Erasing the Epidemic of Loneliness in Church, with Michel Hendricks

Have you ever felt lonely in church? If so, this episode of Grounded is here to give you hope. You’ll hear from guest Michel Hendricks about how to find joy and genuine connection in discipleship, and you’ll learn what it looks like to engage in authentic, transparent relationships within your local church.

Connect with Cameron

Website: https://wholewordinstitute.com/

Connect with Michel 

Website: https://lifemodelworks.org/speaker/michel-hendricks/

Episode Notes

• Whole Word Institute website:https://wholewordinstitute.com/
• The Other Half of Church book by Michel Hendricks: https://amzn.to/49pREd3
• Adorned book by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/books/adorned/
• Adorned event messages: https://www.reviveourhearts.com/events/revive-17/
• Celebrate the Season Sale: https://store.reviveourhearts.com/category/resource-collections/sale

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Erin Davis: Have you ever felt lonely in church? If so, I want you to stick around. This episode is for you, because today we're going to be handing out some hope. I'm Erin Davis, and this is Grounded.

Dannah Gresh: Oh, Erin, I have felt that. I am Dannah Gresh. But you know, don't forget Erin. We're also going to share some perspective today, not just hope. And Portia is here with us to share some good news about what's happening on the front lines in the Middle East. We have someone who has boots on the ground, and we're going to share some hope and perspective about the situation and what you're reading in the headlines right now.

Erin: I can't wait for that segment.

Dannah: Yeah, I can't wait for that too. Portia, are you excited about that? 

Portia Collins: Very, very. 

Dannah: Yeah, me too. Erin, loneliness in the church. I got to ask you, have you ever felt that?

Erin: I absolutely have. I think maybe we all have. 

Dannah: Yeah. 

Erin: And actually, I have a real-time experience. I was teaching at a church in North Carolina this weekend. And I said during my teaching, someone sitting alone in church is an emergency. 

A woman came up to me afterwards, tears streaming down her eyes. She said, “I am the emergency.”

She went on to explain to me that though she had been faithfully attending, there had been some tensions in her relationships, and her husband had stopped attending. She felt incredibly lonely inside the church. I just grabbed both of my arms around her, buried my head in her neck and cried and prayed, because I know what it's like to feel lonely in church. And there, if there's one place we shouldn't feel lonely, it's church. And yet, really frequently . . .

Dannah: Absolutely. You know, that story reminds me of a time when I really felt it. It was for me. I feel lonely when there's sin in me or in my family. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Dannah: And the irony of that is when I need my church body most is when I want it, the least I want to hide. 

Erin: That’s right. 

Dannah: And that makes me feel lonely. This time when my husband and I were facing some problems in our marriage, I was sitting alone, and my friend Chizzy Anderson noticed. She came over and slipped into the seat next to me. She didn't say a word, just sat beside me, and worshiped Jesus. The power of that single decision was a turning point in my battle with loneliness. 

Now I gotta tell you, it's been a while since I have experienced that kind of loneliness, and that's because I have found the secret. And today, when we get grounded in God's Word, I'm going to share a verse that set me free. So, grab your Bibles and turn to Psalm 25. 

Erin: Yeah, I actually have a circle of friends that met in my home weekly. We say to each other regularly, don't let me retreat. Because you're right, when we are in sin or things aren't going well, we retreat from that Christian fellowship. And then sometimes we cause our own loneliness. 

So today, our guest is going to be sharing what we've been missing in our discipleship efforts that could contribute to this loneliness epidemic. 

Michel Hendricks says it's time to invite what he calls the other half of the church. He started talking about men or women there? Well, you have to wait and see what he's talking about. In the fellowship, you're gonna find out what he means when we get grounded with God's people. 

Dannah: Yeah, and I gotta say, this is the book The Other Half of Church. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Dannah: My husband is tired of me talking about the book. That's how much I love it. He's like, “Okay, okay, I’ll read the book.” 

Erin: Well, there’s some clues on the cover about what we're talking about. So, I'm glad you held that up.

Dannah: It's a clue. The Other Half of Church, yeah, you see that brain on there. But before we tell you how this book is going to help you with your discipleship and your loneliness, Portia, it is time we want to hear that good news you have for us.

Portia: I am ready to give it. Cameron Mayhill is back with us. He's from the Whole Word Institute. Say that ten times. Their mission is the whole Word for the whole world. He joined us earlier this year with some good news about Bible translation. I am so glad that he is back with us today. Welcome back to Grounded, Cameron.

Cameron Mayhill: Thank you, Portia. I'm really excited to be with you today. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share with all the wonderful ladies who are joining the podcast today.

Portia: Awesome, awesome. So your ministry is based in Jerusalem, and you are boots on the ground and in the midst of a conflict that the whole world is watching right now. Tell us what that has been like.

Cameron: Yeah, it's been a pretty surreal last thirty days for us as an organization a little for over thirty days now. As the conflict started, and as you know, we had very quickly an impact with our staff deploying as reserves for the Israeli army, going out to serve their country. That's part of the responsibility of the people there. You go from teaching Hebrew on Friday to being on the front lines on Saturday. 

It's been surreal as well as family members impacted and different things happening and even just the conflict. We're based in Jerusalem. The majority of our team is very safe because of where we're located, but we still have a conflict going on all around us. 

And so, it's been a difficult time to say the least. But we have seen hope, and we have good news.

Portia: Awesome. Well, let's get to this. You are our good news correspondent today. And so, just share with us, what good news do you have?

Cameron: Yeah, we still make progress on Bible translation. As the conflict broke out, we had a number of decisions to make as the leadership of our organization of how do we move forward? And for the safety and security of our students . . . We have students from sixteen different countries right now that are studying at our institute in Jerusalem. And so, how do we make sure that they are safe, secure, but also how do we continue to push forward with translation? 

The Lord really opened doors in amazing ways within the first few weeks. We went from, “How long is this going to last?” to “Okay, we believe we need to take a moment to evacuate our students and part of our team.” Within the first few days of our board making that decision and our team coming to that conclusion, open doors that we could have never imagined occurred. 

Our students actually right now are in Greece. We were able within about a week-and-a-half to two weeks after the conflict started to get visas—which is unbelievable. The stories of how God moved to get visas for students from sixteen countries to get into Greece, and just the relationships there, and an open retreat center for all of our students, and our team to evacuate Jerusalem. We still have staff in Jerusalem that stayed with their family.

But just an amazing provision to open the door for visas and for transportation and housing and everything so that we can move our entire program from Jerusalem to just about an hour outside of Athens, Greece. And so, for the safety and security of everybody, that is just some amazing great news. 

Now, we do have challenges. We have to raise additional funding that we do for our team on the ground, and some of them there as well as our students, because we didn't anticipate this. So, the Lord knows what we need. We've launched an emergency fund at this point in time. The Lord opened the door with a donor that's willing to match up to 250,000. And so, we keep pushing towards that goal, because we know that our students will need to be out of the country at least for a couple months at this point in time. 

And so, we're thankful for all the provision the Lord has opened during the season. And, and that's the great news. That's the amazing news. 

Portia: Absolutely

Cameron: But the most important news is the fact that we continue to get Bible translators trained. They can share the Word of God around the world in the villages that they come from, learning Hebrew directly from the staff on our team and being able to translate that into their heart language. 

So, we're excited to continue to move forward, but we would covet your prayers as well as the prayers of those who are a part of the podcast. In Psalm 122:6 it says to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We just continue to pray as a team for peace and to the resolution of this whole conflict so that we can move forward with the work that God has in store for us.

Portia: Absolutely, I'm so glad. I was just gonna ask how can we pray for you guys, and so Grounded sisters, you heard him. We've got our marching orders. We will be lifting you and the organization up in prayer. And just honestly praying for God to continue doing exactly what He is doing. He is on the throne. Thank you so much. 

We're gonna drop a link in the chat and in the episode notes so you guys can go and check out the Whole Word Institute.

And yeah, I'm just I'm grateful for you being here and sharing what this is looking like in real time Cameron. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Cameron: Thank you, Portia. We really appreciate your prayers and the hope that we have in Jesus and whatever partnerships come along. We just are thankful for your time today.

Portia: Absolutely. Take care.

Cameron: Thank you so much.

Portia: All right, we got a double dose of good news today. Don't you like it when I give you a second helping southern girls. We love second helpings. 

Early this year, the Surgeon General released an eighty-two page advisory on a public health crisis: loneliness. Can you believe that? The advisory points to epidemic levels of a feeling of disconnection or isolation. Half of the adults in America are saying that they feel disconnected, isolated, and maybe you are among them? 

Well, here's some important data. The Surgeon General warned that Americans health may be undermined due to their decline in participation in, guess what? Church services and other religious activities, particularly in recent years, people involved in church are less likely to be lonely, including our teens. 

Okay, so listen, here's your marching orders. Get up. Get you and your family and get up and get to church. It really does help. I'm a living witness that it really does help. If you still need a little bit of motivation, I want you to consider this: socially connected people actually live longer. Alright, so this is your invitation to get connected in a local body of believers. If you are not already, it is going to help you in more ways than you could ever imagine. Dannah Gresh, I want you to tell us: what does God's Word have to say about that?

Dannah: Well, I would love to tell you. I have to tell you that my confession is that I felt deeply lonely, even though I was getting myself to church, until I discovered the power of this Bible verse. It's Psalm 25:14. And I'm gonna quote it to you in what I call the DKG version. That's the Dannah Kay Gresh version, because I like how it sounds in the King James Version, and one phrase I like how it sounds in the ESV, in another phrase I think there might even be a third version in there. But here is my favorite verse in the whole Bible. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and he will make his covenant known to them.” 

This is the verse that unlocked my loneliness in church. When I read the secret of the Lord, I thought, I want to know what that is. And so, I began studying. I put all the different translations next to one another. I found that, wow, there wasn't a lot of consensus on this phrase. You saw things like the friends of God, the people of God, the secret of the Lord, that's the King James Version. I loved how that sounded. 

So, I looked it up in Hebrew. And it basically was a phrase that referred to kind of the koinonia fellowship that we read about in the New Testament. It described the people of God who were so deeply connected to each other—not just celebrating victories and birthdays and anniversaries and walking with each other through fears and failures and hardships, but they specifically were authentic and transparent about sin. 

And because of that, they experienced a deep circle of fellowship that was so unbreakable and so intimate. You know what the opposite of that is? Loneliness. We feel lonely when we don't experience that authenticity and that transparency with one another. 

Well, the verse goes on to say that place of authenticity that wipes away loneliness, the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. 

Well, I thought about that, and I thought fearing God. Everything that I've ever had that's good in my life comes from Jesus. So, fearing Him has been a hard concept for me to learn, at least up to that point in my life. So, I looked up the word fear in that verse. It was the word yara. It means to stand in awe of to bow before to submit to and to worship. 

I thought to myself, That’s what fearing God means. 

I like to say that when we pray, when we study the Bible and then pray, and those things crash into each other, we've meditated. 

So, I sat there and I began to meditate on standing in awe of bowing before, submitting to, and worshiping God. 

But in my mind, I wasn't bowing before God. I was bowing before the people in my church, who I was terrified would reject me if they really knew things about me that nobody else would ever know. 

Do you know what the opposite of the fear of God is? The fear of man. 

We experience it most poignantly when we have secrets and sin in our life, maybe even in our past, but we don't really feel known. Because we think when they say, “I love you. I want to be friends with you, or let's have coffee,” would they be inviting me or loving me and being friends with me if they really knew?

And then we get lonely, because we fear man, instead of fearing God. 

Well, when we start to fear God, we start to stand in awe and bow before Him and submit to and worship Him. And that means living our lives according to His Word. He says things like, “Confess your sins, one to another, and then you will be healed. 

When we really fear God, we obey Him. We confess our sins, we override the fear of man, we enter into the fear of God, and that erases our loneliness, and we begin to experience fellowship. 

Now, when I first read this, I didn't know anybody who was living in that powerful place. And so, I just decided, I'm gonna go first. I don't want church to be a place where I feel lonely. I want to be a church to be a place where I feel known and loved. And if God's Word says that I have to confess my sins, then I will. And so in a small group with about six other women, I finally shared the deepest, darkest secrets of my heart. And you know what happened? I found out that they were lonely too. 

They started sharing their deepest, darkest secrets. They started sharing their rescue stories, the rescue stories that Jesus had already executed in our lives. But we didn't know, and we've been studying the Bible next to each other for years.

We entered into something, something that I can only describe as the secret of the Lord. It brought us closer to Jesus. That last phrase of that verse: the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will make His covenant known to them. 

You see, basically that phrase is that when you figure out this secret of the Lord, this face-to-face community that God wants you to experience, it erases the loneliness, and you become more connected to the people in your church, but it also connects you more deeply to the covenant love of God.

You see, the way for us to feel God, to experience God, to know Him more intimately, it does include each other. Christianity is not a solo sport. Somebody led you to Jesus. Somebody taught you to pray. Somebody taught you to love and understand His Word. And when we get to these lonely hard places, it'll be somebody that walks you out. But how do you find that kind of community when you don't have it? Well, let's get grounded in God's people to find out Erin. 

Erin: I've heard you teach on that verse before Dannah, and I love it every time. So good. Such a good reminder. Yeah, let's get grounded with God's people. Why does true Christian transformation seem so fleeting? That's a good question. And why does church often feel lonely and Christian community feel clunky or shallow. Have you ever wondered those things? I'm sure you have. Maybe you've never said it out loud. 

But so, our guest today was a discipleship pastor, until he was discouraged by the lack of progress with so many of his mentees, which man I can relate to, he quit. He wondered if he'd quit more than just discipleship. He wondered if he'd quit church. But then he met a man who understood the brain and how we're hardwired to experience discipleship, that changed everything. I am eager for this conversation. Michel Hendricks, welcome to Grounded.

Michel Hendricks: Thank you for having me on Erin.

Erin: Dannah and I are good buds, and I rarely hear her get as excited about any book as she is about this book. I am eager for you to tell everybody what she's been learning. Tell us about when you quit discipleship. Take us back to that experience.

Michel: Yeah, so it was a couple of years of being a discipleship pastor. My job was really how do we help the people grow in our church that are coming in, and in starting to be involved in our community. 

And so, I just started a bunch of things. I wrote a book for new Christians. I did a training on spiritual practices, all this kind of stuff. I kept running into this thing, this situation where some of the people that would do these things would say, “Michel, this helped me so much. Thank you so much for doing this.” And so, it seemed very encouraging. 

But then there would be other people who would be like, “Michel, this, just went above my head. I just didn't get any traction with us.” And so I kept bumping into this word, “sometimes” with these Christian practices. I was teaching people and it would work for some people and not for others, or sometimes for some people and not other times, or maybe specifically the typical Christian answers seem to work really well for certain areas and problems of life and other areas. It seemed like the snow in Colorado, when you hit the gas and your tire just skids, and it doesn't go anywhere. It just goes around on the ice. 

That's what the frustration was. A lot of times when people write a book, they write it because they become experts, “I'm going to show you what an expert I am, so you can read my book.” But this is not that book at all. It was really written from a point of frustration, and how do people really grow? And why don't we see more radical transformation in our churches? 

Erin: Yeah, I’m so glad you're saying those things. I've been involved in ministry, all of my adult life, twelve of those years in student ministry. Those kids are now young adults. I have that feeling like, “Why are so few of them walking with the Lord? Why are so few of them having deep roots in the Word? Why are so few of them involved in their own churches? Why did it work for some and not work for others?” 

You're articulating something that I'm not sure I've heard other ministry leaders say but we've all felt. So what brought you back to discipleship despite this kind of period of disillusionment?

Michel: I got to the point I would sit in my office and stare at my dry erase board and just kind of scratch my set my head and go, “God, I'm not sure I know how to do my job as a pastor of discipleship.” And it's almost like God took that as a prayer. You know, “Dear God, I don't know how to do my job, amen.” Because I got a phone call a couple days later from a man who had visited our church. He was an elder of another church in Denver about a half hour away from us. 

He said, “You know, I saw some of these discipleship things you're doing. I would love to have lunch with you and talk.” And so, he and I got together, had lunch, and he said, “A friend of Dallas Willard who is kind of a discipleship guru has written a bunch of books on discipleship. My friend Dallas would say to me, ‘It seems like a lot of people are reading my books, but not a lot of churches are actually doing this stuff.’ Michel, it seems like you're actually doing it.”

But he didn't know the frustration I was in. Normally that would be a compliment, but I essentially just vomited my frustrations. I just explained to you right here on this, this interview, like, “I don't know how it works. We're missing big pieces of the puzzle. Why don't we see more transformation?” 

And so, this man says, “Well, let's start having lunch every month and start studying this topic and try to find out what are the missing pieces, to seek God's face in this, and see where He leads us.” 

And so, we started having lunch every month. I pulled another pastor friend, and so, it was three of us. We read books, we listened to sermons, we did all sorts of different stuff. It was maybe about a half year into these meetings where this man, his name is Bob, said, “I think one thing we're ignoring or not looking into is the role that neuroscience plays in discipleship.” 

And when he said that, I had no idea what he was saying. Bob is like eighty-five years old. I thought maybe he had a senior moment or something. Because when he said it, it made no sense. I kind of ignored him. If I'm honest, we laugh about this later, but thankfully, he was stubborn. He was persistent. 

So, a month later in the middle of our time together, he kind of interrupted our conversation said, “I still think we need to lean into neuroscience and how God designed the brain and what role it might take in how we grow as disciples of Jesus. And I said, “Bob, I have no idea what you're talking about—brain science and discipleship. I've never heard this before. What do you mean?” 

And Bob got this kind of smile on his face, and he said, “Well, Michel, why don't I invite my friend Dr. Jim Wilder to our lunch next month, I think he can explain it better.

Erin: I'm avoiding the temptation to whoop, I'm a Farm Girl. So, I want to like whoop here because I'm a brain science girl. Dannah is too. We are fascinated by that stuff. But we can sometimes feel like aliens when we insert that into Christian conversations, because, I don't know, it feels like we're being mystical or daring to go into an area that Christianese isn't welcome. I felt that tension in those conversations. 

God made the brain, so it seems strange that there would be resistant. So, I'm so glad you went there. Why do some people respond to discipleship better than others? What did you learn about brain science?

Michel: We had lunch that next month, and Jim Wilder showed up and sat down at our table. And for some reason, he looked at me across the table and said, “Michel, what do you want out of this meeting?” I shared some of my frustrations. I can feel like I'm missing big pieces of the puzzle of how we change, how we grow as disciples. 

And Jim Wilder said a very interesting thing. He said, “You know, Michel, I think it might help you to understand a little bit about how God designed the brain to mature us and to form our character into the image of Jesus.” 

Erin: Wow. 

Michel: At that point in my life, I'd been a Christian for over thirty years. I'd gone to seminary, I'd been a missionary, done all this stuff. I've been a pastor. But no one had ever said anything like that to me my entire Christian life.

Erin: Yeah, I believe it. 

Michel: I was all ears. Then Jim Wilder bent over. He had a bag on the ground. He pulled out a plastic brain, and he unhooked the two sides of the brain. He started explaining to us how the information flows to the brain and how that actually gets processed to form our character and mature us. 

I look back to that point as very much being a turning point in my life as a pastor, where it's almost all of a sudden we went into this area that had not been explored. It has been an adventure for me.

Erin: I love that. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that lunch. I can't say I've ever been in a circle of pastors where somebody pulled out a model of a brain. But I wish that I had because I think that you're onto something that many of us are missing. 

I know we can't cover it all. I imagine there's a lot of complexities here. We're gonna get the flyover but explain right brain discipleship, I think we're somewhat familiar with this thinking of right brain and left brain and different areas doing different functions. But right brain discipleship, explain those methods that work well in the right brain category.

Michel: Right brain is really a process. It's kind of our emotional, social, relational brain. It's very fast. It's faster than even our conscious thought. So, our right brains come down to these decisions before we even know consciously why we're thinking these things, why we feel this way. 

And our left brain is more than our words, it's our conscious thought. It's problem solving. It's kind of what we think of as the brain really. 

And so, we really have two brains. And they're really meant to work together in harmony. But over the last maybe 500 years, we've started putting more and more of our discipleship into our left brain, and we've kind of been ignoring the right brain portion. 

And so, we're not really arguing for right brain discipleship, we're actually arguing for a full brain discipleship, but that mainly means adding the right brain skills to the good left-brain skills we've already doing. We need to keep doing those. 

And so, an example of this came from a question I asked Jim, after he explained the brain. I said, “What's an example of a right brain based practice that's important that maybe we haven't heard of because we don't know that's not important?” And Jim said, “The human brain is looking for one thing before any other thing. It's the first thing it looks for, even as we're born. It's looking for this and it's the first thing throughout our life that we look for when we go somewhere and we're doing something. And that thing is joy.” 

Joy is defined as when I feel in my body, when I can tell from your face in your eyes that you are glad to be with me. I feel special. I can tell from your face that I am special to you. And joy is very, very fast. I know within basically a twelfth of a second if you're happy to be with me or not. And joy in the brain works kind of like a gas tank where it's the thing that gives us energy to do all the other hard relational stuff that life throws at us. It's like a gas tank.

So, one of the first things we need to do, which is a right brain skill, is start to fill up our joy's tank. 

Erin: Wow.

Michel: And that means we build joy with God. You know, I think Numbers 6 is a classic verse. It's a prayer that actually God gave to Moses and Aaron. That doesn't happen that often where God gives us the prayer to pray over the people. And the prayer that God gave Aaron is, “The Lord bless you, and the Lord keep you, and the Lord make His face shine upon you.” 

I read that Scripture and I thought that is the neurological definition of joy. It's when our faces are shining on each other. It's when we can feel God's face shining on us. And we're shining our faces back on God. And so, we could very much build joy with God, that's a very right brain skill, and we build joy with each other. 

It reminds me of the apostle John. He wrote to one of the churches, this is interesting, because he says, “I have much to write to you,” he's saying to this church, “but I don't want to use paper and ink. Instead, I want to visit you, and I want to talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. 

And so, joy is very much face to face. It shows why it's so important for us as Christians to get together in person. You know, even online, we can't build joy the way we do in person because it's too fast. The bandwidth can't keep up with the non-relational. There's actually a twelve times per second signal between your eye and my eye when we're together that builds joy, and we lose that synchronization online. So being together face to face, just like the apostle John just said, is so important for us to build our joy together.

Erin: I think I've been doing some right brain left brain discipleship in my Sunday school, glad you can affirm this for me. I teach girls Sunday school. It’s kindergarten through sixth. It's like thirty-five girls in a little room. It's crazy. I just couldn't get them to concentrate on the lesson. I tried lots of things. And at the end of my rope, I just started hugging them as they came in the room and saying Miss Erin is so glad you're in my class today. They went to the circle, and they listened to the lesson. It changed the temperature of my room. Was I doing some right brain discipleship by hugging them and looking them in the eye? 

Michel: That is a great job. Erin, our churches are really meant to be high joy environments, where we are glad to be together. 

Now, it's doesn't mean we're happy. Because we can be joyful when we're happy and we're smiling. We can also be joyful when we're sad. 

Erin: Yeah.

Michel: Like if something's going on with you. “I'm glad to be with you in this hard thing. That is sad. And it's joy at the same time because you're sad, but I'm happy to be with you.” 

Erin: Yeah, that's so important and so good. 

Michel: Joy doesn't mean . . . We don't have to put like a plastic Christian face on, our plastic Christian fake smile on our face to be joyful. Instead, we're just glad to be good together and bonded in the good times and the hard times.

Erin: Man, I'm learning so much. We started this episode talking about loneliness. I'm hoping you can connect some dots here for us between just thinking about the brain and our discipleship. There are a lot of lonely people in our Church. Can you explain what's going on there? And what hope you would have for that person?

Michel: The solution to loneliness really is . . . One of the big solutions is that we have a low joy tank that needs to filled up. In other words, we don't see very many faces that we can tell are happy to be with us. 

We can also be with people and still be lonely. We can even be a church and still be lonely, especially if we're surrounded by people whose faces, they're kind of their own thing. Like if you go to the supermarket and people are looking at their phone.

Erin: Absolutely. 

Michel: It's definitely this thing. It is like a joy killer in our society. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Michel: And it's also like if we're surrounded by people that are kind of pretending to be good. Churches can almost encourage us to stay disconnected. But a lot is really what bonds us is that we give people our faces momentarily and just let them know we're glad you're here. 

And also, if in our churches or places we can share some of the junk that's going on in our lives. We don't have to keep it nice and clean and sanitary. That as well builds our joy and builds us as a family. 

Dannah talked about that in her talk. She talked about things, secrets, like if they really knew this, what would they think? And so often there's a fear to share those deeper struggles. Sometimes, obviously, that fear is valid; there's some churches that aren't safe places to share that kind of thing. But our churches really need to be places where we can share our weakness, and it's treated and received with kindness and tenderness and joy again, meaning, in this horrible thing you just shared man, I am glad to be with you. We might even say I have no idea what to say, but I am so glad you told me. That is a very high joy statement.

Erin: I can think of the moments that I've experienced that. There is no loneliness. There may be sorrow, there may be grief, there probably is repentance. But you're not lonely when someone's willing to look you in the eye after you've shared the hard thing. I hope a Grounded sister is asking this question in our heart. This is all great. This sounds right. But is this biblically defensible? You've pointed us to some places in Scripture. But as a discipleship pastor you’ve started to wrestle with the impact of the brain, what places in Scripture opened up for you in new ways?

Michel: That's interesting, because I kind of went back and read the whole Bible again, after learning the importance of joy. I said, “This has to be all over the Scripture, because the God who created, the One who inspired the Bible, is the same God who wired our brains back together. So, these two should really cohere. And I saw it in spades. I saw joy all over the Bible. 

You know, I mentioned Numbers 6. But if you go through Psalms, they're everywhere. One of my favorite songs growing up when I first became a Christian was in Psalm 16, where David writes, “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” And I read that and I went, “Oh, joy and presence.” And actually, I used my seminary Hebrew for one of the only times. I cracked it open and looked at that word “presence,” in Your presence as far as the joy. It's actually the word for face. Because in the Hebrew mind, the face and in your presence are inextricably linked. Your presence is in your face that really says, in your face, God, there is fullness of joy. Again, it's God's face shining on us. 

And so, part of our work as disciples is learning to receive that glowing face of God. Because oftentimes, we think, Well, God's just disappointed in me, or He's mad at me. And just like with our children, sure they'll disappoint, they'll disappoint us, they'll break things, they'll do and say things that disappointment. And yet there's joy. I am so in love with my kids, even though sometimes they drive me crazy. My love for them is unstoppable.

And so being able to receive that from God, it's all over Scripture. I encourage you to actually read through the Psalms, and pause whenever you see the word joy, and let that sink in.

Erin: I feel like I could talk to you for like another hour, I'm gonna work to get you back on because there's more that we could talk about. And this is an area that I'm very enthusiastic about, but also an area where I feel like we have so much to learn. But could you just leave us with a couple practical things you started doing in discipleship once you understood this, the fact that the way we're wired makes a difference, a couple things that maybe are easy to implement.

Michel: Yeah, using really good practices of gratitude. Gratitude is another way that we build joy, we build joy with letting our faces light up on each other. Gratitude is really what God did with the Hebrews. When He would do some big thing, He would say, “Pile the stones up.” So that you would remember 100 years later after we crossed over on dry land. If I was a Jewish man, and I'm walking down the road with my daughter to buy something at the market, and my daughter sees these piles of stones and goes, “Daddy, what are those?” I tell her the story of how God rescued us. 

And those stones are when we do gratitude, we actually have people create a list of gratitude memories: What are times when you especially felt a connection of God? And it can be over anything. It can be from something beautiful you saw in nature. Maybe it's someone when you met when you met your best friend, when a child was born. It might just have been a really good meal or a good cup of coffee. It can be something big or small. Start to build a gratitude list and then just sit in those memories. Don't think about them but actually relive them. 

So go back into the memory you're sitting in. I'm back there. When my kids were playing on the beach and our vacation, I could feel the wind coming off the sea. I can see my kids gathering seashells. I'm back in it, a very much right brain gratitude. Because you're back living the situation rather than the left brain where you would be telling people thank you for this, and I'm so thankful for this. Both of those are important. 

Erin: Yeah.

Michel: Start making a list of gratitude memories giving each memory a short title, and then I do it for five minutes a day. I go back and I sit for five minutes using that list. Sometimes I'll use two or three memories, or sometimes just one memory will take me the whole five minutes. And you're just sitting almost like in a gratitude jacuzzi and that is so good for your brain, your soul, and your spirit.

Erin: Man, I love it. I’ve often said that if I just somehow got oodles and oodles of dollars, lots of money, I would do brain research in the church. I'd love to know what an MRI would show about someone who's sitting in that gratitude jacuzzi, your brain would light up in unique ways. God wired you that way. So, such a fascinating conversation. I've learned so much Grounded sisters. This is your invitation to go and get this book, The Other Half of the Church. We're going to drop the link to make it easy for you. Thanks for being on Grounded, Michel, great conversation.

Michel: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Erin: Yeah, we'll have you back. 

All right, Grounded sister, I hope you heard what was said there. If you're lonely in church, you’ve got to get your face in front of somebody else's face. I'm grateful we have this. I'm grateful that we have discipleship tools at our fingertips. But what we're learning is they are not a substitute for being in the presence of each other, being honest with each other, letting each other know how grateful we are that we're in church together, letting someone know that we missed them when they aren't in church. Those things really matter. I am ready to sit in that gratitude jacuzzi that Michel mentioned.

Portia is going to come and join me, and we're going to point you to some tools. Because we know this is just the beginning of the conversation, you're gonna want to learn more.

Portia: Absolutely, sisters, if you are hungry. I'm always hungry, but not for food, but for authentic community.

Erin: We're always hungry for that too, Portia, we're wired for it.

Portia: We have a tool to help you cultivate it. Alright? Adored: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together. This is both a book by our very own Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and an event with dozens of messages to help you thrive in discipleship. And so we're gonna put a link to the book and the event messages in our episode notes. And in the chat, we want you to check it out. There are 29 messages from Nancy, Mary Kassian, Dannah, Gresh. I know, you'll love it, and you will greatly benefit from it.

Erin: You might be thinking, I don't know where to start? Well, we just told you where to start. Just get a couple of friends together. Have some food, Portia and I always think that's a good thing to have, and start working through these Adorned videos and through the book. We get a lot of feedback through to the ministry about the fact that Adorned opened people's eyes to what true discipleship can and should look like. That's the goal not just to understand our brains better, but to disciple better. 

We just gave you your starting point. And let me encourage you to go first. I think a mistake we make that keeps us lonely and keeps our discipleship from being effective is we expect others to initiate and notice that we're lonely. It's not like we walk around with an I'm lonely sign. You have to own up to that, and share that and then receive that look on somebody's face that says that they recognize it too. I'll repeat what I said earlier, a lonely person in the church is an emergency. And if that's you, it's an emergency. And it's time for you to get yourself to some other people and start experiencing that joy that Michel expressed. 

Portia: Yeah, you gotta fight that temptation to close yourself off. I say that as a person who struggles with it a lot. Y'all see Portia and y'all think, Oh, she's so happy and bubbly all the time. She's never lonely. And that is a lie because I struggle with that.

Erin: And you know, what the left brain stuff is so much harder. The memorizing Scripture, the being faithful in reading the Bible for yourself, the prayer life, all of that stuff is so much harder when we're not fused into Christian community. And don't you know, Satan knows that too. Don't you know that he was going to work to keep you from what a Christian can be. I find it too Portia and you know I'm outgoing. Right? It's not that I'm introverted. 

Portia: They're probably watching this saying, “Whatever, it's easy for them to say.” No, it's not. I mean, just last week there was a temptation for me to just block myself off and not be bothered. I made myself get up and go to the women's study we have.

Erin: I host a women's study in my house because I know if it's not in my house, I will bail. So, I have the guardrails up because I know I've gotten too far down the rabbit trail of not being able to do the Christian life well to know better. It's not any easier for us but it's necessary.

Portia: Right. It's necessary. Get some friends to lock in. I've got friends who know if I'm MIA for too long, like if there's things going on at church and they hadn't seen me, they already know, come get me, or something is wrong.

Erin: Go get her.

Portia: Right, something is going on. 

So, we're gonna be praying for you guys because we really hope that you can really lock in with your community and love well and be loved well.

But also, I've got one more thing that I want to share. I know you're gonna love this, this is gonna help you pad your pockets with resources to go out and engage. Can you say sale? Don't we love a good sale?

Erin: Sale! I can say it.

Portia: Alright, the Celebrate the Season sale kicks off this week at Revive Our Hearts. And we you know, we always like to give you the inside scoop. This is where you can stock up on meaningful gift items, books. I love my little Advent card that goes with The First Songs of Christmas and Born a Child and Yet a King. And those are all good, rich, scripturally packed gifts that you could give and use as you engage in your local community.

Erin: You're gonna give a gift, so you might as well give a meaningful gift.

Portia: Yes. There's something for everybody on your list. We're gonna drop a link. You could check it out ReviveOurHearts.com. 

Erin: Dannah Gresh, I am dying to hear your thoughts on the interview because you were excited to have Michel on. You've been excited about this book. I know you're a brain science girl. Just give me your hot take.

Dannah: I am so excited. Here's my hot take. One is, it makes me want to throw my phone away.

Erin: Amen. Amen. Because this is a barrier, and we all know it. 

Dannah: It is a barrier to our face-to-face encounters. And two, I just want to end today with a Scripture because I think it's been unpacked so beautifully. I just want to end with this. You know, it's not about seeking each other's faces;You have said, “Seek my face.”

My heart says to you, ‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’”

So go out there this week and seek the face of God by getting in the face of other believers.

Erin: So good. Nothing to add to that.

Portia: Amen, amen. I love that.

I was just gonna say she put a bow on it. All I need to add is telling you guys to come back next week. I'm about to test my French out, Lara.

Erin: Sounds good to me. She can correct us next week. 

Portia: I know her but I always like totally mess up her last name. 

Erin: It’s a fancy name. 

Portia: Yes, she is a joy. She's just a lady that's rich with God's Word. She is going to help us find some quiet as we head into the busiest season of the year. You don't want to miss it. Let's wake up with hope together next week on Grounded.

Erin: Grounded audio is powered by Skype. Grounded is a production of Revive Our Hearts calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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