Ep 029 || No Bad Questions

Well hey, Pando family! Welcome back! If you're a returning viewer, if you're brand new with us, welcome to our Pando exclusive podcast, part of Southeast Christian Church. My name is Derek, this is Brandon, part of our online team, but we have a special guest today, Jodi, part of our SE Recovery team, and Jodi, we're so glad to have you. Thanks for having me, glad to be with you guys. Yeah, well let's just jump right in. Jodi, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do here at Southeast, and we'll take off from there. Yes, well it is, I am one of several on the Southeast Recovery team, and we pretty much go wherever the doors are open for people that are in recovery, where we can go in and be pastoral support, maybe meet some felt needs. We offer some classes that we like to teach just to help clients be able to better themselves, and specifically use some curriculum that allows them to start leading, so that we can train up leaders who will train up leaders who will train up leaders, and really help them learn to take ownership of, I can do this, you know, this is something that I can step into and be successful. I think a lot of people think, I have to wait until I get out of treatment to do something worthwhile or life-giving, and we want them to be able to have those moments along the way while they're still in treatment as well. Love that. And now, Jodi, you were on staff before Recovery Ministry, you were at our Indiana campus for quite a while, right? Yes, yep, I started working there 14 years ago, and actually it was just supposed to be a part-time secretary role that was temporary. I was just supposed to come in for a little short season, they were kind of growing quickly, and they just needed a little extra help, and then that was 14 years ago. So I started my temporary job and then never left. That's awesome. Well, you just never know how God's gonna work, right? Sometimes you just step in saying yes to this, what may have been a small thing or part-time thing, and it's turned into full-time ministry for you for, gosh, because what has it been now? Almost 20 years? 14. 14, that's right. Golly, golly. So within stepping into Recovery Ministry, kind of tell us about that transition and kind of your heart stepping in and leading in the way that

you are now. Yeah, well, definitely 14 years ago I never... first of all, I never really intended to work for a church. My background's in education. I have two kids and figured that when they were school-age I would go back to the classroom. So looking back, I would have never pictured life being like it is now, but what I... I just shared this with a friend recently, that as I look back I can see how each season of ministry, God was preparing me for the next, even though I didn't know it was coming, and that brings me to SE Recovery today. I can look back after some time spent in children's ministry for a while, I moved into adult ministry specifically to work with women, where God really brought into my path a lot of women who were struggling with addiction or brokenness or abuse or some sort of heavy bondage-type life situation, and in that five years working with adult women, I know now the Lord was preparing me to step into this season specific to addiction recovery. And I ran away from it a little bit first before I realized through a series of random events, like, the Lord got my attention, is like, you're supposed to be praying about this, and then it was as plain as day that that was the next step, so here I am, and I love the team I get to work with and the people that we get to meet and stories that they trust us with. It is really truly the privilege of a lifetime to get to do that. Right, well that is so cool, and we, Brayden and I, have had an opportunity to be on here with Matt Robison, who leads that team, right, and then a few other people, I think Brie, and then I think she's a newer lady this last week, Carissa. She had an awesome story. Yes. Just an awesome story. So y'all, if you didn't check out last week's podcast, make sure you check that out, because I think her and then Sharon from our Chapel in the Woods team got to catch up. But you guys have a funny but awesome connection. You both are Johnson Bible College grads. Yes, that's true. That is true. Yeah. Oh, man. Is that Knoxville? Knoxville, Tennessee. So what's one thing... So this is gonna be a question for either one of you. What is one thing that our Panda viewers should know about Johnson Bible College back in the day? Oh, back in the day... Oh, my.

It's one of a kind. Yeah. I mean, yeah, for sure. We, well, we, I don't, I think about, like, sledding on, uh, cafeteria trays. Yes. Yeah. Okay. You know, just having the freedom to do things like that. Yeah. Not every school would let you take cafeteria trays outside, but they let us. Okay. Yeah. Is that a tradition? Is that? I don't know. Maybe not anymore. I don't know. Did you do that? Do you think I would fit on, like, a cafeteria tray? You're like, no. Oh, the Preacher Grand Prix. That's all that is. Oh, the Preacher Grand Prix. That's pretty. Like, yeah, the race around campus for that. Okay. And then I remember, like, the president of the college, Dr. Eubanks, came out and played football with us one Saturday. Okay. Like, that was super fun.

Yeah. Okay. What position did he play? Quarterback. Oh, okay. All right. And he was really good. Like, I think he had won, like, he had played football in high school, I think, but he was, uh, I don't even know how old he was back then. I mean, it was. Yeah. He was probably, would he have been 70? Not yet. I would think so. I don't know. And he's the president that hasn't died in office. Oh, wow. Wow. Good for him. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. But anyway, I agree with you. It's my favorite place on earth. Like, it's great. I love it. So. Well, I love how God, you know, works all different relationships together at different places. And I know that our church staff is a reflection of that.

Like, we have so many different people from so many different places, and that's why it's so neat whenever we've connected at different places along the way. And one of the ministries specifically that I'm so grateful that our online team has gotten to partner with is our recovery ministry here at Southeast, because you guys are doing such great work in helping people that are trying to figure out how to navigate through life, given the circumstances they're going through and the addiction and that recovery process. And Jodi, we have a pretty cool thing that we get to announce that's going to be launching hopefully sometime in the next week or so for our folks on Pando. Yes. The Pando Pathway Discipleship Program is actually what it is, but we created this for the clients. It is a, we believe addiction is three-part, physical healing, emotional healing, and spiritual healing. And a lot of times that word spiritual gets people weirded out because they think it's like this mystical, but really we're all spiritual because we were created from something. And we just want to give some guardrails to a healthy exploration of what spiritual healing looks like. And maybe, you know, anybody may be not sure what they believe, or maybe your grandma took you to VBS when you were four years old, and that's what you remember about church. But we wanted to create something that would help give a safe space for people to explore who is Jesus actually, what would life with Jesus actually look like, and learn how to ask questions. Because two things we know are true, shame is killing a lot more people than drugs or alcohol are. And unfortunately, a lot of people we work with have been hurt by the church, like the big C church, just a legalistic approach to like, you need to behave before you belong. And we want clients in recovery to understand God cares about way more than your behavior. He created you in His image on purpose for a purpose, and we want you to be able to step into what that is because it's not just good, but it's best. And who doesn't want what's best, right?

Amen. Amen. So walk us through kind of what our Pando family can expect. I know that there's a video component to it, there's like a content PDF maybe version of it, so walk us through what that looks like. Yeah, so probably what you'll find on Pando is the PDF booklet, but every lesson is broken into four different parts. There's an introduction where just like, allows a facilitator to start a conversation because we believe the classes should be conversational. This is not like a lecture where you sit in a class and somebody talks at you and you take notes, but it's a back and forth conversation. There's a video portion that is, it doesn't necessarily give you material to put in the workbook that you have, but it gives you more content, shares some stories, Matt does a lot of phase one about his particular journey. And then there's a workbook portion where you fill in some blanks. And the reason we have that is, I'm kind of nerd out on the brain science piece, but brain science teaches us that when you write something down, it's like saying it out loud seven times. Interesting. So it really sticks. And so we've chosen a few keywords or phrases that we really want to stick, and so those are the blanks that we've created. It's not about getting it right or wrong, but we want that motor skill of writing to help solidify that truth. And then the fourth piece is an application piece, because we don't want to just give people a bunch of information or good facts and then them not be able to do anything with it. We want them to be able to apply in real time what it is that they're learning. And so my background's in education, and big proponent of learning styles, and we all learn differently.

So we've intentionally used all the learning styles throughout the material, so that somebody in the room who maybe is a verbal processor is gonna really connect with this lesson. Or somebody that's maybe artistic and the drawing is therapeutic and helps them unpack things, that's gonna resonate with them. And maybe somebody that's more hands-on, interactive, you're gonna build with blocks or use rocks and sand, and those things are gonna connect more deeply. And so we hope that we hit every bucket so that everybody has a moment where they're like, oh, I totally get that. But it's divided into three phases of material because it was designed to align with recovery in general. So if you step into a recovery center, some recovery centers are just outpatient, some have inpatient residential care for various lengths of time. But the first phase of a spiritual pathway content is designed, it's 12 lessons designed for people that are just getting started. You may be just coming out of detox, maybe you've been living in just an unhealthy cycle and you're ready to try something different, but it's 12 lessons, you could essentially do one every day, and it walks you through why we believe holistic healing is best, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Then there's a section on real questions

because we believe asking questions is important. And sometimes we feel shame or embarrassed to ask a question, but our philosophy is the only bad question is the one you don't ask. Yeah, right. Well, I remember for me growing up, my parents would take us to different churches, and I think it wasn't until college when I was in my first small group. I didn't wanna go to Sunday school, didn't wanna do any of that because I was so afraid I didn't know the right answer, and it terrified me. It terrified me, and so that simple thing alone kept me from church and real community for such a long time. Yes, well, can I share a story with you? Oh, totally, yeah. So we can have anywhere from two people in a group to 40, 50, 60 people in a group. And in one particular session, I was with two women, a class of two, and we happened to be on the real questions, what about the Bible? And as I walked in, there were two ladies sitting at the table. One lady had her notebook open, and the other lady was rolling her own cigarettes. So when I think about the teacher having a fidget spinner, she needed to fidget and move while she was listening. So I asked the ladies at the very beginning, I'm like, so have you ever read the Bible before?

What do you think about it? And so the lady that was rolling her own cigarettes, she said, well, I mean, I kind of heard of it before, but I never really read it. But man, this class is making me wanna read it. And I was like, okay. And so then I asked the other lady, how about you? And she said, well, I tried it for a while. I was at a church, had a question, I asked the pastor, and he just kind of dodged me. And so then I just kind of quit going and just kind of fell away from it. And so I didn't ask right away, but later on in the group, I had the opportunity to ask her, do you by chance remember what your question was that you asked the pastor? And would you be willing to ask it to me? She said, actually, yeah. She said, I asked him that I said, I noticed when you first start reading the Bible, people lived a really long time. And she said, and then all of a sudden, they don't live that long anymore. She said, did God just change his mind on life expectancy and measure it differently or change it somehow? And so I asked her, I'm like, well, have you ever heard of the story of Noah and the flood? And she was like, not really. And I said, well, don't take my word for it,

let's look it up together. But I said, at that time in history, the Lord said no longer will man live longer than 120 years. And I didn't have the reference off the top of my head, so I'm flipping through the Bible, I'm like, where's Noah? And we found the verse, and so I showed it to her and she said, huh, it says exactly what you said it did, no longer than 120 years. And that just opened the door for me to walk with her a little bit more. And she continued asking more questions. And in my mind, I thought, that's it? Like, that was the question, you know? But somewhere she took on that message of like, I'm not important enough to answer the question, so I just will give up. And we just really want for people, any question is a good question. Because the more, in my opinion, I don't know what you think about, the more I study the Bible, the more questions I have. I mean, I don't know about you guys. Yeah, oh my gosh. I mean, even our series in Genesis, I'm like, what is this? What's this? What is happening here? Yeah, like sometimes there can be this, again, like my own life.

such a long time, and I guarantee there are things now, like there are these lies that we can believe that, whether it's from ourself or the enemy, where it's like, man, that's what He's trying to do to keep you from being close to the Lord. And I'm so glad that we have a resource that may not answer all of our questions, but a lot of the big questions that we're asking, and it's really important that we're in a place where people can answer those. Yeah. Especially one of the lessons we talk about, why is there evil and suffering in the world, which I think is a question we all have at different times in life. You just see what's going on and you think, oh my, just breaks your heart. But we just learn really quickly, it's because of choices we make, because choices other people make, and also the simple fact that there's an enemy that is working to steal, kill, and destroy anything that's good. And so we don't always know the culprit, but because that enemy is prowling like a lion, we know that He's wanting to take those peaceful moments from us, or the things that are true and replace them with lies or doubts, doubting God's goodness. No doubt. So there's three parts. Okay, so in total, if someone were to just go through it, how long of a journey would that be? So there's 24 lessons. Every lesson is designed to be about, if you do it with a group, about 45 minutes. So in the recovery centers, a lot of times groups run an hour, so that gives them time to do one lesson per group. You definitely can do it differently than that, but I think it works best with a small group where you can have a conversation and share perspective and share questions that you're asking. And that very last part of phase one is, those last five lessons are about spiritual formation, which ultimately the concept is, this is the way God designed things to work. We live in a broken world, so things aren't going to operate perfectly as they should. And there is even a part we talk about, you think about just because you can doesn't mean you should. You think about, I'm going to cross the road and here comes a bus. Could I step out into the path of the bus? Sure, could, but should I? No. I mean, it's just not wise. And that's a lot of our life is, we make 35,000 choices in a day. And a lot of times we can beat ourselves up when we get one of those wrong. But what that tells me is, you've got another one coming and you ask the Lord to help you start again and do the next right thing. So that's pretty much what phase one walks you through, like, how could I take next step toward healthy living? Yeah. That's so cool. I'm so glad we get to offer this for all of our Pando family. And so Jodi, say someone goes through those 24 sessions, complete all of it,

what is the hope and prayer that, what is that prayer for that person that once you've gotten through all those 24 weeks, like, hey, this is what we would hope to see or what we're believing will happen for this person? Ultimately, our prayer is that people will meet Jesus and experience a freedom with Him that cannot be explained. You can't find it anywhere else. It's, you know, life is not going to be perfect, hit the easy button, you know, moving on to what's next, but that you can operate day to day, live your life knowing that you're covered by His grace and mercy. You know, high level, we hope that clients would understand God cares about more than my behaviors. He wrote the Bible for me to learn from. He didn't write it to me, but he wrote it so that we could learn from it, and I can actually study it myself and know what the Bible says. Just so that if they ever ended up in a church with some wild doctrine and some things that were maybe off, we want them to learn how... You know, our pastor even says, check me with Scripture. God will never contradict Scripture. And so we want them to have a solid foundation of like, okay, I know this is what the Bible says, and that is not... That does not line up. Oh, no doubt. And Brian, I'd love to toss that over to you, because I think that's such a great point that just talking about this idea of Scripture being so important, right? And what this is doing is setting this foundation, right? So that whoever goes through it, that hopefully for the rest of their life, whether they are in prison or whether they're out and they're finding a church... But why is it so important for us to have a good doctrinal foundation in our lives? Yeah. Well, you know, I guess... I have a couple thoughts on that. One would be, like, I love what you guys do in phase two of the curriculum is talking people through the story of the Bible, because I think it's the story of the Bible that helps us make sense of our own story, right? That we understand, like, hey, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? Well, Genesis 3 sets up a lot of that. Like, we see, like, Scripture is pretty consistently giving us those answers about, like, hey, this is why things are going sideways around here. So when we understand the story that we've been born into, like, we understand our lives a little bit better. Like, why am I, why do I face these obstacles? Why do things seem so difficult? Like, I think it gives us a good worldview, a good framework for us to understand, like, hey, this is what's going on around me. This is what's going on within me. Because even the things I do don't make sense to myself sometimes. Like, what's going on there? I think it's important for us to have a sense of Scripture because, you know, we hear so many competing voices these days, too, is that whether they are non-Christian voices or even some Christian voices, we hear some people misusing or warping Scripture in those ways. And having that foundation in Scripture helps us to understand, like, hey, this is what I think God has said. And, you know, we read throughout Scripture that Scripture is, you know, the Spirit's communication to us. It's the Holy Spirit's vocabulary, I think. So it helps us to understand in those moments where we feel led, you know, is this the Spirit really talking to me? Is this really what God is wanting for me, or is this my own selfish desire hijacking it and trying to over-spiritualize it? You know, I think God is never going to call us into anything that disregards or disobeys or... I can't even think of the word that I want. But, you know, that is going against Scripture. He's not going to call us into that. And so having that signpost not only helps us identify like a like-minded community of believers, it helps me identify those things in my own heart that are going a little sideways. Yeah, I mean, I can vividly remember, you know, kind of my late teenage years. I was around several people that were kind of a part of like the Word of Faith movement, and a lot of like, hey, well, if you just believe this enough, or if you say this thing or say this prayer, then God's going to bring... He's like for sure going to bring this thing into your life. And I remember going through several challenges at that point in my life and reading Scripture at the same time, and it was like I was seeing two different things. It was, you know, because on one hand, Scripture was talking about how, hey, well, life actually may not work out the way that you think it will, but God will be with you, right? And then this other thing was like, well, if you just keep saying this thing or speak this thing into existence, but it wasn't happening, you know?

And it was at that point in my life that I learned this lesson of like, oh my gosh, if I am not being very intentional about who I am listening to and what I am reading, then I can really end up on the wrong road, and I don't want to end up there. And sometimes it just happens by accident, right? But that's why I love that for so many people on Pando, we're going to get to walk through all of this type of content that's going to be teaching those foundations, and going through those three steps, those three phases, I think is going to be so helpful. I think so. And to your point, the Bible in completion, I had a lady come up to me once, she said, I found this YouTube channel, and it's all you need to read is Exodus. And I thought, oh my. No, no, no. There's a whole lot more out there. But to your point, it's one big story. And the minute we take out one piece of it, we miss a lot of other parts. You do need to read Exodus, but you need to read everything else in there too. Exodus is great, but it's not the whole story. Absolutely, absolutely. And so just to kind of wrap up this portion, Jodi, so there's going to be a PDF version of it, some videos that go along with it. Explain kind of the video component of that. Yeah, so the video component, a lot of story based, it has an application piece in it that will think of like maybe an object lesson, something that would help you visualize the concept more plainly. And so it's something that gets you in the Bible, helps explain some passages better, and hopefully just inspires you like other people that have been there and get it. And now they're on the other side, just spurring others on like, keep going one day at a time, you can do this too. And so we just hope people feel seen and encouraged above all. Yeah. And who are some of the people that they can expect to see on those videos? So Matt Robison, who you've had on here before, our recovery pastor, he is on there quite a bit. I do some of the application pieces. Tom Befoya is on there as well. And I think that's mainly... the three of them. So the three of us that do those. Okay, cool. Yeah. Well, that is awesome. And so hopefully, within the next week, we'll have all of that. Y'all that are watching this right now, hopefully by the time you're watching this, it'll already be available for you. But Jodi, this is just such a... I believe will be such an impactful thing in the lives of the thousands and thousands of people that our church has watching on Pando each and every week. But just for you, again, what would be one encouragement that you're like, hey, if you're kind of on the fence right now of, I don't know if I want to do that, that seems like a lot, what would your encouragement for them be? I would say, give it a shot. I mean, you can't say it doesn't work until you try it. Yeah. Give it a shot. And I would even consider you like, take a stab at leading and gather up a group of people, do it together. Use this as a time to build community. One thing, Carissa, that was on the podcast last week, she said she had a sweet community when she was in prison. And the right time is now, like, get together with some people and just make the most of it. Yeah. I love that. And it makes me think of, again, one of the things that this makes me think of is that not only does God want to do something in our lives, like, for our sake, right? To heal us,

redeem us, to save us, to help us become the person He wants us to be. But He also does that because He wants to use us to reach other people, right? To reach other people. And it's like you said, like, take that chance, take that chance to be the person that starts that group, to say, hey, gather a couple people, say, hey, we all may be in the dark here on what all this stuff means, but let's just try it. Let's just try it. And maybe God wants to use you in someone else's life. And it reminds me a little bit, kind of transitioning over to the sermon from this past weekend, talking about kind of Abraham and Lot's relationship, and how Lot finds himself in this really tough spot where he's in this place where God is about to just destroy this place. But one of Kyle's points from this weekend was sometimes the warning sign isn't for you, it's a call to pray for someone else. And I just, I can't help but think that God is going to do something in someone else's life because of someone's willingness to go through the spiritual formations class and portion of this. Yeah. That's good. Well, even in the sermon when Kyle said, you know, Abraham asked. Right. Asked. Like, don't be scared to ask, right? Don't be scared to try, and what have you got to lose? Nothing. Yes. That's cool. What do you have to gain? Everything. Yeah. Yeah, because there are so many people, and I think about when I go back to thinking through the letters that we received from our Pando family is that so many people just feel isolated. So many people feel lonely and isolated, not only just from family and friends that are kind of on the outside, but especially on the inside. And for a lot of people, they may feel like, hey, gosh, this Sodom and Gomorrah place, this is kind of what it feels like I'm living in right now. This is kind of where I feel like God's judgment or this just secular culture has just forced itself upon all of us in here, but yet we have such a good opportunity to live for Christ in the midst of that, and this is, I think, one of those ways that we can do that. Jodi, but I'm curious, as you listened to the message last weekend, people that are going through addiction and recovery and trying to figure out some things in life, where do you think a message like this hits home the most? Mm-hmm. I think that probably what came across very clearly to me is that we all have the opportunity to be an intercessor prayerfully, and the Holy Spirit works in a lot of different ways,

but I think... I'm not somebody who has ever heard the voice of God audibly, but I feel like the Lord puts faces or names in my brain, and I have just taken that as a prompt to pray for someone, and I think if you're sitting there listening to this or you go back and listen to the sermon and somebody comes to mind, I don't think that's a coincidence. I feel like that's the Lord at work in you and through you to intercede on behalf of someone else, and we never know. So often, I think when we meet people, we're at some part of the journey, either the very beginning, somewhere in the middle, or maybe we're lucky enough to be at the very end where they make that life all decision to accept Jesus, and we have no idea where we're at on the journey, but to be faithful in whatever point that is, and just prayerfully intercede, ask, make the ask to God, and there's nothing we can do to change somebody, but we can intercede on their behalf and let the Lord do the work of convicting someone that is far from Him and needs His saving grace. Right. Well, Brandon, I'm gonna ask what may be a stupid question. I don't know. No stupid questions. No stupid questions. But just simply, what does it mean, what does it look like to intercede for someone? Like, we talked about that a little bit this last weekend, but what does that even look like? You know, I think, I mean, Abraham's the perfect picture of it there in Genesis chapter 18, is that he sees this destruction coming, that, I mean, it's specifically because God tells him, like, this is what's gonna happen here. And so Moses sees exactly what is gonna happen, he sees the consequences that Lot can't see, and he goes to God on behalf of Lot to be like, hey, can you do something about this? And I think that's probably the purest picture of intercession we get in the Old Testament or the New Testament, for that matter, is that there's this idea that we are going to God on someone else's behalf because we see something they don't see. And we're asking God to step into that, we're asking God to, in the case of Lot, he has to forcibly pull him out of the city. But there's the sense that we are going to God on behalf of someone so that they can be saved from what they're facing. At its purest form, when we are praying for someone to come to faith, that's what we're praying, is that, God, I see that they need Jesus, I see that they need him to pull them out of this, would you deliver them? When we're praying for someone in terms of physical needs, we're kind of praying a similar prayer, but a

little bit different, is, God, they're struggling with this disease, with this diagnosis, this whatever, pull them out of it. And I think that's a powerful way for us to think about intercession, is that when I'm praying for God to do these things, I'm praying because these are things I cannot do for them. If I could do them, I would do them, but God... You just take care of it. Right, yeah. God, I need you to intervene and to work in a way that only you can in this situation. And that's exactly what Abraham asks God to do in the situation Lot is in in Sodom and Gomorrah. That's such a good explanation. And if I could, just to speak directly to our Pando family as we start wrapping up here, is that I can't help but think that some of the most faithful and consistent prayer warriors we could even have as a church could be you. I think one of the lies that I would hope that you would not believe is that God cannot use you where you are. Because I promise you, for a lot of people that aren't in your shoes right now, the thing that they don't have is time. Because they will feel like, hey, my job, my family, my kids, all these things we're going after can distract us from prayer. But what would it look like for you to start praying for the people in your life? What would that look like? With the time that you have to create a journal and just pray for your loved ones, for your friends, for people that are near you in this season of life, and ask God to intercede in their way—maybe that fancy word, maybe it's the first time you've heard that today—to intercede for them in such a way that you can't take care of, that we can't, but that only God can. And the second thing would be, I would ask that you would just take a chance and do the first day, that first week of this curriculum that we're launching as a church called Spiritual Formations. We would love for you to be a part of that, because there's been so many people already that have gone on that journey, and I promise you, they probably were in the same place you are, where they were like, you know what, maybe I'll just start the first couple. Maybe I'll just do that. And then they finished, and God did some awesome things in their life. And y'all, again, He's going to do some awesome things in your life too, if you will just start the journey. And Jodi, for some people, that's the hardest part. It's just getting started. Just getting started. But thanks so much for being on here with us, and looking forward to having you on here again, and looking forward to seeing what God does. I know He's already done awesome things with it in our recovery centers and with people, but especially with Pando.

Yeah. Yes, we're excited. I think it's gonna be great. Y'all, but we love you. Thank you for being here with us. If you didn't catch the sermon, make sure you go back and catch it from this last weekend. But until then, we'll see you next time.