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Episode 18 – Brandon “Beauty in the Wreckage” Andress

Author, Blogger, and Podcast host Brandon Andress joins us in studio.  Brandon’s new book, “Beauty in the Wreckage: Finding Peace in the Age of Outrage”, focuses on the redemption of suffering.  Listen for Brandon’s humility as he shares his personal stories of finding gratitude, healing, and community in some of life’s most difficult moments.

Brandon is also author of “Unearthed: How Discovering the Kingdom of God Will Transform the Church and Change the World” (2010) and the tongue-in-cheek “And Then The End Will Come” (2013).

Some topics include:

How do we transform our suffering?

How did the grief he experienced during writing impact the book?

How do spiritual disciplines lead to healing?

What does healing mean to you?

Shownotes:

Video Introduction to “Beauty in the Wreckage”

“Beauty in the Wreckage: Finding Peace in the Age of Outrage” main website

Brandon Andress Personal Website

Brandon’s Outside The Walls Podcast

Next Episode:

Tony and Eric live recording at the Heartland 2018 Best Practices Conference

Episode 17- Bob Mills, President of Mindsrenewed.org

Want to join a consortium of 12,000 mental health advocates?  Listen to Bob Mills, Founder of Minds Renewed, discuss the mission of his ambitious organization.  The goal of the organization is to become the most valuable web platform for evaluating, curating, and communicating the best mental health information on the web.

The origins began in 2001 in a mental health ministry that Bob started at 1st Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Bob’s desire to honor God through serving the suffering grew out of his own experience with bouts of depression and bipolar disorder.

Some topics include:

What is the leadership structure of his mental health group ministry?

What has led to the growth of Minds Renewed?

What are some good models that he has identified through his networking?

What does healing mean to you?

Shownotes:

Mental Health Grace Alliance – ministry that provides mental health resources for families and individuals suffering with mental health struggles

Fresh Hope for Mental Health – Pastor Brad Hoefs is a podcast host and developer of a mental health group ministry model

The Stability Network – Mental health advocacy organization that helps employers, communities, and the public recognize that people with mental health conditions are their friends, neighbors and colleagues who canand dolead successful lives.

Keynoting at Best Practices for Ministry: Heartland Conference

This Wednesday (October 10, 2018) is World Mental Health Day. We are honored to be keynote speakers at the at the Best Practices for Ministry: Heartland Conference held at St. Peter’s Lutheran in Columbus, Indiana.

The topic of our presentation will be healing. Here is the program description:

What does healing mean to you? How can it be received and maintained?  Eric Riddle and Tony Roberts have tackled this issue in an intimate way as they wrestle with mental health diagnoses. In Eric’s pivotal work with the flood recovery effort, he discovered how to serve his way to sanity. Tony turned inward, writing a spiritual memoir called, Delight in Disorder: Ministry, Madness, Mission. Eric and Tony then teamed up to found a faith-based mental health support group Faithful Friends. They were then led to produce Revealing Voices, a podcast that is faith-based, peer-led, story-driven, and stigma-breaking.

      Eric and Tony will discuss how God them into mental health ministry, where they find Christ’s strength in their own weaknesses, and what the Holy Spirit can do when believers reach out to those with troubled minds.

Our hope is that we will cultivate a greater sense of healing within and among those who participate and that this healing would spread as they are sent back into their communities to love God and serve God’s people.

Chris Cole – What Healing Means

Healing means to me that I am in congruence with myself and my world, that I am able to maintain relationships in love and devotion, and that I am continually aware of and attempting to return to a state of holistic harmony. Healing, or true recovery, is not necessarily the absence of symptoms but rather an awareness of symptoms and a humble responsiveness to such maladaptive responses to pain, knowing that I want to be healthy for myself and the people I love. Healing requires some connection to a deep meaning and purpose, which I hold as a spiritual vision of love beyond my own small life and circumstances. By healing, I am moving toward the ability to love myself and my world with a growing expansiveness. Healing is a surrender to the dynamics of life and the intimate understanding of continued trials and tribulations on the infinite and mysterious unfold of my own humanity and that of those graciously placed in my life.
I have a strong desire to contribute positively to the world, to love all people, and that has to be an overflow of the love I have for myself. I hold my healing in the highest regard, because I am unable to give without being resourced enough to give. It is like the modern metaphor of oxygen masks on an airplane: I have to put my oxygen mask on before helping another with their oxygen mask, or else I run the risk of being incapacitated and incapable of living in alignment with my values. Such an inability to show love to myself is a sort of spiritual death in itself.
Perhaps most pertinent to the intersection of social justice, neurodiversity, and mental health is the healing required to hold the goodness of humanity in all people located in societal systems of stigmatization, prejudice, and oppression. I believe that people are doing the best they can with the tools they have. Any inability to see their goodness is a reflection of my refusal to see my own shortcomings and capacity to heal. People are fundamentally good, sane, and whole. I believe that wholeheartedly and have come to know this truth intimately within myself. Providing tools—whether in language, models of thinking, or more skillful treatment reform—must be an expression of the ways in which we all long to love and also need better vehicles to more fully express and articulate that love for us all.

Episode 16 – Waking Up with Chris Cole

Author and Mental Health Podcast Host of “Waking Up Bipolar”, Chris Cole, walks us through his vision of a more person-centered, holistic, compassionate mental healthcare system.  Chris re-appropriates language to describe mental illness. For example, he describes his personal journey with “bipolar order”. His podcast focuses on the intersection of bipolar disorder and spiritual awakening.

Chris’s podcast, blog, and Cole Coaching website is www.colecoaching.com.  There are multiple references in the episode to his blog post Re-appropriating Bipolar Beyond Pathology.

Some of the topics covered in the show include:

What is his life experience with “Bipolar Order”?

How can the mental healthcare system care for individuals suffering with severe mental illness?

Who are some of the best coaches in his life?

What does healing mean to you?

Shownotes:

Chris Cole’s book: The Body of Chris: A Memoir of Obsession, Addiction, and Madness

Podcast Facebook Page: Waking Up Bipolar (with video editions of his podcast)

Tony and Eric will be key note speakers at Best Practices for Ministry: Heartland 2018. If you live near Columbus, IN please consider joining us on Wednesday, October 10 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church

Next Episode:

Bob Mills, President and CEO of Minds Renewed

Episode 15 – Laura Pogliano, Caring for the Caregivers

Leader of a Facebook group with nearly 20,000 members, Laura Pogliano has the unique experience of professionally working with Johns Hopkins and personally serving her son who suffered from mental illness. Laura shares her passion for advocacy, putting it into the context of a social justice movement.

Laura’s Facebook group is Advocates for People with Mental Illnesses.

Laura’s Non-profit is Parentsforcare.org.

Some of the topics include:

How does her non-profit help caregivers?

How has the church shaped her family’s life experience?

What are drawbacks of the “Recovery Model” in mental healthcare system?

How does HIPAA impact families?

What does healing mean to you?

Show notes:

Lars and the Real Girl

Treatment Advocacy Center of Virginia

Video of Laura at John’s Hopkins

Next Show:

Chris Cole, Podcast Host of “Waking Up Bipolar

 

Episode 14 – Faithful Friends, Kim and Diana

Faithful Friends mental health wellness ministry model is the focus. Kim Graves and Diana Starkey, who lead the weekly ministry with Tony and Eric, help model the typical flow of the group.

Below is the format of the 7:00 – 8:30 PM ministry hosted every Tuesday night at The Living Room in Columbus, IN:

Opening Prayer | Announcements | Foundational Scripture | Introductions | Guidelines | Scripture | Accountability Check | Wellness Topic | Minute of Gratitude | Sharing | Closing Prayer

If you are interested in learning more about this ministry model, please reach out to Eric (eric.r.riddle@gmail.com) or Tony (tonyrobertsdelight@gmail.com)

Faithful Friends has met every Tuesday since starting in November 2014.

 

Lousville Labyrinth

Today, Jen and I went to a labyrinth on the campus of the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary – where Tony earned his Master’s of Divinity degree.

It has brick sides with a grass path.  Freshly cut. Very large at 66’ diameter (picture was taken at entrance of labyrinth).

I knew that I wanted to walk with an intention, so I quickly decided to focus on the word “time.”  With the size of the labyrinth and the intention in place, I will say that it felt like easily the longest labyrinth walk of my life. That is good.

It tends to be cliché, but time is definitely the most precious commodity that we have. Reflection on time took me deep into my thoughts on values, prioritization, time allocation, and attention.  It also led me to question how I value other people’s time.

How I can commit to making my engaged time with others more valuable?

Thoughts on legacy even came up.  Legacy is connected to people recognizing an individual’s investment of time in a certain place, idea, people, etc. We control legacy only as far as we control our use of time.

When I asked Jen about her experience in the labyrinth, she said that she had “cleared space” in her mind.  It was an important time to be more mindful, something that she admittedly struggles to maintain.  There was no revelation for Jen, but hopefully the space that she experienced will be something that she can carry with her into a new chapter in her life.  She has decided to explore a career in paid ministry.

 

 

 

Episode 13 – Robert Vore, Podcast Pioneer

Christianity and Mental Health’s intersection is the defining characteristic of Robert’s Vore’s podcast, CXMH. The podcast, started in January 2017, released its 45th episode this week. Robert had taken a “Podternity” leave while enjoying life as a first time father this year, but will be launching season 3 this fall.

On this episode, Robert discusses balancing the podcast with a new career in mental health counseling. He finished graduate school in July!

Some of the topics include:

What was the tipping point that led Robert to focus on mental health?

When did he decide to self disclose his own diagnosis? What impact did it have?

What vision does he have for his personal counseling career?

What is his perspective on the peer recovery movement?

What does healing mean to you?

Ways to reach Robert:

CXMH Podcast website

Robert Vote on Facebook

Robert Vore on Twitter

Donate to Robert through Patreon

  • Join Patreon to become a CXMH Facebook community member

Next Episode: Diana Starkey and Kim Grave join Tony and Eric in studio to discuss the Faithful Friends Mental Health Wellness ministry

To Edit or Not to Edit

Back in October of 2017, when Eric & I were conceiving Revealing Voices, we discussed both our dreams and visions as well as pragmatic concerns: format, length, equipment, cost. One question we raised was how frequently we would release episodes. We kicked around a number of possibilities. We discussed how much time we could invest. We looked at podcasts dealing with similar subjects and having similar budgets (none). Shows like CXMH, The Depression Files,  Waking Up Bipolar, and The Dark Place.

We knew a few things with certainty:

A steady schedule. It frustrates us as listeners to get episodes weekly then not for months.

A realistic schedule. Eric has many essential life commitments. My own mental health has comes first.

Our faithful friendship must outweigh the podcast. If the demands jeopardized this, we would cancel.

With these priorities in mind, we settled on a magical number of every other week, with the option to take a planned break as needed. My therapist recommended 20/year as a goal, so we’ve had this in our minds as we entered into our first session. To date, we have released 12 episodes in just 5 months. We even took a hiatus in July for travel, family, and work commitments.

It wasn’t easy at first, especially not for Eric, who bore the lion’s share with editing. While learning the ropes, early episodes took up to 8 hours to edit. This was put a great strain on sustaining the schedule. I wanted to help more, but had panic attacks just sitting down to help edit.

But by God’s grace, we made it through. Technique became smoother. I developed a system of logging and rating that helped Eric with technical editing. We put more interviews in the bank we could draw from. Before long we were in a groove.

With the success of two unedited episodes, we are positioned stronger than ever. Confident in our quality. Eager to schedule interviews with more local leaders and national experts.

We look forward to continuing with the show schedule and bringing you mostly edited interviews and some unedited episodes with the two of us when inevitably crunched for time.

As always, we welcome your feedback and show ideas!