SLP Episode 2: Restoring Christ to Counseling featuring Jonathan Holmes

Will Chang  

Well, welcome everyone. Welcome to the SOLA Network Leaders’ podcast, where we strive to strengthen leaders and churches to shape a gospel future for the emerging generation of Asian Americans and beyond. What we’re striving to do here is to have every episode voice the pastors and practitioners and ministry leaders, so that we can learn from them as they actively shape the gospel future. And my name is Will Chang and today, I’m excited to have joining me today, Jonathan Holmes and Jonathan, thanks for having us. I’ll probably just hand it over to you. If you could tell us a little bit about yourself. I’m sure we’re going to get into it. There’s a lot of things the Lord’s doing through you, but Introduce yourself, please. And what keeps you busy? What’s your day job and what’s your passions and your aspirations? 

Jonathan Holmes 

Yes, well, thanks will, and thanks to sola for having me on. I really appreciate that. I love the ministry of SOLA and all that it’s doing in the Asian American community. I currently serve as the Executive Director of Field stone counseling. It’s a counseling center that’s based in Northeast Ohio. We have locations here in Northeast Ohio as well as in Michigan, but we do remote counseling all across the globe. And then I also serve as the Interim Executive Director at CCEF, which is the Christian counseling and Educational Foundation, and our mission at CCF is to restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the local church. And we do that through our teaching ministry, through content, our journal, through a lot of different resources that we try to provide for the local church. This November, I will be happily married to my wife, Jen, for 20 years. We were out on a date last night, and we were talking about our anniversary, and we could not believe that we’ve almost made it to 20 years, which is a big milestone for us. So happily married for 20 years, and I have four girls, so four girls raging in age from 16 all the way down to 10. I’m a member and an elder at Parkside Church. Have lived in Northeast Ohio for the past 17 or 18 years. Love the Midwest, love my job. Terms of aspirations, I would say probably not too much. I mean, most of my aspirations are, eat a good meal, spend good time with my family on the weekends, watch my girls play basketball, and that’s about as ambitious as I get. 

Will Chang

I mean, it sounds like at the very least, you’re super busy and leading just two pretty significant organizations that really provide counseling resources to the broader evangelical landscape. If you might, might be asking, maybe could back up a little bit and maybe share about, like, how your personal experience growing up in the Midwest, like, what was that like? How did that, in some ways, like, shape the way you think about the need for counseling among Asian Americans and for yourself? And yes, find some thoughts about along those lines. 

Jonathan Holmes  

Yeah, well, well, I, I came to the Midwest for my wife. I actually grew up in the Deep South. I’m adopted. So you know, that’s my sometimes when people meet me in person for the first time I’ve seen my name, they look at my last name and they’re like, Okay, something’s not adding up here. And so I am adopted from South Korea. My parents, at the time when I was adopted, they lived in South Georgia, so for most of my life, I grew up there, and it was, you know, I came over in the big rush in the early 80s, when Korean adoption was at a pretty all, all time high. And I think in terms of just my own experience growing up, it felt very different than what I think many adoptees experience looks like today.

Jonathan Holmes  

You know, nobody look like me. You know, I have a kindergarten picture that I still have framed somewhere in my house, but half the class was African American, half the class was white, and then right there in the center was this little Korean boy in a blue polo shirt. So that was, that was my that was my upbringing, growing up, and in connecting that question to what you’re also asking about counseling and just the need for it back then. I mean, I don’t even think that was even a concept for my for my parents, for my adopted parents, to you know, potentially pursue counseling either for themselves, in parenting an adoptee or in pursuing counseling for me as an adoptee, so counseling was just not even a part of my life or a part of the conversation, until probably I went to college and there at masters, which is a small liberal arts school in California, I studied counseling along with history, and thought maybe I’d be a history teacher, but kind of fell into counseling. And I would say my dominant experience with counseling is that, especially within Asian American context, it’s a little bit of an uneasy relationship. It’s a relationship where, in terms of whatever particular generation you might find yourself in, you might have varying degrees of either openness or apprehension about. Suing counseling. So whereas counseling might be seen as, you know, spilling family secrets or dishonoring people, you know, it could be more frowned upon, I think maybe newer generations and later generations are a little bit more comfortable with counseling and seeing the benefits of it, but I definitely think it’s an uphill climb, especially within the Asian American community, and especially within even the adoptee community, which is a huge frontier, I think, for counseling, for people to be able to receive help and hope so.

Will Chang  

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And so would you say that when you first began to explore and study counseling and history within masters, was that like a general interest or to think about, maybe there’s something that you could do. Did you foresee yourself being sort of involved in counseling the way that you were, or is it more just exploring for your own

Jonathan Holmes 

Well, the honest answer is no, like counseling was kind of like my backup, my backup plan. It was more just, I thought people were interesting, and I wanted to, I wanted to be able to kind of unite two key themes in life, of, how do I know Scripture and how do I know people? And how do you do both of those things? Well, so counseling provided an opportunity for that, but history was, you know, what? I was hoping to do more work in I had a great high school history teacher who just made a big impact on my life. And I thought, Man, if I could, if I could go and do that and teach history. And loved reading about history. But what happened was, when we moved back to the Midwest, my wife and I to the church where she grew up, kind of, there was an opening for a counseling pastor, kind of care pastor, position in a part time way that I kind of eased into, and as you often times know, will in ministry part time quickly became full time, and before you knew it, I was off to the races. And so the Lord really kind of directed my steps there, because I think I had a plan for my life, which was kind of get my masters in history, do further grad work there, maybe teach either at the high school or graduate level. But the Lord had other plans, and I ended up in the local church, and then ultimately here at fieldstone and CCEF.

Will Chang 

Oh that’s fantastic. And so switching gears a little bit along those lines, but related is that you seem to be a prolific writer in many ways. And I think it was recent book which Kathy and I have been started to read is Grounded in Grace, which I think is a very much needed book in the counseling realm, but also just as parents. And could you share a little bit about how that conviction arose? Was it just you saw a constant need? I mean, today is very different. What was that process like?

Jonathan Holmes

Well, that’s a great question too. Well, I would probably say in my counseling practice, I began to see and I think you probably hear it too, and you have daughters as well. There’s a lot of conversation right now with kids and teens about mental health. I mean, you can’t open up a blog, you can’t open up a browser on your phone or listen to cable news and not hear at some point about just really alarming trends as it relates to kids in depression, teens and suicide. I mean, every problem you can imagine under the sun and here’s, here’s, what I found is actually a common thread underneath all those issues is actually issues of identity. It’s an issue of, who do I belong to? Why am I here? Who made me some of those big existential life questions that historically, people would go to their parents to answer, they would go to Scripture to answer, or to their church or to some type of external, trustworthy institution. And in the breakdown of that, in the breakdown of trust, in some of those institutions and relationships, people in teens and children especially, are just told, Well, kind of dig deep down inside and figure out your identity, or figure out who it is that you want to be. And while the appeal of that is quite enticing, right? Because you get to be in charge, the other side of that is that’s actually quite a lot of pressure, I think, on kids and teens to figure out who it is that they are. Why are they here? What’s their purpose in life? I mean, in sixth grade, I was, you know, lucky enough to get through math class and recess, you know, I wasn’t struggling with existential questions of identity. And yet, I think a lot of our kids and teens are they see social media influencers out there on Tiktok and Snapchat, and they think, do I want to be that? And how do I be that? And how can I make myself that? And when that doesn’t happen, right? We they can get depressed. They can get anxious. I mean, there’s so many different iterations of how I think identity and mental health connect with one another, and so the book really kind of came out of a desire to see myself grow in my own parenting with my four girls, as well as trying to help the the parents and the families around me at my local church and practice. 

Will Chang  

Yeah, that’s fantastic with do you see, or maybe could elaborate, given what you’re saying in terms of the younger generation struggling to find their identity, given multiple voices that they face in this world, is there? How. Would you articulate or see that playing out within different cultures? Let’s say an Asian American family versus an African American versus Latino or even, are there, is there much more commonality between the struggles that you see different different family, ethnicities and cultures? Or is there certainly significant nuances?

Jonathan Holmes  

Yeah, you know what? There’s, there probably are a lot of nuances as you kind of go culture to culture, and in, you know, general terms of speaking about more Western culture, more Eastern cultures. But even, you know, in Eastern cultures, I mean, East Asia is very different than Southeast Asia. And you know there’s, there’s different micro cultures. So I’ll just maybe speak to a few that I think I’ve encountered specifically within Asian American culture. I think that younger kids and teens today probably want to explore a little bit more even outside their own ethnic identity. They’re more willing to try new things, to engage in new expressions of culture and culture making activities, whereas maybe older generations, either through language or through who they socialize with or where they live, maybe want to maintain more of a homogeneous ethnic identity and culture. And so sometimes maybe the breakdown that you see within an Asian American culture could be more generational. It could be more older parents wanting to hold on to some of the reigns of identity, of hey, this is who you are, and this is what you’re supposed to do, and these are our expectations of you. Whereas younger generations are probably more self directed, wanting to draw maybe more of that meaning, less so from their ethnic background or their cultural background, and more from their friends, their peers, from pop culture, etc. And so the difficult dynamic of that is that sometimes maybe It pits older and younger against one another, or it creates opportunities for misunderstanding. And so one of the one of the benefits, or one of the hopes that I have for the book is that a parent or a teen or a parent, and a kid could pick up the book, and instead of those differences in how we approach identity becoming opportunities for disagreement, they can become opportunities for understanding and compassion and curiosity and actually growth in those relationships.

Will Chang 

If I could follow up with a question, then on, the point you made about generations. And this was an observation that I heard that older generations are more outer facing, and like you mentioned, they derive their identity either from their family or certain level of their accomplishments. But in this day and age, with the advent of mental health and self care, that in some ways, there could be a swinging of the pendulum, potentially too far, where someone is always looking inwardly. Yes, name a self care, even to the to the detriment of not necessarily being outward facing or loving or serving our neighbor. Do you find that to be the case? And if so, how would you how would you guide parents or people to say no, these are some sort of guardrails so that you could prevent it from swinging too much where the person is just looking forever, internally, existentially into.

Jonathan Holmes  

Yes, they’re, they’re suffering. No, well, you’re, you’re absolutely right. So again, we’re speaking in broad generalizations here, but an older generation would have really held tightly to what sociologists would call a traditional identity formation process, which is very externally facing, where you derive your sense of who you are from, who your mom and dad were, what culture you grew up and what was expected of you, meaning that a lot of the identity markers were somewhat preset. So if you grew up in fifth century England and your dad was a baker. Well, guess what you were going to be? You’re going to be a baker. You know, if you grew up in, you know, seventh century France, and your dad was a farmer. Guess what? You were going to be a farmer. So there wasn’t a lot of room for creativity and and I think in our modern culture, we’ve really turned that around to where the authority doesn’t lie outside of you for identity, it lies inside of you, so you really get to be the defining authority on who it is that you want to be and how you want to function in the world. Now here’s where the piece about self care and mental health, I think, kind of takes a little bit of a turn, because we’ve told an entire generation, Hey, be whoever you want to be, pursue your dreams, live your own truth, Be your authentic self. And you would think that in our culture today, with all the resources that our kids and teens have, that they would be the happiest people ever, right? They’d be the most well adjusted, most mentally healthy generation ever. But that’s actually not the case. And I think the reason why is that each of those different identity formation processes both have some good in it, but they also have some bad in it. And so the via media that kind of cuts between more of a traditional identity formation process and a modern identity formation process is ultimately what we talk about in the book, is a gospel identity process with which, simply put a gospel identity and I got this from. Tim Keller, so it’s not mine, he says, he says, a gospel identity is received and not achieved. A gospel identity is received and not achieved. So we don’t have to achieve it. So in Asian American culture, we place a high value on achievement, accomplishment, recognition, making a contribution. We don’t have to gain our identity through that, through our GPA, through where our you know, college degree is from. But on the other side of that, we also don’t have to just figure it out on ourselves. We also don’t have to just dig deep into our feelings and construct an identity. God has already given us, not only authoritative words about who we are, He’s given us good and flourishing words about who we are. And so I would love to see parents and pastors and ministry leaders and counselors really be captivated by a vision of what identity is from what Scripture says, and to be able to pass that along to those people that they have influence with and that they care for.

Will Chang  

Oh, thanks for sharing that, Jon. That’s really, really insightful and very helpful. I mean, we all sort of quote Tim Keller, but I think we all Yes, well, Jonathan.

Jonathan Holmes 

Now you can quote me who quoted Tim. 

Will Chang  

If I can follow up again, and in terms of even going beyond maybe thinking about how counsel again or identity issues with the younger generation. Want to dig a little bit deeper in terms of some of the specifics or nuances with Asian Americans in general, in terms of how counseling is. I have my living experience once pastor in California, and then my wife Kathy has some experience here. Now that we moved over to Georgia. Would you be able to sort of elaborate or speak a little bit more into that? What are some of the challenges? And I think that is the one thing on top of that is not to just homogenize all Asian ethnicities. I guess we could start generally. What are some of the unique challenges that you think face a church or body of believers that are Asian Americans in terms of really being open to and embracing a counseling culture, or to receiving counseling for themselves.

Jonathan Holmes  

And again, I have somewhat limited experience, and I would even confess so much of my experience because I grew up with two parents who were were who were white, and was raised in a fairly majority white culture. A lot of a lot of even my experience and exposure to the Asian American church has largely come through relationships with people at sola have come through relationships that have probably been within the past five to six years, which is one of the reasons why I’m so passionate about what what sola does, and the mission that they have, because it’s been such an encouragement and even personal blessing to my life. But I would say an observation. You know, one of the one of the first things that I know that sometimes can happen, even in my own counseling practice, is people will just assume, Oh, you’re Asian. So you know what the Asian experience is like, and as you know, it’s so monolithic, but once you dive into it, there are unique experiences. And so trying to make sure that when we’re in counseling relationships with people who are of a different ethnic background than us, or even talking to people who do share ethnic background, that we really maintain a posture of curiosity and question asking, that we don’t just make broad based assumptions. So I’ll give you an example. I had one Asian American counselee come and they were seeing somebody at another practice, and they said, you know, all of the problems came back to shame. They just thought I had this profound shame that I was dealing with. And she said, at the end of the day, I really didn’t think it was shame based. And obviously, shame is a big part of Asian American culture. We talk about it a lot, but that doesn’t mean that that is the root of every single problem that we struggle with, and that could be a very reductionistic way to understand Asian American culture. 

So a lot of my counseling experience has been okay, you, you, you have a different ethnic background than I do. What’s the starting point for any type of relationship? It’s just getting to know each other. It’s asking simple questions. I would say, maybe there are some broad themes, you know, that I could pull out. You know, one of the broad themes that I would say I do see in certain Asian American cultures and family dynamics is, how do older people relate to how do older people relate to younger and younger to older, especially like older parents to younger adult children, right? What’s the role of boundaries? What’s the role of respect and honor? You know? How does it how do language barriers impact relationships between parents and between children and grandchildren? What does it look like when adult children choose to go to a different type of church setting than their parents did, maybe they don’t go to a km ministry church, or maybe they choose a church that’s a bit more diverse. So all of those, I think, would be questions and different themes and patterns that would come up, at least in my counseling experience. What I would say here’s what. I’m encouraged by Will is I do see more and more Asian Americans, maybe more Gen Z, some younger millennials, being willing to take the step of getting care and getting counseling. So that has been encouraging. I think a lot of that has just been due to just conversation that’s been happening. You know, in our current context, about the good side of what counseling can do, and maybe some of the influence of good biblical Christian counseling being offered in in local churches across the country.

Will Chang  

Sure, if you feel someone who’s been around for some time, and you know, I referenced a lot of people over to field counseling, very, very helpful, very fruitful. How do you How would you want church leaders to who don’t have a counseling ministry within their church, but to in a large extent, view that church may be the primary area in which people and believers can gain spiritual and gospel health. How do you see your role leading fields on counseling, coming alongside of the church, or maybe in some ways, supplementing the church, or, Yes, providing alternative perhaps, like, how does that relationship in the world and vision.

Jonathan Holmes 

Well, we definitely don’t want to supplant the church. So I love your word, supplementing. So what I normally tell local churches is, listen, at the end of the day, if fieldstone could go out of business, that the best day of my life, meaning, if the local church was able to be properly resourced and equipped and able to handle the care within not only their church, but also their community, that would be a win for fieldstone. Now, cynically speaking, I don’t think that that’s going to happen. So until that does happen, that does happen, I think the main way that field stone comes alongside local churches is really through offering counseling services when pastors and ministry leaders feel that the level of complexity exceeds their level of competency. So when the level of complexity comes at your front door, comes to you on a Monday after Sunday worship, and you realize, okay, this is a little bit above my pay grade. Doesn’t mean that I am not responsible for certain aspects of care, but there’s a level of competency that humbly and in weakness I’m identifying. That’s where I think pursuing an external referral like field stone could be a help. So that would be one way. The second way would just be through our educational resources. So fieldstone offers a lot of training for local churches at whatever level of care. So if you’re like, Hey, I’m just kind of dipping my toe into the water. Just want to learn a little bit more about biblical counseling. You know, fieldstone has some great courses for you. Uh, we provide a lot of consultations for local churches. So let’s, let’s say you’re a pastor and you’ve got a really tough counseling case or a really tough issue that you just want to get a second set of ears and eyes on. You could reach out to fieldstone. We could pair you up for a 50 minute consultation with one of our counselors, and they could just listen and provide some initial feedback. So fieldstone has a lot of different ways where we are. You could send people to us, or where we could send our resources towards you in a way to help build up your local body. I mean,

Will Chang  

That’s a, I mean, it’s such a, a beautiful vision to to see how this ministry that’s been so robust and fruitful come alongside the local church without supplanting like, right? Oh, absolutely, the church. And it seems that, actually, that might be a good segue, but it seems that the Lord has identified those gifts in you to be able to lead organization like that. I guess that means, as we all know, or many of our viewers may already know, that it has been announced that you are currently the Interim Executive Director of CCF. It’s probably new. At some point I’m going to ask you for some prayer requests, but before we get before we get there, what has that experience been like, and what is, what do you think your role during this interim period is? What is that? What do you see your place given this time in leading that organization?

Jonathan Holmes  

Well, thanks for asking. Well, you know, the biggest transition probably has been just kind of figuring out a little bit of a rhythm of travel. So I live in Cleveland. CCF is based in Philadelphia, so it’s a, fortunately, it’s a quick, one hour flight. I’m actually at CCF right now, currently. So it’s been, it’s been a new rhythm for my family to get used to. So I came into the job right around mid May, and I have a deep love and deep passion for CCF. And I think one of the first things I tell people about this role is I remember 1015, years ago, just being so impacted by the teaching of CCF. So CCF has played a key role in my own counseling life. So much of what I have read, learned doing my own counseling practice has been because of men like Paul Tripp and David Paulison and Ed Welch and Mike imlett and Julie low and others. So CCF has just played such a special role in my own life as well as I know so many churches lives as they’ve sought to bring counseling to their church in some really practical ways. In terms of my. Role right now at CCF. I mean, as the Interim Executive Director, part of my goal is to come in and to really listen and care for the people here. So as they’ve been through recent transitions with their old executive director, going on and moving on, it’s been a joy for me to come into the organization, to just meet and to love on people, to get to know their stories. So I had set a little bit of a goal by the end of summer to meet with all of our employees. And that’s been probably one of the most special times since I’ve started working here is just listening to people’s stories of how they came to CCF, how CCF used, how CCF was used in their life by the Lord to help grow them. My hope during this interim period is to just establish a little bit of stability as well as really help CCF think about its strategic mission for the next season of its ministry and life. So about five years ago, we celebrated our 50 year anniversary with David Palace passing quite a few years ago, there’s, I think, a little bit of a question mark of, Okay, what does it look like for us to really help restore Christ to counseling and counseling to the church? And that’s something that I’m excited and energized to think about with all of the colleagues, with all my colleagues here at CCF, and something that, you know, when we think about prayer, that’s definitely something that we need prayer for here as we think about the future and as we consider what are the next steps for us as an organization.

Will Chang  

I mean, I think it’s obviously transitions can be tough, as you mentioned, but yeah, personally, speaking, and also those I talked to, we’re very thankful that you’re able to step into that role for such a time as this. And so we are excited for the future of field stone, but also CCF and what the Lord will do through you as we begin to wrap up our time here. Jonathan, I didn’t really share this that we’re going to do this before, but sort of intentionally. So just have a couple of questions. I like to do this too, so that the listeners and viewers could get a better sense of the person that we’re talking to. So I just have a couple of personal questions just to ask to kind of get to know Jonathan Holmes a little bit better. And maybe I can start off with this way, do you have a favorite movie that you like to watch? A go to movie? Favorite movie for the recent years?

Jonathan Holmes 

Okay, so there’s a set probably more serious, but I’m a huge Harry Potter fan, so Christmas holiday, it is a Christmas tradition. But my family minus my wife, she’s not the biggest Harry Potter fan, but we watch, we watch all the movies together. So they’re probably some, you know, there’s some movies where you watch them once and you’re like, I don’t need to watch them again. I could watch the Harry Potter movies over and over and again. So Okay, those sounds my favorites. 

Will Chang

Okay, the amount of actually answer my next next question, which was favorite book? So I’m going to see what’s Harry Potter says something,

Jonathan Holmes 

Oh, no, probably Yeah. I mean, I have a deep love for the books, I would say, depending on what genre I you know, I love Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. So I read the book in high school, junior high, maybe. And it’s just a book that has stuck with me. I come back to it quite a bit. I’ve seen the play many times, seen all the different movie adaptations. So Les Mis would definitely be a big book. Maybe a more recent book that I read, that I’ve recommended to a lot of people, is a book called Covenant of Water by and it was a book club pick for Oprah. It’s It’s pretty big, it’s pretty thick. So if you don’t like big books, you know, pick up the Cliff Notes. But it’s just it’s a wonderful coming of age story of a family growing up in South India. And so if you love plot, if you love Family Development, it’s just it’s an absolute pleasure to read.

Will Chang

Oh, definitely, to keep that in mind, do you have, do you have a favorite color?

Jonathan Holmes  

My kids would say I’m pretty boring. I’m like grays, blues.

Will Chang 

In common then, yeah, not too exciting on my family.

Jonathan Holmes 

Not yet. Not very exciting at all. Yeah, today I’m actually in gray and black. So it’s the Philadelphia weather here and there. Yes, no. It really, no. It really does. 

Will Chang  

It really is, do you have a, like, favorite food, favorite genre of food? 

Jonathan Holmes  

I mean, I love Korean food. I love Korean you and I have had great Korean food together. I would say, I feel like, well, I’m trying to make up on last time, because growing up, obviously, I grew up in the Deep South, you know, my family’s idea of, you know, takeout was, you know, getting takeout from the local Chinese restaurants. So growing up, I had a significant lack of Asian food, and so that’s definitely my favorite. But Korean is obviously my, my definite go to.

Will Chang 

Okay, great. What do you what do you like to do to release stress, aside from prayer, all the holy things. 

Jonathan Holmes 

Now, my wife will probably this is all my kids will tell you this to relieve stress, will I probably say cleaning and organizing. So it’s kind of weird. It’s probably a part of my own mental processing and trauma and whatnot. But like, if I’m really stressed out, or if I come home and I’ve had a long day at work and I want to decompress, I will just start cleaning everything. I mean, dishes, vacuuming, laundry, like my wife literally has to tell me stop cleaning. Like, get down and take a break, and it’s hard for me, so in probably a not so healthy way, but with good benefits, cleaning, but probably just being with my family. I love reading. I’m a big coffee fan. So, you know, a book and a cup of coffee. Sure. I’m a big plant guy too. So I love taking care of plants. So I’ll water my plants, check my plants, you know, that sort of thing. Not nothing exciting, though. 

Will Chang  

So they all seem very effective, and probably my wife would wish that I would release stress in the same way that, yeah,

Jonathan Holmes 

I can teach, I can teach you my ways, if you want.

Will Chang  

I guess the last question I get to know, which is a little bit maybe deeper, who would you say is one of the more influential people in your at any point in your life.

Jonathan Holmes 

So I’ll give you a I’ll give you three. So in terms of, like a mentor father figure. His name is Joe, Joe Keller. He’s somebody who discipled me through college and has just remained a good friend to me throughout the years, and just really been somebody who I could kind of call up at any point at any time in my life and just get godly advice. And it’s one of those relationships where there’s an ease. We could be laughing together, hanging out together, and then go to a deep conversation in terms of just recent people whose writings and ministry have influenced me, it’d probably be Tim Keller and David Powlison. So both of those men, I think, profoundly, profoundly shaped how I think about the gospel, how I think about ministry to people, I find myself coming back to their writings, their speaking, their messages, probably on a daily basis. They have been great companions to me, both in life and and in death.

Will Chang  

No, listen and Keller, you’re in good company in good hands. That completely makes sense. The last question is that you did allude to this in terms of your interim role at CCF, but are there other things that the viewers and myself that we could pray for you during this season.

Jonathan Holmes  

Yeah, well, one of the things, and again, not sure when this comes out, but probably here towards the end of July, my family will be taking a vacation, and it’s probably my kids were, we were just talking about it at dinner last night. They they were saying, this is the one time in the year where we feel like it’s just us as a family and we really rest. And so I just want to make sure to be able to preserve that time, that even in a season of busy ministry, that for at least, you know, we go for about 10 days, that it truly is a good time away of just investing in our family, investing in conversations, I would say, on a on a professional level, just continue to pray for CCF and pray for fieldstone, as the Lord brings people to us to care for we want to be good stewards of that. We want to faithfully serve, but then also remember why we’re serving, which is that it’s not for our own glory or to make a name for ourselves, but it’s to further the kingdom. And so just prayers for humility, for a sense of clarity about our purpose, and for a sense that when people come to us for help, that it’s not something that we say or that we offer that they remember, but that it’s who the Lord is and how the Lord comes to them in Christ and through Scripture.

Will Chang 

Yeah, thanks, Jon, and that’s certainly thanks for sharing that. And we’ll definitely keep that in prayer, such an important work, both as a family man, but also for your your roles at these organizations. And so that ends our time here together. But thank you so much for making time for us and for all those of you who are listening. Thanks for listening to SOLA Network Leaders’ podcast, and if this podcast has encouraged you, we want you to share this with a fellow pastor or leader and for more gospel center resources to equip your ministry. Follow us and check us out on SOLA.network and look forward to seeing you there. Jonathan, thanks again, and hopefully to connect with you soon. Thank you.