Hey Tabi!

If We’re "Doers of the Word’"… Why is the Church Still Failing Victims

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 6

Share episode

What does it really mean to be a "doer of the Word" like it says in the book of James?

In this eye-opening episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with Neil Schori, pastor, father, and Director of Church Partnerships at Called to Peace Ministries, to tackle how being doers of the Word should make churches look. Together, they unpack James 1:22-27 and challenge what it really means to “be doers of the word.” Spoiler: it’s not about ignoring abuse.

You’ll hear real talk on:

  • How churches unintentionally side with abusers
  • Why emotional maturity (not just theology) is essential in marriage
  • What “widows and orphans” actually means in a trauma-informed context
  • The epidemic of autoimmune disease and physical health decline in abuse survivors
  • How leaders can stop protecting the institution and start protecting people

This is not your average talk about a scirpture. It’s a call for churches to embody the heart of Christ, not just quote His words. If you're a pastor, elder, biblical counselor, or therapist, this episode is your mirror moment. Don't walk away unchanged.

🔗 Want to help your church do better? Learn more about Called to Peace Ministries and their Church Partnership Program: www.calledtopeace.org

Book mentioned: 37 WAYS TO BE TAKEN CAPTIVE: Warning Signs and Prevention for Destructive Relationships by Syndey Millage - https://a.co/d/9GDLfK6

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

🎧 Subscribe to Hey Tabi for more expert conversations on trauma, faith, and healing.

Order Body & Soul, Healed & Whole: An Invitational Guide to Healthy Sexuality After Trauma, Abuse, and Coercive Control

📩 Connect with Tabitha:
💻 Tabitha's Website - www.tabithawestbrook.com
📲 Tabitha's Instagram - www.instagram.com/tabithathecounselor
🎙️ Podcast Homepage - https://heytabi.buzzsprout.com

💻 The Journey & The Process Website - www.thejourneyandtheprocess.com
📲 The Journey & The Process Instagram - www.instagram.com/_tjatp

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel & watch podcast episodes there

👍 If this episode resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and share to help others who need this information!

🚨 Disclaimer: This podcast is not therapy and is intended for educational purposes only. If you're in crisis or need therapy, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

Need to know how to find a great therapist? Read this...

Speaker 1:

Welcome to hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud, with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here and we are not. Take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now let's get going.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of hey Tabby. I am so stoked. First of all, I'm interviewing one of my favorite people, which is just amazing, and I knew he was going to be one of my favorite people the very first time I ever talked to him. And the other person on the call was like why am I here? Because this person I had so much to talk about.

Speaker 1:

So I am going to introduce to you my friend, neil Shorey. He is a pastor, husband and dad of three daughters. He serves as the director of church partnerships for Call to Peace Ministries, where he leads an amazing team that equips churches to respond to abuse not with silence but with courage and compassion. And I do know some of the church partnership folks. They are amazing. Neil's journey into advocacy began when a pastoral conversation helped uncover one of the nation's most chilling domestic abuse cases. Ever since, he's been on a mission to help churches become the safest place on earth for the vulnerable. He's passionate about healthy theology, practical action and helping leaders move from well-meaning to well-trained. Neil, I'm so glad that you're here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me. I've been so excited for this conversation.

Speaker 1:

We're going to have a really good time. So buckle up everyone. This will be fun. We're going to talk about a passage in James, and I was sitting in church one Sunday when I was listening to this be preached, and in the middle of the sermon I texted Neil and said, hey, I think we should talk about this. And Neil said, yes, we should. And so here we are.

Speaker 1:

So I'm going to start us off by reading this section of scripture, and I know for some people that scripture is tricky. There will be timestamps in the description, so if you need to move past it and hear our summary and discussion on it, you can do that, because I know that for some survivors of abuse, this can be really hard. But, like you guys know who listen to this podcast, biblical literacy is really important to me, and so I definitely want to dive into this together. So we're going to be in James. We're going to start in chapter one, verse 22, and we're going to end at verse 27. So the end of the chapter and I'm reading this from the Christian Standard Bible and I want to note the very first sentence for some that are listening is going to be a trigger. I do just want to remind folks to take care of you you're the only you that you have.

Speaker 1:

But be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves. Because if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone looking at his own face in a mirror, for he looks at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what kind of person he was. But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres in it and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer who works, this person will be blessed in what he does. If anyone thinks he is religious without controlling his tongue, his religion is useless and he deceives himself.

Speaker 1:

Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world. So that's a whole bunch of scripture and I know some of its parts has been proof texted and weaponized against victims, especially to stay in destructive marriages and not to seek safety. But I want to talk about it from the pastor side. How do we think, as an abuse-informed group that we are, how do we help pastors see this not just as go follow a bunch of rules. And how are they doers of the word? Maybe a little differently than they think.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, this passage has always meant a lot to me, because in one of the first churches that I was ever connected with, I had the chance to start a ministry that was specific to caring for orphans and widows. That was the gist of the ministry, and really what I think it's important for pastors to do is look at this, and this is not about us putting something upon someone else, but it's really an invitation to us to step into the kind of religion, the kind of care, the kind of congregation that God wants us to be. And what is that? It's the very last verse. Religion that God accepts is pure and faultless. Is this, in other words, like, if you want to know what your church should look like, it should look like this To look after orphans and widows in their distress.

Speaker 2:

Now, it'd be really easy to just focus on those two and say, okay, well, we don't have to do anything else for anyone else, and of course, that would be missing the point in a really grandiose way. But it's just this idea that the power and the strength that we have is supposed to be used to come alongside people and underneath them, to shore them up. It's never supposed to be used to hold them down. So, rather than saying that this is for other people to do, this is a list of do's and don'ts for other people. No, this is an invitation to leaders to say what do we want our churches to look like? What do we want our ethic to be characterized by?

Speaker 1:

absolutely, and you know, I think it is so easy to use this as a spiritual bypass if you're not paying attention. So you have a sister that comes to you and says these things are happening in my marriage. I don't even know what to call them, because that's usually how it happens when people come to see me. They're just anxious and they want to be a better wife and then she starts telling her story. And if you know what you're listening to, you hear the elements of coercive control.

Speaker 1:

Well it's easy as a pastor to say, well, go have more sex. Or God says submit be a doer of the word, not a hearer.

Speaker 2:

only what does that do to the woman, then that has come. Oh, it's super destructive If we just take everything at face value and we just we don't recognize that the issue that comes to us is simply the presenting issue. If we're not curious about what's actually going on and we don't ask good questions and we don't know the very complex dynamics of course of control, we're not curious about what's actually going on, we don't ask good questions and we don't know the very complex dynamics of course of control, we're not going to know to look for those things. And that's why it's so important for churches to be trained on this to at least every church in the nation should have a DV 101.

Speaker 2:

This is a one in three issue just for women in your congregation. So this is a significant issue. One in seven men, one in three women. This is a significant issue. One in seven men, one in three women. This is a problem. We should talk about it. But if you don't know these dynamics, then you don't know what to look for. So then you're just going to try to be the Bible answer guy, you know, and it's like no, that's not, that's not the heart of the Lord. The Lord always invites us to look at what's actually going on here. What is this person actually saying, rather than just a presenting issue?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think you know, when we think of being doers of the word, I want to say be doers of the whole word.

Speaker 2:

you know not just, and that is a whole word modification, yeah, not just behavioral modification, right Like right.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I can go do a thing and this is what we see. I mean, you know, I work with perpetrators periodically, co-facilitated perpetrator intervention groups, and this is often where we see folks make that checkbox move. Well, I'm doing the thing. The problem is your heart is different. You're trying to get back in good graces, right, you're trying to get back in good graces.

Speaker 2:

You're trying to utilize manipulative kindness to weave your web again and suck your victim back in, and your heart really isn't different. So you're not actually a do think of the name of it, but it was with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn years ago and they had this marital squabble after a party and she was trying to get him to do the dishes and finally he caught on that, oh, I'm supposed to do the dishes, so he goes over there. And she was still upset about it and he goes. Well, what is your problem? And she just goes. I want you to want to do the dishes.

Speaker 2:

And it was hilarious. It was just a totally hilarious line, but I think it really illustrates something about the heart. She didn't want to have to keep asking him or make him finally catch all the hints that she wanted him to participate in the household work. She wanted him to see the whole thing and see her household work. She wanted him to like see the whole thing and see her, and I think that it's really really easy to in churches to try to get people to be good little boys and girls and then have a whole lot of things that are going on in the heart that are never addressed, and God is calling us to so much greater than that.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and good scriptural understanding is looking at scripture with what I like to look at as three lenses. I got this from jen wilkin it is for them and for them, for us and for always, for me and for now. So how do we look at this scripture in that way?

Speaker 2:

so, so, so good, gosh, when I read this and I think about what's god asking for me today? What does this look like for me? In what ways am I personally just listening to the word and then not doing the thing that god's asking me to do For me? I know that he just wants me to be the same person everywhere. He doesn't want me to have a church persona and a home persona and then a gas station or Starbucks persona. He wants me to be exactly who he has made me to be and who he's invited me to become. He wants me to be that everywhere I am, so that nobody wonders who the real me is. They'll see who I am consistently, and I think everyone. I think there's an invitation for all of us when we read this, like, what's the thing that you're ignoring that God's consistently putting before you? And my guess is it's not going to be a list of do's and don'ts, it's going to be more of matters of the heart.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean. God has so much to say throughout scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, about the heart and about his care and kindness for us and to be made from glory to glory to be like him as he's changing us through sanctification.

Speaker 1:

All of those things are more than just a single verse proof text, and I think this is what we see in coercive control so often, where half of verses get used right, so like if this is being weaponized and someone is being told well, go be doers and not hearers. Only you, as wife, submit, you go do the thing right. And be demure and mindful and look like the Proverbs 31 woman, which I'm like.

Speaker 1:

you should read that again because she might actually be, because she was pretty amazing, but you know, we get that piece of it and then they're told that they're wicked because they maybe resisted and said no. And said I'm trying to set a boundary and this isn't OK. And then they get called things like you know, having a Jezebel spirit which is also completely scripturally wrong.

Speaker 1:

And you know it's so important to handle the word of God well if you are a pastor and to be really careful, because the book of James also says I hope a bunch of you don't desire to be teachers because you are held to a higher standard, so I feel like there's a lot of weight to really wrestle with. Is this something I believe and teach because it's what I've always been told? Or is it something I believe and teach because this is the Holy Spirit and the word of God bearing weight on my life and changing me from glory to glory to look more like Jesus?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. That's the key, you know. I think it's. We can say, oh, we're trying to be biblically based, and my question is so what does that actually mean? And what I want to hear is that churches are trying to look like Jesus and how they embody scripture and embody love, right.

Speaker 2:

So it's like when I look at Jesus, when I can get awfully confused when I take, when I cherry pick verses or even some books of the Bible where I read it and I'm like, well, that's that's, that's something, that's a harsh one, that's a confusing word, boy, that that makes me feel confused about God. The thing that I always do is say, okay, if I'm confused about what the Bible's saying about God, to just look at Jesus, because Jesus, scripture says, is the image of the invisible God, okay. So if I'm ever confused about God, all I have to do is go back to Jesus. That's all I have to do. He will show me. He's going to bring light to the passages that are confusing. So when I'm confused about God's character, when I'm confused about how he works in the world, how he treats people, I'm always going to look at Jesus, because that's who we look at. So he gave everything for us and because of that I can trust God of that, I can trust God Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I do think I'm going to say this because this is something that I've heard many pastors say when I have these kinds of discussions, and I'm certain you've heard something similar is but what about sin? Are we just going to let people sin Neal, and we're not going to call out her sin? Maybe she's harsh and isn't everyone a sinner? Are you expecting perfection? I mean, gosh man, are you soft on sin? How would you respond to that?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I've certainly heard people say exactly that. It's like, well, I'm sure she's not perfect, and it's like, well, first of all, if you really want to talk about her. Yeah, no one's perfect. And it's like, well, first of all if you really want to talk about her. Yeah, no one's perfect. And that's also not the point. It's the art of deflection.

Speaker 2:

You know, let's talk about what's really going on here, and when it comes to abusive behavior, all about control. It's all about one person with the power, with the influence, with the authority, who looks at the other person as an object rather than someone created in the image of God. Does that mean are we at all saying that that person is sin free? Well, of course not. That's also not the issue. And there's a very, very big difference between being a sinner, which, according to scripture, all of us that's all of us. But there's a big difference between someone who misses the mark that God has set and someone who's perpetrating sin upon another. It's very intentional, it's very purposeful, it's destructive. Those are very, very different things, and when we mix those things up, we end up having a whole lot of victims that have now experienced a secondary victimization. So we have this wake of victims in the path of the church, and that should never, ever, ever be. The church should be the safest place on earth for victims, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I think, in an effort to push back against some things from just modern society that truly aren't good, that there is a need for a way to A pendulum swing in the other direction that goes a bit, and a rigidity that ultimately then idolizes the institution of marriage instead of worshiping the living God 100% true and, you know, anytime we look at institutions and we want to hold those up, it's like you can start doing that with a really good heart, but it can get awfully twisted and, I think, really miss the meaning that God has for it.

Speaker 2:

You know, it's sort of like the Sabbath, right? So Jesus was critiqued by the Pharisees when his followers were picking grain on the Sabbath to eat. And the Pharisees are like oh Jesus, I think you need to have a talk with those guys, because they're obviously not. I think you need to have a talk with those guys because they're obviously not. They haven't caught on to the fact that it's the Sabbath. And it's like, and Jesus looks at him and goes no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sabbath is for man, not man for the Sabbath.

Speaker 2:

And I think in the same way, in churches we can look at the institution of marriage as the end goal. And it's not, because if it were, then why would some people never get married? Right, it's not the end goal. The end goal is to be conformed to the image of Jesus. And the end goal of marriage, like marriage, isn't the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to have people in union together. And when you have abuse, that's indicated you have one person that's trying to be in union with another, but unfortunately that person's not leaning into the Lord and leaning into what it looks like to put their spouse first. What they're doing is attempting to destroy the other person who's tried to be married to them, and that's not good and not healthy, and they've already broken that union.

Speaker 1:

Right, they're consuming them. Ultimately, it is a consumptive mindset and it is one where the victim is seen as property. I refer to it as a couch that can make sandwiches and stuff. You know, sometimes in the bedroom. They treat their spouse like a blow up doll and it's not an image bearer idea, right.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

They're not looking at someone as an image bearer of a living God. They're looking at them as something to be consumed for their pleasure, which is not scriptural.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's hard for pastors at times to really reconcile that because we have language intimacy so poorly In fact I'm not entirely sure we language it at all in the church at this point. We talk about intercourse but we don't talk about true intimacy. And you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about something that Sheila Gregoire said to me when I interviewed her, and she talks about emotional maturity.

Speaker 1:

And wouldn't it be better if, instead of focusing on marriage, we focused on the emotional maturity of the parties involved? So then, when they got married, they got married healthy, and my heart goes, that's discipleship. What? If we actually really discipled people to look like Jesus, to follow hard after Jesus. What might marriage? I mean the church as a whole. What might it look like?

Speaker 2:

Oh, it'd be incredibly different. What if we built into our premarital counseling, which so many churches do, and I think that's great, that's a great start? What if we built in questions that would look for elements of emotional maturity? And also what if we regularly gave surveys and had good conversations around abusive dynamics? What if we had individual conversations with a woman to say, hey, let me describe some behaviors that you're really, really going to want to stay away from. Have you experienced any of these with your fiance? Because, as we know, in the abuse realm, in the abuse field, a lot of times when people are being abused, they don't even say they're being abused. They know they're uncomfortable, they know they have some anxiety around being with that person, but they oftentimes wonder if there's just something wrong with them internally, like what's wrong with me that I can't just feel normal in this context. But when we educate people in just simple conversational ways, we could help them avoid a lifetime of being tethered to someone that's hell-bent on their destruction.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and if a church needs a little support with that, our friend, sydney Millage wrote this book called 37 Ways to be Taken Captive and it's such a great book for dating to walk through. Where are the elements of coercive control and what are some things that you want to be aware of? So if there's a pastor, elder leader, biblical counselor listening or licensed therapist listening because I think all things are applicable for all of us then I would commend that book because that can help you have some of those questions about what the nature and tenor of the relationship is. I also think that folks doing premarital counseling should be bold enough to say you should not marry.

Speaker 2:

And yes, it doesn't happen often enough. Yeah, and I would say if you've been a pastor for more than a few years and you have not, if you haven't said that to someone, you probably need to get a little bit tougher and check in with yourself on why you're having a hard time.

Speaker 1:

Being honest, yeah, it's a tough conversation. I mean, let's be real, right, it's tough to say. I know that you love this person and I know that you've put deposits in places. Your parents might have put deposits in places and that's no laughing matter. Wedding dresses are expensive Weddings. The average wedding is something like 40 grand. I was blown away by that. So, yeah, there's a significant dollar amount, but can you place a dollar amount on your soul? If someone, ultimately, is trying to take your personhood? I'm going to say no. I feel like we can always earn money back. We can't heal as easily as we could if we didn't get married in the first place.

Speaker 2:

Right. I've seen a lot of people over the years say, gosh, I just really love to be married one day. It's just, I just haven't found the right person and I'm like, hey, I hear you, I'm grateful to be married. I'm so glad I married the person that I did. I'm so glad I didn't marry the other people that I might have. I'm really grateful for that, but for that. But I can tell you that the people that I've encountered who are the saddest and the loneliest aren't the single people. The people that I know that are the saddest and most despondent and lonely are those married to those who are actually against them when they call themselves married.

Speaker 1:

Right, yep, married but really single on the inside. Awesome how I've languaged it, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's great. That's such a good picture too. It's yeah, it's horrible. You know, it's like we've all experienced being around people and, yeah, we don't have a sense of community. It's like you can walk on the streets of any major city in the U? S. You can walk in New York city and it's like, if you aren't with someone, you're just walking. You'll encounter 100,000 people that day. You know thousands of people that day and you could not have one conversation except with, maybe, the street vendor looking for a good hot dog. That's still. That's, a very, very lonely place to be. I think it's significantly more so, and often more dangerous, in a marriage, where you're married and name only.

Speaker 1:

Right. And there will be someone out there who likes to read statistics, who will say but there's a statistic that says that married people have better physical health and live longer. And I would say what kind of marriage? Because if we're going to quote a statistic, it's the kind that they are. As the Gottmans would put it, masters right. So the Gottmans kind of split people into masters and disasters. Disasters are the really destructive, very unhealthy marriages that often end in divorce, and the masters are the ones that learn how to work through things.

Speaker 1:

There's mutuality there is the ability for each partner to accept influence, and there is a correlation between better physical health and those kind of marriages, but not the other.

Speaker 1:

In fact, there's an inverse that we find with it, because I can't tell you and I know you've experienced this with survivors how many autoimmune disorders and physical health issues there are for victims of abuse, because abuse, even if you've never been hit, is physical, and I say this a lot unless you can take your brain outside of your skull and stick it in a two, into a jar, it is still inside your body, which would make it physical, and, while we're at it, it's dumping out neurochemicals that you're essentially pickling yourself in, like cortisol and things that we shouldn't have all the time, and so we're sentencing people to a life of physical harm.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting because, like the image that I get when I'm envisioning, like what you're describing, just in, how the body turns on itself, really autoimmune diseases are that the body's doing it. Basically it's being programmed by the abuse because the abuse is so harmful. So the body is just like. It's almost like well, I'm just going to keep it on. I'm going to turn on myself, because that's what I've experienced for all this time through abuse, and it's a horrible, horrible sentence.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so when pastors take a passage like this one in James and give it I'm going to use a term that isn't really a term, but I'm about to make one up evangelical polish, which is we're just going to make it purdy and you're going to go obey and everybody's going to go obey and we're going to be fine, and not really look at what does it look like to be a doer of the whole counsel of the word of God? What does it look like to let it bear weight on you? And I think that's where we get into that. Don't look in a mirror and see what you look like and walk away and not do something about it. You know, every now and again, I think, pastors get this view of where things really are and they can either shove it down and ignore it, or they can contend with something that might not have been their expectation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, these are uncomfortable. Anytime you go under the surface it's uncomfortable. And I think the degree to which pastors are themselves willing ourselves willing to dig in and say so. What part of me has not been transformed by the gospel? What part of me maybe hasn't been baptized? If we're not willing to ask those questions, then we need to be very, very slow to speak when it comes to putting more weight on another person. We need to look at ourselves and ask why we've kept that part of ourselves out of the waters of baptism and then invite people in in a gentle and kind and relational way, because that is the way of God. That is the way. That's what Jesus does.

Speaker 2:

He doesn't yell at us, he doesn't scream at us. He's not an angry street preacher, he's the embodiment of love who came here and he's saying. He's just saying, come and see. And why don't we just do that? Why don't we just say to people hey, I'm not trying to give you more things to do. What if you just come and see? Why don't you walk with me? Let's do this together.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and I love that at the end of this particular passage, the outpouring of that, when James says, okay, what does it look like? It's loving well. I mean, if we had to distill that sentence down, it would be loving well those who need support. Be loving well those who need support. And I can't think of anyone more widow-like than a victim of abuse, anyone more orphan-like than a child whose parent is harmful.

Speaker 2:

No, no Victims of abuse it's. In some ways, I think it's worse than being a widow, because widows the husband didn't choose to die, you know, presumptively but a victim of abuse, this is someone whose husband chose to act as though that person was dead to them. And anytime we treat people in a way that dehumanizes them, strips them of their agency or their identity, we speak in an ugly way to them or we try to control things about them, we're taking away their humanity, and to me, that is absolutely a more extreme version of being widowed.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. And what an abandonment. I just think about how harmful being abandoned is for people being othered, being marginalized, losing your community. And we see when we read the scriptures in the Jewish synagogue we get upset with somebody, they would expel them and yeet them out, for lack of a better way to put it right now.

Speaker 1:

And you lose your whole community. And so for so many abuse victims, that is the reality of what happens for them, because, instead of getting into the messy and really wrestling for the pastor, for me in this moment, what does it look like to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only?

Speaker 1:

Even if I can say I think abuse is wrong, I think coercive control is wicked. You can say that. But do you say it is it for First Baptist Methodist Episcopalian church down the road, or is it for me? Because it will show up? It is in your backyard.

Speaker 2:

You just might not know, I guarantee it is, and it's scary. We've experienced that in our own church and it was very, very challenging, very, very challenging to address. So I do not at all act like churches have to be perfect or you're not going to do anything perfectly, but you can always take a step to be better. Just as you know, it's sort of like we all need to be in this kind of action, reflection action. You know it's like we need to sort of look at what we did, and I can tell you that cases that I've dealt with more personally, I can always see things that I would do differently every single time. Never done it perfectly, probably never will. But that doesn't mean I just leave it there and say I'm not perfect. You know, no, leaning into.

Speaker 2:

What does it look like for me to love people? Well, it looks like me trying to figure out how to do things for them and stand with them in a way that helps them to feel loved, and not for me to say, well, look what I did for you. You know, here's all these things that I did for you, so you should have received that. No, it looks like me asking them what would it look like for you to feel cared for? What would it look like for you to feel like we walked with you well through this very, very hard time? What would it look like for you to feel like we walked with you well through this very, very hard time? What would it look like for you to have community here? If you still want community here and if you don't want community here, do you have community elsewhere? Because I still believe that's important. Do you have people? Where are your people? Who are they and what can we do to support you?

Speaker 1:

So, as we land the plane here and just really talk about what it looks like to be doers of the word in this space in a different way than maybe a pastor might have thought of it before, and maybe broadening out what it looks like to walk with Christ, what would you invite? Pastors and elders and leaders who are listening into?

Speaker 2:

who are listening into Gosh. I would say to any pastors and elders and leaders, I would say who are the people in your community who are suffering and not being actively cared for? Who are they? Don't look at them. I would encourage you not to look at them as the ones that are detracting you from your mission of growing your church. I would say, I would encourage you to look at them and say what if walking with them is how you're going to see Jesus more clearly? I look at it really like a Matthew 25.

Speaker 2:

Are you noticing Jesus in the people that you meet? And it's not going to be in all the affluent ones that look like they have it all together. It's going to be in the strugglers. Are you looking at strugglers not as an inconvenience, but as an opportunity to love and to show Jesus and to invite them to something better and more beautiful? I believe that's the gospel. It's not about behavioral modification. You said that so well, tabby. It's about inviting people to come to know the Lord in a real and authentic way. And how do we do that? We meet people where they are. Look for those opportunities. You'll see people in every single church that are marginalized. Don't be someone that leaves them on the margins. Invite them in. There is no one in your church or outside of your church. That's so far gone that the Lord does not want them to come to his table. There's not one.

Speaker 1:

And I'll also say, even in that and I just want to make this really clear, because I've heard pastors do this so often Well, the Lord would not want Brother Jim, who is the destructive individual in the marriage, to be far from him and it's like no, he doesn't. In fact, you should call him to repentance, because that's what's actually loving. That does not mean there are not consequences and that does not mean there are not boundaries, so you can invite him to the Lord's table, not inside the walls of the church if it would endanger a victim or the victim's children the church if it would endanger a victim or the victim's children?

Speaker 2:

Oh, 100% true. And so often when you confront someone who's been abusive, everyone has a choice, but a lot of times people who are abusive are going to choose to be more prideful when they're confronted. Doesn't always happen, but it often happens because it comes from a sense of entitlement. Anyway, there's a good chance that you're going to have to practice some of the Bible that you preach well, and practice church discipline. Actually removing someone from the congregation and what Paul says is handing them over to Satan and now that sounds so scary, that sounds like, oh wow, that sounds rough.

Speaker 2:

But what is it for? Not punitive, it's restorative. The goal isn't to banish the person permanently. The goal is that they'd have a wake-up call when they're handed over to Satan and then God would invite them back into the fold. But not giving consequences to unrepentant abusers in your congregation is like having the fox guard the hen house. It's completely unacceptable and it's dangerous and we need to make sure that we're standing on the right side and that's standing up for victims and not causing them to experience secondary abuse in the church.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, absolutely Well, neil, I am so grateful that we have gotten to do this, and I mean honestly, you and I could talk for hours upon hours. I would like you to talk about the church partnership. How can you help churches do this? Well, because there might be some people listening who went yeah, I don't know what to do with any of this and we actually have a solution for that, so talk about that.

Speaker 2:

We do. I'm super excited for this and, Tabby, thank you for having me on. I hope we'll do it again. And, yes, we could talk for hours and hours and it's super fun.

Speaker 2:

The pastors, church leaders, anybody out there that you're like hey, but I don't know how to respond well to abuse. I don't shame you for that. I was in your shoes when I was brand new in ministry. I didn't know how to respond well to abuse either. That's why I do what I do today, because I get to in some ways encourage pastors with the very things that I needed that I didn't have 18 years ago when I was new in ministry. So as the director of church partnerships, I really get to offer two pieces to churches, and one I call the evangelistic side and one I call the discipleship side because I know pastors speak that language. So the evangelistic side is really it's a half day training. So you invite us out, we come and we do a half-day training for you and we teach you about the basics of domestic abuse and coercive control, and very likely what's going to happen is you're going to have a number of people in your congregation that say, hey, I think I'm called to be a part of something more.

Speaker 2:

Is there a next step Can we do more with this organization so that we can learn more about this and respond well to victims?

Speaker 2:

And the answer is yes, and that's the discipleship piece, where we come alongside you and we partner with you and we help you learn to respond well.

Speaker 2:

You're never going to respond perfectly, but you're going to learn to respond well and we do that through helping you with support groups and creating policy, and you actually have a person who's trained really deeply in all this and an incredible advocacy course. That Tabby's a part of. It's amazing teaching and it's a way for you to not just be reactive to abusive situations, but you can be proactive and you can get ahead of this, and what happens is ultimately, your church will become known as a church that responds well is ultimately your church will become known as a church that responds well, and victims all over the place start going to churches that respond well, because so few right now do respond well. So this looks like being a doer of the word to me. So if you're a pastor out there and you know that you need to learn how to do this, this would be one way that you can model what it looks like to be a doer of the word. Responding well to abuse is very much like caring for orphans and widows in their distress.

Speaker 1:

It very much represents the heart of James, the brother of Jesus in this passage James 1, 22 through 27. Absolutely Well, neil. Thank you so much for being here. It has been a joy. You will, of course, be invited back, duh.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, I'm so grateful for everyone who's listened to hey Tabby this week. You can always reach out. Everything, all the ways to find Neil, all the things that were mentioned will be in the show notes. So if you are listening to this and you're like I don't even know, I don't even know if my church could you know, should I mean it's domestic abuse a thing. It's coercive control a thing. Man, do a, protect the flock, which is that evangelistic piece that Neil was talking about. Just do it. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, and I would just commend it to you highly that you go and you engage. It will not harm you, it will only benefit you and it will edify the body of Christ. So thanks for being here with us. We'll see you next time.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much, Tabby.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for joining me for today's episode of hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrookcom. Forward slash hey Tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing.

Head Shot

Tabitha Westbrook, LMFT-S, LCMCH-QS, LPC-S, CSAT, CCTP, CCTCP

Host
Head Shot

Neil Schori

Guest