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Hello. Hello. Hello. As we continue with these episodes with the track leaders, I'm excited about this particular episode as I get to talk to a good friend. Although we haven't seen each other very much over the last couple years because we've been grinding like bad breaks and doing a lot of ministry.

But I'm excited about this episode as I introduce this track leader. I'm here with Greg Wilson. Greg, how are doing, brother?

Doing great. And you're right. We, we should spend more time together, Mike. But we're, we're both busy, but we should get more time. Let's plan on doing that.

Yeah. For sure. And I know you've been really busy. Obviously, your ministry has been growing. Our ministry has been growing at ABC.

And so there's been a lot of exciting things happening, which has been tremendous and a lot to be thankful for. But I was thinking about that before we jumped on this is realizing that, you know what, the last couple of times I've seen Greg, we've just acknowledged each other, smiled at each other, we haven't had a chance to really talk to each other like we Yeah, never need

to dive deep. Diving deep is a value that we both have, and it's a value that ABC has. We just need to do that. So like you said, we have been grinding, but it's good to to hang as well. So we need to plan on doing that.

Yeah. It is a good and grace filled grind. That is for sure. But That's right. We're actually gonna be focusing on the track Hidden Abuse, and Greg's gonna talk a little bit about that.

But before we jump into the details of the track, Greg, can you just share a little bit about yourself, background, ministry, and then after that, introduce just the your team, your track speakers, and obviously friends. And then we'll jump into the content.

That sounds great. Yeah. I am a counselor here in the Dallas Fort Worth area of Texas. So in the same area where the conference is actually located and where ABC is located, it's, I'm not having to travel to go to the conference. It's right here in my backyard.

And I lead a practice called Soulcare Associates. And we've got, including myself, six counselors, all of us who take a biblical approach, but are also licensed counselors. We focus on really every across the board. While, you know, a focus of mine at the ABC conference has been abuse, we obviously do abuse and trauma, but also all of the issues across the board with respect to adolescents and adults. We don't see smaller children in our practice, but anything that adolescents or adults, male or female or couples or families struggle with, we have people in our practice that care for.

So that's the practice, Soul Care Associates, and we're right here in the Dallas Fort Worth area. As far as my friends in the track, we are as like, we are a group of friends. Like we have done this for a long time, not just at ABC, but in other settings as well, where we teach together and work together. So yeah, there is a buddy Chris Moles that you know well, and he and I do a lot of this work together. And then we're joined by our good friend Chris is a pastor and a biblical counselor in the West Virginia area and is has his own ministry called Peace Works.

And then our friend up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kirsten Christianson, who is at Bethlehem Baptist Church up there. And so very large church in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. And she has been doing really a lot of abuse work in her church, but she also does biblical counseling and consulting with churches and organizations around that issue. And then also our really good friend, Tim St. John, is a counseling pastor in Southern California.

We've got, if you think about it, we've got the whole country really covered. Dallas Fort Worth. You can just make a loop around the country, Dallas Fort Worth, West Virginia, up to Minnesota, back over to California. So, like we, you could just, we're covering the whole country but we're friends and like I said, we've got all of us. Chris is a pastor in the local church even now and also does his full time work outside of that in the space of domestic abuse entirely really is like where his ministry is all located.

And then Kirsten is in the local church, but also doing stuff outside the church as well. Tim's a counseling pastor in his church and a biblical counselor as well. And then myself, I'm a deacon in my church and a counselor. So all of us have a variety of experience within the church and outside the church. We all love each other.

And what I would tell you about this track and our relationships that is just, I think important for someone to know if they're thinking about doing the track. It is a heavy topic, but you've been around all of us a little bit. We are not heavy people. We enjoy having a good time. We will laugh.

We will talk. We will we enjoy each other. And I think if you're going to talk, if you're going to spend three days or whatever it is, all told, like talking about something as heavy as abuse, you should probably have some moments of lightheartedness and some moments of just enjoying each other and fun as well. And we definitely do that. It's not a lighthearted topic.

It's a very heavy topic, but it is one that like, if you want longevity in doing this kind of work, you're going to find ways to enjoy the people that you're doing it with. And we definitely enjoy one another.

Yeah. That is that is spot on. And there's a few things I want to speak to that you were mentioning there a moment ago, but we'll come back to that in a moment. Greg, thank you for just talking a little bit about who's gonna be on the track and your friends and obviously ABC partners, and we're thankful for that. But just to speak a little bit about the objective of the track, what are we trying to accomplish, and then we'll get into just the eight sessions.

Who's going to be teaching those eight sessions and just a quick summary topic, the nature and scope of those lessons.

Yeah, let's do that. We're calling the track Hidden Abuse. And what we're getting at is we've been doing abuse, me and this team and others who've been on our team at different times, been doing this at ABC for a long time, the last several years, really as long as the tracks have been in place. Now that I think about it, we've been doing this abuse track and we've taken different angles. The angle that we're taking this year is the idea that a lot of abuse, a lot of what we're calling destructive, abusive, hurtful, harmful relationships happens hidden in plain sight, so to speak.

Meaning that like, you don't always see it. A lot of times the control that is happening, the coercion that's happening in relationships in your church or even in whatever ministry you have, you're not seeing it. It's happening in the home and it's hidden from view a lot of times. So the reason we're calling it Hidden Abuse, and you'll see this as I go over the titles of all the eight sessions, is we're focusing on the fact that it's hidden a lot of times and that you can't see it. And so how you can notice it, how you can recognize it, and then how you respond to it.

So we want people to leave with an idea of, okay, if this is hidden, then what do I, how do I enter into something that's hidden? So how do I like understand what it is and even be able to begin to enter into it in that way? And then, how do I respond to it in a way that honors the lord and in a way that is helpful for both the victim of the abuse or the person who is being abused and the perpetrator, the person who is carrying out the abuse. And so that's really our objective is to help people be able to see what is often hidden in plain sight, but yet it's not always in plain sight in the sense that like it is sometimes it's more subversive and you've got to have eyes for it. It's in plain sight if you've got eyes for it.

I'll put it that way. And one of our objectives is that people will leave this track having eyes for this kind of abuse.

Yeah. That's really good, Greg. And I appreciate just the scope of that and being intentional on that. And I wanna bring to attention, this is what I was alluding to a moment ago of wanting to bring some things up is when you were talking about just the reality of being pastors in the church, ministry leaders in the church, as far North as Minnesota, as far South as here in Texas, or as far West as California, as far East as West Virginia. We're talking about a team that has been doing pastoral ministry and around pastoral ministry for many years.

And as a result of that, I just wanna give this plug for Greg because he and Jeremy Pierre published a good work. What is it? How long has it been, Greg? Two or three years now when Home Hurts came out?

It was 2021 when Home Hurts came

out.

It was actually it came out in the waning period of the pandemic is when it came out.

So That's good. So that's

Been out there for a while.

Yeah. And so that's a that's an appropriate read to everything that Greg is talking about is as far as hidden abuse being in plain sight oftentimes, especially when it comes to the local church. With that, Greg, could you just share a little bit about who would this track appeal to? Obviously, those who maybe as counselors starting to see maybe some abuse coming around. But outside of the obvious, who else do you think would be good candidates to to receive and benefit from this track?

That's great. I'm going to go there, but since you brought up publications, was remiss in also mentioning that Chris has written a book called The Heart of Domestic Abuse and that Chris edited a book called Caring for Families Caught in Domestic Abuse that both Kirsten and I contributed to. It's an edited work with contributed chapters by Kirsten and I and Darby Strickland and Beth Broome and lots of people that have been in the ABC orbit for a long time. And so I just wanted to bring that up because again, there's a lot of expertise on this topic. Yeah, so individually the sessions are going to be, I'm going to kick it off.

That's what I tend to do with our group is I tend to kick it off and I'm kicking it off with a topic, The Exploitation of Fear and Hidden Abuse. So what I'm going to bring out, in addition to introducing the topic and introducing the team, is I'm also going to just talk about the role that fear plays domestic abuse and particularly in the kinds of abuse that we're talking about that are really hidden. And so that's going to be the focus of my session. Then that's the first Thursday night session is in the sequence. And then the second Thursday night session will be Kirsten and Kirsten Christensen.

She'll be talking about what we're calling navigating the dark sky of coercive control, identifying constellations of course of behaviors. And so she's focusing on the identification piece, the recognizing it piece. And what she's going to do is she's going to use this idea of constellations in the night sky and how you might not recognize, you might not be able to say that this star is this certain star, or you might not be able to identify the Big Dipper from like seeing this particular star. But once you have eyes for like how the stars come together to make a constellation, then you can look at that and you can go, Oh, okay. I see how all of these stars together came together to make this thing that is a pretty famous constellation that everybody knows called the Big Dipper.

And it's the idea of being able to put together the pieces. And she's going to use that text in two Timothy three to talk about that. And then she's going to come back and kick us off on Friday morning, the long day of ABC. And so she's going to come in with helping the harmed. So what do we do for victims?

So we're a big believer. Everybody in our track is a big believer that the care in an abuse situation starts with the victim and her safety and caring for her. And that's something that Kirsten has focused her ministry on in the local church and outside the local church. And so she is going to cover that in Helping the Harmed for Movements for Healing. That's what we're calling session three.

And then my friend Chris Moles comes in after that and he's gonna pick up. He's got two sessions on Friday. One that's called the Kingdom of One, Diagnosing the Heart Behind Coercive Control and one called the Kingdom of God, A Biblical Response to Tyranny and Oppression. So the kingdom of one and the kingdom of God. And obviously the kingdom of one is the idea that like when a person is perpetrating abuse, what they are doing is they are sitting on their own throne as a kingdom of one, so to speak, ruling and reigning over this kingdom of one.

And what we want to do both with the people on the track as well as the people who are suffering and struggling out there around this topic. So he'll talk about the perpetrator in particular and how there is this kingdom of one in diagnosing the heart that leads to coercive control and then get to lifting up the kingdom of God, how the Bible responds to the idea of tyranny and oppression. So those two tracks are primarily focused on the perpetrator or help for the person who is struggling with being controlling and oppressive in relationships. And then our friend Tim finishes off the topics that are being taught with two sessions. One called Hidden in Plain Sight actually, which we already use that terminology.

How coercive control thrives in the church. So he comes at this topic from a person who is currently a counseling and care pastor in his church, in the local church, and how he sees that this type of controlling hidden abuse thrives in the church and the kinds of things that churches sometimes do that actually helps this to thrive and flourish, which of course is not good. Those are things we want to see so that we can stop doing those things. And then his second session is called Freedom in Building Churches that Resist Coercive Control and Protect the Vulnerable. So he's got two sessions, one of which is, you know, what churches unfortunately do sometimes that allows space for abuse to grow and to thrive and then what churches can do to resist coercive control and abuse and protect the vulnerable.

So that's the seventh session, the first session on Saturday morning basically. And then the second session on Saturday morning is a Q and A panel discussion. That's going to be all of us. We know that all seven of those prior sessions are going to generate a lot of questions. And you know how it goes, and so do a lot of your listeners who have been to ABC before.

Those sessions are fifty minutes long or whatever. We do our best to have a little Q and A in the session to answer questions during the session. But the reality is that it goes by really quickly. And so we need a time at the end just to say, if you didn't get your questions answered, you'll join us for this q and a at the end. The whole panel will be there, and we will answer as many of those questions as we can.

Greg, thank you for just taking the time to share what this track is going to entail. Guys, again, you can go to calledtocounsel.com and register right now. Check out these books that have been mentioned in the show notes. And so go ahead and purchase those books. So that way, by the time you get to the track, you're primed and ready.

Yeah,

Greg. Yeah, let me just add one more thing to that before we close-up, which is we are going to be working with a case throughout the track. So we are going to be using a particular case of coercive control, if you will, this kind of hidden abuse. And we're going be working with it. All of our sessions are going to address it.

We're going to say so in the case of her name is Sarah, obviously not a real person, but a real type of situation that often occurs. And so you can find Sarah's story, the story that we're going to be interacting with, if you go to a podcast called Peace Interrupted, which is Chris Mull's, one of Chris Mull's podcasts. We were joking before we started. He's got a whole family of podcasts. This is one of them.

It's called peace interrupted. You can find it on YouTube, which is where I would recommend that you check it out, but it's also on all the audio platforms as well. And look for peace interrupted, Sarah's Story, which is it's the only it's the first season of Peace Interrupted, so it's the only story you're gonna find. And basically, the way his podcast works is he starts off with Sarah's story, which is the first episode, and then subsequent episodes are all of us, many of us who are on the team engaging with Sarah's story. If you check that out as well, you will really have a leg up and then we'll be able to really dive deep on the track once you get there, if you've already entered in.

So peace interrupted, Sarah's story, and you'll have an idea of what we're going to be talking about through the track.

Yeah, I love that. That's insight to what supervision looks like in counseling. Here's a case. Let's talk about it. What is everyone's thoughts and gathering insight, data gathering from that from each other and learning from each other and building that wise counsel.

So Greg, thank you for that. I'll definitely put that in the show notes as well. I'll link Chris's Thank you. Episode. Absolutely.

Thank you guys for listening. And, again, don't forget to go register calledtocounsel.com at Doxology Bible Church in Fort Worth, Texas. We'll see you there.