Why the Church Is Full of Hurting People Pretending to Be Fine | Freedom Session I Ken Dyck

August 30, 2025

Kyle: [00:00:00] I think I'm really good. Yeah. Good.

Ken: You terrible? If you thought you were lousy.

Kyle: Yeah, I think I'm, I mean, the results speak for themselves and they're really, um, they really

Ken: good. So good.

Kyle: This is going, do you have, um, do you need anything?

Ken: Nope.

Kyle: You have any questions for me?

Ken: Yeah. Who's our audience?

Kyle: Um, mainly public desk reform people or ex desk reform people. Um, yeah, that's who I seem to reach the most of, but it's, uh, it's a swath, it's a swath of, um, different people. So usually this will probably get about 1500, 2000 downloads.

Yeah. So I do a weekly podcast as well with Gary. Right. And then I do the sporadic interviews as well, so. Uh, [00:01:00] actually good. I have really bad sciatic Ouch. Need surgery, so hopefully I make it two hours

Ken: turn off. So if this episode is successful, what would that look like for you? Like what, what's your goal, sir? What do you, what do you

Kyle: Uh, I think that people would be probably encouraged to get help. That, that, that it's, that it's worth it.

Ken: Mm-hmm.

Kyle: Um, people would have a better understanding of what Freedom Sessions is, what it does.

Um, people would believe in the gospel for the first time. Um, yeah, a lot of those things. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just gonna make sure if you just talk for a bit here. Oh, 1,

Ken: 2, 3, 4. Check, 2, 3, 4. Sound checking. This is good.[00:02:00]

Kyle: Done that. Okay. I will, uh, pray before we get started here. Yeah. Now, father, thank you that, uh, Ken and I get a sit down here and have a conversation this afternoon. I ask, Lord, that you would, uh, bless our chat, um, that you would give, uh, just clarity and openness. Help me ask, uh, the right questions. Um, and that, uh, this would especially be a blessing to the people listening to this down the road.

Mm-hmm. Um, fill us with your spirit. Protect us from, uh, Satan and, and his demons, um, and that this would be used for your glory. Mm-hmm. And, uh, are good. In Jesus name I pray.

Ken: Amen.

Kyle: Okay. Um, also very conversational style. Sure. Shoot back, ask questions. There's no rules. Okay. Um, yeah. That red light's going right?

Ken: I think so, yeah. Okay.

Kyle: Welcome back guys, to another episode of the Furious Licuria Show. [00:03:00] I'm here with Ken Dyke from um, freedom Sessions. Thank you for being here.

Ken: You're welcome.

Kyle: So, I first reached out to you, I don't know if you know this, in August of 2023.

Ken: It was a while ago,

Kyle: so two years ago. Um, um, so pumped to finally have it, make it happen. But that actually brings up a good point if you're a regular listener of the show. Um, I'm looking for a volunteer who help, would help me with appointment setting of, uh, future interviews and stuff like that, because that actually takes quite a bit of time.

So if you like the show and uh, you would love to help with that, please, um, reach out to me. So Freedom Sessions actually had a massive impact on my own life. I did it three times, or the first time I quit halfway. Um, and then I, uh, the second time, second time and third time, um, I was able to finish it all the way.

Um, but it's been, um, very impactful and I've talked about on the show here before, but. What, what, if you could give in a nutshell what you're usually your answer and what it is, what is freedom? What is this?

Ken: What is Freedom Session? Uh, freedom session? Well, there's so many different ways you can describe it.

It's, it's basically, it's a journey. [00:04:00] It's a 21 y 21 week process, or a course that you would take in community, which is critical in which you look deeper, look deeper underneath, uh, the, the things that you think are the issues going on in your life, relationships, failure, discouragement, whatever. You look deeper in your life and you process it with Jesus.

You actually invite him into the pain. You invite him to process it his way, and you. You go deep. So it's a journey. Uh, some people have described it as, uh, will make you a better human being and a closer follower of Jesus, but it's really looking at your stories, like life goes by so quick and we don't take time to process.

Even if you haven't had any major trauma. There's a lot of people that had a lot of trauma in their life, and so we just don't process that. And songs and a sermon on Sunday don't usually touch it either. But then even just grieving the losses, grieving the failures, grieving the losses of a dream, you know, grieving the stages of life.

We don't take time to process any of this stuff. So unfortunately, uh, [00:05:00] emotionally, uh, we're not nearly as mature as we think. So, um, we suppress a lot of stuff. We get busy and a lot of that stuff is in our subconscious and affects our lives and relationships. So what Freedom Sessions, the journey 21 weeks where you process the deeper issues of life, find core motivations, why you do some of the things you do that you wish you wouldn't, why you respond certain ways, why you're vulnerable to certain sins as a Christian audience.

Uh, you know, so that's what it is, uh, the shortest way we've ever defined it as rewriting your story with a God inspired ending.

Kyle: Okay. And, um, how would you know if you need it? Uh, like a lot of people that I've talked to, it says like, well, I don't have really, I don't really have any issues, like a few bad habits here and there.

Ken: Yeah.

Kyle: Um, especially in the church. Um, you know, unless there's something glaring like you're an alcoholic or Yeah. You know, you've cheated on your wife or something else, like that's, that's bigger, that's really out in your face. Like,

Ken: yeah, that's a good question. Um, my answer to that would be all, all, all people could use it.

Well, you know, all people that are relatively, you know, [00:06:00] have a relative. Clear perspective. Reality is though someone is extremely mentally ill or something like that, or psychotic, you know, it's probably not a good good time for them to go through it, but all people could use it. So, um, we've taken, I mean, we take, uh, millionaires through it.

We've taken, uh, single mums through it. Fathers, there's a couple things. Um, I would say, okay, the way we position it in a church is we encourage churches to run it as a natural part of discipleship. Um, we've defined, uh, spiritual maturity cognitively, we've, we've defined spiritual maturity as how often you go to church, what you know about the Bible, maybe you know, your spiritual gifts, you tithe and you serve a little bit.

That's how we kind of define spiritual maturity. Um, but there's a whole emotional, relational component of that. And so there's, there's, you know, most people, if they're really honest, they know something's missing. And there's a big gap between what Jesus promises when he promises. In John 10 10, I've come to give you life in abundant.

What people are actually [00:07:00] experiencing. We just pretend that it's, it's as good as it is and everyone else looks great on Sunday morning. And so we just think we're the only ones. And so we kinda live a lie. A lot of people live a lie. That's why like, um, you know, people say, I don't need it. Well, maybe you don't, but, uh, with the people around you feel like you're emotionally mature, are, are you responding well in relationships?

Are relationships all they can be? Do you struggle with guilt, shame? Like what? Do you know what your motivations? Uh, take some stats in the church. You know, um, 60 to 70% of men are using pornography regularly. These are Christian men. Hmm. About 25 to 40% depends how you define pornography. Uh, of women are using pornography regularly.

One outta four women have been sexually abused at some point in their life. One outta seven men have been sexually abused at some point in their life. 22% divorce rate in the church. So, so here's something there, there's people that are gonna be listening to this right now, that in five years are gonna be divorced.

Uh, why, why are they gonna be divorced? Because they, they haven't learned to process pain conflict and things like that.

Kyle: So, I wanna back up to something you said, you said [00:08:00] on, on, uh, Sunday mornings, everyone looks fine.

Ken: Yeah.

Kyle: Like one of the biggest, uh, gripes I have with the church is that, is that the church looks like a museum for good people, right?

And not a hospital for the broken. Right. Uh, what, how do you think about that? Why, how did we get to this point? Do you think that's always been like that through history? Is that a North American church thing? Like what, what is that?

Ken: I don't know. Historically, it, it is challenging because I've been a pastor for years too.

So in church you got, depends on what long your service you got an hour and 15 minutes. And in that you, you wanna give a worship expression, you want to give a community time, and you want to give a teaching of God's word, you're not gonna, I'm, I'm not, I'm not justifying it. I'm just saying it's tricky to, to, you know, um, you, you can't build a church on the broken.

This is important too. You can't build a church just by reaching out to the ultra broken. So when people say it should be a hospital for the sick and things like that, no, that's only one component should be, um, on Sunday morning. Really, the, the point is to worship God and to bring his light and hope, but hopefully that [00:09:00] steers you to some of the other programs that deal with the stuff.

So in, in church you often tell people what the Christian life's supposed to look like, but you don't tell 'em how to get there. Yes. But how, you know, you, you, you know, so it's not our preaching about, but you've only got an hour and 50 minutes. You have to wrap it up in a bow and do your child dedicated whatever else you're doing there.

So it's pretty tricky to actually do this. Like, like, uh, people complain about Freedom Sessions 21 weeks and it's an, you know, it's a two hour night kind of thing. Uh, that's because you're dealing with stuff. It takes time to process it. Yeah. It takes time to build trust in relationships like that. So, um, but what, what we've made a mistake of, of thinking, oh, people aren't broken.

Uh, most pastors are not gonna admit our, my, my job as Executive Director of Freedom Sessions. Here's my job, um, to help pastors and churches see that their people are, uh, way more broken than they think. Why

Kyle: pause there?

Ken: Yeah.

Kyle: Why? Like, um, from my perspective, that's, um. Accurate that that needs to be done.

But why don't [00:10:00] pastors know their flock and understand how broken they are? What's the gap there? Are they not asking questions? Are they not going, are, are people not being telling the truth? Naive,

Ken: number one, the, the training we get in, in Bible college and seminary. Number two, we're trained a lot how to understand Greek and preach sermons and do leadership, things like that where we're not taught, or, or, and then we're, we're taught how to refer people out for counseling.

We've never been taught to make healing part of discipleship.

Kyle: Hmm. And how do you define discipleship?

Ken: Uh, a discipleship? Well, a discipleship. The difference between a Christian and a disciple is a Christian does what Jesus says. A disciple does what Jesus says and shows other people how to do the same.

Okay. That's a really good question. Like for the people who are listening, are you a disciple or a Christian? Uh, because there's only one metric to see if your church is healthy, and that's how many disciples you make, not how many Christians you got going there or whatever. So, so how many

Kyle: disciples you make that people, you could say is a number?

Is it a numbers game then?

Ken: Yeah. Numbers are people. So how many disciples are we making as a church? So like, you know, as a question is, if church is a team sport, how do you define [00:11:00] a win? You know, a lot of really, we don't wanna define that, but a lot of times people think of it's, it's the, the building. How many people come, how many small groups we've got, you know, how many people get baptized in a year or, or whatever, you know, uh, whatever it is.

Um, so a lot of times we define it that way. Uh, we don't usually define it by the budget, but that's part of it too. Um, we don't generally define it by how many disciples we're making. In fact, you can go to most churches and ask, you, ask the pastors and the leadership. You can ask the whole church define what a disciple is.

And people don't even have a common understanding of what a disciple is. You might not like my definition, um, but at least if I was pastoring a church right now, at least we'd all know what it, if, if the only goal is to make disciples, we better know what a disciple looks like. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And one of the things that a disciple is to be emotionally and mentally mature.

Uh, like a lot of people, like, um. A lot of people. Where do you

Kyle: base that on what scripture did? Um,

Ken: I've come that you might have life and you might have it abundantly. Um, you know, you take, you take [00:12:00] self-esteem issues. You take the woman at the, well, was was she emotionally mature? No, she was isolated. Uh, interesting there.

Um, and she was trying to worship God. She was trying to worship God. Like it's not like she was an unbeliever, you know, she was doing it wrong, but she was trying to worship God. And, uh, Jesus actually, uh, pointed out, um, said, go, go get your husband. You know, they were talking theologically and finally says, go get your husband.

And she says, I don't have a husband. I've had five. And oh, Jesus says, you, you're right. You had five. The one you're shocked up with right now, it's not even your husband. Why, why did Jesus say that to her? Wasn't it kind of mean to bring it up? No, because that was that shame, that guilt was what was keeping her from relationship with God.

And so she, she went and she went back to the, to the town and said, come meet a man who told me everything I did. Jesus didn't tell her everything she did told, pinpointed the one thing that's causing her the most pain. That affects your spiritual life, your, your emotions. Let's take another thing. This is really important for men to get emotions and men don't like talking about emotions, like get that part and we don't.

Part of it is [00:13:00] 'cause we've been feminized in our culture and we're expected to process emotions like women, which isn't helpful. Yeah. Um, but emotions motivate every, or change everything. Emotions and motivation are the same root word. So let's take for example, why does a good man have an affair? It's not logic.

You know, if he goes through a divorce, he's gonna lose 50 cents on the dollar. He loves his kids the shame and stuff. Plus he pays his secretary. If it's a secretary, he pays her to like him. You know, it's not logic, it's emotion. Motives drive everything we do. Why do people work so hard? Motive you, you, you love your kids.

I said emotions. That's all part of emotions. So if your emotions have been damaged, this is something to get to. If, if, for example, let's take, let's go away from the typical things, abuse and all that kinda stuff. Let's go away. Let's say your father died when you were 10. Um, and you're a boy. Uh, or it doesn't matter if you're a girl as well.

Something gets hurt in that emo in that memory, and you will interpret it some way, but understand that a damaged emotion [00:14:00] doesn't mature. So there's gonna be some part of your life. Dad abandoned me. God's not there. Whatever it is you believed at that time, why dad died, um, that's gonna set in your heart, in your mind, in your subconscious, and it's gonna rule a good part of your life.

The, uh, damaged emotions don't mature. You might be doing well in every other part of your life, except when it comes to abandonment. And if you feel abandoned. Then you're gonna react like that 10 or 12-year-old child. That's just a psychological

Kyle: reality.

Ken: Yeah. I, I'm

Kyle: gonna pause here.

Ken: Yeah.

Kyle: Go back to how we started this little train of that.

You said pastors are not aware of the brokenness in their own church. Yeah. Like, so, and they get taught Hebrew and Greek and everything else like that. But I mean, Romans, they gave, they read Romans three that are hearts like an open grave, right? Like the whole point of gospel is that we are totally corrupt and need Jesus.

So, so I don't understand. Well, they

Ken: don't, they don't believe, like, it's really tough to, to convince a pastor that 78% of his men and probably 50% of his elders are looking at pornography. It is pretty, pretty hard [00:15:00] to convince them that. Really? Yeah. Because if I believe that, then I'm responsible to do something about it.

What am I gonna do? I feel overwhelmed. So they're in denial in a sense. They're, they're, they're in denial. Their fear of, what am I gonna do? Because if this is true, if this is really true, and if it's true that 22% of my people are gonna get divorced or their kids are gonna get divorced, if that's true, I'm responsible to do something about it.

And I haven't been trained to do that. So they feel intimidated. And then we've gotten the whole mental and emotional health area. We've got the professionals telling us that no one can really deal with unless you got a PhD. And so the idea there is to refer that all out. The problem with that is it's 150 bucks an hour for a good psychologist.

Yeah. It's 150 bucks an hour for a bad psychologist too.

Kyle: Right. So, so that's a good segue into how did Freedom Sessions even start? I wanna back up a year bit. Sure. Yeah. So, so yeah. What's your story? How, how did Freedom Sessions start?

Ken: Oh gosh. Freedom Sessions started, uh, as a means of ministry survival. We never intended to write Freedom Session.

I had taken a position in church. And the church had doubled in size, [00:16:00] uh, in 18 months. And, you know, it wasn't a huge church, it was about 350 people, but it was one of those churches that had been 350 people for 350 years, you know, okay. Up and down 20, whatever. So it's never seen growth. So all of a sudden it's 600 people, 600 and growing, and the people that were coming weren't, weren't coming to tithe and serve.

You know, they were coming, hoping that what we preached on Sunday morning was actually true. Hmm. Because we were preaching on the real things of life, their sexuality, the relationships, marriage, uh, you know, val, value, purpose in life, things like that. Core issues of the heart, right? And how Jesus wants to intersect that and be, uh, become part of your sexuality, be part of your vision, be part of your motivation, be part of your relationships, all that kind of stuff.

Part of your past, part of your fear is your pain, whatever. Um, so we were preaching on all that. So people were phoning up and saying, okay, how? Yes. But. You say this, how is my, am I supposed to have an abundant life with my husband's gut pornography? I'm about to kick him out. You know how you know, you know, how am I supposed to do this?

I feel paralyzed. Depressed, right? Yeah. So they're asking how, and um, so we started a prayer counselor. You were [00:17:00] the pastor at this time? Yeah, I was one of the pastor. I was the executive pastor. And the church kept growing. So, uh, we started a prayer ministry. I started, uh, my wife and I started a prayer ministry with some of the healing that we had experienced where you, you bring the Holy Spirit as a counselor and you work through some of those areas.

The problem with that is we had about a four month wait. 'cause it's very slow. And we had, we had a four month wait, 40 people on a waiting list for prayer council. We, we tried to train up a team and whatever, we just weren't, and the church continued to grow. So for lack of a better term, we had to find a way to minister healing en mass.

And something theological is really important in the Bible when it talks about salvation. The word salvation and healed is the same root word. It's, no, it's the same word, Soso. So, uh, Luke chapter, I'll, I'll forget what I was so that a lot of people

Kyle: aren from being saved in the church.

Ken: Well, they're not, if you, if you define salvation, the way Jesus defines salvation, that's the only way, isn't it?

Yes, it is. But I mean, a lot, most of us define salvation as going to heaven after we die. Okay. So

Kyle: can, so are they not exclusive to each other then, as in like, you heaven and not be saved?

Ken: [00:18:00] Can you go to heaven? No, of course you'd be saved. Be, but salvation means set free, made whole and delivered. That's what the word means.

So of course it's gonna include going to heaven after you die, you're delivered from hell, delivered from Satan's

Kyle: power. Yeah. So I'm saying that a lot of people say that salvation means going to heaven, right? You're saying that it means this other on earth as well. Yeah. So, but that means that a whole bunch of people are, think they're going to heaven, but they're not.

Ken: They still might go to heaven, but they're living like hell on earth. I mean, their life on earth. And they're

Kyle: not, but they're not saved then, according to Jesus's word description.

Ken: Well, you, if you're talking afterlife, that's based on a, I believe in Jesus or not. That's based on my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Okay? Whether I go to heaven or not. So

Kyle: believing in Jesus and being saved are not the same.

Ken: Well, the words are different. Belief means that I believe that Jesus is the son of God. Salvation is something that happens to me. So let's go to the first time. S the word salvation is used in the Bible. It's, it's in Exodus 14 or 15, I think.

14. So God's people just rescued from, uh, delivered, delivered, saved [00:19:00] from Egypt. Yeah. Okay. Pharaoh's armies behind them wanting to wipe 'em out, uh, mountains on either side of them and the Red Sea in front of them. And God says through Moses, don't be afraid. Stand firm. In today, you will see the salvation of Lord salvation's, actually a military term Okay.

Means set. Army. Salvation. Army. Army. Pardon me. Salvation Army. Well, they're, they're, they're an army. I guess. So thought why They do, but I'm telling you, salvation's a military term. Yeah. So when g, when, when God said that through Moses, he didn't say, stand from, don't, don't be afraid. And today you'll go to heaven.

You'll drown and go to heaven. I will save you today. You'll experience the salvation of Lord. You'll be saved from whatever's trying to destroy you. Right now, it's Pharaoh's army. So if I'm gonna save someone, let, let's take salvation for the guy, uh, or the gal hooked on pornography or, or going to pornography because they're, they're feeling insecure, they're feeling rejected, blah, blah, blah.

They're going there. If I'm gonna save them, what are they? What am I gonna do? Tell them you're free. Tell 'em you're going to heaven. That's not saving them from [00:20:00] what's destroying them right now. They might go to heaven. Hmm. Jesus might have paid, Jesus has paid for that sin. If they confess or whatever they make would've happened.

But they're not saved in the sense of set free, made whole and delivered. They're not experiencing salvation here on Earth. And that's what the church is full of. We all. Okay, so that

Kyle: goes back to what you said earlier, that we're telling people what they need to do, but how to do right, not how to do People are coming.

Exactly. And then they're stopping.

Ken: Yeah, because we don't show, show them how and then, and then what they do is they become disillusioned. But you can't blame God 'cause he's right. So it must be me what your And you look, look around at everyone else that seems happy. Yeah. Because we all put on our Sunday faces and then, you know, for example, marriage, you don't hear about the marriages that are struggling until the separation and all of sudden what happened?

What happened? Well then marriage started falling apart 10 years ago. Through control issues. It's not just for sexuality, it's not just that control issues, gossip, uh, financial, you know, whatever. And even that. Why, why do people, why do people buy so much stuff we don't need? It's emotional. It's not like we logical a lot of the times.

Yeah. [00:21:00] Especially with Amazon, there's a lot of people that will just, you just feel better when you buy something or you go on a trip and you get into whatever you did. Yeah. All I'm just saying is there's a lot of brokenness. We run from the pain, we have all these unhealthy ways of doing it. So when you, back to your question is, who should take freedom session?

I think everybody should. What it is is back to our story. We, we, we try to find a way to minister healing in mass. And we tried to paint an 80% brush. So what I mean by that is like, uh, if you'd come to me for counseling, we would focus on specifically your issues. Yeah. And we would work through that. But when you're doing an 80% brush, we know that there's a lot of people, um, have unhealthy ways of dealing with it.

So, you know, um, we have a thing, you escape behaviors. You know, whether your escape behavior is work overworking, or it's pornography, or if it's alcohol or food or blaming or over sports, whatever it is, you know, if that's your way to escape pain, avoid conflict, and mind something different, it won't really matter because we're both trying to escape pain.

So why don't we deal with that pain and [00:22:00] invite Jesus to bring healing there? Then a lot of these unhealthy behaviors become a bad option, not necessarily a felt need. Because right now you've got people that feel Absolutely. I just have to work for, uh, 75, 80 hours a week. Yeah. Why? That's my identity. Why do I need that as my identity?

'cause something's missing in your heart, but you're a Christian and you have the abundant life. No, you don't. No. You have a religion. You, you, you're going through the motions and no one has, has shown you how to break that down. There's a story I think I tell in Freedom session. I don't know, did I tell the, the ambulance story there where I had a heart issue passed out on a hockey game?

I don't recall. Okay. Maybe I don't tell it. Okay. So this, this, this is, so, I don't even know what year it was. I was playing hockey and, um, I, I developed this thing. I probably got hit and my, my ribs, I don't know how this works, but I, I punctured the sac around my heart. So I was somehow pumping air into the, so around my heart.

It's not supposed to be air there. And it's putting pressure on my heart. It's called Pneumo mediastinum. I learned out later. That's the condition I was developing and I thought I was dying. I [00:23:00] thought I was having a heart attack. 'cause that's, you know, what it felt like, I've never had a heart attack or felt like anyway.

So I go to the bench and I'm thinking, I don't wanna die in front of my friends. So I said, for whatever reason. So I go behind the bench and I pass out. It's all vague. So I might have this little bit, you actually

Kyle: had a conscious thought, I don't wanna die in front of my friends. I, I had

Ken: a con, I don't wanna die in front of my friends, which is kind of stupid.

'cause what difference is I make, right? So I literally went behind the bench and I passed out. I wake up in the, in the, in the ambulance. And as soon as I wake up again, I'm thinking, I'm dying. I'm thinking I'm having a heart attack. And so I start, and I was probably hyperventilating. Maybe that put more pressure on my heart, I don't know.

But I passed it on again, either 'cause I was just hyperventilating or 'cause the pain, whatever. Well, I, I wake up again and, and again, I might be exaggerating the story, but it was a little bit vague. And this, this woman is this, the tenant's yelling, breathe, breathe, breathe. And I'm passing out. And finally I wake up and, and she's yelling at me breathe.

And I said, how? And it dawns on her that this man does not know how to breathe when he's in pain. So she began to. Walk me through relaxation breathing exercises [00:24:00] so that we could figure, settle down things so we could figure out what's going on. That's the position that a lot of people are, okay, God says this, God says this.

How? Hmm, how do I break this? How do I find this as self-esteem? Where I feel valued, not just because of what I do or who yeah I'm with, or whatever. How do I actually do that? How do I process the shame of terminating a pregnancy or the shame of my pornographer or the shame of, of walking out on my kids?

Five. How do I do that? We gotta teach them how. Yeah, so you, the only way to do that is actually take them back into the pain, identifies the lies they believed as a result of that trauma or whatever happened in their life. Replay. Ask Jesus to heal that part of the heart, and Jesus can do it. Jesus can heal our hearts.

Ask Jesus for his truth, which is usually the opposite of the lie we believed and come out of that. Yeah. And the, the beauty of something like freedom Session, again, we didn't intend to write it. We just [00:25:00] tend to do it. And we, we, when we first wrote it, we had no workbooks. We had no nothing. We had no,

Kyle: okay, so literally it was you were pastoring.

Yeah. You've seen that there was a great need in the church, so you try to create something that would help a whole bunch of people one time.

Ken: Yeah. We tried to help those 40, 40,

Kyle: just

Ken: those 40.

Kyle: Okay. And then, and then you realized it worked and then you, the next year you had more people, pretty much, you tweaked it and it just kept going from there?

Ken: Pretty much, pretty much. We actually tried, we started off trying to a recovery ministry. We looked, we studied all the, and I'm not against recovery, but it just find it inadequate. Um, and I also don't believe that, you know, one of the problems with recovery is you define health by staying in recovery. And I don't think Jesus, I think Jesus died for more than that.

I think healing's possible. So, um, anyway, we, we tried and it just didn't work. It didn't go deep enough. And so, yeah. But the rest of your, your interpretation's true. Yeah. We, we tried it for those people and then it began to grow in our church. And then there's, there's a number of iterations and then some other churches began hearing about it and wanted our version.

So we knew we had to publish this, so we ended up having to publish it, and then we added to put it on video, [00:26:00] blah, blah, blah. Some more churches could run it 'cause there's only one meeting, that kind of thing. Um, but somewhere along the line, I remember this guy because it grew like from, you know, after actually the first year, I think we had 11 or 16.

Wait, what year was this? Pardon me? What year would you have done it? Started it never, I would never have started it if, if I would've known how much work it would be. No. What year did it start? Oh, what year? I'm sorry. I think 2003. Okay. I, I think we, we published the first, I think we published the first workbooks in 2003.

Kyle: Oh wow. So you've been at this for over 20 years.

Ken: Yeah. Yeah. We learned a lot. So the first time we published it, uh, we got turned down by 10 publishing companies. That no one wanted to publish curriculum in those days. So we just started our own publishing company. We only published one thing, but yeah, but, and then we went and we did video, but, but there was a time, I think in probably 20 2006, 2007, I remember a businessman showed up and this was, this was a huge breaking point.

A hit, a businessman showed up and um, um, the freedom session and it did keep growing. So, or originally I think we had, I think 16 people take it, the next 40, then 60 people, then eighty five, a hundred twenty, [00:27:00] a hundred thirty people, whatever taking it. Quite a few, some other churches taking it. Anyway, a friend of mine shows up Rick and, uh, six six figure income.

And I said, why are you here? And he points to one of the previous Freedom Session grads who had had a drug addiction or whatever, and said, I want what she has. And that's when we realized that this was not for just the obviously broken people. Mm-hmm. In, in session one and Freedom session, I'm sure you're familiar with it.

We tell the story of Simon the Pharisee and the especially wicked sinner in the dining hall. And they were both broken and Jesus loved them both. It's easier to minister healing to people that are, know that they're broken.

Kyle: Yeah.

Ken: They know that they, you know, they got kicked outta their, their, their marriage, their house, whatever.

They, they, they're just depressed all the time. You know, they're, they got an addiction or they, um, low self-esteem or whatever. Right. Easier to minister, healing to them. 'cause they're open to it. It's the person that just, something's missing in their life. They've got into the religious thing and um, they don't really have that connection with God anymore.

They don't really [00:28:00] feel fulfilled. They're just going through the motions. That's the hardest person. That's Simon in the Bible. And that was, that was my friend Rick. And when we realized that we really worked hard to change the language from recovery to healing discipleship, and now with the mental and emotional health crisis, we're using more, uh, and more mental and emotional health language.

In fact, we're going to be, um, we were actually gonna refilm it this year, but we're, we're actually pulled the plug on that. I'm gonna take it right back to the drawing board. But since COVID, the COVID is not the issue, but one of the lasting societal implications and church implications is the isolation factor, the depression factor, the anxiousness factor.

These are all commonplace now. And, um, the next generation is gonna expect churches to address mental and emotional health from a biblical perspective. And if you think about it, I mean, that's really what Freedom Session does. It's talking about mental health. It's not talking about mental illness or mental wellbeing.

So there's a spectrum in, in psychological terms with, with, in the whole [00:29:00] mental health thing. And we, we gotta, we gotta take a look at that, or we don't have to, but it's important to take a look at that. Let's suppose mental wellbeing is here, and that's a psychological term. Mental wellbeing is someone defined as relative, you know, um, accurate view of, uh, clear, clear, clear perception of reality and their personal identity.

They're thriving in bond, body, mind, and relationships. They, they feel competent. They got a positive outlook on life and the future, and they got relative peace. And, and, and, and in Christianity they also, we would say they have a meaningful, tangible relationship with the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. They, they, you know, actually communicate with 'em.

So that's mental wellbeing here. So if this is zero, let's say this is plus 5, 1, 3, 4, 5, right? Then you've got on the other side of the spectrum, you've got mental illness. And a lot of times we're talking about mental health. We're, we're rarely talking about mental illness and we've confused the two. But mental illness is, with psychological terms, would be someone that has a distorted view of reality and personal identity.

They don't really know who they are. They don't really see things the way they are. Like, you might say something and I, I know that you're mad at me, you know, might not be true or not. Um, they've got extreme dysfunction. [00:30:00] They're not feeling confident. They're generally not, you know, not able to, to function well to get ahead.

Um, they've got, um, you know, mental challenges, lies, you know, voices, sometimes whatever. And then they've got probably a diagnosable mental disorder, like depression, anxiety, OCD or, or maybe an addiction. So those, that's a minus five. Well, mental health is everything in between. Like nobody starts up being mentally ill.

You don't start from going, I'm doing really well to all of a sudden I'm depressed. You don't start here and all of a sudden have an addiction. There's a process along the way, and that is where most people in the church live. And if you think about it, most of our disciples of strategies are, are aimed at the plus four plus five on the mental wellbeing.

Yeah. That are waiting to tithe, then serve and just want more Bible knowledge. That's, that's, we disciple those people. And then most of our, if we're gonna have any Mercy ministries, we might start a recovery ministry for the real down the addiction. Well that's in the mental illness scale. Mm-hmm. And I'm not saying we shouldn't or we start a counseling ministry, you know, for Really?

Yeah. But most of our people live in between, from [00:31:00] minus three to plus three. Yeah.

Kyle: Yeah.

Ken: And that's the gap that Freedom session speaks into. Awesome. So that you don't get to those places. Right. Yeah. Cool.

Kyle: Have you seen other ministries? Around the world or whatever that do what Freedom Sessions does. 'cause I've, yeah, I find it super unique.

Like I've been, yeah, I was in a psych ward when I was nine already, and I've seen a lot of different recovery stuff. Yeah, yeah. In churches and outside of churches, stuff like that. But nothing, nothing close to Freedom Sessions.

Ken: Yeah. It is unique. Otherwise we'd quit because it's, there's a certainly an easier way to make a living.

Um, no, where it's unique is there's a lot. Like, and, and what, what people really want is a quick fix. So there's a lot of encouragements, there's a lot of six week courses, a lot of weekend kind of tuneups, and I'm not against any of them. Those are all great. Like, um, you know, uh, emotional health, whatever, a lot of six week things.

Here's five things that'll turn around in your life, you know? Yeah. Um, there's a lot of that. That's what most of our preaching sermon series are, and they're good. Um, and then there's counseling, which is one-on-one, six months to a year and a half, you know, whatever. Yeah. Thousand dollars Freedom [00:32:00] session does is unique.

'cause it fits in the middle and it, it's the, it's the, in my judgment, I still haven't found anything different. It's the deepest healing. It's the deepest and most transferrable healing dis establishment ministry in North America. That's why we keep doing it. And um, how big is

Kyle: it now?

Ken: Pardon me?

Kyle: How big is the, oh,

Ken: I, I don't know because I don't keep track of, of all that, but we were in the states, we're in Canada.

Uh, we've got a, a Spanish edition. We've got people on the ground in Mexico. We were in Africa this year. We're just translating into Chinese, you know, so I don't actually, you know, know how many, many people are taking it. Okay. Yeah.

Kyle: I got lots, lots of questions, but I wanna back it up even more. Okay. What, what's your story like, how did you become a c, how did you become a Christian?

Ken: Oh, sorry. I grew up in a, I'll do it real as quick as I can. I grew up in a good Christian, you don't have to talk as fast as you're if you don't want to. I grew up in a good Christian home. Um, Gary, Gary was

Kyle: telling me that he's like, he's crazier than I am. Sit careful.

Ken: No, I'm not crazier than Gary. Gary's.

Gary is crazier than I'm, I grew up in a good Christian home, but, but I didn't really, I didn't really have a personal relationship with Jesus. It was, um, and I'm probably being critical here, but we [00:33:00] kind of define Christianity about what we don't do, uh, what we do and don't do, rather than a relationship.

And, um, so that's where I grew up. But I had a really, a good childhood till I was both 12. And, um, and I was the third of three children, you know, three boys. So I never really had to fight my on anything other than fighting my brothers. So anyway, traumatic event happened for me. It wasn't a bad event, but we moved cities in the middle of when I was in grade seven, and everyone would bite.

Everyone wanted to beat me up. Everyone wanted to beat up the new kid from the city that I came from. And rumor, even my parents didn't know this, it's not their fault, but my parents didn't know this. But rumor came up that I had been in a gang in the previous city. I'm 12 years old, I haven't been in a gang, but if everyone wanted to beat me up.

And it dawned on me at one point, I said, I, I remember saying to myself, I will never become stronger in these boys, so I'm gonna become batter. So I thought that's when I became a poser. Uh, if you think I'm in a gang, I will play the gang thing. I'll find out, I'll find out how to get Switchblades sold. 'em switchblades.

I taught 'em how to break into houses. I didn't know, but they didn't know that I didn't know. So yeah, I taught 'em how to do crime, you know, found out how to steal cars and all this. [00:34:00] This is me at 12, 14 years old. And it worked. I became a poser and I was just bad enough. So the people thought were afraid of me and that, that they stopped beating me up.

And that it worked really well. Then at age 16 and stuff like that, then people started doing drugs. Like my friends started doing drugs, so I had to bring my posing to that. So I pretend, and I didn't like drugs because I felt outta control when I used them. Um, I didn't like that I feeling, so I sold, I sold drugs, but I just sold it.

Again. My po I was, I was poser. I was a fake, I pretended to be someone I was not, and I just sold enough to keep him afraid of me. So I did that. And then, um, I became, you know, as successful as you can at 19. I, you know, I was in business, uh, making good money for a 19-year-old. I had a truck, motorcycle, girlfriend, all that kind of stuff.

But my life was empty and I had five goals and my, my last goal, my four, my first four goals, I figured I could meet them in five years. My last goal in life was to own my own business. And I thought that would take me years. Then one year my boss used to gimme a big bonus at Christmas 'cause I ran the shop and everything in the business and he [00:35:00] gave me shares in the company instead.

And he wrote me into his will for everything. And it scared me because I thought, man, in five years I could, I could reach all my life goals with my life about and I'd been drinking a lot. But then I, I, I like drinking 'cause I thought it, 'cause it numbed my heart and pain. I was not the fall down drunk. Um, I don't think I have the gene, the alcoholic gene or anything like that.

But I was just, just always kind of, just, just enough to take off the edge. 'cause I didn't, like, I hated myself. Hmm. Which was kind of weird because, and, and this sounds arrogant, but. I was relatively popular, mainly 'cause I had money in a truck and a motorcycle, I guess played football, whatever. But I was relatively popular and people wanted to be like me and I hated my life, which only made it worse 'cause they, they didn't even know me.

They, they knew the mask, right? Anyway, long story short, um, it scared me to death, uh, knowing I could, uh, meet all my life purposes. And so I just drank more, uh, blah, blah, blah. And I found myself, um, alone in a park one day and my life was broken. And I just threw a beer bottle against the pool and said, okay, God, take it.

And it was really, it wasn't a, it was like a dare, but it wasn't [00:36:00] irreverent. I really meant it. Um, I, I didn't have the courage to kill myself or the stupidity to kill myself. So that's what I, I just surrendered my life and I didn't even think I'd make it. It was a Thursday night. I remember that. I woke up the next morning.

Two things were different 'cause I was drunk at the time. Two things were different. I knew my life had a purpose and I felt unconditional love. I'm sure I was loved, but I didn't feel that unconditional love. And those you,

Kyle: the next morning, you felt unconditional love.

Ken: I woke up that changed. Something changed.

Some people say, does anything change when you surrender your life to Christ? For me, that's what changed.

Kyle: But But you wouldn't say that's the case for everyone feeling that right away?

Ken: I don't know. I just know it was for me. Okay. I don't, I don't know what everyone feels, but I know something changed.

Something changed in my heart and for me, having a purpose in life, if you think about why I was running, because I felt I had no purpose in life, that meant a lot to me. That actually felt like love as well. So anyway, but I remember it was a Thursday night night and I became a Christian and I was thinking, well, I, I should go out drinking.

Well, I didn't know if I'd make it 'cause I didn't know what sober people did on weekends. [00:37:00] Here's the weekend coming. But anyway, I got through all that and I even tried some Christian recovery stuff like that. So that was, that's my story there. I became a Christian man. And I remember my pastor saying, you know, just to, to really grow in your Christian life, you gotta stop hanging out with pe 'cause I just hang out with ex alcoholics or recovering alcoholics, whatever.

Because I had the belief that unless you know what I've been through, you won't understand me. That's, that's a lie a lot of us believe, like you and I, if we became friends. Yeah. Your life's different. Your da the data in your life is different. Your hurts, your trauma, your failures, your fears are gonna be different than mine.

The data. But there's still fear, there's still failure, there's still shame, whatever it is. Right? So my, my, my pastor said to me, he said to Ken, if you really want to grow in your faith, you gotta stop hanging with people of like, experience and start hanging out with people like faith. I remember that and I was mad at him, but he was right.

So I began to do that and my wife Are you mad at him? Pardon me? Why were you mad at him? I was mad at him because I was told. The only people that didn't understand you are people that have had your drug of choice that escaped through alcohol. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's [00:38:00] kinda like saying the guy that's hooked down pornography.

Oh, you don't understand how bad it is. Well, maybe I don't understand that particular way of escape, but I totally understand running from guilt and shame. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so it's not true that, yeah, yeah. I might understand a little bit better, but yeah. So anyway, what he was doing is saying, you need, you need the body of Christ.

And so anyway, my wife and I, we got married at that point. It was, it was quite young. We got involved in, in ministry. I learned that the Bible has power. The word of God is power. And you could, and we were teaching youth that, and then we ended up leaving the business Snar house, went to Bible college, went into ministry, blah, blah, blah.

Uh, pastoring a church. Then I just brought that whole poser mentality into my, my relationship with God. And I brought my whole poser mentality into my pastoring. I still had never dealt with the fear, fears, the guilt, the shame, the sense of meaning in my life is only because I'm doing things.

Kyle: Okay. So I think that is extremely common.

Oh, absolutely. Like where people get saved and, and it just translates into the church stuff. But then you have, you know, high [00:39:00] performing business people behind high performing pastors, and they're still neglecting their family.

Ken: Absolutely. Yeah. You do what you were taught here. Here's another thing, um, and I'm a father, so I, I get this, this isn't good news for me, but your emotional perception of your father or the authority figure in your life prior to puberty, in other words, however you saw your father prior to age 12, is how you probably emotionally perceive your heavenly father.

Kyle: Which is a hundred percent,

Ken: pardon me,

Kyle: which is a hundred percent different than who God actually is. Yeah.

Ken: Off often for any, unless you had a really great father and was just loving time. Most people don't. But my, my father, you know, was always taught us to do more, always taught us to do better. And he was trying to help me succeed.

And frankly, in your culture, who's watching this? That's a very common 'cause. I, I grew up German, you know, I know a lot of the culture here is Dutch with very, very hard work ethic. And that's a lot of our value and our esteem. And so, uh, my dad was just trying to help me, so I saw God as a task master.

Always one more thing I [00:40:00] have to do. Yeah. For him, right. And because that was my emotional perception of my father, and that was just the culture we grew up in. And I just brought that into my relationship with God. But I'd never dealt with the shame and guilt. Like I remember in my, in my wife and my own, um, healing journey, this is before we started Freedom Session.

We went through prayer ministry ourselves, we're prayer counseling ministry. And I remember the counselor asked, you know, we're talking about guilt and I, I, I feel I, I've organized most of my life to run away from guilt. And I felt it 24 7. And, um, they said, what does that guilt feel like? And um, I said, well, you know, when you, and, and I guess if you live in the lower mainland BC is that most of your audience in BC?

No. Over, over all over the world. Okay. Anyway, we live close to the border. So at that time we'd often go down and get gas in the United States 'cause it was cheaper, whatever. You come back and they ask you all these questions at the border. So I said, the guilt feels like when you come back over the border and you're not bringing anything contraband, but you still feel guilty.

And I said, you know what I mean? And, and she said, no. And I couldn't believe it [00:41:00] that some people actually cross the board without feeling guilty. I didn't know that. Some people actually don't feel guilt 24 7. I didn't know it was possible. Hmm. And so I had to begin dealing with that. So, uh, while we're talking about the, the whole posing, oh, you bring this all into your relationship.

So I just brought this all, I just had to keep performing. Even if my family's doing bad, even now, I struggle with that. And you, you know, you might, you know, struggle, but I know where I'm vulnerable. So, you know, even after you receive a measure of healing, does that mean your life's all easy? No, but at least I know where I'm vulnerable.

I know where Satan attacks me. I know. And so I can realize that I might be responding emotionally to failure. 'cause I hate failure. And most men hate failure. I think I hate it a little bit more than most men. But, um, I know that I'm very vulnerable there. Like, if you tell me I'm an idiot, that won't bother me.

I think you're an idiot too. 'cause I know that I'm not stupid, you know? But if you somehow begin talking or looking as if, if, if I'm failing. That will hit me harder because I'm very vulnerable to that. Mm-hmm. Right. So Satan can do all kinds of things. Yeah. Beat me up, whatever. So how did

Kyle: you as a [00:42:00] pastor, uh, flip, like what was it that, uh, what was your recovery before Freedom session that made you, um,

Ken: going through a process and realizing that God wanted me in this world and that the only reason I'm here is because he chose to breathe his breath of life into me.

So what was that process? How did that happen? That was through prayer ministry. It's actually, it's in Freedom Session in Authentic Living. I, I, or maybe, no, it's in session five or six in Freedom Session session six in Freedom Session, where we take you through that prayer, conception through birth. Is that right there?

I don't know the numbers off the head, but do you remember that ex exercise where you actually perceive that was the, that was the process. Yeah. I heard God call my name. I, I know it's emotional. I know it's, uh, subjective, but I, I know as I went through that process myself and I realized the only, like, I'm not here because two people engaged in a sexual embrace.

God's not manipulated. He doesn't have to breathe the breath of life into anybody. Yeah. I'm here because he actually wanted me and he actually knew how bad I'd screw up and he still wanted me. He knew it would happen to me and he still wanted me in this world. That was huge for me. Hmm. [00:43:00] Um, also, the, uh, okay, the other part is like coming out, uh, uh, coming out with everything that's I've done in my life.

I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, but there's somebody that knows about them all my wife or my kids know even how I failed my kids. Um, it's out there. So what's the gonna say? Uh, yes, that's true of me and I, I, because I, after God, I realized that God has a re uh, answer for the guilt. Like, I don't have like unsuppressed guilt, or sorry, undealt with guilt always turns to shame.

Guilt's an emotion gift from God tells us you did something wrong, uh, with the intent to confess it and amend our behavior, but I didn't do that. I would feel guilty and then I'd have to run from that guilt and people run from guilt through pornography, through sex, through work, all, all this stuff, whatever.

Right? Right. That, that's what I, and I would run through performance. 'cause it was, it worked for me. Right? Yeah. So anyway, so no more guilt, like, um, not being controlled by guilt, you know? So that's my own journey. So I know it's possible for other [00:44:00] people. And when those things change, when, when I know I can be totally real, like some people, uh, some people actually say that I'm humble.

I'm not humble, I'm just honest. It's impossible to be honest and prideful. When I'm prideful, it's because I'm back deposing.

Kyle: Yeah. Yeah.

Ken: And I have found in, in the church when, when you can get together men with men, women with women, you can actually be authentic and honest and love each other and accept each other for where they're at, but love each other enough not to let them stay there.

Yeah. You know? 'cause we can get here and sit and talk about naval gazing, about how awful we are and, and Christians of often confused confession with reporting. Like account accountability is not just reporting to you. When I screw up, if you and me are in accountable relationship, you'd be looking at what is the kind of man God wants me to be.

And then I, I, I explain that to you and then you check in, how are you doing? I'm becoming the kind of man God wants you to be, rather than how are you doing? Not, you know? Yeah. You know, doing those things. So anyway, off topic, but

Kyle: uh, a couple [00:45:00] questions first on Pride. Yeah. You've obviously had a huge impact on a lot of people because of Freedom Sessions.

Um, like massive impact. You don't struggle with pride because of that. You not because

Ken: of

Kyle: that.

Ken: Not because of that. Honestly, it. I don't know if, because,

Kyle: because like there's no, no secret that like money and power corrupt and, and that it like gets to people's head when they're a pastor and everyone's like, well,

Ken: fortunately freedom is not a cash cow.

So there's not a lot of money in, okay. It's not money. But like, listen, pastor's a

Kyle: lot of like, honor, like, oh wow. You're like, when you came in on Freedom Sessions, the one time everyone,

Ken: everyone's like, Ooh, Kenzie. Yeah. That actually feels uncomfortable to me because I know who I am. I know that I'm not like, it, it's like my Sunday best.

Like even today I made sure that I put some gel in my hair, right. So I look okay. Yeah. Right. I know. That's not actually me. Like it, it's like it's the mask. Okay. And it's not like there's a professional mask. And I, I, I put most people know

Kyle: that, right? The pastor getting up that's still struggling with [00:46:00] pride.

He knows himself

Ken: well. A lot of pastors don't know themselves. A lot of pastors are fueled and I was administration forever. What does that mean?

Kyle: You don't know yourself? They're just in denial.

Ken: Well, they're fueled, yeah. They're fueled by trying to prove. To God or someone, their grade two teacher, that they got what it takes and they're just trying to prove it in ministry.

It's, but they know

Kyle: that they're secretly still yelling at their kids at home or, yeah, but

Ken: they're in denial. They're secret. They're, yeah. We're in denial. And we justify that. We justify it by blame. Like, yeah, you can be denial's a number of ways. I blame Okay, if, if they know they're young at their kids, well, they'll blame their wife for being such an nag or they blame their kids for doing this.

They, you know, whatever. They blame that or they alize it. Right. Uh, 'cause their kids aren't going to church, they're not going to the Bible and things like that. We spiritualize things. Um, okay.

Kyle: So go back to your, you said your weakness, performance, whatever Yeah. That you realized. How does that still show up today?

You said it's still weak point.

Ken: It shows up, um, performance. Okay. So, okay. I'll be, uh, real honest on this. So as I contemplate, like I know that God's using the current version of Freedom Session and I'm contemplating taking a year [00:47:00] long project of rewriting the, the course just to make it easier, simpler for churches to, to run.

Like, there's some things I don't like about it, but whatever. Um, well, there's a lot of fear 'cause I could fail. I've got something that's working right now and I feel like God is asking us to make it. We wanna include more mental and emotional health language. 'cause that's where the culture is right now.

Right. Same gen general course, but we wanna tighten it up, you know, make it a little shorter, things like that. We want, we improve a few things. Um, not some of the things Gary wants me to change, but, but we're gonna address some of them, but not everything he wants. So whatever, uh, freedom Sessions used in 20 some 30, almost 30 different denominations, so we can't please everybody.

But my point is that failure, that fear of failure is linked to the performance. Performance is just how I dealt with my fear of failure. So the fear of failure is still there. So you feel, you find yourself stalling then, or? I can, and it's a faith thing and I have to be willing to fail, like, to go forward.

Like a lot of times people say it's, it's, you know, we, we need to live by [00:48:00] faith. That sounds great, except when you realize that living by faith means there's actually a chance of failure. Yeah. Faith is that faith

Kyle: means that there's hasn't been fulfilled yet. You're

Ken: still right. And, and you might screw up, you might fail.

Yeah. So, so I'm just saying, so that's where that, that performance, the performance is not my issue. That's how I have numbed my issue used to be alcohol and performance and it, it can be sex, it can be business. It's, it's never been golf or hobbies and things like that. But it can be, I can go, I can numb my heart by going to work in my garage, tinkering on my motorcycles, you know, that kind of thing.

Rather than deal with the conflict in the kitchen with my wife or you know, with the kids. Right. Yeah. Whatever. It's, yeah. You run from pain and you run to, you know, you, you run to so many different things. So, I dunno where we are in the story here, but Yeah.

Kyle: Okay. Um, thank you for sharing that. I want to go through a bunch of questions and if you ramble on, I might cut you off to go to the next one.

No, no. Uh, don't take offense. Um, um, you've walked through a lot of people through healing and recovery. Mm-hmm. What's one story that really sticks with you still of, uh, of a, a recovery story?

Ken: Well, [00:49:00] one that comes my mind. I don't know, it was probably four years ago, me and a psychologist were doing a mental, emotional health conference in another province and there was someone, and when you're at the conferences and stuff, you talk to a lot of people and you get tired and you get worn down and you don't have much emotional energy.

It sounds terrible, but it's hard to come across as compassionate. And I remember this one person, uh, came and um, they called her Sparky and she'd had a terribly difficult life and she had heard us speak and I talked about healing and disciple of all in one anyway. She came here at the end and I, I had very little time and I, I said, you know what?

I think there's a church starting Freedom session in your city. I said, I'll give you the number. 'cause I was, I was tired. I was trying to get rid of her, but I just had very little and I knew I couldn't help her. It was near the end so I could connected her to this church. What I didn't know. And I went to her grad a year later 'cause I went to this church.

It was, it was a fairly large church that ran Freedom session and they invited me to come speak with their God. So I went, what I didn't know is she was, if, if she came to that [00:50:00] conference and if God didn't meet her, she was gonna take her life. I didn't know that. And she went to the co, to the Freedom session.

Um, she dressed very, very much like a male. Like a male. Um, she wasn't a trans or anything like that. She just dressed very masculine so that she wouldn't get raped or abused 'cause she'd been raped and abused as a child. Right. So that's, she felt off I'm interest unnoticeable and unattractive, then I'm safe.

Right. Wow. So that's what she was doing. Wow. And, um, she just came. And so she got to, in her story, she talked about, she got to the emotional part about freedom session and she didn't understand any of her emotions and so she did a word study in all 80 emotions or whatever we talked about in Freedom session.

It took her a year or a year, a week or whatever to do it. And now God healed her in that. And she shared her story, and this isn't an issue, but she was, she wasn't wearing a dress, but she was dressed feminine or whatever. But my point is just the healing that happened, someone that was just about to take their life and you never know that.

You just never know what's going on in the hearts of people. Hmm. And um, and she was a little bit. Rough and stuff. It [00:51:00] wasn't like she was the most pleasant to talk to at that conference. She was quite demanding and things like that. So that, that one just comes to my mind. Interesting. Um, yeah.

Kyle: Um, I like freedom session often.

A lot of trauma comes out. Mm-hmm. And it's just like really, really heavy stuff. When I was going through it, I was also doing counseling and I had other help I was getting, which I don't know if I would've, I might've quit again. Yeah. Like I went and did psychedelics therapy to even have access to the memories of my childhood.

Right. I couldn't even, I couldn't, I got to week nine, whatever, and I write it down and I shut down like I did the year before. Right. Um, is like, is is Freedom session is, is trying to reach, of course the masses. I understand that, but how do you know that going into it or telling someone to go into it that has a really traumatic pass that they also need help?

Ken: Yeah, like, like, well, we don't always know when they need help and so we're, we are hoping that the facilitator and the person themselves, if they need additional help, there's no shame in that. Get additional help. Um. One of the things that's important to understand is all that [00:52:00] pain is already inside you.

It's in your subconscious. So when people say it's risky to lead people to process that kind of pain, it's risky to not, yeah. It's gonna show up, it's gonna destroy people's lives. You know, it's, it's, it's gonna bring them down, it's gonna destroy people's relationships, whatever, uh, and best case scenario is they walk through life and feel like Jesus 30 doesn't make a difference in this life.

So we have a responsibility to. Show people how Jesus meets some of those needs now. And so, but, but additional help is great. But, but I, you know, we've had only one pill every, every, every like a count, sorry, pastor's one pill for no matter what the issue is. It's counseling is the pill we've offered.

Right. But we've found that a lot of people, in fact, why we use it, like I talked about ministry survival, we still, the church that we originally wrote in

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