Hey, oh, oh, come on and take a seat on the virtual couch.

Hey everybody.

Welcome to episode 281 of the virtual couch.

And today I feel like I'm just going to riff a little bit because I have had something that has been on my mind.

I already feel like I'm sounding very dramatic.

I'm very, very dramatic.

But something that's been on my mind in the last few weeks.

And I'm going to go probably in a couple of different directions.

I'll try to stay somewhat on topic.

But I have had an opportunity to do a fair amount of training over the last few years of my career.

And recently, I've been able to train a fair amount of ecclesiastical leaders.

So leaders for religious congregations.

And it's been a pretty cool process because a lot of times in the context of someone's religious

experience, there is an awful lot of people saying, here's what you need to do.

Here's how you do it and here's what you need to do. And a lot of this stems from the work

that I've done with James Fowler's stages of faith. And I even think it might not be a bad idea

to just run over those real quick, because I feel like the stages of faith also apply to our

stages of life. And I did a podcast a long time ago about that. And if you stay with me here,

I really feel like I'm going to make a point, but let me do a little bit of set up first.

So Fowler's Stages of Faith is a concept where psychologists and religious pastor, James Fowler,

back in I believe the 80s, spent over a decade researching all-encompassing belief systems. So there were a lot of

different views or a lot of different religious groups that he studied. And he, in essence,

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