Burned by the Church on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems that people face.

Our special guest on the podcast this week is Dr. Mark Devere. Pastor Mark is the senior pastor

of the Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and he's the president of Non-Marx Ministries.

And we've invited him on the podcast this week because every year ACBC hosts an annual

conference on a topic of biblical counseling, and we host a pre-conference on a topic related to

that conference. This year, those conferences are happening on October 3rd, 4th, and 5th,

and we are delighted that our pre-conference partner is non-Marx ministries. At that conference,

we're going to be talking about how theology finds its home in the local church and how the

local church is the place where we can most fully care for people who are experiencing trouble.

And one of the troubles that people often face is the fact of people being burned by the church. This is an issue that I'm aware of

in my own personal life because it happened to my father. My mom, when I was very young, left my father

and the leadership of the local church where they were attending at the time came and visited my dad and said,

we don't want a divorced man in the church.

And we need to ask you not to come back anymore.

This came out as I was becoming a grown man and had become a believer in Jesus and was sharing the gospel with my dad and was

inviting him to attend church. And he told me that story. And he said, they told me not to come

back and I haven't been back and I won't be going back. And I realized they're in a very personal

way that it's possible for leadership inside local churches to really burn those that they are called to help.

And that's why we've asked Pastor Mark to join us on the program today. Mark, we're glad

you're with us.

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