Paul: Carl, we have you today, not to talk about paper games, although maybe we’ll bring you back for an entire episode about paper games, but we do want to talk about something that’s super important. And we were discussing a little bit about this before we started getting rolling is the fact that December.
Is a hard month for a lot of people. They face, things like depression, there’s seasonal things as all kinds of things going on. And youth pastors are trying to, they’re trying to develop plans for the new year. They’re trying to say, look, I need a discipleship plan and an outreach plan. And they’re trying to develop all these plans, which benefits their youth ministry and the church.
But they’re not so much working on. plans for themselves. They’re not working on helping themselves. So why should a youth pastor then, amongst all the other planning they’re doing,
Why should Youth Pastor’s consider having a self care or wellness plan?
Carl Dodd: Let’s just start with that idea of December and January. So The reason we were talking about it was yesterday full of youth institute and full disclosure, my wife actually works for them, but I didn’t know this was coming up.
She didn’t tell me, but FYI, I’ve done a report on wellbeing and burnout. And some statistics have started coming out. And I think it was like 48 percent of youth ministry leaders would say, December is a high burnout pressure month. And second to that is January, which I think was like 38%. So it’s great that we’re doing this right now because Probably folks listening to this now, there’s at least half of them that are experiencing some form of burnout right now.
The reason it matters is you and I have been in this game for a while and probably have seen behind us a whole bunch of folks that, Have burnt out. I know myself, I’ve been close and probably got there as well, but wouldn’t acknowledge it. And I can’t remember where we’re at right now with the average kind of tenure of a youth pastor, but it’s way shorter than it should be.
And there’s so many different things to add. Add to that burnout, some of it can be church dynamics, some of it can be just general health, some, so many things. And I think. We talk about creating plans that benefit our youth ministry, but very rarely do we feel a little bit guilty creating plans that benefit us and the image that’s always ever used, but it’s so good is it’s like on Monday, I’m getting on a plane to England.
I’ll get on that plane. I’ll sit down. And then the safety talk starts and it’s the whole, in case of cabin depressurization, a mask will fall from the ceiling. The next thing they say is before you take care of anyone next to you, put your own mask on first, and that’s the same with self care, like if students are getting those responding to them when we’re burnt out and just under a lot of pressure, then that’s not the best for them.
So it’s taking care of ourselves benefits us, but also benefits our students because they get the better version of us rather than the burnt out version of us.
Paul: Yeah, such a good point. And too, I see a lot of, too, that there’s a high turnover rate, too, of where youth passenger get, it’s the end of the year.
And so there’s a lot of churches that are just flipping. They’re just saying, Hey, sorry, things didn’t work out. Youth pastors getting fired, and things like that. And it is, it’s I imagine maybe that’s why January is so terrible too, because you pastors are job hunting there and say, what am I going to do now?
It’s crazy. But after you just use that illustration too of the airplane and so forth, I think I’ve decided that should I be on an airplane that is going down? I would like to be on a plane to England because I think it sounds so calming when you do it. And I think, if I’m going down, this would be a pleasant way to go. This is it’s a pleasant way to crash. This is lovely. Thank you.
But so we’re talking about, so then how does the new youth pastors, if we’re going to say, look, this is important, I got to take care of myself because it benefits my family. It benefits me. It benefits others around me, obviously.
So then what’s the best way for a youth pastor to start to develop a wellness plan. And then what really goes into that wellness plan?
Carl Dodd: Yeah, I think one of the things we know from especially post COVID is we’re working with a lot of students that are have had some sorts of mental health challenge or crisis.
It’s actually why I started up a youth crisis first responders, because we recognize that Often we’re at the front line of all of that. So we know those things are going to come up. We know that cry crises are going to hit. I moved to the U S now, what was it? 11 years ago. And I moved to Missouri.
And when I moved to Missouri, I quickly discovered in England, nothing can kill you like literally maybe a rabid squirrel something like that, but no kind of nature isn’t out to get you. But I moved to Missouri and as well as brown recluses and black widow spiders, I. discovered tornadoes. And very early on we had our tornado kit.
We had a plan of what to do when the sirens went off, where to go etc. Now I live in just outside Seattle and if I look out my window and lean a little bit, I can see Mount Rainier, which is an active volcano. I have a plan of what to do if, we start getting earthquakes and stuff like that.
We do all of this because we know a crisis is going to hit. We want to be proactive, but when it comes to making a plan for when we know either a student’s in crisis or we’re feeling the effects of working with students in crisis, like we’re often reactive rather than proactive. So creating that plan is important because it’s going to come.
My first year in ministry, my former youth leader had said, Hey, when you go into ministry, you’ll hit these experiences over a few years. I got them all in the first year. I got to come back and go, I got them all. And so we know that’s going to come up. So the self care action plan is all about saying, okay, how do I invest in myself from the very beginning?
Or now we’re hitting January. How do I set myself up for a good year, 2025 taking care of myself? So that’s where I would start is just simply acknowledging the fact that we need to take care of ourselves. For our own benefit, for our ministry’s benefit, but also, for me, for my family’s benefit.
They’re the ones who I come home to when I’m tired and stuff like that and maybe a little bit shorter than I should be and stuff like that. Acknowledge that you need it is the first step, acknowledge that you need to take care of yourself rather than assuming that you’re invincible.
Yeah, and then I think actually just really getting practical. Like on my website, which is youth crisis. org. I’ve actually got this action plan that you can download and fill out and make a real plan. Because I can think of stuff. I’m just telling from my own experience and I’ll forget it tomorrow.
If I write it down, I might forget where I’ve written it down, but stick it on a wall or something. And this is how I’m going to take care of myself.
Paul: It’s just really important that you’re able to identify that. And I think given what I want to talk a little bit about is just a framework to prompt those thoughts.
Yes, please give us the framework.
Tell us what are we looking for? So I’m going to go through, through them in order.
Emotional,
this idea of you need to think about plan, how you’re going to take care of your emotional wellbeing.
So I’ve just finished working at a therapeutic high school with students, and I have been in that world for a long time. But I’m not a therapist. And so I had limits on what I could do. And that’s true for us taking care of our own emotional wellbeing. We can put people around us but finding people that can specifically support us that could be a therapist.
It could be a counselor. It could be a trusted person, preferably disconnected from your ministry. Outside of the state, possibly outside of the state that you can You can just talk with, be real, say, Hey, I’m struggling here. I think so often we feel like we have to look like we have it all together.
That having someone who you can go to say, Hey, I’m wrestling with this. And I know that I can just be straight honest with you. What’s going on is important because it doesn’t build up. A lot of times we can feel shame that we are anxious or worried of these things and having a safe space to share on that is important, it just allows you to offload.
I use the phrase secondary trauma is the real deal. Secondary trauma is when you’re working with a student in crisis and you pick up some of that trauma. Not all of it but, there’ll be impacts on you and that builds up so you need places to detox from that trauma. Yeah, you have not just one.
Paul: That’s just one story from one kid. If you have five kids and they all have a traumatic story or they all have a story that impacts you over and over again, that clearly can have an impact on you.
Carl Dodd: And the worst thing I would say is you might not notice it. Because they all seem like not a big deal and you don’t notice that cumulative effect until it hits you.
And so naming it saying, Hey, I need to be looking for this and that’s part of the plan is saying, Hey, I want to look for like where I’m feeling these effects. So yeah. So that’s the emotional side of things.
Spiritual,
because very often we joke that we get paid to go to church and read our Bible.
It’s often one of the things that like, If you’re only reading your Bible because you’re prepping for Sunday or Wednesday that’s a good sign that things aren’t going well. That’s maybe you need some extra care and support, but also again, being proactive, going, Hey, when I’m my most busiest, when I’m in December and I’m just feeling all these things, like, how am I going to front load that in November with some just taking care of my spiritual self entering into my day?
All of that. So that can look like go to church outside of your church every so often. Just to be sat in the pew or the chairs with nothing to do, nothing to worry about. You can go and drink coffee with everyone else at the end and just relax. I think finding like a group of folks that you can just do like faith with, that could be other youth pastors.
It could just, again, something that’s unique. It could be jumping on a zoom call with a bunch of folks. I gather with youth pastors as well to just connect. It may be finding spaces where you feel close to God. For me, that’s I go and sit at the edge of a piece of water somewhere. I grew up on a peninsula, so I was surrounded by water.
So that go to a river, go to a lake, go to the ocean and just. That’s for me where I listen to the waves and I just feel like things are getting stripped away and I can just spend time with God. That’s going to be different for each person. Find a place that works for you. And then just like finding a therapist or counsellor, maybe you’re wrestling with something.
Spiritual directors are out there to help you have those conversations about about what God might be saying to you in your life. In different situations. And I know we’ve talked about at national youth works convention, where I was a coach, the, with the spiritual direction team there as well.
And I think just taking that time to invest is important because it just detaches it from work. And that’s always the difficult thing of being in ministry, remembering that you’re actually a Christian as well as a professional Christian.
Paul: When I was young, I thought the only, all I need is the Bible. All I need to do, and it is so important that you brought this up. There needs to be a bifurcation. Between what you’re studying as your job, as what you’re presenting and what the Bible is to you as a believer, because I, in my mind, I was, I, I was very idealistic in, in, so I thought God’s just going to work this out.
I don’t need anything else. I just need the Bible and I just need to be in worship. And suddenly I found out after, probably, I’m slow. I’m a slow learner. So probably five to seven years in I was like, wow, I’m really tired. Why am I so tired? What is going on in my life?
And I wish I would have sat down with Carl Dodd and said, Hey, what’s going on with my life? And you would have given me all these great. Thoughts which means by the way that if you’re a brand new youth worker who’s watching or listening to this You need to go right now not right now finish the episode here, but go to youthcrisis.org and download this wellness guide.
This there’s resources for you to help you because if you’re brand new to youth ministry You can have that an idealism in and of itself isn’t bad. It’s just that We create this little world, that everything’s going to be, just perfectly fine. And suddenly when things are not perfectly fine, we’ve got to have a plan.
Carl Dodd: Yeah, I was going to say, Paul, unfortunately at that time, Carl Dodd was in exactly the same space as you. And so it’s that idea, that I’m going to go into ministry to get closer to God. And that’s a false narrative. Get yourself invest and get yourself in a good place.
If you’re in ministry front load that as much as you can.
Paul: Ministry, AKA the wilderness. Occasionally.
Carl: Yeah. You don’t know what you’re getting. You say, you don’t know, you really don’t know what you’re getting into. It’s Oh no, I’m looking behind the curtain right now. That’s right. You are watching how the sausage gets made.
Paul: Exactly. You’re on one side and you’re going, Oh, this is great. This is wonderful. Now you’re back there with gloves on making sausage. You’re like, what is happening? This is nothing like I thought it was going to be.
It’s that whole idea of you have these mountaintop experiences, like we went to a retreat and ten kids wanted to give their life to Jesus, and you get back and your first conversation with someone who saw what state the van was in when you brought it back, and that’s what you’re actually dealing with and it’s all those things that have an impact that take your focus off what God’s been doing to, okay, now I’m dealing with real people.
And the next thing on the list is the thing that suffers, which is your
Social life
This idea of if. If your youth group or your volunteers have become your social life, then probably you need to get out more and get back into that. So go out for meals with friends, get back into stuff that, if you’re working an 80, 90 hour week that you just have not had time to do sometimes setting those boundaries with churches can have a They kind of start seeing you as you’re a little bit inflexible now.
You it’s no, it’s called boundaries. And it’s to make sure that I can do this for a long time. So there’s a social side.
There’s the physical side.
There’s only man and woman cannot live on pizza alone. But, I think. For me, one of the signs that I’m getting in a good place is I’m being way more physical and playing soccer or I’m going out.
I’m just about to hit snowboarding season, which gets harder each year. I get older. Start making those plans that might just be going out for a walk because you’ve been sat down at your desk for four hours trying to work out what’s going to happen on Sunday. Do something for me, it can even be chopping wood.
It’s a little bit of a frustration out when you. Chop some wood and take the opportunities in time as well. So I’ve just left, like I said, I was working at a school for eight years. Like my drive each day there and back was two hours to two and a half hours each day. And so when I left there like a couple of months ago, like I started texting everyone going, Hey, I have time. Do you want to grab some food? Do you want to do this? And stuff like that. It’s like right now I have time.
So if you’re blessed with that opportunity to recognize, okay, now is not the time to sit on my sofa. Now is the time to. I’ve got no expectations of me right now while the kids are at school. So let’s go and do some fun things.
Leads me into occupational,
take care of yourself within your jobs. That might be like I said, some of it is setting boundaries, but some of it might be, I’m going to invest in myself professionally. It’s this difference between would love churches to just be like family.
But we are employees. And sometimes it’s not till things get difficult that you realize that. So remember that take care of your professional development, kind of network, all those sorts of things. But also have some goals for your life. Where do I want to be? What do I want to do?
Again, engaging with, I know Paul, you do coaching and stuff like that. Engaging with coaches to, to have that plan. Like where’s my life going to be in, in 10 years, again, engage with God on that cause God sometimes laughs at our plans that we have for our lives. That’s happened many times.
So it’s good if you’re following God rather than making it up as you go along. But yeah, do some workshops, do some training, all those things that kind of enrich you to take whatever next step may be. And that’s, it’s okay to have a next step, but as long as, One thing I would say, never say that what your next step is to it.
Don’t arrive at a church and say, Hey I’m here. Cause I’m getting ready to be an associate pastor. Let me talk about my exit strategy. Don’t lead with that. That’s not going to work for you, but in the background, again, separate, just say, Hey I know that I’m not gonna probably be at this church until I retire, so what would a next step look, look for, look like for me?
There’s that side of things. For me, that looked like during COVID, I got trained as a youth mental health first aid instructor, because I always knew that I loved being in front of people giving training. And so I’ve been able to do that on the side. I’ve had it as a fallback if anything ever goes wrong and stuff like that.
Plus I really think folks should be trained up to respond to youth mental health issues. So there’s all that side stuff. My next thing is intellectual, engage your brain. That could be as simple as doing whatever board games or interactive games that, that prompt you. If you’re a reader, dig into books.
Just don’t let your brain sit. So now I have ADHD, so my brain never sits silent. But focus sometimes helps. That might be a better way of doing it.
Financial is the penultimate.
Always a stressor. One piece of advice I would give is if it’s possible, put a little bit of money away.
Like it can be a small amount each week that you don’t know about. So that when you need to go and do something. You don’t feel guilty. So it’s Oh man, I need to go and have a nice meal with my spouse or my girlfriend or my boyfriend and stuff like that. And so and we can afford it because I knew this was coming and I was proactive in planning or a vacation.
If you have vacation money set aside.
Ecological is the last one,
which is an interesting one, ecological and environmental. That’s the two ways of putting it. Like for me cleaning up my space proactively, knowing that I’m going into a a tricky time that’s one way to take care of myself, but also, like I said, going outdoors and chopping some wood like just being in the world that God gave us and taking advantage of it I would say one piece of advice Camps quite often have spaces for pastors and there is a ministry to come and stay.
Check out your local camps, see if they’ve got like a pastoral retreat space. Great place to get out environmentally, physically, all of the things. So that’s just one tip there. Yeah. So that’s the eight of them again, like you can download the planning sheet from our website youthcrisis.org.
Paul: This wellness guide was tremendous and worth the price of admission, folks. If you’re here and that’s, and you jotted those eight things down, you’re going to walk away a whole lot better today. I like the point too, about just putting money away that can immediately relieve some stress. There’s look, I have a little bit of money that should things go sideways.
Carl Dodd: In the ministry that look, at least we have something that says, Hey, we can function, outside of this position. And trust me, when I give that advice, I also know how difficult that is for those in ministry. I’m not, it’s not like a pie in the sky thing. It’s that’s difficult to do, but it’s also something that you, that’s why I said it could be like five bucks or whatever it can be, whatever you can do.
Paul: Just an extra bonus here, but, coaching or even therapy, other things you can build that there’s many churches, at least if you do your budget correctly and you do a budget every year, you can put that under a personal development. There’s usually a personal development.
If your church does not have a personal development line item. In your youth ministry budget that probably needs to be brought up because those you can put some of those things in there Whether it’s a you can put in things like you’re saying. Hey, I want to go to a camp I want to go to a camp for a day retreat.
I want to take a class At a college. I want coaching. I need some youth ministry coaching. I want you know I need feel like I need an hour of therapy once a quarter whatever that is, that can be part of a youth ministry budget. To me, if a church is wise, they will include that if they want to keep you longer than the typical, which may be 18 to 22 months or whatever it may be currently for a youth pastor.
Carl Dodd: If a pastor wants you they’ll, that should be included in the whole package. That’s definitely like a green flag for me is the fact that if a church is talking about your wellbeing, when you’re getting hired, then they know their stuff. And they’re actually being as proactive as you should be.
I was working with, I used to work alongside a veteran youth pastor, middle school pastor called Nate Rice, who became a therapist. And he actually thought of the name Youth Crisis First Responders. I just stole it with his permission. But he, when we were doing training, he would talk to a lot of young youth pastors about building up your contacts.
But basically build up your contact list of therapists in the area, ask it, reach out to them, Christian therapists. You can go, I put some links on my website go to psychology today and look up Christian therapists in your area.
Get to know them either for yourself or for your See if there are people you can trust, say, Hey, can I just talk to you a bit about your approach? And then when a student comes to you in crisis, you say, Hey, I know these folks that you could check out. Here’s some of their pricing. These are the ones that can do it for free, et cetera, et cetera.
Paul: Absolutely. Excellent idea. Keep those things on your speed dial that if you need to get ahold of somebody. Have those list of people that you can trust, that if a student brings something to you that you don’t feel quite qualified for or some, a student needs some extended help, then those are the folks that you want to have in your phone.
Let’s talk real quick about the way that a youth pastor can use their wellness plan. That once they start developing this, and maybe they’ve had it for a little while, how can they use their own wellness plan then to create a culture of wellness for their students and their volunteers.
Carl Dodd: Yeah. It’s having that opportunity, like creating opportunities for conversation. Even sharing like, Hey, I’m not going to be contactable this day because I’m going for a hike. And this is part of my wellness plan and I’m naming it.
Don’t feel guilty about it. I used to, I caused controversy in the church once many times, but this one time, because for the first time ever, they’d had youth volunteers that had worked for a while, they’d been doing it. But one thing I wanted to start was asking them every year or a, not a little bit of an annual commitment, but more of a, Hey, I want you to go and think about this yourself.
Talk with your family. Are you in a place where you can volunteer this year? And if not, this is a complete get out of free jail card. Like you can just, Send me a message and say, Hey, I can’t do it this year. And the reason I did that is because I feel like some people show up to make the refreshments and they end up there for 40 years.
That’s the situation I was seeing, and it’s no, I want you guys to, it actually boosted my volunteers because people would sign up because I would promise them that what I’m asking them to do is all they’re going to do. And if they want to. And every year I’ll ask the same question, go and pray, talk with your family.
Some people thought I was challenging their loyalty and ability to do, cause it’s I’ve done this for years. I don’t, it’s no, I want you to take care of yourself. So setting that culture can cause that even that was an opportunity. Cause you get to talk about, Hey, this is why I’m doing it.
I believe our students benefit from that because again We often have our church face, our church mask that we put on. And yeah, I remember when all those years ago, when I was training for ministry, someone speaking about, I was always told don’t preach about what you don’t know. In other words, don’t say, Hey, I actually am still thinking about this myself.
And that’s true for the mental health as well. This idea of the Bible says, do not worry. So I can’t say that I worry. Cause then I’m committing a sin. It’s no, it’s way more to it than that. And so be real with students in a, in an appropriate way. And that’s the thing it’s be real, but remember that you’re still the youth pastor, the youth leader, stuff like that.
It’s you have, we’ve talked about all these people over here that can support you personally, but also say to students, what that classic, why the, If someone has done something why did God allow this to happen? It’s you know what? I struggle with that too.
And I have to sit and. Sometimes I’m frustrated at God that this has happened, but God’s God, I figure he’s big enough to handle me being frustrated and understand. And just creates that reality of it’s okay. You don’t need to throw everything out because you’re struggling with this one thing.
I think it just creates that culture for students. It allows them to feel safe to talk about their mental health, there’s this commonly held view that if you talk about things like suicide, the students will think more about suicide. They’ve done the research. It’s the exact opposite.
The more you talk about it, the more your people aren’t keeping it in. And we could probably go through, different memories of folks that we didn’t know stuff was going on with and suddenly. Something happened because they were hiding it, they were holding it in. It’s that whole pressure valve thing.
If you’re allowing people to just talk, then it creates that health. Because it’s been, it’s going on, even if you hear about it or not. By saying, like fully youth institute again, sorry. My wife works there and actually was involved with this curriculum, and they wrote Faith in an Anxious World which is about how to engage students in faith conversations with anxiety, which of course we know has been on this big rise and increase even before COVID but how do we have those conversations and see it as not antithetical to being a Christian, but actually engaging?
God being, I think one of the images that’s used is that Jesus gets in the boat during the storm. He doesn’t stay out of the boat. He gets in there and steps into the waves and the struggles and the screaming and being scared. And I think, again, it’s the idea of God’s big enough to hear that we’re struggling.
People don’t come to Jesus because they’re worried about everything they’ve done in their life. It’s that’s the whole point of Jesus. And but we’ve created that culture. So by working You know, given a different narrative of Jesus being there for when you’re struggling and it’s okay to struggle and we’re not going to gossip about you and we’re not going to do this and we’re not going to do that.
Shows that you care, but also leading by example sharing appropriately is important because it’s okay, I can step into these conversations. And sometimes they take you by surprise, a student will share something and then you’ve got seven students all sharing the same thing at once.
Oh, you have that. Oh, I have that. And it’s guys, why are you not talking about this? It’s I talk about it at school. And that’s the question. Why is it easier to talk about mental health at school than church? Like we should be the place where we can introduce how God steps into that.
So the more and more we do it, the more and more we set that example in our own lives, the better it is for our students. And the more focused on Christ as healer places that central role. 100%. Because if you’re, cause youth pastors, if you’re, If you’re taking care of yourself, it creates a ripple effect.
The, you’re the example of what you’re trying to be the example. You’re not going to get perfect all the time. Just like Carl will say, you’re not going to get perfect all the time, but the more you practice these wellness steps, the more evidence you have. for passing those along. When you say you can’t do something, you’re saying, no, it, you’re teaching other people that it’s okay to say, no, I don’t have to do that all the time.
I don’t, I don’t have to be at this appointment all the time. I can take a day where I can just be off by myself or, those types of things.
Paul: And I think that’s so critical, Carl that youth pastors are watching and they’re listening and go, what, I’m not just doing it for me.
I’m doing it for me. But when I do it for me, it’s going to add a tremendous amount of benefit to the people around me and my students, the church that I’m in, and so forth. So if you can be well, they used to say that hurt people, right? But I think well, people can help people get well as included in that.
Carl Dodd: Yeah. Again, to quote Nate Rice, I always like to attribute when I steal. He would often talk about we are built for relationship. We’re hurtful in relationship, we’re also healed in relationship. And I think that’s just important as well. Yeah just having that play out in what we do around students just catches.
Paul: Absolutely. Some things are more caught than taught. You can teach a kid how to read the Bible, study the Bible. It’s equally important to teach them how to take care of themselves. It’s equally as important to show them how to walk with the Lord in difficult times and and all of those things, but let’s go ahead and land the plane here, so to speak that and tell us more about the resources that you have over on your website, over on youthcrisis.org and and some of the things that youth pastors can find there that’s going to help them get this wellness plan started.
Carl Dodd: Yeah. First of all, I’d encourage folks to keep on checking in at youthcrisis. org because I’m just relaunching it. It paused for a while, but I’ve posted a few Of the blogs that I’ve written elsewhere for taking how to respond to students.
The anxiety, I’ve got the action plan as well. But some of the things that, that are on there, first of all, there’s just a a straight, if you’re struggling right now we talked about being in some really dark places, like there’s some contacts you can, Make personally yourself like 988 which is the suicide and crisis line.
If that’s where you’re at this season, I please go and speak to someone. If you can’t do that, my email is there. Call it youthcrisis. org. I will, I can take your email and just be someone who can help you signpost. Also on there, there’s the opportunity to receive some either coaching or even helping churches set their youth group up well for supporting students in crisis.
Like one great insight that I got from someone else after working in a school supporting mental health for years was just the question of why do you do food games when you’re working with students with eating disorders? I almost, you I almost killed a teacher with a Wendy’s chicken burger eating challenge.
So that’s one good reason not to do food challenges. Yes. Thereby the grace of God is what we often say. But also, there was this prompt of okay. Think about the community you’re serving. So asking those questions that we might not ask of, like, how do we shape our youth ministry? And so sometimes that takes someone to just come from outside, have a even a conversation like this and go, Hey, have you thought about this?
Have you thought about that? I’m very, I’m a very strong believer, even in my own life, of having people name my blind spots. I’m living in a totally different culture. There’s things that even though I’m American, there’s still cultural blind spots that I have of, Oh wait, I can’t say that.
Or I can’t respond that way. I’ve just offended you. It’s true for our ministries as well. There may be some ministry cultures that we have that are blind spots. And so having someone in there I think it’s important to, to build out your toolkit. So I’ve talked about youth mental health, first aid training that’s available from a whole bunch of folks.
It’s something that, That I do, it’s like a seven and a half hour course. It’s like CPR, but for mental health. And it puts you in that place. I remember jumping on Facebook pages and this is actually what prompted youth crisis first responders and seeing a whole bunch of youth pastors and different ministry leaders struggling with teens in crisis.
And I went back to my team at the school and said, Hey, we can help youth. Pastors are out there because what the, what is freaking them out right now, we would call Monday because that was the population we worked with. And now, at that early days, I was getting out to churches and just saying, Hey, let me help you just deal with these things.
And then I have a whole bunch of different contacts on that action plan. I talked about, so 988. I’ve talked about the suicide health line national network of youth ministries. If you need to connect psychology today, full youth Institute, disciple project, which is you YMCA. Yeah. And fountain and pen, which is my wife’s spiritual direction website just to start those conversations and thoughts.
But yeah, I’m always willing to take either an email or a phone call with folks that just need to process. And like I said, I have the time right now. And I believe that we in the midst of all that is going on in our teens and our students that it is a place where we can step into with care and with Christ and just support our students rather than feeling like It’s something we need to shy away from or see as an attack.
It’s something where, Christ is calling us into a place of healing. Advent is a great time to think about that, to be that light in the darkness to, to students and to their families that are just struggling right now. But I feel that we need to prep ourselves for that so that we can respond well.
Paul: Absolutely. And where can, if people want to reach out to you, if they want to be able to just ask further questions, what are some ways they can reach you either through social or other means?
Carl:
Facebook: @carldodd
@youthcrisisforstresponders
Insta: @carlrdodd
LinkedIn: carldodd
carl@youthcrisis.org
I do believe it’s like really important and it could transform like how we do. If we wrestle with this, then it could transform folks being in ministry longer, going deeper, all that sort of stuff. So thank you. That’s right. That’s right. Youth pastors, get on over there to youthcrisis. org, download all the good stuff and start making yourself a wellness plan today.
You’ll be thankful for it. And and we’ll see you guys in the next episode.