It was a time to pivot, change, alter course. Dr. Larry Crabb met me at the junction. Larry went to be with his Papa, Jesus, and Spirit on Sunday, February 28, 2021.

There are times I believe that God brings people across our path that have a long-lasting impact on our journey.

I had just begun my pastoral ministry in 1998. I had the role of being a Community Chaplain in a large church where my focus was to provide pastoral care for those in our local area that had significant Mental Illnesses and disabilities.

I was to develop a church community where people could come and feel at home. Teaching, pastoral care, and support that was specifically focused on the needs of this community.

Prior to this, I had been a support worker helping people with serious Mental Illnesses with their daily lives.

Over and over again, I would see them try to be part of Church communities only to see them not truly connect.

Some church people would rescue them, preach at them, moralize them, and tell them to ‘try harder.’

In the end, Churches and the people in them weren’t safe.

I was then handed a book by a former student of Dr. Larry Crabb. The book was Connecting. Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships. 

In this book, Larry also talks about a pivot in this thinking. A subtle shift away from psychology to what he would later call Soul Care.

In recent days, I have made a shift. I am now working toward the day when communities of God’s people, ordinary Christians whose lives regularly intersect, will accomplish most of the good that we now depend on mental health professionals to provide. And they will do it by connecting with each other in ways that only the gospel makes possible.

I envision a community of people who intentionally mingle in settings where these nutrients are passed back and forth, where I pour into you the healing resources within me and you pour into me what God has put in you.

But that’s not what I’m doing. I have strong reason to suspect that Christians sitting dutifully in church congregations, for whom “going to church” means doing a variety of spiritual activities, have been given resources that if released could powerfully heal broken hearts, overcome the damage done by abusive backgrounds, encourage the depressed to courageously move forward, stimulate the lonely to reach out, revitalize discouraged teens and children with new and holy energy, and introduce hope into the lives of the countless people who feel rejected, alone, and useless.

Maybe “going to church,” more than anything else, means relating to several people in your life differently. Maybe the center of Christian community is connecting with a few.

Beneath what our culture calls psychological disorder is a soul crying out for what only community can provide. There is no “disorder” requiring “treatment.” And, contrary to hard-line moralism, there is more to our struggles than a stubborn will needing firm admonishment. Beneath all our problems, there are desperately hurting souls that must find the nourishment only community can provide—or die.

We must do something other than train professional experts to fix damaged psyches. Damaged psyches aren’t the problem.

The problem beneath our struggles is a disconnected soul. And we must do something more than exhort people to do what’s right and then hold them accountable. Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Better behavior through exhortation isn’t the solution, though it sometimes is part of it. Rather than fixing psyches or scolding sinners, we must provide nourishment for the disconnected soul that only a community of connected people can offer.

The crisis of care in modern culture, especially in the Western church, will not be resolved by training more therapists.

We do not need a counseling center on every corner.

It will be worsened by moralists who never reach deeply into the hearts of people in their efforts to impose their standards of beh