Rooting in Unity: Reflecting the Preciousness of Each Other (with Wendy McMahan)

Renae: Well, hello, Wendy, hello. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here for this summit. This is your second TraumaWise ministry Summit, because it's our second TraumaWise ministry Summit, and so I'm Thank you. So I'm so grateful that you said yes a second time, and that you continue to share from your experience and your wisdom and your skills and everything with us. Thank you. Well, thank you. I'm collecting the tokens so I can claim that I was there from the beginning. There you go.

Wendy: Yeah, very, very exciting to see what's happening and the growing group of ministry leaders, pastors, church leaders, other ministry leaders, who are coming in and discovering TraumaWise. So I'm so happy to be part of this journey with you. Awesome. Yeah, me too.

Renae: I I know that you have introduced yourself to the TraumaWise community before, but there may be some people coming to this summit who have not met you, or people who are listening on the podcast who have not yet met you, and so I would love for you to take a moment to introduce yourself,

Wendy: sure. Well, to start out, I have been a lifelong part of the church, the Christian church, having been born into a faith based family, and going through my my schooling and education, I never went to a private school, never received a degree in ministry, but have been a follower of Christ since I was young. I'm a community pastor at my church, which is a volunteer role that I'm so pleased to be able to hold there, to be able to contribute to our church community. And professionally, I'm the president that for the children, which is the ministry responsible for Royal Family Kids Camp and mentoring. And our work is to mobilize the local church to create life changing moments for children who have experienced trauma, specifically children in foster care. So I really come with the church lens, but also the lens of trauma informed work with children

Renae: absolutely and I love that you even the distinctive that you, that you said there of I don't have a degree or this, this pedigree, or these papers that say that I am in this role, but I am in this role, and I think that that's actually really important when we're Talking about TraumaWise ministry, is validating the experiences and the wisdom of people in the community, that each of us has a way that we understand how God is working in and through us and in the world. And those perspectives are are really important.

Wendy: I think that you're, you're so right on that. And if I can just jump in and say, I also really highly value ministry degrees. And so, you know, if, if life here on on in this life was eternal, I'd probably get an MDiv. And, you know, do do all the things, and I really value the the church leaders in my life, and the ministry leaders who have taken that initiative. And so I highly value the education piece of it as well, but I love what you're bringing out of all of us have had lifelong experiences. We're probably worrying the scriptures daily, and we're trying to live out our faith daily. And so God is able to teach us in that way, and then we're able to bring that to others, absolutely.

Renae: And I say that even as a person who slog through the seven and a half years of mass and getting an MDiv, and I mean, it was a lot in in and I loved every minute of it, except for that one history class. And you know that everyone who was in that history class knows why that was a terrible history class, but I it was the the I knew I needed that for the things I wanted to do to get a seat at the table that I wanted to sit at. And eventually I figured out I was trying to get to the wrong table. And so for for me, that's part of why I I value that every person has a leadership role in their circle, in the in that moment when I'm meeting the need of the person in front of me, I'm leading them to hope, right if they're in distress and I'm present with them, I am. I am holding space that they're it's not forever. And I am, I am leading in that. And so that's I love to to highlight that we can do this in ministry, in any job we're in, in any role we're in, whether or not it's a ministry position. Yeah,

Wendy: absolutely. Right, yeah, yeah, that's so good we we talk a lot, especially in Protestantism, about the priesthood of all believers. But do we really believe that? Do we really believe that everybody can go straight to God and that everybody has something to share? Yeah,

Renae: well, and I mean, speaking of that, the the organization that you are currently leading in the team and network and community that has been built over the years and then you have continued to foster and nurture. You have many different denominations of faith reflected in the in the charter groups or the chapters, I'm sorry, they're called chapters, and in your volunteers and in your in all those connection pieces, there may be many different views of what that priesthood of believers looks like and how all that's applied. How do you how do you navigate that?

Wendy: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So we do? We work with sponsoring churches across the country. We work with 200 of those churches, and we, we did a count recently, and depending on how you count denominations, we have 20 to 30 denominations represented in those groups. And when you think about the differences between them, I think we as believers tend to go straight to theological differences. I think everybody has to decide what are the lines across which we cannot just agree to disagree, right? And hopefully those are going to be some pretty, pretty wide births there. But I would say that, you know, in my ministry and for my church, there are plenty of positions that we would say, No, that is not a biblical position, that would not be something that we would consider part of our Christian faith, right? And in those situations, though, those are like the deal breakers, right? But within, within our fellowship, there can be a lot of differences between people, you know, I think of women in ministry. You know, there's probably viewers or listeners who, when we said that I'm a community pastor, it may have rubbed them the wrong way. And when I was growing up, the the church community in which I grew up only had men as pastors, and so even for me to say, I'm a community pastor, although I've, I've reconciled that in my theology, it feels a little bit out there like, what is everybody going to think when I say that? I think of styles of worship. You know, when we get together with all of our church partners and there's worship happening, there are some people who are, you know, their their arms are on their sides and they are singing and they're worshiping God, but in a different way than the person who's like in the aisles with the hands up. And so at what part, what points can we choose to love those differences between us and say we've we've agreed on what we believe to be the main things, and really it's some of that stuff is about humility and honoring others before yourself. So like with the music, for example, I don't always love the worship style at my church, and yet I realize, for me, if I am a mature believer. I can get I can get fed, you know, with my with the worship styles I want in many different ways. And it doesn't have to be Sunday morning at church. And I can choose to come and worship alongside my brothers and sisters who prefer a different style of music, maybe a different level of repetition, or whatever it is, than I do and still love them and still see them as precious

Renae: well. You brought that word precious up, and I know that that's central to our conversation, because we've, we've talked about this a lot of times, a lot of ways that we have really anchored, I think, in this, in this word and and I was recalling conversations that you and I have had even before you were in this particular role. We've talked about the concept of unity, because you and I have been in collaborative spaces that have been even beyond, well beyond history, but across all social sectors, and trying to find, what are those, those common commonalities, what are those central truths that we can rest in, that are these, then, are the essentials that that bring us together, and This concept of preciousness, it seems to be to be the one that we've landed on a lot of times. And so I would, I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey with the word precious. When did this concept first really start to expand for you?

Wendy: Yeah, well, Lord of the Rings threatened to derail. Derail the word precious for me. Um, so we'll just get that out there for some people who are listening, I get can't get past that column. Voice, um, you know, growing up, I had the most excellent examples in my church community and with my parents of what I would call the sanctity of life. Now, when many people hear sanctity of life, we think about the pro life movement, and it certainly is that. And I know there's, there's many people who would say, Oh no, those Christians, they only care about life in the womb and not after you're born. That wasn't the case for me. I really experienced my church community as caring about womb to tomb, as we like to say about the entirety of someone's life, and really basing that on Genesis. Genesis 126, and 27 says that God made man in His image. And it says male and female, He created them in the image of God. He created them. And so if that person is made in the image of God, that person who I don't like what they're saying, I don't like the way they smell, I don't like the way they live. If that person is made in the image of God, then my feelings about their life choices have to be separated out from the preciousness that I know that they possess. And I just really believe that shouldn't the church be the one place, if there's only one place where everybody, where we can say Jesus is for everyone? Yes, he's really for everyone. He's really for whoever walks in that door, whatever they look like, whatever they're espousing, whatever it says on their shirt. Can we really believe that Jesus is for everyone and invite them into relationship with him? Yeah.

Renae: And it it's hard. It's so hard, it's hard. Yeah, conflated so much with compliance and obedience, and they're not the same thing. Yeah, right, that the being complying and conforming to a group tradition. A group understanding is not necessarily the same thing as obedience to God. And that gets very tricky.

Wendy: That gets very tricky. And I think, you know, as you're saying, that I think about, I'm always going back to structure and nurture Renae, like that grid is in my head, where we talk about with trust based, relational intervention, when you up the structure, for in the case of tbri, it's with a child, when you up the structure, you have to up the nurture. But the the way that many of us were raised as far as discipline is that when structure goes up, in other words, when somebody needs to comply more, we decrease the nurture. You know, that's like the the stern talking to that you get from your parent. And I think we sometimes translate that into our church communities, where we go, ooh, that person really needs to come along, and so I'm going to remove my care from them until they do. Because what else is going to make them do that, but that that is not God's way. God's like, I still know the number of hairs on her head. You know, I still want her and love her and ache for her. And so if we can reframe that mindset to go, I'm of the belief that you don't walk into church and just stay the way you are, like God calls us into a cross bearing movement with him, where, through which we are transformed, and we want to make changes, to live our lives, to follow him. And yet, the way to bring people into compliance with that is, is not to give them that kind of tough love. It's to wrap ourselves around them and show them this amazing God and the church family that wants to love them and let the Lord give them that conviction in their lives to make those changes

Renae: and and God's way for me may not be God's way for someone else. And so then it becomes you, you won't, you won't know what I need in order to be obedient to God, in order to be be working and partnering with God in this life, unless you know me, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, automatically reject me for whatever reason. You're not going to know me and you're not going to know what God's

Wendy: doing. Yeah, you just gave me this image of, like, you know, if you have a new neighbor move in, and that house needs some help, right? And every time you pass that house, it looks the same. You don't know what's happening inside that house. They just haven't gotten to the curb appeal yet, right? They're re piping and and renovating and doing all the things that need to be done inside, and you don't see that outward manifestation yet. But that doesn't mean that God isn't transforming. I feel like maybe that's part of having lived life long enough now to see people really change. And you know, the people I knew. In my 20s, who I thought they're they're not going anywhere. They're just showing up and and, you know, going through the motions, or I know what they're doing on Saturday nights. They're not really following like God was working in them. And over over time, they really do change and conform to his likeness

Renae: well. And I think that's part of the this. When you're talking about the high nurture, high structure, there's plenty of examples in Scripture when God draws near, his first words through His Messenger is, Do not be afraid. I don't want you making decisions from your downstairs brain. I do not want you reacting to this. I want you to respond to me. I have message of hope for you and of deliverance, and I know that your first instinct is going to be to be afraid, and that's not what I want. This is this. I'm I'm pursuing you with love. I'm pursuing you with hope. And if we're if we're meant to be in the image of God, we're not meant to pursue people and cause fear. Have they have a biological fear response to us because they're afraid of being left out, or of losing something, or, you know that to threaten loss. God is not threatening loss. God is offering life.

Wendy: And does a fear based response actually ever end up in long term change? No, because when the fear is removed, it

Renae: doesn't last. Yeah. And so can you? Can you think of a time that you saw either an opportunity that was that was met or an opportunity that was missed, to reflect preciousness that is like a just a clear glimpse of this is what we can do better, or we can do more. Of you have something you can share with

Wendy: us? Yeah, the the example that comes to mind actually comes from the last presidential election, which I don't know if you know it was. It was a highly divided time in our country, okay, yeah, there was a there was a lot going on and a lot of stigma and

Renae: a lot of

Wendy: of flame throwing. And my my church, does not talk about politics from stage. We talk about the vulnerable. We talk about situations that impact the vulnerable, but we don't broach the subject of you know which political candidate to vote for, and that means that we have a pretty good diversity of political opinions among our congregation. We partnered with an outside organization that really all that they do their whole ministry is helping people to have conversations about divisive issues and what they did with us after the election. It was just election was on a Tuesday. It was probably the following Monday, something like that. They brought in whoever, whoever, whoever wanted to come on. I think it was that Monday night, and before we had any conversations, we broke bread, we ate together, we sat at around tables and ate with one another and talked with one another, and there's probably 100 120 people in the room breaking bread together. And then after that, we talked about the issues. And really the point wasn't to come to decision about the outcome of the presidential election and whether it was good or bad, the point was for us to practice talking to people we disagree with in a way that reflected God's image, right? And so through that, they they grouped us with divided groups, so we all lined up from one to 10, and the question was based on the outcome of the presidential election, how it was something like, how happy are you right? From from one to 10? So everybody lines up and says what your number was, and they would take us, and let's say you were an eight, so you were really excited about the outcome. They would take several of the eights and several of the two who were really worried and unhappy with the outcome, and those that group of three to five people, would sit down together and talk through the issue in a way that wasn't just about what's the right and wrong here, but what are the feelings that you have when you talk about this? What for you, what does this bring up, and what are your motivations to starting to dig into into some of those things, but starting with the preciousness of one another. If we can go back to that word recognizing we are all here because we have this commonality that we're here to love God and love other people, and we actually all believe that the outcome. We wanted for the presidential election would have been that outcome. It was really beautiful to see those who were really, really happy with the outcome and those who were really, really disappointed, be able to come together and listen to one another and at the end of the night, love each other and not, you know, not just throw, throw angry, angry words around. Yeah,

Renae: I, I love that, because it does, to me, speak a little bit about heaven. Um, when we think about in Revelation, that it when, when it talks about people of all nation, tribes and tongues, who are together in front of the throne. It does not talk about sections. It talks about people together, all praising, worshiping and and they're together, reflecting back to God, God's goodness, because we are in that image, right? So it's not what is at the at the center of it is that that, to me, when I think of trauma, I think the the piece of it that says it's never going to end. It's your fault, which are two of two of the really big lies of trauma, and that when we when we share that with people, what they get to do is to reflect back to us that it's not forever, and that actually it's not our fault, that they're there, that we did not choose the brokenness of the world with whatever choices that we made, but that there's, there are many things that led to this particular situation, and it's complex and it's nuanced, but that we're not that we're not staying in, that I'm I'm all alone. It's never going to end. I'm going to be terrified or frightened or worried. I've seen about the people that you said that were two, about their about their worries, and just hearing someone else's story and their perspective increases our capacity for compassion, because we're going to understand humanity in a new way, right? Because we're validating that that is what they're experiencing.

Wendy: Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right, and it's we all want to just make things easy, right? We want to just easily be able to say, well, that person just is not in their right mind, or they they're believing lies, or whatever it might be, and they might not be in their right mind. They might be believing lies, but also they might have well reasoned or highly felt experiences that are shaping their beliefs, and we're not going to change their mind by telling them they're wrong, you know, they if, if their minds are going to change, it's going to be through seeing a different way, through relationship. Absolutely,

Renae: I think that's part of the, the piece of I, if I you know that it's been my goal for the last couple of years to respond, not react, but to respond as often as possible with unconditional, positive regard. That is like my my goal for how I am in this world, that I could reflect people's preciousness back to them, that they are seen, heard and valued, that they matter. And it has to come for me from this belief that noone is beyond redemption, and that bothers people. Wow, it really bothers people. Um, but that's what I need to do, because I was very much steeped in we like to joke that that, you know, my grandfather, who was Independent Baptist, was a six point Calvinist, because he counted the depravity of man twice. It was like very, very much.

Wendy: Oh my gosh. I love nerdy Christian jokes. That's so good.

Renae: So the just the just the for me, that's the shift that it has to take. That's the position, because that's not my default. My default is not to believe the best, but this the the expression of who, the truth of who God is in me, lives in that space.

Wendy: Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, I know, I know we need to wrap up, but there's a couple of thoughts I really wanted to mention here. One of the things that you have me with was if somebody's feeling isolated or disillusioned in ministry about any encouragement, and that just really touched me, because I think you know what we know since COVID is that as many church leaders have been more vocal. About the brokenness that they're feeling, that that's true of many, if not most, of our church and ministry leaders, which is heartbreaking, because I think we are designed to flourish in the roles that God calls us to. I think that what I would communicate to that church leader or ministry leader, is that you are precious and you are worth getting the rest that you need, and you're worth taking some time away. Your church is worth you taking some time away to be able to regain that that clarity, even if it means that at the end of it, God says, I have something else for you. That's okay. I also wanted to say that I I really feel for church leaders in particular, who week after week, deal with some of the same conversations over and over, and just really want to encourage those who are listening to think about what's the need behind the behavior of some of the people in my ministry. So the the behaviors that you're seeing always reflect some kind of a need, and many times that is just to be heard. You know, I talked to many older folks who don't feel heard at their church, and it's like they keep coming and saying what they think about things, and they only get more vocal or more frustrated. Well, meanwhile, the the leaders at church, many at times, are are exhausted or are just young. You know, they're they're younger, and maybe they're in their 30s and haven't lived, you know, half of the life that the older folks have lived and don't know to just go to somebody and sit down for coffee or sit down for lunch and really, really listen it out. So I just want to encourage go to people, go ask and listen, even if you think you know what they're going to say. Not as much about about processing the words that they say as making sure that they know that you have listened to them and that they have a voice among you, and then maybe something changes, or maybe it doesn't, but probably it changes something inside of you beautiful.

Renae: That's beautiful, and I really appreciate that tangible piece of advice of being being present in being with as we are all called to the mystery of reconciliation, and reconciliation means that there's been a disruption, a rupture, a trail, a disconnection. And reconciliation is the coming together, and we get to be part of God's fulfilling God's promise of I'll never leave you or forsake you when we step forward with openness, curiosity, leaving judgment by the side and saying, I see here in value for you, and and, and let's, let's know each other, let's, let's spend time and just even, even, let me reflect to you the truth of who God is in you. I think that that's such a tangible movement forward that we can take, and it's that doesn't have to be program, doesn't have to be a minister like a separate ministry in a church. We can all just do it. We can all just

Wendy: do it right, right? We can choose to make that the way we go about our days

Renae: Beautiful. Well, I appreciate you so much for so many reasons and continuing to to hear more of your wisdom and experience. You bring so many facets to the conversation and to what we are doing. And so thank you. Thank you. Thank you for showing up and thank you for being part of this.

Wendy: Thank You Renae love being part of the summit. God bless you.