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Mental Illness and How it Draws Us Closer to God with Sergei Marchenko: Podcast EP 127

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Elaina sits down with Pastor Sergei Marchenko to discuss his experience with mental illness both in his home and the church. Pastor Sergei shares hope for the hurting and discusses the importance of mental health awareness in the church, and from the pulpit.

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Elaina: Thank you for joining us for a new episode of Key Ministry, the Podcast. Today we have Pastor Sergei Marchenko, also my dad, back again for another episode, and this time we're going to be talking about his experience with mental illness and mental health, how that intersects with ministry and specifically his role as a pastor. So we're really excited to have him, if you haven't heard his other episodes, make sure and go back and listen to those. Those focus more on disability and special needs families and then that intersection with leading ministry. And so we're excited to touch on a different kind of emphasis that Key Ministry has. We definitely are involved promoting a lot of resources for mental health in the context of ministry, so we're excited to have him.

Sergei Marchenko: Hi. Glad to be back and excited to talk about this, I think very important topic.

Elaina: And we've kind of prefaced it, is nuanced and I think anyone that has experience with mental illness, whether directly or secondhand from somebody else, knows that it's a nuanced topic. It's not going to be the five things you can do for outreach with disability type of conversation with really easy bullet points. But I think it's a really important topic and it matters and I think a lot of people are dealing with it. And specifically, I think now, which we probably won't go into a ton, but definitely this intersection with the church and how the church deals with mental health, which is a whole other big topic. And we touched on that at our recent Mental Health and the Church conference. So anyway, all that stuff, all of our materials are on our YouTube page as well. If you missed that conference and you want to hear more specific topics, we also have that on our YouTube page and we'll link everything in the show notes, but I think this will be a really great addition to some of the resources. Can you just explain your experience with mental illness?

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, so my wife, your mom has struggled with clinical depression, definitely different seasons, but over the course of a couple of decades now. And when somebody is struggling with mental illness, it becomes a whole family affair. It affects everybody and obviously the person that has it the hardest is the person who's directly experiencing it.

But, it does affect everybody else. It affects parenting and marriage and ministry. In our case, my experience, I would say primarily has been connected with Gillian, and Gillian has talked and written extensively on that topic. So while I think it's important to defer to her to talk about her experience, and I don't want to speak for her at the same time, I think I can speak from my own experience and talk about marriage, parenting, ministry dimensions that come out of that.

Elaina: Yeah, I agree. And we'll link some of her resources. She's written for Key in the past, so she's definitely open in talking about this and has talked about it. So yeah, I felt comfortable interviewing you about your experience. So can you tell us a little bit specifically, I guess, so obviously it affects you most as a husband I would assume, because that's your person and your covenant and that's affected... Her mental illness, affects your life probably secondmost because you're the other person in that relationship. I don't know if you would agree with that.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, I think that's right, and the kids. If you think about a household, the people who are in the household are immediately affected by that and then there's circles out of that.

Elaina: Yeah, I guess I just meant for you specifically, your role as a husband seems to be most affected and then probably ministry and pastoral ministry.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, I think you're right, but it's so interconnected. It's hard to separate those things because obviously, and maybe especially in ministry, especially in pastoral ministry, your home life is going to have a huge, a huge overlap. And I think we'll talk a little bit more about it in terms of how it shapes a person, but even outside of the shaping influence, its schedules, it's my mental state, it's my emotional state, it's my margin. All of those things are affected. And so it's husband. Yes, absolutely. That's the main thing here. But father, yes, friend, that affects my friendships of course, ministry. Yeah.

Elaina: So how would you say it affects, we'll just start then with ministry, with being a pastor, and obviously like you said, it's all interconnected. You can't tell us every single way that it affects you, but maybe most primarily, how does it affect you from the pulpit, how you preach? Did it change the way you understand the way you preach, if that makes sense? Did it change the way you speak to a congregation? And obviously it changes your experience that preaching comes from, but...

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, of course. I mean, of course I would say that Gillian's struggles of mental health is one of the main tools that God has used to shape me as a person, but certainly as a pastor. Now we know that that's typically how God works. I mean, that's how we learn, that's how we grow, is through experiences of hardship and suffering and pain. And sometimes it's direct, it's your thing and sometimes it's someone else's thing that's close to you and you're affected by that. Yeah, I think there's a softening that God does through that where he works in a person's heart. It's when, the world is broken, everybody knows it, but you don't know it until you know it through experience that's close to you. So disability would come into that, chronic illness, a personal crisis or something like that. You have to be awakened to the brokenness of the world, and otherwise you kind of think it's fine and you think you can just be okay and we can't. And so at the very least on the most kind of basic level, the disillusionment in the world allows you to see the need for Christ and allows you to be much more open to Jesus and much more grateful for Jesus.

So my experience is not unique in that I think it's every Christian's experience. We just come at it from different ways, but I think that's a really important piece of our spiritual state and people who still sort of believe and have this illusion that the world is okay and that their lives are going to be how they want them to be. It's hard to be close to Christ in that state.

Elaina: Yeah, I think that's a good point.

Sergei Marchenko: And as far as ministry, I mean, yeah, I'd like to think it makes me more compassionate and I'm not naturally compassionate, so I recognize that. So I hope that it made me a little more compassionate and just more noticing people more and being able to be there for someone who's just hurting and there's no solution, there's nothing I can do, but just be there. I think God has been teaching me that. Obviously there's fruit of the spirit through all those things, that are relational things. And the Lord teaches you in specific relationships, and when it's a difficult and a painful situation, you develop love and joy and peace and kindness and gentleness, those things. Self-control is part of it too. The spirit is working and changing the character and the heart of the person through that. Now, I don't think it always happens that way. I think you can also get really bitter and resentful and hardhearted. So we always have to be thinking, and I've met people like that that have a child with disabilities or have a spouse that struggles with mental illness or whatever the circumstances are, and they get hard. And it's really sad to see that. I see the potential of that really changing the person, but you can also see the negative impact.

Elaina: I think that's important, in some sense you have a choice of how you're going to take suffering at some point. You can't just, yeah, you have to decide. I mean, and it's hard. God is working in you, so it's not really like you're just making a decision yourself, but you have to let God do the work. So I think you have to make the choice to allow God to do the work that he's already trying to do in you through the hard things that are happening. That's what you're saying.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, for sure. I think, well, it's the general maturity and growth and spiritual experiences with Christ that make the difference. Yeah. How well do you know Jesus? So in some ways, suffering reveals that, reveals the level of your relationship and it could deepen it, but it can also make you realize, yeah, I don't really know Jesus or like him very much, and so I'm out. That certainly happens.

I think another benefit for me was it does allow me to connect with people in similar circumstances, which it's not uncommon, it doesn't have to be a specific mental illness or even mental illness in general, but people who are trying to serve their spouse, who's suffering or hurting in some way that allows, my experience, allows me to do that and to have conversations. I mean, I was just talking to somebody the other week and I can come in and just kind of say, yeah, I get it. I can't change it, but I'm with you in that. And I can share some things, sometimes that are helpful, but most of the time it's you coming alongside another brother and saying, yeah, it's what it, I understand.

Elaina: I think that makes a huge difference for people and it helps them not be resentful or bitter because you see someone else who's doing similar things or in a similar position and they're actually reaping a lot of the fruit that God is planting in them. I mean, that's just Christianity in general, having community. But specifically with that, I think it's really helpful because we know mental health and mental illness, one of the things that keeps it such a, one of the things that fuels it almost sometimes is isolation. And so when people don't feel alone, whether that's someone as a caregiver or someone with the actual mental illness, that makes a huge difference.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, totally. I think I totally agree.

Elaina: Yeah. So we had a really interesting, I don't think you saw it, it actually went out today. We had a really interesting panel at Mental Health and the Church Conference that just happened in Cleveland with a mom to someone who struggles with mental illness, specifically schizophrenia. And she was saying that when her son started to go to a church, unfortunately she was really worried that they would convince him to not take his medicine or that they would convince him to only take spiritual means of like you just pray, just read your Bible, just do this, this and this. And she was actually really, she's like, I love Jesus, I love the church, but I'm sorry to say I was worried that he was going to go to church where people, she said, who are, well-meaning, but ignorant would convince him to not use the means of grace that he is actually partaking in. What would you say to that? I thought that was a really good point.

Sergei Marchenko: I think it's a real concern, unfortunately, I think, yeah. So I've been able to push back on that in different circumstances and even in my own church from my experience and from my position of spiritual leadership and authority too. So I think when you're in it and when you have firsthand experience as a Christian of serving somebody and being with somebody who's really hurting and you learn things and you learn that you can't over-spiritualize it, you can't do, can't make everything spiritual, you just can't. On the other hand, you also can't under-spiritualize it. And I think I see churches kind of falling into both extremes, and I want to be in the middle. I want to be in the space where we're going to use all of the resources that God has provided for us to help, not knowing which of them is going to be more effective and more important. But being open to discover that this is my perspective on all this and coming out of my experience with Gillian is you try to attack it from multiple angles. So you do have people pray for you, you pray you fast, you have people fast for you. I mean, I think all those are appropriate means. You do go to scripture, you learn what God thinks about all these things and what resources he gives us spiritually. You also find a good psychiatrist, and I mean a good psychiatrist that's able to listen and able to, if you can get a Christian psychiatrist, which is not common, but if you have a mature Christian practicing psychiatry, it's great. I mean, it's really helpful therapy and there's multiple types of therapy, which one is going to help you with that. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, then you think about community and friendships and relationships. So all those things are real and they're helpful and one of them or two of them are going to be more helpful to somebody. So I know somebody who had a long struggle with depression, a decade, and the Lord solved that and delivered her through purely spiritual means.

It happened. So can the Lord do that? Sure, he could do that. And he does that. I know lots of other stories where the application of those spiritual means was actually harmful to the person. They were pushed away from things that God gave them that would actually really help them.

So I think we need to be careful and we do need to consider, and it's specific to specific people and specific struggles. What could be helpful here and not underestimate the role of prayer in scripture, but also not overestimate because we are whole beings. We have bodies and souls, and there's a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed. And the spiritual is above the physical, but the physical is not non-existent. And sometimes simple things like being more active and eating better and sleeping, going to bed on time can have tremendous effect. So why not use that? Is that not God's? It's still his.

Elaina: No, I think that's a really good point, and that's one of the things I'm thankful for as being the child of mom and someone who struggled with mental illness pretty severely, not always, but in seasons. And it helped me. I feel like I don't ever have a stigma now when the answer is medication or the answer is therapy or whatever it is, because I saw it work and I saw it fail. I saw different things work and not work. And I also felt like it was always a conversation in our house. I mean, not like we talked about all the time, but it was never unclear that, that is a valid means of grace from God. It was never a question. And even mom would say, well, if I had cancer, you would be against me getting the treatment I need? And she would make it pretty clear to me, no, of course not. God gives us all these kinds of things, science and medicine and like you're saying, community and exercise and spiritual methods, spiritual means prayer. And even in this panel that I referenced, this man talks about that Daniel Rosati talks, he has schizophrenia, and he says, I have a Bible verse for every feeling I have, but he's also on medication. There's not, like you said, you're attacking it from all angles and God aids you in lots of different ways. So I appreciate you saying that. And I think even though we know that it's helpful to hear it from people in the church because it can feel isolating and it can be really damaging to think I'm just not a good enough Christian.

Sergei Marchenko: And so part of it is being open to talking about it, not hiding that you're on medication or somebody's taking something for their anxiety or depression. I think it's important. And I think something that happened in our church here, and that's really a credit to Gillian, when she came in, when we came to this church, she came in open and some of it, she's written books about it and stuff, but also she is open about it.

Elaina: That's her personality.

Sergei Marchenko: And so I think that gave a lot of other people, I don't want to say permission, but an opportunity to not hide that and to maybe seek help that before they thought they were less spiritual than other people because they have to do that. And that it's corrected some of our counseling perspectives as a church too.

Elaina: And I don't ever want to overestimate the role of a pastor because it's dangerous to do that in my opinion, because you, you've seen that a million times, put pastors on too much of a pedestal, but it does affect the church and for the church to see, oh, my pastor, he is really theologically sound. He is a great pastor. He takes care of us, and his wife has depression and takes medication like real medication in real therapy. I think you're right. It gave people a sense of there was a respect almost for it. And because they could trust you on Sunday for what you're saying from the Bible, they kind of saw that in your life as well, they could trust how she is managing her depression. And it's not always that black and white, but I feel like it would be, it's really powerful.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, I, so yeah, that goes back to, I think like we talked to the disability episode is, I mean some of it is just community. We just need to be open with each other and we just need to be honest. And there some struggles that are, they're not going to get resolved and they're not going to go away, and you live with it. And so a church, a specific church community, they need to make their peace with it. And that suffering is part of life, the side of glory, and the Lord is in it and Jesus suffered. And so we suffer and have that be part of not just the theology you affirm, but you're lived in theology, how you see God, how you see the world, how you see each other. And I guess in a sense you're normalizing that. And so because if you don't, what happens is that people who suffer longer than they should, then they could be tolerated, they get excluded.

Elaina: That's the reality of mental illness usually. Not always, it's long-term. Usually it's something people struggle with a long time or born with or whatever. It's not an injury that heals often. And not that it can't, but it's not as easy as caring for someone with a broken leg. It's going to end. Anyone can be great six weeks! But how can you actually support someone for years, years of a struggle.

Sergei Marchenko: Sure, yeah. And it's hard. We also have some people that are part of our church, but they're not physically at any events because that's how bad it is for them and how do you serve them? And that's difficult. And sometimes you can do stuff. Sometimes you can go and serve them communion, for example, which could be very meaningful. And a lot of times they really can't handle that. And so I think there's a lot of ambiguity in this and how do you serve people well, so it helps to have some personal experience, but I don't know that I also can tell everybody how it's supposed to be either. I think it's dynamic and personal.

Elaina: Well, I think that shows your experience because if you could just give a solution, I wouldn't trust that you've actually experienced real mental illness in your life because that is not how it is. We all know that anyone that's really seen it up close or experienced it themselves knows that it's not a linear experience is dynamic, like you said.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah. There are some things out of that awareness, the awareness of struggle and pain. I think you can do certain things and some of that is almost going to be, you're going to be signaling almost like saying, we know we get it. I think it's, for example, just preaching. So you asked about that, using examples from that world, talking about therapy and talking about medication since we touched on that. Right? Or I tend to, when I preach, I tend to give lists of examples. So including various things like disability and mental illness into those that

Elaina: Yeah, not just like you're in debt or you have this issue, you fell the stairs, you include everything.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, I find myself mentioning chronic illness in particular, and that would include some of the mental illness struggles, but certainly it's broader than that. But even just including that in talking about it, not preaching on it specifically necessarily, but actually just bringing it into the conversation I think is helpful. Also, being sensitive to how things we do might affect different people. And I struggle with that. I mean, talking about joy for example, which is one of my favorite topics to preach about.

Elaina: Ironic. When your wife struggles with depression. Can I say that?

Sergei Marchenko: Sure, yeah. And that's exactly why it's difficult. How can you preach on joy and talk about God's promises of joy when you also have somebody in your house or somebody in your church that's really hurting and they don't feel joyful and they feel like they're faithful. It's not like they're not faithful to the Lord.

Elaina: Yeah.

Sergei Marchenko: It's tough. So you still want to, I don't think, we don't talk about joy, but I think you try to talk about it. And again, I don't know how successful I am with that, but you try to talk about it in a way that doesn't necessarily, doesn't put people down, belittle...

Elaina: Without shaming someone for not feeling joy,

Sergei Marchenko: Shaming, right?

Elaina: Because hard we know that you and me with our family, it's not something if you think on it long enough, you'll just feel that feelings aren't reliable in the same way that they should be. That's part of it.

Sergei Marchenko: But at the same time, I would say all Christians, whether somebody is dealing with disability or somebody's in debt or somebody's in family crisis or mental illness, whatever the situation is, all Christians need the same thing. We all need to hear from God. We need to hear about his grace. We need to hear about the hope in Jesus and what he is done for us, what he is going to do, the hope of restoration. All those things are, they're universal for all Christians. How you communicate it may be different, but I guess my encouragement to other pastors is don't not communicate that. I think talking about, for me personally, it's been really meaningful in the last several years, preaching on the New Heaven and the New Earth and the restoration and renewal. I think that's really important because then you are given a bigger picture to somebody who's suffering. And by the way, that's kind of what the Bible teaches, that we will only be truly healed when he returns. So that has to be part of our theology too, which means we have to be patient with suffering now and allow for things to take a long time before it gets better.

Elaina: But I think that's so encouraging because even if you're in the depths of suffering, you can confidently preach that joy is yours. It's a matter of time. It's not elusive, and it's not never going to happen. Obviously, you want it to happen now, you don't want people to suffer, but there's so much hope in that promise that, I mean, it's the gospel, but there's hope in that promise that it's actually yours already. It belongs to you. Even if you don't feel it in this life, it is yours to have. And God is preparing that for you. It's not an option. It's not optional. Or if you don't feel it, it doesn't mean you don't have it. I mean, it's really hard. I understand. It's hard to preach about, but it's encouraging to me too, I think.

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah. And suffering allows you to go deeper. It allows you to discover the depths of God's promises and depths of the gospel. And that's a huge benefit because we can't talk about suffering. We can't talk about joy on a surfacy level. You just can't. It's fake. It's not real. So if you have suffered or if you're with somebody who is suffering, it does allow you, it gives you credibility and it gives you a real experience of talking about God's promises on this deeper level. And that is incredibly meaningful for a lot of Christians to hear that, because I think many of us are tired of superficial things.

Elaina: Totally. I don't want to hear about how to be happy anymore. I just want to hear the Bible. If someone is actually struggling, that's not helpful. And it's not trustworthy to hear from a pastor. You want to hear real, real theology, real Bible where they're saying, I've experienced suffering, and I know that it doesn't mean...

Sergei Marchenko: Yeah, and you don't want the hero pastor. You don't want somebody that's I used to struggle with that I don't, or I've overcome, or I don't even struggle with that joyful all the time.

Elaina: Yeah, I don't care to hear from them.

Sergei Marchenko: No. Well, because it's not real. It's either that that person is just a superficial person, which that's not a good qualification for a pastor or they're lying. Right. They're pretending.

Elaina: I agree. And I, I mean, I was going to ask you, but I feel like you answered it. How has this experience that's ongoing and probably won't ever fully be gone, although there's good seasons and bad seasons with mom's depression, but how does that deepen your understanding of God? But I feel like you kind of answered it.

Sergei Marchenko: I mean, I would say specifically the doctrine of the incarnation is important here in this conversation. Yeah, the fact that Jesus came into our world and became like us and became a servant, that whole idea, when you start understanding even parts of that, your understanding of God changes because I think it's easier for a lot of us to see God as distant, to see God as so different from us. We can't relate to him. He can't relate to us. And the incarnation changes everything. And I mean, in our circles, in our evangelical churches, we are focused on the cross typically, but the cross doesn't make sense without the incarnation. And I think developing that doctrine more, and not just preaching on it, but allowing yourself to be shaped by it.

So our savior, and the reason God can save us is because he became like us, which by the way means an experience of all these things that we're experiencing. And I'm not trying to be cute, nor am I trying to diagnose Jesus. But when you think about his experience, when he was nailed to the cross, that is an experience of disability. He was disabled, so he was not able to move his body when the kind of anxiety that he experienced in the garden that was real anxiety, real anguish. So we have to go to those passages and see, and that's all part of the incarnation, that's all part of him becoming human so that he can experience these things. So it's not just functional; he had to become human so he would die. No, it's also the experience of humanity and limitation and suffering, and so in effects of sin and brokenness of the world. So yeah, when you're closer to that, I guess by circumstances, it does allow you to see God differently in some ways and be closer to him.

Elaina: Yeah. That's so encouraging. If someone's listening to this and they really are struggling, what would you say to them? And I think you stress community, but that's not a luxury everybody has, although we should, but that's not the reality, and especially with mental illness, it could be really isolating. So I think what would your general message be to them? How would you encourage them?

Sergei Marchenko: It's the same message for any sinner or sufferer, right? It's the gospel. You have to rest on God's promises that in Christ, there actually is healing, there is forgiveness, there is resurrection, there's renewal, and there's removal of all pain and removal of all guilt. That's what God promises to us in Jesus. And so the Sunday School answer is right. It is Jesus. I mean, that's the only comfort we can offer that's lasting and meaningful. Whether that person can receive it at the time or not, that's different. But the content of the gospel is the only comfort we have.

And so as much as we can focus on that and find ways to communicate that better and to do it in the context of all the other good things like community and all that, that's ultimately that's going to help us and change us. And so whatever we're struggling with, we run to Jesus and trust him. I mean, Christianity is simple in that way, right? It's actually just about Jesus. But it's profound in a sense of our experience of that. And you can experience that same truth, that same hope in lots of different circumstances. And mental illness is part of that that's not excluded from that.

Elaina: I agree. And I think it's the same as what you're saying with the doctrine of incarnation and how that relates to doctrines of communion with God as well. Because he was here, he actually experienced it. And so when we say things and you kind of said, it's not to be cute, but when we say you're not alone, you actually aren't. God is actually with you. He actually experienced what you've experienced, and he actually has real promises to offer you that are real and redeemable. You can actually say to God, you promised me joy. And he says, I give it to you either now to experience with your feelings, but definitely when you come to the New Heaven and the New Earth. And I think those things are really powerful to remember and can even be something like we were talking about, you write down or you remember, you remind yourself of when you don't have capacity to think through all the implications of the gospel, like you and I like to talk through. Not everyone has the mental capacity in that moment to do, but you can do it in a way that you're reminded of that. So I just think that's really encouraging and powerful.

Sergei Marchenko: Yep. I completely agree.

Elaina: Thank you for coming on. This was fun.

Sergei Marchenko: Thanks.

Elaina: Thanks for listening to Key Ministry the Podcast. As always, if you love the content that we put out, make sure and leave a review either on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or anywhere else you find your podcasts. If you have a specific topic that you're interested in hearing us talk about, please make sure and leave a comment on any of our social media websites or profiles, or feel free to email us at contact@keyministry.org. Thanks for listening!