What do we do with people after we have decided they are guilty?

Forgiveness is easy to admire in principle. It becomes much harder when the person asking for mercy has actually done something wrong.

In Chaplain to the Guilty, former Anglican priest and frontline mental health professional David Giffen explores guilt, punishment, dignity, forgiveness, and redemption through the lives of people society is often most comfortable writing off.

Drawing on pastoral experience, crisis work, and lived experience, David challenges audiences to consider whether accountability must always end in exclusion—and whether redemption means anything if we reserve it only for people whose failures make us comfortable.

Dignity is not innocence. Forgiveness is not an excuse. Redemption does not erase consequences. And reconciliation is never something another person is owed.

Through candid storytelling, theological reflection, and practical insight, David examines how leaders, faith communities, and organizations can hold people accountable without reducing them permanently to the worst thing they have done.

Audiences leave with:

• A clearer understanding of how accountability and human dignity can coexist

• A framework for distinguishing punishment, forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption

• Practical insight into leading people who carry stigma after wrongdoing

• A deeper understanding of how exclusion can complicate recovery and reintegration

• Spiritual and philosophical perspectives for navigating moral complexity without easy answers

Chaplain to the Guilty is for audiences willing to wrestle with one of the hardest questions in leadership, faith, and community: what happens after guilt has been established—and who gets to come back?

What Leadership Looks Like When Mental Health Gets Real

Mental health leadership is easy to endorse when it means supportive language, wellness initiatives, and good intentions.

The real test comes when someone is actually struggling.

In Mental, former Anglican priest, first responder, and frontline mental health professional David Giffen draws on lived experience and years of crisis work to explore what happens when mental health becomes difficult, disruptive, and impossible to ignore.

Mental illness is not a leadership slogan. When it walks through the door, what do you actually do?

Through candid storytelling and practical insight, David examines how leaders can respond to distress without panic, punishment, avoidance, or reducing people to a diagnosis.

Grounded in trauma-informed practice, harm reduction, and frontline experience, Mental challenges audiences to build environments where compassion and accountability can coexist—and where people are supported without pretending that recovery is simple.

Audiences leave with:

• Practical ways to recognize and respond to distress

• Strategies for supporting people in crisis without abandoning accountability

• A clearer understanding of trauma-informed and harm-reduction approaches

• Tools for building healthier cultures in high-pressure environments

• A more honest framework for talking about mental health when things get difficult

Mental is for organizations and communities ready to move beyond awareness and ask the harder question: how do we actually lead when mental health gets real?

Resilience isn’t pretending the storm didn’t hurt you. It’s deciding what you do next.

In Badder Than the Storm, former Anglican priest and frontline mental health professional David Giffen challenges the easy language we use about resilience.

Drawing from years of crisis work and firsthand experience of addiction, recovery, institutional failure, and rebuilding, David explores what actually happens when the plan collapses, trust disappears, and there is no clean way through.

This is not a talk about positive thinking.

It is about learning to face what is real, take responsibility for what is yours, and keep moving when there is no easy solution.

Audiences leave with:

• A more honest understanding of resilience under pressure

• Practical ways to respond when circumstances or systems break down

• A framework for leading others without denying difficulty

• A clearer distinction between endurance, avoidance, and genuine recovery

Badder Than the Storm is for organizations and communities looking for a more honest conversation about resilience—one grounded in reality, responsibility, and what it actually takes to keep going.