugene Peterson's rephrasing of Matthew 11. You know, I like that idea of recovering your life.
DW: Mindy, we typically end our episodes with the mentor minute. So are you ready to go through the mentor minute?
MC: I don't know. What do I do for it? Are you gonna mention me, I hope.
DW: No, no, it's just a series of three questions that we want to ask all of our guests. And the first one, who is the most influential person that you know, and how have they impacted you?
MC: Well, there was a pastor's wife who really mentored me through my crash, and well into the future and beyond that. She's the one that taught me about that form of prayer. And so when this mentor, very influential in my life, and influential beyond me, the CEO of Gloo. Scott Beck has been a mentor to me, and has been very influential. There's probably a lot of other people, but those are the two that come to mind first.
DW: What about books or podcasts that have been very influential?
MC: I'm terrible at podcasts.
DW: Book or podcast?
MC: I know I was glad you threw that in there. Um, books and pretty much anything by Dallas Willard. "Hearing God" which is retitled from "In Search of Guidance" which is that sort of perennial question we have of does God really speak? And could I trust him to lead my life? And in what way? To what degree of specificity? Should I expect his leadership to be in my life? What does that mean? So love that book, kind of have it on repeat in my head or our reading list. I wish it was on repeat in my head. Renovation of the Heart is another great book of his, divine conspiracy, spirit of the disciplines, so many things from Dallas. The Great Omission another good book by him, actually a compilation of essays more than a book. So I've loved his stuff, others as well, but that should get you people going. Dallas Willard is a good way to love God with your mind. He's not something to read on the bedside stand at night while you're falling asleep. This is like *** but worth it. Absolutely worth it.
DW: Alright, the last one is what's the greatest lesson in leadership that you've learned?
MC: That God cares about the details of what I'm trying to lead. The team I'm trying to lead and that when I feel stuck with not knowing the right next step, or not knowing how to navigate a conflict or resource constraint, that the smartest, literally the smartest person in the universe, the one who knows more about organizational structure, more about financing more about go to market strategies, more about, you name it, the God we serve doesn't only care about prayer. He does care about prayer, right? But he understands supply chain, he understands everything. And he holds it all together in him. Colossians reminds us, you know, in Jesus, all things are held together. And that's like almost an accounting term. All things add up, all things find their place. And, it has surprised me, stunned me, delighted me, corrected me to see how involved God is and can be if I would only ask when I need it. So there's probably a lot of things I could say. But that was the first thing that came.
DW: Mindy, how can we be praying for you and your family?
MC: That I would keep asking God... Always prayers for our family. Yeah, my sons for the work they're doing, for my husband, for us, for the branch, for Soul Care to help the most people possible in the best possible ways as soon as possible, without anyone on our team, giving in to the drivenness that we're trying to correct.
DW: Let's pray. God, I come before you and, and just ask you to be with us. Help us to abide well in you that we would rest well in you. Lord, that we would slow down. And that we would spend time in your word and in prayer and in the quiet meditating on your scripture. Lord, I pray that you would quiet our souls and help us to focus on you and to think about you and to dwell on You. Lord, I pray that you would be with Mindy and her family and her ministry. I pray that You would help her to get this message out to the world, and that it would be received well, and that people would pursue you at a deeper level, that they would desire you, that they would desire to grow closer in their relationship with you. And that through abiding in you that we would bear much fruit. God I thank you for this conversation. I pray that you'd be with our listeners also, in Christ I pray, amen.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
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