What if the growing number of people walking through church doors aren’t just seeking community, they’re desperately seeking healing?

In this thought-provoking episode of the Collide Podcast, we sit down with Shaunti Feldhahn to talk about the surge in hurting people coming to church and what we can do about it. Drawing from her extensive social research and deep understanding of human relationships, Shaunti shares eye-opening insights about the emotional and spiritual needs many people bring with them to church—and how the church can respond with compassion, awareness, and practical care. Whether you’re a ministry leader, volunteer, or someone who simply cares about others, this conversation will remind you that the church has a powerful opportunity to become a place of healing and hope.

Meet Shaunti

Shaunti Feldhahn received her graduate degree from Harvard University and began her career as an analyst on Wall Street before unexpectedly becoming a social researcher, best-selling author, and popular speaker. Today, she applies her analytical skills to uncovering life-changing truths about relationships both at home and in the workplace. Her groundbreaking, research-based books—such as For Women Only and For Men Only—have sold more than 3 million copies in 25 languages and are widely used in homes, counseling centers, and corporations worldwide. Shaunti and her husband, Jeff, speak around the globe, helping individuals and organizations better understand and support one another.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn

• Why there’s been a surge of hurting people turning to the church for help
• How many churches are missing key opportunities to offer meaningful care
• What creates the gap between people’s needs and the church’s response
• Practical ways churches and individuals can become a healing presence
• How empathy and awareness can transform ministry and relationships

How This Episode Will Encourage You

If you’ve ever wondered how to help people who are walking through pain, this episode will give you fresh perspective and hope. You’ll be reminded that while the needs around us are great, God has equipped the church—and each of us—to be His hands and feet to a hurting world.

Connect with Shaunti - Website | When Hurting People Come to Church

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Hey there, friend. Welcome to the Collide podcast. I'm so glad you hopped on today.

I don't know about you, but in a lot of my run ins and conversations that I'm having with people, there just seems to be an overwhelming sense of need, of anxiety, stress, pain, lack of peace, brokenness. And this conversation I'm about to hand you, I had with Shanti Feldhon, who is a Harvard graduate. She was an analyst on Wall Street.

She's become a social researcher, best selling author and popular speaker. And she just came out with a book called When Hurting People Come to Church.

And she's done this immense amount research that she shares about, about this overwhelming need we have of all of these people who are struggling and, and hurting. And the opportunity, she frames it as an opportunity that the church community has to meet those needs. And so it's a, it's an interesting interview.

If you've been feeling overwhelmed by all of the need, I think that this conversation will interest you. Take a listen. Shanti, it is so fun to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for hanging out.

Are you kidding? I'm totally excited.

Oh, I love it. And where are you calling in from?

I actually live in Atlanta, Georgia, Home of the world's busiest airport.

Is it really? I didn't know that.

We actually moved down to Atlanta from New York City. That's where my husband and I started out our marriage.

And we didn't know we were going to be doing what we're doing today with the research and the traveling and the speaking and all the things. But God put us in the city, in the country where we can get anywhere non stop.

I love it. I love it. Well, here's a fun fact about where I'm from that I just learned yesterday.

Okay, so, so Washingtonian here lived here my entire life and I did not know that our state animal is a marmot.

What's a marmot? I don't think I know. Is it like a wolverine, kind of a mammoth?

A marmot? I don't even know. That's what's hilarious. Why is that our.

There are people rolling their eyes at us right now.

I know they are. They're mocking my lack of knowledge around weird animals. Anyways, enough of the state facts. So glad you're here.

You are a social researcher, a best selling author, a popular speaker, you just started a podcast. It sounds like this year you graduated from Harvard. I mean, I could go on and on about you're an analyst on Wall Street.

Must be from your New York life. You've written several books. You have this new book that just came out. When hurting people Come to Church. Can you just jump right in and tell us?

I mean you could have written a book on 100 million things, but you chose this topic, why that topic?

So for years as a social researcher, which is just a fancy way of saying I talk to a lot of people and do a lot of studies to try to figure out what helps people thrive right. In their lives and in their relationships.

One of the things that has come up continually is the mental health journey that so many people are on these days. And it became a really big issue during COVID but it didn't start there. It's been an issue forever.

And this is actually a co authored book with a friend and a colleague at Regent University. He's a clinical psychologist, Dr. James Sells.

And it was the reason that we felt like we had to write this book together is that the church has an opportunity here that I don't know that many churches don't realize that they have just really to step in and we as Christians to step in to the pain that people are having and really have a true impact on the mental health crisis. The church can really become a key solution. It was sort of typified.

Dr. Sells, Jim, my co author on the book, he was driving from point A to point B in the middle of like rural America somewhere. And he on the road on the way to the interstate, he passed this little white church, probably you know, 100 people on a Sunday morning.

Like the way they best thought they could reach their community was to say family counseling available.

And it really hit him at that time that this is an opportunity that many churches would want to step into and many, many of us as caring people would want to step into if we knew it was option.

Absolutely.

I mean I talked to you before we, we got online here about the high value we have around collide with reminding women that they're worthy of healing, that God wants for them healing, they deserve it. And we're always asking them to say yes, to take the next step, to walk closer and closer towards wholeness.

And so we have a counseling program, we have all these resources. So I love that you're right up our alley girlfriend.

But I just reading some stats recently where when asked, moms said the greatest thing they think about in the Middle of the night is their mental health issues. That that's what keeps them up at night. That 50% of women know they need help and only 50% get it, and 50% don't.

I mean, that women are twice as likely to have depression, anxiety, and mental health issues as men. And so there's some serious need out there.

Well, it's serious need, and there are some serious solutions and serious opportunities for people who are listening to this going, yes, right, Like, I need some help and I don't know how. Because here's basically the issue. Can I give you, like, the big picture of. Because some of the statistics. You're right on.

Like, I know exactly what study you're talking about, because there was a study that just came out on moms and our mental health. And right now, just. And this is according to the government statistics, the National Institutes of Mental Health, there are about.

About 60 million people dealing with some sort of mental health issue. Now, the majority is anxiety or anxiety and depression, but there's also trauma, there's addictions, there's, you know, all sorts of things.

And only about 30 million are getting help. Right? So there's your 50% that you're talking about. And the problem is, why is it that half of us aren't getting help?

Well, some of it is just like, we're scared, right? Like, some of us feel like, well, if I was praying enough, then I wouldn't be in pain.

But, you know, I think we all know with our heads, if we're thinking about it, that that's not accurate. Like, we're living in a broken world. Pain is a. Is a part of it, and sometimes you need somebody to walk alongside you.

The problem is, is that for the last 40 years, we've built up a system where kind of, we think the only person who can walk alongside someone with mental health issues is a counselor, is a psychologist, is someone who's going to sort of treat it professionally. And maybe you see a pastor for a few times, and then the pastor doesn't have room to see everybody. So they refer out, here's the problem.

I've spent the last two years doing this massive study with pastors and church leaders and counselors and all the things. And I would ask pastor after pastor after pastor, how are you doing? Because they're overwhelmed, right? They're like, I can't see everybody.

There's so many people who need help. But thankfully we have a big list of counselors in our area that we refer out to. We have people we trust. We can send them to this group.

Then my next question is always, do those counselors have room to see them? No. So that's an issue.

And so the main issue is that we have started to funnel all of our needs and our pain to pastors and clinicians, and there just aren't enough of them. There aren't enough to treat 30 million extra people.

And so what we're proposing is that back in the day, what would happen before we got scared and thought, we can't talk about mental health with people, That's a professional thing. Back in the day, what would happen is that you would have coffee with Aunt Martha, right? Like you have coffee with a friend.

You'd sit, you'd go for a walk with somebody once a week and just share life. And that needs to recur.

We need to get back to the idea that we need the whole scope of care, not just professional clinical care, because there are plenty of issues around life. Pain and worry and sadness and all the things that you really don't truly. Often you may not need a professional for that.

Now, some of those people will.

If you have serious postpartum depression, for example, you absolutely can be greatly helped by talking to a specialist, which, by the way, anybody out there listening to this in that situation, reach out and get that help. But part of the problem is that sort of professional class is very full.

And so what we are hoping is that we can share a vision for everybody out there who's listening, who cares for other people to become a listener and a friend in their church.

So much. I want to ask you about that. The first observation I make as you're talking about this is you call it an opportunity.

And I love that because I think there are a lot of us who are doing this work who feel very overwhelmed, and it feels more like a problem than an opportunity.

So I love that you're starting the conversation out and reframing it and saying, look, this is an opportunity for us to actually have an entirely ginormous impact on individual lives and families, which change trajectories. So that's. That's so very cool. Shanti, my question to you is, before we start getting into the nitty gritty of what does that look like?

To create those kind of communities who are being good listeners and walking alongside people, how did we get out of hanging out with Aunt Martha?

Well, I'll tell you the big picture way.

And there's lots and lots of things that have happened, but big picture, it was actually a good thing that ended up having unforeseen consequences, which is as we became more specialized and as there became more studies around counseling and psychology and how, you know, with how the brain works and neuroscience and oh, wow, like there's something going wrong in kind of the chemical plant of the brain. And this med, this particular medicine kind of goes in and wakes up that chemical plant and somebody feels a lot better.

Like all of that has had a really good trajectory. We've learned so much. The problem is, as we have learned so much, what has started to creep in.

Well, started to creep in about 15, 20 years ago, it's firmly entrenched right now, is the idea that professional caregiving is the cultural standard. That is what we do. In our survey, we asked all the pastors.

We had more than 2,000 pastors and church leaders in this big national study that we just did, and 88% of them said that when the issue is a mental health issue, the primary role of the church should be to refer out and absolutely, like, we don't agree, we don't disagree that there is an incredible need for licensed counselors. I mean, my co author on this book is a licensed clinical psychologist and he spent 30 something years training clinicians.

So it's not like we're trying to replace them.

What we're trying to do is to say we've kind of gotten away from the idea of both and, and saying we need the people to walk alongside and we need the specialists for those cases where it's more than just a basic issue.

And so that's really what's happened, is that we've gotten kind of scared about walking alongside people in pain and think, ah, that has to go to the professional. And that's great. We need the professionals, but we also need the people to walk side by side. And so that's what we're trying to.

Raise up look like to make this happen. A hurting mom, maybe a single mom, and she comes to church with her kids and I'm making up a story here, she feels unsupported.

She has a lot she's juggling with being a sole parent, with, you know, trying to pay the bills, all the things, and she shows up at church. How do you help a corporate equip a church to create this kind of community that can walk alongside people who have some serious issues?

Yeah, well, that's one of the reasons why, in addition to the book, to present the vision and to give some tools to people and to churches, we also have a ministry that's sort of in parallels called the church cares and the whole point behind the church Cares is to equip that church to be able to say, you don't need to be afraid of stepping in. Perhaps that single mom needs a friend, needs a community, maybe needs someone to walk alongside a little more closely.

But maybe there's not, like a true psychological disorder. It's just life pain. And if it is, if there is a disorder, let's just pretend that she has one too many glasses of wine every night for dinner. Right?

Because she just can't handle life, which, you know, everybody gets that. Well, maybe the church has a Celebrate Recovery group and she can be part of that instead of referred out of the life of the church to a clinician.

Now, if it's a really significant issue, of course, enlist the clinician. If she needs a rehab program 100%, the church can't, like, replace that in most cases.

But the vision is what happens if that single mom instead of the pastor going, I'm just overwhelmed. I can only see you a couple of times. Let me refer you to Janine the counselor. If he were to also say, well, maybe she needs Janine the counselor.

But you know what? Maybe she needs Betsy's home group. Right. Like, maybe she needs friends for a minute. Like, can we get her into a community group?

Can we get her into a small group? Can we get her into the Celebrate Recovery group, whatever that is?

Those are people in the church who can walk alongside with kind of the love and the fellowship of Jesus, which is what the church is called to do. And so it's presenting a new opportunity, as you put it.

And the Church Cares ministry is designed to grab anyone who's listening to this or any pastor who wants to do that and say, we can help you. We can help you do that. It's all ministry. It's not like there's any. There's no fees. It's all open source.

There was a huge donor that said the church needs to be the hero. This is a huge opportunity. Let's go.

What's. What's at odds against this idea in the sense that. And that's kind of a weird question. I'll try to break it down.

I just had a conversation with some people who pastor a fairly large church in our area, and they offer all of these kinds of things. Like, you're talking about small groups, Celebrate Recovery classes, classes taught by counselors, you know, women's ministries, all of these things.

And they're seeing less and less and less engagement every single year.

Yeah.

And so, you know, here at church, can Be like, we do care and we're offering these things, but people aren't engaging it. What's. What's challenging that.

That desire for us to go kind of old school and hang out with Martha and be in a small group and, you know, because if a church is offering it, but people aren't wanting to come, is that. Is that cell phones? Is that Netflix? Is that. I mean, because community engagement seems like it's decreasing.

Oh, for sure.

Like people's. Yes. To sign up and come to school, for sure.

And loneliness, not surprisingly, is increasing, right? Like all the numbers. So that isolation is increasing. People are kind of cocooning a lot more.

And it sounds like your church is doing all the things this particular church is doing, the things that they need to do. Because some of it is getting people out of the habit of pulling back, doing church Sunday morning online.

Like, whatever we did during COVID it kind of flipped a switch and we need to unflip it. And so, like, for example, get people into community groups. That's, to me, what we've seen.

Statistically, what the numbers say is getting people into a small group is by far the best use of a church's time. Because what it does is it helps rebuild the friendships because that's what keeps you there. That's what causes you to go to.

When, you know, there's a marriage conference, they can offer a marriage conference. But what if nobody signs up, right? Like, my husband and I, we speak at a ton of marriage conferences. And thankfully people are still going to these.

But there's plenty of times that. What happens if nobody signs up? Well, maybe they're just not feeling connected to the church and they have to get reconnected.

And so having that kind of a mechanism, something that pulls them in. Like, for example. I'll just give you an example. Like one of your events, right?

Like, say you do a big event at a church for a huge group of women and the women. There hasn't been a women's event at that church in a couple of years. And everybody's excited. Okay, well, don't end with the event.

Have the event be the funnel to sign up for small groups, right? And be in community. Because I guarantee you there are so many people that are longing for that.

If you're anything like us, your brain can go from zero to worst case, worst case scenario real fast.

Like, suddenly that friend that hasn't texted you back for a few days is mad at you, wants nothing to do with you, and has blocked your number, never to be seen or Heard from again because they couldn't possibly have just been busy or forgotten to answer, right? Nope. It's gotta be worst case scenario every time, friend. God wants peace for us.

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Have the event be the funnel to sign up for small groups. Right. And be in community, because I guarantee you there are so many people that are longing for that.

It's so interesting because I think I keep saying, thinking back in the day, whenever back in the day was, we lived in a village.

You know, I remember when I had my first baby, and a couple weeks in, I had to go visit my doctor, and she asked how I was doing, and I was like, I can't stop crying. And, you know, she said, do you think you have postpartum? And I said, no, it's totally great. Like, as far as.

Like, I would have been able to say yes if I did, but I was like, my baby almost died. And I. I keep holding him and I just keep crying that he almost died. But also, I'm just so tired. Like, I don't. She's like, do you have any help?

And I was like, you know, I had help for like a week, and then now I don't have help. And she. She said to me, willow, you're. You're not supposed to do this alone. You're supposed to do it in a village.

And it used to be that you lived with your aunts and your sisters and your mom and your grandma. And we don't live like that anymore. And so you have to, like, reach outside of that.

Yeah.

And ask for help and receive help. And I'm terrible at that. And I think there's probably a lot of women listening even as you share who they know community would be good for them.

But they either feel overwhelmed by just their daily life, so starting community feels hard, or it just feels so much easier to. To isolate, do their own thing, you know? What's your advice for someone listening? Who knows they need a village, but they don't have it.

Hey, listen, we all get being crazy busy, right? Like, we all get being exhausted, but we all get being too busy to eat, and we need to eat right.

Like, you know, those days, you're like, I haven't eaten hardly anything and my brain is foggy. Because you've been running around after kids or whatever it is.

And so, you know, that happens a few times when you start, you know, in the middle of the school year, driving the kids to their activities, and you're like, huh, I need to make sure that I allow enough time to either go home and get dinner or go through the fast food or whatever. Like, you just, you bake that into your process. And I think we think of friendships and connection and the village, as you put it.

I think we think of that as optional, and it's not. You know, there have been plenty of experiments that have shown that just like, if you deprive somebody of food or water, they'll die.

If you deprive somebody of the presence of others, like, literally, the brain starts shriveling and you eventually, eventually, literally, like a baby, like a baby animal, it will die if it doesn't have any, even if it's fed and watered. So we, we especially as those created in God's image, we are designed for community. And so here's the advice. You asked for the advice.

So this is the way that I would put it. Without putting any pressure, without putting any guilt on anyone who's listening. This is an idea that you can do, and it's pretty simple.

And this comes to me, this is an example, a real life example from a study that I was leading last summer where one woman, it was a Nash, it was sort of a national webinar group with one of my devotionals. And one of the women was a church staff member. That was her job. And she was just dying inside because she was so lonely.

Like, she worked with people, but she just didn't have time for friends. And she thought, okay, I need something. I'm dying here. I need fellowship.

And so she said, lord, give me the names of just a few people that I can reach out to and say, I don't know what it looks like, but can we get together some sort of a regular schedule for a supper club or a book study or a small group or something? And she said, I sent out five emails. She said, I think it was four emails. So there were five of them in total.

And she said, I felt like I was in eighth grade. And these were like, random people. And she's like, I felt like it was in eighth grade. Sending a message across the room, will you be my friend?

You know, check the box. Yes or no? She's like, I was terrified. And all four of these other women that she reached out to said, yes, please, because they had the same need.

And so they formed a little supper club that they do every two weeks, and it is their lifeline. And you can do this. This is not rocket science. It's just a matter of you make the.

You make yourself do that, and then you make the time for it, just like you do with the kids. Activities and making time for food.

Yeah, it's interesting. I interviewed a woman who's in charge of a small group ministry at. At her church that now has like 500 people in small groups.

But that's awesome.

She actually, she had a miscarriage, and in her place of pain, she was supposed to start a small group, like, I think within the week or something. And she chose to follow through and proceed and start the small group even in that terrible place of pain that she was in.

And she talked about how impactful that was, not only for her to tell herself, yes, I'm tired. Yes, this is bad timing, but I need community more now than ever. So I'm going to follow through with creating this space because I need it.

And when she did that, it actually sort of started this beautiful thing because other women realized how much they needed it, and it started on in this really, like, vulnerable way. And then that spawned so many other small groups. So it was just like a really cool story. But it reminds me of what you're talking about.

Like, we're not supposed to go through those moments alone. And we do need each other. And had she just gone to a therapist, which is super helpful. That's not all inclusive.

It doesn't cover all the things that we need.

Well, the most important thing for you to think about, if anybody is listening to this and either they're like, oh, my gosh, you know, my church does need to be, you know, create a layer of people who can come alongside. Right.

Walk alongside, or if you need someone to walk alongside you and you're going to your church and asking for help, regardless of which direction, recognize one really, really important thing. A licensed clinician is specialized. They can tackle all sorts of things. That's part of the training. And the training is so robust.

There's so much that they can do. But there are things they are not allowed to do that people in the church can do, and vice versa.

There's things you're not allowed to do as a friend, you can't do psychological interventions and conduct assessments, and you know all the things that a counselor is trained to do.

I mean, if you do, you might lose your friends.

You might lose your friends. Yes, you might.

Well, like a clinician, for example, most people don't think about it when, when a pastor is referring someone to a clinician, like, you know, say the, the woman who's lonely. Right. And, and is dealing with a lot of anxiety, referring to them to the clinician.

The clinician can help with the symptoms and can help with some tools for how do you address anxiety. Great, awesome. But the clinician is not allowed to be their friend.

The clinician, ethically, as part of their licensure, they are not allowed to go to the person's house on Thursday night and have dinner. That would be a breach of their license and their licensing standards.

And they have also a time box around it like, okay, we're going to try to tackle this in six sessions, or we're going to try to tackle this in 10 sessions, or whatever. The goal is of a licensed clinician is for the train tracks to stop at some point and for you to, you know, walk on your own.

The train tracks of the church stretch to the horizon.

The whole point is to walk alongside one another in the love of Jesus and in that transforming power of Jesus and really share that gospel transformation with people who need it.

Shanti, would you say that the bigger work here is convincing people that the church indeed does care, or is it equipping the church to show they care?

I think it's more equipping the church because here's one of the things, one of the stats that was so interesting as part of this big study that we did.

So it turns out that in most cases now, not all, there's plenty of exceptions to this, but in this one big study that was done, they found that people were more likely to seek help from a pastor than from psychologists and psychiatrists combined. That's a big deal, right? Like, people automatically seek help from the church, even in our very post Christian culture. And Right.

You're living in an area that is very post Christian culture.

Even in those areas, people are likely to think of the church and to think of pastors, to think of clergy as being a source of help when there's pain or grief or trauma. And so people will come to us whether we're ready or not. And so that's really, to me, the biggest issue is how can the church be ready?

How can we be ready?

Well, I know we could talk about this forever and you have your wealth of information, but when you think about sort of like top three advice for people listening who are either on a church staff, on a church board, active in serving in their church, and they're getting behind what you're saying, and they want to help be a voice and shape how their church can show care for all of these people in need. Where would you say they can start?

Well, the first thing is to recognize that if you're listening to this and you care about this, but you're not a church staff member, you're just a volunteer at your church. This is for everybody, right?

Many of the churches that we talk to, because these models of raising up lay people and how do we walk alongside someone? This is flourishing in churches all over the country.

And when we looked at these churches, it was just as likely that the pastor or church staff started that initiative as it was where just involved, motivated church volunteer came forward and said, we need this. And there's a lot of passion around this because everybody sees the pain. I mean, I had one person who said, I decided my.

One of my best friend's kids died of suicide. And she's like, we are not going through this again as a church. She was so passionate. We need the help to come alongside people.

And so she brought it to the church and said, can we do something? Whatever is in the DNA of the church, and I will help figure out how it works. She wasn't a counselor.

She was just a passionate volunteer, passionate follower of Christ.

So the first thing for people to be aware of, if you ask for sort of the three steps, the first one is that anybody can bring this to the church, whether or not your church staff. The second thing I would say is to have the vision of, okay, can we start enlisting laypeople? Like, talk about it?

Because if the leadership of the church has a kind of a principled stand that no, only clinicians can help around these issues. Well, okay, that's good to know.

And it's better to know that before you start trying to push against it and instead say, okay, what can we do to help with that? If that's the DNA of the church, how can we help? So, for example, one church that we talked to, that was their DNA, they felt that really strongly.

And so their whole lay ministry was involved with, how can I help get people to that professional care? Because there's a lot of obstacles. You're a mom, you don't have any to watch the kids. I'll watch your kids while you go to the appointment, right?

So maybe that's the mechanism, whatever it is. What's the DNA of your church around laypeople offering, you know, kitchen table care, coffee.

And then third, if there is an opportunity that you see in the church, if the leadership is interested and supportive, even if they don't have the bandwidth to do it, the third step to me is like, game out what that would look like. And that's why we have this ministry. The church cares.

In order to help churches with things like a basic listening training, it's just a few sessions, it's a few weeks. It depends on how you want to do it. But a lot of people are doing it as almost like a Bible study, like a succession Bible study.

Are you interested in this? And some people will be. And some people just want to do the Bible study. And, you know, they get a lot out of it for their own personal life.

But some percentage of those people are like, no, I would love to be someone who walks alongside. So that helps you get started.

I love that. I mean, just the power of learning how to listen well would give the church so much opportunity. It's amazing, the ministry of listening.

It's amazing how God can use it.

Well, the ministry of presence, right? I mean, like the joke that we always talk about is Jim, my co author on the book, he said, the best counselor.

Now, remember, he has trained probably thousands of counselors now over the last 35 years, right? That's been a big chunk of what he's done. And he said, the best counselor that I've ever known was my grandmother.

And he said she had an 8th grade education and she had a kitchen table, a Bible and a coffee pot. And he said she changed so many lives just by walking alongside.

Now, is that going to be a substitute for someone who is, for example, trained as a trauma informed therapist to help somebody who's gone through combat or who've gone through a rape or gone through violence in their family? No. But might they need somebody with the kitchen table and the coffee pot even while they're, you know, before and after the counseling? Probably.

Well, and I mean, even as you're talking, I mean, I think about the woman who led me to the Lord, but really, like how that happened was I rented her basement apartment and she would invite me up when I was in my early 20s. She invited me up for coffee and for a snack after my college classes. And I was lonely. I had a broken family and I felt alone in the world.

And she gave me her time and invited me into her life and asked me to begin to share my story. And I Started sharing with her things I'd never told anybody before, traumatic things that I'd experienced that I had held secret.

And she began to speak Jesus's love into my life. And actually it was because of that that I ended up going to a counselor that was Christian and then over time, opened my life up to Jesus.

But it actually took, you know, as you're talking about the grandma with the coffee pot in the Bible in her presence, that really led me to a place where I would even be open to a professional speaker speaking into the abuse and neglect and pain that I'd experienced as a child. So I definitely am with you that I. I think we. We might. Some of us might need it all, but none of us just need one. Just need one.

And so I love that you're speaking into this because the need is so overwhelming. And I love that you're inviting us into the opportunity that is in front of us to have a true impact and bring healing into people's lives.

And I know there's people who are going to want to read more and get this book that you've written. How can they follow along with what you're up to?

You're so kind.

Well, the easiest thing is to either get a copy of When Hurting People Come to Church or go to the churchcares.com which is where you can find out more about the book and more about the ministry. And. And even if you are the only one that wants to bring this to your church and just do a little something, start it, see what the Holy Spirit does.

I love that. Thank you so much, Shaunti, for hanging out with us today.

Absolutely. It's a pleasure.

Friend. I just want to pause for a moment as we step away from that interview with Shaunti. And. And I want to remind you that God cares.

That God cares if you're hurting and he cares if you're anxious. He cares if you're exhausted. He cares if you feel alone.

Not only does he care, but he wants to enter into that space where you stand, and he wants you to know that he sees you. He has compassion for you. He understands how you got here, and he wants to walk you into spaces of healing, into light, into joy, into purpose.

And so if you've had an experience, experience where your brokenness and pain have lied to you and told you that God doesn't care, and maybe you've had experiences where it felt like the church doesn't care, I just want to pause and remind you that indeed we have a Lord who deeply cares about where you're at. My hope is that you'll keep running into him and be reminded that you're worthy.

You're worthy of healing, you're worthy of community, you're worthy of relationship. And if you listen to this message today from Shaunti and you got a fire lit underneath you, maybe that's you today.

You got a fire lit underneath you, and you see a need, and you want to help meet that need. Man, that's so cool. And maybe it feels overwhelming. Like, where do I start? My best advice is take one step today.

How can you meet a need that's right in front of you to show people who are hurting that the church cares? Keep colliding, friend.