Let's Talk About Missionaries and Addiction with Ian Morgan Cron

Are you trying to hold it all together while quietly falling apart inside? Do you ever feel like you can’t afford to be honest about your struggles—especially as a missionary leader? 

In this powerful conversation with Ian Morgan Cron, author of The Fix, we dive into the hidden world of addiction among missionaries—and not just the obvious kinds. 

From people-pleasing and approval addiction to secret compulsions and burnout, Ian shares a compassionate, gospel-centered invitation to freedom, healing, and transformation. Whether you’re leading a ministry or simply trying to keep your head above water, this episode offers hope, truth, and practical steps toward becoming whole in Christ.

📌 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• What addiction looks like beyond substances—and why missionaries are especially vulnerable
• Why willpower and ministry pressure aren’t enough to overcome our internal struggles
• How the 12 Steps can lead to spiritual transformation (even if you don’t consider yourself an addict)
• What to do when you’re leading while secretly falling apart
• How grace—not grit—is the real path forward

💭 Questions to Ponder as You Listen:

• What am I turning to for comfort, control, or a sense of worth?
• Where do I feel unmanageable inside—even if everything looks fine on the outside?
• Have I been trying to fix myself, or have I given God full permission to transform me?
• What’s one ‘sneaky’ compulsion in my life that I’ve been excusing or hiding?
• Who are the safe people I can process this with—and what’s keeping me from reaching out?

Thanks for listening! Email us your questions at care@modernday.org

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Transcript

Speaker: Welcome to this episode of the Modern Day Missionaries Podcast. Today we're talking about addictions and we're talking about the big obvious addictions that I think we're all pretty aware of and we're talking about some of the sneaky, quieter ones that we might not even know that we struggle with.

We're talking with author Ian Morgan Cron, who's written a number of bestselling books. He's a renowned Enneagram expert, he's a priest, and loves Jesus with his whole heart. In his new book, "The Fix: The twelve steps and how they can be used to help us find freedom in Christ,” it's a powerful conversation and I really invite you, whether you feel like you struggle with an addiction or not, to listen to Ian's definition of an addiction and use it as a chance to search your heart and see if the Lord might be calling you into some change and transformation because he has got some amazing things for you on the other side. So with that, let's dive into today's episode with Ian Morgan Cron. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: Ian, Thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. We're so glad to have you.

Ian Morgan Cron: Thank, Stephanie. I'm glad to be here.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Well, we're gonna be talking today about addictions, about your book, "The Fix," and I just wanna jump right on in. Let's start personally. In "The Fix" you share about living with hidden brokenness. A lot of missionary leaders feel exactly that. They feel torn between this pressure to be strong, and I'm a missionary. I'm here to save the lost and this internal struggle they might have with addiction, compulsion, burnout. 

Have you ever had to lead while secretly falling apart on the inside? 

Ian Morgan Cron: Multiple times, several times, going back 40 years. Are you kidding? I don't know anyone who's been in ministry for any period of time that hasn't had seasons where they were leading while falling apart. That is not for a privileged subset of the population that is normal. And sometimes your best work is done in the midst of your own falling apart.

It just depends on how you think about what falling apart is. I think about Henry Nouwen, who wrote that his first really great book was called “The Wounded Healer,” and that's what people in ministry are; they're wounded healers, and you only get in trouble when you think you're just a healer.

You have to remember you're a wounded healer and actually it's your wounds that qualify you for the role you're in now. You have to handle those wounds well. You have to steward them well, because when they are properly stewarded, they actually are the best thing on your resume. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: And I'd love to just even dig into that a little bit more for missionaries who might be having those internal struggles, how do they know when they can keep leading and when it's time for them to do something about it? I mean, you share in "The Fix" how you just came to the end of yourself and had to do something about it, something dramatic. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Eventually what will happen. If you have, for example, an untreated chemical addiction or behavioral addiction like porn, overeating, or you have some kind of unhealthy attachment to another person that has addictive qualities, which happens you will eventually come to the end of yourself. And oftentimes this stuff will come out on its own, right? Like it'll become apparent to everybody around you that this is no longer working. Right? 

And, you know, if you're able to continue in your work, but you know that you are withering on the inside, then you have to take steps on your own too. Seek out the kind of help that you need because these problems we'll be talking about actually fester best in the dark. Like they have to be brought into the light and sunshine is the best medicine. And so to bring it into the light is really, really an important part of the healing process.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Would you mind sharing a little bit of your story? Because like you said, you've been in ministry and this has happened before. And for people who are listening, I don't know, there's kind of a little bit of relief in knowing like, hey, I'm not the only one. Like there is hope of this. 

Ian Morgan Cron: So I was first introduced to the Rooms of Recovery and the twelve steps decades ago when I was a young man and had a problem with drinking. And, I attended meetings for just a couple of years, you know, and had sort of a cursory familiarity with the twelve steps. Worked for a little bit. But my desire to drink was expelled and I just didn't touch anything for decades. Like I never touched a mood-altering substance for use for decades. And then in two0two0 I had a relapse that was surprising and went to treatment for thirty days and was able to work on the problems that were fueling that behavior.

And I live to tell you about it. And the book to be clear, is not a memoir. I've already written one of those. This is a book really about the twelve steps of recovery, which are this beautiful, gospel oriented, design for living. It would benefit people who are in recovery.

So people who already know, man, I have a problem and this is my program of recovery, this is how I stay sober. But let's just say you're someone listening and you're like, I'm not an addict. Oh my gosh, I'm not an alcoholic. I've never touched drugs. I'm not into it, I don't have any addictions. This is a great book for you because alcoholics and addicts can derive revolutionary benefits from working the twelve steps. Imagine what somebody who doesn't have an addiction, how they would benefit.  So it's a program of living for everybody. And that's the point of the book, right? If everyone worked the twelve steps, we'd have a better planet. And they are an evidence-based, time-tested program of living that outlines a way of living the gospel that would help everybody.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm not in any type of addiction right now and I got a ton out of the book. And you really point out that everybody's addicted to something in some way, these addictions, but there's underlying ones. Like I love when you talk about the story of the prodigal son and the older brother. They're both addicts. Can you unpack that a little bit? 

Ian Morgan Cron: Well, you know, it's the younger son, right? It's the one that seems most public and clear, right? This kid takes off and he sounds like an addict. He's narcissistic. He's a wasteful, he is somebody that doesn't care about his compulsive behaviors or impacting his family. But he has this moment where he changes his mind, or as it says in the text comes to his senses and he turns around and he goes home. Alright, that's a pretty obvious analogy. But you know, the oldest son is addicted to his self-righteousness. The oldest son is addicted to just a distorted way of thinking that he can't get himself out of that many people find themselves in and can't get their way out of. 

And so they both have these kinds of addictive qualities that are really just part of the human condition. I think that people think it's, oh, it's like some special subset of the population is really the addicts and alcoholics, poor, poor them. And I'm like, okay, well actually, a great Christian psychiatrist named Gerald May once wrote in a book called “Addiction and Grace.” To be human is to be addicted and to be addicted is to stand in need and grace of grace. And so really, like I could give you a list of addictions. I actually have one in the book that isn't anywhere near complete. 

But I mean, workaholism is an addiction; people pleasing, substance abuse, technology, pornography, approval seeking. How about control? The need to control other people and circumstances, relationship addictions, food addictions, weight and dieting, addictions shopping and spending addictions, gambling addictions, people who fix other people to avoid fixing their own problems. Addictions, the list goes on and on and on. And so these are behaviors that are compulsive, they're mood altering, and they have negative consequences. That's all you need to diagnose as a therapist. That's all you need to see in order to diagnose an addiction, compulsivity, mood alteration, and negative consequences. So that's everybody.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So given a definition of what addiction would be in a general sense. 

Ian Morgan Cron: That's kind of it, right? Like it's an unhealthy compulsive relationship with a person, a behavior, or a substance that has mood-altering effects and negative consequences. Now, let's just go a step further out. There's a great quote from GK Chesterton, and he writes, “Show me a man knocking on the door of a brothel, and I'll show you a man in search of God.”

Now, what's he saying there? What all addictions have in common is that they are really disordered, misguided searches for God, right? It's the search for soothing, for comfort, for being seen, for feeling safe. But of course it's a misguided, disordered love is what it is. And when you understand it that way, you begin to realize, oh yeah, that is everybody. Like we are all in relationships with things like that. In the early church, they would've called them attachments. Now we call them addictions. We all struggle with this, right? And the problem is, no matter how mild they are, they all diminish us.

Stephanie Gutierrez: They do. And I'm just thinking for all of our listeners right now, as you gave that definition and unpacked that, what is something in your life that fits that definition? 

And I'd love to even ask a little bit beyond that. Like, okay, let's connect this actually to the steps. You talk about the steps, and that first step is admitting we're powerless. I think about people in ministry, I think about people in general, who likes to say they're powerless? How do you get to that first step? 

Ian Morgan Cron: It's not that hard, really. If you're a Christian, just go read Romans seven and just start there, right? Why can't I do the things that I wanna do? Why can't I stop doing the things I don't wanna do? Why can't I? You know what I mean? It's like that's a guy who's talking about an addictive bottom, like if someone says to me, I don't have an addiction, I go, how about sin? How's that? How about the compulsive need to play God? All right, so people have a very narrow sort of naive definition of addiction. It's like you are addicted to all kinds of things that you can't stop doing.

Even if you want to have your own unaided willpower, you are powerless in the face of them. Right. If you don't believe that, I don't know how you could call yourself a Christian, and don't even know theologically how you can skip that step. Right?  And without saying, I am powerless in the face of my broken condition, and I need a power greater than myself to extricate me or to lift me out of this.

So step one is not like you just do the steps once, you do them over and over again. I have to remind myself every day, I'm not just powerless over alcohol or substances, I'm powerless over what my adult children choose to do. I mean, I can try to control them, but that's another addiction that's called codependency. Right? And so I laugh with friends all the time. I say, you know, you can't sneeze and not pee yourself. So how do you think you're so powerful and have so much control? You can't even control your bladder. I mean, seriously, like we need to get honest about the truth of our conditions.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah, but you know, I think so many Christians, we have this adverse admission of powerlessness, and we turn ourselves over to the Lord and accept salvation, but then we think we can do the rest. Like people fight against powerlessness. And you talked and said, I don't have the power to get over it. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah. So what you're talking about is very important. Many, many Christians particularly, in the Protestant evangelical expression, have good intentions, and on this score they're wrong. Much of what they do is actually a project of reformation. So reformation, meaning on my own unaided willpower, I will make myself more Christ-like. I'm going to make myself, by virtue of my own willpower, a good Christian, I call that taping fruit to trees. And you're just making yourself a moral experiment. I'm just gonna fix myself and when it works, I'll give Jesus the credit, but really it was me. Right? All right.

So that is a very limited possibility for success. What the gospel describes is that reformation is absolutely impossible. It's absolutely impossible to do this, and unnecessary actually, right? What we want is transformation, not reformation, and transformation is what happens when you give God consent to do for you what you cannot do for yourself, which is change. Now that's transformation. What reformation yields are older brothers from the prodigal son story. It yields people who are like, I'm working so dang hard for you and what do I get? No one's given money to my mission. What, are you kidding me? You know, it's like, well, what you're gonna get is resentment, frustration, disillusionment, disappointment, right? All kinds of stuff that may later on may lead to, oh, I need a substance to make that go away. So you just end up in a bit of a mess, right? Or you become self-righteous. Somebody who's like, look at how good I am; look at what I have done with myself, right? 

Grace, which is where transformation is found. When we just say to God, I can't, so if you look at the first three steps, here's how they would be read in short. Number one: I can't. Step two: He can. Step three: I think I'll let him. That's it. I don't know why we make the gospel so hard, and yet it's really quite simple.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That was one of my favorite parts of the book I have that was actually written down. Because it is so simple. And you referenced Romans seven earlier and that transition from Romans seven to Romans 8 is exactly those three things. Paul is just saying, Hey, I can't do this. I am powerless. I don't have what it takes. And then Romans 8 sweeps in and it's like, hey, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You are not controlled by your flesh but by the spirit. And so that's that transition. Here's somebody who can do it. Jesus did it for us. Are you letting him? 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yes. And so that's why I often tell people, like they'll say to me, I'm trying to be a good Christian. I go, ah, then you probably don't understand the gospel trying to be a good Christian. Hmm. That's not the gospel. The gospel is, you are beloved. Without trying, you can't earn it. That's an earner's mindset, which is an older son. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah. Okay. So talk a bit more about that, that balance between grace and effort. I don't even know if balance is the right word. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah, it's a mystery. It's a mystery at some level, so it's almost like trying to say, well, which one comes first. It's like looking at a pair of scissors and trying to figure out which of the blades is responsible for cutting the paper. It's like, I don't know. You know, it's kind of both and, I don't know. 

So the thing you can do, grace isn't opposed to effort, it's opposed to earning.  And that's really the big difference. It's not opposed to effort, it's opposed to earning. If you see your effort as an earning proposition, then it's a problem. If you see your effort as just cooperating with God's hope and desire for your life, then I think it's okay as long as it doesn't go haywire right? And become me competing against myself to become a better Christian. That's just a recipe for frustration and disillusionment. Ultimately you will burn out from trying to do that kind of work and you know, if you meet a Christian who's like, I'm just burned out. When Christianity, is like, well, then you're not doing it right. You're trying too hard. It really, really comes down to, again, I go back to this idea because it's a very important word in spiritual life. I think I should give God consent. That's the key. It's giving God your permission to do things inside of you that you can't do for yourself.

And that's to me, the key to transformation. And, by the way, that is a lifetime project to learn how to give God consent. That is not as simple as just saying it out loud to make that shift on the inside is fairly dramatic for, you know, step next people like us.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Oh yeah. Well, and letting go sounds like this incredibly passive thing. Like, oh, I'll just let God do it. You will never do this in your whole life. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah. And by the way, you know, if that's not the way you see it, I question your understanding of the gospel and your theology of grace. Like you know, in my understanding of all the relevant texts, you know, so much of the gospel could be reduced down to this kind of tired trope, but it's just let go. Let go. And when you let go, it's just amazing. You discover that love has you, and you're never gonna find that out until you let go.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So that letting go process as we talk about grace, as we talk about effort and action and looking at those twelve steps there really begins with some of those like mental and spiritual, a sense that letting go, that I am powerless. At what point in the twelve steps do you start to see it transition from letting go and an invitation to grace to moving in? To some of that action and effort where they begin to blend together. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah, so when you get through steps one through three are not action steps, right? They're more like an internal shift, right? Admit we're powerless over blank, that our lives have become unmanageable. Unmanageability could just be emotionally unmanageable. It could be just relationally unmanageable. It doesn't have to be losing a car or your job, or your reputation or whatever. Its unmanageability has a lot of different looks. Right?  I'm assuming Stephanie, that you've had moments in your life, maybe in the past week where you felt emotionally unmanageable.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Oh yeah. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yes. Okay, so unmanageability. Then, you know, then the next two steps are, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore insanity. Well, there's God, and we're saying to God, I think you can restore me to wholeness. Then there is a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

We'll talk about how we understood him later, but the point is that the first two steps are just interior shifts in the interior world, and the third step is an action, but it's not very demanding. It's just making a decision when you get to four and five, which are made of searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, then five is admitting to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. You start getting in there. Now we're gonna have to start putting pen to paper. Now we're gonna have to do some work. And the work in four through seven is looking inwardly and doing the work of inventorying that which is standing as an obstacle between us and a relationship with God that we desire. And also it is about what's standing between you and the relationship you have with yourself. 

So when you start to look inward, you're gonna find all kinds of historical resentments you've been holding onto. You're gonna find out about character defects and defenses that are not. That has always been sitting there, you just dunno what to do with them because there's just too many you know, and so you're just gonna go in there and you're gonna do it with a kind and compassionate gaze. You're just gonna go in and just look at all the stuff that's in there. And you're also gonna find, as part of that I'm inventory process, that there are parts of you that are incredibly beautiful that you've disowned that actually need to be reclaimed. So it's just doing the inner work. 

Eight and nine is made direct, it makes a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And nine is made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others now. So watch what's happening one to three. Mend and deepen my relationship with God four through seven. Mend and deepen my relationship with myself eight and nine, mend and deepen my relationship with others. It just sounds like the gospel to me. This is all about how do you love? God, yourself and your neighbor with your whole heart, soul. You know what I mean? Like it's just the gospel. And then ten through twelve is how do I develop a lifestyle that supports health and growth in each of those three domains of my life moving forward?

Rinse, lather, rinse, repeat. Start again. You know, like, just keep doing the steps and as you do the steps, your relationship with them changes over time. Very soon you'll find that the numbers fall away and you're just reflexively drawing on the wisdom of multiple at multiple times throughout the day. Things that you read about in the twelve steps, and you're like, oh, and they're just gospel principles. That's it.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Well, and they were written by a guy who was a Christian, so they are founded in faith. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Well, actually there was a group called the Oxford Group, and they were around the 1930s. They were a Christian organization based, I think, in Manhattan. And they had six steps. Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, was a part of the Oxford Group. He took the six steps and then broadened them out to twelve and he discovered that they had this amazing ability to help people who were deemed hopeless. And he himself, I don't think you could say that Bill was necessarily a Christian; he was sympathetic. Dr. Bob who was kind of the co-founder of it was very much so their roots are in the Christian tradition and there's not one of them that you could say is in opposition to the gospel. No way. They're all completely right. Right in alignment with it.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Oh, absolutely. I remember when I was in my master's program in counseling and they had us attend a group and you could pick any type of support group. And so I went to a codependency group and they went through the twelve steps and I mean, this was just, what, four or five years ago? I had never heard the steps before, really powerful being in a room of people who were all saying them out loud together, and it was just such a new experience, and that really ties into something I wanted to bring up too. These steps are not meant to be done alone. I mean, so for a missionary who's listening who thinks like, okay, so then I can just take these steps and I can work them, and then I can fix myself, and then everything's gonna be good. What would you say to that person? 

Ian Morgan Cron: Well first of all, if they're saying they're gonna fix themselves, then whoever they're ministering to is in trouble. So if we get sick alone and we get well together. That's just how it works. Right. We get sick alone, we get well together. You know, it's interesting when you watch beer commercials on television. Have you ever noticed that the beer commercial is always watching people in the community? They're playing beach ball. They're having a great time. They're at a bar, they're at a club. They're dancing, right? They're with other people. They never show you, the guy who's overweight sitting on his couch with two six packs watching football alone on a Saturday, polishing off eight beers. Do you know what I'm saying? They don't show you that guy. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: I never thought about that. 

Ian Morgan Cron: They don't want you to see the truth. Right. I'm not saying that those people don't exist in the community doing those things. What I am saying is that people tend to get sick by themselves. Right. And in secret often. Right. It's a secret of sorts. And so being in community is important because the opposite, according to Johann Hari, of addiction isn't sobriety, it's connection. So it's interesting, right? The steps are about reconnecting with God's self and others. It's about connection and you know, so it makes sense that the solution is connection with other people who are on a shared journey of healing.

And if you're in the mission field and you have access to the internet, you have access to meetings. So whether or not you're in OA for overeating or NA for drugs or alcohol, I mean, there are hundreds of different kinds of AA meetings, or twelve step meetings for different mental health challenges or addictions. Nobody could say, I don't have access to a meeting. If they have a computer. It doesn't matter where they are. So, you know, part of it is, are you willing to go there? Now, if you're not, I get it right? Maybe you're like, I don't really have a great, then get five friends, get the workbook with my book, and sit down and form a little group and go through the steps together. Have a little community. Make it for fourteen weeks, twelve weeks, whatever it is, and just do the steps and see what happens.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And this also could be something that could work for people who don't have a classical addiction. When I say classical, I mean like the big ones, like you were talking about the twelve step groups. But for people who are people-pleasing addicts or other kinds of addicts. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Listen, if someone's listening right now and they are absolutely dead set up against the idea that they have any addictions or attachments. Number one, you're gonna have to fight with thousands of years of Christian teaching, but let's just say you do that, okay? The steps would still be radical. Improve your life, were you to do them as instructed? If you, if you just did the steps, your life would be dramatically better. So even for the person who can't cope with an addiction, all right, fine. Still do the steps and tell me that it didn't actually really improve your life.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Just looking at steps one through three. I'm like, you know what? I could even stand to go through that again and remind myself of how unable I am to do anything of value without Jesus. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah, and again, these are these weird paradoxes. That's all over the gospel.  And for many people they are a stumbling block, but regardless, there are these paradoxes all over the text where it's like, yes, you are a sinner. But more precisely, and this is an important distinction because they're very, very different. When I hear people say I'm a sinner, I'm like okay. Not, not entirely true. You are a beloved sinner. You're a beloved sinner. That's different than just saying I'm a sinner. When you say I'm a beloved sinner, what it's saying is, yes, I am morally and spiritually, a mixed bag of good and not so good. But you are beloved. And if you don't get those two words together, you're gonna have a pretty twisted view of yourself and of God.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And I love that you bring up the paradox because it is a cliche saying too, but it's that whole, I'm imperfectly perfect, 

Ian Morgan Cron: Well, yeah. Or for example, this idea that you are both, you know, as a friend of mine likes to say, I'm broken and I'm beautiful. I'm a saint and I'm a sinner. It's like, you are a mixed bag. You are full of contradictions, right? We can't just say everything about me is bad. I don't think even my intuition can't buy it.

Stephanie Gutierrez: No. Well, and then we think about how that sinner weaves with our identity too. So for me I like to say without Christ, I'm a sinner. Before Christ, I was a sinner, but who am I now? I'm the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. But the second I forget and think that that has anything to do with me, then I jump back into, yeah, that former identity it is, we live with the tension of being completely and utterly redeemed by God. And in this flesh, this body of flesh, that still sins and we can't forget either one. 

Ian Morgan Cron: No. It's just, that's also really hard and I think God has compassion on it. Being human is super hard and God knows because God chose to become a human and knows how hard it can be. It's hard. You know, we just have to own the fact that it's hard.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Okay. Speaking of hard. I'm just thinking of you. What was that like for you being a person who is well known, who is in ministry, the shame that must have come with. Admitting that powerlessness, checking yourself in getting help. And again, I think this is helpful for our missionary listeners to hear because they live public lives. There are people watching them and supporting them and the thought is, I can't do this because what will happen if everyone knows? And you took that brave step. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah. Unfortunately they're locked in a toxic system.  I have a friend of mine, I write about in "The Fix" who's a pastor of a large church and he had a drinking problem. It happens. This is what humans do, okay? It's just what humans do. And then, his elders found out through an embarrassing moment in church. And rather than find him help, which is what I would think a church would do, they fired him, which I think is heinous. But nonetheless, there we go. 

I'm in a twelve step meeting with him at a different church in the basement of another church one day, and he says, you know, it's so ironic. He said, I have found more love, grace, kindness, support, and welcome in the basement of churches with a bunch of alcoholics than I ever found upstairs in the sanctuary. He said, I wish the people upstairs knew what was available to them in these rooms. 

The problem is we live in these systems that are very unhealthy in organizations and systems and where people are not allowed to be human to make, to have misadventures, which is crazy when you read about all the misadventures people go on in the Bible. I mean, it's just like this is what humans do. Why should any of us be surprised? I'm like, sometimes I very rarely, very rarely have I had anyone say to me something like, I'm so surprised what happened. You're such a well-known guy. You write books and you're a priest and you're this. People don't generally say, maybe they think that, I don't know. They can think whatever they want. I can't control that, but, but ultimately I'm like, are you reading the same book I'm reading? Like, what made you think that anyone is exempt from coming up with kooky strategies for making life more tolerable? I mean, you and I are not maybe talking about the same religion here, and so, you know, I can't be ashamed.

Of course, of course there was some embarrassment, shame, humiliation, blah, blah, blah. Well, this is the price of admission, right? Going to a new place that, you know, pain is God's way of announcing we're going to a new place. And, you know, we tend to be so moralistic. It's painful. What if you began to think of your struggle with an addictive behavior or with a substance or something? What if you began to understand it more like an invitation from God? To a new place of intimacy with him that you previously didn't know existed. What if you, what if you realized this addiction is a summons to a new relationship with myself, with God, and with others? That's gonna be really beautiful, but I gotta do the work, but it's gonna be beautiful. 

Right. But instead we get all morally and older brotherly and we sort of finger wagging and you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, listen, I've been the pastor of a church before and I would never do it again. I'll tell you now, never again. I know I serve as a volunteer priest at a parish in Nashville, but I don't go to staff meetings. I'm not involved in anything except show up on Sunday. How can I help? That's it. Now. That's the best job ever. And you know. One of the reasons I wouldn't go back is because of this crazy expectation on the part of communities that their pastors are superheroes. And you know what happens? You know what crowds do whenever someone falls from grace, the crowds think it's delicious in a strange way, and then they eat their own. And, and so that's why, you know, and I can recommend places to you that where people can get healing and help, specifically pastors, missionaries, people like that where they can go and get help from people that will not judge them. You know what I mean? 

Like, look, Stephanie, look, let me put it this way to you. You know, some people will say, oh, Bob's got a drinking problem. You've heard that, right? So I would the way I would reframe that when people say that, I go, okay, let's be a little more precise with our language. Bob doesn't have a drinking problem. Bob has a drinking solution. Drinking isn't the problem. Drinking is the solution to a problem. And it's a misguided solution, but, you know, human beings periodically do misguided stuff. So what has to happen is we need to obviously stop the behavior because it's dangerous and also because we can't work on the real problem until that stops, right? We then stop that. And then when you work on the real problem, what does it do? It eventually renders unnecessary. The need for an outside solution to this internal problem just makes it unnecessary. And then what do you get? Sobriety.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So well said. And so that's really the question. If they find themselves in any of these addictive behaviors, it's asking themselves, what am I trying to meet? What desire, what need am I meeting? 

Ian Morgan Cron: That's what the twelve steps actually uncover. So they all sound very simple on the surface, but when you start to work on them, you realize, oh, these are quite deep. Right. This is actually quite deep. Right. And it's a difficult and rewarding and also very joyful and sometimes hilarious journey.

As we would expect anything, you know, God's about laughter, so there's gonna be plenty of that. A lot of eye rolling and, but it does require in many instances, you know, some outside help to help us move through that process, whether that's a community and a sponsor or a therapist or somebody that can help help us go get under the hood and find out what's broken so that we stop using. You know, again, what I said earlier, right? External solutions to internal problems, that's like going to the hardware store to buy bread. You are going to be very disappointed every time you get to the register you're looking for, you're looking for something. Understandably, you're looking for something that can't actually deliver what you need it to.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And that's a big and a deep question, and it's not one I don't think we can really solve on our own.

Ian Morgan Cron: Well, and that's why the twelve steps are not a self-help program. That's what people think. Oh, it's a self-help program. No. If you could have helped yourself, wouldn't you have helped yourself already? I mean, it's not a self-help program. The twelve steps says this. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. We tried to carry this message to blank fellow sufferers and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Now, that is the purpose of the steps. The steps facilitate a spiritual awakening of sufficient force, that it expels the need for compulsive behaviors or relationships with substances or people that are unhealthy, right? And so now you've completely reordered your interior world by grace.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That's so powerful, Ian. It really is. And it's one of those things if people can get a hold of this and be willing to pay the price of admission, like you said what's awaiting for them on the other side. And I think that's a big piece of it. People can see that there's a huge cost to pay, but they can't envision what's on the other side. What am I really paying for? Is it worth it? Because the cost of this is so high, and so how can people stir themselves up to get that vision for what they want? 

Ian Morgan Cron: You know, the people I feel the sorriest for are people who aren't desperate enough to do anything. So when people are desperate, they're willing to go to any length to solve the problem. Right? In my program of recovery, we talk about the gift of desperation. People say that phrase all the time. It's like I was given the gift of desperation. It's like, people think I'm gonna go stay away from, it's like, you know what? A lot of people could use the gift of desperation. Because they kind of live lives of quiet desperation. It's this low level discontent, dissatisfaction, anxiety, depression low level, right?

It's big enough to be an irritant and SAP joy out of life, but not big enough that, you know, they're gonna go do the work. Right. Or they may have big amounts of desperation, but the systems they're in, like Christian organizations or churches do, won't give them the leeway to do it right. Or they've been trained up in a theology that says that's bad. Right? And that's a recipe for disaster. You know? I do. 

You know, and by the way, as I said to you before we hit record, I have a friend of mine who is thriving. Counseling practice and the number of missionaries that they do intensifies. So they're like week long or two week long intensives. So people come in from Ghana or from, you know, wherever, and they're on fire. Their lives are on fire. And it could be about porn, it could be about any number of things. It's not just addictions, but there's a lot of addictions that show up at his door and oodles of them. Missionaries, interesting enough, are not exempt from these things, you know? So and yet I feel bad for them because they are stuck inside of systems that don't give permission to people to fall apart. Because you will fall apart. The question is, when will you fall apart? When. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: That's a great way of saying it. Yeah. That is something I think in the mission world we need to take a better look at is how we are there for people and not just keep yanking them and pulling them from the field whenever we see their lives begin to fall apart. Because otherwise they will keep it a secret like we were talking about earlier, and things just fester in the darkness and so then they will implode or explode. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah, and heard a lot of other people, you know, not intentionally, but it's just damage. Now, there are instances where a person needs to go away for a week or two and be with a therapist and do intensive work to get themselves back on track, right? So I think that's important. Like sometimes you do have to step away from the day-to-day in order to do this work, or at least get started. And then you go home armed with new tools and also other ways to continue the process of growing and changing. But you don't have to necessarily do that.

You could just, you know, decide I'm gonna start this journey on my own, or I'm gonna get like, like one of the things I talk about in "The Fix" is get five people together and do these steps together. Don't do them in isolation. Do them with somebody else. Just go do them. And here's how.

Stephanie Gutierrez: And we'll post links to some of these different options. Obviously we'll be linking to all of your stuff, Ian, because I think that that is such an accessible way for people to step right into this. And we'll also post links to places where you can get away. I mean, I know I got away for a week. It wasn't because of an addiction I was in, but it was because of a bad place I was in.

I just was struggling with a lot of stuff from having lived ten years on the field and man, the punches that you take as a result of putting yourself in a type of a spiritual war zone and in a situation. And that week away I went to Onsite, which was incredible. It was life-changing for me. That sometimes that's what people need. There's another place called Alongside where they do three week intensives from a Christian perspective in Michigan and different options that people have. 

But like you said, it is getting to that place of desperation. Or for somebody who maybe is not at that place of desperation, get desperate before you need to get desperate and go, okay, I'm gonna do something. 

Ian Morgan Cron: Yeah, I know I always tell people I have an expression. I say, you know, you get to pull your chute at whatever altitude you choose, so you can pull it, you can pull it 10,000 feet or one foot. It's better to pull at 10,000 than at one foot or wait until you hit the ground. It's much better to pull first, that's the smart move.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah. Well, even for me, as I was reading through the book, it was such a great moment of self-examination going, okay, are there some things that are creeping in in my life that I need to weed out? Are there some things that could become some type of addiction? Like you said, maybe not an obvious one, but those sneaky little internal ones that we can hide that we don't. Always see. And so it's good. It's good, and it's like a good conversation to have with other people as well. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us today. This is about more in ministry and in missionary spaces, so thank you for having the conversation. 

Ian Morgan Cron: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yes, and we will post links to all the things that we talked about and we look forward to seeing all of you missionaries on our next episode.