Rob & Barbara Gross were young pastors, trained, equipped and excited to plant a seeker sensitive church in Rob’s hometown of Kaneohe, HI. But, Jesus had other plans!
In this episode Rob & Barbara share their story of encountering the presence of God and how the trajectory of their ministry was forever changed. From Rob’s personal journey of inner healing to Barb’s burden for the restoration of family and the invitation for all of us to encounter God’s healing and restoration.
Click below to listen starting at 29:07 to follow along.
Healing the Pastor Heart
Rob:
I started thinking to myself, “If I’m as beat up as I am, or I was, I wonder how the people are where they’re at.” I started talking openly during the services about my struggles and people were responding. We started to launch a ministry, we had these video tapes and we just fumbled our way through showing people the videos and then trying to minister.
We really didn’t know what we were doing, but those were the early days of launching our Healing Hearts Curriculum, which evolved over the years, taking people from a place of orphaness to a place of sonship and daughtership.
Gina:
We’re made for relationships. “Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Those relationships are fraught with baggage and our family of origin and the experiences we have and generational things. All of that is brought into those relationships.
I was raised in a congregation that was very much “Are you saved? Are you reading the Word? Are you praying? Then get over it. Old things are gone, everything’s become new. You’re a new creation. Therefore you shouldn’t struggle.”
That left a whole generation of people with a lot of shame and self-condemnation, they would walk into church, the enemy’s number one tactic is isolation, whispering “See all of them there, they are doing great with Jesus. They don’t have the issues you have. They’re not struggling the way you are.”
That really paralyzed a whole generation that felt like they somehow were broken. What God was doing, showing you that, by revealing your own brokenness and the healing you needed, was also then building a way in which to start to bring that healing, start to allow the Holy Spirit to go deep and into those dark places, into those corners, bring healing and wholeness. That’s really powerful.
Rob:
My personal heart is really to bring that to pastors. As the gatekeepers, we found that when I opened up about all my junk, it gave everyone permission to share their junk and to be real, and then realized that being real led to transformation.
I started hanging out with pastors. I started discovering they are some of the most wounded people on planet earth, beautiful people, wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to help others, but are struggling. Who do they go to?
Gina:
They aren’t given permission, either by themselves, their elder boards, their staff or the congregation, to be people. Then on top of that, the Western Evangelical model of church, what we’ve created it to be, things like positional titles, like lead pastor, senior pastor. You’re expected to be an anointed teacher and a visionary and a manager of a staff and take care of the people and, financially.
That’s really not a Biblical model of leadership. You have this entire generation of pastors that are shouldering all of this stuff, and then are fearful that if they are honest about their struggles, weariness, or honest about the fact that they don’t have all the answers or are struggling in an area, that that’s going to be the end. They tend to keep going until they hit a wall, until burnout.
I have the privilege of working with a ministry called Soul Shepherding. They are doctors, psychology and spiritual directors. Their whole ministry is to pastors and leaders, to make them healthy, relationally, spiritually, emotionally healthy, so that their ministry is sustainable, and their families.
Healed Parents Raise Whole-Hearted Families
Gina:
Barb, I’d love to hear more from you. Your passion, your focus has been family, raising family. As you guys have been walking out this ministry and healing hearts and seeing people get healed, and now doing this, how has that impacted families? How does that play out in the larger family?
Barb:
The first seven years we were doing Healing Hearts in our church, three to four times a year with about 20 people. Then we started to shift realizing that they’ve gotten a measure of healing, but now we have to pour back into them. You can get rid of your pain from your family, but unless you start to put something new in it, you’re going to go back to the old pattern.
Maybe the chain has been broken as in the case of a baby elephant, but cut the chain of a baby elephant, but he’s been tied for so long. He has a hard time moving forward. Parenting is the other part of healing, because healing is really about wholeness. First, the removal of ungodly patterns of thinking and relating. The parenting side is about depositing life-giving ways in relationships and how we speak and how we view each other, how we relate, how we reconcile, how we correct.
It points to life itself. I’ve done that for a few rounds. I use Gary and Marie Ezzo’s curriculum from https://growingfamilies.life/ . Their core program is about 17 or 18 sessions. I’ve done a few rounds of that. My son challenged me, he said, “Mom, my generation is not going to tolerate 18 sessions. Can you do it in 10?” I really prayed about it. I felt like God was saying, “You can do it in 10. Give them the big ideas.”
Because the Ezzo’s go into a lot of detail, which is wonderful. I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on that, but I thought, “Parenting is a lifelong journey. It doesn’t matter if you took it for 10 or 18, you’re going to be doing this for a long time. Even if you have children that are adults. You’re still an influencer in their life.” I narrowed it down to 10 and gave them three big ideas.
The first one, I liken it to soil and God was teaching me a lot through my own planting. He said, “If the soil or the home culture is healthy, that seed that you plant will grow.” There are components in the home culture that are very important for kids to experience.
The second one has to do with fertilizing, which is your added nutrients, which is actually wisdom, the further development of wisdom and character, in the child. How do you impart that? How do you bring instruction?
And the last part has to do with weed control. How do you minimize unwanted behaviors? It’s usually in the correction process where children get wounded, because if we were corrected somewhat harshly growing up, then that’s how we will naturally parent our children. But children will naturally feel rejected more than corrected, depending on how parents correct them.
I’ve recently begun to tell the students “You want your kids to love correction, because if you do it properly, ultimately correction is to lead them back to the path of life.” How we do all those components is really important. At all times we are actually revealing God to them. Whether we’re creating this home culture, whether we’re imparting or whether we’re bringing them back on the path, we are really an example of God to our kids.
We’re the first example of God that they know when they’re growing up. I’ve done it in 10 weeks. They still read 18 weeks worth of lessons. I have them do independent work in between, but I think that those who have gone through Healing Hearts have a better chance of sticking with the parenting, because their own woundings of their upbringing have been restored.
Gina:
Everything that you’re talking about is the parallel of our spiritual growth. The correction side for our kids is the repentance side for us. What has the enemy done to the concept of repentance? It’s condemnation, it’s “repent you sinner.” It’s something that we’re fearful of. We feel condemnation rather than it being an invitation.
We don’t recognize it’s His kindness that leads us to repentance. Repentance is something that we should run to not run from. Until we receive that healing ourselves, how can we demonstrate that in the context of our home. That’s really powerful.
Rob:
There was a young woman who received the Lord in our current location. Later on, we learned that her home life was really quite disturbing. Her dad wasn’t faithful to her mom. They eventually broke up. She came from a broken home. Latch key, would run away, was living out on the street. A really tough woman.
She went through Healing Hearts and also Growing Kids God’s Way curriculum. Now she is championing the big island and her daughter’s teachers are blown away at how well behaved her daughters are. How they’re constantly encouraging their classmates, prophesying to their classmates. They ask “What is the secret to why your kids are doing so well?”
Barb:
They just stand out.
Rob:
They’re standing out, but that’s what scripture says. We’re supposed to stand out like shining lights. I think with Barb’s curriculum, she’s actually taught that woman how to speak life to her kids, how to download into their hearts how to do life.
It’s slow going, because not every family is willing to pay the price of cleanup and then train up and build up to actually sit down and go, “Okay, this is what it takes to get our family healed.”
Gina:
What do you say to parents who are beyond that stage of life where their children are small and they can pour into them in that way? Their kids are college or older and they maybe just getting healed, but now they’re still seeing repercussions in their kids. How are you encouraging them and leading them to still be an influence and love those older children well and intercede for them?
Rob:
I’m thinking of a man who lives in Mililani, who grew up with a tremendous amount of struggle in his soul. His dad took a gun to his head when he was little and played Russian roulette. There were actual bullets in the gun. His masculinity was destroyed, because his dad constantly told him he was a wimp and nothing as a male. He literally grew up not being able to pour into his three children.
As adults today, they’ve all moved out and he is slowly but surely rebuilding relationships. I would say to anyone who’s listening to encourage you that it’s never too late, because the Bible says that if we sow well, we’ll reap well. So start. He’s doing zoom now with them and their spouses. It’s been really hard.
They’re so anti-conservative and ultra left and don’t want to hear anything. But he is plugging away. He’s loving on them. He speaks blessing over them. He’s trying to seek them and pursue them. Which is what the Father does with us. He’s sowing and he’s in a season of sowing.
What else can you do, but sow and believe God that there’ll be a harvest, there’ll be a shift. At one point his children will face their children being teenagers struggling. I believe they’ll go back to him and say, “Hey dad, sorry.” It’s never too late.
Barb:
I had a gentleman in my parenting class a while ago, and he had an adopted daughter with his first wife, and he divorce that first wife. Then he married his second wife, had a biological daughter and a stepson with her and then divorced her. He then got married a third time and went through Healing Hearts and took the parenting class. He is still working through his mess.
I think the hardest part for parents is realizing that they could have fallen short, even though their intentions were good, because most parents want the best for their kids. Their methods were not always the best. That’s where the disconnect happens and children are left with wounds in their hearts. It’s either from something the parents did to them, like speaking harshly or the silent parent who doesn’t say anything, there is a great void.
I’ve had a lot of parents take the class that have adult children and they got healed themselves. They realized the patterns they had while raising their kids. And now through the Growing Kids curriculum, they realize what they need to start doing. This is where the void has been in their home. And so they are pursuing their kids and that’s so beautiful. That’s powerful.
Gina:
That’s really fascinating too. I think some people would probably look at the Growing Kids curriculum and go, “Well, my kids are grown. It’s too late for that.” They wouldn’t even consider taking that. To be on that other side and still go “I want to take this and learn.” The places that were deficit or what their blind spots were or what the things were that maybe could have been better. Then be able to come back around and still provide those things.
Rob:
I think one of the things on the other end of the spectrum that we do is to tell the adult kid and or the teenager, to talk to their parent and discover what their childhood was like. We think you’ll learn real quickly that your parent or parents did not purposely intend to hurt or wound you. They weren’t parenting you out of their childhood experience and how they were parented.
When you come to that realization that they weren’t purposely trying to wound you, it’ll be easier for you. It will still be challenging to forgive them. I think the light bulb goes on for a lot of people. We encourage them to come back to their parents and make things right.
But we found in our culture that a lot of times it’s hard for the parents to go to their adult children and apologize once because there’s a lot of shame and guilt and condemnation. It’s really a process of being healed up.
Gina:
Thank you guys. This has been fun. It’s been a great conversation. I learned a lot. I’m grateful for how you are stewarding the things that God’s entrusted to you and the place that you’re standing and the things that you’re carrying and the obedience with which you’re stepping forward and moving and leading.
Rob and Barbara are Senior Pastors at Mountain View Community Church, HI
Check the rest of this conversation Life Changing Encounters With God
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