For Jason Gibson, lunch was becoming a problem — a potentially “6,000 calories” a day problem.
As a longtime professional Christian counselor, Gibson has become no stranger to getting a lot of lunch invitations. But he also has learned that pretty much every lunch appointment has the potential to turn into a counseling session — sometimes before the waiter even arrives at the table.
“I would sit down at lunch thinking we were going to hang out, when really we started unpacking some really heavy stuff at lunch,” he said. “So many lunches were being requested … I couldn’t pack that many in a day.”
Ministry in digital spaces
After COVID-19 hit in 2020, and everything seemed to be moving more and more into digital spaces, Gibson recognized the growing need to develop a way to leverage this new reality with helping families — families that were encountering more and more relational and mental health challenges.
And within the last couple of years, “Lunch with Jason” — a digital resource for families using social media (Facebook and Instagram) — was born. Even if you only have a minute for a little relational advice, Gibson noted, “Lunch with Jason” might be for you.
Several times each week, whether he is in his car or at home, Gibson will create a one-minute video on social media that focuses on some practical advice geared toward helping parents navigate daily relational roadblocks. Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, becoming emotionally drained, having issues communicating with your kids or dealing with other mental health issues, Gibson seeks to provide a little something for everybody.
And some of Gibson’s advice also can be found on Parent TV. Parent TV is an online, global platform, based out of Australia. It’s taking “little bite-size chunks of parent principles and giving it to people right where they are,” he noted. Gibson’s ministry also includes speaking at various events and occasionally on secular podcasts.
“If you’ve just got five minutes at lunch time to jump on one of these resource pages,” he noted, “then you can capture a little nugget of truth that can help you … while you’re eating a bite. And that keeps me from consuming 6,000 calories a day.”
And while Gibson’s work can take him anywhere, he enjoys the flexibility of his current schedule as a single dad of four kids and a member of First Baptist Church Hendersonville, Tennessee.
He previously led the Babb Center, a counseling ministry of FBC Hendersonville, for 13 years. During that time, he supervised more than 30 clinicians — marriage and family therapists, professional counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists. In a year’s time, he noted, the Babb Center handled more than 12,000 sessions a year.
Before that, he was a behavior consultant for schools, traveling all over the world, helping create plans and processes to set children and teens up for their best success. The work, he noted, was important but also emotionally draining.
“It’s really exhausting knowing that there is a list of 10 people that may commit suicide tonight,” he said, noting progress with his work could be difficult to measure at times.
Navigating the right side of disaster
Now with his new online opportunity, Gibson focuses on helping families navigate daily challenges with a more preventative method.
“I love it because I get to leverage the creative opportunities that I have, catching people on the front end more so than waiting until the wheels have fallen off,” he said. “I would always tell my team it’s easier to blow out a match than a forest fire.”
He noted, “I’m able to create resources and meet families right where they are all over the globe. And help them blow out matches instead of waiting until it’s too late.”
A key part for successful relationships, he said, is being be able to admit when you need help.
“There’s a lot of shame in asking questions,” he said. “Because everyone likes to pretend they know everything. It’s a fallacy. None of us do.”
Navigating brokenness
As a single dad who has dealt with the pain of divorce, Gibson knows this personally. He believes those trials have made him a stronger counselor.
“Would you rather follow someone with a limp or a swagger?” he asked. “I thought about it. For me personally, I would 100% follow someone that has a limp. That limp to me signifies victory one step at a time.”
He added, “God has opened up the doors for me to get in places that your typical pastor would never be able to get into,” he said. “As a single dad, you can’t get more dependent on God than me. … I’m just reminded that we live in a broken world so if you have brokenness in your life, you’re actually in the majority and not the minority.”
It’s through Scripture and God’s truth that people find real answers to the world’s problems, Gibson said.
“From a biblical standpoint, God is such a God of order that there’s even an order in disorder,” he noted. “If you even look at the way disorder is written, order is in it. If you believe God created everything, then you also believe God created the science that helps us understand ourselves.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Shawn Hendricks, content editor for The Baptist Paper.
