Dr. Terry Powell is Professor Emeritus of Church Ministry at Columbia International University, a member of the North American Professors of Christian Education, and the author or co-author of 18 books.
He’s also ministered in Zimbabwe, Korea, Ukraine, St. Vincent, India, and scores of other countries.
More importantly… he’s one of the most transparent, sincere guys you’ll ever talk to. Truly.
I recently had the chance to chat with him about his upcoming book, Can You See The Cross From There? and his lifelong battle with depression.
I hope it reminds you that you’re not alone. That God can use people who often live in this disease’s shadows, but still retain the deep hope of Christ’s light, and share it with others.
Also, please check out his excellent site, Penetrating the Darkness, where he writes frequently about faith and depression, church leadership, relationships, and other issues.
HEINZE: Going back to the beginning, can you tell me about your personal history with depression?
DR. POWELL: I have had depression all my life. I did not know what to call it. I grew up in southwestern North Carolina, not far from the mountains. My parents were Christians and went to church.
But as a child, I was often alone late Sundays in my house — even though my grandfather was across the dirt road — while my parents went to night church.
I would feel, especially on weekend evenings, an aching and extreme loneliness and despair that I had no idea how to label.
HEINZE: And how old were you?
DR. POWELL: I was probably mid-elementary school, but it lasted all the way up to high school where I would often go there, cry and pray.
I had these feelings of loneliness and extreme despair without any known reason. I wasn’t abused or anything. I just remember weeping. I just remember feeling absolutely empty. Ironically, I still have that feeling most of my Sundays.
I don’t weep, but I still feel this strange emptiness.
But it started as a child.
I was always hypersensitive, which is not necessary to be depressed.
But I would feel things very deeply. That’s the way God put me together. That’s strength and weakness, in some ways.
And even though I had success at school as a baseball player, I was very shy. I know it went deeper than a typical teen who had self-image problems. I had extremely low self-esteem. I saw myself as very homely.
When we look at pictures now, my wife says I was handsome. I didn’t see myself that way. As a teenager, I didn’t care much about school, except baseball. I was so shy I didn’t date anybody, even though I wanted to.
But I was always too shy. I would often berate myself for being so shy. I was a C student. I didn’t care much about school or grades. Very undisciplined.
After my high school graduation, I was alone at our house, and I got mad at myself for being lonely, for not dating, for not knowing how to relate to girls, for making all those C’s. I took a fist and pummeled myself. I was a 6’4, 215-20 pound athlete, and you can’t hit anybody harder than I hit myself.
That type of self-condemnation is amazing to me.
I had a lot of self-destructive habits and negative self-talk.
So my depression has been intermittent all my life, in some form.
But when I went into adulthood and got married, I was happier for a few years, but I became very performance-oriented. Not only in my Christian life, but also in school.
I liked myself when I achieved. I made A’s in college as opposed to C’s. I started writing books in the mid-twenties and had an outward degree of success, but I would occasionally have almost a panic attack.
The stress would get to me, and I would just scream or hit the dashboard of a car.
I had two young kids and I was in graduate school, making straight A’s at Trinity Divinity School in Illinois, working at a national headquarters, writing and teaching seminars in different states, and I was overloaded to a fault.
But one time I got so nervous and stressed in the car, I hit the dashboard and screamed, “Powell, what else do you have to prove?!”
I needed to prove my significance. And those type of things were very deeply rooted.
As an adult, there’s two extremes to my depression.
One is robotic. I’m numb. I’m emotionally, mentally lethargic. I can teach right sometimes during it, but I can’t feel anything. I don’t have any tears.
The other extreme, which is perhaps a bit more common, is I’m hyper-sensitive and everything hurts. I overreact to the normal stressors of life that everybody goes through.
I don’t know which of those is worse — not being able to feel or being hypersensitive.
The other symptom that’s been with me is toxic thinking.
Pessimism. I know that some people are just pessimistic. But so many times, even in the past few years, I’ll be in a depressive episode, going to teach, by God’s grace, to some ministry, and I’ll scream, “Nothing matters.”
I would have a heavy weight on my shoulders. I’ve read books on grace. I teach it, but I’ve had a lot of hard time giving grace to myself.
I’d ask, “Who do you think you are getting up to preach and tell others?”
Thinking I’m not qualified to do any ministry.
But somehow, as a teacher, somehow, by God’s grace, I’ve done it.
HEINZE: You’re so right. I often feel either too attached to life, so every little thing can tear me apart, or I become too detached from life where I don’t even care if I brush my teeth.
I vacillate between those extremes. But it’s pretty common. They estimate anxiety and depression co-occur about 60% of the time.
You get really anxious about something, and then it’s as if your body exhausts itself to the point of no longer caring about anything. That yo-yo between caring so much and caring so little is exhausting.
It takes a toll over the years.
But going back to childhood. You have Christian parents, and the church is telling you to be joyful, not to be anxious. You’re constantly hearing that message.
So as a kid, how did you reconcile all that with the emotions that you were feeling?
DR. POWELL: Well, I’ve had that wrestling match far more as an adult, because I do believe there is some worry and anxiety in life — Philippians 4:6-7 — that my faith could not control, and maybe it doesn’t.
But I also see the research that says that very deep anxiety is an illness, and those perceptions are changing in the church.
I was amazed when I did some searches recently, how many new books there are. Some by leaders. You’ve probably interviewed some of them, who are now beginning to speak about depression much more openly than they ever did in the past.
But still there’s misconceptions.
I think victorious Christian living for somebody wrestling with deep depression is probably seen in the fact that hopefully you don’t give up.
You try to stay useful. You try always, fail at times, but you try to serve other people when you’re depressed.
One way, not the primary way, but one way I try to handle dark episodes is to think of somebody else I know, not necessarily who’s depressed, but who’s struggling, and say, “Lord, can I call them? Can I encourage them? Bring someone to my mind?”
I say, “Lord, you know I’m self-centered when I’m depressed. That’s normal. But who can I call? Who can I write a note to when I don’t feel like it and can encourage them with their attributes? I often start a letter like this: ‘I thank God for you because’.”
And then I tell them the qualities I’ve seen — something about their ministry or their lives that mean a lot to me.
Of course, that doesn’t end my depression, but God keeps me useful in the midst of it.
And I do have more empathy with hurting people.
So in my self-centeredness, I can go either inward or my sensitivity can go outward.
And I say, “Lord, make me more sensitive to others when I don’t feel good myself.”
And he’ll answer that prayer.
HEINZE: True, maybe we’d stop reaching out to people as urgently if we didn’t experience the pain ourselves.
Is the book coming out in early spring?
DR. POWELL: Can You See the Cross from There? starts each chapter with an original poem I wrote. They all deal with something I’ve gone through.
And there are several on depression, but it’s not the only thing.
There’s some on marriage. There’s poetry on gossip, the sovereignty of God and suffering, what it’s like to feel depressed and then how Scripture helps me.
My blog is called “Penetrating The Darkness.” I worked hard on the title.
I didn’t want to say that my faith obliterates or ends my darkness because it doesn’t.
My faith sustains me. It penetrates the darkness. The sun breaks through those clouds, and yet the clouds may come back.
How does God penetrate my darkness?
There are multiple ways.
One is Lament Praying.
There’s some great books out on lament.
In Psalm 13, David laments, and Michael Card says one-third to one-half of the Psalms are Lament Psalms, where we’re honest before God, and we even share our doubts and, to some degree, complaints like David did in Psalm 13:1-2.
“Lord, when is this going to end? Lord, are you going to forget me forever?”
But one writer reminds us that when you go honestly before God, you are not showing lack of faith.
Why would you go to God with your complaint or question unless you believed he was there?
Lament is actually a sign of your faith in your worst moments.
Another is preaching to yourself.
Truths that I constantly remind myself of. I couldn’t survive without that discipline of memorizing Bible promises.
And yet, in one review of my book Serve Strong, I was accused of using Scripture as a magic wand to get rid of everything.
Well, that reviewer didn’t read that book very well because it doesn’t take away my depression, necessarily.
But it may help me deal with it better. It gives me a projection of hope for the future that I didn’t have before.
I’ve memorized Scripture because I need it.
And so I quote promises to get me to a right perspective, even though spirituality is not the cause of my depression.
I also rely on my good friends and the body of Christ.
Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear one another’s burdens.” There’s a word in that verse which is a shipping term. It means to be overloaded.
Sometimes we’re overloaded and don’t have enough capacity.
I’ve always tried to teach others what I experience.
You’ve got to be open about your struggles and not worry about not coming across as spiritual and in control.
So nobody can bear a burden that I’m not willing to admit — even if it’s just depression and people may see me as weak. That’s because I am.
I tell people to see me as weak if you see my Savior as strong.
I savor the stories of saints.
[The Baptist preacher] Charles Spurgeon said, “I weep like a baby, and I can’t tell you why.”
And another time, he said, “You might as well fight with the morning mist as fight with this all-be-clouded hopelessness.”
I know he had great physical disease and discomfort, but [missionary] David Brainard expressed a wish to die. Even though he had great days of joy in his fellowship, he also had very dark days.
So many great missionaries, I could name over the years and centuries since, have felt encouraged by how God could use a man with that depression.
The other thing I try to do — even though I don’t mean this as an escape, but just to give me hope – is think about heaven.
Revelation 21:4 says there will be no more pain. This is not just for depressed people. It says God’s going to wipe away all these tears.
I tell myself that, whatever my physical or emotional pain is, it’s not forever.
Whether the struggle is pain, loss, depression or my battle with sin, I tell myself, “Hang on a little while longer.” Someday, when Christ returns, these struggles will be over. In referring to Christ’s second coming, 1 John 3:2 says, “When he appears, we shall be like Him (emphasis Dr. Powell’s). Now that’s encouraging! That instills resilience for the here-and-now!
So I try to have resiliency by focusing on my ultimate future. It instills perseverance, even though it may not end my suffering.
HEINZE: You’ve worked with a lot of other people in Christian ministry. You were talking earlier about bearing each other’s burdens. There seems to be a recurring theme among pastoral leaders that they don’t have anybody to bear burdens with.
I was wondering if you could specifically speak to people who are in leadership positions within the church who feel as if they can’t be open or honest about their struggles.
DR. POWELL: I have not been a senior pastor or a missionary, but I have been in vocational ministry on church staffs for twelve years.
And I have been in vocational ministry since I was in my late teens and college. I understand the mindset that realizes that if you’re transparent, you are opening yourself up to misunderstanding.
But I still believe in being honest about what you’re going through. I think we’re being victorious when we use his means of grace to deal with something.
There’s value in having the psychological training.
So I don’t think it’s weak going to a counselor because we all need hope. My counselor did not end my depression, but this Christian man who was a doctor in psychology would help me deal with symptoms that affected my family.
It wasn’t an attempt to heal it, it was an attempt to manage it better.
I would encourage someone to find somebody.
But there’s going to have to be openness or you’re not going to get help.
I believe if it’s really bad and it’s affecting performance, then [a pastor] might have to ask for a leave of absence. A lot of pastors might resign as an overreaction to discouragement.
HEINZE: There have been a number of high-profile suicides among Christian pastors the past few years. The common theme is that they were doing too much and weren’t speaking to anybody else about it. They were burying all of that pain privately.
In that vein, can you tell me about your book, Serve Strong?
DR. POWELL: Serve Strong is a book that actually came out nine years ago. We’re just doing a re-emphasis of the launch. I wrote it to give twenty four main principles that have encouraged and given me resiliency in ministry.
I needed that a lot with chronic depression, but I don’t want to give the impression it’s just for leaders who are depressed. That’s not the case.
There are pastors and missionaries who become weary or have discouragement, even if it’s not chronic depression.
The heavy workload. I’m not one to find a demon behind every bush, but I do believe and have experienced spiritual warfare strongly.
And when you’re doing the Lord’s work or you have great initiatives on the mission field or in your church and neighborhood, you’re probably going to have opposition.
Paul had opposition and spiritual warfare almost everywhere he went.
Sometimes pastors don’t see apparent fruit in their efforts and get discouraged because certain goals aren’t met. But there may be fruit coming later they haven’t seen yet.
I wrote twenty four chapters, and the introduction touches on the concept of preaching to yourself. What truth do I keep telling myself?
As a professor, as somebody who’s taken about thirty trips overseas for short-term teaching, as a writer and now in retirement, how have I been able to be sustained over these years when I know how weak I am?
Well, in Serve Strong, I share these things have upheld me.
They haven’t cured my human problems, but they’ve enabled me to be resilient in ministry.
HEINZE: Okay last question — is there a favorite book that you have on depression and the Christian faith?
DR. POWELL: I’d say Spurgeon’s Sorrows.
HEINZE: Thanks so much!
