Welcome to Speak The Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual in Hello. Hello. Hello. We are on the road in an undisclosed location here to speak the truth, and I have a guest with us who's been with us a few times over the years. But I'm joined with Lee Lewis.

Lee, how we doing brother?

Doing good, man. It's good to see you, bud.

Likewise, man. We are we're excited to have you on. We we wanted to bring Lee on because we're trying to spend a little bit more time in certain segments where when we're talking with churches and knowing that we have pastors and staff and everything where the we're trying to develop a culture of biblical care. And Lee is at the forefront of helping churches develop that culture of care. And they obviously have a lot of material, which I'll put all of that in the show notes.

But today's episode, we really wanted to focus on two things really. The first part is we want to focus on creating a culture of care in the church. What does that really look like realistically, practically? And how do we assimilate that into the local church? And many of you, I'm sure that are listening that are pastors and church staff, you have varying cultures, so things have to be contextualized.

So Lee specializes in being able to go into churches and having those conversations. So we want to talk a little bit about what does it look like to develop that? And so we're going to run through some things. Lee's going to share some things with us. But then layered on top of that is we're going to focus on when we conceptually think about developing a culture of biblical care or soul care to go with soul care consulting, who Lee is with.

But before we jump into all of that, and I disclose the second piece of that, which is probably the most practical piece that you guys are going to be really interested in. But before we jump into that, Lee, you want to share a little bit about what you've been up to these days? What's going on with ministry?

Yeah, thanks for having me. I love you guys. I love what y'all do. We're still in Austin. I pastor at a church called Radiant Church there in Round Rock.

Been there nearly eight years. And I don't have a private practice anymore, but still do, you know, quite a bit of counseling in the church. But, and I'll talk more about this when we get into some of the content you wanted to open up. But one of my main responsibilities there is to equip our leaders to do the work of soul care and not just have a formal counseling team, you know, that does all that lifting. There's a place for that.

Think an important place, like really trying to focus on preventative care. And then by God's grace, the elders share me, they let me work alongside Garrett and the team at Soul Care Consulting International. The Lord's just been like this year we achieved nonprofit status and He's really been blessing the ministry. It's been growing. And so having time to do that has been huge.

And so in fact, we're in a phase right now of recruiting like consultants that can help us with the sheer volume of coming alongside working with churches. I know you're familiar with some of that. So yeah, it's exciting times, but lots of work. So it's good.

Yeah, that's exciting. And here's what I appreciate about what Lee's sharing is that he's not just, oh, did ministry for a bit. And now here's my focus, but you're in the trenches in real time that continually informs the work that you're doing with soul care. So that's huge.

I don't know why, but the Lord's just been, He's always kept my heart in the local church, even when I had a private practice. That's to me, the end goal is like the bride. And it's probably the shepherding DNA that he's put in me. But I, but even like my move from psychology into the biblical counseling movement, it just like having a solid gospel centered ecclesiology of care. Yeah.

Just was so obvious to me. It's

like Yeah.

It's right there in the scriptures.

Yeah.

So how do you help churches? How do we as elders at the church like work to equip people to think that way and aim that way? Because you if you don't aim that way, it's probably not gonna happen. Yeah. Especially with the western mindset of church, which is come and see.

Yep. And then very siloed nearly always. So there's not good movement between ministries in and around like care and discipleship. And so you have to aim that way and focus that way for it to pay dividends over time.

Yeah, that's really good. And really that kind of is the segue into this particular episode. And so Lee, in saying that developing a culture of care, when you say that that's obviously conceptually speaking a pretty big idea. And to your point about the come and see mentality and really just the evangelical model of church. Yeah.

It's Sunday driven. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, unfortunately, I would argue over the decades that consequently that has created a lot of care gaps that, to your point about the silos, has been very devastating to the shepherding piece of the purpose of the church.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you I think you can see this like in Matthew 28 talks about Jesus, the great commission. You see this in Ephesians four as well. I think you see aspects of it in Exodus 18 and Acts six where we're just like a structure for ministry

Yeah.

Based off the gifts that are in the body. And then pastors raising up and equipping those people to do that ministry. That's just a very clear paradigm in scripture that the western mindset of church that come and see the Sunday heavy. Again, the gathering's important. Yeah.

What's happening between Sundays? And because that's you think of the air war on a Sunday where the gospel's proclaimed and then the ground troops gotta do something with it. Yeah. And both evangelistically in the community, but also with one another. And that the one another speaks so clearly to that as a gospel response.

As a believer's growing in the gospel, things like forgive one another, love one another, serve one another, they're extending those things to each other because they're living that and understanding that more as a recipient of God's grace through Christ. You don't just graduate from Yeah. Like you grow in the depths and the knowledge of Jesus Christ and then we give that. So equipping people to understand that they do have a ministry. Every member has a ministry.

It's one another. And then I think the tendency to felt needs Yeah. Reactive care. Yep. Most churches are they see a need and Yeah.

And they go for it, right? It didn't take an immense amount of equipping to move towards the needs that reveal themselves. But I always wanna ask the question, how are we doing with preventative care? And that's nearly always where the biggest gaps are because there's so much focus on people getting gathered on a Sunday, but far less effort and energy is put on equipping. I think of biblical soul care as having rhythms of care if it's gonna be a culture in the church, rhythms of care and rhythms of equipping.

Where one of those is lacking, you can't have a culture. Yeah. And if you like, like we're having to double down at our church right now and get back into the equipping rhythm because we've gotten lazy. Yeah. And so we've leaned so heavy on the formal soul care.

Like we've gotten away from equipping regularly some of the life group leaders. And as we've multiplied those, you go two or three cycles with those new leaders having gotten some of the basic biblical soul care training, you you lose that rhythm. And then not near as much preventative care is happening to the degree that maybe it could or should in the life groups or the community groups of the church, which I believe is the lifeblood of people growing deeper in Christ in a local church.

Yeah, that's really good, man. It's interesting too. So when we talk about creating the culture of care and the one anothers of Scripture and in all the one anothers that you alluded to in passing there, what's interesting is I immediately thought of Ephesians five twenty one submitting to one another and that submitting to one another is communal. It's not just submitting like to a thought or idea. It's like actually it's presence and orientation and it's about being together because you can't really do any of those other things unless you're relationally with those people.

And to your points, and regardless of the variations of the model, whether you're a Sunday school model or a small group model, the level of care and community is the missing piece. And I think it's hard because a lot of people they're busy. So there's a lot of contributing factors that really press into that reality that make it really difficult to turn the ship. When we're talking to pastors, others, having these larger conversations and to your point about the formalized care and then having to remember those rhythms of not only do I need to be focused on formal care, but the informal care and cycling that out. It's kind of like the church calendar where we have things in the spring and things in the fall, but it's like in the same way, if we were to develop rhythms that weren't just event driven that follow that Sunday model, but actually like care rhythms in the spring and the fall and equipping, just building that.

That's a large commitment for the church. And obviously, as you well know, it's not something that's not only really talked about, but taught or like I'm thinking of church planning, for example. It's almost like you have to get in at the granular level of the DNA like you alluded to, just being able to go into those churches. So what would be some encouragement before we get into this idea of this Discipleship Continuum of concretely and systematically like this is like how you can lay these care pieces out in developing that.

Yeah, it's gonna go where the elders get it and take it. And so if the elders have a vision for this type of discipleship and biblical soul care happening amongst the people, then they've got to cast that vision and they've got to teach it and they've got to raise it up like on every level. And that's I think a real challenge for a lot of churches because there's the tyranny of the urgent, as you probably heard said, but what we have found and setting even with good solid churches, in the older room, they don't have a vision for it. So they, their understanding of care is often farmed out, referred out. And I think as a pastor in the community, you wanna have some solid referral options for those heavy cases that need some, maybe some more focused, but not at the cost of caring for them, you know, amongst

Yeah.

The body. And it's it's nearly an extension of care and so often churches are at the mercy of the refer out. Yeah. So getting them to think biblically about like what does it really mean to equip people to do ministry that's centered around the gospel and powered by the Holy Spirit and part of Jesus' command to make disciples. So elders really, they're they're the key.

They've gotta catch that vision, then they gotta cast that vision. And I think that's like a super important thing. We were actually spending some time with the church doing a three sixty for them over the last couple of weeks. They got three elders there and great church, three years old. They've seen some profound growth and it's new converts.

So it means people are like inviting friends or inviting coworkers and people are hearing the gospel and that's how they're growing. So it's not transfer growth, like these elders, they're bleeding hearts. They care so well for their people. But one of the patterns that they're noticing is that their community group leaders in the church will go right past their deacons of care to the elders because they know the elders are available. And so the question we continue to ask the elders is how sustainable is this?

And they had not really considered like scalability. So we looked at Exodus 18 together and said, so what's Jethro doing here? What's he doing with Moses? Clearly Moses was the go to, but he was gonna kill himself. And Jethro said, is not gonna work.

This is that lead pastor model that we're trying to get you away from.

And so then it's, oh, so why would God in his word lay things out in such a way? I think ultimately one man can't do it. Yeah. But then secondarily, it's like God's raised up people to do this work. Might it be that the church gets healthier and deeper when you equip the saints to do these things?

Yeah. And then you're also at the same time working against a cultural trend towards the professional. The subject matter expert, he and Paul spent so much time in the epistle speaking against Gnosticism. Have Gnostic seminary.

Where's the debater of this age? Where's the wise?

This guy went to seminary. So it's his job and it's okay. I think ultimately the pastor's gonna gonna be held accountable for equipping the saints. That's one of the main things pastors are called to. And so if all the care needs are going to the subject matter expert, then there's a whole host of very gifted people in the body that aren't being leveraged for the glory of Christ.

And I think it makes the church weaker rather than stronger. Yeah, that's

really good. For those of you who are listening and be like, yeah, man, I hear you, but then fill in the blank. And it's really around, okay, what's the church budget? How many pastors do you have on staff? So there's a lot of contributing factors that go into where do you start?

How do you do the equipping piece? We can think at that conceptual level of, yeah, we see it and we can observe that and we're like, yeah, we want to make that change. What does that look like though? How do we do that? We're so glad you asked.

So at Soul Care Consulting International, they have resources that are built around the idea. Here's the thing, it doesn't matter of your context in terms of where your culture is, whether you have a culture or if it's a minimal culture, whatever it is, there's the way that they've written, and I'll put all of this in the show notes for y'all, but this it's transformed and it's a we refer to it T1 and it's just this building blocks of being able to develop and build things. Lee mentioned the beginning of this episode of just the idea of the one anothering, that's where it starts. And that's what T1 is about. It's and you could start there with small group leaders.

There's this discipleship continuum and everything that we've been talking about. If you guys are listening, you're like, yeah, okay, you've got these questions. And so that's really what this next segment is for is to just thinking about your context of ministry, whether you're on staff or you're a pastor, you're an elder, and you guys want to care because I do believe churches want to. It's not like they're not trying to, it's just overwhelming. They just don't even know where to start.

And so I think this the idea of a discipleship continuum that kind of goes from the informal to the formal, and using the formal to inform the informal, if I can put it that way, but just how it builds on itself. So Lee, you want to get a little bit into the idea of this Discipleship Continuum and how you can use these resources. So

think of the continuum as equipping men and women in the church to learn to care from the intentional life on life all the way to the intensive care need. And so we have, you mentioned the Transform Resources. We branded it transformed because it's like, we're trying to help churches transform culture. So that's the branding. And then we have six levels of equipping for really every level of disciple, you know, in the church.

So like mutual ministry, we call that transforming mutual care T1. That's a one another study. There's over 41 another's in the scripture, not a single one of them are suggested. They're all commands.

Yeah, 12 worth of developing that.

Yeah, and as people are learning to be intentional with their brother and their sister, they're growing in competencies, growing to in compassion and competency to speak the truth and love. Yep. Like you see as people make much of the name of Christ together and walk out the gospel together, the spirit of God, we know from scripture, does many profound things when much is being made of the gospel. Yeah. The sun.

And so when members of a local church take seriously that call, then there's so much preventative care that's happening. There's so much discipleship that's happening amongst that type of ministry. Then it moves to level two, which is we call it transforming small group leadership. And lots of churches have small groups. I don't know that small groups are the answer, but they do give clear consistent avenue for people to do life together and go deeper together and respond to the word together and to bear with one another and to encourage one another in the truth to admonish one another.

Like

who does that? Well, the church, we don't talk about those things.

So small groups being more than just a fellowship group, but being a place where people are intentional to grow deeper. But then you have to have leaders who know how to access the next level of care as care needs arise. Because when people are confessing sin together, there's gonna be the need for people to come alongside them. And sometimes maybe you do need to bring in somebody that cares has more training that can come alongside those situations, but not at the cost of those people doing live together and continuing to grow. Then we have what we call transforming coaching.

That's like t three. The coaches, it's a concept from second Timothy two verse two, just older, wiser men and women pouring into leaders. And so you, I think you can make a paradigm for this in six and Exodus 18, where they're trained just a bit further to be able to like triage some care as care needs are. And we have tools and resources for all these things so that leaders know how to access the

next level. Like assessment and stuff, yeah.

Yeah, call it the SOS, Severity Ownership Support. It just gives you a quick matrix for how to assess a situation and then access the next level of care. And then we have T4, transforming pastoral care. That's for obviously elders and pastors, but then even I would say directors in on a staff level. People who are who are being empowered or released by the elders to steward a particular discipleship ministry.

A lot of times that staff, a lot time that's an elder role and so what's their role in both championing that type of culture, then also equipping and stewarding it with the gifts and the people that are underneath them. We have T5 and T6 that's transforming, transforming council. So this is more on the formal counseling side of things that you would see. And we don't do certification with our resources like ABC does or ACBC does, but it's that type of training. It's for the formal counseling room all the way to some intensive counseling needs.

And so that's the continuum. And so when we say what's biblical soul care? All of that. What's the culture look like? All of that.

And so it's not just the counseling room. It's not just the intensive. It's from the intentional life on life all the way to the intensive counseling need. And I believe that God's given us everything in the body of Christ in his word to accomplish that continuum. It's not easy.

It's a lot of work, But then you can leverage the many profound and helpful resources in the community in and around biblical counseling to bolster a culture of biblical soul care in the local church.

Yeah, it's really good. And for those of you who are listening, oh man, this sounds great. I'm really interested in this. We understand it's difficult, like we've already been talking about a little bit. And that's what's great about these resources is it really legitimately doesn't matter where you are.

And I think that's the other piece to Soul Care Consulting is, Lee mentioned a three sixty and what he's talking about is an evaluation to assess church health. You know, what's, and it seems a little difficult. Who wants to come in? We all like to think we're a healthy church. Our numbers are good and we have ministry happening and all of those things.

May be very well and good and true. But I think going back to what Lee, what you were saying about how are we interpreting Ephesians chapter four, right? Equipping the saints for the work of ministry. And if we really, according to that interpretation and paradigm, we're not healthy. And so I think that's the beautiful thing is we're not saying you're not doing your job right, let us come in and show you how it's done.

That's not, we're not imposing any of that. It's more, here's the interpretation of the church, the local church and equipping the church and the saints for the work of ministry. How are we doing that? Well, here's a way to help you do that. But it requires a lot.

And so that's part of the assessment that you guys come in and do. And any thoughts on just the three sixty that you mentioned, to use that as like a just a good framework for trying to assess really how healthy are we?

Yeah, we have different paradigm shifts that are they're informed from scripture, but they're definitely methodological and philosophical in nature. Yeah. That we'll use to help a church evaluate like where some gaps are. Cause I think if you paint a biblical picture for soul care to a pastor, if he believes the word, he's not going to argue with it. He's going to agree with it.

He's going to even desire for that to be part of the strengthening of that local church. It's just then like how, what are the threats that are keeping these types of endeavors to be strengthened or pursued or what are the gaps? And just sometimes it's just helpful to have some outside eyes to ask some questions and to draw those things into the light. And then like if the elders are bought into it, then you can move from a, from a, a, like a cast of vision to like some foundation. Like how can we now build some foundation?

And that's where our roadmap, what

we

call it, that's the results from three sixty gives them a two to four year process. So it's you're playing the long game. Yeah. This isn't a flash in the pan. We're not gonna get this done in six months.

This is here's some strategic things to do year one. Here's some strategic things to do to build off of that the next six months after that. And so we lay that out for them based off their context and then the elders contextualize it for for the two to four year and then beyond the maturation of the replication of it. In and through the church.

And that's the scaling piece too. So the contextualizing the scaling because you can't really scale without understanding the context. And so it's not a one size fits all. You can tailor it, customize it to where your context is. But the beautiful part about it is it's universally biblically accurate.

And like to your point, like any pastor who hears about it would be like, and amen. But again, it's like, how do I do that?

Yeah. I like to speak in case studies. One of the churches that we had a privilege to work with probably eight years ago, the guy who planted that church, he was planting it in the fall of that year. And we were just really starting to crystallize some of these three sixty processes that we use. And so he was one of our first that we started working with at a high level and became a partner and worked with him for three years.

So from day one, he started with a three sixty and a roadmap that he followed like a playbook. And his church is eight years old now. And it's one of the most dynamic cultures of care I've ever seen. They've grown. They've He's obviously added to his staff.

He has a soul care guy now who went to Southern. Like he got a phenomenal education. This guy's quality when it comes to training. But when that guy came in, right fresh from Southern, Masters in Biblical Counseling, he was blown away at what he was inheriting. He's like, there's nothing to build.

People are already doing this. It's just about stewardship. Yeah. So he's really able to focus on raising up formal counselors, collecting helpful resources both in the community and in the Biblical Counseling Movement to bolster and strengthen what they have with their freedom groups, what they have with their life groups, what they have in and through their deacon care. And so it's not easy.

Like they have difficult situations. I've done some consulting with them recently to talk through a couple of difficult ones. But the people are really bought in. The people are doing the work of ministry and it frees up the pastors for the ministry of prayer, the ministry of preaching the word, the ministry of equipping the saints. That's what elders are supposed to be doing because then the people are thriving.

Yeah, that's really good. And one of the things that going back to the, before we close out here, the Discipleship Continuum and just moving forward, there's essentially categorically, or at least relationally speaking, how this sort of plays itself out within certain ministries. And there's some overlap and what we're talking about is, and you said this in passing, but like being intentional, right? So that one another's is establishing being intentional. And by definition, Christians are intentional.

Like we literally, the whole goal is to share the gospel, make disciples. So we are intentional people. We ought to be. And then the second thing from relational is not only being intentional, but what's the level of intentionality? What's the purpose of intention?

What are we moving into? For considering the gospel, we're moving into, okay, now after being intentional, now I need to be authentic. Okay, what does it mean to be authentic? It means about being real, but there's ministries where people are being real, but there's not really accountability. Right.

You can speak your mind and speak the truth and be authentic, but it doesn't necessarily mean someone you're allowing people to speak into your life. And then there's transparency, and then what does it look like to be transparent? And then ultimately vulnerability. And then tying that to we're talking about silos of ministry, what we're talking about is some churches, and I can think of a few right off the top of my head, where they have recovery ministries, relationally that those are vulnerable people. And they question people who aren't vulnerable.

Right. And so the reality of them getting, having them assimilated back into any sort of small group church or even Sunday school, whatever their context is, and wherever they're going, they never get assimilated back into the church. So they stay isolated and siloed. And so then I don't just want to always be vulnerable, like it's just a crying session every time. So when Lee's talking about moving through these T series and these building blocks, it's really helping develop those relational dynamics.

And that it is a continuum, it's not a linear, it's like you don't stay in vulnerability, but it's there's life, right? But how do we how are we equipping the body dynamically and being able to switch those relational contexts where man, got to switch on to vulnerability. If I'm using my intentionality to speak the truth in love or help this brother confess his sin or whatever it is, but now there's real rawness and purpose in our intentionality as believers. Any concluding thoughts to that point, Lee, before we close out?

Yeah, love what you said. I agree with what you said and it's encouraging. I think the Lord's given us a beautiful vision in his scriptures for what his bride is in Revelation. Like when I read about the spotless bride, I'm like, he is so committed to his church. And then when you see how he's built out his church in the New Testament, especially, and how he's given these beautiful members.

We are each other's spiritual inheritance. Yeah. So I love traveling to see different churches and meet brothers and sisters that are like literally my inheritance.

Yeah. Like here at the Made to Minister Conference. Totally. Yeah. How you stay away our location.

Oops.

And then you see like that God gives him and then what he saved them from and how he wants to use that story to encourage others. There's something really powerful in that. And unfortunately, the word counseling has been hijacked. Like God's the first counselor. See it in Genesis.

He gives direction. He gives counsel. Don't do this. Go name the animals. Don't eat of that tree.

He counsels them. So counseling's a loaded word in our culture because it's been hijacked by the therapeutic, but it's really a biblical word. And so what I love about biblical soul care is it's really trying to take back the call to to counsel one another in the wisdom and the word of God. And that's full of comfort and full of compassion and full of care and grace, full of truth and mercy, and all the beautiful things that are God that that flow through his spirit, through his word amongst his people, that's counseling. Yeah.

So we don't need to be scared of it. We just need to be equipped to know how to do it, where our threshold is, and how to get the next level of care to the next care need as the Lord is drawing people into his marvelous light.

Yeah, that's really good. Just to encourage you guys, matter context that you're in, but those four relational progressions and dynamics of where we find ourselves as the body of Christ and being able to minister to one another. That's the heart of soul care consulting and what they're trying to do. And then obviously with ABC doing the certification training, but really the goal is, and I think in closing, that was one of the things that I subsequently learned after the fact is that when I started, I was very heavy on biblical counseling and like, you gotta have a counseling ministry in your church, but not realizing that there's all this other care that's just so lacking that we're still missing it. That's great that we have some sort of crisis care that's happening, but there's a lot more care that's on the table that we need to do to close those gaps.

And then ultimately, it is helping the church be equipped to actually triage that care because really we have unfortunately outsourced crisis care. And so that's a thing. We thank you so much, man, for your time and we love what you're doing at SoulCare Consulting. And hey guys, I'll put all this stuff in the show notes and contact Soulcare Consulting if you have any questions. Highly recommend it.

Thank you guys for listening. Lee, thank you so much and we'll see you guys next time.