About Ron Ovitt

I have been in ministry for 35 years.  About the same time I started ministry I started my study of psychology. It seemed to make sense to me that if the Bible spoke so much about the way we think, I ought to learn what I could about it. I studied many of the “early Christian Psychological thinkers” including, Clyde Narramore, Paul Tournier, Gary Collins, Bruce Narramore, and Henry Brandt. Next there were a group of more “Biblical Theories”. I studied Tim LaHaye’s “Spirit-Controlled Temperments, Dr. Charles Solomon’s Handbook To Happiness, and even became a Nouthetic Counselor through Jay Adams course, Competent to Counsel.

All this gave a me a good grounding in the word of God and prepared me for my secular education. I went on to College and Graduate School in one of the most exciting times in all of Psychology. I was at Trinity International University in 1978 just after Ellis, Bandura and Beck were starting to become in the forefront of counseling literature. Behavioral Therapy was brand new and I was in one of the first Christian courses studying it. Cognitive Restructuring was becoming popular by Aaron Beck and Rational Emotive Therapy by Albert Ellis. Meanwhile I was also well grounded in the Third Wave of Existential Therapies which gave me a sensitivity to the way the client felt and say things from their own world. When I started Wheaton Graduate School I has already dreamed of putting together a whole group of Cognitive Restructuring material from a Christian Worldview under the name Mastery Living. I wrote Albert Bandura on some of my model. Dr. David Williams, of Wheaton Graduate School, was a Pastor, Counselor and headed up an intern at Perry Memorial Hospital where I was accepted and studied in their Substance Abuse and Community Health Center. Dr. Williams asked if he could join Mastery Living and we began to write. He came up with some good mind maps which I will use in this study.

In 2008 I started a three year study of addiction, trauma and their treatment. I studied and researched well over 100 books on attachment theory, affect regulation, interpersonal neurobiology, and the neuroscience of trauma and addictions.

I have always been curious about the integration of the mind, heart and the soul. I have concluded that in Jesus we see the answer to our deepest needs. Jesus knew the heart and He knew what we need to get through this life. Jesus taught us to love, to forgive, to have hope and faith.

It is through this lifelong study of salvation, wholeness and healing that I came across the word Sozo. Sozo means to save, heal, to make whole. That is why He came. That is why He rose again. 

I have always been a change agent. Whether it was ministry, corporate or social causes, I have always been involved in change. When I understood the word Sozo, I knew I had come full circle. Sozo is about change. It is about release, it is about freedom. I am a change agent for Jesus who has given us Sozo.