Books

In a time that rewards personality and platform over integrity and character, author Chuck DeGroat invites us to return to the humble work of deep, lasting transformation.

We have more insights and resources for emotional and spiritual health than ever before, yet it takes one look at the headlines―and even our own lives―to see that true depth of character is still lacking. From the broken trust in the highest political, corporate, and ecclesial offices in the land to the broken places in our own hearts, we’re facing a profound unveiling. How can we ever really know who to count on? How do we make sense of it all? And in a day of quick comebacks and empty apologies, how does slow and lasting change take place?

It won’t be easy, but it will be sacred. Combining rich cultural analysis with pastoral and psychological wisdom, therapist and professor Chuck DeGroat invites us beyond techniques and tactics to offer a revolutionary, hopeful new guide for building the internal and external architecture for deep and sustaining character change.

In Who You’re Becoming, we’ll:

• gently confront the ways we’ve traded character for charisma, formation for information, communion for control, discipleship for display

• think clearly and carefully about how Christlike character grows and matures―in our personal lives, parenting, church and spiritual formation processes, even educational spaces

• explore new discoveries in psychology and neurobiology that reveal how character breaks down―and how it can be rebuilt

• engage ancient and contemporary processes and practices that cultivate strong friendships, grounded leaders, connected marriages, healthy systems, anchored identity, and creative work

The temptation to posture is strong, but the invitation of Christ is deeper still. It’s an invitation not to perform, but to become ourselves: rooted, ripened, and resilient in a fractured and fragmented world.

“Chuck DeGroat is a soul cardiologist—a wise, kind, and brilliant reader of the human heart. He surgically engages one of the key issues of our era: character. Many have eschewed character for power, notoriety, and disparagement of those who differ from us. This compelling, beautifully written book calls us to become who we, at our best, long to be. Chuck not only helps us envision the glory of good character, but he also provides clarity about the practices, conversations, and reflection needed to become a presence that manifests the face of God. You are about to embark on a journey that will restore your heart.”

Dan B. Allender, PhD
Professor of Counseling Psychology and Founding President, The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology

“Chuck DeGroat’s latest book, Who You’re Becoming, is a powerful and much-needed invitation to the slow, sacred work of becoming a whole person. In a world that rewards image over integrity and platform over character, this message could not be more timely. What makes this book especially compelling is that Chuck doesn’t just write about this kind of inner formation—he embodies it. Chuck is a person of deep integrity, humility, and courageous self-awareness, and that is exactly why his is a voice we can trust—and why this is a book every single one of us needs to read.”

Alison Cook, PhD
Author of The Secure Soul and Host of The Best of You Podcast

“We’re in crisis. Abandoning our ancient commitment to character—to integrity of soul—we are being ravaged from the inside. These pages, from such a wise, heart-full guide, offer truths to heed if we want to be whole. Chuck is a beloved professor and therapist—but more, he’s a friend committed to loving well and telling the truth. And God knows, we sure need the truth right now. This is a book for our disintegrating time.”

Winn Collier
Director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination and Author of Love Big, Be Well and A Burning in My Bones: The Biography of Eugene H. Peterson

“Chuck has written a book that should immediately be required reading for all of us, whether we are in formal leadership or not. While character should be our shared concern, we are constantly being tempted to focus on presentation instead. He therefore asks us fair but too-often-ignored questions, helps us distinguish between personality and character, provides ample wisdom, and consistently points us toward healthy formation that pushes against fragmentation and toward wholeness. Please read it slowly and with the courage it requires, so that you might experience the hope it promises.”

Kelly M. Kapic
Author of You’re Only Human and The Christian Life

“At our best and truest, we are pilgrims, called into lifelong journeys that are ‘cultivated through faith, strengthened through hope, and embodied through love.’ In his deeply imagined new book, it is clear that Chuck DeGroat is a true doctor of the soul, paying attention to what matters most in our desire for a coherence born of the reordering of our loves and longings. Drawing us into a prayerful examination of ourselves—always honest and yet hopeful—we are invited, with his poetic blessing, to ponder more carefully and live more faithfully. Threaded through with the wisdom of church history and the insights of contemporary science, each addressing in different ways our disposition toward fragmentation and our yearning for integration, Who You’re Becoming should find its way into conversations and classrooms the world over—with sons of Adam and daughters of Eve who are becoming more whole people and, therefore, more holy people.”

Steven Garber
Author of Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate and Senior Fellow for Vocation and the Common Good, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust

“In the midst of our unmoored, image-obsessed culture, Dr. Chuck DeGroat offers us the grounding wisdom we so often forget: God is with us as we become ourselves. With kindness and deft insight, DeGroat leads us through the practical, courageous, and often slow work required to cultivate maturity and true character. In so doing, Who You’re Becoming serves as a powerful and needed guide for anyone wanting to go beyond a try-hard faith or mere surface-level change, so they can deepen into their truest, beloved selves.”

Aundi Kolber, MA, LPC
Therapist and Author of Try Softer and Strong Like Water

“At a time when therapeutic language has become social currency and character formation has become a product rather than a practice, Chuck DeGroat calls us back to the slow, unglamorous, embodied work of actually becoming someone. Drawing on neuroscience, ancient Christian wisdom, and a keen eye for the performance culture of our time, this book refuses every shortcut and offers something rarer than technique: a genuinely integrated vision of what human transformation looks like. What distinguishes this book is that it was written by someone whose life bears witness to everything in it.”

Elizabeth Pennock, PhD, LPC
Program Director, Western Theological Seminary Clinical Counseling Program

“Character is not curated. It is cultivated. The gift Chuck gives us in this book is the wisdom of a quarter century as a therapist, pastor, and professor. Who You’re Becoming refuses performative authenticity and the fauxnerability that too often passes for Christian maturity. In their place, Chuck offers the slow ripening of the soul—moving from survival to connection, from disorder to devotion, and from charisma to character. Drawing on Scripture and the wisdom of the Christian tradition, he answers the crisis of character in our narcissistic age with the patient kindness of God. I need this book. So does every leader weary of the masks.”

Justin S. Holcomb
Episcopal Bishop, Seminary Professor, and Author of Rid of My Disgrace

“Rarely do I refer to a book as a ‘must-read.’ But rarely do I come across a book as incisive and inspiring as this one. It is indeed a must-read for anyone taking up the mantle of ministry and leadership. With timeless truths spoken directly to our particular age, Chuck has given us a great gift in this remarkable and healing book.”

Amanda Held Opelt
Author of Holy Unhappiness

“In this beautiful invitation to courageous wholeheartedness, Who You’re Becoming is a gentle and grounded companion on the journey of change. Weaving together a pastoral heart, therapeutic insight, and anchored hope, Chuck lights the way for a compelling and compassionate exploration of who we long to be and how we long to live.”

Laura Thien, MSW, LISW-CP
Therapist and Executive Director of GRACE

“In Who You’re Becoming, Chuck DeGroat reclaims the lost territory of character formation and shows us a fresh path through an understanding of our nervous-system responses. Chuck invites us on an exploratory journey, linking our character to our unhealthy patterns of self-protection and disconnection. And, of course, Chuck invites us into the slow, courageous, and essential work of integration, so that the deepest parts of our souls can relax into the love of God. Chuck’s writings have been essential reading in my life for almost a decade. This book is now at the top of my recommendation list.”

Steve Cuss
Author of Managing Leadership Anxiety

“Chuck DeGroat has written a wise and searching book for a moment when too many leaders have been formed for visibility but not for trustworthiness. Who You’re Becoming offers a penetrating, deeply humane, and spiritually serious vision of character formation that joins theology, psychology, and the slow work of grace in ways that many leaders badly need. I will recommend this book to my clients with enthusiasm and deep appreciation.”

Tod Bolsinger
AE Sloan Leadership and Author of Canoeing the Mountains and The Practicing Change Series

“We are living in a moment of profound and painful unveiling, and this labor of love is a gift for such a time as this. With hard-won, embodied wisdom, Chuck locates the truths of modern psychology within the ancient systems of spiritual formation, calling us beyond the performative and into the deep waters where true character is slowly, courageously, and intentionally forged.

“This is a book that holds a mirror to our current age and invites us into the long journey from fragmentation to wholeness, and from nervous-system reactivity to being rooted and grounded in love. Chuck generously weaves together insights, stories, resources, reflection questions, and practices to help us locate ourselves within these pages, drawing us toward the wholeness and belonging for which we are made—and which we will need in order to resist the perils of this day. He invites us to know more deeply the God of love who is tending to the restoration of all things. ‘Thank you’ feels wildly insufficient.”

Rachael Clinton Chen
Trauma Practitioner and Pastoral Leader with The Allender Center at The Seattle School

“Many approaches to cultivating Christian character remain curiously disembodied, overlooking how our nervous systems and hidden patterns can quietly subvert our best intentions. In this illuminating work, Chuck DeGroat brings these often-ignored dimensions into the light, drawing on decades of experience as a counselor and the wisdom of a seasoned pastoral theologian. In an age marked by restless striving and spiritual adolescence, this book offers a surprising and beautiful recovery of a slower, truer path—one that leads us to become ‘rooted and grounded in love’ (Eph. 3:17). A gem of a book—one to savor and revisit.”

J Todd Billings
Gordon H. Girod Research Professor of Reformed Theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

Hearts & Minds Books

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We can’t always control what happens to us. But we can discover how to heal the hidden hurt it leaves behind.

If you’re like many of us, you carry a weight of buried pain. Despite looking put together on the outside, you feel secretly fractured within. While you appear strong and resilient on the outside, inside a storm brews of all the ways you’ve been hurt or harmed. There’s a constant churn of unprocessed feelings of shame, anger, grief, or loneliness. And your body tells the story of its struggles in a myriad of aches and ailments. Little by little, you find yourself becoming disconnected from who you truly are. Not knowing what to do with your suffering and fearing you'll be hurt again, you’ve learned to cope, to numb and suppress the ache within.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Healing What’s Within, therapist and professor Chuck DeGroat invites you on a compassionate journey inward to return and retune to the life God created you to live. Along the way, you will discover how to:

-Gently consider and confront what’s keeping you stuck and blocking the path to joy and flourishing

-Better understand the relationship between your body and your emotions

-Experience God as a compassionate witness to your trauma―and his unconditional kindness to wherever you find yourself

-Discover real rest and renewal as you reconnect with God, others, and yourself.

It’s never too late to start healing. God’s heart is always ready to help you find your way Home.

Read the Englewood Review of Books kind review

Curt Thompson, psychiatrist and author of The Deepest Place

To gaze at ourselves, in all of our grief and carnage, is to gaze at a humanity that is terrified of being receptive to love—despite all of our clamoring to the contrary. For indeed, we are first too horrified to be in the presence of ourselves, and fear love's rejection of us once it finds us. Thanks be to God, for those who are courageous and vulnerable enough to risk becoming acquainted with themselves in order to become themselves. In Healing What's Within we have the book, and in Chuck DeGroat we have the guide of wisdom and humility who reminds us again for the first time that God's relentlessly, infinitely kind pursuit of us begins with who we are inside, and ends in the beauty and goodness of his kingdom that is surely coming.

Dr. Dan Allender, therapist, author, and founder of Seattle School of Psychology and Theology

Chuck DeGroat is a master chef/therapist who has set a table of such rich, wise, and nourishing truths that your life will never be the same once you taste this banquet. Healing What’s Within invites you to address the paths and voices that have taken you away from your true home and reorients you to what is the delectable delight you were meant to know as shalom. There is immense honesty, clarity, humility, and humor that will bring your heart a sweetness that will linger and help you live joyfully.

Tara Owens, author and founder and spiritual director at Anam Cara

I consider Healing What's Within to be akin to one of the cherubim God places to keep or tend (the word is shamar in Biblical Hebrew) the way to the Tree of Life. God's messengers come in many shapes, forms, and sizes and I believe Chuck DeGroat is one of them. Here, his words wave a bright sword of truth, not swung menacingly to kee out but joyously to welcome in, calling with the tender voice of Jesus, "Here! Here is the way home!"

Dan White, Co-founder of Kineo and author of Love Over Fear

What happens to our soul when we are hurt? Such a simple question but with profound implications. There are few others I trust with this atomic question than Chuck DeGroat. With exceptional tenderness, breathtaking human stories, theological depth, and therapeutic insight comes Healing What's Within. Really, this manifesto of healing is like finding that wise sage you've been desperate to have a conversation with. There's a breakthrough in every chapter. For those looking for answers, let the healing begin!

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We’ve seen the news stories and heard the rumors. Maybe we ourselves have been hurt by a narcissistic church leader. It’s easy to throw the term around and diagnose others from afar. But what is narcissism, really? And how does it infiltrate the church?

Chuck DeGroat has been counseling pastors with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as those wounded by narcissistic leaders and systems, for over twenty years. He knows firsthand the devastation narcissism leaves in its wake and how insidious and painful it is.

In When Narcissism Comes to Church, DeGroat takes a close look at narcissism, not only in ministry leaders but also in church systems. He offers compassion and hope for those affected by its destructive power and imparts wise counsel for churches looking to heal from its systemic effects. DeGroat also offers hope for narcissists themselves―not by any shortcut, but by the long, slow road of genuine recovery, possible only through repentance and trust in the humble gospel of Jesus.

Curt Thompson

“In the work of the soul, we name things to tame things. And there is nothing that is more in need of taming than the rampant narcissism that is not just a part of our cultural landscape but is hiding in plain sight in my own life. With When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat unflinchingly names the subject for the leviathan it is, while offering hope in real, embodied stories of redemption. Comprehensive in scope, accessible in application, and generously kind in spirit, this book will provide pastor and laity alike the wisdom and courage that is necessary for the healing and recommissioning of the church’s soul for years to come.”

Dan Allender

“Hiring (marrying, working with or for, being pastored by) a narcissist is like building a home in an alluvial plain. The ground is gorgeous but in due season the flood will devour all you have worked so hard to create. Chuck DeGroat pierces the glittering image of narcissism and brilliantly exposes the inner workings of an empty, shame-filled heart and the devastating consequences of Christians being so drawn to narcissists in the church and in politics. This is a landmark work, full of wisdom, tenderness, honor, and hope. If we want to offer a narcissistic culture hope in the gospel, we must tend to the narcissism deeply embedded in our own believing community. This is a profound call for a radical culture shift―truly a must-read.”

Allison Cook

“If you, like so many, have been lured in by the shiny veneer of narcissism only to be left shattered, confused, and filled with shame, you will find help in these pages. In When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat nimbly pulls back the veil―exposing the many faces of narcissism and helping us see what lies underneath. Drawing on decades of experience, DeGroat writes with honesty, wisdom, and compassion, providing help for the wounded and hope for the church.”

Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Lent is from the Old English Lencten, meaning Springtime, that season in which we experience rebirth, growth, and goodness. Yet, we often view Lent as a morbid season, a season when we give up our favorite things. Instead, Lent is an invitation back to ourselves, back to the ground of our being as image-bearers, created “very good” even in our creaturely limitations. We are “enough” precisely because we’re God-breathed and God-imaged. And even when we sabotage our original goodness, hiding behind our fig-leaved and false-selved control strategies, God pursues us in Jesus, becoming human not to overcome humanness but to redeem and ennoble it.

INTRODUCTION – RETURN TO YOUR GROUND

WEEK 1 – DWELL WITH GOD

WEEK 2 – LIVE FROM YOUR TRUE SELF

WEEK 3 – IMAGINE THE KINGDOM

WEEK 4 – TAKE THE HUMBLE PATH

WEEK 5 – WRESTLE WITH GOD

WEEK 6 – FOLLOW JESUS

Whether they are used for Lent or in another season, these reflections will invite you into deeper union and communion with the One who is “more near to you than you are to yourselves” (Augustine).

Most of us lead busy, frenzied, fragmented lives. Our inner fragmentation keeps us from fully experiencing the wholeness and peace — the sense of flourishing — that our hearts so deeply long for.

In this book Chuck DeGroat invites readers to admit the exhaustion and fragmentation they experience on a daily basis even as he casts a vision for wholeheartedness. With wisdom gained through his years of pastoral care and counseling, he explores the phenomenon of human dividedness and wholeness through the Christian story, examines how others have experienced it, and looks at how psychologists and researchers suggest addressing it.

With insights derived from a rich diversity of sources, including poets, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, and the Christian tradition, DeGroat’s Wholeheartedness will enable readers to discover the remedy for their frenzied lives.

Micha Boyett – Author of ‘Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer’

“Chuck DeGroat blends psychology, theology, and poetry in a way that embraces the wisdom of both ancient and contemporary spiritual teachers. I believe his writing will do for you what it has done for me provoke and encourage and push you past the scarcity of anxiety and performance, and into a fuller, more beautiful life of faith.”

Steve Brown - Author of ‘Three Free Sins: God s Not Mad at You’

“Another great book from Chuck. His other books have made a difference in my life; this one came just in time to salvage this old cynical preacher from almost giving up on ever finding healing in this busy world. It will do the same for you. Read it and rejoice!”

John Ortberg – Author of ‘All the Places to Go …How Will You Know?’

“Chuck DeGroat has a deep commitment to living a life of wholeness… There is life in his words.”

The Exodus story is your story.

The Israelites’ liberation from Egypt and journey to the promised land is one the Bible’s most compelling stories a breathtaking account of competing wills, freedom and slavery, faith and doubt.

But the Exodus isn’t just a long-ago Bible story. It’s the overarching theme of every person’s life. We each find ourselves enslaved: to work, to destructive relationships, to food, to spending . . . but beyond our personal Egypt lies God’s promised land.

In Leaving Egypt, Chuck DeGroat shows how our wilderness journey helps us face our fears, receive our new identity, experience transformation, and live into our new found freedom.

Discussion questions for personal or small group use follow each chapter.

“Leaving Egypt is a welcome roadmap for anyone who is tired of taking two steps forward, three steps back whether you are lost in addiction, doubt, fear, shame, or religiosity. This book is a guide filled with directions not to a destination, but to stay on the path, because this journey is the Promised Land.”

– Sharon Hersh, M.A., LPC, speaker, adjunct professor in several graduate schools including Reformed Theological Seminary, author of “The Last Addiction” and “Begin Again, Believe Again”

“It’s a long and sometimes painful journey out of “Egypt,” the place of fear, enslavement, and distrust. I know–I’ve been there, and still visit on occasion. If you’re trapped in “Egypt” and know there should be something far better, this book will change your life. With profound biblical and theological insight, Chuck DeGroat has written a “travel guide” for human and flawed travelers who want to be free.”

– Steve Brown, professor at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, author, and teacher on the nationally syndicated radio program Key Life.