This is the Bamo podcast with Marty Salman. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we are starting a new series that reflects on the heartbreaking realities of spiritual abuse using notes from a recent conference to guide the conversation.

Yeah, this was a, this has been a series that I've been thinking about for a while. Brent, I've gone back and forth on doing it. I am, I have been struggling for a long time with the old Imposter Syndrome with this series. Like, who am I to do this? I shouldn't be talking about this.

It's just all kinds of those things. I've gone back and forth. I just get so many emails about this topic. I hear so many stories. I see, I, I see so many people. I've recently just gone through so much conversation.

And, and so I want to have this conversation because there's a conversation that we just need to be having. We need to be, we need to have the conversation. We need to not be afraid to have the conversation.

And so one of the ways that you deal with the Poster Syndrome, by the way, I think I did a YouTube video on this. Brent, find this YouTube, my little YouTube reflection on Imposter Syndrome. Drop it in the, in the show notes. But, part of the ways that you deal with Imposter Syndrome is just being honest about who you are and who you're not.

Don't hold your, don't make yourself in to be somebody that you're not. I'm not an expert. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a therapist. I'm not going to try to play any of those roles in this series.

I am, I am simply a spiritual leader that has learned a lot in my journey. I've learned a lot of things that I wish I would have never done or feel like I was trained to do or just a lot of reflection and things that I wish I want to get better at as a leader.

So it's coming from that stage. We'll talk more about that before we're done today. But this is it. We're not going to get like super deep. We're not going to get super fiery and prophetic in this episode. So everybody can take a deep breath. All right.

We're going to, we're going to just kind of, we're just going to have a really basic, really shallow conversation.

Just because I don't know if we're having enough of these conversations and we need to continue to open those doors and open those windows to have those conversations and to hear that dialogue.

We're just going to practice some curiosity. We're going to practice some empathy. I know the last time I tried to do that on session six of the podcast.

Amanda, everybody get upset. Here we go again. We're just going to, we're not going to try to be super. We're not trying to be underhanded, strong handed, provocative. Nope. Nope. Nope. We're just wanting to have just a super basic conversation.

I know as I started to investigate doing this series, I just had so many resources sent to me by all kinds of amazing people and some of those resources were amazing. Some of those resources. I wasn't quite sure.

Some of those resources are just outside of there. I need to stay in my lane. And, and so some of you sent me a bunch of resources. I appreciate that. I thank you. And that was all a part of creating this episode.

And then the three that come after this. We're going to do four episodes on this. And, and I just appreciate the way that everybody contributed to that. And just because I don't reference some of your sources and the show notes or anything.

There could be a whole list of reasons why I didn't do that. So I just appreciate everybody's help. But what I wanted to do today is I just wanted to kind of like ease us into this conversation.

And, and, and just speak from some personal experience. Yeah. And I think I have maybe some questions about this because I feel like going into this. I'm like, well, do I know anything about spiritual abuse? I don't think so. But I think if I step back and, and look at it a little more closely, there's probably a lot of stuff that I've seen or even have experienced.

That would be considered spiritual abuse. And I just am naive to it. So I'm excited to kind of step through this and see what comes out of it. Yeah, absolutely. And we'll have some comments right the beginning here as we get started. And then really when we start to we won't really even define spiritual abuse until next episode.

We'll talk a little bit more about that next. So these are going to see some general reflection comments to start our episode today. Maybe maybe a shorter conversation. Who knows. We'll see.

Okay. Alright. Make me wait. I like it.

But so I was at a conference recently. We gather together as campus ministers for.

We have an association of college ministries that we're a part of. We put on a couple conferences, a retreat every spring. And then somewhere late summer. We always have a conference together.

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