Suffering Curriculum

Below are links and descriptions to the seminars that have built around Summit’s 9 step curriculum for how the gospel speaks to life struggles that are primarily rooted in the experience of suffering.

  • STEP 1. PREPARE yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually to face your suffering.
  • STEP 2. ACKNOWLEDGE the specific history and realness of my suffering.
  • STEP 3. UNDERSTAND the impact of my suffering.
  • STEP 4. LEARN MY SUFFERING STORY which I use to make sense of my experience.
  • STEP 5. MOURN the wrongness of what happened and receive God’s comfort.
  • STEP 6. LEARN MY GOSPEL STORY by which God gives meaning to my experience.
  • STEP 7. IDENTIFY GOALS that allow me to combat the impact of my suffering.
  • STEP 8. PERSEVERE in the new life and identity to which God has called me.
  • STEP 9. STEWARD all of my life for God’s glory.

Overcoming Depression-Anxiety: A Suffering Paradigm

This seminar contains three hours of presentation divided into a nine step model of facing depression-anxiety when the experience is primarily a form of suffering. This seminar is most effective when studies with a friend our small group. This seminar is meant to be tandem resource with the responsibility paradigm seminar.

Taking the Journey of Grief with Hope

This seminar contains three hours of presentation divided into a nine step model of facing the suffering of a major loss. This seminar is meant to help you process the death of a loved one, miscarriage, or losses not often associated with grief (health, job, stability, or a dream). This seminar is most effective when studies with a friend our small group.

True Betrayal: Overcoming the Betrayal of Your Spouse’s Sexual Sin

“True Betrayal” contains three hours of presentation divided into a nine step model of responding to the suffering created by a spouse’s sexual sin. Practical guidance is provided for this difficult and often isolating journey. This seminar is most effective when studies with a friend our small group.

Overcoming Codependency

This seminar contains three hours of presentation divided into a nine step model of overcoming codependency. Ask twelve counselors what codependency is and you’ll get at least thirteen different answers. Ask someone who feels trapped in a destructive relationship pattern (whether it’s with an addict, abuser, or manipulative friend) and they’ll tell you it’s real and they need help. That is what we want to provide in the “Overcoming Codependency” seminar: a context for understanding the broken rules we often try to play by in order to appease destructive relationships.  This seminar is most effective when studies with a friend our small group.

Post-Traumatic Stress

This seminar contains three hours of presentation divided into a nine step model for processing the experience of post-traumatic stress. Trauma is simply an experience that is larger than we are prepared to handle at the time that we go through it which interferes with emotions, cognitive clarity, and sense of time. Often the symptoms of post-traumatic stress leave the person feeling like they’re going “crazy”

  • Intrusive symptoms – nightmares, flashbacks, trigger responses

  • Constrictive symptoms – feeling numb, detached, and withdrawing

  • Hypervigilance – perpetually feeling like you have to be on guard

These experiences leave the individual feeling like their mind and emotions don’t work like they used to; like they are broken but are not sure what to do to “fix” the problem. In this seminar I speak to the person who has experienced trauma as well as their family and friends.