Eliminating Predators from Your Church

it's time that we purge all those pesky Predators from our churches we're going to talk about how we can do this through a system of questioning Authority two you know having good Employment Practices and policies and three you know what we just need to make sure that victims can come out and not be shamed for being victims we're going to talk about how this breaks Church what we can do to fix it this church is

lame all right so what we got going on here is that St Steve Episcopal Church and School in Houston um they have a bit of a uh let's just say like an alpha grade incell problem ah geez yeah and and that's that's the absolute nicest way I can say it um there was a lawsuit filed against the school uh by a woman who's just identified as Jane Doe in the article um against an unnamed supervisor that she had while she was working there it it it it begins and gets out of control quickly so I'm just going to go through this real quick so it begins with this guy telling her that there's a mandatory you know employee dinner that she has to attend with all the supervisors and staff and she gets her this only this dude with a 700 bottle of wine $700 bottle of wine and it's like like she's she thinks this is for work so she thinks she has to be there so she doesn't like say no right and that's and that's a and that's just awful um but then like this isn't even close to where it it it ends it just it it elevates he starts to physically harass her at work and and eventually gets to the point where he forces her at knife Point into caral relations with him say what yes um and apparently this happened multiple times um before like she just and and went out um she made a complaint get to school um and and the school did you know immediately Place him on like administrative leave and then it did fire him a little bit later well at least there's that yeah so it's not like this the school was infinitely awful about it but I mean like that that's where we're weting here got it oh wow like that this just bends my brain like holding a like holding a woman at knife point in a Christian school that is just unbelievable and I mean I don't think we need to to to labor on about like how this breaks a church I think anybody listening at this point knows how that's screwed up right um I think the bigger question is like how how does an organization institution get to that point I mean like it's just icky our method of of our being the modern American Church sorry our method for vetting leadership is period the period worst period right we get a small group of people whether it be a a job search committee or an elder board or whatever we have a small group of people go out there and find somebody and vet them and only when they're convinced that the person is the person they want to have do they present them to the larger body for rubber stamp approval knowing that the larger body has never met this person or had broke bread with this person or had a chance to ask their own questions of this person and it's deeply infuriating because it should be the other way around like it should be like you know like when when you have those awful awful like school board meetings or town hall meetings yeah where everybody gets like three minutes in the podium and gets to have their say and ask their question no matter how stupid it is like vetting a vetting a leader in the church needs to be that painful because they have that much power like and this wasn't just just a church you know I mean this is a church with a school attached to it so like you would think that they would have wanted to go the extra step to vet because the idea that you'd have somebody who would use violence to force himself upon an employee I mean being anywhere near where kids are is just it's a failure of the of the highest degree for sure I mean to say that like their like their process of um checking out the leadership was bad I mean it's you can't say it hard enough so I guess really the Crux of this episode is really revolves around how does the church spot predators and eliminate them by any by any means necessary you know well I mean maybe not by any means necessary you know you nuclear bomb would be a bit extreme right that's true but man like I'm like when it comes to Predators like I I'm I'm right there with like the whole like it's always okay to punch a Nazi it's always okay to to take out a predator you know we can go on all day about like hiring practices and like what is reasonable and what's not reasonable yeah um and and I think like that's like something that like we can't really assess out that well I mean maybe it like if one of us ever worked in HR that would have been helpful churchgoers tend to be wired to defer to Authority big time yeah and ultimately I think that's that's the biggest culture shift that needs to happen if churches and Christian schools are going to be successful at fiing out these kind of predators deferring to Authority is not enough because a small search group is not enough Authority like compared to the wisdom of of the whole Community you know what I mean and any Orthodox Jew will tell you that the Old Testament lays out 613 explicitly named laws mhm or Mitzvah right there is not a single one of those 613 not a single mandate is a mandate of something like your church leader your religious leader must have an expectation of privacy that's not an a mantra anywhere so like we need to shift our culture in our churches so that like we write it into our rules that leadership you are going to be help to the highest levels of accountability the highest levels of financial scrutiny the highest levels of social scrutiny the highest levels of geographic scrutiny yes your smartphone has a GPS on it and we're going to track it and if you're not with your wife you know three or four nights out of the week we're going to ask why where are you and why aren't you with your family and like that's that's a Monumental culture shift to say that the pastor's not in charge that the pastor is really a servant and the people that he serves by definition are the people making the rules it's not the way Church in America run currently but it's a shift that needs to be made yeah I mean and I just want to say I mean it's like you know it like we talk about you like Authority um like there's a difference between submitting yourself to somebody's leadership and um sacrificing yourself at the altar of someone's Authority um like any any sort of authority is able to be questioned and should be questioned on the regular I'm not saying that you have to be like a jerk to your boss or anything like that but you know we're supposed to as Christians have a very strong um you know Compass of of good and bad and if somebody is overstepping that line you as a as as a as a person in a in a church um just as a Christian generally you have every right to stand up and go no that's not cool I'm not comfortable with this I out of here right I I think like like especially within like Evangelical circles where you tend to have like uh like a much higher degree of deference given to leadership like I think that's where that's most you know likely to happen but I me Episcopal Church you know like this one I mean like they have a St like a strong leadership structure but this was just a supervisor at like a a church and school this wasn't even like the the pastor or anything like that or the bishop right so it's like you know we we have to to not only focus on on the clergy in those terms we have to look at any kind of lay staff as well for this Psalms 82 defend the weak and the fatherless uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed right we our default position regardless needs to be one of protecting the people who can't protect themselves you know the head of a school the head of a church these are all people with Incredible support resources behind them Financial legal spiritual there's incredible resources behind them they do not need uh the community just circling the wagons out of a default position you know what they need is is to be seeking the truth and regardless of where that truth leads uh it will lead them out of whatever bad situation they're in and that's really the goal yeah let's take a break here and when we come back we will talk about our second idea for eliminating predators in your

ministry when we have anybody working you know in a school or a church uh or Rel religious you know par Church organization um you know that's a phrase that really rolls off the tongue pretty right things that aren't churches that act like they are Church um you know like we used to work at the you know the denominational headquarters for the Evangelical Covenant Church you know it's not a church but it's you know it's feeding into churches right um and like one of the things that like that was there it was like there was a lot of people you could talk to you could go outside of your direct chain of command if you needed to and the policies for dealing with these things were well generally speaking well conceived and well expressed yeah um and not every organization does that but with the problem of assault of this kind um becoming like much more like a thing in the news right it's like it it points to I think the need to like we need to lead with that kind of thing with employees it's like look like here is like we're just going to start off telling you this is the policy right you know um this is how you can seek out you know um you know a grievance if somebody violates it you know this is like if somebody threatens your job uh if you don't comply with their demands like this is like who you can go to to take care of that and things like that like that those there's just a lot of systems and it all goes back to what we keep talking about of you know oversight it's really it's a it's a weird uh push and pull um because we're talking about um church and God and matters of character so many of these organization churches schools par churches they don't want to write it down the policies because they think it's an a front to the character of the staff and and and of anybody else but it's just the opposite it's these policies that protect their character of the rest of the staff One Bad Apple ruins the whole bunch right yeah and so bad apples happen they happen there's just too many people um working in churches schools and Par churches not for their to be bad apples so the point of knowing the truism of bad apples ruining the whole bunch is so you understand the sense of urgency you need to have about getting that bad apple out it needs to happen quickly it needs to happen without prejudice uh for the protection of the flock you know and these policies get you there it's not about defaming the person who may or may not be at fault it's about protecting everybody else we need to accept um that there are untrustworthy characters and actors out there um which is easy if you read scripture even a reasonably you know mediocre amount um like you're going to see the stories in scripture you know King David the greatest king of Israel was a bit of an assaulter himself like come on you we we've gotten murders we've got you know the Apostle Paul was was murdering Christians and and having them stoned to death you know in Paul's own letters he's just like look you know hey you got somebody in your church who's like sleeping with his mother-in-law like you know get him to stop kick him out you know Ian it's like yeah like we know that that these are going to be problems why is like like this whatever you want to call like this culture of niess yeah is is is the thing it's turning toxic on us yeah it's not like we should be distrustful and and just wary of of everybody but we are told in scripture to be you know as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves yeah we've done too much work historically on being the innocent is Dove's part yeah and our lack of shrewdness is biting Us in the buttocks now one of the things the Bible teaches us is that iron sharpens iron like something super hard needs to come into conflict with another thing super hard and neither one of them are going to dull one another right not one is not going to bend to the other one is not going to break to the other both things have to agitate each other and when that agitation happens you actually end up with a better result yeah you know and so what what you're talking about like I call it like the modern Church's need to protect people's egos over and above all else and so no no no no we don't protect we don't protect egos we sharpen iron that that's what we do in the church yeah and and like this like this notion that you know like our sin is private is is an obscenity it is um scripturally speaking but the thing is is that the idea that our victimhood is private is a bigger obscenity yep and and we do need I think to you know be make sure the people around us are empowered to conest their victimhood to us yeah so you know when somebody is injured and hurt by another believer like they've got somebody that like they know that they can trust you or me or or whoever's listening to this like like they they can trust you yeah with that to help them through it and to help them you know get the justice that we are commanded as a church to pursue exactly right that and that's our third Point um in terms of how to find these predators and how to eliminate these Predators from from your from your church or school is you need to have just the most plainly obvious Channel channels for this information to get back and for people to act on it it can't be you know it can't like you said the secret sin thing it can't be like let me try to find somebody on the down low you know people need to know that there there is no latitude for anything other than leadership that is above reproach and the minute leadership Falls below that we're going to hold them to account in the loudest brightest you know spotlighted way without fear and without reservation yeah and you know maybe like one additional idea is that you know um this guy can have the words incel cuck tattooed on his forehead I'm not against it yeah I mean just putting your sin out there you know boom I don't think there's any um mistaken how much um a headline like this just infuriates Mark and myself and I don't think there's kind of any misunderstanding how abuse in the church uh hurts the reputation of the entire church body so Mark and I we are not here to roast the church or tell you to stay away from the church we love the church we support the church we want to see the church do better uh but there's no doubt that headlines like this make it pretty clear why people are leaving and why the church is having a hard time staying relevant and so this is where we collect those stories um so if you have something to say you want to add to the conversation by all means join us over at YouTube and leave a comment or if you're listening by the podcast um shoot us an email churches lame podcast gmail.com and with that go in peace and serve the Lord amen and hey if you enjoyed this uh episode and you want to see more episodes just like this somewhere around me we're going to have a playlist called leadership lunacy click on that and you'll see more content just like this thanks a lot