Facing the Goliaths Together: Unity and Cross Cultural Networking

Camille McDaniel, LPC (00:01.58)
Welcome back to Christ in Private Practice. Today we are going to be talking about something that actually has been sitting on my heart for a long time. It’s been actually a couple of years, but I don’t think I really ever had a way that I wanted to communicate it or that I knew how to communicate what the real challenge was that was on my heart.

I just knew that there was this thing that has been weighing on my heart and I felt as though it was impacting the body of Christ but also wasn’t exactly sure how to bring this into communication or even if it needed to be brought up in communication at all. But after some time, I finally got some revelation this year about what was kind of happening, what I was feeling and how to

discuss it, so here we are. So we’re gonna be talking about it this episode and really that’s the heart of the name of the episode, know, so it’s like Goliath can be defeated but really you need support. Certain Goliaths only go down with support really and so looking at what’s going on

Today, we’re going to be talking a little bit about a way that we might be able to pull together in order to get through these wild times because we are definitely living in a season of significant change in the mental health field. I know you are seeing it. There are a lot of systems that are shifting. Technology is advancing and artificial intelligence is absolutely reshaping the way people are finding care.

or providing care to themselves. And so at the same time that all of this is happening, there are some very real cultural and racial fractures that are going on in the world, that are going on in the body of Christ. And these are fractures that they didn’t start, you know, in obviously private practice, they started in a lot of different spaces.

Camille McDaniel, LPC (02:24.28)
For some fractures, started centuries ago and other things may have started a lot sooner, but either way, they are showing up in the way that we do private practice as far as how we handle business, how we network, how we join together. And I wanna talk about that today. I wanna talk about unity. I wanna talk about collaboration and about why facing this moment together.

really matters more now than ever. The body of Christ is very diverse. I mean, that is how the Lord set up everything. Nothing he does is boring. We have different cultures, different backgrounds, different life experiences. The way we even express our faith is different and that is all wonderful.

but the diversity does not automatically equal unity. And I know that you know that because in a lot of ways we are not unified. And if we’re honest, many of us kind of network for our businesses and collaborate for our businesses in the same way. We kind of collaborate and network within familiar spaces. We refer within circles that

feel safe, we collaborate more naturally with people who share our cultural background or our communication style or our lived experiences. And often that creates, even if unintentional, exclusion. Now, I am very clear that there are many different types of pains, there are many different types of experiences that people within the body of Christ have had.

that are not talked about. They really aren’t. And they keep us in these silos or they keep us in these comfortable circles of people where we feel safe around certain people and we feel understood. that, we wanna be around places where we feel safe and understood. But in some ways that comfort over time leads quietly to more and

Camille McDaniel, LPC (04:46.502)
separation. And even in in separation, there’s not always a joining back. It’s not like separation for a time out to get our thoughts together to maybe get some wise counsel to discern like you know what the Lord is asking us to do. It’s kind of permanent separation.

And in scripture, when we take a look at scripture and how it talks, there’s a couple of things, you know, whether it’s the Lord talking about how there’s no more Jew and Gentile but that he has broken the walls down so that there’s peace, the way to in the book of Corinthians talking about the body of Christ is many parts but one body.

And like the eye can’t say, I have no need for the hand and the hand can’t say, well, really, I don’t feel safe around the foot. So I’m not going to really even pay attention to it. You know, I don’t need you. That’s really not how any of this works. But that is how we end up functioning. Again, not always because we just don’t care. Sometimes it has

you know, things that people experience, causes their hearts to become really hardened and hardened through pain, really, and they don’t trust and they don’t feel safe. But we have to kind of figure a way how to cross those walls, how to find the healing. And the healing comes through Christ. And Christ has already told us how we can come together with love.

with understanding, with hearing each other without offense or defensiveness, through forgiveness. Ooh, he talks about forgiveness. And so again, we want to really take a look at the fractures. And there are many, many reasons why someone might talk about this, but I’m going to keep it toward how it impacts our businesses, which is the way that we take our gifts and talents and use them.

Camille McDaniel, LPC (06:54.41)
in the world for the Lord’s children and some of these children are ones who commit to him and some of these children are ones who have not found him yet but his children nonetheless. Let me tell you why this is really important in talking about this for this episode because we have a changing landscape and and I know I said that in the opening but we cannot ignore it.

What is going on in the field? What is going on? Let’s talk about that because across the country, and I know that this podcast is heard in other countries, but guess what? are countries, across the nations, I should say, there is a lot of change that’s happening, a lot of unrest that’s happening, right? And how does that then impact mental health professionals?

Well, many mental health professionals have already talked about how they have noticed they’re not getting as many phone calls and their referral streams are changing and there is a shift in something and they can’t exactly figure out what the heck is going on. Well, this is not imagined. It’s actually not made up. There are large mental health organizations that are expanding their reach.

They are not even trying to worry about therapists anymore. They are collecting therapists, like some people collect rocks, marbles, trading cards. They are collecting therapists. They are going straight to the insurance company for partnerships to grow. They are wiping people out. They are massive marketing efforts that are targeting.

potential clients directly. I mean, they have money, they are on television, they’re on radio. I have even watched on YouTube certain individuals that I watch on YouTube and they on in the middle of one of their segments, they take a break to then do a commercial for a particular mental health company. And at the same time that all of that’s going on, technology is transforming how people search for help.

Camille McDaniel, LPC (09:19.636)
Search engines don’t even work the same way that they used to. Artificial intelligence is influencing recommendations and visibility is increasingly determined by systems rather than relationships. So you may have heard about terms like SEO, right?

search engine optimization. People have heard about SEO, you put, you know, make sure that your website has SEO, make sure that you have an ongoing SEO plan. But guess what? SEO is not even the only kid on the block anymore. Now we have A-E-O, now we have G-E-O. You can look those up because you don’t have to understand all of the mechanics behind all of that for the purpose of this podcast. But just know, it’s out there now.

And what matters is this, is that faithful and Christ-centered clinicians are wondering where they fit into this new landscape. And the uncertainty can also lead to concern or worry and feelings of isolation. And so that’s why we want to make sure that we are coming together because division makes us much more vulnerable.

This is where spiritual discernment becomes essential. We are on a changing playing field. I mean it is changing all the time, all the time and when you see this many changes, isolation is kind of kind of right around the corner. Now I know that many people check in with each other

in online spaces, in online groups, and they’ll ask like, hey, is anyone else seeing this or anyone else? But no one is really coming together as a united front to say this is how we are going to do it on a ground level. We know that on a very high level, there are companies that have millions to shell out in order to try and start sending clients their way, but we’re going to do something different.

Camille McDaniel, LPC (11:32.738)
so that we can continue to move forward in the way that we know we are supposed to using our gifts, our talents, our training. I kind of see those organizations as Goliaths and they are not defeated in isolation, not by just one individual for sure. They have to be faced by people who are coming together, who are working together on a unified front.

Yes, David did defeat Goliath, but not just because he had just his very own plan and he was his own person in his own silo doing his own thing. He defeated Goliath because he was obedient, he was discerning, and he was from a covenant people, right? And so for us as Christian counselors, we want to come out of being siloed by culture, siloed by race.

siloed by all these unspoken divisions that are not being healed because we then in our silos become weaker as a body. Unity is a phenomenal marketing strategy. I mean it’s it’s spiritual and it’s business. It all comes together. Division and isolation

fast ways for us to break down, fast ways for us to get swept away in every new thing that is popping up in the in the mental health spaces. Let’s come back to when I was talking about the scriptures and looking at like more of what the Lord says. When I was talking about the peace that broke down, the hostility between Jews and Gentiles, you can find that

the book of Ephesians chapter 2 and talking about how look at how there was this this ushering in a thin piece. There was no more just separate and that’s not saying that we don’t appreciate our unique history, no that’s not saying that at all. It’s saying that we don’t need to stay in silos where we then find ourselves at odds with each other.

Camille McDaniel, LPC (13:54.072)
where there is like this wall of hostility. So when you read in Ephesians chapter two, you’ll see like what the Lord came and broke down was the wall of hostility. And we don’t always talk about the hostilities and the pains that we have. We don’t always do it, we just go ahead and silo ourselves. And we don’t want to do that. And this is not about picking and this is not about not acknowledging

real pain that causes real distrust and real discomfort. Our clients are showing it all the time. We’re human too, just like them. Don’t we have it? Of course we do. But we can take a look at it the way our clients are having to look at it in their counseling sessions for those who are coming for those things, right? And we can look as a body, how do we get back to being a unified body? I don’t know that we were always

totally unified but I would say that we have way more division now, wouldn’t you? We are called to be unified, we are. When the Bible talks about heaven or talks about things, it’s not saying that there’s one heaven over here for these people, one over heaven over here for these people, it’s going to be a section over there for those people, he talks about all people.

He talks about all of the different tribes and all the different languages and all the different people coming together. So I want to challenge you. I want to offer you a challenge. I hope you take this challenge. I think that this could be good for all of us. I’ll even take the challenge. Because I believe I can always add, I can always grow in this way that definitely when I take an assessment, there’s more that I can add. There’s more connection, there’s more reaching out.

Here’s the challenge. Okay, and this will be something that can be done over the next 30 days, okay? So what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna take a moment first, this is the first step, is that you’re going to identify your comfort circle. So take a moment and reflect on your professional world. Like who do you naturally refer to?

Camille McDaniel, LPC (16:10.584)
who do you collaborate with and who like shows up the most in your professional spaces, whether you’re in online spaces or you happen to be in physical spaces, what do you notice the most? And so many of us will just notice certain patterns. It’ll be like maybe similar backgrounds or similar cultures or similar life experiences, okay? So you’re gonna just use that as information. This is just gonna be your starting bit of information. And then the next step is

going to be to choose one intentional cross-cultural connection over the next 30 days. So choose one professional relationship to build outside of your usual circle. It’s going to, this is gonna push you a little bit, right? It’s about building genuine connection, genuine humility. We are going to then go a little further.

We got step three, all right? We’re going to practice curiosity. Again, because this is not going to be something that we take lightly. Like we literally want to be able to build more unified connections in the body. And so when you reach out, you want to reach out just with like, what can I learn about how you work? What can I learn about how you integrate Christ into your work?

You want to ask some questions and just listen more than you speak. And maybe they’ll ask you questions and then you’ll speak, right? But we want to honor each other’s experiences in our different paths and our different ways of doing anything or doing things without feeling, again, if we could just genuinely connect without putting on this mask of super hyper professionalism where we don’t kind of allow any of our personality to peek through.

That would be wonderful, okay? That would be wonderful. anyway, it doesn’t require like for us to be unified. We don’t have to necessarily have any kind of formal partnership, but it could kind of just look like starting to build trust in more referrals and talking more so that we can build that trust. It might look like praying for one another. Maybe we determine that.

Camille McDaniel, LPC (18:33.346)
This individual maybe isn’t the best referral source because maybe you just would not have any need to refer to this person because you don’t really even see a population that might need what they offer, but maybe we’re even praying for one another. Maybe we are going to just learn how to better serve our clients from some information that this person has, even though it’s not the specialization that we offer in our practice.

Maybe sometimes there are things that pop up in our clients lives and in that moment we’re like, I need more information on this. So-and-so has information on this, let me connect with them. So it can be something, something small, all right? And here’s the thing that I want you to do. I want for you to pray about this, okay? Pray about it. If you find that you’re like, I don’t want to do this, I don’t have time for this.

I want you to pray about it. What is challenging you about this? Even if it’s time, could you pray that the Lord will make time for you to do this? You know, do you feel any resistance about this? Is the Holy Spirit working on you in this area? I mean, look, we can be real with each other. We can be honest. We’re not perfect people. We come with lived experiences that have impacted us in a variety of ways. But

We can absolutely take steps when we recognize that there is something there that’s holding us back, that’s holding us back from unifying with our brothers and sisters in Christ, that’s holding us back from even outside of that, like reaching out beyond individuals who may offer Christian counseling, because there might be clients that you serve that do not have that faith base.

And so therefore you need to reach out to somebody who may not have that faith base because that’s what your client is asking for. Do you reach out to those individuals or do you only stay comfortable in just a Christian circle? Like how are we spreading and being a light? So I want this to sit with you and I want for you to think deeply about it and I want the Holy Spirit, I want you to go into prayer and I want for you to take action. if that’s where you’re

Camille McDaniel, LPC (20:51.892)
were led in whatever ways you were led. I, again like I said, I’m gonna do it. I believe I do reach out but I can always reach out more, I could. Sometimes I do feel like there’s time constraints but an email honestly doesn’t take that that much time, it doesn’t really. I’m in online spaces and so I could easily connect with somebody. I have done that before when I didn’t understand

and we were supposed to be both believers in Christ and they made a statement I didn’t really understand and then I made a statement and I felt like uh-oh friction, friction and I wrote, I wrote in the online comment section, I was like uh-oh I did not intend to offend, I don’t think I understand where you’re coming from because the enemy would love friction. The enemy thrives off of being fragmented and fractures and pain and anger and resentments

yeah, that’s a part of the whole MO, right? Steal, kill, and destroy. Destroy relationships. Destroy trust. Destroy healing. yeah, no. No, we’re not doing that, right? So I reached out to this person. It was on Facebook, and so I sent them a voice message. I don’t know, first of all, I talk faster than I type. And secondly, sometimes when you can hear the intention behind somebody’s…

message, it can help. And I learned something. We actually had quite a few things that we were seeing the same way and we had different ways of explaining it. It was way more things that we were seeing eye eye on. I was like glad that I just reached out real quick. Also glad that the person responded to me. So that’s how you move forward in peace instead of hostility. Well, we’re at the end.

of our episode for today and if you were able to get something out of it, I’m sure someone else can get something out of it, pass this podcast episode along to others who can benefit from it and others who need to take this challenge. And then I would love for you to be able to let me know how the challenge goes, whether you write it in the email address, hello at christenprivapractice.com

Camille McDaniel, LPC (23:18.432)
or whether you put it into the Facebook group or maybe you happen to decide that you’re going to come back and put it under the video. Either way, it’s just kind of cool to find out what happens and hold each other accountable to doing the work. Until we meet again for another episode, God bless.