Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Welcome back into the Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. Your co host Will Harrop here, joined by Joe and Jack Wilke. As always. Before we get started on our episode, I did want to make an announcement regarding something that we've been talking a good bit about lately, and that is Jack's new book that is coming out. Anytime Jack has a new book coming out is it is a momentous occasion and he's got a new book coming out called you'd are Saved about Christian Assurance. He's been posted on Facebook about it. We mentioned on the podcast before, we obviously record these episodes ahead of time. So there, you know, the timelines don't always add up, but there's a pretty good chance that it is will be coming out in the next few days once this episode gets posted. So be on the lookout for that. You Are Saved is again is the name of the book and we're very excited that's about to come out. Jack, any, any thoughts on that book?
[00:00:59] Speaker C: No.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Obviously you have a whole book's worth of thoughts, but.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Right. We'll probably do an episode kind of covering the ideas. But yeah, when you publish to Amazon, they don't tell you when it's going to go live. You just get an email all of a sudden like, all right, we accepted it. It's on the store. So I can't say for sure, but Lord willing, it should be this week.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Yep, yep. So very excited about that. And then of course, very excited next week for episode 200 as well. Hope, hope everybody's able to tune in. We will be live in person. Not live, but we will be in person recording instead of over zoom. All of us forward to episode two, 200.
With that being said, let's go ahead and get into this week's episode, which is a lot more of a sober topic, a lot more of a somber topic. I should say probably should give the qualifier at the start that if, if you are somebody who usually listens to this podcast with your family, with your kids, maybe in the car, this might be one to to put your headphones in on and only listen for yourself. We're talking about sexual abuse. Talking about sexual abuse specifically within the church, as this is something that obviously is a real thing. It is a real thing. And it's very disheartening to even have to discuss this. It's very disheartening that this even needs to be a podcast topic. But full disclosure, it's been on our kind of list to cover for quite a while and we just Kind of kept kicking the can down the road and decided that we needed to go ahead and talk about this. And so I'm going to hand it to Joe to start for any introductory thoughts that he has on this. Again, this is not something that, not going to be quite as fun of an episode as normal, but it's something that needs to be talked about and we're going to really try to get to what should the church's response be, what should parents response be specifically from a prevention standpoint?
Yeah, got a good bit to cover today, Joe. What, what thoughts do you have as we get started?
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Yeah, as you said, just a somber episode. I hate that we have to, we even have a need to record this. But unfortunately the need is great.
I mean, just from a therapy standpoint, I've worked with a lot of people that have told stories of abuse that happened in church. Bible class, teachers, youth ministers, elders, preachers that, you know, it's the position of authority that then end up getting abused. A lot of times there's grooming involved and you know, there's, and this is something that statistically speaking, most of these will go unnoticed. And so, you know, I put on the outline when we were starting to look up some stats on specifically abuse in church. Interestingly, there's like a small time study in Arizona or in Australia that popped up a bunch. There's a study of like 2018 that kind of went into it a little bit on evangelicalism. We know the Catholicism side of things just from everything breaking out about that. But from an evangelical perspective from the Protestant churches, there's not a ton of great statistics out there. But then you read a statistic, I had it pulled up, statistic like this. An estimated 63% of rapes that do not or that do occur are never reported to the police.
63% aren't reported to the police. Only 12% of child sexual abuse cases are ever reported to the police. So getting the accurate stats on this just right off the top is going to be difficult. People may say, well, how bad is it? We don't know because we don't know everybody that is reporting it. We just know there are obviously a lot of cases that have, that have cropped up over the years. And Jack, I'm going to kick it to you because there's an article going around early February, I think February 21st, it dropped of this year.
And this was by a man named Paul Garretson that was talking about the title is abuse of Authority, talking about several members or at least three different people in the church. I think he had five stories total, two were anonymous, but three people in the church. And so just kind of get us into that and how that sparked the discussion or the need for us to talk about this.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that was an eye opener, as you said, came out in February. And so shout out to Paul Garrettson for posting that.
And yeah, very, very disheartening. But, you know, it's good that he told these stories of ministers, of people that. And these are kind of things that have been public because obviously when somebody gets caught and consequences come down, it becomes public. And that's.
That's a mark on the church when that happens. It's also, of course, first and foremost about the victims. And. And so, yeah, he named some names of some cases and showed kind of how it happened. He's got screenshots of text messages of the grooming going on and the history of it. But also, like, and this was one of his main points, is that it could have been prevented, that not enough talk happened, not enough sharing of information, not enough vigilance was practiced.
And so that was one of the things we wanted to talk about here is when it does happen, God forbid it does, but when it does, then what are the duties to make sure to keep it from going any farther or if it starts, the process starts happening toward that, that somebody has an eye on it.
These are preventable things. But, you know, people want to assume the best of somebody, especially if it's a minister, if it's somebody in their church or whatever, and just don't want to think of them in that way. And that's not what I want to come out of this, is that people come out of it going just suspicious of every Christian, everybody they cross paths with, and certainly not at all.
It's certain patterns of behavior, to be specific, suspicious of. And so I. This article does a really good job of kind of, again, highlighting what could have been done otherwise.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: And what was interesting about the.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: I was just going to say briefly, what was interesting about the article is that it highlighted highlights of these cases, specifically within Church of Christ. This is the. He was not an article about kind of Christendom. No, it was Church of Christ. And even highlighted, you know, that these were a lot of. These were graduates of Freed Hardiman, like pretty close to home. I think a lot of times you can read stuff like that, go, oh, man. And those, you know, that's a Baptist or that's, you know, somebody that's just, you feel disconnected to It. But, man, this article again, entitled Abuse of Authority, that came out earlier this year, pretty close to home. All of us know the name Freed Hardiman. Some of these names he attacked, you know, he, he provided names for three of them. And as I think, as one of you said, two of them were anonymous. But the ones that he did attach the names to a very public. He attached the links as well to the news stories where these guys were arrested. And again, names that, names that people would know because of Freed Hardeman and things like that. So that's really the.
We use the word disheartening. It's kind of the scary thing as well. But Joe, I cut in front of you there.
[00:07:35] Speaker A: Sorry. No, you're good. You're good. I was just going to say from a. You know what this podcast is, is an attempt, as you guys were talking about, to highlight this, to give some prevention, to talk about what the church should do, what it is not intended to do. We'll just say right off the top, we don't give legal advice.
That's not our role at all to give legal advice on this or to parse out every situation. We do understand that, yes, there are times where maybe a false accusation is made, where somebody's life can, can be ruined from false accusations. That's why we take these things so seriously.
But we also, we're not looking to comment on all of those things. We're looking to specifically talk about in the broad general sense.
So people may say, wow, that's not what happened to me.
If there are again, false accusations, whatever it is, that can be a very difficult thing. By and large, though, these things are going untended to. And I mean, there's wild statistics on just in general abuse in general. I saw one that said 1 in 3 girls will be abused before 18, 1 in 5 boys. I saw another one that said 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20, which seems more accurate to me. And then there were several going around that said 1 in 4 girls will be abused before 18. And so whichever one you take 1 in 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 5 for the girls, and then all the way up to 1 in 20 for the guys. This is a massive problem.
A massive problem. And even worse, they say there's this statistic going around, 90% of them will be done by somebody that they know. And so as we get into the church, we think about, you know, your preacher, you know, your elders, you trust your youth minister, you trust these people of authority, your Bible class teachers, whatever it may be. And yeah, they're in positions of authority. They're also people that you trust. They're people that, you know, they're. Oh yeah, that's so and so, brother. So and so and so the parents kind of, sorry to say, they kind of check their brain at the door and they let their kids go to these, you know, we'll get into it a little bit later, but let their kids go to lock ins or let their kids go to these really just really unwise situations because hey, that's brother so and so there we know this. Or get invited to somebody's house and the kid just goes unattended. Like these are the things you have to think about as a parent we need to be thinking about as a church, as a how do we protect. And nobody's above scrutiny. Nobody's above scrutiny. And that's, you know, we want to say, well, we think the best of one another. Not with my kids, I'm sorry to say, not with my kids. Like I don't, I'm not going to leave my kids with anybody type of thing because this is so scary. And the statistics just in general are so much. And so again, we just wanted to get that out right off the top. And as we think about this article, all that highlighted is that yes, they are among us, people that spoke on free lectureships. We hold these people up.
A lot of times they use their authority to do bad things. It's not always abuse in the church. Sometimes it comes out in other ways. But man, it's very easy to let that authority go to the head and people's lives are forever ruined by it.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Well, and as difficult as it is, one of the points of the article makes is that there is a right and a wrong way to handle said situations when they come to light.
You know, again, minister or whatever it is, and when he gets found out there's a right and a wrong way to handle it and man, far too often it seems to get handled the wrong way. And you know, that's speaking, that's speaking very generally. That's speaking, you know, maybe painting with a broad brush a bit. But specifically in all the examples that were highlighted to Jack's point, as he brought up earlier, things kind of led to that point that didn't have to happen.
Things could have prevented it. But then also again, when these things do come to light, what is the way to handle it? Do we, you know, far too often it appears these things can just get kind of brushed under the rug. These things can, you know, kind of just Try to quiet it down, to really just avoid the controversy, to, you know, honestly just kind of keep the status quo.
And it's, you know, at that point it's like, well, the status quo has already been disrupted, so now what are we going to do about it? And yet that, that seems to be the response from church leaders in a lot of instances. So, guys, I feel like we should probably go ahead and get into the church response. Part of this is that that's kind of a, a big aspect of this whole discussion. And so I don't know which one of you wants to start here as Joe's kind of driving the outline here as he's obviously deals with some of this type of thing for, for a living, being a therapist.
Joe, I guess I'll start with you and then we can go to Jack. What are your thoughts on kind of just generically the church's response with regards to offenders, how to handle offenders?
Obviously, we preach grace in the sense of, you know, there is no sin too big that God can't forgive from a, you know, salvation standpoint, from a heaven standpoint.
What about within the four walls of our buildings? What about with somebody who maybe we know is a sex offender?
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Or.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Yeah, what does the path to grace look like for that? Because I, I've got to take. But I do want to, I want to hear from you.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Well, there's two sides. There's the guy that's not yet caught and there's the guy that's caught. And you know, what do we do after wanting to worship there still?
Which is, does he, is he fully repentant or is he still, you know, still kind of in it and defending himself?
So what should churches do before we got to be upping, basically our security? And security is like people paying attention.
So often this goes unnoticed because people aren't paying attention to the signs of abuse. A kid who's withdrawing from things, a kid who is suddenly emotional outbursts of anger doesn't want to be touched in certain areas. A kid who's making kind of odd comments or writing a lot of sexual things, drawing sexual pictures.
Kids that are now afraid of a certain room or afraid of a certain person or feels really weird around a certain person. All of these are signs of abuse.
Most of the time it's like, oh, kids being kids type of thing. And we push it down rather than going, hold on a second, my kid went from a very cheery five or six year old to not at all. Something's going on.
Parents have to be paying attention. From a church's standpoint, though, I think this is where we have to be able to vet. I'm not saying you have to do a background check for every. Every time you teach a class. I don't think that's a bad idea. But, you know, every time you're going to have somebody teach class, you definitely have two by two. You know, they go out two by two, like disciples. You have somebody else teach a class, parents or elders need to be thinking about it from that perspective of like, you never want to put a guy in a compromising situation. You never want to put kids in a compromising situation. Having two teachers per class, things like that is going to be how you initially handle the potential abuser within the church is we just give them no ability to act anywhere because people are paying attention. The rooms aren't closed. We have windows on every single door so people can look in anytime when somebody passes by. Instead of having these closed doors with, you know, that nobody knows what's going on inside, you have people shutting down the church with kids that probably shouldn't be there, or somebody that's acting kind of erratically, like we need to be thinking about these things and not that you're accusing everybody, what you're saying, be aware on the other. The other side. Then I'll get your guys's thoughts.
What about the guy that has already done the abusing?
Again, it goes to what are his.
Most of the time, if it's been reported and we know the guy's abuser, he's probably on probation or he's headed toward prison most of the time. Now, if he's on probation, maybe he's on the sex offender registry and he kind of pleads or whatever it may be.
I think this is where the security really has to come in handy because, you know, I work with sex addicts all the time.
If you relapse as a sex addict, let's say you're. You're looking at porn and you relapse, it's not good. We obviously don't condone relapsing.
It's one of those, like, yeah, you'll have to deal with the emotional consequences, letting down your wife, letting out God, things like that. That's way different than relapsing and abusing a child.
That's a zero tolerance policy. That is a.
That's as scary as it gets.
So, yes, every part of the security has to be max. We have to make sure that, you know, we got to make sure that when we are.
When the Guy comes in, we have an understanding of where he is. We got eyes on him at all times. We have security people that are, that are in the back that are, you know, paying attention to these things. He's never alone with a kid. We don't give any opportunity for somebody like that. Doesn't mean he can't come into church, though.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Oh, that's what I was gonna ask. Would you. Would you be in favor of banning him blocking, barring the doors essentially from him? Sounds like no.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: No, I don't think so. As long as appropriate security is in place. And what you have to realize is I've worked with people in this situation. Their probation officers, yeah, I don't think parole at that point, but their probation officers have very strict guidelines on what they can and cannot do. You gotta be in the church. You can't be in the church more than 10 minutes before it starts. You got to leave less than 10 minutes after it ends. You can't be around any minors. I mean, they have their own list of what needs to be done that needs to be communicated to church leadership as to, hey, this is what's going on. Most of the time, the probation officer will make sure that they are meeting with church leadership before they go to place membership somewhere or before they go back to church. That way everybody has a plan, you know, a policy of what do we do in this situation.
The saddest thing is that most of this goes unreported. So most of the abusers are going to continue to come to church week after week, and nobody knows.
That's the saddest thing, and that's what churches have to do, is we got to get really good at being able to alert others, which I'll get to in just a second, but I'm talking a lot. What are your guys thoughts?
[00:16:52] Speaker C: Yeah, well, you had the two sides there. The one about like, preparedness. This is something that bigger churches kind of have to do, and so they do a better job about it. You mentioned like two teachers do a class or whatever. Smaller churches don't have that. And so the opportunity is more open sometimes there. Obviously with bigger, there's more people. And so it might be more of a, an issue there. But as far as like the logistical processes of, you know, dropping kids off and getting them out of class and stuff like that, like, you know, there's somebody always knows where a kid is kind of thing. And you know, there's again, multiple teachers, things like that.
And so with smaller churches, you got to think a little bit harder about that, as far as, you know, handling the person in the building. As you said, we had a case like that at a church where I preached.
And the. You mentioned the legal requirements, probation or whatever. Part of it was the.
When he. We had single stall or like single occupant bathrooms or whatever, but somebody would have to accompany him down the hallway to the bathroom and stand outside while he went to the bathroom. And, you know, obviously that's pretty embarrassing for the guy, but it's like, well, look, this is what it is.
And that's where people start asking the questions about this. Well, you know, don't we forgive them? Don't we?
Yeah, but when the law has a standard for how somebody should behave, they should not get to come in the church and say, well, we're just going to waive that. We don't. We're, you know, we've forgiven you, so we don't have to do that. No, the church should be above board on these things. And if there's a requirement that we should have no problem meeting it and expecting them to meet it, I think it's a bad sign if the person won't.
[00:18:19] Speaker B: Well, the other thing is, on that note, Jack, is yes, we forgive. There are still consequences to actions.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Right?
[00:18:25] Speaker B: This is a big, big talking point of mine that I've, like, used before. But, like, yes, we forgive. That doesn't mean that the consequences for the sinful and, you know, heinous actions that you took aren't going to be applied. You know, the example that I give, you know, is, you know, you've got, you got a married couple and the husband cheats with his spouse. You know, with the secretary in the office, his spouse can forgive him. You think she's going to be totally cool with him going back to work with that exact same secretary at work? No, probably not. Or, you know, you got two married couples that are friends and one of them cheats with the other one, there's forgiveness. But you think they're gonna be going on family vacations again after that? No, probably not. And so, like, yes, obviously, you know, God's forgiveness and our forgiveness should extend for anything. But specifically, in something like this, I feel like anybody who's, who's trying to downplay the consequences needs to wake up. Because those are, you know, those are things that absolutely. Because the thought that I had, guys, was.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: What.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: What happens if there is, you know, an instance like this where somebody you know is in a. Is a, you know, sex offender or whatever, and it's a congregation with A lot of kids, like you have those congregations where they're just, you know, crawling with children.
That would make me really uncomfortable. And that. I said, that sounds really harsh. That sounds like. So you're saying you don't want them in the church building. Like, I guarantee you some people are going to say that. Is that the loving thing to do? Is that the, you know, the graceful thing to do or gracious? I guess I should say, like, I. I get those questions, but at the same time, like, it's one of those things. You made the decision to do this with your life, and these are the consequences that you get. So I'm not necessarily saying bar them from the door.
I do understand, though, the people that might be like, listen, not this church, you know, not this congregation.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: There's.
[00:20:17] Speaker B: There's dozens of congregations in the Bible Belt. And so I. I don't. I don't know.
I don't really know kind of necessarily what I'm saying there, other than, like, I feel like this is really, really delicate. And you guys agree with that? Of course. But, like, I think you got to be really careful. Anytime this is known about somebody, specifically as it relates to children, and, you know, we're just, you know, in the same pew worshiping beside them.
[00:20:42] Speaker C: Hey, guys, Jack Wilke here. If you enjoy our work with podcasts like Think Deeper and Godly Young Men and our books, articles, seminars, and want to support the work that we do, the best way to do so is to go to focuspress.org donate that's focuspress.org donate thanks again for listening.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the.
The principle there is, like, extreme caution. Yeah, we want to. We want people to know that anybody can be redeemed. But, yeah, again, it's. It's a matter of safety for everybody involved, and that's why the security has to be max. Like, okay. Even if the guy comes back in, the other thing you have to think about is a trauma trigger from the family itself. This happen within the church. Right.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: That's the first I was thinking.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah, right. Like, the.
I'm not saying we allow somebody's trauma triggers to determine somebody's salvation or where somebody goes to church or things like that. It's just another consideration. It's another factor that if he hasn't made things absolutely right, and if they're not ready to, you know, if they're not ready to forgive or they're not ready to kind of be able to move on, man, that's going to be really, really difficult. And you. You do potentially alienate which gets to the reason why I think a lot of elderships just don't say anything.
This, this is it, like a known problem of elderships that have been gone to even references that in the article of the eldership was gone to with texts that were like, hey, this is not good. And it was illicit text. It was not, I don't think, having to do with minors in that situation. Not specifically abuse, but he's talking about somebody who was attempting to cheat. They went to the elders, they showed him, and the elders did. Sat on it, did nothing. And then when they were kind of basically forced to and legal action was threatened and things like that, then it became a okay, and he resigned and they helped him find a job in the area. Reason so many elderships are just scared to cover it. I think. No, not every church is the type that lets this go. But so often elderships want to steer clear of any controversy. They want to steer clear of, you know, basically, like, we understand the implications. We understand how scary it is to make these calls, but what I would say if I was an eldership is call child abuse hotline. If you are told, if you're a parent or if you're an adult present at the congregation, call the child abuse hotline. You're not supposed to investigate. You're not supposed to bring the parties together. You're not supposed to do any of those things. If a case is made or if a, you know, accusation is made, look it up. Google child abuse hotline in your state. The number will come right up. Say what you need to say. Right? Get it out. I don't know all the details here. Are the parties involved? This is what was said, the allegations, I think clergy are mandated reporters in 28 states. Tennessee is not one of them, but they are mandated reporters in at least over half of the states.
So you got to know the laws. We're not lawyers. We're not speaking to specifically what you should or should not do from a legal standpoint. We're going to trust that you know what to do in your own state. But this is a very serious thing. We have to be willing and ready to believe these things at least first and say, hey, we made the call. We'll let them figure it out. And if they, you know, if the people do their job and they find out, man, there's nothing here, no substantiated evidence, then, hey, you did the right thing. You made the call because it was made. And you can always sit back on that and go, I did what I was supposed to do, which is I didn't judge, I made the call, they made the determination type of thing. In the meantime, yes, you got to create security between those people and be, be on watch for anybody where, where abuse is, you know, where abuse is suggested or abuse said.
[00:24:03] Speaker B: So real quick on the elder thing and Jack, apologize, keep cutting in front of you. If you've got something, feel free to jump in.
2 thoughts on the eldership thing and I'm very curious your guys thoughts on this. The first thing is I think overall, and this is a general statement, please don't mishear me. There are a lot of, as I always try to say, I don't envy elders at all. There are elders that are far wiser than me and do a great job leading their congregation. But as we discussed before, there's also a lot of unqualified elders. There's a lot of people who just kind of get thrown up in there in the position of elder and they shouldn't be. And I know this is not an eldership episode, but I think where it applies here is we have so many leadership figures in the church and specifically in the Church of Christ who are just like man, avoid controversy at all costs. Keep the status quo, keep the peace. If there's a little bit of heat to it and there's flames attached, man, just stay away.
I think the time has come for us to need elders that are not afraid of a little controversy. I'm not saying that are going to dive head first into controversy or if something like this comes up, they just blow it out of proportion and it becomes the biggest deal in the world. I'm not saying that either.
But again just from a general perspective, I feel like this is an area where elders again are just typically like man, I'll do anything I can to keep, keep controversy out. I don't know if it's numbers protecting, I don't know if genuinely that you think that's the right thing to do.
But what you see here is in many cases, not all cases of course, but in many cases that is the elderships like you can see them around the conference room table going okay, how do we just keep this as low profile as possible? And I understand like you don't necessarily want to broadcast it, but that's what leads to people believing that the church just covers it up or that the church just brushes it under the rug. The other angle that I had that I was just curious. Very curious. Your guys thoughts on. Because you ra I read several stories about how if it was the minister, the youth minister, the eldership did. Not really.
Not that they didn't do anything, but it was very much a. Let's just try to move on quick, right? Let's try to brush past it. Not in the case of the anonymous one in the article, it very much was like, they didn't announce it. They served the infidelity. This was not the child abuse one. But they didn't announce it. They, you know, he resigned. They didn't. He didn't get fired or anything like that. They just helped him go to a new place.
Here's my question.
Not to slam the boomers or the Gen Xers, but typically these are people who have a very hard time admitting if ever they did anything wrong or had a misstep.
Do you guys think, I don't know who wants to go first on this, that maybe part of that is if you're an elder and you hired somebody or you in your oversight allowed this to take place, whether it be infidelity in the case of some, you know, preacher, secretary abuse or whatever, adultery or whatever, versus child abuse. Do you think any of that has to do with the. I don't want to look like the wrong. The person did something wrong here by A, hiring this guy or B, kind of being in charge, overseeing while this took place. That was just kind of a thinking out loud thing. I mean, I don't think that's conscious by a lot of. By a lot of people, by a lot of elders. But as this is a podcast where we just kind of pontificate and kind of think out loud, that was a thought that came to mind for me is like, generally these are people who don't have a really. They're not very good at admitting missteps or anywhere that they, you know, might take any fault. And so, because I do think it's a problem. But I'm curious, y', all yalls thoughts on either one of those two things.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: I think generationally, there's a. There's just a different approach to this kind of thing. Joe and I were talking about this recently, like, the sleepover thing. It used to be huge. And. And a lot of people in our generation look at it like, man, like, maybe my grandpa's house, maybe, you know, but like the. Just, oh, this friend that you met at school. Yeah, you can go stay at their house. Like, are you sure about their parent? Like, kind of the trusting thing. Too much and sure, you know, as Joe said, 90% of the time, it's somebody, you know, There was so much Stuff when I was a kid about stranger danger, then, yeah, you don't want your kid to get kidnapped and never see him again. For sure, Stranger danger is important to teach, but also that skepticism toward people, you know, and as I said earlier, not viewing everybody like, oh, could you be an abuser? Or whatever. But so having said that, like, there's that viewpoint, thinking about the possibility of it in your church of like, man, if we've got a church of 300 members, something could go wrong. You know, if you got a church of 30 members, something could go wrong. But especially, you know, when you're in leadership over that many people, it's. You have to kind of treat it as your own house. You know, if I'm going to have you guys over and know your kids are going to be in my house, I need to make sure it's not a dangerous place for them to be. I'm going to pick the knives up and stuff like that. Well, from the church, there's that same thing. And so that question of, like, responsibility and taking responsibility for it.
I don't know if it's like hiding from it so much as, like, not even generationally. It was thought of so differently. And I don't know.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: That's a good point.
[00:28:56] Speaker C: There was a.
It's sad that you can't trust and that there is that.
That skepticism you have to live with at all times. But it's just reality. And if they don't have that, then that's where bad things happen and then you don't know what to do when the bad things happen.
[00:29:11] Speaker A: Dad and I were talking about this, about this episode and just kind of collecting some thoughts and he said that SNL was like making fun of or making light of molestation back in the 70s, you know, family molestation and things like that. Like just as a joke on national tv, making light of it. You see, so many of that generation was like, oh, yeah, uncle so and so. Everybody kind of knows him. I never got busted. Guy never went to prison. He could have molested dozens of kids. Nobody really knows, but it's just uncle so and so, you know, yeah, he's.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Kind of a creepy, but it wasn't out of bounds. Even though it's like, right.
[00:29:40] Speaker A: Like what we look at it now and we understand sexual trauma and how it affects kids and how it affects people in general and way more. Like, we understand way more. But that's that generation of. I think they do downplay and those that get.
Still goes to. Yes, it's a scary thing to have somebody accused and to know what to do with it. The problem is we can't just punt on this one. We can't just, you know, kick the can down the road or move the guy to a different church because kids lives are at stake. He could go and abuse another kid at some other church in, you know, who knows where that is on the elders and on those that were told. If other kids go and get abused, like, you should be liable if that's the case. If you sat on and did nothing, you, you didn't, you know, you didn't make any phone calls, you didn't pursue anything. I'm not saying, once again that we're trying to get everybody put in prison. But yeah, we're looking to protect the kids because how many of these people grow up? They go, man, nobody protected me. Nobody. None of the, you know, the elders were told or people knew about it and they didn't protect me. I'm not saying this is every single time, but this happens enough to know there are people that I think are burnt on the church because something did happen and the church went. Huh. I don't see anything like what you have.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: Well, it's not, it's not just with kids either because there's, you know, instances where the preacher, you know, got with somebody who wasn't his wife or, you know, the secretary or whatever the case was and all right, hush, hush, quietly dismiss them. Kind of like, oh, we've decided to go separate ways, kind of announcement and then next thing you know, he's preaching in another church. Like, ah, man, you kind of need to get that out there. And you know, it's the kind of thing where I, I say this, I'm far enough removed. But it's one of those, like, on very good authority this is what happened and that, you know, I. So you say, well, why didn't you say something about it? Well, again, this is from a distance. But on the other hand, like that church has that duty to, you know, if that's the case, again, I'm hearing it second or third hand. But still, if that is the case though, and those things do happen, you know, of just kind of, we don't, as you say, don't want the blow up in our church. Don't want the, don't want to hurt his reputation. I've heard that one.
Well, and honestly, we'll talk about. This is Brad Harab, you know, Will's dad, we work with here at Focus Press, was with another organization that had a man that was probably the biggest known abuser in the churches of Christ, that Brad was instrumental in confronting the guy because it had gone on for way too long. But there were, you know, Brad and some others, and I'm not going to tell his story. Some people know what I'm talking about and if you don't, that's fine. But it went on for years of like just not being reported. Some people kind of winking at it and looking the other way. And I mean, like, yeah, it's a very sad thing. And one of the other things about this, as you look at the stats or whatever, if they get away with it once, they're probably not going to stop.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt it will. Just these are cycles of abuse and then they get more bold and bold and bold, you know, most of the time. And again, it's just a scary situation that we have to be on guard for. We have to be paying attention to and making sure that, that we're not. Well, to your point about the elders kind of shrinking from controversy, this is not one of those we want to lose the battle on. We want to have a plan. We want to be prepared contingency plans for man, if this, then that. What do we do in this situation? If it does happen in our church, how do we prevent it from happening in our church? That's again, all this podcast is for, is bringing it to light. To say this is a problem within the church doesn't mean every church has a problem. Doesn't mean everybody that's slightly sketchy is an abuser. It does mean there are enough out there.
Pay attention, take this seriously and make sure that we're not just hush, hush. And the other thing I'll say and then kick to you will. The other thing I'll say is, you know, for a generation that was making fun of molestation on snl, they're also very squeamish about anything having to do with sex. We don't like. You can't talk about sex. You can't mention the word porn from the pulpit. You can't do anything without there being somebody getting upset about it. And it's like, no wonder why we had this. Because these people hide in the shadows. Nobody wants to say anything. They're confronted with clear sexual issues, either sexual abuse or infidelity or something along those lines. Go figure. They have no idea what to do with it. These are the same. This is the same generation that never had the talk with their kids or if they did, they were so squeamish about it lasted 20 minutes and did zero for their kids. Like, go figure. You have no idea how to handle this within your church when you don't ever, ever talk about it. And their own sex lives are terrible in there. And I'm not trying to throw shade and sorry, that's just a rant of mine, but it's like these people, it's a generational stereotype, generational thing exactly. Of like you have a horrible view of sex and then when somebody actually brings sexual issues, you go, man, I don't even know what to do about it. Like, well then get educated. Because people's lives are on the line and you have people that may walk away from the church and never come back based off of how you handle it. So yes, please get educated.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: The last thing I'll say on this kind of church response and church prevention thing before we get to maybe some parental stuff or Joe, I think you got signs to look for on here. You might have already covered that. But last thing I'll say, and this was a point that was made in the article that we keep referencing, abuse of authority came out in February.
The amount of youth minister stories that you see, you know, youth Minister and a 16 year old girl or 17 year old girl, whatever it is, you know, one of the ways that churches can prevent this is to stop putting immature and unprepared guys into the ministry.
This is a rant that we've gone on before, but how many times do you see the guy who doesn't really know what he wants to do with his life, maybe goes to, you know, goes to Freed or goes to Harding or whatever, gets a youth ministry degree or gets a Bible degree and is like, well, I don't really want to preach, I don't. And just kind of settles into youth ministry, right? It's low paying job for the most part. Not to gas aspersions, but I think a lot of young people think, oh, I can basically just get paid to kind of have a good time, maybe put a little work in. And so it's kind of appealing for young people, right? And again, this is not casting dispersion on youth ministers as much as it is the kind of stereotype around youth ministry in general.
And so you see a lot of immature guys that just at 22 years old, they're youth minister or just biblically unprepared guys, unmarried guys, right? Or guys that maybe you're just dating somebody or have a fiancee, fiance or whatever it is and have no concept of family or kids or anything like that.
You see A good amount of. Anytime there is a situation where it's, you know, church leader and young girl or a lot of times it's a youth minister. And so that would be the one of the first things that I would say is man, you're going to hire a youth minister. I'm not saying don't ever hire a youth minister, but if you're going to hire one man, do your research, man, I would strongly recommend that you make sure that this is a mature individual, that you make sure this individual is studied in the scriptures and very well prepared for his position. Now that's not a cure all. That doesn't mean that if he checks all those boxes therefore he's not going to, you know, ever slip into something like that. But it does mean that you're going to have done your homework quite a bit more versus the 21 year old like, ah, sure, we'll pay him $45,000 a year to be our youth minister because we kind of need a youth minister.
Bad idea. Just a terrible idea. Joe, I'm curious your thoughts on that one. Just because I do think that's a pretty good thing the churches can do is just be really careful about who you hire to put around your 17 year old girls or your six, seven year old boys for goodness sakes. Like, and I'm speaking as somebody who was a youth evangelist at 21. So like I'm not trying again, I'm not trying to, but I was married and I had a kid and so not trying to cast aspersions on youth ministers. I'm just saying we're playing with fire a little bit here and so many times it's just now let's just hire the guy and I don't know, what are your thoughts on that, Joe?
[00:37:08] Speaker A: Jack, did you have thoughts before I jump in? Look like you have thought.
[00:37:11] Speaker C: No, go ahead. Okay, go ahead.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I hate youth ministry.
I'll be honest, I'm, I'm not a fan of it in the least. I think it does more harm than good in my opinion. Yeah, I know we got youth ministers. Listen to us. I know we got a lot of those things and I don't hate the people, I just hate the construct, the, the concept of it itself.
I don't think it works and I think we, there are so many times and it doesn't have to always slip into abuse. It's the illicit text messages from time to time or just the flirtatiousness back and forth between a, you know, a 22 year old like you said. 21, 22 year old guy coming out of college, raging porn addict, whatever it may be. And he's got this, you know, doesn't necessarily know how to control himself sexually and doesn't even mean he's asked to be. They're porn. But you put him in a situation where he's around girls that are like, for you, my wife is four years younger than me, so I'm 22. We got married at 18.
Rewind the clock two years and it's 20 and 16. It's like, oh, that's not as good. Right. So you have to think about those things.
That four year gap is not all that uncommon. If you got a guy that is 21 in a youth ministry. Yes, 17 is under 18 for sure.
So that alone is kind of like, man, I don't know, you're not all that removed from being in the youth group yourself. I don't think you have any of the maturity, the emotional maturity that the kids need in that moment. I don't think you have a spiritual maturity personally. And yeah, I mean, I'm again, I was young once and worked with youth in a congregation, teaching some classes and doing some youth stuff.
I get it. On the other hand, you know, I still would be against it. I know you were. I'd still be against it for those reasons. And I think we have to be rethinking the idea of putting these young kids in these positions to go, okay, well, when do they get into the ministry? Well, they get into the ministry as like an associate minister where they're, you know, right underneath the wing of the minister and they're not just giving carte blanche over a bunch of teenage kids.
I don't think that's a smart idea, especially even on the youth front where it goes a little bit younger. But Jack.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: On the dark world of Ceres, Nevik never questioned what he believed because he didn't believe anything. But when a mysterious girl from Mars tells him about something called God, everything changes. Now as Nevec searches for answers, he's not just battling doubt, he's fighting to survive. Accepting the truth might cost him everything. Quickening series by Kevin McCutch is a gripping sci fi thriller that explores the existence of God and the plan of salvation. Perfect for teens and young adults and anyone who likes a good story and wants to learn how to teach others. Grab your copy of Quickening Series that's spelled C E R E S on Amazon today.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: What are your thoughts on that?
[00:39:45] Speaker C: I was talking about this episode with Allison this morning and she said, why is it that they give it to young guys? Because it just doesn't make sense. And I think it's the relatability, the relevance, things like that. But it's like, man, this is like an older brother to these kids. And you think about like, well, Joe, me to you, I'm five years older than you. That didn't make me your spiritual mentor. I mean like, yeah, I could help you with some stuff and be there for you, but that dynamic just doesn't work. And so, but then, I mean, you just take the idea of a, you know, 22 even 25 year old guy and he becomes the hero to a lot of these kids. You know, you've seen that dynamic happen where you know, they, they look up to him, they really, they just think he hung the moon because he's their youth Minister and a 25 year old who is a hero to a bunch of 16, 17 year old girls.
That's, that's why sometimes these things happen is, is the situation that we've created. And then you think about like things like lock ins and things like that that just add to the opportunities for, or even, you know, oh, let me give you a ride to the thing, you know, to the event there, there's, you know, they, they have what they used to call the Billy Graham rule, you know, that a guy never spends time alone with, with a woman other than his wife. And then you see that get lifted for things like that. Like man, that bad things can happen if the guardrails are not up.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Well, and somebody might be going like, come on guys, this is like 2%, 3% of youth ministry or whatever. Like we acknowledge there's a lot of really incredible youth ministers that would never do anything like this.
That doesn't mean that it nullifies the idea that the construct, to Joe's point, can perpetuate this a bit, can make the problem worse. And so that's all we're trying to point out here is that the current system as it's designed of again, a 22 year old, 25 even a 25 year old, it, or whatever it is getting, spending a lot of time around young kids, supervised, maybe unsupervised. Again, you brought up lock ins. I was never allowed to go to lock ins for, for this reason. And people say, hey, there's a lot of chaperones. It's still just a terrible idea. Let's put everybody in a church building, you know, for, you know, into the hours of the night. There's endless amount of rooms in A church building, you could have, you know, 10 chaperones. And they're starting to be able to cover every. Like, it's just a bad idea. I'm sorry. But again, my point is like, yes, this is 2, 3% of youth ministers or whatever it is, but the construct and the concept still does perpetuate it and make the problem worse. And so that's all we're trying to point to here.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Well, and I know this of happening of somebody that was in their 30s, you know, the youth minister being 30s. Like, you get a bunch of young kids together who idolize somebody. If the guy is not on the up and up and he's looking for an opportunity so often he'll find it again, taking somebody home, you know, oh, yeah, quick jaunt type of thing. This is where it takes place. And because there's confidence built up and because this guy is a, you know, he uses his authority and he uses that. That idol worship, basically. Like, man, this guy's amazing. This guy's the best, and he knows everything about me. And this is the grooming process. So. And again, I'm not saying, like you said, got to be careful to say, no, this is not everybody. But how many compromising situations can somebody, you know, can we. Can we put ourselves in even from protecting the youth minister himself from, you know, these. What if he's accused of something and it's just him and this young girl? It's his. His word versus her word. He goes, man, I didn't do anything.
How would we know, man, don't put yourself in those situations. And unfortunately, things like youth ministry allow for those situations to take place far too often if the parents aren't paying attention. So that kind of ushers us, if you guys agree with it kind of ushers us into a parental conversation. Like, what should the parents do? How do the parents respond? Well, first off, I'd say vigilance.
Always be looking. Make sure you know who your kids are around at all times. You got to be thinking about this is a potential possibility like this could absolutely happen. And, well, I know brother so and so. He's such a good guy.
There's one thing I've learned working with people is you never really know anybody fully. There's always something that's going on. There's always, you know, I was. I was Mr. Goody Two Shoes and I was a raging porn addict at the same time. Nobody knew that. Like, you just don't know people.
So you gotta be careful on those things and recognize that vet the people Pretty, you know, pretty securely. Don't let people go over. Don't let your kids go over to somebody, you know, an adult's house unsupervised. Oh, that's just youth minister. Oh, that's just the elder. Whatever it is, don't do it. Don't allow them to. You know, you need to be there with your kids. Your job is to protect your kids. So know who they're hanging around, know the influences. You don't. And here's the other thing about kids, and we're gonna sound paranoid, but this just happens.
If I let my kid go to some other friend's house where it's like, oh, you know, he's just kind of a fringe member kid and we want to encourage him and seems like a really nice kid and we know the parents and they're pretty nice. You don't know that that kid hasn't been abused from some kid down the street. And guess what abused kids do. They do it to other people, like at a high percentage of the time. So your kid goes in. Kid seems super nice. We don't know what his background is. We don't know if this kid's been abused before and if he's going to do the same to your son or daughter. So no, pay attention and please be vigilant. Don't allow these things. And I would rather be the helicopter parent who everybody goes, wow, that's mainly controlling. And have my kid make it out without being abused. Then to put my blindfold on and go, well, hey, I'm sure everybody's great. No, they're not.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: To Jack's point earlier about the society that, you know, maybe the 90s or the early 2000s, it was a lot more of a trusting society. You just trusted. I mean even, you know, I grew up where in the kind of the turned 10 in 2010. So the 2000 and tens kind of were when I was, you know, growing up and I remember we'd go to, we'd run the neighborhood, no cell phone. Like my mom didn't know where we were necessarily. I mean, she knew the general vicinity. But we were at other kids houses. We weren't allowed to go in the houses, thankfully, but, you know, other kids yards way out of sight with no cell phone.
That's 15 short years ago. Now imagine again the 90s and the 2000s that a lot of, you know, you guys grew up in and a lot of other people.
There's just so much more of a trusting society. You just trusted, you know, the kid on your Soccer team, their parents and you know, birthday party or whatever. Like you just send them over, you just sent your kid over there.
We are in a lot less trusting of a society now and that's just unfortunate the consequences of the society that we've built. And so I would encourage parents not to shame other parents who are less trusting because that's the society that we built. We're not just going to trust. I, like I've said before, like my kids will not be having sleepovers most likely at anybody that's not grandparents house for the most part at least until they get way, way older. And so that's just. And again a lot of people look at that and go to Joe's point, ah, helicopter parent or ah, you're sure controlling like yeah, my kid's soul is, is worth the, the accusation of being a helicopter parent. My kids, you know, kind of sexual health and being, not being abused, that, that is worth being, you know, looked at maybe a little funny because you're not allowed, you're not allowing your kid to go to the birthday party sleepover. Like that's part of it. And so from a parental prevention and response perspective, I'm just, I know I'm just kind of echoing a lot of things Joe said but like man, don't be afraid of the label. Don't be afraid of the, you know, people are going to think you're weird. People have been doing that forever and you know, with homeschooling and with you know, dating and modesty and things like that, like don't be afraid of the people are going to think you're weird thing.
Um, this stuff's really, really important. And again it could be your child's salvation. It very much could. That could be what is hanging in the balance of your decision to send your kid to a lock in or to youth trips. We didn't even get into, you know, taking, taking a youth group trip for three or four days. Again I know there's usually chaperones there but the ratio is usually very high of kid to chaperone and so it makes it a little more difficult.
So yeah, I guess all I'm saying is man, don't be afraid of the label. Do whatever it takes to, to keep your kids safe. Even if you get other parents that look at you kind of funny.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: You got to think about this as what the kid loses in this. The kid loses innocence, the sense of vulnerability, loses safety, loses trust in others.
There's so much loss in sexual abuse that I mean the cost is skyrocketed you know, if something like this were to happen, there's a path back. It doesn't mean that they can't process through it again. That's what I do for a living, is help people process through sexual trauma and things like that.
I'm not saying you can't get through.
Affects your life in more ways than you could even begin to imagine. As it affects attachment, it affects again, future marriage. Your ability to have healthy, good, connecting sex 20 years later in your marriage goes back to, guess what? You know, something happened when you were five years old and somebody touched you inappropriately, or something bad happened, or, you know, it starts happening more, you allow it to happen, and then it becomes a consistent thing, and then you blame yourself. And that's a very common theme. There's people to blame themselves for people to feel dirty, yucky. They can't accept grace. They don't feel that they're loved by God. All of these things can go back to sexual abuse because we internalize. I'm a bad person. I'm bad. Not just I did something bad, which they didn't even do that. It goes to the shame level of I'm a bad person, you know, because either I didn't say anything and I allowed this to happen, or maybe I wanted it. And so those are the themes and the thoughts that kind of come in these core negative beliefs. That absolutely affects your ability to feel saved, your ability to connect with other people, your ability to feel loved and cherished by others. Like, there is such a.
It's so sad when we're not protecting the innocence of our children because, again, we're afraid of a label or because that's what everybody else is doing. I don't care.
I don't care. The cost is too high to be gambling with something like this. Jack, what are your thoughts?
[00:49:13] Speaker C: Yeah, and that's.
The high cost is really important you have here on the outline, as we start to close to the victims themselves, that, you know, our heart goes out to you. And again, we've talked a lot about kids, but just across the board, you know, adults, whether it was in the church or by a respected church member. And people in the church didn't believe you. I mean, like, things like that, Whether it was a spouse, I mean, there are tons and tons of people who have gone through these things in our congregations. And so hopefully the church is getting to a better place with these kinds of things. Hopefully, as far as reporting and handling and believing people and listen, at the very least, listening to people and Figuring out what to do about it and process through it. And hopefully we've given you some useful stuff on that. But yeah, I mean, that's.
I know you've kind of got some things to add on there of it. You know, it's not your fault. Don't take the blame. I know you work with a lot of people like that where there's the guilt and the shame that comes with it. And yeah, obviously I mean that.
But you know, bad people do bad things and this whole thing is about protecting people from the bad people who do the bad things. But sometimes that somebody slips through the cracks. Sometimes it's too late. You've already been through that and you know, that's an unfortunate place to be. And that being the case, you know, hopefully.
Man, I don't even know what to say. Our hearts go out to you for sure.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Here's the thing is, you know, one of the reasons that people take the blame, it's again, we look to close. One of the reasons people take the blame is because it's scarier to admit that it was fully their fault because then you don't feel in control of it. If it's my fault, it's something I can fix.
It happened because I did actually fully the abuser's fault. If it's full. Yeah. If it's fully the abuser's fault. Correct. Yeah. It's unsafe and everybody becomes unsafe. If it's my fault, then gives me something to control. I can work on it. I can be. I can change. I could have done this better. And so we feel like we're more in control of it. It feels safer to blame ourselves than to blame the other person because then everybody becomes a potential abuser.
That's something to process through. So what I would say is if this has happened to you, if this has happened to a kid, you know, to your kid, look for a trauma informed therapist. Got to be careful out there. Make sure that they are. They have a biblical background.
Especially if it's happened in the church. You definitely want to have somebody that is not going to push you outside the church. Oh, wow. Sounds like religion's the problem. Religion's not the problem. Bad people are the problem. People that do really bad things, don't go blaming God. It is not God's fault. God saw what's happening. God is ever loving.
He gives people free will. And free will means people make really bad choices. But it's not God's fault that you know. But that's something to process through because a Lot of times it's part of the grieving process of this and so find somebody that can help you work through it. But other, other than that, talk to people, find other people in your group that you can just go through this together with.
Because connections key when you're processing through trauma. So if your kid is looking for it, just know the signs. And I don't know, Jack, if we want to even post that in the show notes, but I would say people can Google that too. Like signs of abuse. There's. I've got a great, great resource of all sorts of the behavioral signs, the physical signs, the emotional signs and just be aware of those things. Make sure that we're protecting the kids around us, protecting those in our congregation. Because, man, this is, this is a scary thing. But I think, as you said, Jack, I think we're getting better at it. Hopefully we're getting more aware of this. And so hopefully there's a brighter future ahead with these things. Will, any other thoughts?
[00:52:41] Speaker B: Now? You guys wrapped it up really well.
Prayers go out to not just those, but as I'm the one that kind of talked specifically about the elders, I know we all did, but my prayers go out to the elders as well that have to deal with, you know, stuff like this. It's such a. I mean, we're in a fallen world, you know, Adam's sin that has trickled down to us and that's one of the biblical responsibilities of shepherds is to kind of oversee some of the just ugliness of human beings. And so my prayers go out to elders and church leaders as well. That might be either in the midst of this right now as far as having to deal with, with this or maybe one day Will. So that's all I would add is prayers go out to them as well.
[00:53:21] Speaker A: Well, guys, it's been a somber episode. Definitely one that takes prayer, as you said, Will takes a lot of prayer, takes a lot of consideration. If you have questions or thoughts on this, obviously let us know. We're looking forward to the comments on the deep end. So make sure to join our patreon to get your comments in there. But truly, just message us if there's questions or things like that. Again, we're not legal advice. That's. It doesn't mean that we, you know, this is a broad ranging topic. We're not covering every form of abuse. We're not covering every, you know, every situation for sure. And so we're well aware of that. We're well aware that we're covering, you know, probably just touching on maybe 20, 30% of what is a. You know, there. There's a lot there. But that also is not intended to just freak you out and not trust anybody other than just pay attention. There are a lot of good people there. Way more good than there are bad, in my opinion. Way more people are willing to protect and that are willing to help the bad. And so I hope I don't come across as everybody's a problem. No, it's just you don't know who the problem is. And all it takes. It's kind of the same as lying. One lie out of 99 truths calls all 99 truths in a question.
One bad, bad fruit. You know, one bad guy out of 99 people calls everybody into question to some degree, even though there's 99 good ones. Right. So we just want to be aware. Love one another, but keep your eyes open and be vigilant. Be paying attention.
[00:54:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Good thoughts. All right, we're going to wrap right there. This has been episode 199, so the next one will be 200, so keep an eye out for that. We're. We're very excited to hit that milestone, and we appreciate everyone who's been along for the ride all the way. And I don't know if there's nothing else, we'll see you guys on the next one.
[00:55:00] Speaker A: Sam.
