Ministry Won’t Heal You With Christine Caine

QUOTES

I’m excited because I know the word revival gets thrown around, but I’d have to admit I really think we’re on the edge of it. I really do. – Christine Caine

Let’s not hide behind our gifts. Let’s hide in Christ. – Dr. Derwin Gray

The most powerful people in ministry are those whose origin story they’ve allowed Jesus to redeem, that the pain becomes purpose, that the tragedy becomes triumph. – Dr. Derwin Gray

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SHOW TRANSCRIPTION

00:00:00
You know, it’s a changing world. One of the things that helps us understand the changing world is research. And so, as churches have been struggling and families may be disconnected and sometimes drift away from the church, we’re kind of dealing with some of the questions of where we go from here. The Communio nationwide survey on faith and relationships really kind of points to the family decline and how it relates to faith decline in the United States. Actually, the survey has three key issues that are impacting our society today.

00:00:27
Go to communio.org study to download the nationwide study on faith and relationships. Welcome to the Transforming the Church Podcast, hosted by Doctor Dr. Derwin Gray. We pray that through this podcast, you will be empowered to live on mission with Jesus and lead courageously. Here’s your host, Doctor Derwin L.

00:00:47
Gray. Hey, what’s happening, everybody? This is Dr. Derwin Gray. Welcome to transforming the church podcast. If you are encouraged, if you are inspired, could you please like and subscribe, help a brother out.

00:01:00
Let’s spread the good news. And I’m super excited because I get to have one of our very best friends, Christine Caine, married to the one and only Nick Cain. He’s like the James Bond of Christianity. It’s amazing everyone is familiar with you. But for those who may have lived under a rock, Christine Caine is here.

00:01:25
Nick and Christine are one of the most dynamic ministry couples in the world. I appreciate Christine greatly. Not only are they involved in stopping human trafficking through a to one, she is preaching and teaching not only large stadium evangelism type events but also equipping leaders like, you’re like a modern day Apostle Paulette. Paulette. Yeah, a modern-day Apostle Paulette.

00:01:50
So what I want to do in our time together is really talk about how ministry cannot heal you of your wounds. One of the things that I’m seeing is there are a lot of people who go into ministry because Jesus has met them, but then they think that ministry is going to heal them when it’s not ministry that heals. And what a lot of people may not know is, um, you were unwanted and unnamed when you were born. Can you tell us about that?

00:02:27
Like your origin story? I love that. Anyway, it’s such a privilege to be on this podcast. And wait till I tell my husband he’s James Bond. That’s going to go to another level.

00:02:37
But, you know, I love that we’re talking about this because this is very dear to my heart in that, you know, Derwin, when I was left in a hospital when I was born, and my birth certificate actually says, child’s name unnamed number 258 of 1966. So, there is no name on my birth certificate. And I didn’t even find out I was adopted until I was 33. And then I was also the, you know, childhood victim of sexual abuse for many years. My immediate family was great, but my parents allowed people into our home whom they should have been able to trust, but they were so untrustworthy, you know.

00:03:14
Can I ask you a question before we move past that? Yeah. Did you ever hold that against them, that they allowed people into the home that they should not have trust?

00:03:26
Yeah, great question again.
And, you know, it really. I can say no back. I’m 57. So, you know, in the seventies, when this was happening, in the 1970s, to me, I wouldn’t have even had language for the word abuse. It wasn’t being spoken about.

00:03:44
And I think by the time I came to faith in Christ in really the late eighties, 1989, and then began the process of healing in the 1990s, I was able to work through so much of it with Jesus, with a counsel, with a great Christian counselor, a spiritual director, that I really didn’t hold it against my parents. Meaning, could things have been done differently? Yes. Did they know differently? No.

00:04:13
You know, like, at the end of the day. So even when I spoke about it with my mother before she died, about what had happened, her capacity to really accept what had happened, understand and have a framework for it was so limited. It was just so an unspeakable thing, something that wasn’t even talked about, that I really had to get to a place in the Lord where I could forgive them without holding it against them in that sense because there was gonna be no moving forward if I, you know, I could have remained angry and bitter for the rest of my life. But, I mean, you know, there was that. And then imagine finding out at 33 that you’re adopted, that your parents for 33 years haven’t told you who you really are.

00:04:57
Again, there could have been another opportunity for bitterness and resentment. And again, this is why what we’re talking about is so important, because it would have held me back from doing the very things that God had called me to do. So, in there, was there trauma? Well, yes, right from conception, obviously, to being left in a hospital, to being adopted without anybody knowing except for my mum and dad. And then the abuse that happened as well.

00:05:25
I also grew up as a second-generation Greek immigrant. At the time, Derwin, Australia, was extremely racist against particularly Italians and Greeks. Wait a second. Do you mean racism isn’t only in the United States of America?

00:05:39
No. Any of us who work outside of America could tell you. Wow. No. You know, I run 19, A21 offices in 14 countries.

00:05:47
I could tell you racism is alive and well in every one of those countries. Okay, so hold on. One of the pushbacks I get is if you just stop talking about racism, it’ll go away. So I thought, you know what? When Jesus came to the earth, he shouldn’t have died for sins.

00:06:04
He should have just stopped talking about it, and they would all go away. No need for the cross, no need for the resurrection. Let’s just stop talking about it. It’ll all go away. Of course, I’m being tongue in cheek, but I raise that point up because often, as Americans, we think that racism is just an American problem, when racism is a sin problem that has plagued humanity forever.

00:06:27
And you, as an immigrant Greek in Australia, experience that. So let me pause here cause I wanna back up just a little bit. I’ve heard it said this, that a villain and a hero both have the same origin story. Both the villain and hero both experienced a form of deep hurt and trauma. The villain turned bitter and angry and destructive.

00:06:53
The hero gave forgiveness and mercy and then became a healer of the hurt they experienced. So, how did you meet Jesus and become a hero instead of a villain? By the grace of God for both. But how did I meet Jesus was. People came to school.

00:07:11
Now I grew up greek orthodox. To be greek is to be orthodox in Australia, you could go. You had religious education in school, 1 hour compulsory religious education. It was either protestant or catholic. Wait, and this is in public school?

00:07:24
Yep. So in a secular country, you had religious education. And the reason why it stopped is because there weren’t enough churches that would send religious education teachers into schools to talk to kids for 1 hour compulsory a week. Because it was just youth ministry. Irrelevant.

00:07:39
And now they don’t have it in Australia anymore. So when I grew up, my entire year, from kindergarten through to the end of high school, imagine if every church had just thought, wow, what an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel for 1 hour a week compulsory. Anyway. So I used to sneak out. I had to go to Catholic because I was Greek Orthodox, but I would sneak out of the Catholic one only because all my friends were in the protestant one.

00:08:02
And so then that was the first time I was in an environment where I actually heard the Gospel, where people were, like, teaching the Bible and preaching Christ. Because in my Greek Orthodox church, you had a three hour liturgy in ancient Greek, which nobody spoke. So I didn’t know that there was a loving God who died for my sin, who rose again from the dead and forgave my past. I had no idea. Anyway, I learned all of that, and I was very responsive to it.

00:08:30
But at the end of the day, I was, because of my brokenness, which I didn’t know at the time, but here I was. I just kept. I had so many patterns of destructive behavior. I wouldn’t have known back then that it was a link to the abuse that had happened. What were those patterns?

00:08:45
The pain, you know, anything from addictions to really poor choices. Relationally, I’d go in and out of, like, really destructive relationships again because I’ve never told anyone, and I didn’t know that there was a root cause of brokenness and trauma. And, I mean, we could go all the way back. Abandonment at a hospital, you know, there. So I’ve got all this stuff going on.

00:09:05
I have no idea. I just think there’s something wrong with me. Of course, for me, I was so full of shame. Most every abuse victim is. And so, you know, shame is like, there’s something wrong with me.

00:09:17
So I would think. So Derwin, try to live with yourself, you either. I performed really well at school, so somehow, I would then either try to medicate through substances anything that would make me feel valued, significant security. But, of course, none of that lasts. None of it.

00:09:32
A friend then, when I was 21, invited me to a church in a warehouse in the back of Sydney, Australia, with a couple of hundred people in Ithoodae. And I’d never been to a church in a warehouse. I didn’t even know you could. I walked in and, you know, the rest is history. I could tell you, you know, 29 January 1989, I went to a 06:00 service, which is why I will forever love church.

00:09:52
And I encountered Jesus. That’s where from that day, 29 January 1989, to this day, by the grace of God, I haven’t looked back in terms of. I truly encountered the resurrected king. Jesus was flooded with the love of God in a way that really began to change me, thank God. He then brought some people into my life that were really, really great at understanding the power of the cross, the power of the blood to bring freedom and what that really meant.

00:10:23
So for the first time in my life, there was a place to really begin to talk about what happened to me, because I had this gift on my life, and the Lord obviously had a plan for my life. But Derwin, back then, I was 22 years old. The gift that was on me would have destroyed me because what was in me could not sustain me. You know, I just did not have enough both character formation and I was still so broken from the wounds and the trauma. And I needed someone that understood how you could bring Gospel healing, not just therapeutic healing, although I needed that as well.

00:10:59
I needed therapy and counseling, but in and of itself, that would have helped me to maybe manage my life a little bit better, but not for my life to be transformed. There’s a difference between sin management, sin avoidance, and transformation. That’s right. And I think a lot of what it was initially like, well, Christina, we can help you manage your life or just avoid this. Now, the wisdom in both of that, that’s great.

00:11:22
But true transformation is what we’re needing now. You can only find that with the spirit of God, through the word of God, in the presence of Jesus, you know, like, truly. And I thank God doing that. I had the right people in my life in my twenties that I went through what I would say is an intense eight year Jesus transformation school. Wait, hold on.

00:11:44
Wait a minute. You mean that you had to spend eight years, like, you didn’t rush to put up your website and tell everybody you wanted to preach and teach and build your social media platform? Oh, my gosh, no. Thank God. There was no Internet there.

00:11:57
No, because I. No, we were; I was just serving in church, driving kids to youth. I didn’t even speak on a platform. People would say to me that because I did a lot of school work, it was like motivational seminars in schools, and I would work with at-risk young people. God was trading.

00:12:13
I mean, today, we lead one of the largest anti trafficking organizations in the world. Imagine if I devalued because, you know, it was suggested, maybe you shouldn’t speak yet, even though that was my primary gift, to allow God time to do healing in my life and serve in other more nonvisible ways in the youth ministry and then in schools. I was doing, like, you know, in secular high schools. I was doing schoolwork. God was training me.

00:12:38
How would I have known to work with education departments and governments and learn how to speak to people? Not in a Christian context, which is everything that I do on a global scale now. You know, with a 21, I would have bypassed that without even realizing it, that God was preparing me for what he had already prepared for me. But in my rush for visible ministry, I could have missed what God had for me. And so that was the.

00:13:04
And then I would serve in the youth ministry, and yet everyone would probably have affirmed that my primary gift was a speaking gift, but it was the gift that wasn’t being used from a platform because for the intentionality of God.

The Transforming the Church podcast is a part of the Church Leadership Podcast Network, which is dedicated to resourcing church leaders and to help them face the complexities of ministry. Church leaders podcast network supports pastors and ministry leaders by challenging assumptions, providing insights, and offering practical steps that will help church leaders navigate a variety of cultures and contexts. Learn more@churchleaders.com podcast network one of the things that I say here at transformation church to our staff and then when I speak to other leaders is this, is that you want your gifting running after your character. That’s great.