Notably, Hunt’s alleged sexual abuse took place in his vacation condo in Panama City Beach while he was away from his then-home in Woodstock, Georgia.
“I found it even hard to pray,” Hunt said of the period of time following his alleged abuse being made public knowledge. He nevertheless emphasized the importance of hope, quoting Charles Spurgeon: “Never question in the dark what God has shown you in the light.”
“I’m gonna be honest. I’ve been on the shelf,” Hunt said. “[But] I like what someone said: ‘God may cast you out; he may put you on the sidelines for a while. But he never just sets you on the shelf to leave you there.’”
“I’ve never felt dirtier than when I tried to defend myself,” Hunt later said.
Toward the end of his sermon, Hunt laid across the floor while describing a cast sheep that has rolled onto its back and cannot get up without the aid of a shepherd. Explaining that a shepherd will break the legs of a sheep that repeatedly runs away and gets cast, Hunt said, “When they start limping again, they stay close to the shepherd.”
Though a popular sermon analogy, the veracity of the claim that shepherds would break the legs of their sheep is disputed.
“When you’re cast…the only thing you can do is cast yourself on Jesus,” Hunt said.
For some abuse survivors and advocates, their response to Hunt’s appearance at Hiland Park Baptist was visceral.
“I listened to the sermon Johnny Hunt gave and it’s stomach turning,” tweeted survivor advocate Tiffany Thigpen. “Yes, he speaks truths of [God’s] mercy, forgiveness, using scriptures. But it misses every mark.”
“Manipulative uses of scriptures are what we know well,” Thigpen continued. “He mentions being treated unjustly, of being down but not knocked out, going through difficult times, through the fire. No mention of what he’s put [the] survivor & others through.”
Later in the thread, Thigpen wrote, “Please stop this stage show, smoke and mirrors, moving uses of scripture to manipulate hearts in church to seeing his ‘torment’ & just love on poor him while we elevate him…He can be forgiven, restored to fellowship [with] Christ, he never lost it. He needs repentance but not restoration to Pastoring/leading. Any church who calls him, promotes him, is a part of the problem.”
Mike Keahbone, Oklahoma pastor and vice chair of the SBC’s Abuse Response Implementation Task Force, said of Hunt’s return to the pulpit, “It grieves me deeply that Johnny Hunt would not have the spiritual and emotional intelligence to realize the deep trauma that he is causing. Not only to the victim of his abuse, but also to all survivors who are watching and re-living their pain as they watch him return to the very platform that he caused harm from.”
“True repentance is not found in the opinions of 4 men, but in a broken heart & changed behavior,” Keahbone continued. “Standing with Scripture, our SBC messengers overwhelmingly affirmed that sexual misconduct calls for disqualification from ministry.”
