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Ministry leader
delivers answers for personal healing at North County seminar |
| By Bruce Curtis and Joel Anderson |
| CHRISTIAN TIMES |
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ATASCADERO — Dr. David Eckman works with people in pain, but he’s not a physician. Instead, Eckman spends his time helping single parents, struggling marriages and stressed-out relationships. “There’s plenty of need,” Eckman says, “because America is in a state of relational collapse that has created a tidal wave of stress within the family.” Eckman took that message to Christian families in Atascadero on May 19 as part of a two-day seminar designed to help parents deflect some of the personal problems wounding American families. To do that, the Western Seminary Hebrew and Spiritual Formation professor founded Kesed Seminars, and Eckman’s self-proclaimed goal is to restore relationships within families locked into self-destruct mode. The word Kesed is taken from the Hebrew and translates “loyal affection.” Berean Bible Fellowship sponsored both free three-hour seminars as it launched a new series of small group Bible studies that follow Eckman’s approach to personal and family healing. Eckman offered attendees some statistics to explain why he believes families are drowning in emotional, verbal and physical abuse these days: • The average American woman will be married more times than she has children. In fact, statistics indicate that she will have two marriages but only 1.2 children. • Over the period of a year, about one in three individuals (30% of the people) will see or experience harm within their own homes. Those same people walking on the streets of America only have an 18% chance of seeing an act of mayhem. • The National Victimization Survey from the Justice Department cited that 1/5 to 1/3 of all women are assaulted by an immediate family member. Further statistics indicate that only a 10% difference in the level of violence exists between the homes in the suburbs and the homes in the inner city. • One in four children are born to mothers who never finished high school; one in three are born to unmarried parents; one in four are born poor. • Over 50% of all children in the United States have two sets of parents due to divorce. Eckman claims that behind those figures are parents who feel guilty, worthless and spiritually orphaned—even Christians—mostly because hearts are in bondage. That bondage goes, he says, when hearts are set free from guilt and condemnation. That process takes place as Kesed seminar students learn more about God, and the Bible’s concepts for healthy communication and understanding self. That may not be as easy as it sounds, particularly for people who have struggled with guilt rooted in their own childhood. So Eckman’s approach is to connect people with their past. He steers around the shoals of pop psychology, emphasizing that such voyages of self-discovery aren’t simply for giving victims someone to blame, but rather to understand and then release their past bondages. “It’s also vital,” says Eckman, “to escape self-powered Christianity and its treadmill of guilt that deprives believers of the power to live for Christ and reach out to others.” For Christians who cannot get beyond their own sense of worthlessness and failure, Eckman sees his job as one of helping people go beyond the theology of salvation, to the joy of experiencing it. “Most Christians are aware that God is a God of unconditional love, unbelievable acceptance and inexhaustible compassion,” said Kimberly Grassi, another Kesed lecturer, “but very few Christians are living a joyful Christian life because their emotions are not connected to the truth about who God is.” Kesed’s Eckman puts on the seminars to kick off a program of in-church Bible studies designed to help people kick addictive behaviors and start personal emotional recovery. |
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