Hello and welcome to the Southwesterners Forum. We’re joined today by Cliff Lea, senior pastor of First Baptist Church Leesburg, in Leesburg, Florida, and Dr. Lily Park, Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling here at Southwestern. Today, Pastor Lea is going to share about how he applied some newfound classroom knowledge to his marriage, and it did not go as planned.
The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.
Cliff Lea 0:29
She’d had enough, and she looked at me and said, “I don’t care about your stupid books!”
Lilly Park 0:35
Hello, I’m Dr Park, and I teach in biblical counseling at Southwestern Seminary, and I’m here with Pastor Lea.
Cliff Lea 0:45
Hello, Pastor Cliff Lea, I’m a senior pastor of First Baptist Leesburg, and I’m a graduate of southwestern Seminary in 1996, so it’s good to be with you today. I was asked to give a little more elaboration on an article that I was asked to write for the for seminary, and I’ll kind of go into that. So I was asked to share an experience about a class that I remember today, that I’m applying to my life today. And so I entered into Southwestern Seminary in 1992. I kind of grew up at the seminary, though. My father was a professor there, the late Dr Tommy Lea, and we moved there. And I was an eight year old kid in 1978. So I grew up at the RAC, you know, playing racquetball and basketball. And so I love the school. Love it to this day. It means so much to me.
Cliff Lea 1:33
But so in 1992 I was a newlywed. I finished Hardin-Simmons University, and I enrolled. It was very, very expected move for me, feeling called to ministry. There was no other choice for seminary other than SWBTS. And so my new wife, Susie, we moved to–well, it’s sad, because Carroll Park is no longer. So the place where we learned our first year of marriage is no longer there. One of the great things about Susie, she had a real mutual call to ministry. She felt very led to be a pastor’s wife, but she was just so interested in what I was learning. And so when we would go walking a lot (she was a first year, second year teacher), and we would go on walks after, you know, she got home and I got home, we would just talk all during dinner. We didn’t have a TV, you know, our first year of marriage, and we were just talking all the time, walking and talking all the time. She was interested in the classes I had, you know, she loves the Bible and all that stuff. And one class I had, I think it was second semester, now, was with Dr Ray Clendenning, and it was a class on relationship counseling. You know, healthy relationships. I can’t remember the exact name of it, but I do remember there was a powerful book by Dr David Augsburger called Caring Enough to Confront. And I just I devoured that book. It was such light reading compared to, like, you know, the big theology books and the other textbooks. I’d never really studied that kind of subject before, and so I just, it was super practical. It talked a lot about the importance of relational conflict resolving, and if you care about somebody, you’re going to bring up the hard stuff.
Cliff Lea 3:27
So this was kind of perfect-ish for newlyweds, because Susie and I were, like, incurably in love with each other, and are to this day, by the grace of God, we were just the ultimate kind of floating around the campus newlyweds that were just head over heels for one another. But we also were immature, you know, we’re 22 years old, trying to figure out marriage and that kind of thing. So it was a mixture of, you know, the emotion of love and the kind of the knucklehead-ness of being a young person and not totally knowing how to express our feelings. We both were raised in homes where there wasn’t a ton of conflict, and so when we experienced disagreements, even though they didn’t get necessarily heated, it felt so unlike the euphoria we normally experience, and so we kind of didn’t know what to do with it.
Cliff Lea 4:27
So here I am reading this book, and it says that you don’t just kind of sweep stuff under the emotional rug of your house. And I started noticing that if I wasn’t careful, I hated conflict so much I was going to put up with a lumpy emotional rug, you know, and just kind of, ah, no big deal. We’ll just forget about that. And so I started reading this book, and it kind of convinced me that if I care about our relationship, I’d be willing to talk stuff through. So I began to just take it seriously. And the book had some guidelines. You know, it kind of gives the formula. I’m sure, Dr Park, you’ve given certain formulas for couples to use and utilize in their counseling and their relationship. And one of them was this, “when you…” and then list the offense, don’t put an insult, but list the specific offense I feel. And you’re supposed to give like a one word emotion, not, “I feel like you’re an idiot,” but, “I feel frustrated,” you know? And then, because you’re supposed to list a way forward, like, “Hey, when you are talking on the phone to your mom for an hour, when I get home, I feel frustrated, because I love you so much, and I want to talk about our day together.” That was an example of how you’re supposed to do it.
Cliff Lea 5:49
So anyway, dear Susie, I’m telling her about the books. Now what happened was I became like a bit of a “Caring Enough to Confront) Nazi, because I began to just kind of like, “Oops, babe, you just kind of broke the rules of the book I’ve been telling you about!” And she’s like, “Oh, sorry, you know what I’m supposed to do.” And to this day, we chuckle about it, and I can’t remember what the what offense she was committing, what awful relationship crime. I’m sure it was quite minor, but she said something. We were disagreeing about something, and I said, “Suze, that’s not how we’re supposed to talk, according to the book.” I don’t think I was necessarily stern, but I was definitive, and she looked at me, and she is the sweetest thing on two feet. I wish everybody could meet her. I’ve never met a more wonderful person. I’m quite biased, I know, but she had had enough. She’d had enough of this first-year seminary student that was all high and mighty on my knowledge of relationships. And she looked at me and says, “I don’t care about your stupid books!” That was literally she said. “You know, I haven’t read your stupid books. I don’t care about them!”
Cliff Lea 7:12
And so I’m kind of like, what do I say? It was so unusual for us to talk that way that it just lingered. And kind of like 15 to 20 seconds later, we both look at each other and start laughing. And it’s better, as everyone knows, if you’re laughing you want to mutually be laughing. You don’t want one to be laughing and the other not.
Cliff Lea 6:53
So what I guess the takeaway for me was that I needed to not be so into the principles of the book that I’m policing her, but also that there needs to be a natural way for us to mutually implement them. And so I apologized to her for that. I’m like, “Dear, you’re right. You’re right, doll. So let’s, you know, let’s figure out how we want to do this.” So the truth is, I tried to basically just focus on clarity and communication myself. And if she was going to break the rules, I wasn’t going to say anything. And in time, she began to kind of see the wisdom of the book without me having to remind her, “This is the book!” And when we got into pastoral ministry, which was really right away in a lot of ways, I was a college pastor for the first seven years of our marriage, and ministering to college students the whole time, and I’m doing a lot of premarital counseling. By the way, premarital counseling is so much better than post marital counseling. And so I began to practice those principles from that book with kids that I was talking to, and she would do the same.
Cliff Lea 8:52
And then I became a senior pastor in 1999 and have mostly been in that world ever since. And so our current church, I don’t do as much counseling, but I still like to prioritize premarital counseling. That’s kind of my thing. I’ll do a little bit of post marital. But Susie and I have had such a blissful 33-year marriage, and that book still helps me to this day. I take on probably half a dozen premarital counseling clients (you know, they’re not charged or anything), but clients a year and recently, just two weeks ago, I was working with a sweet young couple. They’re in their mid 20s. They’re just precious. They were in our singles group. They fell in love. And I have a little lesson on relational conflict. I don’t necessarily tell that story, but I do mention the principle of “when you, I feel, because,” that’s mentioned in the book.
Cliff Lea 9:45
So now, as I kind of land the airplane of my story, I would say that there’s a lot of classes that have helped me at Southwestern Seminary. I had my dad for a couple of classes. Those were great. I had the late Dr Curtis Vaughn for New Testament, as well. And I remember, I quote him still. I had the late Calvin Miller for church growth, evangelism and things like that. I love to quote him, as well. But I don’t think there’s a class that I use more regularly throughout the year than what I learned from that relationship counseling class. That was an unsuspecting class that it really it helped my marriage a great deal, because Susie and I learned to communicate better, but it’s also helped our ministry, because I’m able to share those principles with young couples. I got to do premarital counseling with three of my four married kids, and I go over that lesson, and I share that principle too. So you might say it’s impacting generations in many ways. So anyway, Dr Park, I wanted to share that with you and our Southwestern family who may be listening about how that’s helped me in my own life.
Lilly Park 10:55
I love it. Thank you. I can tell you’ve been in ministry a long time the way you’re talking about how post marriage counseling is more difficult than premarital. It’s not the same thing, right? They’re totally different. It’s more messy, right? But I like your story because it’s just a reminder that, you know, ministry is not about a list, it’s not a formula, right? That is, “If you follow steps, you’re gonna have happy marriage or happy pastoral ministry,” whatever it might be. I think your story is a good example. You need to know the the principles, the biblical truth. But how you practice it is not all neat, and it can be more messy than that.
Lilly Park 11:44
So I have a question with this book. Would you say this has been really helpful for you? I know you talked about using these principles with premarital counseling, but has, has that been really helpful? For example, as a pastor, do you think it’s made a significant difference in your ministry as a pastor?
Cliff Lea 12:11
Yeah, it has. I mean, I a few years ago, I taught a sermon series on the book of Proverbs. And Proverbs is hard to teach. You don’t teach it verse by verse, like you would, an epistle or a gospel. You can, I suppose, but it’s better. It’s so thematic, right? It’s better to say, what does proverbs teach on money, on pride, on this or the other? So I taught a lesson on conflict resolution. That’s a huge need. You know, in our culture, people don’t know how to solve basic conflicts, much less, we’re talking countries need to learn to solve massive conflicts. But so for that lesson, I picked out several verses […] and a lot of those verses I got from the teachings of that book, and I literally pulled that Caring Enough to Confront book off my shelf and thumb through it. I was probably out of seminary like 25 years or so at that point, and or maybe a little less than that. I guess I’m going to say this on record that as I’ve moved positions or moved offices through the years, I didn’t take all of my seminary textbooks with me. You start running out of space, and some of them are so big, and some of them like, I think, especially with the internet now, the internet wasn’t really a thing when I was in seminary. If I ever need to know something about Asherbanupal for my biblical backgrounds class, I can pretty much find that on Google. But that was definitely a book that I kept with me, so it was cool feeling, and I’ve pulled it off the shelf a few times for a few different lessons, but I remember that particularly. It helped me be more practical in a particular sermon series way after the fact.
Lilly Park 14:07
And I love that, because we’re talking about that constantly. I mean, you grew up on this campus, right? Your dad taught here. We’re not just about telling you, teaching you how to study the Bible in context, but what does it mean for life in ministry? And I think your story will be encouraging too many, because sometimes we think, “Oh, pastors, they never have marriage problems. They never listen.” I think it hurts maybe some of the younger pastors who are still trying to navigate ministry. So I think your story could be really encouraging to people that you will have conflict, but you know you need to work it out biblically and get a good book on solving conflict biblically.
Lilly Park 14:56
Well, I since you shared a story, I wanted to share how I had those unexpected connections to the academia, right? For me, I was a student a long time unexpectedly. I wasn’t planning to do all this schooling, and then now being on the other side of teaching for over 10 years, I guess God has a way of humbling me to practice when I’m teaching or when I’m studying. And one of the concepts we talk a lot about in our classes is the heart. And this goes with conflict too. I really appreciated the article by David Paulson, and he talks about the heart, and it’s pretty foundational, one of the first writings on the heart. And he talks about how, in the Bible, the heart is the core of who you are. And it talks about the heart, which includes your emotions, your thoughts, your desires, and it’s the deepest part of who you are. So when we’re struggling with different emotions in conflict, it helps to go back to, “what is it that I’m really wanting to make me happy here?” Whose opinion really matters, or what does success mean in ministry or this work, or whatever it might be. He gives like 30 questions, I think, to basically evaluate what we’re really wanting in that moment. And that’s been so helpful, even when I have disagreements with people or conflicts, to know, go through some of those questions so that I’m not just looking at “I just want this outcome,” or “I just would really like my desires to happen,” but it helps me to think about what is it that I want, and it’s not aligning with what God wants for me. And so that’s been really helpful in understanding the human heart better when I’m going through ministry in life.
Lilly Park 17:24
And specifically, I’ll give you an example. Over 10 years ago, I had one of my first experiences of burnout. So yes, we talked about depression, and yes, we talked about, “Be careful of over-extending yourself,” and all. And I was counseling. I was a student. I was serving, helping professors and all those things, helping out in church. And I I didn’t realize, but I was experiencing burnout, and I was just really tired, exhausted, and just things that I enjoy doing, even ministry was seeming like a burden, like I wasn’t enjoying it. And then I came across a description of the symptoms of burnout, and it was like, check, check, check. And moment of, How did I miss this? How did I miss not seeing this in my own life that I was experiencing? Because, you know, I’m a counseling student, right? And I counsel people, and we’re talking about these problems, but I wasn’t making that connection immediately, but when I did, it was so helpful that I was able to take a step back and reassess my commitments.
Lilly Park 18:53
And another thing it didn’t help was I was working through, you know, you don’t have to say yes to everything. Being a good servant, being a good student, being a good counselor, doesn’t mean saying yes to all the requests. So I quickly learned that–not that I didn’t know before, but I think it was, it was a lot going on at once–and so God used that to help me realize that I need to be more intentional and humble, that I can’t do anything that I’d like to do, and I can’t do everything that I could do, but I have, you know, 24 hours, just like everyone else, and I need to sleep, you know, I need to take care of my body too, and get rest and not feel guilty. So it’s a process, but it was so life-changing that I’ve been trying to practice. Today, many, many years later, of being realistic of what I can commit to, and not feeling guilty or bad about things I can’t, and I think with that, goes with not trying to please all the people that you want to please.
Lilly Park 20:21
So that was really, really impactful for me, even though I knew all that, and had it in my head and took classes and books and I was even helping people going through their struggles, but I I didn’t realize I was going through those struggles, but that’s where God unexpectedly used those readings on the heart and burnout. Burnout can be a form of depression if you’re not careful, and it really ministered to me so that I didn’t leave ministry, but I made changes to my schedule slowly. Took on less cases. Trying to be more intentional. But I wanted to share that story, because, just like yours, with conflict, I think Christians don’t talk about conflict as much. Because it seems, if you and I are mature Christians, we shouldn’t have conflict, right? And that’s not true. But I also wanted to share that example about burnout, because I think sometimes Christians need to realize that it’s okay to slow down for certain seasons of life, especially if you’re working and going to school full time, or if you have little kids at home, that’s another responsibility. So for those who are listening, I hope that encourages them to maybe slow down and reassess their priorities and commitments.
You can learn more about pastor Cliff Lea’s ministry in the upcoming fall 2025 issue of the Southwestern News Magazine, also available at equipthecalled.com. Thanks for joining us for the Southwesterners Forum, and we’ll see you next time.
