Podcasts about restore conference

Guest Bios Show Transcript What happens when people start questioning what they were taught about Jesus—and discover the church might be the problem, not their faith? In his talk from the Restore Conference, author and New Testament scholar Scot McKnight reframes the controversial topic of “deconstruction” as a faithful pursuit of Christ rather than a departure from belief. McKnight challenges common misconceptions about deconstruction, often mislabeled as rebellion or “exvangelical angst.” Drawing on his recent book Invisible Jesus, co-authored with musician and pastor Tommy Preson Phillips, McKnight shares insights from those rethinking their faith—not to abandon Jesus, but to more firmly grasp authentic faith in Him.

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

In this episode I discuss the recent talk by Neylane McBaine at the Restore Conference in Utah with over 4,000 people. She outlined various questions and positions we could take related to the patriarchy, and I mentioned where I think I am at and share some of my thoughts about that. I also comment about how asking questions in the Church is important to moving forward. I bring in a few other topics as well! Listen in! RESOURCES: The Salt Lake Tribune Article: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/09/15/lds-feminist-author-seeks-way-blur/   Sheri Dew's Book: Worth the Wrestle: https://www.amazon.com/Worth-Wrestle-Sheri-Dew-ebook https://www.deseretbook.com/product/P5155690.html   Utah Women & Leadership Project: www.utwomen.org A Bolder Way Forward: www.abolderwayforward.org

Send us a Positive Review!Join Valerie and fellow podcaster Aubrey Chaves of the Faith Matters podcast as together they discuss the vision and purpose of the Restore Conference. A common belief among these two brave and compassionate women? True growth and connection is about being welcome and accepted wherever you are on your faith journey.  No fine print. In their unique ways each are involved in efforts for their LDS and surrounding fellow travelers. Listen in to hear why they are so committed to this work! Support the Show.**More sensitive or more psychologically advanced themes will be saved for Friday "Exclusive" episodes for subscribers only. This is in an effort to protect the content creators from being mischaracterized by consumers who are not familiar with the body of their work or the healing intent of this podcast. MORE LATTER DAY STRUGGLES RESOURCES:TAP HERE TO LEARN HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FRIDAY EPISODESHAVING TROUBLE WITH YOUR SUBSCRIPTION? Email: support@buzzsprout.comCONSULTING: Interested in doing individual or couples work with Valerie or a member of her trained team? Time-limited packages with Valerie and extended work with her team of coaches and therapists are available ⁠⁠here!⁠ SUPPORT GROUPS: Next support group starts Tuesday Afternoons This November. To register click on this link⁠.⁠CLASSES: Discover ways, learn new concepts, and build skills that will help you grow and strengthen your relationships. Visit the class library.SUPPORT: Like what you're hearing at Latter Day Struggles Podcast? Make a one-time donation to ...

Jared Halverson is an associate professor of Ancient Scripture, working at BYU after 24 years of serving in the Church Educational System. Jared also hosts the popular YouTube channel Unshaken I wanted to speak to Jared to learn more about how to become a great student and teacher of the scriptures. I've always been so impressed and inspired by the talented teachers in the Church, and Jared is definitely one of the best. Some highlights from this episode include how to help someone navigate a faith crisis, the one principle that transformed how Jared teaches, and how Jared manages to spend hours teaching at Unshaken without burning out!--You can find more of Jared's work at the following links:- https://www.youtube.com/c/unshaken- https://youtu.be/oIVasSK0WDY?feature=sharedFollow For All The Saints on social media for updates and inspiring content:www.instagram.com/forallthesaintspodhttps://www.facebook.com/forallthesaintspod/For All The Saints episodes are released every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVDUQg_qZIU&list=UULFFf7vzrJ2LNWmp1Kl-c6K9Qhttps://open.spotify.com/show/3j64txm9qbGVVZOM48P4HS?si=bb31d048e05141f2https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/for-all-the-saints/id1703815271If you have feedback or any suggestions for topics or guests, connect with Ben & Sean via hello@forallthesaints.org or DM on InstagramConversations to Refresh Your Faith.For All The Saints podcast was established in 2023 by Ben Hancock to express his passion and desire for more dialogue around faith, religious belief, and believers' perspectives on the topics of our day. Tune into For All The Saints every Monday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.Follow For All The Saints on social media for daily inspiration.

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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBdqZj2_gHA Can a church that's had a history of being toxic transform its culture and become truly healthy? Or, are churches like this doomed to repeat their history, despite efforts to change? This edition of The Roys Report features a talk from our recent Restore Conference by Laura Barringer. Laura and her father, theologian Scot McKnight, co-authored two best-selling books on identifying toxic church cultures and reforming them. Their first book, A Church Called Tov, identifies how many church cultures are failing in their mission to glorify God and be truly “tov”—the Hebrew word for good—and instead are harming people. Laura and Scot's second book, titled Pivot, deals with transformation. Can church structures, policies, and even relationships that were once oppressive turn into something tov, or good? This was the topic of Laura's talk at Restore in which she shared details and compelling stories of churches who have successfully made this change. Doing so is not easy, Laura says, but it's worth it. With more and more churches and ministries being exposed as abusive or corrupt, this topic is extremely relevant. Sometimes, after a bad leader is removed, churches want to change but don't know how. This talk helps chart the way. Guests 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 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

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

We're back sharing a favorite session from last year's Restore Conference. In this session, Adam Miller retells the parable of the prodigal son and a highlight from the Children's book series, 'Frog and Toad", to re-examine our relationship to love. It is our nature to think we have to work hard to earn love, and we constantly tell ourselves stories about what we have to do to earn it. But if God's love is constant, then these stories are elaborate distractions. We feel guilt and shame whenever we try to earn love that is already given. We always appreciate Adam for his wisdom, but also for the way he presents it. This session feels like a meditation that allows us to see the worries we carry that we are unworthy of love and release them, which God invites us to do. And, as Adam ends his session, “While [this] is still very hard work, it is work of an entirely different kind.” 

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. 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

Today we're sharing another fantastic session from our Restore Conference last October, this time from Lisa Miller. Lisa is a clinical psychologist and professor at Columbia University who specializes in the science of spirituality. She's also the author of the popular 2021 book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.We often think of science and spirituality as separate ways of knowing that don't really speak to each other, where science focuses on what we can see and empirically observe, while spirituality focuses on the unseen. Lisa's research bridges these worlds, building an empirical case for the reality of spirituality and its benefits across the lifespan, and showing how science can be a “witness” to spirituality. She believes we all have an innate, in-born capacity for spirituality, or “relational, transcendent awareness”. Individuals who cultivate a strong spiritual core are less likely to experience despair, addiction, and depression throughout the life course, and a spiritual core is correlated with growth and resilience after facing challenges.We really loved Lisa's session as well as her beautiful spirit. As we got to know her in person at Restore, we realized what a special person she is and felt the love she has for our community. We think you'll be able to feel that as you listen to her talk. 

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 https://youtu.be/WuE4Gfre8b8Why is church after church succumbing to corruption and false doctrine? Yes, it's the result of greed, immorality, and a lust for power. But we've had those vices forever. So, why is there an epidemic of corruption in the church now? Author, pastor, and church planter, Lance Ford, who's worked inside pastor training networks for decades, answers that question with a line reminiscent of Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign motto: “It's the system, stupid.” Lance explains more in this enlightening edition of The Roys Report, featuring his session from our recent Restore Conference. Lance says the system of leadership that's been imported into the church from corporate America is what's producing our abysmal results. This system has been wholesale embraced by Christians, but there's nothing biblical about it. It's what Jesus called the way of the Gentiles. And unless we start to dismantle this godless system and replace it with a godly one, the church will continue to be plagued by scandals and spiritual abuse. Over decades, Lance has identified the toxic leadership models that have been imported into the church and he's sought a different path. As one who has designed unique training systems being used by networks, seminaries, and leaders throughout the world, he is speaking from a heart of love for pastors and the church. This is an extremely illuminating talk, essential for anyone who cares about the health of the church and the proper care of those in it. 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 UnLeader, The Missional Quest, and The Starfish and the Spirit. His next book, The Atlas Factor, will be released in February. Lance holds a master's degree in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. Learn more at LanceFordBooks.com. Show Transcript SPEAKERSLANCE FORD LANCE FORD  00:00You know, I’m sure that a lot of the speakers will do this, and it’ll be appropriate. But I just really want to thank Julie and her team, not only for just putting this together but for the writers on staff. The hard, dangerous work that they do. Because let me tell you, if you’re a demon right now, in the church, these are some dangerous people. Okay? So, hell fears what we’re doing here. But I am convinced that what we have seen over the last few years, the exposures of leaders, and you know all the names, and many of you come from situations where the names behind your stories aren’t in the headlines. But make no mistake about it, the Holy Spirit is shaking that which can be shaken, so that things that can’t be shaken will remain. Okay? I am convinced that Aslan is on the move. And I’m convinced that Jesus is standing at the door knocking. And we probably heard that verse growing up a lot, how Jesus is standing knocking at the door of your heart. That’s not the context of that verse in Revelation three. He’s standing on the outside of the door of the church, knocking to get in. And the question should be asked, Why is he on the other side of the door? But I believe that we are in a moment, and we are in a time where the Lord is raising so many voices up to speak against this stuff. And not only to just expose it, but to truly bring restoration. Amen? To restore the church to the hands of Jesus into the headship of Jesus.   LANCE FORD  02:13 Some of you are old enough in here to remember Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign. You remember James Carville? So, Carville ran the campaign, and he came up with this campaign slogan kind of by accident, because he had just posted it in the campaign headquarters for the workers to kind of stay focused. He knew that Clinton’s this guy from Arkansas and Arkansas wasn’t really taken that seriously. I’m from Texas, so I still don’t take Arkansas seriously. But, you know, this, I mean, you can’t become president from Arkansas. And nobody knew who Clinton was. And so there was an uphill battle, and Carville comes up with this little moniker that he thought, our best chance is if we can get the American people to focus on one bottom line. And how many of you remember what that moniker was? It’s the economy stupid. And that, really, Clinton ran on that, and he won. Now, as I have listened over the last few years, to so many podcasts, and blogs and stories, and read articles, I constantly find myself doing it this week, I was listening to a podcast. And I’ll hear myself out loud, say a little riff on James Carville’s, It’s the economy stupid. And I’ll hear the stories and I’ll go it’s the system stupid. It’s the system. And so, we have this system of leadership that has been imported straight into the church, that almost wholesale is received and accepted and run with, but few people question the system.   LANCE FORD  04:16 Edwards Deming said, every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it produces. So, when I hear so many of the leadership abuse stories, it should not surprise us. The system is perfectly designed to get the stuff that its getting. It’s a perfect garden to grow what is growing. The prevailing leadership systems in most churches of our day are not only not rooted in the words and the ways of Jesus in the epistles, they come from what Jesus called the ways of the Gentiles. What the Old Testament prophets would have called Babylonian or Egyptian. Just read Jeremiah in Ezekiel, and some of those prophets, and see some of the metaphors that they use that always flipped it back to Egyptian or Babylonian. Well, in the time of Jesus, when Jesus says the Gentiles, he’s speaking systemically, he’s speaking about a system. And so, over the last 30 to 35 years in particular, we have sewed to the wind, and we’re now reaping the whirlwind of the corrupt seeds of a false doctrine, and I’m going to call it that a doctrine of leadership. And see that’s the thing is, we don’t call it a doctrine. We don’t think about it as a doctrine, but make no mistake, it very much is a doctrine in the church today.   LANCE FORD  05:49 Now, you’ve already figured out Julie put me right behind sweet Ken. Thanks, Julie. So, it’s the typical, you already figured is good copy/bad cop, okay? And I don’t want to be a bad cop. I want to be nice. I want to be sweet. I don’t want to come across as a jerk. I spoke some of these types of things just a few years ago at a conference, and as I showed up to this particular conference, I was wondering, why did they invite me here? because they had me speak on leadership to a thousand Missouri pastors. And it was kind of like the experience for me, was kind of like Marty McFly on the stage when he was playing. And remember how the crowd just looked at him? That was my experience in Missouri to a thousand Missouri pastors. I was just glad to get out of there.   LANCE FORD  07:10 Ivan Illich was a Catholic priest and theologian, and he was asked what’s the most radical way to change a society? Is it through violent revolution? Or is it through gradual reform? And he said, If you want to change your culture, if you want to change society, you have to tell an alternative story. And so, what he was talking about is what sociologists and anthropologists would call a system story. Because every one of us, every one of us, every group, every tribe, every family has what we would call a system story. A system story is really your paradigm. It’s the way you see things. And the irony about a system story is it’s not necessarily what you believe at as far as core truths. It’s about habitual behavior. And it’s tied to deep seated narratives. And when we are looking at systems story of leadership, especially in groups, people tend to behave in the moment, according to a leadership system story that’s been imported into the church, not necessarily from what they believe the scriptures say. And so, the system story of a group will override even the claims of what they say they believe to be true. I mean, if you ever listened to any podcast or quotes from Mark Driscoll, one of his favorite monikers is, it’s all about Jesus. Exactly. Okay. Because he operates from a system story. He operates from a particular leadership system story. Jesus told the Pharisees; you nullify the Word of God by your traditions. He’s talking about their system story. He said, you search the scriptures daily, but you don’t come to me. Why? Because this particular system story overrides, it's the way they look at things. And so your system story influences everything, especially in churches. Our system stories influence our vocabulary, the way we say things. How many of you grew up with this? I grew up in church and grew up in the South. You grew up with this.   LANCE FORD  10:00 That’s a demonic little nursery rhyme. Why? Because this ain’t the church, Jack. That’s not the church. That’s the church. The folks are the church, the church isn’t a place you go to. It’s not an event. It’s not a location. It’s a people. And so, when we start thinking that church is a place, we’ve immediately got the system wrong, because I love my grandpa, he used to always say, he didn’t call it the church, he call it the church house. Guy Ford had that right back in 1965. He had it right. It’s just a building. It’s a sheep shed. But these are system stories. Our system stories influence our power structures within the church. It influences the way that we look at accountability. And even though we read Scripture, we read the Scripture over and over throughout the New Testament, it really emphasizes a mutual submission, a mutual accountability. In most of these abusive, in all of these abusive leadership systems, they’ll say they have accountability. But the accountability only runs one way. It’s a one-way street. But that’s not the system story of the New Testament. We have systems stories of titles that completely conflict with what Jesus said, that we use every day in our churches. And I’m going to talk a little bit about that I can’t help myself, I’m going to talk a little bit about that in a few minutes.   LANCE FORD  11:39 One of the things I like to do when I’ll start to work with a church that says that they want some consulting, or some coaching or help in a transitioning, is I’ll take them through some assessments and a few things. But one of things I always like to do right off the bat is look at their website. And so, I’ll look at church websites, and I’ll pull up the staff or the team, and I like to look to see how they list the team. And I’ve counted it up for usually it’s about 95% of churches. And you could do this on your own, you could just start arbitrarily looking at church websites. About 95% list the staff by hierarchy. Very rarely will you ever find a church that lists the staff alphabetically. I found a church came to me a couple of months ago, our team is going to start working with them in January. And they said that they’ve been trying to transition to more of a servant leadership type of style. And they’ve been trying to make inroads. Now I went and looked at their website. The first person listed on their team was the custodian. I thought, hey, you’re ahead of the game already. I mean because what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to get their thinking straight. But the language and the vocabulary that we use in our churches, and in our systems has a lot to do with what constantly gets recalibrated even in our hearts. Jesus says to the Gentiles, as we said, or says to His disciples, here’s the way that the Gentiles do it. And you remember the context to that you remember, James and John, I don’t know if it was their idea, or their mom’s idea. But Mama James and John goes to Jesus, right? And says, Hey, could you know my boys, you know, be Secretary of the Navy and, you know, and Speaker of the House. And you know when you get this thing going. And you remember that, and the other disciples, they get ticked off about it. Now, I have a theory about that. I think they got ticked off because James and John thought about it first. And because they didn’t get their mamas to show up first, because these guys were jockeying for position just as much because there’s another occasion where Jesus has to do the same thing. But he calls them to him, and he sits him down, and he says, Hey, I know we’ve all been raised in the shadow of temple power. We have been raised under oppression, a Roman hierarchy. And I know that you’ve never seen any type of government or leadership other than power and above. I know you’ve never seen that before, but that’s the way the Gentiles do it. It will not be so among you. We read that text just so quickly, and I think Jesus probably emphasized that like a daddy sitting down with his kids. It will not be so among you. But we need to ask why is it so very so among us today? Because that style of top down, heavy handed, over lording leadership is exactly what’s in the church. It’s had us by the throat for a long time now. And please hear this. We typically pay attention or get upset when a new headline comes up about some leadership abuse. But here’s the thing, and it’s easy to point out, it’s easy to highlight and put the spotlight on very heavy-handed abusers. But here’s the deal; the everyday MO of the prevailing leadership system in the vast majority of our churches, even among those leaders that don’t come across as mean or abusive, they’re still operating under systems that functionally cause an elite individual or group to lord over others. And this was the thing Jesus forbade. The Gentiles exercise dominion, some translations say. Other translations say they lord over one another. And that’s probably really the proper terminology from the Greek, they lord over one another. And we know there’s only one Lord.   LANCE FORD  16:44 So, when you start breaking down some of the way that we do leadership, here’s the thing. Once again, for the church, for the church, it’s to be different. And so, when Jesus comes to tell an alternative story, an alternative system story, he does. And it’s the story of the kingdom. And so constantly, you see these parables Jesus is giving, that just flips, our brains just flips the script. It’s the opposite of the way that we normally do things or the way that we, hey, if you want to be first, let me tell you how to shoot up the ladder, become last. What?! The greatest will be the least, the best will be the servant of all. And make no mistake, the word servant to us doesn’t have much impact. Back in the day, in their day, it had a lot of impact. Because nobody wanted to be a servant. When you’re doing the dirtiest jobs all the time. So, when Jesus washes the feet of his disciples that was scandalous. When he says, “This is the way, this is the way to do it. But when you look in our churches today, most of the people at the top with rank and title, how in the world can you convince me you’re the servant of all, when you have more perks and privileges than anybody else on the team? I mean, you really think Jesus had a donkey parking place for himself, you know, at the front of the temple? Why is it that there’s only one or two people on a staff on a church staff that seem to have the competency or the adulthood enough to be able to set their own schedule? Where does this stuff come from? Now it’s normative in the world for someone to unilaterally have the power to fire somebody. Where in the world do we think that that should be in the church? See, because if I’m a church leader, I can’t control the business world. I can’t control the corporate world, but I can do everything in my power to try to structure and operate this thing according to the way that Jesus in the epistle writer said to do it. Okay? So, if I have unilateral power to fire somebody, that is a violent act. It’s a violent act. And some of you are in here and that’s your story. That’s what happened to you. Because if I do that to you, I’ve affected your entire family. I’ve affected good chance where you live. And I’ve caused you to have to uproot because you’re going to have to go somewhere else and find another job. I’ve affected your spouse; I’ve affected your children. They’re going to be uprooted from their friends and their schools and the stability that they had. It’s a violent act. No one person should have the power to do that. And there is no scriptural menu whatsoever that gives anybody the authority to do that. See, that’s lording over somebody else. I’m acting as lord because I’m affecting your life in a significant way. No one person should have the power to do that.   LANCE FORD  20:33 This is about as quiet as it got when I was speaking to all those Missouri pastors that day. No one should have the power to dictate another team member’s schedule, that’s paternalistic. See, these two items alone are proof of the power of a system story. Because we say we don’t believe that anybody should do that. And yet our systems operate in that way. We constantly accept things that are a direct dis to Jesus. Let me give you one here. Okay. So, I’m basically trying to pull from like three books right now in 35 minutes. I feel like Carrot Top up here. Okay, look at this, okay. Look at this. Now, there’s nothing about me and Carrot Top that have anything in common, right? But I’m just going to try to pull a few things out and just try to wake us up to the systems issue of the leadership system that we have. So, Matthew 23, Jesus says, But as for you do not be called rabbi. For only one is your teacher and you’re all brothers and sisters, and that’s the key right there. You’re all brothers and sisters. We are siblings. The church is a group of siblings. A church staff is a group of siblings. He says, and do not call anyone on earth your father for only one is your father who is in heaven. And do not be called leaders. For only one is your leader that is Christ. But the greatest of you shall be your servant. And then he says whoever humbles himself will be exalted. But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. Don’t you know the scribes and Pharisees always regretted when they showed up to a Jesus talk? Oh, no, it’d be great. I heard this guy’s really exciting. He has great TED talks. And Jesus always gets them. Oh, you scribes and Pharisees that showed up! You hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven for men, for you do not enter in yourself, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. And that’s the issue is these leadership systems literally shut the Kingdom of Heaven off from people. They shut down people’s giftings they shut down people’s callings. They alienate the anointings that people have had been given, the wisdom and the experience so often, because you can’t speak up because you don’t have the same title, or you don’t have the same rank in the room. That’s the way leadership works. We often tend to view the Pharisees as religious fundamentalist that were obsessed with the law of Moses. But we seldom consider or realize that Jesus’ emphasis on their hypocrisy in setting themselves over their brethren. And when you look at what Jesus constantly was bringing up to the scribes and Pharisees. He’s saying you’re setting yourself over your brethren.   LANCE FORD  23:50 You know, I remember watching the documentary on Hillsong. I think there was two of them, actually. And I remember one of them, or maybe even both of them pointed out how that the Hillsong, New York and I think most of them are this way, but like the front seats were saved for the celebrities and everything. Jesus talks about this. This is stuff Jesus talks about, directly, and we just ignore him. And you know, that’s elementary. That’s just elementary Christianity stuff right there. Elementary Christianity is first off, just do what Jesus said. Just obey Him. And so, when Jesus says don’t call yourself this, don’t call yourself that, don’t call yourself this, don’t call yourself that, He is specifically forbidding rank-based titles and practices that degrade the beauty of our sibling status. He says it’s a blockade to the kingdom. So, we have these totally accepted titles. Senior Pastor. Yeah, it gets quiet in the room because we think that’s normal. Where did that come from?   LANCE FORD  25:10 Listen, when I’ll get in little debates with guys, imagine that. And they’ll say, Well, you prove to me from the scriptures that a woman can be a senior pastor. And I’ll say you prove to me from the scripture that a man can be a senior pastor. We just think this stuff’s normal. And then about 20-25 years ago, there was Robin to the Batman senior pastor showed up; the dynamic duo. And the second part of this was the onset of the executive pastor. And you remember that? Ephesians 4, Apostle, prophet, executive shepherd and teacher and executive pastor. Could you hardly come up with a more hierarchical executive pastor? I’m here to execute. You may be next, right? Where do we get this stuff? I know where we get it. Okay, but we import it straight in. And most churches, they think it’s well, it’s just, that’s just normal. You got to have somebody managing things.   LANCE FORD  26:34 Well, that’s really interesting, because this is where we started getting into the evolution of leadership. Interestingly enough, the word leadership, believe it or not, it’s a pretty new term. It’s a term here’s how new it is. I started about three years ago, well it’s been about four years ago, now, I was working on a new book. And I wanted to kind of research the history. I kind of got this, this burr under my saddle to research the history of the word leadership. And I remember, I’ve  got this little office out in the woods that I built. It’s a little cabin. And I remember the moment I went over to my bookshelf, and I have a 1955 version of the Oxford Universal dictionary. It is this thick, I mean, it I would have liked her brought it, but I would have had to pay for extra on the plane, probably because it weighs so much. So, it’s this giant dictionary, and it has expansive definitions on words that it’s working with. I went to look up the word leadership 1955 Oxford Dictionary went to look up the word leadership, I could not find it. I could not find it. I finally found like an eight-word sentence using the word leadership as a definition for leader, but there was no definition for leadership in 1955 in the Oxford Dictionary. In 1915, Webster’s Dictionary the word leadership is not to be found at all. It’s not there. You start looking back to the earliest dictionaries, the earliest dictionaries that had the word leadership was the mid-1800s. And then there weren’t even any books with the word leadership in the title until the very end of the 1800s. And we’re talking about a very few at that point. Where leadership really came on was in the early 1900s, as the Industrial Revolution kicked on. And as these giant factories started coming up, that operated on quotas and clocks. And so the management system was instilled. And actually, there’s a guy named Frederick Winslow Taylor from Bethlehem Steel, that is credited as really the father of modern management. He wrote a book called The Scientific Art of Management. And basically, bottom line to it was what Taylor was saying was there’s two kinds of people. There’s thinkers and there’s doers and most people are the doers. Most of them are too incompetent to think on their feet. So, he created a Management Worker system so that the managers told workers when to do what, how to do it, when to start, and when to stop. And Taylorism, as it’s called, started moving straight into the corporate leadership structures throughout the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. And there wasn’t even still a lot of books even with the term leadership until the 1950s. And a few more started coming into the 60s. Today, it’s everywhere. It’s a $50 billion industry,, leadership is.   LANCE FORD  30:31 Now when the Church Growth Movement started in the late 1960s, and the idea, okay, that we need to start quote, doing church a little different, because a lot of the seminaries and a lot of the denominational leaders, were starting to see a slippage in church attendance and participation. And so, they’re kind of, it’s the canary in the coal mine. And they’re like, We got to start changing things. And so, you started having the Church Growth Movement come on, which ended up creating in the 90s, the Seeker movement. Anybody remember the Seeker movement? And the big mistake about the Seeker movement was they made the wrong person the seeker. Jesus said, Son of man goes to seek and save the lost. We’re supposed to be the seekers. We’re supposed to seek the lost. But we thought, well, if we can create cool church, if we can make it innocuous enough and safe enough and nice enough, because you know, really, carrying crosses, it’s not that bad. Because that is the core of what it means to follow Jesus, right? But everything ended up being softened to such a point in the Seeker movement and the Church Growth Movement. But the thing was, was as these churches started growing in the late 70s into the 80s, they didn’t know how to manage them, they didn’t know how to run them. So, guess where they turn to find insight? They turned to the secular world. Why? Because here’s the thing, even by the 1960s, in Christianity, my research, and I’ve tried to be pretty thorough with it, tried to be as thorough as possible. And I’ve tried to go to the sources, and I’ve tried to go to the experts. So far, I’ve only found about 9 to 11 books, in the 1960s Christian books that had the word leadership in them. Okay? So even before that, you’re just not gonna find it. If you were to ask most pastors to name you know, ten classics on doctrine, they could just start naming so many books and authors to antiquity on Christian doctrine. But if you were to ask them to name ten classics on Christian leadership, they would really struggle. Most pastors and Christian leaders that you know how much of a library they point back to Oswald Sanders 1967 book, Spiritual Leadership, but before that, you don’t find anything. So, we turn to the world for it. I mean, if you look back at the history of the Global Leadership Summit, from Willow Creek, and you look at all these incredible spiritual speakers that had pastored churches, neutron Jack Welch, well I’m sure we’re gonna get a lot of Jesus from old neutron Jack I remember walking into so many pastors’ offices and just looking at the books and looking on the shelf and you see in the titles, leadership lessons from Attila the Hun. I’m not making this up. I’m not kidding. Where do we get this stuff? Yeah, you know, that’s a great small group text right there.   LANCE FORD  34:08 So, here’s the thing; it’s the system, Stupid. You’re not stupid. You’re not the stupid ones. But that’s exactly what Paul said. He called it folly. The wisdom of the world is foolishness to God, Paul said. The language that we see throughout the New Testament for a staff is not employ. There are no bosses on the New Testament Church staffs. The language that you see over and over and over throughout the Epistles is coworker, fellow worker, fellow worker, companion, co laborer, shoulder to shoulder. Here’s the deal, the church is not a corporation, it’s a community. It’s not a factory. It’s a family. It’s not a business. It’s a body. It’s not an organization. It’s an organic masterpiece of the fullness of Jesus as a gift to a watching world. That’s who we are. And that’s what every church staff is. If you were to ask and say, Well, you know, so and I’m wrapping it up, because my time is in the red up there now. If you know, and this is a question, I get a lot, So Lance, are you just saying there’s no leadership? No, not at all. That’s not what I’m saying. We need structure. We need systems. But the system that we have is not it. And here’s the deal, as long as we continue to support these systems, and to prop them up and try to just work along with them,  Julie is going to be running this conference for years to come. All the podcasts and the podcasters that are represented here and the writers and people that write stuff like I write, we’re going to have job security for a long time if we continue to prop up this system. I want to be put out of work, don’t you, Julie? It’d be awesome. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you know some time, you got an email, some point down the road, and Julie said, you know, we just don’t need it anymore? Wouldn’t that be awesome? Jesus is knocking on his church. He’s knocking on the door of his church. Thank you.   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 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

Subscriber-only episodeIn this final episode of Valerie's 4-part visit with Adam Miller, they delve into Adam's recent RESTORE CONFERENCE address, covering some tender and personal territory around about God's love, our futile efforts to earn it, and how we are all both endlessly beloved and on a fool's errand in trying to earn our lovability. Using a children's classic from the "Frog and Toad" series and the parable of the Prodigal Son, Adam and Valerie end their series hopefully helping you feel differently about grace, justice, atonement, the nature of God and your own nature. ——————————————————————————————————————SUPPORT: Like what you're hearing at Latter Day Struggles Podcast? You can support Valerie's efforts by becoming a recurring donor on ⁠Patreon.com⁠!——————————————————————————————————————SUPPORT GROUPS: You are invited to join one of Valerie's space-limited ⁠⁠⁠Faith Crisis and Expansion Support and Processing Groups⁠⁠⁠⁠! As a trauma therapist, she continues to help our LDS faith expansion community become psychologically healthier and spiritually well in and around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.Details about availability on ⁠⁠⁠⁠latterdaystruggles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. These groups ALWAYS FILL UP, so jump in asap!https://valeriehamaker.com/latter-day-struggles/support-groups/——————————————————————————————————————COURSES: Now available! “⁠⁠⁠⁠A Couple's Guide to Faith Crisis and Expansion⁠⁠⁠⁠” parts I and II. See what else is offered on ⁠⁠⁠latterdaystruggles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://valeriehamaker.com/latter-day-struggles/course-library/⁠——————————————————————————————————————CONSULTING: Interested in doing individual or couples work with Valerie or a member of her trained team? Time-limited packages with Valerie and extended work with her team of coaches and therapists are available! ⁠https://valeriehamaker.com/latter-day-struggles/private-practice/⁠——————————————————————————————————————For those of you listening to this FRIDAY episode of the Latter Day Struggles podcast, we offer you a heartfelt THANK YOU for your generosity in supporting our work on your behSUBSCRIBE TO FRIDAY EPISODES BETWEEN 5/31/24 and 6/27/24: Premium content episodes of Latter Day Struggles can be accessed through ⁠a paid subscription⁠. Enjoy your first month of Friday episodes at a reduced cost of $3 as a thank you for joining the Latter Day Struggles subscriber community! Sign up here!⁠ WEBINAR: “Accepting Stages of Faith Within A Marriage” Valerie will host a webinar class for individuals and couples seeking guidance on how to stay united during a faith expansion experience. Special question/answer session directly after the webinar. Wednesday July 10th 8:30 CST. Come ask Val your burning questions and be part of the conversation! ⁠ Sign up here!⁠ SUPPORT: Like what you're hearing at Latter Day Struggles Podcast? Make a one-time donation to ⁠her business Venmo account⁠ or become a recurring donor on Patreon⁠.⁠ CONSULTING: Interested in doing individual or couples work with Valerie or a member of her trained team? Time-limited packages with Valerie and extended work with her team of coaches and therapists are available ⁠...

In this thought-provoking Part Three of this Four-Part Series studying Adam's fascinating book "Original Grace", Valerie and Adam dive into the challenging concept of suffering as linked to God's wrath. They address the damaging theology of viewing suffering as punishment and explore the doctrine of original grace. Adam differentiates between justice and suffering within this doctrine. Val discuss how beliefs about God's nature impact our responses to suffering. She highlights potential harm in traditional atonement models, and suggests a shift towards an understanding of original grace. In their final episode in this series together, Val and Adam do a deep dive into Adam's recent presentation at the Restore Conference hosted by the Faith Matters Foundation. Don't miss this! Info on how to subscribe to listen to Friday's episode is directly below. See you there! ————————————————————————————————————— SUBSCRIBE: All Friday episodes of Latter Day Struggles can be accessed through ⁠⁠⁠a paid subscription ($9.99/month)⁠. Thank you for supporting Valerie's professional commitment to your LDS Faith expansion journey!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://tinyurl.com/bddk8ak7 ⁠Click here for a step-by-step guide on how to support the podcast and subscribe⁠ https://valeriehamaker.com/how-to-subscribe/ —————————————————————————————————————— SUPPORT: Like what you're hearing at Latter Day Struggles Podcast? You can support Valerie's efforts by becoming a recurring donor on ⁠Patreon.com⁠! —————————————————————————————————————— SUPPORT GROUPS: You are invited to join one of Valerie's space-limited ⁠⁠⁠Faith Crisis and Expansion Support and Processing Groups⁠⁠⁠⁠! As a trauma therapist, she continues to help our LDS faith expansion community become psychologically healthier and spiritually well in and around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Details about availability on ⁠⁠⁠⁠latterdaystruggles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. These groups ALWAYS FILL UP, so jump in asap! https://valeriehamaker.com/latter-day-struggles/support-groups/ —————————————————————————————————————— COURSES: Now available! “⁠⁠⁠⁠A Couple's Guide to Faith Crisis and Expansion⁠⁠⁠⁠” parts I and II. See what else is offered on ⁠⁠⁠latterdaystruggles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://valeriehamaker.com/latter-day-struggles/course-library/⁠ —————————————————————————————————————— CONSULTING: Interested in doing individual or couples work with Valerie or a member of her trained team? Time-limited packages with Valerie and extended work with her team of coaches and therapists are available! ⁠https://valeriehamaker.com/latter-day-struggles/private-practice/⁠

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 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

On this episode of Mormonish Podcast, we sit down with the wonderful Randy Bell, the Master of Disaster, to talk about the recent Faith Matters: Restore conference held in Utah.Restore was an opportunity for faithful Latter Day Saints to spend a weekend restoring their faith with music, talks, community and more. It was attended by over 3500 people and had the look and feel of an Evangelical gathering according to those who were there to observe. Randy, Rebecca, and Landon discuss the significance of this type of conference that portrays a different type of Mormonism you won't find in the pews on Sunday. We talk about what this type of gathering might mean for the church as a whole and it's future going forward.This was a very interesting conversation that also touched on the "Christianization" of Mormonism, something that seems to be unfolding very rapidly. Randy has great insights and perspectives that we were really fascinated to explore with him on this important episode.How to Donate to Mormonish Podcast:We appreciate our Mormonish viewers and listeners so much! If you would like to financially support our podcast, you can DONATE to support Mormonish Podcast here: PayPal: https://paypal.me/BiblioTechMediaVenmo: @BiblioTechMedia Contact Mormonish Podcast: mormonishpodcast@gmail.com

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. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcast, 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

If you're feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the lack of collaboration and creativity in your team, despite implementing countless team-building exercises and brainstorming sessions, then you are not alone! Instead of the result you're looking for, you may be experiencing a stagnant workplace culture where employees are afraid to speak up and take risks due to a lack of psychological safety.Lori Adams-Brown is not your average podcast host. With a background in global leadership and development, she's a true expert in the field of psychological safety in the workplace. Having worked with diverse industries and organizations, Lori understands the challenges faced by managers and leaders in creating a culture of inclusivity and well-being. What sets Lori apart is her genuine passion for making a difference. She's not just here to talk about psychological safety - she's lived it. Through her own experiences and encounters with individuals who have endured workplace bullying and toxic environments, Lori has seen firsthand the impact of psychological safety on employee well-being and overall productivity. Her expertise has taken her across the globe, training workshops and sharing insights from the Center for Creative Leadership. With her A World of Difference podcast, Lori aims to empower managers and leaders with practical strategies and tips to foster psychological safety and create a workplace where everyone can thrive.Creating a culture of psychological safety is not just important, it's crucial for individual growth, innovation, and career development. - Lori Adams-BrownIn this episode, you will be able to:Enhance workplace culture by fostering psychological safety and promoting a sense of belonging among your employees.Gain fresh insights and innovative ideas by embracing diverse perspectives in your organization.Increase productivity and employee satisfaction through a culture of open communication, where every voice is heard and valued.Resolve conflicts in a constructive and respectful manner, fostering a positive and harmonious work environment.Lead by example and create a safe space for your team to express their thoughts and ideas without fear of judgment.Cultivate an inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and respected, resulting in improved employee well-being and engagement.Create a culture of psychological safety, allowing your team to take risks, collaborate effectively, and innovate.Harness the power of diverse perspectives to drive creativity, problem-solving, and business success.Foster open communication and transparency to build trust, strengthen relationships, and improve overall team performance.Resolve conflicts in a productive manner, promoting healthy work relationships and maintaining a positive work environment.Lead by example in nurturing psychological safety, cultivating an environment where individuals feel empowered to speak up and be authentic.Embracing Diverse PerspectivesInnovation in the workplace thrives when diverse perspectives are not merely respected, but actively sought out. Employees from varying backgrounds bring unique insights and approaches, which can lead to breakthroughs in problem-solving and creativity. Encouraging diversity of thought supports a more inclusive work environment, drives growth, and reflects positively on the company culture.The resources mentioned in this episode are:Visit www.betterhelp.com/difference to get 10% off your first month of therapy with BetterHelp. This is a great resource for those who have experienced trauma in the workplace and need support in healing.Check out the Center for Creative Leadership's website to learn more about their research-based content on leadership and development. They offer workshops and training programs that can help create a culture of psychological safety in your workplace.Consider attending the Restore Conference to connect with others who have experienced workplace bullying and to gain resources and support for healing. This conference provides a safe space for individuals to share their stories and learn strategies for overcoming trauma.Take the time to assess your own workplace and evaluate the level of psychological safety. Are there areas where improvement is needed? Consider implementing some of the tips mentioned in the LinkedIn Live session to create a more psychologically safe environment for yourself and your colleagues.Educate yourself on the topic of psychological safety by reading books, articles, and research papers on the subject. This will help you gain a deeper understanding of its importance and how to promote it in your workplace.Reflect on your own leadership style and consider how you can lead by example in creating a psychologically safe environment.Psychological safety is the number one factor in team performance. It affects everything from well-being to productivity, motivation, and employee engagement.- Lori Adams-BrownThe key moments in this episode are:00:00:02 - Introduction00:01:36 - Importance of Psychological Safety00:03:19 - Learnings from the Restore Conference00:04:25 - Psychological Safety in California and Me Too Movement00:08:17 - Introduction to LinkedIn Live Podcast00:15:03 - Importance of Diversity of Thought00:16:02 - Honoring Truth Tellers00:17:59 - Learning from Failure00:19:26 - Creating a Culture of Innovation00:22:59 - Clear Communication00:30:17 - Creating Systems to Eliminate Bullying00:31:05 - Embracing Productive Conflict00:32:17 - Norms Around Conflict Management00:33:38 - Commitment to Psychological Safety00:36:08 - Benefits of Psychological SafetyLeading by example is key. We must demonstrate vulnerability, admit our mistakes, and foster open and honest communication to create a psychologically safe workplace. - Lori Adams-BrownTimestamped summary of this episode:00:00:02 - IntroductionLori Adams-Brown introduces the podcast episode and talks about her recent experience speaking at the Restore Conference in Chicago. She emphasizes the importance of psychological safety in the workplace and how it affects individuals across different industries and cultures.00:01:36 - Importance of Psychological SafetyLori reflects on her experiences in various workplaces and highlights the significance of psychological safety in creating healthy and productive work environments. She discusses the intersection of her work in tech and her previous experiences in non-profit, faith-based, and government organizations.00:03:19 - Learnings from the Restore ConferenceAfter attending the Restore Conference and hearing stories of workplace trauma, Lori shares the impact it had on her and the importance of providing resources for healing. She discusses the upcoming workshop she will be leading on "Listen to Understand" and how it contributes to psychological safety.00:04:25 - Psychological Safety in California and Me Too MovementLori talks about the relevance of psychological safety in California, particularly in light of the #MeToo movement that exposed the psychologically and physically unsafe environments in Hollywood. She emphasizes the need to focus specifically on psychological safety and its connection to the overall well-being and growth of individuals and organizations.00:08:17 - Introduction to LinkedIn Live PodcastLori introduces her LinkedIn Live session on psychological safety and invites viewers to join the conversation. She briefly mentions the importance of mental health awareness and shares that she will be providing 17 tips on creating psychological safety in the workplace.00:15:03 - Importance of Diversity of ThoughtEncouraging diverse perspectives leads to more innovative solutions and helps organizations stay relevant in a changing world.00:16:02 - Honoring Truth TellersOrganizations should show compassion and genuine curiosity towards those who speak up and challenge the status quo. Honoring truth tellers helps avoid blind spots and promotes innovation.00:17:59 - Learning from FailureOrganizations should create an environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth. Openly sharing lessons learned from mistakes encourages psychological safety and innovation.00:19:26 - Creating a Culture of InnovationOrganizations should establish spaces for new and out-of-the-box ideas. Leaders should be open to questioning and encourage risk-taking to foster innovation.00:22:59 - Clear CommunicationClear communication helps build psychological safety and prevents misunderstandings. Listening to understand and promoting dialogue are important for effective communication in the workplace.00:30:17 - Creating Systems to Eliminate BullyingThe importance of establishing systems that promote zero tolerance for bullying and provide clear guidelines for reporting and consequences is emphasized. It is crucial to create a culture where witnesses of bullying feel safe to report incidents to HR without fear of retaliation.00:31:05 - Embracing Productive ConflictThe significance of fostering a culture of productive conflict is discussed. By setting expectations for psychological safety and promoting sincere dialogue and constructive debate, teams can work towards resolving conflicts in a productive manner. Seeking outside help may be necessary for organizations struggling with this.00:32:17 - Norms Around Conflict ManagementQuestions to ask about conflict management norms within a team are provided. It is important to assess if conflicts are handled in a safe and respectful manner, and if there are any consequences for crossing boundaries. Encouraging open communication about process concerns is also vital.00:33:38 - Commitment to Psychological SafetyCreating an environment where individuals feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns without fear of negative consequences is emphasized. Psychological safety requires commitment from all levels of an organization and is an ongoing process that contributes to employees' well-being.00:36:08 - Benefits of Psychological SafetyThe positive impact of psychological safety on employee well-being, motivation, innovation, and organizational growth is highlighted. A psychologically safe workplace allows for open questioning, decision-making, and improvement. Creating such an environment is crucial for employee growth and satisfaction.https://www.facebook.com/A-World-of-Difference-613933132591673/https://www.twitter.com/@awodpodhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/aworldofdifference/https://www.youtube.com/@aworldofdifferencehttps://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.com

If you're feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by the lack of collaboration and creativity in your team, despite implementing countless team-building exercises and brainstorming sessions, then you are not alone! Instead of the result you're looking for, you may be experiencing a stagnant workplace culture where employees are afraid to speak up and take risks due to a lack of psychological safety.Lori Adams-Brown is not your average podcast host. With a background in global leadership and development, she's a true expert in the field of psychological safety in the workplace. Having worked with diverse industries and organizations, Lori understands the challenges faced by managers and leaders in creating a culture of inclusivity and well-being. What sets Lori apart is her genuine passion for making a difference. She's not just here to talk about psychological safety - she's lived it. Through her own experiences and encounters with individuals who have endured workplace bullying and toxic environments, Lori has seen firsthand the impact of psychological safety on employee well-being and overall productivity. Her expertise has taken her across the globe, training workshops and sharing insights from the Center for Creative Leadership. With her A World of Difference podcast, Lori aims to empower managers and leaders with practical strategies and tips to foster psychological safety and create a workplace where everyone can thrive.Creating a culture of psychological safety is not just important, it's crucial for individual growth, innovation, and career development. - Lori Adams-BrownIn this episode, you will be able to:Enhance workplace culture by fostering psychological safety and promoting a sense of belonging among your employees.Gain fresh insights and innovative ideas by embracing diverse perspectives in your organization.Increase productivity and employee satisfaction through a culture of open communication, where every voice is heard and valued.Resolve conflicts in a constructive and respectful manner, fostering a positive and harmonious work environment.Lead by example and create a safe space for your team to express their thoughts and ideas without fear of judgment.Cultivate an inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and respected, resulting in improved employee well-being and engagement.Create a culture of psychological safety, allowing your team to take risks, collaborate effectively, and innovate.Harness the power of diverse perspectives to drive creativity, problem-solving, and business success.Foster open communication and transparency to build trust, strengthen relationships, and improve overall team performance.Resolve conflicts in a productive manner, promoting healthy work relationships and maintaining a positive work environment.Lead by example in nurturing psychological safety, cultivating an environment where individuals feel empowered to speak up and be authentic.Embracing Diverse PerspectivesInnovation in the workplace thrives when diverse perspectives are not merely respected, but actively sought out. Employees from varying backgrounds bring unique insights and approaches, which can lead to breakthroughs in problem-solving and creativity. Encouraging diversity of thought supports a more inclusive work environment, drives growth, and reflects positively on the company culture.The resources mentioned in this episode are:Visit www.betterhelp.com/difference to get 10% off your first month of therapy with BetterHelp. This is a great resource for those who have experienced trauma in the workplace and need support in healing.Check out the Center for Creative Leadership's website to learn more about their research-based content on leadership and development. They offer workshops and training programs that can help create a culture of psychological safety in your workplace.Consider attending the Restore Conference to connect with others who have experienced workplace bullying and to gain resources and support for healing. This conference provides a safe space for individuals to share their stories and learn strategies for overcoming trauma.Take the time to assess your own workplace and evaluate the level of psychological safety. Are there areas where improvement is needed? Consider implementing some of the tips mentioned in the LinkedIn Live session to create a more psychologically safe environment for yourself and your colleagues.Educate yourself on the topic of psychological safety by reading books, articles, and research papers on the subject. This will help you gain a deeper understanding of its importance and how to promote it in your workplace.Reflect on your own leadership style and consider how you can lead by example in creating a psychologically safe environment.Psychological safety is the number one factor in team performance. It affects everything from well-being to productivity, motivation, and employee engagement.- Lori Adams-BrownThe key moments in this episode are:00:00:02 - Introduction00:01:36 - Importance of Psychological Safety00:03:19 - Learnings from the Restore Conference00:04:25 - Psychological Safety in California and Me Too Movement00:08:17 - Introduction to LinkedIn Live Podcast00:15:03 - Importance of Diversity of Thought00:16:02 - Honoring Truth Tellers00:17:59 - Learning from Failure00:19:26 - Creating a Culture of Innovation00:22:59 - Clear Communication00:30:17 - Creating Systems to Eliminate Bullying00:31:05 - Embracing Productive Conflict00:32:17 - Norms Around Conflict Management00:33:38 - Commitment to Psychological Safety00:36:08 - Benefits of Psychological SafetyLeading by example is key. We must demonstrate vulnerability, admit our mistakes, and foster open and honest communication to create a psychologically safe workplace. - Lori Adams-BrownTimestamped summary of this episode:00:00:02 - IntroductionLori Adams-Brown introduces the podcast episode and talks about her recent experience speaking at the Restore Conference in Chicago. She emphasizes the importance of psychological safety in the workplace and how it affects individuals across different industries and cultures.00:01:36 - Importance of Psychological SafetyLori reflects on her experiences in various workplaces and highlights the significance of psychological safety in creating healthy and productive work environments. She discusses the intersection of her work in tech and her previous experiences in non-profit, faith-based, and government organizations.00:03:19 - Learnings from the Restore ConferenceAfter attending the Restore Conference and hearing stories of workplace trauma, Lori shares the impact it had on her and the importance of providing resources for healing. She discusses the upcoming workshop she will be leading on "Listen to Understand" and how it contributes to psychological safety.00:04:25 - Psychological Safety in California and Me Too MovementLori talks about the relevance of psychological safety in California, particularly in light of the #MeToo movement that exposed the psychologically and physically unsafe environments in Hollywood. She emphasizes the need to focus specifically on psychological safety and its connection to the overall well-being and growth of individuals and organizations.00:08:17 - Introduction to LinkedIn Live PodcastLori introduces her LinkedIn Live session on psychological safety and invites viewers to join the conversation. She briefly mentions the importance of mental health awareness and shares that she will be providing 17 tips on creating psychological safety in the workplace.00:15:03 - Importance of Diversity of ThoughtEncouraging diverse perspectives leads to more innovative solutions and helps organizations stay relevant in a changing world.00:16:02 - Honoring Truth TellersOrganizations should show compassion and genuine curiosity towards those who speak up and challenge the status quo. Honoring truth tellers helps avoid blind spots and promotes innovation.00:17:59 - Learning from FailureOrganizations should create an environment where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth. Openly sharing lessons learned from mistakes encourages psychological safety and innovation.00:19:26 - Creating a Culture of InnovationOrganizations should establish spaces for new and out-of-the-box ideas. Leaders should be open to questioning and encourage risk-taking to foster innovation.00:22:59 - Clear CommunicationClear communication helps build psychological safety and prevents misunderstandings. Listening to understand and promoting dialogue are important for effective communication in the workplace.00:30:17 - Creating Systems to Eliminate BullyingThe importance of establishing systems that promote zero tolerance for bullying and provide clear guidelines for reporting and consequences is emphasized. It is crucial to create a culture where witnesses of bullying feel safe to report incidents to HR without fear of retaliation.00:31:05 - Embracing Productive ConflictThe significance of fostering a culture of productive conflict is discussed. By setting expectations for psychological safety and promoting sincere dialogue and constructive debate, teams can work towards resolving conflicts in a productive manner. Seeking outside help may be necessary for organizations struggling with this.00:32:17 - Norms Around Conflict ManagementQuestions to ask about conflict management norms within a team are provided. It is important to assess if conflicts are handled in a safe and respectful manner, and if there are any consequences for crossing boundaries. Encouraging open communication about process concerns is also vital.00:33:38 - Commitment to Psychological SafetyCreating an environment where individuals feel comfortable expressing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns without fear of negative consequences is emphasized. Psychological safety requires commitment from all levels of an organization and is an ongoing process that contributes to employees' well-being.00:36:08 - Benefits of Psychological SafetyThe positive impact of psychological safety on employee well-being, motivation, innovation, and organizational growth is highlighted. A psychologically safe workplace allows for open questioning, decision-making, and improvement. Creating such an environment is crucial for employee growth and satisfaction.https://www.facebook.com/A-World-of-Difference-613933132591673/https://www.twitter.com/@awodpodhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/aworldofdifference/https://www.youtube.com/@aworldofdifferencehttps://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.com

In the latest episode of A World of Difference, host Lori Adams-Brown shares ten essential tips for providing trauma-informed care, drawing from her personal experiences with trauma, her professional experience translating for a trauma therapist in the Indonesian tsunami, her own training and trauma-informed certification, and her husband Jason's expertise as an MFT with a specialty in trauma therapy. What is the key to truly helping individuals heal from trauma? Find out in this gripping episode of A World of Difference.Have you heard these myths about trauma-informed care? Myth #1: Trauma-informed care is only for people with severe trauma. Myth #2: Trauma-informed care is a one-size-fits-all approach. Myth #3: Trauma-informed care is only about therapy. In this episode, our guest Lori Adams-Brown will shed light on the truth behind these myths and share the importance of trauma-informed care in helping individuals heal from trauma.This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Go to www.betterhelp.com/difference for 10% off your first month of therapy.Host: Lori Adams-BrownLori Adams-Brown is a highly experienced and knowledgeable professional in the field of international disaster relief and development and global leadership and development with a trauma-informed care certification. With her background as a translator for a renowned trauma therapist with a specialty in childhood trauma and her own personal experience with trauma, she has gained a deep understanding of the importance of trauma-informed practices. Lori's expertise extends to working with caregivers and professionals in providing support and healing for individuals who have experienced trauma. Her commitment to learning and growing in this field led her to become a certified trauma-informed care provider. Through her work, Lori aims to create a culture of empathy, respect, and understanding, ensuring that individuals feel safe and supported on their healing journey. With her warm and friendly approach, Lori is dedicated to making a difference in the lives of trauma survivors and those who care for them.Collaboration is key in providing comprehensive support to individuals who have experienced trauma. You are not their savior; so work with others to ensure they receive the help they need. - Lori Adams-BrownIn this episode, you will be able to:Gain a deep understanding of trauma-informed care and discover its powerful role in helping individuals heal from trauma.Create a safe and supportive environment that promotes healing and growth for trauma survivors.Respect personal boundaries and triggers to create a trauma-informed approach that truly supports and empowers individuals.Learn effective strategies for active listening that will enhance your ability to validate the feelings and experiences of trauma survivors.Embrace the ongoing process of being trauma-informed and adapt your approaches to meet the unique needs of each individual you support.Creating a safe and supportive environment is crucial for individuals dealing with trauma. This involves developing a physical and emotional space where individuals feel secure, seen, and understood. Ensuring confidentiality, setting clear boundaries, and providing a calming atmosphere fosters trust, a vital element in the healing journey of individuals who have experienced trauma.Being trauma-informed means understanding the impact of trauma on individuals and creating a supportive and empathetic environment. - Lori Adams-BrownThe resources mentioned in this episode are:Learn about trauma: Educate yourself on the different types of trauma, their effects on the brain and behavior, and the prevalence of trauma in society.Create a safe environment: Foster a physical and emotional safe space where individuals feel secure and supported. Set boundaries, ensure confidentiality, and provide a calm and welcoming atmosphere.Respect personal boundaries: Understand that individuals who have experienced trauma may have unique boundaries and triggers. Always respect personal boundaries and ask for consent when appropriate.Practice active listening: Give individuals your full attention, validate their feelings, and avoid judgment or dismissive attitudes. Do not minimize their trauma or abuse.Offer choices and autonomy: Empower individuals by giving them choices and control over their decisions whenever possible. This helps rebuild a sense of agency and self-esteem.Avoid retraumatization: Be mindful of the language and actions you use to ensure they don't retraumatize or trigger distressing memories. Be aware of potential triggers and avoid them.Be patient and understanding: Trauma recovery takes time, so be patient with individuals who may need more time to process their feelings and experiences. Avoid rushing them or pushing for quick resolutions.Invest in training and approach trauma survivors with sensitivityTrauma recovery takes time, so it's important to be patient with individuals who are processing their feelings and experiences. - Lori Adams-BrownThe key moments in this episode are:00:00:02 - Introduction, 00:01:20 - Personal Experience with Trauma, 00:03:39 - Sponsorship by BetterHelp, 00:04:57 - Trauma-Informed Care Tips, 00:08:38 - Celebrating Differences and Seeking Input, 00:10:17 - Social Media and Contact Information, 00:15:41 - Impact of the Tool, 00:16:12 - Join the Difference Makers Community, 00:16:35 - Share Your Tips, 00:16:58 - Connect at the Restore Conference, 00:17:24 - Keep Making a Difference, Timestamped summary of this episode:00:00:02 - Introduction, Lori introduces the podcast, discussing the heavy topic of trauma and the importance of being trauma-informed.00:01:20 - Personal Experience with Trauma, Lori shares her personal experiences with trauma, including translating for a trauma therapist and her own experience of abuse in the workplace.00:03:39 - Sponsorship by BetterHelp, Lori mentions the sponsor of the podcast, BetterHelp, and emphasizes the importance of seeking professional help for trauma and other issues.00:04:57 - Trauma-Informed Care Tips, Lori discusses ten tips for being trauma-informed, including educating oneself, creating a safe environment, respecting personal boundaries, and practicing active listening.00:08:38 - Celebrating Differences and Seeking Input, Lori emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting individual differences in trauma experiences and invites listeners to share their own trauma-informed care tips.00:10:17 - Social Media and Contact Information, Lori shares her social media handles and discusses the suspension of her Twitter account, but mentions the podcast's Twitter account and invites listeners to reach out with their tips.00:15:41 - Impact of the Tool, The guest discusses the impact of a tool in helping abuse survivors in a faith-based setting. He emphasizes the importance of the tool and its effectiveness in group therapy sessions.00:16:12 - Join the Difference Makers Community, The host invites listeners to join the Difference Makers community, where they can access content from previous episodes and engage in discussions with other members. Membership is priced at $5 a month.00:16:35 - Share Your Tips, Listeners are encouraged to share their tips and insights in the community. The host expresses excitement about hearing their thoughts and encourages participation.00:16:58 - Connect at the Restore Conference, The host invites listeners attending the Restore Conference in Chicago to come to say hi and meet in person. She expresses gratitude for the support and listenership from around the world.00:17:24 - Keep Making a Difference, The host concludes by thanking the listeners for their continued support and encouraging them to make a difference wherever they are.https://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/aworldofdifference/https://www.linkdin.com/loriadamsbrownhttps://www.facebook.com/A-World-of-Difference-613933132591673/https://www.twitter.com/@awodpodhttps://www.instagram.com/aworldof.differencehttps://www.instagram.com/loriadamsbrownhttps://www.youtube.com/@aworldofdifference

In the latest episode of A World of Difference, host Lori Adams-Brown shares ten essential tips for providing trauma-informed care, drawing from her personal experiences with trauma, her professional experience translating for a trauma therapist in the Indonesian tsunami, her own training and trauma-informed certification, and her husband Jason's expertise as an MFT with a specialty in trauma therapy. What is the key to truly helping individuals heal from trauma? Find out in this gripping episode of A World of Difference.Have you heard these myths about trauma-informed care? Myth #1: Trauma-informed care is only for people with severe trauma. Myth #2: Trauma-informed care is a one-size-fits-all approach. Myth #3: Trauma-informed care is only about therapy. In this episode, our guest Lori Adams-Brown will shed light on the truth behind these myths and share the importance of trauma-informed care in helping individuals heal from trauma.This episode is sponsored by Better Help. Go to www.betterhelp.com/difference for 10% off your first month of therapy.Host: Lori Adams-BrownLori Adams-Brown is a highly experienced and knowledgeable professional in the field of international disaster relief and development and global leadership and development with a trauma-informed care certification. With her background as a translator for a renowned trauma therapist with a specialty in childhood trauma and her own personal experience with trauma, she has gained a deep understanding of the importance of trauma-informed practices. Lori's expertise extends to working with caregivers and professionals in providing support and healing for individuals who have experienced trauma. Her commitment to learning and growing in this field led her to become a certified trauma-informed care provider. Through her work, Lori aims to create a culture of empathy, respect, and understanding, ensuring that individuals feel safe and supported on their healing journey. With her warm and friendly approach, Lori is dedicated to making a difference in the lives of trauma survivors and those who care for them.Collaboration is key in providing comprehensive support to individuals who have experienced trauma. You are not their savior; so work with others to ensure they receive the help they need. - Lori Adams-BrownIn this episode, you will be able to:Gain a deep understanding of trauma-informed care and discover its powerful role in helping individuals heal from trauma.Create a safe and supportive environment that promotes healing and growth for trauma survivors.Respect personal boundaries and triggers to create a trauma-informed approach that truly supports and empowers individuals.Learn effective strategies for active listening that will enhance your ability to validate the feelings and experiences of trauma survivors.Embrace the ongoing process of being trauma-informed and adapt your approaches to meet the unique needs of each individual you support.Creating a safe and supportive environment is crucial for individuals dealing with trauma. This involves developing a physical and emotional space where individuals feel secure, seen, and understood. Ensuring confidentiality, setting clear boundaries, and providing a calming atmosphere fosters trust, a vital element in the healing journey of individuals who have experienced trauma.Being trauma-informed means understanding the impact of trauma on individuals and creating a supportive and empathetic environment. - Lori Adams-BrownThe resources mentioned in this episode are:Learn about trauma: Educate yourself on the different types of trauma, their effects on the brain and behavior, and the prevalence of trauma in society.Create a safe environment: Foster a physical and emotional safe space where individuals feel secure and supported. Set boundaries, ensure confidentiality, and provide a calm and welcoming atmosphere.Respect personal boundaries: Understand that individuals who have experienced trauma may have unique boundaries and triggers. Always respect personal boundaries and ask for consent when appropriate.Practice active listening: Give individuals your full attention, validate their feelings, and avoid judgment or dismissive attitudes. Do not minimize their trauma or abuse.Offer choices and autonomy: Empower individuals by giving them choices and control over their decisions whenever possible. This helps rebuild a sense of agency and self-esteem.Avoid retraumatization: Be mindful of the language and actions you use to ensure they don't retraumatize or trigger distressing memories. Be aware of potential triggers and avoid them.Be patient and understanding: Trauma recovery takes time, so be patient with individuals who may need more time to process their feelings and experiences. Avoid rushing them or pushing for quick resolutions.Invest in training and approach trauma survivors with sensitivityTrauma recovery takes time, so it's important to be patient with individuals who are processing their feelings and experiences. - Lori Adams-BrownThe key moments in this episode are:00:00:02 - Introduction, 00:01:20 - Personal Experience with Trauma, 00:03:39 - Sponsorship by BetterHelp, 00:04:57 - Trauma-Informed Care Tips, 00:08:38 - Celebrating Differences and Seeking Input, 00:10:17 - Social Media and Contact Information, 00:15:41 - Impact of the Tool, 00:16:12 - Join the Difference Makers Community, 00:16:35 - Share Your Tips, 00:16:58 - Connect at the Restore Conference, 00:17:24 - Keep Making a Difference, Timestamped summary of this episode:00:00:02 - Introduction, Lori introduces the podcast, discussing the heavy topic of trauma and the importance of being trauma-informed.00:01:20 - Personal Experience with Trauma, Lori shares her personal experiences with trauma, including translating for a trauma therapist and her own experience of abuse in the workplace.00:03:39 - Sponsorship by BetterHelp, Lori mentions the sponsor of the podcast, BetterHelp, and emphasizes the importance of seeking professional help for trauma and other issues.00:04:57 - Trauma-Informed Care Tips, Lori discusses ten tips for being trauma-informed, including educating oneself, creating a safe environment, respecting personal boundaries, and practicing active listening.00:08:38 - Celebrating Differences and Seeking Input, Lori emphasizes the importance of understanding and respecting individual differences in trauma experiences and invites listeners to share their own trauma-informed care tips.00:10:17 - Social Media and Contact Information, Lori shares her social media handles and discusses the suspension of her Twitter account, but mentions the podcast's Twitter account and invites listeners to reach out with their tips.00:15:41 - Impact of the Tool, The guest discusses the impact of a tool in helping abuse survivors in a faith-based setting. He emphasizes the importance of the tool and its effectiveness in group therapy sessions.00:16:12 - Join the Difference Makers Community, The host invites listeners to join the Difference Makers community, where they can access content from previous episodes and engage in discussions with other members. Membership is priced at $5 a month.00:16:35 - Share Your Tips, Listeners are encouraged to share their tips and insights in the community. The host expresses excitement about hearing their thoughts and encourages participation.00:16:58 - Connect at the Restore Conference, The host invites listeners attending the Restore Conference in Chicago to come to say hi and meet in person. She expresses gratitude for the support and listenership from around the world.00:17:24 - Keep Making a Difference, The host concludes by thanking the listeners for their continued support and encouraging them to make a difference wherever they are.https://www.aworldofdifferencepodcast.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/aworldofdifference/https://www.linkdin.com/loriadamsbrownhttps://www.facebook.com/A-World-of-Difference-613933132591673/https://www.twitter.com/@awodpodhttps://www.instagram.com/aworldof.differencehttps://www.instagram.com/loriadamsbrownhttps://www.youtube.com/@aworldofdifference

Guest Bios Show Transcript What do you do when you're being bullied by your Christian employer? Do you take it and simply turn the other cheek? Or, do you confront it, hoping for repentance and justice? Unfortunately, workplace bullying has become a major issue—not just in secular contexts, but in the church. In this podcast, Julie explores this issue with the whistleblower who exposed Dane Ortlund, Emily Hyland, and anti-bullying expert, Paul Coughlin. Ortlund is a Chicago-area pastor and author of the best-selling book, Gentle and Lowly. But, according to Emily, he's not very gentle or lowly; he's a bully—and a misogynist. And she says, when she complained about Ortlund's behavior to the elders of Naperville Presbyterian Church, where Emily worked, they fired her. Since then, Emily has filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights, claiming retaliation. Last December, the Department of Human Rights ruled in Emily's favor and found “substantial evidence” of retaliation by Dane and Naperville Presbyterian. In this podcast, Emily tells her story and updates us on her case. She also shares insights about responding to bullying she gained from her firsthand experience. Anti-bullying expert Paul Coughlin also contributes to the podcast, sharing advice he's gained over decades of dealing with bullies. Paul met Emily at last year's Restore Conference. And Paul has been a source of support and wisdom for Emily throughout her whistleblowing process. If you've ever had to deal with a bully—or are dealing with one now—you'll find this podcast invaluable.  Guests Emily Hyland Emily Hyland earned her bachelors in Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology before working for the Office of Naval Research in Washington, DC. While there she received a MHSA in Management & Leadership from The George Washington University. She has worked with the US Army and the Office of the Surgeon General, Accenture, GE, and across finance, manufacturing, health services, and information technology. Recently, she was the Director of Operations at Naperville Presbyterian Church in suburban Illinois. She is married and has three children.  Paul Coughlin Paul Coughlin is an author, an international speaker and the founder and president of The Protectors, which is dedicated to helping schools, organizations and communities combat bullying. His books include No More Christian Nice Guy, Raising Bully-Proof Kids and 5 Secrets Great Dads Know. Paul and his wife, Sandy, reside in central Oregon and have three teenage children. Learn more about Paul and his organization at www.theprotectors.org. Show Transcript SPEAKERS JULIE ROYS, EMILY HYLAND, PAUL COUGHLIN JULIE ROYS 00:04 What do you do when you're being bullied by your Christian employer? Do you take it and simply turn the other cheek? Or do you confront it, hoping for repentance and justice? 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 episode are Emily Hyland and Paul Coughlin. As you may remember, Emily is the whistleblower who filed a complaint with the Illinois Department of Human Rights concerning a well-known Chicago area pastor, Dane Ortlund. Ortlund is the author of the best-selling book, Gentle and Lowly. But according to Emily, he's not very gentle or lowly. He's a bully and a misogynist. And she says when she complained about Ortlund's behavior to the elders of Naperville Presbyterian Church, where Ortlund pastors, they fired her. But last December, the Department of Human Rights ruled in Emily's favor. It found substantial evidence of retaliation by Dane and Naperville Presbyterian Church in Emily's firing. And now that case is going to trial. Plus, there have been some additional charges added to that case. So, stay tuned, and you'll hear all about that. But also joining me on this podcast is Paul Coughlin. Paul is an expert on bullying and a repeat guest here on The Roys Report. He also was a speaker at last year's Restore conference. And I know from talking to Emily that she took pages of notes from Paul's talk, which was super eye opening. And it's out of that relationship and collaboration between Paul and Emily, that started at Restore, that this podcast was envisioned. I know many of you have experienced bullying in a Christian workplace. I get emails about this all the time. It's bad enough to be bullied in any workplace. But when it happens at a church or an organization that's supposed to be Christian, it's especially painful. So, I'm really looking forward to our podcast today. But before we dive in, I want to thank our sponsors, 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, joining me is the whistleblower in the Dane Ortlund discrimination and retaliation case, Emily Hyland. Emily was the Operations Director at Naperville Presbyterian Church in Naperville, Illinois. But in March 2021, just nine days after complaining of discrimination and bullying to church elders, Emily was abruptly fired. And she has two cases pending right now, one before the Illinois Department of Human Rights, and another with the Illinois Department of Labor. So, Emily, welcome. I'm so glad you could join us. EMILY HYLAND 03:30 Thank you, Julie. And thank you for your continued support and drawing attention to these important issues that men and women face when they're in a church and employed by one. JULIE ROYS 03:40 Well, it's my pleasure to do so. And again, also joining us is Paul Coughlin, founder of the anti-bullying group, The Protectors. He's also the author of a number of best-selling books, including No More Christian Nice Guy and Raising Bullyproof Kids. He's also worked with the Baltimore Ravens and is an expert witness. So, Paul, welcome back. It's just so great to be with you again. PAUL COUGHLIN 04:02 Great to be back. It's always wonderful. And Emily, good to hear your voice. JULIE ROYS 04:07 Well, it's so cool that the both of you actually met at the Restore conference. And I know that was before any of this became public. It's before the Illinois Department of Human Rights found substantial evidence of retaliation by the church and Dane Ortlund. But Paul, let me just start with you and ask when you first met Emily, what was your impression of her case and just what she had been through? PAUL COUGHLIN 04:33 Well, you know, you hear a lot of the same things when it comes to people who have been abused either adolescent bullying but then also bullying in the workplace, particularly faith centric areas. And honestly, what you often hear is a good amount of confusion at first. Many times, people who have this confusion going in their minds, they often may take it out on themselves as opposed to really seeing it more clearly, and in seeing it more clearly, it's not the fault of the target. It is the fault of the bully, and in many cases, the serial bully. JULIE ROYS 05:09 I hear a lot of these stories. And it's usually Wow, this is so awful. But I'm not expecting justice with the Illinois Department of Human Rights. You hardly ever get a ruling in your favor. Were you surprised when you heard that she had gotten this ruling? PAUL COUGHLIN 05:24 Very much so. I mean, Emily had a substantial case, substantial amount of evidence. And you know that evidence comes from people who, you know, obviously are willing to talk. Do you know how many people are not willing to talk? They know the score, but for a few fundamental reasons, they remain quiet, probably because they're worried that they'll be next. So, we have a substantial case, where chances are few people really spoke up. JULIE ROYS 05:50 And again, that case is pending. And towards the end of this podcast, Emily, I'm going to have you update us on the latest developments, because there are some really important ones there. But let's back up to your story, and what happened to you, Emily, for those who haven't read the news reports. I mean, it came out in December, even if you did read the report, you might be a little bit rusty on what happened. Would you give us the cliff notes of what happened to you, that led you to file this claim with the Illinois Department of Human Rights? EMILY HYLAND 06:21 Well, in some ways, it starts back before 2020 to my time at the church. I had been there since 2006, and Dane joined in 2007. So, for over a decade, we existed as two members of the same church, running into each other, same classes, same age kids. And so, when the former senior pastor left, a search committee was put together, Dane was on it. Two years go by and no senior pastor candidate. Well, then it's announced, Dane is going to be the senior pastor candidate. And by that time, I was on staff and the director of operations. And I was surprised because he hadn't been a pastor before. And I knew that the requirements for the job had been five years of pastoring experience. But I was since I knew him, I mean, he wasn't a stranger. I had no inclinations that this was something that was going to be so catastrophic. But when he started, things just weren't right. And they continued to get more wrong as the months went on. And as I started really telling myself, this isn't what you think, it's not right. I mean, maybe you're off, maybe you're just being a little petty. I had this mindset that was getting progressively more confused. And I was just talking circles to myself. And then finally, I happen to read in that February of 2021, when the Ravi Zacharias report came out. And in addition to obviously, the terrible accounts of sexual predation was the organizational aspect and how staff who raised questions who were having legitimate concerns, they weren't buying some of the early propaganda that was being put out, that those staff were being bullied. And I read those reports, and I looked at this, and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, that is what is going on here. And I was shocked, because I finally had words and labels to what I was feeling, what I was experiencing. And so, I take the next maybe month, I read up a little bit more about the differences between bullying, harassment, rudeness, inconsiderateness, to really make sure that I'm linguistically precise in this matter. And it comes to a head when I call up two of the elders, and I tell them privately, I think I'm being bullied. I think it's because I'm a woman. I myself had a hard time getting those words out, because I didn't want to be bullied. And I didn't want it to be because of my gender. So, the two elders sat on this for a little bit, because Dane was out of town. And when they brought it to Dane, that next Monday, it started the floor falling out of everything, where it was very swiftly after that, then maybe 12 hours, that I was going to be fired. And it took a few days. And in the meantime, I didn't know what was happening. I just knew that this couldn't continue. This was not the right behavior. I wanted the elders to help me navigate this and to be safe in it. But that's not at all what happened. That at the end of the week, Dane fired me, and they had no elder walk me out the door. And then I was done. They follow that up by Dane telling the staff that I had been fired for cause and to not reach out to me. JULIE ROYS 09:53 In a day. Right. You lost your church of how many years? EMILY HYLAND 09:58 I had been there almost 15 years by that point. JULIE ROYS 10:02 You lost your job. You lost your church family. And you were ostracized at this point. People weren't even talking to you, correct? EMILY HYLAND 10:12 Oh, right. Yeah, it was full on disfellowshipping. I mean, I didn't know what that word was until somebody told me I was like, Ooh, yeah, that is exactly what it is. I had people who wouldn't even look at me in public. These were people I had served with for 15 years. And I didn't believe it could happen. I still I mean, my husband still cannot process that element of it, which is that he cannot believe that people who I've been with for that long would turn because I didn't do anything to them. I didn't even say anything publicly about Dane. I mean, this was two conversations with elders. And now people won't speak to me. And that really continues now. JULIE ROYS 10:50 Really, to this day? Yeah. And I want you to comment on this, Paul. But first, I'd like to read a statement by Dave Veerman, who was an elder at the time. So, he participated in the firing. A few months after it happened, clearly had a change of heart, and he resigned himself. And his statement really played a pivotal role in the Illinois Department of Human Rights in their ruling. So, I'd like to read it. I can't read the whole thing just because of the length. But some portions I think would be really instructive as to what happened and even corroborating what you're saying. So, this is what he writes. The 2021 version of the Personnel Committee met a couple of times via zoom to discuss a few relatively minor issues. Then we got word that Dane wanted to have us deal with a serious issue with a staff member. At this Zoom meeting on March 16, he said he wanted to let Emily go and made vague references about her performance and relationships with other staff. He also said that he had met with her a couple of times, so we thought she had a pretty good idea of where this was heading. Let me just pause there. Did you have any idea you were going to be fired? EMILY HYLAND 10:51 None. It was so shocking. And this was two days before Palm Sunday. I mean, it is going into the biggest week of the Church year, and to just be like, Oh, we don't need a director of operations. And we certainly don't need her to do any turnover. We don't need her to give us any of the information that she has been using in her job for eight years. I was completely surprised. JULIE ROYS 12:18 Well, and apparently Dave shared your sentiments there. He writes, this news was a shock to us because we had always been impressed with Emily and what she had done for the church. In addition, we had just had a session meeting on March 15, in which nothing had been said about her and her performance. Dane also said that Emily had gone to two elders that she felt close to, and thought would listen empathically and give wise counsel. Later, I learned that she had shared how she had been mistreated recently by Dane and was asking advice on how she should respond. And then I'm gonna skip through some of it and read. He describes that he had several meetings, then with elders and different people. Then he writes, even though I didn't know Emily's side of the story, I voted to move ahead with Dane's recommendation. Our next step was to inform the other elders. So, the three of us each took a few men to call. Then Dane set up a meeting with Emily for Friday, March 19, to inform her and he asked me to be there. At that brief meeting at 1pm, Dane fired Emily saying it was, quote, the will of the session. Unsurprisingly, Emily was quite upset, although trying to maintain her composure. I tried to just listen and not say much. She started reading the agreement. Apparently was there an NDA that they had given you? EMILY HYLAND 13:32 Yeah. On top of the details regarding severance. JULIE ROYS 13:35 Is there anything remarkable about that, or pretty standard? 13:39 I think that it was passed off as something that oh, this is just how we do things. We don't really know what's in here. But I read contracts very thoroughly and to be like, Wow, no NDA, no severance. That was how it was written, is that if I did not sign away, my legal rights, agree to confidentiality and agree to a non-disparagement, I mean, never saying anything negative about the pastors, the officers, the church or how I was treated. That was the only way I was gonna get any severance. And that's how it was written. There was no mention of why I was terminated. It wasn't for cause that was it. JULIE ROYS 14:15 I wish I could say that that was remarkable in some way. I've learned that's very unremarkable that's very similar to what I got from the Moody Bible Institute when I was fired. And so many people that I've talked to are getting NDAs now, and I'm glad that this issue is coming to the fore. That people are realizing that churches now are giving NDAs, that Christian organizations are giving them and they're about as carnal a document as there is and it is there to protect the institution; has nothing and no care and concern for the employee. As a sister in Christ or a part of the church, but I digress on my editorial comment on that one. But NDAs are just I just think they're evil. He continues to write, Emily brought up her recollection of being bullied and strongly pushed back on the decision because of the current cultural attitudes toward misogyny. Skipping ahead. Later, I learned that at 3:30pm, a staff meeting was held to announce Emily's termination. Dane said 1) Emily was fired for cause, 2) the decision was the will of the session, a session being in a Presbyterian Church sort of the equivalent of the elder board, and 3) staff should not contact her. I need to say that because of Dane's actions, a few months later, I resigned as an elder and my wife and I left the church. Not to go into many details, but at that time I heard Dane give many of the same rationalizations and explanations for his attitudes and actions in this precipitating conflict. It made me rethink my decision regarding Emily, that I had made a mistake. My agreeing to terminate Emily's employment was based almost entirely on believing the word of Dane, my pastor. I realized now that I should have looked deeper, ask more questions, and met with Emily to get her side of the story. And again, that's Dave Veerman, a former elder there at Naperville Presbyterian church. Paul, as you listen to this letter, I could see on your face, yes, we're on Zoom, by the way, folks, but I could tell that you're resonating with some things in there. But what stood out to you, as you heard that letter? PAUL COUGHLIN 16:22 That elder is a rare person, sadly. I mean, that's a rare person who's going to stick their neck out like that. But those are the people who really keep integrity on the table. So, if I had a hat on, I would take it off to that gentleman. You know, there's a lot of things that Emily has talked about. And we spoke earlier about the pattern of behavior, right, that people undergo. And when you recognize that pattern, you begin to realize you're not crazy. And one of the things that is so painful for targets is betrayal. You could hear it in Emily's voice. And she talked about it; people not talking to her, been at the same church for something like 15 years and people don't talk to you. The emotional impact of bullying in the workplace itself is swampy for many people. And then you have this being ostracized. And one thing I'd like to point out for any workplace, but especially faith centric workplaces, is that you're going to expect people to live by a certain level of integrity. And sadly, for whatever reason, it seems to be baked into the system, betrayal is coming. I'm reminded, and I've experienced that we've all licked our wounds when it comes to this behavior. I'm reminded of that wonderful movie Braveheart, where William Wallace was in. JULIE ROYS 17:45 One of my favorites, by the way. PAUL COUGHLIN 17:46 I'm not surprised. He's betrayed by his best friend. And because of that, his heart is completely taken out of the battle, he doesn't care anymore. That is what will happen to us. And so, what I would like to say to our listeners right now is that don't be surprised by the betrayal. For some reason, it is baked into the system, in most cases, most of the time. I'm reminded by that quote from Martin Luther King, who said, in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. It's just how it goes down. It's par for the course. But I would also want to say to the people listening now who could be that support structure around others, please keep that in mind. You can play a profound role, not just in bringing fairness into the workplace and with integrity, but also in the psychological and spiritual bolstering of another person, you're that important. JULIE ROYS 18:49 And I've heard that repeatedly from people who have been victims of spiritual abuse, church abuse, retaliation, bullying. That they can handle that there's one bad apple. Like, they can handle that there's a bully pastor out there, right? They can deal with that. What they can't deal with, is that everybody got in line with that guy. Everybody stood there silently, while they were excoriated for false charges against them, whatever, and that the average person stood by and did nothing. And that's been my experience. I know, I just had a birthday recently. I don't even know if I should say this. But, you know, you get these greetings from folks that you're like, wait, you haven't talked to me since the day I was fired! In fact, you wouldn't take my phone calls. But okay. Thanks for the Happy Birthday. Appreciate that. I mean, it's one of those things that's just absolutely stunning. And this is why I think spiritual abuse and church hurt is far worse and more fundamental than other kinds of abuse. And I'm not meaning to minimize certainly all of them are horrible, horrible. But there's something about this that just goes to the core of your belief system of who you think people are. And if we don't separate out, God's people from God Himself, can really mess up and distort our image of who God is. And I think there's so many people deconstructing today, whatever you want to call it, are just trying to come to grips with what is it that was true that I believed and what was just the stuff that I accepted with it that really wasn't? And I know there's people listening who are there, I've been there, right? I'm still there to some degree, you know. PAUL COUGHLIN 20:39 And Julie, could I add to that our Lord was bullied before He was crucified. Our Lord knows exactly what it's like to experience betrayal, false accusations, to put up with the arrogance and the hubris of other people. And he can empathize with our weaknesses, he knows exactly what it was like, because the crucifixion included many of the same components of workplace bullying. So he is on our side, he knows exactly how we feel, and he is there for us. EMILY HYLAND 21:11 I thought about that over the last few years, when you take communion, and it starts with on the night he was betrayed. You can just stop right there and say, Jesus knows what it's like to be betrayed, and forsaken by everyone who you thought was for you and with you. I mean, to identify in that aspect of religious community is a thread of hope you can have because Jesus knows betrayal. JULIE ROYS 21:39 I'm so glad that you both brought that up. Because I think the ability to identify with Christ in his sufferings, if you've been through something like this, is much greater. And yet, as I've experienced it, the eye opening thing hasn't so much been that I get to suffer with him. But it makes me so much more aware of how hideous the suffering that Jesus endured. Just having tasted a small amount of what he went through, has given me just such a greater appreciation for the suffering of Christ by being able to enter into it again, in a very small way, comparatively. PAUL COUGHLIN 22:21 Julie, one thing I tried to point out for people who you've talked about, like deconstructing faith, and all three of us have gone through its process right. In my mind, one thing that I have tried to do to try to keep things clear is the difference between churchianity and Christianity. And I think when we see this suffering of Christ, of such great unfairness, I see that in the category of true Christianity, that's what it's about. What we are experiencing in faith centric organizations is what I would call churchianity. And I believe that there's obviously overlap between the two. But also, there's great distinctions. I think that's very helpful for people who have been abused so that they can start thinking of it in terms like that, because it helps them hopefully not throw the baby out with the bathwater, where it's all bad, and it's all wrong. Rather, it helps to put it in context. JULIE ROYS 22:22 Well, much of what we're going to be talking about in this podcast is really looking back and thinking, what I wish I had known then that I know now, because it is a learning process. And man, can it be a rude awakening, but an important one. It's like the matrix as the red pill or the blue pill, right? You know, those of us who have taken I don't know, is it the red pill that opens your eyes? But yeah, if you take that pill, there's no undoing it, and you see it. Let me just start with you, Emily, I know one of the things that you said, if you were to do this over again, is you would stop talking to yourself and start listening to yourself. What do you mean by that? EMILY HYLAND 23:55 Well, as I said earlier, I think I was talking myself in circles, and something would happen, and I would disconnect from my intuition. It felt wrong, but I told myself, nah, and I downplayed the harm that was coming, which I know now, like, that's not mercy. Mercy is an intentional weighing of the harm that you receive, and a decision to forgive it. To just dismiss harm, and to downplay it and pretend like that wasn't harm, that's actually not mercy. I think that, particularly to Christian circles, we think of the Spirit speaking through our intuition. For instance, if I had an intuition to go and talk to a neighbor, and invite them to a church choir service, we would say that that's the you know, Spirit leading you. But it doesn't work in the other way. Like if you have this intuition that, you know, I think something's wrong here. I think my pastor isn't behaving as a pastor should, that your mind does not really like that absolutely could be the Spirit speaking on your attentions, you're trying to tell it this Be quiet, and to stop talking. And so, I think I was trying to rationalize away a pattern of events. And now, if I could go back, I would have told myself Stop, listen to how you're feeling, and especially your sympathetic system. I mean, that is there by God's design. And when we feel fear, when we feel out of control, when we feel afraid, or wanting to run away, or pressured, and those hormones start making you feel stressed and anxious, that's not nothing. That's your body responding to something that is really happening. And that I should have been listening much more carefully to that, instead of just telling myself in my higher brain, oh, don't bother with that. It was like, No, this is merely myself trying to protect myself. And I discounted it for a very long time. Until one day, like I said, I just happened to read a description of what workplace bullying in Christian ministry looked like. And it was like my intuition just got plugged in all at once. And it was like, Whoa, now, what followed was my intuition bracket was perfect. I mean, it was remarkable how, yeah, I was right on this stuff. I was accurate. And I didn't really want to be, I didn't want to be bullied, and I didn't want to work for a bullying pastor. None of that was by design. But identifying those behaviors, identifying what was going on behind the scenes, was when that intuition reconnected. And I think that if I could have gone back, I would have listened to my intuition, and realized, yes, that is the spirit, it's saying some hard stuff that I didn't want to hear. But that silencing it was to my own detriment. JULIE ROYS 26:53 And let's also acknowledge that in a lot of these churches, we're hearing consistent message often of listen to the authorities in your church, be submissive to the authorities in your church and their leadership. Don't gossip, the meddling, we're hearing those constantly. And so, it's a cognitive dissonance that you're dealing with. And I remember we did a surprise birthday party for my husband once. And there were numerous times that he should have figured out what was going on. And he just didn't like, and afterwards, we asked him because he was so surprised. Like, how did you not get that? And he's like, I don't know. It's just like this cognitive dissonance and you throw out things that don't fit the narrative. And you just, it's funny how we do that. One of the best books out there, and it's funny that you've even said it several times. And when you're talking about this, is it something's not right. And I think Wade Mullins book, Something's Not Right, is just so so good in helping you put your finger on that. So, if you've never read this book, you have to read Something's Not Right. It's just so good. Or listen to Wade's talk at the Restore conference, where he talks about some of these things. They're all available at our YouTube channel, you can see that. And by the way, Paul, your talk on bullying is available on video on our YouTube channel. It's also available as a podcast, I think June 23, I think of last year is when we published that. So, you can go back and listen to Paul's whole talk on bullying, which is I know mind blowing for so so many people. Paul, as you hear what Emily just said about trusting that intuition, what comes to mind for you? PAUL COUGHLIN 28:31 A number of things. One thing that would have really helped Emily and so many other people is if she had at least one person standing by her side. She talked about almost like talking to herself and the cycle. We all get into that. And what really helps if we have a person, ideally, a person who is wise, but also more than wisdom, courageous. If we have someone to confide in, they can talk us out of those circular thinking, tends to spiral down, not up usually. And in that wisdom that they give us, we can find the seeds of courage as well because when we get clarity, we have a much stronger ability to move forward, hopefully in an intelligent way with both truth and grace and love. So, there are people out there who need us desperately in that situation. And I'd like to point out a distinction statistically between men and women when bullied in the workplace. Statistically, men tend to get angry and leave. Women tend to medicate and stay. And unfortunately, and to hear that the protectors what we do is we often advise find another job because it can be so damaging to the person's spirit to their soul when they undergo this work. And statistically it can be harder on women. That damage can go deeper and last longer. In fact, many of the characteristics of PTSD are the same that happens in the workplace, then people returning from war, it can be that bad. So, it's an important distinction to keep in mind. You know what I think what happened was Emily, is they picked on the wrong person, and I've told Emily this; is that chances are the people in her former workplace, the main pastor particularly, in my opinion, has probably been doing this for a long time, has probably been targeting people specific people and getting his way. And what happened is he probably targeted the wrong person; a person of a lot of backbone. You can tell Emily's very sharp, but sharpness alone won't do it. Functioning degree of courage is often necessary in order to defend yourself. And we have a wonderful success story now, I think because of Emily's character of who she is. JULIE ROYS 31:04 Well, this concludes part one of my podcast with Paul and Emily on bullying in a Christian workplace. In part two, you'll hear Emily describe more of what she wishes she knew back when she was being bullied that she knows now. And you'll hear more expert advice from Paul Coughlin, on how to deal with bullies. And also, why you may have become a target. PAUL COUGHLIN 31:25 Bullies in the workplace, particularly within the church, they use our niceness against us. It's one of the reasons why we're targeted. We don't use the word victim at the protectors very often, we prefer the word target. And here's why. You have been selected, the bully in the workplace, the bully pastor has picked on some people but not other people. Why is that? Because a bully is not looking for a fight, they want to overwhelm another person. So, they look for the nice person, they look for the person, for example, who lives by turning the other cheek. JULIE ROYS 31:57 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 so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Well, again, that's Paul Coughlin. And we'll be releasing part two of this podcast in just a few days. So, you want to be watching for that. Also, if you're a survivor of church hurt or abuse, or you're a Christian leader who just wants to learn more about how to protect against abuse and help survivors, I want to invite you to join me at our upcoming Restore conference. This two-day event, October 13 and 14 at Judson University in Elgin, Illinois, is a very special time of healing and equipping. Joining me will be author Wade Molen, whose book we referenced in this podcast, along with Lori Anne Thompson, Sheila Ray Gregoire, Mary Demuth, and more. For more information, go to RESTORE2023.COM. 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 so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript Victims of adult clergy sexual abuse often report that their first wound—the abuse itself—was awful. But it wasn't as bad as the second wound: the response by the church to their abuse.  This is precisely what Moriah Smothers and her husband, Jack, describe in a follow-up conversation to our initial podcast interview about the alleged abuse Moriah received at the hands of her former pastor, Patrick Garcia. In this podcast, Moriah tells of the shame and rejection she experienced from other church members when her abuse was mislabeled an “affair.” Some called her “Judas.” Others told her the devil had got the upper hand. The backlash left both Moriah and Jack devastated and confused.  Yet after a year of extreme pain and brokenness, Moriah heard an earlier edition of The Roys Report podcast with another victim of adult clergy sexual abuse. She said it led her to an epiphany and significant healing.  It also prompted Jack and Moriah to confront leaders at their former church—The Hills Church in Evansville, Ind.—for how they handled Moriah's abuse. The couple also reached out to Bob Russell, pastor emeritus of one of the largest churches in America, who is currently re-platforming Patrick Garcia.   You'll hear how Russell and the Hills Church responded. And you'll hear Moriah and Jack's impassioned plea for the church and other Christian institutions to start dealing with clergy sexual abuse in an appropriate way. Guests Dr. Moriah Smothers Dr. Moriah Smothers is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education and a former elementary special education teacher. She is also a survivor of adult clergy sexual abuse (ACSA). Dr. Jack Smothers is a Professor of Management and a secondary survivor. Their heart is to help other ACSA survivors find healing and community. They are passionate about educating church leaders to identify, prevent and respond to ACSA. They have two children and have been married for 15 years. You can connect with them at jackandmoriahsmothers@gmail.com. Moriah has also been affiliated with Restored Voices Collective, a nonprofit group that seeks to break the silence around ACSA. Show Transcript SPEAKERS JULIE ROYS, MORIAH SMOTHERS, JACK SMOTHERS, PAUL LINGE, JIM BURGEN JULIE ROYS 00:04 In 2020, Moriah Smothers says her spiritual and sexual abuse by her pastor was suddenly exposed. Only no one recognized it as abuse. Instead, it was labeled an affair, and Moriah was ostracized by her church. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I'm Julie Roys, and this is part two of a two part podcast with Moriah Smothers and her husband Jack Smothers. In part one, Moriah told of what she believes was grooming and abused by her former pastor Patrick Garcia. And if you haven't heard part one, I encourage you to go back and listen to that now. It's a harrowing and cautionary tale about how adult clergy sexual abuse happens. And I wish more Christians understood this phenomenon because it's a widespread problem wreaking havoc in the church. But so often it goes undetected, and the victims instead of receiving help receive condemnation, and the predators often get re platformed only to continue their predatory ways. So again, if you haven't heard part one, I encourage you to do that now.

 But in this podcast, Moriah and Jack describe what is often called the second wound. This was the response of their church to Moriah's adult clergy sexual abuse, and the shame and the rejection that Moriah experienced was absolutely devastating. But you'll also hear how after a year of extreme pain and brokenness, Moriah heard an earlier podcast that we did on The Roys Report with another victim of adult clergy sexual abuse and hearing that podcast and recognizing that it wasn't an affair, but abuse led to a ton of healing. But it also prompted Jack and Moriah to confront the leaders at their former church, Hills church in Evansville, Indiana, for how they handled Maria's abuse. The couple also reached out to Bob Russell, Pastor Emeritus of one of the largest churches in America, who is currently re-platforming Patrick Garcia. You'll hear Bob Russell and the Hills church responded, and you'll hear Moriah and Jack's impassioned plea that the church and other Christian institutions start dealing with adult clergy sexual abuse in an appropriate way. So, I'm very excited to share this podcast with you. But first, I'd like to thank our sponsors, 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. We now pick up my conversation with Moriah and Jack Smothers. They previously described how their pastor Patrick Garcia groomed Moriah and then abused his power by luring her into an emotional and sexual relationship. This was eventually discovered by Patrick's wife, who then told the church leadership. And this is where we join our discussion. So how did you feel the church responded to you, Moriah? MORIAH SMOTHERS 03:49 I don't want to over exaggerate this and I can share details. The abuse from my pastor was horrible. The way the church responded was 10 times more traumatizing than the abuse. I could have recovered from the abuse in a reasonable amount of time, I feel but the literature when you read about this, it calls it the second wound. And the first is that having just that abuse experience, but then the church response was really painful. I don't think the church had any knowledge of adult clergy sexual abuse. And so we were basically told again, through zoom, I think Dave was designated to be the person that communicates with us, nobody else really did, that they were going to release a statement. This is what the statement was. We were not involved in any of the processes the information. I did again, we thought we only had a fair narrative. We had no information about ACSA. And so I did send a text message. Jack and I thought it was a good idea at the time to some of the women I was really close to and I disclosed that this situation had to do with me. In hindsight that was not a good choice because of the way I worded it but oddly, one of the things I've struggled to recover the most from, were some of the communications from my very best friends from the church. And most of them were very involved in the church as well. And so one of the ones that has just stuck with me is when your identity is eviscerated, things just have the ability to sink really deep. One of them was calling me Judas and Patrick's wife at the time was like Jesus. A lot of them wrote, you need to get help, you really let the devil win was a common one I got. I'll never trust you again was often. And I will say those that were ugly, hurt, they hit really deep. I did get a few women to respond or just like I don't understand but I'm praying for you. And very little support from within the church. I do want to say that God was really I wouldn't have been able to make this big faith statement a year ago, but I realized now God was so good. He sent I didn't know this woman, but she was local. When she heard what was happening at the Hills. She is also a survivor. And she asked for my contact information from a mutual acquaintance. And she immediately got in contact with me and has mentored me, she didn't know about abuse either. But she and her husband made it and were thriving. But it was another abuse situation locally and just was such a good mentor to me. So, inside the church, the response was not supportive. It was not understanding. We were ostracized, basically. Even people we love dearly the extent of support was basically like, go get marriage counseling, and so not supportive. Outside the church, nobody we met understood ACSA. So I'm not saying that we still never got the language. But there were some people that were able to love on us. Our next-door neighbors, were just Jesus to us. This fellow survivor, my parents came around us very quickly. And so we did have some support that we you know, a lot of people don't have, so I want to acknowledge that. JULIE ROYS 07:04 Wow. Jack during this time, you and Moriah's parents met with Dave Bowersox and Daryl Maron. As I'm understanding that was a pretty tough meeting. Would you describe what happened in that meeting? JACK SMOTHERS 07:22 It was intense. But so Moriah's parents are wonderful, amazing Christians, they have invested a lot into Moriah and I, and we trust them, we love them. And so we felt that it would be good to take them along. And I'm glad that they went. They've done a lot of counseling in their life. And so they took resources, books, a variety of different resources to help Dave and Daryl in the Hills guard against situations like this occurring again. So they gave them those resources. And we talked through the situation, they shared some of the information that they had, such as you know, I was not aware at that point in time, of the May encounter that had happened at the zoo and police report. And since I was not allowed to come to that meeting with Moriah, I didn't have that information. MORIAH SMOTHERS 08:22 There's was an investigation. JACK SMOTHERS 08:23 There was an investigation. They hired an investigator to look into Patrick's devices to see if they could uncover anything. And I guess that went on throughout the summer. And when that didn't come up with anything that he was re platformed later on in that fall. JULIE ROYS 08:41 Help me understand this. And maybe I misheard you, you're saying there was an investigation, they looked at all the devices, and then they re platformed Patrick? JACK SMOTHERS 08:52 Yeah, The investigation came up with nothing, they did not find any communication. Their suspicion of communication. But they didn't find anything between Patrick and so this was after just to clarify, this was after the May event. JULIE ROYS 09:08 Got you. So in between the two? JACK SMOTHERS 09:10 There was that investigation that didn't come up with anything. When everything finally did come out, and what was that? September? October? That's when the meeting happened with Moriah's parents and myself and the pastors. JULIE ROYS 09:25 And is it true that Dave Bowersox confessed during that meeting that he was aware that Patrick had an attraction to Moriah? JACK SMOTHERS 09:34 That is true. So Dave's advice to Patrick was just get a handle on it, get it under control and resolve your old feelings, essentially. They felt like Patrick may have targeted Moriah, but they said that they felt like Moriah was complicit in that situation. Of course, they didn't understand at the time the ACSA framework and that complicity would not be possible in that situation. So it was high drama. JULIE ROYS 10:03 Stunning to me that seminaries don't teach this. It's against the law. I wish it was in more states, but in certain states, it is against the law for a pastor to have a relationship like this with a congregant. It seems like we're, maybe we're just on the cusp of becoming awake to this. But even as I have interviewed pastors, and say, hypothetically, do you think it would necessarily be abuse if a pastor has a relationship with a married congregant? And there'll be like, we don't know what the role of the woman was. Like, I don't even understand the basics of exactly what you said, Jack, that when there's a power differential, someone cannot give consent, when there's that kind of power. But it's just stunning to me complete and utter ignorance. And it's inexcusable. Every pastor should be aware of this. The same way that you have to go through training with Title XI, if you work for a university, pastors need to go through this kind of training, if they're going to serve in the pastorate and so do all the elders and the people who are holding them accountable. But it is just not happening. And it's really unbelievably frustrating. MORIAH SMOTHERS 11:19 Yeah. And really, that's the heart of why we're talking to you, is that you're right. It's illegal in 14 states right now. Understanding adult clergy sexual abuse is a job requisite skill at this point. 20 years ago, maybe not knowing maybe I can get it. There's so much literature now and fantastic researchers that this has been discussed too widely to claim ignorance at this point. And so I completely agree with you. There should be no ignorance of this issue. JULIE ROYS 11:50 In the wake of what happened is my understanding that Hills church actually paid for counseling for Patrick, is that right? JACK SMOTHERS 11:57 That's what they told us. JULIE ROYS 11:59 Okay, did they pay for counseling for you? JACK SMOTHERS 12:02 They did not. JULIE ROYS 12:03 Help me understand that? Did they give any kind of explanation for that? JACK SMOTHERS 12:08 No, we didn't ask them to pay for anything. MORIAH SMOTHERS 12:11 I chose a counselor because my survivor friend had also seen this woman. And again, she didn't know she was actually a survivor at the time. And so she was affiliated with a church that the Hills did not want us to receive counseling from. And so they actually discouraged me from seeing a counselor. They wanted us to see a counselor that was also I believe, seeing Patrick and his wife at the time. And so I was uncomfortable seeing a counselor that they recommended, which they didn't offer to pay for anything either way. But again, Julie, our supportive statement was go get marriage counseling. As if our marriage was broken, not that I was targeted and groomed and abused, confusing. JULIE ROYS 12:55 And the statement that was given at the time called it an inappropriate relationship, correct? Patrick did say that it was his fault, and no one but him. His fault, yet seems like some mixed messages in what was being said. MORIAH SMOTHERS 13:10 And there was no disclosure, I was a congregant. And I think that while there was no overtly blaming me in this situation there, I felt like the context of the sermon was, frankly tacky. It was preaching from the woman caught in adultery. And it was from the lens of a let's not throw the first stone but as a broken woman, I listened to it. That was all I heard is the adultery piece. They had all the advisory boards stand up front, and you could just see their disgust on their face. It was a group I should have been part of. Because if anybody had known I was missing, that would have been very a clear signal if they had known. It really has always bothered me, they never disclosed I was a congregant. I think that was very intentional. Actually, Dave Bowersox had apologized. He said, I'm so sorry you all are having to go through with this. And Jack, I think he said something like, I'm sure there's not a script for it. And they've said, Oh, no, there actually is. So they received counsel from somewhere about how to handle these situations. JULIE ROYS 14:13 They didn't make you were a big Scarlet A, at least. I guess we've progressed a little bit. But unbelievable. Yeah, what you went through and I'm so sorry. That just sounds absolutely traumatizing. For a year while you're in biblical counseling, you're believing the narrative. How did you internalize what you had done and the consequence? MORIAH SMOTHERS 14:40 Yeah. Oh, man, that's complicated. Julie, honestly, a lot of pieces did not make sense. But I was so desperate to keep my family together. I was willing to take responsibility for anything and everything. And so that's what I did for a season is I did a lot of work with my biblical counselor to figure out what was wrong with me. Like how had I sinned, how had I fallen, I will own it, I will repent for everything under the sun. Because I wanted to be well and whole. I didn't understand how this happened because I didn't want to have an affair. To be honest, I'm not even attracted to Patrick. I had no clue how this happened. But all we had was a fair framework. My mom tried to be really sweet and helpful gave me like a fair recovery books and things. And I started to read them. And I was like, this isn't me, this isn't I'm not represented in this. And so I will say the counselor I saw, knew nothing about abuse and trauma for this situation. She did some good soul care kind of things with me. But yeah, we were just trying to keep it together with the fair. JULIE ROYS 15:47 Wow. That's a very humble response, and so often we don't see those. You can only do what you know. But when you know, then you're responsible. And that's super, super important. It seems like you did have an epiphany. And it was on a podcast that we published, which, when I hear things like that it's so heartening. We work in the trenches a lot from day to day. And it's not the easiest work. But things like that, to hear stories of how it has impact is, it can give you some fuel for a decent amount of time. So I'll just say that it just is really encouraging. MORIAH SMOTHERS 15:47 He won't say this, but my biggest source of healing was Jack. That sweet man, we walked together a lot. That's where we bond as we walk. And so like we were walking every day for miles and miles. And he was my counselor at that time. And how deeply unfair for him to have been traumatized the way he was, and yet he was supporting me. I wanted basically nothing to do with faith at that point. And I've loved Jesus my whole life basically, that I thought, How can God cannot be good if my pastor treated me this way. Which I could have gotten over that, but I thought, There's no way the church is good or right, if it's been covered up by other pastors. So I was relying on Jack's faith. And Jack never asked me to leave. And again, we thought affair, never asked me to leave. He never yelled at me. There was a moment that it's still it's really hard to talk about. It was very soon after all of this had come out. And again, I was following him around the house because I was dazed and confused what had happened. He stopped in the doorway, and our kids were sitting there watching. And he said, I just feel so much compassion for you. And that was the first time he hugged me since it all came out. And I don't usually cry. I'm not a crier. I sobbed and sobbed in the hallway. And it was like, from that moment, I knew we were going to be okay. But it was hard. It was a hard road. And I did get some bad advice spiritually. The counselor told me that God had probably planned this for me, maybe for Patrick Garcia to get out of ministry. And I thought, man, if that's what God plans for the children he loves, I don't want to follow that God anymore. So that was a rough road. I will say for that counselor, Jack and I once we did realize what had happened, that it was abuse, we went back to her, presnted that. She graciously received that she apologized to us for not knowing. And so I have a lot of respect for her for that reason. And I'm excited for the work she's going to do in the future with this new knowledge. JULIE ROYS 17:49 But you heard a podcast, I guess it was November 2021, that I recorded with Katie Roberts, a beautiful, wonderful person that has become a friend, because I've been able to share her story with a lot of you. And so courageously she walked through what was incredibly difficult, and she took incredible hits from people criticizing her. It is just so indicative of the misogyny in our culture, that we just have such a difficult time wrapping our heads around the fact that women are not the temptress or that we cannot acknowledge that this is abuse. But Katie, beautifully did, and you heard that podcast when she talked about her own grooming, and abuse. Talk about what that was like to hear that and for the light bulb to go on. MORIAH SMOTHERS 19:23 That was an epiphany and that's exactly what it was. I'd been listening to your podcast for a while because I didn't have the words but I felt like something was mishandled here. It just, what happened in the church, it didn't sit right. Like I knew it didn't feel like justice somehow but I didn't know why. And I've been listening to you for a while Katie came on. And I remember almost feeling a little shaky and scared because I felt like she's telling my story. Like how could she possibly know what happened to me? And how has it happened to her? And this was way before I knew that there's so many similarities between these grooming and abuse stories with clergy. And I listened to the whole thing, I sent it to everybody in our support network, which let's be honest, that actually wasn't very many people at the time. But anybody that knew our story and would listen, I sent them the podcast. And I was like, how can this be? The language she used to explain like the grooming and the trauma bonding, the love bombing. She used the language that I had been describing, but didn't have the right word for it. And so it was such a weird thing. But I remember feeling I have to know more about this. And so I looked up Katie's email, and I emailed her and I said, I don't know if this makes any sense or not. But this is my story. And I shared it all. And she responded, and we ended up hopping on a phone call or zoom, I don't remember. But her first words to me, I actually wrote them down to share at the end of this podcast, because there was so much compassion when she heard my story. And she said, I'm so sorry how you've been mistreated. And from someone outside of my circle, but didn't have to love me and hear my story, that was such a powerful moment, because she got it. And while we were talking, she kept saying I understand, and that makes sense. And I thought, I didn't even understand all of this, and she did. And that's another part of the reason we're talking to you is that we found truth and understanding and freedom through Katie's story, which I know was a grueling experience for her. And I thought if the Lord is going to bring this opportunity full circle, where I learned through Katie, if someone can hear our story, and hear the tragedy, but also the hope, then we can't pass that up. JULIE ROYS 21:53 I love that. And I have found that nobody can minister to a survivor like another survivor. MORIAH SMOTHERS 22:03 I've learned the most through that community, there's a support group community that Katie and a few others founded. It's called Restored Voices Collective, and the learning, the growth, the empathy that happens in there, it could not be replicated, and it's only other survivors. So we're just supporting each other, we're not trying to overly educate or correct, it's just living life together in the aftermath of deep brokenness. JULIE ROYS 22:33 And I think that's what I've heard and what I've experienced, what I've seen. The Restore Conference that we've done, you know, a couple of those. And I remember the first one, I thought, oh, we should have prayer ministers, you know, to make sure because really, I mean, the whole vision was just to gather people that were literally strewn along the highway. I mean, that's just how it seems when you report these stories, and the church isn't caring for them, the church harmed them. And so they have nowhere to go and to see them come together. And I realize the prayer ministers are here, they're each other, right? It's the person who's sitting down right beside you, who you don't have to explain hardly anything because they get it. And it really is. And I know the survivor community is not perfect. And sometimes there can be some really painful things that happen within it. But I would say 90-95% of the people in there are just some of the most compassionate, good people because their character has been refined by fire. MORIAH SMOTHERS 23:39 And I attended your last Restore conference, and I got to meet a lot of the women I'd only known online up until that point, through zoom meetings, and one of the things that struck me is that personally, they're very normal, seeming. It's like when you feel so broken and devastated. Which is strange to me, like these very regular moms and women, but what I also know about them is they are warriors, they are so strong and so capable and intelligent. And that was an amazing experience just to see like my supporters in person. And that was amazing. Thank you for putting on those conferences, because I got to meet my people in person because of that. JULIE ROYS 24:20 It's a pleasure to do it really is and it's an honor. And we have another one coming up. So October 13 and 14th. If you're interested in that, I hope if you're listening you can because honestly, being with those people and experiencing what God does there, is probably one of the favorite things that I've ever done in my life. I absolutely love it. So it's RESTORE2023.COM if you want more information on that. So talk about the difference and you've already touched on it but the healing journey for you and Jack having this new perspective that this was not an affair that this was abuse, that you are a victim, that you're a survivor walking through this, what difference did that make emotionally and relationally, but also spiritually? MORIAH SMOTHERS 25:16 Oh, that's a big question. So I will say, for me the language made all the difference. Because earlier in the podcast you mentioned, I wrote that I felt like an addict. Now, knowing that description while being true is describing trauma bonding, that was really powerful. And I think because I'm a teacher person, like, language has been so healing for me. And it's given me search terms, basically, to read about what does this mean. So that's been a huge part of my healing. And then also being able to teach other people in my life about this is what this means this is how this happens. And just having the right words to study has been very healing. Also, I would say, understanding ACSA was healing in and of itself, because there's so many pieces of who I am, who Jack was, our life didn't just didn't fit affair. And so it felt very insufficient. And we did not have answers. Once we had this framework and understood how this happens, I started talking to other survivors, hearing similarities and stories. It's a really sad club to be part of. But then you have your other people to compare notes with. And so you have options and choices again, that I never had before. And so again, we were happy healing in private with that, but that made a big difference. My faith was a battle though. I think, intellectually, and emotionally, Jack was so stable for me and such a good listener, he helped me heal up in that way. My faith was a big, I still struggle with that, if I'm being completely honest. I was really ready to walk away for a while thinking that there's no goodness in church, I don't see how God can be good if these are the people that are leading a church. And so I got to a place in my faith that I realized that, so our kids committed their life to Jesus as well before, while I was really still struggling, which was such a beautiful thing. So I really felt like to be a good wife and mom, I've got to figure out this faith thing. Because I was willing at that point, I'll follow Jack wherever he goes. So if I have to attend church and just be mentally elsewhere, I will. But I knew I've got to figure out what this is. So I mentally went through like the major religions. And I was like, I don't see myself becoming a Buddhist and like really going through, like, where am I going to land because I'm a faithful person, I always have been, I knew I needed a religion, or faith. And so I thought, gosh, well probably like my best option is just really going with some kind of new age thing. But I would be a horrible God to myself. And so I felt like that's not on the table. And so I thought, Okay, I've got to figure out what do I really believe about Jesus? Because Jack has been being Jesus to me. And I don't mean that in a weird way, just like modeling the goodness of God, like I was holding on to his faith. And for the first year, again, only affair framework, I was able to read the Psalms, which was fine, like that was good, it was a start. But then when I realized I've got to make my mind up about what I think about Jesus, I started reading the gospels again. And that was a moment for me that I realized, I absolutely love the person of Jesus Christ, and that our hearts were so much in alignment about, he rarely called out anyone in sin or the vulnerable. He called out religious leaders for the way they were hurting vulnerable populations. And so that was a turning point for me is that, first of all, Jack modeled faith to me. He modeled the love of Jesus, which kept me hanging on by a thread. And then once I could finally reengage with the Word of God, I just focused on the person of Jesus. And I was able to fall back in love with him and really have some deeper roots again. I say now, and I completely mean this. The only people in my life I really trust are Jack and Jesus. JULIE ROYS 29:08 Wow. I love the honesty and the vulnerability. And I don't know anyone who has walked through church hurt, or certainly adult clergy sexual abuse- that's just brutal – who hasn't struggled in their faith in their walk with the Lord. I just spent the weekend with a survivor and, boy, they were raw, and they were honest, and I've been through it too. So. MORIAH SMOTHERS 29:40 And we're really healed up in a lot of ways. But I mean, we're almost three years out, but church is hard still. We've just moved. We're looking for a new church home. It's hard. And there's a lot of triggers and red flags and it's just even when you're in a good place and you really love the people. It's just hard. JULIE ROYS 29:56 It is, but I will say one thing, my teachers, Katie has been a teacher. Lori Anne Thompson has been a teacher. And they've been gracious with me like when I've written something and I used a wrong word or a wrong term, and they won't mince words. They'll reach out to me, but they're gracious when I'm like, Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not. Yep. Okay. Help me understand. MORIAH SMOTHERS 30:22 That's survivor community, they are loving but they are fierce and I love that about them. JULIE ROYS 30:27 Yes, they are. But I think it's so important to process what's happened. And I know just my own church hurt, experience, being able to process with people that you're not going to rack them, if you just say exactly how you're feeling in the moment. And that's just super, super important. Let's turn to holding the church accountable, because after this happened after you became enlightened about what had actually happened to you, you reached out to the Hills leadership, and you wrote them a letter, you've given me a copy of that letter. I think it's so good. I would love for you to just read it because my understanding is you sent this letter, so far, you haven't gotten a response. MORIAH SMOTHERS 31:17 No, I think it was confirmed it was received. Actually, the first letter I sent Jack was really kind. Again, I know we've been harsh about the church we came from, the Hills. We love a lot of the people there. I think there's some good things happening there. Out of respect, Jack met with Dave Bowersox to let them know this letter is coming. But besides that, you did get a response after this letter, though. Didn't he call you? JACK SMOTHERS 31:42 He did respond. I don't know if it was a call or an email. But he did respond. MORIAH SMOTHERS 31:45 And I think it was basically like we mishandled the situation was the response. I wrote this letter in fall 2021. So that was right after learning about adult clergy sexual abuse. So I will say I've learned a lot more since then. There are a few pieces of it that knowing what I know now, I would reword differently. But this is right where I was at having learned it, so I'll read it for what it is. My Hills church leadership. For most of the past year, Jack and I have been trying to navigate our way through this situation, with the framework and language that surrounds an affair or inappropriate relationship, which implies there was full consent from both people. While many of my choices were sinful and I egregiously sinned against God and Jack, it did not account for many of the experiences represented within the reading and counseling in which we engaged. I voraciously sought material to gain an understanding of what happened with the hopes that knowledge would alleviate my confusion and brokenness. In doing so I recently discovered the concept of adult clergy sexual abuse, ACSA, and for the first time I understood what had occurred. With this new knowledge, I felt compelled that we as the church need to grow in this area. Upon reflection, Jack, and I believe there are two logical explanations for the way that Hills leadership handled the situation, which include either ignorance or intentional misrepresentation. From an assumption of ignorance, if you had been aware of power dynamics requirements for consent, the cycle of ACSA abuse, how targets are chosen by predators and the grooming process, then this situation would have been conveyed to the congregation differently. The alternate explanation is that you received legal/peer counsel to minimize the liability of the church by intentionally misrepresenting clergy abuse as an inappropriate relationship. Regardless of the explanation of what happened in the past, there is much work to be done going forward to minister to those who have been hurt within the church. Therefore, I am writing to you with the hope that you as an institution will be able to grow and change as I have been growing and changing in my understanding and the implications of this critical issue. I hope you have read and shared my side of the story with the church leadership, elders, pastors and advisory council, which was given to you in fall 2020. However, if you have not, I suggest you review it so you have an anecdotal understanding of ACSA in this specific situation. Given my new understanding of power differentials and how they apply to pastors and congregants, I fully believe I was exploited by Patrick Garcia, and it was erroneous and misleading for the church leadership to convey it as an inappropriate relationship, which conveys consent. The predatory nature of the lead pastor was not communicated to the congregation, which is of great concern to me because it minimizes the impact of abuse within the church. I've included several resources on ACSA and I pray that you will educate yourselves and your leadership teams on the nuances of this type of abuse, how to effectively prevent it and how to handle it with integrity and transparency if it does occur. The reason that I am writing to you is threefold. One, I ask that you reach out to other potential victims and provide them with the support and resources to understand misconduct, grooming and abuse by spiritual/pastoral leader. As you are likely not aware of all the victims who have been adversely impacted by pastoral misconduct in the church you lead, an open invitation to all congregants is likely needed. Please connect them with a female counselor that is well versed in adult clergy sexual abuse and misconduct. The wounds from this are complex and deep. So I implore you to seek out your hurting sheep and care for them. Two, I ask that you share my story and ACSA resources with anyone in the church that you consider a leader. In my opinion, this means the elder board, pastoral staff and advisory board at a minimum. It is the church leadership's responsibility to shepherd their flock with care and dignity. Choosing to not educate yourselves when a wolf has wreaked havoc on your congregation is not living up to the call our Lord has placed on your role. Number three, I ask that you inform the perpetrator and people from whom you received counsel, that this was not simply an inappropriate relationship, that it falls under the criteria of adult clergy sexual abuse. By doing this, I hope you will clearly communicate that God's church is a place that abuse in any forum is not tolerated, because your primary goal is to protect the people under your care. I then provide some working definitions of clergy sexual misconduct, clergy sexual abuse and abuse of power. And then there were hyperlinked resources at the bottom. JULIE ROYS 32:41 So you asked for three things. Of those three things that you asked for, have you gotten any of them? MORIAH SMOTHERS 35:40 If any of those things have been done, they have not been communicated to us. JULIE ROYS 36:39 Okay. And, Jack, you had a conversation with Dave Bowersox after he received this letter? What did he say? JACK SMOTHERS 36:50 They were still processing what their response was going to be. And so he did thank me for meeting with him before we sent the letter to give him a heads up about what our intention was in sending the letter. But that was the extent of the response that we received. JULIE ROYS 37:06 And then you send a follow up letter to a couple months later, still nothing. MORIAH SMOTHERS 37:10 No. I reminded them of the request, and I sent the follow up, not to just be hounding them, but it was when everything had come out in a bigger way with the SBC. And so I thought surely this will get their attention that they'll realize how serious this is because the SBC even came out and said that if a pastor is in a relationship with a congregant, it's abuse, and that's a disqualifying sin. And so I thought having this outside entity that is that powerful, repent, hopefully, that should speak volumes to them. I received confirmation it was received, but I have not heard word if anything was actually done. JULIE ROYS 37:50 Right. And when this is called an affair and not abuse, it does open the door for the person to reoffend, and to continue doing this. And there may be others who have similarly been groomed by Patrick. MORIAH SMOTHERS 38:07 I've been told very specific information about those situations, which makes me think it's credible, but I have not had interaction or communication with any women that would say that. But again, they probably wouldn't even know it was grooming. JULIE ROYS 38:21 So now, almost three years have passed since Patrick resigned from the Hills. When he did so he said he was going to undergo a quote, season of restoration so that the root of my brokenness and dysfunction can be addressed. Christian Post just published this article in June in which Patrick says he's repented. He said, he's gotten to the root of his pride. He's preaching again. Do you believe Patrick Garcia is repentant? And why or why not? JACK SMOTHERS 38:53 I'll give my thoughts on that. Not to dodge the question, but I don't believe it matters whether or not he is repentant. I believe that an abuser is disqualified from ministry regardless of whether or not they repent. I hope that he has restored his relationship with God. I hope that all abusers come to an understanding of the pain that they have inflicted and are genuinely sorry and repent from that sin. But that does not mean they are then qualified to stay in that profession. They can go get any other job anywhere in the world, but not that one. MORIAH SMOTHERS 39:35 Actually, one of the things I feel strongly about is that I hope he's repentant. I hope everyone repents, but that does not mean there's leadership roles out there for them. I think actually, repentance means not seeking out leadership, because that's where this pain occurred. Like clearly that's a temptation that's a difficult area. Restore your relationship with God and be involved in a healthy body, church body. But I don't think that means leadership. And that's where I'm seeing my biggest concerns are about the church right now is that repentance equates to re-platforming. And I don't think that's what that means. JULIE ROYS 40:13 And when trust is betrayed, trust has to be earned back. And honestly, I said this not too long ago, but some of these guys don't have enough time in their life to earn back the trust that they've squandered and that they betrayed. But I agree with you. And I know there's going to be people who disagree. And what about David? We've talked about this so many times on podcasts, or listen to other podcasts, we've addressed this ad nauseam, but I'm just so tired of it. Above reproach is the qualification in Scripture for an elder. Are you above reproach? I have a tough time thinking that someone who has preyed on a congregant. Think about that; you're supposed to be a shepherd, and you became the wolf. How we could ever put that person back in the sheep pen again. And the amount of concern and compassion and let's pray for the predator that you hear. And the little that you hear about praying and concern and care for the victim is appalling. And I think it's very indicative of the kind of culture that we live in, which puts celebrities up on the platform. And man, if you are an order, and you you have the right stuff, boy, people just love you. But man, if you're not, and you happen to be in the way of someone getting back on that platform, it's very difficult. So I asked Jim Bergen, he's the lead pastor of Flat Irons Community Church in Colorado, and Paul Linge, who currently oversees the counseling ministry there at Crossroads, whether or not they thought that Patrick was ready to return to ministry, whether he should be replatformed. I got two very different responses. So I'd like to play both of them. First, here's how Jim Bergen responded. JIM BURGEN 42:12 Patrick absolutely messed up in a simple way with this woman. Her degree of willingness or participation. I don't know anything about she didn't call me. Patrick confessed to me, and I okay about disclose everything you know, and get on it. And even as he's starting to move back into ministry, I have a lot of texts going hey, do you think I can preach again? Do you think I can preach again? And I'm like, slow down. Because it's been, I don't think, we lose most of the New Testament and all of the Old Testament, if sexual sin disqualifies you from ministry forever. I mean, David, we lose Abraham, okay. But I don't think that when a pastor makes a mistake like this, it's a death sentence forever. But it definitely is a slow, long healing process. And that's what I cautioned him with, over and over again. JULIE ROYS 43:04 Okay, clearly, Jim Bergen doesn't share our view on this. MORIAH SMOTHERS 43:09 Really, Jim Burgen understand or know any survivors of ACSA. Just sexual sin and not the spiritual or emotional or psychological. He needs some education on that. JULIE ROYS 43:20 He does. And actually, in our conversation, I pushed back on that and asked him about spiritual abuse, about adult clergy sexual abuse, as well, and what qualifies. And it was clear to me that a lot of this was new to him. MORIAH SMOTHERS 43:35 Yeah, we've met some really, truly good men, good shepherds, pastors that we have a lot of respect for. They don't know. And I'm just floored by that. JACK SMOTHERS 43:47 But the good ones respond with a desire to learn. Yes, and that's really encouraging. Moriah has done a wonderful job of putting together training on ACSA. We've been able to deliver that to two different churches, and it's just fantastic and encouraging and edifying to see the godly people who get it and they want to improve they want to protect their congregation and guard against wolf-like behavior. JULIE ROYS 44:16 As I said, I also asked Paul Linge about this question, and I'd like to play his response. PAUL LINGE 44:23 Christian Post article stated that he did meet with Crossroads elders as part of what I think was I don't remember if it was Southeast or Bob Russell in particular but basically trying to put him on a restoration pathway which to me was grossly inefficient. General sense was it was a box to check rather than any kind of your display of repentance. Because for him to really go on a restoration journey with the people at Crossroads and Evansville. That's not a one-time meeting. There's probably months of meeting, based on the damage that was created in our community. So that's why it feels very superficial. I personally, and just through my own contacts have not seen the necessary repentance, or else he would be spending a lot more time in Evansville, the community that he helped blow up if that were true. And so I don't, I think the article comes across as in not just to me, but to others in our communities who read it, as though he was somehow the victim, whether that was the victim of Crossroads, the victim of the Hills leadership, the victims of Savannah, and it's just not true. At some point, a person has to take ownership and responsibility that for their own choices and behavior. I think he keeps getting prodded along by some key figures, who, for whatever reason, are reticent to just tell him the truth. Maybe they are, and I just don't know it. But it just seems like he's been continued to be propped up. I don't know if it's so much of a timeline, Julie, as it is looking for mile markers along the way. Right. So looking for signs of humility, looking for signs of teachability, looking for signs of repentance, looking for signs of restitution. I wronged you, you know, I dented your car, I'm going to pay for it to make sure it gets fixed. When you see that, you know, kind of the key is anybody I have wronged, then I'll make it right. That's the type of response I think you're looking for when you're talking about character change, or even your personality change. Once you start to see that and you're like, okay, something's happening. What we're looking for is their demonstration is there not feigned or fake remorse, but genuine repentance. And that's what I would say, at least from my experience from my seat. I have not seen that in Patrick Garcia in the last five years. JULIE ROYS 47:02 I'm guessing you resonate with a lot of what Paul said. I think he's absolutely right for looking for the markers of repentance, whether or not that means you can re-platform that's another question. And there's really need to be two different questions that people need to understand; you can be restored to Christ, you can be restored to the body restored to a position, that's a totally different thing. And I think people need to just start saying you're permanently disqualified. I don't know why we just can't seem to say that in the church. And yet I think it needs to be said for abusers. Absolutely. MORIAH SMOTHERS 47:39 And, Julie, I just want to again, echo what Paul said in his clip. It's what Jack and I were saying, Actually, Jack wrote this to Leonardo Blair, who wrote the article that the level of pain and trauma that article caused from Patrick, Blair made himself as the victim clearly demonstrates no understanding of spiritual authority, power dynamics, abuse. Anyone that was mentioned in that article, he re traumatized, and Leonardo did too. So I'm going to be very blunt, I hold the Christian Post responsible for publishing that as well as Patrick Garcia. Because I think, yeah, I think I hold them all responsible. We have too much information to just publish whatever might get a few clicks at this point without considering all of the victims, not just Jack and I, but the churches, the families. JULIE ROYS 48:30 And I think reporters need to be educated, absolutely need to be educated and trauma informed and all of these things and if you're not fine, but it's no excuse at this point. Get it. MORIAH SMOTHERS 48:44 Yeah, we get it. If you're not and don't want to be, go report on the weather, don't report when they're in a space where there are victims. JULIE ROYS 48:50 Yeah, absolutely. And there is clearly, I would agree, complete dearth of understanding of what ACSA, adult clergy sexual abuse is, and it needs to be remedied. I agree. Again, Patrick has been re platformed by Adventure church. He's preached there several times. That's a church in Louisville, Kentucky. I reached out to Adventure for comment. The church did not respond. Bob Russell has also replatformed Patrick. Bob had Patrick share about his fall and restoration at Bob's mentoring retreat for pastors. This, that Patrick is up there now instructing pastors about his fall and restoration and they're learning from him how to be a pastor. How does that make you feel? JACK SMOTHERS 49:41 That is absolutely ridiculous. You can't have someone who is an abuser trying to instruct people on how not to abuse. I don't understand really the line of thought and why you would want to put him into that scenario given his background. I think honestly I would just say my concern is, why is there so much focus on helping these pastors who have abused other people, instead of focus on how do we help the abused? How do we help the victims of the people who we have, are partially responsible for their victimization? That's really where the focus should be is how do we care for the vulnerable? because that's exactly what Jesus did. That's who he ministered to. And that's who he loves. So that's, we just have a mis alignment, a missed focus on on what we really talk about in churches. JULIE ROYS 50:37 And I'm guessing Bob Russell has met with Patrick, and continues to mentor him and yet, you guys reached out through Dave Road up, who I understand is someone who has relationship, he's in Christian leadership has a relationship with Bob Russell. He wouldn't meet with you. He would not meet with you. MORIAH SMOTHERS 50:58 Yeah. Paul Linge was the connection. We met with him and several other Crossroads leaders and shared our story shared educational material. They held space for us and held our story with so much goodness. That was very restorative. I struggle with pastors in general, getting to meet with Paul Linge helped restore some of that faith in that role. So the connection between us and Bob Russell is very removed, we don't know him. But we told Paul, if Bob Russell's willing to hear our story, we're willing to share it. And so there was also David Roadcup was involved there. David Roadcup knows our story as well. He shared it with Bob Russell what he could and said, Are you willing to meet with this couple, because they have concerns that Patrick Garcia is preaching again. And his comment was that if there was not sexual intercourse, I will not meet with them. That was what we were told. And so I guess anything, pastors are allowed to do anything, and be preaching and be re-platformed, besides have sexual intercourse with someone who's not their wife, is the message there. JULIE ROYS 52:01 Well, and again, we didn't hear that directly from Bob's mouth. But I have reached out to Bob, to try to get comment to try to clarify to give him opportunity. And he has not responded. If he'd like to, I'm still here, and he can do it. And I'll report what he says. Or if he'd like to apologize, he can do that, too. But just would like to hear from him, it would be really nice. Last question. And thank you so much. I know this is so hard, and can be re traumatizing. And it's difficult. And I know that you only do this because you care about other victims, you care about the church, and its ability to care for others and so this doesn't happen and keep happening to people. And so that Patrick doesn't get platformed and is able to prey on vulnerable people again. But I know it comes at a cost. And so I'm extraordinarily grateful to both of you. I know, just knowing the audience that we have for this podcast, that there are people listening, who have been through what you've been through, they may be in totally different levels of healing right now of understanding. But I think it's amazing how well both of you are doing three years, that may seem like a long time, it also seems a really short time, and you're doing remarkably well. Not just as human beings individually, but together in your marriage. And that's, I think, a testament to who you are as human beings and to the godliness. As you know, when you were talking about Jack and the way he's carried you through this, great husbands are a gift. And that's really beautiful to hear that. But I'm just wondering what you might say to other survivors who are listening, some of whom may just be right now white knuckling it just to hold on? MORIAH SMOTHERS 53:55 Yeah, yeah, and the survivor community is really, that's my heart. Like you said, that's why we're here. There's a line in Wade Mullins book that I've tried to anchor myself to, and I'm not going to quote it perfectly. Something's Not Right is the book that says, as part of your healing journey, you need to think about what your abuser or his supporters would want you to do and do the opposite. And so this is me reclaiming using my voice for that. And so I really thought about what would I say to other survivors, because I know where they've been at. And so I would repeat what sweet Katie Roberts said to me the first time I spoke to her in person, and is that I'm so sorry for how you've been treated. You aren't alone. There's others of us that have been where you're at. It's an absolute nightmare. But there are other people out there that get it. We're here for you. There's a group of women that would love to hear your story, and we're going to understand it because we've lived it as well. We're here to support you in that and that's Restored Voices Collective. Julie, if you can put that little link in your bio that would be great. I would encourage other survivors work really hard to find a counselor that understands trauma. Don't settle for a counselor that just loves Jesus. With what you've been through, it's not enough. They need to know trauma and abuse. If they love Jesus, that's great too Take the time to learn and study the language of what happened to you. Some of the researchers and writers that have been instrumental for me are David Pooler has been one of them. Dr. Heather Evans is another one, Mary DeMuth's book, We Too, is a really wonderful book. And I would say, take care of yourself. I know, this healing process is long and hard. You need people that can cheer you on and just sit with you in the pain. And the last thing I would say is, my faith is intact. And I hope that people that have really had a close relationship with Jesus, that have been abused, I hope you're able to find your way back to Him. But take your time; he's patient, he's willing to sit with you through all of the pain. And so when you're ready to explore faith again, or figure out what that looks like, just look to Jesus, don't look to your church leaders don't look to a denomination. Just look to Jesus for that. JULIE ROYS 56:12 That is so good. Moriah thank you. And thank you for just sharing so openly, Jack, thank you the same, again, difficult topic, but appreciate the way that you guys have walked through this with integrity. And the way that you're really reaching out to others and taking courageous stands to speak out, which is never easy. So thank you, it's just really been a blessing to get to know you. JACK SMOTHERS 56:37 Thank you. MORIAH SMOTHERS 56:38 Thank you. We appreciate the opportunity. JULIE ROYS 56:40 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 the work that we do here at The Roys Report. As I've said before, we don't have any big donors or advertising we simply have you, the people who care about telling other survivors stories, exposing wrongdoing, bringing healing and restoring the church. Also this month when you give a gift of $30 or more, we'll send you a copy of Christy Boulware's book, Nervous Breakthrough. It's such a great resource and I'm so excited to make it available to you to donate and get a copy of Nervous Breakthrough, 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'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 In 2016, imprisoned Iranian-American Pastor Saeed Abedini became the focus of a worldwide #SaveSaeed movement. But according to his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, Saeed was a fraud and an abusive husband. Yet because the Christian world idolized marriage and wanted a hero, Naghmeh says leaders suppressed the truth.  Featuring a powerful talk from the recent Restore Conference, in this podcast Naghmeh Panahi addresses the idolatry evident among some evangelical leaders that has led them to cover-up abuse in the church.

Guest Bios Show Transcript When you give to a church or nonprofit, how do you know your money is being well spent? How do you know if leadership is truly being held accountable? In this session from the recent Restore Conference, veteran journalist and MinistryWatch president Warren Cole Smith answers these vital questions. As Warren explains, the evangelical church has been completely incapable of policing itself.

Guest Bios Show Transcript Narcissism, power through fear, and false narratives. These are some of the qualities of toxic churches. But what about truly good—or, in the Hebrew, “tov”—churches? What do these churches look like? And how do you become one? In this session from the recent Restore Conference, world-renowned New Testament scholar Scot McKnight unpacks what it means for a Christian community to be truly good.  

Guest Bios Show Transcript Does anyone truly recover from spiritual trauma? After being ravaged by the church or a church leader, can a person ever be the same? Those gut-wrenching questions were recently posed by author and speaker, Lina Abujamra, at the Restore Conference—a session featured on this edition of The Roys Report. “It's been 9 years since I survived my spiritual trauma,” she said.

Guest Bios Show Transcript It's perhaps one of the most painful questions that survivors ask: Where is God when there's abuse? Or, where was God when I was abused? In this powerful message from the Restore Conference, internationally recognized trauma expert and psychologist, Dr. Diane Langberg, seeks to answer this difficult question. But she openly admits, “I don't know why God allows abuse.

Guest Bios Show Transcript Bullying is a huge issue in schools and workplaces. But what do you do when your bully is a pastor or leader of a Christian organization? Do you give a gentle word and turn the other cheek? Or, do you stand up and fight? On this edition of The Roys Report, we'll hear from Paul Coughlin, a best-selling author and nationally recognized anti-bullying expert, as he speaks at the Restore Conference.

Guest Bios Show Transcript How do you heal when you've been hurt and traumatized by those who profess Christ—when both Christians and church seem incredibly unsafe? In this episode of The Roys Report featuring a message from the Restore Conference, professional psychologist Dr. Philip Monroe addresses trauma, healing, and barriers to helping others going through the healing process. Maybe you've experienced trauma and you feel stuck.

To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: http://empowerchurch.co.za/giving   —— Stay Connected   Empower Church Facebook: https://bit.ly/2ZhSYNN Empower Church Instagram: https://bit.ly/2UEc6jH Empower Church Youtube: https://bit.ly/2L0KVvJ Empower Church Online: https://bit.ly/3e0J9IA Gebhardt Berndt Facebook: https://bit.ly/30iqYa0Gebhardt Berndt Instagram: https://bit.ly/2UEc6jH

To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: http://empowerchurch.co.za/giving   —— Stay Connected   Empower Church Facebook: https://bit.ly/2ZhSYNN Empower Church Instagram: https://bit.ly/2UEc6jH Empower Church Youtube: https://bit.ly/2L0KVvJ Empower Church Online: https://bit.ly/3e0J9IA Gebhardt Berndt Facebook: https://bit.ly/30iqYa0Gebhardt Berndt Instagram: https://bit.ly/2UEc6jH

To support this ministry and help us continue to reach people all around the world click here: http://empowerchurch.co.za/giving   —— Stay Connected   Empower Church Facebook: https://bit.ly/2ZhSYNN Empower Church Instagram: https://bit.ly/2UEc6jH Empower Church Youtube: https://bit.ly/2L0KVvJ Empower Church Online: https://bit.ly/3e0J9IA Gebhardt Berndt Facebook: https://bit.ly/30iqYa0Gebhardt Berndt Instagram: https://bit.ly/2UEc6jH

Enjoy this special episode with Christ over Culture Podcast Host Michelle Lenae and Grammy Award Nominated, 2019 Stellar Award Female Vocalist of the Year, gospel singer-songwriter, Jekalyn Carr! During this interview, Michelle and Jekalyn chat at the Restore Conference 2019 about music, ministry, and what's coming up next for Jekalyn in 2019! Follow Jekalyn: Instagram: @JekalynCarr Facebook: @JekalynCarr Twitter: www.iamjekalyncarr.com Follow Christ over Culture: Instagram: @ChristoverCulture Facebook: @ChristoverCulturePodcast Twitter: @ChristovCulture Website: www.christoverculture.com

Restore Conference -Session 1

Restore Conference - Session 2

Restore Conference - Session 6

Restore Conference - Session 5

Restore Conference - Session 3 & 4 by Mark Dolphens

Hello everyone and welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 14. I am your host, Javier Diaz, and I am so thankful that you've chosen to listen. The Restore podcast exists to help restore the vision, restore the mission, restore the church. We do this through telling stories of different churches and how they are on the journey of transformation, and also by having conversations about different relevant topics facing the church today. The Restore podcast slowly but surely continues to grow. We thank you for listening and hope that you will share it with others. Please do subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss when we release our monthly episodes. On this episode, our guest is Pastor Jose St. Phard from Bolingbrook Seventh-day Adventist Church in Illinois, less than two hours from Chicago. We invited him to our Restore Conference in January, but in this episode we dive a bit deeper into the transformational journey of Bolingbrook Church. You will want to listen all the way through as it is an amazing story of a church that began with only 40 or so in attendance and a person telling Pastor Jose that their church was the "frozen chosen." But today, Bolingbrook is a church of approximately 400 members with a mission that is the first thing you read on their web site: "Creating spaces for the people God misses the most." Show Notes/Links/Resources Bolingbrook Church Web Site: bolingbrook.church Jose St. Phard E-mail: info@bolingbrook.church Jose St. Phard Twitter: @jphard

Hello everyone and welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 14. I am your host, Javier Diaz, and I am so thankful that you've chosen to listen. The Restore podcast exists to help restore the vision, restore the mission, restore the church. We do this through telling stories of different churches and how they are on the journey of transformation, and also by having conversations about different relevant topics facing the church today. The Restore podcast slowly but surely continues to grow. We thank you for listening and hope that you will share it with others. Please do subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss when we release our monthly episodes. On this episode, our guest is Pastor Jose St. Phard from Bolingbrook Seventh-day Adventist Church in Illinois, less than two hours from Chicago. We invited him to our Restore Conference in January, but in this episode we dive a bit deeper into the transformational journey of Bolingbrook Church. You will want to listen all the way through as it is an amazing story of a church that began with only 40 or so in attendance and a person telling Pastor Jose that their church was the "frozen chosen." But today, Bolingbrook is a church of approximately 400 members with a mission that is the first thing you read on their web site: "Creating spaces for the people God misses the most." Show Notes/Links/Resources Bolingbrook Church Web Site: bolingbrook.church Jose St. Phard E-mail: info@bolingbrook.church Jose St. Phard Twitter: @jphard

Hi everyone, welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 12. I am your host, Javier Diaz. It's good to be back after not posting an episode last month. Of course last month we held our Restore Conference and it was truly a lot of work to put on but an incredible blessing—especially hearing from several pastors/leaders telling us how they were inspired and challenged by the conference. If you weren't able to make it, we are updating our web site to add pictures from the conference, including many of the main stage speakers. So, as soon as the site is ready I will let you know. Before telling you about this episode. I again want to thank all of you for listening and sharing with others this podcast. I also want to thank several of you that have encouraged me to keep doing them. With this 12th episode, I have now been doing this for a year. Over the course of this year, we've had more than 1,000 total plays to the Restore Podcast. So again, I say thank you and please continue to share and subscribe to the podcast! With that said, I'm really excited for you to hear this episode entitled Worship, Music, and the Church. I invited three incredible, God-loving people who love the church and love music! Though they do introduce themselves, allow me to tell you a little bit about them: Tami Cinquemani is Worship Pastor at Florida Hospital Church. She has served there for more than 20 years, and became Worship Pastor in 2009. She also completed her masters degree in worship studies at the Robert E. Webber Institue for Worship Studies. Richard Hickam serves as Minister of Music at Florida Hospital Church. Richard is a versatile composer, conductor, arranger, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He is also the founding music director and conductor of the East Tennessee Symphony Orchestra and served for more than a decade as the band and orchestra director at Collegedale Academy in Tennessee. Denar Almonte is Worship Leader for Forest City Spanish Church. He is an incredible worship leader, singer, and music producer. He spent 12 years as leader of the well-known Spanish Heritage Singers. Along with leading worship at Forest City, Denar currently leads a music group called Promise. We had an incredibly great and fun time talking about what worship is and what it might look like in the gathered experience, as well as when the church is scattered during the week. We spent a good amount of time talking about how they prepare for their worship gathered experiences and so much more. I believe this is the longest episode I've recorded thus far, but I hope that you will take the time to listen, because I believe you will be blessed by listening to this amazing conversation I had with them. Show Notes/Links/Resources The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God's Call to Justice by Mark Labberton For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship by Daniel I. Block The Worship Architect: A Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and Biblically Faithful Services by Constance M. Cherry

Hi everyone, welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 12. I am your host, Javier Diaz. It's good to be back after not posting an episode last month. Of course last month we held our Restore Conference and it was truly a lot of work to put on but an incredible blessing—especially hearing from several pastors/leaders telling us how they were inspired and challenged by the conference. If you weren't able to make it, we are updating our web site to add pictures from the conference, including many of the main stage speakers. So, as soon as the site is ready I will let you know. Before telling you about this episode. I again want to thank all of you for listening and sharing with others this podcast. I also want to thank several of you that have encouraged me to keep doing them. With this 12th episode, I have now been doing this for a year. Over the course of this year, we've had more than 1,000 total plays to the Restore Podcast. So again, I say thank you and please continue to share and subscribe to the podcast! With that said, I'm really excited for you to hear this episode entitled Worship, Music, and the Church. I invited three incredible, God-loving people who love the church and love music! Though they do introduce themselves, allow me to tell you a little bit about them: Tami Cinquemani is Worship Pastor at Florida Hospital Church. She has served there for more than 20 years, and became Worship Pastor in 2009. She also completed her masters degree in worship studies at the Robert E. Webber Institue for Worship Studies. Richard Hickam serves as Minister of Music at Florida Hospital Church. Richard is a versatile composer, conductor, arranger, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He is also the founding music director and conductor of the East Tennessee Symphony Orchestra and served for more than a decade as the band and orchestra director at Collegedale Academy in Tennessee. Denar Almonte is Worship Leader for Forest City Spanish Church. He is an incredible worship leader, singer, and music producer. He spent 12 years as leader of the well-known Spanish Heritage Singers. Along with leading worship at Forest City, Denar currently leads a music group called Promise. We had an incredibly great and fun time talking about what worship is and what it might look like in the gathered experience, as well as when the church is scattered during the week. We spent a good amount of time talking about how they prepare for their worship gathered experiences and so much more. I believe this is the longest episode I've recorded thus far, but I hope that you will take the time to listen, because I believe you will be blessed by listening to this amazing conversation I had with them. Show Notes/Links/Resources The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God's Call to Justice by Mark Labberton For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship by Daniel I. Block The Worship Architect: A Blueprint for Designing Culturally Relevant and Biblically Faithful Services by Constance M. Cherry

Welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 11 where it is our hearts' desire to help restore the vision, restore the mission, and restore the church through God's strength and power. I'm your host, Javier Diaz, and it is hard for me to believe that, at the release of this episode, we are less than two weeks away from the end of 2016 and the start of 2017. Ever since we began this podcast in February, it's been a learning experience for me getting into the podcasting world. Though I listen to many podcasts, it's a bit different to start working on one. Yet, it's been a blessing to talk with and learn from so many people. I thank all of you who take the time to listen and even give some feedback. Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing this podcast. Before I introduce this month's guest, I want to remind you of the upcoming Restore Conference happening January 30-31, 2017. The discounted early registration priced at $99 ends December 31 and increases to $150 after that, so be sure to click over to RestoreTheMission.com and register right away to get the lowest price. Since we are in the thick of the holidays, we are giving away TWO registrations to the conference. Send an e-mail to me—javier.diaz@floridaconference.com—with your answer to the following question (one guess per person), and the first two correct answers will win a Restore Conference registration: Which episode of the Restore Podcast do you think has been listened to the most number of times? (Hint, this is episode 11, so the answer is one of the first 10) Again, only one guess per person is allowed, and the e-mail with your answer must also include your full name, city, state, and church membership. In addition to the first two correct answers receiving a free registration to the Restore Conference, the third correct answer submitted will receive a free copy of a book authored by this month's guest, Juliet Van Heerden. Her book is entitled Same Dress, Different Day: A Spiritual Memoir of Addiction and Redemption. Juliet is an educator, speaker, and writer who holds a Master of Science degree in Literacy Education. Juliet states: "Same Dress, Different Day: A Spiritual Memoir of Addiction and Redemption chronicles my journey from victim to victor as I struggled to break free from codependency's suffocating cycle. I learned to see my Savior as the soul mate and provider that my chemically dependent spouse could never be. God's healing grace is not only for the addicted, but also for the broken ones who love them." Throughout this year, we have told several stories of churches on their journey of restoration. I'm so glad to bring you this personal story of restoration. Show Notes/Links/Resources JulietVanHeerden.com personal web site SameDressDifferentDay.com by Juliet Van Heerden additional purchase options Connecting: Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships by Dr. Larry Crabb The Bondage Breaker by Neil T. Anderson Codependency for Dummies by Darlene Lancer A Woman's Guide to Breaking Bondages by Quin Sherrer and Ruthanne Garlock

Welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 11 where it is our hearts' desire to help restore the vision, restore the mission, and restore the church through God's strength and power. I'm your host, Javier Diaz, and it is hard for me to believe that, at the release of this episode, we are less than two weeks away from the end of 2016 and the start of 2017. Ever since we began this podcast in February, it's been a learning experience for me getting into the podcasting world. Though I listen to many podcasts, it's a bit different to start working on one. Yet, it's been a blessing to talk with and learn from so many people. I thank all of you who take the time to listen and even give some feedback. Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening, subscribing, and sharing this podcast. Before I introduce this month's guest, I want to remind you of the upcoming Restore Conference happening January 30-31, 2017. The discounted early registration priced at $99 ends December 31 and increases to $150 after that, so be sure to click over to RestoreTheMission.com and register right away to get the lowest price. Since we are in the thick of the holidays, we are giving away TWO registrations to the conference. Send an e-mail to me—javier.diaz@floridaconference.com—with your answer to the following question (one guess per person), and the first two correct answers will win a Restore Conference registration: Which episode of the Restore Podcast do you think has been listened to the most number of times? (Hint, this is episode 11, so the answer is one of the first 10) Again, only one guess per person is allowed, and the e-mail with your answer must also include your full name, city, state, and church membership. In addition to the first two correct answers receiving a free registration to the Restore Conference, the third correct answer submitted will receive a free copy of a book authored by this month's guest, Juliet Van Heerden. Her book is entitled Same Dress, Different Day: A Spiritual Memoir of Addiction and Redemption. Juliet is an educator, speaker, and writer who holds a Master of Science degree in Literacy Education. Juliet states: "Same Dress, Different Day: A Spiritual Memoir of Addiction and Redemption chronicles my journey from victim to victor as I struggled to break free from codependency's suffocating cycle. I learned to see my Savior as the soul mate and provider that my chemically dependent spouse could never be. God's healing grace is not only for the addicted, but also for the broken ones who love them." Throughout this year, we have told several stories of churches on their journey of restoration. I'm so glad to bring you this personal story of restoration. Show Notes/Links/Resources JulietVanHeerden.com personal web site SameDressDifferentDay.com by Juliet Van Heerden additional purchase options Connecting: Healing Ourselves and Our Relationships by Dr. Larry Crabb The Bondage Breaker by Neil T. Anderson Codependency for Dummies by Darlene Lancer A Woman's Guide to Breaking Bondages by Quin Sherrer and Ruthanne Garlock

Hello and welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 10. I'm your host, Javier Diaz, and I'm joined by my two friends and colleagues Tim Goff who is the Ministerial field associate for Central Florida and Rudy Alvir who is the Ministerial field associate for South Florida. I'm excited to share with you this podcast in which we have a conversation regarding the question, "What does it mean to be part of the church?" This question in one shape or form has been on my heart for some time. I hope this particular podcast can be a platform to help further engage this utmost important question. I also want to remind you of our Restore Conference just about two months away. Make sure you go over to RestoreTheMission.com for all the info we'd love to see you all at the conference. Show Notes/Links/Resources The Church: The Gospel Made Visible by Mark Devers Why Bother with Church? by Sam Allberry Surprise the World: the Five Habits of Highly Missional People by Michael Frost

Hello and welcome to the Restore Podcast episode 10. I'm your host, Javier Diaz, and I'm joined by my two friends and colleagues Tim Goff who is the Ministerial field associate for Central Florida and Rudy Alvir who is the Ministerial field associate for South Florida. I'm excited to share with you this podcast in which we have a conversation regarding the question, "What does it mean to be part of the church?" This question in one shape or form has been on my heart for some time. I hope this particular podcast can be a platform to help further engage this utmost important question. I also want to remind you of our Restore Conference just about two months away. Make sure you go over to RestoreTheMission.com for all the info we'd love to see you all at the conference. Show Notes/Links/Resources The Church: The Gospel Made Visible by Mark Devers Why Bother with Church? by Sam Allberry Surprise the World: the Five Habits of Highly Missional People by Michael Frost

This year we kicked off our Restore Conference with a Night of Worship and a short message by Pastor Matt Kehler.

In this episode, we are talking with the pastoral staff and first elder of Miami Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church. This is the largest English-speaking Adventist church in Miami and also one of the oldest. Miami Temple is one of those churches that many in the Miami area gravitate toward on a week when, for whatever reason, they don't want to go to their home church. Yet, Miami Temple has been, and still is, on a thorough transformational process that has empowered them to be on a journey to be the missional church God has called them to be. We also have some exciting news to share. As most of you know, this podcast was born out of the inaugural Restore Conference held in January of 2016. The next conference will be January 30-31, 2017, at Forest City Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Church. We are finalizing our lineup of speakers and breakout sessions, but the speakers will include Ed Stetzer Ph.D.—a prolific author and well-known conference and seminar leader. You can register today at restorethemission.com and we look forward to seeing you there.

In this episode, we are talking with the pastoral staff and first elder of Miami Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church. This is the largest English-speaking Adventist church in Miami and also one of the oldest. Miami Temple is one of those churches that many in the Miami area gravitate toward on a week when, for whatever reason, they don't want to go to their home church. Yet, Miami Temple has been, and still is, on a thorough transformational process that has empowered them to be on a journey to be the missional church God has called them to be. We also have some exciting news to share. As most of you know, this podcast was born out of the inaugural Restore Conference held in January of 2016. The next conference will be January 30-31, 2017, at Forest City Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Church. We are finalizing our lineup of speakers and breakout sessions, but the speakers will include Ed Stetzer Ph.D.—a prolific author and well-known conference and seminar leader. You can register today at restorethemission.com and we look forward to seeing you there.