Adrian Crawford, founder and pastor of Engage Church in Tallahassee, has talked openly about his own struggles with depression (most recently with USA Today), and lemme tell you — as someone who scours the landscape looking for pastors willing to acknowledge their battles — it is so rare and wonderful to find one who does.
As a church, we have to understand that depression and anxiety can affect anyone, regardless of spirituality or position in the church.
That seems obvious — the medical basis of the condition is clear and indisputable — but again, there’s this idea that pastors are so spiritual that they couldn’t possibly struggle with stuff laypeople do.
But according to one large survey, nearly 40% of church leaders said they’ve suffered from a mood disorder like depression or bipolar, and 23% say they’ve struggled with clinical anxiety.
Yet for obvious reasons, it’s very difficult for pastors to open up about their struggles with their congregations. But what it a difference it makes.
Over Christmas, Pastor Crawford and I talked further about his depression, why he calls it his “beautiful affliction,” what the young generation needs to learn (“resilience”), and how the white American evangelical church’s indifference (or at times, outright hostility) to the pursuit of social justice can be so depressing.
Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
HEINZE: Can you tell me about your struggle with depression?
CRAWFORD: When I was a kid, I was always kind of melancholy — always saw the glass as half-empty. Not even half-empty, nothing in it sometimes. Both my parents grew up in Jim Crow segregation. My father was a Baby Boomer, and no one ever talked with him about emotions.
My mom and dad are both really incredible people, but my dad had this super emotional kid. I cried and cried all the time. He was never harsh to me. He just didn’t know what to do. Later, I found out that my mother and other people in my family struggled with mental health stuff, too.
Throughout high school, I was having thoughts about suicide. I became a Jesus follower around 19 years old, and had this powerful experience and I was super excited about it, and I went from living a really reckless life to getting hold of Jesus and thinking, “Wow, my depression went away. I got born again.” You know, that charismatic expression.
They were really good people, but the whole thing [about treating depression] was “Lay hands and pray.”
I joke that I was anointed with so much oil that I was deep-fried. You had this attitude of “I’m free, I’m free, I’m free.”
But fast-forward about a year later, and I’m sitting at the edge of the bed with a knife in my hand and saying “I’m gonna end this.”
HEINZE: Wow, just a year later?
CRAWFORD: I had this false idea that I shouldn’t struggle.
All of a sudden, I’m working through becoming sanctified, but you still have certain struggles, and you’re feeling the conviction of the Spirit and you’re saying, “Man, something’s wrong with me. I’m not saved. I don’t know Jesus because if I did, I wouldn’t have any struggles.”
So even though I was always depressed, that pushed me down further.
I got to a place where I was pleading to Jesus, “Please change me.”
A husband and wife and my girlfriend, who’s now my wife, prayed for me and I started to move forward.
Then the big change for me was about ten years ago.
I feel like I had a midlife crisis at 30 years old, and I realized Martin Luther King Jr. was something like 33 when he gave his “I have a dream” speech, and I had this moment where I got so sad and wondered what I was doing. I was just over there playing NBA 2K, while he was shaping humanity.
I was doing campus athletic ministry at Florida State, at the time, and we had something like 15-20% of student athletes showing up.
I’ll never forget this moment – we were doing an altar call, and I was watching these people and I said to myself, “I don’t know if I believe this. I don’t know if I believe what I’m preaching.”
I still had this mentality of performance.
I’d played basketball at every level, to that point. My entire existence had been about performance, so deep inside of me, I still had this fear of losing my salvation, even though I would have told you that Christians can’t.
I found myself just exhausted, wondering if I believed any of it.
I was with a mentor, and he asked what I really thought of God.
I gave the theologically correct answer.
And then he said, again, “No what do you really think of him?”
And it just came out of me, and I said, “Man, I think he’s just a vindictive thug who sits in heaven, waiting to pounce on me.”
He said, “Hey, Adrian, I wouldn’t serve a God like that, either.”
That was the beginning of realizing how my emotions affected things. Fast forward to my mother suddenly passing away and one of my friends gave me a book called, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality.
And this is the first time I’d ever read about how emotions and the Gospels work together.
I started realizing that my body was being sanctified, but I had not allowed the Gospel to get to my emotions. I realized our bodies and emotions are fallen, and they have to be redeemed.
There was a guy named Dr. Mike Zoda. Dr. Mike became my therapist for 3.5 years — right around when we were planting a church.
He’s become a really good friend, but I tell people he saved my life. He taught me how to become emotionally healthy. Emotional health is an art form, it’s a skill.
But one time I was praying, “God please I don’t want to be sad anymore, I don’t want to be depressed.”
And I felt like I heard it really clear that God said, “Adrian, I’m not going to take this away from you. This will be your beautiful affliction.”
My depression is part of The Fall, and what the enemy meant to be harm for me – man, this thing drives me to the presence of God.
I tell people, “Depression is actually a beautiful affliction because it drives me to the presence of God and I’m a better man, husband, because I have to get the presence of God every day.”
HEINZE: I think depressives can get a high when they first give their life to Christ. But unless they have good doctrine, they won’t know the spiritual high won’t last. It’s a rush, it’s a feeling.
If you’re not grounded properly in theology, you run the risk of questioning everything about Christianity if you get depressed.
CRAWFORD: I agree with you. Most of life you’re managing tension. I always tell people, “Jesus is the only thing.”
I’m radical that way. I’m fully one way. Everything else you’re just managing. I’m Reformed Charismatic. I’m a black dude who’s Reformed Charismatic who manages a multiethnic church in Florida. I’m a unicorn.
On the charismatic side, it gets way out of balance because it becomes about health, wealth, name-it-and-claim it. They get at the extremes. It’s not the Gospel.
Now on the very Reformed side, it’s always taught that life is just awful. They say, “Yes, there’s hope in the Gospel, but you just gotta suffer.”
In the Reformed world, for awhile, it was incredible for me. It taught me the doctrine of suffering, and I am so incredibly grateful for that.
But I found myself getting more depressed.
The part of the Gospel I get is, “Humans suck.” Yes, humans are awful, we’re terrible. The depravity I get to the fullest.
But the charismatic expression taught me that God answers prayer and moves, and there’s another side of the Gospel, and that’s hope. Paul doesn’t write to the “sinners” of Thessalonica, he writes to the “saints,” and I think the reality is there’s hope.
There’s a tension between the two sides, and if we don’t manage it, it can lead to depression, either way.
I tell my church that your purpose has everything to do with you, and nothing to do with you.
Go to Hebrews 11.
The first half is the SportsCenter highlights – the Davids of the Bible. The back half is the people who were sawn in two.
You can be a person who’s had success in society’s eyes, or you could be on the other half, where society doesn’t think you’re successful, but your purpose has everything and nothing to do with you.
Everything to do with because it’s yours. But any God-given purpose is about the flourishing of humanity because that’s the essence of Jesus.
In the very Reformed world, it has nothing to do with people and they say, “Don’t think about yourself” and people get lost.
And what I’ve seen in life is that when people find out who they’re designed to be — marriages, parenting, friendships, workplace, and evangelism go through the roof because they realize God’s called them to something.
HEINZE: Why have you decided to preach about your depression? And have you, over the years, experienced any pushback?
CRAWFORD: A long time ago, I made a decision that when I stood on the stage to preach, I was going to be an example and call people up by setting a standard and living it. I wanted to just be authentic and real.
So from the beginning of our church, we’ve talked about it.
We did a series about emotions called “My remote control.”
For a lot of people, it was refreshing. Churches are now starting to talk about this idea of mental health. Our church has been talking about it for seven years.
I didn’t see pushback, or it was just mainly from older people who said people are making this about themselves.
For the most part, it’s been accepted. People were longing for it.
I preach a lot about Genesis 4.
When Cain killed Abel, it’s because he felt a certain way. Tim Keller talks about how the first few passages of Genesis are really the genetics of the world. And in the first few passages, the genetics are right there and God shows us how to deal with emotional health.
Cain feels some type of way, God shows up and doesn’t say, “Suck it up.”
Instead, he asks, “Why are you angry, why are you dejected?” He comes as a counselor to him and asks, “Why?”
And most of us don’t ever get to the reality of why.
We just say, “I’m mad.” And then we quote the fruits of the Spirit, and it’s just putting a band-aid over the infection.
So many times, pastors think that being mad or angry is a sin. No, it’s the reaction to being mad or angry.
We see right at the beginning of the Bible how God wants us to deal with emotional health, and the answer is to ask the question “Why?” and then apply the Gospel.
HEINZE: Studies show people get more stressed, anxious, and lonelier during the holiday season.
What would you say to a Christian during this season who feels that Immanuel, “God with Us,” isn’t with them?
They hear “Joy to the World” at every church concert, and feel no joy themselves.
CRAWFORD: If you’re not feeling the joy, then first, don’t condemn yourself. All condemnation creates shame. And shame is a bad thing. It’s the gift that keeps giving. Then you’ve got shame for your shame. If you’re a Jesus follower and you don’t have a joy, you wonder why and think there’s something wrong with you.
Second, can you get to “Why?”
Usually there’s a trigger that starts it. Maybe you saw an old family photo. Why did that photo bother you? The answer is always three to four levels down.
So regarding how you feel this Christmas season, you may not feel a certain way, but you have to keep moving forward. You may not have joy, but you can’t let that stop you from getting in the presence of God.
HEINZE: Can you talk about the next generation and mental health?
CRAWFORD: Our church probably has 60-70% millennials or Gen Z. Here’s the thing – this generation is like the “Drake Generation.”
Drake is the first and best rapper to be all about emotions. I love hip-hop to the core. But it was always about how tough you were. It was never about sharing your feelings.
Drake does this because he speaks to this generation. This generation gets emotions compared to Boomers, who didn’t know what they were feeling.
But here’s the problem – the conversation is happening with millennials and Gen Z, but they’re not being taught resilience.
This group knows what they’re feeling. Everything is about feeling. I tell them all the time, “Yes, identify why you’re feeling this way.”
But then I say, “Empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, you have to drop your head and just fight.”
You don’t deny feeling, which is what the older generation did. They had such resilience. That’s why our nation prospered, but it left them emotionally broken. This generation knows how they feel, but they don’t have the fight in them.
We talked earlier about the extremes in the church – the charismatic church says, “You just gotta pray, and speak in tongues and therapy is just what society does. That’s the world.”
On the other side, some of the pop Christianity stuff is just about doing all this therapy, but they’re not talking about getting into the presence of God and crying out for him to change you. You need to do both.
That’s gotta be a conversation.
I’m so happy emotional health is talked about now, but we’re not talking about resilience. That we have to drop our head, that we have to war, and it’s going to be tough.
And you can’t quit.
I’ll be honest. This past Sunday I had a multitude of things, and my own chemical makeup. There was not an ounce of me that wanted to get on stage on preach.
And what I tell people is that it doesn’t matter because that’s what God has called me to. And until he calls me to something else, I have no option because he’s my King.
We’re missing the idea today in emotional health that Jesus is Lord.
So even if you feel a certain type of way, you still have to get on with the work.
Jeremiah – he hated his calling, often. He was depressed. But Jeremiah didn’t quit. It was his job.
I ask people a lot “Do you want to be made well?” like Jesus asked. You may not get radically delivered where you never struggle again, but I’m hearing a lot of people today that don’t want to be better. It’s just become the popular thing where people are just talking about it because they get “likes” and “followers.”
HEINZE: There’s one more thing I want to get to, and I’ll explain later why it’s tied to depression.
You said you’re a Reformed Charismatic, and I know in that culture, there aren’t a whole lot of African-American preachers.
Further, a lot of the guys that particular movement venerates supported slavery. George Whitfield actually owned slaves.
So the white church’s problems, historically, with race have really mirrored the culture’s.
Growing up in white evangelical churches, the casual conversations about race usually centered on one thing — affirmative action. And boy, white Christians hated it. There wasn’t much else about race.
I was recently reading that the Christian rapper Lecrae went through deep depression and even thought about leaving the faith because of the way the white evangelical churches treat race.
I’m speaking broadly, but in general, the white evangelical church says, “don’t bring social justice to church,” while at the same time, we’re out there, 24/7 talking about abortion and religious liberty, which are also social justices.
The white evangelical church is really passionate about defending Christians who are discriminated against based on religion, but when it comes to blacks experiencing discrimination based on race, they say, “Don’t bring that social justice into the church.”
As a black leader in this orbit, have you struggled with this dynamic?
CRAWFORD: That’s an incredible question. I’ve got an incredibly diverse church. I’ve got incredible friends who are white and reformed, Gospel Coalition, friends at Westminster Seminary.
And I’ve got a church that’s split down the middle. I’ve got people who are in the “Make America Great Again” movement, ones who love Bernie Sanders, all that.
Black leaders in the church, though, have traditionally felt they’re being told this: “We want your skin color in the church, but when you’re in our house, don’t move the furniture. Just be here. We’re glad you’re here. Worship here, speak, but don’t talk about that stuff.”
But a lot of black leaders are now saying, “There’s parts of Christianity that have been white-washed, and it’s not okay.”
For me, yeah, it’s led to, at times, some depression.
Some Christians won’t quote Martin Luther King Jr., who brought real gospel to the earth, because of his infidelities, yet they still quote Whitfield and some of these other guys who owned slaves.
When people talk about privilege, that’s what we’re talking about. We feel, at times, as if we’re second class citizens in the Christian world.
We’re at a point where we’re saying, “We love and appreciate you, but at the end of the day, we have a voice just like you and can add real value to the earth.”
Yes, there’s a lot of times the Left weaponizes it, but when someone gets shot and killed on camera in Minnesota who has a sealed and carry permit, everything the NRA says you’re supposed to have, everything is right, and yet the evangelical community tries to justify it?
There is more diversity at Starbucks than at church.
That’s a broken thing. I think God is raising up African-American men right now to lead churches that are very diverse because we know what it’s like to be the minority. There’s such empathy there.
HEINZE: Thanks so much for chatting.
About Adrian: Pastor Crawford is the founder and pastor of Engage Church in Tallahassee, a seven year old church in the top 10% of growing churches in the nation. He is driven by his passion for the “secondary class” of people who are often unnoticed, under-appreciated and overlooked.
He also founded the development company, Gamespeed Basketball, and Gamespeed Nation — a non-profit providing a world class basketball training academy for youth in low income and underdeveloped areas. Crawford, most recently, founded The New Rules Project — a training and development institute.
