Podcast appearances and mentions of julie roys

Guest Bios Show Transcript Despite an investigation finding that Michael Brown engaged in clergy sexual abuse, an Elder Accountability Team cleared him for ministry. And now, Brown has published a video, announcing his return. What should we make of the allegations against Brown? And is his video truth—or an attempt at image repair and lies? On this podcast, host Julie Roys welcomes Ron Cantor, a former close friend of Brown’s, to examine the video and the known facts.

On today's show we will feature some clips from the Julie Roys interview with a Daystar whistleblower and talk about child trafficking with Mary Flynn O'Neill Daystar Petition: https://tinyurl.com/ycxwe4ye Sign up for my newsletter here: Laura-Lynn Newsletter Jonathan & Suzy Lamb GiveSendGo: https://www.givesendgo.com/GEBG9 Richardson Nutritional Center: https://tinyurl.com/mudzzy3n Zstack Protocol: https://zstacklife.com/?ref=LAURALYNN Antibiotics at: Sales@larxmedical.com Promo code: LLTT Need some Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine? Fast shipping with guaranteed delivery in Canada and the US. Contact Mia for more information. SozoHealth@proton.me ☆ We no longer can trust our mainstream media, which is why independent journalists such as myself are the new way to receive accurate information about our world. Thank you for supporting us – your generosity and kindness to help us keep information like this coming! ☆ ~ L I N K S ~ ➞ DONATE AT: https://www.lauralynn.tv/ or lauralynnlive@protonmail.com ➞ TWITTER: @LauraLynnTT ➞ FACEBOOK: Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson ➞ RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/LauraLynnTylerThompson ➞ BITCHUTE: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/BodlXs2IF22h/ ➞ YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/LauraLynnTyler ➞ BRIGHTEON: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/lauralynntv ➞ DLIVE: https://dlive.tv/Laura-Lynn ➞ ODYSEE: https://odysee.com/@LauraLynnTT:9 ➞ GETTR: https://www.gettr.com/user/lauralynn

Investigative journalist Julie Roys unpacks why her work exposes evil deeds of church leaders—and why truth matters in an era of compromise.

This week, we continue our deep dive into the family court system with an exclusive interview featuring Rachel Pickrel Hawkins, whose story made national headlines. Sourced from The Washington Post, Julie Roys' investigative work, and Rachel herself, we explore the events that led to her arrest for interfering with reunification therapy. Rachel shares her harrowing experience of fighting for her children's safety after alleging that her ex-husband—a police officer—sexually assaulted their child and abused their son. We'll discuss how the court system and reunification therapy impacted her family and examine the systemic failures that put protective parents in impossible situations.

*Content Warning: sexual assault, false reporting, suicidal ideation, mature themes, religious abuse, cultic abuse, harassment, gun violence, parental alienation, breaking and entering, driving under the influence, upsetting themes. Sources: Elwood woman faces multiple felonies in connection with ongoing rental scheme [Video] Gay, L. (2023, May 3) for WTHR 13: https://www.wthr.com/article/news/crime/elwood-woman-arrested-for-ongoing-rental-scheme-megan-Fishers woman charged with fraud against multiple people in rental scam, By: Katie Cox for WRTV Indianapolis (Apr 26, 2023): https://www.wrtv.com/news/local-news/crime/fishers-woman-charged-with-fraud-against-multiple-people-in-rental-scam Life After MLM by Roberta Blevins, Episode 230: Sandy Rusk: https://podcasts.apple.com/no/podcast/episode-230-sandy-rusk/id1553784236?i=1000650980806&l=nb The Truth About ITOWN Church Groups:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1308102203363481/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sandyrusk2022 Chloe Anagnos on X: @ChloeAnagnos https://x.com/ChloeAnagnos/status/1651260809362784261 The Sinking Arc by Megan Stoner, 2022: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-sinking-arc-megan-stoner-_OQ75y1JmbA/ iTown Indianapolis: https://itownchurch.com/ Lawsuit Accuses Church Planting Group of Allowing Florida Pastor to ‘Sexually Prey' on Employee By Julie Roys, October 18, 2021: https://julieroys.com/lawsuit-accuses-church-planting-group-florida-pastor-sexually-prey/ Julie Roys on X: https://x.com/reachjulieroys Megan Stoner Chronicles on X: @ChroniclesMegan: https://x.com/ChroniclesMegan Resources:Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources Theme Song & Artwork: Thank you to NeonHoney and GIBBANEZ for covering our theme song, Glad Rags's original song U Think U this season. NeonHoney's IG: https://www.instagram.com/neonhoneymusic/ NeonHoney's Website: https://neonhoneymusic.comGibbanez IG: https://www.instagram.com/@gibbanezmusic/ Gibbanez Linktree: https://linktr.ee/gibbanezmusicGlad Rags: https://www.gladragsmusic.com/ The S22 cover art is by the Amazing Sara StewartFollow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/u94-UCMB14kThe fact that abuse occurs at all in churches is horrific. What's worse—often, the abusers are protected rather than exposed. And the victims bear crushing trauma of both the abuse and the cover-up. But there is a better way. On this edition of The Roys Report, internationally renowned psychologist Diane Langberg joins Julie to discuss her new book, When the Church Harms God's People. Not only does the book explain why churches are failing miserably in this area, it also explains how to fix the problem. Known around the world for her expertise and care as a Christian leader, Dr. Langberg has counseled many victims of high-profile ministry leaders. She knows the evils of sexual abuse, domestic abuse, and rape committed by church predators—and now confronts this devastating evil. In our discussion based on her latest book, which is available this month to supporters of The Roys Report, Dr. Langberg unveils what she's learned about how churches cause harm. Why do Christian communities often foster unhealthy leaders who end up hurting rather than protecting God's people? She also offers hope for the future, describing how churches can reflect Christ—not just in what they teach, but also in how they care for themselves and others. This insightful conversation offers a small preview of what we'll be hearing from Dr. Langberg at Restore Conference coming up in February, as she is one of more than a dozen leading Christian voices who will share. Listen in to hear her heart, with wisdom from walking God's narrow path for many decades. Guests Dr. Diane Langberg Dr. Diane Langberg is a globally recognized psychologist with 53 years of clinical experience working with trauma patients. She has trained caregivers from six continents in responding to trauma and the abuse of power. For 29 years she directed her own practice in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Now, in partnership with Dr. Phil Monroe, Langberg, Monroe & Associates continues this work which includes more than a dozen therapists. Dr. Langberg has authored numerous books including Redeeming Power and When the Church Harms God's People. Learn more at her website. Show Transcript SPEAKERS JULIE ROYS, DR. DIANE LANGBERG   JULIE ROYS  00:04 Internationally recognized psychologist, Dr Diane Langberg, has encountered the crushing trauma of sexual abuse, domestic abuse and rape and its cover up. Even more tragic, she’s encountered all of this within the church,. But as she explains today, there is a better way.   JULIE ROYS  00:21 Welcome to The Roys report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today Dr Diane Langberg joins me to discuss her new book, When the Church Harms God’s People. The fact that abuse occurs at all in the church is horrific. But as listeners to this podcast know, abuse is happening in the church, and too often, the perpetrators are protected, and the victims bear the brunt of not just the abuse but the cover. In her new book, Dr Langberg confronts this horrific evil, and she unveils what she’s learned about how churches cause harm and why Christian communities often foster unhealthy leaders who end up hurting rather than protecting God’s people. She also offers hope for the future, describing how churches can reflect Christ, not just in what they teach, but in how they care for themselves and for others.   JULIE ROYS  01:12 We’ll get to this insightful interview in just a moment, but first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, The RESTORE Conference, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor or pastor, there are a few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church, but The RESTORE Conference this February 7 & 8 in Phoenix, Arizona is designed to do just that. Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary Demuth and Dr David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Tov, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly and more. For more information, just go to RESTORE2025.COM. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquart, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   JULIE ROYS  01:12 Well again, joining me today is Dr Diane Langberg, an internationally recognized psychologist with more than five decades of clinical experience with trauma victims. She’s also trained caregivers on six continents in responding to trauma and the abuse of power. She’s also written several books, including her latest, When the Church Harms God’s People. So Diane, welcome. It is such a pleasure to have you join me.   DIANE LANGBERG 02:58 Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.   JULIE ROYS  03:00 I’ve said this to you before in person. I don’t know that I’ve ever said it in a podcast, but I do consider you the matriarch of the abuse survivor community and someone who is not just special because of your trauma experience, but I think because of your faith that has endured really trudging through some amazingly toxic stuff. So again, just such an honor and a pleasure to be with you. And I know last year at RESTORE you weren’t able to be with us because you were writing this book. So I am thrilled that you’re done and able to be with us at the RESTORE coming up in Phoenix.   DIANE LANGBERG 03:39 I’m thrilled to be done too.   JULIE ROYS  03:43 I hope you appreciate that we’re going to be in Phoenix instead of Chicago when it’s February. So your book talks about when the church harms God’s people. And obviously the church is supposed to be a place of healing and of comfort, but it ceased to be this in some cases. And I know there’s a myriad of reasons for why this has happened, but if you could kind of put your finger on ‘here’s the main reason that I see contributing to what we’re seeing in the church today’, what would you say that is?   DIANE LANGBERG 04:15 So, rather than the love in those places, we are protecting a system that we think is truth and makes us safe and all those kinds of things. But last I checked, Jesus didn’t die for systems,   JULIE ROYS  04:34 So often it’s the shepherd that is at fault for preying on the sheep. I mean, here we have a shepherd that’s supposed to protect sheep, and instead, we have shepherds who are preying on them, which is just the antithesis of who Jesus is, the antithesis of who they are supposed to be. But sometimes, in fact, probably in 100% of these cases, when there’s a. shepherd who is not really a shepherd, but he’s a wolf parading as one, it’s deception that’s happening. Why is it, how can we tell whether a shepherd who can be incredibly charming, right? and  say all the right words and all those things? How can we tell if this person is actually a shepherd, or if he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing?   DIANE LANGBERG 05:25 Well, I think the way that Jesus put it is by their fruits you will know them. I think that we have fallen into the trap, I suppose, of measuring fruit by success, which, if we measure fruit by success, then Jesus failed.   JULIE ROYS  05:45 So what would you say fruit is?   DIANE LANGBERG 05:47 It’s likeness to him. I mean when we’re taught about the fruit of the Spirit, it means someone who loves. It means someone who treats others with respect and kindness and protects the sheep because of their preciousness, eternally to the shepherd.   JULIE ROYS  06:10 And yet, so often it is true  when I get pushback for the type of reporting that we do, exposing someone who has been a very bad shepherd, that is often what I hear, what about the fruit? And when they say fruit, they mean the numbers, right?   DIANE LANGBERG 06:29 Yeah. Number and money and fame. That’s fruit which is not fruit of Christ.   JULIE ROYS  06:35 One of the questions that I get asked a lot, and I think it varies from person to person. But they ask, were these predator pastors? Did they begin bad, and they just conned people the whole time into their positions? Or are these people who maybe had good intentions to begin with, maybe were good people to begin with, and the pressures of the system began to change who they were. What would you say to those who asked that question?   DIANE LANGBERG 07:14 Well, I think the first honest thing I would say is I don’t know, but I think that there is a spectrum of some are this way. Some are this way. Some start out really intending to do good in things. But part of what runs through, I think a lot of it, is that certainly the Christians in general, and places like seminaries and things do not put a lot of expectation or whatever on who you are. It’s what you know how to do and do well, and how well it is happening and how big it is. But again, if you go back to the Gospels and look at the things that Jesus spoke, you know so much of it is about character. And by their fruit you will know them. And the fruit he’s talking about is not how many members you have in your pews. It’s your character, it’s your heart, it’s the way you speak, it’s the way you treat the least of these, those are all the things that measured him, and they are to measure us. I think we’ve lost our way, and I think that’s a global issue.   JULIE ROYS  08:28 Do you think too the mega church movement, and I’ve been asked this as well, are mega churches just inherently bad? And I’m like, Well, no, I mean, there are some mega churches that do-good work, and there’s people who have been saved through these mega churches, who have been discipled through them. But I think for the pastor, I have seen that it seems like all the pressures in a mega church are in the wrong direction. I’m curious what you would say that you’ve seen with our churches today, and whether they help spiritual formation for these leaders, or whether they seem to work in the opposite direction.   DIANE LANGBERG 09:09 The pressure is terrible, the expectations are extravagant, and everything has God’s name on it. So if you aren’t meeting the pressure, and you aren’t bringing in lots of people, and people aren’t talking about how wonderful you are, you’re not doing a good job. If those are the criteria, then Jesus didn’t do a good job. And so the care of the shepherd,  the personality of the shepherd, the heart that not is just given in words, but indeed. All of those things show us who a shepherd is, and we are measuring by outcome. I mean again, you go back to the cross or to the resurrection, there were not very many people about looking for him. I think that we love the institution, and it  feels safe to us, and it feels like God must be on our side, because we have 3000 members or whatever, when, in fact, he’s called us to love and to patience and to self-control and things like that. That’s how we look like him, how we serve him, and how we woo others to him.   JULIE ROYS  10:38 Well it is centered around a celebrity so often. And this can happen in large churches, mega churches. This can happen in small churches, where the pastor can be the big fish in the small pond, just as much as you know that the celebrity pastor in this this big institution. And I think when we complain  about the pastor or about the institution, we also have to look at ourselves, don’t we? because we’re the consumers of these type of churches. We are the ones that give money to these churches. What  responsibility do we have as lay people to ensure that our churches are better?   DIANE LANGBERG 11:19 I’m not even sure that I would start thinking about it that way, because to ensure our churches are better means to ensure a system is good, and Jesus didn’t die for systems. So the question is number one for me, on my face, asking him where I am not like him to teach me that and to teach me how to become more like Him in those ways. Part of what doing that and living there, not just doing it once or something, but living in that space with God also sharpens our eyes and our ears, and we begin to recognize things that may be painted beautifully but look nothing like Christ. I think, until that happens, the system is evidence of God, which is not whether it’s a church or a political one, or whatever it is, none of that is his fruit. It’s who we are in the places that we live that is to be his fruit.   JULIE ROYS  12:31 Something I’ve really appreciated about you, and I’m hearing it in this interview, but it’s also in your writings. One of my favorite book actually, of yours is that little. It’s just a tiny paperback book on meditations for counselors. And I have found that it’s not just meditations for counselors, it’s meditations really for anybody who’s in work that does take them through some of the grossest evil that’s out there, and how to protect your soul. And I so appreciate that. I know I read it. I said this at the last RESTORE,, because I went through a very difficult time prior to it, and I read  those meditations, I went through that book twice, just because I found that I needed to protect my soul, so carefully, because, again, the pressures are just not in the right direction. And I know my own flesh  when I encounter these systems, makes me so angry, and you can’t, not when you, when you hear the way that people have abused.   DIANE LANGBERG 13:40 Jesus cracked whips and turns tables over. So I don’t think he likes it much either.   JULIE ROYS  13:46 And that’s something that I say regularly, and people are like, You sound angry, and I’ll be like, Why aren’t you angry? Like this should make us angry genuinely. Yet at the same time, Satan will use that as an opportunity in our own hearts. And you talk about in your book about the role that deception plays. This was so good, and let’s start with the predator himself. Right? How deception works with someone who is again preying on the sheep rather than protecting the sheep. Often, I wonder if they even admit to themselves what they’re doing.   DIANE LANGBERG 14:29 Often not. I think that, I mean, obviously we are deceptive creatures. There’s no exceptions. The only exception was Christ, and so we carry that around. And that’s, I mean, it was started in Eden. I didn’t do it. That girl did it.   JULIE ROYS  14:53 Blame it on the Lord.   DIANE LANGBERG 14:54 Right, of course, but it’s been in us since the beginning. And so our go to thing is when somebody points the finger at us about anything, whether it’s true or not, our first thing is to take care of ourselves. That’s our automatic response, and if what they have given us is true, we have to make it untrue. There’s some way we want to make it untrue because it disturbs us. If we make it true, we don’t want them to think about that. It’s going to hurt our job. It’s going to do whatever. So I don’t think we have really understood the depth of that and its claws on us. And I think that that makes us very vulnerable.   JULIE ROYS  15:47 Yeah, I’m still stunned. James McDonald, who I  reported on back. I mean, it started in 2018 but then he was fired from his church in 2019 and most of the elders stepped down. He is out there now today, even after assaulting a 59-year-old woman and breaking her femur, he is still out there proclaiming his innocence, and even with that blaming it on PTSD that he got from me reporting and this 59-year-old woman supposedly triggered, but by the way, just curious of your professional opinion on PTSD being triggered in a situation like that, to actually assault somebody?   DIANE LANGBERG 16:29 It’s a great cover up on their side.   JULIE ROYS  16:33 And what’s shocking is he got a professional counselor  in court to say that.   DIANE LANGBERG 16:40 If someone has been doing terrible things and actually really begins to see it and is hit by what they have done and grieving by what they have done, having them look like they have PTSD would be expected, but it’s at their own hands that it’s there. It’s not you who did this or said this, therefore I feel this which many abusers would do.   JULIE ROYS  17:06 and it is interesting how the blame often goes everywhere, except on the one person who’s caused it. Let’s talk about deception now with the abused and even with systems. I mean, it does always, I find it difficult to wrap my head around although I know it happens and I believe it happens, but the idea that somebody could be sexually abusing you, and yet you think that this is somehow okay spiritually, like you’re a Christian and  you’re able to believe the lies that are told you. Talk about that dynamic and how that plays into it.   DIANE LANGBERG 17:51 Well, I would say first of all that I don’t think we have really very much understanding of how deep deception is in all of us. No exceptions. No exception is Jesus Christ, and we do it quickly and easily. And anybody who’s raised children realizes it takes about two seconds after birth of them to figure it out. But you don’t have to teach them. It’s there. And so the way that we think is flawed, and I don’t think we start with that premise. We know other people where it’s flawed, but  we’re doing the right thinking, and we don’t expose or look at ourselves in those ways. So I think we have very little understanding of the depth of deception in individual humans, often on a daily basis, and then how that shapes and controls systems which only reinforce the deception that we have because we like the system. So it’s here since the beginning. It’s got deep roots.   DIANE LANGBERG 19:20 When I was a young girl, one of my grandmothers lived in the mountains of West Virginia, and I was staying with her for a couple of days, and she said to me, go downstairs to the cellar and bring up the clothes that we were washing. So I do, and we’re talking about a dirt floor cellar and the whole thing. So I go down into the cellar to get the clothes, and I started crying and screaming, and my grandmother came running, and I came running up the stairs. She turned on the lights, and she said, Watch. And then she said to me, if you turn on the lights, the rats will run. And that came back to me some years ago; in terms of deception, in organizations, in myself, in leaders, in whatever, turning on the lights. And that’s what Jesus did and does –  rats run! And then we have to make a choice. Number one, are we going to turn on the light? which most of us are very uncomfortable. I mean, I don’t need him. I get that turn on the light, and they will run.   JULIE ROYS  20:32 So good. I know at RESTORE in 2022 you made the comment that says how to when you were addressing how to recognize a wolf in the church, and you said, Well, one way is to not become one. And I saw  some pushback to that. I thought it was a fantastic point because I think  we all have this, and if we deny that we have it, that’s almost the scariest situation, because if you are not attending to your own heart, that’s when I think you are most likely to fall into this. But some people said, Oh, wait, isn’t this sin leveling? Because it takes a special kind of evil to be a pedophile or to sexually abuse someone, and not all of us are there. Speak to those folks who were saying that, and I think you know, and I understand where they’re coming from. What would you say to them?   DIANE LANGBERG 21:36 Well, I think, first of all, sin in itself is on a continuum. I mean, some sins do hideous damage to people that all the help in the world isn’t going to undo. You know, it’s not going to go away, really, until they see the face of Jesus. There are other things that we do, that we see, and we stop doing, or other people see us stop and we change. And things like, it’s all on a continuum. And the problem is, if you have, let’s say, as an adolescent, you start doing things to cover up things, which is pretty common in adolescence, frankly. Did you do this? No, I didn’t do this. Were you in this place? No, I was not. So forth.   JULIE ROYS  22:35 I’m not sure it’s just adolescents either.   DIANE LANGBERG 22:37 Oh I  know it’s not. The point is that it’s very young, and it happens when you can have a toddler. You ask them, “Did they do something? Did you spill this? No, you know, darn sure they were.   JULIE ROYS  22:51 It reminds me of my grandson who, four-year-old grandson who was asked if he did something. He said, No, my mind made me do that. My mind told me to do that.   DIANE LANGBERG 23:04 Well, that’s a keeper number one and number two, I mean, teach him when he has a different level brain to look at himself. But yes, it’s in all of us. And so when I said that what I’m saying is, don’t live even minorly in the way that perpetrators live. Don’t excuse harm to others. Doesn’t have to be sexual abused, It could be a rude person. Don’t excuse that rudeness. Don’t treat other people  as if they have no value or they can easily be discarded or whatever.   DIANE LANGBERG 23:43 It is the things that grow and control if we keep doing them that we don’t theoretically want to do. And that’s what I mean by that. Look at yourself and  we are very good at saying, Well, I did do this, but I didn’t do that. We do that all the time, and we’re leveling it, and we’re not looking at ourselves in the light when we do that. That’s what we’re called to do.   JULIE ROYS  24:16 I love that you say, put rudeness up there and not honoring people as made in God’s image. I find sometimes it’s hard to remember that even the perpetrator was made in God’s image. And someone who’s taught me a great deal about that is Lori Anne Thompson. I have never heard her dehumanize another human being. Again, for those who don’t know her, she was one of the victims of sexual abuse by Ravi Zacharias. I’ve never heard her do that, and I find being around her makes me a better person, because I always hear her honoring every person. Not that she won’t call them words that they rightly have owned,  but to remember that every single person is made in God’s image and treat them. ,   DIANE LANGBERG 25:09 Yes, you will never meet somebody who is not, even if they’ve got their bodies six feet waiting in hell. They were made in the image of God.   JULIE ROYS  25:23 It reminds me of CS Lewis, who said, “We will never meet a mere mortal.   DIANE LANGBERG 25:28 Right? Yes, which does not mean being easy on it. That’s one of the places many people get confused. If I think this way, then I but actually, if you really think that way and love somebody, I mean they’re dancing in hell, for crying out loud, if they’re abusing children or something like that. The gift to them is the truth and turning on the lights so the rats run .   JULIE ROYS  25:56 Absolutely. And repentance is a gift. And the best thing we can do is call them to repentance, and I try to keep that in the forefront of my work too, that that is always my hope. Do I want them to be removed from spiritual positions? Yes, but ultimately we pray for their soul. Ultimately we pray that they would repent.   JULIE ROYS  26:19 When you talk about the deception that operates in these systems. There’s a lot of, I mean, even psychologically, what’s going on with, I think, the staff, with the people, the lay people, as they hear things. And you talked about something called Truth Default Theory. Would you explain what that is and how that often is in operation when these things begin to get revealed?   DIANE LANGBERG 26:51 The best way to find out what that is to read that section of the book, frankly. And it’s not a short thing to explain, so to speak. But people choose to lie because they think the outcome will be good. If you tell the truth of a big mess, the outcome will be bad, which there’s some truth to that . You’re going to blow something up if you tell the truth. It’ll make a mess, and everything else. And so I think that people want to keep the system okay. And so you’ll see these places or whatever, where the leader has been sexually abusive, maybe for years and years, and they got rid of the leader, but they don’t go any deeper. They don’t go any deeper into it because this is the church, and we want it to be, we want it to thrive, and we’re glad that that stopped and all that kind of stuff. And we make it shallow. It’s not shallow. You can’t do harm like abuse or live with that harm for years or months or whatever, and then just walk away and be fine. It’s not a possibility. And so part of that is understanding the different ways that people hold on to systems. Now, this is my church. I love it. I’m going to protect it. Yes, he did those things, yes, they’re terrible, but we fired him, and that’s all. It’s shallow in terms of really understanding.   JULIE ROYS  28:37 And when we have this vested interest, we do seem to try, and we’ve seen this a lot, we seem to choose who we believe. And so often, I think people are just predisposed to believing the person who has the position of spiritual authority, and usually the victim is someone we’ve never heard of and often, one of the first things that the system does  to protect  their basically, this is their money maker, right? This is their image as a church or as a ministry, is that they will denigrate the person who’s bringing whether it’s a reporter, whether it’s the victims themselves bringing the allegations, and the people seem to be predisposed to just believing the person we want to believe.   DIANE LANGBERG 29:40 Yes, yes, yes. We want it to be okay. We want it just to go back to normal without the bad guy, they figured out. First of all, the understanding of how it seeps into everything, contaminates everything is not understood. So if the bad guy is gone, so to speak, then let’s just be fine. But if a bad guy had run a truck over a half of the denomination and nobody could walk, what would you do? That’s clear there is the harm, and it’s still there, even though the people who drove the trucks got kicked out. But with this kind of thing, I think it’s easier for people to push it away and say, well, the bad is gone. And, this is good, whatever.   JULIE ROYS  30:34 Talk about the larger system. So I often refer to it as the evangelical industrial complex. I think you refer to it a little bit differently, but it’s the same thing. Often it’s not just the particular institution where there’s allegations being raised, but there’s an entire system behind that nation, a denomination, or even a camp like I think we saw that with Mike Bickle and sort of the International Houses of Prayer and their related ministries, and even that seeped into the Messianic ministries that were very much a part of this. Talk to those who maybe are somewhat naive about how these systems work. Because I know before, before I got a job several decades ago at Moody Radio, I didn’t know this existed. I was kind of like, pretty blind to it all. And I just thought, these are all wonderful ministries. And I think a lot of people believe that and  I wish it were all true; some of them are wonderful ministries. But talk about that system and  how it  exists and how it works.   DIANE LANGBERG 31:54 Well, even if you think of it just as a family or a big system like that,  the idea of the family, or the idea of a church, whatever. Those are good ideas. We love the idea. We want to help the idea. We want to make it grow. We want it to get bigger, and all of those things. And then something comes along that shows that there’s cancer  and so sometimes we ignore that. There’s plenty of organizations that do that. Sometimes the response is very superficial, and sometimes people really want to get rid of, say, those who are the source of the cancer, whatever, but they still aren’t doing any treatment for the cancer.   JULIE ROYS  32:42 Some of it’s quite carnal too, isn’t it? Just come down to, I mean, we’re talking dollars and cents with some of these.   DIANE LANGBERG 32:47 Oh my goodness, yes, fame and a whole lot of money.   JULIE ROYS  32:51 It really is amazing, once you get into this, when you realize how much the celebrity pastor supports the entire industry, whether it’s the mega church, whether it’s publishing, whether it’s Christian radio, because we rely on them for our programming and  to bring the big crowds,  or to bring the audience to a station, I mean, all of those things. And I think people don’t realize it is a billions, billions of dollars involved in evangelicalism.   DIANE LANGBERG 33:21 Be we tell ourselves, it’s all God’s work, and his message is getting out there, and people are hearing, and we have to protect that period .   JULIE ROYS  33:30 And despite the fact that these pastors are living in multi-million-dollar homes, sometimes multiple multi-million-dollar homes, and somehow we say they deserve it? like whether they deserve it or not, Christ didn’t live like.   DIANE LANGBERG 33:46  He certainly deserved it, right?   JULIE ROYS  33:50 And yet he, he never, you know, I always go back to Philippians two, being in very nature God did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. But instead, emptied Himself and became a servant and it’s like we’ve forgotten that model. And sometimes I’m just like, wow.   DIANE LANGBERG 34:12 Well, I think in many ways, over, I don’t know how many decades, but that the Christian world has forgotten those things, which I can’t imagine how much grief we have caused our God.   JULIE ROYS  34:25 Despite these harms that you talk about in your book, and you explain, and we’ve talked about on this podcast, you express hope for the church. And I think a lot of folks are looking at the American church and not feeling very hopeful at all. Why do you feel that there’s hope?   DIANE LANGBERG 34:48 Because Jesus Christ exists. It goes back to him. But I have also in this work, met very fine, pastors, leaders, whatever, who have come in to see me, whether struggling with something or whatever, but who long to do right to please God, to love Jesus well, to love their people well. So I have not had a diet of only those who are either victims of terrible harm or doing the harm. I think if that’s all I’d had, I would have a much harder thing to think about in terms of my thoughts about God, and I did. There was a time, I don’t know how long ago it was now, some years where I decided I can’t do this anymore. It’s going to make me rotten  inside. And literally got down on my knees and said to God, okay, I’m done. You’ll have to let me know what other job you want me to do. Obviously, he did not do that, because I’m still there. That was a turning point for me in many ways, many of them wonderful. But you know, how much of that can you sit with and look at and not be made sick by it? If you’re not, something’s wrong with you. But if it does that to you, then, how do you deal with yourself?   JULIE ROYS  36:23 And I think one of the most insidious parts of religious abuse and trauma in the church is that it separates you often from community. And I have found, and I haven’t been in this nearly as long as you, but that community, and I think we need to sometimes redefine it. And I mean, I’m in a house church now, and I’ve talked about this on numerous podcasts, but it’s been a safe place for me. It’s been a wonderfully healing place for me. But it’s just been crucial. And I know not everybody has that opportunity, but somehow I just think we have to, we have to seek that out, even if it’s really difficult for us. And I understand some people need to take a break for a while, and I totally get that. And we had a very compassionate church, or house church, where there were a number of us that were wounded, that people were willing to sit with us in that and not try to make something out of what we were doing more than just loving people, which really is, I mean, that’s the essence of it, all right. Wow. That that you’re right. If all you encounter are toxic people doing toxic things, and I still feel this way to this day, the most beautiful people that I know still are Christians. Some of the most ugly ones that I’ve encountered are professing Christians, whether they know Christ, that’s between them and him. But yeah, I will still say  the most loving, beautiful human beings on this planet that I know are still Christians.   DIANE LANGBERG 38:16 Yes, and I have found that to be true. And I’ve sat with people sometimes for years working through growing up with abuse, churches abusing, I mean, just the idea that anybody can grow and have a life and bear good fruit out of all of that, it’s a miracle. But I watch it, it’s there, and it is a thing of beauty,   JULIE ROYS  38:43 Truly is. I’ve said this before, but you are an inspiration to me. I know you’re an inspiration to so many of the folks that are listening,. I would just love to know from you, and I know you, that there is no secret hill or secret formula. But as you’re looking back over five decades of work and your relationship with Jesus, what would be some things that you would say to us, and remaining true to the end, fighting the good fight, being able to say someday before Christ, or hearing him say to us, well done, good and faithful servant. We want to get there. How can we get there?   DIANE LANGBERG 39:40 Well, I think one of the things I would say is that I did try to quit once. I mean, I told God, I was quitting. I didn’t ask him anything. Probably, there’s something about me, of course, but I couldn’t do it. I was either gonna  react in ways that were harmful for people or just deaden myself. Those seem to be the only options, and that was a huge turning point for me. I obviously did stay with it. So he won, but he responded to me and helped me see things in way of the cross that I had not seen before, in who he is in his heart. So feel like quitting. I think that’s pretty normal, you know, and I think a lot of people do. But I think, yeah, I literally got down on my face on the floor, and said, I quit your turn, I don’t know what to do. But he responded, and I’m so grateful, and I’m so grateful I didn’t. I’ve learned more of him by staying I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’ve also seen changes, not just in individuals, which I have, but in some systems, or at least portions of it was probably right.   JULIE ROYS  41:13 I mean obviously God could do all of the work that we do without us. He doesn’t need us, and yet he chooses to allow us to partner with what he’s doing in the world  and through that, we become different people. We become,  I’ve said it to my husband before, like I feel sometimes like he is making us more  enjoyable companions for him.   DIANE LANGBERG 41:44 Yes, we become more like Him. And you don’t feel it in the middle of it, and it takes a long time, but it’s somewhere along the way you look back and go, Oh, that’s not what I was like before. Has his aroma in it.   JULIE ROYS  42:01 Well, I just want to thank you so much for your work, for your writing, and I’m just absolutely thrilled that you’re coming to RESTORE in February. So looking forward to that. And a new thing thanks to Phil Monroe, your partner there, is having a pre-conference for counselors. Because, again, we need to minister to the counselors, to the caregivers, to the pastors, absolutely. And so I’m thrilled that we’re going to be able to do that, and you’re going to be able to participate in that. And then the conference as well and speaking to a lot of people who’ve been through an awful lot of church hurts. So very much looking forward to that. But thank you so much for taking the time today, and thank you for this new book, even though  we weren’t able to have you toward the last RESTORE, which, for me personally, was  a sacrifice, but definitely worth it in the book. So thank you.   DIANE LANGBERG 42:58 Well, thank you for having me, and I am glad for the work that you do. It touches people, but whose souls have been hurt, gives them a taste of light and love. So blessings on you..   JULIE ROYS  43:19 Thank you.   JULIE ROYS  43:22 Thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and I would love to get you a copy of Diane’s latest book, When the Church Harms God’s People. This is our premium to donors this month. So if you give $40 or more to The Roys Report, we’ll send you a copy of Diane’s book. As many of you know, your gifts to this work is what makes it possible. We can’t do anything that we do, from our podcast to our daily reporting to our investigations, without your support. So please consider helping us out, and when you do, we’ll get you a copy of Diane’s book, When the Church Harms God’s People. To donate and get the book, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Spotify, or YouTube, that way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review, and then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content again. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/g3j3C25thlcMuch research has been done to address individual trauma. But what happens when trauma is collective—when an entire congregation, for example, is betrayed by a pastor they trusted? In this edition of The Roys Report, Kayleigh Clark, a pastor and a pastor's kid, discusses the impact of communal suffering, which church leaders often overlook. Kayleigh, a doctoral student at Kairos University, is completing her dissertation on congregational collective trauma and paths towards healing and restoration. And what she's learned is ground-breaking for churches that have experienced pastoral abandonment or moral failure and are struggling to recover. As was explained in the popular book, The Body Keeps the Score, unhealed trauma—if unaddressed—will manifest itself as physical and psychological ailments in our bodies. Likewise, unaddressed trauma in the Body of Christ will also manifest as corporate dysfunction and pain. But as Kayleigh explains in this eye-opening podcast, this doesn't have to be the case. Healing is available. But it requires congregants and spiritual leaders who understand trauma and don't try to charge forward before the congregation has healed. Given all the unhealed trauma in the church, this is such a relevant and important podcast. It's also one that discusses dynamics Julie knows all too well, as someone who's in a church with others who've experienced deep church hurt. She discusses her own experience in the podcast, which could be a prime case study. Guests Kayleigh Clark Kayleigh Clark is founder and director of Restor(y), which exists to journey with churches on the hope-filled path of healing and restoration. She completed a Master of Divinity at Northeastern Seminary and is currently a Th.D. Candidate at Kairos University with a focus on the interplay between psychology and theology. Kayleigh and her husband, Nate, love exploring the outdoors with their son near their home in Rochester, New York. Learn more about Restor(y) online. Show Transcript [00:00:00] Julie: Much research has been done to address individual trauma, but what happens when trauma is collective? When an entire congregation, for example, is betrayed by a pastor they trusted. According to my guest today, the impact of communal suffering is often overlooked, but the body of Christ keeps score. [00:00:22] Julie: Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And joining me today is Kaylee Clark, a pastor and a pastor’s kid who’s well acquainted with the beauty, joy, pain, and heartache that exists within the church. Kaylee also is a doctoral student at Kairos University, and her dissertation work focuses on congregational collective trauma and paths towards healing and restoration. [00:00:50] Julie: She also is the director of ReStory, a ministry to help churches heal and embody the hope of Jesus, especially after experiencing a devastating loss or betrayal. I had the pleasure of meeting Kaylee about a week ago, and I was so excited by her insights and the work that she’s doing that I was like, you have to come on my podcast. [00:01:10] Julie: So I am thrilled that she can join me today, and I know you’re going to be blessed by this podcast. I’ll get to my interview with Kaylee in just a minute, but first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, the Restore Conference and Mark Horta Barrington. If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. [00:01:30] Julie: So, Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor, or pastor, there are a few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church. But the Restore Conference, this February 7th and 8th in Phoenix, Arizona, is designed to do just that. Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary DeMuth and Dr. [00:01:50] Julie: David Pooler An expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Toe, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly, and more. For more information, just go to Restore2025. com. That’s Restore2025. com. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. [00:02:17] Julie: Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to buyacar123. com. [00:02:37] Julie: Well, again, joining me today is Kaylee Clark, a pastor and doctoral student who’s studying congregational collective trauma and the paths to healing and restoration. She’s also the founder of Restoree and she’s a wife and mother of a beautiful baby boy. So Kaylee, welcome. It’s just such a pleasure to have you. [00:02:56] Kayleigh: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be with you today. [00:03:00] Julie: Well, I am just thrilled to have you on our podcast and I mentioned this in the open, but We talked last week and I was just like, Oh my word, everything that you’re doing, your work is so important. And it’s so where I’m living right now. [00:03:15] Julie: And I know a lot of our listeners are living as well. And so I’m thrilled about it. But as you mentioned, your work is, is unique. We’re going to get into that, but I am just curious, this whole idea, collective trauma, you know, ministering. To the church. How did you get interested in this work? [00:03:33] Kayleigh: Sure. Um, so I am fourth generation clergy. [00:03:37] Kayleigh: So great grandpa, grandpa, my dad, and then me. So are all pastors. Uh, and so I’ve just always known the church, uh, pastors have also been kind of my second family. I’ve always felt at home amongst the church and amongst pastors. Um, but when you grow up in the parsonage and other PKs will know this, uh, you are not hidden from. [00:03:58] Kayleigh: The difficult portions of church and the really hard components of church. And so then when you add on to that, becoming a pastor myself, you know, my eyes continued to be open, uh, to some of the ways that church can be a harmful place as much of it as it is a healing place. And I began to kind of ask the question, well, well, why, um, what is going on here? [00:04:21] Kayleigh: Um, particularly because when I served and we’ll get into more of this, I think, but when I was serving in my first lead pastor, it’s. So I’m a really young, I was like 27 when they, or 28 when they entrusted me when I first lead pastorate, which is kind of wild. And so they kind of threw me in and what they do with most young pastors is they kind of throw us into these dying churches. [00:04:44] Kayleigh: And so, right, it’s a small. Church with, you know, it’s dying, it’s dwindled in numbers. And so this is my first kind of lead pastorate. And, you know, I read all the books, I’m a learner, I’m a reader. I, you know, I know how to do all the things. And so I’m reading all of the books on how to revitalize a church and raise a church up from it and all those things and nothing is working. [00:05:06] Kayleigh: Um, and it started to kind of really raise my attention to, well, maybe there’s something else going on here. Um, And, and maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions when we’ve been approaching the church. Uh, and so, uh, again, I’m a learner, so I was like, well, I’m just going to go back to school. If that was the only way I knew how to figure this out. [00:05:25] Kayleigh: So I landed in a THD program that focused on combining the studies of trauma theory with theology. Um, and my undergraduate degree is in psychology, so it felt kind of like a merging of my two worlds. Um, and it was there that I encountered collective trauma and. Really in an interesting way, studying, um, more like childhood development trauma. [00:05:46] Kayleigh: But anytime I looked at it, all I could see was the church, um, and seeing the ways in which there might be a bigger picture. There might be a bigger story going on here. And maybe there’s some collective congregational trauma underneath the, these dying, uh, declining churches that we just aren’t aware of. [00:06:04] Julie: So, so good. And this is the thing that, that just stuns me. When I, I, I do an investigation and the top pastor gets fired, sometimes all the elders step down, but the church, it’s, it’s unbelievably rare for one of those churches to thrive afterwards. And I, and I think so much of it is they think, Oh, we got rid of the bad apple. [00:06:29] Julie: And they have no concept of how that toxicity, one, you know, the toxic, often bullying way of relating and everything was, was taught and learned and trained throughout. But then there is that trauma and, and I just, I think of Willow Creek Community Church, I went to their, it was like a midweek service where they were going to deal with, Supposedly, the women who had been sexually harassed and abused by Bill Heibel’s, the previous pastor, and they didn’t even name it. [00:07:08] Julie: They didn’t name what had happened. They didn’t go into what had happened. They didn’t apologize to the women. The women became like this amorphous something out there, the women, you know? Um, and, and then they talked about, they had a repentance time, like we’re supposed to repent for his sins. It was the most bizarre, unhealing thing I had ever seen. [00:07:27] Julie: And I couldn’t imagine how after something that dysfunctional, a church could go, okay, we’re back, you know, reach the lost, you know, seeker sensitive church. It was just bizarre. Um, so, so much of your work is, is resonating with me. And again, We’ve seen a lot in and it’s really important is dealing with individual trauma and which is super important work. [00:07:53] Julie: Um, and my last podcast with Chuck DeGroat, we talked a lot about that. We talk a lot about that on a lot of podcasts, but we often don’t address again, what’s this collective trauma that, that, you know, that it actually has a social aspect. So talk about why is it important that we begin addressing collective trauma and not just individual trauma, though, you know, obviously we each need to heal as individuals, but collectively as well. [00:08:24] Kayleigh: Yeah. So collective trauma is a newer field, even in psychological studies. So it’s, Not as old as individual trauma studies, and it actually became more popular through the work of Kai Erikson, who’s a sociologist. He’s not even a psychologist, but he studied collective trauma in kind of what he refers to as unnatural disasters. [00:08:43] Kayleigh: And so these disasters that are experienced by communities that have a human, like, blame component. So it was due to somebody’s negligence due to somebody’s poor leadership due to somebody’s abuse, and it’s on a community. And so Kai Erickson notes the, the social, he calls it the social dimension of trauma or collective trauma. [00:09:03] Kayleigh: And what he, he details there is that collective trauma is anything that disrupts and ruptures the, uh, relationships within a community. Distorting and taking apart their, uh, he calls it communality instead of community, but it’s their sense of, like, neighborliness. It’s their sense of being together. It’s their, Their shared identity and their, their shared memories are all now distorted. [00:09:26] Kayleigh: And so I think when we’re speaking specifically about the church, and when we’re looking at religious trauma and congregational trauma, we need to remember that the church is first and foremost, a community. And so sometimes I think that’s missed in our kind of American individualism. You know, a lot of people kind of view spirituality as this individualistic thing, but the church is a community. [00:09:48] Kayleigh: And so when we come together as the body of Christ, you know, when wounding happens, when trauma comes, it breaks down the relationships within that congregation, which really. is what makes it a church. The relationships are what make that a church. And so when trauma comes in and disrupts those and starts causing the divisions and the distrust and the he said, she said, and the choosing of sides and the church splits and all of these things have these ripple effects on the community. [00:10:19] Kayleigh: Um, and they really are, are traumatizing. And so what happens is that if we don’t deal, if we’re only dealing with the individual trauma, In part, that’s usually dealing with people who have left the church, right? And so usually the people who are seeking individual healing from their religious trauma, who are able to name that, who are able to say, I went through this, have often stepped outside of the church. [00:10:42] Kayleigh: Sometimes just for a season, which is completely understandable. They need that time away. They need time to heal. They’re, they don’t, feel safe. But what we’re missing when we neglect the social dimension of religious trauma are often the people who stay are these congregations who can’t name it yet, who can’t articulate that what they’ve gone through is religious trauma, who who maybe are still trying to figure out what that means. [00:11:07] Kayleigh: Often it means that we’re missing, um, you know, these, these the church that I served in, you know, isn’t one of these big name churches that’s going to get, you know, newscasted about. And they can’t necessarily name what happened to them as religious trauma because nobody’s given them the language for it. [00:11:25] Kayleigh: And so we’ve often missed these, these declining churches. We’ve missed because we haven’t remembered that Trauma is communal that trauma is relational. And so we need to, yes, provide as much care and as much resourcing as we can for the healing of individuals, because you can’t heal the community if the individuals don’t know. [00:11:44] Kayleigh: But we really need to remember that the community as a whole. impacted, and that especially when we’re talking about the church, we want to be able to heal and restore those relationships. And to do that means we have to address the social dimensions of the religious trauma. And so [00:12:01] Julie: often the people that, that stay aren’t aware of what’s happened to them. [00:12:08] Julie: Are they not even aware they’re traumatized? [00:12:11] Kayleigh: Right, right. Yeah. [00:12:13] Julie: Yeah. You introduced this, this concept, which is great. I mean, it’s, it’s a riff off of the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which, you know, um, just an incredible book by, uh, Dr. Vander Kolk. But this idea that the body of Christ keeps the score. [00:12:33] Julie: Describe what you mean by that, that the body of Christ keeps the score when there’s this kind of trauma that it’s experiencing. [00:12:40] Kayleigh: Sure. So you kind of alluded to it earlier when you were giving an example of the removing of a toxic pastor, right? And then just the placement of a new pastor. And so often what happens in these situations where there’s spiritual abuse or, um, clergy misconduct or any of those things that’s causing this religious trauma, the answer seems to be, well, let’s just remove the. [00:13:00] Kayleigh: Problem person. And then that will solve everything. Um, well, what happens is we forget that trauma is embodied, right? And so you can remove the physical threat. Um, but if you remove the physical threat or the problem person, but this congregation still has this embodied sense of trauma in which they perceive threat now. [00:13:23] Kayleigh: So they’re reacting to their surroundings out of that traumatized position, because that’s what the collective body has learned to do. And so you see this, um, It’s a silly example, but I use it because I think people see it a lot. So you have a new pastor come in and the new pastor has a great idea, at least he or she thinks it’s a great idea. [00:13:46] Kayleigh: And it probably has to do with removing pews or changing carpet color. Okay. And so they present this, what they think is just a great harmless idea. And the response of the congregation is almost volatile and the pastor can’t figure out why. And often, unfortunately, what pastors have kind of been taught to identify is that they must just idolatry. [00:14:11] Kayleigh: They just have the past as an idol for them and they need to kill this golden cow. Right. And so it becomes this theological problem. Sure, there might be cases where that is the truth, but often I would say that there’s, um, a wonderful. So another great book on trauma. It’s more on racialized trauma, but it deals a lot with historical trauma is, um, rest my Mac mannequins book, um, my grandmother’s hands and in it, he addresses this historical trauma that is embodied and he quotes Dr. [00:14:42] Kayleigh: Noel Larson, who says, if it’s hysterical, it’s probably historical. In other words, if the reaction to the thing happening doesn’t seem to match, like it seems out of proportion, either too energized or not enough energy around it, it’s probably connected to some kind of historical trauma that hasn’t been processed. [00:15:03] Kayleigh: And so we see this a lot in churches who are having a hard time being healthy and flourishing and engaging with the community around them. And. The reason why is often because they have this unhealed trauma that nobody’s given them language for. Nobody’s pointed out, nobody’s addressed for them. Um, and so it’s just kind of lingering under the surface, unhealed, unnamed, and it’s informing how they believe, how they act. [00:15:33] Kayleigh: Um, and so this is really What I mean when I say the body of Christ keeps the score is that the body of Christ has embodied this trauma and it’s coming out in their behaviors, in their actions, in their values, and our pastors are not equipped to address it from a trauma informed perspective. They’ve only been given tools to address it from maybe a theological position, or this kind of revitalization remissioning perspective. [00:16:02] Kayleigh: That often doesn’t work. [00:16:04] Julie: There’s so many things I’m thinking as as you’re talking. I mean one. to come in and do something. And then because people react to, I mean, basically that’s shaming them. It’s guilting them to say, Oh, you have an idol or what’s wrong with you that you can’t get on board. And the truth is they don’t know what’s wrong with them. [00:16:23] Julie: They, they don’t. And, and they’re hurt. And all they know is you just, they’re hurt and now you’ve hurt them. So now they don’t trust you. So way to go. Um, but I’m thinking maybe because we brought this up and I don’t mean to beat up on, on Willow Creek, but I’m thinking about. When the new pastor came in, and I don’t think he’s a bad guy, um, you know, they, they were bleeding money. [00:16:45] Julie: Obviously they, they did not have the resources they did before. So one of the first things they did was they centralized, which meant the campus pastors weren’t going to be preaching anymore. They were going to be pumping in video sermons. Here’s the pastor that people trusted on these campuses. Now, that person’s not going to be preaching, which then of course, all of them left. [00:17:06] Julie: They ended up leaving and the trauma you’d now it’s trauma upon trauma. And it just seems like, especially in so many of these churches, you bring somebody in and they want to move somewhere like, right. They want a thriving church. What they don’t want to do is be at a church and sit in your pain. And yet. [00:17:27] Julie: Unless that’s done, I mean, can these churches, I mean, can they move forward? I mean, what’s going to happen if you come in and you don’t? slow down and say, these people are hurting and I need to, I need to be a shepherd. Then that’s the other thing. It’s so many of these mega churches, and I know this isn’t unique to mega churches that this happens, but I, it’s the world in which I report so often is that these mega churches are very mission vision, five year plan oriented and what they’re not capable of doing. [00:17:59] Julie: I think so many of these, you know, and they always bring in the, the pastor. That’s a good orator, maybe not a shepherd at all. In fact, some of these guys even say, I’m not a shepherd, which that’s another, yeah, I mean, but, but to actually, they need a shepherd at that point. Right. I mean, these, these people need it. [00:18:20] Julie: So, I mean, again, what, what do they need to do? And what happens if they don’t do some of these things? [00:18:28] Kayleigh: So the thing that I have really been drawn to, especially as I study Jesus, and I look at what it means to be trauma informed in the pastorate. So I, I do believe that God is still working through pastors. [00:18:39] Kayleigh: Um, in fact, there’s a really beautiful section of scripture in Jeremiah 23, where God is addressing abusive shepherds and God’s response is, I will raise up new shepherds. So God still wants to work through shepherds. There is still a place for a pastor. The problem is, is I don’t think we’ve taught pastors how to lead out of a posture of compassionate curiosity. [00:19:03] Kayleigh: And so if you follow Jesus and you look at the way that Jesus interacts with hurting people, it is out of this beautiful, humble posture of compassionate curiosity. And so I was always struck by like, he asks the blind man, what do you want me to do for you? And it always seemed like a. That’s a strange question. [00:19:20] Kayleigh: Like, he’s blind, Jesus. What do you think he and often it’s preached on, like, well, we need to be able to tell God what we want. And that’s maybe some of it. But I think it’s also the truth that God knows that it can be re traumatizing to somebody to tell them what they need and what they want. Right? So what we learned when we studied trauma is that it’s not. [00:19:40] Kayleigh: So especially when we’re talking trauma caused by abuse is that abuse is so connected to control. And so what has often happened to these victims of religious abuse of spiritual abuse is that they have had control taken from them entirely. And so when a new pastor comes in and tells them, this is what you need to get healthy again, and never takes the time to approach them from this. [00:20:02] Kayleigh: posture of compassionate curiosity, they can end up re traumatizing them. Um, but our pastors aren’t trained to ask these questions. And so, so often if you read, you know, and they’re well meaning books, you know, they’re, they’re trying to get to what’s going on in the heart of the church. They’re trying to get back to church health, but so many of the books around that have to deal with. [00:20:23] Kayleigh: Asking the church, what are you doing or what are you not doing? And trauma theory teaches us to ask a different question. And that question is what happened to you? And I think if pastors were trained to go into churches and ask the question, what happened to you and just sit with a church and a hold the church and, and listen to the stories of the church, they, they might discover that these people have never been given space to even think about it that way. [00:20:52] Kayleigh: You know, where they’ve just, they’ve had abusive leaders who have just been removed or they’ve had manipulative leaders who have just been removed and they’ve just been given a new pastor and a new pastor and nobody’s given them the space. To articulate what that’s done to them, um, as individuals and as a congregation. [00:21:09] Kayleigh: And so if we can learn to, to follow Jesus in just his curiosity, and he asks the blind man, what do you want me to do for you? He, he says, who touched me when the woman reaches out and touches him. And that’s not a, it’s not a question of condemnation. That’s a question of permission giving. He knows that this woman needs more than physical healing. [00:21:28] Kayleigh: She needs relational healing. She needs to tell her story. And by pausing and saying, who touched me? He provides a space for her to share her story that she’s never been able to share with anyone before. And I think if we were to follow that Jesus, as pastors and as leaders, we would begin to love the Bride of Christ in such a way that would lead to her healing, instead of feeling the need to just rush her through some five year plan to what we think is healing and wholeness, and what actually may not be what they would say is what they need. [00:22:02] Julie: So many things you’re saying are resonating with me. And part of that’s because, uh, like I said, we’re living this. Um, I, I told you last week when we talked that our, our house church was going on a retreat, first retreat we’ve ever had. We’ve been together a little over, well, for me, I came in about two years ago and I think they had been meeting maybe eight or nine months before then. [00:22:29] Julie: Some of the people in our group, Um, don’t come out of trauma. Um, you know, one of our, one of the couples in our church, uh, they’re like young life leaders, really just delightful, delightful, delightful people, but they haven’t lived the religious trauma. One couple is, they’re from the mission field and they had a great missions experience. [00:22:55] Julie: The only trauma they might be experiencing is coming home to the U. S. The truth is they love the mission field, right? Um, and then. The remainder of us come from two, two churches, um, that, that had some sexual abuse that was really, you know, mishandled and the trust with the leaders was, was broken in really grievous ways. [00:23:19] Julie: Um, and then there’s me on top of having that, um, living in this space where, I mean, I just report on this all the time. And so, but one of the beautiful things that happened in this, in this group is that it did have leaders when we came into it and it triggered us. Like, you know, and for us it was like, oh, here’s the inside group and the outside group. [00:23:47] Julie: Like, we’re used to the ins and the outs, right? And, and we’re used to the inside group having power and control, and the rest of us just kind of go along with it. And, and we’re, we’re a tiny little group. Like we’re 20 some people, right? But, but it’s just, and, and we’re wonderful people. Wonderful people. [00:24:02] Julie: And yet we still like, it was like, mm. And um, and so. The beautiful thing is that those leaders recognize, like they didn’t fully understand it, but they said, you know, I think we need to just step down and just not have leaders. And I didn’t even realize till we went on this retreat what an act of service and of love that was for them to just say, were laying down any, any agendas we might’ve had, any even mission or vision that we might’ve had. [00:24:35] Julie: And for one of, you know, one of the guys, it was really hard for him cause he’s just like, Mr. Mr. Energy and initiative. And, and he was like, I better not take initiative because like, it’s, it’s not going to be good for these folks. Um, and on the retreat. So then, I mean, it was, it was really a Holy Spirit. [00:24:54] Julie: experience, I think for all of us, because there definitely was a camp that was like, okay, we’ve had this kind of healing time, but can, can we move forward a little bit? Like, can we, can we have some intentionality? And then there were part of us that were just like, oh my word, if we, if we, if we have leaders, why do we need leaders? [00:25:12] Julie: We’re 20 something people. Like we can just decide everything ourselves. And, and there really was somewhat of an impasse, but it’s interesting. The things that you said for me, And it was funny at one point. They’re like, can’t you just trust? And, you know, kind of like, what, what are you guys afraid of? You know? [00:25:29] Julie: And the first thing that came out of my mouth was control control. Like we’re afraid of control, um, or I’m afraid of control. Um, but what was so, so. Huge for me and I think was one of those again, Holy Spirit moments was when, you know, I was trying to like make a point about power dynamics, like you don’t realize power and like we have to be aware of how power is stewarded in a group like this because everybody has power. [00:25:59] Julie: If you don’t realize as a communicator the power that you have, like I’m aware now that because I can, I can form thoughts pretty quickly. That I can have a lot of influence in a group. I’m aware of that. And so, you know, there was even like a part where I was leading and then I was like, I can’t lead this next thing. [00:26:17] Julie: I’ve been leading too much, you know, and then we, and then we gave, we, somebody had a marker and we gave the marker to, to, um, one of the guys in our group who’s fantastic guy. And, um, And at one point, so, so anyway, I was talking about power and, and one of the guys was like, well, I don’t, I don’t really see power. [00:26:35] Julie: I don’t need. And I’m like, you have it, whether you realize it and you have it. And what was huge is that one of the other guys that sort of a leader was a leader was able to say what she’s talking about is real. Everybody has power. This is really important. And he was quite frankly, somebody with a lot of power in that group because he has a lot of trust, used to be a pastor. [00:26:57] Julie: Um, and for him to acknowledge that for the rest of us was huge. And then this, this other guy, I mean, he said at one point, Oh, well, you know, so and so’s holding the marker right now and he has power, doesn’t he? And I was like, yes, you’re getting it. That’s it. That’s it. Thank you. Because he’s like, you just reframed what we said and I wouldn’t have reframed it that way. [00:27:22] Julie: Like I wouldn’t. And I’m like, yes, exactly. It’s like, and it was like, it was like the light bulbs were going on and people were starting to get it. Um, and then another key, key moment was when one of the women who, you know, wasn’t, you know, from our church where we experienced stuff, who said, can you, can you tell me how that, how that felt for you when we used to have leaders? [00:27:46] Julie: And then for people to be able to express that. And people listened and it was like, and I was able to hear from this guy who felt like he was, he had a straight jacket, you know, because he, he like wants to use his, his initiative. Like he, he. You know, and God’s given that to him. It’s a good thing, you know. [00:28:07] Julie: And all I can say is it was just an incredible experience, an incredible moment, but it would not have happened if, and now I’m going to get kind of, it wouldn’t have happened if people cared more about the mission than the people. And they didn’t realize the people are the mission. This is Jesus work. He doesn’t care about your five year plan. [00:28:41] Julie: He doesn’t care about your ego and the big, you know, plans that you have and things you can do. What he cares is whether you’ll lay your life down for the sheep. That’s what shepherds do. And what I saw in, in our group was the willingness to, for people that have shepherding gifts to lay down their, you know, not literally their lives, but in a way their lives, their, their dreams, their hopes or visions, everything to love another and how that created so much love and trust, you know, in our group. [00:29:22] Julie: And we’re still like trying to figure this out, but yeah, it was, it was hugely, it just so, so important. But I thought how many churches are willing to do that, are willing to, to sit in the pain, are willing to listen. And I’m, I’m curious as you go in now, there’s so much of your work has become with ReStory is, is education and going into these churches. [00:29:52] Julie: You know, normally when this happens, And you told me there’s a, there’s a name for pastors that come in. It’s the afterpastor. Afterpastor. [00:30:00] Kayleigh: Yes. The afterpastor. [00:30:02] Julie: How many times does the afterpastor get it? And does he do that? [00:30:07] Kayleigh: So the problem is, and I can tell you, cause I have an MDiv. I went, I did all the seminary. [00:30:11] Kayleigh: I’m ordained. We don’t get trained in that. Um, so, and there is, um, like you said, so you use this guy as an example who has the clear. Initiative gifts. So they’re what would be called kind of the Apostle, um, evangelist gifts in like the pastoral gift assessment kind of deal. You’ve got the Apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. [00:30:34] Kayleigh: And right now there’s a lot of weight kind of being thrown behind the Apostle evangelist as kind of the charismatic leader who can set the vision. And so most of the books on pastoral You know, church health and church are written kind of geared and directed that way. Um, so we’re really missing the fact that when we’re talking about a traumatized church, what you really need is a prophet shepherd. [00:30:57] Kayleigh: Um, you need somebody who can come in and shepherd the people and care for them well, but also the prophet. The role of the prophet is often to help people make meaning of their suffering. So if you read closely, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, particularly who are two prophets speaking to people in exile, what they’re really doing is helping people make meaning of that suffering. [00:31:17] Kayleigh: They’re helping people tell their story. They’re, they’re lamenting, they’re crying with them. They’re, they’re asking the hard questions. Um, and they’re able to kind of see between the lines. So prophet, Pastors who have kind of that prophetic gifting are able to see below. They’re able to kind of slow down and hear the actual story beyond the behaviors, right? [00:31:35] Kayleigh: So the behaviors aren’t telling the whole story, but we need eyes to see that. And so the problem, I would say, is that a lot of well, meaning pastors simply aren’t taught how to do this. And so they’re not given the resources. They’re not given kind of the, um. this like Christian imagination to be able to look at a church and say, okay, what has happened here and what healings take place here? [00:31:59] Kayleigh: Um, the other problem is, you know, we need to be able to give space. So denominational leaders need to be able to be okay with a church that maybe isn’t going to grow for a few years. And I think that is whether we like it or not. And we can say all day long that we don’t judge a church’s health by its numbers. [00:32:19] Kayleigh: But at the end of the day, pastors feel this pressure to grow the church, right? To have an attendance that’s growing a budget that’s growing and. And so, and part of it is from a good place, right? We want to reach more people from Jesus, but part of it is just this like cultural pressure that defines success by numbers. [00:32:36] Kayleigh: And so can we be okay with a church that’s not going to grow for a little while? You know, can we be okay with a church that’s going to take some like intentional time to just heal? And so when you have an established church, um, which is a little bit different than a house church model, it can be. A really weird sacrifice, even for the people who are there, because often what you have is you have a segment of the church who is very eager to move forward and move on and and to grow and to move into its new future, and they can get frustrated with the rest of the church. [00:33:15] Kayleigh: That kind of seems to need more time. Um, but trauma healing is it’s not linear. And so, you know, you kind of have to constantly Judith Herman identifies like three components of trauma healing. And so it’s safety and naming and remembering and then reconnecting, but they’re not like you finish safety and then you move to this one and then you move to this one. [00:33:36] Kayleigh: Often you’re kind of going, you’re ebbing and flowing between them, right? Because you can achieve safety and then start to feel like, okay, now I can name it. And then something can trigger you and make you feel unsafe again. And so you’re now you’re back here. And so, um, um, Our churches need to realize that this healing process is going to take time, and collective trauma is complicated because you have individuals who are going to move through it. [00:33:57] Kayleigh: So you’re going to have people who are going to feel really safe, and they’re going to feel ready to name, and others who aren’t. And so you have to be able to mitigate that and navigate that. And our pastors just aren’t simply trained in this. And so what I see happening a lot is I’ll do these trainings and I’ll have somebody come up to me afterwards and go, Oh my goodness, I was an after pastor and I had no idea that was a thing. [00:34:18] Kayleigh: And they’re like, you just gave so much language to my experience. And you know, and now I understand why they seem to be attacking me. They weren’t really attacking me. They just don’t trust the office of the pastor. And I represent the office of the pastor. Okay. And so sometimes they take that personally again, it becomes like these theological issues. [00:34:38] Kayleigh: And so helping pastors understand the collective trauma and being able to really just take the time to ask those important questions and to increase not only their own margin for suffering, but to increase a congregations margin for suffering. You know, to go, it’s going to be, we can sit in this pain. [00:34:58] Kayleigh: It’s going to be uncomfortable, but it’s going to be important, you know, learning how to lament, learning how to mourn. All of these things are things that often we’re just not trained well enough in, um, as pastors. And so therefore our congregations aren’t trained in them either. You know, they don’t have margin for suffering either. [00:35:14] Kayleigh: Um, and so we need to be able to equip our pastors to do that. Um, and then equip the congregations to be able to do that as well. [00:35:20] Julie: So good. And I’m so glad you’re doing that. I will say when I first started this work, um, I was not trauma informed. I didn’t know anything about trauma really. And I didn’t even, you know, I was just a reporter reporting on corruption and then it turned into abuse in the church. [00:35:38] Julie: And I started interfacing with a lot of abuse victims. who were traumatized. And I think back, um, and, and really, I’ve said this before, but survivors have been my greatest teachers by far, like just listening to them and learning from them. But really from day one, you know, it’s loving people, right? It really, it like, if you love and if you empathize, which You know, some people think it’s a sin, um, just cannot, um, but if you do that and, and that’s what, you know, even as I’m thinking about, um, within our own, our own house church, there were people who weren’t trained, but they did instinctively the right things because they loved. [00:36:28] Julie: You know, and it just reminds me, I mean, it really does come down to, they will know you are Christians by your love. You know, how do we know love? Like Christ laid down his life for us. He is our model of love and, and somehow, you know, like you said, the, in the church today we’ve, we’ve exalted the, um, what did you say? [00:36:49] Julie: The apostle evangelist? The apostle evangelist. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, we’ve exalted that person, um, you know, And I think we’ve forgotten how to love. And too many of these pastors don’t know how to love. They just don’t know how to love. And it’s, it’s tragic. Because they’re supposed to be I mean, the old school models, they were shepherds, you know, like you said, like we need apostles, we need evangelists. [00:37:16] Julie: But usually the person who was leading the church per se, the apostles and evangelists would often end up in parachurch organizations. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I think the church needs all of those things. Um, and, uh, But yeah, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve left that behind, sadly. And there’s nothing sexy about being a shepherd. [00:37:37] Kayleigh: Yeah, no, I, all, all of the Apostle, I mean that, well, the whole thing is needed, um, and it’s most beautiful when we just work together, and, and when they can respond to each other. So, I mean, me and you’re an example in your house, you’re a visiting example of this. You can’t, even if just listening, you have some clear Apostle evangelists in your group, right? [00:37:54] Kayleigh: I mean, Um, right? And so you have these people wired for that, and yet they’re able to, to learn and respond to some of the people in the group who have more of those prophet shepherd tendencies. And so I think that that’s really what, and that’s loving, right? So we should go back. It’s just loving one another and learning from one another. [00:38:17] Kayleigh: And knowing when to lean into certain giftings and to learn from others giftings. This is why it’s the body of Christ. And so when a component of the body of Christ is left out, we can’t be who God’s called us to be. And so when we neglect the role of the shepherd and neglect the role of the prophet or minimize them, or see them as secondary, then we’re not going to do called us to be. [00:38:44] Kayleigh: You know, we may need all of it to come together to do what God has called us to do. God is working in this church. He’s worked all through this church. He has established it and called it, and He’s going to use it. But we need to be learning how He has built it and how He framed it. For me to love one another and not elevate one gifting above another. [00:39:07] Julie: And it’s interesting too, you mentioned the office of the pastor. Um, I know as we were discussing some of this, we have one guy who’s very, I mean, actually our entire group, and I think this is probably why we’ve been able to navigate some of this. It’s it’s a really spiritually mature group. A lot of people. [00:39:26] Julie: who have been in leadership, um, which sometimes you get a lot of leaders together and it can be, you know, but this hasn’t been that way because I think people really do love the Lord. Um, and they love each other. Um, but one of the things that was brought up, um, is Is the pastor an office or is it a role and have we made it into an office and, and what we realized in the midst of that and I, you know, I, I’m like, well, that’s really interesting. [00:39:57] Julie: I would like to study that. And I find there, there’s a curiosity when you talk compassionate curiosity, I think there’s also a curiosity in, in people who have been through this kind of trauma. There’s a curiosity in, okay, what, what did we do? that we did because everybody said that’s how we’re supposed to do it. [00:40:18] Kayleigh: Yeah. [00:40:18] Julie: Yeah. Do I really have that conviction? Could I really argue it from scripture? Is this even right? And so I find even in our group, there is a, there is a, um, there’s a curiosity and maybe this is because we’re coming through and we’re in, you know, I think a later stage of healing is that now we’re like really curious about what should we be? [00:40:44] Julie: Yes. Yes. What should we be, like, we, we want to dig into what, what is a church, what should it really be, and what, why, how could we be different? Of course, always realizing that you can have the perfect structure and still have disaster. Um, it really does come down to the character of the people and, and that, but, but yeah, there’s a real, Curiosity of, of sort of, um, digging, digging into that. [00:41:10] Julie: And, and let me just, I can ask you, and, and maybe this will be a rabbit trail, maybe we’ll edit it out. I don’t know. Um, , but, but I am curious what do, what do you think of that idea that the, the pastorate may be a role that we’ve made into an office and maybe that could be part of the problem? [00:41:27] Kayleigh: I think that’s a lot of it. [00:41:28] Kayleigh: Um, because when we turn the, the pastorate into an office, we can lose the priesthood of all believers. So that I think is often what happens is that, um, you create this pastoral role where now all of the ministry falls on to the pastor. And so instead of the pastor’s role being to equip the saints for the ministry, which is what scripture says, the scripture describes a pastor as equipping the saints for the ministry. [00:41:56] Kayleigh: Now the pastor is doing the ministry, right? There’s, there’s just all of this pressure on the pastor. And that’s, that’s where I think we start to see this. The shift from the pastor being the one who is, you know, encouraging and equipping and edifying and, you know, calling up everybody to live into their role as the body of Christ where we’ve seen. [00:42:19] Kayleigh: You know, I have a soft spot for pastors. Again, I’m like, they’re all my relatives are them. I love pastors and I know some really beautiful ones who get into ministry because that’s exactly what they want to do. And so what has often happened though, is that the, the ways of our culture have begun to inform how the church operates. [00:42:40] Kayleigh: And so we saw this, you know, when, when the church started to employ business In kind of the church growth movement. So it’s like, okay, well, who knows how to grow things? Business people know how to grow things. Okay. Well, what are they doing? Right. And so now that the pastor is like the CEO, people choose their churches based on the pastor’s sermon, right? [00:43:00] Kayleigh: Well, I like how this pastor preaches. So I’m going to go to that church. Um, so some of it is. So I would say that not all of it is pastors who have like that egotistical thing within them at the beginning. Some of it is that we know that those patterns exist. But some of these men and women are genuinely just love the Lord’s people and then get into these roles where they’re all of a sudden like, wait, I, Why, why is it about me and others, this pressure to preach better sermons and the person down the road or, you know, run the programs and do all of these things instead of equipping the people to do the work of God. [00:43:38] Kayleigh: And so I think it’s, it’s about, and right, I think it’s happened internally in our churches, but I also think there’s this outward societal pressure that has shifted the pastor from this shepherding role to the CEO office. Um, And finding the, like, middle ground, right? So again, like, we can swing the pendulum one way and not have pastors. [00:44:05] Kayleigh: Or we can swing the pendulum the other way and have pastors at the center of everything. But is there a way of finding, kind of, this middle ground where people who are fairly calm and gifted and anointed by God to do rich shepherding can do it in a way that is Zen sitting that church that is equal famous saint that is calling the body of Christ to be what it is called be. [00:44:27] Kayleigh: And I guess I’m, I’m constantly over optimistic and so I’m convinced that there’s gotta be a way , that we can get to a place where pastors can live out of their giftings and live by their callings and live out of their long dreams in such a way. That leads to the flourishing health of the church and not to its destruction. [00:44:45] Julie: Yes. And, and I think if it’s working properly, that absolutely should be there. They should be a gift to the church. Um, and, and sadly we just, we haven’t seen enough of that, but that is, that is, I think the model. Um, let’s talk specifically, and we have talked, or we might not have named it, um, but some of the results of this collective trauma. [00:45:08] Julie: in a congregation. Um, let’s, let’s name some of the things. These are ways that this can, that this can play itself out. [00:45:17] Kayleigh: Sure. So when we’re talking about congregational collective trauma, one of the main results that we’ve talked about kind of in a roundabout way is this lack of trust that can happen within the congregation. [00:45:27] Kayleigh: And this can be twofold. We can talk about the lack of trust for the leadership, but it all also can be lack of trust. Just, In the congregation itself, um, this often happens, particularly if we’re looking at clergy misconduct that maybe wasn’t as widespread. So I think this is some of what you’ve kind of talked about with Willow Creek a little bit, and I’m, I wasn’t in that situation, but I’ve seen it other places where, you know, in our system, the denominational leadership removes a pastor. [00:45:56] Kayleigh: And so what can happen in a system like that is that denominational leadership becomes aware of abuse. They act on the abuse by removing the pastor. And what you have happening is kind of this, um, Betrayal trauma or this, you know, bias against believing. And so because the idea that their clergy person who they have loved and trusted, you know, shepherd them could possibly do something that atrocious. [00:46:24] Kayleigh: That idea is too devastating for them to internalize. So it feels safer to their bodies to deny it. And so what can happen is you can have a fraction of the church. that thinks it’s, you know, all made up and that there’s no truth to it. And they began to blame the denominational leadership as the bad guys or that bad reporter that, you know, the [00:46:45] Julie: gossip monger out there. [00:46:47] Julie: It’s so bad. [00:46:48] Kayleigh: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you have this split. Now, sometimes it literally splits and people will leave. Um, but sometimes they don’t and they all stay. And so you have these fractions of people who believe different things about what happened. And so now there’s, there’s a lack of shared identity. [00:47:08] Kayleigh: So I would say one of the key components of collective trauma in a congregation is this mistrust, which is often connected to a lack of shared identity. And so they can’t really figure out who they are together. What does it mean for us to be a community to get there? Um, and so trauma begins to write their story. [00:47:27] Kayleigh: And so when we talk about the embodiment of trauma, one of the ways that that works in individuals, and this is like a mini neuroscience lesson that many of your listeners are probably aware of, because I think you have a very trauma informed audience. Audience, but, um, you know, that it, it makes us react out of those fight, flight, or freeze responses. [00:47:46] Kayleigh: And so that happens individually, right? So something triggers us and all of a sudden we’re at our cortisol is raised. We’re acting out of the, uh, you know, those flight flight places that happens communally too. So a community gets triggered by, you know, a pastor again, having what they think is just a creative idea, you know, but maybe it triggers that time that that pastor. [00:48:09] Kayleigh: Had a creative idea that was, you know, and ran with it without talking to anybody and just like wield the control and manipulated people. And now, all of a sudden, this pastor who thinks they just have this innocent, creative idea is now seen as manipulative. And what are they going to try to do behind our backs? [00:48:27] Kayleigh: And what are they going to try? And, and. What are they going to take from us? Right? And so trauma, trauma takes from people. And so now they’re living kind of out of this perpetual perceived fear, perceived threat, that something else is going to be lost. And so when you have a congregation that’s constantly operating out of, you know, this fight, flight, or freeze response. [00:48:52] Kayleigh: Collectively, I mean, how can we expect them to live out the mission that God has given them? Um, you know, they’re not, they’re not there. They’re not able to, um, they’re not able to relate to one another in a healthy way. And so we, we see a lack of kind of intimate relationships in these congregations, right? [00:49:09] Kayleigh: Because so the Deb Dana, who has helped people really understand the polyvagal theory, when we’re talking about, um, trauma talks about your, your, um, Nervous system, your autonomic nervous system is kind of being like a three rung ladder. And so in this three rung ladder, you have the top rung being your ventral bagel state, which is where you can engage with people in safe and healthy ways. [00:49:32] Kayleigh: And then you move down into kind of your sympathetic nervous system. And this is where you’re in that fight flight freeze and then dorsal bagels at the bottom. And in those two middle and bottom, you can’t build these deep relationships. And again, deep relationships are what make a church a church. And so if you have a congregation that’s stuck in these middle to bottom rungs of this ladder, they’re, they’re fight, flight, freeze, or they’re withdrawing from one another. [00:49:54] Kayleigh: You’re, you’re losing the intimacy, the vulnerability, the safety of these congregations to build those kinds of relationships. And so I would say that, that distrust, that lack of shared identity and that inability to build deeper kind of relationships are three kind of key components of what we’re seeing in congregations who are carrying this collective trauma. [00:50:16] Julie: And yet, if you work through that together, like I will say right now, I feel a great deal of affection for, for everyone. Uh, in our house tours because we went through that chaos together, but also it was, it was an opportunity to see love and people lay down their lives for each other. So to, to be able to see, I mean, you begin writing a new story instead of that old story that’s been so dominant, you know, that you have to tell, you have to work through. [00:50:50] Julie: Yeah, you do. And, and, and you have, you do. I love where you say, you know, people need to, to hear that from you. Yeah. I think that’s really, really important for people to have a safe place. But then at the same time, you can’t, you don’t want to live the rest of your life there. You don’t want that to define, define you. [00:51:09] Julie: Um, and that’s, that’s what’s beautiful though, is if you work through it together, now you, you’ve got a new story, right? You’ve got, you’ve got Dodd doing something beautiful. Um, among you and, and that’s what he does. [00:51:23] Kayleigh: That’s why we call our organization Restory. Um, it is a word used in trauma theory and in reconciliation studies to talk about what communities who have experienced a lot of violence have to do is they have to get to a place where they’re able to, it’s exactly what you’re talking about with your house churches doing is you guys have kind of come to a place where you’re able to ask the question, who do we want to be now? [00:51:45] Kayleigh: And this is this process of restorying. And so what trauma does is in many ways, for a while, it tries to write our stories. And for a while, it kind of has, because of the way that it’s embodied, we kind of, it has to, right? Like we have to process like, okay, I’m reacting to this. trigger because of this trauma that’s happened. [00:52:05] Kayleigh: So how do I work through that? You know, how do I name that? How do I begin to tell that story? And so we, and we have to tell the story, right? Because I mean, trauma theory has been the dialectic of traumas, but Judith Herman talks about is it’s very unspeakable because it’s horrific, but it has to be spoken to be healed. [00:52:22] Kayleigh: Right. And so with this trauma, it can be hard to speak initially. But it needs to be spoken to be healed. But once we’ve done that, once we begin to loosen the control that trauma has on us. Once we’re able to speak it out loud, and then we can get to a place individually and communally where we can start to ask ourselves, Who do we want to be? [00:52:45] Kayleigh: And who has God called us to be? And no, things are not going to be the way they were before the trauma happened. I think that’s the other thing that happens in churches is there’s a lot of misconception. That healing means restoring everything to the way it was before. And when that doesn’t happen, there’s this question of, well, well, did we, did we heal? [00:53:06] Kayleigh: And we have to remember that we’re never going back to the way it was before the trauma happened. But we can begin to imagine what it can look like now. Once we begin to integrate the suffering into our story, and we begin to ask those helpful questions, and we take away the trauma’s control, now we can ask, who do we want to be? [00:53:24] Kayleigh: And we can begin to write a new beautiful story that can be healing for many others. [00:53:29] Julie: A friend of mine who has been through unspeakable trauma, I love when she talks about her husband, because they went through this together, and she often says, he’s like an aged fine wine. You know, and I love that because to me, no, you’re not going back to who you were, but in many ways who you were was a little naive, little starry eyed, a little, you know, and, and once you’ve been through these sorts of things, it is kind of like an aged fine wine. [00:54:01] Julie: You have, you’re, you’re aged, but hopefully in a beautiful way. And, you know, I, I think you’re way more compassionate. Once you’ve gone through this, you’re way more able to see another person who’s traumatized and And to, you know, reach out to that person, to love that person, to care for that person. And so it’s a beautiful restoring. [00:54:26] Julie: And we could talk about this for a very long time. And we will continue this discussion at Restore, [00:54:33] Kayleigh: um, because [00:54:34] Julie: you’re going to be at the conference and that was part of our original discussions. So folks, if you wanna talk more to Kaleigh , come to Restore. I, I’m, I’m gonna fit you in somehow because , I’m gonna be there. [00:54:46] Julie: you’re gonna be there. But do you just have a wealth of, uh, I think research and insights that I think will really, really be powerful? And I’m waiting for you to write your book because it needs to be written. Um, but I’m working on it. , thank you for, for taking the time and for, um, just loving the body. [00:55:07] Julie: And in the way that you have, I appreciate it. [00:55:09] Kayleigh: Well, thank you. Because, you know, when I heard about your work and your tagline, you know, reporting the truth, but restoring the church, you know, I was just so drawn in because that’s what we need. The church is worth it. The church is beautiful and she is worth taking the time to restore. [00:55:24] Kayleigh: And I’m so thankful for the work that you’re doing to make sure that that that happens. [00:55:28] Julie: Thank you. Well, thanks so much for listening to the Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’ve appreciated this podcast and our investigative journalism, would you please consider donating to the Roy’s report to support our ongoing work? [00:55:47] Julie: As I’ve often said, we don’t have advertisers or many large donors. We mainly have you. The people who care about our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church. So if you’d like to help us out, just go to Julie Roy’s spelled R O Y S dot com slash donate. That’s Julie Roy’s dot com slash donate. [00:56:07] Julie: Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to the Roy’s report on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. [00:56:29] Julie: Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more

Ever heard the stat from “a recent study” that found that, when a husband comes to Christ first, in 93% of cases the wife and kids follow, but when the wife comes to Christ first, it's only 17%? Today Beth Allison Barr and Miranda Zapor Cruz, both academics looking into gender relations in church, join me to try to track down the source. Spoiler alert: People seem to have made this up about 30 years ago—and they keep quoting it! We look at what happens when churches assume this stat is true.OUR SPONSOREver, AJ: Uniquely crafted vegan leather Bible cases. These Bible Cases are GORGEOUS and FUNCTIONAL! Use it as a traditional case, or you can also buy purses and wristlets. Makes a great gift too!TO SUPPORT USJoin our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our workFor tax deductible donations in the U.S., support Good Fruit Faith InitiativeAnd check out our Merch, or any of our courses!THINGS MENTIONED:Miranda Zapor Cruz': The Myth of the 93% Julie Roys' podcast with Amanda CunninghamTim Clinton ClipDanny Akin citing the “stat” Josh Howerton clip (around 20:15)J.D. Greear clip The Baptist Press articleThe Orthodox Barbie clip The Christ Church of the Valley handbook with the “stat” Matt Chandler saying he preaches to men:  (around 36-37 minutes)ABOUT MIRANDA ZAPOR CRUZ:Find Miranda Zapor Cruz on Facebook Order her book Faithful Politics ABOUT BETH ALLISON BARR:Find Beth Allison Barr on Threads Pre-order Becoming tJoin Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!And her FACEBOOK PAGE has been HACKED--so please join the new official one!Check out her books: The Great Sex Rescue She Deserves Better The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!Check out all her courses, FREE resources, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Ready to question some widely accepted teachings on sexual purity? "Every Man's Battle" might be doing more harm than good. On this episode of Calibrate Conversations, Brady dissects the implications of this popular book and its over-the-top graphic content, arguing for a healthier, more biblically sound approach to tackling lust and sexual sin. By illustrating the pendulum effect, where extreme corrective measures backfire, he open the floor to a critical and balanced discussion on the real solutions to these deep-rooted issues.As Brady ventures into the murky waters of marriage expectations, he challenges harmful stereotypes and generalizations about men's struggles with lust. Brady shares his personal journey of fidelity to his wife, countering the narrative that all men face the same battles. He also confront the dangerous idea of treating wives as mere objects for sexual gratification, advocating instead for relationships built on love, mutual respect, and true intimacy. By rethinking these conventional narratives, he aims to set a new standard for what a healthy marriage should look like.Navigating the broader implications of abuse and redemption within relationships, we touch on the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, dissecting high-profile scandals and their impact on public consciousness. Brady critiques the misuse of influential resources like "Love and Respect," discussing how they can lead to manipulation and unrealistic marital expectations. Through the lens of biblical principles and gospel-centered leadership, he calls for accountability, balanced perspectives, and heart-level transformation to foster relationships that reflect God's true design.Join us weekly as we strive help people embrace God's standard for sexuality! Other ways to listen:https://linktr.ee/calibrateconversations#Abuse #Sexuality #EveryMansBattle #JulieRoys #SheilaWrayGregoire

7:15: Telegram, Praying Mantises, Lady Bug insect kits.11:20: Molly eats caterpillars for dinner, Molly gets a tension headache.15:48: Being shocked by someone's sin and Stephen Lawson20:25: Idols of the Heart and flattening out the spectrum of sin22:27: Ed Welch and leftover halloween candy26:00: The language of “watch yourself lest you too fall into sin.”27:44: But the sin is actually egregious and Julie Roys took it up.32:34: Severity of sin and an interesting paradox in Scripture36:07: A take on RFK and Olivia Nuzzi via House Inhabit.SUBSTACK44:56: 3 Sermons on the theme of idols: Stacy Gaylord (ME? A Slave?) Jeff Hamling (Sound of Silence), Bryan Clark (The Fall of the Great Prostitute).54:26: A spelling test of the old testament and the root of the word “Proverb.” Too Busy to Flush Telegram GroupSend us a PostcardCanavoxPique Tea - Referral Link (it's super-delicious and healthy)Ledger Hardware Wallet - Referral Link (store your crypto securely!)

Julie Roys on X: "Thinking BG rule can solve moral crisis in Christian leadership is absurd. What's also absurd is @albertmohler blaming social media for "public damage to the gospel" & "wounding of little lambs." 1 Tim 5:20 says "those elders who are sinning you are to reprove b4 everyone" 1/ https://t.co/P3C4PTQ9S3" Dr. Danish on X: "Young people are not ok. https://t.co/cuIRgiLi4V" ℂ

Julie Roys on X: "Radio evangelist & pastor @ChuckSwindoll will retire from Stonebriar Community Church in N. Texas next month, following his 90th birthday. “So okay, no tears, no pity," said Swindoll on Sun. "What's to pity? God has begun a good work & he's continuing it" https://t.co/W90Mu3qbSJ" Desiring God on X: "Test your heart, Christian. https://t.co/qpjShOZe9J" Squirrel on X: "There used to be more than 2,000 K-Marts in the United States. The final K-Mart store, located in Bridgehampton, Long Island, New York, is scheduled to close on October 20, 2024." Dan White Jr. on X: "Jesus had a Tax Collector and a Zealot on his core team — political arch enemies. This choice makes absolutely no sense organizationally. But when you think about this transformationally, it turns the world upside down!"See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

“Your thoughts and beliefs dictate your financial reality. Shift your mindset from scarcity to abundance, and you'll be amazed at the opportunities and growth that follow.”— Jen Sincero In this episode, Julie shares her perspective and highlights: Her inspiring journey from growing up in an immigrant family with financial struggles to becoming a successful multimillion-dollar entrepreneur The concept of transitioning from active income to passive income and how her strategy has enabled her to achieve financial freedom The importance of having a strong support system and maintaining a growth-oriented mindset Continue the conversation on Instagram @heatherchauvin_ For your own AG1 supply, visit: drinkAG1.com/EU Julie Roy is a Canadian-born entrepreneur, coach, author, speaker, and investor, with a deep passion for helping elite entrepreneurs achieve legacy wealth and freedom. She started her first business in her early 20s by taking a high-interest loan, which she paid off through sheer determination. Over a decade, she learned from costly mistakes and successfully positioned her first venture for a profitable exit. Check out her website julieroy.com for free downloads, resources for real estate investing, information about the trifecta strategy and all the entrepreneurial stuff. You can find more about her book "The Multi-Million Dollar Mompreneur" at thejulieroy.com/book If you are the type of person that needs to buy back your capacity so you can lead better, so you can dream better and feel amazing while doing it, go to heatherchauvin.com/trr to learn how to manage your time and energy better so that you can become the type of person that you desire. Ready to step into the next level of your personal and professional growth? Head over to heatherchauvin.com/apply and my team and I will review your application to see how we can support you reach your next level.

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWVNVNJg4n0 Normally, people think of grooming as the manipulative process a sexual predator uses to lure his unsuspecting prey. But these same grooming tactics are rife in cult-like churches. So says Mike Donahue, a child sexual abuse survivor who spent many adult years serving under popular author and youth leader, Jeanne Mayo. On this edition of The Roys Report, Mike joins host Julie Roys to tell his tragic but riveting story, revealing shocking truths about megachurch culture. During his childhood, Mike was abused and neglected, making him easy prey for sexual predators. These predators exploited his need for love and attention to fulfill their perverse sexual desires. After escaping these predators, Mike found hope in Jesus and became a Christian. Yet, instead of finding safety in the church, Mike says he found another predator: well-known author and youth leader Jeanne Mayo. Mike says Mayo exploited his same need for love and belonging—not to satisfy sexual appetites, but her craving for success and growth. In this eye-opening discussion, Mike reveals the predatory recruitment tactics he observed in Mayo's ministry and others, and then was coached and trained to imitate. But he also talks about his journey of discovery, and how he changed after being convicted that the way he was ministering was wrong. Guests Mike Donahue Mike Donahue is a highly sought-after speaker and author on the subjects of respect, bullying, and resiliency. Over the past three decades, he has addressed more than a million students and adults in-person including across the U.S., Asia, South America, and Europe. He has written five books including Hidden Scars and his latest book, Groomed. Mike and his wife, Rachel, who are parents of five children, live in Omaha, Nebraska. Learn more at his website.  Show Transcript Coming soon Read more

On this show, we confront liberalism in the American church and ask, "Is Julie Roys of the Roys Report woke?" How you can support the ministry: https://restoringyourvoice.substack.com/p/donate For more godly content: website: https://restoringyourvoice.substack.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RestoringYourVoice Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PDavidCMcGuire X (Formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/PDavidCMcGuire

Send us a Text Message.This week, Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate for the Democrat presidential ticket.Christian journalist Julie Roys, the same one who has tried to slander John MacArthur out of ministry, posted an article on her website that characterized Walz as a “Minnesota Lutheran dad”.But is that an accurate description of Walz? What has he said and what has he done in office? We will open the program this week with a deeper examination of Walz' worldview.Later in the program, we will also air more interviews from our Road Trip to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. Mark Looy, co-founder with Ken Ham and chief communications officer of Answers in Genesis (AIG), will join us to talk about God's hand in the development of the ministry.Hope you join us for a packed program!-------------------------Two New Store Resources:Shepherds for Sale by Meg Basham - on sale for $26.39Who Am I? Solving the Identity Puzzle by Martyn Isle available for a donation of any amount to The Christian Worldview.

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/5I3m2AAHjAY Christian nationalism has taken over large swaths of the United States. But is this movement really Christian? And is it possible to engage with a Christian nationalist in a disarming way that doesn't end up in a fight? On this edition of The Roys Report, host Julie Roys engages in a lively dialogue with Caleb Campbell—a one-time skinhead who became a Christian and then a pastor. And for the last 18 years, Caleb has been ministering in Phoenix—a hotbed of Christian nationalist fervor. Caleb shares candidly how Christian nationalism divided his church and left him so wounded, he had to take a months-long sabbatical. But he says God used this experience to soften his heart and motivate him to reach those ensnared by a powerful, growing movement. Drawing from his own experience leading congregants at Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix—and his just-published book, Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor—Caleb provides a pastor's primer on Christian nationalism. How do you define this ideology? What are the concerns and potential harms, from both a pastoral and constitutional perspective? And what are some conversational approaches to disarm people who may be ensnared by it? During a contentious election year, this topic is a minefield—with critics waiting to pounce. This thoughtful and compassionate dialogue will help you navigate this minefield and love those with whom you disagree. Guests Caleb Campbell Caleb Campbell has been a pastor at Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix, Arizona, since 2006 and lead pastor since 2015. He is a doctoral student at Fuller Theological Seminary and a graduate of Phoenix Seminary. He serves as regional director for the Surge Network, an equipping and church planting organization. He is a co-founder of the J29 Coalition and the founder of Disarming Leviathan. His first book, Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, was published in 2024. He lives in Phoenix with his wife and children. Show Transcript Coming soon Read more

Meet US gymnastics' 'pommel horse guy' Stephen Nedoroscik Ed Stetzer on X: "Being Offended by Offensive Things Is Good, Actually" -Ed on the Last Supper and Olympics "Here are some keys for Christians thinking through and responding to this situation." If 'God Is Good,' Why Is The World So Messed Up? Julie Roys on X: "A Church of the Nazarene court stripped the Rev. Thomas Jay Oord, an LGBTQ-affirming theologian, of his preaching credentials and expelled him entirely from membership in the 2.5 million-member global denomination. Protestia on X: "Things we like: this young woman going to church for the first time :) Daily DevotionalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/w2rB6NZogbgThe American church is in crisis. After numerous scandals, distrust of the church is at an all-time high. Young people raised in the church are leaving at an alarming rate. And, in a society where loneliness and spiritual hunger are rampant, people are turning elsewhere for help. In this edition of The Roys Report, host Julie Roys welcomes Skye Jethani for a wide-ranging discussion on the crisis in the American church. Skye, a former editor at Christianity Today and former pastor, has for years co-hosted The Holy Post, a popular podcast. Recently, Skye wrote the provocatively titled book, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? In it, he looks at what the Bible really says about the church, then compares that with some of the prevailing beliefs and values popular in the church today. For example, the church is commonly referred to in Scripture as a family—but in modern America, it's become a corporation. In its pursuit of expansion, influence, and power, the church has sadly lost the essential Christian virtues of faith and love. As Skye writes, rather than feeling like valued members of God's family, today, many church members feel like replaceable cogs in a ministry machine. Is it any wonder that the church is suffering, and is it any wonder that people are leaving? For people who've had negative experiences in church and have lived through congregational crisis firsthand, this lively conversation brings clarity and hope. Guests Skye Jethani An award-winning author, speaker, and co-host of the Holy Post Podcast, Skye Jethani has written more than a dozen books and served as an editor and executive at Christianity Today for more than a decade. Raised in a religiously and ethnically diverse family, his curiosity about faith led him to study comparative religion before entering seminary and pastoral ministry. With a unique ability to connect Christian thought and contemporary culture, his voice has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post. Show Transcript [00:00:00] Julie Roys: There’s no doubt the American church is in crisis. After numerous scandals, the distrust of the church is at an all-time high. Young people raised in the church are leaving at an alarming rate and we have a society where loneliness and spiritual hunger is rampant, but people are turning elsewhere for help. [00:00:21] Julie Roys: Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roy-. And today I’m going to be discussing the crisis in the American church with Skye Jethani. Skye is a former editor at Christianity Today and a former pastor. He’s also co-host of the podcast, The Holy Post. [00:00:40] Julie Roys: And he’s a speaker and author of numerous books, including the provocatively titled, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? In the book, Skye looks at what the Bible really says about the church, then he compares that with some of the prevailing beliefs and values popular in the church today. For example, the church is commonly referred to in scripture as a family, but in modern America, it’s become a corporation. [00:01:05] Julie Roys: And in its pursuit of expansion, influence, and power, the church has sadly lost the essential Christian virtue of love. As Skye writes, now, rather than feeling like valued members of God’s family, many church members feel like replaceable cogs in a ministry machine. Is it any wonder that the church is suffering, and is it any wonder that people are leaving? [00:01:28] Julie Roys: I’m so excited to speak with Skye about the church, not just because he’s a great thinker and teacher, but because he’s my brother. Skye attends the same house church that my family attends, and I’ve seen his commitment to the church on a day to day, week by week basis, and it’s because of people like Skye that I haven’t given up on the church, even though I’ve had a ton of negative experiences. I still believe in the church. I still see her beauty. And so I’m so excited to share this podcast with you. [00:01:49] Julie Roys: But first I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington. Are you passionate about impacting the world so it reflects biblical ideals of justice? The Talbot School of Theology Doctor of Ministry program is launching a new track exploring the theological, social, and practical dimensions of biblical justice today. [00:02:16] Julie Roys: The program equips students with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual foundation needed to address social issues with wisdom and compassion. Justice has become a key issue in our culture, but more importantly, it’s an issue that’s close to God’s heart. While it’s clear the Bible calls God’s people to pursue justice, we must be guided by His Word within that pursuit. Talbot has created this track to do just that. As part of this program, you’ll examine issues such as trafficking, race, immigration, and poverty. And I’ll be teaching a session as well, focusing on the right use of power in our churches so we can protect the vulnerable rather than harm them. So join me and a community of like- minded scholars committed to social change and ethical leadership. Apply now at TALBOT.EDU/DMIN. Julie Roys: Also if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM. [00:03:26] Julie Roys: Well, again, joining me is Skye Jethani, a former pastor who now co-hosts the popular podcast, The Holy Post. He also speaks and writes books, including one that we’re offering to listeners this month called What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? So Skye, welcome, and it’s just such a pleasure to have you. [00:03:50] Skye Jethani: Thanks, Julie. I’m happy to be here. [00:03:51] Julie Roys: And you may be surprised to know this, but I’ve actually mentioned you numerous times on this podcast. Do  about this? [00:03:58] Skye Jethani: I do not, because I have to confess, I’ve not listened. [00:04:01] Julie Roys: You haven’t listened to our podcast? Well, that’s okay, but I’ve listened to the Holy Post. I’ve actually been on the Holy Post, which has been really fun. I’ve mentioned you because I use this term that you coined called the evangelical industrial complex. And so whenever I do that, I try to give you credit. I say, , this isn’t my term. This is Skye’s term. [00:04:24] Skye Jethani: I don’t need credit, but you’re appreciated. It isn’t like I get a kickback or anything from every time it’s spoken, but. Yeah, I think it was 2012 I wrote an article that I first used that phrase, and it just took off. A lot of people have used it since then. [00:04:37] Julie Roys: Well, it’s a great term, but for those who are listening who haven’t heard it before, what is the evangelical industrial complex? [00:04:45] Skye Jethani: Right. So it’s a riff off of President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the country. It’s on YouTube. I recommend people go watch it. It’s very interesting, but he gave a televised address to the country where he warned about the military industrial complex. Of course, Eisenhower, having been a general and the commander of the forces in Europe during world war two had a lot of credibility when it came to military stuff. [00:05:08] Skye Jethani: And his concern was that there was this permanent arms industry that had been developed after world war two and the military industrial complex, he said, needed a perpetual conflict and warfare to continue its business model. And so I kind of adopted that phrase, but talking about the evangelical industrial complex, which is this financial money-making industry that constantly needs celebrity leaders, celebrity pastors in particular, and big events to perpetuate its business model. [00:05:39] Skye Jethani: And so it tends to elevate leaders who may be quite talented but lack the character or the maturity to handle large audiences or significant influence. But the evangelical industrial complex will prop them up, publish their books, get them on the big stage, build a big platform for them in order to make lots of money off of this person’s talent and reputation. [00:06:06] Skye Jethani: And then we’re shocked when they end up cracking under the pressure or falling into some controversy or their church implodes. And especially when I was working at Christianity Today, And I got around the country and I was seeing kind of behind the curtain in a lot of these places. I was noticing that tendency over and over and over again, where it wasn’t the Godly mature tested people who were given platforms. [00:06:27] Skye Jethani: It was young, attractive, talented people who were given platforms. And so looking at this in different angles, like I just said, this is about making money. This isn’t about really building up the church. And so that’s the evangelical industrial complex. [00:06:42] Julie Roys: And there’s so much that you just said; just in those few paragraphs about the church and some of our assumptions about the church, the fact that we can have an industrial complex, the fact that we have so many financial interests, and we’re going to dive into a lot of that today. [00:07:01] Julie Roys: And I love your book because you take all of these things that are kind of, we’ve just adopted because we swim in this soup, right? And we don’t even know kind of these false ideas about church that we’ve imbibed. But they’re there. And when you begin to contrast them with scripture, you’re like, Oh my word. [00:07:19] Julie Roys: But as I mentioned in the open, you and I, not only know each other professionally, but we go to the same church and we go to a house church, which is a very unconventional form of church. And I know for me and a lot of others within our house church, we’ve come because there was some sort of, I would say many of us are church refugees. [00:07:44] Julie Roys: Something happened at the church that we were at. And I know I’ve talked about this before on this podcast that for us, it was losing trust in our leaders because of a sexual abuse coverup at the church. And so that was very concerning. Your story, I’m guessing, is a bit different, and I realized as we jumped into this, I mean, I know your former church, and I know some stuff that happened there, but I really don’t know your story of why you came to this house church, which is really, in some ways, unconventional form of church, but if you read the New Testament, it sounds awful lot like what they were doing back then. So, what’s your story? How’d you get there? [00:08:24] Skye Jethani: Quite by accident really. I was at the same church for 20 years and for, I don’t know, six, it’s hard to, to find, but I was on staff at the church for quite a few years. And then when I was at CT, I actually split my time between staff at the church and Christianity Today. [00:08:41] Skye Jethani: So these convoluted timeframes, but overall 20 years. And probably, uh, gosh, trying to get dates straight in my head. A few years before we landed at the house church, my wife and I were struggling, honestly, at the church. And I saw, I think partly because of my own ministry background and from my years at CT, where I had been around the country and seen behind the curtain at all kinds of different issues, I had growing concerns about what I saw happening at my own church. [00:09:12] Skye Jethani: And I took some of those concerns to some of the leaders. They did not share my perspective. They thought I was making a mountain out of a molehill. So in those years, my wife and I kind of decided, well, we’re going to take a step back from like deeper involvement because I was, I just saw yellow flags and yet this was our community. This was the people we loved, people we’d known, our kids were all born and raised in this church. So we were committed to the community, but I just decided as previously having been a significant leader there, I was going to take a step back. And those are hard couple of years because I was constantly told, well, should we be somewhere else? [00:09:52] Skye Jethani: I really wanted to be at a church where I felt like I could contribute my full strength and enthusiasm to the work of that community, and it just wasn’t going to happen at our church in that season. Then 2020 happens and the pandemic hits, and it’s like, Oh! God caused the global pandemic. So we don’t have to go to church and feel awkward anymore in this situation. [00:10:30] Skye Jethani: So like everyone else, our church closed. And so everyone moved online or figured out other alternatives. And a few months into the pandemic, Brady Wright reached out to me, who’s also part of our house church and a mutual friend. And he and I and our families have been friends for a long time. And he said that he knew a bunch of families that were all struggling with just feeling isolated. And it was still warm out. And he asked if we’d be open to gathering in someone’s backyard under a tree, social distance for like a fellowship gathering where we would read scripture, pray for one another, and just have a very, very rudimentary kind of worship gathering. [00:10:53] Skye Jethani: So we started doing that in the spring and summer of 2020. And the people came from different churches, but we said we needed fellowship. And a lot of us were connected through Young Life. And then as we got into the winter months, we realized, well, we actually really like doing this with each other and our churches were still closed. [00:11:12] Skye Jethani: And most of us were maybe engaging somewhere online, but not in a meaningful way. And then by 2021, the church that we had been a part of all those years went through that significant crisis that it kind of finally blew up. And I had concerns that this was coming for years and then it did. [00:11:37] Skye Jethani: And so when people found out that my wife and I had been a part of this little under a tree gathering thing. And then in homes, after the weather got cold, some of those refugees started showing up at this little house church. And then there were other churches in our area, like yours, where people were struggling, and they ended up coming. And before you know it, Brady and I are looking at each other going, this was just supposed to be a COVID fellowship, temporary thing under a tree. [00:11:59] Skye Jethani: Um, But now we realize there’s a bigger reason for this, and there are people who need this place to feel connected and heal and a different way of approaching the basic functions of a Christian community. [00:12:21] Skye Jethani: So fast forward, we’re no longer at that church that we were at, obviously, for 20 years, I’m no longer ordained in that denomination. And this house church has just become our community and home. So we didn’t go into it as refugees from a church. We came into it just because of COVID, but it all kind of aligned with a number of years of suspecting things were coming. And then when they did, I think we were just a little ahead of the curve. I saw what could happen and it did. So maybe God was just sparing us from a more acute pain had we stayed more engaged. [00:12:50] Julie Roys: And we were church refugees, and I kind of knew this, but when we lost what was our church home, we spent about two years visiting tons of churches in the area and it just grieved me because I saw the same sort of system at every church that I just didn’t believe in anymore. [00:13:13] Julie Roys: I still believed in the church, I still believed in God, but I didn’t believe in the system anymore. We’re going to dive into that and actually in your introduction, I like how you talk about the church has changed. Our idea of what the church is, it’s just dramatically changed in 50 years. [00:13:33] Julie Roys: And I would a hundred percent affirm that. The church that I’m seeing everywhere right now, that’s called the evangelical church is not the church I grew up in at all, not even close. So talk about that change and what sort of prompted that change. [00:13:51] Skye Jethani: Gosh, I guess it depends on where you want to start the timeline. It’s probably older than 50 years, but I think one of the significant changes that happened at some point in the mid-20th century was sort of the professionalization of pastoral ministry. [00:14:08] Skye Jethani: And I don’t mean professionalization as in professional training. I think that’s very valuable. But here’s what I mean. Throughout most of Christian history, a pastor or minister would spend most of their time during the week out in the community. They met people in their homes, in their farms, in their factories, in the hospitals and the prisons, wherever they were out in the community, engaging people. [00:14:29] Skye Jethani: And then those people would congregate on Sunday. And the minister would lead them in sacraments and in teaching of scripture and all that. But he or she knew their sheep because they were out in the community. And at some point we flipped a switch and we said, if you desire to be ministered to, you now need to come to where the minister works. [00:14:51] Skye Jethani: You need to come into the church office, the church building, and we, the ministers will create a plethora of programs for you and your family to minister to you. And that was done, I think, with very good intentions and there’s an efficiency in that. But I think what it unintentionally did is it caused those of us who are ministers and our pastors to lose touch with the reality of our sheep. [00:15:15] Skye Jethani: We lost touch with what do people's lives actually look like Monday through Saturday? Because the only time we ever saw people, it was on our turf, on our terms, in our programs, and in our building. And once you made that switch from pastoral ministry out in the pastures, to pastoral ministry in the professional setting of the pastor in their building, well then it’s just a matter of how do I scale this factory? How do I make more programs? How do we make bigger worship services? How do I get more people into this system? [00:16:03] Skye Jethani: And then you get the explosion of mega churches and all of that. That was a big wake up call for me, even, after spending a number of years on staff at my church and then beginning to work outside, I realized, oh, I had no idea what the lives of the people in my church were actually like, because I only saw them in my context. I never saw them in their context. So I think that was a big change. And then you just get this massive growth of the institution because you add into this concoction the sacred secular divide. And a lot of people in ministry think that the only work that really matters ultimately is ministry. [00:16:23] Skye Jethani: So if something’s going to matter, it has to happen under the church umbrella, which is how you get like exercise facilities in a church. It’s how you get auto mechanics in a church. It’s how you get all these because it has to be under the church to count and you get these monstrosities ministries and in some communities that’s necessary. [00:16:43] Skye Jethani: I don’t want to completely diminish that, but a lot of places it isn’t. And then you need more and more professional people to manage and run these huge things. And that becomes the system that you’re talking about. You’re like, wow, this becomes really self-serving rather than ministering out into the community. [00:16:59] Skye Jethani: I think that’s one reason is just the simple professionalization of what happened. There’s a lot of other pieces of this we can unpack, but I think that one doesn’t get enough attention. [00:17:07] Julie Roys:  Yeah. And the church has become a corporation. It’s not  the family that a lot of us knew the church has. And I do think there were good intentions with things. Like I remember the first time we went to Willow Creek, which is the big mega church in the Chicago area, much less big now that everything’s happened with Bill Hybels But I remember going and the thing that struck me, because when I grew up in this little church, it was a great family, really great family, but nobody became a Christian there. Right? Like nobody came to the church and became a Christian. And I saw Willow Creek putting on these amazing shows on Sunday morning, very attractional model. And I remember inviting my boss. I was doing this little sales job in between college and graduate school. And I invited my boss, and my boss became a believer. [00:17:59] Julie Roys:  And then we started doing Bible studies and we used to fill up two rows of people on midweek. Like we’d have a sales meeting and then we go to Willow. And literally there were dozens of people became believers through that. So I mean that at first I was just like, this is amazing. It’s like the para-church church. I saw all of these para church type outreach ministries, that model coming into the church. But then some really unintended consequences we really weren’t thinking about it necessarily biblically, we were thinking about it pragmatically; how do we reach people? [00:18:43] Julie Roys: And that’s kind of how we got there, but really, what is the church, right? I mean, that’s what your book is getting to. What is the church? And I think you rightly say a lot of people think of it as an event, as a building, as an organization. So biblically, let’s go back down to our roots, right? And what is the church? [00:19:02] Skye Jethani: The simplest answer is it’s a community of women and men and children who have been redeemed by Jesus and are living in communion with him and one another. That’s it. And that obviously can take different forms and structures and different cultures and times, but that’s it. I think your observation that megachurch function very much like a parachurch outreach kind of ministry, I think it’s accurate. And I’ve been a part of a number, especially as a college student, a number of parachurch organizations like Campus Crusade CRU now, InterVarsity, Navigators, and at least in my time connected to some of those things. They’re very careful not to call themselves a church because they understand that we may be a ministry, we may do outreach and Bible studies and other things, but we are not a church. [00:20:05] Skye Jethani: But the funny part is when you go to some churches that more or less function like parachurch ministries. they embrace the name church. And I wrote a piece many years ago for Leadership Journal, where I was arguing that these very large churches shouldn’t really be called churches. And I started calling them VLMs, which is a new one. It’s a very large ministry. And I tried to come up with a name that wasn’t disparaging because they are doing ministry. They are reaching people like your colleagues, like they’re doing good work, but there’s something chafed on me about calling it a church when the historic definition and functions of a church community were really not present. But they were preaching the gospel. They were teaching scripture. They were engaging non-believers, all that great. But the functioning of a church in many of these places was not actually happening. [00:20:44] Skye Jethani: Para church organizations recognize that about themselves and stayed away from the label of church, but these mega churches and other ministries embrace the church name. All the while they weren’t really functioning as churches. [00:20:56] Julie Roys: And I think the pastor wasn’t functioning as a pastor. I mean, we have pastors who are basically preachers, but they’re not pastors. They’re not shepherds. [00:21:04] Skye Jethani: Right. Exactly. Yeah. [00:21:06] Julie Roys: You wrote one of the chapters is on, whose church is it really? And it reminded me of an experience I had last fall. So I was doing some investigating on a church where Albert Tate was the pastor. It’s in Monrovia, California, and he had admitted that he had an inappropriate texting relationship, but then his staff started complaining about bullying, about spiritual abuse. [00:21:33] Julie Roys: They found out that they really didn’t have any say. They didn’t own the church the way the bylaws were written. Albert, and a few of his key guys that he put on his board owned the church. I remember at this very contentious town hall meeting that I went to where they were basically the people were demanding their church back, and they were talking about Albert going on this sabbatical, and he came back really quickly. I forget how it’s several weeks. And then he said, and I’m just going to quote, he’s like, I’m not sure if a month would have made any difference, like saying if I had stayed on my break for a month longer. And unfortunately, I still feel like this is my church. And the place erupted. I mean, people were saying it’s our church, it’s our church. [00:22:25] Julie Roys: And then somebody was saying, no, it’s God’s church. But the way that we think about our church, I mean, there, it was really coming to a head, and it really was a matter of who owns this church? And we’ve got legal ownership, and then we’ve got spiritual ownership. So speak to that, because I think we have really messed this one up. [00:22:46] Skye Jethani: Yeah, and there’s a lot of pieces that intersect with this, because there’s different polities, there’s different church structures and governance structures, depending on your denomination and theology and all of that, it gets complicated. There’s some denominations in which they might have congregational polity, but the denomination owns the building, and it goes on and on like in the denomination I was a part of they were congregational in their polity, but the licensing and ordination of clergy was handled by the denomination. So there was some oversight. And one of the things, I used to have stronger opinions, I guess, about these matters, but as I’ve gotten around and had my own experience and just perhaps mellowed a bit with age, I’ve realized I have not yet found a church structure that cannot be abused. [00:23:33] Skye Jethani: They all have weaknesses, and they all have strengths. Some I think are better than others, but none’s immune. So if someone’s looking for a silver bullet of how do we structure these things to avoid abuse? Good luck. The best you can do is try to mitigate against it in your culture and environment by choosing certain models versus others, but they can all be abused. [00:23:56] Skye Jethani: But what you’re getting at in the story that you mentioned, and I’ve seen this up close as well, especially within evangelicalism, so much of our tradition is rooted in charismatic personalities and lowercase C charismatic personalities so that we tend to associate a church with its visible leader, the person in the pulpit. [00:24:22] Skye Jethani: I remember Outreach magazine, I think it was Outreach magazine years ago, used to do an issue every year on like the top hundred churches in the country or something like that. And they measure just based on size, based on attendance. And it was like a centerfold, a fold out. big thing and they’d list all these churches in this chart And there was the name of the church and then there was just a headshot of the senior pastor That was the visual representation of that church [00:25:02] Skye Jethani: So it is a structural problem, but it’s also a people problem We do that we do that because we tend to pick a church based on do I like the preacher? If that’s the criteria you have for picking your church, you’re reinforcing that same idea. And what really grieved me was when I realized, despite the rhetoric, despite the theology, despite all the words about we’re a body and it’s blah, blah, blah. When people in leadership, John Ortberg used to say that everyone has their mission, and then there’s the shadow mission. [00:25:28] Skye Jethani: There’s what you say your mission is, and then there’s what your mission really is. And what I discovered in some of these places is, you might say your mission is the health of the church, or it’s the growth of the church, or it’s the service of the community, whatever it might be, glorifying God. The shadow mission in an awful lot of these places is to protect the pastor and to maintain the pastor’s status and reputation. [00:25:50] Skye Jethani: And that for me to speak about the system being broken is when I lost trust and hope. Where it ceased to be about what’s best for the body, and it became what’s best for the figurehead who represents the body, not Jesus, but the pastor. Again, there’s a bazillion stories of how this happens. [00:26:15] Skye Jethani: I don’t want to point the finger just at the system because we are complicit in creating that system. Because I think for a lot of us, we get a lot of satisfaction after saying that’s my pastor. That’s my leader. Look how great my guy is. Look how many books he’s published, look how popular his radio show is. And I’m a part of that. So there’s something we get from that, which props them up. [00:26:36] Skye Jethani: And somewhere else I wrote about it as being like the relationship between an animal and a zookeeper. They both benefit. The animal gets fed in a safe place to live. And the zookeeper gets the satisfaction of. , being in charge of all these animals. And if you’re content with that model, we’re going to continue to have this dynamic where the leaders are synonymous with the church. And then the church does everything it can to prop up and protect its leader, and it’s really unhealthy for everybody involved. [00:26:57] Julie Roys: That’s interesting. And it is true that it’s comfortable for us because when we go to a church like that, everything’s provided for us, and we don’t really have to bring anything to the table. And that’s been one of the challenges with our house church, hasn’t it? We're like, nobody signed up to facilitate this week. Nobody signed up for worship leading. And it’s like, okay, yeah, we’re going to have to bring a little more to the table if we’re going to keep meeting. Again, biblically speaking, there’s commands about when you meet together, you should bring a psalm, you should bring a word of encouragement, you should bring, I mean, all of these things. [00:27:34] Julie Roys: We’ve gotten into a very consumeristic way of looking at church and of approaching it. And it’s on us. You’re right. You’re a hundred percent right. It is on us. And I think we don’t think of the church. as God’s church. But if we do think of the church as God’s church, then I think it also changes our expectations of who should be in that church. [00:27:59] Julie Roys: You mentioned how a lot of churches, when they plant a church, they’ll talk about their target audience, for example, which implies you can either be in their target or not be in their target, right? So, if you’re not in their target, then do you count? I mean, do you matter? A lot of assumptions there. But when we think about church and we think about who’s coming, how should we perceive that? [00:28:29] Skye Jethani: Yeah, I think that the breakdown here is the way our culture defines hospitality. Again, it’s become an industry; there’s the hospitality industry in the modern world. And so what we usually mean by hospitality, and this trickles down even to our homes, like when we think about do you have a hospitable home? You think, well, if I’m going to have guests, I’m going to find out what do they like? What do they want? I’m going to accommodate to their needs. I’m going to make sure that they're vegan or whatever it is. And we’re going to customize our home to fit the people who are coming. The hospitality industry has taught us, whether it’s airlines or hotels or resorts or whatever, find out who you’re marketing your resort to, and then give them what they want. Customer is king. And megachurches and the seeker movement came along, and they adopted that same approach. Well, we’re going to go after unchurched Harry and Mary, famously was Willow Creek’s thing. And they had this middle-class, middle-aged people, and they tailored a church around what they wanted. [00:29:30] Skye Jethani: That’s very different from the ancient world’s understanding of hospitality. Paul commands us to be hospitable to one another, and so does Peter, and it’s a very ancient idea going back to Abraham being hospitable to the strangers who are angels who came to his home. [00:29:46] Skye Jethani: In the ancient Near East, hospitality was not about catering or changing your home or community to accommodate your guests. It was instead, welcoming guests into the normalcy and flow of your home as it is; it’s been authentically yourself but welcoming those guests into it. [00:30:15] Skye Jethani: So, I’ll give you one example. When I was in seminary, some classmates of mine did an experiment where they took 2 television monitors to Northwestern University, right? This. secular university in Evanston, the north side of Chicago. Julie Roys: Where I got my graduate degree. [00:30:36] Skye Jethani:  Right. One monitor they showed a Catholic mass, and the other monitor they showed a very contemporary mega church worship gathering. And they asked students as they came by, hey, if you were ever to go to church, which one of these would you go to? And this would have been probably 1998-99 in that timeframe. The overwhelming response of the students was the Catholic mass. And then they asked them, why is that? And they said, well, that looks like a rock concert. I can get that anywhere, but that looks sacred. That looks holy. [00:30:54] Skye Jethani: And what they were getting at was, the mega churches said, we’re going to accommodate to the culture and give people what they want. But increasingly with my generation, and I think the younger ones, it smacks of pandering. It smacks of, well, you’re changing who you really are in order to be who you think I want you to be. [00:31:13] Skye Jethani: Whereas the Catholic mass, a lot of these students was like, well, they’re being authentic to who they are. That’s Christianity. They’re not trying to. I mean, goodness, the Catholics just started doing the mass in English not that long ago. They were very slow to accommodate, but that was seen as authentic. [00:31:28] Skye Jethani: So I think that the challenge for us today is not how do you change the church to be what the culture wants you to be? It’s how do you be authentically Christian in your church community? But how do you make it As accessible as possible to the people who might come in? [00:31:49] Skye Jethani: So in our case, like when we gather, we take communion every Sunday when we gather. I know plenty of seeker churches that would say, you don’t do that because it’s off putting to non-believers who don’t understand it. I would hope that if someone came into our community, and I’ve seen churches that do this really well, who take communion regularly, they explain what this is, what it means, why we do it, how to do it, the significance of it and invite people to participate or not, depending on their theology [00:32:13] Skye Jethani: . That’s being hospitable. It’s not changing who you are to accommodate people’s expectations. It’s welcoming them into who you are and to the normal flow of your family and household. And I think that’s a better approach and a more faithful approach than polling the community and finding out what they want. [00:32:29] Julie Roys: Absolutely. And I love that we do communion every week. I think a lot of churches have forsaken this. In fact, you talk about the, what is it, The coffee bar versus the Lord’s table? Like in a lot of these churches, the coffee bar has become more appealing than the Lord’s table to these churches. Again, because I think their mentality is we’re doing church, and this is where I feel like evangelism, which is such an important thing, but it’s almost superseded worship. [00:33:04] Julie Roys: Like, we forget why we come together. We don’t come together to reach the seeker. Not that God, obviously Jesus cared. He left the 99 to get the one. But we come together to worship God; that’s the primary. And so the table, describe, beyond what you’ve talked about, but theologically, why is the table so, and by the way, our RESTORE conferences, every single one, we always end with communion, which I’ve had people come up to me and say, Oh, you shouldn’t do like anything that might trigger people because they were hurt in the church and communion, that's something that’s very churchy. [00:33:46] Julie Roys: And I’m like, we have to redeem these symbols. We can’t throw them out because these symbols are there. God gave them to us because our souls need them. And we need to have this communion with one another and with Christ. I know this is a conviction of yours. It’s very deeply held, but why is the table like a non-negotiable for us as believers when we meet? [00:34:13] Skye Jethani: Let me give you two reasons, although there are more. One, is I think it is the practiced embodiment of the gospel. It is not just the verbal proclamation of the gospel, which is obviously valuable, but it’s the embodiment of the gospel. And in the sense that it’s not just a memorial to Jesus' death, which certainly it is that; my broken body, my shed blood, but in sort of an Ephesians 2 kind of way. [00:34:54] Skye Jethani: There Paul talks about how on the cross God has reconciled us to one another. He’s talking about Jew and Gentiles there. He’s broken down the wall of hostility and he has reconciled us to one another and made us one new person. And then together reconciled us to God through the cross. So It’s not just when I sit alone and take a little juice and a little bread, and I kind of think about the cross and my community with God, it’s when I am sitting side by side or standing side by side with my sisters and brothers, realizing I’m one with them because of the cross, and he has reconciled us to one another, people, maybe who I share something in common with, in an earthly way, but some whom I don’t. [00:35:31] Skye Jethani: And so when we don’t practice communion regularly, I think we can easily fall into the trap of losing the horizontal dimension of the gospel. And we make it simply vertical. It’s just me and God. And we forget, no, it’s the reconciliation between brothers and sisters happens first, Paul says, and then we’re reconciled to God, the father of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. [00:35:56] Skye Jethani: If you’re going to make an offering at the altar, and there, remember your brother has something against you, leave the offering, go be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift to God. He always puts the horizontal reconciliation ahead of the vertical, and we have so lost sight of that. And we don’t think that’s essential to our gospel, but it is. [00:36:11] Skye Jethani: So the table is critically important because it is the embodiment of that full gospel, the horizontal and the vertical. And when we don’t practice that, we get really warped. And it just leads to terrible things in the church. Then the other reason, the second reason, and this gets a little bit more into that coffee bar versus communion table thing is, virtually everything in our society is designed to make us narcissistic consumers. [00:36:41] Skye Jethani: It’s all about me. It’s what I want. And when I go to a coffee bar, I don’t drink coffee. I drink tea, but when I go to a Starbucks or whatever, like there’s infinite options and I pick what I want and I’m the one in charge and I order it and I get it. And a lot of churches have that in their foyer or communion area or common area, whatever might be fine. [00:36:58] Skye Jethani: I’m not against coffee in church, but the table I’m no longer in charge. It’s Christ’s table. It’s not my table. And even if I’m officiating and I’m a pastor at the table, it’s still not my table. It’s Christ’s table. He welcomes us there. This is his body. This is his blood. This is about his kingdom and his family. [00:37:18] Skye Jethani: And it’s a reminder that I am not in charge, and I belong to something other than myself. And so those two realities of the gospel, I think are antidotes to what we get bombarded with in our culture of the privatization of our faith. It’s just me and God and the hyper narcissism of it’s what I want that matters, not what God wants. [00:37:41] Skye Jethani: For me, the practice of communion inoculates me to a degree against all of that cultural garbage and realigns me to the gospel of Christ again. So to not practice it regularly, I think is to lose one of the greatest graces that Christ has given his church. And especially in our context, we need to do that. [00:38:03] Julie Roys: I love about the table too, especially this is probably why I absolutely love liturgical worship, which is something I loved about our previous church because it was Anglican and I love the liturgy, but I love the table because it reminds us of what’s coming, like the wedding feast that we’re looking forward to. [00:38:27] Julie Roys: I think way too often especially in evangelicalism, it’s like our goal is to get people saved and then it stops. Like we forget that ?we’re saved to be part of this community that’s being redeemed and has this glorious thing that we’re anticipating. And I think most Christians forget we’re anticipating something. [00:38:48] Julie Roys: You just get the sense like, Oh, you got saved. You’ve arrived. And then, well,  you should become discipled; that’s important because as you point out, we haven’t really defined what disciple is but that’s important, but we forget. Man, we are just passing through. We’ve got this glorious, glorious feast that we’re awaiting, and it is going to be a family and it’s going to be a family affair where everyone’s gathered. [00:39:15] Julie Roys: I love that part of it. And I love that it takes us out, like you’re saying, out of our present context and reminds us who we are and where we’re going. So love that part of it. And you touched on this when you said, You were hinting at the transactional nature that we come to church with, and I hear this all the time. I’ve probably said it myself. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of this. But we look at church and we say, and if we go and we don’t feel like we were especially inspired or something, we’ll say, I didn’t get anything out of that. [00:39:54] Skye Jethani: Mm-Hmm. . [00:39:54] Julie Roys: Talk about why that’s really not the way we should be approaching church. [00:39:59] Skye Jethani: Oh, gosh, Julie, I wrote my very first book on this whole thing, which no one read. It’s called The Divine Commodity and it’s all about consumerism and the church. With a weird thread of Vincent van Gogh all the way through the book, which is why no one read it. [00:40:16] Julie Roys: That sounds very interesting though. In a dark sort of way. [00:40:19] Skye Jethani: We live and move and have our being in a consumer culture. Everything is measured by its value to me. It’s interesting. Like, there’s an economist who argues that America really transitioned into a truly consumer economy in the 1950s. And it’s the 1950s where you begin to see a massive spike in divorce rates. [00:40:43] Skye Jethani: Now, there’s a lot of factors into that. It’s not just economics, but I think it’s a factor. Because what Consumerism tells us is that the world exists to satisfy my desires. And when something doesn’t satisfy my desire, I’m justified in changing it, whether it’s a product from a shelf or a spouse that I said I was committed to. [00:41:03] Skye Jethani: So we measure everything that way. Most of us don’t even think twice about it. Of course, that’s the right way to live. Of course, that’s what the world is all about. And so we come into our church communities or even our relationship with Christ and we go, well, what have you done for me lately? And is this beneficial to me? And am I getting something from it? We don’t challenge that ethic in most of our churches. We never point it out, we never go, Hey, this might be the way economics works in our society, but it’s not the way the most important things work. This isn’t the way we should think about our children. [00:41:34] Skye Jethani: This isn’t the way we should think about our spouses. And this is not the way we should be thinking about God. And Certainly not the way to think about his church, but we do. And in a weird way, the first amendment has reinforced that idea. We have no established church in America and I’m grateful for that, but it also means there’s a free market of religion in the United States and the religious institutions that are out there are all competing for part of the market. They’re competing for customers. And in that setting, the customer’s King, you give them what you want. So it ends up reinforcing this mindset over and over and over again. I can’t just shake my fist at the culture and go big, bad consumerism. [00:42:12] Skye Jethani: But what I can shake my fist at a little bit are churches and ministers that aren’t speaking about this dynamic and helping people be formed out of it into the values of the kingdom of God. And instead we either stay silent about it or flat out reinforce it and advance it in a weird way. So yeah, things like communion, like commitment, like relationship, like service are antidotes to some of that mindset. [00:42:38] Skye Jethani: But it’s hard. And I find myself in that posture all the time as well. You can’t escape it. It’s just part of who we are as 21st century modern people. But that’s where it’s on the shoulders of church leaders and institutions to help form us and give us a vision of a different way that very few are doing. [00:42:58] Julie Roys: Similar to that is I think this idea that when we come to church, we do so, and we’ve heard churches build themselves this way. We come and experience God, and worship has become, and it’s interesting to me because worship was so huge in my development as a Christian. As I remember being in high school and I got discipled by these, Oral Roberts/Jesus People like wacky charismatics who were druggies maybe 10 years prior to meeting me. [00:43:32] Julie Roys: But they were so on fire for the Lord, and we would get together, and we would pray and worship and literally we’d be there for 3 hours, and it would seem like 10 minutes. It was just an amazing. I didn’t realize up until that point that you could have that kind of intimacy with God and that kind of communion with him. [00:43:51] Julie Roys: So worship was huge to me in my experience of God. What’s been challenging now. And even I look back, we were in a Vineyard church for a long time, and I used to love to invite people and I would see them come into the worship and they just start crying and they don’t even know why they’re crying, right? [00:44:08] Julie Roys: They’re just crying because they’re moved. But now I’m seeing so many of these worship experiences that are, they’re amazing emotional experiences and it’s making me check; like I have a check now because I see these kids raised in their hands and they’re praising the Lord. [00:44:32] Julie Roys: And then the rest of what they’re doing throughout the week has nothing to do with the Lord has nothing to do with worshiping the Lord. I see these ministries that are built on worship, like Hillsong and Bethel. And now we’re seeing just such horrible manipulation and corruption and abuse within so many of these churches. [00:44:52] Julie Roys: And so the whole experiencing God thing,  it’s hard to even parse out, like, is the music affecting me? I think if you try to parse that out, then you’re kind of killing the experience itself, right? So, you destroy it. [00:45:16] Julie Roys: But I think this idea that we have to go to church to experience God. has been baked into evangelicalism where it’s at right now. So address that and why we need to really change our focus when it comes to worship. [00:45:28] Skye Jethani: You and I were very different high school students. [00:45:31] Julie Roys: We were. You were here, I was here, right? [00:45:35] Skye Jethani: Yeah. So I was the worst kid in the youth group in high school because I was such a skeptic. I used to get dragged to these big worship events in Chicago for high schoolers in the early 90s. And I just thought these are the most manipulative and emotionally charged. I just didn’t buy it. I never bought it. And that’s just, that was my own baggage and problem. But let me say, I think the problem is not necessarily these gatherings. [00:46:02] Skye Jethani: I think they can be beautiful in many, and I’ve been a part of some that are just amazingly gorgeous times of communion with God. The problem is not the gatherings. I think the real problem is what we expect to get from them. And here’s the metaphor that I’ve written about elsewhere that I find helpful. [00:46:23] Skye Jethani: In 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, Paul references Moses on the mountaintop of Sinai when he meets with the Lord. And if you remember the story from Exodus 34, when Moses came down the mountain to meet with the people again, they all freaked out because his face was glowing, right? The radiance of God was shown on his face. [00:46:44] Skye Jethani: And in Exodus, it says that Moses put a veil over his face. So that people wouldn’t freak out anymore. Well, Paul, when he’s referencing this in 2 Corinthians 3, adds a little bit of rabbinical tradition into the story that’s not actually in Exodus, but Paul was familiar with. And he said, no, the real reason that Moses put a veil over his face is because he didn’t want the people to see that the glory was fading away and that is was only temporary. [00:47:09] Skye Jethani: And so when you piece these things together, you get a sense of what was really going on here is every time Moses would go up the mountain and meet with the Lord, he would take the veil off and he’d kind of get recharged another zap of God’s radiance. [00:47:20] Skye Jethani: And he’d come down and everyone would see, Oh, he’s been with the Lord. He’s glowing. And then he put the veil over cause it fades away. And I think that’s a little bit what we’ve gotten caught up into, is an external mountaintop kind of communion with God. Moses' experience on the mountain was real. It was genuine. It was good. It was full of God’s presence [00:47:38] Skye Jethani:. The problem that Paul’s pointing out is it always faded. It was temporary. And so you have to go back over and over and over again. And he contrasts that with the new covenant in Christ, which he said is not. about an external glory. It’s about his spirit within us, transforming us from one degree of glory to the next with ever increasing glory. So we can take the veil away. [00:47:59] Skye Jethani: And this is the core problem. I think in an awful lot of consumeristic American evangelical Christianity is essentially what we have done is rejected the new covenant in Christ in favor of the old covenant in Moses. And the reason is if we really buy the new covenant in Christ, You don’t need a 50-million-dollar mountaintop to encounter God, and you don’t need a dynamic preacher to encounter God, and you don’t need a huge worship band o genuinely encounter God. What do you need? You need to cultivate a deep abiding presence with his spirit, the kind that Jesus talks about in John 15. Abide in me and I will abide in you, just as a branch abides in its vine and bears fruit. That’s New Testament spirituality [00:48:53] Skye Jethani: But if you want a big ministry, and if you want thousands or even millions of people buying your albums and coming to your church and doing anything, then you need old testament spirituality. You need to convince people that the only place that they’re really going to have an experience of  God is on the mountain that you’ve built and that you hold the toll road to accessing. That’s old testament spirituality and it’s really lucrative .But it’s not what we’re called to in Jesus. [00:49:13] Skye Jethani: So that’s what worries me is we’re creating kind of worship junkies where they need another hit and the glory fades and they’re like, Oh, my life, I felt really transformed after going to that big event, that big conference, that big whatever. But yeah, a week later, the glory fades and you’re back to the person you always were. [00:49:29] Skye Jethani: And then you go, I guess I need to go again, or I need a bigger thing or a better church or a better speaker. Whatever. And all the while we’re ignoring what we’re called to, which is who’s teaching me how to really commune with Jesus? Who’s teaching me how to pray? Who’s teaching me how to confess my sins? Who’s teaching me how to really live in step with the spirit day in and day out so that I might truly be transformed from one degree of glory to the next? [00:49:51] Skye Jethani: Very few of our mega ministry settings are designed to do that kind of work. They’re designed to give us a show and make us feel great. And to be fair, again, sometimes those are genuine encounters with God, just like Moses was, but it always fades. That’s the problem. [00:50:09] Julie Roys: I’m thinking back to when I was at Vineyard and there was a saying that John Wimber had that I absolutely loved. He would say pretty much everything else in our experience with God is something that he does for us. Worship is the one thing that we do to him, that we give back to him. And I think rightly understood, it comes from that communion with God that you have, that then when you have the chance to verbally express that, it's very much like in a marriage relationship. [00:50:44] Julie Roys: When you have that opportunity to physically express that love to your spouse, it’s extraordinarily meaningful because why? you already have that love that you experienced one for another. And so then that Physical expression becomes so meaningful But if it were just the physical expression without the love, I think that’s where a lot of people are at really in the way that they’re relating to God, [00:51:07] Skye Jethani: Right. Yeah, if we developed a genuine communion with God throughout the week, and then we gather with our sisters and brothers on the weekend and express that, that’s wonderful. I think too many of us again, schooled as consumers don’t have that communion all week long. And then we show up on Sunday going, light me up, make me feel good, give me that charge so that I can go into my week and feel encouraged or blessed or whatever it is I’m looking for. That’s not worship [00:51:34] Julie Roys: We don’t want to disciple people on how to maintain that in their private life because then they don’t need us. And yeah, so good. Well, there’s so much more we could talk about. Before I let you go talk just briefly about leadership and you’ve touched on it somewhat, about the celebrity pastors. You also used a term that’s become somewhat of a buzzword within the church is something called servant leadership. [00:52:05] Julie Roys: I have a feeling that’s much more about the upfront and not like the shadow mission shows whether that servant leadership is actually a thing. But talk about that leader and the approach that leader should have. How a leader should serve within a body, and why maybe we should be suspicious of those who come along and say, they’re visionary leaders and they’re going to impart their vision to us, for the church. And I know I just gave you a big one, didn’t I? [00:52:37] Skye Jethani: It is a big one. And there’s so many landmines in this. I generally don’t like using the language of servant leader because especially again, in American evangelical culture, the assumptions behind it are misunderstood. So let me unpack that a little bit. [00:52:57] Skye Jethani: Usually, when we think of servant leader, we think of a person with authority or power who nonetheless does humble acts of service, right? So it’s the pastor who’s out there shoveling the snow o ,the church leader, who’s still taking out the garbage and you go, gee, look at,  pastor Steve, isn’t he humble? And he’s a servant leader and he’s doing that thing. Just like Jesus washed the disciples feet. In my view it’s great. I’m glad a pastor does that. I certainly wouldn’t want to disparage it, but I don’t think that’s really what servant leadership means. In John 13, that scene where Jesus washes the disciples feet, what he’s really doing there is not only humiliating himself, he’s humiliating his disciples. They had been arguing about who’s the greatest. And then Jesus strips naked and starts washing their feet, taking this grotesquely humiliating role. And he gets to Peter and Peter’s like, there’s no way you’re washing my feet. And he says, if you don’t let me wash your feet, you can have no place with me. [00:54:03] Skye Jethani: Which is like, wow, that’s a pretty strong statement. What’s going on there? In that culture the relationship between a rabbi and a disciple was well established, and a disciple’s identity was completely defined by who their rabbi was. So when Peter and John and James and the others, when they left their fishing boats and their toll booths and all the other things they were doing to become a follower of Rabbi Jesus, Peter especially was thinking, this is a pretty good deal, because I’m leaving a meager fishing business to become the disciple of the most powerful guy I’ve ever seen, who’s probably going to take over the world. [00:54:41] Skye Jethani: And that’s why, am I going to get to sit at your right on your left? Where am I going to get, like, this was a great deal. Cause my rabbi is like bigger than Moses. And then he sees his rabbi do the most humiliating and embarrassing task imaginable. And so what Jesus is saying to Peter is, If you think this is humiliating to me, it’s even more humiliating for you, Peter, because I’m your rabbi, which means you’re even lower than me. [00:55:05] Skye Jethani: And then at the end of the whole scene, he says, I, your teacher and rabbi have done this. You should do likewise. I think the message he’s really saying there is stop caring what others think about you. And love in a self-sacrificial way, take up your cross, die to yourself and follow me. [00:55:37] Skye Jethani: So when I then look at what does that mean in 21st century American church world, nobody is going to look at a pastor shoveling snow or taking out garbage and go, Oh my gosh, what a loser. Most church worlds go, Oh, that’s great. He’s doing something noble and kind and helping out and everything. No one’s going to think he’s a humiliated nothing because of that. So what I’m looking for is a pastor who has given up on their own reputation, who’s doesn’t care how many followers they have on Twitter, who’s not worried about, are they going to have a bestselling book? [00:56:00] Skye Jethani: Isn’t counting how many people showed up every Sunday because that’s a stroke to their ego. It’s where they have truly died to themselves. They know who they are and where they’re going, like Jesus did at the beginning of John 13. They know they belong to God, and they know they’ve been called by him, and they’re set free then to love sacrificially, without caring about their own reputation and ego. So that's, I think, a better definition of a servant leader, the person whose ego is not driving their ministry. That’s hard to spot without real relational connection and knowing somebody well. [00:56:44] Skye Jethani:  I’m all for that kind of serpent leader and it’s rare. I’ve known men and women like that. Sometimes they have an ecclesiastical title. Sometimes they don’t. But they are the salt and light in the church today. And I pray that God will bring us more of them because we desperately need them in the American church. [00:57:02] Julie Roys: I love that. That’s so good, Skye. Thank you. Well, we have to wrap this because I’ve got my grandson’s first soccer game coming up and I’ve got to boot out of here to go see that. [00:57:15] Skye Jethani: I actually have a soccer game tonight too for my high school daughter. So I’ve got to do that too. [00:57:19] Julie Roys: But this has been really good and really rich. I so appreciate this book that you’ve written. Like we said, we’re offering that to anybody who gives a gift to The Roy’s Report this month. Just really grateful for you, Skye. And I think people, when they hear this, they’re like, wow, that guy’s in your church. And we have like so many people who are deep thinkers like this in our church. And it’s been an incredible gift. And it’s been an incredible thing to iron sharpening iron, which we’ve had that opportunity. So just feel blessed to have you as my brother and just appreciate this time we spent. [00:57:57] Skye Jethani: And thankful for all the good work you and your team at The Roy’s Report are doing in helping people navigate a really difficult season in the church and hopefully find healing and deeper communion with God and one another. It’s valuable, valuable work. I’m grateful to have a small little role in this podcast now as a part of it. [00:58:15] Julie Roys: And you’re going to have to watch this podcast now. It’ll be your first. [00:58:18] Skye Jethani: Yes, I probably will. [00:58:20] Julie Roys: Well, blessings to you. And thanks so much. [00:58:22] Skye Jethani: Thanks, Julie. [00:58:23] Julie Roys: And thanks so much for listening to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And just a reminder, we’re giving away Skye’s book, What If Jesus Was Serious About the Church? to anyone who gives a gift of 25 or more to The Roy’s Report this month. As I often say, we don’t have advertisers or big donors at The Roy’s Report. We simply have you. The people who care about reporting the truth and restoring the church. So if you’re passionate about our mission, please go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATED. Also, just a q

The Remnant Radio welcomes Julie Roys of The Roys Report. In this episode, we'll explore the systemic nature of abuse in churches and the proper ways for churches to handle scandals when they arise. We'll discuss the importance of adhering to Ephesians 5:11: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them," and how this scripture should guide our response to misconduct within the church. Julie will share insights on the dangers of honor culture in churches and why it's crucial to have whistleblower policies and procedures in place to break this cycle. We'll also examine why third-party investigations are essential in cases of abuse and scandal. Julie will explain why church elders, staff, or relatives cannot be considered independent investigators due to potential conflicts of interest and biases. She'll provide practical steps for ensuring transparency and accountability, emphasizing that true reform and restoration can only happen when churches are willing to expose and address wrongdoing without favoritism or cover-ups. Finally, we'll address what practices and procedures can be established in churches to protect members from abuse. How can a church set itself up so that holiness and integrity are at the root of all activities? Don't miss this crucial conversation on how we can protect the integrity of the church and ensure a safe environment for all its members. Julie Roys is founder and investigative reporter for The Roys Report - a Christian media outlet dedicated to reporting the unvarnished truth within the Christian community to facilitate reform and restoration. You can read The Roys Report here: https://julieroys.com/ Kairos Classroom: Use Promo Code "Remnant" for 10% offhttps://kairosclassroom.com/classes Kairos Classroom: Use Promo Code Remnant for 10% offhttps://kairosclassroom.com/classesSupport the Show.

06-22-24 Girl Talk with Rob Merlin of SmartFlyer, & Julie Roy of Multi-Million Dollar Mompreneur by

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/XKwF1N--a00For more than two decades, Patrick and Mary DeMuth faithfully served as lay leaders at Lakepointe Church, a megachurch in the Dallas/Fort Worth area pastored by Josh Howerton. But as concerns about Howerton grew, Patrick and Mary found they could no longer stay in good conscience. And now, they're dealing with the anger and grief so many so-called “church refugees” feel. In this edition of The Roys Report (TRR), Mary DeMuth joins host Julie Roys to talk about navigating church bewilderment. This is a condition more and more Christians are experiencing today, as scandal and corruption are increasingly seeping into the church. And if you caught the previous TRR podcast with Amanda Cunningham, you heard about many of the concerning issues at Lakepointe Church. This is the church where Mary and Patrick served for 23 years. How do you deal with righteous anger? How do you navigate the grief? How much is okay to say, and what is gossip? How do you find another church home when you're dealing with feelings of betrayal and lack of trust? How do you avoid getting in the same situation again? These are crucial questions, which Mary—an internationally known author and a repeat speaker at our Restore Conference—admits she is wrestling with. And, as is so characteristic of Mary, she engages these questions with grace, wisdom, and a passion for truth and justice. Sadly, many churches have created a culture where it's not okay to talk about leaving a toxic church. But as Mary explains in this podcast, the church won't get better until we talk about it. Believers must begin to evaluate and process the toxicity in churches—and how we can truly become the Body of Christ. Mary has recently developed a Church Hurt Checklist to help people understand their situation and begin to process and articulate it. Download it free at marydemuth.com/churchhurt Guests Mary DeMuth Mary DeMuth is an international speaker, podcaster, and author of over 40 books, fiction and nonfiction, including The Most Misunderstood Women of the Bible and We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. Mary lives in Texas with her husband of 30+ years and is mom to three adult children. Learn more at MaryDeMuth.com. Show Transcript Julie Roys: For more than two decades, Patrick and Mary DeMuth faithfully served as leaders at a megachurch in the Dallas Fort Worth area. But as concerns about the current pastor grew, they found they could no longer stay in good conscience. And now they’re dealing with the anger and grief so many so-called church refugees feel. Julie Roys: Welcome to The Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And today, Mary DeMuth joins me to talk about navigating church bewilderment. Sadly, this is an issue many Christians are dealing with, as abuse, scandal, and corruption increasingly seem to be seeping into the church. Julie Roys: And if you caught our last podcast with Amanda Cunningham, you heard about many of the concerning issues at Lake Point Church in the Dallas Fort Worth area, where Josh Howerton is Pastor. This is the church where Mary and Patrick served for 23 years. And if you missed our prior podcast, it was a real eye-opener and I encourage you to go back and listen to that. Julie Roys: Today’s podcast is a sequel to my podcast with Amanda, but rather than exposing the issues at Lake Point today, Mary is going to be discussing the aftermath of leaving. How do you deal with righteous anger? How do you navigate the grief? How do you know how much is okay to say? And what is gossip? And how do you find another church home when you’re dealing with feelings of betrayal and lack of trust? How do you avoid getting in the same situation again? Julie Roys: These are crucial questions and ones that I know many of you are dealing with today. And so I’m so looking forward to diving into this topic with Mary DeMuth. But first I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington. Julie Roys: Are you passionate about impacting the world so it reflects biblical ideals of justice? The Talbot School of Theology Doctor of Ministry program is launching a new track exploring the theological, social, and practical dimensions of biblical justice today. The program equips students with the knowledge, skills, and spiritual foundation needed to address social issues with wisdom and compassion. Julie Roys: Justice has become a key issue in our culture, but more importantly, it’s an issue that’s close to God’s heart. While it’s clear the Bible calls God’s people to pursue justice, we must be guided by His Word within that pursuit. Talbot has created this track to do just that. As part of this program, you’ll examine issues such as trafficking, race, immigration, and poverty. Julie Roys: And I’ll be teaching a session as well, focusing on the right use of power in our churches so we can protect the vulnerable, rather than harm them. So join me and a community of like-minded scholars committed to social change and ethical leadership. Apply now at TALBOT.EDU/DMIN. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and quality. That's because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys: Again, joining me is Christian author and podcaster, Mary DeMuth, and many of Mary from her excellent books like We Too: Discussing the Sexual Abuse Crisis in the Church, and also her memoir, Thin Places. Mary also was a guest speaker at our last Restore Conference in 2022, and she’ll be speaking again at our Restore Conference in Phoenix in February in 2025. So we’re super looking forward to that. Julie Roys: But she joins me now to talk about something that’s been a very painful process for both her and Patrick, and that is leaving her church of 23 years, Lake Point Church there in the Dallas Fort Worth area. So Mary, Thank you so much for being willing to talk about what I know has been a really difficult journey. Mary DeMuth: Thanks. I certainly prayed about this conversation and what I’ve noticed in this space is that a lot of people in the middle of it. are not articulating how they’re feeling because there’s this general pressure from churches that you leave that you aren’t supposed to say anything. And I think there’s a difference between, and we’ll talk about this, I’m sure, throughout this episode, but there’s a difference between leaving quietly and running around gossiping about things. Certainly, those are two different things. Mary DeMuth: But I think what we’ve done is we’ve created a culture of silence; you can’t talk about it and literally we won’t get better unless we do talk about it. So that’s one reason why I am having this conversation today, because this is not a completed story. This is a messy story. I’m in the middle of it. Mary DeMuth: I am heartbroken, and I don’t have all the answers. But I wanted to give word to those of you that may be in that same space, that may be hurting and don’t have words to say about it. And maybe I can articulate some of those things for you. Julie Roys: And I so appreciate that. I find that people often are willing to talk about experiences years after the fact, when they’ve worked it all out and they can tie it all up in a neat bow and we can all go, Oh, that’s so nice. And here’s three ways that you can apply this message. But I knew you were going through a really painful thing that it was messy. You’ve been tweeting about it, or I should say posting on X. Julie Roys: You’ve been very open and honest with your pain. And I really appreciate that. And I love the topic. You actually gave me the title for this, about navigating church bewilderment. And I love that word bewilderment because I feel like it really captures the confusion, the real disillusionment, and then the grief and the pain. Julie Roys: All of these things bound up in one. And so we’re going to get to all that and unpack all of that. But I think to understand the depth of it for you and for Patrick, first I have to understand how deeply vested you were in this church. So talk about what this church has meant to you over more than two decades and the roles that you played in it and the community that you had. Mary DeMuth: Yeah, we’ve been there for 23 years, and we immediately started serving the moment we landed there. And we also were the first non-IMB, it was an SBC church at the time, and we were the first non-IMB missionaries to be sent out from Lake Point. Julie Roys: Define IMB for those who . Mary DeMuth: Yes. International mission board. So typically SBC churches send, they don’t really send their own missionaries. They sponsor IMB because all the money comes out of the SBC into this fund for the International Mission Board. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to be actually supported because we believed that people who paid prayed. And so we were not IMB, but Lake Point sent us out. So we were church planters in the South of France for a couple of years. And honestly the leadership there at our church, even though we weren’t going through our church, they were the ones that helped us through a really untenable situation. And our loyalty to that church was because they put us back together when we got back from the field.. Mary DeMuth: So much pouring in and so much love. And so we have been a life group leader for 20 of the 23 years. The only three years we weren’t was when we were in France, planting a church. And then I have run a couple of conferences, interestingly enough, called the Re-story Conference, which was very similar sounding to the Restore Conference. Mary DeMuth: And I also recorded a Life Way study at Lake Point for an audience. And then my husband was an elder at the church for five years. And so we have led mission teams all over the world for Lake Point. We have definitely been in the upper levels of volunteer leadership all these years and have enjoyed a lot of conviviality and fellowship. Mary DeMuth: And I never never. I always bragged about my church. It never crossed my mind that there would be a day that I wasn’t at that church anymore. And so as of December of 2023, we are away from there and making our way into a new space. Julie Roys: And I’ve talked about this on this podcast, but we’re in a house church with, some of the folks in our house church were at their previous church for over 30 years, and the amount of pain and loss and especially when you’re, when you’re our age, early 40s. Julie Roys: That’s it. It’s early 40s. No, when you’re a little bit older and later in life and to be at this point where you’re starting over is not at all where you expected to be, and it’s pretty tough to be there. You retain some of the friendships, but everything’s changed. And it just makes for a really really difficult road that you never planned to be on. Julie Roys: Your church; and this is a lot of the reason behind you leaving, changed dramatically in the last 5 years. Stephen Stroop was your previous pastor. And in 2019, I believe Josh Howerton came in. Your husband actually was on the elder board that approved him, right? Mary DeMuth: Yes. Yes. And we’ve had to work through that as you can imagine, because that’s painful to think about. And just to expand a little bit about the why is the basic reasons why we left. There’s a lot of things. As an author, as a published author and as a speaker, the plagiarism was just grating on me and I couldn’t stomach it, but that wasn’t the main reason. Mary DeMuth: Although it’s still very problematic to me. What’s more problematic is that they don’t think it’s a big deal and they don’t see it as sin, and I just disagree. But the two things that we, the two main things that caused us to walk away, one was we were told by leadership, by upper-level leadership, that there was no place for us to serve. Mary DeMuth: And that was really, that was about a year ago. And so it took us about a year to make that decision. Like we were still serving in our life group, but there were things that God has put in us as church planters. And as me, as an author and an advocate that we have a lot that we would love to be able to offer, and to have that cut off when we feel like we’re in the prime of service right now. We weren’t asking to be paid. This is all volunteer, but we were told we couldn’t. Mary DeMuth: And then the second thing that was kind of the straw was all of the crude words and the misogynistic statements that started around 2022 almost every sermon. And as an advocate for sexual abuse victims and as an advocate for women, I could no longer be associated with that church because it just didn’t, I just couldn’t be associated with it. Mary DeMuth: I have stood in front of the Southern Baptist Convention, and I have spoken and advocated, and I have been chewed up and spit out for it. And if I’m going to a church that is marginalizing women, it does not make sense. And so no place for us to serve, big, huge problem. And then I just couldn’t be connected with a church that had that kind of reputation. Julie Roys: Those reasons are huge. and make an awful lot of sense. The plagiarism as you said, the crude remarks, the misogynistic remarks. And for a lot of folks, if you’re like, what are they talking about? I do encourage you to go back and listen to our last podcast with Amanda Cunningham, where we went over a lot of these things that Mary’s talking about that have happened in her church. Julie Roys: I’m sure there’s people listening, and they’re like, okay, that sounds really, really awful. But how do you know when you hit that tipping point? Because I remember talking to you a couple of years ago and me going, Hey, is this really your pastor? I’m seeing some stuff. How is this your pastor? And you’re like we’re serving, and we love our life group. I get it. I totally, totally get it. But how did you and Patrick, how did you get to the point where you’re like, this is the tipping point, no more? Mary DeMuth: We decided we went into this together, so we decided that we both had to have the same decision. We weren’t going to have one of us leave and one not leave. We were going to do this together. So that took a year of a lot of conversations. And we saw those red flags when you saw them. So we’ve seen them, but as you mentioned, the model of Lake Point used to be, it seems to be shifting now, but it used to be church within a church. And so your life group was really basically what you’re doing, Julie. It’s a small gathering of people where there is someone who teaches, and there’s someone who’s the missions coordinator. And there’s someone who, it’s that’s how, like your church is that group. And so we felt a deep, strong connection to our group. And we felt like we were the pastors of that church within a church. Mary DeMuth: The model has shifted. And I don’t know, it has never been articulated publicly, but it seems from the exterior looking in that it’s more becoming a franchise model, which is where you create this mother church, and it can be duplicated like MacDonald’s in any context. Therefore they may not have that idea that it is church within a church anymore. It has to be something replicatable on all other campuses. And so we began to see this shifting of, this is no longer church within a church, which is really what kept us there. We had people we were serving. And then honestly, I just couldn’t stomach sermons anymore. I couldn’t walk into that building anymore. Mary DeMuth: And as everything became a spectacle the longer we were there, it was all about Sunday morning and the spectacle that it had become like a circus, and I could not find Jesus there. And I would sit in the audience. We had beautifully. articulated and performed auto-tuned worship. It was beautiful. It sounded amazing. There was a lot of rah-rah-rah. There was a lot of energy and it felt like Ichabod to me, like to me as a Christ follower, a mature Christ follower of many years, I couldn’t feel the presence of the Lord anymore. And for me, that’s what is the point of going to a church, if that has happened to you? Mary DeMuth: I’m not saying that other people aren’t experiencing the Lord there. I’m not saying that other people aren’t becoming Christians there. They are. And that’s probably the most problematic part of this whole thing is that they are easily able to point to numbers that are flowing in through the front door, ignoring all of us that have left out the back door. Mary DeMuth: And because it is successful, therefore they can just call me names and malign me or people like Amanda and others, and they can dismiss us because look what God is doing. Julie Roys: And Amanda talked about that same thing about the church within a church and even how each of the churches had different women’s ministries. Julie Roys: And I think about it, it was so personal because people are different and they all had different campuses, have different makeup, they have different cultures and now, this franchise model where you go in, you order a Big Mac, and you get a Big Mac. That’s what you’re used to, right? Julie Roys: But is it? And probably our conversation today, we probably don’t have enough time to really delve into this, but this is something I have been thinking more and more about, is it even church if you have a place where it, maybe a Christian organization and maybe a Christian organization that blesses a lot of people but is it a church where you say to members of the body, we don’t need you, we don’t need your gift, and you can’t serve here? If we have a pastor who doesn’t even know people’s names, if we don’t have that kind of shepherding, is it even a church anymore? Mary DeMuth: I’ll back up before I answer that in that I’ve, been overseas and, anyone that’s been overseas and gone to a McDonald’s overseas knows they have different categories. So even franchises like McDonald’s in France has McWine, right? Or McVine. McDonald’s even understands contextualizing the hamburger to the person, and to the people. So that’s an odd thing for me that there would be this idea that you can just, this is the model and we’re superimposing it on all sorts of different economic people and people in different cultures, and we’re just gonna superimpose it there, which seems super weird to me. Mary DeMuth:  On the, is this a church? We have to just go back to simplicity, which is, are we celebrating the Lord’s Supper? Are there sacraments there? Is the word of God being delivered and is it? Mary DeMuth: And then deeper than that, are  disciples being made? because there’s a big, huge difference between converts who hear something. And I think about the parable of the soils, they hear it, they receive it with joy, they have no root and then they walk away. We’re not teaching a theology of suffering in most of these bigger churches for sure. Mary DeMuth: But I think we need to remember that a church is supposed to be a place of koinonia, a place of fellowship, a place where we are iron sharpening iron, and a place of discipleship where people are not just converted, but they are just doing the slow work of people pouring into each other’s lives. That’s discipleship. That’s not a top-down model. That’s not pastor to congregation. That’s person to person. And when a church gets so big for its britches these things can fall through the cracks. Mary DeMuth: Now, Lake Point had done a very good job of doing that discipleship piece through their vehicle of a life group. But as things have shifted, we’re seeing a lot less of that. And again, I haven’t been there for six months, so they could be doing it. I don’t know, but just from my perspective today that’s something that’s been difficult to see. Julie Roys: You alluded to this earlier, this idea of leaving well. It’s hard to leave well and even to define what leaving well is. I will say there was one church that my husband and I ended up leaving and it was over a theological disagreement that we just felt we couldn’t bend on. And at the same time, we felt really pulled to another church. They actually had us come up and explain why we were leaving and gathered around us and prayed for us. Julie Roys: That was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen where it was just like, differences and God makes calling you here. We want to bless you as you go. And you’ve met a lot to this church and we mean a lot to each other and let’s just bless each other. It was so beautiful, and I don’t know why this can’t happen more. But usually it’s just a lot of pain and a lot of heartache And when you talk about leaving well, what it usually means to a lot of people, and I’ve heard even Christian leaders talk about this. When you leave well, you just keep your stuff to yourself. Julie Roys: The issues that you had, you suck them under, and you don’t speak about it. And honestly, I think that’s part of our problem in the church is that we don’t talk about our problems. And so we wait till they become a major scandal or crisis. And then they really blow up. And we allow abusive pastors just kind of reign; to continue doing what they’re doing. Julie Roys: So talk about this concept of leaving well. Obviously, you’ve chosen to speak rather boldly about what happened there. I think really from a heart of love and concern for both the church and the people there, not just to vent how you’re feeling. But talk about that and how you’ve come to the decision you have about that. Mary DeMuth: First, I’ll say there’s been kind of  an unholy silence. We were pretty high up and we have not been followed up with, and the very few times we were invited into those spaces, it was difficult. So there is that. I would encourage church leaders to do what your former church did, because I think there’s a lot to be learned. Mary DeMuth: I also need to say that we didn’t leave from a position of canceling and of immaturity. There’s one thing if you’re like a church hopper and you’re like, just running around with a consumeristic mindset like, what do I get in this for me? A lot of people that are leaving churches are being accused of being that. But the ones that I know that have left this church are mature, deep believers in Christ who are seeing so many red flags. Mary DeMuth: And the reason I articulated it was because I was running into people who were brokenhearted and didn’t have words for it. And somehow through the grace of God and through his power and his ability, I was able to say the things that people were feeling so that they would no longer feel alone. I would rather have been silent if the Lord hadn’t put his hand on me. Mary DeMuth: I would rather grieve this alone and quietly, but I have seen a lot of really good conversation and ministry happen because of this. I’m not out to harm the reputation of the church. I will never tell someone to leave a church unless they’re being abused, obviously, that’s their own decision. Mary DeMuth: They have the autonomy to make that decision between them and God. But I do want to be a listening ear and an empath for those who are bewildered at the church they’re going to that no longer looks like the church they used to go to. Julie Roys: So tell me what is gossip because this is what is, this is the word, I’ve gotten called this myriads and myriads of times. But what is gossip? And clearly you don’t believe this falls into that category. Why? Mary DeMuth: It’s not gossip to share your emotions about how you’re reacting to an abuse. That is actually being a lot like Paul. And if you look at the letters throughout the epistles in particular, you see Paul saying things about churches. Mary DeMuth: And so if we’re going to talk about gossip, we’d have to call him a gossip because he was constantly calling out, Hey, listen, those Judaizers, they don’t really have it right. Oh, listen, this Gnosticism isn’t good. And that guy’s having sex with his mother-in-law. These kinds of things are, he’s very clear. Mary DeMuth: These are not untrue things he’s saying. These are actually true statements. And underneath all of that is a desire for the church to be the body of Christ and to be holy. It’s not slander because it’s telling the truth. And it’s always with a desire to see God do good work in the local church. And if she is straying, if you love her, you will say something about it. Mary DeMuth: Now there’s a manner in which you can do that. You can be really caustic. You can speak the truth without love, but we are called to speak the truth with love. And I believe that we have conflagrated speaking the truth in love with gossip, and those are two different things. Gossip intends to harm the reputation of another or of an entity; telling the truth in love tries to help that institution have a mirror and see what’s going on. Julie Roys: The motive is really important, although I always get frustrated when people try to judge other people’s motives because the truth is, you don’t know somebody else’s heart. And that’s something I never do. I’ll talk about actions, but I don’t know someone’s heart. Only God knows the heart. But I know that’s something I constantly check myself about is my desire for repentance? is my desire to see these leaders repent? 100 percent, and I know you well enough to know that you would be absolutely thrilled and would extend grace if the leaders who have hurt you so deeply would repent of their sin and would change their ways. I know that and I’m sure you pray for that, that you and Patrick are praying right now for that. Am I right? Mary DeMuth: Absolutely. That is  underneath all of this, is just a desire to see the local church healthy and to see her lift up the name of Jesus. And we also just want to again put up a mirror of is this representing the kingdom of God or is this representing something else? And that’s what we were coming to find. Patrick and I both were. The kingdom’s upside down. It’s counterintuitive. It’s the least is the most. And the most is the least. It’s not about building platforms. It’s not about being the winner. It’s not about Christian nationalism. It’s none of these. I don’t even like those two words together. Mary DeMuth: It’s not about power. Jesus willingly laid down his power and he considered equality with God, not something to be grasped. He made himself nothing. And when I see a lot of these big churches and not all of them, but a lot of them where it is very male leader centric celebrity driven. And really about, we want to be the coolest people with the biggest numbers. Mary DeMuth: I don’t get it. They’ll point to Acts chapter two. They’ll talk about how many were added to the kingdom on that day. They’ll call that a mega church. It was not a mega church. People were still meeting in homes. So we just have to be careful. I’m not against mega churches. I actually think that there’s a place for them. Mary DeMuth: Over the years, they we have had the benefit of a megachurch that can go into a community and say, oh, you need a church building, here you go. Like they can do some things that a littler church can’t do. So I’m not against the megachurch, but there is something fallible in the model, the consumeristic model, that is causing all of this anguish. Julie Roys: And I’d say the leadership model. Because we have imported a leadership model that’s of the world and done the exact opposite of what Jesus said, don’t be like the Gentiles who lorded over them, but instead, whoever wants to be first should be last, whoever wants to be greatest should be least. Julie Roys: It is the upside-down kingdom, and we’ve forgotten that. We’ve become just like the world, and we count our success the same way as the world. And we’ve seen this going, it’s been going on a very long time, and I think the megachurches get a lot of the criticism because they’ve. been kind of doing it in spades in an awful lot of them and then exporting these values to all the smaller churches who are wannabes, right? Julie Roys: So you even have smaller churches that are trying to do the exact same thing and they think it’s right because it’s successful very much in the American model of success, which is bigger and better. Before we go forward, there is something I do want to ask you, though, and I would be remiss if I didn’t. What was it about what you and Patrick that you were doing that they didn’t want you serving? Mary DeMuth: I don’t know. They just didn’t want us. That’s what’s been hard is, it’s a speculative, I just don’t know. And I’m willing to be talked to about those things, of course. Like if they feel like something that we’re not godly enough or we’re, or I’m too public or whatever it is, I don’t know. Mary DeMuth: But I do know this, I do know this. When we were told this, what we learned was that they had been morphing from a church that had a lot of lay leaders to a higher control situation where only people who are employed by the church could be in charge of ministries. And so, you can control that. If you can control someone's salary, you can control the whole thing. Mary DeMuth: And so we were just told there is no place for you because we’re not on staff. So that’s probably my guess at a reason is that we were not controllable. And the statement made to us is I’ve got 30 other people just like you that are well trained and that have gone, my husband went to seminary, and all that, but will never use them. We will never use them. And basically, you just need to get over it. You will never be used. Julie Roys:  What a waste of resources. Unbelievable. The kingdom is not so well resourced that we don’t need every single person; that God didn’t give gifts every single one of them to be used. Julie Roys: But I will say, I’ve seen this happen before. And the beautiful thing is, people get dispersed, people like yourself and like Patrick, too often churches that are very needy very welcoming. Like Oh, thank God. It’s like Christmas come early, come to Moots, come to our church. And I’m sure you’re experiencing that because I can’t imagine not wanting you and Patrick at my church. It’s just shocking to me. But yeah, that is a benefit of it. It’s the church in Jerusalem getting persecuted. Then they went to the ends of the earth, and we can do that. Julie Roys: One of the things that I’ve seen be a silver lining, if you can call it that, in these sorts of situations is you’re a church refugee, but there’s a lot of other ones out there, too. And there can be a great deal of deep fellowship. And, in many ways, that’s what RESTORE is. It’s a gathering of a lot of not just refugees, a lot of helpers and pastors and people who are allies who just want to know more. But. There’s an awful lot of us there that have been hurt by the church, and there’s just this beautiful, sweet fellowship. Julie Roys: And my understanding is, and Amanda alluded to it in our last podcast, that you guys have served as pastors to these refugees. Would you talk about that sweet group that you were able to love on and pastor through this and just help them? Mary DeMuth: Yeah, we definitely were praying, and we just kept coming upon people. And in particular, people who had been employed but had been harshly fired in very traumatic ways. And we just felt so deeply. I mean for us, it’s sad and we were highly involved and it’s sad, but it wasn’t our job. And so we just had this empathy for those folks. And so we gathered as much as we knew, we put the word out quietly. Mary DeMuth: We gathered people for several weeks and met with them. And these were people that some were still there, and some were not, and some were walking away from Jesus. It was just the whole gamut of a wide variety of people in a lot of pain. And what we wanted to do was just to help them know our first session was called, You are not crazy. We just wanted them to know. that what they had seen and experienced was real and validated by the rest of us. And then we’ve just been walking through Chuck DeGroat's information about narcissism in the church and narcissistic church systems. And then talking about what is a safe person and what is a safe system. And then praying and crying and grieving and giving people the space that they are not allowed to have to get out all this junk that’s inside of us because it’s been so, so painful. Julie Roys: And I want to get to the safe system and the safe person, because I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening who would like that information as well. Julie Roys: But let’s talk about the feelings first, because when this happens, there is. Again, we talked about bewilderment. There’s just this mix of negative emotions that you don’t know what to do with a lot of times. One is anger and anger in the church has been one of these emotions that we just don’t deal with very well. And I’ve said this numerous times, but this is one that we’ll get. We’ll get thrown back in my face and people say, you sound like you’re angry and I’m like, darn I’m angry. Why aren’t you angry? Why wouldn’t we be angry when these awful things are happening in the church? And yet again, as a Christian, we feel guilty when we’re angry. So how have you dealt with your own anger, and helped others who are dealing with similar anger? Mary DeMuth: The first thing that we did was we process outside of the circle of the church because we needed to know if we were going crazy. Is this normal? Are these things that we’re saying? Is it a big deal? Or are we just being babies? We definitely did that. And then it’s been the prayer of let this anger fuel something beautiful, because I do believe that great movements of God happen because there’s injustice and we are angry at the injustice. Mary DeMuth: I often joke that I write a book when I’m angry, so I must be a pretty angry person at book 52. There’s injustice in this world and our God is righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne. When we do the work of making note of people who are being hurt and oppressed and harmed, we are doing the Lord’s work. And so that anger can be a fuel to doing positive things Mary DeMuth:. Now, I also just want to say, it’s okay to be angry. I’m angry and I have been angry and I’m processing that with friends and I’m processing it with my husband and with the Lord. Rightfully so, because I see so many people, to use Mark Driscoll’s frustrating phraseology, the people behind the bus. I’m meeting so many people behind the bus that are getting the bus is backing up over the people. Because not only cause when if you say anything, if you dare to say anything, you will get run over again and again, you will be accused of all sorts of things when really your desire is to see people set free and to open the eyes of people that are being harmed so that they no longer have to be in that system anymore. Julie Roys: And what a great deal of fear these leaders must feel. to behave that way that you have to annihilate people who say anything negative. I’ve gotten quite comfortable with people saying negative things. I just want to make sure if there’s truth in it, that I take it to heart. It’s okay, but in the end of the day, you’ve got to be okay with who you are before your Lord. And those closest to you who will tell you the truth when you’re veering off. That desire to control that desire that you have to shut down negative communication. I can’t imagine living in that much fear that you constantly are doing that. And yet that’s what we see. Julie Roys: And that whole thing about feeling like you’re crazy. So much of that’s because you’ve been told you’re crazy. You’ve been told that because that’s the gaslighting that happens when you say there’s a problem. No, there is no problem. You’re the problem. Mary DeMuth: It’s back to the emperor with no clothes. We all see the naked emperor and only a little kid says he’s not wearing any clothes. And we’re like Oh, yeah, but there’s this like kind of delusional thing or czarist Russia, the Potemkin village. If you know what that is, it was a village that was just set up like a movie set so that when the czar went by he could see that this Potemkin’s village was actually a really cool place, but you open the door, you walk through, it’s just mud and dirt on the other side and some horses grazing in a field. Church is not a Potemkin village. It should never be. It should not be a facade that we are trying to hold up by shaming people who say negative things. The church is a living, breathing organization. It is the body of Christ. Mary DeMuth: God does not need to be defended. He can do just fine by himself. And this fear that you talk about is very real because it’s about human empire. Whenever we build our Roman empire on our cult of personality and our particular views about things and not on the word of God and not on studying the word of God, then we will be threatened by anyone who says anything negative because that will eat away at the foundation of our FACO empire. Julie Roys: Very well said. That is very well said. Let’s talk about grief. And I was reminded of the Kubler Ross Stages of grief. And let me see. Those are denial, which is often where we start, right? When things go wrong, anger, the bargaining we can work this out somehow, right? Depression and sink into that deep depression. This is just so sad. And then there’s acceptance, which is that last one. And it’s not like these are completely linear because what I found is you go through, oh, I’ve worked through to acceptance. No, I haven’t. I’m back at anger again. Julie Roys: Something will happen. it'll put you right back there. So it’s not completely linear, but how have you moved toward acceptance? What does acceptance look like? And maybe that’s a long way off but talk about where you’re at in that whole process. Mary DeMuth: I think a lot of people are in this space. There’s a lot of loyal people and that’s where the bargaining comes in. And a lot of the people I’ve talked to are like, yeah, I never go to that church anymore, like to the services, but I’m here because of my small group and they’re my church. There’s this, that we were in that space for a really long time. We can make this work. This is our church, not that other part is not the church, but it’s all together. Mary DeMuth: So once we got to the decision and made the decision, then the depression set in for sure. And I think I’m still there working my way through it of thinking that I was going to be there the rest of my life. As a person who grew up in a really difficult home and met Jesus at 15 years old, the church became my family. My family was not my family. And the church was the one place where I could go to be loved, to be healed, to be worked, just to work through my salvation with fear and trembling. And so, to walk away from something that you’ve been at the most we’ve ever been at a church is 23. This is the longest we’ve ever been somewhere to walk away from. It felt like I lost my limb. I lost my family, my father’s in the faith, my mother’s in the faith, my aunts, and my uncles in the faith. And then to be villainized for just having eyes to see what the heck is going on, has been devastating, devastating. So I’m still in the grief phase and I don’t cry much about it because I’ve sometimes just shoved it way down deep because I did not ever expect that I was going to have to leave a place I loved so much. Julie Roys: There’s a, I think it’s a short story and I should know the name of it, but it’s about someone, a man who goes to a cemetery and he sees a woman just weeping and weeping, and he’s there to visit his partner who had died. I don’t think he had actually married her. But he realizes in that moment that the person who’s grieving, who’s crying and just sobbing is the richer person. Because they had loved deeply and he had never loved that deeply. And I’ve thought about that, I lost my mother over 20 years ago and she was so special and I never like, I hear some people talk about their mothers, and how difficult or what I never felt that way. My mother was just a joy, but it was so hard to lose her, but it was hard because I loved her so much. Julie Roys: And I think, I’m so grateful for you that you did have that church experience where you were loved so deeply, where you loved deeply, and I’ve got to believe that God will provide that family again. It will be different. And I know I just feel so blessed by our church family that we found in this wasteland or out of the wasteland. Julie Roys: But it’s been really, really special because I don’t have to explain anything to these people. They understand the world I work in. They understand. It’s just, it’s really been a gift. And I think it’s been a gift too. And I know you have adult children. I’m glad I had these adult children because they’re a blessing in ways that they couldn’t be and a support in ways that they couldn’t be when they were younger, when we had to be everything to them. Julie Roys: And I’m glad I’m not dealing with, and I know a lot of people are,  is what do we do for our kids now? And then there’s that pressure to find something for your children right away. And that makes it really hard. But as believers, we are taught, Hebrews 10:25, let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but all the more as the day of the Lord approaches, let us encourage each other and all the more as the day approaches. I have found sometimes that can be used as a club against people who are just grieving, and they’re dealing with a great deal of betrayal trauma at this point. Julie Roys: And now we’re going to hit them over the head and say, you better be in church on Sunday. When they walk into a church and it just triggers, it’s a trigger for them. I believe in fellowship. I believe in the church. I love the church, but I am concerned about the process of helping people reengage after they’ve been wounded so profoundly. Julie Roys: So speak to this process of finding a new church home, or even having the freedom for a period of time to say, I don’t know. I don’t know that I can do that right now. Obviously, there is a danger if we’re out of fellowship for too long. But speak to that person who right now is outside of fellowship and really afraid to reengage with it. Mary DeMuth: Yeah. First, you’re super normal. And if you’ve been wounded in a terrible community, the stakes are pretty high, when you walk in, especially if you’re triggered or traumatized by walking into a building. I don’t know that I could walk into a big church right now. Like I just don’t think I could, I think I would have a hard time with that. Mary DeMuth: So for us, how we went about it and everyone’s going to be different, we did want to land somewhere because we just feel like we’re in that stage of, we want to serve the church. And so for our little parameters, and I think it’ll be different for every person. Ours was, it needs to be local. And we’re hoping that there will be people there already that we’re friends with. Mary DeMuth: And since we’re in a little town, right? So there’s, 1 billion churches and little towns in Texas, right? So we had plenty to choose from so many, and we didn’t even get to all of them, but that was our parameter in choosing a home. In fact, we just officially joined a church yesterday. So it did take some time to get to that place. But I just want to let you know that it’s normal to be scared, to be triggered, to be in pain. Mary DeMuth: Don’t let it stay there. You are wounded in a negative community and the Lord is very frustrating and he asks you to be healed in good community. That’s hard. But a relational wound requires a relational cure, and that’s one reason why Patrick and I have been pouring into people who are hurt because we want to be that safer relationship for people to be falling apart or hurting or ask really blunt questions and be really ticked off. Because I believe people are healed in community when they’re wounded in community. Julie Roys: 100%. And I know when I came through just so much grief and pain and church hurt. I know a lot of people go to therapy and I’m not against therapy, but I was like, I don’t need to talk to this about this with a counselor. It’s just not like that. I need to be in a community where there’s love. I need to see beauty in people like again. And even though I’m afraid to be vulnerable on some levels at the same time, I’m compelled to be vulnerable because I know until you do that, you can’t heal. Mary DeMuth: When we met with the person who became our pastor and there’s a multiplicity of pastors in this particular denomination, but we sat across from him and we told him our story and he just listened, and he dignified the story. And then he said this, he said, we just want to love you. And I just immediately just, I was like, what? you don’t want to use me? Cause we’ve been in leadership positions in the church for so long, our whole adult lives we’ve been in those positions and for him to say, we just want to love you. And that was foreign to me, but that was the beginning of that healing journey. Julie Roys: I had a pastor at one of the churches we visited when we were in this search process. And it was at a very large church I would say it’s probably a megachurch, and we sat across from him and he said a very similar thing. It was really wonderful. And he said, “I think you guys have been wounded deeply, and you need a place to heal. And we do just want to love you. What was interesting is when I came back to him with a follow up email, because part of me is like wait, this is a megachurch. Am I insane? Julie Roys: I’m just like looking at it and being like,  I don’t think this is at all what I want. And then I emailed him. I said, we want a pastor. Would you be able to pastor us? And then he basically declined as nicely as he could; like I’d love to be, but I can’t and I’m like I don’t need a small group leader to try and pastor me. I was just kind of like of course, you can’t because you have the corporation to run. And so that is again a fundamental issue that I do have with the mega church. Julie Roys: One thing I found and I see it here, because I don’t know how many people in the Chicago area who have left Willow Creek and ended up at Harvest. They’re like, wow, di I know how to pick them! They’re going from something that’s become familiar. And if you became a believer at Willow, then that big model, that big service, whiz bang entertaining sermon or inspirational talk, whatever you want to call it. Julie Roys: Although I’ll say at Harvest, he preached he discipled people. I know a lot of people from Harvest that were discipled shockingly by a really depraved pastor. But I see them going from what they’re used to. And it’s almost like when I see people who grew up in a dysfunctional home and thank God you didn’t do this, but they often then replicate that in their own home, or they’re attracted to that same kind of dysfunction in the next home. Julie Roys: And I’ve seen it with churches and I’m just like, why are you going to the same model of church that you just left? And I see that there’s this thought in their head that it’s just the one bad apple. That’s all it is. It’s the one bad apple, but basically there’s nothing wrong with the system. Julie Roys: I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system. So speak to that. Do you think, I know you’ve got some pretty strong opinions now about celebrity megachurches, even though you said some megachurches we’ve seen work. Do you have some thoughts about the model of church and what makes a safe church? Mary DeMuth: Yes. So many thoughts. I’ll start with a story. In the early two thousand, I went to my first Christian writers conference before I was published and on the airplane on the way there, my story flashed before my eyes and I said, Lord I’ve withstood a lot of trials. Like I’ve gone through a lot of trials. Mary DeMuth: And he said clearly to me, you have withstood many trials, but will you withstand the trial of notoriety? And that has stayed in my mind all these years because fame emaciates, fame makes you think that you’re better than other people and that people exist to serve you rather than you equipping the saints for the work of service. Mary DeMuth: And when the systems are in a place, typically what happens is the ego takes over. There’s something deep within the narcissistic system. And in the narcissistic pastor, they have this wound that they can’t fill except by acclaim. And then it’s like a drug, so they have to keep being acclaimed. They cannot have negative things said about them. Mary DeMuth: Therefore, the next thing they’ll do is they will dismantle the elder board, or they will significantly reduce the influence of the elder board that exists or completely dismantle it altogether. They will gather yes-men around themselves who will only say positive things to them that are not in their context that cannot see them do the bad things And who are other megachurch pastors. So there’s just this like cabal of megachurch pastors that are sitting on each other’s boards saying you can do whatever you want and have fun. Mary DeMuth: That system is ungodly and that will cause the fall of many leaders, which we have already seen over and over and over. It’s like a broken record of sameness. It keeps happening. Why? Because I think we are creating a church structure from a pyramid, which if you look in the Bible, the Israelites left Egypt, but were still looking back at it. One person at the top, one Pharaoh at the top, one supreme ruler, and then everybody has to fit into that system underneath that pyramid. Mary DeMuth: Whereas the kingdom of God is the opposite of that. It’s an inverted pyramid. The kingdom is of people that are last to are not acknowledged. And I think we’re going to be super surprised at where they are standing in line and the new heavens and the new earth, the people with all the acclaim are going to be way at the back. The people that nobody knew about that were silently and quietly serving the Lord are going to be at the front of the line. And we’re going to say, tell me your story, I want to learn from you. Mary DeMuth: But these structures cause the downfall of many men who do not have the character to hold up that structure. They’ve been given leadership responsibility without having maturity, and therefore they are stealing sermons. They are harming people with their words. They are demonizing others. They are all sorts of things you talked about last week. They’re doing those things because they have to keep their empire because their ego needs it so badly. Julie Roys: And the other thing is, and we can’t really even go into this, although I know you see this too, because you run your own literary agency, is that the evangelical industrial complex needs these celebrity pastors to function. So they need the publishing companies need the celebrities so that they can publish them, so that the megachurches need the celebrity to fuel their model of that great attractional speaker that can be everything. Which again, does just feed into the narcissism and it attracts the narcissism. Julie Roys: We like the narcissist. And the whole entire moneymaking empire runs on these narcissists and these celebrity pastors. And so it’s not just even the pastor himself who needs to be a celebrity, but it’s this system that needs celebrities. And at some point, Mary we’ve got to deal with this and evangelicalism, or we’re just going to keep doing this over and over and over again. Mary DeMuth: And I believe the Lord is bringing judgment on those systems. And we’re seeing that in publishing as well. I think it’s a broken system. We make these requirements of how popular you are to be able to be an author. In the nineties and before, it was really about can you write a good book? Is it theologically sound? Do you have a good mind? Do you have a heart to minister to others? And now it’s how many social media followers do you have? Which is you can buy those. Mary DeMuth: So what does that even mean? I hate being a cog in the Christian industrial complex, both as an author and as a literary agent, but as an agent, I feel like I’m championing projects that would otherwise not get sold. That are more global voices people that are marginalized and not often given a voice. So that’s why I have a literary agency. Cause I’m trying to have those voices platformed. Julie Roys: Before you go, I want to ask you also about, we’ve talked a little bit about a safe church, but what makes somebody a safe person as you’re trying to process this? Mary DeMuth: A safe person is someone who doesn’t speak initially, who is an active listener. Who doesn’t jump to conclusions, who doesn’t feel the need to defend the church that you are leaving, who doesn’t say things like Hebrew says don’t forsake your assembling together. Those kinds of like cliche, like super cliche oh, you better do this instead of just meeting you in your grief. Mary DeMuth: A safe person doesn’t try to change your state. They come alongside you into your state and they weep alongside. And that to me is so powerful. People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember that you were there with them in the pain. And we’re just willing to say, yeah, that hurts. And, oh, that must’ve been very painful. Just that empathy piece. Julie Roys: And they won’t shame you for deconstructing. They’ll walk with you; they’ll allow you to process. And I hate that when I see that. I see it on social media all the time, people denigrating people who are deconstructing and I’m like, maybe if you didn’t do that, maybe they wouldn’t be walking away from their faith. But again, deconstructing, I think takes a lot of different forms. I think for a lot of people that have gone through it; they’ve come back to a richer faith that stripped of maybe some of the baggage that they had previously. Julie Roys: Before I let you go, because I know a lot of people listening are in this place of just really, really  struggling and in a lot of hurt. And I know you have names and faces for those people too. Would you be willing to just pray for them and what they’re going through right now? Mary DeMuth: I will. And I’m just going to mention, I have a free resource, MARYDEMUTH.COM/CHURCHHURT. And it’s a hundred statements about things that people feel when they’re going through church hurt so that you can share it with a friend and check off the ones that are you, and then have a good conversation about it. Julie Roys: Wonderful. What a great resource. Thank you. Mary DeMuth: Yeah. Okay. Let me pray. Lord, thank you for loving the least of these. Thank you for leaving the 99 and chasing the one. Thank you for being counterintuitive. Thank you for the Sermon on the Mount. Thank you for your grace being sufficient for us and your power is made perfect in our weakness. Mary DeMuth: Lord, forgive us for these systems where we are worshiping strength, power, and numbers when that’s nothing to do with your kingdom. Reorient our lives and our hearts to what is your kingdom. Help us to hear your voice in the midst of the madness and the muddledness of what this has become. I pray that you would send friends to my friends who are suffering in the aftermath of spiritual abuse and church hurt. Mary DeMuth: I pray for hope Lord in these kinds of situations, it can feel like a death, and it feels very hopeless and sad. I pray for comfort and pray all of this in your beautiful name, Jesus. Amen. Julie Roys: Amen. Mary. Thank you so much. And how beautiful that even in this you are ministering to others through it. So I am just so grateful for you and for Patrick and for what you bring to the kingdom. And thank you so much for being willing to talk so vulnerably and bravely. So thank you. Mary DeMuth: Thank you. Julie Roys: And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and I want to invite all of you to our next Restore Conference in Phoenix in February 2025. Julie Roys: This is one of the most healing gatherings I know of, where you won’t just hear from amazing folks like Mary DeMuth and Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Tove, and Dr. David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. But you’ll also meet lots of other people who have gone through similar experiences, and I’ve found that just being in that kind of community is so healing. Julie Roys: And so powerful. So please come. I would love to meet you there. To find out more information, just go to RESTORE2025.COM. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. Julie Roys: And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. 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Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/ZOOhWWj5AqIAccording to the Houston Chronicle, hundreds have recently left Lakepointe Church—Josh Howerton's prominent megachurch in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Now a longtime volunteer leader at Lakepointe, who recently left the church with her family, is speaking out. Joining host Julie Roys on this edition of The Roys Report is Amanda Cunningham, a former model and actress who became a Christian at Lakepointe Church under former Senior Pastor Steve Stroope. She also served as a leader in both the marriage ministry and women's ministry, which boomed during her years there. But in 2019, Stroope retired, and young pastor Josh Howerton was hired to replace him. According to Amanda, that's when a major transformation occurred. Ministries were canceled as the church sought to become more centralized and on-brand. Emails from Amanda to those in her ministry were canceled, and they were replaced by communications from central leadership. Soon, outsiders began posting about Howerton's plagiarized sermons. His behavior online, and in sermons, led to allegations of misogyny. Then, Howerton told a joke that some said promoted marital rape. Howerton apologized for the joke, but as TRR reported, he apparently plagiarized his apology! Most recently, the church, in an effort to gain city approval for a traffic light, urged people in the church to sign up to drive repeatedly through an intersection to manipulate the findings of a traffic study. All these events, plus interactions Amanda witnessed personally, made her and her husband feel like they no longer could attend the church. Now, she's speaking out to warn others. After 11 years doing life and ministry at Lakepointe, it wasn't easy or simple for Amanda and her husband to exit. Her eye-opening account covers what led them to that point—plus insights on church celebrity culture, top-down leadership, and spiritual abuse that are widely applicable. Guests Amanda Cunningham Amanda Cunningham is a former model/actress who left her career behind when she became a mom. Subsequently, she spun into an identity crisis and was later stunned to find her true identity in Christ. Amanda is a writer, speaker, wife of a fire Deputy Chief, and mother of two girls. Connect with Amanda on Facebook. Show Transcript Coming soon Read more

This week's Misfit Entrepreneur is Julie Roy. Julie is a multi-millionaire entrepreneur that was born into an Italian immigrant family and raised in Windsor, Ontario. She started working when she was just nine and did all kinds of odd jobs, including digging graves. From a very young age, she decided not to let her personal or financial mindset be one of scarcity. Right out of college she went into business for herself starting a private Montessori preschool, in her mom's basement. She continued to build businesses and today, she is an entrepreneur, investor, speaker, author, podcaster, coach and world traveler who has visited all seven continents with her husband and four kids…and is financially free. Her latest book is called The Multi-Million Dollar Mompreneur: Your guide to business mastery, uncommon freedom and legacy wealth. Julie's set out to design the exact life she envisioned all the way back when she was a kid and made it happen. I'm excited for her to share her best wisdom on how you can do the same! thejulieroy.com/​ To see the full show notes and Misfit 3 for this episode, go to www.MisfitEntrepreneur.com Show Sponsors: Check out the The Growth Gear with Tim Jordan, presented by Carbon6, the driving force behind today's top ecommerce solutions and growth tools. you can listen anywhere you listen to podcasts! 5 Minute Journal: www.MisfitEntrepreneur.com/Journal

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/fFImYJWb2XUNancy French was once a darling of the GOP—and ghostwrote books, speeches, and articles for some of the leading conservative politicians. But then came Donald Trump's candidacy for president—something as both a Christian and a sex abuse survivor, Nancy says she could not support. Then, she was ghosted. In this edition of The Roys Report, Nancy French, a New York Times bestselling author and Christian conservative, recounts how she's been called some of the worst names in the book. Why? Simply because she and her husband, New York Times opinion columnist David French, refused to violate their convictions and promote Donald Trump. Even more egregious to some, Nancy published an article in the Washington Post explaining why, as a sex abuse survivor, she couldn't support a man who bragged about assaulting women. As a result, she lost every ghostwriting client she had. And she found herself unwelcome in her own tribe and her own church. But Nancy tells about much more in her book than just the events of the last few years. She tells about her humble beginnings, her sexual assault by a pastor who taught Vacation Bible School, and the dramatic change in her life when she met her husband, David French. Nancy French and her husband have been at the center of the major upheaval our nation has faced—as a new political paradigm invaded the church pews. As an abuse survivor and woman of conviction, Nancy courageously shares her story that has insights for every listener. Guests Nancy French Nancy French has collaborated on multiple books for celebrities - five of which made the New York Times best seller list. She has conducted a multi-year journalistic investigation, written commentary, and published for the nation's most prominent newspapers and magazines. She has written several books under her own name and tells her own story in Ghosted: An American Story. She lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband – journalist David French – and family. Learn more at NancyFrench.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSJulie Roys, NANCY FRENCH Julie Roys  00:04Nancy French was once a darling of the GOP and ghostwrote books, speeches, and articles for some of the leading conservative politicians. But then came Donald Trump’s candidacy for president; something as both a Christian and a sex abuse survivor, Nancy couldn’t support. Then she was ghosted. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And joining me today is Nancy French, a New York Times best-selling author, a Christian and a conservative who’s been called some of the worst names in the book. Why? Simply because she and her husband, New York Times opinion columnist David French, refused to violate their convictions and promote Donald Trump. Even more egregious to some, Nancy published an article in the Washington Post explaining why as a sex abuse survivor, she couldn’t support a man who bragged about assaulting women. As a result, she lost every ghostwriting client she had, and she found herself unwelcome in her own tribe and her own church. Nancy writes about all of this in her book Ghosted, which we’re offering this month to anyone who gives a gift of $50 or more to The Roys Report. And if you’d like to do that, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. But Nancy tells about much more in her book than just the events of the last few years. She tells us about her humble beginnings, her sexual assault by a pastor who taught Vacation Bible School, and the dramatic change in her life when she met her husband, David French. I’m so excited to share both the book and this podcast with you. But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Talbot Seminary and Marquardt of Barrington. Are you passionate about impacting the world so it reflects biblical ideals of justice? The Talbot School of Theology Doctor of Ministry program is launching a new track exploring the theological, social, and practical dimensions of biblical justice today. The program equips students with the knowledge, skills and spiritual foundation needed to address social issues with wisdom and compassion. Justice has become a key issue in our culture. But more importantly, it’s an issue that’s close to God’s heart. While it’s clear the Bible calls God’s people to pursue justice, we must be guided by his word within that pursuit. Talbot has created this track to do just that. As part of this program, you’ll examine issues such as trafficking, race, immigration, and poverty. And I’ll be teaching a session as well focusing on the right use of power in our churches, so we can protect the vulnerable rather than harm them. So join me and a community of like-minded scholars committed to social change and ethical leadership. Apply now at TALBOT.EDU/DMIN. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of character. To check them out. Just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Well again joining me is New York Times best-selling author Nancy French. As a ghostwriter, she’s written for a variety of people, from well-known politicians to celebrities. She’s also investigated and exposed widespread sexual and spiritual abuse at Kanakuk camp, America’s largest Christian camp, and her latest book Ghosted, tells her remarkable story of growing up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, marrying David French, a New York Times opinion columnist, becoming a ghostwriter for conservative political leaders. And then when she and her husband opposed Trump, getting kicked out by their own tribe and then becoming the target of white nationalists and Trump supporters. So Nancy, welcome, and it’s just such a privilege to have you.   NANCY FRENCH  04:08 Thanks for having me on. This is fun.   Julie Roys  04:11 And I know that this is not the best time for you to be doing a book tour. You’ve been very public about your struggle with cancer. And I know you’re going through chemo. And I just feel honored that you’d be willing to take the time in the middle of something like that to talk about this. So thank you.   NANCY FRENCH  04:27 Yeah, no, thank you so much. Yes, I think I’ve done pretty well with all the interviews, even though I’m high as a kite on prednisone. And I haven’t said too many things that I maybe regretted later. But I’m very thankful to be able to have a book out. It just so happens, it’s in the middle of chemo. So this is gonna get real.   Julie Roys  04:45 Yeah. Well, absolutely. And I was surprised when I read your book. I mean, you and David are kind of like this powerhouse couple. And yet, you had very humble beginnings. In fact, your grandparents lived in the mountains of Appalachia; you lived in the foothills because your parents moved. But again, they were interesting sort of rough and tumble group of people. In fact, your dad used to joke that your family was famous or maybe infamous is a better word. Tell us a little bit about that and the background of your family.   NANCY FRENCH  05:19 Yeah, we get accused a lot of being like Washington, DC cocktail party elites or whatever. I don’t even go to Washington DC. I am from Tennessee. My parents are from Montego mountain. My grandfather was a coal miner. My dad did not graduate from high school. He got his GED. And he later in his 50s went back to college. But  he went to college, he got a degree and amazing man. But yeah, from self-described hillbillies, and all that entails. And yeah, I wanted to sort of describe my upbringing, just so that people could understand that many times people will say, Well, you just don’t understand what true Americans think or you don’t understand what true Tennesseans think. And I always sort of in my mind laugh at that because I’m like, you can’t out Tennessee me. You can be an American and a real Tennessean and hold the beliefs that I hold, you know, so that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to describe that upbringing. I love my family. They’re amazing. They’re fierce. And I think some of that ferocity has been passed on to me and I just I love my hillbilly family.   Julie Roys  06:32 And your part Cherokee Indian too?   NANCY FRENCH  06:35 Yeah, we have a lot of Indian blood. So my grandmother was I think was 1/4. And that was Cherokee. And then my grandfather also had a different type of Montana Indian in him, which is interesting. But yeah, it was all mixed together.   Julie Roys  06:52 So your dad broke from your family, moved to the foothills. Mayfield, Kentucky, which I know where that’s at. My dad actually lives near there now. But Mayfield, Kentucky, then eventually to Tennessee. Talk about the culture of the home that you grew up in, but also the town and sort of rural Tennessee and what that was like.   NANCY FRENCH  07:16 So Paris, Tennessee, has a 16-foot-tall Eiffel Tower,   Julie Roys  07:22 An Eiffel Tower.   NANCY FRENCH  07:25 There’s a huge battle between Paris, Texas and Paris, Tennessee over this Eiffel Tower business. But Paris, Tennessee is an amazing place. I grew up near the lake, Kentucky lake. We have a 60-foot Eiffel Tower. It’s just a great place to grow up very rural. We did not necessarily value education in the way that you would think a school might. For example, in seventh grade, I did not have science class, but instead they decided because none of us were going to go to college, to teach us about guns and so we had hunter safety classes and that culminated in skeet shooting contest. Which, I don’t like to brag, I don’t like to but sometimes you got to. I was the best shot in my seventh-grade class. Which is interesting and funny, but that’s how I grew up; just complete redneck hillbilly sort of existence and I loved it. Like I love Paris, Tennessee. I love Montego mountain and I love Mayfield, Kentucky.   Julie Roys  08:28 Well, it’s funny you say you lived in Paris, Kentucky. My parents for probably about 12 years lived in London, Kentucky, which you know, we didn’t know Kentucky at all. We grew up in Pennsylvania, but we thought it was kind of comical because it’s the least like London of any place I can think of in all of the United State.   NANCY FRENCH  08:47 There’s also Versailles.   Julie Roys  08:49 Versailles right. Not Versailles. But Versailles.   08:52 Yes. And there’s also a fence. Right. Yeah, it’s crazy. Love all these small towns.   Julie Roys  08:59 Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that your dad did differently than your growing up or his growing up, I mean, he came from sort of a superstitious, it sounded like background very sort of animated with maybe tribal kind of religion. But then he became a part of the Church of Christ, and describe what that church was like, I mean, seems from your description, very conservative, but also kind of leaning towards the legalistic side.   NANCY FRENCH  09:32 Yes, that is a very kind way of putting it, Julie. But I will say this, the church probably saved my dad. It’s like, saved his life saved his soul saved my, because he got off the mountain and he and my mother started going to church. They took us to church three times a week. It was just very wonderful and Norman Rockwell ish, you would think, but under the  facade of that sweet small town, Southern church experience, there was a lot of abuse happening at my church. So I was abused by, there was one guy who was like a predator. And he abused 15 people in my church. I didn’t know about the other 14, I only knew about me. I only now know this in the process of writing the book, I figured this out. But I grew up sort of feeling isolated spiritually. And it made me feel differently about God. Previously, church was a cushion, the warm blanket, a place to lay your head. And then all of that was ripped away from me because of that abuse. And I became isolated and smoked cigarettes and painted my fingernails black and skipped church, and it just set me on a bad path.   Julie Roys  10:43 And you were 12 years old when that happened? .   10:46 That’s right. And the preacher was 10 years older.   Julie Roys  10:51 I read your book soon after I read Krista Browns book who of course, was sexually abused in her church as a child. I was actually stunned by the similarities between your story and her story. But I think that the thing that really struck me was the way that both of you internalized it. She internalized it, she called it an affair. How can you have an affair with your youth pastor when you’re an underage teen. You, similarly, you kind of took the guilt and shame on yourself.   11:27 I did. And I think this is common. This is like sort of an embarrassing book to write because it’s so I don’t know, like, actually, I shouldn’t even say that. I’m saying words that are shame full. Like I’m saying this is embarrassing, but I didn’t do anything wrong, right?   Julie Roys  11:45 No, you didn’t.   NANCY FRENCH  11:46 That’s what you think. And in the church with the purity culture sometimes, very well meaning poorly conceived theology. Which is, if you have a sexual sin, which by the way, you don’t, if you’re being abused, that’s not a sin, you’re not the one sinning. But if you’ve been compromised sexually, you’re ruined for the rest of your life. And I internalized that, and I thought that was right. And I also thought that this pastor, preacher, Vacation Bible School person, I thought he loved me, because I was 12. I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything about this. I just didn’t perceive it correctly. So I told myself the wrong story about this abuse almost my whole life. And so this book, though, there’s a lot more to it than just the abuse, obviously. This is me correcting the record for myself. But I wanted to do it publicly for all the people out there who feel guilty over stuff that they shouldn’t feel guilty over. And also, I became a complete mess after my abuse, and I wanted to show people that. Because what happens is you get embarrassed because you make a series of bad decisions and you look unsophisticated, you look immoral, you look like trash. And people will, they’ll look at you and they’ll say, that’s just trash, why are you listening to her? When in actuality, they should look at the damage that has been done to people in the church and repent about the way they’ve been handling abuse. And so I sort of wanted to put myself out there and say, Okay, y’all esteem me now, when I’m almost 50, because I’ve gotten my life together to the degree that I have, which I haven’t, but people esteem me. They don’t know about any of this. So I wanted to say, Okay, this is what it looks like, this is what I looked like. And I looked ridiculous. I was flailing, I was terrible in a lot of ways. You know, let’s talk about it.   Julie Roys  13:45 I think that’s so helpful. Because especially now when we have as public figures, you have a curated image, and it’s often so different than the real image, right? Although I really appreciate it, you have been so real, I think, especially as you’ve been walking through your cancer, the treatments and everything. I’ve so appreciated that. I appreciate that today, you forgot your wig. And so you’re just wearing whatever, and a lot of people would be like, Oh, I can’t go on. But I love that because that’s where all of us are. We like to pretend we’re not. But that’s where all of us are, at least at different points in our life. And so I just, I appreciate that. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening, who appreciate that as well. It didn’t end with the violence and the abuse didn’t end with that Pastor whose name was Conrad as I recall, but you had a boyfriend then, Jacob, who unbelievable. I mean, who this man turned out to be and you were trying to break it off from him forever. That did remind me of boyfriends I’ve tried to break it off with and you couldn’t. But talk about what happened with Jacob  and how that impacted you.   NANCY FRENCH  15:03 So I tried to find solace outside the church, meaning in boyfriends, and I made a series of terrible mistakes. And I dated this one guy, who eventually, I actually, Julie, double crossed him. I was cheating on him to let the record show that I was not innocent in this. But it was like I could not break up with him, I didn’t have the backbone to break up with him. And every time I tried, he threatened to commit suicide. And I realize now how terrible that is. I didn’t know it at the time. But in one very terrible moment, he revealed that he knew I had been cheating on him, and he tried to kill me. And so that was a pretty dramatic moment, he tried to strangle me, and it was bad. And boy number two, the guy that I was dating, actually came and rescued me from the situation at the very last second, very wonderful. So that boyfriend number two realized that I was cheating on him. And that I was in duress in the same moment. And he immediately pivoted to try to help me, and he did. I’m very thankful for that. But all of that was the pre-David French romance, which you can imagine when I met David French, who is so levelheaded and calm and good and mora., I wanted that. And that’s what I got. So David French sort of helped put me back on track. And, yeah, I’ll be forever grateful to him over that.   Julie Roys  16:35 Yeah, I was really struck by how big of a difference he made in your life. I mean, at this point,  you’re a victim of two assaults. You’re just absolutely reeling. You’re going to Lipscomb University, which is a Church of Christ school. Although I thought it was interesting that you could not even go to chapel. You knew, if you didn’t go to chapel, you’re going to lose your scholarship. But you call it the positive theology that you couldn’t stomach at that point. I think this is actually good for Christians to hear. Because it’s still there in a lot of churches where it’s very, well just describe what that was, and how that struck you as somebody who’s been through the kind of abuse that you have been through.   NANCY FRENCH  17:30 Yeah, I just had experienced so much. And then my best friend died. And in the same time period, and I was full of grief, though, I wasn’t even really properly processing. I wasn’t grieving the way you’re supposed to grieve. But I knew when I go into chapel, I was actually seeking answers, like, what do you do when you’re completely decimated by life? And the chapel speakers would be like, Hey, guys, we should be humble. Let me tell you about my little league game where I was pitching, and this happened. And I was just like, what is happening? This is so vacuous. I could not listen to this one more syllable. This is going to kill me. It felt like they were trying to kill me. And the reason why is because they didn’t have a doctrine of suffering. Right? Like I was really suffering. Not to mention the fact now that I realized that the Church of Christ leaders knew that I was being abused by this preacher and didn’t do anything. That’s a whole different level of stuff. The people at Lipscomb weren’t guilty of any of that. They were just nice people. And Lipscomb is really amazing. Like David works there. Now, David has always had a great experience there. But my experience there was I could not get down with this theology that I thought was vacuous. And it did not help. I needed help, like I need to help. I was suicidal, or something close to suicidal. So I needed help. And so those chapel talks were not going to cut it. And so I got called into the Dean of Students called me in and he was like, if you don’t go back to chapel, you’re losing everything. And I was like, I’ve lost everything. I don’t care. I never went back. But there’s something about this toxic positivity that I noticed with cancer, and here’s why. So whenever people find out that you have cancer immediately, they want to pray for your healing and for the cure. You have people at McDonald's stop and pray for your healing, which is very kind and sweet. But when I first got my diagnosis, my son, who’s a philosophy major, said there’s going to be beauty in this. Like, you have to keep your eyes open to see the beauty in this. And there’s, I have like, that was such an interesting, salient thing to say, because there’s so much to learn through disease and disability. Like looking like this. Like, I have no makeup on. I have no hair. In 1 million years would not have taken a picture and posted it to Facebook, let alone been on an interview with you a year ago looking like this. And I am so happy because I feel like, I don’t know, Julie, have maybe this is just me. I’m completely insecure. But I’m insecure my whole life. I’m almost 50 I’m insecure over the way I look. I’m insecure over cellulite, I’m over insecure over my weight, I’m insecure over my teeth that are equine looking. Like whatever you know. But what I’ll do as a ghostwriter, I’ll move in and help people write books about confidence. And so I was talking to my friend, Kim Gravelle, who has her own makeup line and fashion line on QVC. She’s a queen, amazing businesswoman. And we wrote a book called, Collecting Confidence, and I was talking to her, and she was like, you’re so confident I love seeing you. And I was like I faked all that. I completely faked all that. I can’t even imagine people who are confident, like I don’t even get that. But the cancer thing. Oh my gosh, it’s like it removed the vanity or something. And I don’t want to say vanity like it’s negative because we all you know, care what we look like, and it’s important. But I am not going to criticize my body again. I’m so thankful for it. And thankful for the way I look. I’m thankful for being bald because it allows me to connect with people in the most beautiful ways. Women who have cancer will send me pictures of their bald heads and they’re afraid to do it publicly. Some of them don’t even let their husbands see their bald heads. And so what I’m trying to do is normalize this, like this is okay, it’s okay to look like this. I probably won’t look like this forever. But it’s okay to look like this. And so when I’m doing my normal life, that’s not book promotion, typically, I just go bald. And people come up to me and they’re like, is this a fashion choice? Is this you know, like, what’s going on? Because I also tattooed my eyebrows on, because I’m not completely free of vanity. But anyway, it just opens up so much conversation and so whenever you’re faced with lament and grief and loss and abuse and death and disease and disability, you better have a doctrine of suffering. And you have to know how your faith intersects with that. And the good news is it intersects in a very beautiful way. With Christianity, we get back what we lose. It’s a beautiful thing. And I just love the fact that there’s so much truth and beauty even when we look like this. There’s still truth and beauty that we can tap into that is so much greater than my tattooed eyebrows, although on fleek.   Julie Roys  23:05 Well, I think you look beautiful, even with a bald head. But I love that. I absolutely love that. And I love that sometimes when we go through, I was telling somebody this recently that sometimes when we go through really horrific things, the things that used to scare us, the things that used to be so daunting, now we’re like, now that I’ve gone through this, like, go ahead, make my day. I’m not afraid anymore. And I do think it’s a wonderful like, I’ve never been through cancer, so I don’t want to even pretend that I know what that’s like. But yeah, I do hear what you’re saying and suffering for believers is redemptive; it’s always redemptive in some way. And I think you’re right that we don’t talk about it nearly enough in the church. I want to get back to David, because again, he made this huge, huge difference in your life. And I just thought it was so beautiful how you wrote about him. But he really, I mean, here you are an absolute wreck. And I love how when you met him like you confronted him, because he’s the one who convinced you to go to Lipscomb. And you’re like, thanks a lot, you know, and you kind of laid into him. And yet he responded in such a gracious way and within. I mean, I don’t know if it was a few hours or days like he had led you to the Lord.   NANCY FRENCH  24:27 Yeah, we had a very truncated experience dating, romantically and spiritually. He was sick. He had an incurable disease, which is a totally different story. So he was sick. We started dating, the second date, I realized I could marry this person. And then I think we were engaged within three months. I didn’t know him. He was like a complete stranger. But during that very brief amount of time he told me about Jesus. He was like he was telling me about the Holy Spirit because David French, New York Times columnist, was cured of an incurable disease,  Okay? And that was in 95. And I got to see that happen. He weighed 100 pounds when we were dating, he was so sick. And maybe 120 I don’t know; he lost a ton of weight. But I got to see this miracle happen. And I didn’t believe in miracles. I didn’t believe in any of it. So he was telling me about that. And I was like, wow, I think I might need to know about whatever it is that you know about. And so he used CS Lewis to talk me through the Lord, lunatic or liar, those three options. And for those listening, CS Lewis was basically like, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. Was he telling the truth? Was he insane? Or was he just lying? And I could not bring myself to say that Jesus Christ was lying. I just couldn’t. And so the only thing and I didn’t think he was a lunatic. So I was like, you know, I think Jesus was telling the truth. And that small thing changed my life, because I believed and David helped me believe, and it was very beautiful. So I write about that in the book.   Julie Roys  26:11 Yeah. Lord, liar, lunatic. It’s a powerful argument. So simple, but so powerful. And yet a lot of people just have never, they’ve never thought deeply about it. And then you guys got married, in Paris, which is great. I won’t go into it because we don’t have time. But that was a great, great story. You moved to Manhattan. And then you, this hit me in a probably a different way than it would normally because I kind of lean charismatic. So I’m open to charismatic things, even though I would say, I grew up, my dad was a surgeon. So we were always, if you thought you were sick, it was kind of like, prove it. It was everything a little bit skeptical. And, as a journalist, we tend to be pretty skeptical too. But I read this about your encounter with a prophet. It was I guess; it was like a reunion of the Harvard Christian group that David had been a part of. And well, you were skeptical too. So tell about that experience, because it really is pretty mind blowing.   NANCY FRENCH  27:23 Craziest story. I became a Christian. I have one inch of theological belief, which is I believe Jesus Christ is Lord, all in You. And the Harvard Law School Christian fellowship was having a reunion. And we went, and by the way, I don’t want to go hang out with a bunch of people who graduated from Harvard, right? Because, a three-time college dropout. I don’t want to hang out with these people. I’m intimidated. Everybody is so smart. And also, when you grow up in the way that I grew up, you’re taught that people who believe in the Holy Spirit and Pentecostals or charismatics are low class, they’re unsophisticated, they’re not smart. They’re given to emotion. So here I am going into the Harvard Law School Christian Fellowship. So they’re smarter than I am. They get paid a lot of money to evaluate documents, and the Bible is a document. And David was like, Yeah, I think they invited a prophet, and I was like, What is a prophet? Is this like a psychic? Like I don’t have a category for this. And so we go to the thing, and I was apprehensive because, Julie, I don’t know if this is a sign of a guilty conscience. 100% It is. But if you talk to a prophet, I was thinking that he would say, Well, you don’t read your Bible. You don’t pray, your main to whatever, you know, like whatever you kick the dog, whatever, like he could read my mail. So I didn’t want to talk to a prophet either. So anyway, we go to the thing. Gary has on a Hawaiian shirt. He’s smelly, he has a hairy belly, and I can see the bottom of it. It’s insane. I’m like, okay, so this is Gary the Prophet. Okay, whatever. So Gary the Prophet, y’all gotta read this, it’s the craziest thing that ever happened. But he goes to the people at the Harvard Law School Christian Fellowship, and I thought he would say to Harvard Law people, Oh, you struggle with pride? Or oh, I don’t know, you’ve got so much intelligence. I don’t know what you’d say to Harvard people. I’m not a Harvard person, as you can tell. But that’s not what he did. He went around the room and read to like, spoke into their lives. So for example, I don’t know if you know Shaunti Feldheim. She’s a Christian. Shaunti was there, and her husband Jack, and I use their names in the book. And later I was like, Hey, I used your name in the book with this crazy thing because they were there and they had this crappy car that Shaunti and Jeff, like, they were the only people in New York City who had the car of our friend group. So they were very nice to let us use the car, but it was a freaking jalopy, and they were always in fights over it. And so, but Gary looked at Jeff and Shaunti and spoke to them about this car. And I was like, what? So you got a chance to talk to a prophet. He’s giving you automobile advice, that’s weird. And then he went to other people, and he talked to another friend who secretly had written poetry and he said, “You know the poetry right secretly? It’s time to do this was like literary advice. I was like, what is happening, Gary the Prophet? So then Gary the prophet looked at me, and he was like you, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is gonna be so bad. And he called me up. And he told me, he said, you’re pregnant. And I was like, No, I’m not. Julie, this is TMI, but this is what’s happening. I was on my period, and I told him that, and he looked at me, I said, it is impossible, because I wanted everyone in this Harvard Law School Christian fellowship to realize they’ve been duped by a con man. And so I was like, defiant, like, No, I’m on my period. I’m not pregnant. And he just laughed at me. And he was like, with God, all things are possible. But this is what you need to know, you are pregnant, you are carrying a girl, she’s going to come this year, she’s going to have physical problems, here is five Bible verses that you need to know. When they tell you that you’re aborting, don’t believe it, you’re gonna have a healthy baby. And all is gonna be well just remember these words. And I was like, okay, Gary, the Prophet. This is weird because I wasn’t pregnant, right? But he scared me to death. So I go home, and my period stops. And I think, you know, this is weird. I think he’s scared me into not having a period. Gary the prophet is the worst prophet ever. And then later, though, like I took a pregnancy test, and I was pregnant. Apparently, the bleeding that I thought was my period was implantation. And Gary the prophet knew this. And lo and behold, a few months later, the doctor calls and he says, “You are miscarrying. You’re aborting call off the parties. But they gave me a due date in January. I knew that wasn’t the case, because he said that she was going to come this year, and I also knew the gender. So talking about gender reveal party, Gary the Prophet, you did not need that. And Camille was born. And she’s amazing. And right now this second, she’s 13 floors up. She’s got two of my grandchildren, that she’s given birth to; cute, wonderful, beautiful kids. And we’ve seen God’s hand in Camille’s life and all of our lives in such dramatic ways. And that cured me of being skeptical of the Holy Spirit. My book is called Ghosted, not just because I’m a celebrity ghostwriter, or because vast friend groups have ghosted me for my political decisions. But also I wanted it to encourage people to really consider the Holy Ghost, to consider God, because He will not let you down even though everyone else will.   Julie Roys  33:03 I never said why I’m a little more skeptical than I used to be. And it’s because of what’s happening at the International House of Prayer. Just, and of course, I mean, this is the umpteenth. I don’t know how many scandals I’ve covered since I’ve started The Roys Report. I mean, it’s just been one after another after another. But this particular one, I think is especially gross, because prophecy was used to manipulate and then abuse women. And then we have this prophetic history that now some of the key facts in it have been debunked. And it just seems like it was used in such a manipulative way. And so I’m trying to figure out why God? Like why do you even like, is that real? Like when people get because I remember, I used to be in the Vineyard, and I remember hearing stories, and I remember miraculous things happening. And then you go to a church where they don’t expect that to happen, and guess what? It doesn’t, you know, kind of like the Holy Spirit doesn’t work in ways that our faith doesn’t allow it to, sometimes, but it was good for me to hear it.   NANCY FRENCH  34:17 I think that’s a very interesting point. And it’s important to say it, because the charismatic church has really, really messed up with this Donald Trump prophecy stuff.   Julie Roys  34:29 Oh, my goodness, yeah.   NANCY FRENCH  34:31 They’ve gone off the rails. And so what do you do like if you’re a Christian person, and this is not just for charismatic people or Pentecostal people, but all white evangelicals who are going to church where the egregious evil is overlooked because of political positions? What do you do? And so that’s the thing I don’t I don’t even go to a Pentecostal church. I just really believe that there’s a lot of counterfeit stuff happening, with all these prophecies, political prophecies. But if it’s counterfeit, that indicates there’s something true. Right? So it’s a mimicry of something good. And so I would just encourage, I don’t know how to do it. I’m not doing church right. I’m completely a mess; I’m hanging on to Christianity by my freaking fingernails. And ever since I got the cancer diagnosis, I can’t really go to church, I’ve gone like twice in seven months. However, I feel so warmly towards God. And I feel like he’s got me. In spite of all of this, I just feel so thankful to God. And I don’t understand God. So when I wrote this book, one of my intentions was to never be invited by a church to come speak on the book at a church. And I think I probably pulled that off, the invitations are not rolling in Julie. And that’s because I don’t understand God. So I’m just telling you the truth. This is what happened to me, there was a guy named Gary, and he had a hairy belly, and a Hawaiian shirt. And he was completely right about the trajectory of my life. And we recorded it because he said, If I’m a false prophet, you’ll be able to say that I’m a false prophet. I’m recording everything I say to you. And there’s some things that haven’t happened yet that I 100% know are going to happen in our lives. Then David and I joke about it all the time because it’s just so crazy. But it feels crazy. But it happened, and I’ve got a kid upstairs, who is alive. And so many things like that happen. And sometimes things happen that you don’t get that aren’t as uplifting, that God acts in ways that are baffling and confusing. And I included those stories too. Because I just wanted the reader to be able to say, Okay, this is what my life looks like, because I wrangle with God and wrestle with God. What does yours look like? Is it as nuts as this? And I just think it is, I think we’re just too sophisticated to talk about it. But I think people have interactions with God all the time. And I want to normalize talking about that.   Julie Roys  37:10 And when I was in Vineyard, their tagline used to be to make the supernatural natural. And I did love tha.t I loved lots of things about my Vineyard experience. I know they’re going through some really, very difficult times right now. But yeah, it was very positive for me in many ways. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate just the fact that I read Scripture differently now, whereas I used to skip over oh my gosh, they raised the dead. You know, like that was normal for the disciples like what does that mean to us today? But it’s challenging.   NANCY FRENCH  37:42 Yeah. Or what does it mean when Paul says just eagerly seek these gifts of the Holy Spirit? Do it just do it, just believe the Bible and do it. And one of the things is church is so nuts right now. It makes you feel like you don’t have a spiritual home. Like, actually, like, I do not have a spiritual home, I’ve been projectile vomited out of like the church.   Julie Roys  38:05 I can relate to this. So yeah.   NANCY FRENCH  38:08 if you can just like divorce yourself from the people who are angry at you for whatever reasons, and just sort of settle into your relationship with God. I don’t think we should forsake the church or the gathering of our friends and saints and all that. I don’t know how to do it. It is a very difficult time. And so I wrote this book for other people who feel politically, culturally, or spiritually homeless. And I’m just sort of like reaching out my hand and saying, Hey, do y’all, this is weird, what’s going on? Do y’all feel weird about this? Anyway, we can be weird together, we can be alone together. And that’s what I hoped the book sort of encapsulated.   Julie Roys  38:47 I loved your story of how you became a ghost writer, which is kind of amazing. You’re a college dropout. And all of a sudden you’re writing for all these stars. A lot of people don’t know that you’re writing the book because you’re a ghost. But you end up writing and I didn’t realize you wrote this book Bristol Palin’s book when she got pregnant. For people, you know, who aren’t familiar with this, although most of us I would guess, that are listening. Or it wasn’t that long ago. Sarah Palin became the vice-presidential candidate. And of course, she’s a conservative, Christian conservative, very traditional values, and then it comes out uh-oh, her daughter Bristol is pregnant out of wedlock. Although it wasn’t really what I think everybody probably assumed at the time. Talk about that experience of writing that book with Bristol, but also of the reception that book got when you published it.   NANCY FRENCH  39:44 Yeah, so I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that Democrats were sexual predators, or at least for pretty still with them. Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, give me a freaking break. So I was like, okay, So that’s the party. I do not want to have anything to do with. Democrats do not care about women. So I go to Alaska, I live with the Palins, I meet Bristol. Her story is told beautifully in her book. And I’ll let her tell her own story. But I was shocked when I got up there. Because what I thought was true was not true about the Palins. And I love Bristol Palin, she is courageous. She has a backbone, and she is a fighter for what is right. During that very tumultuous time when she got pregnant out of wedlock, she really rose to the occasion and she’s an amazing mother. And I love her so much. But what I learned when I got there, I said to her Bristol, we need to really talk about this baby shower that you had and she goes, I didn’t have a baby shower. And I was like, Yes, you did. I’ve got pictures. Look, your kid has this camouflage onesie. And she was like, Nancy, that is photoshopped. What is wrong with like, it’s so obviously photoshopped. I didn’t know because I was new to the world of lies and deception. But then when Bristol told me her story, how she lost her virginity. She goes, it wasn’t really lost. It was stolen. And I was like, oh, okay, what? I was completely floored by that because all of the media coverage was mocking her. And so when we published this in the book, I thought everybody would be like, my bad. I write for The Washington Post, or I write for the New York Times, or I write for this thing. And we mocked her for what essentially was a sex crime. She was a victim. And we’re sorry about that. That’s not what happened. People continue to mock her. They continue to make fun of her. And what that told me at the time was Democrats do not care about women, unless you’re a certain type of woman. Now, later, fast forward five freakin minutes, and here we are. The GOP standard bearer is someone who has been held criminally accountable for rape in court, much more so than Bill Clinton. And we’ve embraced this guy. So this is my trajectory. It has been one of confusion. I don’t feel like I’ve changed. I feel like you could believe that Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy were sexual predators or had sexual problems, obviously, without you can believe that and also look at people in your own tribe, can say the same things. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. You can just decide to be against sexual predation generally, across the board. It’s pretty easy if you make these decisions. But that’s not what we do. What we do is, oh, Harvey Weinstein. Yes. Well, that’s how Hollywood is, you know, Hollywood, they’re godless. Or the Catholics, for sure the Catholics have a problem. And then you find out oh, is the Baptist, oh it's the deacon Oh, it’s Kanakuk camps in Branson, Missouri. And it’s like, you don’t want to embrace that you’re just like, Nope. A part of my identity is that I’m a part of the good guys, I belong to the good tribe. And that was mine, too. I firmly believed that, that I was on the side of good, but then I wasn't, and I was guilty of mischaracterizing my liberal neighbor and trying to fight for my tribe over truth. And anyway, my book is sort of like unpacking that, it is not chastising the reader. It’s chastising myself because I got too much into the scoring of political points occupationally. And I realized that was not kind of me. God didn’t give me my writing talent for me to disparage my neighbor and to bear false witness. And so that’s what I was doing. And when I decided not to lie, or bear false witness, I was unemployable. I was as popular as head lice. So we used to be super popular in certain circles. And then, you know, nobody wants anything to do with us now.   Julie Roys  44:02 Yeah, yeah. It’s amazing. 2015 You guys were like the darlings of the GOP. I mean, David had gotten  awarded the Ronald Reagan award from CPAC, you know, the Conservative Political Action Conference. I mean, you guys were like, you were the quintessential Christian conservatives. And I think that’s when I was introduced to you. I was working at Moody at the time. And so I was doing a lot of commentaries and it’s amazing to me, I look back and I’m like, I had everything figured out then. Wow. It’s so funny, because I don’t now, but then I did. But I was very right. I was very conservative. And I could spout all of the political reasons why the Conservatives were right. And then all of a sudden, I couldn’t, I don’t think I changed. I don’t think I changed either. I was just absolutely shocked at who my Christian conservative neighbors were. Like, because I had supporters who were furious at me because I spoke out against Trump and stopped supporting me. And I’m like, Who did you think I was? Like, how can you support this man? I have not changed. I thought we were the party that cared about values. And they didn’t. Clearly we cared more about power, we cared more about position. But I have kind of thought, in my role as an investigative reporter in this space, where I call out Christians, and people often don’t want to hear, as you know, the scandals and what’s really going on. And so I thought, I got a lot of hate mail and pushback. Compared to what you and David have been through, I mean, that gave me like a whole new perspective, the personal nature of what was done to you. Especially regarding I know you have a daughter that you have adopted from Ethiopia. The amount of cruelty and this is where I’m like, that whole compassionate conservative thing. I was like, where are they? Talk about what happened to you when again, you simply stuck to your guns, and you spoke out, you spoke out what was true about Donald Trump. What happened?   NANCY FRENCH  46:28 So chaos. We’re big fans of Hamilton, and we are always like chaos and bloodshed. If you know that songs chaos and bloodshed are not the solution. But that’s what ensued. So I wrote a 2016 article in the Washington Post about my own sexual abuse and how I was begging the GOP to consider sexual abuse victims, because we were not about this. Imagine if you’re me, and you grow up believing Bill Clinton is rapist. The Democrats don’t care about women. The GOP is the party of family values. We care about children, all this stuff. Imagine if you’re that, and then they show up and they’re like, Hey, this is the guy that you can vote for. His name is Donald Trump, he grabs women by the genitals. It’s fine. Just, it’s great.   Julie Roys  47:17 Just locker room talk. Yeah.   47:19 And you’re just like, I don’t think I can do this. Is there a problem? So I wrote this article, I talked about my sex abuse for the first time. And I had not even told my counselor about my sexual abuse, I could not even articulate it. So it wasn’t like I had gotten to the point of spiritual maturity and emotional health, and I was finally deciding to make a case in the Washington Post. I had not even told my counselor; I could not even say it. But I went ahead and published this in the Washington Post, and it was a story of my abuse. And my counselor was like, Okay, I think we can work with this. But  this is potentially emotionally problematic, which it was, because I just laid my soul bare. I was like, guys, please. But then after I did that, there were some conservatives, prominent conservatives who were like, oh, Nancy French is just using her personal story to make a political point. And then later, when I would make any sort of statement about politics, these people would say things like, just because Nancy French seduced her pastor doesn’t mean that she should be able to speak about the Supreme Court or something like that.   Julie Roys  48:27 It’s infuriating. It’s infuriating, unbelievable.   NANCY FRENCH  48:30 I’ve never heard anything more evil than this; where you take the victim of pedophilia and say that they seduced a pastor. It’s so sinister. But these are people who y’all read, like, people read these writers, they’re associated with sort of legitimate magazines. I don’t know. I don’t read them. And they make fun of us. They make fun of our adopted daughter because she’s black. They say I had sex with men while my husband was deployed. And that’s how we got this baby. Not through adoption. And then for a time, they put fake-like photoshopped porn of me having sex with black men online and they would photoshop David’s face looking through the window at it, and they called him a cock-servative and obviously, he’s raising the enemy because we have a black child. So all black people are enemy. The evil that came at us with such a flood of evil. I could not even I still cannot even process it. That was all because we decided not to vote for Trump. So I mean, it’s like, I don’t wish it on my worst enemy.   Julie Roys  49:52 It’s unbelievable. It really is. And this is where, like you said, people continue to read some of these people. You call names in the book. You’re not doing it right now, that’s okay. But you can read the book. And you should.   NANCY FRENCH  50:03 Yeah, they’re so inconsequential to me. I was like, should I say their names or not? Because I don’t even like, I don’t even know what they look like. Like, I’m so not dialed in to whatever their thing is. So, you have this thing you’re like, should I elevate them by actually using their names? Or should I protect them? Because surely to goodness, in five minutes, they’re gonna realize they’re on the wrong side of this issue. You know, like, I feel bad for them. I don’t know what their deal is, or why they’re so obsessed with trying to attack victims of sex abuse. But it’s not like this is an anomaly. It’s not like the church otherwise really has it going on in terms of protecting children and women. So, anyway, yeah. So it’s hard to know what to do with these people. And I probably, I vacillated between wanting to name names and score settle. And I just decided not to do that generally, just because I think this story is important, the story is good in and of itself. And these people they’re not. They’re just tokens. They’re just indicative of the things that I wanted to talk about. And I wish them all the best. I hope all of us are progressing politically and spiritually and culturally, to the point where we get better. I feel like I’ve gotten better. And I know we all can, so I don’t even have animus toward them. But they really are on the wrong side of this.   Julie Roys  51:37 Yeah, absolutely. And I should say you name some names, but you do leave quite a few out. Although, if you put some things together, you can probably figure out who they are. But it is shocking what Christians are okay with and what I think this whole crazy political polarization has shown. And it’s been disorienting for a number of us Christians, I think, who are very surprised by it. For you, it cost you your job, your livelihood, essentially. I mean, you’re a ghostwriter, all of your clients were conservatives. We didn’t talk about it, but folks that you have to get the book and read the story about Mitt Romney and when you worked for Mitt Romney and the skiing story, I was laughing out loud. Oh, my gosh, I was laughing so hard.   NANCY FRENCH  52:33 I did include some anecdotes that do not reflect well on my virtue. There is a warning here.   Julie Roys  52:38 Oh that one! Yeah. Again, I’m just gonna tease that one. Because people have to read the book to read that one. And it’s hysterical. But  here you are. You’re basically an unemployed ghostwriter. And Gretchen Carlson comes to you and  tells you about an investigation you can do. It takes you like better part of a year, and you get paid like a big goose egg for it, like nothing. Which I have to, it reminds me of when I got fired at Moody, because that’s when I started investigating Harvest Bible Chapel and James McDonald. And I think that year, I did get paid for that article. But that’s like, the only thing that I wrote for any other publication because I wrote it for World Magazine. But I think I came out ahead when I did, the income minus like, expenses. I made $300 that year. I know. It was fantastic. But  it was that kind of years, I could really relate to all of a sudden, you get this story just dropped on your lap, you tried to get other people to write it, and nobody did. And so you’re faced with this responsibility. And I know this all too well, where you know, a story. You know, I went to journalism school, you didn’t even go to journalism school. You’re a very good writer, an excellent writer. And I think you have obviously excellent investigation skills. And although you had to develop some of I mean, you just went out and you just began investigating this. And you get yourself in so deep that you realize, oh, my goodness, I gotta publish this, right? I’ve got to do something. So talk about it. This was Kanakuk camp, the largest Christian camp, and you find out there is widespread, like over decades, sexual abuse going on. It’s known, and yet, nobody has been held responsible, other than the actual abuser.   NANCY FRENCH  53:34 That’s a lot! Yeah. And you’re being very kind in your description of this. So like, literally, I tried to get everybody to cover this. And I don’t even have a degree period, let alone a journalism degree. And when I realized that I had to be the one to do this because I’m almost 50 years old and I’m a grown person who knows about the abuse. When I realized that and this is after losing my job and being fired, either being fired by or quitting all of my gigs and no money.   Julie Roys  55:13 That’s how we become investigative journalists. We get fired and nothing else you can do.   NANCY FRENCH  55:18 Nothing else you can do. I Googled, what does off the record mean? I didn’t know that there were layers of that, you know this, you’re laughing. It’s so crazy. There’s like no background, anyway. So I googled that. That’s how I started my investigation. It was three years of just angst and agony. And I didn’t have anyone to help because I’m just myself. I really needed a team of like five people or something. But I worked around the clock for three years, and I proved everything that I wanted to prove basically. I only published like 3% of what I know. But yeah, there was a bad guy at Kanakuk camps. He was there. His name is Pete Newman, he abused an estimated hundreds of male campers, several of whom have died via suicide. We still get tips over these deaths. So anyway, awful. But the thing that I uncovered was that Kanakuk camps and its CEO Joe White, they received 10 years of Red Flag Warnings. So they knew for 10 years that this bad guy was convincing campers to disrobe and to be completely nude. He played basketball nude with them; he was on four wheelers nude with them. Which by the way, absolutely disgusting. Just that fact visualizing that they knew that. They knew that parents complained, one camper saw Pete Newman abusing another camper. And they told the Female Camper who was the witness that they didn’t think she was Christian enough to go to the camp. So Pete Newman is in jail. But all of the people who allowed this abuse to happen, they’re still running the camp to this day, nobody’s resigned, nobody’s been fired. The same people. And there’s 25,000 kids who go there per summer. So that’s why I’m so alarmed by it. If you Google Kanakuk, almost everything written about it is me, regrettably. It's  out there, and you can read about it. So I would encourage people and parents just to become aware of that. The reason I’m so sad and despondent over the issue is that I proved everything and the church, their reaction was laconic, is that the right word? I don’t even know what that means. They were not as alarmed as I thought they should be.   Julie Roys  57:38 Apathetic for sure. I mean, they just didn’t care. It’s callous. I mean, I have had investigations that turned out great. Like James McDonald, Harvest Bible Chapel. He got fired, all the elders stepped down. The Ravi Zacharias investigation, I think, pretty much it’s well established. But most of Christendom now realizes he was a sexual predator. John MacArthur, I don’t know what more I could have proved. I really don’t. And it’s been shocking to me that conservative, you know, pundits like Megan Basham still to this day, you know, will defend John MacArthur and I’m like, have you read this? I mean, we have so much documentation. We have video evidence. I mean, we have handwritten letters from him telling the teenage girl whose father molested her that she should forgive him and that he’ll stay on staff, and we know he stayed on staff three more years and then went on to pastor for decades more. And John MacArthur did nothing. It drives you absolutely insane. And you think what on earth is the matter with people? Like what is wrong with you? Nothing has been done to John MacArthur. Nothing has been done to Joe White. Christians continue to just send their kids to a camp where clearly they’re not being protected. How do you come to terms with this, Nancy?   NANCY FRENCH  59:01 I don’t. I’m so depressed. I’ve been in a bad mood for many years. To be completely honest, I don’t know how to resolve it. I’m so depressed over it. And then the Kanakuk investigation dropped like a few days after the SBC was revealed to have all these sexual predators in a database conveniently tracking all the sexual predators and keeping them from the cops. I have no answers and I have decided that I cannot be responsible for the church and their collective inaction on this. That I am not responsible. I cannot exact justice. I just can’t. I am standing on the side of the road with this giant sign over my head saying, justice is coming. Justice is important. One day this will be better. It is not today. But I’ve just decided I’m just going to talk about it. People make fun of me because I’m a one-note song. If you follow me on Twitter or on any of the social media channels, I’m like, Hey, guys, today in Kanakuk saga number 550 million, I’m talking about this, because I have so much information. I published, like 3% of what I know. And so I just want to warn parents and I have, and so I feel comfortable with that. I will not stop talking about it. Lawsuits have been filed based on my investigative work, what I was able to uncover, and I trust lawyers more than I trust the actions of the church in terms of holding people accountable, which, you know, is sad. But I am thankful for attorneys and for brave victims and survivors speaking out. So I’m very thankful. But it took me a long time to get to that point and, I’m not okay with it. I’m sad and depressed. I’m sad about the Christian celebrities who are associated with Kanakuk camps, who won’t speak out. I’m sad about the parents who send their kids to Kanakuk camps. And I’m sad just for all the grieving families who’ve lost family members because of this abuse, it’s awful. And I’m so inspired by the families who choose to say that their loved one who died via suicide,  was a victim at Kanakuk camps. A brave family in Texas did that first and that started all of it.   Julie Roys  1:01:26 Well, you’ve done a Herculean task by digging into that, and if you want a place to publish, you know, the other 97%. If you get well enough, we would love to publish it. I know we published. I mean, based on your research, really, we’ve sort of rewritten some of this stuff, but it’s really well done, really well documented, and you’ve done a service for the church. And you’ve warned people. I figure that’s all we can do, is we can warn people, and then what people do with it, at the end of the day, we have to you’re right, we have to let that go. Because that’s in God’s hands. And we did our job. We warned them, we told them the truth, but it is frustrating. You said, There’s a quote that I just want to read of yours. It’s so good. And I so related to it. You said throughout my life, I desperately wanted to identify the good people and the bad people. So I could walk more confidently among them. Befriending the good ones avoiding the bad ones. I categorized people into tribes, according to their political views, their church attendance, and their voting patterns. But this line was fuzzier than I’d originally believed. I feel that the people we thought were the good guys aren’t necessarily the good guys. I still hold on to my faith, I still have the same convictions. I hold them differently now. I hold them differently. And I think there’s an openness to people that I wouldn’t necessarily be open to before. But talk about where you’re at now with kind of maybe seeing a little more gray than you did before or good, where you made might have seen bad and how you’re processing that?   NANCY FRENCH  1:03:22 Well, I mean, probably the most interesting and honest answer is I realized how that the line separating good and evil runs through my own heart, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said. And I was guilty of a bunch of stuff. I was politically acrimonious; I was mean to my Democrat neighbors. Mean meaning in my rhetoric. Like I help people own the LIBS or whatever. But I think there’s something very beautiful about aging, I’m almost 50. I do not care about my brand management. For all of you listening, I am not one of the good guys on the good side of the line, and I do all this stuff right. I do some things right. Probably hold a lot of beliefs that I won’t hold in 10 years, hopefully, because you know, you change and you get better and you want to allow space for you to get better, for your party to get better, for your church to get better. I think it’s interesting how you say you hold your beliefs differently. I am just so thankful for being able to not protect your brand. To the church. You’re not God’s PR branch. He doesn’t need you. He doesn’t need you in terms of his marketing. You can embrace the truth of whatever is uncomfortable, and you can talk about it without damaging the gospel, without damaging the church. In fact, you’re protecting the church when you’re calling out evil, you’re protecting children. When you’re calling out evil, you’re protecting women when you’re calling out evil, you’re protecting men. And so you don’t have to say like, oh, well, I’m a Christian, so therefore, I cannot criticize anything that is happening in the church. In fact, that’s biblically the opposite of what we are actually commanded to do. And so I have been guilty of being politically acrimonious and uncharitable towards my neighbor, not protecting the reputations of my neighbor. And I changed. And so I fully believe all of us can change. But that’s not to say that I’m the arbiter of all that is good. And now these people are bad, but it’s just all mixed up. And I feel like we have such capacity for both good and evil. And there’s part of you that is sort of like sobered by that. And then part of me is like, liberated. It’s like, okay, well, that explains a lot. That’s why I’m so petty. That’s why I yell at the kids when I don’t mean to, that’s when I get frus

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Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/ok7qRXGZYroFor nearly two decades, one woman stood up to the Southern Baptist Convention, forcing it to face its sex abuse crisis. She was gaslit, maligned, and threatened with legal action. But she didn't back down. And on this edition of The Roys Report, you'll hear her story. Joining host Julie Roys is Christa Brown, an abuse survivor who overcame the odds in pursuit of justice. As a 16-year-old girl, Christa was repeatedly raped by the youth pastor at her Southern Baptist Church. And when she told the music minister at her church what had happened, he told her never to speak of it. For 35 years, Christa kept silent, accepting the shame that rightly belonged to her rapist. But in the early 2000s, Christa broke her silence—and confronted her childhood church with what had happened. She thought they would do the right thing. But instead, they attacked her. That began a nearly 20-year battle with the Southern Baptist Convention—and led to two major investigations, showing that hundreds of Baptist leaders and volunteers had sexually abused congregants. She recounts it all in detail in her just released memoir, Baptistland. Christa found her voice, rising above her past trauma to become a leading voice in the national and global abuse survivor community. She speaks with unrelenting honesty about the patterns of abuse in evangelical churches—and the necessary steps to bring reform. Guests Christa Brown Named as one of the "top 10 religion newsmakers" of 2022, Christa Brown has persisted for two decades in working to peel back the truth about clergy sex abuse and coverups in the nation's largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. As one of the first to go public with substantiated child molestation allegations against a Baptist minister—and documentation that others knew—she has consistently demanded reforms to make other kids and congregants safer. She is the author of Baptistland and This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang. Christa, who is retired appellate attorney, a mom, and a grandma, lives with her husband in Colorado. Show Transcript SPEAKERSCHRISTA BROWN, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:04For nearly two decades, one woman stood up to the Southern Baptist Convention, forcing it to face its sex abuse crisis. She was gaslit, maligned, and threatened with legal action. But she didn’t back down and on this podcast, you’ll hear her story. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And joining me today is Christa Brown, someone who’s become a sort of legend in the abuse survivor community. As a 16- year-old girl, Christa was repeatedly raped by the youth pastor at her Southern Baptist Church. And when she told the music minister at her church what had happened, he told her to never speak of it. For 35 years, Christa kept silent, accepting the shame that rightly belongs to her rapist. But in the early 2000s, Christa broke her silence and confronted her childhood church with what had happened. She thought they would do the right thing, but instead, they attacked her. And that began a nearly 20-year battle with the Southern Baptist Convention and led to two major investigations, showing that hundreds of Baptist leaders and volunteers had sexually abused congregants. Joining me is Christa Brown, someone who for decades fought to expose sex abuse and cover up within the Southern Baptist Convention. She has been dubbed the mother of all abuse bloggers, and also is named by the Religion News Association as one of the top 10 religion newsmakers of 2022. She’s also a retired appellate attorney, a mom, and a grandma. So Christa, welcome. It is such a privilege to have you on this podcast.   CHRISTA BROWN  03:22 Thank you, Julie, I really appreciate it. I’m so glad to be with you.   Julie Roys  03:26 And you’re kind of like a legend. I don’t know if you recognize this, but you have been at this a very, very long time and the persistence that you have had to expose what’s been going on within the Southern Baptist Convention, it didn’t just happen to you, it happened to so so many women and men who have been victims. And so just as somebody who’s been in this space for a really long time, not nearly as long as you, I just really appreciate your work. So thank you.   CHRISTA BROWN  04:16 Thanks. And of course, this is something that is still continuing to happen too.   Julie Roys  04:21 That’s true. So I just finished your book, Baptistland, and really emotionally, still wrestling to come to terms  with everything I read. I think there were several things that really struck me from your book. Of course, the horror of the sex abuse that you had at the hands of your own youth pastor, somebody that you trusted, and the spiritual abuse involved in that was just absolutely horrific. But I think too, the abuse within your own family and the psychological and emotional abuse that was there and kind of how that conditioned you for the abuse and to kind of keep secrets. And so it kind of contributed to everything that happened. But I think lastly, was your resiliency, which is amazing in the face of what you encountered, your resiliency. And I don’t know how you did that. I mean, what do you attribute the resiliency that you’ve had to overcome so many hurdles in your life?   CHRISTA BROWN  05:26 I don’t know. In part, I think I’m a little stubborn by nature. I think that is there. In part, I think I had the enormous good fortune to encounter a wonderful husband and wonderful spouse, who has been nothing but supportive. And I think, when someone has that kind of support in their life, I mean, that came, of course, later as an adult, but that too, of course, has just been an enormous source of stability for me. So yeah, I’ve had those things. And in that sense, I’ve been very, very fortunate.   Julie Roys  06:10 If someone has just even one person in their life that’s advocating for them, that’s behind them, it makes a huge difference. And I know my spouse has been with me 100% in the work I’ve done as well. And I credit him for a lot of what I’ve been able to do as well. So I can relate to that.   CHRISTA BROWN  06:28 Yeah. I mean, he’s a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. No one knows my husband, but he is very much there for me.   Julie Roys  06:38  You divide your memoir into four different deaths, as you call them. And of course, there’s an element of resurrection and all of that, too. But your deaths start, the very first death that you write about is the abuse that you suffered by, again, your own youth pastor. But as I mentioned, there was some dysfunction in your own home, that kind of conditioned you to be able to have this abuse, and maybe to keep it quiet. Would you talk a little bit about that, the home situation that conditioned you to stay quiet about the abuse?   CHRISTA BROWN  07:19 Yeah. I mean, I grew up in the sort of home that it’s like, we all pretend we’re happy. What happened didn’t happen. And when someone blows up and throws plates across the wall, we clean it up, and we act like nothing ever happened. When my father explodes, we all just go on. My father had serious PTSD problems, but back then, we would not have even had that acronym PTSD, we didn’t know what to call it. We just all, as with many families across America, when war veterans come home, we all just do the best we can. But that very dynamic of never talking about it, and just always putting you in the background and moving on, conditioned me to keep quiet and to not talk about things in the family. We did not talk about the family with outsiders. That was for sure. And so all of that, I think is part of what conditioned me. Then when I was abused by the pastor, why would I talk about it? I had no experience in talking about anything troubling in my life, None. What was normal was never to talk about things. And I hope people will see that because of course, that’s one of the very common questions that people often ask, Well, why didn’t you tell someone sooner? Why didn’t you talk about it? I hope people will see in my book, the only rational question is, why would she have ever talked about it? And then, of course, the fact that I did try with a couple people and that only made things worse.   Julie Roys  09:08 Yeah. And there was also this element of spiritual abuse, which honestly, when I was reading your book, and I’ve heard a lot of spiritual abuse, but I would say this was almost just so wicked, because in your case, you were so trusting, you had such a childlike faith in God. And he just completely exploited that. Would you talk about the spiritual abuse and how that how that really gave him power over you?   CHRISTA BROWN  09:40 Oh, it gave him enormous power. And I hope people will see that the enormous power that earnest that a person’s faith can hold when it is weaponized against them, because that is what gave him power. I mean, I think there are many people who would wish to believe that this happens to kids who are in some way, oh, morally lacks or they want to blame the kid for some reason, that the reality is what made me vulnerable? What made me a target? What made me easy prey? was the very fact that I love God so much. My faith was earnest and pure and that is precisely what was weaponized against me literally. I was raised from toddlerhood to believe that you trust these men who carry the voice of God, that they are men and God. In the framework I held in my mind at that time., there was no other possibility other than to obey.   Julie Roys  11:00 You know, it’s interesting, because I just had a conversation with my daughter this morning. And I feel kind of bad sometimes because of the work that I’m in, that they’re exposed to the evil of it. But at the same time, I realized this morning, as we were talking about some things, she knows to be skeptical, that trust is earned. I don’t care what title someone holds. She knows that you still need to know that this person may not be trustworthy, you need to watch them over time. But I think especially in our generation growing up. I mean, I never would have dreamed that a pastor could be involved in any kind of wrongdoing. It just wasn’t in my worldview. So I totally get that. And the other thing is, and this is probably the most wicked is the way that he made you feel then that you are somehow evil because you had participated in this and even did like an exorcism on you or something, right?   CHRISTA BROWN  12:05 Yes. After this had gone on for months and months, seven, eight months. And it escalated, of course, and got worse. And then toward the end, he began to tell me that I had harbored Satan. And I was a temptress. And finally, then he called me into his office one day and made me kneel. While he, with one hand on my shoulder and one hand raised, stood over me as I was kneeling, praying on and on for God to cast Satan from me. But as a kid. I mean, that was just, that was terrifying. I mean, I didn’t know how I had let Satan in, and I didn’t know what I had done. If I didn’t know how I’d let Satan in I didn’t know how to make Satan leave me. And the very thought that I held Satan within me, made me think I was going to hell, which, as a kid, I was raised with a very literal version of hell, where you burn forever with no reprieve. This was absolutely terrifying. And of course, in hindsight, I think that’s exactly what he wanted was to put this enormous, just exponentially greater shame onto me, so that I would not talk about it. Because why would I want anyone to know that I harbored Satan?   Julie Roys  13:36 Unbelievable And yet when you did speak, like you referenced, nothing was done to help you. And you initially spoke with it was your music minister, right?   CHRISTA BROWN  13:49 Yes, that’s right. And he was also my piano teacher. I always had my piano lessons in the church sanctuary on the baby grand there. He was the music minister. And it was because I had just developed this enormous fear that I must surely be going to hell. And so one day at my piano lesson, I just, I mean, psychologically, I was at a point where I was just breaking then, and I just completely froze. I mean, my hands literally would not move on the keys. And I told the music minister that I was afraid I was going to hell, and I asked him, “Am I going to hell? Then I told him that I’ve had an affair. And that was my own word an affair with the pastor. And he basically just told me to never talk about it again, at all. And he said, I wouldn’t go to hell, but it wasn’t much comfort, really, at that time. He told me never to talk about it. He did nothing. And many, many years later, I learned that he had already known even at that point in time, because the youth pastor himself had talked about it with him.   Julie Roys  15:00 That level of complicity and silence, I just I don’t understand like, do you have any idea why he would do that? Why would a music minister say nothing about a pastor that he knows is sexually abusing a teenage girl?   CHRISTA BROWN  15:26 It’s very hard for me to explain. He was a father himself. He had a young daughter at that time. And so it’s hard for me to understand why he couldn’t think about his own daughter and imagine how he would feel if it were her. And it’s very, very hard for me to comprehend. I think that instinct among some religious leaders who kind of circle the wagons and protect themselves is very, very strong. Also the sense of protecting the institution, the sense of not doing anything that would bring, that would hurt the cause of Christ that would hurt the witness. I think all of that is a part of it. And yet, of course, none of that excuses it.   Julie Roys  16:21 No, and it’s not really biblical. I mean, Scripture tells us to confess our sins, not to bury our sins, and yet, that’s what the church has been doing for so long. Not all churches, but certainly within the Southern Baptist Convention this has been a widespread problem. So Tommy Gilmore, who was your youth pastor,, did eventually leave the church, was given what I understand sort of a hero’s send-off. Yes. And then, which I just can’t even imagine you as a kid, like, you have to go through an exorcism. Meanwhile, your abuser gets a hero send-off, and then you go home to live like, just go on, right? Like nothing’s happened, right?   CHRISTA BROWN  17:07 That’s right. He did indeed have a hero sendoff. He went to a bigger church; I was told that he would have a better salary. The senior pastor praised him for the pulpit and talk of how fortunate we all were, how blessed we were to have had such a man of God in our midst for so long, there was a big church reception where everyone brought their casseroles and stuff. And in hindsight, I don’t know how as a kid, I could have thought anything else. I mean, here was a great man of God, praised by everyone. I was the girl who harbored Satan.   Julie Roys  17:43 Just awful. And when you did go home, you did confess to one of your sisters what had happened. Her response was pretty horrific.   CHRISTA BROWN  17:53 Yes, she called me a slut.   Julie Roys  17:55 Unbelievable. And so the shame that you must have felt that you shouldn’t have felt but I’m sure you did, must have been just just awful. But you were given, I mean, sound like the pastor then arranged for you to have a job at the library. And your mother kind of encouraged you for this maybe? What was it he said that he thought you should be busy or something? Or I mean, kind of like he knew what had happened.   CHRISTA BROWN  18:23 Yeah exactly. None of this was really explained to me. But my mom said, Brother Hayden thinks you need to stay busy. And so they set me up with a job at the Farmers Branch Public Library, which I started immediately, which turned out to be even though I had never sought this job. But it turned out to be a very, very good thing. I loved working at the library.   Julie Roys  18:52 And you even said, I think later on your book, you credit some of your ability to come through all this to the books that you read, which opened your mind to a whole new world, which what a beautiful thing that in the midst of all of this awfulness, there was this oasis right?   CHRISTA BROWN  19:09 Oh, absolutely. The library was very much my safe place. Books were my safe place, always my refuge. A library has a certain kind of orderliness about it, and the neat rows and every book has its place. And that brought a level of comfort to me.   Julie Roys  19:28 Yeah. And one of the great things was that you were a very studious person, it sounds like, and that ended up being a route for you kind of out of some of your home life. But initially, you thought you would go off to college when you graduated from high school. It didn’t really turn out that way. Kind of like your mom sabotaged that. Is that a correct way of putting it?   CHRISTA BROWN  19:51 Yes, that is she did sabotage it. She wanted me at home for her own reasons, and I wound up staying home and commuting to college, and it was a very, very bad year, because she was struggling enormously. And both of my parents were struggling.   Julie Roys  20:13 The second death that you described is when your sister Rita was separated from her husband, Richard, and something happened. I’m gonna let you describe what happened, but also how that played out within your family and your family relationships.   CHRISTA BROWN  20:31 Well basically, I had gone over to babysit their young two-year-old daughter, and he made a move on me. Told me that he had married the wrong sister. That he should have married me. He picked the right family but picked the wrong sister. And I felt very trapped at the time. I did leave, of course. But I mean, this was someone I had grown up with. This was someone who was like a brother to me. This was my oldest sister. And so he had been a part of our family, since I was like 12 years old. So, in that sense, it just felt incredibly wrong and bizarre. But the one thing I knew with absolute certainty was that if I talked about it, I would be blamed for it. That even at that young age, I knew that for sure. And so ever after this was, again, another great secret that I had the key. It really kind of, I think, warped some of the relationships in our family. For every Thanksgiving, and all sorts of family gatherings thereafter, every single time, I would always try very, very hard to make sure I was never alone in the room with him. And yeah, that was the death of that kind of view of my family. I think.   Julie Roys  22:14 One of the things I’ve noticed just from my experience in ministry is that often a child that’s raised in a dysfunctional home, even though they recognize it’s a dysfunctional home, has trouble breaking those patterns, and often picks a spouse that is often very much like the dysfunctional parent or one of the dysfunctional parents. And yet you did the exact opposite. I mean, you turned down one proposal from someone who you didn’t love. And your mother pressured you quite a bit to marry because he had an engineering degree with some financial stability there. But instead you met a guy, Jim. What was it that really drew you to Jim, someone who was completely other than your family, and so healthy in so many ways? What really made you fall for Jim?   CHRISTA BROWN  23:13 Well. Initially, it was just that he had these gorgeous blue eyes.   Julie Roys  23:18 That helps, right?   CHRISTA BROWN  23:21 But it was just a connection there that I could not deny. You know, and with Jim, what you see is what you get. He is who he is, and there is never ever any kind of hidden agenda, any dagger behind that smile. That’s it. He is up for and in true. And that was always very clear to me. That mainly, it was just this connection that I felt with him. So much so that, I mean, it felt so powerful. And I felt fearful of it because I think I recognized immediately that this was something powerful, life-changing potentially. And so initially, what I did was to tell him that I could never be serious about someone who hadn’t read Anna Karenina.   Julie Roys  24:18 Well, of course! Who of us hasn’t said that, right?   CHRISTA BROWN  24:24 That was my effort in escaping because I was so afraid of this. But Jim proceeded to read Anna Karenina. So I had no excuse. And so we’ve been together ever since.   Julie Roys  24:37 That’s so funny. And then you went on to do something that nobody in your family thought possible. You went to law school, and even the application process and everything. I mean, to have the gumption to do that. Despite the fact your mother said you’re gonna fail. You’re not going to do well. Again, this incredible hurdle, what made you feel like you could go to law school?   CHRISTA BROWN  25:07 You know, I really only had, I came from a blue-collar family. And I really only had one friend at that point in time, who had been to law school. And I kind of thought, Well, I think I’m as smart as him. And he was a good deal more assertive than me by temperament. But I thought I could give it a chance. And initially, I really was very tentative about it. I kind of just kind of tip toed in and told myself, well, I’ll try it for one semester and see how it goes. But I did well, so then I continued. And with my family, I did not tell anyone I was even applying until I was already in, already accepted, already had my financial aid lined up. Because I was fearful of what the reaction would be. I was fearful of how negative it would be. And even intellectually, knowing that maybe that’s not right, your family’s words still carry power. And so I made sure I had things in place before I even told them.   Julie Roys  26:21 So true and so important. But yeah, I mean, even if  intellectually, that’s a lie. Or even if they’re saying this because of their own issues, right? It’s still hard to overcome that. And so the fact that you did, again, amazing resiliency. And then you had a daughter, which is just so beautiful. I have one daughter, I had two boys, and then my daughter. But daughters change us in remarkable ways. And you, even though you really didn’t have a model for healthy parenting, sounds like you did a really great job, and you broke some of those patterns of behavior that you saw in your family. What do you attribute that to?   CHRISTA BROWN  27:09 I attribute it to letting my daughter herself educate me, being observant of her, trying to attune myself to what’s going on with her. And recognizing that and trying to be sensitive to that. I do think that breaking long established patterns or familial dysfunction is very, very difficult. I mean, lots of people would like to make a decision and say, Oh, I won’t do things like my parents did. But the thing is, it’s not just a one-time decision. It’s something that has to be done in 1000s, of tiny, tiny little decisions, to choose to pause in the moment, to pay attention, to think about what’s happening. And that kind of attentiveness takes effort. And I think I attribute it to that. Also books I write,I don’t feel that I had a good roadmap to follow from my own upbringing. But  I was big on books.   Julie Roys  28:29 And that guided you. One book that you mentioned, you read your daughter was the Bible, but  chose not to raise her in the church, understandably because of your experience. But you decided to have her explore that herself with just reading her scripture and telling her Bible stories. As I was reading that, I just realized that my own experience within the church when I think of like your experience, my experience, things that for me, certain songs that for me are very comforting to you probably have a totally different connotation. Like for me, Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus is a beautiful song that reminds me of a wonderful, idyllic, really in comparison childhood that I had growing up in the church, where people were trustworthy, and people weren’t hypocrites. But yet for you were, how do you come to terms with that, and with what the church did? with God? with faith? How do you come to terms with that?   CHRISTA BROWN  29:53 For me, it’s very, very different. Because things like that. Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus. No, it was not sweet for me. Because trusting in Jesus, that was exactly what I did as a kid. That was my whole heart was to put every bit of trust in Jesus. And that led me down a very, very dark road. And that’s not the kind of thing that I can cognitively reason my way out of. Because the reality for me is that things like that, hymns like that, all sorts of Scripture like that, that for me now is kind of physiologically, neurologically networked with child rape. And that’s not something I can just say, Oh, no, I’m gonna think about this and not choose for it to be that way. No, that’s the way it is. And I accept that that is how it is. And I live with that. So yeah, for me, I mean, and that, I think, is what people need to realize is the enormous if you value your faith so much, then you need to be implementing serious accountability measures to make sure that these kinds of men do not church hop from church to church, because look at the damage that is done.   Julie Roys  31:20 Well. And that’s why I think spiritual abuse, and especially when it’s coupled with sexual abuse, has to be about the most profound harmful abuse there is, because you’re not just harming the body, but the soul in such a profound way. And it really is, I mean, that spiritual leaders or people who purport to be spiritual leaders, aren’t just horrified and wanting to root this out. I mean, says to me a lot about what they truly believe.   CHRISTA BROWN  31:55 Exactly. It is very, very hard. Certainly, for me, it is very hard to feel safe in faith, when faith itself has been used to eviscerate. And that doesn’t mean feeling safe in a church. That means feeling safe within myself in faith. It’s a very hard thing now,   Julie Roys  32:19 The shame that you felt as a kid, as I talk to you now, you seem to be very clear on the fact that you should have felt no shame, that you did nothing wrong. At what point did you get to that point where you realized this is not my fault? This is has been put on me by evil people. But it’s not my fault. I’m sure it was a process. But were there any points at which like, kind of a breakthrough where you’re like, this was not me?   CHRISTA BROWN  32:55 Yes. It was really my daughter who saved me, I think. Because when she was approaching the same age I had been at the time that the abuse, it was as though something exploded in my head. All these dark dusty boxes that were on the back shelf of my brain, that I had shoved back there and ignored for so long. All of a sudden, I kind of had to pull those boxes down and look at them and see what was in them. And that shifted thing. Suddenly, I saw things through the eyes of a mother in imagining what if someone did to my daughter what was done to me? And that was something I could not live with and could not accept. And really, that was  the singular kernel of truth from which everything else flowed. Because the one thing I knew for sure, and I didn’t know very much for sure. But I knew this, if someone did to my daughter what had been done to me, I would not blame her for one second, and I would be absolutely furious. And that shifted everything.   Julie Roys  34:20 Hmm. And so you did. You did at the age of 51, right? You publicly spoke out and really you talk about this as sort of the third death when you spoke about what had happened because of the response that you got. Although, before we talk about the response, just the fact that and I read in your book that the average age of someone coming forward is 52 which is insane to me, I would have guessed, like maybe late 20s early 30s you begin to sort of grapple with what had happened in your family or whatever. Why is it so late that people come forward about their childhood sexual abuse?   CHRISTA BROWN  35:13 I think the shame is so enormous. And as a kid, we absorbed that shame, and when we ossify into a few of what happened that blamed ourselves and we absorb that, as a kid, we solidify that view. It’s horrifying, we put that view, we put that into a box, put it up in their head, and put it on the back shelf. And we never want to look at it again, although, of course, it’s there. And it affects us in enormous ways. But I think it then just takes a very, very long time. And then there are these triggering events, like having kids of our own, to begin to understand, because we formed that view when we were young. And it impacted our whole identity.   Julie Roys  36:09 So when you did come forward, you spoke to your church, your childhood church. I’m not sure why you had optimism about that.   CHRISTA BROWN  36:19 I’m an optimistic person by nature.   Julie Roys  36:22 Yeah. I mean, you must. But I mean, when I read that I also thought,  when I first blew the whistle at Moody, I naively thought when I went to the trustees with the information I had, they would do the right thing. And that was not my experience. But I think we still hold on to this view that, man, these authority figures, they must not know. And so if I tell them, they will do something. Explain what happened when you did come forward to your church, and then I believe to, the Baptist Convention there in Texas as well.   CHRISTA BROWN  36:58 I was in my 50s,  early 50s. And I absolutely believe that they would do the right thing, that they want to help me. I was adamant about it. The same music minister who had known when I was a kid was still there at my same childhood church. I was absolutely convinced; I knew that he had raised a daughter by then. I thought he’s older now he will know better. He’ll wish he had done things differently. He will have learned some things; he will want to help me. And I have never been more wrong about anything in all my life then I was about that. Because the church’s first response was to threaten to seek legal recourse against me if I talked about it. And yeah, that was fairly intimidating. Even as someone who is a lawyer, I thought, whoa. And of course, you have to realize, I think, even as I’m doing this, at that point in time, I’m still trying to work through this process in my own mind, of unpacking everything that was done to me, of just dealing with it, of coming to terms with it. And that is a long emotional process because it was very traumatic. And at the same time then having the church threaten me, and try to bully me, that was just absolutely devastating. And then eventually, of course, yes, I also talked with people at the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Again, thinking these will know something. And I’ve contacted 18 Southern Baptist leaders in four different states, thinking surely there would be someone and there was no one. Absolutely no one who would do anything to help.   Julie Roys  38:59 One of the things that I thought back on when I was reading your book is about totalitarian states; that one of the things that a totalitarian state has to do is take over the press. And in Baptist land, they had their own press. Yes. And that was also weaponized against you, right?   CHRISTA BROWN  39:22 Yes, exactly. The Baptist Press published an article in which they said that I made false accusations, which, again, that was just absolutely devastating. But they’re in control of their own press, which gives them the ability to control the narrative, to present the picture that they want to present. That’s a very, very powerful tool.   Julie Roys  39:47 Although they don’t control all of it. And this is the thing that I have been so grateful for before the internet. Really, you had to go through all the gatekeepers, and I know, I couldn’t have done the reporting I’ve done had I had to go through the gatekeepers of the major Christian publications because they didn’t want to report half of this. Right. And I think the whole ME-TOO movement has taken off because of that. The Church TOO movement has taken off, because now, we have our own platforms, we have our own megaphones. And we can expose this stuff, and you did not stop. You just kept coming. And I’m guessing that that you’re one of so many, and so many people who have been suffering the same way as you have. But you went to the Southern Baptist Convention, you spoke out. Talk about your literally decades of advocacy, and what has kept you going through that.   CHRISTA BROWN  40:56 What has always kept me going has been the stories of other survivors, the very awareness that I wasn’t alone, and that there were so many others who did not have the ability, the resources, the educational background, the stamina, or maybe they just had toddlers under foot at home, they didn’t have the energy available for this. Back in 2006, I managed to publish an op-ed piece with the Dallas Morning News. And that was very early for me in this process. And it was after I did that, and I had my email address at the end of it, I was just flooded with emails. And that was when I really began to understand how pervasive this was. And most of those voices, most of those people are stories that no one ever hears about. And so that is always what has been a very powerful, made me feel a powerful sense of obligation. Because I’m very aware of those people. And I also want to say, the name of my book is Baptistland. And yes, I think there is this overarching kind of inculturation that this authoritarian type of Baptistland influences in our culture. But as you say, way back when, one of the earliest news media sources to begin reporting these stories was Associated Baptist Press, which is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, they’re Independent Baptist press. And they were some of the very first. We would not have some of the history we have and the documentation of this long problem if they had not been doing that work. And it continues today with Baptist News Global, which again, is not affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. I frequently write for them. So, yes, there have been other avenues, kind of on the fringes of Baptistland, that have been helpful in documenting this problem. And for that, I’ve been enormously grateful.   Julie Roys  43:14 So much has happened, especially in the past five years. The Houston Chronicle. That report showing literally hundreds of Southern Baptists leaders and volunteers engaged in credible abuse, effecting we know now over 700 victims. And again, that’s probably a fraction of it, because so many don’t speak, so many don’t come forward. We have Guidepost Solutions, who did their review, independent investigation of the executive committee the way that abuse survivors were treated. We know now that you were treated horribly, not just you, although you’re mentioned quite a bit in that report. But many survivors have been treated this way. SBC has initiated seemingly some reforms, the Caring Well Conference. But when it comes to substantive reform, have we seen substantive reform in the SBC?   CHRISTA BROWN  44:22 No, we have not. In my view, almost everything that they have done has been performative in nature. They still have no  names of credibly accused pastors on a database. They have talked and talked and talked. We’ve seen committee after committee, taskforce after task force. But no institutionally, they are not making progress. If they viewed this as a high priority, things would be very different. And you’re right. It is such a tragedy. It has been five years now since the Houston Chronicle Abuse of Faith series. It’s been two years since the Guidepost Report. That is enough time that we should see a great deal more change then we do. And yes, I’m named 70 times in that Guidepost Report, precisely because the executive committee treated me so terribly, and that’s now documented there. And that is just one report about one small entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, the executive committee. And what it reflects is pretty incredibly awful. And yet, the executive committee itself, it doesn’t make amends for its wrongdoing. It doesn’t impose consequences on those who treated me so terribly. No. And so what kind of example do they set for the rest of the Southern Baptist Convention? And they could take responsibility and accountability for their own wrong without anything to do with local church autonomy. They could do that themselves. No, they do not.   Julie Roys  46:15 And that was the big excuse for so many years was the SBC saying, listen, we’re a denomination that really honors local church autonomy. So we can’t really impose anything on these local churches. And you are asking for very common-sense reforms. I mean, a list for example, of all of the credibly accused or convicted pastors or leaders within the SBC. We just want a database, right? asking for this and them saying, oh, we can’t do that because of autonomy. And yet when this Guidepost Solutions report comes out, we find out they’re keeping their own list.   CHRISTA BROWN  46:52 Yes, they’ve been doing it all along, ever since 2007, while simultaneously claiming that they can’t keep a list. And of course, keeping records and sharing information on credibly accused clergy sex abusers, there’s nothing about that, that intrudes on the autonomy of local churches. To the contrary, that kind of information-sharing system could provide local churches with the resources that they need to exercise their autonomy more responsibly. That’s not on behalf of the local churches that their doing that. It’s on behalf of the larger denominational structures of the Southern Baptist Convention, that they’re protecting themselves.   Julie Roys  47:49 Wow. And we still don’t have it. We still don’t have a good database. This is not brain surgery, folks. This is really, really simple. But it shows the lack of will on the part of the Southern Baptist Convention. I think I just tweeted something out, not tweeted, posted on X. I can’t get used to that. But something recently; Southern Baptist minister saying, hey we’ve got the sex abuse crisis and everything else. But we need to get back to the really important things of winning people for Christ. That, to me is so infuriating that we don’t see, Jesus cared for the least of these, throughout Scripture talks about the least of these. How do we think what are we winning people to if our churches don’t reflect the heart of God? It’s so perverse and so frustrating. And I’m curious at this point, I mean, do you have hope for reform within the SBC? or do you feel like it’s a lost cause?   CHRISTA BROWN  48:56 I certainly don’t think that we will see meaningful reform in my lifetime. I really don’t. I just don’t think this institution is going that direction. They’ve given us no evidence on which to believe that they’re serious about this at all. And they have had multiple opportunities over the past 20 years to reckon with this, really serious opportunities, when they could have chosen to do so. And again, and again, they do not. So no, I do not hold hope for the institution. I do hold hope for individuals. I think there is value in putting the truth out there, regardless of what the Southern Baptist Convention may or may not ever do. Thank goodness, my hope does not rest on them.   Julie Roys  49:48 Amen. I mean, honestly, I think the truth has its own power and how it works itself out. That’s not in our hands. There’s nothing we can do about it. We’re not that powerful. But I know there’s a lot of different ways to look at this. I mean, some people come up to me and they’re like, Well, why is all of this being exposed now? What is going on? You know, it’s something awful in the church. And I’m like, Well, what we’re exposing most of what we’re exposing is decades old. Some of its recent, but a lot of it is decades old, that just hasn’t been exposed. And I do think God’s angry about it. I mean, that’s my personal belief on this. And that some of this is being exposed, that there is judgment coming. And there’s a reckoning coming. I do take heart in the fact that at least the truth is getting out there. But what people do with it, pretty tough. But I do think it will be a decade’s-long process, I thought at first it’d be a year or two few years. It’ll be a decade’s long process of this being exposed. But I do pray that something, some good structures grow out of it.   CHRISTA BROWN  51:13 I do believe that in years to come, and maybe decades to come, that ordinary human beings will look back on all this. Which is why I’m so glad things are being documented. We’ll look back on all this, and it will be so aberrant as to be almost inconceivable. And they will say, you? a multibillion-dollar tentacular institution? used this excuse of church autonomy to avoid protecting kids against clergy sex abuse? really? And it will seem so horrifying as to be almost inconceivable. I think that will happen. And this institution is on the wrong side of history.   Julie Roys  52:02 I agree with that.100%. And I’ll also say that when I talk to abuse survivors, it’s often not the abuser. I mean, the abuser obviously does horrific harm. But it’s the protectors, the allies, the bystanders that do nothing, or worse than that actually contribute to the crime by covering it up. That is what really, really causes the harm. And so I mean, to Southern Baptist leaders who probably won’t listen to this podcast, but if you do, shame on you! do something. I mean, this is unconscionable that you call yourselves Christians and you don’t do anything about abuse survivors. That is, to me, a test of the authenticity of your faith.   CHRISTA BROWN  52:52 You know you’re absolutely right Julie. This is perhaps the single most universal commonality that I find in survivor stories is almost invariably, as awful, and horrific as the sexual abuse itself is, what does even greater damage is how terribly survivors are treated by religious leaders, by churches, by people of faith. That is hard to reckon with and hard to come to terms with. It is one thing to come to terms with the evil that one man can do, but it is quite another thing to try to come to terms with, And everyone else acts as though it’s okay. And this kind of systemic institutional problem does not come about without the complicity of countless others who enable these things. And that is where the real problem lies.   Julie Roys  54:00 The fourth death that you talk about in your book is when your mother died, and your own sisters cut you out of an inheritance. And a lot of it though, based in the fact that your family didn’t want you talking about this. I can only imagine. I mean, I felt it as I read the book, but the pain that I’m sure you still carry from that. Why is it that your family wanted to silence you so much on this issue, so much that they would retaliate in this way?   CHRISTA BROWN  54:45 I think because they felt it brought shame onto the family. And because I grew up in a sort of family that says you pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You never talk about difficult things. You never talk about the family. My sister blamed me for what they said was making mom feel guilty because I had talked about this. Mom herself before she died, as I was speaking out numerous times would tell me that she thought I needed to own my part in it. Even though of course, I had been a kid. But she too had been, I think, misled, and manipulated by Brother Hayden, the senior pastor of our church at that time. And he’s now deceased. Because years later, many years later, I learned that he had told her that I would just forget about it. So that was a way of silencing my mom as well. And on some level, I think my mom must have felt guilty for that. As many mothers would feel guilt if something really terrible happens to a kid.  But I think she felt an enlarged level of guilt, which she could not really process. And it’s not as if people in my family went to counseling, right? And then because my mom felt guilty, my sister, I never put blame on her. I never ever put blame on her. But nevertheless, my sisters blamed me for making mom feel guilty. But, in some way if I think that’s all , scapegoating is something that human beings do. It’s something as old as time. And I think that’s what my sister did to me. Wrong. And in some ways, then they scapegoated me, and that was just kind of the rationalization for legitimizing what they did. And yes, to say it was painful, would be a real understatement. It was extremely painful.   Julie Roys  57:01 So sorry. You end your book with an afterword to childhood or clergy sex abuse survivors. And I know, our podcast, many survivors listen to this podcast. What message do you have for them?   CHRISTA BROWN  57:21 First and foremost, you are so worthy, you are a human being of infinite value. Whatever has been done to you within this faith community, it does not define who you are. Whoever you are at this point in your life right now, whether you are a person of faith or no faith, I don’t care. You are of infinite value and all of this other stuff that the faith community has communicated to you. Which abuse does this to people. It inculcates in you this notion that somehow you are not worthy. And that is a lie. That is a lie. So that would be the first thing I would say. And secondly, I would say, to all survivors and advocates, and really almost anyone out there, cultivate your skepticism. And sadly, when we see that faith itself is weaponized for power, that the accoutrements of faith are used to help propagandize and the perpetuation of status quo power structures, then it behooves us to apply our skepticism even to matters of faith. And I say, do not feel guilty for skepticism; not one bit. People need to earn trust. There’s nothing wrong with you for, for holding doubt.   Julie Roys  59:10 And I believe that if God is God, that he can handle our doubt, he can handle our hurt, he can handle our anger. And it’s justified in these cases. And it’s one of the greatest conundrums of the human experience. If God is great, and God is good, how do these horrible things happen to innocent people? It’s above my paygrade; it’s certainly one question that I’ve wrestled with an awful lot in my life and continue to, but I appreciate so much Christa, you’re honest, you’re honest  recounting your story and where you’re at, and you are a hero to the survivor community. And again, you have been in it so much longer than I have been. And I just look to folks like you who have really blazed a trail. And just so, so, so grateful for your work. So thank you.   CHRISTA BROWN  1:00:21 Thanks, Julie. Thanks for having me here. I really appreciate it.   Julie Roys  1:00:28 Thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’d like a copy of Christa’s book called Baptistland, you can get one when you give $30 or more to The Roys report this month. As I’ve often said, we don’t have advertisers or many large donors, we simply have you, the people who care about exposing abuse and corruption in the church so she can be restored. So if you’d like to help us out and get a copy of Baptistland, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys report on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way, you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Julie Roy is a dynamic force in the world of entrepreneurship, known for her remarkable journey from a struggling single mom to a self-made multimillionaire. With a passion for empowering others, Julie has dedicated her career to helping people achieve business mastery, uncommon freedom, and legacy wealth. Julie's early life was marked by resilience and determination. Raised by a single mother who worked multiple jobs, she learned the value of hard work and perseverance. Her entrepreneurial journey began in her early twenties, when she secured a $25,000 loan to start a Montessori preschool. This venture, born out of her mother's basement, quickly grew and laid the foundation for her future success. More about Julie: Website: thejulieroy.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/julie-roy Facebook: @julie.d.roy.75 Instagram: @thejulieroy

In honor of Mother's Day, which is right around the corner, we are celebrating moms. Our guest today is Julie Roy, a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, wife, and mom of four. She's also the is the author of "The Multi-Million Dollar Mompreneur." We're chatting with her about her journey to financial freedom, setting goals, making connections, and the desire to have it all.

Julie Roys on X: "For decades a popular worship songs in churches, ‘How Great Is Our God' has in recent years become an anthem for Christian nationalist protesters. “When I think of ‘How Great Is Our God,' I wonder, who is the ‘our'?” said religious historian @DrLeahPayne Dean Defuria on X: "“There's no such thing as PTSD. There's no such thing as OCD. There's no such thing as ADHD.” — John MacArthur Remember the 4 ‘Alls' of the Great CommissionSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We begin the program by bringing you four news segments with different guests on the stories we think you need to know about! Actor Kevin Daniels talks about his new movie, "Not Another Church Movie" coming out in May. Andrew Zaleski says restoring sight is possible now with optogenetics.Is your car seat installed correctly? With Anthony LaRosa – Police Officer and certified child safety car seat technician.Julie Roy, "The Multi-Million Dollar Mompreneur" shares her tips with working moms on how they can achieve financial freedom for themselves and their families.Ask Alexa to play WBZ NewsRadio on #iHeartRadio

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tbf5FsOm0oResearch shows more than 95% of women who report being raped are telling the truth. But in some churches, these women are not believed and shamed. According to author Ryan George, it's all part of a propaganda machine meant to consolidate and maintain power. On this edition of The Roys Report, host Julie Roys continues her eye-opening dialogue with Ryan George, the son of an Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) pastor. In part one, Ryan described the physical abuse he suffered from his dad. Now Ryan exposes the harmful rhetoric in IFB churches from his insider perspective and comments on shocking examples of IFB misogyny. This podcast includes clips from IFB pastors who shamed women and rape victims in their sermons. Also included in this podcast is Ryan's description of how IFB pastors promote violence, especially when it's directed towards those seen as political foes. This is a no-holds-barred podcast, exposing the ugly truth about the IFB church movement, which Ryan asserts is a cult. It also includes a clip from John MacArthur in which the famous preacher sounds an awful lot like Ryan's IFB pastor dad. However, this podcast also has a wonderfully redemptive story, as Ryan tells how he escaped the abuse and deception in his father's IFB church and overcame fear. Guests Ryan George Ryan George is the author of Scared to Life, Word on the Street, and his latest book, Hurt and Healed by the Church. He's the blogger behind Explorience.org, where he tells stories at the intersection of physical adventures and spiritual discoveries on all seven continents. He co-founded and co-leads Dude Group, a parachurch outdoor Bible study and prayer group in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he lives with his wife, Crystal, and daughter, Deonnie. Show Transcript SPEAKERS PASTOR BOBBY LEONARD, JOHN MACARTHUR, RYAN GEORGE, Julie Roys, JACK HYLES Julie Roys  00:00 The following podcast contains clips from some pastors in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church, or IFB, who shamed women and rape victims in their sermons. We chose these clips to illustrate the systemic problems in IFB churches. But we realize these clips are hard to hear, so please take care as you listen.  For more background on these and other stories please visit JulieRoys.com. Research shows that more than 95-percent of women who report being raped are telling the truth. But in some churches, especially IFB churches, these women are disbelieved and shamed. According to Ryan George, it's all part of the IFB propaganda machine meant to consolidate and maintain power. Welcome to The Roys Report—a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys. And in part two of an eye-opening podcast with Ryan George—the son of an IFB pastor—Ryan exposes the misogynist propaganda in IFB churches. And in this podcast, you'll hear some shocking examples of this misogyny. But as Ryan explains, there's also promotion of violence within IFB churches, especially when it's directed towards those seen as political foes. This is no-holds-barred, stunning podcast, exposing the ugly truth about the IFB Church—a group Ryan confidently asserts is a cult. You'll also hear a clip from John MacArthur, where the famous preacher sounds an awful lot like an IFB pastor. But this podcast also has a wonderfully redemptive story, as Ryan tells how he escaped the IFB and overcame fear. I love Ryan's story—and I think you will too. We'll get to that in a minute. But first, I'd like to thank the sponsors of this podcast—Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington . . . Well again, here's part 2 of my podcast with Ryan George, author of Hurt and Healed in the Church. . . So there’s a whole section of your book that deals with propaganda. And you know, as a journalist, as somebody who’s in media, I mean, that’s something that always sort of piques my curiosity when I see something like that, but it’s really this idea of how the IFB was able to sell certain ideas to you. And extra biblical ideas that really weren’t necessarily in Scripture. And one of them that was just so heartbreaking to me because I work with female victims all the time of sexual abuse, and was that this idea, you actually heard this in college? Just stunning to me, that a woman if she’s raped, she would only get pregnant if she’s somehow enjoying it. And so it was kind of her fault if she gets pregnant. I mean, just despicable. absolutely shocking that anyone would say that. Yeah, just absolutely despicable. And, you know, I’m very pro-life in my convictions, but the thought that somebody would try to treat a rape victim who got pregnant that way is just heartbreaking, heartbreaking. But we know, these really misogynist ideas are woven into so many of these fundamentalist churches. And you mentioned in your book, that Jack Hyles, who if you don’t know Jack Hyles was really a main figure within the IFB movement. He had this church in Hammond, Indiana, First Baptist of Hammond, I think, huge mega church. I think at one point, they said they had like 40,000 people coming. I know he would bus people. RYAN GEORGE  01:42 He had 86 buses at the peak of their ministry, running a bus route. I mean, that’s a big metro area city bus ministry. Julie Roys  01:49 Yeah, Absolutely, absolutely huge. Anyway, you had this clip, and it was so awful, I like had to look it up in your footnotes and be like, is this online? And so the journalist in me, like has to find it, right. So actually I was able to do it, I was able to find this clip. And just so people realize, I also looked up, like what was the context? Because he says, who slew all of these? when he’s speaking and really what he’s talking about, I looked up that phrase, it’s actually from II Kings 10, and it refers to Jehu, who is basically meeting out God’s judgment to the wicked king Ahab, and also Jezabell two of the most wicked kings Israel ever had. And there are actually, you know, these men of the city, who slew who slay the 70 sons of Ahab. And it’s a pretty graphic description in the Old Testament where they actually bring the heads of all of these sons, and they put them at the gate. And it’s like the judgment of God being meted out in just, you know, a horrific way. But then again, what Jezebel and Ahab did during their reign was pretty horrific as well. But Jehu comes and he looks, you know, in front of the people, he’s looking at this this pile, and he says, who slew all of these? And so in this clip, Hyles is actually likening these wicked men who were beheaded, to the people he’s describing, and it’s absolutely breathtaking, because these people are women, who, God forbid, didn’t dress in the way that he thinks is appropriate. So take a listen. JACK HYLES  03:47 Who slew all of the women in shorts? Who slew all of these poor kids that are girls pregnant before they married? caused the boys to get so stirred up passionately that they rape a girl. Brother, you listen to me. For every single man that goes to prison for rape, you ought to be right beside him, a half-naked girl in the next cell. Who slew all these people on beaches? Who slew all these churches to have mixed swimming parties? Julie Roys  04:31 Unbelievable. RYAN GEORGE  04:32 And if you notice in the background of any video, or background of that video, it’s all women except for one guy and they’re smiling. Julie Roys  04:41 Some are some are not. I mean, some are smiling. Some are not. And I just know you know from reading your book, and from the research that I’ve done, I mean, there’s a lot of sexual abuse going on behind the scenes. I just have to wonder how many of these women are standing there hearing this, and they’ve been sexually abused, and now they’re hearing, it’s your fault that this happened to you. Which, interestingly, Jack Hyles’ son, David, he’s been accused by several women of raping them. In fact, I did a podcast about four years ago with a woman who claimed she was raped by Jack Hyles son David Hyles. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes. That’s I mean, if you want to explore this a little bit more that was a really powerful podcast. Amazing woman what she’s been through., RYAN GEORGE  05:36 Oh, yes. Julie Roys  05:38 But also, there’s the son-in-law of Jack Hyles, who, you know, he’s been convicted of taking what a 16-year-old across state lines and raping her. Interestingly, when he was caught in his crime, he did eventually admit, I guess that  he had raped her. But then he blamed it on the teen’s aggressiveness, on her aggressiveness. I mean, this is so just baked into the whip and woof of this culture, that it’s the woman’s fault. And you might think, well, you know, Jack Hyles, died in 2001. So this is like the IFB of many decades ago. And, unfortunately, it’s not. In fact, I found a clip, and this was just like, last month on the internet, and it was a recording that it had been from, I think, August of last year, last September, but it finally made its round. Yeah. On the internet. And it was of a pastor in North Carolina, Pastor Bobby Leonard, at this Bible Baptist Tabernacle in Monroe, North Carolina. And this, I mean, every bit as awful as what you just heard from Jack Hyles. Let me play this because, again, this happened within the past year. PASTOR BOBBY LEONARD  07:01 I used to say this. I haven’t said this a long time. You ready? I said, if you dress like that, and you get raped, and I’m on the jury, he’s will go free. You don’t like it, do you? I’m right though. I’m right. Because a man’s a man. Julie Roys  07:22 Hhmm. A man’s a man. RYAN GEORGE  07:25 We define manhood very differently. Julie Roys  07:27 Yeah, right. I mean, that was unbelievable. And I pointed out and I think I put a Tweet out there saying or a post on X, I guess I have to say, that, yeah, he’s a man. He’s not an animal. And one of the features of a man is he’s able to exercise self-control. So if a woman’s in shorts, no, that doesn’t give you a license to rape her. And that video went viral. And there were protests there. And I don’t know if they’re still ongoing. I know, several weeks after this video went viral,  those protests were still going. But you know, I looked before we recorded this podcast, and this Bobby Leonard is still pastor at this IFB church. RYAN GEORGE  08:09 Same church. Julie Roys  08:10 Yep. The thing that kills me about this is that this man is a pastor, and he’s espousing something again. So the antithesis of what Jesus would. I mean, his heart broke for victims. His heart was absolutely. So I mean, the only people he was hard on was religious hypocrites. That’s the only people he was hard on,  but people caught in sin, people victimized, those are the people Jesus’ heart broke for. RYAN GEORGE  08:39 There’s a chance that when that woman who was pulled out from underneath her adultery partner, when they brought him to Jesus, brought her to Jesus to stone her, there’s a really good chance that she was naked standing there next to Jesus. Julie Roys  08:49 Oh, I thought you were gonna say that she was a victim. But I’d never thought of that. RYAN GEORGE  08:53 I don’t know. She definitely she could have been a victim. Right? But even if it was consensual, they didn’t draw her adultery partner out. Right? They didn’t try to stone him. Julie Roys  09:02 No, no, not a man. No. RYAN GEORGE  09:04 No, right, right. They pulled her out as if she was the problem which is an IFB thing. And then so if that’s the case, they said, we put her in the act. So, there’s very likely that a pastor like this, a group of Pharisees, pulled this woman out into public, set her next to Jesus and Jesus didn’t look at her, he wrote in the dirt. And then when all the accusers went away, say, Hey, where are your accusers? Neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. That’s like you’re saying antithetical to what is the messaging in that video, and many of the churches that I grew up in. Julie Roys  09:40 There’s so many components that you discuss, and we don’t have time to go through them all. I wish we could. But one of them I was like, we have to talk about this because Christian nationalism has become so big. And especially right now, in an election year, we’re hearing In a lot of it. I didn’t realize how IFB  churches supported Christian nationalism and tried to kind of do it biblically like having a biblical basis. Would you describe that? RYAN GEORGE  10:14 Well, it’s baked into the idea that if we can’t winsomely attract people to Jesus, right? Their churches don’t even try to winsomely attract people. I tell a story in the book about my parents church had a raffle that you could win a shotgun if you brought people to church. Yeah. Because like, that’s the only way, they knew that the message that they had to sell wasn’t going to be popular, right? And so what they look at is well, then just like as they do in the churches, can we go by force? Right. And so, when you hear fundamentalists talk about politics, they’re talking about overtaking and taking control. Like you hear these kinds of authoritarian terms, to say, we are trying to take our culture by storm, we’re going to try to take it back. That’s not exclusive to IFB. But you wouldn’t think that this very seclusionary cult would try to be mainstream in that way. But I mean, we had polling places on our campus. The college I went to is the home district for Matt Gates, who is also accused of multiple sexual crimes against minors. And they would brag that, you know, they would get students to change their voting district to college so that we could vote in Florida elections, and our college bragged that we put Bush in the White House. Because if you count how many votes were cast by our students in that district, that was enough to put Bush over the top, I voted for Bush, this isn’t a political thing. But the idea is that they were trying to take it by any ways necessary, which definitely falls into this whole Trumpism thing now because they’re like, that’s our Savior. He’s gonna force it. He’s talking about retribution. He’s talking about making people pay, making people cry. You know. So it makes sense if you have an authoritarian church and authoritarian pastor that you’d be drawn to political authoritarians. Julie Roys  12:05 And wasn’t there something too about like when the passage about the separation of the sheep from the goats and that certain nations, I’ve never heard this before, that God will separate certain nations, like separating the sheep from the goats, almost like if you’re not in the Christian nation, you’re not going to make it in? RYAN GEORGE  12:26 Yeah, it’s a weird double jeopardy situation. And they’re like, Hey, we have to win America back to God because of this passage. And part of it is because if you only believe that the King James version is the only version you can read, and if you only believe that there are pastors out there, I have a few pastors that say that the English version of the Bible is more inspired than the original. Like, I mean, it’s all over you can find on the internet. If you follow, there’s an Instagram account, I highly recommend called At Bad Sermons. Bad Sermons has a whole bunch of this stuff. Julie Roys  12:55 I think that’s where that clip, actually yeah, of Pastor Monroe first came out, yeah, RYAN GEORGE  13:01 Oh, my gosh. And so what happens is they go, well, then that means if A plus B equals C, then we have to win America to Christ, so that, and they don’t mean that they have to save America. They’re not trying to save Americans. They’re trying to save their version, which is, again, a messed-up version of America for this thing. But that doesn’t make sense. So as I’m writing that chapter in my book, I’m in Slovenia, which I was in northern Slovenia, I was about 5-10 miles from the Italy border. And if you’ve ever looked at that part of the map, Slovenia has been part of like, 12, where I was sitting in that library has been part of like, 12 different countries in the last 400 years. Like, so at what point does Jesus pick your country? Is it 1787? Is it 2004? Is it 1999? Was it when it was in the Soviet bloc? Is it now that it’s not? It’s like, you know, was it when it was part of this country or that? Like, there’s so little intellectual rigor applied to anything. And when you do try to apply any type of academic anything, you’re saying, Oh, you’re a liberal, you don’t have faith, you know, all this stuff. Like you have to take the man of God’s word for this. And so you have IFB pastors after Joe Biden was elected, getting up and saying, Hey, I don’t know if you know if this is right, but I’m not going to get in the way of God if his will is to assassinate Joe Biden, from the pulpit. Wow. And you go, wait, what? Like, where did Jesus ever call us to assassinate our enemy? When Peter cut the guards year off, Jesus healed the guard and then said to Peter, like, what are you doing, man? Like, this isn’t how we do this. Julie Roys  14:37 Ah, that is so I am speechless. That is so so awful. Wow. Well, there’s something else that stuck out to me, probably because this is in the news right now. And you’ve got a chapter called, Misrepresenting Orthodoxy, and you talk about these IFB preachers who will condemn certain groups or certain groups of people in sort of this selective self-righteousness. And you talk about your father, who again, this is a man who was a pedophile. I mean, he molested girls who are not even of age. And yet, he said he would condemn Martin Luther King Jr., because he supposedly was a philanderer and, you know, had relations with women outside of marriage. At least, you know, in that case, you know, I don’t know, but I’m guessing they were consensual. Which was not the case with your father. But you write, I thought  this was a great paragraph. You write, While that irony plays out. Let me just read this here. While that irony plays out on a micro level of my family, I can’t escape the more macro irony of my dad’s disregard for Dr. King. In the unsaved churches of my youth, beliefs were an idol and hypocrisy was defended as a way to protect the gospel. Dogmatism took precedence over following the example of Jesus. Doctrine was more important than authenticity, curiosity, or compassion. And you’re probably aware, right now, there’s a big brouhaha over some things that John MacArthur has said, about Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact, I’m just gonna play that. So if people haven’t heard that, they can hear what he said. I’ll just play it. JOHN MACARTHUR  16:41 The T for G (Together for the Gospel) guys wanted to honor him with a panel, and we spent an hour, an hour and 15 minutes. And it was just beautiful tributes to RC from all of us, who knew him so very, very well. And the strange irony was a year later, they did the same thing for Martin Luther King, who was not a Christian at all, whose life was immoral. I’m not saying he didn’t do some social good. And I’ve always been glad that he was a pacifist, or he could have started a real revolution. But you don’t honor a non-believer who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel, in an organization alongside honoring somebody like RC Sproul. Julie Roys  17:36 So how does that hit you? RYAN GEORGE  17:39 So I see it again as a hypocrite, you know. John MacArthur has covered for multiple child molesters in his church. And I go, here’s the irony is you’re going to prop up people in your own church who are doing way worse than what Dr. Martin Luther King is and say that they are examples of the faith. Like this is why we keep them in our church, right? And then say somebody who had some affairs, which we’re not condoning affairs, that it wipes out everything they did, including  whether or not they’re going to heaven. That’s the mental gymnastics that the  IFB church has to do to feel self-righteous. Julie Roys  18:16 And missing, that one of the greatest sins that God calls out is pride. I mean when I hear things like that, I’m like, wow! I mean, I could talk about Dr. Martin Luther King’s doctrine, and there may be some really bad things in there. And I’m not saying that you can’t talk about that. But to say that you, a mere human, who doesn’t know the hearts of man, can say where the eternal destiny of someone else is. That crosses a line to me. RYAN GEORGE  18:46 It’s hubris. Julie Roys  18:48 Absolutely. RYAN GEORGE  18:49 And the irony is Dr. Martin Luther King was a Baptist pastor in the south, which means it was probably conservative to some degree, as far as theologically conservative church. They were probably closer than MacArthur would like to admit. Julie Roys  19:02 Yeah. Well, the last section of your book is beautiful. And it talks about. RYAN GEORGE  19:08 Oh, thank you. Julie Roys  19:08 Yeah, it talks about the greener pastures that are available. You know, there to get beyond the abuse, and the dogmatism, you know, that these things don’t have to define you and define the rest of your life. I think that’s hugely important. But at the same time, moving forward and choosing, you know, the better path, to choose growth over comfort, can be, it’s a risky thing to do. But it’s the path you chose, and maybe the path less traveled. But why would you like to the person who right now is just kind of sitting there going, You know, dare I do that? What would you say? RYAN GEORGE  19:54 I’d tell him, it’s worth it. So I’m a little predisposed to this. So, I’m an adrenaline junkie, I jump off mountains and planes and buildings. I’ve surfed in the Arctic. I do all kinds of crazy things. Julie Roys  20:06 You surfed in the Arctic? RYAN GEORGE  20:08 Yes, ma’am. I’ve camped in both the Arctic Circle and Antarctica. I do a thing called wing-walking, where you go out on the wings of a bi-plane while it’s flying, and it does aerobatic maneuvers while you’re out there. Julie Roys  20:16 No, no, no, no, no, no. RYAN GEORGE  20:18 But here’s what I’ve learned in that. And this is how God designed our bodies with dopamine and epinephrine and other reward chemicals, is that when we do this scary thing, we are chemically rewarded, right? And the times when I felt most alive in my life, outside of a faith community in a relationship, but like physically when I felt most alive, was after I conquered a fear. I was so scared to go wing walking the first time. I finally found a life insurance company to give me life insurance cuz you can imagine it’s hard to insure some of the stuff that I do for fun. And I got back down on the ground after my first, you take lessons, and you get like certified for different things you do out on the wings. And I got back down on the ground and my classmates had waited, I was the last student through the school that day. And one of my classmates yelled out, how was it? And I’m taking off, you know, your gear whatever, I was like, I’ve never felt more alive, right. And so what I’d like to tell people is, it’s that way for me and my faith. When I’ve had a conversation around a fire with somebody, or when I saw someone meet Jesus for the first time or put their marriage back together. Or I have a friend who has six foster and adopted children?, and to watch the reclamation project of what he and his wife are doing right? And different things in my life. I’ve seen Jesus do incredible things. And I have goosebumps right now all over my body, thinking about what I’ve seen is like, that is what life in all caps is. And I’ve experienced it. So my last book was called Scared to Life. And it was about I felt God the most when I’m scared. And so what I’m able to do because it’s become normal for me, I’m scared of heights. People are amazed. I’ve jumped off the 63rd story of a building before, but I’m scared of heights. But what I’ve learned is, is that when I lean into that fear, the reward is at least equal to whatever I was afraid of. And I found that to be true in my faith. You can’t convince them. It’s like trying to convince a seven-year-old that someday they’re going to like kissing girls. Trust me dude, I’m telling you, it’s the same thing. People are like, You’re so crazy, I would never go out on the wings of an airplane. It’s like, but have you ever been upside down at 140 miles an hour looking at the California desert? I can’t explain it right? It’s the same thing. There are things in my faith. I’ve had these encounters with Jesus that’s sweeter than anything I’ve ever had with my parents, anything I’ve ever had in churches growing up, that cannot be explained outside of Jesus. And I want that for you. I won’t ever force someone to jump out of a plane with me or do some of the stuff that I do. But I will invite over and over and over again because I know what’s waiting for them on the other side. And then you go, Okay, you just did something that 99% of humans in America would say you are legitimately crazy to try, and you feel more alive. What is something back home that you’re scared to do? A conversation you’re scared to have, a thing you’re scared to relinquish to Jesus, an addiction you’re scared to tell somebody about whatever it is. That Invitational model has proven true in my life over and over again. Julie Roys  23:16 I mean, it makes me think of when I was about to blow the whistle on the Moody Bible Institute. And I had this piece written, and I won’t go into the whole story of how that went down. But I was terrified because I knew that would burn my bridge forever. Not just with Moody. But you get blacklisted. And that would be the end of my career. And I was okay with that. But it was still scary. And yet, I mean, yes. Did I feel alive when I did that? And then on the heels of that, that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing today. God birthed this out of that, and had I not followed through  on that conviction God gave me, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t be here, you know. And so, to me, I feel like I’m living the adventure. You know. I think life in Christ should be living the adventure. And it will always, always, I think we’ve forgotten about this. RYAN GEORGE  24:14 Jesus hinted at it. So they didn’t have the terms that we have now in the New Testament to describe biology and whatever else. But over and over and over from Jesus and other people Old Testament New Testament. The Bible says the just shall live by faith. But what a lot of people don’t reverse engineer that to go it’s you can’t have faith unless you have doubt, fear, both, right? I’m only scared on the wing of an airplane if I don’t think my harness is going to work or there’s going to be a malfunction in the plane. When you’ve done it 100 times, the 100th time I rode a motorcycle, it wasn’t as scary as the first time right? The first time you ride a roller coaster you’re holding on white knuckles. By the fifth time you’re posing for the picture. You’re physically doing the same thing. But you’ve lost that fear. And so, for us to live by faith on a regular basis, there has to be something that brings doubt or fear into our life. It sounds masochistic and I don’t mean it that way. But if Jesus isn’t given me an assignment on a regular basis that makes my palms sweaty, then I have to ask myself, do I have faith right now? Am I living the just life? Julie Roys  25:11 Absolutely. And that’s why I think we’ve forgotten that to be a moral person, to be a godly person, it actually requires courage. Like, you just don’t hear that very much. We think of it as you have to be pure in your thoughts and your life and all those things are true. But you have to have courage, because God will call you to something that requires faith and like you’re saying, it requires facing your fear. And I’m thinking right now because this is where your book lands. But I know this is where an awful lot of people are. Is some of the scariest things to do, are to pursue your own healing. Because it means instead of running away from what was painful, you actually have to lean into it, you actually have to go places that you don’t want to go. And yet, that’s something that you did. And I feel like you’re kind of not that any of us is on the other side. Because healing is a process that we won’t fully be healed till we’re in heaven, right? You know, so. But you’re kind of on the other side, where you’ve walked through some stuff and been able to say, hey, you can trust this process. So speak to that person right now who may be in that spot. RYAN GEORGE  26:25 Oh, man. The hard part is all of our journeys are nuanced, right? So I’m not calling someone and telling them, Hey, go back to the church where you came from, or go back to the religion that you came from, or even go back to a church as is commonly defined United States, like a Sunday service, or whatever else. What I am calling people to do is to find a version of Jesus they can fall in love with. And I was talking to a podcaster a few weeks ago, and she gave me this great analogy, and I got to use it. But she said, there are a lot of people who go to a Taylor Swift concert alone, but nobody goes home alone. They come home with friendship bracelets, and new friends and new Instagram connections and whatever else. And I said, for me, the Taylor Swift in that story is Jesus. And if I find that Jesus, that I’m a big fan of which I have found, and if I go to the concert, I’m going to bump into other people who love the same Jesus. And we’re going to trade friendship bracelets, and we’re going to start. So whether that spiritual community is a service, or whether it’s just meeting someone for coffee, there are certain people that I know, the first version of Jesus they can find is to go to therapy, and to be real. And what happens is, after you get used to telling your story in that room, then you get more courage to tell people outside of that room, et cetera. And so church can grow for you. But my book is not a call to go back on a Sunday. My call is to fall in love with the Jesus that I’ve fallen in love with, because it’s been utterly rewarding. And if you can look at it as a personal relationship, I know that that terminology has been used and abused in the faith that I grew up in. But as a note, this isn’t like me and the church. This is me and Jesus, and know that Jesus, everywhere he went, other people were attracted around that were fans of his hand up to 1000s of people. So no matter whether you define church as a house church, or, you know, multisite, non-denom, whatever. All of it is trappings; find the Jesus that loves you. And he promised, in his own words, read letters to the Bible. He said, If you seek me, and you seek with your whole heart, you will find me. And we’re on this divine scavenger hunt to find him everywhere and anywhere. And when you start intentionally looking for him. Like before, before I go on a hike, you’ll get this because you’re a hiker. Before I go on a hike in new places like God, will you reveal why you drew me to this trail? God, will you reveal what it is you want me to know about yourself today? And I can tell you how that prayers were answered hiking in the Faroe Islands and Iceland and Norway. I still remember how Jesus answered those prayers. I have prayed that prayer before getting on a flight at JFK. God, would you reveal why it is I’m getting on this plane? What do you want me to know about getting on this plane? And that led to a very emotional blog post and people are like, Oh, my goodness, you met Jesus on a flight to Finland? Like how does that even work? And if we’re expectant to find the real Jesus, why wouldn’t he want to reveal himself? Jesus gave up his life so that we could know him. So when we asked him, Jesus help me know you more, helped me find the real you, why wouldn’t he answer that prayer? Julie Roys  28:45 I love that. I love that. And it is the real Jesus. And unfortunately, he has not been portrayed to some of us as his true self. And it’s important that we find that. Ryan, this has been such a phenomenal conversation. I’ve so enjoyed it. Yeah, just so glad to have this conversation and for the gift of your book. And I know it takes a lot to write a book and especially one this personal. So thank you so much, and it’s just been a delight. RYAN GEORGE  29:45 Thanks for sharing me with your people. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript What does it take to disqualify someone from ministry? An affair? Spiritual abuse? Sexual abuse? Abuse of power? Or, as some have claimed, can just about anyone be restored to ministry because “God is gracious” and “His call is irrevocable”? This edition of The Roys Report takes a deep dive into the Scriptures—particularly, those specific verses used to justify restoring pastors to ministry who have fallen in egregious ways. Author and Bible teacher Ron Cantor joins host Julie Roys for this engaging discussion. Partly because of confusion around the “irrevocable” call to ministry, the evangelical church is often like a game of “whack-a-wolf.” A pastor will be exposed as a fraud or abuser in one location. Then he'll just go underground for a couple of years and relaunch somewhere else. That's why it's critical to address common errors of theology and interpretation—including how to confront a sinning leader. In what situations do the principles of Matthew 18 apply, and how is it often misapplied? And what does the Apostle Paul mean by “being above reproach”? This is such a relevant discussion now, given what's happening with Mike Bickle, the founder of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. (Full coverage here.) Bickle's alleged sexual abuse of multiple women includes accounts from girls as young as 14- and 15-years old. Yet some are suggesting that Bickle can still be restored. Is that really what the Bible instructs? Ron Cantor, a Jewish believer in Jesus who has authored ten books, engages the arguments heard often in evangelical circles—citing Scripture and context as he provides food for thought. Guests Ron Cantor Ron Cantor, a Jewish believer in Jesus, is the Israeli director of God TV. He is the author of ten books and host of two TV shows, Out of Zion and Get Real. He is president of Shelanu TV, the only 24/7, Hebrew language TV channel sharing the message of Jesus. Ron and his wife, Elena, also direct the outreach arm of Shelanu, Messiah's Mandate International, which supports pastors in Israel, Holocaust survivors, and leaders in training. The Cantors live in Tel Aviv, Israel. Learn more at RonCantor.com. Show Transcript Coming soon Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript A bombshell report on the alleged “affair” between popular worship leaders Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards published by The Roys Report sent shock waves through the charismatic Christian community. How could two people, who ushered so many into the presence of God, sin in such an egregious way? But were they both consensual partners? Or, was Kevin, an admitted sexual predator, the abuser? And was Misty his victim? To consider such questions, Baylor University professor Dr. David Pooler, an expert on adult clergy sexual abuse, joins Julie Roys for this challenging but crucial discussion. They examine the difficult story of these two worship leaders in light of this often-misunderstood issue. Adult clergy sexual abuse (ACSA) is when someone in spiritual authority intentionally uses their role, position, and power to exploit someone else sexually. Is this what happened here? Misty claims she's not a victim. And Kevin was not in a formal role of authority over Misty. But he was more than 20 years older than her. Past articles reveal Misty admired Kevin's songs and his intimate style of leading worship. And Kevin also has a history of sexual predation. Also, in 1999, Prosch admitted to a series of “adulterous” relationships, describing his advances with women in ways that sound abusive. He wrote, “I committed adultery and used my gifting to manipulate the women involved. I pursued women, not only sexually but also emotionally and always for my own selfish gain and personal pleasure.” Regarding Misty, she has spent the last 25 years in what is increasingly being exposed as a manipulative and sexually abusive environment at the International House of Prayer Kansas City, or IHOPKC. Follow the shocking revelations concerning IHOPKC founder Mike Bickle and the ministry's response at this link. Many questions surround what happened with Misty and Kevin. Drawing from his extensive research on adult clergy sexual abuse, Dr. Pooler gives insight into these complex issues. Julie also addresses criticisms of her reporting, explaining the struggle of how to report this story, the ethics of journalism, and how this report helps shed light on the larger narrative. Guests Dr. David Pooler Dr. David Pooler is Professor and Director of the Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse; Advocacy and Research Collaborative at Baylor University in the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work. As a national expert on Adult Clergy Sexual Abuse, he brings insights about this phenomenon through research and his clinical practice with survivors. Dr. Pooler has a B.A. in psychology and religion from Lee University and earned the MSW and Ph.D in Social Work at the University of Louisville. He is married to Cheryl, who is also a faculty member in the School of Social Work at Baylor, and they have two adult daughters.  Show Transcript SPEAKERSDAVID POOLER, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:03Our bombshell report on the alleged affair between popular worship leaders Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards sent shockwaves through the charismatic Christian community. How could two people who ushered so many into the presence of God, sin in such an egregious way? But were both of them consensual partners? Or was Kevin, an admitted sexual predator, the abuser? And was Misty his victim? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today we’re going to discuss not just our report on Kevin and Misty, but the often-misunderstood issue of adult clergy sexual abuse. This is when someone in spiritual authority intentionally uses their role, position, and power to exploit someone else sexually. Is this what happened with Kevin and Misty? Kevin was not in any formal role of authority over Misty, but he was more than 20 years older than her. And we know from published articles that Misty admired Kevin’s songs and his intimate style of leading worship. Kevin also has a history of sexual predation. As I reported in 1999, Prosch admitted to a series of adulterous relationships. Yet when you hear the way he described those relationships, they sound abusive. Prosch writes, and I quote, I committed adultery and used my gifting to manipulate the women involved. I pursued women not only sexually but also emotionally and always for my own selfish gain and personal pleasure. The very gift God gave me to bless others with, I used to manipulate and seduce these women. We also know that Misty has spent the last 25 years in what is increasingly being exposed as a manipulative and sexually abusive environment at the International House of Prayer or IHOP in Kansas City. And if you haven’t been following the shocking revelations concerning IHOP founder Mike Bickle, I encourage you to go to the investigations tab at my website, JULIEROYS.COM. And there we have all of our stories on IHOP easily accessible.   Julie Roys  02:10 Well, again, there are a lot of questions surrounding what happened with Misty and Kevin, our reporting on Misty and Kevin, and this whole issue of adult clergy sexual abuse. And joining me for this discussion is a well-known expert on the topic, Dr. David Pooler. Dr. Pooler is a professor at Baylor University who’s done extensive research on adult clergy sexual abuse, and I’m so looking forward to speaking further with him about this topic.   Julie Roys  02:36 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  03:39 Well again, joining me is Dr. David Pooler, a professor at the Diana R Garland School of Social Work at Baylor University. Dr. Pooler has more than 15 years of social work practice experience and has done extensive work among at risk and abused children. But most pertinent to our discussion today is the research he’s done on adult clergy sexual abuse and his desire to develop healthy church congregations. So Dr. Pooler, welcome, and thanks so much for joining me.   DAVID POOLER 04:09 I am super glad to be here. It’s a real privilege and an honor that I get to talk about something that really matters.   Julie Roys  04:15 Now it does matter, and I just so appreciate your interest in abuse, but also in the way that I first met you at the RESTORE Conference, which to me, I was just kind of blown away when I saw you had signed up for it. I’m like, Oh, my goodness, Dr. Pooler is coming and, and he should be teaching, I should be like sitting under him. And yet you came just to learn and observe, and I just appreciate that.   DAVID POOLER 04:38 I did. I wanted to be around people that it’s almost like the folks that show up that RESTORE  are sort of my people if that makes sense. It’s sort of a hodgepodge of people who have been injured and wounded and are still finding their way and wanting things to be better and on some level looking for church reform, right and in ways that we often aren’t thinking about reform. And so I do think that this whole topic of adult clergy sexual abuse kind of sits in this strange place of the church just does not know what to do with. But yet there’s a lot of room for hope and healing and change to occur. That’s what I’m devoting my life to do.   Julie Roys  05:24 Well, I appreciate that. After we published this article on Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards on what I had termed in the article an affair, and I know that’s a very questionable word, given the context of everything, but you reached out to me, just with some concerns, some questions, and just in such a gracious manner, and we were able to have a zoom call about that. And as we’re having this call, I’m thinking, this is such a profitable conversation, I want to make this public. And so I invited you to do this podcast with me. I think this is going to be outstanding, and I appreciate just your demeanor in coming to me about that. But let me just, instead of me trying to paraphrase you, what were some of the concerns that you had with the article and with even how things were presented?   DAVID POOLER 06:12 Sure. When I read it, just in my study of adult clergy sexual abuse, I could immediately tell there was so much more than could be reported on there. These abusive systems and when I say abuse of systems where we have sort of a patriarchal leader, sort of men are elevated, and we have an issue around clericalism, where it’s elevating the priorities and needs of certain leaders to the exclusion of others. Anyway, but when I read the term affair and I’m like, for there to actually be an affair, there would have to be consent, people would have to be on equal power levels. And I’m like, I wonder if that’s really the case here. So I had issues with the term affair, because one of the things that’s really interesting is that there are 14 states that actually criminalize, have state statutes, where a pastoral leader if they abuse an adult under their care, they can be charged with a crime. In some states, it’s a misdemeanor, and some it’s a felony. California is a current state where there’s legislation happening right now, that’s going to be going through this session, where clergy will be added to the list of other helping professions around that. So I had issues with the term affair, primarily. And I also just was a little worried, too, that we could end up doing some victim blaming in this particular story, blaming Misty as if she’s completely complicit. And again, I’m just wondering, to what extent was position authority, the nature of the relationship, the gender? Are those things leveraged, exploited in this long history? I know Misty has been a part of that movement for years. And what way has she been, you know, her thinking has been sort of distorted, and shifted to come alongside and support leaders no matter what, and protect them at the exclusion of her own self and her own needs? There’s so much more complexity and nuance with this. And thankfully, your response was just amazing and led to this opportunity. Because in a sense, the article then gave an opportunity for a deeper, more meaningful conversation that can expand this and get more people talking about what is adult clergy sexual abuse? can pastors abuse adults and people under their care? even another minister under their care? My research with a resounding yes to all of that. And I’ve seen many cases where there has been a positional leader under another leader who actually is abused. And I’ve seen the system’s hold them equally accountable and like, but that’s not okay. And if you’ll allow me, I’ll share a little bit about what has framed my thinking around power and consent. And some of that actually has to do with the secular world. The secular world is way ahead of where the church is, quite frankly, when it looks at power differentials and consent, in relationships, interpersonal relationships, where there’s a lot of connection, and there’s a lot at stake. For example, with a therapist or a doctor, or a nurse, or my profession, a social worker. And so we have boards that guide our behavior. And so in no situation, would there ever be a case whereas a social worker, I had a sexual connection or relationship with someone that I was working with, and it would never be called consensual it never happened, because it would be clearly labeled as misconduct and inappropriate.   DAVID POOLER 09:42 So not only could I lose my license as a social worker, I would then be held accountable. Generally, every state has a state statute or law to hold a helping professional accountable. Again, that’s where ministry is so far behind, and I honestly think it’s interesting our separation of church and state is actually part of the problem. Because what happens is the church has just not been forced to keep up with evolving new ways of thinking about power, and consent, and relationships and boundaries. And that really, it’s always the person with more power, it’s their job and responsibility to delineate what a healthy relationship is going to be. It’s their responsibility to outline the boundaries, it’s their responsibility to maintain boundaries. But yet in the church, we have done so much victim blaming. A pastoral leader is sexual with someone that is dependent on them, and then they blame that person and says, Yeah, they just did this, that or the other. A lot of the purity culture stuff, a lot of our rape culture, quite frankly, in this society, and just, Oh, what was she wearing? What was she doing? She must have been the temptress, those kinds of things. So that sort of sets the stage for this conversation about adult clergy sexual abuse.   Julie Roys  11:04 And I don’t disagree with you on one thing that you just said. And in fact, I think my first introduction to adult clergy sexual abuse was hearing Lori Anne Thompson’s story. And if you don’t know Lori Anne’s story, she was one of the victims of Ravi Zacharias. And the way that she was manipulated, the way he found out her past abuse, and then used that to basically become a father figure. And then to exploit that, to get her to do something that she would not have normally done. But it was so predatory. It was so abusive, and I could see it once I heard the story. It was like, Oh, my goodness, of course. And we’ve had entire podcast we’ve done on this, I did one with Katie Roberts, who was, you know, in a similar type situation, and now she started an entire organization, helping adult victims of adult clergy sexual abuse. And so this is something I’m familiar with. And so if somebody asked me, do I think Misty Edwards was a victim? I would say, absolutely, 100 percent, I think she was a victim. What I found difficult with this story, normally, the victim in the stories that I report, is the source. It’s the person who comes to me with their story, and says, will you please report this story for me of this person that harmed me? Here I have a situation first time ever, honestly, where I have somebody coming to me, who is saying she’s not a victim. And I’m having to deal with a very complex story where there were two stories in this particular case; one, which was I referred to as the other secret because you couldn’t tell one story without having that story, because they were intertwined. But I didn’t tell that story, because it involved what to me was very clearly what you just described, it was abuse. And I wasn’t going to tell that story out of respect for the victim, because it was clearly abuse. With Kevin and Misty, again, my opinion, it was abuse. And so now I felt like it was one of those situations where you have two competing virtues and values. So on one hand, as an advocate, your highest commitment is to the victim, right? You’re there to protect the victim, the survivor, right? As a journalist, your responsibility is to protect the public, it is to serve the public interest. So you have two people, Kevin Prosch and Misty Edwards. Both have very large platforms. I didn’t know I’ll be honest; I didn’t know Misty before I started reporting on IHOP and then I discovered she has a global following. She has recorded seven albums with I don’t know if they’re all with 4Runner Music. I think most of them are which is IHOP’s label. And you have Kevin Prosch who, even though he has a past, he confessed these adulterous relationships which when honestly, when you read about them, they sound like they were abused, because he clearly used his position and power in these cases. I don’t know whether any were congregants at his church or not. But certainly he has a predatory pattern and likely was abused in these cases.   Julie Roys  14:09 But again, you have two people in positions of power, at least ostensibly, right? And you have Misty who’s on the executive leadership team at IHOP, which is their highest level of leadership. You have her saying she’s gonna go to Israel and go serve in prayer houses there. And I know that people are emulating her worship style – a worship style that frankly, she got from Kevin, she talks about this romantic worship this intimate worship. I was in the Vineyard movement; parts of that I agree with it and parts of it, I go, this is like getting a little icky. And so I think there were just so many factors and then having on top of it. You have someone like Brent Steeno, who’s a former IHOP staffer who’s saying I was abused in this I was harmed because I was smeared by these folks. There were just these complex dynamics and as a journalist, I felt and I know a lot of people were like, there’s a number of journalists who got this story and didn’t report it. Actually, from what I’ve heard from Brent. Judy at the Star, for example, Casey Stars done some excellent work on this. Just hadn’t figured out how to report it. But from journalistically she was like, That was a good story. And I didn’t hear that directly from her. But I’m just as a journalist, again, I felt a responsibility to the public to report this story, because they were two public figures. And because and why didn’t I report it as abuse? Were there some red flags there? Did Kevin have a predatory pattern? Yes, he had a predatory pattern. Was he a celebrity? And did she look up to him? Yes, but the argument can be made, she was just as big a celebrity as he was. There was an age differential, but we can’t automatically say that because there was an age differential. That was.   DAVID POOLER 15:55 Yeah, that was abuse, right?   Julie Roys  15:56 You can’t do that. And then, and then you have just this blackmail element to the story, which clearly when there’s blackmail, that’s abuse. That happened in my understanding five years into the relationship. So it definitely became coercive,  but I’ll be honest, I didn’t know whether I could even report the blackmail aspect of this story, because I have one witness telling me that she said it was blackmail, and I have one text that seems to support that where she said she wishes she could destroy all the devices. But it was pretty circumstantial. And I’m glad I reported it, because I wanted to put the clues in there to folks that they could look at that and say, whoa, wait, this was not okay. But at the same time, journalistically, I just felt like my hands were tied in this particular case.   Julie Roys  16:47 Now, having said that, could I have done it better? Could I do it better? I’m always open to that. Yeah. And that’s why you have these kinds of conversations afterwards to say, okay, how can we do this better? I’ll just give you a chance to reflect on that.   DAVID POOLER 17:01 The thing that really stands out to me that’s worthy of discussion on this is her reporting that she’s not a victim. And I think that’s worth taking a deeper dive into, because I’ve met survivors at various points along their healing journey, and many early on, would not call themselves a victim, on some level. They would blame themselves, possibly, but not see themselves as a victim, certainly not understand that they were being abused. Like, how should I say this, it would cause so much cognitive dissonance if they’re not along in their healing journey, or don’t have a name for what’s going on. Because, honestly, to come to grips with the fact that I had been harmed and injured to that level, by someone that I had trusted my life with, my spiritual life with my mediator, if you will, with God. And I’ve trusted that and to come to a deep and abiding realization that I had been betrayed and exploited, and sexually used and potentially sexually assaulted by this person? That’s like too much. But what I’ve noticed is that along the healing journey, as the awakening and awareness happens, they can then point back and say, absolutely, I was a victim. So that’s one of the big unknowns with Missy’s journey. Six months from now, two years from now, will the story be different? Will she then say, yes, indeed, I was a victim, and here’s how I was victimized, and here’s how I was injured. But most of the instincts of people is to protect their abusers, to protect the church because they’ve been socialized to do that. It’s almost like if this gets out, or it’s known that we’ve, of course, the perpetrators would use the word affair, if we’ve had an affair that would cause people to fall away from the Lord and leave. So they feel this enormous amount of responsibility to protect the institution, to protect the leader, to protect their abuser. And, of course, to me, that’s one of the big question marks at play in the story with Misty.   Julie Roys  19:08 And interestingly, I had a number of conversations with Misty some on the record some off the record, some I can’t talk about, but I will say right before I published the story, I called Misty, and I told her, I know that you don’t believe you’re a victim. I believe you are. And I also told her, I’m not going to report the one thing that we didn’t report, because it would to me expose a victim. That’s their story to come forward with if they want to. But we had those discussions, and it was just, it was heartbreaking to me personally. Misty’s one of the most tragic figures in this whole story, and if you know anything about what’s happened with her and I think a larger context that I couldn’t tell in this story, your heart can’t help but break for Misty and this whole situation.   Julie Roys  19:58 One thing that’s challenging for me too though is, as a reporter, I have to report what people tell me. So if somebody says they’re not a victim, I have to say that person says they’re not a victim. And I know too as advocates, and this whole advocate space is a little bit like the wild West right now. We have some people that are really trained. I spoke of Lori Anne Thompson, she’s someone that went and got her master’s degree is very educated on real advocacy and how to come alongside people. But I remember at our 2022 RESTORE conference, she talked about advocates speaking for victims, and victims often say, speak for me, because I have no voice. And she’s like, Excuse me, unless you’re dead, you have a voice. You have a voice, and the job of advocates is to come alongside the victim, and allow the victim to tell their story, not to put words in their mouth or to tell them their story for them. And so it becomes very challenging when you have someone who’s maybe they’re living in an alternate reality, where they have taken blame for something they shouldn’t take blame for, or they have seen this in a certain context, where they see protecting the legacy of someone that you go, are you kidding me? protecting the legacy of this person, who’s an abuser? Why would you want to protect that legacy?   Julie Roys  21:14 But how can we, as a reporter, I have certain rules I have to abide by. As advocates, there’s a little more leeway. But how can we be helpful in this stage with people who, and right now I’m sure Misty is representative of an awful lot of people who may have been victimized by a system or by a person that don’t see themselves as victims?   DAVID POOLER 21:37 Helping people move from victim to survivor is huge. But I feel like I did something wrong, I’m really not a victim, I participated in this, right? Believe it or not, I actually still have some control. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed as a clinician. But when I say I’ve actually been victimized, that means I literally could have done nothing to stop it. It’s like it literally happened. I am powerless. That doesn’t mean their powerless going forward. But just the acknowledgement of the nature of the wounding and the injury, was this was totally done to me by someone else. And I think that’s really hard for people. For Misty and/or lots of other people in that sort of space, right? And I think part of it is having conversations like this, being able to have an adequate definition of adult clergy sexual abuse, to actually say, hey, it’s when a leader uses their power position, their authority to basically gain access sexually to someone under their care, or that they’re working with or supporting in some way. That person is dependent on them in some way. And they use that dependence as a way to be sexual with them. That’s adult clergy sexual abuse. And interestingly if someone’s 16, or 20, there’s nothing magical that happens when someone is 18. The same tactic someone uses to groom and exploit a 15 year old is the same that they would use to groom and exploit and be sexual with someone who’s 25. It’s the same dynamics. And so uncovering those dynamics, talking about how people are groomed, because that’s the thing, abusive leaders use the language, the culture, Bible verses, and even their authority, their pastoral authority, God is in this. So the Holy Spirit has told me; they use all that language to gain sexual access to somebody. And then when you look at that, it’s just grotesque, right? It’s predatory on the deepest level. Being able to just honestly have the conversation for the church to say, this is indeed happening in our midst. And we have very little in place to detect abusive people. We have almost nothing set up within our religious structures where people can go to report it, or a system that’s going to listen to it or believe the person.   DAVID POOLER 23:56 In my research, one of the things that’s most damaging, actually, to survivors is the church response. If that makes sense. It’s not just the nature of the injury itself. But it’s the way the institution fails to respond adequately, by believing them and supporting them and validating them and helping them get help, and then holding the abusive leader accountable or removing them from ministry or out of the way so they can’t harm anybody else. They we just tend to continue to elevate the abusive person and shove the victim right out the door, right? In the playbook of the evangelical world, but I’ll be honest, it’s beyond the evangelical world. I mean, there’s a case I’m involved with right now, where I’m going to be an expert witness, if you will, and it’s a much more progressive denomination. But the narrative is the same, oh, it was consensual. And it clearly was not. We really have a problem. And I’ll give you just a quick statistic. This is really old, but Diana Garland’s research going back to a study in 2009. She actually looked at what percentage of women who regularly attend church had an unwanted sexual advance from their church leader, and the unwanted sexual advance was framed in such a way, that it would be clearly wrong, if someone found out they would really have concerns about what had happened. But if you extrapolate this out to the average sized church and sort of the gender makeup of your average sized church. So if you take an average sized Church of 400, there would be seven women in every church of 400, in the United States, where this has happened. So again, it’s about 3%. So it’s not a huge amount, right? But it’s also something that we have to take very seriously. It is indeed happening. And I would say every church has someone who’s experienced some version of sexual exploitation or harassment by a church leader. We can have every year we do domestic violence months and things, but we ought to celebrate and honor those people who’ve been injured by clergy and say, you are among us. You are here. We care about you. We care about your experiences, and we know you’ve been injured within the church. And we’re doing something about it instead of just ignoring the problem.   Julie Roys  26:13 Well in this environment that you’re describing, where obviously we have predators, obviously, I’ll say allegedly, but it’s been certainly we have so many victims right now, or alleged victims that have come forth and said, Mike Bickle abused me, started when I was 14, or 15, or 19, depending on the particular story. But this seems like a man who was a serial predator, and preyed on the women that were under him, and had this persona of being hearer, and God spoke directly to him. And the angel Gabriel showed up, how could you possibly question this man of God? And then you have this whole history, this prophetic history, that seems like it was almost put on the level of Scripture. Like, you can’t question this history, like, this is what’s happened. And it was really so grandiose. I’m reading this, and I’m going, Whoa, like, Why didn’t red flags go up? And yet I heard from somebody recently who was like, yeah, it probably would have but he was accepted in mainstream evangelicalism, which to me is a whole other discussion. Like, why did nobody see that this was a problem? These are really grandiose things that he is claiming and stating very early on, and selling to impressionable young adults, men and women who are a part of this.   Julie Roys  27:30 But let’s talk about specifically at some place like IHOP where, and I’m not gonna say that abuse happens more at charismatic churches than non-charismatic, I’ve seen plenty at non charismatic. But I have to say, when you think that your leader is like God, in direct line with God, and you have this Moses model of leading, which is really an Old Testament, I won’t get into all of that. But I mean, this idea that God speaks to  your pastor like he spoke to Moses, and now he’s the Prophet and the word for you, or he’s the apostle and the word for you. And again, I see in the New Testament, a totally different thing where the gifts are available to everyone. There isn’t like one person who has a direct line to God. We all have a direct line to God in that sense. But speak to this particular system. What, again, we’re outsiders, although you are in the Church of God, which started with Assemblies of God, right? And the two were very connected.   DAVID POOLER 28:24 Same origins. Yeah, around the turn of the last century.   Julie Roys  28:27 Okay. And I was in Vineyard. There’s a lot that I absolutely love about charismatic denominations, and I love about the charismatic movement, and I’m not a Cessationist. But at the same time, I do think there are some things that are particular to these systems that can lend themselves to this kind of clergy sexual abuse.   DAVID POOLER 28:48 Absolutely. Yeah. Where I literally go back to is the clericalism. again. And I think it can be heightened in spaces like this, where you have a central charismatic leader, whose authority is almost unquestioned. Because what ends up happening is there’s a high level of dependence on everyone upon what they say, and what they do. What they say is okay, what they say is not okay. And it’s a diminishing of power among everyone else around their sense of personal agency, their ability to think critically, ask questions, dissent, push back, right? So none of that is tolerated. So when a system like that, if that leader crosses the line and wants to be sexual and says, it’s God’s will, no one’s gonna question, right? I mean, the system is set up to sort of make perfect victims; that it’s not just the IHOP system. There’s plenty of others, but we’re talking about that it literally sets people up to be exploited and victimized. I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but that’s it in a nutshell right there. And so one of the things I suggest in my research is a much deeper level of power sharing between leadership and laity, or congregants., right? A much more robust way of holding people accountable.   DAVID POOLER 30:12 The other thing I’ve struggled with is, so how do congregants benefit from clericalism? They don’t have to do as much work, they don’t have to do as much critical thinking, they don’t have to be at the table, being My Brother’s Keeper, really. They get to sort of offload all of that responsibility on to the leader. And the fact is, that’s not a great system. We need a much better system where people are empowered in congregations to really all be concerned about abuse, all be concerned about exploitation, and flip it to the other side to be concerned about flourishing, and well-being. And how do we have a really healthy congregation, right? Then if everyone’s really not at the table talking about that, and one leader is trying to tell you what a healthy thing is? You’re probably not. It’s probably going away off into the ditch, which is what we’ve actually seen had been happening at IHOP for years. There were people being injured and torn up and ground up under the machinery of this institution, right? In a sense people waylaid and victimized for years. And it just finally came to light. Because any dissent anyone speaking up or questioning or trying to bring it to light would have immediately been pushed out of the system. The system wouldn’t tolerate that.   Julie Roys  30:12 I’m trying to figure out how though, like when you’re in a system like that, I mean, you read the Scripture, it’s pretty clear. I mean, you have someone like Mike Bickle married, clearly shouldn’t be engaging in outside sexual activity. And yet, if you’re the recipient of his sexual advances, how do you put that dissonance together? And, and I know people are pushing back and saying, Well, okay, how did they not know that this was wrong? Or why when you’re in a system like that, what happens just psychologically, to put these two seemingly contradictory things together? How do you do that?   DAVID POOLER 32:09 Yeah. So honestly, your question gets at the grooming process. And what I’ve noticed with these predatory folks is they start creating a culture where more physical touch is okay. And most of the predators will test the people out, they’ll do a prolonged hug or other things. And they do this over months and months. And eventually, I can’t tell you how many times this happened. It would be so interesting to find out how many folks that I have this happened to, they’ll be like, Can I kiss your hand? and then can I kiss your neck? And then eventually, it’s a kiss on the lips. So it’s not just, you know, the adage of the frog boiling in the water; you don’t just drop them in the boiling water, it jumps out, or whatever. You slowly turn it up. These predatory folks have mastered grooming, and they will slowly blur and break boundaries over months and sometimes even years until they finally have the person have full access to them. And they’ll use whatever playbook they need, including the things I just talked about. But again, adding in the Scripture and those things. So by the time the person is, if you will, actually being sexual with the leader, they’re no longer trusting their intuition. So anytime someone’s intuition said something’s wrong, right? That’s the other thing about those systems is that intuition is tossed out like your gut reaction, that something is wrong, is squashed over and over and over to the point it doesn’t work anymore. So you don’t trust yourself at all. You’ve been socialized to trust the leader and their perspective.   DAVID POOLER 33:36 So in a sense, that’s how that dissonance occurs, its slowly broken down over time. So by the time sexual activity is actually happening, even though the person so honestly, the victim is actually I’ve heard this so many times, they literally feel insane. They  feel completely insane. Like, this can’t be okay, but yet, I’m being told it’s okay. What is wrong with me? It is an internal sort of soul injury of dissonance that’s ripping them apart. But yet they’ve been taught to conform, to stay in church and to keep trusting the leader no matter what because, of course, they know what they’re doing. God has called them, and God is in charge of this. All these things that get used to injure people. And this is the stuff we’ve got to really be talking about. In fact, I actually have a doctoral student right now. We’re working on a paper right now to identify the grooming tactics. So what we hope to do is spit in the soup of the playbook of predators, quite frankly, so that their playbook doesn’t work anymore. Maybe they’ll come up with new tactics, but at least the ones that have been regularly used and the survivors I’ve interviewed that won’t be accessible anymore. We’ll know how they do it. And so that when someone sees a leader doing something or saying something, they can trust their intuition that this information is now actually out for the public to consume and use to inform them to be, in a sense, a better citizen or a better participant or a better congregate, talk about this in the secular world, sort of the non-protecting bystander. We have so much of that going on right now in the church, where it’s like, I see something, I wonder, is that okay? Or when the pastor did that? But we’re just taught to where we don’t protect, we don’t intervene, we just stay back. Because that behavior of getting in and getting it messy, we don’t like that. But I honestly think that kind of messiness, and questioning, critical thinking is a part of what actually would make our churches way healthier.   Julie Roys  35:38 The problem is, you’re not allowed to question. If you say there is a problem, then you are the problem. I’ve interviewed so many people from IHOP, who said, Yeah, I would see women go into Mike’s office and spend an inordinate amount of time and like we didn’t have access to Mike like that. But why did these women who weren’t even necessarily very high up in the organization, were going into his office and spending all this time? Why are there locks on the inside of the office? Some of these things that are just bizarre, but he had ways of dealing with that. And I’m sure with his victims, when I’ve heard this from victims who thought they were in love their abuser, think they’re in love with their abuser. And then also think like with Ravi, it was like, you can’t expose me I need this because I’m under so much pressure. And I’m just human. And if I don’t have this kind of support from you, then I just can’t function and you’re critical to my functioning. And if you say anything, then oh, do you want to bring down the whole apologetics movement, or in this case, the whole prayer movement? You want that to be on you that you’ve just brought that all down? Even now, people are protecting the prayer movement. They’re protecting Mike’s legacy. They’re protecting something that has been shown to be fraudulent, not that the whole prayer movement is fraudulent. But certainly, whatever requires Mike Bickle as its foundation is not legitimate.   Julie Roys  37:00 What does a bystander do, though, and these are my sources that I talk to almost every day, right? And Brent in the story was a bystander, right? He’s a bystander, but he wasn’t just a bystander, if you believe his story, and I obviously did believe his story. Misty divulged a lot of these things to him, but then also confines him to secrecy. Like all of a sudden now, I remember when I was in youth ministry, when people would be like, I’m going to tell you something, but I don’t want you to tell anybody else. And I’d be like, no. Timeout timeout. You know, if there are certain things if you tell me, I’m responsible to tell somebody else. I’m trusting that you’re telling me because you trust me. And I will try to be trustworthy, but that trustworthiness may mean that I have to tell somebody about what you’re going to tell me. Let me just put that out there ground rules before you tell me anything further. Here’s Brent in this situation, though. Now he’s stuck with this secret. And what does he do? It’s ripping him up. It’s destroying him. What does he do? And what do bystanders do, or witnesses do in a situation where they see abuse? And if they come forward, as in this case, and this is a whole other dynamic too which maybe a follow up question to this is when the victim becomes part of the abusive system and begins harming other people? But what do you do as a bystander in that situation?   DAVID POOLER 38:20 Yeah, yeah, the complications are built into all of this. There’s not a pass, there’s not the one thing that you’re supposed to do. But I do think staying silent is not okay. And doing nothing is not okay. We have to do something. And I do think many people who bring up or confront a system where there’s a lot of power held in one person, or bring up something that’s of a major concern, they’re going to get injured by that system, because that system is protecting itself. And it’s protecting the power and the control that it has. And part of it is when someone’s bringing up something or pointing out something that’s wrong, or where there’s injury, it’s a threat to the system, if the system is that unhealthy, and it is abusive, it’s we don’t want to get found out. Yeah, so there’s no simple answer other than Yeah, I think people are going to have to take the risk and put their own neck out for someone else. Again, so anytime you stand up for someone who’s being injured, the likelihood of you being injured, too, is very high. It takes courage.   Julie Roys  39:29 It is and so often they do what they’re told to do in the church, which is go to your leaders within your organization. And sadly, those leaders within the organization they’ve been groomed to protect. And so they are going to as you say, they’re going to harm you. And people often say who made you judge and jury as journalists where we report on a lot of the stories? For one I’m not judge and jury. I report the facts. You’re the judge and jury. You are.   DAVID POOLER 39:59 Yeah. people make sense of what you’re reporting. Yeah,   Julie Roys  40:01 That’s right. I report the facts, you make sense of it. And I wish we didn’t have to exist. I wish the church had some sort of structures in place to police itself. And it does in some denominations. They don’t seem to be working very well, these structures that we have in place. I hope at some point, we at least I love that there’s 14 states where adult clergy sexual abuse is a crime as it should be. I hope that more states are like this. But it seems to me at the very least, there should be some sort of professional, just like when you’re a doctor, or therapist or whatever, there aren’t professional standards. I know, as a journalist, there are professional standards. You can go and read them, where the society professional journalists have put it out. This is what we adhere to, this is what we do. And we have to adhere to them. And if you don’t, then you can be disqualified. Do we need to get some system in place for licensing pastors?   DAVID POOLER 40:58 Wouldn’t that be great? The fact is, I think there is no way probably even in my lifetime that our society we can get there. Because currently what we have are different denominations that have varying ways of here’s the education that you know, some denominations might require having a Master of Divinity for ordination, some might require nothing. You can have a high school diploma or not even and go through a process. And you can get a ministerial ordination certificate online for free. It is the absolute Wild West, a completely unregulated space. Even though I agree, ideally, in an ideal world, absolutely, we should. But again, that’s the very nature of the question is why we have such a huge problem in our religious institutions right now is because of our lack of accountability. And so many people with power surround themselves by Yes men, yes women, yes people, right? who aren’t going to hold them accountable, who are just a part of that system of control and power and money. I mean, I don’t want to be too cynical. But I also want to be incredibly realistic. There are way too many leaders, if you will, doing what they do because it’s unregulated. They’re free to do whatever they want to do. They have an enormous amount of power and influence and money. And they’re going to keep doing it because it benefits them in an incredible way.   Julie Roys  42:26 Yeah. And unfortunately, I think there’s far too many pastors out there that don’t understand this and don’t understand this dynamic. And so they’re restoring these abusive pastors who, again, it’s not just a sin problem, I mean, there’s something deep, deeply wrong when someone is a predator like this and a serial predator. You don’t just confess it, and then go back to another church. Stephen Strang, who’s the CEO of Charisma Media, Charisma Magazine. He went on before Mike has given like a half apology that ever really isn’t an apology. He hasn’t even come close to owning this and repenting from this. And Stephen Strang saying, Oh, isn’t it a noble thing to restore people? I’ve always thought that was a noble thing. And so we just keep restoring these pastors. Talk about the pastor as a predator; should someone who’s abused somebody in this way ever be restored to a position of trust?   DAVID POOLER 43:26 In my opinion, after having done so much research on this, almost never. Like that would be the exception rather than the rule if anyone could ever return to ministry and influence people the way they had. Part of your question gets at something that I think we weaponize, which is forgiveness. We are actually using and weaponizing forgiveness as a shortcut. And actually, then what we do is we put the burden on the person who’s been injured, you just need to forgive. And once you’ve forgiven, then we can restore. It’s almost like forgiven, once we hear you’re okay, again, and that we’ll  put them back in ministry. So the burden is in the wrong place. The burden should be on the person who’s done the injuring, and go through an incredibly rigorous, even if they’re not restored in any particular way they need to make right the wrongs they’ve done. They literally need to take years to do the work to figure out what happened, why they did it, the exact nature of the injuries that they’ve caused, and figuring out ways to actually help heal those, right? That’s where the burden should be. So if someone were ever to be restored, it should be the exception. And to me, it would be years in the making. But typically what when we do remove someone from ministry, we send them off somewhere, and it’s not even really therapy, it’s some discipleship program somewhere that people go through for four months and say they’re restored, and we bring them back. That is completely inadequate. So I’m with you that yeah, in most of my writing, I’m just like, yeah, whenever this happens, it should preclude them ever having a job in ministry again. Because what for me as a social worker it would. If I were sexual with a client, I’d lose my license and I wouldn’t be able to work in my chosen profession. Why do ministers who have all this power and authority and esteem and represent God, get to just jump right back in? We’ve got it upside down right now.   Julie Roys  45:23 We do. And I think what people don’t realize is that, fundamentally, there’s deception at the core of this. So this is someone who is skilled at deceiving people. So how on earth do you know that this person is repentant? How on earth do you know if this person won’t reoffend? They’re a master manipulator and deceiver. You just don’t put people like that back in positions where they’re over people, and they have authority and a means of manipulating people. You just cannot do that. I look at certain pastors who have fallen. And I’m like, there are not enough years left in this person’s life to restore the trust they’ve betrayed. There’s just not. The only way you know if someone’s changed, is, over time, a long time in a community. And we’re sadly in a situation in evangelicalism where the pastor’s removed from community, especially in these mega churches, especially in these big movements, they’re removed from accountability, people don’t know them. And again, just ripe for this type of abuse.   Julie Roys  46:28 So, glad we’re talking about it. And I don’t want to not touch on something that I mentioned earlier, but we didn’t really dig into it. Talk about the victim, who then becomes a victimizer, who becomes a part of the system. I don’t know how common that is. I will say in my reporting, it hasn’t been all that common. But in this particular case, there’s at least some people saying there was Misty participating in some harm. I don’t think she saw it as that. But talk about that dynamic and how that happens, and how to deal with it.   DAVID POOLER 47:05 So to universalize, this on some level, we’ve all been injured, and we’ve all injured others on some level. So we can just sort of state that’s a fact about being human. But I would just say in my experience, most victims of adult clergy sexual abuse, they themselves do not go on to injure and harm others. However, I think some of the exceptions to that are when that person who potentially is being abused and injured is at the core and has power and has influence. And there’s something at stake in both the way that they’re protecting the system, and some of even protecting their own interests in some way, whether that’s financial, emotional, psychological, whatever that is. And I think when we’re backed into a corner, we’re likely to lash out and injure others. So it absolutely can happen. But I guess that’s the thing is like, where do you go back and tracing back by say, hurt people? Right? On some level, that’s exactly right.   DAVID POOLER 48:10 But I think what’s important in all this is teasing out some of these dynamics that, yes, someone may have been a victim, and then they have injured someone else in a certain way. They don’t get off the hook for that, right? They need to make that right, acknowledge that and own that. In any given day any of us can injure or heal. And I think part of what we have to just say is that all injuries are not the same. Right? When you’ve got a predatory person, deeply injuring someone who’s going to have major pain for the rest of their life. Right? I’ll just add a statistic. I just got a paper that’s under review right now. But 39% of the survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse that participated in my research, 39% have PTSD. The injuries are deep, abiding, and profound. This isn’t just a little fly by night, oh, this was no big deal. The data I’m looking at, are saying this is a huge deal. It’s causing post-traumatic stress disorder, a mental health diagnosis that has profound impact on how we function and think and navigate relationships. It’s a big deal.   Julie Roys  49:25  It’s not just adult clergy sexual abuse, the amount of spiritual abuse and what that does to people. I will never forget. And this was very early on in my reporting. When I was reporting on Harvest Bible Chapel and James McDonald and the harm he was causing people. And there was a couple that came over it was actually the former chairman of the board of elders at Harvest and his wife, and they had been out of the church for 10 years. They came over and I’ll never forget his wife was literally shaking, and she’s like, I’ve been out of it 10 years. She had never seen a counselor to get this diagnosis, but she’s like, I’m sure I have PTSD. She’s to this day and she was shaking, telling the stories; 10 years out of it.   Julie Roys  50:08 I remember somebody else I talked to said, his counselor asked him at one point, how often do you think about James McDonald? and he said at least seven times a week, because he knew daily, he still thought of the abuse that he had received. Again, no sexual abuse in this, just bullying and nasty spiritual abuse. And it is just such a scourge in our churches right now and something we don’t understand. And so I appreciate so much you reaching out. This is one story I have just agonized over before I published. I continue to agonize afterwards. Could we have framed something differently? I just think all of us, we need to be asking these questions need to be doing better at understanding it in the church and having more of these discussions. And so I’m very grateful for that. Is there anything that I haven’t brought up that as you’re looking at this particular situation, that you feel needs to be highlighted, or that we just haven’t explored yet?   DAVID POOLER 51:03 Maybe this is an interesting place for this to end. But around maybe the person who’s been injured, who thinks they’re in love with their abuser.   Julie Roys  51:13 Is that the Stockholm Syndrome?   DAVID POOLER 51:15 It can be, but I think, on its deepest level, is that this person has met a need for  the survivor. In other words, as a need for belonging, affirmation, feeling important, feeling valued, feeling essential, having a sense of purpose. And these predators actually exploit all of those very human normal needs that could be met in very healthy ways, as far as being a part of a congregation. But are met in a way that of course, you know, how I describe that grooming process. And it takes on a life of its own, but there’s this sense of this person loves me. And of course, and that I’m going to protect the person who I think loves me, and I love them, right? And so breaking that trauma bond, almost around that, is a huge part of recovery for people. I guess, if anything, I would just want to validate it’s a messy and complex journey for people. And what we’ve got to do better in the church is see it for the abuse that it is, and quickly come alongside people that have been injured in our midst and include them and embrace them and let them remain in our congregation. Because right now, the status quo is to push them out and exclude them and blame them and ask what they did wrong. Really, the reason we do that is our collective cognitive dissonance around the fact that we currently in 2024, have predatory leaders in our midst, all over the place, injuring people. We would rather believe that the church is wonderful, our churches are healthy, our churches are safe, our leaders are amazing. But it upsets our little utopia that we’ve created for ourselves.   DAVID POOLER 53:08 And so I guess that’s where I would end is that getting through this requires a depth of critical thinking, a depth of courage, a depth of awakening and self-awareness, a reckoning with ourselves in a way that the church just isn’t used to. But I think if the church can move in that direction, the church would be far more appealing to others. Look, here’s a place that’s wrestling with its own self, with its own questions, and its own failures in really authentic ways that are like really dealing with the hurts that had been caused and holding people accountable. Because right now, I can’t imagine people looking at some of the crises that are facing the church and being attracted to it at all. If anything, it’s gotta be nauseating, and repulsive. I don’t want anything to do with that.   DAVID POOLER 54:03 So that’s sort of my invitation, my call going back to just how messy this is. It’s being a Christian it’s not easy. It’s not for people who want an easy way or an easy path. In fact, it calls us to the depths of injuries and hurt. Yeah, even my own theology has changed as a result of looking at all of this, right? My theology is no longer super positive and super wonderful and just isn’t God great and isn’t being a Christian, super fun? No, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s grief. It’s so effort expended in ways I never imagined. But I honestly think, Oh, I’ll end with this. I think the survivors of this kind of trauma and injuries in our church actually are some of our future church leaders. They know best what a healthy church would look like. They know best what to avoid in a leader who would injure people. They know best what it’s like to actually heal from some of the deepest wounds that you could experience. Right? I don’t know, I have a lot of hope for where we are. But it’s going to include the voices of people who’ve been deeply injured in our spaces of adult clergy sexual abuse, spiritual abuse, some of the things that you cover and talk about. It’s those very people who are making their way through this that can lead us and bring us new light.   Julie Roys  55:29 I agree with that 100%. I think Phil Monroe, in the message that he gave to RESTORE in 2022 said something along those lines, and the sweetness when you are around survivors, and these are people whose faith has been through the fire, and some of them are clinging to just like barely clinging on to faith. But some of them also, if you come through this, and you even have a mustard seed left, that’s commendable. That’s all I can say. And so I think these folks are our teachers, they will be our teachers. And can I just say, with this particular story, I do pray for Misty, I really do. And I really, truly hope that she comes to a place of being able to tell her story truthfully to herself. She will find there is a great deal of love and support for her and for others who have been through similar things. Thank you, David. I so appreciate you joining me. I learned a ton, as always, just really wonderful. So thank you.   DAVID POOLER 56:33 Thank you, Julie. I so appreciate being here. What a privilege.   Julie Roys  56:37 And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And just a quick reminder, all of our content at The Roys Report is available free of charge. We don’t erect paywalls. We don’t make you pay for our conference talks. Everything is free and available to the public. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t cost us money to produce it. It does. And if you want to know how we spend our money, our financial reports are available on our donate page. All that to say we rely on your donations to do what we do. So if you believe in our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church, would you please help us out this month? To do so just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/3TQsIWujVnI Once you've experienced trauma, how do you heal? What should you look for in a counselor? What kind of therapy is right for you? And how do you take care of yourself as you begin your healing journey? In this edition of The Roys Report, discover answers to these questions and more in an in-depth talk from professional psychologist, Dr. Phil Monroe. It comes from his recent (and second) appearance at the Restore Conference. And you'll hear the wisdom and gentle demeanor that have made him a favorite among attendees. All too often, people who are traumatized don't know how to find the help they need. They may end up in the care of someone who wasn't qualified or able to help them. Or, in some cases, the person who was supposed to help them with trauma actually made their trauma worse. As a trusted voice in the survivor community and an expert in trauma, Dr. Monroe gives practical, actionable steps about what to do—and not to do—in one's healing journey. He talks about the ways trauma hinders all aspects of oneself. “You need to take care of your body—it's the only one you have,” he says. Healing from trauma isn't a journey anyone wanted to be on. Yet Dr. Monroe gives each of us strategies, tools, and even grace to take the time and energy needed for the path ahead. Guests Phil Monroe Philip Monroe, PsyD, is a psychologist who leads Langberg, Monroe & Associates, a private clinical practice in the greater Philadelphia area. He is the Taylor Visiting Professor of Counseling at Missio Seminary where he and Dr. Diane Langberg founded the Global Trauma Recovery Institute. Learn more at philipmonroe.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERS Julie Roys, PHIL MONROE PHIL MONROE  00:04 Once you've experienced trauma, how do you heal? What do you look for in a counselor? What kind of therapy is right for you? And how do you take care of yourself as you begin your healing journey? Welcome to The Roys Report a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys, and on this podcast you're going to hear a talk from our last RESTORE conference by Dr. Phil Monroe on the do's and don'ts of healing. Phil is a trusted voice in the survivor community. He leads the counseling practice begun by Dr. Diane Langberg, a popular author and globally recognized trauma expert. Phil is an expert on trauma as well and leads the trauma healing Institute at the American Bible Society, and he's a repeat speaker at RESTORE and someone whose wisdom and gentle demeanor has made him a favorite at the conference. But I especially appreciated his talk at the last RESTORE. So often I hear from people who knew they were traumatized and needed help. But sadly, they didn't know how to find the help that they needed. They ended up in the care of someone who wasn't qualified or able to help them. Or in some cases, the person who was supposed to help actually made their trauma worse. So, this is an incredibly important topic and one I'm eager for all of you to hear. Julie Roys  01:18 But first I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington. If you're looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you're looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That's because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out. Just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys  02:21 Well, again, the talk you're about to hear is from Dr. Phil Monroe from our last restore conference in October. Here's his message on the do's and don'ts of healing from trauma. PHIL MONROE  02:32 It's good to be here with you. And it is good to follow Carson and LoriAnne. Thank you for telling us your story. Thank you for shining light. It's costly when you tell your story. Even when you tell your story in front of a group of safe people, it's costly. And I bet some of you too, have been telling your story on the sides here of the room for coffee over lunch, and you've been telling parts of it. And you might find yourself at the end of this weekend exhausted. That's normal. That's what happens to us when we exert the energy to speak and to speak the unspeakable. So, I encourage you ,have compassion, take care of you. Think about what you're going to be putting into your body and what you're going to do the rest of this weekend when this conference is over. Because you will need recovery time. We all do. I also encourage you when the videos come out, play back Dr. Lena's, Carson's, and Lori Anne's parts where they're talking about how they recovered. Your journey will look different. It will be different; you have different stories, you have different guides, you have different geographies to traverse. But there's goodness in there to hear again from them, what it's been taking for them to heal, what did they need? What helped? This is the question that I get asked a lot and for why I came up here today. PHIL MONROE  04:19 How do we know if we're doing this journey right? This journey of healing it is a journey. Trauma is a wound that affects every part of your life. It hinders your ability to relate to your own self, much less your family, your friends, your community, and your faith. It takes a long time to heal. And it feels like this journey that we never wanted to be on that we never asked for, and we're in this foreign land that doesn't make any sense. And we're both somehow equally alone on this journey, but with a whole bunch of people on the sidelines yelling advice to us. And some of it might be helpful. A lot of it probably isn't. Right? So, this journey that you never wanted to be on takes energy and time. And so, let's take a few moments to just talk about, how do we know if we're doing it right? What is it supposed to be like this journey of healing? Carson talked this morning about, you know, doing it and feeling like he was making progress., and then going back down in the hole, I think LoriAnne said the same thing. This is what it feels like, we go a step forward, and 10 back. This is the healing journey. It's normal, it's natural. And you are doing it right. PHIL MONROE  05:52 I want to give you a little bit of a preview about where we're going. Well, I'll talk about a few things, a few hooks to hang some ideas on. We'll look at some of the myths that we believe that kind of interrupt our healing journey, we'll look at some of the red flags, I'll add to some of the things that LoriAnne said, some red flags about those helpers, those guides along the way that we should give pause to and consider whether or not that's the right person for us. And then end with some ideas about all the therapies that are out there that you've heard, and what you might do in order to try to figure out what's the right thing for me. Again, I'm not going to be able to tell you what that right thing is for you. But if we have some ideas, and things that can help us make that decision, then we might be in a better place. PHIL MONROE  06:47 So, let's start with three things that you can hang all of what we're going to talk on, on what it means to be on the healing journey, three hooks that you need. These are three things that no matter what model you use, no matter what kind of guide you're looking for, you probably need in your life. The very first thing is to take care of your body, to take care of you. Trauma affects every part of your life. It affects your body, your mind, your soul, your spirit, every bit of you has been impacted. And your number one activity is to take care of you. And to do it with compassion and curiosity. I'm going to repeat that a couple of times during our talk here, because I actually find it rather rare in our Christian environments. Somehow self-compassion sounds like self-ish. And curiosity seems dangerous, because we might ask  unlight questions, and we might come up with some answers of things that help that others think no, you can't do that. You need to take care of this body of yours. It's the only one you get. This has come to my attention more recently in the last couple of weeks, I hurt my back. You've seen me with a cane around here. This is a violation of my pride. So, I didn't bring it up here. But I needed it. And what happened is, I thought I was younger than I was, and I carried around a heavy backpack for a lot of miles, and then paid the price a few days later. What happened to me was, my muscles went into contraction, and I was immobilized. And even as I began to the healing journey, and getting physical therapy and medications and understanding what was going on with me, I didn't want to move, everything locked up. Any movement could bring that spasm back. And I needed guides and friends to say, you know, you can relax those other muscles that aren't working right now. I had to tell myself this over and over again. I had to think about, what does my body need? My instinct was to actually not move in order to not hurt. But I needed to remember no actually, movement helps. As one of my friends says, motion is lotion. It keeps you moving so you can move more. Right? So, this is the small little trauma that I experienced that lasted for about a week and I'm still recovering from it. But imagine if your body has been impacted by decades of trauma, how much more compassion we need to have and curiosity? It didn't do me any good to beat up my muscles and to tell them they shouldn't be this way. Right? And it won't do you any good to beat yourself up and think you should be better than you are. So, compassion and curiosity, finding out what helps it. PHIL MONROE  10:05 Similarly to this and related to this is what LoriAnne was talking about finding stability in a triggering world. Finding stability is your job number one on repeat, how do I find stability? You know that first stage that she was talking about? safety and stabilization? it never ends, it's not a stage that you do, and then you stop doing. You continue it. And even in a great weekend like this, where we're talking and we're naming truth, and you're getting vocabulary that makes sense for you, and helps you understand your story and helps you communicate that to other people. Right? You still need to find stability, you still need safety, you need to think about the things that helped me come back to ground. LoriAnne demonstrated this, in through the nose, hold, out through the mouth. You're communicating to your body that you're here. And that you can remember to breathe. PHIL MONROE  11:13 I'm pretty sure a bunch of you forgot to breathe during the last session. You held your breath. It's normal, it's what we do. But we can also remind ourselves to breathe, right? So, we take care of our bodies with curiosity and compassion, and we keep finding ground, we look for that stability. This is our main task. And it's not because you have some disability. It's because you're coming back to truth, you're coming back to present, you're coming back to the reality of where your body is at this present time. So those two things, no matter what you do, you'll be doing. And the third thing that you're going to do with this as well, is to begin your story again. Somebody took your story, hijacked it, told you things that weren't true, gave you false vocabulary, told you that you were the problem. That's what DARVO is, right? You're the problem. But in fact, actually, you're not. And so, each day, you begin your story again. It's the work of writing and rewriting the narrative of you. PHIL MONROE  12:31 Again, this can sound very egocentric, but it is the job actually, that God gave you. And he gave Adam and Eve the job of naming things as they were. He gives this to you too, to name things, and to know who you are. So, no matter all the things that we're saying here this weekend, and the things that might be helpful to you, don't forget these things – take care of you, find ground and stability, and keep on with the naming of things as they are. And starting your story again. It has not ended, there is a chapter that you're in. And we don't know how that chapter is going to end. But we look for it with compassion, and curiosity. PHIL MONROE  13:17 Now, these are the things that we want to do. But there are some barriers and boundaries that can get in the way, right? And some of those come from us, and some of those come from other people. So, I want to name these so that you have some thoughts about what are the things that could get in the way of my recovery of this journey and sort of take me down the wrong path? And so, let's name a few of these myths. PHIL MONROE  13:43 The first myth that I want to highlight is that we have some unhelpful views on what healing actually is. Right? And one of those unhelpful views is that healing should happen, and it should be all done and in the past, and that there should be no scars and no impacts in the future. I hear this over and over from my clients from other people who wonder, why is it that I still have triggers? You know, something happened today. I got a phone call. I got an email from somebody from my past, and I didn't know what was in it, and I had that reaction. Carson mentioned this morning, something can happen, and he might spend a few hours being unable to work, he's is transported to some previous experience. This, my friends, is part of the scars that we bear. It doesn't mean it will always happen or at the same level of intensity. But you are changed. Imagine this you are an elite athlete, and you have a career at that level. and you get a knee injury. Some of us might get a knee injury, and we might get it repaired and we get back out there and we're playing again. But we're probably not playing with the same vigor and vim that we used to have, we have to do it differently. Other of us, the knee injury is so severe that it's career-ending for being an elite athlete, and we have to navigate into other careers, other identities, right? So, one of the myths that we carry though is I should be healed, I shouldn't be bothered, and I should be able to talk about trauma without having a reaction. My friends, this is not going to happen. You know things that you can't unknow. In fact, if you did unknow them, you might be at greater risk to be harmed again. These are part of the treasures in dark places. And you bring those scars with you in your body. So, check with yourself. Do I have somewhat helpful views about what healing is? Let me add to these unhelpful views of healings. Healing means no grief. I'm going to tell you that grief and joy can commingle. Grief and happiness can commingle, grief and healing will commingle. A loss is a loss is a loss. Most of you in the stories I've heard have lost community. And when you come to certain times of the year, certain church traditions, certain things like this, you feel that grief deeply. That is not a sign that you haven't healed. It's a sign that you have grief and grief needs space to breathe. So again, watch about some of these unhelpful views of healing. PHIL MONROE  13:46 How about another unhelpful view of healing? My faith should be exactly the same as it was. My friends, your faith is different. Read the Psalms, you will see the psalmist contending with things. I used to go out in front of the procession Psalm 42. In the procession, I used to be out at the front leading the way to worship. And you can see in the Psalm he's saying, Not only am I not leading the way, but I have people accusing me and attacking me on the process. Where are you God? Well, this psalmist has a new worship tradition, lament. And lament is just as active and real and God-oriented as whatever great worship song you used to sing in a large community. Your faith has been changed, maybe for the better. But with scars and grief, but healing does not mean it looks like it used to. PHIL MONROE  17:45 And lastly, one more myth about our healing is we sometimes slow our healing down when we fall prey to the belief that God wants me to suffer so that he could show me his goodness. Unfortunately, we hear all that outside. But we also sometimes take this in. And I think there's some part of us that wants like, there's got to be meaning here. If I can just know that something good that God is giving me is coming, then I can tolerate all this. And I'm telling you, God's heart is broken and angry for what you're going through. He is enraged by it. And he says in Malachi 4, that you will be like calves leaping coming out of the stall on the ashes of those oppressors. That's going to happen. The belief that somehow the suffering that you're going through is God's wonderful plan for your life, is damaging. Now will good things come out of hard things? They often do, and many of you are testaments to that. The fact that you're here is a testament to that. PHIL MONROE  19:02 So, there are some of the myths. Let me talk about some of the red flags that can get in the way of our healing journey as well. Very similar to that if you have guides and helpers who want to make everything in your life spiritual, everything happening having a spiritual answer to it, that's all wrapped up with a bow, guess what? Run! Job had friends like this. Job had friends like this and look at what God has to say about them at the end of that book. So, when you have guides that are wanting to make everything spiritual and give a nice happily ever after ending to that, then that might not be the right person for you. Coupled with that, when you articulate things about your faith that they don't like, how do they respond? Do they want to correct you? fix it? challenge you? Not everything I say about my faith is correct, something a should be challenged. Maybe you're hearing some now, but how they challenge that matters, right? When you feel like you're not allowed to think something, believe something, feel something, that's a sign this person might not be the right person for you. PHIL MONROE  20:18 Another red flag, how focused are they on the techniques, the new technology? We'll talk about that in a minute about the various counseling models, but how focused they are on doing stuff to you? If somebody seems way too interested in doing some new thing they learn to you, maybe that might not be the right person for you. And if you resist that, or you are flooded by what they're doing, you are overwhelmed by it, do they notice? does it matter to them? You know, as a therapist, I can tell you, I've made a lot of mistakes in my career. Hopefully, I can see that they're happening, or I'm told afterwards, and we have a corrective moment. Whereas I become the student again and learn what helps them. So, when somebody is doing something to you, or with you in a session, or telling you something and you're not responding well to it, does it matter to them? Are they curious about you? Do they have compassion? Or are they irritable, defensive, explaining, talking too much, telling you why what they're doing is actually the right thing, and that you should be thankful? These are signs that you might not have the right person. Along with that, is there a pressure to progress? Why aren't you getting better faster, so that I can, as a therapist feel better about myself? Unfortunately, I love therapists, I am one I've been one for a long time, I supervise a bunch of great therapists. But I can tell you that not all of us are in this for the right reasons. And you can see that when somebody needs their clients to get better, faster, so that they feel better. How much do they talk about themselves? another red flag. If at the end of the session, you didn't get to talk about the most important things that you came to talk about, that's something you want to talk to them about, and see if they're open to changing how they do things. PHIL MONROE  22:24 And finally, last red flag, boundary crossings. You know, I've talked to many victims who are being helped by someone. And then they're also then telling me oh, and by the way, I'm managing their books, I'm helping to write their books, I am helping in their practice, I am doing things. We call that boundary crossings. Look, therapists are people too, and they need friends, but not you. You need friends who aren't your therapist. So here are some red flags, some myths that get into the way of their healing. PHIL MONROE  23:12 So, let's move at this point into talking a little bit more about some of the essential items that you do need. We gave three hooks at the beginning. remember? taking care of your body, right, the first one second one, finding ground and stability, and meaning making, rewriting your story again and again. Now let's flesh that out a little bit. What will that look like? And as we end, at the end of this, we'll be talking about some of those models that might be used. But again, the focus is not so much on the models, but the DNA, the kinds of things that show up in a particular form of therapy and healing activity. Like I said, I was going to repeat this – compassion and curiosity is an essential item that you take on this journey. I want to ask you, think for a moment, when you're struggling, and then if you're not traumatized, you love somebody who is, and you see them struggling. How often do you hear self-critical language come out of their mouth? What do you feel when you say those things? Defeated? discouraged? ashamed? hopeless? It's interesting that we go there. It's understandable that we go there. Because that's the message that we are often given either implicitly or explicitly that you're the problem. I said this last year here that when we are traumatized, we have two enduring questions that we ask over and over again, why? and how do I get out of this hell? And unfortunately when we're traumatized, we come to the same answer for both questions, why? Because there's something wrong with me. And how do I get out of this hell? And why am I not getting out of it? Because there's something wrong with me. Right? So, compassion and curiosity need to be your friends. How can you begin to encourage that? Plant those seeds, ask your friends to look for that as well. They don't need to give you long lectures about it. They just need to help you identify what is true about you. What is true about your body? What helps you feel just a little bit better? When you're feeling overwhelmed by trauma, nothing feels like it will help you feel better. When I was in the throes of my biggest spasms, nothing seemed to help. But you know what? small movements did, and I had to accept that, you know what? it really is getting a little bit better. How about for you? What are those little things that only made me make it better 5%? Can you do it? Can you do it again? And can you begin to make that list of things that care for you? Maybe for you it's some music. Maybe for you, it's just going outside and looking at a leaf. What helps you just a little bit? PHIL MONROE  26:27 Compassion and curiosity are necessary. It means not beating yourself up during or after something happened. Any more than you'd beat yourself up for having a migraine or back injury. Right? It's exhausting to do this work. And it's harder when other people around us are encouraging us to think less of ourselves. So, part of your compassion and curiosity may be distancing from some of those voices. Second thing you need with you on this journey is community. That's been said multiple times. And I agree with LoriAnne Thompson as well that you also need a community outside of social media and digital community. There is some good in that community, as also we see lots of bad. Sometimes we feel heard and understood, we read somebody else's story, and that helps us understand something about ourselves. That's good. But that needs to be highly limited. You need real people that you can see who you can touch if you want to and allow them to touch you if you want them to. And who will listen to you say the same story, like Carson said, hundreds of times. You need this community. These are people who are committed to listening, rather than talking, cheerleader more than coach, right? Together, you and that community are going to be looking for life outside of trauma. That means you're going for a walk together, that means you're taking in a play, that means you're listening to something, you're exploring some creative arts. This community is essential. No one heals alone. You weren't designed to be alone, and the damage was done in community. So, you're going to need to find it. But it might be a community of two, rather than the big community that we have lost, right? PHIL MONROE  28:28 Find a therapist and a professional. Thank you, LoriAnne, for saying that. I do believe in licensed mental health professionals. I also know that those people aren't always the right for you. So, find someone who will be your guide who goes at your pace. Your pace is the most essential thing that matters here, not their pace. If you're going too fast, they may ask you to slow down. And I love the image that you gave us, the slow down. But maybe we could say it a little quieter a little bit more gently. It's okay to slow down. We want to get to the end really quickly. But oftentimes we cannot, but your pace matters. When you ask to slow down or not do something, how do they respond? Do they pressure you? Do they withdraw? Right? Do they give you too many words explaining themselves? Or are they curious about what's happening in you right now and what might help right now? And one more thing about that professional. If you notice that they label your resistance and your reticence and your tendency is not to do something as refusal as a bad thing resistance, this is a concern. Your resistance is part of your healing. You see, trauma takes your voice and your power away from you. And you learning to use it and your no is essential. Maybe later you'll say yes to something that you said No today, it doesn't matter. So, watch out if your professional labels you as a resistor. Take that as a badge of goodness and find someone else. PHIL MONROE  30:25 Two more little points here before we talk about models, but one limit yourself to others exposure, others trauma. We've had a lot of exposure to different trauma here. This is good for weekend, it's not good for everyday life. With a little bit tongue-in-cheek, sometimes you might not want to read Julie's next post. You know, it's really good, somebody needs to read it, many people need to read it, but you might not need to read it today. When we listen to other people's pain, it triggers our own reactions. And then we need to take care of ourselves. So, find your right pace and the right amount. And finally, finding life outside of trauma means finding all the opposites to trauma and making sure they're in your life. If you had chaos, find order. If you had ugliness find beauty. If you had silence, find voice, right? What are the opposites that you need to have in your life on a regular basis? PHIL MONROE  31:25 So, with that, let me take the last few minutes to talk about these various models. If you have thought about going to see a therapist, you've probably heard of all sorts of different models and ways of treating trauma. Right? You might have heard things about the difference between licensed and unlicensed biblical counseling, Christian counseling. You might have had things that are focused on I don't know cognitive-behavior therapy, trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy, DBT dialectical behavior therapy, prolonged exposure PE, EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, tapping, CPT, cognitive processing, brain spotting, narrative exposure therapy or NET, ACT, EMDR PFA, debriefing, somatic psychotherapies, neurofeedback. Or if you're really on the cutting edge, you're hearing all about ketamine, or transcranial brain stimulation, right? Acupressure, yoga, art, exercise, the list is long. And it's overwhelming and confusing to those of us who are just looking for something to help. With this long list, you probably hear people said, This one here was a miracle for me. I'm so much better. And at the same time, you probably heard someone else say that same one didn't work for me. It leaves us confused, doesn't it? wondering, what can we do? Well, you can do a lot of work on Google, I'm not going to do that here. Some of them have a lot more scientific efficacy behind them. I will also warn you that sometimes when you get a disciple of a particular model, they promise a whole lot more than the original creators and the researchers of it did. So, watch out for somebody who has one single thing that will solve all your problems. It probably won't. PHIL MONROE  33:15 What do you need to see? And how might you process the information to find the right person? The first thing I want to say to you is interview your therapist. If you don't have one, and you're going to find one, interview them. Take that first session and make sure you have time to ask them questions or even before the first one. Ask them about what model do they approach? How do they deal with the different kinds of trauma out there? Who do they read? Who do they look for to help educate them? That doesn't mean they are as good as those people they read, but it means something to you about what kind of background do they have? What do they know? And if they get resistant to you asking these questions, thank them and find someone else. PHIL MONROE  34:04 When you get into a treatment, here are some things that you might see in all of those ones that I listed, that are essential to be there. A significant focus on grounding, calming, stabilizing. This is not just something you do in the first couple of sessions, and then move on to the deep dark part of your stories. It is something that needs to be a part of every session you do. And in fact, if you have someone who wants to get into your trauma story, and leaves you right up to the 59th Minute of a 60-minute session, and let you go out bleeding, so to speak, and not giving you time to recover in that session, that's also a little bit problematic on our end, right? So, in your sessions you should see things that are about grounding and calming, and finding things that work for you. Obviously, there will be some exposure to the trauma story, right? And when that happens, do they leave you triggered, and distressed and overwhelmed? Or do they bring you back to the surface and back to the present in a way that helps you calm yourself again? There will be a narrative focus about who are you? Who is God? Who is the world? What are your strengths? things like that. There'll be grief work. These are all parts of almost every one of these therapies that you have. PHIL MONROE  35:31 But most important, not the model, but the interactions that you have with this therapist. Do you, at the end of the session, feel heard? Do you at the end of the session feel a little bit understood? Did you talk about the things that were important to you? Do you feel a growing sense of trust, even while you're afraid of trusting again? Those are the messages that you want to listen to in your own body. Your therapist can't do your healing for you. And they can't know always how much pain you're in. So, if you feel like this is not something we can talk about in the session, that could be a problem. So, look at those interactions that you're having with them. Do they judge you? Do they get angry with you? dissatisfied with your resistance? Or do they actually take joy in saying this is great, I'm so glad you're speaking up? What would work for you now? PHIL MONROE  36:41 Friends, this journey that you're on, the one that you never wanted to be on, is here in front of us, you're not going to go back to your old way of life. There'll come a day when you'll be glad for that. But right now, it might be hard. It's going to take time. This is your grief. But journeys do also bring us to new friends, bring us to new vistas, to new observations, to seeing a little bit of our aliveness in a new way. I think you heard that from Carson and LoriAnne capture that snapshot. You know, Psalm 19 tells us, the heavens declare the glory of God, the sky's display his craftsmanship. The psalmist is saying creation reminds me of God's goodness. In fact, it says that they speak without words and their message is clear. Creation. You are God's creation. You speak a message even when you don't speak,. Your presence here speaks that message. Never forget. And never let anybody else tell you anything else. But you declare the glory of God, even when you're in a pool of your own tears. Julie Roys  38:02 What an affirming message and that's so true. So often when we've experienced trauma, we feel broken and damaged. And we are but so was our Savior. And our brokenness doesn't make us any less beautiful in some ways, especially as God begins to heal what's broken. Those wounds in our history become part of what's especially beautiful about us. Well, again, that message is from our last RESTORE conference, and we'll be announcing the next RESTORE soon. So be listening for that. And as I'm sure you're aware, many groups charge for conference talks like the one you just heard, but we've decided to make them available free of charge because we believe the content is so necessary for the restoration and health of the church. Yet producing these videos costs money as did bringing in experts to speak at RESTORE. So, if you appreciate this ministry, would you please help us out by donating to help us offset these costs to give just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won't miss any of these episodes. And while you're at it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

The Great Sex Rescue turns 3 this week! And it's been a super eventful three years. So much has changed. So let's talk about the feedback we've had, what we've done since, what people are saying--and where we're going from here.To Support Us:Join our Patreon for as little as $5 a month to support our workOr, for tax deductible donations in the U.S., support our Good Fruit Faith Initiative through the Bosko FoundationAnd check out our Merch at our store, or any of our courses!Things Mentioned in the Podcast:The Great Sex Rescue!  Learn more, or get it right from Amazon.Our Healthy Sexuality Rubric where we scored the books we looked at for The Great Sex Rescue.Our podcast where we discussed how the authors we critiqued had responded to The Great Sex Rescue.The article on Julie Roys' site about Focus on the Family deleting comments on the Reel where Juli Slattery used our talking points. Juli Slattery's reel on Focus on the Family's Instagram pageThe Bodies Behind the Bus podcast where Joy tells her story about The Great Sex Rescue (we're near the end) (and here's part 2!)Future Speaking Events:Grand Rapids, MI: Sheila and Rebecca will be at Calvin University on March 13 and 14 . March 13 at 4:30; March 13 at 7 pm for a panel discussion; and March 14 at 7 pm. More details here.Belleville, ON: St. Thomas Anglican Church in Belleville, Ontario is throwing a party for us to celebrate The Great Sex Rescue and She Deserves Better! We'll have blackout poetry crafts and other paper crafts to do with toxic books (bring them along!), a silent auction, a Q&A, and more. March 23, 2:30 - 5:00 pm. All welcome.Join Sheila at Bare Marriage.com!Check out her books: The Great Sex Rescue She Deserves Better The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex and The Good Guy's Guide to Great Sex And she has an Orgasm Course and a Libido course too!Check out all her courses, FREE resources, books, and so much more at Sheila's LinkTree.

Guest Bios Show Transcript Everything rises or falls on leadership. Ever heard that line? Think about what it means when applied to a pastor's role in a church. What about the priesthood of all believers? And where is Jesus in that equation? In this edition of The Roys Report, veteran church planter and pastor, Lance Ford, challenges popular views of leadership, showing how they're the opposite of what Scripture teaches. In the Body of Christ, the pastor is not the head; Jesus is! In 2012, Lance Ford's landmark work UnLeader exposed how unbiblical models of leadership have become an obsession in the church. Now The Atlas Factor, which is about shifting leadership onto the shoulders of Jesus, serves as a sequel to that book. One of the most eye-opening truths of The Atlas Factor is that leadership, when presented as a key to organizational success, is a relatively new concept. The multi-billion-dollar industry built around teaching and training people in leadership—in both the corporate world and the church—has emerged only within the past 40 to 50 years. And this model of leadership didn't come from Scripture; it came from the world. Lance was featured in a recent podcast with his message from the Restore Conference titled, “It's the System, Stupid.” If you caught that message, then you heard a preview of what Lance and Julie delve into in-depth in this podcast. Lance's prophetic message is a clarion call to the church to return to Jesus' way of doing things—or continue to face disastrous consequences. Guests Lance Ford Lance Ford is an author, church planter, coach, and consultant who has designed unique training systems currently being used by networks, seminaries, and leaders throughout the world. He has written several books including The Atlas Factor, UnLeader, The Missional Quest, and The Starfish and the Spirit. Lance holds a master's degree in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. Learn more at LanceFordBooks.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSLANCE FORD, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:04Everything rises or falls on leadership. Ever heard that line? Certainly, great leaders can make a big difference in the success of an organization. But think about what that line applied to the church really means. Does everything rise or fall on the pastor? What about the priesthood of all believers? What about the body of Christ, where each member plays a vital role? And most importantly, what about Jesus? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and joining me today is Lance Ford, who spent decades planting and pastoring churches. And recently we published his talk from the RESTORE conference where he argued that so many of the scandals and issues that we see in the church today stem from our toxic model of leadership. Well, today you’re in for a treat, because Lance is joining me to discuss his new book, The Atlas Factor. And this book eviscerates the conventional wisdom that leadership is everything. In fact, one of the most eye-opening things I learned in this book is that leadership is a relatively new concept. Sure, there have always been people who lead and manage organizations. But leadership as this thing that’s crucial to the success of organizations is relatively new. And certainly, the industry that’s been built around teaching and training people in leadership in both the corporate world and the church is super new, like within the past 40 to 50 years. But I think the pressing question, especially in the church concerns whether these notions of leadership we’re training pastors to follow are actually biblical. And if they’re not, what’s the alternative? We’ll dig into those questions in just a minute.   Julie Roys  01:46 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity, to check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  02:49 Well, again, joining me is Lance Ford, a church planter, coach, and consultant who spent decades pastoring and planting churches. And out of that experience and biblical study, he’s designed unique training systems that are being used by seminaries, church networks, and leaders throughout the world. Lance is also the author of several books, including one of my favorites called Unleader. This book exposes the obsession in the church to unbiblical models of leadership. It’s fantastic and eye opening. And Lance’s latest book, The Atlas Factor, is essentially a sequel to Unleader, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites as well. So, Lance, thanks so much for joining me. I’m really, really looking forward to our discussion.   LANCE FORD  03:29 It’s always one of my favorite things to do is visit with you, Julie.   Julie Roys  03:32 I’m glad to hear that. And I should mention that you also are a recent addition to The Roys Report board. So, we’re pretty excited about that. But I know you spoke at RESTORE and I heard from so so many people, but our board as well, just saying, hey, we need to get this guy on our board. So just really, really glad for all the wisdom that you’re going to bring to the board. So, thanks for being willing to do that.   LANCE FORD  03:55 Well, it’s a huge honor to be invited to be a part of y’all. The boardroom didn’t get smarter because I showed up it probably got a little dumber When I joined.   Julie Roys  04:04 I do not believe that. But as I mentioned, you spoke at RESTORE and gave a great talk on toxic leadership and  our obsession with it and probably had the best line of the entire conference I have to say, which became the title of the podcast that we put out with your talk, which is, It’s the System, Stupid! Just briefly for those who didn’t hear your talk, which if you didn’t hear Lance’s talk, it’s the System, Stupid!, I think it was like back in mid-December, we published that. Go back and listen to his talk. It is so so good. But talk about what you meant by that, that it’s the system stupid.   LANCE FORD  04:41 I think probably Julie one day I was probably somewhere along the midst of listening to The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill  podcast, and I was just thinking, they just keep talking about symptoms, symptoms. They never get to the solution, and I just said it out loud. It’s the system stupid. And it reminded me, James Carville’s deal with Clinton. It’s the economy stupid. So that’s kind of where that came from is that all these problems that we have are downstream from a messed-up system. And you can’t just deal with the symptoms and try to throw drugs at the symptoms. You have to bandage the wounds, pouring the oil on the wine, that’s necessary to say the least. Well, let’s do some preventative medicine. Let’s go back to the headwaters of this thing and try to nip some of this stuff in the bud. And it just seems that the answer almost every time, especially internally, from the groups that are in the midst of these falls and these breakdowns in leadership, usually their answer is, well, we just need better accountability. But it’s the same type of what they call accountability. So rare is it that when you hear a group say, well, we need new leadership, they don’t mean they need new leadership systems. They mean, we need a new hero leader.   Julie Roys  06:05 Yeah. Oh, exactly. I mean, I remember when Rick Warren was stepping down. And of course, there’s all sorts of issues with Andy Wood, who was picked as his successor. And we’ve published many articles on how he apparently is a horribly abusive leader. But he’s now in that position. And when I heard the language, though, it was like we need to find a successor for Rick. And I thought, really, who can be the successor to Rick Warren, and who is capable of being in a position over so many churches and having so many people following you? And I sit there and wonder, because there’s this idea that there’s going to be this really good, noble, full of integrity leader that can handle those kinds of pressures. And I sit there, and I look at that, and I’m like, I don’t know that I can handle that. That’s an awful lot to shoulder. And I think that really is at the root of what you’re talking about in this book, The Atlas Factor. The metaphor is great of you know, Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. But essentially, that’s what we’ve set up leaders to be, to be Atlas, to do the impossible, and then we’re surprised when they fail. Here’s a quote that’s very early in your book from the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, they’re irrefutable.   LANCE FORD  07:15 Be careful, Julie.   Julie Roys  07:17 But the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is this quote from LeRoy Eims, “a leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees further than others see, and who sees before others do.” And then there’s the quote that I said at the beginning of the podcast, that “everything rises or falls on leadership.” It’s almost like we have made these men into gods; talk about that whole dynamic and what it’s doing to pastors.   LANCE FORD  07:47 The thing about the typical the prevailing leadership system in the overwhelming majority of churches today, it puts a weight up on the senior, and I might as well just say senior guy, cuz 99% of them are guys. But there are a few women in senior leadership positions, but just the job description, and then even the unwritten expectations that are placed upon them. I know I was a pastor for well over 20 years and was a church planter and a senior pastor for 10 years. So, if you just look at the job description, you’re basically the CEO. In fact, some of them call themselves CEOs, you’re the face of the church, the organization, you’re the top fundraiser, you are the top theologian, you’re supposed to be a marriage expert, a family expert, a child rearer. I mean, just go on and on and by the way, you need to give 45 to 50 fantastic talks a year too. No one’s built for that. And certainly when you go to the New Testament of any description of any type of leadership in the church, you don’t see that. In fact, Paul mentioned several times that he wasn’t even a good speaker. So, it’s a burden. And so that created the metaphor for The Atlas Factor for the book. It’s the weight of the world. It’s like Atlas, and a lot of people look at Atlas and they go, he was this hero. No, that was a punishment, Zeus gave him the punishment of having to hold the weight of the world on his shoulders. It’s out of order. It’s a misalignment. So, a lot of these pastors are victims too; Even the ones that don’t abuse, they’re being abused by this system of expectations, this fault system of leadership as it’s been cast upon them. And then of course, the ones as you said, that are narcissistic, have the tendencies, then they take that power, and then they become the abusers. And basically, then they take that weight, and they place it up on the shoulders of their staff or the volunteers and church members, and then they crush others with that weight.   Julie Roys  09:49 I have heard that so much from these churches where there is this big celebrity pastor, and they have to put on the big show and it’s really impossible to do. I mean, I have I always said, When my husband and I used to be youth pastors and we always said, The World entertains better than we do. So, if you want to be entertained, like go see a movie, go to all those things, but in the church, we’re gonna focus on worship and prayer and discipleship and Bible study. That’s what we do. But I think we’ve gotten away from that. And we’ve certainly gotten to this model where man we have to put on the show every week, and it’s crushing. And the staffs are getting crushed too. You quote this in your book that there’s a 2021 Barna study, 38% of pastors say they’ve considered quitting within the past year. And then if you look at pastors who are just 45 or younger, that jumps to 46%. So, I mean, if this plays out, we’re looking at a crisis in the church, we’re not going to have pastors willing to take these jobs.   LANCE FORD  10:45 Yeah well, there’s some stats that came out, I forget if it was Barna or who it was a couple of weeks ago. But it said that right now, currently, between four and 5000 pastors a month, are leaving the ministry. So you’re talking about a huge under the watermark in the boat of the church right now. So not only are people leaving the church, but you’ve got pastors leaving the church. So, it is a crisis, as you said.   Julie Roys  11:09 Although, I have to say at the same time, like I’m in this small house church, and he said recently, if we get a pastor, I’m gone. I’m gone. I mean, I think we’re a unique group, because there’s some pretty highly competent, mature Christians in there. So, you kind of have more leaders than you know what to do with. So, God help the pastor that would come in and try to pastor that. But yeah, I think there is sort of a suspicion about pastors. But really, because I think exactly what you’re talking about in this book is that we have merged this idea of leadership that really is worldly based with, we’ve kind of baptized it in Christian lingo. So that now so many people think that leadership, the way it’s being taught, you know, by people who claim they’re Christian, so that, you know, this must be biblical, is biblical. But leadership, it’s not really talked about very much in Scripture is it?   LANCE FORD  12:03 It’s not that there’s not leaders in Scripture, there’s leaders all throughout Scripture, but the leadership system as we know it today, in fact, leader or leadership is not even mentioned. It’s like, a half a dozen times in the entire New Testament. And it’s not spoken favorably, most of those times. But if you really get down to it, and I do try to make a delineation between attorney leader in leadership, because it’s become such a in our nomenclature today, but it’s a real new term. I’ve said that before some well-known authors that immediately react, and just like push back. Okay, first off, definitely, there’s been leadership forever. And it’s been studied. I mean, the Chinese going back to the 1300s. I mean, you can look at Plato and Machiavelli and others that studied leadership, but not leadership as we know it today. And what got me on this was just doing some research on it. And I just got curious one day and thought, Well, I’m gonna look up the word leadership. And I went to my old 1955 Oxford Dictionary, which is probably the best because it gives the evolution of words. And it wasn’t even defined there. I couldn’t even find the term and a definition, I finally found at one time in about a seven- or eight-word definition for the word leader, but then it didn’t even define leadership. That pushed me back further, you start reverse engineering, you know, how you are doing research, and I found the 1915 Webster dictionary. The word leadership was not even in there. And that really took me down a rabbit hole of finding out after just doing a couple of years of research, in searching even secular scholars that had done research on the word leadership and come to find out you couldn’t even find the word leadership until the mid-19th century. So, you’re not finding publications anywhere that mentioned it until the early 1900s. Even the term. Now the reason I say that, and it should stand out to us as a stark contrast, because leadership is an $87 billion dollar industry today. 87 billion, I mean, that’s more than entertainment, media and everything put together. So, it’s a huge thing that’s evolved over the last 100 years. And it didn’t even really start entering in the church, which is a gigantic thing in the church now, it didn’t even start entering into the church until I would say the 1970s. Because you can’t even find a dozen books with the term leadership in the title, even in the 1960s. So, it’s a really new thing. And now, and I say it as its defined, because you could interchange the word management and you’d be just fine because that’s really what it is. It’s management theory. It goes back to Peter Drucker 1966, his famous book, The Effective Executive. There were some significant church growth leaders took that book, they parlayed it into the Church Growth Movement because some leaders such as Robert Schuller, for instance, with Crystal Cathedral, Robert Schuller doesn’t get enough if you want to call it credit or blame for really being the biggest shaper of what we have today. And my research bears this out. You can track Bill Hybels in Willow Creek, they go right back to Schuler, although they scrubbed a lot of that from their history, because Schuler became so controversial that they just didn’t want to be associated with him. Rick Warren was a disciple of Schuler. Schuler was a disciple of Norman Vincent Peale. That’s where he got all of his positive thinking and everything. But then all of them went to Peter Drucker to get the management systems. And then Bob Buford, who created Leadership Network, which a lot of people, the listeners would say, I’ve never heard of a guy named Bob Buford. Well, he was way behind the scenes. But he was hugely shaping of what we have today with Leadership Network and funded and raised up and platformed and helped develop a lot of those leaders such as Hybels and Warren and others. And then a lot of the newer leaders that lead these prevailing, what I call Neo attractional churches today, their heritage, the family tree goes straight back to Peter Drucker and these management systems. And these management systems just conflict with what Jesus said Matthew 20, of the Gentiles, or the world systems; it’s a metaphor, he where if he was in the Old Testament would have said, The Babylonians or the Egyptians. But when he says the Gentiles practice dominating one another, or lorded over one another, it will not be this way among you. But the first will be last, the greatest will be the servant, which basically was pushing back against power, and against dominating one another in any system in his kingdom. But that’s the very thing that we have today. And it goes right back to management systems that we imported straight into the church.   Julie Roys  17:06 And you alluded to this, that we don’t see lead or leader much in Scripture. You write, and this was in Unleader as well, and this just blew me away, that we see the word disciple 260 times, as opposed to leader. Leader, I think is mentioned like seven times. So, it’s a 37:1 ratio. We used to think of the pastor as the shepherd. Even when I was a kid, that was really the prevailing metaphor was that our pastor was the shepherd, that changed. And I remember even when I was at Willow Creek because my husband and I spent several years there. And I just remember Hybels talking about how they had found shepherds to do the shepherding within the church, because he didn’t do it. It was kind of like, yeah, they have been put in as pastors, but they’re really more Shepherd. So, we’re putting them over here to let them Shepherd. Meanwhile, I’ll do the pastor thing, which is being the great orator and charismatic leader, and all that. And that became our model for pastor and then of course, Bill Hybels brought in so many worldly leadership. In fact, if you go and read about the Global Leadership Summit, like I’ve read some of the articles that were published in secular publications saying, Man, this is like the best business school that’s out there, like, I know, it’s at a church, but this is like, this is a great business school. Everybody in business, whether you’re a Christian or not, whatever you profess, just go to this really good. And we love that as Christians, because we constantly were seeking the world’s affirmation, which is really sad. Like we wanted that credibility in the church. So again, you’re putting language into things I felt for so long, and that the research in your book, you even go back farther, and I found some of this stuff that gave birth to our modern leadership movement was fascinating. And you start with 1840s, 1900, around there with this thing called Great Man theory. Describe what this is, and how it’s impacted our view of leadership today.   LANCE FORD  19:01 Great Man theory was the prevailing ideology of where great leaders came from. That was the term that they used. And so, when you go back and you look at even, I was able to even trace back and find some of the speaking topics for some conventions, conferences that were taking place back in the 1920s and 1930s. And so Great Man theory was basically the idea that leaders are born, they’re not made. And so, you’re gonna think about Teddy Roosevelt, you’re gonna think about Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, people like this, that just have this ability to lead, and you can’t make it. So that that would that would mean there’s a real limitation if you don’t happen to have a great man walk into the room, you know. So, then they started studying the traits of the great man and that about 20 years after Great Man theory was the prevailing theory. Then by the 1930s, 1940s was what was called Trait Theory, and they basically were studying the traits of the great man and saying, Well, maybe it’s possible that we can teach these traits, we can mimic these traits, and we can actually make great leaders. That’s how it started evolving. Then there became for a while it became what was called Group theory, which they said, well, leadership really is an effect upon a group of people. They actually started getting a little closer to what was right about what  I would call leadership, that leadership is a fruit product. It’s not a position, I would say a faithfully following Jesus as a servant. But then they moved away from the group theory, and that really went back into a person at the top. And then Management theory, by the 1950s, to corporate America, and the Industrial Revolution had matured and was getting old by that time. By that time, it really became Management theory. And then we replaced it with the word leadership. And like you said, earlier, Julie, I was just reflecting a while back and thinking, you know, when I was growing up, if you walked into a Denny’s, there were no Starbucks back then. So, if you walk through a breakfast place, and let’s say that there was and we used to have in small towns, they would call it the Ministerial Alliance. And pastors of local churches that actually liked each other, and they get together about once a month. So if you were to see a group of those guys sitting around, have a breakfast together, I say, 1980. I’ll guarantee you; the word leader and leadership would not even been uttered at that table while they’re having breakfast. It wouldn’t even come into their mind. They might have called themselves pastors or shepherds, they probably call themselves ministers. And certainly, the people from the local community sitting around would look over and said, Oh, yeah, that’s the ministers. They wouldn’t say that’s the leaders. That’s the leaders of the faith community. It just wasn’t in their thinking, right? Because the word Minister means servant, but it’s washed out today. And so, I mean, who wants to be a servant? You want to be a leader. This was the problem with the disciples of Jesus, and they watched him be a servant, and he still had to, you know, thump upside of the head, more than one occasion.   Julie Roys  22:20 I want to read a section of your book because I think it really crystallizes the moment that we’re living in right now. You write, “The industrial leadership approach to church leadership caused us to abandon the understanding of the church as a body and turn to a view of the church as a machine. Our language and titles changed as we veered away from the code of the New Testament in Jesus. It became normal to hear terms and titles such as strategic initiative, ROI, return on investment scale, engineering, management, leader, executive, superior, replace biblical language, such as steward, disciple, co-laborers, servant, minister, elder, brothers and sisters, et cetera. Noncompetes, and NDAs, and  HR became leverage points in place of loving your brother, blessing those you believed were your enemy and letting your Yes be Yes and your No be No.” Bingo. Right there. I mean, I talk a lot about the Evangelical industrial complex. And of course, that gets into the money and everything that’s involved. But it’s also once you become a corporation, you’ve got to manage that image. And that is the situation that we’re in. I’m guessing some people who have been really, really schooled in this, because I mean, leadership is everywhere, right? I mean, from the time kids are like teenagers, even maybe younger, in our church, we’re training them to be leaders. But it does beg the question, and I’m sure people are wondering right now is if everything doesn’t rise or fall on leadership, and what does it rise or fall on?   LANCE FORD  23:47 I believe it rises or falls on the headship of Jesus. And I believe that’s where we land on the problem of what’s happened in the church. That’s the other part of the metaphor for this book, The Atlas Factor was. I had written something one day, about three years ago on Facebook or X, it was Twitter then; we had the pretty little blue bird. But I just said something about leadership in the church being misaligned with the headship of Jesus, and the body. Had a buddy that reposted that and then his chiropractor made a comment. And he said, Yeah, that’s like subluxation with the C-1 and the C-2 vertebra in the body. Then he said something that really got my attention. He said, Yeah, when you have a problem with the Atlas vertebra, and the Axis vertebra, it misaligns the body with the head. And I was like, Whoa, that really got my attention because I’ve been playing around with this Atlas metaphor before. And little did I know, and you know, this is as a journalist and a researcher, then it sends me down into this wormhole. I ended up reading three or four books in chiropractic.   Julie Roys  24:57 You sound like my husband. My husband would do that. Give me the Cliff Notes honey.   LANCE FORD  25:02 My wife’s like land it, land it. Yeah, but it was fascinating Julie because he said C-1, the first vertebra is called the Atlas. So, in fact, this particular doctor had written a little book, a real tiny little pamphlet size book called, It Just Makes Sense. Well come to find out there’s a certain amount of chiropractors, it’s a small percentage of chiropractors that just practice, they call it upper cervical care. And so, they only focus on the two top vertebra, because they’re convinced that if you line those up, everything below is going to come in order and align. In fact, they’ve got some pretty large claims of incredible maladies that get healed and come into order when the body, the neurological system starts functioning like it should. In fact, my buddy that had posted this, his chiropractor, so my buddy has a very rare form of cancer. And I forget what it’s called, but it should not kill him. But he’s had it for several years. And so, he’s always having to watch his T counts and everything. And under Dr. Weller’s care, his numbers have totally come in order. And that’s been going on for about four or five years now. So, it’s really amazing. So, one of the quotes that he said, and I did quote it in Atlas, so that Atlas vertebra, that’s where the brain stem sits into. So, he’s talking about the relationship between the head and the body. And he says, there’s that extra something inside each and every one of us that gives life; the inborn, innate intelligence knows what to do and how to do it. The intelligence that came from our Creator travels in and through your nervous system, which is commonly referred to as the neurological system. Neuro logic or intelligence within the nerve, the neurological communication between the brain and the body through the brainstem is imperative for allowing the body the best ability to function at its optimum. We believe that the body does not need any assistance, just no interference in its functioning. When you apply that to what Paul said about the body of Christ, and the relationship to the head, which he really goes in depth in Ephesians 4, he mentioned the other places, but in Ephesians 4, which Ephesians. The whole book of Ephesians is scholars say this is the book for the church. And it’s not a book about leadership. Ephesians 4 is not text about leaders, it’s about the body, it’s a text, read to the body, corporately, it’s talking about the body when he says the apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher – that’s within the body. These are not professional positions. And I would say, and I know you would agree, Julie, that your house church, you guys already have at least one, you have multiple pastors there already. So, you don’t need some pro that comes in leveraging authority and power. They’re gifted. So, the body of Christ is already gifted in these functions. But the problem is, is when humans try to occupy the place of headship and playing Atlas, then it creates a disjointedness, between the Atlas vertebra and the rest of the body. And so, what happens is, we get paralyzed, we can’t move. We get all these maladies in these atrophy that sets in below the neck because somebody else has stepped in and cause misalignment with our true head Jesus. And so, I really believe that the first job of a church leader, or a pastor that wants to try to change is it’s kind of what Dr. Eddie Weller said is that we need to eliminate interference between Jesus in the body. And usually, it’s our system of leadership that’s causing the interference, and is bringing that paralysis and those maladies that go along the neckline.   Julie Roys  28:54 That’s so interesting. As you’re saying this, I’m beginning to get an image in my head of a body trying to function with just the brain. Right? And the rest of the body being literally paralyzed or just limp and not able to move. And I think about that in the church because we have made these guys at the head who communicate truth to us. I mean, most of the people come into our churches right now, they don’t know how to read the scripture for themselves and listen to the Holy Spirit themselves. They need that pastor to interpret for them what’s going on, which is scary. I remember going to one of these, you know, video, Pastor churches, and I’m like, and it had a celebrity pastor who was in from, you know, states away, who was preaching to them, telling them what to do. And I thought to myself, that guy who was preaching, nothing he said was heretical; however, he was not explicating scripture right. He was making it say things it didn’t say, and it scared me because I thought, that guy anything he says will get swallowed by this mass of people, because they don’t know they are not equipped. They are not connected to the head. They’re connected to the pastor, right? Who really functions in a godlike way with so many of these people? And I think that’s why when you see one of these falls, you see, just huge disillusionment. You know, for a lot of us, it’s been hurtful. It’s been disillusioning. Yes. But not to that foundational level, because my pastor was never my God. He was always just a man. Right? That’s all he was. And so yeah, we’d have lost that idea that really, it’s a functioning body, and all the members have to be functioning for this thing to work. And the guy at the top is not the pastor. It’s Jesus Himself, which is a radical idea, the biblical idea.   LANCE FORD  30:43 You know, the word radical and radish have the same root. Radical literally means root. So, it’s funny how that when you talk about people that are radicals, man, they’re so radical. That’s usually the people that have gone back to the roots of things that we call the radicals. It  was like the hippies back in the 70s, they were reading Mother Earth News, you know, and they’re, you know, got their gardens out the backyard, and they’re doing all this stuff, you know, are they radical? No, they’re doing what people have done for thousands of years. So sometimes that’s the hint that the people that we call the radicals may just be the ones that have tapped back into something that’s at the root of our beginnings as the church. And so that’s one of the things that when you get to this misalignment of the body, the real job description of a pastor or if you believe in those FIFO gifts, the apostle, prophet, Pastor, shepherd, and evangelists and teacher, their job description, Paul says, is to equip or resource and train and supply the saints for the work of ministry. So, it’s not to do everything, it’s not to be the chief speaker to be the end all. Really your job there, when you wake up in the morning, I don’t care what your title is, if you’re on staff at a church, no matter what your rank is, first thing you wake up in the morning and think what I need to do is how can I best resource and equip and serve the people that are around me? So, during your day, you shouldn’t be telling people what to do, you should be asking people, how can I help you? How can I serve you? What do you need youth pastor? How can I help you today to fulfill your calling? But that’s not the way it is. I mean, it’s usually everybody’s here to serve my needs. That’s leadership. That’s the system.   Julie Roys  32:37 I mean, we have a professional pastorate. So, we pay for you to do things for us.   LANCE FORD  32:42 You’re a vendor of religious goods and services, and I’m a consumer. So, give it up.   Julie Roys  32:48 Exactly. And that’s where I don’t put all the blame on the guy at the top. It’s what we’ve allowed as consumers. It’s what we’ve allowed as the body that is not doing what the Bereans did, and going back and saying, is what they’re teaching us right now, is this biblical, or is it not?   LANCE FORD  33:03 One of the things I thought about is you look at iteration or a church says today, most people are biblically illiterate. We don’t expect them to read their Bibles. We don’t. I mean, that’s why we project every scripture on screen. We don’t expect people even to bring a Bible. When you and I were growing up. I mean, people were bringing a Bible to church. I grew up spent a lot of time in the Baptist Church. every other weekend, the whole family would load up and we go spend the weekend with my grandparents about an hour away. They were Nazarene. They were in a little Nazarene church. And so, I literally spent half my time in a Nazarene church. So, I got a lot of Nazarene in me. And that little church of about 60 people and 55 of them were my kinfolks. I mean, you talk about a pastor not having a chance. Stay in line buddy because the Browns and the Fords will kick you to the curb. Anyway, it was a sweet fellowship and all my great aunts and great uncles and everything, They had the little board on the side of the pulpit that told the attendance from the week before, it told the offering. And I’m not making this up, even had a place it said Bibles present, you know, which was always funny to me, because I’ve looked back, and I thought they were trying to make a point. And those folks knew their scriptures. I mean, they knew the Bible, and they may have been misapplying it, but they still knew the Scriptures. And we just don’t have that today. We really have dumbed people down. And that’s part of the entertainment and this all comes from the secret church evolvement but if you go into the prevailing church today, if you go anywhere on a Sunday morning, most of the churches especially of any size you walk in, you don’t even know what denomination you’re in because most of them are singing the same songs. And the style is the same you’re going to go into a dark room. The ceiling is going to be black. The stage is going to be well lit depending on how much money and resource they have. It may even have some smoke machines which I call that the Shekindof. Glory, by the way,   Julie Roys  35:03 When I see the smoke machine, I am so over the top that I just I cannot I just cannot. And by the way, though, when you talked about Nazarene, this is going to warm the heart of Christine Jones, who’s one of our board members because she’s Nazarene. But I did Bible Quizzing. So, when I heard she was a Nazarene I’m like, Oh, dang! Oh, man! You know, and I am was pretty good Bible quizzer.   LANCE FORD  35:27 I bet you were.   Julie Roys  35:29 We went to Nationals a couple times. Our Bible Quizzing, my mom was our coach, but I’m telling you, I learned 100 you know, 150 verses every single year I did Bible Quizzing. I mean, that’s how I learned the scripture. But those Nazarenes they memorized the whole book. They memorized the whole thing.   LANCE FORD  35:45 I had a niece that does the Bible Quizzing in the Nazarene church, and  I don’t ever want to go toe to toe with her.   Julie Roys  35:52 But here’s the thing. Like I know Christine to this day says when they say a passage, she’s going over the passage in her mind, because it’s still there, the memory is still there of that passage. And you can’t distort something that people know. But we’re in a situation where people don’t know it., and so it creates just this fertile ground for everything to be messed up, and it’s gotten really messed up. So, you’re talking about realignment, how do we realign? Like in this situation that we’re in, how can we realign because we’ve got some major, major vertebrae out of whack?   LANCE FORD  36:24 So, you have to start off not with just looking at and saying, Well, yeah, I gotta choose a different way lady. No, you have to repent. This is an issue of repentance. Because we disobey Jesus and the word disobedient in many places. In fact, Paul uses it when he talks about your disobedience coming into a line. It means to, to hearken to not just to hear, but to listen and obey. We’ve disobeyed Jesus disobeyed Jesus, not only with our systems, but just some of those things that you mentioned, when you read the quote from the book earlier, even our what we call ourselves as leaders is disobedient to Jesus. Jesus could not have been more plain, don’t call yourself Father, don’t call yourself Teacher, don’t call yourself leader, because he says it causes you to lift yourself up above your brothers and sisters. Because he’s trying to create a peer type of a culture, a sibling culture. And this is the nomenclature that you see throughout the New Testament, co-laborer, coworker, fellow worker, is mentioned dozens of times those terms. You never see employee and boss. Because what happens is, that’s a power difference, right? It differentiates between the power, every time those words are mentioned, every time those terms and those rank-based titles are mentioned. So, the first thing a leader has to do is say I have to change the culture, I have to repent. And I have to admit this, and then I have to be willing to start changing the culture. So, I think the first thing that a leader has to do is then move into saying, I’m going to ditch the management systems. And I’m going to try to learn what it would look like if people on our team are able self-manage. And as I’m doing that, not only am I changing my titles, which that’s probably the first thing you need to do, because it will just freak everybody out. But what you do is you change your role. And so, you wake up in the morning and saying, I’m no longer going to act like I am chief, and everybody’s here to serve me. But I’m going to do what Jesus said, I’m gonna become a chief servant. I’m gonna out serve everybody here. And I’m gonna go back to the very thing that Paul said in Ephesians 4. I am going to work myself silly in helping the people around me to fulfill their calling. I’m going to do everything I can to resource them, to equip them, and just watch this rising tide lift all the boats around. So that’s the  first moves. And I always say this is when you’re looking at moving from a centralized leadership to a decentralized leadership, you can’t just wipe everything out, because then it’s just chaos and anarchy. So, you have to replace the systems with other processes and agreements. And that’s one of the things I’ve tried to write a lot about, wrote about a lot book called The Starfish in the Spirit. And in this, try to give some processes in some systems and some agreements of how you can rebuild your system into working this way. Because it doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. It’s too enormous of a change to move into it. But it has to be biblical, because that’s where the safety and that’s where the joy is. And this doesn’t mean that everything’s going to be rainbows and unicorns. There’s still stress and hard things and difficulty. I mean, Paul talked about the anxiety he had in the churches, but a lot of that was him trying to straighten stuff like this out.   Julie Roys  39:58 The book that I interviewed Scott McKnight and Laura Behringer on, Pivot, you know, is talking a lot about sort of similar things making this pivot from realizing you have a toxic culture. You guys are talking about it from the same idea, but a little different vantage points. And given, you know, he’s more of a theologian, you’re more of a boots on the ground kind of guy. But I think saying a lot of the same things. And one thing I wonder is that we’re often thinking about it in terms of like you said, we’ve got this church that needs to change. I was very interested in church planting in my 20s. And a lot of people would say that a lot of time, it takes way more energy to change an existing church than it does to grow a new one. And it’s just something I’ve been wondering, you know, out of these ashes, because what’s happening in the evangelical church right now, I mean, it is, it’s imploding, which I know is painful for everybody involved in you know, to see these kinds of implosions. But I’ve really been asking myself, Should we be putting energy into changing the existing church, or should we be saying, we just need to close some churches, we need to scrap this model? Because I mean, even so often, when you get rid of like the toxic guy at the top, it’s a toxic system throughout,  it is so hard. You have so much inertia, that to change that church is so hard. So, I know you don’t get into this really in your book, but it’s something I’ve been wrestling with. And even wondering once you do start that new thing. How can we do it differently because this is what we’ve seen modeled?   Julie Roys  40:02 What you’re touching on there is the whole wineskin issue that Jesus taught. You can’t put new wine in an old wineskin. But can you create a new wineskin for the old wine? Heard a lot of people talk about that. Which yeah, well,  maybe you can, I think is very difficult for the reasons you said. Now, two out of the last three houses that my wife and I have lived in, we built ourselves. And when I say that, I mean, we built it ourselves. I didn’t contract it. Our hands, blood and sweat, and skin. And I just kind of grew up with that, my grandpa was a carpenter. So, I kind of grew up with that.   LANCE FORD  41:31 We built one house. We didn’t do everything ourselves. But yeah, I thought, general contracting, how hard can that be?   LANCE FORD  42:14 Oh yeah, you got that lesson, then, you found out. And you promise, I will never do this again, which I said I would never do it again after the first one.   Julie Roys  42:22 Well, no, actually, I said, I learned so much by making so many stupid mistakes in that first one that I want to do it again, so that I can capitalize on the lessons learned.   LANCE FORD  42:31 Now that’s good. And it is a fun process. And it was very cathartic. This one that we built was a smaller house. And it was very cathartic. But also, we’ve rehabbed houses. And I would say as hard as it is to build from the ground up, it’s easier than rehabbing a house.   Julie Roys  42:47 Cuz you never know what you’re gonna get into.   LANCE FORD  42:49 You don’t know what’s behind that wall, you know, and you think that you know, and you peel it back, and you just discover, oh, it’s deeper, and you’re taking it down to the studs, and you get down the studs and go, Oh, the termites were here before I was here, right? All kinds of stuff. So yeah, those issues come into place. I tell you, one of the things that we’ve seen a lot of success, and I say we because I do work with a few others. I’m a part of a team that we do help churches in consulting and coaching. we talk about terms of a parallel track, just trying smaller little projects, and seeing how they go. In fact, several of the largest churches, and we’ve worked with large churches that realize that they just cannot completely turn that thing around. So, what they do is they start investing in different types of church plants, or micro churches, or whatever. And I think their hearts are good and right in that. And so, I’ve got some friends that do lead large mega churches. And I think that they are, some of them have developed some leadership systems that are closest to what I would hope to see. And I think it’s probably about as close as they can get without just killing the thing.   LANCE FORD  44:06 Our time is getting short. But there’s one term that I thought was so good when you’re talking about developing a culture of equality, and you talked about this term, I’ve never heard this this term before, but equa-potency, thank you. But yeah, explain what you mean by that, because I thought that was actually a pretty key component to what you’re talking about.   LANCE FORD  44:30 What equa-potency basically, is kind of a culture of equals. When you talk about a quality in a leadership system, it freaks a lot of people out because immediately the pushback is somebody has to be in charge. The buck has to stop somewhere. You can’t have equality, everybody’s not equal. You can just look at him. Okay, so let’s start right there. And Paul talks about this in Romans 12. In fact, Romans 12:1-2 you know, we usually start out with be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind right? So that you can prove what is the good, perfect, pleasing will of God. And we usually stop there. And so, people usually read that verse and say, Oh, that’s the verse about not being worldly, you know, don’t drink, don’t chew, don’t run around with girls that do, right? And always blame a woman, right? That was the little saying growing up. But don’t stop there, keep reading the rest of the of the text, because then he’s really going into how gifts that the Lord pours out should be functioning. And so, one of the things that he says he talks about the different gifts, in fact, he talks about people that do have a gift of administration, or what we would call leadership. And he talks about, then he says, but do it with sobriety, be sober, and then he starts talking about don’t look on your own things and be selfish. And he starts going into this whole thing about different people have different measures for their giftings. So, in any room, if you have a sizable room, and you think about just outstanding, let’s say the great men or the great women that are great into gifting or whatever. And you and I, Julie may have a similar gifting. But we can just look like I’ve got a couple of friends that are mentors of mine. And I’m thinking about one in particular. He’s been an incredible mentor in my life. And he and I have similar gifts. Mine, I can’t even touch his abilities in some of this stuff. He is just far out. Well, Paul will call that he has a greater measure of faith. It’s not faith like we think about it all. Oh yeah, he’s confident and all that. No, it’s really the term there, really iterates it’s the ability to use that gift. And some people just have that, have a greater measure. And so, Paul warns them to treat the others as equals. And so, this particular mentor in my life, he’s always treated me that way. And in the first few years, we started working together, man, I mean, there was no way I could touch what he did. But he always encouraged me genuinely, not patronizing me. But really, he just thought you never know when what the Lord wants to say or do is going to come through Lance or Jill or Rob or Steve in the room, just because I’ve got the big platform, I’m speaking as him, I can use any of them. So that’s equa-potency. So, it’s potent. So, when you get a group of people together, and you have an equal atmosphere, not meaning that everybody has the same has equal gifts, but they have equal opportunity. And so that’s really what we’re saying. It’s a culture that everybody is treated as equals to have equal opportunity, even if they don’t have the equal faith in the giftings that they have. Does that make sense?   Julie Roys  47:55 Absolutely it does. And as you’re talking about this, we do think of the people that that are incredibly gifted. And we have examples of that in scripture. But we also have probably the greatest leader, or one of the ones that we look to in the Old Testament was Moses, who couldn’t speak, had all sorts of failings. And yet God used him in amazing ways. Because he had that spiritual connection to God. He knew God, and he had a heart after God. And we have majored on the minors, right? We’ve made the gifting so important instead of the heart for God. And there’s so much in your book, we could discuss, and I would love to discuss, you get into how spiritual warfare, how that plays out in this practical steps. And so, I really encourage people, this is going to be our book for this month, for anybody who gives a donation of $30 or more, we’ll get you a copy of The Atlas Factor, just a phenomenal phenomenal book. So, if you want to do that, support our work here at The Roys report, but also get this incredible resource, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. And we can get this book in your hands. And I want to get this book as many hands as I can. Because I think it’s a paradigm shift is what you’re talking about. And you’ve been talking about it now for 11 years since you wrote your first one, Unleader. And I think there’s a lot of resistance. But the more and more we see the crash and burns, the more and more we’re going to have to say we’ve got to do it a different way. And so, I feel like you’re very much a prophetic voice when it comes to this issue. Just so grateful for it. So, Lance, thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for speaking at RESTORE. Thank you for being on our board. Thanks for writing this book, The Atlas Factor. Really awesome.   Julie Roys  48:13 Always a joy, Julie, thank you.   Julie Roys  49:41 Well, again, that was Lance Ford, an experienced church planter, pastor, consultant, and author of The Atlas Factor, Shifting Leadership Onto the Shoulders of Jesus. And as we mentioned, this book releases this month, and we’re actually giving away copies of The Atlas Factor to anyone who gives a gift of $30 or more  to The Roys Report this month. Again, we don’t have any big donors or advertisers almost all the funding for The Roys Report comes from you, the people who care about exposing abuse and corruption in the church and caring for abuse victims. So, if you can please go to JJULIEROYS.COM/DONATE  and give what you’re able to this ministry. And when you give, we’ll gladly send you a copy of The Atlas Factor. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me. Hope you are blessed and encouraged.   Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/RF-3TbX8fXAAs a Christian in Iran, Naghmeh Panahi was arrested numerous times—and once even had a gun pointed at her head. But as awful as that was, Naghmeh says she endured something far worse when she began speaking out about abuse from her husband. It was then that she faced persecution—not from radical Muslims, but from Christians. In this edition of The Roys Report, you're going to hear Julie's powerful interview at the Restore Conference with Naghmeh Panahi. Naghmeh was catapulted into the national spotlight in 2013, a year after her husband, Pastor Saeed Abedini, was imprisoned for his faith in Iran.  With the help of Franklin Graham of Samaritan's Purse and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, Naghmeh launched the Save Saeed campaign. The campaign garnered worldwide attention. And it eventually led to Saeed's release in 2015. But during this time, Naghmeh learned that Saeed's violence, repeated insults, and spiritual manipulation were not just a sign of a bad marriage. It was abuse.  Yet, when she spoke out about the abuse, the backlash from Christians was virulent and cruel. And the psychological and spiritual damage from that backlash was far worse than anything Naghmeh said she encountered in Iran. In this interview, Naghmeh talks candidly about the abuse and the Christian community's failure to stand with victims. But she also talks about the persecuted church—and how the Western Church's failure to care for the abused and broken is not a bug but a feature.  Drawing from her book, aptly titled, I Didn't Survive: Emerging Whole After Deception, Persecution, and Hidden Abuse, Naghmeh's message is a prophetic witness to the American church—if we will listen in and take heed.  In her talk, Naghmeh refers to recent books by Miriam Ibraheem and Lance Ford. Guests Naghmeh Panahi Naghmeh Panahi is an author, speaker, and Bible teacher. Naghmeh made national news when she publicly advocated for the release of her then-husband, Saeed Abedini, who was imprisoned in Iran for his Christian faith. Naghmeh's autobiography, I Didn't Survive: Emerging Whole After Deception, Persecution, and Hidden Abuse, is available now. Learn more at NaghmehPanahi.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSNAGHMEH PANAHI, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:04As a Christian in Iran, Naghmeh Panahi was arrested numerous times and once even had a gun pointed at her head. But as awful as that was Naghmeh says she endured something far worse when she began speaking out about abuse from her husband. It was then that she faced persecution, not from radical Muslims, but from Christians. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today you’re going to hear my powerful interview at the RESTORE conference with Naghmeh Panahi. Naghmeh was catapulted into the national spotlight when her husband, Pastor Saeed Abedini, was imprisoned for his faith in Iran. And with the help of Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse, and Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice, Naghmeh launched the Save Saeed campaign. The campaign garnered worldwide attention and it eventually lead to Saeed’s release. But during this time, Naghmeh learned that Saeed’s violence, repeated insults, and spiritual manipulation was not just a sign of a bad marriage, it was abuse. Yet when she spoke out about the abuse, the backlash from Christians was virulent and cruel. And the psychological and spiritual damage from that backlash was far worse than anything Naghmeh said she encountered in Iran. In our interview, Naghmeh talks candidly about the abuse and the Christian community’s failure to stand with victims. But she also talks about the persecuted church and how the Western Church’s failure to care for the abused and broken is not a bug but a feature. I am so grateful for Naghmeh’s, prophetic witness to the American church, and I’m confident that God is using that witness both through podcasts like these, and in Naghmeh’s book aptly titled, I Didn’t Survive: Emerging Whole After Deception, Persecution and Hidden Abuse.   Julie Roys  01:50 We’ll get to my interview with Naghmeh just a moment, but first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington if you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  02:56 Well, again, here’s my interview with Naghmeh Panahi on surviving persecution from the church. This is from our last RESTORE conference in October 2023.   Julie Roys  03:07 Let’s just start with a little bit of your story. And again, those of you who know her story, this may be familiar, but I know I learned a lot of new things. You were born in Iran. And the interesting thing is you got to see Iran before the revolution, and then after. Talk about what the change was in Iran when you when you saw that happen?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  03:29 Yeah, I was actually born soon, a few years before the revolution. So, my mom was one of the first women in the king’s army, as a woman, which was pretty radical for her time. And also just, you know, Iran has had Islam for about 1400 years, so not Islamic culture. And she was very proud woman with her gun and protecting the Shah, but also, you know, having authority in a sense that women usually didn’t have. So, my mom was kind of protecting the king from the revolution. My dad was actually one of the people that wanted the Islamic Revolution, because, before the revolution, people like my mom, were wearing miniskirts. And, you know, just like the US, they were free, and my dad and his group of people thought, you know, we’re becoming too westernized. And if we have an Islamic religious revolution, then the culture will be more purified. And so, I kind of grew up in chaos. I saw  tires burning, my mom going, and my nanny would cry, and is she going to come back? Cuz she was trying to defend against the protesters, and then my dad would be in the streets and there was different groups that were trying to take over the government. And they were all radical and there was a lot of people just been killed in the streets. And so, I kind of grew up in a very chaotic political atmosphere of where the country was becoming very Islamic. And so, I went to school I shared in my book, my photo from my school, elementary school and I looked at and I was the most covered up. Like some of the girls had their head covering a little back. Just from the photo, you can tell I was so afraid. I was told you can’t show hair and all this teaching that was like going through the schools about just Islam and how we had to cover up. And so, it was very foreign to me, having seen my mom without a covering, and then seeing her, she had to be all covered up and her rank  taken away from her. And she had to be in an office setting, as a woman couldn’t have any authority over men in any position of power. And so, I was noticing a lot of that changes and the fear that was gripping a lot of the woman. I would actually have a lot of dreams that I was walking in the streets in Iran without head covering, and I was being arrested. And that was one of my, a lot of the nightmares I had. But just the fear of having to cover up and right around the revolution right after there was a war with Iraq. So, I also grew up in war, we had bombs and missiles. And I was just flipping through my social media, and I saw a video with the sirens going off in Israel. And all of a sudden I had a panic attack, because I would hear those sirens all of the time, the bomb sirens and you have to go to shelter and not knowing if your house was going to be the next one that was bombed, or a missile would hit it, or a lot of the Iraqi soldiers were certain parts of Iran were attacking and raping and taking captives and women and children were being killed. And so, it’s brought back a lot of that memory as a child, even just hearing that siren was so hard to listen to.   Julie Roys  06:47 I’m thinking when you’re talking about being covered up your mother losing her rank, being afraid as a woman I mean, I’m thinking of Sheila’s talk yesterday. I mean, this is like modesty message on steroids. As a young girl, how did you internalize, did that make you feel different about you?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  07:04 Yeah, I was told as a seven-year-old at that time. Like when I went to school, I had to dress up, like cover up, I was told that I was sexually appealing to men.   Julie Roys  07:14  As a seven-year-old?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  07:16 That’s what I we had to once I went to school, like six, seven-year-old got to be fully covered. And people I know that had their relatives like their grandmother had married at the age of nine and their mother had married at the age of 12. Right now, we do work in Afghanistan, and since the Taliban has taken over these, as soon as the girl hits puberty, like nine, a lot of times 9-10, they’re being married and they’re now giving birth to babies at like 10, 11, 12. And so yeah, it’s unfortunately it was part of the culture. And as a little girl, you’re told that you had to cover up because it would be tempting to a man as a little seven-year-old. Which is interesting, because years later was like, the purity culture sounds very Islamic.   Julie Roys  08:05 So, your parents did leave. And it sounded like the impetus was the fear that your brother might get drafted in the army. And the little boys were basically sent out there to check where the landmines were right? So, I mean, it was almost certain death. So, your parents escaped out of there and came to the US, settled in Idaho, and then the story of how you became a believer is really phenomenal and interesting too, how your parents when you became a believer, that was not welcome.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  08:41 No. My mom was more of a moderate Muslim. My dad was very strong Muslim. Like he had his prayer life and fasting. I’d never in the Islamic Revolution world, I never heard of the name Jesus. And so, when we came to America, my twin brother who actually he got his doctorate at University of Chicago in quantum physics, and so he was not emotional growing up, and even with the war I was the more emotional one he was, the more like, questioning God. But he was crying like I’d never seen him emotionally. And he said, I know we question Who is God? Why is he allowing, we would see our classmates like their dead bodies in the street. The houses of the kids that we would play with,  completely gone. And we didn’t know if we were next. I mean, just growing up in war was just insane. And so, we had a lot of questions about God. And he came running to me one day when we’d just come to America, and he said, I found the God we’ve been looking for. His name is Jesus. And I was like, what? He had a vision, I guess he had seen Jesus and he said, he is all I felt was love. And I just know we have to find out who this Jesus is. And so that’s how we were saved. We were running around acting like crazy nine-year-olds, like who’s Jesus? And with our limited English, we found some people who, you know, spoke Farsi, and told us and gave us a Farsi Bible. And we thought our parents would be as excited as us. They were angry. My dad wanted us actually, to move us back to Iran. He said, it’s better if we die in the war. You’ve become Christian. You’ve lost your culture. You’ve lost everything. And my full name is Naghmeh Sharia Panahi. So, Sharia is Islamic law. Panahi means protector, so our last name meant protector of Islamic law. And so, my dad always prided himself like we’re related to the Prophet Mohammed, like the Prophet of Islam. And so, for him, for us to become Christian was like, the worst thing ever. And so, he was in the process of moving us back into a war with like chemical warfare. My brother was about to be signed up to go to like, run through the mines. And he didn’t seem to care. He thought us becoming Christian was like the worst thing that had happened.   Julie Roys  11:07 Unbelievable. And despite that, I mean, you would think as a nine-year-old, something like this happens, your parents don’t support it, it’ll be gone, it will be eradicated from your life. Why didn’t that happen?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  11:19 Yeah, my uncle, my uncle, who graduated from university in California, had found a job in Boise, Idaho. And he said, you know, let’s move them there. They’re only nine. It’s just a little feeling. They’re going to forget about this Jesus, you know. And as a nine-year-old, you want to please your parents. They’re all we had in the war. Like, they were our lifeline, and wanting to please them. And so, they thought he said, they’re going to forget about this Jesus. And we didn’t. I mean, it’s by grace of God, he kept our faith, our Bible was taken from us, me and my brother weren’t allowed to even pray together. My dad had a lot of fits of anger. Just a lot of it, we experienced a lot of persecution, anger in the home. And in Idaho, we were pretty much isolated. Try to forget about Jesus, and we didn’t, and it was not until we were from nine until 16-17, where my parents, I guess, were on their own journey. We didn’t know but they were on their own journey of finding Jesus. They were secretly reading the Bible they took from us. I didn’t know that at that time.   Julie Roys  12:26 When did they actually become believers?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  12:29 Right around as I was graduating, I could see they had softened. I would sneak out, as soon as I got my driver’s license, I would sneak out to a church. And I thought they didn’t know but they knew. And they were okay with it because they were reading the Bible. But they didn’t become Christians until I went to college. And when I came home, they were like, We believe we want to be baptized, from nine until 22.   Julie Roys  12:57 And why is it? I’ve always you hear this among Muslims so often, that they have these visions of Jesus, and they come to Jesus through that. I mean, it just seems to be a feature. Why do you think that is?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  13:14 I think that whoever cries out to God, anywhere in the world, God will make himself known. In Iran, you don’t have a lot of missionaries right now. And I would talk to people in Iran, I would talk to, and I would say, hey, I would talk to a woman, I’d say, Do you know who Jesus is? And they would start crying. And they would say, Yes, I saw him in a vision. Like, tell me more. My child was dying, and I cried out to God, and I said, help and Jesus appeared to me and said, I am the way the truth and the life, but they didn’t know much. They just knew that he’d healed their child, or he was the way the truth and the life. Like they knew little parts of who Jesus was. But it was really not hard to evangelize. That’s why I think when I returned to Iran, we saw such a revival because people already knew who Jesus was. They’d seen him in dreams and visions, and they’d already seen him move in ways that wasn’t, we weren’t trying to convince them. They were like, Yeah, we know him. He healed our child, or I saw him in a vision.   Julie Roys  14:15 Wow. So you went to college, were planning on becoming a doctor. You must have done quite well in school.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  14:23 I think coming from an immigrant family, you’re told you have no choice, lawyer, or doctor. We’re in America you have to pursue the American dream.   Julie Roys  14:33 Right. And probably the last place on earth you wanted to go was Iran and yet you ended up back in Iran.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  14:41 I did. My parents really struggle with that because I went right after September 11. And when no one wanted to get on an airplane, and no one wanted to fly into the Middle East. So, I had the whole airplane to myself flying into Iran, and President Bush was like there’s gonna be war in that region. And so, I just felt like God was like, this is the time to go, I’m going to change that land through the gospel. My fight is through the gospel is through love, you know, in Christ. And so, I didn’t know when I went back. And my parents thought I was crazy. I was about to take the MCAT like I was on the road to being a medical doctor. And I said, I need a break. I feel like God’s telling me to go to Iran  I didn’t know that I was going to be at the forefront of a revival. But I just knew God was like, You need to go now. And so, when I went, he allowed me to be at the forefront of revival and be part of leading one of the largest house church movements in Iran.   Julie Roys  15:46 And when you flew over there, was it on the plane, you get those cards, and you have to declare things?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  15:51 In Muslim countries, I don’t know why, but every single they have no shame about discrimination. Religious discrimination is like they don’t there’s like nothing. So, everything you fill out has religion, what’s your religion? So, that’s why Christians when people become Christians, they have to fill up. And because of their conscience, they can’t put Muslim. So, they put Christian so as soon as they put Christian, even like filling out a passport. If they write Christian, they’re arrested. They can’t work if they write Christian, if they’re not arrested, they can’t find job, or they can’t go to school, Christians are not allowed to go to school. And so even on the airplane immigration form, I had religion, and I knew my last name meant I was a Muslim. Like people could tell by your last name, you’re a Muslim, but I knew I was a Christian, I really struggle with that form. And it was right after September 11. And I was like, stepping into radical Iran that I had read about killing so many pastors and hanging them as an example. And I wrote down Muslim.   Julie Roys  16:57 And also because of your name, they would know that you were born Muslim, yeah. That you converted and that’s a major, major no, no.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  17:04 Yeah. I was fine by myself. And I mean, I just felt so bad. I felt like a Peter moment. I just there was so much fear, flying into Iran. And as a Christian, I’d never experienced that. Anyway, I had left Iran as a Muslim. God was allowing me to go back as a Christian and to experience what it meant to really understand the persecuted church. And so yeah.   Julie Roys  17:30 So, you get into Iran. Talk about the church and the, you know, the way the house church movement was going and also about this very charismatic pastor that you saw over there named Saeed.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  17:43 Saeed. Yeah, so I grew up in the purity movement. I was like, when I went to Iran, I was 24. I hadn’t dated I was told first hold, holding hand or first kiss had to be with someone you married. I had some people pursued me in college, good Christian guys that I was like, nope. And so, I hadn’t really experienced  anything. And Iran had right now they don’t they had some building churches, that they allowed the Armenians to conduct church, because the Armenian people are considered Christians. They’re not converting. They were like, they have been Christians for generations. So Iranian government allows for religious freedom for the Armenians to conduct church. They weren’t allowed to let Muslims in like Persians. Persians are, you know, have been Muslims for so many hundreds of years, you know, 1400 years. But the church actually that I met Saeed in had started allowing Muslims to come in and they were converting, and one of them was Saeed. And that’s why they had killed some of their pastors. The government had arrested and killed some of the pastors at that building church. And I saw Saeed he was on. It’s a long story, how I ended up in that church. I had a cousin that had gotten saved and invited me, so I was about to leave Iran. I had been a missionary for one year, and I had five people who accepted Christ. And I was like, Okay, I shared with every single relative, like aunt and uncle gave out Bibles. And there was five people became Christians. And then I was like, Okay, I’m done. I was about to leave.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  19:12 My cousin invites me to this church service. And I go inside Saeed was on stage worship on the worship team. And I really saw a lot of passion for Jesus. And then he was like, I love evangelism. Like that’s my number one passion. And even in Boise, I would always go and evangelize to the refugees, the Muslim refugees that were coming in. And so, he seemed like this great evangelist, and I was really drawn to him. And so, we started working together. He actually reached out to me and said, Hey, you want to do ministry together? And I didn’t realize but he was going to an underground bible school by the Assemblies of God there. And  because the government was heavily persecuting the building church, they were being trained to start house churches. So, at that time, he had about a dozen people, I had five we decided to join forces. And within a few years it grew to 1000s over 33 cities and it was college students, they were our house was in the middle of Tehran-by-Tehran University. And so, all these college students were getting saved. And then they would go back into their city and evangelize. And all these house churches was just popping up. And all over Iran, every 33 major cities had churches, within two years.   Julie Roys  20:34 Very organically.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  20:35 Very, it was all college students, very organic.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  20:39 And women. Women did a lot of leadership. Yes, it’s really I mean, ironic in a Muslim country.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  20:46 Very ironic. I was just sharing that is China and Iran had this revival of house church movement, and women are the main ones leading it. And in a culture like, Iranian culture, where women are literally told their property, and a lot of the Muslim men treat them with a lot of contempt, they don’t have a lot of freedom. And so, a lot of Muslim women are drawn to the church and become saved because they see how the men in the underground church honor women and they’re leading. And the men are completely okay with that. And they’re working together. I mean, there’s no titles, there’s no stage, they call each other brother and sister, even the pastor, which is like a shepherd or shepherdess. It’s called sister like Sister Naghmeh, Sister Julie. So, no one’s called, , no one’s given a title. And actually, being the pastor or the leader of that house church, means you’re going to be the first one to be arrested and killed, you know. And I share in my book about a 10-year-old girl that I met in one of the cities and  she got saved at 10. She was passionate by 25. She was a discipling like 500 women. And she was arrested, tortured, and solitary confinement. She would not even give out one name, she was defending her flock. She went through so much. And she came out she’s like, I didn’t give out one name. They weren’t able to find any of the 500 people that she was discipling. And so that’s what it means to be the leader, it’s, you’re literally laying down your life for the sheep. It’s not like a place of popularity, it’s actually not a place, I’ve shared that in the podcasts with you. Not a place that a lot of narcissists like to serve. It’s not fun.   Julie Roys  22:33 I mean, that’s the thing, if you hear so often, the shepherd should be the first to lay down his life, right? And if that were the case, it does just sort of naturally weed out the chaff.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  22:47 Literally, if you’re the leader means you’re going to be the first one that’s arrested and tortured. So what narcissist want to do that? So, you don’t see a lot of narcissists. And you don’t see, unfortunately, you don’t see a lot of the men wanting that position. So, a lot of the women are the ones carrying the torch of the gospel, and they’re the ones being arrested. They’re the ones being raped. They’re the ones being tortured. They’re the woman by the well that Jesus is using. I was sharing with one of my pastors recently, I was like, how dare God use women on the underground churches in Iran? Why does he do that? But it’s the woman but they’re not getting any popularity. They’re literally being tortured and killed, but they’re the ones, the weak, Isn’t doesn’t Jesus says he uses the weak, broken? It is the weak, broken woman who’ve been so shattered in that society that God is just lifting up and honoring and giving the privilege to suffer for the gospel.   Julie Roys  23:45 And where we see the church shrinking in the West, in these places where it’s organically happening without all of the money and the programs and, you know, all the seven steps to this that are the other thing. The gospel is going forward.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  24:02 Yes, it is going without a program. It’s weak vessels that society has crushed, that Jesus is honoring and using for the gospel in one of the hardest countries in the world that has the most crazy governments. With great wisdom, God is using that. And doesn’t he say that in his word? That’s who he uses, but it’s really It’s so confusing for me because I see that happening in the Middle East. And then the way women are honored in a place where they haven’t been. And then I see something different here, which has been so hard to try to digest that. But it’s so radical. I mean if you guys could understand how radical it is. And I know you’ve watched like sheep among wolves and all that. It’s radical for women to be leading in the Middle East, the house churches. Just think about that in a culture that has said You’re nothing your property, just how radical that is. And for Jesus during his time to do that too; be so radical in the way he honored women. I am just still shocked by the fact that how the men in the house churches really honor the women and really  God, it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. There’s no other explanation.   Julie Roys  25:19 It is so cool. So, you told of a time when you denied the Lord, but you had another chance.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  25:26 Yeah, I told the Lord. I went home and I cried, I said, God, if I have another opportunity, I will not deny your name. And two and a half years later, I was arrested. But I’ve been arrested a lot. Many times, for the gospel. We were like, if we were smuggling Bibles, like at night, we would try to move around Bibles and give it to different house churches. So, we were arrested many times, there’s so many stories. But there was an incident where it was the scariest because I was actually detained. I have guns pointed to my head, we were basically told, if you say you’re a Christian, you will go to a woman’s prison, you will get raped and tortured and you will die. If you say you’re Muslim, you get to walk out this door right now. And everything within me wanted to be Muslim. I just want to get out of that door. I had the radical Revolutionary Guards all around me with guns and I was just like, Okay God, you know how the Bible says, he will put the words in our mouth? And I said, I’m a Christian. And the story is more detailed in my book. But towards the end of it,  this top interrogator was crying and asking for a Bible. The guy that threatened to kill me, was actually ended up asking for a Bible.   Julie Roys  26:46 And Saeed said that he got his inspiration from you because you. . .   NAGHMEH PANAHI  26:52 There was three of us that got arrested. The first guy wrote Muslim, and then it was my turn. And so, I wrote Christian, and the Revolutionary Guard interrogator asked for my testimony. He said,  basically my testimony was the evidence that was going to convict me of the death sentence they were going to give me for converting. And then Saeed also said he was Christian. And he told me after we left, I was gonna write Muslim. But when you said Christian, I got inspired to also write Christian. So yeah.   Julie Roys  27:32 So, you guys come back to the States. You end up getting married to Saeed. There were some red flags in your dating relationship, obviously, that you talk about in the book. And we don’t have time to go into all of what happened. But what was your life with Saeed behind closed doors?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  27:55 Yeah, so Saeed had never been to the states. We came to the States in 2005, after a lot of persecution. But in Iran, it was the first full on physical abuse happened when we fled Iran in Dubai. So about a year and a half into our marriage, but I didn’t see the signs of abuse, obviously, now looking back, but early on, he didn’t find me attractive. He would say, you’re so dark, and you’re so ugly, and you need to do nose surgery, you need to do surgery with your eyebrows, and you need to lose weight. And so, he was just, pretty much I start questioning, I said by that by the time we were  eight years into the marriage before Saeed’s arrest, I couldn’t even think for myself. I remember the interviews, I would tell people, this is the first time I’m processing life without Saeed because I would have to ask him permission, what do I say? And it was really hard  being put in the spotlight and having to rely on my own. Not as Saeed  to give answers. It started out with him putting down my looks. And then it was like, questioning the way I was seeing things and then questioning the way I was looking at Scripture and saying, I was idolizing scripture, I needed to let the Holy Spirit , you know, his own idea of what the Holy Spirit is. And just he started questioning my understanding of Scripture. There was not a full-on beating, but he would shove me he had me beg. He would have me beg and kiss his feet. It’s in the book. There’s some really hard stuff in the book. But pretty much, after eight years of marriage, we came to America because of intense persecution. And then after four years of being in America from 2005 to 2009, we didn’t go to Iran, but then he started traveling. And then he got arrested. He thought, Well, we haven’t done house church for four years. I can go back. He went back and forth, back, and forth. 2012 was arrested the time he was arrested; I was a shell of a person. I had no friends. He cut off my family, my friends. I had so much makeup on, I was 30 pounds lighter than I am now. I tried everything to be exactly how he wanted me to be. And I couldn’t show emotion. If I cried, he would say you’re trying to manipulate me with your tears, he would get very angry with tears. I couldn’t laugh, I couldn’t express any emotion. So I was just like this very dead person, just basically, I worked full time he didn’t work. So, I was full time I was a slave, I was working full time taking care of the kids cooking, cleaning. And he was just traveling, and I was funding his travels. And so I was, close to death. I didn’t realize his imprisonment was my freedom. I did not see it; I was so mad at God. And I explained it in my book. I thought God was being so cruel to me. Now I have to try to get my husband out of the worst prison in the world.   Julie Roys  30:55 And you are gone from being premed, you had done incredibly well in school, then you help your dad run his business.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  31:02 I was very confident.   Julie Roys  31:03 Confident, competent, all of these things. And after these years of marriage, you have been reduced to that point. And then you start advocating for him. It doesn’t dawn on you that you’re being abused till pretty far along in the whole process. But talk about when you finally because I think a lot of people have heard you know the story up until this point. But then you advocated for him. And then you got to the point where you finally said, it dawned on you you were being abused. And you said something.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  31:36 Well, the reason it dawned on me if he hadn’t had a phone, most people don’t realize this part of the puzzle. The last year of his imprisonment, he had obtained a smartphone where he could literally get on the internet in maximum security prison in Iran. It was a smuggled phone worth $7,000 to get that phone to him. But I’m glad it happened. Because at first I was like, why does he have a phone and he’s treating me like this? He would call me Jezebel, like that was the number one word he’d use against me. whore and again, you’re ugly, you’re nobody if people are clapping, they’re clapping for Abedini, Saeed Abedini. They’re not clapping for you. I’m the hero of the story. He saw that I met with Obama I met with Trump I  was on the news. And we did a prayer vigil with Mr. Franklin Graham and 2 million people watching online and he saw when he called me for the first time he saw this confident woman that he had destroyed for eight years. So, he saw, Oh, she has confidence in Jesus. I dreamed in his time of imprisonment. It was my time in the cocoon. I was reading the word praying again, because I couldn’t even pick up the Bible when I was in abuse. I couldn’t imagine, I kept myself pure. I had been a missionary and part of me was really mad at God for allowing me to suffer like this. I mean, I describe a lot of hard things in the Bible. In my book, I was raped by him. It was just a horrible, horrible marriage.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  33:15 And so, part of me, I guess, had distanced myself from God thinking, I kept myself pure. I wanted to serve you. Why would you allow this? And so, when he was in prison, actually, I drew close to God and like you said, I had been raised in a home where my dad gave me a lot of confidence. And so anyways, my Heavenly Father was like, really, through the Bible I am finding confidence. So, when he got a smartphone, he saw that confidence and he was scared. I didn’t see it at that time. So, as he was calling me all sorts of names, I’m writing articles for The Washington Post and New York Times. I'm writing op-eds on being on the news and traveling, speaking in churches and he’s calling me names. I couldn’t understand why because people are like, Your husband must be so proud of you. I was literally traveling the world getting him out. He had an eight-year sentence. He spent three years in prison, six months in house arrest, but he could have been there for a longer time. They were actually going to give him more and more years. People are like, he must be so proud. You’ve met with presidents to get him out and then here he was calling me names and I couldn’t get it.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  34:22 So finally, I broke coming from the Middle Eastern culture and the Christian culture, you don’t want to air out your dirty laundry. So, I didn’t tell anyone even my parents had experienced abuse themselves. He had physically beat up my dad, but it was a culture of you don’t divorce no matter what, but also a culture, you don’t talk about it. So, for the first time I shared with this pastor that I was speaking at his church, I said, I don’t understand. Here’s all these text messages he’s sending on Skype to me. He’s calling me all sorts of names. I don’t get it like why? And he said, “You're an abused wife. He said, This is why he is And then it started making sense Oh, he needed to crush me to control me. And I wasn’t crushed. During his time of imprisonment, God was setting me free inside was seeing that. And so, he was calling me all sorts of names. And when this pastor gave me the diagnosis, that was it   There was no going back. Because before then I was like, I have a hard marriage. And then once I knew it was cancer, I’m like uh, this needs chemo, and I knew I had to educate myself on what abuse was and what do I do?   Julie Roys  35:35 And so, you sent an email. To like, 100 close supporters.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  35:39 Yeah, I was like, Nah, this is the way the media has blown it up. I sent an email to really close friends. And then that got leaked to the media. And then yeah, I was, I think Lori Anne Thompson said this stone was like the person bleeding by the road. I was like, stones were thrown at me. I was bullied by Franklin Graham, told to shut up. You’re damaging the cause of Christ. He used every power every connection he had. And he was like, You’re never ever going to do ministry again if you talk. I was like, I don’t want to do ministry. I just want to live quietly in Boise, Idaho. Why is ministry an idol? He was scaring me but saying you’re never gonna do anything. I’m like, It’s okay, I don’t want it. So, he couldn’t hold that over me. But I lost everything like Lori Anne Thompson said, I had to quit my job to advocate for him. So, my income had been speaking engagements. And that was taken from me. So, all of a sudden I’m in the middle of he comes out, files for divorce, because how dare I have leaked, shared with a group of people that leaked information about abuse. And so, he came out filed for divorce, the worst thing I was afraid of which was actually my freedom. But at that time, it was heartbreaking. Because I fought to get him out. He didn’t even want to fight for our marriage. He just came out and filed for divorce. And I literally lost everything. I lost my marriage, I lost my income, I had stones thrown at me, I was literally by the side of the road. And all the religious leaders were like either kicking me, or quietly walking by. It was very few that were there, all the text messages stopped, all the Naghmeh, we got you and my poor kids too, they would always get gifts and support. They would get so many gifts on their birthdays. And it all of a sudden stopped. And they’re like, Mom, what happened? And all of a sudden, we’re just like, I mean, I got so many calls from past, pastors that were just throwing things at me. And I had a really interesting experience with Family Research Council too. And so, it was just like, a lot of stones at a time where my marriage was falling apart. And yeah, it was a very difficult time.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  35:43 So that the title of your book is I Didn’t Survive.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  37:58  People don’t like that. They’re like you’re a survivor.   Julie Roys  38:03 But the old Naghmeh is not the Naghmeh who’s sitting here is this like Dr. Monroe said, you know that you change your different. How have you changed and why?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  38:19 I am not the person I was 10 years ago once I went to prison. I think I would describe it like a caterpillar going into the cocoon. The caterpillar is no longer the caterpillar, it's a butterfly. There’s a confidence I have in God. There’s a lack of fear of what religious leaders. My Goliath was Franklin Graham. He used every power he had to shut me down. I know this for a fact. Some megachurch pastors called me and said yeah, Franklin called us and every person I reached out for help, Franklin would call and say if you help her, you know? And so yeah, there’s a lot of stories. I don’t have fear of losing anything. I know that losing income, ministry, people’s praises, all of that fell and the old Naghmeh was afraid of losing a lot of things like marriage, status, income, even as a single mom; all that fear is gone. He’s been my provider, day in and day out. I live for Christ and if people don’t like that, then it’s okay. I don’t get any benefit from people either copying or so there’s a lot of people pleasing. I’m just not the old Naghmeh. The old Naghmeh was so afraid, scared about people’s opinion. I mean, I care for people but I’m not a people pleaser. You would have been surprised to meet the Naghmeh of 2012. She would have been a completely different person.   Julie Roys  39:49 Thing Mariam said in her book, that she said that the domestic abuse that she suffered by her husband was worse and If you read Miriam’s book, I can’t quite even wrap my head around what can be worse than some of the things that she suffered at the hands of Muslim persecutors. But in what ways was that worse when you get persecuted from professing Christians?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  40:22 She said it’s worse? So, Miriam and I are, she’s one of my best friends. And she came out of Sudanese prison. She was on death row, and I met her soon after she’d given birth to her daughter, Maya in prison. And then she faced this horrific, you will read her account in prison in her book that’s out there. The prison experience her growing up as a refugee in Sudan. Her mom was a refugee. Her dad was Sudanese, and she grew up in a horrible situation and then she was given the death sentence by the radical Muslims there in Sudan and treated horribly. For her to say what she experienced in domestic abuse and the church’s response was worse than that? I was like, “Are you what?! She said she knew that was the enemy, she’s like, I knew that was my enemy. I knew that those people that had persecuted me where my enemy. I didn’t expect it to come from my home. And I didn’t expect it to come from my Christian community. Like that was what was like I think you said that about Lori Anne Thompson’s, that it came from the church is the most messed up thing with the name of carrying the name of Jesus to for broken people that Jesus so cares about to be trampled on. And use then abuse is I just that just, it’s so messed up. And so that’s why she says that she’s like, I didn’t expect it in my home, that my enemy would be in my home and that the way the Christian community respond to her she was a Christian hero for standing up to the Muslim community in Sudan. And then she was a bad person for wanting to divorce her abusive husband. No one wanted to touch her. She shares that. It’s like the modern leper, she Yeah, she  actually became homeless, no one wanted to help her. She had to flee her home with her two kids that had just left Sudanese prison. And no one wanted to touch it. No one wanted to get her a lawyer help get her nothing. She had nothing. She just come out of Sudan with no English. She filed for divorce in 2018. So, four years after she came out from Sudan, so she knew a little bit of English, but she had never worked in the US. I mean, she literally was helpless. She had no family. Her mom had died. I mean, she had no family and the Christian community that had tried to help her escape Sudan was now like, don’t talk to us, don’t reach out. Don’t talk to us. Like she became a leper. Yeah, so I wish she was here. And we tell her story.   Julie Roys  42:56 Yeah. So last question because we’re gonna have to wrap up. But having been through what you’ve been through, seeing what you’ve seen in the house church movement in Iran, then coming to the US and experiencing what you did by the American church, what message do you have for the American church today?   NAGHMEH PANAHI  43:18 To get Lance’s book. It's so messed up the way the system is destroying is not Christianity, what we have here is a system it’s a business. It’s not laying down your life for the sheep. It’s actually like Ezekiel, where God’s like you’re abusing,  you’re using the sheep for your own benefit. A good shepherd would actually lay down. I mean, Paul says, you know, parents should give to the children, not children, like he should have been this rich pastor, and he’s like, I’m poor. I’m homeless. I’m treated like he wasn’t a great speaker, he wouldn’t be probably have any church gathering. And so, it’s just the way the system is really. If anyone that comes from the house church movement in Iran or China, they come here and they’re like, Oh, the church is asleep, like there’s no church. There’s buildings, people are gathering in buildings, but the church is dead. Anyone has ever come that’s the first reaction they give is, wow, the church here is sleeping. And so, I would say I think we really need to rethink and not just read about Jesus was the servant, what does that mean in my life? And I love what Lori Anne Thompson said that we don’t also as abuse survivors, we are not the heroes either, Jesus is. I think the reason I wrote my book is that it's not heroic, someone wrote a review. It’s not about anyone being a hero. It’s about the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony, and my hope is my testimony is going to help draw people to Christ because I’m not the answer. Christ is. And so that’s why I’ve kind of refrained from writing a curriculum or having an answer. I’m and like Jesus, he helped me, point to him. And so, we’re not the heroes. You know, as survivors, or as the persecuted church. The persecuted church doesn’t want to be heroes. They’re just following Christ. But I think we can learn a lot from the persecuted church and really learn what it means to carry our cross. I don’t think the American church really, the leadership understand what that is. What does it mean to carry your cross and die to yourself daily?   Julie Roys  45:36 And I do believe that out of the ashes, new things are coming. And who was it that said, maybe it was last night at the dinner that I think it was Laurie Adams Brown, who said that she believes that survivors and a lot of what’s happening for people that have been through this who have really experienced the pain of what’s happened, it’s fertile ground for a new thing to happen in the church. And so that’s my prayer.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  46:07 I think this is my I’ve prayed and cried out to God many times. I think God’s gonna use the broken. We are looking for oh, I think Sheila said that, too. We’re looking to these big platforms to do something and God’s like, No, I’m going to use the little scattered broken people on the outside. You keep looking to these megachurch pastors see, please see this. And they’re not because for them to see it, it means their whole world would be toppled upside down. And so, we’re trying to change these big organizations. But a lot of times the answer is actually Jesus is like, no, I’m actually going to  do a work outside of that. And that’s going to, yeah, anyways, I think just having spent many hours just crying for the church in America, because I was born and raised for the first nine years in Iran. But I’ve been in America for like 37 years. And so, I’ve cried for this country. And as a Christian, and I think he’s going to work in a way we didn’t expect him to. It’s not going to be people with platforms, it’s going to be a grassroot, no one’s going to be the hero, it’s only going to be Jesus. I tell people because they like to build heroes. I’m like,  don’t look to me to be the chain. It’s gonna require every one of us, like Sheila I think said, and a lot of the speakers. It’s going to be a grassroot because like I said, Jesus Himself, God is a jealous God. He deserves all the glory; he’s going to be the Savior. There’s no minnie saviors that are going to change the climate, you know, here. So, it’s just gonna be all Jesus. But all of us are just a voice. But we need to use our voice. And I think what Lori Anne said, or Adam said is true, I think it’s going to be a lot of the movement is going to start with the survivors and the broken. And that’s why people ask me, you were so passionate about the Middle East, I still work with the underground church in Iran and Afghanistan. I’m not a ministry, but I try to collect money and just give everything there. But I also care about their views, then they’re like, this is kind of two different worlds. I’m like, No, it’s not. Because Jesus is with the broken, the persecuted church is broken. The abused are broken, they’re both desperate for God. And guess what God cannot resist? God cannot resist His people being broken. Like he will step in like you have not. Gloria Thompson said she was like, once she had her daughter, she’s like, I will fight for her. And God is that jealous for us. And when we’re broken, that’s when God’s steps in. And so, for both the persecuted church and the abused, my heart is for them. First of all, Jesus says, If you want to minister to me, minister to the least of these my brothers. So, if you want to actually walk with Jesus, it’s not on the big platforms. It’s literally walking with the least of these. That’s where I experienced Jesus is when I’m walking with an abused woman. I’m not on I’m literally just, I’ve had abused woman live in my house, like, that’s where I’m experiencing Jesus, or when I’m working with the persecuted church, who have no money to eat, and they’re still carrying forth the gospel. They’re in these countries that are sanctioned. They’re so poor, and as Christians, they’re even poorer, but they continue to take the gospel. So when I hang out with the least of these, I truly experience the move of the Spirit. And so, they’re related. The persecuted church, and the survivors abused, you know, women and men. They have a common thread that is attractive to me, and that’s brokenness and desperation for God. Anyways.   Julie Roys  49:47 Naghmeh, every time I sit with you, I get inspired. Thank you so much. Thank you for so truthfully telling your story and for being an inspiration to so many of us.   NAGHMEH PANAHI  50:02 Thank you, Julie. And I just so appreciate it. You know, people have attacked you before being divisive and like, trying to go after the church, but your heart to bring healing to the church is I think I just know there’s going to be I’ve prayed for this, there should be 10s of 1000s of people coming to this conference of just finding that restoration. And you know, and so I appreciate your work so much. And yeah, keep going. You have my prayers. And so, thank you. Thank you.   Julie Roys  50:45 That was just such a special interview with Naghmeh Panahi, and it’s one of many unforgettable moments from our last RESTORE conference. And if you’re listening and thinking, man, I don’t want to miss out on that next RESTORE conference, I want to encourage you to send us an email at The Roys Report at JULIEROYS.COM, and just put in the subject line RESTORE EMAIL, and we’ll be sure to add you to our email list. And then when we announce the date and all the information about the next conference, you’ll be sure to be the first to know. Also, if you’re grateful for these interviews and talks, which we’re making available free of charge, would you please consider giving to The Roys Report. As I’ve noted before, we don’t have any big donors or advertisers, we simply have you the people who care about abuse and corruption in the church and want to expose it. To donate, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t ever miss any of these episodes. 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Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/eX7GZjdC4DEWhy can't people get over talking about race? Ever heard that line? Or, how about: We live in a post-racial world. We've even had a black president! If racism doesn't exist, then we don't have to deal with it. Yet racism, sadly, is alive and well—not just in our culture, but within the church. On this edition of The Roys Report (TRR), Dr. Lainna Callentine—an educator, pediatrician, and former evangelical faith leader—delivers a powerful talk from our recent Restore Conference. Lainna has walked an incredibly difficult and painful journey as a Black woman in the evangelical church. This is a journey that white evangelicals often don't acknowledge. And it's an experience that Julie Roys, TRR founder and a friend of Lainna's, admits that she once didn't believe or affirm. But, just as Julie's eyes have been opened to abuse and corruption in the church, the past few years have given her a new awareness of racism in the church, as you'll hear in Julie's introduction of Lainna's talk. Lainna's talk, which is rich with history and personal anecdotes, has the power to open the eyes of many others. Please listen with a heart and mind open to what Lainna and the Holy Spirit have to say. Guests Lainna Callentine, M.D., M.Ed. Lainna Callentine, M.D., M.Ed., is a pediatrician, former homeschool mother, master's trained educator, and creator of curriculum program, Sciexperience. Dr. Callentine received her B.A. from Northwestern University and completed her M.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. She has taught all levels from early childhood to postgraduate students. Learn more at sciexperience.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSJulie Roys, LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. Julie Roys  00:04Why can’t people just get over talking about race? Ever heard that line? Or how about, we live in a post racial world, we even had a black president. Of course, if racism doesn’t exist, then we don’t have to deal with it. But as you’re about to hear racism, sadly is alive and well, not just in our culture, but within the church. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And on this podcast, you’re about to hear a powerful talk from our RESTORE conference by Dr. Lainna CALLENTINE Lainna is a pediatrician and an educator and a former faith leader in the evangelical church. But she’s also a friend of mine who’s walked an incredibly difficult and painful journey as a black woman in the white Evangelical Church. This is a journey that white evangelicals often don’t acknowledge. And as you’ll hear, it’s an experience I once didn’t believe or affirm. But just like I’ve had my eyes opened to abuse and corruption in the church, the past few years have opened my eyes to racism in the church as well. And coming to terms with this reality has been hard because I’ve had to deal with my own ignorance and indifference. And I’ve had to acknowledge my complicity with a sinful system that treats persons of color as less than full bearers of the image of God. But what Lainna did, coming into a predominantly white space and delivering this message was even harder. And I think that’s something I haven’t realized until recently as well. So many of our Black, Hispanic, Asian, and indigenous brothers and sisters have been profoundly wounded and traumatized by white Christians. And they have every reason to expect that when they speak to us, they’ll be minimized, dismissed, and traumatized again. I’m grateful that didn’t happen at RESTORE and I hope like the audience at RESTORE, you’ll open your heart and your mind to receive this important message from Dr. Lainna Callentine on surviving white evangelical racism.   Julie Roys  01:57 But before we hear from Lena, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington if you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM   Julie Roys  03:01 Well, again, you’re about to hear a talk by Dr. Lainna Callentine on surviving and thriving beyond white evangelical racism. I’ve also included in this podcast a portion of my introduction of Lainna at RESTORE, which includes an important apology. For time sake, I’ve had to remove my description of how my eyes were opened to racism in the church, while investigating what happened at Bethlehem Baptist Church, the Church John Piper pastored for three decades. But I encourage you if you want to understand more about the covert nature of racism in the evangelical church, go back and listen to our two-part podcast on what happened at Bethlehem Baptist Church when you’re finished with Lainna’s talk. But now here’s Lainna’s powerful talk at RESTORE 2023 with a short introduction and apology by me.   Julie Roys  03:49 So, three weeks ago, our next guest and I got together at her request, and we talked for about four hours. And she said, Julie, I just don’t know if I can do this talk. And she said this is what normally happens when I come into a predominantly white audience, and I talk about the trauma I’ve experienced as an African American woman in the church. So, I go out there and I bleed,  I bare my soul, and then they look at me with eyes of disbelief., and they just go on their way. And I mostly listened because I really didn’t have a lot to say, and I just needed to hear. And then she reminded me about how we had gotten together because our next guest is a friend of mine. In fact, she was my daughter’s 11th grade biology teacher. And she reminded me of a time we got together in a coffee house, and she shared her, really bared her soul to me, about all the racism that she had experienced. And she said, Julie, I didn’t feel like you believed me either. And the truth is six, seven, however, many years ago, this was I didn’t really believe it. I mean, I believe there was probably some racism in the church. It really wasn’t until I did the investigation on Bethlehem Baptist Church, John Piper’s church, and I got to know these people who had persons of color that had gotten together, had a dinner for the first time where it was just them. And they shared some of their experiences. And out of that, they decided that they wanted to put together a committee and address why is it that we have so few persons of color on our elder board? And then what happened with this committee is that then they spent, I forget how many months, a lot of months working on this, and then they gave their findings. And you know, it’s kind of death in committee. They gave their findings, that was it, nothing happened. Every single member of that committee ended up leaving the church.   Julie Roys  06:22 And so, it kind of opened my eyes to how this is done. And it’s kind of a covert thing. And I had to say to Lainna, you know what? I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t see that. And I’m sure that hurt you. And that was wrong of me. And I also told her that you guys are different. And when you’ve had enough bad experiences with white people, it’s hard to say this group is different. But I said, one, this group knows about believing victims, about believing survivors, and believing their stories. And we also know that when you get up and you bleed, when you tell your story, we get the cost. It’s like re traumatizing. And if you’re going to do that, and nothing’s going to happen. It’s like it happened again. Right? And so, I know you guys, I believe in you guys, or I wouldn’t have asked my friend to come, who I care about deeply. And It’s my prayer that this will be a healing experience for all of us. But especially for persons of color who have been hurt profoundly in the church. Just to tell you a little bit about Lainna’s credentials. She’s a pediatrician, who completed her MD at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. She’s also a former homeschool mother, Master’s trained educator, a creative curriculum program called SCI Experience. And then she served on a whole bunch of different Christian organizations that we would recognize, although she said to make sure that I say she was the former, or formerly served on the Physician Resource Council at Focus on the Family. But I love Lainna dearly. And I’ll just warn you, she doesn’t mince words. I have no idea what she’s gonna say. Let’s welcome Lainna.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 08:38 Thanks, Julie, for your words, and your apology is very heartfelt. Thank you. One of the things you need to know that I’m just traumatized being in this space speaking to you. Okay? And I know that as we prayed for all of you this morning, how coming into a church space listening to some of the songs that we’re singing, how traumatizing that is to you. And I hold that in my heart and understand that pain. As I’ve walked through evangelical spaces there are many things that have been said to me. These are just a few in the fine collection of lines that have been delivered to me with good intentions. I don’t see color. You are so articulate. You’re playing the race card that I’m doing reverse discrimination and racism. Why can’t people get over talking about race? I don’t even care if you’re black, white, or purple. I’m not sure. Only purple people I’ve seen are dead. But one of my best friends is black. We live in a post racial world. We’ve had a black president, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan. My family did not own slaves, and All Lives Matter. So, these are a few things. These are just a few of the sophomoric, unhelpful, and lacking insight retorts that I’ve received from my white brothers and sisters in Christ when discussing race with them. I’ve questioned myself over and over again, why am I here today? Up to this morning. I really didn’t think I could be here. A few months ago, as Julie said, when she asked me to speak at the RESTORE conference, I have struggled and questioned my need and your need to hear me speak. I have not spoken in front of a large audience since 2019. I swore off speaking in front of white Christian-like audiences, like someone giving up chocolate for Lent. I have been successful up until today to keep that pledge.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 11:08 This is a bit of a public coming out for me. Authentically, being myself, you’re the first people to see this. In the words of Maya Angelou. I no longer are beholding to the white gaze. I must have sat down 1000 times to write some kind of speech for you. I’ve struggled to share intimate parts of me, potentially to an audience and community like those in the past that caused me so much pain. It was then I was a respectable model Negro who provided a limited colorism to their homogeneity, I allowed myself to be squashed and to be strategically unassuming, as I would not convey the angry black woman or intimidate the fragility of the individuals around race. Now, I do not have the motivation or desire to wrap up this in joining into a neat tidy package sprinkled with various Bible verses and then joining hands to sing a rendition of Kumbaya making all feel comfortable with my threatening presence as an educated black woman. I’m going to be completely honest with you; discussing racial trauma in white evangelical spaces to me, as Julie was talking about, is like slitting my wrists for white folks to see me bleed as a bizarre form of curiosity and entertainment, while giving them the power to determine if my blood is red, debate the merits of the tool of my infliction and determine the depth of my wound and the level of pain I may be experiencing. All of this is based on their intellectualized bystander observations and their limited personal experiences. I’m tired of being treated when I talk about race, racism, unfair, unjust practices, and white Christian spaces as not being a credible witness. Being divisive and unloving in some way, my race disqualifies me, because I have a conflicted interest in my blackness, and that only white folks have the power to be the judge in jury in such matters.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 13:37 Julie assured me that this audience would be different. I told Julie, there is a great difference between white folk who have been hurt by the church and by the figures in Christian organizations, than the pain of being black in overwhelming Christian space. There are many nuances. Yes, Julie, they feel pain, isolation, and loss. But here’s the key difference. You see, Julie, you all were part of the family. You and they belonged until you didn’t. Me, however, while I was never part of the family, I was allowed to be in those spaces, tolerated as long as I did not upset the fragile balance or to critique or speak of the lack of people of color, in leadership or in lowly position in that space. I was to be unseen and unheard, and I was allowed to enjoy the delicious morsels that fell from the table where no seat was available for me. I felt a little bit like Charlie Brown ready to kick a football, getting into position to swing my leg, and Lucy quickly going from holding the ball and snatching it away again, and my landing square into my backside. I am so tired of not being believed, watching white folks finding no compelling reason to address the issue, feeling like they will lose something or be subjugated to the evils in demonic treatments that blacks have experienced. As if those like myself want to pay back every horror on white bodies that have been inflicted on us. I’ve watched white folks actively and complicitly be antithetical to the Gospel, denying the Imago Dei in all people. I’m tired of racism being viewed by white folk as a political issue outside the realm of the gospel and being chastised that we are one human race in a story.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 16:04 I hear God whispering, do you love me? A piece of me dies a bit, and my heart hardens repetitively, telling the story even if later a person starts to believe perhaps my story might be slightly credible. I have paid the price over and over. I feel God holding my hand,  will you trust me? I’ll be rejected and dismissed once again God. You are my child and so are they. But they hurt me so much. Look at all that I have lost. I have been hurt and othered all my life in predominantly white spaces. I have lost so much. I do not believe racism will ever go away. It is deeply rooted into the fabric and foundations and the DNA of this country.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 17:04 God can I really love these people? Proximity and the hugging it out doesn’t work. I fought this issue in the world and within my own home. I had no reprieve. I’ve got you, fall back into my arms. I will bear this. God, it’s so hard. But you have sent friends who have done the same who are not the same pigmentation of me. And many of them are here in this audience. They have borne with me the pain and loss that I’ve endured over the last several years. They have shown up with meals, encouragement, and prayer, sat beside me and held my hand on some of the darkest nights. They have listened to my disappointment and even my anger. They have been the hands and feet of Christ. Yes, Lord, I can love them. Because as I look around this room, I see so many of my friends. Although the pain is still there, hope has not been extinguished. I trust you, God, please stay by my side and walk with me and protect me.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 18:30 So, with that, I’m going to tell you a little bit about my story. But I can say something I couldn’t even say 72 hours ago. I love you guys. I have been hurt, but I still have hope. And I want to tell a little bit you know in this time. I’m like, How can I tell a hard story like this in 40 minutes? So, I’m gonna share a little bit about my story. I think parts of it that are  pertinent to this particular audience and my titular brothers and sisters. Unlike most African Americans, I’ve never been in an all-black space. I’ve never been part of a black church. I’ve always lived in white communities. And no, I was not adopted. Okay. So, growing up in white spaces, I also have had and continue to have education, because I just seem not to get enough. Right now, I’m getting a fourth degree from Wheaton College in evangelism and leadership. I decided to go there to see what white people were learning. And I got that done and knew in two weeks what was happening but dang I signed up for a three-year degree. That wasn’t well thought out. In my 30 years of formal education, I’ve only had two black instructors. A total of 12 weeks of those 30 years. I’ve learned to study white people learning to code switch and adapt in order to assimilate and be unassuming. My success depended on knowing how to operate in spaces. Their success I’ve learned culturally in medical school. And there have been times in my life where I was on the brink of wanting to join the Black Panther group and forever being away from white people, not black people, because Lord knows I haven’t been around them. So, I had an amazing mentor by the name of Dr. J. Hirsch, in medical school, he was a traditional Jewish man, amazing man. Had an incredible command of an audience. So, he was a child psychiatrist. And he always did the greeting at UIC, where I went to medical school for the incoming medical first year class. And he had a way that he could capture an audience. And I would be sitting in the audience with over 400 of my colleagues, and make you feel like you were the only one in that auditorium. And I was like, I don’t know what that is, but I want that. And one day he was offering, understanding the family as a patient. Anytime you treat a patient, you’re treating the whole family. And so, I decided I need to go to that class for this mysterious man. And I got into his class, it was just a four-week class. And one day I was walking down the hallway, and I was at that time, engaged to my white husband at the time. So, no one knew about that. We kept it kind of secret  I hung out with many of the black students, he came up to me and asked me if I would allow him to be my mentor. I looked at him like, really? I’m  like, I’m gonna have to think about this. I said, give me some time to think about this, and I walked off. I’m glad to report that I did take him up on his offer. And it was the most amazing time. Actually, my second child is named after Dr. J. Hirsch. He became my academic father; he used his privilege to stand beside me. I didn’t come from a whole line of doctors. I do have a brother that’s a doctor. And that’s something my parents instilled in us. But it wasn’t my background. And there were many times I struggled during medical school where I was close to being kicked out of medical school for academic failure. And he never did my work. I didn’t even know how to write a letter on my behalf. He would make me I would write it, he would edit it, he would make me write it over and over again until I got it right. And at one point, it was so bad that anytime I was called into the dean’s office for academic struggling, he would come with me. Didn’t say a word. I remember one time we were in the elevator, the doors closed, and I was exhausted, I was done. I was like,  I can’t fight anymore. And I remember when the doors close, that man took his fist and slammed it against the elevator door and let out a swear word that they better not eff with me. And at that point, his anger overwhelmed me. He freaked me out, oh, like, Man, this guy’s crazy. He wants it worse than I do. And he stood by my side. And that brought me to the brink of  going to the dark side.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 23:40 I spoke nationally in homeschool conferences all over the country. And I have a publisher that is, just Google my name, you’ll find out who it is. Who I worked with, who has my books. And I thought we believed the same thing. I was walking in any of these really big conservative organizations, even though I wasn’t up front or seen, I believed in the vision and mission. And as I watched the things that my children went through, and I watched my boys who were cute little biracial boys grow up to start looking like men, watching that they suddenly became dangerous. And I watched how I was treated in the world. And about five or six years ago, I said something’s wrong. So, I began to start speaking out about the racism and exclusion of people of color in leadership and the messaging of predominantly national organizations, ones that may have centered on white families using stock photos of black people to colorize their messaging to give the illusion that they were interested in diversity. I think the last thing that brought me back besides my great family from Tov that Julie spoke of, I’m part of that group of our Tov family, was I was bewildered just like you were. And I was like, these people’s orthodoxy do not match their orthopraxy. And I kept talking out, and I found myself at a conference called liberating. And check this. I did not put this on Facebook, liberating evangelism. decentering whiteness, okay. It’s like, what the heck is decentering whiteness? I don’t even know what that means. And so, I went into this conference., and at the time, I was already being kind of, excuse the pun, blacklisted in the evangelical circles. And I went into this conference, and I knew that no one that I associated would ever find themselves there. So, I walked into the hotel conference room, peeked my head in there, and a third of the people were white. I think I gasped out loud. And I stepped back, and I looked at the sign on the door. Yep. Liberating evangelism. decentering whiteness, why are there white people here?   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 26:20 And it was bizarre to me. And because no one in my evangelical circles would have been caught dead there. And so, I was fascinated as I watched the pulpit be shared by people of color of various nationalities. Now, this is the first time I was at a conference that I didn’t see a white male be a keynote speaker. And what I saw from the indigenous to Latinos, and Asians and other people that did it, it had a different flavor. So I was out of my mind, like observing this really weird world. And I asked one of the white individuals, why are you here? And they looked at me like I was asking a trick question. And they’re like, What do you mean? I said, “Did you not read my lips? Let me try this again. Why are you here? And they said, because the Bible says we should love our brother. And I like, seriously? Do you really believe that? Like, yeah, what else would that mean? And it was that adventure that I went into. And as I started sharing my circles, no one in this circle that I was at, had any idea really of Focus on the Family, or any of these organizations I associated in the homeschool world. And I’m like, Don’t you know who they are? I was like, kind of proud., because I was name dropping all those people. They’re like, I don’t know who these people are. And I was like, really? Because they told me they’re the center of Christianity. But you guys say you’re Christians, but you don’t know those people? They're like, nope, no clue. And so, after I would introduce myself, people would look at me at the conference like, and when those ASPCA commercials, you know, with the little dog in the cage shaking, they would look at me like really pathetically like, Oh, bless her heart, look at her. And I didn’t understand it at the time. And so, after one of the meetings, I was sitting on the couch just bewildered because I had not the language to describe what I was experiencing in the white evangelical space. And, lo Behold, this is how God works, a white woman stood and sat beside me. I was in my thoughts. She put her hand on my shoulder, and she goes, I know from which you come. And it’s just like, God, you know, and I was like, Oh, my gosh. And she’s like, Oh, I know all the people you’re talking about. I’m like you do because I was feeling kind of crazy. Like they didn’t really exist. And she goes, Yes, I’m a homeschool mom. I’m from Florida but I live in Philadelphia. And I traveled here because my husband gave me this gift. And I have two little boys, the woman was white, and I vow that I won’t raise them in the stuff that I was raised in. I was like, wow, this is a whole new world. And she goes, Well, where are you staying tonight? I’m like, I don’t know, this hotel is kind of expensive. I’ll find somewhere else to stay. She’s like, why don’t you stay with me? I said seriously, in your hotel room? I’m like It’s been a while since I’ve been in college and stuff. But so, I said, Okay, this is crazy, but I’ll stay in your room.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 29:40 So over two nights, this white woman mentored me. She’s like, and she didn’t chastise me. She’s like, okay, Lainna, you need a little help here. So, get a notepad out. Okay. And she’s like, let me give you names of some podcasts and some authors. She’s giving me black authors and other things, all the stuff that was taboo, and evangelical will start discovering James Cohn. And I started discovering the real Malcolm X and the real Martin Luther King. I started reading all these things. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know about James Baldwin. Nothing in my education had prepared me for this stuff. And she bandaged my wounds that night and brought me from the brink of hate. So, I share that, in that she was willing to step into space with me and walk with me.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 30:39 And my third story of where my friends have come, the last three years, I have had a new friend group. They don’t know they just laugh when I tell them where I’ve been. And these organizations that I have served, and they’re like, that doesn’t sound like the Lainna we know. Like, I know, I’m kind of a different person now. And the way that they’ve come beside me, and the love that I’ve been shown has been unprecedented. So, I can’t thank my friends enough. One of the things that has been really grounding into me is I had the opportunity to go to Ghana this summer. It was life changing, I will never be the same. I am so grounded now. I went on something called a Sankofa. It’s called and Sankofa is from the language A Twi from Ghana, and it means loosely, go back, and get it. And so the whole idea, and this is me sitting on underneath a Sankofa is the bird is facing forward, its neck is backwards. And as it’s going forward, it has the ability to look back. So, the idea is to retrieve things of value from knowledge of the past, you have to go back to move forward. And living in a country where they’re trying to ban all black history as if it’s alternative American history. I have grown up in a world that has told me my people were nothing; that we were savages until we had the unfortunate issue of slavery. And well, that was kind of a bummer. But now we’ve had the opportunity to be civilized. There is no history that we’ve done anything significant in this country or anything. So, I’ve always felt lost. I felt I couldn’t understand who I was. And so, when I went to Africa, I felt an incredible grounding, and a sense of pride. I couldn’t find it here. But I found it there. I learned about my ancestry, that I’m the descendant of kings and queens, where the European Christianity is not nearly as old as the African Christianity. So, I’m learning all these things I never had an opportunity, and it has been life changing. So, I went to for the first time in my life to be in a place where people look like me. Okay? I get lost in the crowd. I’ve never had that happen to me before. And so, we were able to be entertained by African chiefs. And actually, one of the chiefs reminded me of my father. I’ve never been in a group where I could actually see me, and I saw this man, and he resembles my father. Both my parents died of COVID, a couple of years ago, two weeks apart. And I’m going to tell you a little bit about that in a moment. But to see this man, I just welled up in tears and crying because I could see myself for the first time.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 34:08 So going to Ghana, I’d never seen all these billboards with black folk. Okay? I think I saw one billboard with one white person, but everything from their leaders to their celebration to everything else, I saw me. But the interesting thing in Ghana, there’s no such thing as a black person. And so that kind of understanding that their race is invisible, helped me to understand how white people see their race as being invisible. So, to be able to relish in the joys of being a part of a community where people looked at me, looked like me was incredible.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 34:50 I also had the opportunity to visit the Cape Coast and the Gold Coast. And I went into two castles that housed my ancestors when they were stolen raped and taken from their homes. And these castles are on the Cape Coast, Elmira and a Cape Coast Castle. And these were built in the 1400s. This one, particularly by the Portuguese was a trading post that later became a place for black cargo. So, to walk in these buildings and these castles to try to embody and feel the pain of my ancestors was overwhelming. And as I walked through one of the uncommon things that you wouldn’t imagine belief, do you guys know what that is? This is in the middle of one of the castles. It’s a church. There were churches where white people would come while the suffering and horror happened in the same space. And this was very formative to me. At one point, we were merged with a group of white tourists. And it was interesting to watch the white tourists posture. Believe it or not, our whole group from Wheaton College was black. I don’t know how that happened. But all of us were black that were on the trip. And we were merged with the white group. And as we walked solemnly through the sacred places, we watched our white brothers and sisters act like they were on a field trip. They would push to get in the front to get a better view. As they talked about the carnage that was happening in the space, I remember, we went up to the governors quarters. And they were telling us in the space that the governor’s quarters was, it would house up to nine people. That same space down below, would house over 300 of enslaved Africans in the space, without food, any kind of hygiene. Everything happened in that space. And what did my white brothers and sisters say, as they were in that space? They were looking out the windows and talking about what a beautiful view there was. So, at that point, I was like, I’m done. I can’t be around this. And I was sitting next to one of the cannons that protected the castle, kind of reflecting on it and someone kind of caught that picture of me at the time. This is one of the things on the castle. It reads an everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died Rest in peace, May those who returned find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We the living vow to uphold this. So, my whole talk is supposed to be about surviving and thriving. I know about surviving; I have been in survival mode for some time. I’ve had in the last four years I’ve had a total knee replacement as a former athlete along with many health challenges, I’ve ventured into spiritual wilderness teasing out the Jesus of the Bible, versus the twisted Jesus that had no concern for justice. Those who have been harmed in the church, who were unable to refuse to see the imago Dei and all people. I navigated racial unrest and the silence of my white Christian friends and my former circles, who always had something to say about black bleeding and dying bodies laying the street about their character and had nothing to say about the character of a yellow haired man with a bad comb over sitting in the Oval Office. I lost my 30-year marriage to a white man. I haven’t gone public. My divorce was finalized about six months ago. And had a lot to do with this issue. My family has been shattered. I’m watching the politicization of mass while millions die across the world from COVID. And those last being considered expendable. Watching my dad die over FaceTime, due to COVID and not being able to hold his hand or be present as he drew in his last breath,. No funeral and then there’d have to be my mom who died two weeks later. This is just a few of the things that I’ve had to survive over the last four years. I’ve survived a predominantly white churches where my pain and the pain of others who look like me were ignored so that my brighten brothers and sisters could remain comfortable without self-examination.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 39:49 I understand surviving. Surviving is remaining alive. Some days, that was all I could do. It’s continuing to exist after coming close to dying and being destroyed. surviving is holding up holding on and enduring when very little is left in your tank. I know all of you guys understand that. At times surviving is all that we can do. God carried and continues to carry me and you through this. God brought friends into my life who bandaged my wounds and lifted me up when I had no strength on my own.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 40:28 So, I want to get a little geeky, I want to show you something about healing. So, you know, I’m a doctor, and I kind of like that science thing and stuff. So, I’m going to talk about healing by secondary intention. So, this is like a medical picture. So, bear with me, maybe you can see the analogy here is, there are two ways of healing, there’s called first intention versus second intention. So, when a surgeon goes in to repair something, and they make that clean cut, after they repair it, they bring the edges nicely together and sew things up. That leaves a minimal scar. Okay? I feel like what we’re all going through is healing by second intention. And what that is, is when you have a gaping wound, and let’s say it’s been open for some time, or it gets pulled open several times. After about six to eight hours, for more as close to six, we as physicians can’t sew that wound up because of the concern of infection. So, you let that wound stay open. And with that open wound, you have to care for that wound. A lot of times we have antibiotics, and we’ll pack that antibiotic in that wound that the dressings have to get changed often. And as that wound is going through the healing, it actually heals from the bottom up, okay? From the inside, out. And I see us kind of like that secondary intention, as that wounding first we have to start that healing inside of us as we work it out. And then, of course, the scarring from second intention healing is much greater. There’s much scarring, but it’s been restored in a new way. And I feel that a lot of what we’re going through is similar to that secondary healing.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 42:21 So, we talked about surviving, what about thriving? I started looking through this whole idea, what does it mean to be thriving? Am I thriving? I do feel like I have a little more. The fact that I’m here is a big testimony that I’m starting to feel God’s healing presence, and it’s working. And thriving means growing and developing, having resilience. It means you’re comfortable with yourself, you’re able to take control of your physical, mental, and spiritual health. And there’s an increased optimism for the future. Ah, I think I’m starting to thrive. It’s not that the pain is not there. It’s not even that I believe that this world will ever get better. But I know as we walk and take our wounds, and we heal from them, the power that GOD can do with us through our thriving. So, we have a thriving we have flourishing. Like how is thriving and flourishing different? And Acts 2:42-47, If you read that when it talks about the hospitality, it’s a place of a joyous community, where there’s a festival friends. And there are five domains in flourishing; one, happiness and satisfaction that’s gonna look a little different for each of us. It is having the mental and physical health, having meaning and purpose in your life, and character and virtue. Now I know we’ve had a lot of character training in evangelical spaces. So, this will sound bizarre, but that character in virtue cannot be fully embodied unless you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Okay? And most churches and evangelical spaces talk about God, Jesus, and the Holy Bible, because Lord, we won’t get close to the Holy Spirit because that gets a little radical and out of control. And that doesn’t go in our 20-minute sermon series that we’re trying to do. Okay? So, in order to have good character and virtue it has to be nurtured through the Holy Spirit. And lastly, close relationships, close good social relationships. And finally, how do we get there? Okay. In 2019, as I was swearing off white evangelical spaces like chocolate I feel like God laid four words on my heart about this and it seems to apply to all these hard circumstances and prior speakers have spoke of this. So, the four words, the first one is lament. This is not feeling sorry, this is not God created you white. It’s a beautiful thing. No one’s asking you to be anything else than what you’ve been graded. But understanding that hearing these issues, no one wants pity. It’s a legitimate lament, it’s not a sadness. It’s not an Oh! that’s so sad. A lament is a deep longing in pain and sorrow for something. Unless you can lament, you can’t move forward. So, it is a spotty window that someone has talked about that embodying it.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 45:45 The second word he sent me was liberate. Oh my gosh, this seems out of touch. Because of all that stuff I hear an evangelical word about liberating means once Jesus comes, then we’ll be good. No, this means as soon as you see the problem, you have to liberate that issue. You don’t wait till Jesus comes. I lament, there’s a problem, it needs to be corrected now. I love how we like use time; I was told this at a prominent school, Christian school, you know, Lainna, you’re just trying to rush us too much. We’re just going to need a little more time to change hearts. Like seriously? Wait, your Bible says, When you see something wrong, you correct it. How does racism take time? So, you have to liberate.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 46:37 Third thing is to reclaim because Lord knows, you have to, like clean that space out. And you have to reclaim it for Christ because of the distortion and the evilness that’s been pervaded there, that space has to be reclaimed, or that mess comes back. And lastly, you have to reimagine. This is not a little tweaking of systems, you know, like finding a couple more chocolate chips to put into  your little organization to try to give the issue that you have reformed yourself. This is a whole reimagining. It’s a whole reimagining of systems and purposes of what you’ve done. You can’t tweak something that’s already distorted, tainted and evil. So, wow, I’m doing good, it’s only 49 seconds. Yes. Okay, so I didn’t think I could do this.   LAINNA CALLENTINE M.Ed., M.D. 47:40 So, I just want to leave you I have a little bit of I don’t know if you guys know this book, I didn’t write it. Darn! I wasn’t thinking – I should have brought my own books and should have been holding them up like this. But this is not one  I wrote. But it’s by Kate Bowler and it’s The Lives We Actually Have. And I thought something and it’s 100 blessings for imperfect days. And there was a perfect blessing that I want to leave with you. It’s called for when you’ve been hurt by the church. God saw me walk away. I had to, for what was supposed to have been a refuge, a community of hope and purpose, mutual encouragement, distorted all I understand you to be. Oh God, lead me to the heart of love so I might find the healing I need and protect the reverence I have for you. For you do not consume, but rather feed, you do not destroy but build up. You do not abandon your little ones but insist that they belong in your arms. Enfolded here, I see you now. The God who loves us to the end. For though I walked away, you didn’t. You found me and will lead me. Let’s now find the others. Thank you.   Julie Roys  49:17 Will again that’s Dr.Lainna Callentine speaking at RESTORE 2023 and Lainna, thank you so much for sacrificing yourself on our behalf to bring this message. And as you explained, there is no quick fix to racism. We need to lament deeply. We need to totally reimagine our systems and our purposes. And that’s something we’re committed to doing at The Roys Report. And I don’t know exactly what that entails, but I am confident that the Holy Spirit does. And we are committed to listening to the Spirit and to following the spirit. So please pray for us as we continue to take Lainna’s message to heart. And as we continue to discern how to practically walk out our conviction that every human being is a bearer of God’s image and worthy of equal respect and love. And I hope you’ll do the same. There’s so much to process in what Lainna said. But dealing with racism is not optional. Any more than following Christ command to love each other is optional. So, let’s commit to doing that together. And again, thank you so much for listening and supporting our podcasts and our mission here at The Roys Report. As I’ve noted before, we don’t have any big donors or advertisers, we simply have you, the people who care about abuse and corruption in the church and want to expose it. So, if you’re able, would you please consider giving a gift to support our ministry? And this month when you donate $30 or more, we’ll send you a copy of The Great DeChurching. This is a great resource exploring what’s causing the current exodus out of the church, and what can be done to stop the bleed. To donate and to get the book just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you’re blessed and encouraged.   Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/hteO426dZ6cMen need sex. And it's their wives' job to give it to them—unconditionally, whenever they want it, or these husbands will come under Satanic attack. Stunningly, that's the message contained in many Christian marriage books. Yet, research shows that instead of increasing intimacy in marriages, messages like these are promoting abuse. In this edition of The Roys Report, featuring a talk from our recent Restore Conference, author Sheila Wray Gregoire provides eye-opening insights based on her and her team's extensive research on evangelicalism and sex. Out of a desire for evangelicals' conversations about sex to be healthy, evidence-based, and rooted in Christ, Sheila and her team have analyzed many popular Christian books on sex. Many teach that men are incapable of not objectifying women. And instead of training men to control their urges, these books teach that women must save these men. If a husband struggles with porn, for example, it's his wife's job to give him more sex so he can go cold turkey. If a husband is abusive to his wife, it's his wife's job to pray the abuse away. And if you're a single woman, it's your job to dress in such a way that your body never “intoxicates” a man.With messages like these, is it any wonder that abuse victims often feel like it's their fault if someone hurts them? Is it any wonder that pastors like John MacArthur can convince wives that it's her duty to stay with a man who abuses her and their children? As Sheila explains, the patterns of abuse we're seeing in the church today are a symptom of these toxic evangelical teachings. And to solve the problem of abuse, we need to analyze and challenge these unbiblical teachings. Guests Sheila Wray Gregoire Sheila Wray Gregoire is an author, podcaster, and researcher into evangelicalism and sex. Her goal through Bare Marriage, a popular podcast and ministry, is to change the evangelical conversation about sex to be healthy, evidence-based, and rooted in Christ. She lives in Ontario, Canada, with her husband. They have two adult daughters and two grandbabies. Learn more at BareMarriage.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSJulie Roys, SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE Julie Roys  00:05Men need sex and it’s their wives job to give it to them unconditionally whenever they want it, or these husbands will come under satanic attack. Stunningly, that’s the message contained in many Christian marriage books. Yet research shows that instead of increasing intimacy and marriages, messages like these are promoting abuse. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and what you’re about to hear is an eye-opening talk by Sheila Ray Gregoire at our latest RESTORE conference. Sheila is an author and podcaster who’s done extensive research on evangelicalism and sex. And what she’s discovered is that many evangelical books teach an unbiblical message that men are incapable of not objectifying women. And instead of training men to control their urges, these books teach that women must save these men. If a husband struggles with porn, for example, it’s his wife’s job to give him more sex so he can go cold turkey. If a husband is abusive to his wife, it’s his wife’s job to pray the abuse away. And if you’re a single woman, it’s your job to dress in such a way that your body never intoxicates a man with messages like these. Is it any wonder that abuse victims often feel like it’s their fault if someone hurts them? Is it any wonder that pastors like John MacArthur can convince wives that it’s their duty to stay with a man that abuses them and their children? As Sheila explains in this important talk, the abuse that’s rampant in the church is just a symptom of this toxic teaching so prevalent in evangelicalism. And unless we address this false teaching, we’ll never solve the problem of abuse. So, I’m very excited to share Sheila’s eye-opening talk with you.   Julie Roys  01:57 But first, I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go toJUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out. Just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  03:02 Well, again, you’re about to hear a talk by Sheila Gregoire on how evangelical teachings on sex promote abuse. Sheila is the founder of BAREMARRIAGE.COM. She’s also the author of several popular books, including The Great Sex Rescue, and She Deserves Better. Sheila’s goal is to change the evangelical conversation about sex to be healthy, evidence based and rooted in Christ. And so, I’m so excited to share this message that Sheila gave at the RESTORE conference.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  03:32 It was a Friday afternoon in January of 2019, and I was sitting on my yellow chair in my living room trying to figure out how to procrastinate. I had a migraine, and I didn’t want to work, and so I was on Twitter. And I was reading a conversation between some women arguing whether or not they needed love or respect. And I thought, well, I’m a woman and I need respect. And so, I started chiming in and we were getting all spicy. And then I thought, I have that book. And I had never read it. So, Love and Respect, written by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, who got his PhD from somewhere, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s based on the idea that women need love. and men need respect. Oh, actually, no, it’s not. The subtitle is, the love she most desires, the respect he desperately needs. So, she has desires, and he has desperate needs. But I realized I have that book and I’ve never read it. And so, I thought this is a great way to procrastinate. So, I went, and I got it, and I opened to the sex chapter because I’m kind of the sex lady and that’s what I do. It was only about 12 pages long. And that was when the nuclear bomb went off in my living room. Because I read to my horror, if your husband is typical, he has a need you don’t have, and that need is for physical release. So, if he doesn’t get physical release, he will come under satanic attack. And through that chapter, he keeps referring to sex as a man’s physical release. There was not a single word about intimacy. There was not a single word about women feeling pleasure, too.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  04:07 So, I called my team, and we freaked out a bit. And we decided to write a post on our blog about the way that the book handled sex. And that post got so many eyeballs that we spent a whole week on love and respect. And over that week, we had email upon email, and comment upon comment about how that book had enabled abuse in their marriage. Working with me, was a young woman in her late 20s at the time, who has a master’s in epidemiology and is the statistician, but she was home with her baby. And so, she was just working remotely part time for me. And she said, you know what we should do Sheila? we should create a mixed-methods, qualitative analysis of the comments, and we should send it into Focus on the Family, who publishes the book, because maybe they don’t know. Maybe they don’t realize how harmful this is. And so, over the next few weeks, Joanna proceeded to do that. And we sent it to Focus. I knew Jim Daly; I had been on Focus on the Family several times. And we sent a nice letter about how harmful the book had been. And we never heard back. And so, Joanne said to me, “You know what I should do? I should go back and get my PhD so that I could do a study of how messages in the evangelical church are hurting women’s marital and sexual satisfaction. And I said, Joanna, I bet I could get a publisher to pay us to do it. And that is what we did.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  06:59 Until that day, I had never actually read another Christian book on sex and marriage. I mostly just wrote my own stuff. I was really scared of plagiarizing. But then we decided that we needed to open our eyes and see what was really going on. So, we surveyed 20,000 women for our book, The Great Sex Rescue. It’s the largest study of evangelical women’s marital and sexual satisfaction that’s ever been done. Did any of you take that study? Were any of you in mind, thank you. I know that was like half an hour of your life you can’t get back. I appreciate it very, very much. We’re doing a new survey that will be out in about two weeks. So, if you follow me, we will be putting out soon we will have a great need for people to take that one as well. But we surveyed 20,000 women measuring how various evangelical messages affected their marital and sexual satisfaction. And what we found was that there was four big messages in the church that really hurt women. And these messages are not biblical. They’re not from Jesus. They are what we have decided, as a church collectively are true. And we’ve done great harm with them.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  08:20 And so those messages are a woman is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it. 39% of women that we surveyed entered marriage believing that. All men struggle with lust, it’s every man’s battle. A woman should have frequent sex with her husband to keep him from watching pornography. And boys will push your sexual boundaries and so girls need to be the gatekeeper. The sum total of those messages does great harm. These were all widely taught, widely believed and hugely destructive. We also did a survey of 3000 men a year later, and guess what? The same messages hurt men’s marriages too. These are universally bad. And yet, when we took a look at 13 of evangelicalism’s bestselling sex and marriage books, these are everywhere. There were only three books that we looked at, that actually scored well on our rubric, the vast majority of them of the books that we looked at scored in the harmful category, including Love and Respect, which scored zero out of 48, literally. Even Every Man’s Battle did better, it got nine. Last year, we did a survey as Julie was telling you of another 7000 evangelical women, this time looking at how messages that we give to teenage girls, end up hurting girls long term. And the same messages that we studied before? Yep, they do harm, but we added some new ones, like the modesty message. When we tell girls, you need to be careful what you wear so that you don’t cause one of your brothers to stumble. Well, that makes her feel like her body is a threat to her. Because by no fault of her own, he could look at her and have these bad thoughts. And then because he can’t control himself, he could end up hurting her. And so that message makes us feel like our bodies actually cause ourselves to be put into harm.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  10:42 Research shows that far too many of our common relationship teachings in evangelical culture are hurting us. And I have been trying to sound the alarm on this. And while those in this room are likely to hear it, the powers that be often don’t. This has become a grassroots movement, which I think tends to be the way that Jesus works. He doesn’t tend to talk to the churches, the big places, the big people in power. He sets up 12 disciples and all of the women that were traveling with him, and they go, and they set the world on fire. And that’s what we found in the reception to our books, which are actually selling quite well, is that people want to hear this, even if the powers that be won’t talk about it.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  11:38 We have painted men in the church as being created by God, to not be able to do anything but objectify women, which by extension, means that it is women’s responsibilities to save men. And then we’ve somehow managed to sell the message that this is the way that God intended it. So let me give you a few quotes. And I want to do a big trigger warning here, and I’m quite serious about this is that some of you, it might be good to step out of the room. All I’m going to be doing is reading you things from our bestsellers, but they’re not pretty. And so, if you feel like you need to step out of the room, now would be a good time. But let me tell you what Every Man’s Battle said. If you’re looking for the reason for sexual sin among men, we got there naturally, simply by being male. The same authors repeat, men just don’t naturally have that Christian view of sex. So, I guess women were created with more of the Holy Spirit than men, I don’t know. And how then, are men supposed to quit lusting and watching porn? Well, they have the solution. The book, the original edition of the book, told women when he stops cold turkey be like a merciful vial of methadone for him. It explains that well before when you were lusting, you may have been going to your wife for five bowls of sexual gratification a week. Now you’ll be going to her for 10. And she will be happy about this. I don’t know how you can write a book and know so many little about women, but nevertheless.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  13:37 So, think about that. We are the methadone for our husband’s sex addictions. And what is it that methadone does? Yeah, methadone is basically something which numbs you so that you don’t go after the thing you really want. And that’s how they raised a whole generation of boys and men to think of girls. That book series has sold 4 million copies. Or how about this? This Gary Thomas and Deborah Phyllida echoed their sentiment in their 2021 book Married Sex, where they encouraged women to send nude photos to their husbands so that neurologically his attention will be focused on her and not other women or porn. And they didn’t really ever talk about the problems of revenge porn, and they minimized any concerns that she may have about cementing an objectified view of women in porn. Even if it’s not about sex, we get the message in our best sellers that we’re just supposed to pray the abuse away. Women you have so much power over your man. Don’t you understand that? So, in Stormy Omartian’s book, Power of a Praying Wife, she has this quote, which is echoed throughout the book. You can submit to God in prayer whatever controls your husband, and she lists a number of things, including alcoholism, and abusiveness, and pray for him to be released from it. That book sold 10 million copies of women being told if he’s abusive, you can pray it away. You just need to pray more.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  15:27 I bet John MacArthur likes that one. I think the evangelical version of the gospel too often looks like this. Jesus saves women, so the women can save men. And it’s even in the little things. Last year, the Gospel Coalition put out an Instagram reel, where Ligon Duncan claimed that wives can’t expect their husbands to do risky things, unless their wives unconditionally respect their husbands first. And what are these risky things that a woman can’t expect her Christian husband to do? Pray, read the Bible, think about life from a Christian point of view. You cannot expect your husband to do these risky things that you by the way are already doing unless you first give him unconditional respect. This really quietly puts the wife in the leadership role, while having to pretend that it’s the husband who’s actually the one leading. Honestly, it’s like the bar is so low, it is in the basement, isn’t it? Over and over again, our evangelical teaching tells everybody that it is impossible to expect men to act honorably. Tim  LaHaye, in The Act of Marriage, told a story about Aunt Matilda, and he berates Aunt Matilda for telling her niece how terrible sex was just as her niece was getting married. But then he goes on to explain that on her wedding night, Aunt Matilda’s husband held her down kicking and screaming and raped her and continued to do this throughout the marriage. Then Tim LaHaye talks about Aunt Matilda, and her equally unhappy husband. He called the rapist equally unhappy as his rape victim. That book published by Zondervan has gone through four different editions, and nobody ever took out that anecdote. That sold two and a half million copies. His Needs/Her Needs, which I think has also sold two and a half million copies, has a line in there where a 32-year-old executive complains, I feel like I’m begging her or even raping her, but I can’t help it. I have to make love. And Willard Harley, the author uses that to explain that men just have a really high sex drive, and women need to understand that. And then, of course, there’s For Women Only. Shanti Feldon based her book supposedly on research. Which is why I think people have given these books more credence than they really need to have. I’m going to give you an example of her survey question, which has become fundamental in evangelicalism and for several different books. But Emerson Eggerichs actually based his book Love and Respect on the foundational survey question that Shanti used in her book For Women Only, which came out in the same year, 2004, as Love and Respect. So, Shanti asked, I think it was about 450 men, would you prefer to be alone and unloved or inadequate and disrespected? Okay? So, you could be alone and unloved or inadequate and disrespected. 72% of men said that they would prefer to be alone and unloved than inadequate and disrespected. And so, she took this to say that men want respect more than they want love. And that is what Emerson Eggerichs used to base his ideas on for Love and Respect.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  15:39 They never asked women; think about that. A whole doctrine of how men need respect and women need love. They never asked women. When other people, other survey people asked women the same question, 68% of women chose alone and unloved as well. There is no gender difference. But beyond that, okay, I’m just gonna get a little survey geeky with you for a sec here, okay? Alone and unloved, inadequate, and disrespected. That’s what’s called a double-barreled question where you don’t know whether they’re responding to alone or unloved or inadequate and disrespected. When my son in law looked at that, he said, well, the one that I would hate to be the most is inadequate, because alone unloved and disrespected are all how other people are treating me, inadequate is how I feel about myself. So, I would choose alone and unloved because I don’t want to feel inadequate, because inadequate and disrespected are not synonyms. That is the state of research that evangelicalism based a foundational doctrine, love, and respect, that we hear everywhere. And church, we simply have to do better. That’s not okay.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  21:32 Now, there are many other things and for women only that Shanti Felden, that I find quite problematic. But one of the worst is this line, when she’s talking about the need that men have to feel unconditional respect, she says, If you are wondering if you’ve crossed the disrespect line, watch for anger. So if you’re wondering if you’ve disrespected him, watch if he gets angry. So, your husband’s anger is a sign that you have done something wrong, rather than a red flag of a behavior problem or abuse. And again, her book series has also sold 2 million copies. The worst thing though, is that these messages are not just being given to adults, they’re also being given to children. And for our book, She Deserves Better, where we looked at the messages that were given to evangelical teen girls, we found horrific things that were said to girls as young as eight. And I would like to show you something from the Secret Keeper Girl curriculum by Dannah Gresh. Secret Keeper Girl became an event that was seen by about a million little girls and their moms around North America. It’s now called True Girl. So, they’ve rebranded but a lot of the messages are still the same. And in that curriculum, she encouraged girls to take the Raise and Praise test, okay. So, here’s what you do, you put your arms up in the air. And if any belly shows, that’s bad. And the reason is because bellies are intoxicating. Later in this curriculum, she has a conversation that mothers are supposed to have with their daughters to explain what this means. And you’re supposed to talk to your daughter and explain that to be intoxicated means like being under anesthetic or being drunk when you’re out of control. And God created our bodies to intoxicate men. But you are only supposed to intoxicate one man, your future husband, and so you need to make sure that you’re not intoxicating to anyone else. She told eight-year-old girls, that their bellies have the power to make adult men get out of control. And we did nothing about it. We took our little girls to these events, and they internalized this message. I could go on and on.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  24:40 Whether it’s sheet music by Kevin Lehman, telling women that it’s a good thing to have sex when you feel forced and want to shove him off of you. Or explaining that your period is a very difficult time for your husband. I’m not kidding. And so, it’s important to give him sexual favors during your period or when you’re postpartum so that he’s not tempted to watch porn. I can tell you about Every Man’s Battle, telling women that if your husband demands or coerces sex more than once a day, that’s a bad thing. So, there’s a quote, I guess that’s acceptable of coercion. I don’t know. The abusive messages and our evangelical resources are horrifying, and honestly, it seems endless.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  25:33 But the sum total of these teachings is that men are entitled to women’s bodies. Men deserve unconditional deference free from being challenged for any bad behavior. And men cannot be expected to act honorably, or even safely. So, when men do harm, it’s likely because some woman somewhere hasn’t done her job. It’s not hard to imagine how disastrous this can be. In a survey done by the Institute for Family Studies, about 27% of highly religious men who believe in complementarianism, or believe in male headship, claim that they have been violent with their current partner. Marital rape is more difficult to measure because it depends on the definition of marital rape. But from what we’ve seen in the literature, and in our own results, it looks like a rate of about 10% with a very narrow definition, to about 25% of evangelical marriages if you include things like obligation sex, which lead to trauma. So, this is what’s going on in the pews. One quarter of the women in our churches are currently victims of abuse. And a lot of that is caused by our messages which prop up and enable abuse.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  27:17 And it’s not only abuse. There’s also rates of sexual pain. This is one of our big research areas that we’re trying to dig down deep into. Because it’s been known for about 50 years in the literature that evangelical women suffer from sexual pain. Specifically, a sexual pain disorder called vaginismus, which is when the muscles of the vaginal wall contract and become really tight, so that penetration becomes really difficult, if not impossible. Even things like inserting tampons can become difficult or pelvic exams. And we’ve known evangelical women suffer from this at way higher rates than the general population. But what we haven’t known is why. And it was assumed that it’s just because well, they’re just ashamed of sex. That’s not actually what we found. We discovered two big things that are highly highly correlated with vaginismus. The first is the obligation sex message. So, when women enter marriage, believing in obligation sex, whether or not their husbands do, it's just what you have internalized, your chance of experiencing vaginismus increases to almost the same statistical effect as if you had been abused. Because our bodies interpret obligation sex as trauma. Because abuse says, you don’t matter, he gets to use you however you want. And so does obligation sex. The other big thing that’s correlated with it is the modesty message as a teenager. So, when a girl has internalized that she is at least partially responsible for keeping boys from sinning., she’s also far more likely to experience vaginismus. This is our problem. It’s not nice to talk about it, but this is our problem. We have an incidence rate of about 22.6% of evangelical women and in the broader population is closer to seven or eight. This is what we have done, and it’s largely because of what we have taught people.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  29:32 And that’s why I am so passionate about changing the way we talk about sex and marriage in the church. Because what we have done has had real world effects. It has caused abuse to rise. It has caused actual physical changes in our bodies. And there’s other research which has shown that it actually solidifies porn use and makes it much harder to stop. We need to talk about this in a different way. And what’s been so exciting to me as we have done our work is that people have told me again and again, that when they read our stuff, they start to recognize abuse in other places too. Like, once you start to see, oh, this isn’t okay, in one area, you see it everywhere. One woman told us that it’s like peeling an onion, you know, and you take off one layer. And then you see it again and again. Another woman said, you know, I read The Great Sex Rescue, and I recognized that there was some really abusive patterns in my marriage. And thank God, my husband saw it, too, and we’re on the road to recovery. But it wasn’t just that. I also in that same week, realized that my boss was sexually harassing me, and I stood up to him, and I reported him. And we left our church. Because when you see abuse in one area, you’re able to recognize it in others.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  31:19 This is gonna sound weird to say, I don’t actually care about sex that much. Like, I know, this is my whole life, and I know this is all I write about. I don’t actually care that much. You know what I care about? I care about people thriving. I care about emotional health and wholeness. I care about ending abuse. But there’s a lot of people that are doing that work of calling out abuse, and you know how hard it is to get people to listen to you. You know, it’s like banging your head on the wall, and they just don’t want to hear. And on the other side, there’s a lot of people addressing the theology of men and women in the church, and how harmful that theology has been to many women. And I can’t speak Greek, my husband reads the New Testament in Greek, but I don’t, you know, I can’t tackle it on that side. But you know, the one thing people like talking about? sex. Everybody wants to talk about sex. And so, this has been our way in. We’ve been able to open up that conversation about sex, so that people will listen. Even people who, maybe you’re normally in more fundamentalist spaces, because everybody wants good sex. And when you can tell them, hey, here’s the way forward, here’s what we need, here’s why women need to matter too. When they start to see it in that one area, then they’ll start to see it in others. And I think that’s where we can work together. You know, I know so many of you are recovering from church hurt, and you’re wondering where to go and how to move forward. And I’ve been there. But I believe that as we speak up about this stuff, we’re going to empower others, that they can speak up too, and we’re going to cause a grassroots movement.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  33:27 I spent a lot of years hitting my head against the wall, trying to convince Focus on the Family to change. It doesn’t work. Interestingly, they’re now using all of my talking points in their Instagram reels. They’re just not referencing me. It’s pretty funny. But so, you know, that’s good. You know what? I don’t care if you don’t reference me, as long as you’re actually starting to teach healthy stuff, do not trust Focus for healthy stuff. Okay? They might be saying a few good things. And I’m glad about that. But this is not an endorsement. But you know, things can change slowly from the grassroots. But we’re not necessarily going to get the big things to change. And it used to really frustrate me when I couldn’t get the big organizations to change, when I couldn’t get the megachurch pastors to listen to me, when I couldn’t get the big media organizations to listen to me. When nobody big would interview us about The Great Sex Rescue, even though we did the biggest study that’s ever been done. Even though we spoke at the American Physiotherapy convention because pelvic floor physiotherapists think we’re groundbreaking. And we can’t get  the big names in the church to listen. But maybe that’s because they’re not supposed to. Because Jesus works at the margins. And I think Jesus is working at the margins here. And I know so many of you are hurting and a lot of It is because of this crap that was in so many of the books that taught you that it’s your fault if someone hurts you, and that you’re just not praying enough. And don’t you know that Jesus put up with it? So, what are you to say that you shouldn’t have to put up with this? You should have the mind of Christ. And you’ve heard those messages. But let me tell you that Jesus wants to tell you that you matter, that you matter.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  35:33 One of my co-authors on The Great Sex Rescue said that we could sum up the whole book with just four words, women are people too. And we are. And men are people too too; we all matter. But when we live in a church culture, which is trying to be based on power instead of on love, and emotional wholeness, we’re going to end up with abuse. And we’re going to end up with hurt. And so, as we’re fighting abuse, my plea, if I can make a plea, is that we also fight that which underpins abuse. That we don’t just fight abuse, but we start calling out the teaching that has enabled it. Because when we call out the teaching, we make it far more likely that people will recognize abuse in other spaces, too.   SHEILA WRAY GREGOIRE  36:35 One of the things that so disappointed me in the Mars Hill podcast series, I don’t know how many of you listen to that. Some of you, yeah, they just didn’t go far enough. They treated it like Mark was the problem. Mark was a symptom. All of the things that one episode they did about women, all of the things Mark preached about women, were in all of our best sellers. I could have pointed you to everything he said was in all of our bestsellers that are still our bestsellers. Mark is not the problem; Mark’s awful, but Mark is not the problem. The problem is that we have this whole culture of teaching that enables the Mark’s to get power. If we didn’t have this teaching underpinning it, if we didn’t have these ideas of power and kingdom, then there would not be a Mark Driscoll who would have that kind of power, there would not be a John MacArthur who told Eileen Gray she needed to go back to her abusive husband. And so, as we fight abuse, and I am so grateful to those of you who are out there in the trenches doing that, I pray that you will also join me in some of my mission too, in fighting the teaching that is given about marriage and sex that is underpinned abuse and enabled it to flourish. Because I think, until we can eradicate that teaching, we’re just going to be playing abuser whack-a-mole. Thank you.   Julie Roys  38:12 Wow, such an important message. And I’m so grateful for Sheila’s ministry, and the way that she’s addressing the root of the abuse problem in our churches. And I’m grateful for you too, who listen and support these podcasts and help us get these important messages out. As I’ve noted before, many ministries charge for conference talks, but because of your continued generosity, we’ve been able to make these messages available free of charge. And I’m just so grateful to the hundreds of you who donate to The Roys Report. As I’ve said before, we don’t have any large donors or advertisers, we simply have you the people who care about abuse victims and want to help. If you appreciate this ministry and want to support us, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. And in January, if you give a gift of $30 or more, we’ll send you a copy of The Great Dechurching. This is a great resource exploring what’s causing the current exodus out of the church, and what can be done to stop the bleed. So again, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you’re blessed and encouraged.   Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript America is experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in its history—greater than the First and the Second Great Awakening and every revival in the U.S. combined. But instead of a massive shift into the church, what we're seeing is a mass exodus. In this edition of The Roys Report, you'll hear from Michael Graham, co-author of The Great DeChurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back. Based on the most comprehensive study of people leaving the church in America, the book gives keen insights into this phenomenon. You'll learn why people are leaving the church, which demographic groups are leaving in the greatest numbers, and what can be done to stop the bleed. And the results may surprise followers of this podcast. Though much of our reporting focuses on corruption and abuse in the church, these issues were not the greatest factors people cited for leaving. The reasons cited were much more mundane than you might think. We are living in a unique moment—what research says is the greatest “dechurching” in nearly 250 years of this nation. This exodus doesn't just affect society or public expressions of faith; it impacts family relationships and how people relate to each other. Tune in for a highly informative conversation that examines the state of the church and why restoring her matters. Guests Michael Graham Michael Graham is program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He is also the executive producer and writer of As In Heaven and co-author of The Great Dechurching. He received his MDiv at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando. He is a member at Orlando Grace Church. He is married to Sara, and they have two kids Show Transcript SPEAKERSMICHAEL GRAHAM, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:04America is experiencing the largest and fastest religious shift in its history greater than the first and the second Great Awakening and every revival in the US combined. But instead of a massive shift into the church, what we’re seeing is a mass exodus, and the greatest de churching in nearly 250 years. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and on this podcast you’ll hear from Michael Grant, co- author of the new book The Great Dechurching. Based on the most comprehensive study of people leaving the church in America, the book gives keen insights into this phenomenon. You’ll learn why people are leaving the church, which demographics are leaving in the greatest numbers, and what can be done to stop the bleed. And the results may surprise followers of this podcast. Though much of our reporting focuses on corruption and abuse in the church, these issues were not the greatest factors people cited for leaving. The reasons were much more mundane than you might think. And we’ll dig into those in just a minute.   Julie Roys  01:05 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top-ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  02:09 Well, again, joining me is Michael Grant, Program Director at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. He’s also the executive producer and writer for the As In Heaven podcast. And he’s also a member at Orlando Grace Church where Jim Davis, who’s the co-author for his latest book, The Great Dechurching. He is also a teaching pastor. So, Michael, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you join me.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  02:31 So good to be here with you, Julie.   Julie Roys  02:32 So, Michael, your book is based on an extensive study that sought to prove or disprove this thesis that America’s in the middle of the largest and greatest religious shift in its history. And what you discovered is pretty sobering. Would you tell me about that?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  02:47 Yeah. So, I mean, the Cliff’s Notes version is that 40 million adult Americans have left houses of worship, across all religious traditions. And by and large, almost all of that has occurred in the last 30 years. So, from the moment of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit to today, 40 million people have gone from, you know, the various pews of all religious traditions. Now, most of those are out of what you’d call Christian traditions, about 15 million of that out of evangelical traditions, and then about another 20 million out of Roman Catholic and mainline traditions, the other traditions are a lot smaller. So, we weren’t really sure what we would be looking at in terms of why there were two prevailing storylines, depending on what your kind of media diet looked like. If your media diet looked a little bit left leaning, then the story was basically that people had been leaving houses of worship primarily because of mistakes made by those institutions themselves. So, this would be things like racism, misogyny, abuse, political syncretism, clergy scandal. If your media diet leaned a little bit to the right, the prevailing story was basically a story of secularism, or sexual revolution, progressivism, people are leaving houses of worship, because they’re no longer worshipping the Triune God, they’re worshipping some other, you know, forms of non-Christian things. The reality is that you can find several million people who would fit both that first story or that second story. However, most of the people might have elements of either of those two stories in there, but most of them left for really, really boring reasons. So, the challenge is like not necessarily saying that story A or story B is wrong. There’s actually a story C that is not as interesting. That’s also there and is kind of  the water that we’re all kind of in is the number one reason why people you know, left houses of worship, and stop going on at least a monthly basis. So that’s how we defined the charging somebody who used to go to church, or house of worship at least monthly, consistently, and now less than once per year. So even if you go to church on Christmas Eve, or Christmas, or Easter or Christmas and Easter, we still counted you in our study as being churched. So, if you think the 40 million number sounds scary, you know, if you take all the Christmas and Easter people out.   Julie Roys  05:32 That is like a really, really low bar.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  05:35 There’s many, many more people. But basically, the number one reason I moved, right after that is, attendance was inconvenient. After that is some kind of marriage, divorce, new child, or some other significant family change. After you kind of get past some of those reasons, you start to get into some of the reasons where people experience some more pain or some more friction, either at the individual level, or at the institutional level. But it really kind of looks like of the 40 million people who left, 30 million left, what we called casually, and about 10 million left as casualties. And so, 10 million people is a lot of people, okay, I don’t want to downplay at all the people who have significant church hurt at the individual, institutional or both levels. But there’s also just kind of 30 million people where it just kind of looks like, okay, well, just the inertia of American life and their rhythms and habits just kind of had them floating on.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  06:45 Now, the interesting thing about really, across the board, both the people who left casually and unintentionally, as well as the people who left as casualties and left highly intentionally, most of them are willing to return today to a house of worship of some sort. Some of them were willing to go back to exactly what they left and some of them are not willing to go back to exactly what they left, but willing to go to something that we would all consider as being part of the historic Christian tradition.   Julie Roys  07:18 Yeah, I was surprised when I read it, how many people just dropped out because well, even COVID. Like, they just got out of the habit. And I guess we’re seeing that. I mean, I know that’s a phenomenon. But it’s stunning in some ways that something that you would expect to be so central to a person’s life, that they would give it up just because it’s inconvenient, or they get out of the habit of going. And yet, maybe that speaks to where the spiritual state before that happened. But that was surprising, I thought finding of the study.   Julie Roys  07:48 I thought too just thinking through what’s at stake, which you do kind of in that first section relationally, what’s happening, you know, between parents and their kids, and you had this one line which struck me because I’m over 50. And it says, anecdotally, we know, of almost no parents over the age of 50, who don’t have at least one child who is dechurched. And I’ve got three kids. I guess I read that, and I just was very grateful, because none of my kids are dechurched. But I mean, certainly, wow, we felt like we have been in a war for their soul at different times within their lives. And just, by the grace of God, I think, have seen them embrace faith. But there are a lot of things in here that remind me of the situation that we’re in. I mean, this between parents and their children. And of course, I have so many friends, I mean, that are just beautiful parents and probably did a 10 times better job than I did. And they’re dealing with just such heartache over their kids leaving their faith leaving the church. But even you know, it’s culturally how fractured we are mentally. I mean, talk about some of these impacts on who we are as communities and as Americans that are really going to be impacted as we see this begin to play out.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  09:15 Let’s start at the purely secular level. Why would I care about this if even I was an atheist or agnostic or a nothing in particular? The first thing I would say is you should care about this phenomenon, because it’s going to at least sociologically reorder many aspects of American culture and society. How many different trends can you think about that impact one in six adult Americans? There aren’t many. And so, the implications of this will have implications in terms of politics and political voting groups. It will have an impact on the social safety net in our country. There are certain studies that have shown that as much as 40% of  America’s social safety net, the social safety net being the kinds of things that are there for people, when they’re, at their hardest or most challenging moments, that 40% of the social safety net in this country is basically coming from religious nonprofits. And so, when you see one in six adult Americans, you know, opt out of those kinds of ties, thicker ties, and local ties to local religious institutions, that’s going to have an impact for sure, on the social safety net. And I don’t think that that’s in the interest of either common good or human flourishing.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  10:41 We estimate in the book that that’s probably about $25 billion that just exited out of the religious nonprofit world. I mean, you’re talking about $1.4 trillion dollars, in terms of the total income of the people who have disconnected from local churches. A lot of implications for institutions, certainly, you’re going to see churches and houses of worship that are going to struggle, perhaps even close. You’ll have others where the trend of decline will continue. And that will put additional strain on those institutions. There will probably be consolidation that takes place that’s there. But if you’re listening to this, and maybe you yourself are dechurched, is it’s like, what, I miss you, okay? Because I go to church, and if you’re not there, I’m worse off because of your absence. At the local church level, it’s like, well, dechurching is impoverishing our churches, because you have all these people who are amazing image bearers, and then who liked I want to know, and love and experience. And I think about like the 59 one another's in the New Testament. At least over half of those require, we have to be embodied in order to even get to do those things. And so, I’m just worse off when there’s people who aren’t there anymore, and they’re missed. And so, and then zooming all the way down to, like, the familial level, there’s tremendous pain and hurt there. We’re not talking about just a number on a spreadsheet, you’re talking about real people’s lives, and real things in their story, and real pains, and real hard sometimes. Sometimes for very good reasons people disconnect themselves from these things. Anybody familiar with you and your ministry,  knows these stories, and they know them well.. And so, I think on that front, there’s just tremendous things at stake. What’s the Thanksgiving or the Christmas dinner table look like? And what pieces of sadness are there?, or these places where people land different from their family members in terms of how they process really big conversations. Those can be really hard and lonely and isolating things when you find yourself in a very different place.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  13:25 But you know, one of the things that we advocate in the book is a posture of quiet, calm curiosity for everybody. You can only find yourself in that, in that place of being quiet, calm, and curious with other people, when you have a sense of security in yourself. And I think that security is best found when we’re confident in our identity as image bearers made in the image of God, redeemed by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and confident of our future, our eschatological future in the kingdom of God. And so, when we have that, that gives us the freedom to not feel like we need to be defensive, we can just listen to other people and hear what they have to say and believe people when they’re telling us about the wins and losses, particularly the wins and losses and their experiences with people who claim Christ or institutions that claim to be Christian. And so, I think there’s a lot of implications for these things. There’s just a lot that’s at stake. I think that there’s much work to be done, both on the individual front, and there’s a lot of work to be done on the institutional front.   Julie Roys  14:43 How we lead as institutions, I think, is probably an area that energizes me because I have found so much dysfunction within those institutions. And I did like that you said, we don’t have to go back to the church we left and I’m in a house church now, I love it. And I find myself questioning a lot of the stuff that I just took on face value. I was having discussion recently, I’m like, I don’t know, like preaching is that really the best way for us to study the Bible? We get together and we open the Bible, and we study it together. And I found that incredibly rich, richer than a lot of times when I have somebody giving me basically a lecture for 30 or 40 minutes on their opinion of what it says. And I find it just much richer to go right in and dig in ourselves. So, I find myself at least among the people that I’m in contact with, are all asking these questions. What is it really have to offer look like? I am just in contact with so many people where it hasn’t felt safe. And so, I just have such a degree of empathy for those who have trouble and I say, even my own children, I watched them try to find a church. And it is unbelievably hard, unbelievably, and that just breaks my heart because I feel like so many of the vibrant churches that I knew when I was their age, don’t exist anymore, or they’ve been just the ministries that I think of that were so vibrant on campuses, and so forth just aren’t there. And so, we do have an unbelievable amount of work to do. And I thought it was interesting, you also found, like, when we’re talking about leaving the church, like, who’s dechurching?, this isn’t any particular group. This like everybody across the board, right?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  16:27 It’s unilateral across the board,. In certain places, it’s maybe a little bit more prominent or pronounced than others. And the timing of which various different groupings may have kind of floated on looks different. But by and large, yeah  there’s no group that’s immune.   Julie Roys  16:48 Well, let’s dig into some of the groups because that’s what I do find really fascinating, but also, I think, really educational, because if we’re going to be relating to these folks in hopefully a winsome way, it’s helpful to know who they are. And I think there are some misconceptions of who they are. So, you basically found there’s five groups of dechurched individuals, cultural Christians, dechurched mainstream evangelicalism, exvangelicals, dechurched, BIPOC. So Black, Indigenous and People of Color, and dechurched mainline Protestants. Let’s dig into each one of those groups. Let’s start with the cultural Christians who, I’m guessing these are the people that grew up went to church on Christmas and Easter, and maybe a few times in between, but basically a little bit of church background, but not really a saving faith, probably.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  17:46 Yeah, so every one of those groups we mentioned had one thing in common, they all went to a house of worship, at least consistently on a monthly basis, but now less than once per year. So, the culture in terms of size, the 15 million people who left evangelical traditions, and that’s the first four profiles that you just read off: cultural Christians, dechurched mainstream evangelicals, exvangelical, and then the BIPOC dechurched. The cultural Christians are about eight of those 15 million people. And then the next three groups are between two and two and a half million each. So, the cultural Christians, they look like people who are upwardly mobile, who did not have a deep understanding of the gospel, or the Bible, and the inertia of just their rhythms and habits basically has them out of the habit of going to church anymore. They’ve been gone from church for about 12 years now. They’re in their early 40s, on average. They’re overwhelmingly white, 98% white, and they’re doing well from an education and income standpoint. Interestingly enough, about half of them are willing to return to an evangelical church today. The top reasons why they left attendance was inconvenient, their friends weren’t worshiping at church anymore, they moved. More casual reasons than casualty and painful and the reasons why they said that they wouldn’t be willing to return were largely things that were relational in nature; new friends, lonely and want to make new friends, they miss church, a friend invites them, a spouse wants to go, they move and want to make new friends in a good community. So those were the reasons why about 4 million of them were willing to return to an evangelical church right now.   Julie Roys  19:36 Throughout these profiles, you often talk about their relationship to their parents, because again, they were brought up a certain way and obviously they’re doing life differently now than their parents did. And there were a couple things with their parents, one turned off by their parents commitment to culture wars and refusal to listen. And then the second  one, they’re not seeing the fruit of the Spirit in their parents. It’s tough to hear that. I think it’s a reminder that you know, as parents wow, I mean, what a responsibility. I’m curious if those relationships, and I don’t know how much you dug into it, but do they just remain fractured?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  20:21 We don’t know yet. The hard scientist in me would say we need to ask the same people the same question years later. And to drill down to get at the heart of those things. Probably in the three-to-five-year timeframe, we want to ask a lot of the same questions and see what looks similar, see what looks different. The stuff with the parents is really hard. And  it’s challenging, and it’s sad. I don’t know if it’s necessarily surprising. Obviously, for most of us, that’s one of the most formative relationships, if not the most formative relationship, at least in certain times of our life. And so, I think, also the last decade, in American public life, and I think particularly with the advent of social media, and the ways in which social media, you know, you have the like button, I think that was introduced, I want to say in 2009. Every platform has their dopamine-inducing reward structure for creating content that some people find interesting. The challenging thing about all of that is now, when you have a reward mechanism built into social platforms, people are more self-revelatory than what they would have been before. And so, I think, in terms of public communication and discourse, there is the freedom for people to communicate more about their perspectives than probably what there was before this dynamic of American public life existed. And so, I don’t think that’s necessarily all good or all bad. It’s just, there are implications that are downstream from that. And now, it’s where everybody is at, is far more clear than what it was 10 plus years ago. And there’s going to be implications from that, particularly as people have divergent perspectives, and sometimes strongly divergent perspectives. And again, all of these things are algorithmically incentivized. And in some ways, the stronger you feel about those things, sometimes that reward mechanism rewards you even further. And so, I think over time, there aren’t many impulses that are there baked into these things that create people finding as much common ground. And oftentimes, our digital interactions become power over persuasion.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  22:56 And so those are challenging dynamics. And what do you do if your parents are behaving poorly on the internet, and are getting cheered on from those things? You can flip that script in the other way, as well. So those things are going to have implications at the dinner table. And I’m sure that many people have experienced some challenges during looking back at their Thanksgiving and their Christmas. And I think that some of these things are just downstream from these particular dynamics of how technology has inserted itself into our lives and revealed things about people that we loved that have maybe changed our perspectives about how we view them and have altered maybe the amount of relational intimacy that we feel comfortable with. Those are hard and sad things.   Julie Roys  23:44 And one thing I found really interesting about this group, I mean, obviously, there’s the family fracture, well, that’s going to leave you more lonely, maybe depressed. But then there’s the relational fracture, like most of us, I mean, I know for me, my closest friends are my church friends, right? And without that community people are, and you even found, like more depressed, higher anxiety, I mean, all those things. And so, the reverse then, is that, and we often think, how do we invite people back to the church?, and I thought it was insightful that you’re like, these people need a dinner-table invite. In other words, they’re looking for a relationship, right? That’s most likely what’s going to bring them back to the church.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  24:26 What we talked about in the book is there’s three levels of relationship that different broadly speaking profiles probably need. The second profile that you’ve mentioned, the dechurched mainstream evangelicals, these folks left on average about three or four years ago. They’re about the same age as that first group, early 40s. But this group is whereas the cultural Christians only 1% of them said that Jesus is the Son of God, 98% of this second group said Jesus is the Son of God.. These people have a very deep understanding of the Gospel, the Bible, and the kinds of things that you want to see from Nicene-creed level of Christianity. And 100% of that group are willing to return to an evangelical church today.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  25:08 And so, the three levels of kind of relational need that’s there, that group really they just need a nudge. A nudge is something like a text, a phone call a water cooler moment, talking out on the porch, or in the cul de sac, hey, I got this really cool thing going on at church, or I’m speaking up this thing, or I think you’d really like our pastor, would you be willing to come to church with me? Let’s go grab lunch after at such and such place, that’s a nudge. I think when there is more pain, or church hurt, or these different kinds of things. And this should be obvious, when you think about it, it’s just people need the kind of intimacy that occurs around breaking bread together in a home at the dinner table. Literally, or figuratively and metaphorically, I think that when people need to be able to have an avenue, when there’s either interpersonal or institutional or both friction, then they need to be able to have a place that is where they can experience somebody who’s going to be willing to quietly, calmly and with curiosity, engage them in their story in a way that they would want to be treated. So, we have a third category of people who are just, they’re probably just never going to return to a house of worship.   Julie Roys  26:26 The exvangelicals. No?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  26:28 The exvangelicals are done with the evangelical expression of the faith. Okay. 79% of them were willing to return to some form of Christian tradition. That was something that was very surprising.   Julie Roys  26:44 So just 100%, they will not go back to the church they came from, which may be a good thing, in a lot of ways.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  26:51 Well, I mean, certainly there are many different institutions I could think of where it  would be very unhealthy to return to. So, and that’s the good news about all of this stuff, you don’t have to return to what you left if there was something unhealthy. I always think about these things in terms of truth, goodness, and beauty. Well, what’s a healthy church? Where you can see the truth of the gospel, the goodness of the gospel, and the beauty of the gospel, all in the same place.   Julie Roys  27:21 The exvangelicals, I just want to camp there just a little bit, because these are folks that I mean, honestly, I have a lot of empathy for  and understanding. I mean, they’ve been through some things that were pretty toxic in the church. In fact, you found they scored 74% higher on experiencing a lack of love from their congregation than the other four groups combined. And that’s heartbreaking, like the place where you should most experience love, they experience a complete lack of love. And I’d be curious how many of them come from a fundamentalist background as well because I mean, there just seems to be a correlation there between just a rigid adherence to rules and so forth, and even the culture wars and all of that, and just a lack of caring for the soul and caring for the human being, whether they agree with you or not. But these folks, where they look for answers; talk about that a little bit.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  28:26 We ended up calling this group exvangelicals because none of them are willing to return to an evangelical church. But what was really surprising was that 79% of them said that Jesus is the Son of God, and they had the second highest view of the Bible, as well as Nicene Creed-level Christianity. And so that would be things like the Trinity, the seamlessness of Jesus, these kinds of things. But what was interesting is this group was overwhelmingly female, two thirds female. And they were middle aged, average age 53. And they left a little bit after 9/11, on average, in terms of the bell curve. And what does seem to be occurring there is they had the lowest income and the lowest education of any of the groups, and their relationship towards institutions in general, was very strained. And so that was really interesting to see. It’s not just that the church isn’t working for this particular group, particularly the evangelical church. But American institutions in general aren’t working well for this group. Much lower rates of marriage, much higher rates of divorce, the rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts were also elevated across the board, but particularly suicidal thoughts were very bad. I think I made a note of this in the book, describe how you’re doing with respect to suicidal thoughts. And we’re basically 100 is I have no suicidal thoughts; everything is rainbows and Skittles. And where zero is deeply, deeply struggling with suicidal thoughts, the average score among this group of people, the exvangelical group, was 16. I just started crying, these are real people. And there’s several thousand people that we surveyed here. Are some of these people no longer with us?, is some of these people? So, I don’t know, given the number of people we surveyed probably. So,  I’m looking at that., and it just can’t not impact you at a deep level, when you have any measure of empathy to think, oh, my gosh, these are image bearers. And this is a group of people that are clearly there’s a lot of pain that’s here. And there’s a lot of things that just aren’t working. And I don’t know how many institutions there are, depending on where you’re located, and how many options you have. I think many people might have to go a long distance to find a place where they’d find a church that would have that kind of empathy and understanding, given whatever is there in the story.   Julie Roys  31:07 Well, it becomes almost cyclical, because if you’re divorced, I mean, I hear this from so many of my divorced friends, that you go into a church and you feel judged right away, or you feel like you don’t fit in, and so it can become very self-perpetuating, makes it very hard to go to any place. So, wow, let’s move to the dechurched/BIPOC because this one was surprising to me, too. I was not expecting the profile that you found of this group. So, describe the black indigenous persons of color who have dropped out of their church. What kind of person are we talking about here?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  31:43 Yeah, so this group was fascinating too. Over two thirds of this group was male. Yeah. And the average age there was early 50s. And this group on average left in the late 1990s. Okay. Now, something that’s really fascinating, when the machine learning algorithm that we used to sort the dataset into these different profiles, we didn’t let it see ethnicity or race in the dataset, and sort based on that. Now, what’s interesting, though, is that you have profiles like cultural Christians that are 98% white, and you have profiles like this one that are 0% white. And note, so while race is a biological fiction, it is a sociological reality. And so, you can see that race and ethnicity has a significant impact in terms of the ways that you’re experiencing America and American institutions, and it has an influence on those things. So that was interesting. Another thing that was interesting was that this group, and you’re talking two to two and a half million people, had the highest income and the highest education of any of the different groups. Now, bear in mind, this is a group of people who aren’t white, who probably largely willfully chose to connect themselves to evangelical institutions, which we all know trend from a sociological and demographic standpoint, most evangelical churches trend in the Anglo direction of things. And so, it wouldn’t be wise to take the particular perspectives of this particular group and assume that everybody who’s BIPOC in America would share the same perspectives: very high incomes, very high education, head and shoulders above any of the other groups. And the cultural Christians are the next to that. And the BIPOC groups just stands head and shoulders above them.   Julie Roys  33:39 So, this is a group that generally, I mean, those that have dropped out, at least the profile you gave was of somebody who’s BIPOC that lives in a pretty white space. And so, I mean, I’m looking at that thinking, Is it easier to disconnect from that church community? Because the black church is such a cohesive community that, I mean, almost, it’s so strong in the community. I think it is even stronger than most white churches. Is it easier to disconnect from church once you kind of moved out of that space? And then you’re in really, almost an alien space in some ways.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  34:26 Yeah. In terms of black Protestantism, the black churches in American US history, have played more of a role in the local community life than say their predominantly Anglo counterparts. And I think a lot of that has to do with the amount of pressure that was placed on those communities over time. The BIPOC group was 76% African American and 13% Latino. So, when you combine the predominantly male with predominantly African American means over half of this group was extremely upwardly mobile black men. So, you’re talking to at least a million black men of the 15 million people who left evangelical churches. The most pain in church hurt comes from the exvangelical group and the BIPOC group. By far, the exvangelical group, they’re all the church casualties. The BIPOC group is a mixture of casual and casualty. The dechurched, mainstream evangelicals are all casual. And then most of the cultural Christians you’d characterize as casual.   Julie Roys  35:35 The last group we don’t have much time to spend on because I do want to talk a little bit about some of the messages and the things that we need to say to all five of these groups. But the dechurched, mainline Protestants and Catholics, not a lot of surprises there I thought. That they’re really concerned about the church doing some good when maybe the church they grew up in and I know the profile, you get profiles for all these different groups, but the profile was a man who grew up Catholic and the clergy sex scandal just rocked his world because it impacted his brother. And those people are kind of done with church if it doesn’t make a difference in a positive way for the community, right?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  36:16 Yeah. And in the dechurching that occurred among mainline and Roman Catholic occurred earlier than the dechurching that we’re seeing among evangelicals. Dechurching among mainline Protestants is more starting in the mid-80s. and extending into the late 90s. And then you can kind of shift that up about five years, for those who are leaving Roman Catholicism from the early 90s to like early aughts. And then you know, dechurching among evangelicals kind of looks like the Apple stock chart, just a little bit later, going hockey stick.   Julie Roys  36:54 Yeah. Well, the last segment of your book does talk about those who had dechurched from evangelical churches, how we might be able to bring them back. And, you know, I really appreciated that you talked about not just beliefs, because that’s what we hear so much about. In fact, when you were talking in the beginning you’re saying, you know, we think of people who don’t believe in the Bible anymore, don’t believe in God. And that’s not what we’re finding, by and large with a lot of these groups. But where we’re not looking is the sense of belonging and the behavior. So, would you talk just a little bit about that? and why this is important?   MICHAEL GRAHAM  37:30 Yeah. In sociology of religion, Jim and I learned from our conversations with Ryan, that they have these three categories of belief, behavior and belonging. I think in the 20th century, most of the ways in which we communicated the gospel to people was belief centric. And when you look at like, apologetic literature from that century, most of it is focusing on, oh, the claims of the Bible, or the claims of Jesus, or the Gospels are true. And it’s okay, that’s good. But I think the kinds of questions that we’ve seen more frequently, in the last decade or two, have been questions about whether is Jesus good? Or Is he beautiful? And what does that mean for me in terms of how I relate to other people and to community? And so those are more of belonging-type questions than truth questions. And so, I think that it is important for us that we be building healthier institutions. And like I said before, we want to have churches that emphasize the truth of the gospel, the goodness of the gospel, and the beauty of the gospel. Is the Jesus way a path towards to human flourishing to me?, will I find people who treat me with the fruit of the Spirit, with love, joy, patience, peace,  all of these kinds of things? The good news about all of that is those are things that are within our control. We can walk and keep in step with the Spirit. And we can bring the kinds of change needed at the institutional level, to try to really bring our churches in line and instep with the Holy Spirit and inline and in step with what God has revealed in his word. And as we do those things, we can be building beautiful places for people. Will those things ever be perfect or whatever? No. But I think that impulse to be always reforming. It needs to be there. And we need to be willing to have hard conversations with ourselves calmly. But we need to be willing to hold up mirrors to ourselves and ask ourselves, How can we do better?   Julie Roys  39:48 A question that you asked in the book that I think is powerful, is does your church operate more like an event or a family? And I have found it just in so many churches, it is an event where you can come, and you can go, and nobody even knows you. And it’s no wonder if that’s what people think of the church that they’re leaving. So, if there’s not that family component, yeah, they’re just not going to stay. I think it was interesting, too, that you found that online church is basically a back door. Like people might go there for a while. But if they’re not connecting relationally, which how can you, you're a virtual church?, they ended up leaving, and I thought, on the behavior side, where you talked about that the church talk about hypocrisy, if they don’t see our beliefs and our actions lining up, they’re not going to stay. And so, we can only touch the surface, really, in a podcast, but the book, I would just highly, highly recommend. There’s so many good things in there, I think, instructive for us, and how we can do better how we can reach out, but how we need to be something different, I think, before we can even invite people to what we have, because if we’re not really functioning healthy as a church, then we can’t invite people to it. But before you go, I just want to give you an opportunity to any last thoughts that you’d like to say, to those, and especially those right now who are listening, who, they’re still dechurched, they’ve had it.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  41:21 What I want to say is that, regardless of how people, humans, and human institutions have hurt and harmed or failed you, I have never been hurt or harmed by Jesus. And I continue to fall more in love with just the goodness of his gospel. And look, I’ve been before, in my current role I’ve been a pastor for some 15 years. And I should probably be dechurched based on the things that I’ve seen over the years. There’s nothing that’s in the book, aside from the parental pain, I don’t have that there. But pretty much any other category that you can talk about, I’ve seen it, and I should be at risk. But I just know at the end of the day, if anybody else had the words of life, I would go and I would go there, but nobody else has the words of life but Christ, and he has died for his church. Is she a mess? Yeah. Is some of her parts way more messed up than others? Yes. Some to a fatal extent? Yes. Should there be some institutions that don’t exist? Yes. However, and sometimes for certain people, it’s going to be more proximate than others. But there are still good places where you can find that, where the body of Christ functions like a family. So, I’d encourage you to go back to God’s Word and look at all those one another's that are there in the text and find a place where you see those one another’s embodied, and where you can see that the truth, goodness, and beauty of the gospel all in one place. There’s just such tremendous hope in Jesus. It is the treasure in a field that is worth selling, metaphorically speaking, all that you have to go and pursue. Only Christ as the words of life. And only in Him can we find redemption, and the hope of a future where re-creation is happening, and redemption is happening as far as the curse is found.   Julie Roys  43:46 So good. And I think what we’re finding is that people are open to Jesus. It’s just the church. So, I do pray. I know for me; I feel just extraordinarily grateful that I found a body of believers and it’s been a lifeline for me. So, I just pray for that for other people. But I thank you, Michael, for helping us understand these different groups of people and also understanding what maybe we’re doing wrong that we can fix. Appreciate that, love your book. So, thank you again, so much for taking the time.   MICHAEL GRAHAM  44:17 Thank you, Julie. Appreciate it.   Julie Roys  44:19 And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And just a quick reminder, if you’d like a copy of Michael’s book, The Great Dechurching, we’d be happy to send you one for gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report this month. Again, we don’t have any large donors or advertising we simply have you the people who care about reporting the truth and restoring the church. So, if you’d like to support our work and get The Great Dechurching, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you’ll never miss an episode. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks for joining me today. Hope you are blessed and encouraged.   Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/QiNJvzlFadwWhen faced with a scandal, organizations have a choice. They can engage in impression management strategies, designed to obscure the truth, and save their image. Or, they can take the road less traveled. They can humble themselves. They can listen. And they can admit the truth—to themselves and to others.In this edition of The Roys Report, researcher, author, and abuse survivor advocate, Wade Mullen, speaks on how to manage a crisis in a session from the recent Restore Conference. This is a topic Wade knows well. For his doctoral dissertation, Wade studied the responses of 50 evangelical organizations when faced with a crisis. Sadly, what he found is they all do basically the same thing! They engage in impression management and hire spin doctors. They strategically omit key information. They make ambiguous statements, tell half-truths, evade questions—and do whatever it takes to try to control the narrative. What's tragic is that victims then get re-victimized. The public is deceived. And if the group gets away with it, they become emboldened and skilled manipulators. Prior to this week, our plan had been to release Wade's compelling, in-depth talk in February. But, in light of what's happening at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOPKC), now seemed the right time. IHOPKC is facing allegations that its founder, Mike Bickle, sexually abused multiple women over several decades. And just this weekend, IHOPKC platformed Eric Volz of The David House Agency to manage its crisis. Sometimes, it's hard to put your finger on what's happening in these situations. But some light bulbs will likely go on as you listen to this talk. Guests Wade Mullen Wade Mullen, PhD, is a professor, researcher, and advocate working to help those trapped in the confusion and captivity that mark abusive situations. He is the author of Something's Not Right: Decoding the Hidden Tactics of Abuse and Freeing Yourself from Its Power (Tyndale House). He serves as an institutional response specialist with Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment, a leading nonprofit group. His website is WadeTMullen.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSJulie Roys, WADE MULLEN Julie Roys  00:00When faced with a scandal, organizations have a choice. They can engage in impression management strategies designed to obscure the truth and save their image. Or they can take the road less traveled. They can humble themselves, they can listen, and they can admit the truth to themselves and to others. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And what you’re about to hear is a talk from our recent RESTORE conference by researcher, author and advocate, Wade Mullen, on how to manage a crisis. This is a topic Wade knows well. For his doctoral dissertation, Wade studied the responses of 50 evangelical organizations when faced with a crisis. And sadly, what he found is that they all do basically the same thing. They engage in impression management. They strategically omit key information. They make ambiguous statements, tell half-truths, evade questions, and do whatever it takes to control the narrative and control how others think of them. And what’s tragic is that victims get re-victimized, the public is deceived. And if the group gets away with it, they become emboldened and skilled manipulators. I had planned to release Wade’s talk in a couple of months. But in light of what’s happening right now, at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, or IHOP, I thought now was the right time. If you’re not aware, IHOP is facing allegations that its founder, Mike Bickle, sexually abused multiple women over several decades. And just this weekend, IHOP brought in Eric Volz at the David House Agency to manage its crisis. Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on what’s happening in these situations. But I think as you listen to Wade’s talk, some light bulbs will go on. And so, I’m very excited to share this talk with you.   Julie Roys  01:53 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington if you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Curt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out, just go toBUYACAR123.COM. Now, here’s Wade Mullins, speaking at RESTORE 2023 on how to handle a crisis.   WADE MULLEN  03:04 It’s an honor to be here again, and to be a compassionate witness to one another’s stories and to stand in solidarity against abuse. I’m grateful to be here. Throughout college, I worked as a server, a waiter at an upscale restaurant, which, given how accident prone and clumsy I can be, probably wasn’t the best idea. But they hired me. And as a result, I created a number of crises for management to have to respond to. There was the time when I was carrying a tray full of drinks in one hand, which was always a risky kind of circus act for me. And I approached the table in the corner of the restaurant, and a man was sitting at the table with his back towards me. And I approached the table and one of those trays started wobbling, and a glass of cold ice water tipped over. And the way the tray was, it caused the water to go right down the back of his shirt. And to this day, I can picture him going, whew, that’s cold. He didn’t know what happened. So, I had to apologize. Management had to come out and figure out what to do. I believe the man went home to get changed. It was it was bad. Then there was the time I was walking to the dining room with another tray full of dishes and a ramekin just like a small cup of yellow mustard, fell off of the tray and landed on the floor at such an angle that the yellow mustard flung into the air and my eye is going toward what spilling, but I hear a woman say what the? And I look up and she had all that yellow mustard in the back of her hair. And she’s trying to figure out what just happened. But perhaps the worst, and there was many. But perhaps the worst was when I was trying to keep one of those trays full of drinks straight again. You see, I should have learned my lesson, and just avoided that altogether. When I got to the table, and a glass full of coke, dropped off the tray and entirely into a woman’s purse. She gasped. And to this day, I remember her saying, looking in her purse and saying my purse is flooded. So again, I had to apologize, management had to come out, offer to pay what was ruined. comp the meal in all these cases. It wasn’t good.   WADE MULLEN  06:00 A crisis is when the unexpected happens, usually at a speed you can’t keep up with, and results in some kind of undesirable negative impact. And there are often four components of a crisis. The first is an event that’s unexpected, which can make it difficult to prepare for, so nobody brings an extra shirt with them to a restaurant in case the server drops a glass of water on them. Second, there’s a high impact on numerous people, which usually cannot be easily assessed. So, when I spill a drink on someone as a server, there’s the direct impact on the person who got something spilled on them. There’s the impact on those who are trying to share a peaceful meal together. There’s the impact on me the server, perhaps on my trustworthiness as a server. There’s the impact on management and perhaps on the restaurant. Third, there’s a loss of control as events happen too fast to manage. So, there’s initial reactions, which might be shock or confusion. There’s a time in which people are trying to figure out what is happening and how do we respond. So, it can all seem like a blur. And then lastly, fourthly, if not handled well, and I know  many of us have experienced this. When not handled well, the response to the crisis can generate additional losses, additional pain, additional conflict, potential abuses. So, what if after I dropped the Coke into the woman’s purse, I became upset and blamed the woman for having her purse on the table? I did not do that. But had I or if management didn’t offer to pay what was damaged, a wrong response can add insult to injury and create additional crises. And there are different types of crises. So, these are examples of accidents that I’ve provided, but there are crises that are a result of natural disasters or emergencies. There are crises that companies face when technology or product fails like a like a data breach. Then there are crises that are commonly referred to as scandals because they involve typically reports of some kind of leadership failure, misconduct or abuse that undermines public trust. And this is what I want to focus on.   WADE MULLEN  06:02 In 2015, I set out to complete a PhD dissertation on how evangelical organizations use what are called impression management strategies to respond to a crisis. Or to be more precise, a particular type of crisis called an image threatening event. And at this point, I don’t need to convince you that the evangelical landscape is filled with these types of crises. I want to talk about how leadership can respond well in the midst of a crisis of this nature. And I’m going to begin with some common responses to crisis that should be avoided, then give some principles for responding well, and end with an encouragement to engage in healing and restorative work. Every situation is different. Your response to let’s say, a suspected crime, like child abuse, is going to start or should start with a report to authorities who have the responsibility and resources to investigate that. But your response to let’s say, a non-criminal offense, maybe spiritual abuse, is going to be different. So rather than providing guidance for specific scenarios, I’m going to give you principles and tools that I believe can be applied to most any situation. And I’ll start with this observation. And I always hesitate to create two paths, two options, but I think there’s truth to this one, based on my research and experience. When there’s a crisis, decision makers must choose one of two paths; to adopt truth telling and transparency, regardless of the impact on one’s legitimacy, status, or image, and I would say that is in this field, the narrow path, or second, use impression management and public relations strategies intended to portray and protect legitimacy and status and a positive image. And that first thing, legitimacy is often what’s being protected most of all. It’s this fear that people have, leadership has, that if this is going to become known, then that will threaten our appearance of legitimacy. And if we lose that, then we’ll lose following and if we lose following, then we’ll lose power and we’ll lose money and all the things that they might be grasping.   WADE MULLEN  08:33 Now, you may be wondering what’s impression management? In some of my prior talks, I went into detail describing various impression management tactics, but if you’re new to the term, or need a refresher, impression management is the process by which individuals or organizations attempt to control the image others form of them, usually in order to be seen in a positive light, especially when a reputation or legitimacy is threatened. And research studies indicate that impression management is the predominant focus of organizations and their leaders in the wake of a crisis. Strategic omissions, non-disclosures, ambiguous statements, half-truths, preventing discovery, not allowing people to ask questions, not cooperating with an assessment or an investigation, making misrepresentations, and a host of other communication techniques, are often difficult to identify, because they tend to be just shy of outright lies. And because the audience typically doesn’t have access to all of the information to be able to test what’s being said. And over time, these techniques of deception of impression management are learned. And thus, individuals or leadership teams can become very adept at creating false impressions, without placing themselves in the very difficult position of being caught in a lie or having lost control of the narrative. The objective of impression management is to control the behavior of others by defining a situation in the way that leadership wishes others to define it, knowing that it’s easier to control people when you can define reality for them, or keep them confused.   WADE MULLEN  13:00 And when leadership has successfully managed crises in the past, by using impression management tactics, they feel less threatened by future crises, because they know they can draw upon their past arsenal of impression management strategies to respond defensively to any future threats. So, the organization has created what’s called a buffer between its image and any future threats to its image. One of the tools that some evangelical organizations have sadly employed to manage a crisis, are non-disclosure agreements or similar clauses that can appear in all kinds of legal documents that are used to secure silence, to keep someone from being able to share their story. And you can imagine how, when and if that works the first time an organization decides to employ that, how that then can become a standard practice. And numerous crises are discovered to have been partially managed through the use of those kinds of agreements. But these kind of strategies can be used to create this buffer between an image that needs protecting and any future threats to that image. Now, that approach, that image-centered approach, can become a framework, a grid, through which all crises are viewed and through which all decisions are made. And over time, an organization a community, a culture, can become increasingly concerned with covering up abuses, injustices and all kinds of unethical behavior, for the sake of preserving that positive appearance. To be seen as a place free of those kinds of dark secrets. And it’s as if there’s this line, and everything above the line, what the organization wants to present to others and everything below the line is what they want to keep hidden from others. And when a crisis hits, the organization gets to work, managing this split between what has been presented to the public, and what is actually happening behind the  scenes that might threaten the public image if it were to become known. That’s why wherever you have successful cover ups of wrongs, you have two types of dark secrets that that organization now must maintain; the secret of the wrong itself, and then the bigger secret, that such kinds of secrets even exist. And that’s why so often we find that when there’s finally exposure, the exposure, the initial exposure, then might open the door to all kinds of things that have been hidden over time. Over time, they not only learn what strategies to use to maintain the split, but they also tend to become more insular, and fortressed. By only giving power to those with close relational ties, those who will remain loyal, and keep those secrets.   WADE MULLEN  16:15 Another typical response to a crisis is to centralize power so that decision making is done within the higher levels of an organization’s hierarchy. Sometimes that’s necessary in an emergency when decisions need to be made quickly. But it’s a problem if that then isn’t brought back into balance. But it can also be a response designed to protect the more powerful members of the organization. And sometimes a crisis becomes a convenient excuse for leadership to grab more power. And even when the crisis is over, the power remains centralized. So, a crisis tends to strengthen the hierarchical structure of an organization and increase the power differential between leaders and followers. And that’s always hard to assess. But it’s a reality that is so often true in every situation where you have cover ups of wrongs, and you have abuses, and you have traumatized individuals. So, you have this huge gap in power. Followers typically become less powerful, and the leaders become more powerful. Then as power is pulled more and more into the higher levels of the organization, and never shared, then that amplifies the desire leadership has to protect its own image when a crisis hits, because a threat to their legitimacy is a threat to their power. So, an image is threatened, power is concentrated within a single person or a few people who will remain loyal to each other, to protect that shared image, and keep all the secrets below that line. And this continues. So, what I’m trying to emphasize is that this becomes a pattern, it becomes a cycle. And it gets amplified up with each crisis, widening that gap between what is presented to an audience and what is actually true. But managing that gap, what I have found, becomes more and more difficult over time in some sense, because in order to hide what is below the line, people tend to feel as if they must volunteer information about themselves that is the opposite of what they’re hiding. So, showing off becomes a way of hiding secrets. And another common response to a crisis is when the priority is managing an image through self-promotion to boast and make overly optimistic statements and grandiose claims. The late sociologist, Erving Goffman, wrote this  the more there is about the individual that deviates in an undesirable direction from what might have been expected to be true of him, the more he is obliged to volunteer information about himself, even though the cost to him of candor of that honesty may have increased proportionally. So, honesty is not the right synonym here for candor, but that willingness, that volunteering of information becomes a risky thing when there’s that split between what is actually being said, and what’s true.   WADE MULLEN  19:37 So, for instance, an organization a university could claim to be one of the safest campuses in the country while actually failing to meet the demands of safety. This is what hypocrisy is and this is the risk. This is what’s happening in this cycle, in this pattern. Hypocrisy is wanting to be seen as good without meeting the demands of goodness. It’s asking for trust without working to earn trust, it’s wanting to be seen as a healer, without touching any wounds, it’s gathering a following without serving, it’s always taking, never giving. And that gap widens and widens and widens. And then managing that image becomes the predominant goal, when everything above the line is what gets presented to others, and everything below the line is what remains hidden. All of that energy goes into maintaining this divide.   WADE MULLEN  20:35 Another factor that drives leadership toward image management is the reality that for some leaders, their identity and sense of self-worth is intertwined with the success of the organization they lead. And so, a threat to the image of the organization is a threat to the identity of the leader. The organization can’t be seen as a failure, because then that leader will be seen as a failure. And I believe this is a significant problem. And I’m grateful for those who are writing books and helping us understand more and more about the problem of narcissism within the church. But we need to be willing to name the truth and acknowledge our own limitations and failures when faced with a crisis. Even if it means being seen by others as weak or as inadequate. When leadership tries to cling to their image, then they use power in ways that are careless in ways that might be callous in ways that harm people already negatively impacted by the crisis, and in ways that undermine public trust.   WADE MULLEN  21:46 And then lastly, an organization can believe it has become too big to fail. Research suggests organizations that enjoy a higher position in their field have more to lose when that position is threatened. Therefore, they’re more likely to use impression management because they believe the risk to all they’ve built is too great. And I’ve heard leaders who say, well, if we were to get in front of the congregation and make an apology, and admit this, you know, just realize just what that would do to all that we’ve built, or that might work in a small church, but you’re talking doing this in front of thousands of people. That just will cause such a mess, you know. So, their  sense of we’re too big to fail.   WADE MULLEN  22:40 Organizations can quickly get caught up in a cycle of managing images and reputations. And on too many occasions, I’ve heard from groups of people who have experienced the pain of seeing their church community or an organization they love, slowly become a place characterized by fear and confusion brought on by dominating leaders who manipulate for their own gain and for the protection of their own image. Now, why does all this matter? Because the most profound impact become the most easily forgotten when leadership turns their attention away from the needs of victim survivors and toward the work of protecting their own image.   WADE MULLEN  23:28 So, the first principle I want to offer for responding well, other than avoiding all of those things, is to surrender the desire to manage impressions and defend your image. And when you do that, it frees you to center the needs of victim survivors, and it frees you from this prison of deception that we can so easily get ourselves into when we start prioritizing our image and our reputation. An important question to ask and to keep asking, when responding to a crisis is, who is impacted and how? You need to assess the losses people have experienced, and that response must be governed by love for those entrusted to your care. Years ago, I was in the car, and I heard a man on the radio define love in a way that has stuck with me. He said love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another, that does not require being loved in return or that the other person is demanding of that love. That is sacrificial Christian love. And when you think of love in that way, you also might think of Jesus Himself and His death on the cross. I John 4:10 says this is love. Not that we loved God, but he loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation, as a satisfactory payment, for  our sins. Love requires sacrifice. And if you are going to respond well to a crisis, understand it is going to cost you something. One of the saddest statements I hear sometimes from church leaders is, I didn’t sign up for this. Well, that’s exactly what you signed up for, to serve people in the midst of their suffering. And not only is that for their good, but it’s ultimately what is character forming and joy producing in your life. No one who experiences meaningful and faithful service to others looks back on that and says, I’m so glad of the self-serving self-protective role I had. So out of this love for others, you ask who is impacted? And how are they impacted? And you have to keep asking that.   WADE MULLEN  25:53 The next question we must ask is, what do we have to do to alleviate the suffering and promote healing? How do we enter into that suffering in a way that is trauma informed, ethical, and redemptive? But the answer to that question gets disrupted by a self-serving question that goes something like, if we enter into their suffering, what will happen to us? And this isn’t just theoretical. I’ve been in these situations and have heard from leaders who are wrestling with among themselves, there are some who say, this is the right thing to do. And we need to admit this, and we need to get in front of the people we’ve harmed, and we need to confess our sins to them. But then you have those who are in that meeting, who say, Oh, but if we do that, what will happen to us? In Martin Luther King Junior’s last speech titled, I’ve been to the mountaintop, given a day before his tragic assassination, he called people to support black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, who are on strike over poor work conditions and unfair pay, and challenged his audience to develop a “dangerous unselfishness” in their fight for justice through peaceful means. And in that speech, he recounted Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. And he suggested that the priest and the Levite, who chose not to help the wounded man who was robbed and left on the side of the road, that they might have been afraid of what would happen to them if they stopped to cross this dangerous road and help the man. And because he was conducive to  ambushes, Martin Luther King, Jr. speculated that this fear may have gripped them. So, he said, the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question. If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him? King concluded his speech, that’s the question before you tonight, not if I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor? The question is not if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? Its if I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? That’s the question. And I think one of the reasons leaders fail to respond well in crisis is because they say things like, if we stop to address these concerns, we’ll be distracted from our mission. Or if we get involved, and we don’t get it right, then we might get sued. So, leaders might say, what will happen to us if we get involved? What if things go wrong, and then we’re implicated? So, let’s keep our distance and not have our responsibility descend to them. Let’s not enter into it, let’s just hope it goes away. Or when the right thing is to confess and publicly apologize, leadership might ask what will happen to us if we confess? So, they remain silent, or they give a statement that falls just short of accepting responsibility by saying something like well if mistakes were made, or if anyone was hurt. In addition to assessing the impact on individuals, you also have to make sense of what is happening and apply the right definitions to the situation.   WADE MULLEN  29:44 One of the most harmful failures is when a situation is wrongly defined. Sometimes that’s intentional and done deceptively to control the narrative and protect powerful people. So, for example, the pastor verbally abused his staff and It’s called miscommunication. A leader repeatedly acts in spiritually abusive ways toward those under their care, and when it finally comes to the surface, it’s attributed to interpersonal conflict. A pastor commits adult clergy sexual abuse, and it’s called an affair. When you attribute the wrong terms, categories, and descriptions to a situation, you lead people down a path that ends up causing more harm. Sometimes there’s confusion around these definitions, because there has not been adequate attention paid to policies and procedures, or to training or to the fostering of an ongoing learning environment. So then when leadership is faced with a crisis, they’re left unprepared. And that lack of preparation opens the door to confusion. And in worst case scenarios opens the door to the bad actor, the deceptive person, to drive the narrative and the response. So, I want to emphasize the need for robust policies that are kept current and accessible. In many situations where there’s a failure to respond well, I hear leadership acknowledge that they either don’t have policies in place, or that they haven’t been updated in years. Or if they have policies, they don’t know what they are or where they are. Policies and Procedures are critical.   WADE MULLEN  31:29 Now, sometimes when I recommend this, I get pushback, and I hear leadership say, well, we don’t want to policy ourselves to death. And I want to speak to that because I’ve heard it too many times. I’ve only ever heard that view expressed by those who don’t have any. And in my opinion, it’s a potentially dangerous view that puts at risk the safety and fair treatment of those who are most impacted when a crisis hits. I’ve never heard someone say, well, maybe we would have responded better if our policies weren’t so robust. There is a need for there to be clarity and cohesion. But they but they need to be there. Regular trainings and fostering a culture of ongoing learning is also important. Trainings on abuse, prevention, and response on trauma-informed practice, on facing the ethical dilemmas of leadership can all help you to respond well when the need arises. I’m grateful in my work with GRACE that through GRACE, I’m able to sit through training in each of these areas once a year.   WADE MULLEN  32:38 Establishing access to resources and experts is also important so that when you need to get expert external advice, you know where to turn. I also recommend if it’s possible that organizations have an interdisciplinary response team, a diverse team of individuals with backgrounds and relevant fields, perhaps social work, or mental health, that can help with auditing policies, making sure they’re up to date with recommending trainings with assisting when there’s a crisis. These things can help prepare you. And it’s critical that there’s work done in this area of preparation because what you take into a crisis is what you will have with you during that crisis. In too many situations, I’ve seen people try to scramble and try to put something together after they’ve already been faced with something that they need to respond to. But even well-meaning response efforts can be harmful, when they are not supported by policies, education, and resources, because that confusion, that uncertainty about what to do can worsen the crisis.   WADE MULLEN  33:48 Now, perhaps you have clear policies, and you have ongoing training, you have access to resources, there’s still often a need for wisdom. Because there’s sometimes dilemmas, there’s nuances that need to be carefully worked through. There are two behaviors that are important for maintaining wisdom and an ability to make sense of what’s happening when you’re navigating a crisis. The first is what might be referred to as updating. Updating invites, welcomes, and provides safe mechanisms for new information to come to light. And that process is going to look different depending on the situation. Another term for updating might be openness. You remain open to new information and perspectives. You’re willing to hear from people, you’re willing to allow people to ask questions to bring concerns. You’re willing, if needed to,  to submit to an external investigation or assessment in order to understand what’s true.   WADE MULLEN  35:03 A second behavior that goes along with updating is flexibility. You have to be willing to continually test and revise interpretations and conclusions and decisions on the basis of information, and as new information comes to light. So, you hold these things with an open hand. And when both updating or openness and flexibility are working in tandem, wisdom and discernment are more readily practiced. And when you don’t practice wisdom, then you risk falling into one of two extremes. So, imagine a spectrum with wisdom in the middle. You don’t have to imagine it because I put a slide up there. And on the one end of the spectrum is overconfidence, in which leadership shuts down feedback, isn’t open to changing course, because they think they know what they need to know. They don’t acknowledge their limitations; they don’t turn to outside help. And as a result, this kind of response tends to result in dangerous action. This overconfidence can look like minimizing the scope and severity of a situation or making overly optimistic statements that everything is under control, or things will resolve themselves. Again, research has shown that this response is driven often by individual identities that are threatened during a crisis. So, you might have an overconfident individual, let’s say the founder of the organization, that responds in this way out of a threat to that identity. On the other side of the spectrum, are the overcautious. The overcautious are fearful of what feedback will reveal, and they take more of a passive, let’s just ignore it kind of approach. And they tend to take dangerous inaction.   WADE MULLEN  37:04 Both the overconfident and the overcautious shun wisdom. They shun curiosity, they shut down feedback, they shut down information. And as a result, they end up making poor decisions. One of the most common regrets I hear from leaders is that they wish they would have gotten help sooner, or they wish they would have taken time to listen to people. Not only does this application of wisdom benefit victim survivors and others who are most impacted by a crisis, but it also allows for a more sustainable and supportive environment for leaders. I often hear leaders go through a crisis and get to a point where they want to give up. They despair, maybe of the role they find themselves in. And I think part of that might come not just from lacking the capacity or resources to be able to give what’s required to meet the needs at the moment. But that inadequacy, those limitations, they go unacknowledged, perhaps out of a desire to be seen as in control, or perhaps out of a fear of being seen as weak or as a failure. So, they insist on leading. And then when the crisis is abated, maybe things calmed down, that leader in my experience, then takes a sabbatical, they go on vacation, thinking they’ll return then and be a different person. But then there’s another crisis and the pattern repeats itself because the leader hasn’t been honest about his or her limitations and gifts and abilities. So, they still cling to what they know and what they think they can do well, which then worsens the crisis for everyone involved. But when you’re able to say, here are my limitations, here are my weaknesses. When you’re able to move into this area of wisdom, and invite other people into a process, turn to outside experts. You embrace this model and you become a gift to others, and to those impacted by the crisis. I also recommend that when there’s a crisis, there’s often a need to speak truth in love. Sometimes speaking, truth and love means helping people process the crisis. So, it isn’t always the case that leadership needs to confess something, but they might need to provide answers. When giving accounts, explanations and answering questions, you should seek to do so in a way that helps people make sense of what has happened in a way that honors the dignity of those involved.   WADE MULLEN  39:46 When there is a time to confess, so this is another area of speaking the truth and love, is confessing. Then that ought to include this surrendering of defenses. So sometimes in that moment of confessing, that’s when we feel the most desire and the temptation to then protect our image. So, you have to surrender that, you have to take ownership. You have to take responsibility, and you have to demonstrate empathy. Sometimes speaking the truth in love looks like confronting wrongdoing. And when this happens, and of course, this isn’t something where you have external authorities involved who are investigating. But let’s say there are deceptions that you’re hearing in a board meeting regarding the what happened, or regarding the motives of other people. And there’s just a need to confront some of that misrepresentation. How do you do that? Well, this should be done with gentleness, it should be specific about the offense, about the wrong about any consequences, and it should invite that person into a redemptive process of accountability and repair. Then there’s a need to engage often in a work of repair in allowing for an environment of renewal. If needed, there ought to be an offer of generous restitution, and support for those who have experienced losses, those who have been victimized. This is, in my experience, sometimes where organizations stop, and I encourage them and invite them then to continue on this path. And to perhaps if it’s safe, ask people, What is it that you need? And the general principle that I give to leaders, if they find themselves in that position, is to do whatever the other person asks. I’ve never been involved in a situation where that request wasn’t a reasonable one. And sometimes it looks different. It’s not always I could use some help with paying for medical bills or counseling bills. That should be considered. But sometimes it’s, well, we really would like everyone on the leadership team to go through this training. Or we really would like maybe you could build some kind of memorial in honor of those who have been traumatized here and victimized. So there needs to be this restitution. And it ought to be generous, and it ought to be willing. When Zacchaeus made restitution, it was four times the amount, it was generous. But it was also something that Jesus didn’t twist his arm to do. It was something he was willing to do. And when he did that, Jesus said, today, salvation has come to this house. This is a critical step that is often missed.   WADE MULLEN  42:48 There needs to be a time where people are allowed to lament their losses. And I think it’s a beautiful thing when a church moves through a crisis well, and leadership shepherd people well, and after that, together, they hold a service of lament, and they name what has been lost. There ought to be some process in which the organization, leaders involved, submit to some kind of change, and that usually then involves some outside input to. There ought to be an honoring of truth tellers. That is another step that is too often missed. The only reason you’re here and experiencing this reform in many cases is because somebody had the courage to speak up. Are you honoring that? And then value the sources of resilience. And this is what I mean by that, just as a choice to prioritize managing images can quickly become a cycle of cover up and harm, a choice to embrace truth and transparency can become a cycle, it can become a way of living, that strengthens trust, strengthens safety, and creates resiliency. Thank you for the honor of being able to share with you again.   Julie Roys  44:15 Well, again, that’s researcher and author Wade Mullen speaking at RESTORE 2023. And as I’m sure you’re aware, many groups charge for conference talks like these, but we’ve decided to make them available free of charge, because we believe this content is so necessary for the restoration and health of the church, that we really could use your financial help. We need to raise $70,000 before the end of this year to end 2023 in the black. So, if you believe in our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church, would you please consider giving to this ministry? It would mean a ton to all of us here at The Roys Report and it will help us start 2024 on strong financial footing. To donate just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. And this month if you give a gift of $50 or more, we’ll send you a copy of Tim Alberta’s book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory. This is an awesome book exposing the idol of politics in the evangelical church and calling her to more biblical and faithful witness. So again, to donate just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript How did loving your enemies—a command of Jesus—suddenly become a sign that you're “woke”? And why is “owning the libs” now the answer to “What would Jesus do?”  On this edition of The Roys Report, bestselling author and journalist Tim Alberta joins host Julie Roys to explore a disturbing phenomenon in American evangelicalism. Though once evangelicals understood that the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man were separate, now the two are being combined into an unholy mix. And sadly, for millions of conservative Christians, America is their kingdom—and proper adherence to their political ideology is their litmus test for Christian orthodoxy! On this podcast, you'll hear Julie's compelling conversation with Tim, exploring how evangelicals got into this mess—and if, and how, we can get ourselves out. Yet Tim doesn't speak as an outside critic passing judgment, but as a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor.  Tim spent years sifting through the wreckage of American evangelicalism, interviewing pastors, evangelical/political activists, congregants, and scholars. The result is his new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory, which tells story after illuminating story of major players and institutions within the evangelical movement that have succumbed to political idolatry.  One example is Liberty University, founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. Recent headlines have exposed how Senior's now-disgraced son, Jerry Falwell, Jr., made Liberty into a far-right, culture warring, money-making powerhouse. But is this mixing of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man a corruption of Senior's vision—or, is it the culmination of it? And what does it say that everyone—the administration, board, and Liberty supporters—were all fine with it, as long as the money was coming in?  Tim also shares stunning admissions he got during one-on-one interviews with major evangelical/political figures, like Robert Jeffress and Ralph Reed. In private, these men confessed that they know mixing political advocacy with the gospel is misleading and wrong. Yet, as Tim documents, these men keep doing it! Yet Tim also offers stories of hope—like his chapter on Rev. Dr. John Dickson, who teaches at the flagship evangelical school, Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill. In it, Tim explains why Dickson has become a missionary to America—and how Christians can lose the culture wars yet live joyfully and winsomely among unbelievers. Tim's book also includes a chapter on exposing abuse and corruption, featuring Rachel Denhollander's work and our work at The Roys Report. On the podcast, we discuss why our reporting is so important and why this chapter is Tim's mother's favorite! This is such an important podcast for Christians wanting to remain true to their calling to worship God first and foremost, rather than succumb to political idolatry.  Guests Tim Alberta Tim Alberta is a staff writer for The Atlantic and has written for dozens of other publications, including the Wall Street Journal and National Review. He is the author of The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism and the New York Times bestseller American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump. He lives in southeast Michigan with his wife and three sons. Show Transcript SPEAKERS TIM ALBERTA, Julie Roys Julie Roys  00:04 How did loving your enemies, a command of Jesus, suddenly become a sign that you're woke? And why is owning the libs now the answer to what would Jesus do? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys and joining me on this podcast is New York Times bestselling author Tim Alberta, whose latest book explores what happened to American evangelicalism. Decades ago, Americans viewed evangelicalism favorably. In 1976, author and historian Gary Wills called evangelicalism, the major religious force in America, both in numbers and an impact. And leading evangelical thinkers claimed that evangelicalism could no longer be regarded as reactionary but was vigorously and sometimes creatively speaking to the needs of the contemporary world. Fast forward to today and evangelicalism has become synonymous with Donald Trump, a thrice married vulgar opportunist who said he doesn't need to repent or ask for forgiveness. A recent poll by Pew Research found that the only religious group that views evangelicals favorably are evangelicals. And as Tim Alberta notes in his book in 1991 90% of Americans identified as Christians, but today, only 63% do. What happened to this once vibrant movement? And can it be saved, or has it passed beyond the point of no return? Un his new book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory. Tim Alberta does a masterful job of exploring these questions, but he doesn't do it as an outside critic passing judgment. But as a practicing Christian and the son of an evangelical pastor. I found Tim's book eye opening on many levels, and I'm so excited to share this interview with you. Julie Roys  01:47 But before I do, I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you're looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you're looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That's because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity, to check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Julie Roys  02:51 Well, again, joining me is Tim Alberta, a staff writer for The Atlantic and the former chief political correspondent for Politico. Tim also is the author of The New York Times best seller American Carnage on the Frontlines of the Republican Civil War, and the Rise of President Trump. And his latest book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory, explores American evangelicals in an age of extremism. So, Tim, welcome. It is just such a pleasure to be with you again. TIM ALBERTA  03:16 Yes, Julie, it is. It's great to catch up with you and come sort of full circle from where we were a couple of years ago talking about all of this. Julie Roys  03:24 That's right. We spent a couple of well, more than a couple of hours. I think it was supposed to be like maybe an hour and a half, and we got so into our discussion. I think we closed down one coffee shop and went to another. TIM ALBERTA  03:35 We did. I hijacked your whole day. Julie Roys  03:38 Oh, it was fantastic. And so, encouraging to me, but always fun to talk to a fellow journalist with similar convictions. And I was excited about this book when we had our discussion. I'm so honored, I have to say, you know, to get the galley of the book, and I figured because we spent so much time that I'd be in it, but you know, just what you wrote, and the way that you captured some things just so honored to be featured in a chapter with Rachel den Hollander. So, thank you so much for that. I just really appreciate it. TIM ALBERTA  04:07 I should tell you that is my mother's favorite chapter of the book. Oh, for what it's worth, because she's big into strong feminine Christian leadership. And so, she was particularly smitten with you and with Rachel. So, I thought you should know that. Julie Roys  04:21 Oh, wow. Well, I'm honored. I really am. And I should mention that we are offering your book as a premium to anybody who gives $50 or more to The Roys Report in this month. Again, this is just a way that you're able to support the work that we do, but also get this fantastic book. Just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE if you're able to help us out and continue the work that we do, and also get what could be a great Christmas present for somebody or for yourself. So anyway, encourage you to do that. Well, Tim, as I mentioned in the open, you're not writing this book as sort of an outsider critiquing evangelicalism. You grew up evangelical, your dad was an evangelical pastor. And oddly enough, it was at your dad's funeral in 2019, that something sort of awakened you to the severity of what's happening right now within evangelicalism. Tell us a bit about that story. TIM ALBERTA  05:17 Yeah, so my dad, Reverend Richard Alberta, was an amazing, amazing guy. We were very close. And he had a pretty crazy come to Jesus story himself where he was actually kind of a hotshot New York finance guy. And my mom was kind of a hotshot, young journalist with ABC Radio. They lived in New York and my dad, despite having all of this worldly material success, just felt this emptiness. And he was an atheist. He grew up in an unbelieving home. And he, one day stumbled into this church in the Hudson Valley, and heard the gospel and he gave his life to Christ. And it was already a pretty dramatic conversion because he became completely unrecognizable to people around him, including my mom, who was not yet a Christian. Everybody who knew him just thought he was sort of losing it. Suddenly, he's waking up at four in the morning to read his Bible and meditate in prayer for hours. And they're all like, what is this guy doing? And then pretty soon after that, he feels the Lord calling him to ministry. And now they all think he's like certifiable, right? You know, but he follows the Lord's calling. And, you know, he and my mom who became a Christian, they sell all the possessions so he can go to seminary, and they basically they give up this pretty lavish lifestyle they'd had. And for the next like, 20 years, they just work in small churches and live on food stamps and serve the Lord that way. And then when I come along, some years later, we eventually settle in Brighton, which is a suburb of Detroit. And my dad builds this kind of small startup church there into kind of a mega church. And that was my home. It was my community. It was my whole life, really. My mom was on the staff there at the church as well. It was called Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyterian Church. I was raised physically, literally, inside of that church. TIM ALBERTA  07:11 And so, my dad dies a few years back. And when I came back to the church for the funeral, because of the work I've done in politics, and because I had just recently written this book about Trumpism and his takeover of the Republican Party, I was kind of in the crosshairs of right-wing media at that time, because of the book. And so, at the funeral or at the wake during the visitation, I had a bunch of people at the church kind of confronting me and wanting to argue about politics and about Trump and asking me if I was still a Christian and how I could be criticizing him this way. And it was pretty ugly. And as you said, sort of a wakeup call. Julie Roys  07:52 Yeah. And it is something isn't it when you don't support these people that certain evangelicalism believe you have to your, you know, I've got people praying for my salvation, because I've taken on John MacArthur, you know, It's craziness. But there is this tribalism now, within evangelicalism, and it's probably at its very worst when it comes to former President Trump and what he typified. It's interesting to me, you know, as I look at the evangelical movement, you know, I was a card-carrying conservative right? Before Trump came along, and then something really happened. And I feel like I was going back and reading a little bit of Chuck Colson's, Kingdoms in Conflict. Do you remember that book? TIM ALBERTA  08:34 I do. Yeah. Julie Roys  08:35 I mean, he was pretty even handed. I mean, he's very clear in there that being in the kingdom of heaven means it's not about ruling others, it's about being under God's rule. And yet something has tripped, where we're not saying that anymore. We're really become about this whole Dominionism. And he talks about the cultural mandate and things like that, but it's from a very, very different perspective. So here we are dealing with all of this Christian nationalism, and according to your book, a lot of this began, and it's funny because now, Lynchburg Virginia has become synonymous with the Falwell's and with Liberty University. But I've got to say, growing up in the 80s, you know, I knew about the Moral Majority, and some of that, but it just wasn't that big to me. And yet it has grown and grown, and I guess I wasn't even aware of the influence it had. But talk about how a lot of this has its roots really there, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and with what Jerry Falwell Senior. started in, like the late 70s, early 80s. TIM ALBERTA  09:42 Sure, in the context of the American church experience, it is Lynchburg, Virginia. It is the mid-1970s. And it is Jerry Falwell Senior who was a brilliant businessman who, you know, this guy could sell anyone on anything, and he was kind of a master entrepreneur, also a master manipulator. And what Falwell Senior. effectively did, he had already built out Thomas Road Baptist Church into a massive congregation. And then he had tapped into the relatively new medium of television to broadcast his sermons around the country. At one point, he became the single most telecasted program in the entire country. And so, he's reaching millions of people and he's raising a lot of money. This is pretty cutting-edge stuff at the time, but he's building out a mailing list with like more than 10 million names on it, and they are raking in money. So, then he already has his church. But Falwell, Senior is really almost the early archetype of the Christian nationalist. He believes that sort of fighting for God and fighting for America is one in the same and that if America falls, then almost God's kingdom on earth will fall. And so he recognizes that he needs something more than a church; that he needs kind of a cultural stronghold. So, he does two things. First, he takes this little Baptist College Lynchburg Baptist College, and at the time of the bicentennial in 1976, he rebrands it to Liberty University, and he changes the colors from green and gold to red, white, and blue. And basically, they do this whole patriotic rebranding exercise, which is aimed at tapping into not only patriotism in the church, but also tapping into the percolating low simmering at the time, fear in the church and grievance in the church. This sense that, you know, abortion is now legal. Pornography is prevalent, the drug culture is out of control. Prayer is banned in public schools. Secularism is on the march and they're coming for us like they are coming for Christianity in America. And so, Jerry Falwell turns Liberty University into this cause, and then piggybacks onto that with this new organization, The Moral Majority. So suddenly, he's got these three cogs. And he builds out this machine, Falwell Senior does, and it is incredibly effective. They mobilize 10s of millions of voters and sort of bring them under this banner of not just, you know, Christianity, not just following Jesus, but a very particular type of Christianity, a sort of subculture of a subculture. And in many ways, those seeds planted by Falwell 50 years ago, we are harvesting them now. And what we are dealing with, you know, the fracturing of the modern evangelical movement, I think you can trace it directly back to that period. Julie Roys  12:36 It's so interesting, because I think when you talk about Jerry Falwell Senior, and I've talked to a lot of people from Liberty, I've done a lot of reporting about Liberty. And a lot of folks look very wistfully back to the early days, and these are good people, you know, I've talked extensively to them. They're really good people, sincere believers. They look at what's happened to Liberty, and they're like, this isn't Senior. Like Senior loved the Lord and he really was sincere in his walk with the Lord and Junior just was like, we don't know how Junior happened, right? I mean, that's how they often talk about it. I'm going to have you come back to that, because I think what you present is a very, very different picture and honestly, one that I've begun to suspect myself. But let's talk about what happens with you know, Senior dies pretty abruptly right of a heart attack. And then Jerry Falwell, Junior, who is the lawyer, right? He takes over not Jonathan Falwell, who's the pastor, much more of the spiritual leader, but Jerry Falwell, Junior takes over. Very clearly, I'm not a spiritual leader. I mean, he really assued that whole entire title. But when he takes over, despite all the success that his dad had, the school was on the brink of bankruptcy at this point, right? And he kind of turns it around. 13:57 So, Falwell, Junior. is the yes, the UVA trained lawyer, businessman, real estate developer, who is a smart guy. He knows business. And he had really kept the church and organized religion at arm's length. His younger brother Jonathan was the preacher in the family. But Jerry Junior, he'd gone to Liberty for his undergraduate studies. And he says that, you know, he believes in the teachings of Jesus but rejects a lot of the other stuff that comes with it, including Liberty itself. Jerry Junior never wanted to really be a part of Liberty. And suddenly as he's working in the private sector, the school is about to go under. Jerry Senior has really badly mismanaged the finances and he tells his son that basically the school is on the brink of insolvency. And so, Jerry Junior kind of reluctantly comes aboard and he helps to stabilize everything, and he makes a lot of drastic cuts to the different programs and kind of rejiggers the whole balance sheet operation. And he saves Liberty in a lot of ways that, you know, his father gave him credit for that. And it's interesting though, Julie, that when Jerry Falwell senior dies, it's not an accident that Jerry Junior. takes over. That was the plan of succession. It's notable that here is Jerry Falwell senior, who is both businessman and culture warrior, but also a preacher. And he's got these two sons that exemplify one of each, right? He's got the son who's a preacher. And he's got the other son who's the kind of culture warrior businessman. And he appoints the latter to take over Liberty after he's gone. And that in and of itself, I think, speaks volumes. And then more to the point, Jerry Junior, as you said, he comes in and he tells anybody who will listen, look, I'm not a religious leader, I'm not here charged with the spiritual well-being of this school. I'm here to turn us into a powerhouse, I'm here to turn us into a highly profitable, highly influential organization that can sort of, you know, push back against the forces of secularism in the left in this country. But he doesn't, to his credit, I suppose. Falwell Junior, he doesn't pretend that he's something that he's not. And the irony of it all, Julie is that everybody was fine with it. They were fine with it. Right? They were, as you know, when the money was coming in, and the buildings were going up at a rapid clip, and the endowment was bulging, everybody was fine with it. Because he's Jerry Senior's namesake, and he's a Falwell, and the school is doing great. Clearly God is blessing this project. So, what's not to like? Julie Roys  16:47 Well, and you say everyone was fine with it. And it's true on a public face, everyone was fine with it. I will say I started hearing from a lot of people who weren't fine with it from I mean, obviously the Jane DOE's and now we know about who were victims of sexual assault, and their cases got just horribly mismanaged. In fact, not even reported. And you know, now we have the Department of Education looking into how badly Liberty bungled these cases and violated Title Nine mandates, and they could face like a 30 some million dollar fine, which could be one of the largest ever. So, this was percolating under the surface, but nobody knew about it at the time. And I also talked to a lot of professors who were like, the way this place is being run is abysmal. There's nothing Christian about it. The way the administration handles things, there's nothing Christian about it. And we know too, from some of the people you interviewed, it was less like a religious institution and more like a mafia like a mob boss. Like Jerry turned into I think Jerry is very, he's very likable when you meet him. I mean, obviously very socially gifted, even though he's an introvert. He seems like this kind of your good old boy that, you know, everybody likes. But he began to become very controlling, and lock that place down where Jerry ruled with really an iron fist. And by the time some of the stuff started coming out about him, that place I mean, am I right, that it was a lot less like a Christian institution a lot more like the organized crime syndicate? TIM ALBERTA  18:24 Yeah, well, and listen like this is so Julie. It's funny, because obviously, you and I are in the same line of work. We're coming at this from pretty similar worldviews, and we're having similar conversations, with some of the same people. And you're exactly right when they're using the term family business. You know, Liberty is a family business. They're not just talking about like the Falwell family. There's, you know, the implication there is like very clearly that there is almost a mafioso-esque quality to, you don't cross the Falwell's, the power is concentrated in a few hands here. If you get a seat at the table, you are just lucky to be there and you nod and you know, at one point, I think I make sort of an offhand smart aleck comparison to like the North Korean military where, you know, you stand and salute the dear leader and don't dare step out of line. And of course, that's tragic on a number of levels, one of them being that Liberty has been filled over the years with really good and godly students and good and godly professors who are there for the right reasons. Some of these professors who started to really see the rot from the inside., they chose to stick around because on the one hand, they could see the success around them. The kind of observable material success that you know that the campus is absolutely stunning. Maybe God is doing something really marvelous here and I just have to kind of see my way through this part of it. But I also think that there's a level of devotion, and a feeling for some of these people that they wanted to help right the ship, that they wanted to be a part of the solution. And obviously, those are some of the characters I talk to in the book who now have finally gotten to a breaking point where they say, you know what? I just can't do it anymore. And not only can I not do it anymore, but the world needs to know, the whistle needs to be blown here that like this is not okay. Julie Roys  20:21 What does it say about evangelicalism, Tim, that when the money was coming in, and the money still is coming in, that everybody was okay with how godless this place was? And anybody that was in administration knew and saw it. The Board, who it's astounding to me that when Jerry Falwell Junior, got embroiled in this big sex scandal, and he gets fired, that Jerry Prevo takes over. And we think that that is a change of the guard. This was the man who was the chairman of the board the whole time that Jerry was doing all of this stuff. It's shocking to me, but yet I see it so much in so many different Christian organizations. And so, what is it about us that we're okay with these things, with really what is just absolute rampant hypocrisy? TIM ALBERTA  21:15 I'm afraid that in many ways, we're actually worse than some of those secular institutions. Because of this idea of the prosperity gospel, it's almost become like this proper noun. And so, people feel like well, those are those people are crazy. I'm not one of them, I'm not a part of that, right? But the idea inherent to the prosperity gospel, right is that, well, if you give to the Lord, and if you serve the Lord, if you follow the Lord, then you will be blessed. But that is so conveniently and so easily reverse engineered by a lot of Christians, either at a conscious or at a subconscious level, where when you see any sort of material success around you, you then say, well, clearly, I'm blessed. Clearly, the Lord is blessing this project. And that creates a kind of a permission structure, I think, for a lot of us to then turn a blind eye to things that are very obviously wrong, or kind of downplay things that you otherwise would never downplay. And whether that's an individual church congregation, whether that's a big college campus, whether it's the President of the United States, this can manifest in a lot of different ways. It's so much based on that kind of material thinking that I think we are particularly vulnerable, particularly susceptible to it here in the American church. I think the saddest part about it is that many of us just don't see it, or maybe don't want to see it. I don't know. Julie Roys  22:44 Your book has a stunning quote, stunning quote by a former professor, Dr. Aaron Warner. And he says, and I quote, Jerry, Senior, was always a bit of a scoundrel, and Jerry Junior, perfected the art of using fear and hatred as a growth strategy. Christianity happens to be the thing that they used to build a multibillion-dollar institution. It could have been anything else. It could have been moonshine, but they chose Christianity. And it's gained them a lot of power and a lot of money; the two things these people truly worship. You talked to a lot of people, interviewed a lot of people at Liberty. Is that characterization fair? Or do you think it's a little too harsh? TIM ALBERTA  23:23 It's harsh, that's for sure. It might contain some traces of hyperbole. But I will say this, Aaron Werner is another guy who knows that institution very well. Went there as an undergraduate, has deep longstanding ties to Liberty And the stories he tells from the inside are stunning. One of the other quotes, actually, I thought it might be the one that you're going to read because it kind of runs right along in parallel to that one is from a current professor. Now, at the time of this recording, he's a current professor. My sense is that when the book releases and when this gets back to the administration that he could be dismissed and he's expecting that that will happen. But his name is Nick Olsen, and he's an English professor, very popular English professor there. Brilliant, godly young guy. And he's a legacy at Liberty. His dad was one of the first students at Liberty and a contemporary of Falwell Senior. And Nick has sort of agonized in recent years with this inheritance at Liberty and everything that he's seen and struggled with there. And he says to me, this is not quite verbatim, but he says this to me in the final chapter of the book, he says, Jerry Junior, thought that he was fulfilling his father's vision by assuing spiritual stuff and by building out this massive multibillion dollar like culture warring Republican institution. And he says, and it is heartbreaking, because that's exactly what he's done, and he did fulfill Jerry Senior's vision. And I think that piece of it, Julie is not hyperbole. I think that when you spend enough time digging through the archives and talking to people who were there in the room where it happened, so to speak, it becomes pretty self-evident. And by the way, you know, you mentioned earlier that there are people who will say, Yeah, but you know, Jerry Senior, he really loved the Lord. Yeah, well, these things aren't mutually exclusive. I mean, I'm not suggesting that he didn't love the Lord. But I'm suggesting that like many people who love the Lord, he got his priorities out of whack. And by the way, we are all susceptible to this. But it's very hard to evaluate the history of Liberty University, the decisions made there, the structure of the place and the personnel and how they've treated people and what the benchmarks have been. It's very hard to assess all of that and reach any other conclusion than the one that Nick Olsen reaches at the end of the book. Julie Roys  25:41 And yet Liberty continues to be the largest Christian university in the country. It still has this dominance, there's still a lot of people that I know sending their kids there. And it's heartbreaking to me. I mean, I just wonder at what point do we say enough, and we stand up to this? And I'm glad that people are starting to speak out. But sometimes I wonder if it's too little too late, when we have just these juggernaut organizations and it really has been a marrying of two kingdoms that should be in conflict, and we're trying to say that they can be married together the kingdom of this world, the kingdom, the political realm, and the kingdom of Christ. And Jesus never became a political leader. It's stunning to me some of these quotes that are in your book, that are just like you expect a lightning to fall out of the sky, the way that scripture and Jesus are being misrepresented. It's just so awful. Julie Roys  26:37 In your first section, though, I have to say there's always some redeeming thing in each section, which I'm like, Thank You, Lord. It's like a palate cleanser in a lot of just awful stuff. But you have this beautiful chapter. And it's on a guy, John Dixon, who I actually got to know in my reporting on Ravi Zacharias, because John used to be a speaker for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And he was one of those who, you know, pretty early in the game as things were starting to come out, recognized that there were some lies being told by the institution he had been a part of, and he quickly made a break, and he boldly took a stand. I mean, I really respected him for that, that he didn't seem to have this Oh, fear of, if I say something, what's going to happen to me? I mean, he just said what was right, and what was what was true. And now he's at Wheaton College, which is right in my backyard. And what I love is that he's so joyfully on the losing team. You know, we've got all of these people, all these Christians out there telling us we have to be on the winning team, we got to take America back. And here's John Dixon saying, No, we're on the losing team right now. I mean, eventually, when Christ comes back, we'll be you know, he will set things right, and we'll be on the winning team. But for now, we're kind of on the losing team. And it's okay, people. So, talk about John and what we can learn from him and his example, because again, he's from Australia, which is probably about 10 or 15 years ahead of us in sort of this post Christian era that, you know, is beginning to happen here as well. Julie Roys  28:16 And that is so tough for us. I mean, it's not tough for Chinese Christians to get this, right? I mean they get it right away. Because to be a believer means you have to get rid of everything, you can't hold on to anything, you're gonna lose all your power, all your position. But I think we've been, actually it's the curse of being prosperous. And being in a country where Christians have had the majority and where it actually was a plus, probably for my parents to be believers. I think it won't be for my children. But maybe that'll be a good thing. And maybe that's precisely what the church needs. We already think we're being persecuted, which is funny. We really aren't. But we may see it. And right now, I think most of the persecution we're getting is because of what you said that we're not because we're so holy, but because we're actually worse than the world in so many different ways. And we deserve it. TIM ALBERTA  28:16 John is really one of my favorite people I've met in all of the journeys that I was on, and one of my favorite characters in the book for exactly the reasons that you mentioned there. And the fact that he is not an American is, I think, a big part of his perspective, right? But I think also, there's something deeper embedded in the American psyche, about winning, about the need to dominate. I have a funny quote somewhere else in the book from somebody who had spent years living and studying and teaching in Canada, who talks about how Canadians just want fourth place, and then when they get the bronze, they're thrilled. And in America, if you don't get the gold, you're a total loser, right? And so, there's something, you know, about the American Christian experience that's so different. And so, John, one of my favorite scenes in all of this reporting that I did was, we're sitting in the cafeteria there at Wheaton College, surrounded by the flags of the world all around us in the cafeteria. And I say, Why did you come here? Like, really? Why did you come here? And he says, like, this is my mission field now, like the US is my mission field because of this, this stuff. Everything you and I are discussing right now. He said this stuff is like so toxic and so unhealthy. And the church is caught in this terrible pattern. That, by the way, is not new. Right? You go back to Constantine, there has been this obsession with worldly power this inclination to merge two kingdoms into one. So, what we're living through here is not new, in a lot of ways. And I think John is so brilliant in kind of illuminating the appropriate Christian perspective here, which is to say that if you care so much about winning and losing, then the good news is you've already won, right? The tomb is empty, Jesus conquered death, and you believe in him. So therefore, you're already a part of the kingdom. But this place, which is meant to be ephemeral, and unimportant ultimately, and just, you know, a step among the stairs, that if your identity here is wrapped up in winning and losing, then you can't really have your identity there. And he says, ultimately, you know, we're the death and resurrection people. Like losing, and losing well, is a part of the Christian experience. TIM ALBERTA  31:24 John Dixon talks about how there's sort of this inverse relationship historically, between the amount of cultural and social and political power held by Christians in a society and the health of Christianity in that society, right? In other words, when you hold the commanding heights, the Christian influence it actually tends to be pretty weak and pretty corrupted and pretty compromised. When you are at the margins and when you are truly countercultural, the witness thrives. And we've seen that throughout history. Another favorite character of mine in the book, Brian Zahnd, who's the pastor of a church out in Missouri, he talks about how difficult it is for American Christians to really appreciate how the Bible is written from the perspective of the underdog, right? The Hebrew slaves fleeing Egypt, and the first century Christians living under a brutal Roman occupation. Like they had no power, they had no influence. And yet they were so joyful, and they were so content because they had their kingdom, right? And it does give me unease even in my own personal life, just the things I enjoy the materials, the prosperity, the comforts; can I fully appreciate the baby born in a manger? can I fully identify with the vagrant preacher from the ghettos of Nazareth? You know, it's a hard thing. Julie Roys  32:42 And here's the reality; that message, which is Christ's message really doesn't sell well in America. Having your best life now sells in America. And what we're seeing right now, and this, you know, brings me to the second section in your book dealing with power, which again, we've got to take back, America, has become sort of the mantra that we're hearing from so many of these, you know, political rights. And it has just morphed into something where, and again, I said at the outset, I used to be very much politically engaged with the conservative movement. I am not anymore because I can't stomach it and what it's become. I felt like we were being salt. But now it's about dominating and doing it by any means possible, where we just get rid of our morality. And I was always brought up to believe and I think this is what Scripture teaches, that the means is as important as the end. And so, if we achieve a righteous end through an unrighteous means, then we've lost. We've completely lost because we have given up what makes us unique, and what makes us God honoring for something that we're saying is a God honoring, you know end. But again, this is what has happened in our country. And, and what's interesting in this section that just captured my imagination. I mean, I've wondered this, like, you take a Robert Jeffress, right? This guy's not dumb. He's a smart Southern Baptist preacher, clearly a savvy guy. He has built this mega church, but the things that came out of his mouth, especially when Trump was in power, but it's still there. The things that come out of his mouth, and I think, he's got to know that this is not in line with the Gospels. He's got to see this. And yet, publicly, you wouldn't hear that. But when you met with him privately, you began to hear some doubt in there and allowing you to see a little bit of vulnerability, although it didn't seem to last all that long. But talk about that, because I'm not sensing much doubt in the masses that follow these men. But when you get them one on one, tell me what you see. TIM ALBERTA  34:50 And it's not just Robert Jeffress, Greg Locke, Greg Locke, Ralph Reed. Yeah, yeah, a lot of these guys. It's the pastor who in my hometown, grew his church tenfold by basically turning Sunday morning worship services into Fox news segments. And giving a Nazi salute to Gretchen Whitmer from his pulpit. I mean, but then you get them one on one. And you press them a little bit. I mean, you know, politely, respectfully, but you press them. Suddenly, they not only back off a little bit, but they do a little bit of like winking and nodding at you to basically say, like, you're right, I'm definitely putting on a bit of a song and dance here for the masses. But I think that they will ultimately justify it by saying, Well, yeah, but look at all these people who are coming in and look at the opportunity, we have to reach them now with the gospel? So, you know, those ends really do justify the means. I think the problem with that, as you hinted it, is but look, I mean, there's a lot of problems with it. You know, Mark 8:36 is not a rhetorical question, right? Like, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world yet forfeit his soul? But I think for some of these people, some of these leaders, the thing that really grates at me and I know it grates at you, Julie, is like, they're the shepherds, they're the ones who are supposed to know better, because a lot of their flock, you know, and I'm not being condescending or patronizing when I say this, they don't necessarily know better, they are the sheep, right? They need to be shepherded. And instead of shepherding, a lot of these people have just themselves become wolves. And they become wolves for what? So that you can have a seat at the table? So that you can get on Fox News? So that you can raise some money? So that for what ultimately? You're so right, when you press them on it almost to a person, they will acknowledge at some level that what they're doing is kind of gross, and kind of anti-biblical, and then they just keep on doing it. Julie Roys  36:46 So, speak to the person who is listening. And we probably don't have a ton of these. But there may be some who are listening, who have bought this hook, line, and sinker that we do need to take America back. And Franklin Graham told us it's all for the Supreme Court justices, and we got the Supreme Court justices and Roe v. Wade was just overturned and, you know, look at what was accomplished. So, you know, politics is a dirty business, Tim. I mean, come on, if we're gonna win in politics, which, you know, we're talking about babies here, babies are being slaughtered left and right. And then, you know, some of these people would allow a baby to be born alive and kill it. You know, that's who these people are. So, I mean, come on. This is the world we live in, and we've got to fight the way that the world fights. What do you say? TIM ALBERTA  37:35 I'd say a couple of things. I think you can go round and round about Roe v. Wade, and about Trump and about Supreme Court justices. But be careful what you wish for in this space. Because the fact of the matter is that Roe v Wade fell, and the total number of abortions in this country went up. I live in Michigan, where prior to Roe v Wade falling, there were pretty tight abortion restrictions in Michigan. Now, it is the wild west. It is some of the most liberalized abortion laws in the country. And that is true in seven or eight other states that have had ballot initiatives passed since Roe v. Wade, dramatically liberalizing abortion laws, and it's going to happen in a number of other states next year. So, let's be really clear eyed and fact based when we talk about what our political involvement does and what it doesn't do. At the end of the day, if you want to win hearts and minds to stop the scourge of abortion, if you are a Christian, and you view this as your great crusade, then is voting for a candidate or putting a bumper sticker on your car, is that the way to win those hearts and minds? Because the fact is, if American evangelicals had put a fraction of the energy into the social side of abortion, of doing the hard work in the clinics, and helping the single mothers and doing the foster care that is needed to address this at its root, if they had been willing to do that over the last 50 years, my guess is that public opinion would be dramatically different as it pertains to abortion. And we wouldn't even be talking about Roe v. Wade, because the number of abortions would be so low in this country that it wouldn't even register. But we've sort of self-selected into this alternate universe where politicians are our savior, and that politics is the mechanism by which we right the wrongs in this country. And I'm sorry, but if you are citizens of another kingdom?, then you can't possibly believe that. You can't possibly believe that Donald Trump or that any other politician is the person who's going to ultimately right these great moral wrongs. But unfortunately, I think that's the trap we've fallen into. Julie Roys  39:51 You know, I used to be very involved in the prolife movement. I will say, almost all of the people that I knew when I was involved in the pro-life movement, were actually involved in reaching out to single moms and caring for them and caring for their unborn children. But I think what we've forgotten so much is that politics is downstream of culture. So, if you're losing the culture, which we clearly are to change the politics, if you've got a kid that's rebellious, a teenager who's rebellious in your home, locking down all the windows and the doors in your house, that's not going to keep your kid from sinning. What's going to keep your kid from sinning, is if you can winsomely love your child into relationship with Jesus Christ and to want to be like you and to want to adopt your values. But we've forgotten about that, we've become this, you know, Midas right. And I remember in 2016, writing a commentary, The Rise of Trump, The Fall of Evangelicalism, and I said, we may win this one, but we will lose in the long run, if we throw our convictions out the window, and we alienate everyone around us, by our you know, the way that we talk and the way that we relate to people. This is not how you win people to the Lord. That fell on, you know, really deaf ears. It actually lost me some key supporters too. But I just was stunned because I did not know who these people were that I thought believed the same way that I did and had the same values. And then I went, Wow, we are just on different planets, we really don't have that. Julie Roys  41:29 I want to look at one person, again, you have these palate cleansers within all of these sections. And one of them to me is Cal Thomas, who was very much a part of the right and so I can relate to that, because that was I mean, I used to be emceeing the banquet to raise money for you know, the political cause, or whatever it was. I don't do that anymore. Cal Thomas doesn't do that anymore. What changed Cal? TIM ALBERTA  41:58 It's so funny, Julie, because just a minute ago, when you were talking about what are the weapons of our warfare? I was thinking about Cal., because Cal for those who don't know his story, you know, he was Jerry Falwell Senior's lieutenant in the Moral Majority. And he was their spokesman for the Moral Majority. And the vice president of that organization, and, you know, was really heavily involved in the kind of crusading era of the Religious Right, he was a central figure. And then Cal really started to feel uneasy with what he was seeing around him. And he doesn't even sugarcoat it. We have this very raw conversation in the book where he talks about, you know, the corruption and the greed and the grift. And how he just couldn't justify it. He justified it for a while by saying, Well, look how many people we're reaching, and look at all this money coming in. So clearly, you know, God must be doing something here. And then he eventually just gets to a point where he says, No, this is a scam. It's just immoral. And he finally walks away. And then years later, he writes this book called Blinded by Might, where he kind of tries to atone. And he just says, Listen, I was a total believer in winning the culture war to protect Christian America, as you know, part of our duty, you know, to God's kingdom. And in fact, not only has it failed, but it has backfired spectacularly, that we have driven away so many people who need Jesus, but who won't have anything to do with us anymore, They won't even let us in the door to have a conversation because of the way we've treated them because of the way we've treated the culture. So, to your point about locking down the teenager in the house, right? Cal really eloquently and powerfully was giving voice to this when he wrote that book. And then, you know, in our interviews for this book, he's an older guy now he's 80. And he's looking back with such regret on those years and thinking about how did he in some way contribute to laying the groundwork for Trump ism as this kind of sub cult in the evangelical world. And what's most interesting to me from that whole conversation, and I said this to him, is that the more things have changed, the more they've stayed the exact same. I mean, this break that he's describing in the 1980s. And this kind of crisis of conscience that he's feeling is exactly what we're trying to address today. What I'm trying to address in the book now, which is that, listen, it doesn't have to be this way. You have a choice, right? We all have a choice. It was so incredibly unpleasant for me to write this book in a lot of ways, Julie. If I'm being totally honest, I probably couldn't have written it while my dad was still alive. It would have been too hard. Like I've had some people writing me emails this past week saying, oh, like thank you for your courage. Thank you for your brave, I don't feel courageous. I don't feel brave. I feel like a coward in a lot of ways that it took me so long and that a lot of ways took my dad dying and having those experiences at his funeral to finally be willing to acknowledge and use my platform, my relatively high profile journalistically speaking to address this thing that has been so clearly wrong for such a long time. And so, for anybody listening, whether it's in your individual congregation, your faith community, your family, whatever it is like, it doesn't have to be this way. And it takes people like Cal Thomas, kind of blowing up his own life, blowing up his tribal affiliations and walking away. It takes Pastor Brian Zahnd, who I write about in Chapter 15, who had a mega church of 5000 people, and they were making money hand over fist. And then he just woke up one day and had this like epiphany from the Lord that it was all wrong, and that it was so shallow, and it was doing such a disservice to the Gospel. And he blew up his mega church. He's got like 150 people who come every Sunday now and the sanctuary seats like 2000. And he made a choice, right? Cal Thomas made a choice. You've made a choice, Julie. And I just think like, at the end of the day, the people who make that choice and who decide to reckon with what this has become? I don't think they're going to regret it. I really don't. Julie Roys  46:05 I have not regretted it once being free of the whole evangelical industrial complex as it's called, and just being free to follow your conscience without thinking, what are the consequences if I speak the truth publicly? Like what's going to happen to me? Like I see so many Christians just living in fear that if they speak out, or they tell the truth that they know that something, you know, there will be bad consequences for me, and it just makes me wonder, do we believe the gospel, like do we believe the gospel? What gospel are we living on day-to-day basis? And I love Pastor Zahnd's story that was like one of my favorite stories. And it reminded me of the book because I just interviewed Scott McKnight and Laura Behringer and their book pivot, which talks about similar things, other churches that realized church is toxic. It's huge, it's successful, but I feel empty inside, you know, and I feel thin, and they made that pivot. And it may be to smaller church, it may be and it's interesting, though, you were saying how Zahnd's church is now starting to maybe even start to grow and become a little bit healthier. And so, when I hear that I say, it's going to take a while. But in this, you know, these ashes, do you see something growing that's beautiful there that can replace this ugliness that quite frankly, I think I just think it's doomed. I think it's coming down. I don't know that it will come down quickly. This complex that we've built, but I think it will come down eventually. It may take decades. But I think there will be a Christianity I hope this was my prayer that replaces it. And it's more organic and more Grassroots less big leadership and more the Body of Christ. TIM ALBERTA  47:48 Yes,  I do see something rising from the ashes. I can sense it, particularly among the younger generation. One of the things that consistently surprised me in all of my reporting, and it was a pleasant surprise, to be clear, was spending time with younger believers. They ideologically, culturally, politically, like they're really no different from their parents, like they check those boxes on paper. But then you kind of get into some of this with them. And they want nothing to do with Trumpism. They want nothing to do with Charlie Kirk, and I'm talking about like the serious believers. I'm not talking about like the very casual kids who identify as Christian, but then go to a Turning Point USA event. I mean, like, you spend time around Liberty, and like, yes, there are some MAGA kids at Liberty. But most of the kids you spend time with  at Liberty, including those who would self-identify as like, sure I guess on paper, I would be a Republican, because of abortion because of other issues, they will really eloquently and gracefully speak to these schisms. And they're so perceptive. I think that's the big thing, Julie, is that they can see it. Right? My generation, I kind of think of us as like the children of the Moral Majority. And we can now very clearly diagnose this in a way that my dad's generation probably couldn't, they were too close to it. They were too wrapped up in it. And I think, you know, in some ways, they almost I kind of tend to maybe just give them a little bit of a pass for that because they didn't have the appropriate distance to really assess it and analyze it in the way that I think I'm able to, and certainly in the way that the generations behind me are able to. They see what this is doing to the church, and they are saying no, thank you. Even at my home church, the guy who took over for my dad, almost run out of the place. He came very close to just quitting because it got so bad for him because he hears this young guy taking over this, this mega church congregation in a very conservative Republican community. And he's not particularly a conservative Republican. He's not like some big Democrat either. He's just a guy who like loves Jesus and who processes news events through the eyes of like the gospel, right? What's so interesting is that he lost a ton of his congregation. And then this past summer, I went back for the first time since my dad's funeral, and the place was packed, and I didn't recognize anybody there. And he comes out and gives this sort of fire and brimstone sermon, challenging them on the culture wars, challenging them on like, where are your priorities, really? What kingdom do you really belong to? And so that actually, I didn't aim to end the book on that optimistic note, but I was so encouraged by it, because it makes me think that in this market of supply and demand that you and I have talked about, and mostly we focused on the perverted nature of the supply and demand, that there is also maybe more demand out there than we realize for that true, pure form of the gospel. And so that is my hope, moving forward, and particularly with these younger Christians, who will demand something better than what we've seen so far. Julie Roys  50:53 I loved that I don't often read the epilogue, but in your book I did. And that was beautiful to read about Pastor Winans and the way that, you know, you kind of left them in the early chapters really disillusioned and discouraged. And then he comes back invigorated for the gospel, and preaching it so boldly and that really, pastors like that give me hope. And I know that there's probably a lot more of them than I encounter in you know, the line of work that I do, which usually means I hear about the worst of the worst all the time. Julie Roys  51:28 Let me just ask you about this most of your chapters are about political power and about the way that these kingdoms  and the power has sort of become an idolatrous thing. And then you turn your eye to corruption going on in the church and the abuse, the abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, how that's been addressed recently, how Rachel den Hollander stood up to it and she went, you know, most people I'm sure listening know Rachel's story. But you know, one of the first gymnasts who came forward and told her story about Larry Nasser, and how he had abused so much of the, you know, US Olympic gymnasts team. And she went from being just Joan of Arc, I think you call it to being Jezebel, right? Or from Esther to Jezebel, because she spoke out about the evil in the church. And that's what I found. When I was at Moody Radio I was allowed to speak about Joel Osteen, right? Or I was allowed to speak about the liberals in politics. But when I turned my critique on our own tribe, man, I would get shut down, you know. That's one of the reasons I left Moody besides the others that I talked about. I couldn't speak out about the evil in our own house. And I feel that at this point, we have no moral platform as Christians to be speaking about the evil out in the world anymore, until we deal with the evil in our own house and the way that it's crept in. You know, judgment begins with the house of God. He doesn't expect, you know, the people who don't know him, to act any differently than they're acting, but He expects us to, and we're not. So, I appreciated that you put this chapter in the book, dealing with some of the abuse and the corruption within the church. But you could have easily left it out and just talked about the way that politics has, you know, really usurped the gospel. Why did you put this chapter in? TIM ALBERTA  53:28 One of the things that really bugs me, is how the New Testament model here and you were just alluding to this a moment ago. The New Testament model is not ambiguous. We are to treat outsiders with unlimited grace and kindness and compassion and forgiveness, because they don't know God, and they don't know any better. That is clear. And what is also clear is that we are to treat the insiders with the utmost accountability, and they are to be held to the highest standard because they do know God, and they do know better. That is the New Testament model. And we in the American church have completely flipped it. We have nothing but hostility, and animus and enmity towards the outside world. And we practice nothing but grace and forgiveness and cheap grace and cheap forgiveness inside the church. Right? And it drives me a little bit nuts. Because if you are the person out there in the world, who is sort of curious about Jesus, and you feel something missing in your life, what are the odds today that you're going to go to a local church and try to learn a little bit more? I mean, you know, you might say, Well, some people will, some people do Sure. But the statistics here don't lie, Julie. Like when you look back 30 or 40 years, the perception of the church among unbelievers in this country was incredibly positive. People who did not know Jesus looked at the church as a beacon of moral rectitude, of compassion, of social good. Even if they were never going to sit in the pews with us, even if they didn't believe any of the doctrine, they respected the church and they admire the church. And that has completely changed. It's just completely fallen apart. There are some people who will tell you like Robert Jeffers and I go back and forth on this in the book, he said, Well, that it doesn't matter, right? Those people aren't looking for the Lord. I completely disagree. I think the credibility of the church matters enormously. TIM ALBERTA  55:37 To your question of why did I feel compelled to include that chapter? Well, who's going to hold the church accountable? Is the church going to hold itself accountable? No, I mean, typically, institutions are not very good at self-policing. We know that from working in journalism, right? By the way, the media is not very good at self-policing. Actually, I could argue the media is terrible at self-policing. I mean, any big institution, it can't be expected to hold itself accountable. Okay, so what are the mechanisms for accountability here? If we care about the Bride of Christ, if we care about the credibility of the church, if we care about how the outside world perceives the church, which I think matters enormously, then what do we do to ensure that the church is on the up and up and is doing its duty before God and it's carrying out its purpose and its mission? You know, journalism has to play a role in that. I think, you know, the law has to play a role in that. I think that there are external forces, even, you know, gasp secular forces that have to play a role in that, because otherwise, we just leave these churches, these pastors to their own devices. And I'm sorry, but you don't need to read any other source then the Bible itself. You pick up the Bible itself, read from Old Testament to new and see how well that works out. We see it time and again. I there are not accountability structures in place, then things go very badly, very quickly. And so that's a long answer to your question. Julie Roys  57:06 Hmm. Well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate your book. And I know you're getting interviews all over the country. I saw you on CBS, Good Morning America; that was so exciting to see but really wonderful that you've gotten this platform to winsomely speak to the rest of society who I remember a couple of times, I got to be on NPR. They would ask me about evangelicalism, and they are always amazed, I think that I could even string two sentences together. And I was actually an evangelical right? But I am so thrilled that you are representing evangelicals because you're a face that and I don't know, do you still identify as Evangelical? TIM ALBERTA  57:49 not really, I don't fight the label, but I would not volunteer it for myself just because of exactly what we just described, you know. Somebody outside the church hears it, and they quickly shut down the conversation, because they don't really want anything to do with you. Julie Roys  58:01 I don't know if I would take that term, either. I'm kind of where you are, as well. But you're a Christian, and you love Jesus. And even when I heard you in that one interview recently said, How's your faith? and you're like, it's as strong as it's ever been. I thank you for that and for your witness, and for this book, and for giving me so much of your time. I really appreciate it. So, thank you, TIM ALBERTA  58:21 Thank you for all that you're doing. And thank you for saying that. It's very kind of you. We're ultimately playing some small part here in trying to get this thing back on track and doing it as humbly as possible. I hope that we can make a difference. Thank you for having me on. And I know that we'll continue to talk. Julie Roys  58:39 Absolutely. And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys. And just a quick reminder, if you'd like a copy of Tim Alberta's book, The Kingdome, The Power, and The Glory, we'd be happy to send you one for a gift of $50 or more to The Roys Report this month. Again, we don't have any large donors or advertising, we simply have you, the people who care about exposing evil and restoring the church. So, if you'd like to support our work and get Tim's book, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, I want to let you know that next week, I'll be releasing another talk from the RESTORE conference. This one is by veteran church planter Lance Ford, who gave an amazing talk on the Christian addiction to leadership and why it's so toxic. I love this talk and I think you will too. So be watching for that. We'll release the talk as both an audio podcast and as a video at my YouTube channel. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you'll never miss an episode. And while you're at it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media. So, more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/CaDhqixI0jsExposing abuse and corruption can be a thankless job. Powerful figures doing wrong often deny and attack those exposing them. And their supporters often join suit—attacking the messenger, rather than holding their leader accountable. This edition of The Roys Report features a very personal talk from Restore Conference founder and journalist, Julie Roys, delivered at the recent event this past October. It's centered on one question: why continue reporting, advocating, and shining a light when doing so comes at such a high personal cost? Journalists like Julie often ask this question—and so do many abuse survivor advocates, whistleblowers, and allies. The work can be grueling, and the pay off at times seems minimal. But in this talk, Julie shares not just her own struggles, but also the convictions she's gained over years of exposing abuse and corruption. If you're struggling to keep fighting for truth and justice, this talk will not just encourage, but inspire you to keep going. Guests Julie Roys Julie Roys is a veteran investigative reporter and founder of The Roys Report. Julie previously hosted a national talk show on the Moody Radio Network, called Up for Debate. She also has worked as a TV reporter for a CBS affiliate in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and as a newswriter for WGN-TV and Fox 32 Chicago. Julie's work has also appeared in Christianity Today, Religion News Service, The Federalist, and The Christian Post. She and her husband, Neal, live in the Chicago area and have three children and two grandchildren.  Show Transcript SPEAKERSJulie Roys Julie Roys  00:04Exposing abuse and corruption can be a thankless job. Those doing wrong often deny and attack those exposing them. And their supporters often join suit, attacking the messenger rather than holding their leader accountable. So why continue reporting and advocating and shining a light? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And the question of why not quit is one of those questions I’ve asked myself repeatedly over the years. And I know it’s not one that just journalists ask; many abuse survivor advocates, whistleblowers and allies do too. The work can be grueling and the payoff at times can seem minimal, so why not quit? Why keep fighting Goliath when the odds continually seem stacked in our opponent’s favor?   Julie Roys  00:52 What you’re about to hear is a very personal talk I gave at the 2023 RESTORE conference. The past 18 months have been especially hard for me. And there have been times when I’ve struggled profoundly with whether I can stay in this work without it deforming my soul. If you’re a survivor, or whistleblower or an ally, or maybe all of the above, you’ve probably experienced some of the same struggles. You may be struggling today. In this talk. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m still processing a lot of this stuff myself. But what I do is share my journey and why ,despite the difficulties, which are many and real, I’m not quitting. You’ll hear my talk in just a minute.   Julie Roys  00:52 But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres, just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Curt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   Julie Roys  02:37 Well, again, here’s the talk I gave a RESTORE 2023 on why not quit? Well, at the first RESTORE conference in 2019, I announced from this stage that we were experiencing an unmistakable move of God to purify his church. James MacDonald had just been exposed as the bully and hypocrite that he was and removed from Harvest Bible Chapel. Bill Hybels was exposed as a sexual predator, and people were finally believing the women, and revelations about Jerry Falwell, Jr. were just beginning to come out. And then donors alleging fraud won a massive $37 million dollar settlement from Gospel for Asia. Clearly God was cleaning house right? And over the next few years, the revelations just kept coming. Jerry Falwell, Jr, resigned from Liberty University amid shocking allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. Ravi Zacharias was shown to be a serial sexual predator, and RZIM was shut down. Hillsong began to implode beginning with Carl Lentz and his sexual misconduct going all the way to Brian Houston, and his sexual misconduct. And then I reported probably the biggest investigation I’ve ever done. I reported on John MacArthur, the supposed greatest expositor of the 20th century, that he had a pattern of shaming abuse victims and protecting their abusers. With story after story after story, the evil infecting the evangelical industrial complex, was being exposed and routed out. And probably more than any other time in my life, I felt like I was right in the middle of this remarkable thing that God was doing. Well, then I experience the most virulent backlash I have ever experienced. An army of YouTubers loyal to John MacArthur just kept hitting. They couldn’t go after the facts of my stories, so they went after me. And I became the poster child of the angry feminist proponent of CRT, wokism –  it didn’t matter whether I adhere to any of these things. They republished it anyway. And John MacArthur, despite everything I’d reported on him, he didn’t get canceled. He went and spoke at the Getty’s Sing conference. At the G3 conference, the Puritans conference. Sure, his reputation has been tarnished a bit. But those loyal dug in.   Well, then some anonymous Twitter accounts loyal to John MacArthur found some objectionable content in a book that I wrote in 2017. And soon I wasn’t just facing backlash from John MacArthur and those loyal to him, but from my own tribe, and from the survivor community. And people were hurt, and they were confused. And like I said, yesterday, some of that criticism was valid and deserved, and I didn’t get the power differential and someone a relationship with somebody that had been in a ministry that I had led, and that was my own responsibility. And I had assigned fault where it didn’t belong, where I should have taken responsibility. But some of the criticism was cruel. And it was patently false. And it was shockingly personal. And if you’ve never been in the midst of a public controversy like that, it’s kind of hard to explain. But it is a unique kind of awful. At least when you’re a private person and people talk about you, they have the decency to do it behind your back. But when you’re a public person, they do it in front of your family and your children and your friends and thousands and thousands of other people. And it was traumatic for me, I know it was even traumatic for some of you. And then perhaps smelling blood in the water, Protestia, a so-called discernment blog, lacking hardly any journalistic integrity, announced that they had a story that was going to expose me as a fraud. And on a Friday, they tweeted, were blocked but someone tag at reached Julie Roys, and give her a heads up in our next article about her revealing some of her shenanigans is really, really gonna sting. And then they published this video:   07:05 I said at the very at the very beginning, that we have some more information coming out about Julie Roys that I’m hoping to have out to you by Monday but suffice it to say it’s going to blow up the facade of Julie Roys as an ethical investigative journalist. We have some information about some very unethical, I would say immoral, but certainly unethical., things that Julie Roys has been caught saying and doing and promoting that we’re going to be releasing this information, hopefully by Monday. So, stay tuned to Protestia.com for that information. I want to thank you all again for joining me tonight on this live stream.   Julie Roys  08:06 So that came out on a Friday, so I had the whole weekend. I’m on pins and needles a whole weekend and I’m like what awful thing did I just do? I have no idea what I just did. So, I’m waiting for this to come out and on Monday Protestia published this menacing tweet. Apparently the story had been delayed a day. But will come out the next morning. Yet on Tuesday instead of publishing their big expose on me Protestia had to publish a retraction saying they almost got conned by an abuse survivor. Of course, they’ve got conned because they went forward with all of these allegations on Friday. Apparently a woman had fabricated some emails that she said were from me. And in these emails, I allegedly said that she should go forward with 300 allegations against a well-known Christian figure whether they were true or false. And sadly, Protestia didn’t do the very basics, the number one thing that you do when someone’s accused, is you go to the accused, and you ask for their side of the story. They didn’t do that until Tuesday, when they started to recognize some things might be going wrong. And they had accepted these fabricated emails as fact for about three days and went forward with those, again, libelous, and slanderous allegations,. The experience was unnerving, especially in the middle of what I was dealing with. But it wasn’t the last hoax I faced either. Someone close to James McDonald came after me with wild allegations that I covered up a child sex abuse scandal at Harvest Bible Chapel when I was investigating it. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Yet, some survivor advocates picked up that story as well and they began tweeting and retweeting it. And I had to track down a story that was three years old and find the emails and the texts and go back to the primary sources and publish my own story, showing that these allegations were false. And whatever momentum that I had going into all of this was completely eradicated. I was just trying to keep my head above water. Emotionally, I was spinning. It was so, so tough.   Julie Roys  10:21 And then people started talking about whether or not I was going to quit. In fact, I got a call from a colleague of mine, and was actually the only journalist who called me in the midst of this. And he said, Julie, I am watching what’s going on online. And he’s like, are you all right? And it was really sweet. And I don’t even know what I said. I was playing blubbering something. But it was a sweet call. But at the end of the call, he’s like, hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but if you do resign, can I have the interview? I was a little taken aback, but then I got a call from a former blogger, who I got to know really well through an investigation. And he gave me permission to share what I’m going to share with you. But he just asked that I call him by his first name, his first name, Scott. And so, he said something very similar. He said, Julie, I’m watching what’s happening to you on Twitter right now. And I just have to tell you as your friend, like, this is painful. He’s like, You don’t owe me an explanation. I know you. I know your character. But don’t take this the wrong way. But have you thought about quitting? And he’s like, I love you and I care about you, and I’ve actually jotted down some reasons that I think you should consider. And would you be willing to just hear me out on this? And I love Scott. I respect Scott. And I knew the heart that he was saying this was, so I said, Sure. Scott, go ahead. Tell me what you think. And he said, one, I noticed that you’re taking all this friendly fire. See, usually, my accusers are the defenders of whatever church leader it is, that’s  caught in the crosshairs of some investigation. But now, my accusers were my own tribe. It was people, some people from the survivor community. And let me just preface what Scott said, by saying, I have found that the survivor community and the people in this room, that some of you have been some of the most gracious people that I know. And the love that I was shown from some of you was so touching. And I have so much respect for survivors. Because survivors have been through hell, and they’ve come out with this beauty. So many of you. And so, it really was a small segment of the survivor community that was really being nasty. But he said, Julie, given the way that you’ve been treated by your own tribe, why would you keep reporting their stories? And I know some of you know what that feels like. Because you’ve tried to help with something. And you stepped out and you’ve messed up in some way and the backlash, and what happened to you when you did that, made you feel like I don’t even want to do that again. Like why try? And that’s how I felt a little bit at that point.   Julie Roys  13:22 But then he said, secondly, maybe your work to expose abuse and corruption is done. And by this, he didn’t mean there weren’t any more abusers out there or anymore corruption. What he was saying is that there’s a pattern. In fact, there’s so much of a pattern, you just see it playing out again and again, and again. It’s like Wade Mullens said in his book, something’s not right. They’re all using the same playbook. They all use the same tactics. He’s like, have you thought that maybe, just maybe, those who have ears to hear have heard and the rest won’t ever listen to it anyway. But lastly, and this is the one that really kind of hit home. And he said, Julie, do you ever wonder in what ways reporting on all of these vile things in the church and living in this constant pressure cooker is molding you and forming you into someone that you don’t want to be? And then he quoted Friedrich Nietzsche, who said, Whoever battles monsters should see to it in the process, that he does not become a monster himself. And when you look long into the abyss, the Abyss also looks back at you. And then Scott recalled ways that when he was blogging, that he’d start to see how this was affecting him negatively. That’s part of the reason he stopped doing it. And he said, Julie,  don’t take this as a confrontation. I’m not saying that I see this in you yet. But when I read some of the comments sometimes at your website, that’s when I begin to see it. He’s like, It’s like Grace is disappearing. And friend, you know the verse in the passage in Corinthians, If I speak with the tongues of angels, but have not love, I am nothing but a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal or in my situation, if I expose every predator pastor and defend every vulnerable victim, but have not love, I am nothing. And I know again, my experience is unique in some ways, but it’s not. Also, some of you have been reporting, maybe not as a journalist, but in other ways have been trying to expose abuse and corruption in the church for far longer than I have. Some of you that have spoken at this conference have suffered far worse than I could even imagine,  for standing up for the truth. And you may not be journalists, although there’s some in this room. But you’re bloggers and podcasters and whistleblowers, lawyers, pastors, allies, advocates. And you may today profoundly feel betrayed by those that you expected to support you. A sense of futility about the work that you’re doing. And there are moments when you feel like your work, or advocacy is molding you into someone that you don’t want to be. And you may be wondering, is it worth it? Should I just get out of the trenches? Should I stop doing this and maybe just go to Colorado and hike mountains every day?   Julie Roys  16:39 I have wrestled with all these things profoundly. And I don’t speak today as someone who has all the answers. I am in process like a lot of you. But I do feel like God has spoken to me with some resolution on some of these things. And I just want to share with you kind of what God’s been saying to me, in the hopes that it’ll help you as you wrestle through some of these things as well.   Julie Roys  17:05 So let me talk about the first issue that Scott raised, and that’s betrayal. I mean, why report or advocate or serve or pastor on people who may at any point turn on you? First, let me say, it goes both ways. I’ve been hurt by some survivor advocates, some of them innocently, some of them maliciously. But I’ve hurt some people in this room. I’ve had to ask forgiveness for some people in this room. And they’ve had to show me grace. And so, in some ways, there’s really nothing unique about this. If you’re working with people, we’re going to disappoint each other, right? We’re going to let each other down, we’re going to have to ask for forgiveness, we’re going to have to extend grace. But this is I think the question itself had an assumption in it, and that is that I’m doing what I’m doing for survivors. And I love survivors. I love you guys, and I consider myself now after some of the stuff I’ve been through, one of them too; absolutely love you guys.   Julie Roys  18:20 But this is what I told Scott, or at least what I was thinking at the time, I can’t remember if I told him. But I’m not doing this for survivors. Maybe as a secondary reason, yes. But I don’t think any of us can stay in the work that we’re doing long term if we’re primarily doing it for people. Because when you’re doing it for people, your eyes are always on the worthiness of a person. And we’re pretty darn fallible. In the long term, if that’s what we do, we’re gonna end up very bitter and angry and burned out. The primary reason I’m doing what I’m doing, and I would suggest that all of us should be doing whatever work it is, as an act of worship to God. We’re serving God. And you’ve probably heard the story of Mother Teresa, where she was with a journalist in Calcutta. And he saw her cleaning out this infected wound that was this maggot infested. And he said, “I wouldn't do what you’re doing for a million dollars. And she shot right back, I wouldn’t either. She got that when she served the person on the street, she was serving Jesus. And so, whenever we’re serving whatever capacity it is, we are serving Jesus. I would also say that I do believe God called me to this work.   Julie Roys  19:45 I never would have imagined five years ago that I would be doing what I’m doing today. It was the furthest thing from my imagination. And I bet for some of you in this room 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you never would have imagined you would be here either, or you never would have imagined the set of circumstances that put you in this room right now. And I’m guessing that if you look back over the ,5, 10, 15, however many years it’s been, if you look carefully, you can see the hand of God in your life, putting you where you are right now. It is not the road you would have chosen, but it’s the road that God worked redemptively in.   Julie Roys  20:31 Five years ago, I was a radio host on the Moody Bible Institute, Moody Radio Network. I’d just written a book, I was getting booked at these women’s conferences, ironically, one at Harvest Bible Chapel. I was getting booked on all these radio programs, I was on my way to becoming, God forbid, a Christian celebrity. But then I learned about corruption and abuse at the Moody Bible Institute. And I was the one person who not only had the inside information, but I also had the training and the skills to know what to do with that to expose it. And so, it didn’t take too long before it became a matter of conscience where I felt like if I didn’t say something, that I would be disobeying God. And some of you know exactly what I’m talking about, because you’ve sat in that situation before, where you’ve known that to stay quiet is to disobey God. But you have absolutely no guarantee that if you speak out, that it’s going to go well for you. In fact, you’re pretty darn sure that if you do speak out, it’s gonna go a lot worse. And that’s what happened for me. I got fired from Moody Bible Institute. Ironically, they also pressured the top three executives to resign that I had reported on. But I had broken the silent rule, which is, you never speak about these things publicly. I was actually told by a board member on the phone, that the reason they fired me is because the interim president told them that I had signed an NDA. And I will never forget the shock in his voice  when I told him that several years before when they had moved me from full time to part time that they had given me an NDA, and I fought it with everything I was worth. There was absolutely no way that as a journalist, I would sign something that resigned me to silence, absolutely no way. And he immediately said, Oh, I gotta go and hung up. And despite the fact that they had absolutely no grounds for firing me, I was completely blacklisted in the evangelical industrial complex. And many of you know what that is like too. I knew it would happen, just wasn’t, I had been in it for about 10 years. So, I knew how the game worked.   Julie Roys  23:02 And I thought when I got fired, this would be a great thing. I’ll have more time with my kids, and now my grandkids. But then survivors from Harvest Bible Chapel came to me begging me to hear their stories and do what I had done at Moody for Harvest. And then survivors from Mark Driscoll’s church came and said, “Would you please listen to us and report on what’s happening here? And then Steve Baughman gave me a copy of his book, Cover Up in the Kingdom. And he said, Julie, I’ve been reporting for years about how Ravi Zacharias is a fraud, but nobody will listen to me because I’m an atheist, but they’ll listen to you because you’re one of them. And God brought me story after story after story. And every single time I didn’t hear like the audible voice of God, but I felt very much that he was saying, keep reporting. And so that’s what I’ve tried to do. And ironically, God took the one thing that I thought would end my career, blowing the whistle on the Moody Bible Institute, and he used it to launch The Roys Report. And he used hurting people that I got to know in my reporting on Harvest and Willow Creek to start this conference. And I just see his hand working redemptively in all things. And I bet some of you like I said, if you look back over your life, and even this chapter, you might be able to see God’s hand working redemptively. Maybe not yet. Some of you I know, because I’ve talked to you and it’s like, you’re hanging by a thread right now. And you can’t even believe that the things that have happened to you at the hands of people you loved, and you trusted, and you thought were members of the kingdom and you were all working on the same team, did you what they did. And I would just encourage you for whatever mustard seed of faith that you have, hang on to Jesus. Just hang on. Because I also know that there’s others of you today that you never would have believed, you never would have believed 10 years ago that you would be where you are today. You never would have believed you’d be able to heal. You never would have believed with what you went through, that you would have the confidence and the courage that you have today that you will be as healed as you are. And I just want to remind you, that’s not just because you’re amazing. A lot of you are amazing. And you’re an incredible inspiration to me, and you have been through far more than I ever will go through and ever dream of going through, I would just encourage you to see the way that God has been working in your life doing what he said he would do, that he began a good work in you will carry it on to completion to the day of Christ Jesus.   Julie Roys  25:57 I don’t think it’s trite, that what God did in the Old Testament with Joseph that he still does today. That he takes the evil that was done against us, and he works it for good. And if he’s calling you to a certain work, I would just encourage you to do it with all your might, as unto the Lord. And I’m not going to quit because of the pushback. I think it comes with the territory. In fact, I had an editor once who said Julia, if you’re not getting any hate mail, then you’re probably just not saying anything.   Julie Roys  26:38 But what about the second reason that Scott mentioned? The seeming futility of fighting this evil that seems to have worked itself through the entire dough of evangelicalism and within the church, and you seem to be fighting this giant that is so incredibly massive, and all the people with power are propping it up. And quite frankly, we don’t have very much. In fact, in comparison, we’re just gnats; we’re like so small. You know, last night we heard from Jason and Lorie Adams Brown. And if you know their story, you know that they blew the whistle on Andy Wood, who had been at Echo church because of the spiritual abuse that they received at his hands. Despite the fact that they blew the whistle on him, and I had the privilege of reporting their story, Saddleback Church went ahead and hired him, and he is now the successor for Rick Warren at Saddleback Church.   Julie Roys  27:42 But it was so encouraging to hear from them how their courage and their speaking out, cause other people who had been similarly abused by some of the same people to come to them, and talk to them about the abuse. And for them to say how they got their voice back because that’s what abusers do. They take away your voice. And to reclaim your voice is a very important thing. It is empowering. And then they talked about how another story that came to me because I published that first story was stories about how Andy Wood and Echo Church had stolen these vulnerable congregations that own these multimillion-dollar buildings and had tried to steal those buildings. And a major Baptist leader went on the record with me talking about his experience of Andy Wood trying to steal numerous churches. And that never would have come out had they not spoken.   Julie Roys  28:42 I also recently produced a podcast with Emily Hyland, who’s at this conference. And Emily was a victim of abuse by Dane Ortlund, who’s a pastor in this area. And Emily told me that after we published the podcast, now she’s beginning to hear from other people who have similarly been abused by Dane Ortlund, and now they’re beginning to get their voice and they’re thinking of going on the record. And just a little bit ago, I published the story about Churchome. This is this West Coast church pastored by celebrity pastor Judah Smith, and the first piece that I did on Churchome was about this woman who had been raped by one of their pastors. And they even did an independent investigation and found out that there’s credible evidence, in fact beyond a reasonable doubt that her allegation was true. So, they pressured him, and he resigned from the church and three years later, they hired him back over her objections. And literally the same day, I started getting emails and texts and different things from women who had similarly been abused at that church and wanted to go forward with their story and I was able to do a three-part series on what Churchome had done. And right now, I can’t tell you what the story is because I haven’t published it yet. But I have a big one. And it’s due to another person at Churchome, seeing what we just reported. And now that person came forward and gave me a bunch of information. And that’s how it happens. Every single time with story after story after story. It’s like this little fire starts here, and then it spreads here, and then here, here, and soon the whole hillside is ablaze. And friends, that’s how movements happen. That’s how they grow. But it takes time, and it takes perseverance.   Julie Roys  30:34 At the first RESTORE, I said that this unmistakable move of God that it was not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Now, at that point, I thought we were in like mile 9 or 10. The more I’ve done this now I’m thinking we’re on four or five, we may be on two or three. And I hate to break that news to you. But I really do. People have compared this current state of the church to the Catholic church before the Reformation. I actually think that’s a fair comparison. It is that corrupt. It is that widespread. Do you know how long the Reformation took? Historians date it from 1517 to 1648. Friends that is 131 years. How about slavery? Let’s just look at England. It took William Wilberforce fighting passionately, so much so that his own health suffered greatly for two decades to abolish slavery in England, because friends, that’s how institutionalized evil and that is what we are dealing with institutionalized evil. That’s how it’s dismantled. So, do I get discouraged? 100%. I’m human. Are there days when it’s hard to persevere? But I believe the corruption in the church is the most serious threat to this country. And most Christians don’t even know it. That’s the shocking thing. Most Christians aren’t even aware of it. And you say, Well, how can I say that? How many times have we heard the hope of the world is Jesus and his means of rescuing the world is thank you, the church. And we’re supposed to be the salt of the earth. We’re supposed to be a light on the hill, and we are Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet, what are most all the Christian leaders doing right now? What are they talking about? They’re talking about all the sin out there. Right? They’re talking about everything that’s bad out there in the world. Like they have a moral platform to stand on. And they’re not talking about the sin in their own house, none of them. And unless we deal with the sin in our own house, there’s no way, there’s no way that we’re going to reform this country. And it certainly isn’t by electing some politician.   Julie Roys  33:21 But I would encourage you, and this is what I see happen a lot, is that people get really excited about a story that touches them personally. And thank God because every time I report a new story, there are people who are totally unaware that this is going on, and they become aware. But then what happens is they move on with their life. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t move on with your life. Dear Lord, if all of us lived in, I’ve got a weird call. I get that. I got a weird personality too. I make mugs. Actually. I have people make them for me, but the biggest insults I get I actually enjoy that at times. I’m just kind of weird that way. But I’m just there is an element to which we can’t all live in that intensity, and I get that. But what I’m saying is, don’t just move on and forget there’s other people stuck. Don’t just move on. Keep your love for the church and for the mission and for the restoration of this thing that Jesus died for and that he loves. And don’t forget that if not you, who? So, am I going to quit because the progress is slow and hard? No. I’m going to keep in mind one of my favorite verses First Corinthians 15:58. Therefore my dear brothers and sisters, do not lose heart. Stand firm. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.   Julie Roys  35:07 And now I’m going to address the most concerning issue that Scott raised. And that is what if in the process of fighting the monster, you become the monster? Last year Christian therapist and trauma expert Dr. Diane Langberg, said from the stage that the way that you recognize a wolf is you don’t become one. Some people took offense at that, because they said, listen, we’re not all going to become pedophiles. We’re not all rapists, we’re not like on that level. And they’re right. It takes a certain level of pathology to do something like that. And most people, quite frankly, aren’t there, thank God. That said, that’s not what Diane was saying. What Diane was saying is that every single one of us, every single one of us has a sin nature. And if we don’t keep that in check, we can succumb to a lot of the same things as the people I report on. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have some of the vices of the people I report on because I do. I struggle with anger, bitterness, contempt, self-pity, that’s a big one, pride. And the more I uncover and the more that I see innocent people abused by these people, the more difficult it becomes to deal with some of those vices. It can become a death spiral. And the spiritual death that we see in other people can become our spiritual death. Dr. Lambert writes about this in her devotional book called In Our Lives First. And this is a book that I’ve read twice, devotionally over the past 18 months. I’ll probably read it again over the next year because this is something that I constantly need to be reminded of. And she writes, those of us who work with such deaths must be extremely careful not to catch the diseases that surround us. We must be careful not to assume that catching such diseases is hard to do. Working with sin, suffering and evil can easily numb the heart. Numbness leads to death, if left alone. She also writes, counselors, though this is true of investigative reporters, it’s true of pastors, it’s true of Survivor advocates, many others. We are handling toxic things, and we have toxins in our own hearts, and it is not hard to either be destroyed by the work or to destroy those who come to us for help. So, what do we do? Do we quit working in the trenches? Lori Anne suggested that some people should quit. I’m not going to argue with Lori Anne. Maybe I tweak it a little bit. Let me just speak to those of you who like me grew up in a home where personal responsibility and duty was a big thing. Any of you? okay. And so sometimes those of us who grew up in these homes tend to do things because we feel like we have to, and we have a sense of responsibility and duty. And we can be destroying ourselves and destroying the relationships with those we love the most. Yet we keep doing it because we think we have to. Am I right? Can I get an Amen? Now, right? I don’t think God is honored when we destroy ourselves. And I tell you what, he’s certainly not honored, when eventually that turns into harm for others, because eventually that’s what happens. So, if that’s you, and that’s happening, you know, maybe you don’t need to have a frontline role. Maybe you can just step back for a season. Maybe you can support some people that are out there. You know, maybe you can adjust your role or maybe you do take a little bit of a break. Or maybe you do go to Colorado for three weeks and hike mountains. But is there a way? Is there a way to remain in work that exposes us to the vilest, the vilest things that happen in this world, yet instead of destroying us, it actually aids in our own sanctification? Sanctification, just a theological word for the process of becoming like Jesus.   Julie Roys  39:53 I grew up in the holiness movement. You may not know what that means. That’s okay. But in the holiness movement, we talked a lot about sanctification. And we talked a lot about a second work of the Holy Spirit, kind of like charismatics talk about a baptism of the Holy Spirit, except the manifestation within the holiness movement isn’t tongues, the manifestation is power over sin in your life. And we weren’t against tongues. Speak in tongues? Absolutely. Just like Paul said, I wish you all were like me. Just if it doesn’t lead to your sanctification, what good is it? That’s the point is that we become like Jesus, right? Diane Langberg writes a lot about sanctification. She doesn’t urge counselors to quit their work. Instead, she implores them to pursue Jesus. She writes, we have not heard God clearly if we fail to understand that one of the requirements for our work is that God’s sanctifying work must go on continually in us as well. If it does not, while we may appear for a time to be doing his work, eventually what is true will be made manifest. That we have not for the sake of others, meant to the sanctification process ourselves, we will damage his world, His people and His name, may it never be so.   Julie Roys  41:17 One of the great tragedies of the epidemic of abuse and corruption in the evangelic church is that it is pushing people away from Jesus. And many because of the hurt that they’ve experienced are beginning to deconstruct their faith. And I’m not dissing deconstruction. Many of us need to go back and reevaluate a lot of the beliefs that we took in and begin to think about those and we need a safe place to do that in. We need people who are safe people to do that with, we need safe people. We need to be safe people. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that what I have been exposed to hasn’t caused me to doubt my faith. In fact, the hardest question for me has been does Christianity, does it make people worse? Or does it make people better? Because I’ve seen some really devout Christians who have incredible grip of Scripture, incredible grip of theology much better than I do. And yet they are some of the most wicked people I have ever known in my life. And I tell you what I’ve become convinced of, I’ve concluded that Christianity, divorce from a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ and reduced to a theological system, a moralistic system, or God forbid, a political one is absolutely heinous. And it does make people into monsters.   Julie Roys  43:06 But I believe a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ is not only helpful in helping us deal with the vilest thing of this world, it is 100% essential. I know my relationship with Jesus has sustained me over the past 18 months. I remember several weeks before last year’s RESTORE conference, and I was a mess, and Dr. Diane Langberg got on a zoom call with me for about 90 minutes. And she was so loving, and so gracious, which I’m sure is not hard for you to imagine. And she was Jesus to me. And I remember saying to her, Diane, the hardest part about this whole thing to me is that I’ve been accused of these awful things, and I can’t say anything. I remember having a very close friend who said, Julie, if you step down from that conference, everybody’s going to assume that everything that was said about you is true. And Diane said to me, she said, Julie, this is an opportunity for you to enter into Christ’s sufferings. And initially, I thought about that very much in a martyr sort of way. Because if you’ve been wronged in some way, it’s really really easy to get a martyr complex. Super easy. But it hasn’t been like that.   Julie Roys  44:43 So, I had a very profound experience with a spiritual coach mentor about, I don’t know, seven or eight months ago where we were just doing some breathing exercises because I was kind of worked up. It’s hard to imagine I know. And while we’re in the process of this, she said, just experience the Lord’s compassion. And that morning, I had read about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. And I began imagining being in the garden of Gethsemane with Jesus. I have a pretty vivid imagination. So, I’m there and I’m looking at his face and I see just incredible pain on his face. And it strikes me he’s just been betrayed by one of his 12 closest companions. And one of his three closest friends is going to deny him three times. And I felt betrayed by people who are frankly kind to strangers. I don’t really even know any more. And then Jesus is literally sweating, beads of blood. I had gone through some emotional trauma; I’ve never done that. And then Jesus is thinking about this in the night before he’s going on the cross. I began thinking of this, he’s going to be tortured to death the next day. I have never in my life been tortured for my faith. I read Miriam’s book, and I was devastated. What that woman has gone through, and she has overcome. I am in awe of her. Jesus suffered. The immensity of His suffering began to hit me. And I in that moment, finally didn’t feel sorry for myself. And somehow, in that whole process, I felt more unified with Jesus than I’d ever felt before. And there was this oneness, and somehow now what I had gone through had meaning and that made all the difference in the world. I’ve also been thinking about the fact that Jesus died for his enemies. I have enemies now. I don’t think I had enemies before I started reporting. Like I people didn’t like me. But enemies. I mean, somebody really bent on your destruction like that, actually schemes about it. I have those now. Some of you have those now. I’m having a tough enough time forgiving them. Dying for them? Man. And here’s where it gets tough because Jesus says we’re supposed to have the same attitude that he had.   Julie Roys  47:29 I was challenged by a friend several years ago, to just read through the Old Testament, and read about every single time that a prophet brings a word of judgment to people. It took me several months, but I went ahead and did it. And something dawned on me. Every time that God gave a prophet a harsh word to say to his people, it was never because he wanted to destroy them. We see this in the story of Jonah, right? You all know the story. Jonah is told to go to the Ninevites. Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrian bloodthirsty, hostile people, the enemies of the Israelites. And what does he do? He goes to Tarsus gets on a ship and they go out to the Mediterranean. The big storm comes they throw him overboard, fish swallow them, he’s in the fish three days, vomited up on dry land, and he says, Okay, fine, I’ll go to Nineveh, goes to Nineveh for three days. He tells the Ninevites that in 40 days, God’s going to destroy you. And then the Ninevites do a most remarkable thing. They actually repent and God has mercy on them. But Jonah, what does he do? He becomes despondent. He says to the Lord, oh, Lord, is this not what I said when I was in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarsus, for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love unrelenting from disaster. Therefore,  oh Lord, please take my life for me. For it is better for me to die than to live. Jonah had become every bit as hard-hearted as the people that he hated. And if that can happen to a prophet of God, it can happen to me, can happen to any one of us.   Julie Roys  49:29 So, this is kind of a heart check for us. This heart check for me, I began to think about this. Like what if John MacArthur repented? It’s hard to imagine. The man’s never apologized that I know of. That’s what I’m told from everybody near him. But let’s imagine he did. What if John MacArthur went to Eileen Gray, and he said, Eileen, I’m so sorry. When your husband tried to suffocate your daughter and the abuse was so brutal in your home that you came to the church, you came to us for help. And instead of helping you, we told you to drop that protective order that you would have gotten against him to protect, not you, but your children. And in front of the entire church, I, the shepherd shamed and excommunicated you simply for trying to protect your children. And years later, years later when it came out that he had sexually abused your children and was convicted by court, and you know how hard it is to be convicted in California of child abuse? And they sent him to prison? I still maligned you, and I protected your abuser. Oh, Eileen, I am so sorry. I have sinned against you. I’ve sinned against my church; will you forgive me? Or what if he went to Wendy Gray and, Wendy, when you came to me, or when your father came to me when you were just a teenager, and he confessed to my face, that he had sexually molested you, and I kept him on staff another three years and I wrote you that handwritten note telling you to forgive your father? That was wrong, that was a sin against you. And years later, decades later, when that action of mine had devastated your life, and you simply came to me because you wanted support going to the elders of the church, where your father was still pastoring. And at this point, you knew that he was a serial abuser, he was abusing many people because that’s what pedophiles do. Instead of coming with you instead of supporting you, instead of repenting for what I did, I said in an email to you, why has this become such an obsession for you? That devastated you. That was my fault. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me for that? Do I want John MacArthur to receive grace? Do I want him to repent? or would I rather him see his maker and try and make that excuse to him? Honestly? It’s a little bit of a struggle. But I thought about that. Imagine if John MacArthur repented? I mean, really repented? Can you imagine the ripple effect that would have? How many pastors that would affect in this church? Can you imagine what that would do? Unbelievable what would happen if John MacArthur repented. Would I rejoice at that? You bet I’d rejoice at that. That could be the start of revival in this church. That’s what we need to see – is pastors repenting.   Julie Roys  53:09 But I tell you what, that is not natural for me. I tell you what’s natural for me. When somebody hurts me, I want them to hurt in the same way that they hurt me. Can I get an amen? That’s human nature, isn’t it? The only reason that I have any grace in my heart is because of Jesus Christ. Because I wouldn’t have it without him. And without him, I would become a monster, I am convinced of it. And that’s why one of many reasons why I need Jesus. But now I’m going to say something a little bit controversial. I’ve also found that I need Christian community. And I know some of you have been so burned by your Christian community, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to darken the doors of the church. Three and a half years ago, we lost a church, or we left the church that I thought we would be in the rest of our lives. I thought it was different. I loved that church dearly. I loved the people in it. But the last straw for us was when they covered up sex abuse. And at that point, we just couldn’t trust the leadership anymore. And for two years, we went from church to church to church to church, and it was unbelievably depressing. And I won’t go into all the reasons it was depressing. I think you all know. But two weeks before everything blew up in my life when this whole controversy hit last year. Two weeks before that a professional colleague invited me to his house church. And here’s what’s kind of ironic, that professional call I happen to be the CEO of Christianity Today. Now, if you know anything about my past, which you may not, I have not had a great relationship with Christianity Today. That CEO, though, has since publicly apologized for some of the stuff that CT did to me under his predecessor. But two weeks before this happened, I was like, Great, yeah, I’ll try anything at this point. So, my husband and I went to the church, the house church. And it was great, we loved it. I was like, this is really super. Between week one and week two, everything in my world blew up, and I had to resign from the conference. And I remember walking into that house church with people I knew two weeks. And I wasn’t really planning on sharing this. But somebody noticed something I had said, and then when we were in small groups, they said something, and I just, and I’m bawling in front of people I don’t even know, hardly. But over the past 18 months, that’s become my Christian community. And I was invited into a women’s cohort. And that became a support for me. And the leader of the women’s cohort said, “Julie, do you have a prayer team? And I said, Well, I used to have a prayer team, but it’s kind of fizzled. And I don’t honestly even have the strength to put one together. And she says, I’ll do it for you. And so, once a month, we have this really sweet prayer time with a small group of people. And they’ve been some of the best times for me, and I honestly shudder to think of where I would be right now, if for the past 18 months, I had done that in isolation. And so, I’m so grateful for Christians in my life, who have been the hands and the feet of Jesus to me and who have loved me. And I don’t know. I can’t speak to your situation. I know some of you feel like you’re in a wasteland. And I know you feel like all the churches in your area are bad. And I don’t, I’m not even going to argue with you. I would just encourage you to not give up, to not give up. And to keep hoping, keep pressing into Jesus keep looking for Christian community. And I don’t know how God will meet that in your life. But I just trust he will because that’s just God’s nature. And I don’t know how long the wasteland will be, but it won’t last forever.   Julie Roys  57:40 So, we’re going to close this conference the way we close every single RESTORE conference, and that’s with communion. And Paul Lundquist, who is a local pastor who has been a dear friend of this ministry, and so supportive of what we’re doing is going to come and lead us in communion where we celebrate not just our oneness with Christ, but our oneness together as his body. So, Paul, would you come?   Julie Roys  58:05 Well, I hope you’ve been encouraged by what you just heard. And I wish you could have been there to experience communion together with those dear and beautiful souls at the RESTORE conference. That is a memory I will not soon forget. And I hope you’ll make it a point to join us at the next RESTORE conference, which we’ll be announcing soon. Also, I want to mention that the videos of these talks are all available at my YouTube channel. And we’re not charging anything for those. We just really want as many people as possible to benefit from these RESTORE conference talks. But friends, I’m sure you’re aware that producing these podcasts and videos is not cheap. So, if you appreciate this content and you’re able to help, would you please consider donating to The Roys Report, especially as you’re considering your end of the year donations, please remember us and the work that we do. We’re running a bit in the red this year so your gifts are especially critical, so we can continue podcasting and reporting at the same level. To donate just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way you’ll never miss an episode. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNHswz5yZ-M Clergy sexual abuse is one of the most devastating forms of abuse, impacting almost every area of life. After surviving abuse like that, how do you recover? And after being preyed upon by a powerful church figure, how do you recover your agency, your voice, your life? This edition of The Roys Report features an unforgettable session from the recent Restore Conference, and one of the most raw and vulnerable talks you'll ever hear. It comes from Lori Anne Thompson, a victim of clergy sexual abuse by one of the most powerful men in evangelicalism for nearly 40 years—Ravi Zacharias.  But even before Ravi, she experienced the pain of abuse by her father. And then, after becoming a believer, the pastor who had become a father figure to her used his position to extort money from Lori Anne and her husband. Statistically, Lori Anne should be a shell of herself. But anyone who knows Lori Anne knows her as uncommonly kind, extraordinarily bright, perceptive, healthy—and truly, one of those people whose presence in your life just makes your life better. She has walked a road no one should ever have to walk. And yet, through that process, she's learned the keys to not just surviving abuse and trauma, but how to thrive after abuse and trauma. The voice of abuse survivors is too often missing—and silenced—in American evangelical churches and ministries. Lori Anne has a vital perspective as a survivor and healer, and she's distilled decades of experiences and wisdom into this riveting 52-minute talk. Guests Lori Anne Thompson Lori Anne Thompson. RKin, MA, is a survivor of clergy sexual abuse who now seeks to serve the survivor community through selective speaking, extensive writing, and in her role as an intake specialist at a survivor-centric law firm. She graduated from Queens University, Canada, earning a Bachelor of Science Kinesiology and a Master of Child Advocacy & Policy from Montclair State University.  Learn more at loriannethompson.com Show Transcript SPEAKERS Julie Roys, LORI ANNE THOMPSON JULIE ROYS 00:02 Hi, I'm Julie Roys, founder of The Roys Report and the RESTORE conference, and you're about to see a video from Restore 2023. Alot of conferences charge for videos like these, we've decided to make them available for free. We've done that because we don't want anybody to miss out on this valuable content for lack of finances. But of course these do cost us money to shoot and to edit. So if you're able we'd really appreciate it if you consider donating to The Roys Report so we can continue this important service. To do so just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, I hope you'll make plans to join us at the next RESTORE conference, which we'll be announcing soon. As great as these videos are they pale in comparison to being there in person. As one speaker commented this year, RESTORE is more of a restorative community than it is a conference. And every year that community just grows deeper and richer. And so I hope you'll be able to join us at the next RESTORE. Be watching for that. And in the meantime, I hope you're blessed and encouraged by this video. LORI ANNE THOMPSON 01:11 The survivor community is a community that I was born into. It's also a community I never ever wanted to be part of. 100% of those of us who have survived any kind of abuse did so in a social structure, where the despot has ruled the day. Where the power dynamic was as tangible as what it was invisible. Where dominance and subordination or submission have been the typography of our tyranny. The Oxford Dictionary in the Oxford Dictionary, tyranny is defined as cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control. The work of Dr. Judith Herman has informed so much of my understanding. and she writes this, and I quote, “The rules of tyranny are simple. The strong do what they will simply because they can. The weak and vulnerable submit, the rule of the strong is enforced by violence or the threat of violence. Violence does not have to be used very often; it merely needs to be effective when it is used.” 02:22 In faith communities, we not only have the threat of violence by our earthly offenders, who seem all powerful and deeply omnipotent, but we also have the ever-present threat of the Almighty himself. The rules of tyranny are as systemic as what they are systematic. They are as pervasive as what they are predictable. In contrast, the survivor community is meant to be based upon principles of mutuality and reciprocity, a safe shelter for people who have been pillaged, where they should have been protected. And a place where people should be fed when they have been eaten. Juxtaposed to those who offended against us, overwhelmingly, we are a group of courageous overcomers. We are not a group of losers. But we are a group who have suffered catastrophic losses. I regularly have the privilege of interviewing survivors who are seeking civil justice. And the single hardest question that these people have to answer in that interview is this: what, what are the damages to your financial, personal, physical, psychological, professional, sexual and spiritual life? It is easier to make a list of what's not been damaged, about what remains, because across domains, life is radically altered when you've been touched in any way by abuse. 04:09 Some of us may have encountered abuse for the first time as adults, but a much higher percentage of us have encountered abuse as children. Those are called Adverse Childhood Experiences, and they result in a sequela a staggering sequela of negative outcomes that compound and complicate life in adolescence and adulthood. In the 1990's, Dr. Vincent Felitti, and his team at Kaiser Permanente did the original or foundational a study, and they elucidated–they surveyed I think it was 17,000 people–and they elucidated 10 factors that if any one of them happen in childhood, that can cause a deformation of the person and personhood and personality of individuals. And they include sexual, physical and emotional abuse, physical and emotional neglect, parental separation, parental incarceration, parental substance abuse, domestic violence and/or mental illness. Later on in the Philadelphia study, not surprisingly, the concept of childhood adversity was expanded to include community violence, racism, foster care and bullying. The earlier and more protracted all this, (I'm gonna bleep myself) happens, these adverse experiences happen, the longer and later the outcome, the adverse outcome stay. And a score of four or more puts survivors at risk of a 12-fold risk of suicide. So, check, check, check, check, check, depression, substance abuse and a laundry list of extensive poor health outcomes that last well into adulthood and often lead to early death. It's an abysmal picture. For those of us who have encountered abuse across a lifespan, a significant percentage of us have never told a soul. Rather, we have suffered and suffocated in silence. Sometimes, sometimes people don't even tell themselves. 06:26 This is a very leaky business. Research done by Baylor University, I met Dr. Pooler yesterday, it was a privilege, informs us that those of us who have survived clergy perpetrated sexual abuse as adults, they know some facts about folks like us. The average age of onset is 30. So much for being vulnerable, not being vulnerable past the age of 18. With an average duration, and this is staggering to me, of four years of abuse. Like that's staggering. A whopping 65% of us had unprocessed trauma, and a further 62% of us, were being counseled by the very person, the clergy member who abused us. Only 9% of us report that the church supported us after we disclosed. And 80% of us report that abuse negatively impacted our relationship with God. More recent research that's not been published yet reports that 40% of clergy adult sexual abuse survivors have post-traumatic stress disorder. Man, I tell you, I wonder why, wonder why we have PTSD? Anybody? It might just be that those of us who have decided to disclose and sought any form of public justice have each had our own public crucifixion. Silence looks like a very attractive alternative in the face of that. We have watched strangers and friends alike gamble in person or online, as our private hell is hung in public humiliation, as we are mocked, and lied about when we were the ones who were lied to. Most of us can recall the hollow thud of our frames when our limp bodies collapse in exhaustion and when we dragged ourselves away from the side of the evangelical religious road and waited to die. We can taste the trauma, the disorientation and the bewilderment of telling the truth only to labelled a liar. The cruelty of incomprehension as we asked for bread not only to be given a stone, but to have stones thrown at us, to be told to sit down in silence while our offenders rise to speak for standing ovations. 09:21 It is grievous. It is right to grieve, it is also right in this moment to breathe. Can you join me? Can we do it again? One more. 09:46 That was then, and this is now. And I'm about to enter into what is the beginning of my end and so if that hurt, I would ask you to find a space to ground yourself because this may hurt more. It hurt for me to write it may hurt for you to read. I have written a brief narrative, one that is as gentle as I could make it. One that leaves out as many details as possible, yet still provides a cogent narrative for you to understand that when I met Ravi Zacharias I was already destroyed. 10:38 I was sired by a sexual predator. I am the child of a child molester. I was my mother's last child and I thought I was my father's last child too until several years ago, I found out that he sired his last child just before he died. That child was born to a child. She took her first breath five months after his last. I was two when my mother and my oldest sister fled the home. Myself and my two remaining siblings were left behind with him. Consequently, my home life was transient and tumultuous. Poverty pervaded my life across domains. My siblings and I regularly endured rage fueled physical assaults by my father, on more than one occasion, that led to unconsciousness. My father had a partner in his crimes, my stepmother, who also perpetrated verbal, emotional, physical, sexual abuse, at times that came close to torture. Polyvictimization in my home hung as heavy as the daily dose of secondhand smoke. Shame, spurning, starvation, medical and physical neglect were commonplace. These abuses are too overwhelming to number or even to name, but they included control of consumption of food and drink, control of urination and defecation, a regimen that did not resemble human hygiene, sexually abusive bathing practices, denuding and dehumanizing and defeminizing that include mandatory dressing in full coverage masculine clothes, which was always excessively hot in summer and wholly inadequate in winter. It seems to me that all oppressive regimes seem to engage in the practice of the shearing off of hair of their victims. Month after merciless month I sat in the kitchen where she and I silently sobbed where my any traces of tresses would fall to the floor. I was formed and fashioned entirely by the will of others, and I rarely, if ever expressed a will of my own. My older remaining sister disclosed my father's savage sexual abuse of her and fled the home when I was 10 years old. She was 13. Once again, I and my remaining sibling were left behind. My father confessed to his crimes, attempted suicide twice, went to jail for nine months and returned home rehabilitated. It is difficult to breathe when your father's shame hangs around you like secondhand smoke. I was in a toxic family and with no choice but to inhale or die. I did both with each breath. 13:47 Upon his release from incarceration, he turned his abusive intentions towards me — sexually abusive intentions. I could not fathom how an adult would want to have sex acts with a child. I still cannot. After a particularly salient incident, I asked him why he had sex with children. I like many others thought that if a man had a wife, he would not sexually offend. I can still see this moment, the traumatic tableaux as he leaned against the table, the kitchen table. He was a massive, he was an immense man, and I can feel what I felt as I stood by the door ready to run to literally nowhere and no one, knowing full well, the futility of fleeing, but ready to flee anyway. And in a rare moment of clarity, and maybe the only honest thing he ever said, he told me that his predation was not about sex, it was about power. I was twelve. 15:06 Judith Herman says, “Repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality which how trapped in an abusive environment is faced with the formidable task of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, and power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal – an immature system of psychological defenses.” 15:48 More Kleenex. Thank you for being patient with me. It would be harder if I didn't feel this, or easier, sorry, if I didn't feel it so much. I understood that if I were to survive, I would have to protect myself from the one man who was supposed to protect me. I tried really hard for three more years and he tried harder. But the time I left home at 15, I had a perfect ACE score of 10. It was a perfect score. And my perfectionism began early. I left with life in a cardboard box. And I never looked back. 16:28 He was arrested for child molestation for the second time, and he learned from his first go round that the nearly universal act of predatory denial. This time he was acquitted because it was my word against his. And there were no traces of his trauma on my person. Many children many abuse children, says Judith Herman cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom without question, but that they will grow up with major impairments in cognition, self-care, in a memory, and identity and the capacity to form stable relationships. I had them all. My father was released from prison, but I was not. As an adult, I was repeatedly revictimized by men in places of power and fiduciary duty, men that I both dearly loved, and deeply trusted. I married when I was 18. Because he asked and I couldn't say no. And I had my first child at 21. Her very existence some of you may relate to this, awakened in me an anguish about my own childhood that can only be described as infinite and touching absolutely every area of my life. It was an earthquake, the birth of something beautiful, someone beautiful showed me that I was vulnerable too. The desire to protect her, nurture her, care for her and rip limb to limb anybody who would bring her harm, evoked rage for my own inner person. I was entirely unequipped to handle that the doors to the past that the present had opened. I knew I needed help. But I had very little in the way of resources. 18:34 That's when I turned to the evangelical church, who offered me cost free help. I had no idea how costly that help would be. Rightly, they proclaim good news to the poor, comfort to the brokenhearted, release for the captives, and liberty for those who had been imprisoned. I was poor, and I sure was brokenhearted, I knew everything there was to know about captivity. And they said that all who hunger and thirst for righteousness would be filled. And I was starving. 19:24 In the early days of belonging to the so-called Christian community, my own father died and it's that time that a door to a deeper darker world was open to me and I was adopted as a spiritual daughter of the lead pastor, who, and I had regular therapy sessions with him, I was diagnosed by him, and he was the treatment. I came to believe that the sum total of the Christian life in those early years was crying. I thought that, I was told and in some ways it's true, that tears will tarry, but joy would come in the morning, and it looked to me like night would never end. It was in the same community that I later met and married my current husband of 18 years. It was also there that the same pastor committed egregious spiritual abuse and financial malfeasance against us and other members of the congregation. And you know this but attempting to hold a much beloved, high powered pastor to account is an invite in catastrophic sequala of betrayal trauma as experienced by us, but as theorized by Dr. Jennifer Freyd, that includes a series of events that is defined by DARVO: denial that anything happened, attacking the victim in reversing the victim and offender dynamics such that the real victim is thought to be the offender agent of Satan, and the real offender is being victimized. Some of us have been DARVOed to death. 21:13 All of this happens, astonishingly, institutional cowardice is committed in the name of Christ. Perhaps truer words were never spoken by Dr. Judith Herman when she said, “In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the purpose or perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim, and if he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens.” No one listened. Very straightforward. Highly successful campaign. We were shunned and shut out of our Christian community. Before we had at least the hope in Christ. Now all we had was the harm of those who called upon his name, and not too much remained. It was in this context that I met Ravi Zacharias. 22:15 When I came forward when this story went public in 2016-2017, life as I knew it, anything that was beautiful, collapsed in what can only be described as a protracted private and public catastrophe. Virtually no one believed me. I could hardly believe myself. I was globally vilified. I lost my home, my occupation, and nearly my life itself. Years of days were filled with night. My only confidants were my therapist, and my lawyer, and in times of really intense moments, they still are. Justice was a joke, and so was hope. The steady drum of those two people's sanity helped me to save mine. I had no faith or hope left so I had to borrow theirs. In time, their belief and trust in me helped me to find a measure of belief and trust in myself. But there would be many years of nights before dawn would ever come. I and my husband took one step forward only to take at least 10 steps back. It took forever to not lose ground. It took even longer to gain any. C.S. Lewis said of wrong some can be made right, but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot develop into good. Time does not heal it the spell must be unwound bit by bit with backward mutters of dissevering power or else not. It's in recovery that we go back to the source of the error. And we work it a fresh from there. 24:18 Lainna said yesterday that we have to look back to move forward. Lena, I want a statue of that duck wherever you can find one of those. She was completely right. 24:34 For the time that we have remaining, I want to talk to you about the stages of recovery. The architecture of empowerment, and the route to resilience, even as each one of us has our own path and we'll take divergent paths forward. Are y'all ready for that? Okay. I want to say this as a caveat and no I didn't add this after I heard Lena speak. Although I was born into an abusive and nonnutritive environment. The simple fact that I'm a white, heterosexual female endowed with a backpack of privileges, that my fellow survivors who are part of marginalized groups, and races and cultures simply do not have. I was clever as a child compulsively compliant, and I had a quiet disposition. Some of those things have changed. 25:26 Even then, I had an interest in human wellbeing that was higher than my low estate. I had a lot of words, which I was not permitted to use, nor was I even permitted to think them. I was able to attend school, and eventually church. And those two things were a reprieve for me. I was watchful, which helped me anticipate some of the storms and take shelter, but whenever possible, these were compensatory mechanisms for me, you will have your own. 25:58 Another breath. On your mark, get set, here we go. 123, inhale, hold it there, exhale. Let's do it again, shall we? I need this as much as you do. On your mark, get set, go, inhale 123. And exhale. Feel your butt in your seat. Feel your feet on the floor, put your hands in your lap and your head on your shoulders. You have a body and it's good. 26:33 Okay, recovery is defined as the return to a normal state of health, or to regain the possession or control over something that was stolen or lost. That definition hits home. For many of you the road to recovery will be a pathway to recover what was. You remember a self before this, some of you. For me, recovery has been a pathway to collect what wasn't. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm just saying it's different. I have a big bee in my bonnet about empowerment. And this might sound ranty, so hold on. Dr. Judith Herman again says, “The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor.” I'm going to say it again. The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. “She or he must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not very, very importantly, not the cure.” Others are not the cure. “Many benevolent and well intentioned attempts to assist the survivor flounder because this basic principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention, (I say it again), no intervention that takes power away from a survivor can possibly foster recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in his or her immediate best interest.” Empower, to be empowered is to have capacity and control. To have autonomy, which means I am me, I'm not you, and have agency which means that things I do matter in my life, I can affect change. It's not sufficient for you to do for me. It's wholly insufficient. We do for toddlers. Even in toddlerhood, that's how children learn. It also means to engage in critical thinking rather than being told what to think. That means we have to flex our thinking muscles. And I don't know your story, but I know mine. And I was not permitted to think, but I also didn't even know how to think. And so even when I became a Christian, I was really happy for other people to think for me because they must be right. That has to stop if we're going to be a people who are empowered. We need to seek information and not be given a steady stream of advice. When I'm in a hurry, I will drop a piece of advice. And when people are also in a hurry, I'll do that. But in general, I will only provide resources and information. We can't have other people chew the meat for us. We have to learn to chew ourselves. I'm deeply concerned and don't mind publicly saying it that I'm very concerned about the dynamic that I see developing in the survivor advocacy community. I fear that we are absolutely without question recreating the celebrity culture from whence we came. 30:03 People speak of their, this drives me crazy. Oh, you can tell I'm feeling empowered. People speak of their helpers as if their helper is responsible for their healing. That is bullshit. You are responsible for your healing. You are not responsible for your hurt, which also many people aren't going to tell you you're responsible for your hurt. You are not responsible for your hurt, but you are responsible for your healing. No one person is the cure. And anyone who says they are, big circle around that person, big circle. There is no question that we need advocates in public spaces. But critically, we need to learn to advocate for ourselves. We need wise helpers. I'm all for wise helpers. And they're essential to recovery. The wisest helpers are those who can and will do with you and me, but not for. Wise helpers should not give you the answers. They might ask you questions. They should help you find the answers for yourself. 31:33 Empowerment is so central to recovery, that if that fails, recovery will not ensue. Empowerment is not a one and done. It is a process. However, there are stages to recovery. Carson alluded to that. He didn't know how well he was cueing me up. He really demonstrated his recovery journey for you. Thank you, Carson for embodying that, for us. 32:06 The first stage of recovery is establishment of safety and stability in the present. And I really think that many people continue to flounder because they try to go into the next phases of recovery before they are safe and stable. So you consider trauma… think of it like a train wreck, you're in a train wreck, nobody's going to get you to get up and walk when you have an open wound. That makes sense, your guts will fall out. So, for many of us, we're trying to get up and walk, some of us are trying to get up and run with our entrails hanging behind us. And we wonder why we're not well. Like that has to stop. And it took me at least a year and a half to stop hemorrhaging. Like I mean hemorrhaging. It took another year and a half just to be safe and stable. That's a long time, three years, just to get safe and stable. 33:06 And grieving and remembering is the second stage of recovery. Before we go to the second stage of recovery, let's just talk a little bit more I've got some notes and I want to make sure we talk about them. Part of safety and stability is are you safe from harm from yourself? Fair, fair point? Are you safe from harm from others? Can it the restoration of biological functions is paramount. They are the litmus test of whether or not you are in a place, a safe and stable place. Can you eat enough but not too much? Can you sleep enough but not too much? Can you move? Can you work, pay your bills, all those things? Abuse annihilates our attachment systems. I didn't have working attachment systems, but any sort of abuse, whether it's attachment system to key relationships, like Carson was talking about or workplace or identity, it annihilates our basic trust in others and also ourselves. Right? It rips apart our identity it destroys our autonomy. It really obliterates intimacy, and then it crushes initiative. Just can't do anything, you can hardly function. Trauma shatters our sense of safety in the world, and in our very selves. These things are not only fracturing, they are also formative. It takes time to rebuild a secure base. Give yourself that time. 34:36 The good news is that this is all possible. The bad news is its gonna take a lot of work. But you are people who know work; your gritty, you know how to get things done. So, we might as well put in the work to become safe and stable. People who don't negotiate safety and stability well will repeatedly re stabilize, or destabilize. 35:06 I have two young kids who remain at home still we have four in total. I birthed three of those suckers and I got one for free. And they're great, they're amazing. My youngest daughter is 14. She's amazing. She just started high school in Canada. And that's a big deal, because you go from like grade school to high school and they're wearing school uniforms. And she made the high school basketball team. Yeah, proud mom. I can't hit the broadside of a barn. But you know, she's my kids are athletic, which I'm really grateful for. And so, my husband likes to coach from the bench. Nobody else has that problem, I'm sure. And I don't know anything about basketball. But I'm really excited that she's having a good time and making connections and it's part of her identity and growth and development. And so, I'm all for that. What I have learned and watched that when the girls are a new team and young, and when they get the ball, they're like panicked, like, oh my gosh, we got the ball! And then they they all run in a mad, like a mad way to get to the other end of the court and then they don't know what to do. And my coach husband beside me, I'm quiet and he is usually quiet, but something happens in athletics to men. Oh, it's crazy. And he's saying, slow down. Like, can you just slow it, slow it down! They can't hear him because he's not the coach. And then he's telling me, like I even care. He's telling me look at that kid, like there's this kid on the team and she she's dribbling, right. I can't even mimic it because I can't do it. She's dribbling, she's got her head up. And she's looking, right she's looking for what she's supposed to do with the ball. But every other girl's like they've got their head down, they've got the ball, and they're not looking up at all. But he's right. It's good advice. So, if when you're new at recovery, and you are welcomed into survivor community, but it is baptism by fire. And so when you are thrown the ball and thrown into a new team, where you have no experience, and everything's confusing, and you have this ball that you feel you need to hold the offender accountable, you need to tell the church, you need to, you know, Christine said contact a lawyer or the authorities if there's a legal or criminal thing, and that's correct. But everything else, slow down! Take the time to feel what safety looks like. Take the time to see what it tastes like. So that you can monitor and measure those metrics. So keep your head so you should be able to dribble the ball of recovery in such a fashion that you can still look around and see where things are at. 38:20 And part of dribbling the ball and playing the game of recovery, and it's not a game but it's a good analogy, is grieving and remembering. And it's really, it's making meaning out of processing metabolizing and making meaning out of trauma. None of us incurred abuse alone. And none of us will be able to heal alone. The importance of social support can't be overstated. Small, safe, homegrown support groups are really, really, important. Thankfully, there's a lot more survivor led grassroot organizations that have been cropping up now than what there were then when things happened with me. 39:02 The therapeutic alliance which I'm pretty sure we're going to hear about next is of the utmost importance. And when I say therapeutic alliance, this is what I mean. And I make no apologies for making this statement because you deserve the best, the best of care. You need a licensed, competent board-certified mental health professional. I know it costs a great deal to get good therapy. I am telling you I would not be here without it. It costs more not to. Low to no cost things are journaling, meditation, prayer, really vigorous exercise. I am in the wellness industry, I'm a health care provider. And when this all happened, I was curled into a ball for several years. I know what it feels like to feel paralyzed and not be able to move. You think that you cannot move a muscle. But vigorous exercise, there is such strong evidence to say that moving your body will help you heal. It's basic, but adequate rest, good nutrition, you are really truly worth caring for. If your children were going through a crisis, you would make sure they had breakfast, lunch and dinner and they had naps. Podcasts, blogs, vlogs, library books, there are online and in person communities. I want to give some caution and caveats to online communities. Please consider your rules of engagement. Consider them for yourself, not just what the rules of engagement of the online community are. Consider how do you want to interface What do you want to get out of this? What do you want to bring to this. And remember that online, the online world is a made-up world, really. So there are many safe secular spaces in which to flourish, and eventually to heal and eventually flourish. Don't be afraid to seek those out. 41:09 Most of us were reluctant to face the agony of abuse. I remember talking to my trauma therapist, when I first met her, and I said I'm not sure if my story is bad enough to really warrant a trauma therapist. I can't believe I don't know. But that's what I thought then. It's your choice whether or not you're going to confront the horrors of your present or your past. Nobody can or should force you to do that. We do believe that if we open up that Pandora's box of pain that, you know, we'll never be able to shut it, and it will just overwhelm our lives. I want to tell you something. That's the very thing you should do, the thing you don't want to look at. And the box you don't want to open are the very things that slowly, safely, securely in gradiated fashion. Those are the things you need to look at. Those are the places you need to go. Traumatic memories are buried alive. And grief can be really, really, really complicated by an unlimited number of factors. But grieving does come to an end, believe it or not. “Crying is alright while it lasts,” says CS Lewis, “but sooner or later, you have to stop sooner or later. And then you got to decide what to do.” 42:46 Reintegration. Reintegration to me means neither being defined by your trauma or denying it. Establishing yourself once again as an independent “I.” Who was I before this happened? Who am I now? And who's like Carson said, “who do I want to be?” Getting to know yourself, including being aware that there are things about yourself that you don't yet know. Self-knowledge is a process. How is my role changed in my family and my faith community, with my employ, compared to what it was then. How can I contribute to community of my choice in a way that's based on my strengths? And how can I live a life, some of us for the first time, how can I live a life that includes me? 43:51 This brings us to the topic of agency. Agency is not only the feeling but the actual capacity to have control over your own life. In Christendom, we're like, well, God has a plan for you, so you shouldn't have one. Crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And in his book, Trauma, Dr. Paul Conti suggests that agency is a verb, that's something that you do rather than a noun, which is the person, place, or thing. And there's a difference between being in a car, being the passenger in a car and being the driver of the car. And one of the questions that we should ask ourselves is, “how old is the person who's driving your emotional car?” At too many junctions in my life, someone who should not have had the keys, was steering my car into seas of sorrow repeatedly. I was compulsively compliant, which essentially meant that my no was broke. And when compliance is the only possibility, consent is utterly impossible. If you can't say no, then you can't say yes either. 45:05 Abuse and abusers try to define you. Just search on the internet, there's lots of definitions of me. They take away your choice. In the process of reintegration, you actually get to choose who you want to be. The most beautiful people I know without fail, are the ones who have dug through the rubble and made something beautiful. Some of these people may live and die in insufficiency, but they have found a way to make beauty from ashes. And that is who I want to be. I was astonished to realize that with much practice and patience, I developed an intact sense of self. That was a miracle. I didn't, you know, you fill in the blank yourself, that was a miracle. And I differentiated from others. If you wanted your eggs like that, that's how I have my eggs. If you like that restaurant, that's how I'd like that restaurant. If you wear those clothes, that's the clothes I would wear. I'm able to hold my own “No,” while carefully considering what yes would mean. Many survivors negotiate their trauma in the privacy of their own lives. My entire family, they don't even know what I'm doing here. It's fine. My sisters, my mother, my brother, we don't talk about these things. It's okay. That's how they're negotiating their trauma. But there's a subsection of trauma survivors that (a small percentage of us) want to feel compelled to altruistically engage in advocacy, in some way, shape, or form. This is an altruism born of suffering. And suffering can create a need to help, and it has in me, I think I'm a helper by nature. But this has to be congruent with your life narrative, and also consistent with your strengths. I continue to seek meaningful ways to serve the survivor community, that increases my strength but diminishes my sorrow. When seeking to serve others, I looked at all sorts of options when I finished grad school. Most of them, it was kind of fun, because too many stories to tell. But most of them would leave me hemorrhaging with trauma and like in trauma with the person who's in trauma. So the last thing survivors needed is for the person who's trying to help them to also be falling apart. So there's caveats, if you decide that you're going to develop a survivor mission that is in the public sphere, one, get to know yourself, get and keep good therapeutic help. It may help you it may help you to serve others, but it's not about you. Wherever you see individuals, or organizations who are recreating the dynamic you left, it's a red flag. Here's some other red flags so you're ready. Dominance. In any culture or any person where dominance, subordination, and submission is the name of the game. Where people tell you what to think, instead of how to think, where people give you advice versus information, where people will speak for you instead of empowering you to speak for yourself, doing with rather than doing for, whose actions appear to be wholly invested in building up their platform rather than people. Don't let anybody use you that way. Remember that we're supposed to be a people of mutuality and reciprocity. While these things feel familiar, they have no place in the survivor community that we're trying to cultivate. 48:48 We have to learn to cultivate healthy decision-making processes. Y'all need to stop being so dang nice. Offenders not only tell you what they think, they also tell you what you should think too. Learning to think for yourself is worth its weight in gold, and it is a skill that takes time and practice. This is important, you will know if you have successfully navigated the reintegration process if these four things are in place. Are you ready? You are able to tolerate the symptoms that are associated with PTSD within reasonable limits. That doesn't mean you won't have them. You have PTSD, but you're able to tolerate those symptoms and you have coping skills. And that includes number two, being able to manage the feelings of trauma. You saw that I went in and out of feeling very emotional, but I managed, right?. You can call up your traumatic memories under your own volitional control and they don't control you. The memories of the event or events have a cogent narrative that you can convey if you want to, and they're importantly, and I talked to Carson about this before he spoke importantly, they're connected to your feelings. And my final comment about reintegration. And I say this with absolute care and concern for not only your well-being but my own. I urge you to cultivate a personal and private life. One that has not lived out before your abuser or your abusive community. One that honors your own humanity, protects your person and allows your roots to grow and allows you to bear fruit. 50:36 I want to talk about justice in the moral community, and then I'm going to wrap it up. The idea of a moral community is a concept wherein a group of people have a social contract, and they respect a certain moral code, a group of people in whom you trust, and you believe will have your back. It does not have to be a faith community. But very often faith communities fall into that category. For faith communities to be a place of healing, it's critical that the demand for justice in the context of the moral community must be shared by the group. We all need to be outraged. Julie asked the other day, people ask her why she's so mad. And she says why are you not mad? We all need to be outraged. And yeah, absolutely. And what Paulo Freire calls, “our just ire.” We need to get our backs up about this stuff. And we need to ask the following question, or we want to be asked the following question as well. What would it take to repair the harm? Or at least as much as possible? This requires that people listen. Universally, we want public acknowledgement of the harm universally. If the harm has been public, we want publicly acknowledgement. We want the right. Somebody asked me once, you know, how far does this apology from RZIM needs to go? And I said needs to go as far as what the damage to me has gone. 51:55 And we all want protection from others, and we want moral vindication. We want somebody to stand up and say that bastard was wrong, not her. There are roads to justice and many of you know those roads to justice, and they're probably not worth getting into. But what is required of you is required that you do justice, and that we love mercy. And mercy doesn't look like re-platforming anyone or sharing platforms of abusers. But it does look like honoring your own humanity and even the humanity of the people who have wounded you. I am speaking after two people who sought my slaughter. That fact is not lost on me. 52:59 And it also requires us to walk with humility. Humility says that although we have been wronged, we are people who are capable of wrong as well. It means cultivating a culture and a posture, not of deference, as I have heard so often, but one of gratitude. Not gratitude for the harm that you have suffered and in many ways continue to suffer, but gratitude that unlike your offender, you get to choose who you want to be. You can cultivate your character, you can nurture empathy, and you can become the person that you desperately wished that others had been for you. I spoke for the last time, I spoke at RESTORE last year in 2023. And while I'm not certain at present, I do feel I felt coming here to this conference this time that this season is coming to an end for me, which is why I had an epitaph here for you today. It's in keeping with my own core values that I didn't know I had but I now can name of equality and mutuality and reciprocity. I am going to be taking a seat and letting others speak. I've also come to know that my own person is most effective when I can pursue excellence and you deserve excellence. For me that requires concentrated effort in one domain. 54:34 Additionally, I didn't survive all of this to not really live and neither have you. Julie is going to talk to you about why not quit and I am here to tell you can. It has been a privilege to speak with you. I'm sorry I took up so much of your time. It is an honor and you have been my joy. Thank you for your absorbent listening and for bringing the weight of your pain and for bearing the weight of mine. I opened with saying that I didn't choose to be part of this community. But I close with this, I would choose any one of you any day of the week. Something rare and true and beautiful emerges when an innocent victim endures abuse and finds a way to flourish in the aftermath of injustice, and you are truly beautiful. Thank you. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript Third-party investigations have become increasingly common as churches and Christian institutions continue to be rocked by scandal. But how can you tell if an investigation is truly independent—or just another attempt to cover up?   In this edition of The Roys Report, experts address the red flags and key features to look for in any so-called “independent” investigation. And they answer questions like: Can a third-party investigation by a law firm ever be truly independent? What advantages are there to hiring an investigative team that's familiar with church culture to conduct investigations involving Christian institutions? And what are the hallmarks of a “trauma-informed” investigation? The answers to these questions are especially relevant due to the current controversy over the third-party investigation announced by the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, or IHOPKC. Mike Bickle, IHOPKC's founder, has been accused of abusing multiple women and IHOPKC leaders have been accused of mishandling reports of abuse. After announcing it had hired a national law firm to conduct the investigation, IHOPKC changed course and dismissed the law firm. Then, it hired another law firm, but is refusing to divulge the name of the new firm.  Joining us on the podcast is a top American litigator and former GoDaddy general counsel, who's also a Christian with a passion to protect victims. That litigator is Christine Jones, who also serves on the board of The Roys Report. She has considerable expertise in this area and her insights on this issue are incredibly helpful. Two other experts joining me, Pete Singer and Robert Peters, are known for the organization they lead—Godly Response to Abuse in a Christian Environment, or GRACE. GRACE has become the gold standard in the Christian survivor community because of the quality of its investigations and its commitment to protect survivor interests.  Listen now for a lively, and eye-opening discussion that will help you discern whether to trust a third-party investigation—or to cry foul. Guests Christine N. Jones Christine N. Jones is a top American litigator, business executive, and civic leader who has a passion to protect the vulnerable. Until 2012, she served as general counsel for GoDaddy. During her time there, she helped drive federal Internet-related legislation, including laws to keep the internet safe from child predators like the Protect Our Children Act and the Keeping the Internet Devoid of Sexual Predators Act. Christine also practiced law at Beus Gilbert, which has been ranked as one of the top law firms in the country. She also served several years as the COO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Christine recently launched her own firm, Newman Jones, a private law firm in Arizona, which specializes in representing victims of abuse in churches and Christian organizations. Pete Singer Pete Singer is Executive Director at GRACE, which focuses on abuse prevention and response in faith communities. He is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker with 30+ years' experience across settings. He received his MSW and certificate in Trauma-Effective Leadership from the University of Minnesota. He trains and writes on trauma-informed practice and his counseling practice focuses on children and adults who have experienced trauma. He has published and contributed to a number of articles and book chapters including Wounded Souls: The Need for Child Protection Professionals and Faith Leaders to Recognize and Respond to the Spiritual Impact of Child Abuse and forthcoming work Toward a More Trauma-Informed Church: Equipping Faith Communities to Prevent and Respond to Abuse. Robert Peters Robert Peters has been with GRACE over 10 years and is currently the Director of Institutional Response, where he oversees all investigations and assessments. He served as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney and Special Prosecutor in multiple West Virginia jurisdictions, where he specialized in the prosecution of sexual offenses, civil child abuse and neglect, and online child exploitation. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Visit netgrace.org Show Transcript SPEAKERSCHRISTINE JONES, PETER SINGER, Julie Roys, ROBERT PETERS Julie Roys  00:05Third party investigations have become increasingly common as churches and Christian institutions continue to be rocked by scandal. But how can you tell if an investigation is truly independent, or just another attempt to cover up? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And our topic today has become a big issue because an organization facing a major scandal just hired a law firm to conduct its third-party investigation. That organization is the International House of Prayer in Kansas City or IHOP. And if you’ve been following this story, you know that IHOP founder, Mike Bickle, has been accused of abusing multiple women and IHOP itself has been accused in mishandling multiple reports of abuse. The Roys Report has published several articles about this scandal. So, if you need some background on the story, I encourage you to go to JULIEROYS.COM, and then click on the investigations tab, and you can find all those stories on IHOP.**   Julie Roys  01:05 But joining me today to discuss these issues is a top American litigator who’s also a Christian with a passion to protect victims. That litigator is Christine Jones, who also serves on the board of The Roys Report. And she has so much expertise in this area. So, I’m very excited to pick her brain on this issue. But also joining me are Pete Singer and Robert Peters of Godly Repose to Abuse in a Christian Environment or GRACE. GRACE has become the gold standard in the Christian survivor community because of the quality of its investigations and its commitment to protect survivor interests. So, I’m very excited about today’s podcast.**   Julie Roys  01:45 But before we dive in, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM.**   Julie Roys  02:49 Well again joining me today are Pete Singer and Robert Peters from GRACE which stands for  Godly Repose to Abuse in a Christian Environment  And GRACE is one of the most respected organizations in the Christian survivor community when it comes to independent investigations. And I’m really looking forward to talking with them and getting a behind the scenes look about how these investigations are done. But first, I’d like to introduce Christine Jones. Christine is a top litigator, business executive, and civic leader who has a passion to protect the vulnerable. Until 2012. she served as general counsel for GoDaddy. She also practice law at BS Gilbert, which has been ranked as one of the top law firms in the country. And she recently launched her own firm Newman Jones, a private law firm in Phoenix, Arizona. But her greatest claim to fame by far is serving as a board member for The Roys Report. So, Christine, welcome. I’m so glad you could join us.   CHRISTINE JONES  03:43 Thank you, Julie. So great to be here. And that is by far my best claim to fame for the record.   Julie Roys  03:48 Absolutely. I’m glad that you clarified that. So, Christine, I wanted to talk to you first because there’s been a lot of buzz lately about law firms conducting third party investigations. And this is nothing new, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. For example, when they did their investigation, they brought in a law firm Miller Martin, there was a law firm Husch Blackwell, that investigated Cedarville University after it hired a known sexual predator that was a couple of years ago. But right now, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City IHOP is facing a major crisis. So IHOP has just announced that they’re going to do a third-party investigation, and they initially hired a law firm Stinson LLP, to conduct this investigation, but there’s been a lot of pushback because there are a lot of people saying that no investigation by a law firm is truly independent. Well, then last Friday evening, IHOP announced that it had decided not to proceed with Stinson. And the reason that IHOP gave was that third parties claiming to represent the victims had communicated a lack of trust in Stinson. So now IHOP is said that it’s hired a local law firm to investigate, but when I asked IHOP to identify the law firm Lenny LaGuardia, a member of IHOP’s executive team replied, and I quote, We will not be publishing her name out of respect for her privacy. When I asked an additional clarifying question about the attorney, LaGuardia responded, IHOP, KC will not be providing any personal information about its attorneys, they are not the story and you should know better, unquote. So, Christine, say hypothetically, that one of the alleged victims of Mike Bickle is your client. Would you advise your client to cooperate with this investigation?   CHRISTINE JONES  05:35 So setting aside the attorney independence for one moment, I would say , all else being equal, if you have some information that’s germane to the discussion, then you know, and you’re not being re traumatized or re victimized and you have the capacity to do it, probably, I would advise them to go ahead and give the information because that is going to be helpful to the outcome, the recommendations or you know, whatever the third party investigator is doing. Now, I have to say that with a caveat, as always, these people may be bound by preexisting contractual relationships that limit what they can say. And in that case, they should probably seek the counsel of an attorney before they do that.   Julie Roys  06:14 So, the fact that the attorney isn’t being named to the public, do you see that as a major problem?   CHRISTINE JONES  06:21 Well, this entire scene has unfolded in such an unusual way. And I have followed a little bit of the back and forth on social media. Stinson, a well-respected law firm being named actually probably was positive, because they do have such a good reputation in the legal community, I don’t know that they had a previous attorney client relationship with IHOP. So that could have at least set a path for them to have independence in this scenario. But here’s the thing, not disclosing who the lawyer is for the sake of protecting the lawyer’s privacy is a very unusual suggestion. And the answer that you got on that inquiry is puzzling to me, because the attorney’s privacy is not the issue here. So, I hate to use the word excuse, Julie. But it does sound to me like they’re just using that as a cover up for their own lack of transparency in this process.   Julie Roys  07:16 Well, the lawyer is the professional, I mean, this is their job, their public, it does seem like a very odd response. development that happened over the weekend is that Ben Anderson, who I guess is a former IHOP staff member, posted on Facebook, the name of the person he believes is the attorney that’s been hired by IHOP. I have tried to confirm it again, went to IHOP. And they will not confirm or deny that this person is the person but the person that he has named publicly on Facebook is friends, apparently with IHOP executive leadership. And apparently, after he posted some social media posts showing this relationship, this attorney deleted her Facebook account and some social media. So, it does seem to be a little fishy, what’s going on. But let’s say that this person is the person but again, we’re not able to determine for sure whether or not that’s true. If somebody is friends with the executive leadership, if perhaps and I guess there’s some indications that she may actually attend IHOP’s church Forerunner, essentially, if that’s the case, correct me if I’m wrong, has it moved from being a third party independent or some semblance of independent investigation? Now we’re really looking at an internal investigation?   CHRISTINE JONES  08:39 Well, let’s talk about the investigation itself before we get to the crux of that question. An attorney could conceivably conduct an independent investigation. Here’s the rub; any attorney client relationship comes with the fiduciary duty that the attorney owes to the client. And look, if this attorney doesn’t want to disclose the fact of the engagement because the attorney feels like in their ethical opinion, that would violate some kind of fiduciary responsibility that they have, that’s their decision. The client certainly can disclose it. But getting back to the independence. The issue here is I was gonna say it’s twofold. It’s actually three-fold. Here, if you have a relationship that’s existing with the executives, it’d be very difficult to claim you have independence on this particular issue. You may even be a percipient witness, you may even be a fact witness, which is a huge red flag for any attorney going into any kind of engagement.   The second thing is if you have this existing attorney client relationship, it’s almost impossible to conduct an independent investigation because you are already required to demonstrate a duty of loyalty to the client, which is the antithesis of independence. It is the exact opposite of independence. No client wants their attorney to be independent of them. That’s why you hire an attorney, right? So, let’s just say it’s a generic person, we don’t know who they are, any lawyer out there, pick a name. If they had that existing relationship, and they have a hope of a relationship in the future, they’re already making money from this client, and they hope to make money from the client in the future, it would be virtually impossible under the ethical rules for them to be considered independent in this investigation.   Now, if it’s a huge law firm, they have hundreds of lawyers in different cities, you know, could one department do the investigation, another department do the advising? Possibly, but that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case here. And it strikes me that IHOP getting rid of Stinson is them backtracking. They’re getting themselves dug into a deeper hole here that they were even in before. They’re not improving their situation, they’re making it worse,   Julie Roys  10:59 Good points that you brought up. I mean, the fiduciary responsibility the lawyer has to its client, and then the possibility of, you know, some sort of relationship in the future, obviously complicating things, and this is why in the very beginning, people were like, Oh, my goodness, they hired a law firm. And what a lot of people were asking for was an organization like GRACE, Godly Repose to Abuse in a Christian Environment, who plays by very different rules. And again, they’re going to be joining us in just a bit and we’ll hear about what they do that is different. But is there ever a situation in which we can say this is truly an independent investigation when you’re being hired by the organization that you’re investigating?   CHRISTINE JONES  10:59 I guess it’s possible. If you had an engagement that had a well-defined set of terms, and your role was only to determine a set of facts. Issue a report that said, here’s the timeline on this date, at this time, in this place, this proper noun did the following. And you just gave the report with no recommendation, no observation, no characterization, no coloring of the facts, you could conceivably be independent. It would always be the client’s decision about whether those findings would be released. It’s a really tricky situation for the finest law firm in the best circumstances. Somebody who has a preexisting relationship, which I understand if the lawyer is who we think it is, is in a really precarious position, claiming that they’re independent, and that their findings are going to be completely objective.   Julie Roys  12:34 So, a little over a week ago, Michael Brown, Dr. Michael Brown spoke at IHOP. And he announced that there was going to be this independent investigation. And Michael is someone who’s very well respected within the charismatic community. And again, IHOP-KC is a charismatic organization. So, I think they were bringing in someone who would be a trusted voice. And so, he argued that the Christian community could trust this investigation, because IHOP had pledged to make these findings public. And again, I know with RZIM, when they were doing the Miller Martin investigation that was the crux right for them was whether or not they were going to make these findings public. I don’t know if that’s still on the table, to be honest, given that things have changed. But let’s assume that it is and IHOP is going to make the findings public. I guess the question is, even when they make the findings public are we talking the complete findings? Is this a redacted finding? Is this the part of the findings you want us to know? I mean, is this really much of an assurance that the findings are going to be public? Or would we still say, you know, as the public looking to get some assurance that this is really been investigated, that we can trust what they’re reporting?   CHRISTINE JONES  13:46 It’s tricky, right? Unless you had actual recordings of conversations, and maybe you had a third-party observer sitting in on those conversations and hearing the results of the investigatory process, it would be almost impossible to say, Now, I don’t want to bad mouth Mr. Brown, you know, reputationally, he’s an upstanding guy. But we’re not judging his statement here. What we’re saying is, lawyers are humans, and humans have bias. And if I’m a victim, I’m a survivor, or I come forward or even I’m a close associate of one or I’ve been part of this community for a long time., and I know somebody who is, I’m still going to have to question, did that human who is a lawyer, conduct this in a way that I can rely on the findings? I will never know because I will never know what the process was that they used. And I already know, particularly if this lawyer is part of the church, but I will already know that they have gone into it with a preset bias that will make it very difficult for them not to filter their conversations and their findings through their preexisting relationship.   Julie Roys  14:59 And one thing I didn’t mention I mean, which you’ve hinted at, I mean, there is an engagement and a letter of engagement that’s signed between the client and the law firm. Is it ever okay to release that letter of engagement? And also, I know, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention when the executive committee was being investigated, they actually waived under a great deal of pressure, their attorney client privilege. Is that something that we could expect or should expect in a situation like this?   CHRISTINE JONES  15:30 That’s a really interesting question. And here, it’s probably not going to be the same outcome as what we saw on the SBC, which as you said was exceptional. The client owns that privilege, the client gets to pick whether the privilege is waived. Here, the motivation for IHOP to give more information is probably well, I mean, it’s going to be tricky for them, right? Because anything that they find that’s derogatory, they’re gonna be less inclined to disclose it, right? We don’t have the power, sort of as third parties who don’t have privity to this contract, to require them to disclose it. Could there be some community pressure, either by survivors or by members of the community, like what we saw in the SBC? I suppose it’s possible. But even let’s say that they produce the engagement letter. Let’s say they sent it to you, and you published it. Let’s say they gave us the entire report, right? It’s still gonna come with the names of minors redacted, it’s probably still going to have some information that’s viewed as relevant to a criminal investigation or, you know, somehow protective of victims' rights redacted. So, will you ever see the entirety of it? You know, as I sit here today, I would say probably not.   Julie Roys  16:46 Yeah. Well, we will see as the story continues to unfold, but Christine really appreciate you being willing to come on and lend your expertise, which has just been such a blessing to The Roys. Report, and to our listeners today, as well. So, thank you so much.   CHRISTINE JONES  17:01 My pleasure. And can we say one last thing in conclusion? Just in case anybody from IHOP-KC is listening to this podcast? IHOP, hire an independent third party to do this investigation. Let them find out what the facts were and hire a separate counsel to give you the advice on what to do with it. Why cloud the perception of what’s going on here? If you want to clean your house, clean your house and do it well.   Julie Roys  17:25 Thank you. And I would second those thoughts. Appreciate that so much.   CHRISTINE JONES  17:29 Thanks for having me, Julie.   Julie Roys  17:31 Absolutely. Well, now, Peter Singer, and Robert Peters are going to join us from GRACE. And Pete is the executive director of GRACE and a licensed clinical social worker with about 30 years of experience. He also has a master’s degree in social work and a certificate in trauma effective leadership from the University of Minnesota. So, Pete, such a privilege to have you join me. Thanks so much.   PETER SINGER  17:55 Thank you. It’s great to be here. Really appreciate the chance, Julie.   Julie Roys  17:59 And also joining me is Robert Peters, who oversees all investigations and assessments at GRACE. He formerly served as an assistant prosecuting attorney and special prosecutor in several jurisdictions in West Virginia. And in that capacity, he specialized in the prosecution of sexual offences, child abuse and neglect, and online child exploitation. So, Robert, so glad to have you on The Roys Report podcast. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, that I think this is the first time we’ve had two lawyers on our podcast. So welcome.   ROBERT PETERS  18:32 Great to be here. And I hope we don’t break any podcast length records unless you’re going for that. In which case, you’re welcome.   Julie Roys  18:39 So, GRACE has become, and I mentioned this before, sort of the gold standard when it comes to investigations. And that’s quite a badge of honor for you guys. And I know, it’s not just the investigations, but also the manner in which you treat victims. And that has given you a distinction among the survivor community. Right now, there is a petition circulating and I know you don’t want to comment on this, but there is a petition circulating urging IHOP hire GRACE to conduct its investigation because of, I think, the respect that you have within this community. What is unique with what you do? And let’s start with your expertise, because you focus specifically on investigations involving churches and Christian organizations. Pete talk about that, and how that perspective is perhaps different from a lot of organizations like a law firm, but even some other organizations that do similar type investigations, but not in this kind of space, but more normally in more of a corporate space.   PETER SINGER  19:42 Sure, really, really important things that come into play here. A big piece of that is an understanding the criteria that we’re looking at, isn’t just what does the law say? Yes, that is a very, very significant piece of criteria. But beyond that, we’re also looking at what is God saying? And at times, it can be very difficult for a law firm or other private investigative agency as part of the investigation to also do a theological review. And to say, Okay, let’s look at what happened here. And now we’ll examine that in light of Scripture. And one of the things that I think is unique about the way that GRACE does an investigation, is that GRACE brings in an incredible, incredible experience. Our investigators come from a background similar to what Robert is bringing in his background or from extensive law enforcement experience. They’re also bringing in that theological experience. They’re also bringing the understanding and the familiarity with church culture, church governance. For example, when we do a report associated with, let’s just say, a Presbyterian Church that might be governed by the Book of Church Order, we’ve got people on staff who are experts in the Book of Church Order, and we can specifically craft recommendations that fit within the Book of Church Order. And so being able to pull in that experience, as well as an understanding of what Scripture says about this. Because scripture is not silent on this; Scripture speaks so often of the Scripture sayings., In First Samuel, that Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli who was the high priest of the tent. Hasni and Phineas were acting as priests in Israel. Scripture calls them worthless men. Why? Because they used their position of spiritual authority to have sex with people. Scripture is calling out clergy sexual abuse.**   PETER SINGER  21:53 And then we’ll fast forward to the New Testament, and we’ve got Jesus calling out against child sexual abuse, anything that would harm a child, against elder abuse, against financial exploitation, against spiritual abuse. So a GRACE team brings in both that incredible legal background, similar to what Robert has, or many of the people who have been in law enforcement on our team have. But then an ability to blend that with what does scripture say? And what do we know about trauma? We have many, many published articles from people at GRACE, whether they’re our investigators, people on our leadership team, people on our board of directors that help explain the very nature of trauma and trauma informed practice. And we’ve got an article coming out at the end of the year that will be published in Currents in Theology and Mission, theology journal, that will be taking six key principles of trauma informed practice and saying, what does that look like when it’s applied in a church? When GRACE or an organization like GRACE comes in to do an investigation, that is all automatically a part of the analysis of this situation. And for an organization that does not have that deep embedded background within the Christian culture within churches, how are they going to be able to bring in and analyze the situation in light of Scripture? How are they going to be able to blend trauma informed practice and Scripture? And how are they going to bring those excellent qualifications like Robert has and the members of his team,   Julie Roys  23:44 Great points that you’re making, and I can relate as a journalist who works exclusively in the Christian space. And I’ve also worked in secular newsrooms. And it’s interesting when I did work in secular newsrooms, how much they misunderstood the language, or they misunderstood the culture, and they just weren’t able to report properly. And frankly, Christians didn’t trust them, because they didn’t know, they didn’t understand, they would misinterpret things. For me as a reporter, it’s hugely important that I understand spiritual abuse, for example, to understand how these communities work, as far as you know, a lot of these folks, it’s not like a work environment where you go, and then you come home, and you have your family and your community. This is their family and their community often. There is no leaving in many ways, and it encompasses all areas of their life. And so, I do think that having we call it a beat in journalism, I mean, you know, your beat, you know, really, really well and you understand the culture, you understand the people. I think the same thing sounds like what you’re saying is what GRACE is doing with investigations in this space.**   Julie Roys  24:48 Let’s talk about the independence and objectivity because Christine was talking a lot about that. You know, law firms obviously have a fiduciary responsibility to their clients, but you’re hired by clients. And again, I’m looking at this as a journalist. I can’t even have you buy me lunch; I can take no money from you. I’ve been offered numerous times, hey, we’ll fly you out to interview or flight. And I’m like, well, if I’m going to do the story, you can’t fly me out, you can’t do anything for me, and you can’t put me up, I need to come on my own dime, which is hard to say, because we have such a limited budget and stories we’d like to cover, right? But for us, if we take money, we’re not objective, right? I mean, that’s how strict it is for journalists in this space. So, I mean, talk about that, because you’re obviously being hired by organizations that you do investigations on,. How does that not make you beholden to your client?   ROBERT PETERS  25:38 The two-word answer would be structural independence. And that’s really critical of the contractual phase,. You know, in the discussions that we have with churches, where those discussions either prove to be fruitful or not, that’s the crucible. That’s where these things tend to either solidify, either grudgingly or smoothly to an independent investigation, or where they tend to flame out spectacularly. So, it really varies. And what I mean by structural independence, you know, and these are good questions that the perhaps survivors should be asking, before participating in any investigation, frankly, not just those that are undertaken by law firms. But yeah, what sort of is going into that? Is there some sort of those fiduciary pieces is there an attorney client relationship. We are not a law firm; we don’t provide legal services. So, we’re not coming into some of the same ethical obligations. I am an attorney, but I don’t function as an attorney within GRACE, or anything related to GRACE. So, there’s that piece of it, where we’re just sort of structurally ethically different and legally different.**   ROBERT PETERS  26:40 But then there’s contractual independence and the nature of the contract itself. No one sets a limit on the amount of interviews that we have. We may have estimates based on the facts that are presented to us by churches we’re having discussions with, but we’re very clear and the contracts provide for it. That’s ultimately an investigative determination of even the number of interviews. And so that becomes complicated right financially. Because certainly, we do need to pay our employees and contractors for the work, we want to continue equipping the church and equipping survivors, that takes resources. But we also want to make sure that we have maximum discretion in order that we don’t have those sort of perverse incentives and threads, bold and leveraged in ways that are unproductive to justice, that are unproductive to transparency. So, things like disclaiming those pieces expressly, but also ensuring that we have that type of discretion. Additionally, also at the risk of being inflammatory, GRACE is not a mud flap. And there are entities that sometimes unfortunately operate as mud flaps, meaning they direct the dirt into particular locations. They put emphasis of culpability on particular locations. And isn’t it interesting how that tends to align with the priorities of the individuals that are paying the bills? GRACE is not a mud flap. And so, when it comes to the other report drafting process itself, we do accept feedback, both from designated members of church leadership, as well as reporting victims. They always receive a copy of this report during the embargo period where we’re accepting feedback,. That feedback is limited to a few specific areas, that feedback is limited to is there something that’s factually inaccurate, not something I don’t like, we do get that feedback. But the feedback we’ll consider is limited to something that’s factually inaccurate, something that’s inconsistent with the church theology or polity, because we want to be culturally informed as we’re conducting these investigations. And then is there something that’s overly Identifying in the reporting victim? Those are things that we want flagged in the event that this report is elected to be made public, either by the church or by reporting victims who also have discretion to make public. There’s sort of those structural pieces where the church is no longer in control of that piece. And there have been cases where we simply don’t get contracts because some cultures that unfortunately, don’t have that healthy view of power dynamics, and aren’t really understanding the importance of engaging in that hard work. And it is hard work. And it is vulnerable work. Sometimes churches don’t see that necessity or correctly see the risks of that approach, and ultimately get the client to move forward with this. On the other hand, some do bravely step into that. And it is a difficult process, but it’s ultimately a necessary process for survivors, and ultimately, for the well-being of the church.   Julie Roys  29:20 Let’s talk about the report because this is a really, really key part of GRACE. So often the report as for example, we mentioned Ravi Zacharias International Ministries when they employed Miller, Martin, there were a couple things. And one is the scope of the investigation, which initially was very narrow, but because there was a lot of media pressure, and I know we published a story the minute I got some documentation saying this was limited, very narrowly we published on it, and then it broadened right? And that’s the beauty of the pressure of the publicity. But also with Miller Martin, that report was given to RZIM and there, I know from talking to people, there was a battle as to whether or not to release that to the public. And ultimately, it was the board’s decision. But I know there was so much public pressure and that was released publicly the full report, which was I mean, like a bomb went off, right? I mean, that was huge. So, let’s talk about that with what you’re doing. There have been reports that you’ve done that haven’t been released to the public. But what you do is unique in that you don’t just release it to the organizations that’s paying you. But you release it to somebody else, as well. Talk about that.   PETER SINGER  30:38 It’s absolutely essential that that happens. It can’t just be the church, or ministry, that was the Sikh of the abuse. That can’t be the only person that holds the power of the report. Because that report is power. We specifically have in the contract that we do not assign the copyright of the report to anybody, which means that nobody has the ability to say you can’t publish that. And then often, there is a recommendation something to the effect of church leadership work with survivors to figure out the best way to distribute this.**   PETER SINGER  31:21 Now, GRACE used to have a relatively standard recommendation of distribute this. But then, several years ago, what happened was a survivor said, What are you doing? Now, everybody will know who I am. I, the survivor did not want that distributed. And so, once that situation occurred, we changed how we address that. So that we tell the church generally, work with the survivor to figure out how to distribute this because sometimes survivors don’t want it more public. And then it’s that balance between empowerment and safety.   Julie Roys  32:04 Yeah. And that that always is the attention; it’s definitely attention in what I do as well. You want to always have a survivor centered approach in the way that you move forward with these things. And here’s something that, again, would be what we’ve heard recently, and we reported recently with IHOP, is people coming forward reporting, and then being traumatized when they report. Being interrogated, being gaslit, being grilled from very much an, aren’t you lying? kind of perspective or doubting what they’re saying, very skeptical. How do you keep from being re traumatized as somebody who comes forward? And what assurance do they have that they’re not going to be re traumatized? Because a lot of these people have been burned multiple times. And do you see what you do as uniquely protective of survivors?   ROBERT PETERS  32:58 Yeah, that’s such a critical question, Julie, and there’s a lot of different layers, I think, to what it means to provide a safe environment for witnesses, particularly survivors of abuse. I think it’s worth noting, tragically, how rare it is, for professionals in the field of sexual abuse investigation itself, let alone what I would consider ancillary professionals, which is most attorneys to engage well in this context in a way that does not inflict further harm. And let me double down on that a little bit. So prior to coming on board at GRACE, I spent the past four years at Zero Abuse Project before that at the National White Collar Crime Center, training law enforcement and child abuse prosecutors in all 50 states. Regrettably, some of them are virtual, like Hawaii. I’m not bitter about that at all. But pandemics were great. But one thing I learned, first of all, there are some incredibly gifted professionals that work in these spaces. And so, I don’t want my next statement to undercut the fact that they’re absolute heroes working for very low wages, extremely hard work, giving themselves, expanding themselves sacrificially. So, this is not a statement about those individuals. But the other reality is that many, possibly most individuals in law enforcement and prosecution are not competent to handle these cases. That’s just the reality. I’m talking criminal context. They’re simply not. There is a high level of specialization, there’s a high level of training, a high level of skill in achieving competence, let alone excellence in conducting sexual assault and child abuse investigations. And that’s true in the civil context as well. There are so many moving parts when it comes to the complexity of trauma. When it comes to how do you question, when it comes to accurately identifying grooming behaviors, when it comes to even your posture with witnesses? How do you build rapport? There’s just a whole host of pieces. But the reality is that specialization breeds excellence. We know that’s true in medicine. We know that’s true in every other context. It's true in investigations as well. If you’re not constantly building up those skills, staying current on literature, staying current on tactics, you’re not going to be competent, you’re going to inflict further harm. And simply having a PhD or a JD doesn’t make that any less likely; it might make it more likely. And so, it really just depends. And again, once again, I want to be very clear, there are attorneys that do a phenomenal job, that I call for advice on a frequent basis when it comes to conducting investigations. But I think it takes a lot of caution and humility to say, simply by virtue of being a law firm, there’s a qualification here. There needs to be some careful scrutiny of what those qualifications are, what type of credentials do the individuals involved have when it comes to forensic interviewing? What are the relevant publications, right? What protocol of forensic interviewing do they utilize? There’s a great deal of expertise that comes into not inflicting further harm in these interviews. I think there’s also a posture of intentional integration of trauma informed principles is that's very much in the DNA that started with Bob Tchividjian. And now it has grown with Pete Singer, what he’s brought from the mental health care field, in terms of how we interact with all witnesses, but especially survivors of abuse.   PETER SINGER  36:08 As we head into these interviews, those trauma informed principles that Robert talked about, these are things, one that we’re going to evaluate the church on. And two that we’re going to evaluate ourselves on. How are we doing this in the continuance of an investigation? So, these are the principles that need to govern our interview. The first and foremost is safety, physical safety, psychological safety, spiritual safety. The second, as I mentioned before, trust worthiness and transparency. The third, peer support. As long as they’re not another witness, a witness or a victim can bring a support person with them. As long as they’re not somebody else that would be a witness, bring that person with you to provide support. The fourth principle is collaboration and mutuality. That means work together with the person that’s been harmed, work together within our own group or among those who are specialists here at GRACE, and work together outside of our group. So, for example, when we’re doing an international investigation, we bring in cultural consultants to help us understand that culture so that we don’t make cultural flubs. Then empowerment, voice, and choice. How are we empowering those who have been harmed? How are we giving their voice a platform so that it can be heard? And then the final principle is humility, in the face of historical, cultural and gender factors, which simply cannot be separated from the trauma.   Julie Roys  37:52 So good. You have done an investigation for IHOP in the past, and that investigation, as I understand, never became public. Is there anything that you can say to shed light on that investigation, or how that might impact your moving forward, if you didn’t move forward with IHOP?   PETER SINGER  38:16 Sure, what I can say is that it was a completed investigation. What I can say is that consistent with our practice, the church was given a copy of the report, and anyone identified as a reported victim was given a copy of the report. I can also say that nobody was told not to distribute the report by GRACE. I can say that there have been some situations where GRACE has done multiple investigations for organizations. So having completed an investigation previously, does not prohibit GRACE, as long as we don’t feel that there’s a conflict of interest. And we need to check to make sure that there isn’t a conflict of interest. And as long as that conflict of interest is not there, then we can do an additional investigation with organizations just generally speaking.   Julie Roys  39:04 Lastly, and you’ve touched on analysis already. And this is something where I will say I’ve read a lot of these reports. GRACE’s analysis is usually something that I feel is insightful and is helpful. And because you guys get the culture and you get how abuse work, you get how cover ups work, you get all that stuff. I found those extremely helpful. At the same time, I have been horrified by some reports that I’ve seen. For example, there was a Guidepost Solutions report that was done on the Bryan Loritts’ investigation. I wrote about it so people can go and see it, but it was shocking to me because the only person that had this phone that had the evidence of wrongdoing was Bryan Loritts. He said things happened that he gave it to people. Nobody ever verified that they ever got the phone from him. He said he instructed people to report this to the police. We know that the police got no report whatsoever. And yet, the thing that was reported at the end of that was that Bryan Loritts essentially, has been found not guilty by this, you know. There’s no reason to think he was involved. It was shocking to me because the whole thing was pretty decent. I mean, really, they didn’t find out anything that I hadn’t found out prior, you know, because I had investigated this. But it was pretty decent as you went through. And if you understand the different people and what their objectives might be, and telling the truth or not telling the truth, but the analysis was just shocking to me. And there was so much inside of me that would have appreciated it, because when it was reported, people, you know, reporters can be really lazy. So they can just like look at the analysis at the end, and then just take that and not read the report. Because why bother, right? Just cut to the chase, read that, and then move on to your next story. And that’s what I suspect a lot of them did. And the problem is the truth didn’t get out there. So as a reporter, we keep like this really firm line between any analysis or opinion, and any news. So, we report all the facts here in the news story, we try not to let any editorial comment come in, and then we’ll report separately, okay, here’s what we think about it, if we do that. Or sometimes we’ll interview several experts, and then we’ll quote them in the story to give some perspective if we feel like the reader needs that. So, speak to that, because, again, I’ve seen it work. And I’ve seen it be absolutely abysmal, when there’s analysis in there, and there’s a part of me as a reporter that just wished the analysis would be separate,   PETER SINGER  41:38 You bring up a really great point, Julie, and I’m not going to speak to any particular other organization that is out there doing investigation. But just off the top of my head, I can think of three or four reports that I’ve read within the last year where I look at them, and their findings of fact make sense to me. And I get done reading the findings of fact thinking, wow, this is great. They actually revealed what happened. And then I get to their analysis. And I’m like, how did they get that analysis? That analysis is totally contrary to the facts! What happened?**   PETER SINGER  42:15 And so often, that can happen because that organization is being a mud flap, because their job is to direct the dirt. And again, I’m not calling out any specific organizations. And sometimes you’re just left wondering, and I think that you highlight just the importance, you can’t just go and read the analysis, you can’t just go and read the conclusions, you have to read the whole thing. And if you read the whole thing, you will see, A does not equal B. What’s going on here? And that is one of the red flags that you may have when you’re reading a report to know if that report was done in good faith. Because if you’re reading that nobody from whatever group participated or agreed to be interviewed, and then you’re reading the analysis that says this organization was fully engaged in the investigation, you got two opposite things. One is a factual statement but negates the analysis. With the GRACE report, generally speaking, there’s going to be some variability, we lay out those factual findings. There are some pieces of analysis in there. But those factual findings are laid out, and then we do an analysis. And sometimes there’s analysis that’s brought in with each piece of the findings so that there can be understanding as we go along. But that’s one of the key pieces that we do. And one of Robert’s biggest responsibilities is to make sure that this analysis actually is consistent with the factual findings. And not in contradiction to it.   ROBERT PETERS  43:55 Yeah, adding to that getting the what right is inconsequential, if you screw up the so what,. And so, I think that’s one critique I would have just more broadly over even law firm involved investigations, if you don’t have the church culture piece, if you don’t have the scriptural piece, you’re gonna mess up the so what or at a minimum, you’re going to miss an opportunity to address the so what piece of it. It’s so interesting how often we’re moving from, you have entities that are theoretically sola scriptura, but not in this context. Theoretically, Scripture is sufficient for all things, but not here. And so why is the disconnect, right? Why are we not leaning on Scripture to guide our response? And I think there’s some reasons for that, that are not always always very pleasant. So, I think getting that so what use is critical. **   ROBERT PETERS  44:39 I don’t know, Julie, if you’re familiar with I’m sure you’re familiar with the name Victor Vieth. But he wrote a really influential article years ago called Unto the Third Generation, and he posits a very optimistic and I think still realistic and grounded view that child abuse really can be meaningfully reduced to levels that are fractions of what they are now. I think that’s absolutely the case, I think we can lose sight of that just in the work that we do. Right? You’re being exposed to all this stuff. And how does this you know; how does this stuff ever end.**   ROBERT PETERS  45:11 One of the ways it ends is by not just getting a recitation of the facts. And then even if you don’t botch the analysis, stop there. The facts are important. The facts matter, they need light, and survivors deserve that. What also needs to happen is the so what. Okay, given these facts, what are the systems that allowed this to happen? As James Clear states, we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. What systemically is wrong here? And then by implication, how do we fix it? Because we don’t need to live in a world where every day, there’s a new, terrible podcast topic, probably several that you have to choose from. Right? We don’t have to live in a world where every day there’s more hearts being broken, and more individuals being shown an image of Christ and image of God does anything but what Scripture portrays. This is unnecessary. There is a way forward, and that way forward is the path of Christ. And it’s taking the facts seriously, yes. But it’s also doing the hard work of what do we do now, or the work of culture change. You don’t get there without the Bible. You don’t get there without being sensitive to survivors and being trauma informed. And that’s what survivors deserve in these investigations, regardless of who was conducting them.   Julie Roys  46:22 So, so good.   PETER SINGER  46:24 This is where the words of James come in: to the one who knows to do good, and doesn’t do it, it is sin. When you get done reading the report, there should be a path that’s laid out. Now you know, the path. And if you don’t do it, you are in essence taking God’s name in vain to continue sinning, to continue causing harm, to continue misrepresenting God.   Julie Roys  46:52 Amen. So, so good. And I so appreciate what you guys do. I know that these podcasts even though we keep our news stories and our investigations, we have to as journalists, just report them straight as we can. But I’ve heard from so many people, it’s the podcast where this is our analysis piece, right? This is where we get to speak into these things. And they’ve been so so instructive to our listeners. I hear it all the time. We just had the RESTORE conference, and so many people came up to me and said, thank you so much for the podcast, because voices like yours get amplified, and they get to hear them and get to be able to process the information that they’re hearing. So, so grateful for both of you, Pete, and Robert and Christine, who was with us earlier,. Thank you so much for being a part of this podcast.   PETER SINGER  47:42 Thank you for the opportunity. It was great.   ROBERT PETERS  47:44 Thank you.   Julie Roys  47:45 And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’ve appreciated this podcast, would you please consider supporting what we do financially? As I’ve said before, we don’t have any big donors or advertisers. We have you the people who care about exposing abuse and corruption in the church so she can be restored. And this month when you give a gift of $30 or more to the Roys report, we’ll send you a copy of Scot McKnight and Laura Behringer, his book pivot the priorities practices and powers that can transform your church into a Tov culture. So, to donate and to get your copy of pivot just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to the noise report on Apple podcast. Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you’ll never miss an episode. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/kfW97erZjYA What do you do when the man you looked up to as your spiritual hero is exposed as a fraud? How do you recover from the disillusionment and betrayal? And how do you find hope when your world is turned upside down? On this edition of The Roys Report, you're about to hear a highlight session from this year's Restore Conference featuring Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Ravi Zacharias had a huge impact on Carson when he was coming of age. When Carson was hired by Ravi's ministry, he thought he had found his dream job. But then in 2020, the dream became a nightmare as more and more evidence showed that Ravi Zacharias was not the man he purported to be. He was not a model Christian leader and sterling apologist, but a serial sexual predator, who lied and manipulated to cover his tracks. The revelations rocked Carson's world—and especially his faith. And in this incredibly raw and vulnerable talk, Carson doesn't sugar-coat anything. He tells of his journey from believing the exposés about Ravi were just Satanic attacks—to realizing that his own leaders, people he looked up to, were lying to him. He tells of the excruciating betrayal, pain, and depression he experienced. He talks about almost losing his faith and feeling like God had abandoned him. But he also talks about hope and hanging on, even when life seems bleak. Guests Carson Weitnauer Carson Weitnauer is an author, speaker, and the founder of Uncommon Pursuit, a Christian apologetics ministry. He formerly served on-staff at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and resigned to advocate for survivors. He has coauthored multiple books. Learn more at uncommonpursuit.net Show Transcript SPEAKERS CARSON WEITNAUER, JULIE ROYS JULIE ROYS 00:02 What do you do when the man you looked up to as your spiritual hero is exposed as a fraud? How do you recover from the disillusionment and betrayal? And how do you find hope when your world is turned upside down? Welcome to The Roys Report—a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys. And what you're about to hear is the second of 11 talks from this year's Restore Conference. Speaking is Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And as you'll hear, Ravi Zacharias had a huge impact on Carson when he coming of age—and internalizing his faith. So, in 2013, when Carson was hired by Ravi's ministry, he thought he had found his dream job. But then in 2020, the dream became a nightmare as more and more evidence showed that Ravi was not the man he purported to be. He was not a model Christian leader and sterling apologist, but a serial sexual predator, who lied and manipulated to cover his tracks. The revelations rocked Carson's world—and especially his faith. And in this incredibly raw and vulnerable talk, Carson doesn't sugar-coat anything. He tells of his journey from believing the exposés about Ravi were just Satanic attacks—to realizing that his own leaders, people he looked up to—were lying to him. He tells of the excruciating betrayal, pain, and depression he experienced. He talks about almost losing his faith—and feeling like God had abandoned him. But he also talks about hope and hanging on, even when life seems bleak. If you've ever experienced betrayal trauma or church hurt, I think you're going to resonate deeply with Carson's journey.  Here's Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries—and someone I've come to know as a man of integrity and courage.     JULIE ROYS 04:02 Hi, I'm Julie Roys, founder of The Roys Report and the RESTORE conference, and you're about to see a video from RESTORE 2023. Though a lot of conferences charge for videos like these, we've decided to make them available for free. We've done that because we don't want anybody to miss out on this valuable content for lack of finances. But of course these do cost us money to shoot and to edit. So if you're able we'd really appreciate it if you consider donating to The Roys Report, so we can continue this important service. To do so just go to JulieRoys.com/donate.  Also, I hope you'll make plans to join us at the next RESTORE conference which we'll be announcing soon. As great as these videos are they pale in comparison to being there in person. As one speaker commented, “this year RESTORE is more of a restorative community than it is a conference.” And every year that community just grows deeper and richer. And so I hope you'll be able to join us at the next RESTORE. Be watching for that. And in the meantime, I hope you're blessed and encouraged by this video. CARSON WEITNAUER 05:11 Julie Roys is a liar. It was September 21st, 2020, and I felt nauseous and disoriented. As I thought about all of the crazy things she was saying. I was at the beach with my family. We were trying to recover COVID. But it had been a hard year because Ravi Zacharias had died. He had very suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from cancer, and I don't cry, but in May at his funeral, I had wept that Ravi was no longer with us. And I was angry that God had taken him so soon. The Vice President (Mike Pence) was there. He said, “In Ravi Zacharias, God gave us the greatest Christian apologist of the century. He was the CS Lewis of our day.” And tributes in that spirit poured in from all around the world. Christian media, social media was flooded with praise for Ravi Zacharias. And our ministry was trying to figure out what we would do without our founder our inspiration or leader or guide. But at the beach a few months later, I felt tense and tight. And I was trying to get my bearings because I was scrolling on my phone through these articles Julie had written. Julie claimed to be an investigative journalist. But responsible leaders at RCIM had explained the truth. She was a clickbait journalist. She would dig up dirt on people so she could get her 15 minutes of fame by, you know, scandal mongering. And now she was stooping to a new low in the aftermath of Ravi's funeral. She was claiming that Ravi Zacharias had taken advantage of Lori Anne Thompson. 07:49 And Julie had documented a lot of facts about the situation I had never heard. So I read her articles. And I tried to do a critical reading of them, I tried to ignore all of her negative biased commentary. I just wanted to pay attention to the facts that she had primary documentation for. And every evening, after I got my kids to bed, I would open up my computer and open up a Google spreadsheet, and I would put everything that Ravi and RZIM had told me in one column, and I would put everything that Julie was documenting in another column. And I got 287 rows of discrepancies. And I just kept comparing Julie's articles with everything I had learned for three years since 2017 and 2018. I'd scoured the internet for information for three years to get information on Lori Anne Thompson. I had talked to many of RZIM's leaders, I debated what was being claimed with my colleagues. For every good point that was raised, RZIM's leaders had a good answer.Lori Anne had schemed with some friends to leak emails to embarrass Ravi. And they made it look like Ravi had done something really wrong. But our leaders had the whole context of the entire email chain. And they explained that the whole chain of emails had been selectively and manipulatively distorted and taken out of context to make Ravi look guilty when he wasn't. 09:30 Ravi and a senior leader who were both Easterners explained how they read these emails from an Eastern point of view. And they said if you think Ravi is guilty of something, that's because you're reading this as a Westerner. We had earnestly prayed for God to protect our ministry in this time from satanic attacks. And it felt like God had put a veil of protection, a dome of protection over our headquarters, and our ministry and our events. And these satanic attacks had been thwarted by the power of prayer. And it hadn't been my job to investigate these claims. But there were people of outstanding integrity and leadership, Christian leaders of major organizations. And it was their job to look into this. And so there were two independent external investigations. Ravi's denomination was a highly respected denomination. And when claims like this came up, they did a proper investigation to ensure that none of their pastors did anything like this. And they had found that Ravi was innocent. 10:44 Ravi's publisher would not publish a book by an author who did this kind of thing. They wanted all of their authors to not only have good teaching but good lives. The publisher had a responsibility to investigate. They investigated, they found that Ravi was innocent. RZIM was a multimillion nearly $40 million a year organization, in the 30s of millions, and our board was comprised of extremely qualified Christian leaders. And when a claim like this came up, the board had a responsibility. They investigated. Our senior leaders were best selling authors and powerful speakers and well educated. They had a responsibility. So our speakers our senior leaders had investigated. So I was looking at four separate investigations by Ravi's denomination, his publisher, his board, and the senior leaders. And all four investigations concluded that Ravi was innocent, and that Lori Anne and her scheming husband had tried to extort Ravi out of $5 million dollars. It was a blackmail attempt. 12:03 So what made more sense? A self promoting journalist, desperate for clicks and attention was passing on lies because she always believed survivors? Or multiple investigations by the most trustworthy people had gotten it wrong? And so I wavered. 12:25 I had first met Ravi, when I was in high school. I was struggling with my Christian faith, do I believe this or not? And I'd read Ravi's book can man live without God, and it really helped me. And so there were some connections, and I got to go to a dinner around Christmas time where Ravi was speaking. And afterwards, it was arranged for me and Ravi to talk with each other. And I could not believe it. Ravi spoke to world leaders. And now he was going to talk to me. And he explained, keep in touch Carson, I'd like to keep in touch with you. So on the way home, I told my mom, I would love to work for Ravi Zacharias one day. 13:03 I studied at Rhodes College in Memphis, studying philosophy. And so I asked Ravi, I wrote him a letter and asked him to give me some advice on my future career. I studied abroad at St. Catherine's college at Oxford. And while I was there, I visited the RZIM offices. It was a chance to meet the people that Ravi had hired and trained and spoke with. I then went into campus ministry for 10 years, seven of those years, I had the joy of serving students at Harvard College. We faced difficult intellectual and cultural questions. And so we often went and said, What is Ravi say about this? What resources does RZIM have to help us navigate this conversation with gentleness with respect, with biblical fidelity with intellectual clarity? So in 2013, when I was hired to work for Ravi Zacharias, it was a dream job. I felt like God had orchestrated all the details of my life and worked it out for me to work for Ravi. During the seven years that I worked there, I got to start with the US speaking team, leading them. And then I transitioned to starting and growing an online community called RZIM Connect. And we had hundreds of thousands of people visit this community and learn how to have good conversations about faith and get answers to their questions. I had respected Ravi and RZIM for over 20 years. I'd worked at RZIM for seven and RZIM was not just a job, it was a joy. It was my identity, my community, my sense of purpose, my faith, my spirituality. So I was a real mess on the beach. And then came to more bombshells. 14:58 Both Christianity Today and World Magazine reported that massage therapists who worked at Ravi's spa alleged that Ravi was guilty of awful, horrendous sexual misconduct. And as I read those articles, my heart sank as I thought about what those women had endured. World Magazine also reported that the tax documents Julie had were accurate and that the Thompson's had given away nearly $200,000 one year to different Christian charities. And so I just asked myself, “Are the Thompsons greedy extortionists or exceptionally generous Christians?” “Are all of the journalists self promotional hacks, or courageous truth tellers?” And I was reluctantly but totally convinced. And I felt that I had a responsibility to take action. Because for years, I had shut down people who thought Lori Anne Thompson was telling the truth. And I had defended Ravi. And now I needed to speak up for his victims. And I had been helped by RZIM so much, I had to do whatever I could to help the ministry do what was right. 16:16 And I just trusted that Ravi Zacharias International Ministries was nothing like Ravi Zacharias. I mean, he was a fraud. He was abusive, a bully a liar. But my friends, my mentors, the people I worked with day in and day out, we'd been on road trips together, we'd done ministry together, these people were solid, they were people of integrity, I could count on them to be truth finders and truth tellers and advocates for the vulnerable. So it was October 1st, 2020. And RZIM's board had already put out two statements, fake news, these are false. We've already looked into it, nothing to this. And they also said truth is the foundation of what we do. And I had to ask myself, is truth, the foundation of what we do? Are you just saying that so people will believe what you're saying? 17:20 And then we had a global town hall meeting because the ministry launched a investigation and they knew staff had questions. And one of the ideas on official motto was no questions off limits. And so I had a few questions. And I wanted to know if we have this investigation going on, but Lori Anne and her family are subjected to a nondisclosure agreement, how can the investigation include them? They can't disclose. And the family wasn't willing to release them from that. So would RZIM provide cover to the Thompsons were they to violate this agreement? If there was financial penalties or legal costs, couldn't we make sure that they could participate? And the response was wonderful. It sounded very gentle and respectful. “We're totally committed to the truth here. We want them to participate. The NDA won't be a problem. We're definitely going to include them in this investigation.” It sounded awesome. And then I thought about it. And they hadn't made any concrete promises of unwinding the NDA or providing a legal defense for the Thompson. So they were just empty promises. And then the hammer fell. There was a private follow-up conversation with our general counsel. And he explained that I had been out of line and inappropriate and should not have asked those questions. And I still have flashbacks to that conversation. And I will freeze up and just feel feel so helpless. And then I will remember that I don't have to be afraid of him anymore. And I will take a deep breath and relax my muscles. And I will try and go back into my day. One day out of nowhere, the Chief Financial Officer sent me and my line manager an email. I guess she'd gotten wind of what I was doing, talking to staff about the situation, advocating for the women. And she wrote to me, “while I agree that we should remain transparent with the truth, I don't think repeating potential lies, or passing on judgment, or qualities we want to embody at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Carson.” She said she value transparency and truth. But her threat was not idle. Staff had been fired for asking questions that fall. I had thought Julie was a liar. And now one of RZIM's senior leaders was saying that maybe I was a liar too. Throughout the fall of 2020, I heard many heartbreaking stories of my friends being bullied. 20:19 At one point, the human resources director sent out an email saying, “We want to make sure there's someone to receive staff complaints. So we've appointed an ombudsperson.” And that sounded awesome! There's going to be an ombudsperson to advocate for staff. And I was shocked to see the name. The new ombudsperson had a nickname:The Enforcer. She had a track record of bullying staff. So I wrote to the HR director and said, “This person has a track record of bullying staff. You can't have her be the ombudsperson.” And they ignored my email. The ombudsperson stayed in her role. And I had to ask myself, why did they want a bully to receive complaints of bullying? If they cared about staff mistreatment, why did they appoint the Enforcer to this role? 21:09 And as information began to circulate around the ministry, I started to learn about some pretty big lies. Ravi had always said that for that nondisclosure agreement, no money changed hands. But in 2017, our senior leaders had read an email where they had learned that Ravi Zacharias had paid $250,000 for that NDA. And so for years they had known Ravi was lying. And they never corrected the record about a $250,000 payment. And the four investigations I had trusted, they consisted of asking Ravi if he did it, taking him at his word when he said he didn't, and closing the investigation. 21:58 RZIM's president asked us not to publicly comment on the investigation because they were so committed to the integrity of it and to finding the truth, they didn't want anyone to comment about it, so it could run its course. But then, at the end of October, there was a major fundraising weekend called Founders. They would raise millions of dollars in one weekend. And all of the people speaking there, they basically said, “Ravi is a hero, and we want you to make a major gift this year in honor of his legacy.” In November, there was a global apologetics conference. Pastors and churches were trusting us to help them with the big questions of the day. And to a global audience, our speakers share their favorite memories of Ravi and how Ravi had mentored them. They encourage participants to imitate Ravi's example. And I realized that our President's request for silence wasn't about the integrity of the investigation. It was about silencing anyone who believed that Ravi had abused women. It was about protecting Ravi's reputation. And his reputation and our ministry's reputation. 23:03 I had gone to prayer meetings four days a week, and the weekly chapel one day a week, for years. And at the prayer meetings, there were again prayers for God to protect our ministry from the satanic attacks. And I realized now that they were praying against me and what I was doing. And that really complicated my prayer life. By December, I was so discouraged and worn out and wrung out and exhausted. I talked to anyone I could about this issue and been pretty discouraged. When I showed up to our staff Christmas party, I was hoping, look, this is a classic, we laugh, we have fun, the spirit of Christmas. This could be a good moment of connection and recovery. And then came the Christmas Devotional. It came from our chief cultural officer who was a board member. It was Ravi's widow. There's a verse in the Bible that says, the apostle Paul says, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” And her Christmas Devotional was, “Everyone here, follow Ravi's example, the way he followed Christ.” And it was a home run. People liked the message. They thought it was a great Christmas Devotional. And at that point, I knew RZIM was not interested in finding the truth. And they weren't interested in the victims. They didn't believe there were victims. It was about loyalty to Ravi over everything else. And I felt that darkness was closing in around me and I ran out of hope. 24:42 RZIM said they valued truth, and they kept telling lies. They said they valued respect, but they bullied us. They said they valued integrity, and they acted hypocritically. They use the name of Jesus to get money, and they didn't use the money to follow Jesus. In September of 2020, I lost my confidence in Ravi. By December of 2020, I lost my confidence in RZIM. And in January of 2021, I resigned. And I had to wonder if I would lose my confidence in God. 24:42 I was a wreck. I was unemployed. I didn't feel good. I found my family finances changed. I was directionless. What do I do with my life now? I was isolated. I lost all my friends from work pretty much. I was disillusioned. My childhood hero was a liar and a bully and a sexual predator. I was recovering. I was trying to find words to explain all the pain I was feeling. I was trying to understand what spiritual abuse was, how to respond to bullying. I didn't know how to describe what I was experiencing. I was frustrated and angry. I poured my heart into this online community and it had to be shut down and then deleted. All gone. I was ashamed that I'd given seven years of my life to this ministry that would be always associated with scandal. 26:26 And I was so confused. Why would God bring me to work for a sexual predator and a corrupt ministry? I felt so rejected. And hopeless. I just felt like my whole body was covered in pain. One of my first attempts to recover didn't go very well. I went on a retreat by myself. I got an Airbnb in the Great Smoky Mountains. It was beautiful. You know, since childhood my my Bible had been a source of life. But for three months it had been poisoned. And so I didn't really want to read the Bible. And I'd usually loved praying to God. It just felt like dust in my mouth. I had graduated from seminary, but I had never had any training for this. I finally just opened up this journal I brought. And as I started to write, I wrote these incredibly bloody and raw and angry, just super intense prayers to God. Like some pages were just one word of anger at God. And I felt so troubled by what I had said to God, I threw the journal away. 28:01 Slowly, over time, I started to find a few things that helped. After I would drop off my kids at school, I would go to the gym. And instead of feeling weak, I would start to feel strong. And then I would go to the dry sauna. I would just sit in there as long as I could. And it just felt like the heat was taking all the pain out of my body. That's a really good time. I kept talking with a counselor, and he helped give me language helped me express my emotions and start to understand what had happened. I shared my story with friends at church,. And I told them the same story 100 times and they listened and listened and listened and listened and listened to me. I got to know Lori Anne Thompson. I found she was a source of healing in my life. That she would be my friend and forgive me and give me wisdom and care to help me find my way forward. Ruth Malhotra is here. And she has been a steadfast friend and has helped me navigate so many complex things about this. My mom is here for this talk. And she's been amazing. I leaned on my wife for support. I could not in any way have made the decisions I had made, except that she decided to be completely there for me. And it's been years of her, offering me unconditional love and support as I figured things out again. 29:40 I had to rethink all of my beliefs. I read books on theology and church history trying to evaluate if this still made sense to me. And I got really, really honest with God. And I stopped having any pious prayers. It was unfiltered, direct expression of how I felt with God, exactly how I felt about him. I told him, what was on my heart. And even though I was yelling at God, I continued to sense that God was with me, and that God loved me. And I started to pray the Psalms, and I would tweak them as needed. And it was amazing to me that the Psalms were so visceral and real. They blame God for a lot of things. And God heard those prayers and said, I'm going to put these in my Bible. So people can pray them for the rest of time. And I realized that Jesus and the prophets had already spoken the words I needed to say to the leaders at RZIM. And to Ravi Zacharias. I had tested Ravi. He was a disappointment. I had tested RZIM. They were a disappointment. And then I tested God with my very worst. And I found that he could handle it. 31:16 One thing I didn't know is that the road to recovery goes up and down a lot. Sometimes you cannot make progress. Sometimes you don't know if you are making progress. Sometimes you thought you have made progress and you have not–you have regressed. At one point in the spring of 2021 My family went back to the beach for another chance to recover. And I got an email from RZIM saying they wanted to give me severance, which sounded like a real moment of repentance and hope. But I read the separation agreement and my heart sank. It was a nondisclosure agreement. I sent it to four lawyers to make sure I understood this correctly. All four said that's a nondisclosure agreement. 32:05 Boz Tchividjian helped me fight it. And for two months, we were dealing with RZIM's corporate attorney. I lost sleep. And I felt stressed out. And I could hardly think straight, that an organization with millions of dollars in the bank was trying to take the one thing I had left: my voice. 32:28 And if you think that's an unfair characterization, consider that RZIM has never done anything to help Lori Anne Thompson with her NDA. To this day. It's embarrassing. And I got hit from other angles that really confused me and threw me for a loop. I reached out to my whole network and people reached out to me. Mentors, respected Christian leaders, people who wrote books and talked about integrity and Christian leadership. And they had heard my heart ache. They had cared for me. They had prayed with me. They had told me they hoped I would get better. They were there for me. And then they endorsed the books of RZIM's leaders. They did events with RZIM's leaders. And I couldn't understand why they would help relaunch the ministry of people who had bullied me. I reached out I said, “Can I update you? They have not done anything to get right with me or a lot of other people. They don't have the Christian character and integrity you're always saying is so essential.” They said, “Why haven't you forgiven them?” 33:45 Some of them just refused to talk to me. They just never responded to the message. And again and again, I realized that for many Christian leaders, accountability is for anyone who gets in my way. It's never for my friend who's done something wrong. 34:09 And I didn't know that I would have flashbacks. I thought the past was the past. I didn't know that I would be at my desk trying to do work and be unable to do anything for hours because I couldn't stop thinking about a conversation I'd had with someone at RZIM. I didn't know it would keep taking days of my life. 34:29 I would log into Facebook. And Facebook would be like, here's a happy memory of you and Ravi Zacharias. I would hear a new story about RZIM's corruption. And there are so many stories that are not public. So up and down, up and down, up and down. There were times I was in so much pain, I didn't know if I would ever get better. I didn't know if it was possible to get better. I could not see a light at the end of my tunnel. And then I wouldn't get a little bit better. But something would happen. And I would go back down into that pain again. So then, when I was better, I didn't know if I would stay better. It felt so fragile. How long does this last for? When will something catch me off guard and knock me back down into the pit. 35:34 And if you feel like there is no light at the end of your tunnel, and if you wonder if you will never get better, I just wanted to say, I hear you. And then it's okay to not be okay. That was one of the main things I just kept saying to myself, it is okay, in light of what I've been through, to not be okay. 36:03 And over time, I had to accept that Ravi and RZIM had damaged me. And for a long time, I just denied that and resisted that and hated that. It felt so unfair and wrong, that they had changed who I was. And I didn't like what they had done to me. And the kind of person that they had shaped me to be through their hurt. And I felt so helpless. I mean, how do you change the past? How do you undo all the horrible things they did? You can't. I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't want to face that reality. 36:50 But at some point, I gained the strength to choose who I want it to be. I will never justify what happened. I'll never spiritualize it. All of the lies and bullying and spiritual abuse were totally wrong. But that doesn't mean I can't choose a better future for myself. 37:13 So I'm now awakened to the pain of survivors. I'm excited about that. That's a good thing God's done in me. When I see evangelical corruption, I'm not afraid to challenge it. Sometimes people say to me, Carson, are you worried that if you keep calling out all of these big name leaders for corruption is going to limit your future. And I say if it limits my future, that's not a future I want to be a part of. 37:51 I once thought Julie was a liar. And now I can call her a friend. I hit rock bottom. I might go there again sometime in the future. But I'm here today sharing with you a story of hope. I enrolled in the Doctorate of ministry programs so I can learn how to build a healthy Christian culture. Some Christian leaders decided to investigate what happened. And they published a report holding RZIM's leaders accountable. It's sad how many ignore their report. But it's great that they did that. 38:30 My former line manager at RCM reached out to make amends and over and over again, he made really sacrificial choices for my benefit. And that rebuild trust that he kept doing sacrificial things to repair our relationship. I started Uncommon Pursuit. And we're creating resources to help people grow in their Christian faith. And I read the Bible with more sensitivity to God's heart for many years, thanks to some good mentors, I had always had known for many years that God cares about the vulnerable. The orphan, the widow, the immigrant and the poor. God hates injustice. God hates racism. God hates sexism. God hates all forms of oppression. But it had shifted from being something that I could do exegetically to something I felt in my gut as I turned the pages of Scripture. 39:34 And I have developed a way more honest relationship with God. I don't pray pious prayers anymore. What I feel that's what I tell God about. And I know he can handle it. When the truth becomes a lie, when a good reputation is used to lure people in and abuse them, when the minister turns out to be a monster, it's okay not be okay. 40:05 I am not here today with any answers or advice. All I have is the story of how God has been able to handle all of my pain and helped me to start to heal. And how with God's help, this pain has helped me to choose a better version of myself. I am convinced that if we can maintain the courage to be honest with God, and with each other, about all of our reasonable and righteous disillusionment, that we will also find our way to hope. Thank you guys for the chance to share with you today. JULIE ROYS:  41:02 Well again, that was Carson Weitnauer, speaking at Restore 2023. And what a very special and moving talk that was. And I hope if you're in a place of disillusionment or discouragement today, that this talk encouraged you. Next week, we'll be releasing a fitting sequel to Carson's talk. That's a talk by Lori Anne Thompson on trauma recovery and empowerment. And this was the most raw and real talk I think I've ever heard. My husband cried during this talk. And he's a math teacher, so he's not really given to shows of emotion. But wow, Lori's talk is just so powerful—and helpful for anyone who's experienced severe trauma. So, you'll definitely want to be watching for that. Also, I want to mention that the videos of these talks are all available at my YouTube channel. A lot of conferences charge for their videos. But we've decided to make ours available for free because we don't want anyone to miss out on this valuable content because of lack of finances. But as you can imagine, these videos do cost us to shoot and edit. So, if you appreciate this content and you're able to pitch in, would you please donate to The Roys Report so we can continue this important service? To do so, just go to JulieRoys.com/Donate.  And when you give a gift of $30 or more this month, we'll send you a copy of Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer's latest book: Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers that Can Transform Your Church into a Tov Culture. So again, just go to JulieRoys.comDonate. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way, you'll never miss an episode! And while you're at it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then, please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks for joining me today! Hope you were blessed and encouraged!    Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript How can you transform a toxic church culture into a healthy one? And what's the best way to initiate change? In this podcast, theologian Scot McKnight and his daughter, Laura Barringer, join me to discuss their latest book, Pivot, a sequel to their earlier best-selling book, A Church Called Tov. While their first book explained the characteristics of a “tov,” or good, culture, Pivot tackles the next challenge—transforming ingrained toxic cultures into tov ones. As Scot and Laura discuss, transformation can be a grueling and painful process. And their research shows transformation takes an average of seven years! But it is possible. And cultures led by narcissist leaders that create consumers can transform into ones led by servant-leaders that make disciples.  In their characteristic relatable and warm style, Scot and Laura explain the practical steps required to do that. Specifically, they discuss the priorities, practices, and powers necessary to pivot, or transform, toxic cultures. And they give real-life examples of churches that have undergone this transformation and lived to tell about it! Scot and Laura draw from their own experiences in churches, conversations with leaders seeing transformation happen, and a deep well of research to provide actionable insights for churches and ministries. Guests Scot McKnight Scot McKnight is a professor of New Testament and has been teaching for more than four decades. His specialty is in the fields of Gospels and Jesus studies, but his passions are in the intersection of New Testament in its context as it speaks to the church today. Along with his daughter, Laura Barringer, they have published A Church Called Tov and a follow-up book, Pivot, which discusses what churches can do to help transform themselves from toxic cultures into tov (goodness) cultures. Laura Barringer Laura Barringer is coauthor of A Church Called Tov as well as Pivot: The Priorities, Practices and Powers That Can Transform Your Church Into a Tov Culture. She previously co-authored the children's version of The Jesus Creed and wrote a teacher's guide to accompany the book. A graduate of Wheaton College, Laura resides in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband Mark and their three beagles.  Show Transcript SPEAKERS SCOT McKNIGHT, LAURA BARRINGER, JULIE ROYS JULIE ROYS  00:00 So how can you transform a toxic church culture into a healthy one? And what's the best way to initiate change? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys. And joining me today are theologian Scot McKnight and his daughter, Laura Barringer. They're the authors of the bestselling book A Church Called TOV. TOV is the Hebrew word for good or goodness. And the book explained how to create a church culture that's truly good–one that resists abuse promotes healing and spiritual growth. But what if your church or Christian workplace already has an ingrained toxic culture? Well, that's what Scot and Laura's new book PIVOT is all about. It explains the priorities, practices and powers that can help you pivot or transform your toxic culture into a TOV culture. But it's not easy and it's not for the faint of heart, but it is God honoring and it is possible. So I'm very excited to delve into this topic was gotten Laura But first, I'd like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you're looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities and strong financial aid. Plus you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shape the world. For more information, just go to JudsonU.edu. Also, if you're looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity and transparency. That's because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out. Just go to BUYACAR123.com.  Well again, joining me is New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, who has authored more than 50 books. He's currently professor of New Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. And he's an ordained Anglican and maintains a blog with Christianity today called Jesus Creed. So Scott, welcome. It's a pleasure to have you join me. SCOT McKNIGHT  02:25 Thanks, Julie. Good to be with you again. JULIE ROYS  02:27 Yeah, second time. So I always like when I have a repeat guest. It means it must have gone okay the first time. SCOT McKNIGHT  02:33 I used to be with you sometimes on the radio, in the old days. JULIE ROYS  02:37 On Moody. Yeah. Yes, old days. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This is going to be fun. I love the book. And Laura, thank you also for joining me again, Scot's daughter Laura Barringer, who's co authored Scott's last two books, A Church Called TOV and PIVOT. Laura also is a children's ministry curriculum writer for Grow Kids. And her day job is teaching kindergarteners in suburban Chicago and Laura, I know you've had a full day teaching them today. So thank you so much for for joining us and for being willing to come on. LAURA BARRINGER  03:09 Yeah, thank you for having me again. It's nice to be with you guys. JULIE ROYS  03:13 And you were just with us at RESTORE, and did a phenomenal job. And we've been rolling out the videos on that and yours will be rolling out in the next few weeks. But that was just delightful to have you. So thank you for joining us at that. LAURA BARRINGER  03:27 I had a great time. It was such an honor to speak at the event and meet so many of the people that I've interacted with online over the last few times. I was just blown away by how special. I was anticipating it. But I was blown away by how special that was to see actual faces. And I came away just realizing this is so much more. It's not just a conference. It's so much more than that. SCOT McKNIGHT  03:51 That's what we experienced the year before. LAURA BARRINGER  03:53 Yeah. SCOT McKNIGHT  03:54 Same thing like these are the people. LAURA BARRINGER  03:56 Yeah. SCOT McKNIGHT  03:56 These are the people. Yeah, that's good. JULIE ROYS  03:58 Yeah, I think you called it a restorative community. LAURA BARRINGER  03:58 That's what it is. JULIE ROYS  04:00 I love that. I was like, yes, that's exactly what RESTORE is. And Scot, you joined us last year for the RESTORE conference. And your video is up on our YouTube site as well. And I believe it was on How To Be TOV, Not Toxic. So a lot of that stuff that we're talking about today, although today, we're talking more about your second book, which is kind of making that pivot when you realize you already are toxic, right? And you've got this culture ingrained that's not so good. And Laura, I loved in the book where you said, at one point you're like, I teach kindergarteners and now I'm doing all these interviews on how to make a church culture TOV and how to make it good and you're like, how did I get here? And then a pastor said to you, “you know what you nurture little people all day you children all day long, and that skill, even though it's often not valued by pastors is probably more appropriate than a lot of them realize.” And I just I love that. And I'm sure you're finding that as you're speaking to people. LAURA BARRINGER  05:05 Yeah, that was very meaningful interview that was Jared McKenna. He has a podcast that he had invited me on. And for whatever reason, my dad wasn't there. I don't know, usually, they want my dad, and then I tag along. And so initially, those interviews could feel really uncomfortable, because every now and then I would stop and think, do these people, you know, they'd asked me about, like, the church abuse crisis. And I'd think, “do these people not realize that I was making kindergarten ready for school confetti earlier today?” How have I landed in this spot? But that was a very encouraging conversation for me when Jared said, you know, you have some of the qualities as a teacher that we want to see in our pastors. And I stopped, I thought, I suppose that's what we do all day long as teachers we nurture and encourage and shepherd. So yeah, that meant a lot to me, as you read in the book, JULIE ROYS  06:05 And Scott, you teach at a seminary, but a lot of seminaries aren't teaching about this kind of stuff. Like you're you learn a lot of Bible knowledge. But as far as how to create cultures and how to nurture goodness within churches? I mean, are we teaching this in enough seminaries? Or are we maybe a little heavy on the head knowledge and not enough on the cultivating of the heart? SCOT McKNIGHT  06:30 The answer to that is no. There are really no seminaries that are focused on spiritual formation or character development, LAURA BARRINGER  06:41 Really? SCOT McKNIGHT  06:42 None. The curriculum for all the courses is Bible theology, church history, and skill development. And skill development is what is measured, as a general rule for what constitutes a good pastor. In other words, they can preach they can lead, you know, we talked about leadership, I don't, but the evangelical world does. And we read books and from the business world, and we read, what is it, Jack Welch? We read all these people. And these are the people that are formational, for people's perception of what is success, and what constitutes a pastor. One of the curricular changes that took place in seminaries about 15 years ago, 10 years ago, was to bring spiritual formation into every class, rather than located in one class, a class on spiritual formation. And so we do it that way. But Julie, I think character formation for church leaders, is caught more than taught, it's embodied more than it's instructed. And it requires time with someone who has that kind of character. So if you can be an assistant, in a church with Mr. Rogers, for five years, you'll never be the same. If you are in a church with, we won't name any names don't need to in this context, for five years, you will be harmed in character formation. JULIE ROYS  08:12 And that's what's so sad is that so much of my reporting is on churches where that's happening, where you have pastors who can preach the Bible, and can teach it–sometimes with really good doctrine–and yet, the life does not match the teaching. And so that is so much of the problem. So I'm so glad that you that both of you have done these two books, which go hand in hand, and I loved your first book, A Church Called TOV, and I love this book PIVOT, because it's, it really is sort of the sequel, and I think helps an awful lot. And we've been using this phrase church culture. Scott, let me just start there. What is a church culture? Because this is something we often don't think about yet we often swim in it, and we're shaped by it. But what is it exactly? And how is it formed? SCOT McKNIGHT  09:00 A culture is a living agent that conforms people, whether they understand it, or not, unconsciously, unintentionally, to become people who fit in that culture. Now, that's the impact understanding, but culture is a living agent. That is the result of people decisions, policies, over time, that result in a given set of assumptions that are mostly invisible, that shape what's going on in a given institution, or church, whatever, without even being aware of it. That's the culture. JULIE ROYS  09:44 And so often what we see I know when I report on a church or a leader, and in several circumstances that's led to the leader being removed, and then they bring in a new leader, and you think, oh, everything's different now. SCOT McKNIGHT  09:58 Yeah. JULIE ROYS  09:59 But it's really not. Right? Because  Nothing. You've got a culture that's ingrained, you have people that have been formed by this culture. And they don't know any different than how to run a toxic church, because that's how they've been discipled. That's the culture that they're familiar with. So you use this metaphor in your book of a peach tree, to help us understand culture. So Laura, let me throw that to you. What is this peach tree metaphor? And how does it apply to helping us understand the church? SCOT McKNIGHT  10:01 Nothing, LAURA BARRINGER  10:30 So the peach tree metaphor, it's, it is a cute, if you will metaphor, but it actually is research based and we based it on the research of Edgar Schein, he's one of the, to my knowledge, most important researchers on organizational culture. And also to our knowledge, we were not able to find research or books on church culture or Christian organization culture. So we took what we learned from him and adapted it and made our model a peach tree, mostly because I have a peach tree in my backyard. Mark, and I planted it when we moved in our home about 10 years ago. And it ended up being perfect for this metaphor, because it's very unhealthy. We've never even eaten one peach off the tree. So like, Oh, that's perfect, because it was a very small because I called her tree. But at any rate, so we talked about peaches as the visible elements of your culture. And it's what people see and experience when they walk in the door. So they might feel like, Oh, those graders were friendly, or who's singing on stage or, when the Anglican tradition, they pass the peace, that's part of the culture. And when they leave, they can probably explain what they felt, what they saw. So what we have learned, and again, this is research based, is that what is underneath the soil is what feeds the living elements of the tree. And most of that is like what my dad was saying that you can't see it, you don't even know it's there. And like our peach tree in our backyard, the fact that it's not growing peaches is not the problem. The problem is that is probably the soil or that we're not caring for the tree, we're supposed to add nutrients every year–we never do. So that's how we develop the model is that the soil and what's underneath the soil, what goes into the roots is what feeds the culture of your organization. And so you really need to look at, we learned, is “what's feeding the soil?” If the tree is being fed by the fruits of the Spirit are by spiritual formation practices, the culture is likely healthy and thriving. If it's being fed by ambition, or power abuse, then the culture is going to be toxic. And so you might get some healthy, like looking peaches, but underneath that's very sick. SCOT McKNIGHT  13:04 This is a good question. And Laura's got a good answer there. But I was in a conversation the other day was a seminary professor who talked about the last three presidents of that institution. And the seminary professor said they were all narcissists. And I said, I think we have to look at why narcissists rose to the top in that organization. There's a culture that gives rise to “that's the kind of person that seems to fit the job description.” Why is that the case? JULIE ROYS  13:39 And that is an important point to make. Because I think so often we do point at the narcissist, and oh, this horrible person that was there and did such horrible things. And we don't look at what's our responsibility for putting that person in and for following that person for not noticing the characteristics that we should have. And you've named some of the toxins that go into these soils of these toxic churches. You give, and I love this because you don't hear the stories very often. And I'd love to report on a lot more of them. I wish there were a lot to report on. But it's of a church that discovers that it's toxic, and goes through this transformation process. And one of them that you talked about is is Oak Hills church in Folsom, California. Explain why Oak Hills felt like it had to transform and then how it began to do so. LAURA BARRINGER  14:33 Yeah, this is one of my favorite parts of our work on PIVOT, I think. I had never heard of Oak Hills. Just one day a book arrived on my doorstep, sent by Scot McKnight. And he said you need to read about this, and then write about it as a case study for PIVOT. It's such a beautiful story, but essentially, the pastors Mike Lueken and Ken Carlson founded a church in California called Oak Hills. And they had come out here to Willow Creek to learn as much as they could about doing church. And they don't criticize Willow at all. They said, in fact, everything that we tried worked. Their attendance exploded, they became a mega church. But they started to feel I would describe it just like an unease like in their soul. And they felt like the exact quote is so striking. It says, “the way that we were doing church was actually working against the invitation of Christ to experience his transformation.” And they had been reading Eugene Peterson, and Dallas Willard and more. And they felt like our attractional model is working against transformation. And so they took the whole church through a very tumultuous process. Their attendance declined, like it was cut in half or more. But they ended up transforming their church from an attractional model to a spiritual formation model. They said the people in the church had become consumers. So like, they would sit there and want a really good show. And then the next week, they would come back and they wanted an even better show. And they said, it felt like we were feeding a monster, and they were drained. They were worn out. And they just felt that stirring in the spirit that they had to transform it. JULIE ROYS  16:28 Yeah, somebody asked me once, whether I thought a mega church could ever be healthy. And my answer was, perhaps, but it just seems to me that all the pressures are in the wrong direction. And it's awful hard to withstand the pressures that keep pushing you in that direction. And I'm curious, Scot, have you ever seen a mega church that, really, you're seeing a real emphasis on spiritual formation? And it seems really healthy? SCOT McKNIGHT  16:59 This is a really interesting question because it feeds into what we researched in this book. And Edgar Schein, I've seen a lot of them, because I've only been there for a day or two. Okay, so this is what they are masters of, is the weekend service is extremely impressive and they have talented, charismatic, winsome, affable people that welcome you at the airport, take you to nice hotels, feed you nice meals, provide a green room in the back with all the amenities that you need, and a wonderful platform where they stand up and even clap for you. Great music. So here's the point, I do believe there are mega churches that are healthy. But the only way to know this is to have someone investigate them, not for the purpose of exposing anything, but for the sole purpose of finding out what's really going on. And it would take three to six months of someone who's skilled at knowing how to find a culture. This is what Edgar Schein does, he'll go to places like let's just say IBM, and work there for nine months. And it takes that long to find what is actually in the soil feeding the place. So there's no megachurch pastor, or leaders, or any church is going to tell you that what's driving them is ambition, and competition. They want to win the battle of the best church in the neighborhood or in the city or in the state or in the United States. They will never say that, but that is one of the drivers. And it takes a long time to figure out that that's what's actually at work when fundamental decisions are made in the church. So I would say I've never had the opportunity to actually examine a mega church at that level. I do know, a mega church model that the theory is that it's small groups that meet on Sunday. That's the kind of mega church model has the capacity to be working at character formation. But I can't say that I looked at the people I've met there have been very impressive, but that's what a famous pastor in Canada that was his model as well. JULIE ROYS  19:26 Bruxy Cavey. SCOT McKNIGHT  19:27 Yeah, that's a lot of problems. JULIE ROYS  19:29 Yeah. And he comes from Brethren In Christ Anabaptist background which is my background. I grew up in that so at that was very sad for me to see that happen. SCOT McKNIGHT  19:39 Well, I endorsed a lot of his books so not that long before this story. Yeah, I've known Bruxy a long time. Sad story. JULIE ROYS  19:47 Yeah, it is and Brethren in Christ churches from my at least from my growing up, I haven't been in one for many years because we don't really have them in the Midwest, but I felt like they were phenomenal at character formation, spiritual formation. You talk about three pivotal priorities–and one you've touched on–but I want to do a little bit of a deep dive because we're talking about emphasis on character, not ability. I mean, that seems like one of those like, Duh, this is basic, right? I mean, we should be all about character. But why is it that this is such a misplaced priority? Like we really are not looking at character in our churches, and we find, pastor after pastor after pastor falling into scandal and into disrepute, because of character flaws? Why is this? SCOT McKNIGHT  20:39 I think, let's say the pastor on the platform is a different beast altogether than ordinary people in the church. But those aren't the same things. The character issues, you're expecting people to hire a pastor to be able to perform on that platform every Sunday, and put butts in the seats and bills in the plate, and baptisms in the pool. And buildings on the campus. That's what they hire him for. But I would say there's a couple things. Number one is our church is, let's say, measurement devices, or success measurements are not shaped by that at all. A second thing is, it's extremely difficult to measure spiritual growth in a true character formation. And I think I said two, but I got a third one. And it takes a lot of pastors. A lot. You can't have one pastor working with the transformation of 50 people. They can't do that. They don't have that kind of time. That's why the small group model has the capacity. If you don't have pinheads running the small group. If you have people who are Mr. Rogers, like who get to work with people in that small group. We just have a lot of things distorted in the wrong direction. And they start in the wrong location. JULIE ROYS  22:06 And this is the challenge, isn't it? Like you said in the book, if you're going to transform from a toxic culture to a TOV one, what you've seen is that it takes minimum seven years, probably three years before you see this change start to happen. And often the church will shrink. In Oak Hills, they lost what 1000 people? LAURA BARRINGER  22:28 Yeah. JULIE ROYS  22:28 Yeah. And I said this at the beginning of the RESTORE conference, to the pastors who were there, because we talked about, you know, a lot of church hurt at these conferences. And I did hear from one pastor who came and this was at the previous year, and he said, “Yeah, it was really, really powerful conference, but I kind of got the feeling as a pastor that maybe we're the bad guys.” And so I wanted to make sure this one to say, “No, we love you. We're so glad you're here. And the fact that you as a pastor, invested in coming to hear from wounded souls, about the way that they've been hurting the Church says something about you and your character and why you're here. And you're exactly the kind of pastors that we need in our churches.” Yet. I think if I were doing a conference on how you can grow your church overnight, I wouldn't have enough seats, if I had a proven method of making your church double overnight. But what you're talking about here is, here's a path to making your church maybe smaller, maybe less successful in the world's eyes, and trying to get people to buy into this model. But in the end, there's greater fulfillment isn't there in knowing that you're actually producing people who are furthering the kingdom of God? Because you're actually modeling Christ to people. It's a powerful thing. But how do you get people to buy into that? SCOT McKNIGHT  23:48 Well, when you were talking, I'm sitting here thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer with his renegade subversive hideout seminaries in northern Germany and Prussia, and the impact of Dallas Willard on someone like James Smith, where it was over time, with one person working with another person. And that's a different calling. And it's not like that's what we hire people in churches to do. You know, the last Barna book I read by David Kinnaman, was on pastors. And I think the number was 12% of pastors enjoy discipleship. LAURA BARRINGER  24:34 That low? SCOT McKNIGHT  24:35 Yeah, it may be lower than that, but I think it was in the book, Pastor Paul. But that is not what they see themselves doing. They see themselves preaching and leading and administrating and organizing. And some of them writing books, and traveling around speaking at conferences. That's what they see themselves doing. But if you work in Navigators or you work in Campus Crusade or InterVarsity on a campus and colleges, which are some of the most effective TOV institutions in the world. They are all about working with young college students and helping them deal with the fact that they got drunk last night, and we got to find out what's going on. And they disciple people. And it takes a lot of time. And in four years, those students, a lot of them want to come back and do the same to other college students. That's the multiplication principle of Navigators. And Navigators is all about one on one, JULIE ROYS  25:37 And what virtues should we be looking for? And should we be cultivating? LAURA BARRINGER  25:42 Theologian. SCOT McKNIGHT  25:43 (laughter) There's a couple of ways to look at this. And I think we need to take the major virtue passages in the Bible. So look at the 10 commandments. Alright, look at the book of Psalms, pick a couple of prophets and say, What are they trying to inculcate in people? And how they should live? Then look at the Sermon on the Mount. Look at Paul's list of the fruit of the Spirit. Look at what Paul says about love in First Corinthians 13. Look at First John's teachings. Avoid Jude because he's too hot, a little angry all the time. So and just realize that there are different ways to package this over time to frame what virtues we want to talk about. Now, there's ways of summarizing, let's say, we want to be followers of Jesus. That's a summary statement. Or we want to be characterized by love. Or if you're in the Puritan movement, you want to be characterized by godliness. And that means you read the Puritans, and you subscribe to Banner of Truth  Trust, and all this, and these become your heroes. Jonathan Edwards is the guy. But all these terms are summary statements that need to be unfolded. And so the virtues, the character that forms these virtues, so that they become sort of instincts can be framed in different ways. But all those passages can help us shape the kinds of virtues we're looking for. JULIE ROYS  27:23 So we have character is one of our priorities. Another one is TOV power. And I have to say, when you hear that word power, and you've experienced abuse of power, just that word power, can be scary. So how can we tell if power is being harnessed and used in a good way, as opposed to a toxic way? LAURA BARRINGER  27:49 Yeah, this is a big one for us. After A Church Called TOV was published, we received letter after letter after letter, we wrote a lot about sexual abuse, we heard mostly from victims of power abuse, we would get these letters every week, my dad would get some I would get some. And it was story after story of people who had been wounded, mostly by pastors who had misused their power. And the people had tried to stand up for themselves or those who found the courage to maybe try to talk to elders. It was like they didn't get very far because people didn't believe them, or it was done behind closed doors. So people say, Well, I haven't seen him do that. That's not how he is. That's not my experience. And that was so painful, because it discounts the reality of what another person endured. So this was a really big one for us when we went to write PIVOT. All of us have power, right? Like, I have power, I'm a teacher, so I have the power to influence those under me and how people use their power is a measure of their character of who they are as a person. SCOT McKNIGHT  29:09 People have power. And anybody who exercises a decision, who is a leader, has a right to make those decisions. And people underneath them, I guess, have a right to bellyache about them as well. I mean, that's part of the complaint culture that workplaces develop. But to me, one of the signs of power desire is when someone who is your leader makes a decision that you don't like how do you respond? Do you manipulate? Do you gossip? Do you attack? Do you get other people in your corner so that you can eventually destroy that person's reputation and character? That's a very important element of power, in institutions, is a complaint culture that forms. All narcissists have no self awareness of the power that they have, and what they are doing to people around them. They have lack of self awareness. So they think what they're doing is right all the time. And when they're criticized, they DARVO. “That's not what I was doing.” Well, yes, you did. That's the impact you made on it. So they lacked that awareness.  So it needs to be revealed by people being able to have a safe place to be able to express what they've experienced from a person. I've been in institutions where presidents were removed. I'm at one right now. And the former president, there were too many people who were released, and then stories were released about that person. And The Roys Report reported about it. JULIE ROYS  30:53 Yes we did. SCOT McKNIGHT  30:54 Not very good news for our seminary. But those were symptoms, signs that something's going on. And it was not a safe place for people to be able to register their complaints. And it didn't seem to be achieving anything, I think power is going to happen. People get to do this, who are leaders. They have power. So they exercise their power, and not everybody's going to agree with it, and people get to interpret it. And they can be dead wrong, and be very convincing, even though they're wrong. But at the same time, there has to be some sort of device mechanism, TOV tool, that gives people some indications of how that person is using power. And I think it's possible to reveal some of this stuff. But I think it's impossible to change a narcissist. JULIE ROYS  31:52 So you have to have somebody in positions of leadership, who obviously have the character and wants to use their power in a right way. And one of the things that that you do in this book, which I think is really helpful, is you not only have questions at the end of each chapter, but you do have assessment tools, where you can begin to assess some of these things to say, Okay, this is a toxic culture, this is a TOV culture, this is a good way of using power. And maybe not so good way of using power. It's a beautiful thing, when you see somebody in power, use that power to protect others to draw out someone who's quiet, who wouldn't normally speak, to be able to notice the weak and the vulnerable and to use the power to protect and to help. SCOT McKNIGHT  32:39 I think people who use power well, are not recognized as using power. Because something happens and you go, Oh, that was really nice. And you didn't realize that that leader decided to elevate somebody in a way that empowered them. So when they're empowering others, you usually don't recognize that they're using power. It's when they violate the power. A good umpire in a baseball game is unrecognized. And when you're talking about the umpires, it's because they screwed up. They messed up stuff. You notice it. “That was terrible!” And I think that's the same way with leaders. If you don't recognize their leadership, and things are functioning pretty well, you probably got a pretty good leader. JULIE ROYS  33:33 That's good. Yeah, I would say the number one problem of most of the bad leaders that I report on, obviously, the character issues there and everything, but the way it often comes out is in hypocrisy. They're just not living, what they say they believe. And you make a big point of one of the priorities is you got to model. You got to be the example of what you want your culture to be. And I love this, one of the people that you talk about modeling this goodness is, as you said, Mr. Rogers. Explain how Mr. Rogers is modeling exactly what he's teaching. LAURA BARRINGER  34:14 Well, when we went to write A Church Called TOV, I kept sending my dad examples like, what about this pastor or this one? And he kept saying, no, no, no. And he said, We need somebody that's dead. (laguhter) Because–that's exactly what he said–they have to be dead. Because there's too many scandals that erupt. And sure enough, we have a story in A Church Called TOV, that when it went to the next printing, we had to remove because the pastor, allegations etc. So we use Mr. Rogers as our example. Mr. Rogers, from everything we have read about him, the man that you saw on TV was the man that everybody knew. He was patient. He was gentle. He was just as kind in person as he was on the television screen. He would get distracted by children, he would tell Oprah, I'll come on your show, but you can't have children in the audience because I will be distracted, I will be I know that I will be, all of my attention will go to them the vulnerable. That's what my heart and soul is, is for. And so when you said hypocrisy, that's the opposite of Mr. Rogers, there are some beautiful stories that we recited in the book about him that he is as good a man as he appeared to be. JULIE ROYS  35:35 Hmm. And there was one in the book, I thought was so touching about a man whose wife . . . was the wife, the employee, I believe, or was LAURA BARRINGER  35:44 The wife was the employee. JULIE ROYS  35:46 Yeah. So the wife was the employee, and she died. It sounds like young, got cancer and, and Mr. Rogers would show up and visit, you know, visited on a regular basis. And the day she died, he he knocked on the door and said, I just had a sense that, that you needed me today, or you needed to be visited today. And here, she was dying. And he came in and cried with him, you know, as his wife was dying and prayed with him. And the husband said, he never talked about it. Nobody ever heard that story about Mr. Rogers. LAURA BARRINGER  36:21 He didn't get up and talk about the ways that he volunteered or helped people. I also love the story about the reporter who maybe this is in A Church Called TOV. No. I remember I don't remember no. He said, “Do you know, who is the most important person in the world to me right now?” And the reporter was like, Who who is the most important person? Mr. Rogers said, “You, I'm talking to you, you have my full attention. You're the most important person in the world to me right now.” And the reporter was, like, stunned that a celebrity would spend that much time and give him that much attention for I think he said an hour which was unheard of with celebrities, interviews. JULIE ROYS  37:05 Well, and as a reporter, you're just happy when somebody wants to talk to you because most of the people I talk to, they don't want to talk to me. SCOT McKNIGHT  37:13 But Julie, you know the issues of the people that that we want to find out more about, that have become celebrities that Katelyn Beaty has written about. They're there. And you just think they're just amazing because of the platform persona, that they've presented in their pastoral sermons. You just go, “I want to be like that person.” Okay, so the tendency is to make those the examples. And all you see about them is the presentation on the platform. And that's why I said to Laura, we can't take living examples now. I mean, yes, I understood what she was doing. And she had some wonderful stories, and they they truly are probably good people. But because I'm older, you know, I think when when I wrote when we wrote TOV I was probably 65. JULIE ROYS  38:10 A whippersnapper. SCOT McKNIGHT  38:11 Yeah, I was young compared to the day.  here were people that we wanted, you know, that I could easily say they were fantastic people that in the last five years, I would say, Well, maybe that's not so true. So it was important for me I finally said, Laura, we got to find dead people whose whose stories are unimpeachable. But I have found stories of people that I have exalted in my years as a professor. I've written I've used their names. And I discovered later that they were horrific people. And nobody knew. Nobody was talking. Because even in those days, you didn't talk about things like that. We, I mean, when Kennedy was a president, we didn't talk about what was going on in the White House, behind closed doors. Now we know these things. So that's why we went with dead people. But but nobody questions Mr. Rogers. And so we used him in both books. LAURA BARRINGER  39:09 I remember that–my dad's texts, “Nope, only dead people.” JULIE ROYS  39:13 Problem is even dead people, Ravi Zacharias that didn't come out, you know, until after he was dead. But I mean, obviously, a little better if they've had a little bit of time, between their life and some study of the kind of person they were, SCOT McKNIGHT  39:30 I would also say that nobody's perfect. Not many people are like Mr. Rogers. So people with warts and all is not the worst thing. David is hardly a beautiful character in all the pages of the Bible. The apostle Paul can lash out at people. I don't know about Peter. Mary seems to be a good person, other than the fact that she's trying to tell Jesus what to do and how to be a messiah. So we just we can't expect perfection but we expect a certain level of maturity that we can count on. And we may find out that Pastor got really mad one day and said something he shouldn't have, but he admitted it. JULIE ROYS  40:11 That's a big one to me is Do you hear the pastor admitting wrong, asking for forgiveness, because that needs to be a regular practice. Let's talk about some of these practices of transforming cultures. And you talk about there being a transformational agent. Normally, when you see these kinds of transformations happening, and as well, a transformational coalition. SCOT McKNIGHT  40:35 Julie, let's just say you realize your church has got some stuff in the soil that needs to be healed. Alright. And you go through a process of discovery. And you come up with five things that we need to work on in the next five years. All right, I think that's a pretty normal process. I don't believe that the pastor should be in charge of all this. Now, in most churches, I believe the pastor will be in charge of this because the pastor is in charge of everything. But I think it should be handed off to a transformation agent, who is independent, and can get more honest responses from people than the pastor can, unless the transformation agent is just a flying monkey, as the as the words are used, or a mole for the pastor. If it's a person of character, they're going to be trusted, and the pastor is going to have to listen to the results. But I think it's good to have a transformation agent whose responsibility it is to organize administrate, to evaluate, and to pass the information on so that it can be implemented in a really good way to the leadership of the church. But it can't just be one person or two people. And it's not based on it's not a bunch of sermons, LAURA BARRINGER  41:52 I don't want to skip over something really important that we learned from Edgar Schein, again, the major researcher on this topic of transforming culture, is he said, You can't transform anything until your problem is clearly defined and crystal clear. That's what led us to write the TOV tool so that it can help groups or whomever is taking it churches, groups, teams, clearly identify areas of strength, and then areas where growth is important. And Edgar Schein said, that's like the most important step of all is listening. And that might take a lot of conversation and a lot of authenticity and hearing maybe things about yourself, you don't want to hear. But that's like one of the most important steps is identifying, “we are not putting people above the reputation of our institution.” Or, “it seems like we're really good at truth telling, but we're not offering a lot of justice to the wounded.” So every organization is different. But those conversations where you unearth, what are the strengths, and where do we need to grow in these areas of like that we created the TOV tool out of our circle of TOV from the first book. It just cannot be skipped over. And then that can be used by the transformation agent and the coalition to have some data and listening as they move forward or attempt to move forward. SCOT McKNIGHT  43:28 And I would add to the coalition is you can't transform a culture because you're a persuasive speaker, with a couple of friends in your church that are all doing this. It takes a culture's ownership to get there. So our theory is okay, we got a transformation agent and a couple people, they studied the Bible, I won't get into all that, then it grows to a group of five. And then it grows to a group of 10. And then it splits into a couple more groups that grow to a group of 30 or 40. And you're starting to build a critical mass of people who are committed to this idea and working it out. But they're contributing to the idea. So it's not like I got a great idea. Now we're gonna go implement it. It is, I have an idea. Let's work on this together. And before long once you get 50 to 75 people involved in it, there's ownership but the idea has now grown into something that is healthier, stronger, deeper, wider. It starts to get ownership, if you have a fairly sizable church, before you go to the church. JULIE ROYS  44:36 And I think what's to me exciting about listening about some churches that did this. And even hearing you talk about it, this is a very organic thing that happens as people are discussing this and something starts to grow. I mean, basically, this culture begins to reform as people are reforming. Right? And they're beginning to model it, and they're beginning to change, and so then you begin to see this transformation happen. And then hopefully you're moving into a different culture. Right? And the congregation becomes a different kind of culture.  And those who quite frankly, don't buy into it, leave. I mean, I remember the power of that when we did youth ministry, like we just said, from the beginning, we don't do entertainment, the world does that better than us. But if you want to come and worship and pray, like, we're really going to be a part of that, and studying the Bible, and the ones that weren't interested in that would just fall off. And then we would gather a group of people who really wanted to do that, and it became our culture. But it takes that kind of time. But you talk about then the last part of your book about the powers and the congregational culture powers, I thought it was really interesting, especially Laura, when you were talking about kind of the practices that led to a culture at Willow Creek when you were there. And then you contrasted that with these practices that led to a culture at this Quaker church that was completely different. Talk about that, because I thought, it's such a great example and a contrast, because we often don't think about what we're doing when we're doing it, and how this is creating a culture. But I think, as I was reading it, it made me think about things that I'm doing, and what kind of culture does that create? So yeah, talk about that. LAURA BARRINGER  46:29 So I didn't really realize what the culture of Willow Creek was, until I left Willow Creek. And being out of it allowed me to see and I'm not criticizing it, I'm just saying like, factually, there are a lot of people that attend, they put people up on stage, that walk through the campus with bodyguards. And there's sort of a feel of like haves have nots, or the whole service leads up to what the speaker is going to say. And you know, weeks ahead of time, who's going to be speaking and like Mark, and I'd be the first to tell you, like, we got into a terrible rut at Willow, we were like, Oh, we don't really like that speaker. So we're not going to go this week, you know, our neighbors would be like, come for a bike ride. Okay, we'll do that instead, like, we were just consumers of a show. So we left Willow Creek and experienced the Anglican tradition, which is very different. But then what I wrote about in the book, I tried to get into less Twitter fights or whatever X fights? JULIE ROYS  47:37 It's weird. It's just weird. LAURA BARRINGER  47:39 I know. One day, I just wandered into this, like delightful conversation with a Quaker pastor. And I remember his name, because we have a family friend of the same name, Scott Wagner, and he posted pictures, and I don't know anything about the Quakers other than what I've read, you know, just a little bit. So I'm not I don't know where they stand theologically at all. But his pictures were so startling to me. They were getting ready for a meeting. And the chairs were set up in a circle. And it was just in this like, small room with wooden floors. And after coming out of the Willow Creek tradition was like, well, where's the speaker gonna stand? But that wasn't what the goal was at all. It was like a meeting where everybody was seen as equals. And I don't know, it seems like is that how the early church was? That's how I picture people in my head, like, sitting in a circle together. Not like all of us staring at a person on stage. JULIE ROYS  48:44 I have to say, being in a house church now and experiencing meeting in homes, and we haven't had a sermon. You know, in the past 18 months since I've been going to our house church. There's no sermon. We're opening the Bible. And there's a facilitator and we dig in together, and we study the Bible together. And I just love it. I mean, I come away every Sunday, it's like, wow, that was rich, that was really good. And I've gone to a church too where we were in the round, in fact, is one of your colleagues there, Dave Fitch, his church that we attended, where we would have the chairs all in a circle, I love that, I think in the Anglican tradition, instead of the sermon being the highlight, really, the table is. Eucharist. That's the highlight, and that communicates a value. So I think looking at what are we doing in the service, and I have wondered about this. And to me, the fact that we make a man on stage preaching, which is very heavy head knowledge. And I'm not saying that's wrong, but I'm, I often wonder if that's sort of a post enlightenment way of thinking that the pinnacle of the service is the sermon? SCOT McKNIGHT  49:56 It happened at the reformation that turned the sermon into a major, the major focus. The early church didn't have sermons. LAURA BARRINGER  50:04 They had letters, right? They would hear, read letters? JULIE ROYS  50:07 And at that one sermon where, what is it Eutychus?  Fell out the window and died. You know, SCOT McKNIGHT  50:12 Paul was talking, he was talking. But I mean, it was a it was a house church, you're talking about a normal sized living room with maybe an atrium with some water in the middle. And people around it talking and someone instructors instruction. There'd be the reading of a letter. There'd be the exposition of a psalm or something. And eventually, they would read scriptures and then preach about or teach about it. But it was a fellowship, where there was instruction, there was prayer, there was worship, there was caring for one another. And that's where the church got started. Jesus didn't preach sermons in the houses, he told stories, parables, it's where the parables came from. JULIE ROYS  50:59 Well, obviously, there's a lot of things that we can do to sort of jumpstart transformation. We've talked about some of those. But I love that you kind of land this book with where the power really comes from. And it's from the Holy Spirit, and it's from God's grace. So talk about the importance of relying on the Spirit, and grace, so that we're not manufacturing something but we're actually being led by God. SCOT McKNIGHT  51:31 When we were writing this book, I told Laura, probably 10 times, every chapter could be the first chapter. They were all interlocking. LAURA BARRINGER  51:39 We had trouble ordering the chapters. SCOT McKNIGHT  51:42 And theologically, I wanted to begin with that theological ending, but I know that just sounds like I'm a seminary professor. And we've got to get people interested in the topic first. So the neuralgics is what it's called sometimes. So yeah, I think the example of Christ, the significance of the Holy Spirit being open to the Spirit, the power of God's grace, which is operative, in the example of Christ, and in the power of the Spirit, all those things are what ultimately is responsible for transformation of an individual person, and of a community, a church. If we think it's just mechanics, and structure, and system and program, it's gonna go dry. But when it is the dynamic of the Spirit of God, leading us, prompting us, directing us, making us change, making us think of new things, we're in the right place. LAURA BARRINGER  52:39 That's what I love about the story of Oak Hills is that they say we felt this sense of dis equilibrium in our soul. And they surrendered to what they felt the Spirit was telling them and leading them. And they followed. And I think they would say, the transformation was worth it. Rather than having consumers, they were discipling people to grow in Christ. And they were like, we just steadily pushed against the culture, and taught people how to live like Jesus. That was it. JULIE ROYS  53:12 And I believe that Jesus said, his last words were not to go and make big churches or converts. But yeah, to make disciples, that is, what the church should be doing. And so I just really appreciate what you guys have put together here in this book, and that you're really moving people, I think, towards something beautiful and something good. Any last thoughts or final encouragement for those who might be thinking of embarking on this journey of trying to transform or are in the midst of it. And I mean, as I said, at the beginning, it's not for the faint of heart, it's not going to be easy. It could be a seven year or even longer process, any encouragement for them right now. SCOT McKNIGHT  54:00 I would say go with it. There's going to be many times when you'd like to return back to where you started and say, we'll just go back to where it was working. Roll with it. Because it's going to be different for every group. But it's worth it to pursue this direction, to see what God can do in your church and in your institution, over time, as you begin to focus on, let's say, the power of God's grace to transform us into being people who are like Jesus Christ. JULIE ROYS  54:34 And that's pretty exciting. LAURA BARRINGER  54:36 Amen. JULIE ROYS  54:37 Well, again, thank you so much. I really appreciate both of you and appreciate the ministry that you're having and the impact that you're having. This has been extremely helpful. So thank you. SCOT McKNIGHT  54:48 Thank you, Julie. LAURA BARRINGER  54:49 Thank you for having us. SCOT McKNIGHT  54:51 Thanks, Laura. LAURA BARRINGER  54:52 Thanks, Dad. JULIE ROYS  54:54 Scot and Laura, thank you so much for the gift of this book—and the gift of your time today. This has been so helpful . . . And if you'd like a copy of Scot & Laura's new book, Pivot, we would be happy to send you one for a gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report. Again, we don't have any large donors or advertising. We simply have you—the people who care about exposing toxic churches and leaders, and then encouraging them to transform into TOV ones. So, if you'd like to support our work and get the book Pivot, just go to JulieRoys.com/donate. Also, I want to let you know that next week, I'll be releasing another talk from Restore by Carson Weitnauer on Disillusionment and Hope. This is an extremely vulnerable and moving talk where Carson tells his profound disillusionment when he discovered the truth about Ravi Zacharias. At the time, Carson was a director at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries—and Ravi had been his hero. This is such a painfully honest, yet hopeful, talk—and one you won't want to miss. So, be watching for that. We'll release the talk as both an audio podcast and a video at my YouTube channel. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way, you won't miss any of these episodes! And while you're at it, I'd really appreciate it if you'd help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then, please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks for joining me today! Hope you were blessed and encouraged!   Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/xfqTi7vFjhw What are the telltale signs of spiritual abuse? And once you've been subjected to it, how do you heal? On this edition of The Roys Report, we're rolling out the first of 11 talks from this year's Restore Conference. This was an amazing gathering of survivors of church hurt and abuse—as well as pastors and Christian leaders wanting to better minister to these survivors. The gathering featured some incredibly powerful and eye-opening talks. One of those talks is on recognizing and healing from spiritual abuse, from Pastor Ken Garrett—one who knows about spiritual abuse firsthand. Ken and his family were members of an abusive church in Oregon, which turned out to be a cult. But after escaping the cult in the mid-1990s, Ken went on to complete graduate research on spiritual abuse. And he created the Spiritual Abuse Forum for Education, or SAFE. This is a bi-monthly meetup for survivors of spiritual abuse connect and support each other—where people of any faith or no faith are invited to participate. Ken also is the pastor of Grace Church in Portland, Oregon—and he's the author of In the House of Friends: Understanding and Healing from Spiritual Abuse in Christian Churches. This talk deals with narcissism, control, and breaking free. Ken, who is such a warm and gentle soul, guides us through these difficult issues with a father's heart. Guests Ken Garrett Dr. Ken Garrett is the pastor of Grace Church, Portland, a diverse, historic downtown church, and author of In the House of Friends: Understanding and Healing from Spiritual Abuse in Christian Churches. Ken has spoken and written for the International Cultic Studies Association, and provides support and encouragement to many survivors of abusive churches, cults, and high-demand groups in the Portland area. He founded the Spiritual Abuse Forum for Education, an informal gathering for mutual encouragement and education that welcomes and supports survivors of religious abuse from all faiths. Show Transcript SPEAKERS KEN GARRETT, JULIE ROYS JULIE ROYS  00:04 What are the telltale signs of spiritual abuse? And once you've been subjected to it, how do you heal? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys, and on this podcast we're rolling out the first of 11 talks from this year's RESTORE Conference. This was an amazing gathering of survivors of church hurt and abuse as well as pastors and Christian leaders, wanting to better minister to the survivors. As one speaker commented, RESTORE is more like a restorative community than a conference. And there's really nothing that quite compares to being there in person. That said, we had some incredibly powerful and eye-opening talks. And one of those talks you're going to hear today, the talk is on recognizing and healing from spiritual abuse, and the person speaking is Ken Garrett, someone who knows about spiritual abuse firsthand. Ken and his family were members of an abusive church in Oregon, which turned out to be a cult. After escaping the cult in the mid-1990s. Ken went on to complete graduate research on spiritual abuse, and he created the Spiritual Abuse Forum for Education or SAFE. This is a bimonthly meet up with Christian and non-Christian survivors of spiritual abuse to connect and support each other. Ken also is the pastor of Grace Church in Portland, and he's the author of In the House of Friends: Understanding and Healing From Spiritual Abuse in  Christian Churches. Ken also is a warm and gentle soul who I'm proud to call a friend, and I'm so excited to share his talk with you. But first, I'd like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you're looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience, Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you're looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That's because the owners there Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to BUYACAR123.COM. Well, again, this is the first of 11 talks from the RESTORE Conference, which concluded on October 14. This talk on recognizing and healing from spiritual abuse is by Ken Garrett, a pastor and author of In the House of Friends: Understanding and Healing From Spiritual Abuse in  Christian Churches. Here's Ken Garrett. KEN GARRETT  03:00 Sometimes in the process of recovery from spiritual abuse, it's easy to think in terms of the long haul; Will I ever be okay? Will my marriage be okay? Will my kids get over it? And will I ever go back to church? Or will I ever be able to listen to another loud pastor guy standing behind a pulpit? I mean, all kinds of long-term questions. But really, the recovery is a step-by-step endeavor. And that step by step for me sometimes meant not even getting out of my car when I would drive into the parking lot of a church after I left because guess what? God's will for my life changed when I drove into that parking lot. I couldn't handle it. So, I drive on down the road or drop my kids off at the church and then go get breakfast or something. That's what happened to me, and I want to talk a little bit about it. And Julie kind of covered what I'm up to now is I'm a pastor in Portland, Oregon, had been a pastor of a church there for 20 years in the middle of downtown Portland. And before that, ironically, I served as a paramedic in that district of downtown Portland. In fact, one of the first times I ever preached there, I took care of a gentleman having a hypoglycemic reaction, and then preached and I thought that was so cool as the kind of things you would write about if you were doing that, but that's what happened. And so that's what I do now. I'm a pastor there, and Julie referred to my experience as having been in a Christian cult which is spot on. And I want to assure you today that I know you're in all phases of figuring out what happened to you. I did not refer to my experience or the church I was in as a cult for, I don't know, boy maybe 10 years or so, seven years before I could really think of it that way. And before it occurred to me that I had so much in common really, with my friends that had escaped Scientology, or yoga cults or Hindu cults or white supremacist cults are all of the polygamous, all of those cults. I had so much in common with them. And it was when I started learning about them, I realized I'm certainly, certainly just like them, I've survived a cult. And I was able to start calling it that. I realized, as I'm speaking to you today, that not everybody is comfortable. You're not there, maybe you'll never get there. Spiritual abuse is kind of on a spectrum. And I'm going to share with you some red flags of spiritual abuse in churches that I see and that I believe; not all of those red flags will relate to your situation. But I'm going to be so general about it really, that I think a few bells will go off for you. But it's a process. And wherever you put yourself in that process, I'm delighted that you're here today. That part of it is for you to take a step to cross through the door. Most of you probably know what it's like to walk through the doors of a church after you've had a particularly terrible experience in churches. And that really represents something if you're able to do that. And it represents something today that you did that this morning, you got up knowing, having an idea of the things you were going to hear having an idea of the things we were going to talk about, but you came anyway. And I thank you for that. Yeah, I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and grew up pretty normal. I like to think a normal guy. I  grew up in the Lutheran church, and I live in the neighborhood now that I grew up in. And my parents were Christians and went to church and raised us in the church. I joined the military when I was 20. And during that time, also, I got married. Sharon and I were married and lived in North Carolina for a while. And something that was true about us, and I don't think it's just because she's a Baptist preacher's daughter, I don't I don't think that's the only reason. But we were fiercely devout to our age, you know? We had a little bit of Keith Green, gonna, you know, we're gonna save the world. I mean, good grief, no stopping us. And we were very open to finding ministries that were a little Avant Garde, a little  different, a little edgier. You know, we didn't want our mom and dad's churches, neither one of us did. And so, I was then at work, one day, a fellow paramedic invited me to her church. And she said, Well, Ken, what are you looking for in a church? And I said, discipleship and Bible study. Man, that's candy to a recruiter from a cult, right? I mean, it's just like bing! Guess what we do? And as if that wasn't enough, I actually said, you know, I'd also wouldn't mind joining a church that meets in a home or something like that too Something a little different. She said, we meet in a living room, and thus began in 1984., my journey into a church that began to unravel and fall apart. I'm still thinking through the reasons why it unraveled. I know we talk about abusive churches a lot,  if this was a church, and it was abusive. As if all of you had some malignant designs on each other because you were all bad, you were in an abusive church, you are all abusers or something. That's not true at all. I'm still circling around this issue after many years of studying it. I find a narcissistic personality behind every abusive church I ever find. There's somebody calling the shots and that person has some very distinct attributes about him. And I'm not going to say a whole lot about those attributes, but I'll just say, our guy had those attributes. And he really, we studied the Bible like crazy. I mean, we were studying Greek and Hebrew and church history and giving. Oh, my goodness, like Monday evening, Wednesday morning, Saturday morning evangelism, Sunday morning worship, and then Sunday afternoon fellowship. And that didn't even count meeting during the week with my discipler, mentor, the person who was supposedly going to help me grow spiritually. So, it really kind of ended up eating up our life. which really, when we first went there, we wanted that, we were looking for a big commitment. We did in that sense want to save the world; we wouldn't have admitted that. But sure, why not? Over the years, the whole thing really went off the cliff. And this gentleman who is leading our church, really through all kinds of issues in his life that were simply undealt with, that he really should have gotten, you know, real therapy for and help he didn't. And the church was the low hanging-ist fruit of finding a social group that could be controlled and could become what is called a narcissistic supply for him. And all of those things working together, ended with us moving in together, and living communally with several large homes in a beautiful neighborhood of Portland. And did you know you can get like 24 people into one large home? It was pretty crazy. It was really communal, is what it was, although for some reason, while we were living that way, we and we were with our kids, too, we ended up having three kids in this group. For some reason, it was important that we qualified our communal living that it was semi communal. I don't know what semi meant, because I wasn't in charge of the thermostat or what cable channels we got or anything like that. And I was told when I would eat and what our family was going to do. So yeah, I'm glad it wasn't communal then I guess because semi communal was really bad enough. Well, everything really fall apart, it fell apart. And we really followed him off the cliff. And it's important to note people in my church hate it when I note this. But it's important to note that I was a card carrying fully supportive, on the bus disciple in this group. I progressed to being a kind of a Junior Leader, a deacon in the group, I was teaching, and I spoke a little bit and I supported the whole thing. And that's the way it was for all of us too. That's something that survivors of spiritual abuse, sometimes we have a tough time owning the fact that we really supported it. I mean, we were on target for it. We did alienate friends, we did ruin every Thanksgiving we went to with mom and dad, at least I did. We have trouble sometimes seeing that, because we do carry vestiges of shame about us, don't we? Shame as a husband as a father, I mean, just so that's difficult to look at. And I realize, coming in here today that you probably carry the vestiges of those really hurtful and harmful feelings and things and thoughts about yourself that I'm still picking through 26 I think 20 I don't know 26 years later, so. So, I get it about that. So, in 1996, I had repented of a lot of personal sins in my life. Biggie, Biggie, Biggie things. I mean, the police watched us and the FBI for a while. So, we were kind of serious criminals, I think. And I repented of a lot of sins. And Sharon and I, our marriage, of course had fallen apart in the group and which is kind of what these groups do. And we got together again, although we've known each other since we were kids, we just started piecing together. And this sounds really strange. But the first encouraging thing about my marriage that we pieced together is establishing the fact that if I left the church, Sharon would go with me. Isn't that sad? It's not because she was so bad or, or I was so good. It's because in these kinds of groups, that's how it can be for a marriage. So yeah, and that was like, wow, she's going with me. I can do anything. And here's something interesting. I haven't even touched my notes yet. And I'm glad I didn't write a lot of notes. Here's something interesting. When I first told God I wanted to leave this church, I felt guilty about it. And I felt that I was scared somebody would find out and overhear my prayer or something, even though I was on a mountain in Portland. But when I first told him I wanted to leave this church, the terms that I expressed that to him were this, I'll give up ministry. I'll give up my dreams of being a pastor. And I will put all of these ridiculous books away that I've been poring over for years, I'll walk away from all of those aspirations I had. And I will live on top of a garage somewhere. Man, I'll live in a packing box, a shipping box, I'll live anywhere, if you'll just let me keep my wife and my children. And if you'll do that, God, I won't bother you anymore with these aspirations of Ken being a pastor or anything like that. That says a lot about me and how I viewed God. It really says a lot about what I felt was a transaction happening that I was failing in the contract. I was going  break my contract with God. And I found that that's very, it's actually consistent with Christians and other cults too. Scientologists, when they leave it, they break what for some of them is a 16-million-year contract that they've signed over to follow it. I know that sounds totally wacky. But the first time you hear it, you kind of what, but yeah, and they decided to break that contract. I lived as if I had a contract with God. And as I left the church with Sharon and our children and the few things that we still had to us. And as we walked out the door, on August 28, at about 3pm 1996, and got in our little car and drove away with the associate pastor yelling at me and the elders all angry, and all of that. We went to a hotel because I was too embarrassed to tell my parents, ugh you were right. I'd alienated them so much. I just couldn't take that too. So, we went to a hotel. And the big question, of course, that I carried, and that took a long time to get around was simply the question, what just happened? I was 24 years old, fresh out of the military, great job as a paramedic, buying a house settling into life having babies and here I am, I'm 36, and I'm checking into a little hotel and afraid to call my parents and I'm really freaked out that they'll find out where I'm at. And, wow, what happened? Well, it's really easy to say now what happened, spiritual abuse happened. My religion, spiritual abuse I've written down as the infliction of an emotional, psychological, and spiritual wounding, that is inflicted on a person within the context of that person's religion. Spiritual abuse is not simply located or limited to Christian churches. Spiritual abuse is the use of a person's ideological, metaphysical, or spiritual beliefs, their religion. It's jumping into that world, and then beginning to corrupt the person's thinking, and the person's reasoning. And in many ways, they develop what's called a false self. And that's spiritual abuse when that happens. Now, along with spiritual abuse, are equally terrible abuses and even more terrible that we're not really here to deal with at this event, but sexual abuse, physical abuse, violence, marital abuse, child abuse, economic abuse, professional abuse, I mean, there are so many ways that this abuse happens, and spiritual abuse simply says that these abuses as terrible as they were happened in the context of my religion. The thing that was supposed to help me avoid that abuse. So that's what happened to me. Okay, so let me give you some red flags of spiritual abuse. And I don't expect as I said that these will, you know, make sense to everybody but I'm going to run through them and I got rid of all of my little explanatory notes of my main notes because I thought you know, Ken, you're saying some details here. But as I understand our group here, and what we're doing here today, you guys have the details, you have it down. I'm just stating this out as a general idea about spiritual abuse and how it looks and how it can look. But as I see looking at the schedule of events and speakers, we're gonna get detailed and you're gonna get more details but I'm going to speak kind of generally. I've got 10 things that I think are that I found to be red flags of spiritual abuse. The first thing I should clear up is who joins an abusive church? Who joins an abusive church? I'm not just being facetious about it, but I'll tell you the answer. Nobody. Nobody, nobody joins a church that's going to wreck their marriage, alienate them from their children, take all their money, take them out of professional advancement and educational advancement that they would like to do, like everybody else wants to. Nobody willingly joins that kind of a group. Of course not. We join groups that promise to meet our deepest needs, that promise to give us the community, the quality relationships we want. When we're young families and young parents, they promised to give us other young families and young parents that share our values so we can grow up together in it. This group promises to give us the things we so desperately want. So that's the group we join. And it's the same thing in the world. You know, wherever you're at with it, people don't join a cult, nobody goes out and says, You know what? I like the simplicity of an all-orange wardrobe. And I especially love the simplicity of a vegetarian diet, and the standing on the corner, yelling at people and trying to get their money. That's just icing on the cake baby. That's for me. Of course, nobody does that. They join a group that communicates to them that those deepest needs and desires of their life are going to be met there. And I suspect that's how you guys either joined., or, if you grew up in one of these abusive churches, what you discovered. Okay, so the red flags, the first one is deceit, deceit. Every cultic group, or abusive group, or abusive church is founded when it begins abusing its members. And again, I got to tell you, even though I'm saying members plural, and church plural, in my head, I got a picture of a guy. And that's a bad guy. He's finishing out a 20-year sentence at Oregon State Penitentiary, as we sit here today, for his badness of felony child sexual assault, finally got caught after like three trials. So, I'm thinking of a guy. And I don't know what you might be thinking of, but it's based in deceit. It's based in deceit. The environment of a hurtful church is purposely unclear. The motives are veiled. The atmosphere is controlled. When I say atmosphere, what I mean is the milieu it's the control of the milieu, what you look at what you see who you're with, what kind of music you hear, where the pastor is, how the pastor stands, what does his pulpit look like? What kind of behaviors do you observe, are allowed and what kinds of ones are not? This is the whole cultural milieu, the context and it's based in deceit, because it's presenting to you a picture of the church that is simply not true. And this is important to note, because this is the aspect of an abusive church that destroys your trust, okay? It's the very beginning, realizing, and I hate to put it this way, but realizing you were tricked. And that is a violation of your trust, which, wow, hits you hard. Lose trust in God, lose trust in religion, lose trust in your Bible, lose trust in your friends, your spouse, your religion. And worst of all, you lose trust in God, and you're not sure if you got tricked into the whole ball of wax. So, the first thing I find is deceit with these groups. The second thing and this is not a progressive order, it's just kind of a 10 as they occurred to me. The second thing is isolation. Abusive churches and toxic groups depend on isolating their members from the other's. Moms and dads, brothers and sisters, best buddies from high school, kids you grew up with, other Christians. I mean, the support that could be a support network for you, the abusive church moves toward isolating you away from that and diminishing the importance and the significance of those relationships, to where maybe You'll spend Thanksgiving with your church family, those folks that really love you. And you'll tell your mom and your dad, I'm not going to be able to make it home. Maybe you won't go to the normal Christmas gathering that you've been to all of these years, because you know what? Pastor's teaching of complete study through the book of Mark over Christmas break. That's not something I want to miss. That isolation serves a much deeper purpose than simply showing the power of leadership. The reward and punishments as a system that take place in an abusive church can only take place if you have no outside influences. The abusive leader does not want you to be able to go have a cup of coffee with your high school buddy, and say, well, you'd never believe it. Actually, I'm tithing 30%, which was pretty tough for a new guy and a new paramedic, and with kids and everything, but I don't know, what do you think of that? Well, after my friend got done slapping me he would, he would say something like Ken, wake up, wake up. This is not right. How can this be right? They're rich, and they're making you poor. That kind of discussion and reaction is poison to the leaders and the leader of an abusive church. So, the isolation has to happen. The reason it's important is because you do not become completely pliable until you are effectively isolated, okay? And the way it happens is not through deriding and discouraging you from your present or your relationships or things important to you. It's also through loving you within the group into such a way that you can say, well, maybe my needs will be met here. And it becomes emotionally very important to you that those needs are met and that you're okay with everybody in that group. And you begin making decisions based on the underlying commitment you have to stay good with the group. Isolation is important to these to these groups. Another one – elitism. Elitism. Just the idea of compared to other Christians compared to other churches, compared to other groups, this is a place where it's done right. You might hear the translation of their Bibles criticize; you might hear their pastors criticize. You know, well, what kind of church do you think that must be? They got a woman pastor, right? Don't throw anything at me. I was just using that as an example. So, this elitism begins to happen within these groups. You're actually told, while you're experiencing the worst life you can imagine you're actually told that you're a Green Beret for Jesus. I mean, you're actually in the best group, and you are better and you're going to be better, and you probably are going to save the world. Elitism. Fourth, I see that the independence the freedom of thought begins to be controlled by the group. Nobody likes the word brainwashing, and it's not a good word at all to use in the academic world. It's called thought reform. That is through a system of manipulations and emotional controls, the very way that you as a member think, is changed. That happens partially through being told you're more special than everyone else. And you're elite. Your pastors the best pastor. He's the most like King David. Isn't that something? We really did say that. Yeah. Which if I would have really thought about it, I would have gone, oh man head for the hills. That is not exactly the best person to be like, bless him. But yeah, okay. So, the elitism hits and the independence your ability to think independently gets goofed up. That's why it's hard when you leave a group to think straight. It's hard to think straight. It's hard to pick up a book. I went to the store and stared at the section of Levi's because I needed a new pair of jeans. And it was just months after leaving. I stared at those things. Man, there's like a million different kinds anyway, right? And just trying to make a decision about it. And I walked out after an hour, couldn't decide. It didn't quite take an hour but I also walked out of the supermarket. I could not decide between white and brown eggs. And of course, that wasn't a thing from my cult. It's just my decision making and my trust in myself had gotten so out of shape that at moments I couldn't even control I would be paralyzed and couldn't not think straight. That's generally not a good quality in a paramedic. But there it was, and I managed to survive. So yeah, the independence of thought is hid. And I call that really a freedom of conscience. The idea of being able to believe what I believe and know what I believe and own what I believe in these churches, of course, gets violated. Fifth, I see that the member's private life is violated. Okay, violated, it can take place through simply giving reports to those over you. How are you doing this week? How's your time with God going? How are those memory verses going for you? Can I review you? Are you planning on making it to this? How is this going? Your private life begins to be dismantled. How's your marriage, Kne? How's your marriage? Well, don't just say fine. I mean, how are you doing? When was the last fight you had and, that's stuff that you, you bring up for help and assistance with somebody you trust. It's not something that the bosses ask you. That's your marriage. So, there's a violation. And then of course, confession, the very demand that you as a member, confess your sin a lot, often. And that sin ends up making its way up the chain. And in some churches, they actually write them down. I think the Bible says something about that somewhere, keeping a list, you know. But the confession is a very important part of it, because it involves a public shaming, and an admission of your unworthiness and of your failure. When I went to court, which, you know, 19 years or so, after leaving my cult, I was on the witness stand. And it was very important to the defense attorney to discredit me as a witness, probably because I'm a pastor, because my daughters had been some of the children that this man had abused. But also, I had studied cultic dynamics and whatnot. And so, he thought to himself, well, I don't really want Ken up there. And it was amazing. They remembered sins that I had confessed in 1984. Yeah, and now I'm a 54-year-old man who's, you know, Grace of God moved on from a lot of things in my life. And now I'm faced with 24-year-old Ken with his totally goofed up compromises. And since they remembered it, they told their lawyer, and he nailed me on it in the courtroom, everything from well, I just won't get into it here, but just everything they really it down. And it didn't work. Because when you've left a group like this and faced things, who cares who knows whatever? They thought they were going to make my church maybe fire me or something like, Oh, if they knew what we know about him. That wasn't exactly the case at all. Another red flag is family. How the church treats family relationships. The two that I'll just mention is, first of all, the marital relationship. I've said a couple of things about that already. But also, the relationship of children in the family unit. False teachers and abusive leaders get right to work in fusing marriages, especially young marriages, with issues of dominance, with fake communication with the concept of husbands discipling their wives, or maybe wives discipling their husbands. I mean, I've been to weddings where the pastor, in giving his wedding speech, reminded the young groom that he was now the authority in his bride's life, and he would need the answers. She needed to come to Him for wisdom, no longer her father. Isn't that weird? And I'm thinking to myself, good grief. This is a kid. And he's being told that I mean, I know, he's not even taking responsibility for his own life, because he's 20 years old or whatever. And he also now is responsible for the life of the most precious human being in his life, his wife, and he's set up for failure. Abusive churches hurt marriages, in many, many different ways. And they also hurt the relationships between children and their parents. The healthy connecting, and bonding that should be happening between a child and his mom, especially his mom, but a child and his mom and their dad, in the earliest years of life, often are disrupted in the abusive church, and it hurts because you can't get those years back. The reason this happens is because narcissistic leaders hate dyadic relationships. Strange word: what I mean, there is this, they are jealous of any other two people in their world, having a relationship that is outside of their control, criticism, ability to step right into and mess with anytime they want. They resent these relationships, and they resent the relationships often between parents and their children. That's how it was in my church. You know, he was just jealous. He was just jealous. There's a distinct fear of displeasing leaders in abusive churches. Members end up living their lives with the consideration before they do anything of you know, anything, go out to a movie or whatever. They think, how would pastor so and so feel about this? And would I be in trouble or not? Is this okay or not? And they make decisions based on that. A terrible fear of leadership because of what they can do to you once you've been isolated by them. Then the issue of grace, this is where I could talk for like 10 hours. And I probably wouldn't even touch the bottom of it. The violation of grace that happens in abusive groups and churches is absolutely criminal. If grace is even spoken of, it is relegated to the theology pages of a book to explain the disposition of God, when He graciously and nicely presented Christ in such a way that you and I can believe and escape judgment and sin and, you know, be saved. And that's it. But the issue of graciousness in the church, man that is not just twisted or perverted, it's absent. Grace is absent. That's the number one kind of theology that I find people when they leave these churches and begin to put their lives together  and heal the number one thing that blows them away, if they're in that space, is grace. It's the missing theological point of all of these abusive groups. And finally, leaving the group is traumatic, it's hard to leave. It's not just hard to leave, it's traumatic on you to leave. Long before you leave the group, the message is made clear to you, what will happen to you if you leave the group, what will be said about you by your best friends if you leave the group, how you will be thought of if you leave the group, how you will fail in life if you leave the group. Long before you walk out the door, you see it lived out before your very eyes and how your friends are treated when they leave. And you think to yourself, I don't want that to happen to me. So, the trauma begins before you even leave it. But once you leave it, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, the anxiety attacks, the fear of crowds, the fear of people, the inability to keep commitments you make to meet somebody or to do something, the showing up late for an event or a church or something so that you don't have to talk and then the leaving early, so that you don't have to talk, all of those behaviors,  those all come about because of the trauma that you experienced of your soul being mashed up in a meat grinder by a church. Okay, I've got just a few minutes to say just a few things. How do we begin to heal from this? What does healing look like? How do we begin the healing process? I've got just a few things to say. And the first thing is that the healing process absolutely involves a renewal of trust. It might take a year; it might take 10 years. I suppose I'm 26 years out and I'm still kind of working through it. But trust has been violated. Something that needs to be earned was violated. And you don't trust churches, you don't trust people. You struggle with trusting God. You struggle with opening the Bible, it triggers so much. I mean, so much of what happened to you is centered around somebody tapping a Bible while they were doing it to you. And worst of all, you don't trust yourself. I couldn't trust myself to buy a pair of pants. And I'm raising kids. And I'm giving life support to patients; couldn't trust myself to just make a decision about buying a stupid dozen eggs in Safeway and going home. Your trust in yourself. And if your trust is violated on even those small things, imagine the big things. How do I know how to lead my family? How would I ever know a church that's good or not? How am I ever going to trust another pastor? I trusted that when I trusted that church I trusted that doctrine. I trusted those things and I failed. I should be here and I'm not. I should have this much retirement I don't. I should have this kind of house, I don't, I should have this education, I don't, my wife and I should be experiencing this life we're not. So, trust is violated. And so, the first thing in recovery is to begin to consider the need for trust and make some small choices to restore trust. I'm a very literal guy. When I say small choices, I mean, like, get out of bed. So far, so good. I made it. And that's what I mean is to begin to make good choices, and to establish trust. And of course, that involves people. And that's really the second thing of building back trust is kindhearted people. You need a relationship with people who get it. It's best if those people are people that were in your group with you, they get it, and you can stay up all night telling stories. And that's good. But you need people in some manner. And it can be a handshake and a hello. And that's it for now, no problem, you've done something. But we need human beings to restore trust in human beings. If you're trying to help people recover from these things, this is the most important aspect, that you are a person of integrity and kindness and you stick your neck out for the person that you're wanting to help. And you understand that they don't trust you. And they might not for a long, long time. Okay. And then finally, you need information. You need solid information. I went back to seminary, and I was working on a doctorate, it was on some boring, boring subject that nobody has a right to really take anybody's time. But I switched halfway into studying cults and abusive churches. And all I could find was basically other than a couple of good books, all I could find was devotional materials, or telling me why I needed to be nicer to King Saul when he throws a spear at me. You know what I mean? So, you need, you need education. You need to learn the dynamics of thought reform, of cults, of how psychologically things happen that hurt you. And I had to go into the kind of the secular academic realm to start researching and putting that together, and you need that information. And finally, I got like a couple of seconds. Finally, if you achieve a bit of an education with people, you'll develop the vocabulary to explain what I started out saying what happened to me? You will develop a common language so that you can show up here and get to telling your stories and sharing your heart a lot quicker and you can be understood and empathized with a lot better because you learn a common vocabulary. And over time, you develop the words, and you understand them and you're able to share and to listen to your fellow survivors as you heal. Please bow your heads if you would let me and grant me the respect of letting me pray for you. Gracious King. dear King, Shepherd. Every human being in this room is broken. And every human being everywhere is broken. We're here admitting it. So, we ask you to carry us don't just help us along don't just help things get a little better. Absolutely 100%, save and deliver us. Even now, we want to have a good weekend. But God even now, wherever we're at with this horrible issue, meet us, deliver us, give us trust. Give us good people and teach us father teach us for we are here to learn. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. JULIE ROYS  44:25 Well, again, that's Ken Garrett speaking at RESTORE 2023 which just concluded on October 14. Next week, I'll be publishing my podcast with theologian Scot McKnight and his daughter, Laura Behringer, on their new book, Pivot: The Priorities, Practices and Powers That Can Transform Your Church Into a Tov Culture. That's an awesome book and it's sure to be an awesome podcast, so be looking for that next week. Then on November 8, I'll be releasing a talk from RESTORE by Carson Weitnauer on disillusionment and hope. This is an extremely vulnerable and moving talk where Carsten recounts his profound disillusionment when he discovered that someone he thought was a hero of the faith turned out to be a fraud. That hero was Ravi Zacharias. And when Carson discovered the truth about Ravi, he was a director at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. This is such a painfully honest yet hopeful talk, and one you won't want to miss. I also want to mention that the videos of these talks are all available at my YouTube channel. A lot of conferences charge for their videos, but we've decided to make ours available for free because we don't want anyone to miss out on this valuable content because of lack of finances. But these videos do cost us to shoot and edit. So, if you appreciate this content and you're able to pitch in, would you please donate to The Roys Report so we can continue this important service. To do so just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. 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