Throughout this time, the Lord began to shape and break my heart in many ways. In pastoral counseling, I have shepherded countless women (and some men) who suffered abuse of various stripes. (And, I might add, I sometimes shepherded them poorly.) Listening to them, I began to hear and see how and why they felt voiceless and defenseless. I saw how often their stories were minimized, brushed aside and disbelieved. I witnessed how difficult they found it to speak and to be heard. It was too easy for Christians to either condemn them (for where they were, for what they wore, for what they’d done, for what they didn’t do) and to apply quick-fixes with spiritual-cliché band-aids.
At the same time, I experienced false-accusations, abuse, betrayal and other sufferings through church controversy. While this initially made me defensive of pastoral heroes, the Lord used it to help me hear the cry of the poor. When I was mistreated, many expressed sorrow and support for me in private, but not many stepped up to actively stop it. When I was attacked, some minimized it or applied quick fixes. I had “friends” who refused to listen to or follow me as a pastor merely because influential pastors said and believed otherwise. I learned what it was to be the victim. Through this, the Lord stirred in me a desire to see, hear and respond to those who experienced abuse.
In 2013, I resigned from being a lead pastor and spent one year out of pastoral ministry. During that time, I worked for a mission agency that plants churches among the poor. The Lord used the incredible men and women in that ministry to continue to challenge and change my heart. They wrote and spoke boldly about how the evangelical church too often overlooks, stereotypes and mistreats the poor—and how such prejudices can be engrained in systems and institutions. They included women in ministry in remarkable ways (in a particularly challenging context)—and did so as conservative, Calvinistic complementarians! They did not take themselves seriously but took the Gospel very seriously. They did not fear man but asked hard questions of influential people. The Lord used them to shake my heart and mind and to stir me to think differently. I am so thankful for those men and women. I am so sorry for the ways I’ve failed so many.
In 2015, I re-entered the pastorate as an associate pastor—I entered a changing man. There are innumerable things God used to change my heart over the previous decade. Too many to list. But I want to mention a few germane to the SBC issue and the role you played.
At one point, I attended a conference at which several Southern Baptist leaders spoke. One of the men, a man I admire, shared some things about his personal policies regarding interactions with women, admonishing the pastors and seminarians to adopt them. I disagreed with those policies but did not think much of it. After the talk, a sister sitting next to me commented, “I was hurt several times by what he said.” I didn’t follow-up on that comment immediately, but I tucked it away in my heart for meditation. Why did I disagree but remain unoffended, while this sister was “hurt”? As I mulled over that question, I began to see what his statements (unintentionally) communicated to women about women. I understood why she was hurt. I wondered how often my ignorant, unthoughtful (though well-intentioned) comments and actions hurt the sisters in the churches I pastored. I resolved to listen, ask, listen, ask, listen more than I commented, assumed and acted in regards to women in the church.
As the #MeToo movement rose, I listened. Twenty years earlier, I would have responded to #MeToo as a calloused, knee-jerk (emphasis on jerk), Rush Limbaugh conservative. I would have mocked and minimized the movement. But now I read and listened and wept. I wept. Reading the stories of complete strangers, I recognized the stories of women that I knew, that I loved. I wept. Reading the stories of how these women were treated, I saw the world that my mom grew up in, that my wife lived in, that my daughter would enter. I wept.
I remember the first time I saw your name on Facebook. You were being (rightly) heralded as a hero for your role as the first woman to speak publicly against Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor, accusing him of sexual assault. Christians celebrated you and your victim impact statement as a model of Christian boldness and grace—which it was.
As I read your statement—which is worthy of all the praise it received—this sentence floored me: “My advocacy for sexual assault victims, something I cherished, cost me my church and our closest friends three weeks before I filed my police report.” I wondered how on earth this could be.
My heart broke again when I read your interview with Christianity Today, particularly these paragraphs:
Church is one of the least safe places to acknowledge abuse because the way it is counseled is, more often than not, damaging to the victim. There is an abhorrent lack of knowledge for the damage and devastation that sexual assault brings. It is with deep regret that I say the church is one of the worst places to go for help. That’s a hard thing to say, because I am a very conservative evangelical, but that is the truth. There are very, very few who have ever found true help in the church.
