Hey Tabi!

When Churches Make Abuse Worse (And How They Can Change) with Matt Chandler

• Tabitha • Season 2 • Episode 26

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What happens when a pastor admits, “We made it worse”?

In this episode of Hey Tabi, licensed trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with pastor Matt Chandler for an honest conversation about how uninformed church systems have harmed abuse survivors - often unintentionally, but deeply. Tabi didn't provide any questions in advance and Matt didn't shy away from anything asked.

Together, they explore what happens when churches lack training in domestic abuse, coercive control, & trauma dynamics, & how good intentions can still cause devastating harm. Matt speaks candidly about past failures, institutional blind spots, & what true repentance & reform actually requires.

Inside this conversation:
⛪️ Why abuse is often missed in Christian marriages and churches
⛪️ How church systems can unintentionally side with abusers
⛪️ Why trauma-informed training is essential for pastors and elders
⛪️ What accountability and repentance should look like in the Church

Where to find Matt:
https://www.pastormattchandler.com/
Matt's latest book - Awake and Alive: A 30-Day Challenge to Revive Your Faith - https://a.co/d/gLywHJp

Where to get trained:
Pastors that would like to get educated on abuse or schedule a Protect the Flock training for your church, reach out to Called to Peace Ministries - https://calledtopeace.org/.

Wanna say hi? Send a text!

At The Journey and The Process we strive to help you heal. Our therapists are trauma specialists who use evidence-based tools like EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems to help you heal - mind, soul, and body. Reach out today to start your healing journey. https://thejourneyandtheprocess.com/

 This book is for every Christian woman who has been harmed sexually, whether that happened in childhood, adulthood, or even within your coercive controlling marriage, and you're longing to feel safe in your body again. We talk about the hard stuff, shame, desire, faith, and even questions like, is this sin or is this trauma?

You don't have to untangle it alone. Body & Soul, Healed & Whole is for you. Get a copy here today - https://a.co/d/8Jo3Z4V

🎧 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

Wanna support Hey Tabi? Buy me a coffee here - https://buymeacoffee.com/heytabi

📩 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
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👍 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...

SPEAKER_01:

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. Welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabby, and I have got somebody very interesting. I'm going to introduce him first and then I'm going to talk about him. So who I have with me today is Matt Chandler. And Matt is a husband, father, pastor, elder, and author whose greatest desire is to make much of Jesus. He served for over 20 years as a lead pastor at the Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, which recently transitioned its five campuses into their own autonomous churches. That's been a little while, actually. He's also the executive chairman of the X29 Network, a large church planning community that trains and equips church planners across the globe. Matt's known around the world for proclaiming the gospel in a powerful and down-to-earth way and enjoys traveling to share the message of Jesus wherever he can. He lives in Texas with his wife Lauren and their three children, Audrey, Reed, and Nora. So welcome, Matt. And I'm going to start us off with this because some of my listeners, or if you're watching on YouTube, may be stroking out and going, You have got Matt Chandler on, and you talk about abuse. What are you doing? And so I want to actually say what I am doing. First of all, I go to the village church and I am aware of some of the challenges and missteps and harm that have happened in those walls. I was not there at the time that those things happened, but I am aware of them. I've heard about them from the survivor community. I've talked to Matt about them in the past, actually. And one of the things that I believe is that as churches try to do the right thing, I want to talk about that because I think it's really important. And there are things I've seen that are really good. Like we have a abuse group for women. We have a care team that is very abuse aware. We have a Men of Peace group that is currently running at the Church for Destructive Men. And so I want to talk with Matt about those things. I want to have a real honest conversation. And so I believe in not talking about people, but talking to them. And so, Matt, thank you for being here with me. I'm really grateful.

SPEAKER_00:

Listen, glad to be on with you. So love you. So love the work you do. Just what a light. And so, man, of course, I'd love to chat with you about whatever you want to ask.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I appreciate that very much. And I will say, when I first came to the village, I asked two questions. One was, how Baptist are we? Because that was in the middle of the Southern Baptist stuff. And I remember being at an encounter service one night, which is a prayer and worship service that we do once a month. And it was in the middle of all the SBC baloney about the sex abuse scandals and how they were just mishandling it. And I remember talking to you about that. And I said I was rage tweeting, and you asked me, What do you mean by rage tweeting? And I was like, why am exegetically expounding upon the scriptures to these idiots from the SBC executive committee? And I remember you saying, Go get it, sister. And I appreciated that greatly. That support of just like, no, call out the thing.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So you got to expose evil. That's what Paul tells us in Ephesians.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. You and I talked a little bit before we started recording that you didn't have an idyllic childhood. There were some struggles at home and some big ones and some abuse that was taking place there. You said that you experienced physical abuse there as well. And so you know what it's like to be on the receiving end of abusive behaviors. What is it like for you to become aware of abuse in a different way from not just the I've experienced this as a child, but it's happening in my church.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I think it made it even more heartbreaking. You know, we just didn't know what we didn't know. We were very foolish, but in all honesty, didn't even know we were being foolish and didn't know signs, didn't know how to help, didn't know. We we were just trying to like look at the covenant of marriage as it was stated in the scriptures, and then apply that without any like zero trauma awareness, zero understanding of narcissistic behavior and how to spot it. And we made the mistake I think a lot of churches make, which is just to say, well, we can see this clearly in the Bible that God hates divorce. And so we're gonna hold the line on marriage. And that's what we were doing, but we were doing it without any category for, and I think probably what was happening is we were conflating in a way the difference between a difficult marriage and a destructive marriage, and we didn't have that language then, and we couldn't spot the signs. And so oftentimes, and I'm just gonna be honest and ask for grace about how we were seeing it back then, we would be in these really complex, difficult marital situations, and frequently the man was winsome and steady, and the wife was coming off like neurotic and a little bit crazy, and it didn't make sense to us, and the story wouldn't line up right, even in her telling of it, you know, in one room to the next. And so because we didn't know, because we had had no training, because we just didn't know what we didn't know, it became easy to go, hey, this woman seems to be the problem, not this man. And we were easily being manipulated by these men, but didn't have that category at the time. Not that men couldn't manipulate, but just in that setting, we it was fog of war stuff, and a lot of people got hurt.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I think, you know, when people don't have training, and this is something that I observe a lot in the big C church, just across spaces, or they think it's not happening here. It can go both ways, right? We can say I believe abuse is a thing, but it's not in my church. And we know the statistic is one in three relationships will or have been or are going to be abusive or destructive. And not having the understanding of those things and not knowing how to enter in. And victims are often dysregulated, right? We know that their neurology is on fire and they don't know what to do. And so you don't get linear thought or any of those things. And so it's really hard for a church that doesn't have training. How big was the village when this first started to come out?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, we were five campuses at the time, so close to 20,000 people in five different locations. And so when you're that large, you're relying on structures and systems, you're relying on processes. And that was the big repentance to the church back in 15, was that we were not seeing people, we were seeing our process. And so I we tried to repent of that and then own that. After that, we had a meeting with over 50 women who had been sinned against by us. And we let them set the meeting, where it was, who was there. We never defended ourselves, even there were a couple of times where I was like, I don't think that's in my memory and even in my notes, that's not how that happened. But you know what? Please forgive us. That was not our intent. We were foolish and we sinned against you. And so it was a very large church at the time.

SPEAKER_01:

And I would imagine, and this is something that I think can be hard for pastors and survivors, is the different experiences of harm, right? And even though there may have been things that you didn't explicitly remember, I can only imagine pastoring a large group of churches would be very tough. And having because you're here's something, and just for my listeners that may not know this about me, I'm a pastor's daughter. So I grew up in the church. I've been in leadership, I helped plant churches. This has been my world for a very long time. And, you know, as someone who's watched pastors, worked with pastors, been on church leadership teams, there's so much happening. It's not an excuse for missing things, honestly. Like I think we should all get trained, but there's funerals to do and babies to dedicate and churches to run in a church that size. I can imagine that there's a lot pulling on you, and there's the administration of it all. And I know that there are going to be some survivors who are like, the administration be danged, and what about us? And I think that's a fair critique.

SPEAKER_00:

Maybe that's fair. Yeah. Maybe that's fair.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. That's a very fair critique. And I think that's the tension that we stand in as churches, hopefully learn that, you know, sometimes, especially if the machine itself is big, that getting information to the people that can actually take action is really hard. Although I would hope that it is getting less hard. I hope we're growing in that, like as a as the church itself, the big C church, but it can be really tough. And so I have compassion for that when you don't know what you don't know. When you begin to know and try to put things in place, and this is a criticism that I see a lot, is you're putting these things in place, but you're not talking about them plainly from the pulpit. You're not saying this is what we did. I think in my experience, this is the most explicitly I've actually heard you tell the story. Now, again, I haven't heard you tell it every single time you may have ever told it, but this is the most explicit where you use the term we sinned against these people. What would you say to that criticism of not saying something that directly from the pulpit or being as transparent?

SPEAKER_00:

We did say that from the pulpit. My my original, like we had two choices when everything blew up. We could not own it, we could pull back, we could even do something like let's handle this internally so for a better future and forget about the past. But I stood in front of everybody across all services and used those words. We have sinned against you at these four ways. And I was very specific about the four ways that we had sinned against people and then left room for there still might be ways that I don't understand and don't see that we've sinned against you. And that was the purpose for we would love to own, we're not asking you to come back to the village. We're not saying we're even a safe place yet, but we do want to own the sins of the past while we start to build towards the future. And so, man, I to this day, I'll commend the elder board for that because they weren't worried about our brand at that moment. Nobody was in the back telling me, well, lawyers were. Lawyers were telling me about the legal liability of owning that, but no elder. The elders made the decision, we're gonna be the kind of church that owns our mistakes, which gave me a lot of courage to be able to stand up there and own it with specifics and not just kind of brand, you know, kind of generalizations. And so the first like rollout of man, we have sinned against a large group of people was very detailed. And then since then, I haven't gotten into those details every time I tell it, but allude to some of those things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I think it I know working with survivors, one of the things that they want to hear from a church is we blew it. We blew it, we made a mistake, we didn't know, and to have that full ownership because I think, and again, I'm not talking specifically about the village here, but I'm talking about what I see as a whole, because I walk with a lot of survivors in these spaces in different churches across the US and across the world. That what they what I hear over and over again is I just want there to be change. I just want to be heard. I want to be safe. I don't want to have to give up my church because so many do. And so many end up feeling pushed out because their abuser is winsome. They are manipulative, they do come across well spoken. And so these women and children, typically, because the children are harmed as well, end up leaving.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and something I have to live with, Tabitha, and I could feel it in my chest even now, is we had 50-something meetings. But that doesn't mean that's all that we hurt. Those were just the women that had the courage and were in a place where they could come have that meeting with us. I carry the weight of who all out there is either completely deconstructed and punted on the faith, who we harmed that I will never be able to own it to, that we will never be able to own it to. And so it was a bigger deal than just 50-something people. We were huge and in some ways decentralized on five different campuses. And so I know, like it wouldn't surprise me if somebody watches this and they might not even ever heard this happened, but we did hurt them. And that offering still, it's always on the table. Like, I'm not going to defend us. I know we didn't know what we didn't know. I know we sinned. I know we hurt people. I know we made matters worse thinking we were trying to make them better. And so I'm under no illusion that this is tied off with some bow. Like, there's no way. The harm went much broader than that. And then when I think about our influence, and I think about other churches that early on were learning from us, and then they were learning really the wrong thing to do. Like, that's a is a, I have to give that to the grace of God frequently, even now, all these years later, when the enemy tries to whisper that into my ear and into my heart, still have to take that to the Lord. We did. It's awful. Like, to make things worse for someone who's being demonically oppressed and abused and like horrific, like horrific situations. And to come to the church expecting the hope that the gospel's meant to bring, and found a gaggle of jackasses in charge, like that's painful to me. And I can't, there's no flux capacitor, there's no time travel. I can't go back and make anything right, but I can dang sure make sure we're more aware and continuing to grow in this area.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And, you know, we are 10 years past through on the other side of for lack of a better way to put it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I don't want to ever use like through it because it's part of our story. It's never not going to be part of our story. So it's a part of our story that's formed our present reality. But I don't even like thinking about, oh, I'm glad we're through that, because I don't think you ever get through it. I think it marks and helps form who you are. And I think it's good not to forget what happened, to not let that be some old chapter, but to remember the pain. Remember those meetings were gut-wrenching. They were awful. I don't think I've been through brain cancer, I've had a wayward kid. I've been, I mean, that to me is probably the lowest point in 30 years of ministry. Because I thought I was helping. I thought I was serving. I thought, we thought, it was collective. We thought we were like to find that you're thinking you're giving medicine and you're giving poison when really you're you're giving your life to the cause of Christ in this world. Like that to me, lowest point in a a life with some significant lows.

SPEAKER_01:

And for those listening who don't know this statistic, in 2018, Call to Peace Ministries did a study about where people go when they are harmed in the church. And it was 71%, I believe, of victims went to their pastor first, and only 4% would ever go back. And I remember hearing that statistic for the first time and going, This is not how it's supposed to be. And knowing that that's not the heart of God either, is that the church should be the safest place. And it should not be a place where harm is perpetuated. It should be a place where destructive individuals are called to repentance because they are goats potentially masquerading as sheep or flat-out wolves, and where victims should be cared for and healed. And a lot of times we see in the big sea church the victim being blamed. I mean, there are some pretty notable stories out there about women being excommunicated. And for the ones that aren't making the news or making certain publications, I can tell you how many women I have sat with who were excommunicated from their church. One of the most poignant stories, and I will never look at communion the same way again, ever, is I was teaching at a retreat in the plain community. So that's Amish, Mennonite, German Baptist, Old Brethren, that group, and I love them so much. And I remember sitting there and we were doing a communion liturgy, and so many of these women had been excommunicated because of their abusive partners and the church not recognizing it. And the way they held those elements in such reverence. And because they were, they'd been denied communion. They were not allowed to have it. And so that we were doing that there together. I remember crying all the way through it and repenting of my own sinfulness of saying, I have looked on this gift cheaply, this remembrance of what my savior did for me. And I've never looked at it the same way again. It changed me. And I wish more pastors could see rooms like I've seen, because it changes everything for you. What would you say to invite pastors into seeing with different eyes if they don't have this understanding yet?

SPEAKER_00:

You you've got to get it. I think it's like anything else. We would seek out subject matter experts that know what we don't, and then we walk in the humility to be pressed on and to rethink and to, and if I'm honest, if I'm super honest, Tabitha, I don't know that I could have done that before those 50 meetings. Like those 50 meetings did something to me, did something to us. I wasn't the only one. I'm saying me, it was us that had those meetings. But our collective experience was this can't happen. And then we were ready, like humbled, broken, humbled, and willing to hear and to rethink and to reshape and to then build off of that what I think we are now, which isn't perfect, but serious about these things.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. How because the village is still pretty big, right? I think we have roughly 4,000 is I think where we sit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It's around that four to six, somewhere in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, that's still pretty big. So if we do the math and God help me, I'm going to try to math and I am I therapise. I do not math.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But so with about 4,000, give or take, if we say a third of those are, you know, in or will be in abusive relationships, that's about a thousand people, right? Still in our own church now. I think that math is somewhere in the general ballpark. It's actually about a quarter, whatever. I don't math. We're just not going to math.

SPEAKER_00:

It's fine. I never published.

SPEAKER_01:

I should have used 6,000 because then it would be 2,000. So we'll just use 6,000. So that would mean that any any given point, 2,000 people in that building are struggling with or will be struggling with destructive relationships and coercive control. I think from my perspective, looking at it across churches, across denominations, all of those things. One of the things I see pastors and elders understand the least is coercive control. So everybody has like a paradigm of abuse being hit, punched, thrown downstairs, maybe sexually assaulted, maybe not. Depends on the church. You know, sometimes we're just like, you're yes with at the altar. And I'm like, that is not what scripture. Scripture says people, and I'm like, would you like me to walk through First Corinthians with you? Because I will. But like, you know, we look at these things and pastors go, but you know, the victim wasn't hit. And they don't understand the physical ramifications of non-hitting abuse and coercive control. So what I always tell people is, unless you can take your brain out of your head and stick it in a jar, A, it's a body part, and B, it's releasing all kinds of neurochemicals and impacting the body. And we see that through all kinds of research about how it affects the body to live under constant trauma. What would you say to a pastor whose paradigm is, well, she didn't get hit?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think you've got to look at what God has called the man to in marriage and hold him to that standard. And that standard is to love his wife like Christ loved the church. And no one's going to be able to do that perfectly. It's not like I don't love Lauren like Christ loved the church. I can't. But what I can do is look to Jesus as my model, see his tenderness, see his interaction with the bride, and try to model it the best I can. And Jesus doesn't abuse his bride. And I'm not talking about hitting her. I'm talking about disorienting her. I'm talking about using finances to control her. He doesn't make her feel crazy. He doesn't like all of those things, I think, are fall on the man now, the husband in particular, to wash his wife in the water of the word. And I'll often say from the stage, brothers, if you're using scripture to control your wife, you probably don't understand those scriptures. You have no sense, you're already too late. Like if you've got to exert that kind of control over your wife, and you haven't loved her in a way that the Bible says she should be, she should look like a well-watered vine, then you've already sinned against her in ways, and you've sinned against the call of God on your life to nurture and to make sure as best you can she's a well-watered vine in regards to patience and empathy and presence and support and encouragement. So that's how I've always tried to frame it. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_01:

I would agree that that's some good words, you know. And I have heard you say those things. I think for pastors, it can it can feel tricky.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it is tricky. It's super complex.

SPEAKER_01:

It's incredibly complex. I know my friend Chris Moles, who is a better interventionist, he wrote the book, The Heart of Domestic Abuse. He's written a couple other books as well. He says it this way that if you've seen one case of abuse, you've seen one case of abuse. And it's because there's so many layers, you know, and there's so many presentations. And this is where you had said talk to subject matter experts. Like there are those of us out there that would walk into a church and have these conversations that do walk into these churches and have conversations and say, hey, we would love for you to learn. We want to teach you. We want to help you. We want to walk with you. We, you know, I know bajillion resources at this point. I work with the ministry called to peace that I already mentioned, that does exactly that. My practice does exactly that. We walk with people because we want the church to be a safe place. And so for the pastors listening who are like, I have never thought about this before, I would encourage you to think about it. It'd be really good for your congregation. And that's the heart of a shepherd, is that none of the sheep are being beaten, none of the sheep are being torn apart by wolves, that we are making sure that we are inviting people into God's best for them. And God's best for them is not to be an oppressor and not to be oppressed. And that's such an important part of scripture.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure it is. I mean, you're communicating like the pastor in particular, particularly the lead preaching pastor, it becomes in a kind of way a picture of the heart of the father. And so you had better take that pretty seriously when you get up there. And when you preach and teach and counsel and disciple, and how you train your staff to do those things, and how you, in a real way, are saying, the Lord is like this imperfectly, but that's part of like part of what I understand I'm doing when I'm up there preaching, is I am becoming in a real weird way, this man between God and people that should be emulating his heart for us, both in prophetic call to holiness and in tender care. And to try to be both of those, you know, to walk that line of both. And so I know you've been in the room. Like I will almost always, especially talking about marriage, have a sidebar that goes, ladies, let me tell you what I'm not saying right now. I am not talking about a man who's manipulative, controlling, abusive, emotionally tormenting, financially oppressive, physically, or even sexually abusive to you. I'm not talking, you are not bound by that. In fact, we would love to help you. When you're ready, we were here. We'll get you in a safe place. We will believe you. We will. And so I've added that caveat as I'm leaning into clear exposition of the text around Christian marriage.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'll say I appreciate you taking it out of just the physical realm. Again, because your brain is, in fact, in your head and it's still physical abuse, but I do want to highlight the sexual abuse part. This is one of the things I do not find being asked nearly enough. And I've done so much work with women on their shattered sexuality because of things that happened in the bedroom. And while women have been told in the church, in the evangelical church over time, well, if a man doesn't have sex every 72 hours, he's going to suddenly explode. And I'm like, hey, this is what I tell destructive men. It's one of the things I've said in groups is if that happens and you do explode, I'm gonna need you to videotape it. I'm gonna research it, make a lot of money, and I'm gonna be drinking out of a pineapple on a beach. Since I'm still here, that hasn't happened. And then also my favorite fact of 2024, which is there's one mammal that will die if they don't have an orgasm, or that can die if they don't have an orgasm, and that is a female ferret. And so everybody that's listening, you can absolutely fax check that. Yeah, there's your new fact.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not gonna Google that. It'd probably pop up some things in my, I'd probably have IT come ask me some questions. Did you just Google orgasm ferret? Like, hold on, I'll do a podcast with Westbrook, and here's what she's saying. So I'm not gonna Google that, I'm just gonna trust you.

SPEAKER_01:

But it that but everybody else can facts check it.

SPEAKER_00:

And I brought that up last time when we did our marriage series last spring. And I actually had, I talked about sexual abuse in marriage and its reality. And I actually had two survivors, this was great, Tabitha, two survivors email me to go, here's how it actually works. It's not always this forceful, like, here's how it works. And they taught me kind of the manipulation involved in that rape, that it doesn't look like other forms, that it's something different. And I was just, to me, and I don't know how anybody watching this is going to take this, I'm fine. That our survivors now feel comfortable emailing me and going, and I thank you. I've never heard a pastor say that before. Can I help you? Can I help you understand that a little bit more, that they feel safe at TVC emailing me to help me understand even more? So I felt such a win there, Tabitha. I was trying to help, and yet we've created a culture now where victims go, I think I can help him, but not in a way that's like jabbing at me, but like really going, hey, next time you say that, here's how it actually works. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. One, I'm so sorry that you know that information. Breaks my heart to know you know that. And then thank you because it will help others in the future. And so that I yeah, what a horrible, what a horrible, horrible reality for many women.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And for most women who are in destructive marriages, if I'm being real, it's one of the things that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. And it is one of the things that absolutely can shatter a soul, for sure, because it's such an intimate space. And absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean that's how it was designed by God.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And I think one of the things that I'm hearing is, and I'm gonna globalize something that you've kind of said for the church as a whole, is pastors should be open to hearing from victims. And I think even saying that some pastors probably just went all cringe and like what kinds of stories am I gonna hear? And it's like, I mean, you'll probably hear a few things, but also you know, being able to hear what's the experience of the people that you serve and that you lead well, hopefully, is such a vital piece. And the pastors I know that have humbled themselves to hear these stories are better for it because it does inform like how do you look at your theology? And I think it is very common when we have grown up in a system, in a theological system, that we don't ask enough questions. You know, there's an adage about the older fish coming up to the younger fish and he's like, How's the water? And the younger fish are like, What water?

SPEAKER_00:

What water?

SPEAKER_01:

And I think as pastors, as leaders, and I would say this to any leader, whether it's an elder, whether it is a lay leader, all of us have that responsibility to go, what water am I drinking? And does it look like Jesus? Does it look like living water? Because I might need to change my theology. That is actually part of sanctification. So I know that the D-word deconstruction can get a little spicy for some. But what I look at it is, is there sanctification that has opportunity here of what have I believed my whole walk? And is that really what the Bible says? Or am I just looking at it through a different lens? And I think about David's prayer: search me and know me, and show me if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting, which is the part that doesn't always get quoted.

SPEAKER_00:

True. Hey, can I ask a question that might be controversial? It might even paint me in a bad light. But I'm I, if I can learn from you publicly, we can try it. My experience with a pretty large group of victims is in regards to listening. One, I want to hear the story. I want to sit in the heart of it, in the heartbreak of it. But I have had some experiences where victims are probably not as healed as they think they are, and then want us to make a kind of sweeping change that probably would have worked really well for their situation, maybe. But I think by and large, laying that on everybody's. And then the accusation is that we didn't hear and we didn't do what they said. And so I'm just talking about the pastoral reality of yes, I want to listen to the story. I want my heart broken. I want to do whatever we can to serve and protect and grow and learn. But I'm also not making the victim a default elder of the church in regards to programming and those kinds of aspects of things. Now, if that same thing comes up six times, that's a little bit different to me. But I've had one or two scenarios where, I mean, one in particular, I was deep involved in it and in a positive way, not a negative way, always believed, always moved towards, always gave agency towards, never doubted, agreed with. But then there were things that this woman wanted the church to do that there's no way we should have done. And then when I didn't do what she said, then I'm a guy who doesn't listen to victims. So you will serve the pastoral side of this podcast by helping us know how to navigate that moment. That's not every moment. I've already used examples of where we've grown, where we've implemented based on victim feedback, but there are certain victims they're still significantly dysregulated, but don't see themselves that way. And then the advice that we're given, and it doesn't usually come off as advice, it comes off as do what I say, or you don't listen to victims. And then that has felt like a lurch to me a couple of times. So you will serve pastors who watch this by helping them navigate that moment where, oh man, what am I supposed to do with this? Because I know there's two cases right now where those women would say, I don't listen to victims. And I spent dozens of hours listening, dozens of hours crying with feeling the rage over their situation, wanting to do the last chapter of Nehemiah to their husbands, where Nehemiah's pulling beards and beating men with sticks. And if the Lord would ever give me that ministry, I know just the guys I would hire for it. But I trained jujitsu, I wrestle with a lot of killers who are really gifted at pain. And man, I just put them on staff and give them addresses, but nobody gets cured, nobody gets healed that way. So if you could counsel pastors who are listening about that moment, and maybe together we can talk about the balance of, because for me, there's this global voice of the victims. And I want to hear that and I want to understand it, and I want to learn from experts who minister into it specifically, people like you. Like I've got all the kind of ears for you to say to me, hey, what about this for TBC? And you've got the ears of other people here who are subject matter experts who you could say, have we considered this? That's gonna come with a different weight than maybe somebody else. And so can we talk about that? Is this a safe place to talk about that?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think I'm gonna give you a therapist answer. It depends.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, okay, right? That's what makes this hard.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. I'm gonna give some just thoughts around it. One is we always want to start, and this is the global, including me as a therapist. I want to start by hearing well and not moving too fast. And I think this is where sometimes churches in victim care, and again, I don't know these cases, so I don't know particularly, but this is kind of to the global church that they start moving too fast to get things cleaned up or fixed or what have you. And it's a lot slower than that. This is a long game, realistically, both on victim care and perpetrator accountability. It's a long game. You know, like the perpetrator groups that I facilitate are 26 weeks long and they need to go through them multiple times. If they even want to change realistically, right? We say between two and five years, if someone's actually working at it. And they sadly don't always do that. When someone's been so deeply wounded, depending on the length of wounding, whether or not there was developmental trauma as a child, then that's gonna inform their struggle, right? It's a lot more wounded if you had parents that didn't care well for you and now you have a spouse that doesn't as well, and that you've been trapped essentially a prisoner of war your whole life. And so knowing that going in as a pastor and going, this is gonna go slower. And that's hard because there's so many other things pulling on time as well, which is why we advocate teamwork, you know, having care team members. But at the end of the day, there is a place for a pastor to sit with someone. So we can't just farm it all out, right? And I'm not saying that you're suggesting that at all.

SPEAKER_00:

But not at all talking about the guy who's not farming it out at all, right? Who isn't trying to clean it up, but is met with like, if you don't do these things, then you don't care about victims.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And I think it's in the loving them well to help them feel cared for it. Now, like, are we gonna be perfect for everybody? No. No. There are gonna be people that struggle and that have to do more healing. And that's a true statement. What I don't want pastors to do is to go into pastors who are not yet well educated, to go into this thinking they're gonna be this person. They're probably not gonna be that person, by the way. Most victims are not, but to gently walk forward. And I actually walked with a pastor in a very similar situation because the victim was beginning to cause a lot of division because of her own woundedness. And there was just, it was a fear. And I encourage that pastor, look at the fear and the fear that is sitting there, and not that they're a person giving over to fear. I've seen that get misused with victims to silence them and spiritually bypass them. I do not like that. But to say, what is the, you know, if we want to get a little partsy language, maybe her little girl part that is going, please see me, please value me, or a protector part that is saying, I'm gonna make sure everybody else is safe. Right. Can we look at that and validate that and say, I get it? Right? Validation doesn't equal agreement with method necessarily. Right. And that's always a tricky thing for people because like if they validate it.

SPEAKER_00:

I want you to say that again. I want pastors to hear you say that again. So say that again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, validation doesn't necessarily mean agreement. It means I can understand why you feel this. And so if someone's saying, I don't like the response, there are two things that can be at play. One is there's a brokenness there and they would feel safer with that response. One is also the pastor doesn't see that that actually is the right path yet. And so that can be hard too, because we all see through our experiences and lenses. And this is what we call in our therapy practice the messy middle, where we kind of have to be willing to wrestle together. And I encourage victims with pastors that want to hear and are not manipulating you, lying to you, or spiritually abusing you. And I just want to caveat this with that, because we need it to be safe enough, pastors, right? And like none of us are all safe, which is why I use the term safe enough. We can all make mistakes. But can you wrestle with that person? Can you guys wrestle together and go, I get it, I don't see this for our church. Like that, I hear that you would love to literally pat down every person and give them a 45-page questionnaire about, you know, whether or not how they treat women and like all that stuff, right? Which would not be feasible. But I hear the desire. The desire is for protection. Can you learn to see under the content into the context and what they're asking for, what their heart is longing for? And I would start there. And again, we can't make everybody happy, you know, but if we go with, I want to hear your heart, I want to understand the driver behind what you're asking of us and being transparent about here's why that doesn't work, or why we're not quite seeing it this way, or any of those things, and being willing to hold these things with open hands together and say, what we want is to be a safe enough church. That's our goal at the end of the day, is to be a safe enough church and we hear you and your voice matters. And we want to make changes and get us there, like we do. And, you know, and it might not be like painting everybody purple that we think is an aggressor or right, like there. I've I've heard lots of things. So that is what I would encourage pastors to do, right?

SPEAKER_00:

That's super helpful.

SPEAKER_01:

And just be gentle. And the other thing that I see a lot, and this is something, and I'm gonna we have just a couple of minutes left, but I do want to touch on Acts 29, because this is a hot button topic in the survivor world. And that is there are some men that are platformed that absolutely should not be.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And when you say platform, do you mean it are national conferences or do you mean they're just pastors in the past?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean that they are pastors. And I've walked with a number of pastors' wives who have Acts 29 pastor husbands, and they have felt like they're deaf ears at times and they don't quite know where to go and what to do. And I bring that up because you are the board chair of Acts 29. And so it's just an opportunity to ask the question of how can we as X29 do better at making sure that the men that are put in those spaces that their spouses are safe. Now, are we gonna get everybody? No. No. But what do we do when that happens? And this is where we get into all the things about well, they're autonomous churches and some of that stuff. So I know we can't answer that in five minutes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. No, but I can give some context. When we assess a man, we're not just assessing the man, we're also assessing his wife. That that wife has multiple opportunities with other women not being assessed by men, but other women, and are asked real specific questions in this space to try to ferret that out. We also provide all the A29 churches with the kind of resources that TBC has implemented over the last decade so they have access to outside ministry opportunity that helps make their church safer, that helps them become trauma-informed. And we do as best we know how, having rethought it multiple times over the last decade, how can we spot this earlier in the assessment? The assessment can last years. And the woman had like, if even think about since you go to TBC, when they come in and do our residency, these guys that are coming to plant, their wives have a whole track with Michelle Holgram, who's been trained in trauma awareness. She's been trained in all this stuff that we're talking about. She's taught and sat through art of care. She's done the ministry safe protocols. She she's got all the information. And she's walking with these church planner wives for a couple of years. And we're trying to just, if we can like get a whiff of something or see a flag or say, we'll move right in. So that's when we go right at it. That I don't, I'm not sure what else we can do. When it pops and we hear, we will move towards somebody on the board, will move towards that situation. And so certainly we can do better, but I think we're doing more than most right now. And so we we probably need, it's been a few years, we probably need to get back and evaluate how well is this working and where can we strengthen it. But it but at this point, we're trying to connect wives with women, not another guy that that's some other pastor, that, but but women who in our case are trauma-informed women who can sniff some of this out early on. But it doesn't always happen. Like we had one here that went through our residency. His wife connected with. She hadn't had that epiphany. Like it could be, but we're looking for like early on, like, do you feel crazy here? Does this whole vision for it do you share this vision? Because I'm not interested in planting the guy. I'm interested in planting this couple. Um, and and so we're looking for certain aspects of spiritual health, maturity, and vibrancy in her. But I think we all know that until you know you're in it, you don't know you're in it. And I'm speaking for the women that have been in these situations, that they don't know they're in it until they finally know they're in it. And then it all pops. And so where we haven't caught it, it hasn't been that we're not looking for it early, but that somehow either the wife's unaware or we're not seeing any sign of it. They both might even be projecting an image, which is so common in ministry circles. And if I'm honest, I'm pastoring a large church of mainly white-colored people. Everybody's kind of projecting an image, an Instagram image of what their marriage is. And man, I have sat in this room and seen a married couple like sit close to the stage, they take notes while I'm preaching arms around each other, hold hands on the way in, that we find, I mean, raise their hands and worship together, that we find out two years later was this horrific, abusive, demonic, evil thing. And so sometimes what happens is there's no way to spot it until it pops. And then when it pops, we try to move towards. But oftentimes, then if we didn't do the residency, we're coming in complete to an unknown situation that we have to navigate. And that becomes, that ends up becoming the complexity of those situations. But hear me, we are not just assessing these men as planters. Their wives are also assessed alongside of them in a place that is as safe as we can make it for the women, with women who are trauma-informed, who should be able to spot some of that if it's there.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate that. I'm gonna ask a question and you can tell me yes or no, or you're crazy, Tabitha. I'm cool with all of it. Would you let me see the processes and assess them and give you feedback?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I can let you see that. Okay. I mean, we could I'll just grab the codified version of that from Tyler Powell and Michelle's his right hand and Mari works with them too, and I'll ship it over to you.

SPEAKER_01:

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00:

Andy is just my left hand. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I would love to give feedback if I can be of help and you know, serve in that way for sure. And so uh I want to end by saying I know that there will be people that listen to this conversation and think we didn't go far enough, but we only had the time that we have. And I know that Matt and I could probably talk for a lot longer. And I'm sure that people will be like, oh, I wish you'd ask this. But I do want to thank you for being here with me and for being willing to have this conversation. If our audience wants us to have another one, would you be down for that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we just got to find the time and do it.

SPEAKER_01:

Sounds awesome. Well, thank you again, Matt, for being here with me on Hey Tabby. And for our listeners, we will see you again next time. 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 Tabitha Westbrook.com forward slash hey tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-C-I, and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.

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