May 29, 2024 Show with Jeff Rose on “Depression in the Pastorate”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 29th day of May, 2024.

Before I introduce my guest and topic, I want to remind all of you men in ministry leadership that next week, Thursday, June 6th, is our next free, biannual Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastor's luncheon, and this time, for the very first time ever, we are featuring our guest speaker, Dr. Joel Beakey, founder and chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Dr. Beakey and I have been friends for decades going back to the early 1990s, and I am so delighted that I have the providential opportunity to have him as our speaker for the first time, and remember, this is a free event, so not only is admission free and your lunch free, but in addition to all of that, every man who attends is going to receive a very heavy sack, perhaps even two very heavy sacks of free brand new books, personally selected by me, and donated by Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom.

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Jeff Rose on 116 Bible Church, Jeremiah Cry Ministries, and the Anxious Bench

Well, today I am delighted to have a returning guest that has not been on this program for a very long time. In fact, the last time he was on the program was when Iron Trip and Zion Radio was broadcasting live out of WNYG and WGBB radio in Babylon, Long Island, New York, and he was right there in the studio with me and Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who was in town for some debates and conferences, and his name is Jeff Rose.

He is senior pastor of 116 Bible Church in Watauga, Texas, and he can correct my pronunciation if I got that wrong, and he's also founder of Jeremiah Cry Ministries and founder of Anxious Bench Ministry, and today we are going to be addressing a very important theme, one that really hits home with me, depression in the pastorate, one minister's journey through mental darkness and counsel on managing it, shedding light on a hidden battle, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back after such a long absence to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Jeff Rose.

Well, thank you, Chris. It's an honor and a privilege to be here. I'm very thankful to be on the show with you today.

And if you could, let our listeners know something about 116 Bible Church, and of course, explain the name.

Okay, 116 Bible Church comes from Romans 116, declaring that all the power comes from the gospel of Christ, not from ourselves. That's what drives our entire ministry there at 116. So it's a church plant of seven years.

I planted the church seven years ago, along with another elder who had passed away from cancer, and brought on another elder since then, and we are still plugging along. So, yeah.

And is this a Reformed Baptist church?

It most certainly is. I mean, it isn't part of the ARBCA or the Reformed Baptist as far as the movement is concerned, but it is Reformed, and we are Baptistic. So our soteriology is Reformed, and we believe in baptism by immersion.

So that's kind of where we stand. So we stand with the 1689, of course, and that kind of fuels everything that we do.

Well, if anybody, especially if they live in or near Watauga, Texas, or you have family, friends, and loved ones in or near there, or if you're just passing through there on vacation or on a business trip, and you'll be there on a Lord's Day, the website is 116biblechurch .com.

That's 116, spelled out with numbers, biblechurch .com. And by the way, did I butcher Watauga, Texas, or is there another pronunciation?

Yeah, that's fine. Watauga is kind of how I've been taught to say it, but I think your pronunciation is fine.

Well, now tell us about Jeremiah Crime Ministries.

Well, Jeremiah Crime Ministries was started in 2006. I was going to school, and it was in Dallas, Texas, and I was affiliated with another street ministry, Way of the Master, at the time. We were with another company called The Great News Network, and at the time, they were a sister ministry to the Way of the Master, and its front-line ministry was open-air preaching.

And I spent a lot of time out on the streets, felt a calling to do this, and through much prayer and the study of God's Word, I felt like the Lord had drawn me to Jeremiah and Jeremiah's ministry, which Jeremiah's name means, God will raise us up, and Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.

He cried out, not only to his own people, but to the nations abroad, and I felt like that was what we should do as a ministry.

Well, if anybody wants more details on that ministry, go to jeremiahcry .com, jeremiahcry .com. Last but not least, let our listeners know about the Anxious Bench, and that especially requires explanation because if you're a Reformed Baptist and you're listening, or a Presbyterian, you might say to yourself, wait a minute, is this guy doing altar calls?

Is he a devotee of Charles Finney? What's going on here? I know it's a play on words, because if you.

Could explain it. Yeah, yeah, so the Anxious Bench is really a place to go for those who are looking for a place to restore their mind. In a sense, what I mean by that is to find fellowship in their suffering.

It is a site designed specifically to encourage, to inspire, and to offer hope for those who suffer with depression.

And anxiety. Okay, and is there a special website for that?

There's not a website. It's just on our Facebook page. If you look up the Anxious Bench, you can find that. You can even find that off my personal page as well. There's a link there in my bio. Description should be there.

And then, yeah, once you get to the page, you will see it's pretty much just quotes and just different memes and things just to encourage one another and have unity, a place to go for those who are suffering, and a place to be able to just to go to restore your mind and be encouraged.

All right, great. Well, since it's been so long since you've been on the program, I want you to do what we typically only have our first-time guests do on the program, and that's give a summary of their salvation testimony.

And so if you could provide for our listeners a bit of your story, including the religious atmosphere in which you were raised, if any, and also the kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you.

Yes, sir. Well, for 28 years, I was in the world a very intense individual, a very violent individual. I come from a past of violence as well, a traumatized childhood. And all the way up to the age of 28, I was in bars, I was bouncing, I was doing work like that.

And I'd moved from, I grew up in Michigan, I moved to Arizona. Specifically, I wanted to start my own gym business, but I had nothing to start a business with. I really didn't have any money, I really didn't have anything.

But I was able to find a place, find some shelter in a very rundown part of Arizona, where it's extremely hot coming out of Michigan into Arizona. I went into a home and just, I mean, in that home, they only had a swamp cooler and it was 116 degrees outside, and I literally boiled to death.

But in that type of environment, I started bouncing and getting involved in the clubs there. And I was offered a job because I really wanted to get in the fitness industry because that's what I did in Michigan.

I won the Mr. Kalamazoo 1996 Bodybuilding Championship at that time, and I was really just wanting to do my own thing. I didn't realize how hard it would be to get there though and what kind of providence that God would have for me to get there.

I didn't turn to, I ended up getting offered a job as a salesman at a gym, and that didn't work out well, so they gave me a job as a personal trainer. I did so well that my schedule became very full. I became very good at what I did, and I moved to a bigger facility, and my clientele even got larger to the point where I went ahead and I said, I've got all these clients.

I've developed my own philosophy. I need to start my own gym. With no money, I got basically laughed out of the banks. They thought it was funny. And eventually through God's providence, one thing led to another, and I was able to have my own gym.

It did come to pass, and during that time, I became a Christian at 28 years old.

By the way, I already have the name for your gym. Guns and Roses?

There could have been a better one that I had. We called it the Fit Stop. Our gym was right under the shadow of the Mormon temple. It took off really well because I had very large Mormon families that would come, and they would bring all their families, and they had even told me, they said, as long as you're here, you'll never go out of business.

You can imagine the witnessing opportunities and things that I had while I was there. How I got saved? While I first got my foot into the gyms, a very frail, small person as we would probably think, more of a nerdy person approached me.

I was very big, and I was training him. He was very forthright, and he began to share the gospel with me. He wasn't frightened. He was bold. He told me about the cross of Christ. He said, Hey, listen, if you want another chance at life, you want to start over, you want to begin again, consider what I just told you.

I considered it, and I said, I would love to sit down and talk again. We talked again. He shared the gospel with me again. He asked me if I wanted more time to wait and pray about it. I said, No. I want to give my life to Christ at that moment, and I did.

I obviously felt a dramatic change in my transition within my being. From that point on, I was caught up in the charismatic movement very heavily, a lot of quirky, crazy, kooky stuff, but I didn't know the difference.

I didn't know that it was wonky and wrong. I had nothing to compare it with because that's all I knew. I went from leaving there, and then I went to a giant megachurch, all the easy believism, all that stuff.

Finally, I ended up going to an assembly of God church where the preacher at least preached on health and preached against sin. I felt my sanctification kick in at that point. From there, I ended up selling the gym business.

We moved to Texas. During my time in Texas, when I went to the school, I was brought on, as a matter of fact, as an evangelism teacher by God's providence. I was taking out people on the streets every Saturday, a large team, 50 people preaching in the open air.

At that time, I was Arminian. I didn't really know the difference of what's Arminianism or what's Calvinism or anything. I had no idea. Then I ended up getting an invitation and I moved to Scotland. While I was in Scotland, I was there for two years.

It was then I was reading a lot of the books that I was finding in some of these old bookstores. They were all reformed. They were like these old, beat-up Presbyterian books. I would find them in the corner of these old bookstores.

I began to read them.

Who was the one that invited you to Scotland?

It was interesting. I was teaching a class at this school that I was at, an unbiblical school, by the way. A gentleman came in. He was from Uganda, but he had a ministry in Scotland. He had told me after the class was over that he said to me, Scotland needs you.

It wasn't Idi Amin, was it? The king of Scotland, as he called himself?

It wasn't him. Was very kind. He said, let's meet for prayer at the track, 6 a .m. Met him for prayer. Got done praying with him for an hour. He had basically said, if you ever need anything, I'm here.

I can introduce you to people over there. He left. I went out with my business, began to pray and seek the Lord about Scotland. A year later, I'm not sure, I lost all of his information. Somehow, through providence, obviously, I got an email from him.

The conversation took off again. He said, we're waiting for you here. I got a ticket to Scotland, took a friend with me. I went there. When I got there, I had eight interviews set up for me. The third interview was the worst.

It was raining. It was windy. He could barely hear me. On the last day that I was heading home, I got a phone call from him. This guy says, I want to move you and your family here in Scotland. Your assignment is going to be to preach the gospel on the streets as we plant this church in Glasgow.

For two years, that's what I did. I proclaimed Christ in the open air out on the streets of Glasgow. All the move of God, like I've never seen before. Crowds gathering around, 200 to 300, 400 people. Not walking by, by the way, but circling around you, arguing, yelling, some people crying, some people jumping on your back, throwing things at you.

Very aggressive, but I loved every minute of it. It was a street preacher's paradise. When I came back, we lived out of an RV for two years, a 1986 Southwind. Nothing worked in it. It was like a trash can with wheels.

It broke down every 50 miles. We're traveling across the United States trying to get Jeremiah Cry off the ground. I'm preaching at churches, college campuses, wherever I can. At the end of that two years, we finally moved into a house.

That's kind of how everything took off.

Al, praise God. How did you eventually wind up pastoring 116 Bible Church?

That's a great question. While I was in New Jersey, this is where we landed, by the way, after the RV. We were in New Jersey for, I'm not sure how long, six years. I had got called to do a conference on street preaching here at a church called Grace Reformed Baptist Church.

It's no longer in existence any longer, but they brought me down here for a three-day conference. I preached all the three days, went really well, so well that they wanted to invite me back permanently to be on staff at their church.

We went home, we prayed about it, sought the Lord. They went ahead and they paid for us everything we owned, all of our vehicles, got transported down there. I was now on staff at this church. Then it was a very legalistic church, very abusive church.

We didn't realize it until we got in it. Six months later, it dissolved. They were paying our rent and all of this. Now we were kind of stranded. Those that were left over from this church asked us to continue the work.

I denied it three times. Finally, I agreed after the fourth time. I said I'd pray about it. My wife and I prayed about it. Jeremy Roten and his wife, a couple of other fellows that were still remaining, and I think there was a couple of other church members.

We decided to go with it. Here we are seven years later.

Praise God. I'm going to give our email address to our listeners. We're going to be going to our first commercial break in a moment. Folks, if you know anyone that is battling depression, give them a call during our commercial break, or send them a text, or send them an email, or get a hold of them on social media, however you communicate with people these days, and tell them to log into IronTruppinZionRadio .com and click live stream it so that they can hear today's program.

You never know, it might be used of our sovereign God to actually save a life, let alone transform a life. Anybody who wants to send us a question about depression, especially about depression in the pastoral ministry, but obviously anybody who is experiencing depression of any kind, you may feel free to send us an email with a question at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the U .S .A., and you may remain anonymous if your question is involving a personal and private matter, and obviously with a topic like depression, assuming that this may evoke very personal and private questions from listeners due to the nature of the subject.

So we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Jeff Rose at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

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So go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Jeff Rose. He is pastor of a church in Texas, and he's also the founder of Jeremiah Cry Ministries and the Anxious Bench Ministry, and we are discussing depression in the pastorate, and if you have a question for Jeff, send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence, and only remain anonymous if your question is personal and private. And Jeff, this is, as I said at the outset of the program, a topic that is near and dear to my own heart.

I am one who battles depression, and perhaps my own struggles with it pale into insignificance when compared with what some of our listeners are enduring, or perhaps even what you are enduring or have endured.

But tell us when, well, actually before you even tell us about how this first reared its ugly head, as they say, in your own life, but before you even do that, if you could give us a definition of depression, because some folks may think it's just when you're sad or something.

They may not have an accurate definition for depression, so tell us about what you believe is a true definition of depression, and then tell us about how it became to unfortunately rear its ugly head in your life.

Yeah, well, I'm sorry you're going through that, Chris. That is definitely a struggle that I have as well that I'll explain. But yeah, I mean, depression, it has so many different faces, right? It customizes itself to each individual differently.

It literally, I mean, for some, it's biological, it's hereditary. It comes through the family. They just have a propensity towards it because of just who they are and their family. They inherit that. There's trauma-based, where someone goes through severe trauma, and that is really the foundation to their depression.

And then you get the environmental, right, where someone is subjected to certain things within their environment that causes them to feel a certain way. Depression is, you know, the word, you know, is one of those words where we use it all the time, right?

He's depressed or, you know, just really upset, and I was very depressed because my football game, you know, my team lost. And we throw that word around quite a bit, but it's certainly not what we're talking about today, certainly not the experience that I went through.

Clinical depression is different than just feeling sad and unhappy or there's unmet needs or unsatisfactory goals in your life. I mean, people can get sad over those things, but being clinically depressed is different.

This is something that comes upon a person, and still to this day, no one can give an accurate definition of depression just because it is so mysterious, but yet it is so powerful. And it does, I mean, you've got 800 ,000 people worldwide committing suicide every year.

There's an issue. You have 280 million people in the world at this point who have depression, 21 million adults just in America. So, I mean, it's a prevalent issue. But to come to an exact definition, I'm not sure that we can, but it certainly is a very, for some, it can be mild, and for others, like you said, it can be extremely, extremely harsh and extremely heavy.

And this is why it's so important to talk about it because it is one of those elephant in the room. It's one of those things that we're just not addressing in the church today. And I think a lot of it is because people are blamed for the way that they feel or things that they're going through.

It becomes like they are put in a position where it's a character flaw and not something that has happened to them without their invitation. I can tell you this, that no one in their right mind would ever choose to be depressed.

I can just say that right now. No one wants to feel like that. No one's going to fake that. I know obviously there are people out there that do jump on the bandwagon that are fakes, don't get me wrong, but those who really struggle with it, trust me, they would rather not have it, period.

Well, tell us how and the circumstances and when you began to first experience depression.

Well, I've always struggled with it throughout my life at some level. I just never really knew what it was. I had panic attacks when I was a kid, anxiety throughout my life, and I always had an uneasiness just about myself that I could never pinpoint what is this feeling that I have.

But the second year into our church plant, it was 2019, we planted in 2017, and I was working bivocationally. I was an operations manager for a security company at five different sites that I was watching over.

I had a lot of responsibilities. Being a brand new pastor for two years, I didn't know what I was doing. I had people coming and going, and people giving me problems, and people trying to take over the church.

I had opportunists coming in there. I had wolves coming in there, and I was just getting slaughtered. I knew I didn't want to quit. I knew I was called to it, but I was just getting beat up so bad on that end.

And then the struggles that I was having as an operations manager, all the pressure, all the anxiety. And one day on my way to work, I was driving to work, and it was like something crawled over my shoulder, and I felt like I was having a heart attack.

And I pulled over. I'm like, okay, something is clearly wrong with me. I can't put my finger on it. I haven't had a feeling like this before. I felt like I was dropping off of a cliff, and it just kept, and then it would stop, and I was just covered in sweat.

So I pulled open my Bible. I was reading my Bible. I was terrified. I thought I was having a heart attack. So I went to one of those little dock-in-the-box places. I went in there. I told them I think something's wrong with me.

I may be having a heart attack. They did an EKG. They did all this stuff. I'm sure many of the listeners would agree with. They may have went through this same thing. Most of us do. So I went there. I was checked out perfectly fine.

Everything was balanced out. I came home that night. I told my wife. I really wasn't sure what happened to me. I wasn't sure, and then I started just feeling these waves going through me. It's like these waves.

I couldn't really put a finger on it, but just like these waves moving through me. So that night I went to bed, and three o 'clock in the morning is when it all fell on me. I got up, looked in the mirror.

I said, what's happening? I feel like I'm dying. So I woke my wife up, told her what was going on, sat on the edge of the bed, and sat there. We talked it out. I wasn't really sure what to do yet, because I'd already been to that.

I'd already got my heart checked. At this point, I was really frightened. Went back to bed, and when I woke up in the morning, I was in a full-blown depression. So bad that I could not move. Day in, day out, I could not get out of the bed.

So finally, I ended up saying, I need to go to the doctor. But this was after I saw a video. I don't know if you're familiar with who Tommy Nelson is. He has a Bible church in Datton.

Oh, yeah. I was there a couple of years ago for their Bible conference. That was the first time I was ever in Texas at all. I really enjoyed meeting Pastor Tommy, who I believe is either in the process of retiring, or he's already done it.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure I had a chance to sit down with him as well, because someone had sent me, I had reached out on Facebook, told everybody, the best to my knowledge, I was having a breakdown. I explained a little bit of it, and someone sent me a video of him.

He told his testimony, and I'm thinking, that's what happened to me. So he told me some of the medications he went on, and I went to the doctor. I got these medications, and I think it was a couple of days on those medications.

I was laying in bed one night, and I heard this loud, almost sounded like a lightning crack in my brain. It threw my body into a, I'm not sure if you're familiar with akathisia, but it threw my body into severe, severe akathisia.

Akathisia is by far the worst hell that could ever happen to a human being on this planet. It is sheer terror. It is like you're trapped in your body. You're suffocating. You're in absolute, utter terror.