Episode 10: The Power of an Encounter Weekend
Season 1 · Episode 10
The Power of an Encounter Weekend - A Pastor's Experience
Show Notes
In their very first interview episode, Amy Howard sits down with Pastor Shae Fitzgibbons of Bethany Church on the New Hampshire seacoast to talk honestly about the loneliness, burnout, and hidden pain that quietly wear on pastors and congregations alike. Shae shares his winding road into ministry, his initial cautions about opening the door to the Holy Spirit, and how a simple invitation to "pray in a non-weird way" led his church into EncounterGod weekends, EncounterEquip training, and EncounterLife cohorts. Together they explore what it looks like to build a healing culture where masks come off, confession happens in community, and ordinary people are equipped to carry the love of Jesus to hurting neighbors right where they are. It is a warm, candid conversation about trading sin management for the power of God and rediscovering New England as a field ripe with opportunity.
In This Episode
- Pastors face steep rates of burnout, stress, loneliness, and isolation, often because they carry ministry alone and feel they must appear to have it all together.
- The pain, bondage, and complacency inside the church can look strikingly similar to the world's, and more information alone rarely reaches the heart-level issues underneath.
- The enemy thrives on secrecy and the lie that you are the only one struggling; confessing sin out loud in safe community breaks isolation and opens the door to healing.
- Praying for healing and deliverance can be done in a healthy, non-weird, reproducible way that honors God's presence while still respecting human limits, environments, and even the clock.
- Encounter weekends, EncounterEquip training, and 12-week EncounterLife cohorts work together so healing that begins in a weekend keeps unfolding in community over time.
- When people share their stories and confess openly, it creates a welcome mat that makes it safe for others to come clean and find hope.
- New England is not a hard, closed field but a seedbed for genuine intimacy with God, where authenticity and prayer become the most natural bridge to the gospel.
Going Deeper — Discussion Questions
- Shae admits he has thought about quitting ministry more times than he can count. Where in your own life or work do you feel the weight of doing it alone, and who could you invite in?
- The episode notes that pain and bondage inside the church often mirror the world. Why do you think the church can look so much like the world, and would you go to the church with your deepest problem? Why or why not?
- Shae talks about the enemy's lie that "you are the only one." What is something you have kept in the dark for fear of what people would think, and what might change if you brought it into the light?
- Amy and Shae discuss confessing sin and praying for one another in community (1 John 1:9) rather than privately. What makes that kind of honesty feel risky, and what would make your group a safe place for it?
- What are some of the fears or "red flags" that make you cautious about opening things up to the Holy Spirit, and how does Shae's experience speak to those concerns?
- Shae describes how sharing his own story made it safe for others in the room to come clean. Whose vulnerability has made space for you to be honest, and how could your story do that for someone else?
- The hosts reframe New England from a "hard" field to a place of great opportunity that simply requires more authenticity. Where do you tend to say a situation is "too hard," and how might telling a new story change the way you show up?
Full Transcript
▸Hide transcript · proofread, 60 min read
0:03Introduction
Welcome to Between Heaven and Earth. We're your hosts, Justin and Amy Howard. And together, we lead a mission agency right here in beautiful New England. We are thrilled that you've joined us. In each episode, we'll explore what it means to follow Jesus by bringing Heaven and Earth together in your family and community. Our goal is to empower you to thrive in the collision of kingdoms and courageously join with Jesus in his great project of healing and restoration. This podcast is brought to you by Encounter Culture Mission Collaborative, dedicated to working with ordinary followers of Jesus to mend, make, and multiply disciples right where they are. Let's dive in.
0:54Welcoming Pastor Shae Fitzgibbons
Well, hello listeners, we are really excited to have you here with us again. And today is our first interview. And we're really excited to have Pastor Shae Fitzgibbons here from Bethany Church, which is here on the seacoast of New Hampshire. And we've been doing a lot of work with Bethany around Encounter Culture, EncounterEquip, and EncounterLife and Encounter Weekends. And it's just been super fun to work with Shae. And we've known you for a few years now. And what we want to do is we want to help church leaders and pastors, and if you are in your church and you enjoy listening to this podcast, maybe you have been involved in Encounter stuff.
What does it look like for Encounter to come to your church? Why would it add value or be a benefit? Because we are all passionate about discipleship and want to see disciples made. And Jesus said, go into the world, make disciples. Don't make converts, make disciples. And what does it look like for us to come in and to sort of present a vision of holistic discipleship where the entire person is healed? And so we have Pastor Shae here to talk about that. And I think it's going to be a great interview. And so I'm going to hand it over to Amy, and she is going to conduct the interview. Hey, Shae. Hey, Amy, how are you? I'm well, thanks, how are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me in your home.
We're so glad that you're here.
I heard that your wife is going to win fantasy baseball this week. Is that true? That is not a fair question. I am competitive and I am five and one. Okay. But when my wife put a trick question to me this morning, how important is it to you to beat your wife at fantasy baseball? I didn't know how to answer that. Is that Solomon wisdom, in the same direction? Yes, let's call it that. Or it's just she's going to win and you didn't want to own it ahead of time. It was a very wise way of saying, back off, to your husband. Wouldn't you like to see your wife win? We love you, Angie, and wish you were here, and we hope you win. I mean, I, you know.
So I am so excited to talk to you today about just your own story as a pastor, as a human. We love to say it's hard to be a human. And your experience with ECMC stuff, your experience—you've experienced Encounters on your own terms. And then also you've been integral in bringing trainings and weekends into your congregation. And so we just want to talk about how that's gone, and yeah. So let's do it. Yeah, let's do it. So, Shae, why did you become a pastor? Yeah, in many ways, I'm still trying to figure that out.
4:11From Engineer to Pastor
Primarily because at one of my most desperate vocational moments, trying to figure out, what am I going to do with my life? I went to school undergraduate at Virginia Tech to become a mechanical engineer. Okay. And after three years of working in the plastics industry and liking some of it, but not loving most of it, quit my job and moved back into my parents' home when I was 23-ish, thinking, all my friends are ahead of the game here. And I'm back in my parents' home, have no idea what I'm going to do. And through a lot of prayer, I felt just very thinly the Lord say, prepare for full-time ministry. Wow. I had no idea what to do with that. So it wasn't like cymbals and thunder. I wish it was. I wish it was the lightning bolt on Martin Luther. Okay, I'll be a monk.
But no, it was—I took that to my pastor who was, now my senior pastor that I work alongside of. Wow. So this is going back just over 20 years. You say it's a long relationship. It's 2003. And long story short, he said, Gordon-Conwell seminary is right down the road from us. You could enroll in their MDiv program. It's three years. That'll give you time to figure out what your calling is. Wow. And I learned that it did not mean I had to become a pastor. I could have been a teacher, missionary, author, whatever, you know, but instead the Lord said, yes, I want you to be a pastor, a shepherd. Wow. And when did you start shepherding?
Well, I did mentored ministry, which is part of the program in most seminaries, to have a practical portion of your studies. And I worked with young adults, 20-, 30-somethings. And then I fought the Lord at my next stage, which was to be a youth pastor. I had not prepared for that. I don't think I took one youth ministry class. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first. I did not have a job. We were living in a parsonage at a church. They needed a youth pastor. And one of my friends wisely said, you may not be called to youth ministry, but you might be called to free rent. Because that was the pay.
Instead of us paying for the parsonage, they would now, in exchange for my 15 hours a week, allow us to live there for free. We've made a lot of those kinds of decisions. This must be the Lord because it pays the bill. I felt called to free rent. Yeah. At that point, I love it. But now it's—so that was 2008 in Lynn, Massachusetts. Wow. So what do you love about it? I love—I do love people. And I love seeing people, like the light bulb come on for them, that this is not about just trying to obey better, or let me cut this out and really have faith.
I love seeing people transformed by the power of God, like fall in love with Jesus, and then discover that the Holy Spirit actually empowers them for ministry, speaks to them. So when I see those light bulbs come on—and it has for me too—I'm like, okay, this is exciting. This is why I got into this, was to see people's lives change, to see disciples grow in their faith, who then turn around and say, I wanna make more people like this. Wow, wow. So there's a huge attrition rate in pastoral ministry in the United States. Statistics vary, but a lot, a lot of pastors are quitting.
8:52The Weight Pastors Carry
I was looking at some statistics recently that said 56% said the immense stress of the job was why they were leaving, 43% said, I feel lonely and isolated. How many times do you think about quitting? Ah, I'm not sure I can count. And that's just me being honest, human, right? That I think part of that is that ministry is not easy. Yeah. I was exhausted recently from a lot of ministry, and immediately I thought about Jesus sleeping in the boat as there's this massive storm going on, and it finally made sense. I'm like, he was doing a ton of ministry, healing so many people and teaching. I think I would have fallen asleep in that boat. On the wooden floor of the boat, in the middle of the boat.
And it would have been the most comfortable place to do that. Yeah, and you would have been irritated by the people who'd woken you up. We need you again in the middle of the storm. Like, just leave me alone. But I do think, and I know from experience, I have a lot of friends in ministry that are doing this alone. And I believe that's probably the larger stressor, is trying to figure this all out. Knowing that their role is to equip the saints to do the work of ministry, and then looking around and seeing not a whole lot of receptive saints. They're very happy to pay their pastors to do the bulk of the work. Or that's why we have deacons or elders.
So they don't maybe have a sense for their own role that they're playing in the advancing of the kingdom. Right. Like a spiritual gift. They might nod and say, I even think I know what mine is, but what does it look like when a whole church really comes alive around those and realizes that if you don't use yours, we are incomplete. And likewise, if I don't contribute mine, the strength of the body is not what it could be. Now take, I don't know, 75% of the congregation out of that picture, and everybody else elevates the pastor and his or her gifts. And I think you have a recipe for burnout.
One of the things that has just kind of gripped me over the last few years as well has been the mirroring, statistically, of stuckness and pain and bondage in and outside the church. So our congregants are experiencing things that, I think a lot of times, maybe what we're doing isn't getting at it. It just doesn't seem to be enough. Like, Barna Group put out a statistic that said born-again Christians have a basically identical divorce rate as non-Christians. And even though practicing Christians are still found to view pornography less frequently than non-Christians, the gap was only 14 percentage points. It's so, so common, like just different addictions, different bondages. And then there's even, it seems like, a growing complacency. Like, 16% of that sort of Christian group that were regularly viewing pornography said they were like, I have some reservations about it, but I found moderate use is acceptable. There's just sort of a like, I can't really fix this.
I'm just gonna go with the flow at this point. I've kind of given in to the broader sense of—well, 62% said that they were comfortable with their level of consumption. 62% of churchgoing—I believe the people, out of the people that were interviewed that said, yes, I'm viewing pornography on a regular basis, 62% said that they were comfortable with their level of consumption. Yeah. And to me, that's not a judgment call, that's a hopelessness. That's like—I mean, do we have tools that can actually get at some of the pain, right?
We've talked a lot in here about the difference between head issues, like, and the way that you kind of solve problems that start in your head with information that goes into your head, and then body and heart problems that need a different solution a lot of times, that just more information isn't oftentimes enough to get at some of these heart issues. What do you think's going on? Why does the church look so much like the world in a lot of ways? Why is the pain the same? Why does it seem like—you know, if I had a problem, would I go to the church to have it solved? Yeah, that's a great question. The answer to that should be yes.
Yeah, right. And like, another reason why we get into ministry? Yeah, it's because we want people to realize, when you are struggling in your sin, go to the body, go to your elders, go to your leaders, go to a friend, and confess your sins and pray for one another that you might be healed. Wait, am I getting ahead of you? No, no, don't get ahead. You're suggesting that actually saying the stuff out loud is a big part of—well, how you see kind of the solution, if you will. Well, I have, ever since I got to know you guys—that was poorly led. You did not, you did not tip me off to say that; that was of my own free will. But I know I am saying exactly that. But I'll tell you, and from my own experience, right, the enemy is really good at convincing us that you should not let anybody know what you do in the dark. Because if you did, XYZ will happen, right? You'll get fired from your job, your spouse will hate you and want to leave you, your closest friends will be repelled by you and want nothing to do with you. And it doesn't matter, fill in the blank—you mentioned divorce, pornography, could be gambling, drug addiction, right? Anxiety. Anxiety.
Yeah, so I think—I don't want to give too much time to the enemy, but obviously the enemy would love to dangle in front of us anything that will get our focus off of Jesus. And he's a great rip-off artist. So he'll even take beautiful things that God created, like sex, and say, if we just pervert this for a moment, it might be even better. And then you head down this path that is just wrong, and it takes something beautiful God created, perverts it, and then it pollutes the mind and traps you. And then you're just there.
Yeah, and the more you feel trapped in whatever idol you're worshiping, the more it starts to own you and you serve it. And I think that was God's point in so much of Scripture, was these things are dead. They're not full of life, but you turn around as if they are and you worship them. That sounds very lonely. Yeah, extremely isolating, extremely lonely. I've got this problem, I'm—I'm worn, just not the perfect person that I long to be or that I want everyone to think that I am. And then I just kind of have to put on a face when I am with other people, if I'm not really known. We're talking about pastors being lonely.
17:01Facing the Fear of the Weird
I mean, how much more for pastors whose paycheck is connected to having it together a lot of times. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. It's so hard, so, so hard. So tell me about your first ECMC event. What were your thoughts going in? What did you expect? What was your experience? Tell me the story. Well, I sat down for coffee with Justin, your lovely husband, and it was a very God-ordained moment, because our church has a decent prayer ministry at all three of our campuses. And by that I mean, you know, there are prayer requests that are put out on email every week.
We know there are, you know, dozens upon dozens of people praying faithfully for those that have written down on their cards every Sunday, this is what I need prayer for. And we offer prayer at the end of a service. I've met some of your prayer team members and they are fantastic. They are, and they're so hungry for more. I want to collect the whole set and take them—they're so delightful. Well, that—thank you. Yes, I love them. And there are some prayer meetings during the week. So, you know, I think from the outside looking in, you're like, oh great, there's some of the hallmarks of evangelical prayer.
Yeah. But when I sat down for coffee with Justin, and he asked, you know, what's the Lord doing in your life? I said, well, in our ministry, our prayer team members have unanimously said, we need training. Hmm. And I've tried this in the past with other ministries, like, let's just get a good book. Yeah. And I don't think they do DVDs anymore, but it would have been that in the past. Yeah, let's just read the book, we'll watch the DVDs, and then that'll be it. Yeah, we'll be ready, right? Yeah. And I just knew that wasn't the answer, as many great authors as are out there.
Yeah, I knew we needed something hands-on, with live people we could ask questions of. So you didn't want just more data. We needed interaction, and we needed somebody to show us the way, where we could ask silly questions—knowing that there really aren't any silly questions, that if you're asking, that's a sign of strength, because you're saying, I need help, I want to grow. Long story short, Justin said, Shae, we teach people to pray in a non-weird way. I said, sign me up. That's what our people want. I know our church, that's what we need. Yeah, yeah. Tell me, real quick—
Can you tell me something about the non-weird way, like, why did that pull your heartstring? Well, because I know the church I represent is not Pentecostal. Yep. And that's not disparaging the Pentecostals. They're brothers and sisters in the Lord. Just not our tradition. And it's not your culture. Not our culture. Your culture is maybe, would you say, a little more quiet? Reserved. A little more reserved. Conservative theologically. Yeah. Open to the Spirit, but I don't know that we've really ever seen massive moves of the Spirit. So just like an open but cautious? Yeah. What are some of the cautions that you think are in place? 'Cause my heart is so affectionate.
I mean, we were talking about this right before we got on, that my heart is so full of affection for Bible-believing evangelical churches that have legitimate and good concerns about, is this gonna be weird, or is this gonna just bring wreckage if we start praying for people for healing or for deliverance ministry, who are concerned for good reasons. Like, those are my people, that's my set. So what were some of your concerns? And that's how I come at it. As a shepherd, I'm looking out for the flock, and I know the culture. Yeah.
So I think some of the fear or the red flags, if you will, that we'd be looking for, that I imagine many of your listeners who are pastors, leaders in the church, would also share, are, if we really open this thing up to the Spirit, is this gonna get out of control? And is it gonna—when we say weird, is it going to turn away sincere seekers, people who otherwise would have stayed and said, the Spirit is here, but now because we've opened it up and the Spirit's doing some new things that we're not used to, that now that would make a lot of people uncomfortable and they'd leave and go to other churches. And that maybe—that's just being really brutally honest, right?
Yeah, that's why I'm hoping for you. So what would that look like? Oh gosh, maybe people breaking out into strange tongues that nobody's ever heard before and looking around and waiting for somebody to interpret and it doesn't happen. So interrupting a service, for example, with a demonstration of some kind. Right, just hijacking a service, if you will, right? Yeah, yeah. And—so not being governed by love in the corporate body, but instead being governed by something else. Yeah. And maybe, frankly, not being governed by the clock. Like, if we're driven by, you know, this is what our services look like, this is what we do. Yeah, right, this is what we can do on a Sunday morning.
And we have another service coming, you know, right? So maybe a little afraid that if we open this up and it gets much more charismatic, like—can we ever go—we've lost control of our services and people are gonna be turned off by it and say, oh, what's going on, you know? Okay, I'll tell you, this is a little bit of a dovetail, but one of the things that has just been such a learning curve for me and was such a relief to find out is that if God is moving, He actually understands our human frailty or human needs, our human limitations.
And I've been in now just any number of healing prayer sessions where, you know, somebody is visibly being healed or their, you know, their body is releasing trauma and it's intense or their, you know, whatever's going on. And there comes a point when we're just tired, and the beauty of the fact that God's like, yeah, we can pick this up later. We can continue this conversation another time. Like, you don't have to get to the bottom of every single story in this one session and just drag it out for five hours. I think there's a weird, a weird sort of thought that if God is moving, this is my one opportunity to sort of cash in on this moment, and it would be dishonoring of God.
And you know who doesn't think that way? Moms with small kids, and they are ready to go home. Their kids need a nap, and I'm not saying there's anything beautiful about the prayer meeting that never ends. But also one of my favorite parts about the prayer meeting is the ending.
I am, for real, because I want my lifestyle to embody the presence of God. Who? I don't want it just to be event-based. There is—you'll know who this was, I can't recall—but someone from, I don't know, maybe the 1700s or so, that said some prayers need to be cut off at the beginning and the end and set on fire in the middle. Oh, I like that. Yeah. It so resonates, because you think there are some prayer meetings where it's like, what are we doing? It just seems like there's a lot of talk but with not a lot of passion here. Or even when the Lord is moving, he also is just not—he knows our frame. He knows that we're dust. He knows that our kids need attention.
He knows that the time is up. I mean, I think there are moments for honoring, absolutely, the sovereignty of God. And if he says, let's interrupt something, there are moments where it's a really good idea, and I've watched you all do just that. Like, I just really feel like the Lord wants us to emphasize something right now, or wants us to stay in this moment for a little, you know, for a while. But I think that there is an anxiety around, you know, if I go down this road, and even if the Lord begins to move, I have to get it all done in one session, which means this is going to have to last for 14 hours every single time.
And I think that was actually some of the challenges that we found in some of the more charismatic environments that we've been a part of. There's just the sense that, like, it was never okay to go home. It was never—this is going to sound really sacrilegious, but, but I've, I've said, okay, we're done, with healing prayer sessions that seem pretty midstream, where there was a lot of productive stuff still happening. Right. Because bodies need to rest. Yeah. I'm grateful that even this past weekend at a training where we had you at our church, that very thing happened. And a woman who really needed more. Yeah.
And it's probably the most comfortable I've ever felt by saying, why don't we just hit the pause button there for a moment? There's going to be a break. Yeah. We probably could use a stretch of our legs. Yeah. And then, you know what? When you come back, there's still 10 more minutes. Why don't we go into that quiet room next door and we'll finish up? Yeah. I mean, Jesus was always anointed. Like, he was, he was never not anointed. And he was like, my disciples are hungry and tired. We're leaving. Like, the Spirit of the sovereign Lord was always on him. Yeah. And he—I mean, is that liberating? How did that feel to just be like, we're going to go take a break now?
It felt natural, and it didn't feel any less. We weren't taking any dignity away from this woman. Yeah. If anything, we were adding to it, because we were saying, this is important, but it's important for us to do it well. And if we were to try to, like, ramrod this through a break, when now it's going to be loud around us and people are going to be maybe laughing and talking louder, it's not the right environment. So. I think the Lord cares a lot for environments. And I think he respects the fact that, you know, churches want to have a nine o'clock and an 11 o'clock service. And they want to maximize the glory of the Lord and his holiness in those time frames.
And so I don't think he would—the Spirit is not gonna hijack a service and make the whole church really upset, especially if there was a lot of healing that took place. He's not gonna take that service and make it a three-hour service. Yeah, we say not every day has to be Acts 2. Some days are Acts 2. If Acts 2 shows up, you're gonna know. Yeah. And you're gonna make room for it in your life, but it's not gonna be every Sunday. Hey listeners, are you ready to become fully alive? Life can feel overwhelming, and many of us struggle to feel fully alive. Perhaps you feel stuck in your marriage or career.
You might be struggling with anxiety or depression, or you really want to take your relationship with God to the next level. The good news is that you don't have to go through it alone. OneLife Group is a distinctly Christian approach to professional, individual, and couples counseling, as well as certified coaching for life, leadership, business, health, and wellness. They also have licensed spiritual directors to guide you in your ability to hear God. They can help you get free, stay free, and live your life on purpose. With virtual services available for individuals, couples, and groups, OneLife Group can help you discover which approach is right for you or someone you love. They will help you continue your journey of becoming fully alive. Visit youronelife.co to learn more. You don't have to go through it alone. Check out OneLife Group today.
30:03Healing at the Encounter Weekend
Okay, so you met with Justin, continue. Right, well, I'm so glad that after I said, "Sign us up," I learned more that if there were an ideal progression, let's say one might go to an EncounterGod weekend first and really just for themselves, just bask in God's presence and deal with some of the things that haven't been dealt with and truly experience the love and healing power of God. So one would experience that, and then you'd be asking yourself, "Wow, I was prayed over so well, could I do that? Or, could I train my church to do that?" And then you'd have the EncounterEquip prayer training. We just happen to have done them in reverse, or— Yeah, a lot of people do. Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of churches do. And experience healing at both, and that's fine, but we went off to an Encounter weekend in Jaffrey with you all, and my wife and I, and I'll be honest, I thought, I'm just going to check out what this is like as an observer, and my wife, who has some health issues, I was really just hoping like, maybe she'll get healed of something. We advise pastors to do that. Just come be a fly on the wall. I mean, if you can suspend the angry judgment enough, you know what I mean? Yeah. Come curious, but come as a fly on the wall, come watch, just see. But then it was the first teaching, the first testimony, and it was like an arrow through my heart.
And I was like, "Oh, this is for me. I've got some work to do." And it was like a weekend full of healthy tears, a lot of Kleenex. But yeah, so we walked away from that, having both experienced a lot of healing. My wife and I, and I was so fired up for our congregation now to experience that. And I caught the vision for how the Lord can do a great work in us if we will endeavor to not only just host events like that, be trained to do it, but really more be desirous of the culture transformation that would welcome that. Oh, tell me more about that. What would it look like to be a culture that welcomed that kind of a thing? And what are you welcoming? Well, we're welcoming honesty.
We're saying maybe each week you come to church with a mask on and you hide behind pain or trauma or sin. And you do the Christian thing, your heart is in the right place. You really want to come and worship God. You wanna be around other people, but there's maybe an intimacy that you're still afraid of. We wanna do away with that. We want a new culture that says, bring it all through the front door, because this is a healing place. And that sounds a lot like First John. It sounds suspiciously like First John, like, walk in the light and you'll actually have fellowship. Yeah, maybe you'll know one another and not be lonely anymore, not be isolated. Yeah.
So First John 1:9 that everyone points to in the evangelical world, I think is often privatized. Ah, say more. Oh, but you just said it. Right. But before that, John's saying, you know, walk in the light as he is in the light, but he's saying that to a fellowship of believers. Yeah. So he's saying, like, essentially, you all need to do this together. And then I think comes that clarity that, you know, when we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us, all of us, from all unrighteousness. It's meant to be a community experience. And of course, that never eliminates the individual and quiet time with the Lord. Right. It's just a both-and.
Right, it's a both-and. You were made for those sweet vertical between-you-and-God experiences, but you are also made to be loved and to love in community, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Right, right on. And when somebody else sees me in the place of my pain, and I feel safe enough to put it out there and know that the person I'm confiding in or confessing to is not judging me, but wants my healing, maybe even more than I believe I will receive it, there's strength in that. That's where there's strength in weakness, in just saying, I'm a weak, broken human being, I sin, but there's a place to take that sin. And I need your help taking it to Jesus.
And then we pray for each other and, wow, we're surprised that we walk away feeling healed, closer to God, closer to one another. Gosh, that sounds like the way Jesus designed church. I—Shae, you have set a really rich table at Bethany. I mean, you have boldly testified from your own story. And I—it's scary, right? I mean, to be a leader, I mean, you're—sorry. Everybody's story is scary. Everyone thinks their story is the most scary story. It was scary to me. When I first was challenged, my heart was beating out of my chest, and there were only seven other people from my church at that Encounter in Bangor. So you shared your story, because, I mean, gosh, it's risky. It's risky.
36:13Taking Off the Mask Together
I suppose no one could respect you, because then they find out you're a human. But what's your hope? That's scandalous. It's so scandalous. Oh my gosh. You're human too? You're not allowed to be. You're not allowed. Wow. Yeah. You're not allowed. You have to hide. No wonder pastors are tired. I'm not saying that to be honest about my congregation. Yeah. But I'm saying it about the narrative that was running through my own mind. Yeah. I've probably been conditioned in some circles to think that way. Yeah. Pastoral circles, church circles.
But I think the enemy does a really good job at trying to convince you, like, if you put this out there, that's so scandalous that no, you need to keep that under wraps. But what's crazy? I mean, I watched it happen. You shared your story and it made it safe for everyone in that room to come clean. Yes. It created a welcome mat. Oh, I guess I'm not the only one. And if he has struggled with this, or he has been into those dark places, and he can still, like, testify to the goodness of God and has been set free in the following areas, and here are the places of continued journey—maybe there's hope for me too. Yeah.
It shuts down that space of, I just need to be good, because everyone around me is good and they've all got it together, so I need to keep it together. And the enemy keeps winning with that internal, you're the only one. You're the only one who struggles with this. Exactly. Yeah. And it breaks down that whole sin-management philosophy that, you know, you just—to be a better Christian, you just kind of have to tidy up your house and sin less, you know, sin fewer times, and God's got to be more proud of you when you do, right? There's that attaboy, that pat on the back and, hey, you're doing a good job finally. But that's exhausting. That's not leaning into the power of God.
That's leaning into the flesh, which is always going to disappoint. Yeah. So what would you say for pastors that are like, you know, I think I can see that maybe, or at least I imagine that my congregants are struggling with the same stuff that's out there in the world, but maybe we talk about it less in church. I want, like you, I want to see that transformation. I want countenance renewal. Like, I want people to be set free and to have a testimony that they share with their friends and their neighbors. And they're maybe like, I've heard about these Encounter weekends. What would you say to them, or even the training?
And then maybe you could give us—you and I talked even a little bit about the 12-week groups that we've been doing. Right. Yeah. So it's really easy, I think, for a pastor to go to—I mean, we go to conferences all the time, we go to trainings. Most of us will have some sort of even budget for, you know, leadership development. Yeah. Make this one of those things you do. Like, this year, just say, hey, I'm going to go to an EncounterGod weekend and experience it up close and personal. I mean, any good pastor will evaluate material, whether it's a book or
anything you're going to recommend, right? Authors that you read. So why not see if this is something that you could recommend to your congregation. And I'm just telling you, by my experience, you'll say, why didn't I do something like this sooner? Because there is visible healing. You see the countenance change, like you mentioned, or you will experience somebody physically healed. Yeah, that throws an interesting bit into the conversation, doesn't it? Then you have to, like, whoa, but Jesus really did that. And right? And how are you gonna sit there and deny or fight what's happening in front of you? Or someone's testimony of, like, I've been sick this long, and now the pain's not there.
So I think, one, just go and experience it. And that's what I did. And I thought, oh, wow, there's so much healing here. And I imagine every pastor out there has their own things that they need help from others to bring to Jesus and leave with him, so that they can receive back peace and healing and freedom. And maybe end a little of that loneliness, an isolation. Yeah. And that's another thing I've experienced. I have now friends in ministry, because of you guys, thank you very much, that are throughout New England, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, that just—it's, someone told me this once and I've held onto it ever since.
41:38The Kitchen Table of Grace
When you go into someone's home and you feel so comfortable, it's often the kitchen where you have those deep conversations. True. And there can be—if you walked into our house, this—I should be helping with this at our home, but there are dirty dishes in the sink, okay? But it's a safe place. If you came into the kitchen, it's like you wouldn't care about that, because you know someone loves you and wants to go into the deeper regions of your life with you. And there's the possibility of food. It smells good. There's coffee. And there's stuff being made. Right.
So I think there's that experience when someone comes to Encounter, it's like you're being welcomed into the kitchen and God's there, Jesus is there. And you found pastor friends in the kitchen. And I found pastor friends in the kitchen, and we've done life together. You mentioned EncounterLife. Yeah, so it's a 12-week coached cohort where we take groups of four to eight people through a series of how to get in the way of being loved well. We say, if love is a four-lane highway, how do we practice running into the street in different ways? So how do we encounter love in our bodies? Through, from the Lord, how do we encounter love in our emotions?
And then the second half of those 12 weeks is, how do I carry that into my relationships on mission with Jesus? Right. The reason I jumped to that before speaking more about the training is because I've been to a few Encounters now and did not take advantage of the EncounterLife. But now that I have, and I think we're like on week 11 out of 12, I can see the connect, where the healing that begins in a weekend now just continues to unfold in community over three months. And I'm telling you, the pastors that I'm doing EncounterLife with, and Amy, you're our coach—we trust one another with our lives. Yeah, yeah.
There's—from day one, there was never any judgment in those circles. And we can laugh together, we can cry together, we can talk about some of the more difficult things, painful pasts. But there has never been a call—never been a call where we've finished unhealed. There's always been healing that has taken place. And often the healing isn't complete, but it's a process, especially if it's an emotional pain from the past. And I'm just blown away at how God loves us so well, but delights in using the body to love. Sometimes I need to set eyes on the other side of that love. I need a body, I need some person.
So those connect—those weekends and the continual EncounterLife, those connect very well. But in the midst of that is that training where there are some best practices about how to do prayer ministry. And you've learned from others—I believe what you've put together in the Kingdom Training Manual is a host of great best practices that are, again, not weird. They may, for some, be new and hence like, okay, this is pushing me out of my comfort zone a bit. And that's okay. And the Holy Spirit tends to do that a lot. Hold on. It's more fun if you have new things to learn. Yeah.
But then I think there's also, for those pastors out there who may be a little hesitant or just somewhat circumspect because they're trying to discern, is this healthy? Yeah. I think what they will find, and speaking from my experience, is a very healthy set of practices that are reproducible. So you can teach the flock to do this. And it's not like some huge extended, like, three-year discipleship course. You can do this in a weekend. We just had you to our church Friday night, all day Saturday. And then it's like we have now commissioned prayer ministers who this Sunday, if they want—yeah—join one of our prayer teams. They're going to keep practicing in church. Yeah.
And I mean, not everybody that was there were even prayer ministers, right? They're just moms and dads and neighbors and coworkers that maybe now can actually share some of the goodness that they've received with the hurting people around them. Yeah. Can I tell you a really exciting story? Please do. We hadn't been finished with this last EncounterEquip for even an hour before I received a voice text from one of my congregants—just baptized her within a year. So she's a new believer, she's totally on fire for the Lord, and her text, essentially—she says, this is too long to text.
But she was half in tears, half laughing, and saying how, essentially, God put in her path a young woman who was in tears at a gas station. And so she's talking to herself, the woman that attended training, and saying, I just left a training. Wow. And then she's like, oh, that's right, I just left a training. So let me put this into practice. Good for her. And she did. She knocks on the window. Says, I'm a Christian, I noticed you crying. Would it be okay if I prayed for you? She prayed for her. Apparently there was somebody on the phone who heard the prayer, and in tears the woman gets out of her car. This young lady gives her a hug and says, you did a good job.
Thank you. And you know what, as a pastor, honestly, as I'm listening to that, I was crying. I bet you were. So proud. I was like, that's why we're doing what we're doing. So that people will put it into practice wherever they are and feel like, oh, God designed for this to happen. Yeah, and all I have to do is show a little bit of courage and talk to a stranger. Yeah, pray for them, and let God handle the details. Say—that's a really great story. Yeah, I love that. That's really—so my hope is that those stories won't be rare, that it'll be common. Yeah, and every Sunday will be like, you'll never guess what happened, this was so cool. If you're—if your region—
We're just saturated with people who are ready to help you bring your pain to Jesus, whatever your pain was. I mean, there are practical ways that the church, generally I think, feels comfortable addressing practical needs, more, much more comfortable. So I don't want to eliminate the real practical needs that the church is meeting, you know, food and clothing and assistance in different ways. But can you imagine if the church were also the place—I mean, if a region were saturated with just hundreds of people who were just ready and waiting to find out where the pain was around them and bring it to Jesus? Well, I'll tell you a very practical way to marry those two.
49:30Bringing Jesus to New England
Yeah, yeah, let's say the ministries of mercy or justice together with, how do we tell them about Jesus? Yes, would be, I think, prayer. Yeah, so we had a time last year where a staff member in our church, her uncle's house burned down in North Berwick, Maine. And he's not a believer, or wasn't at the time, and a very difficult person to talk to about the Lord or about anything about Scripture, would always kind of turn the conversation to something else. And since this had happened, he was asking her a lot more questions, receiving prayer, and our church went up and helped him to get rid of all the debris and rubble as best we could, yeah, to make way for a new home. And we just gathered in a large circle and prayed for him and prayed over the property. And he now has a new home and it's beautiful. But there was a Bible found that did not burn up. Wow. And he's been reading it. And he's welcomed prayer. And I think several of our folks who went from church to his property to help him clean up—
we're trying to find that, like, how do we tell him? We're here not just to clean up this mess of what happened to his home, but that we want him to know Jesus. There can be that awkward, like, I have to force or find a way to, like, stick this in here, someone tell him about the Roman—Romans Road, right? Right, the Romans Road. And that just always feels forced. Yeah, it never feels right, but I think prayer can just be that way of saying, like, we're here, our hearts, you know, break for what happened to you as well. Do you mind if we just pray for you? Can I help you bring your pain to Jesus? Yeah, can we—yeah?
You have a lot of pain and trauma that's just occurred. The safest place we found for that is to bring it to the side of Jesus. Ah, I love that. I mean, Jesus healed so many people who had no idea who he was. The Romans hadn't been written yet, and he was just healing and delivering people left and right. He hadn't died and been resurrected. I mean, John was proclaiming the Lamb crucified before the foundation of the world. But nobody got it. I mean, very, very few people, if they were in the know, they certainly didn't show it.
He was healing and delivering, showing them what God was like, and bringing the kingdom together before they had that paradigm for what was going to accomplish the fullness of destroying death and the grip of the enemy and pain and whatever else. I mean, that's so beautiful, that before that gentleman even knew the gospel, you're willing to be a conduit of healing, right, practical healing and also real emotional, physical, spiritual healing. I can't imagine there's a pastor out there who wouldn't be thrilled at the idea that if we train folks to pray better, that they'd also be more evangelistic in a natural way, that it would be the overflow of their love for God.
And they wouldn't be worried about, like, how do I memorize some canned presentation of the gospel that I need to seal the deal before this conversation is done. And New Englanders love that, don't they? I feel like they're a project. Yeah, and to almost feel like that's their duty. Like, I did a good job because I closed the deal. Because I closed the deal. And I mean, I tell you what, I just—I feel like New Englanders know it's just cheap. We were running an Alpha up north, and we had this beautiful neighbor who I loved so much. He was an older gentleman. He was very—his body was dealing with a lot of long-term illness.
And after three asks over the course of several years, he finally decided to come to an Alpha. And if you're familiar with Alpha, there's a series of videos that sort of introduce the gospel, and it's very winsome. It's very whatever. But they're Nicky Gumbel. Yeah, but they were the new ones. They weren't the old Nicky Gumbel ones. They're new. And so they're done, like, the videos are mostly run by these kind of mid-20-somethings, very cool people. And after the first video, our neighbor sidles up to me. He's like, this is so canned. And I was like, what do you mean? He's like, well, I mean, obviously that wasn't real. Those people's hiking shoes, they're out in the wilderness.
And those shoes had clearly never been used. Good observation. Yeah, I mean, that's—but that to me, that's New England. Yeah. Like, I want to know it works. I want to know you've worn the shoes and that you have worn them over and over and over again. And I don't really care to listen to you unless you have a genuine, like, witness in your whole being that this is the stuff that works, not just tell me something true in a canned way. I don't care if it looks pretty. I'm actually a little suspicious if it looks good. Yeah, that way—maybe that's why there needs to be a little sweat stain on the Red Sox hat.
It shows that you've actually been through some of the hard years, you know, you didn't just get it at the right—and I think that it's true for all of humanity. But I want to say, particularly in New England, which I think is the seedbed for the most beautiful, genuine intimacy with God, right? I mean, New Englanders are not going to become, at the end of the day, just religious, check-the-box people. It's either going to be real or they don't want it. Can I say a challenging word to us in New England? Yeah, yeah. I feel like, having been here now, gosh, 22 years in ministry, I do feel that we take a little bit of pride in calling ourselves the frozen chosen. I think there can be a subtle pride in saying how low church attendance is among those, like, in New Hampshire and Maine and Vermont.
Why don't we just change the narrative and say—actually, our senior pastor did this so well, not just by citing stats, but by saying that just means now, as we look around, there's so much opportunity everywhere you look. Yeah. I would say, I would readily just dispense now with the frozen chosen thing. I love it. I love it. And just say, you know, the Lord has given us tremendous opportunity to share the gospel with the love of Jesus. Yeah, we stopped using the language "Maine is hard" when we were planting there, because people would say, yeah, Maine's really hard. It's really hard. People are hard.
It's hard to minister. And we just determined, like, we really hate that language. And what we've replaced it with is this idea that, like, actually it requires more authenticity from us. Like, I actually need God to show up. Yeah, I need a story. It's not—yeah, yeah. So I think that it's on—like, this is a huge opportunity. And so if a non-believer were listening to this podcast, and I hope—I hope there are, yeah—it would almost, I'd be embarrassed for the church if they heard us talking all about, like, oh, it's so difficult to do ministry in New Hampshire, Maine, like the people are so not open to spiritual things. That couldn't be further from the truth.
It's not—you're so far from—it's exactly what you're saying, is they just want to know that you're not trying to sell them something. Yes. Do you actually care about me, right? And if you do, like, just be honest and genuine, right, and give me what you got. Yes, don't beat around the bush, but if what you have works, tell me about it. Yeah, and show me. Don't try to trick me. Yeah. Yeah, and show me, don't just give me words. Like, pray for me. Yeah, let's—what I want is, I want to encounter God. I don't just want to hear about God, I want to know it. Oh. Well, Shae, this has just been a real joy, delight, and I'm so glad to be laboring with you in New England.
Hey, man, this is a great place. New England is a great place. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. I love ministering with you. I'm glad to be friends on the journey. And thanks so much. Thanks—more to come, more to come. Absolutely, much more to come. We love you. We love you and your whole family, and tell her—I wish you good luck with her fantasy baseball. We love you too. Thanks for having me on the show.
All right, peace. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Between Heaven and Earth. We hope that you are stirred to curiosity and courage as we explored bringing Heaven and Earth together right where you are. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. We're here to support you in understanding what the Spirit of God is doing in your life and responding in obedience to his good leadership. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please take a moment to like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. We'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and questions with us on our Facebook page or by email, podcast@encounterculturene.com. Your support helps us reach more people who are eager to join Jesus in his great project of restoration. Also check out our website, encounterculturene.com, for upcoming events and equipping opportunities for you and your church. Until next time, may you find joy living in between Heaven and Earth, and the courage to bring them together wherever you go.