In Spiritual CPR, you argue that Christians often respond quickly to physical crises but overlook spiritual struggles, offering the WASH PIGS framework as a guide for recognizing when and how to intervene. Why was this an important book for you to write?

In medicine, we rely heavily on time tested protocols/ procedures  for different things and practicing them ahead of time.  For instance you don’t want to be looking at a textbook on how to do CPR when someone is having a heart attack. So on thinking about spiritual crises, it made sense to develop a frame work to help people work through spiritual crisis  they might encounter spiritually  ahead of time.

What do you think Christians most commonly misunderstand about responding to someone who is experiencing a spiritual crisis?

We need the church to be a safe place where people can work through a struggle. Yes, we hold them accountable, yet we help them though it.  Instead, sometimes, I think the church has a huge problem in that people with good intentions think they should be punishing others instead of helping them get to the other side.

I also think that some people are afraid of spiritual “cooties”; they think if they get too close to someone struggling, they might catch the sin.  Maybe people are afraid what other people might think if they associate with the person, or be afraid it might look like they are approving of whatever is going on. But, Jesus was called a “friend of sinners” and what people meant as an insult was true- Jesus offered them LIFE. Sometimes we are called to go into the messy places and that doesn’t fit well with American Christianity.

The book addresses highly sensitive subjects including pornography, abortion, sex outside marriage, LGBTQIA+ issues, estrangement, and chronic sin. What was the most difficult chapter for you to write, and why?

Idols was the most difficult chapter to write. Literally anything has the potential to be an idol, but what is a problem for one person may not be for another person.  Trying to capture that was a little hard.

On top of that, idols and/or chronic sins sometimes have causes or effects within the physical world, so there are sometimes physical manifestations of sin. And people make judgments because of it, without knowing the whole story.

What is one mistake you hope readers will avoid after reading Spiritual CPR?

I hope people do not remain apathetic. Instead, I would hope they would be madly in love with Christ and be willing to put their phone down or whatever is eating up all their time and focus on the people around them. I really think if they would focus on their fellow believers around them, then recovery ministries would really start and true revival and spiritual awakening would occur. I would hope they would just step out, have faith, and see what God Will do with them.

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