Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1080: The Abuse of Power in the Church: Tiffany Bluhm

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Tiffany Bluhm is the author of Prey Tell: Why We Silence Women who Tell the Truth and How Everyone Can Speak Up and the co-host of the popular podcast, Why Tho. She speaks and writes at the intersection of women’s issues and faith with her work featured in Publisher’s Weekly, Sojourners, Red Letter Christians, the YouVersion Bible app, Jenny McCarthy Show, and more. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband and two sons. In this podcast conversation, we talk about the content of her book Prey Tell, which addresses the abuse of power in the church. What constitutes an abuse of power? Why do more people not speak up? How can you spot a leader exhibiting narcissistic tendencies? What kind of ecclesiological structures help enable the abuse of power? And what can we do to help lessen cases where people abuse their power? 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Tiffany Bloom, who's the author of the recent book, Pray Tell, Why We Silence Women Who Tell the Truth and How Everyone Can Speak Up. She also co-hosts the popular podcast called Why Though. She speaks and writes at the intersection of women's issues and faith and has over 15 years of ministry and nonprofit experience. We engage in a lively conversation around the abuse of power in the church, which is part of her research that went into her recent book, Pray Tell. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Tiffany Bloom.

All right. Hey, Tiffany, welcome to Theology in the Raw. It's really good to get to know you for the next hour or so. Thanks for having me, Preston. So we got connected through a mutual friend who I have mad respect for. And he's like, dude, you have to have Tiffany on. I'm like, all right, because I have mad respect for you. I'm sure I'm going to enjoy this. So this is our first time seeing each other on a screen. You are doing a lot of really interesting work in the space of the, I would say, can I say massive problem of abuse in the church? Not that abuse is only happening in the church. It's kind of everywhere. But you would expect the church to be different.

And it seems like if you read the headlines, unfortunately, it seems like, are we different than the world in this? Like what is going on? You can't go eight weeks without seeing something in the news. And yeah, there's, I have some, we have so much to talk about. So what, well, tell us who you are and how you got into this work that you're doing and then maybe then describe the work that it is that you are doing. Yeah. Again, my name is Tiffany Bloom. I'm an author and speaker. I live in the Pacific Northwest and my work is at the intersection of women, justice, and faith. And my most recent body of work is about abuse of power at a woman's expense and how that takes place in faith communities and why it's so prevalent in faith communities

and what we can do about it. When you say abuse of power, so it's not limited to sexual abuse, abuse as a whole, or when it involves women? Yeah, specifically when there's gender inequity between men and women and men are abusing their power at a woman's expense. But really, we can pull back the camera and really see how abuse abusive power is such a pride issue. We start there. And one of the effects of abusive power is seeing yourself as invincible. It's seeing yourself as untouchable and immune to accountability, which we can talk about and really dive into that. But how that plays out is usually will always end with using women. It's a very

predictable pattern, well-researched pattern. Dosh Keltner, he is a professor out of USC and he researches why men who have an ascent to power will often shed the virtues that got them to a place of leadership in the first place and will usually end up in this place. More than 90% of men will end up in this place

where they see themselves as very sexually desirable and everyone around them is there to meet their needs. So it doesn't matter if it's in the faith-based education, politics, business, Hollywood, you are going to see this destructive pattern play out unless we have some steps along the way that prevent it. I got it. You just jumped right into the deep end. So let's uh i want to go back a little bit what got you uh interested and passionate about this specific topic this is this is a i'm sure a difficult thing to throw yourself out there into and and um what sparked your desire to want to

enter into this space yeah after my own experience of following all the rules and playing by church's rules and purity culture. I had the ring. I signed the pledge. I was a virgin on my wedding day and was so passionate about ministry and leadership. And that was where I wanted to spend myself. And as I played by all of the rules set before me, I discovered as time went on, I had to play by the rules, but some of the men set before me, I discovered as time went on, I had to play by the rules, but some of the men around me didn't. And it was so disturbing when I discovered abuse of

power, no man's expense in my faith situation, in my faith community. And when I spoke up, I lost more than I could have ever dreamed, Preston. I felt the ramifications financially, I felt the ramifications financially, relationally, spiritually, professionally. There was no stone unturned and nothing that I couldn't have imagined happening. It all happened. Every bad thing that I thought could happen if I spoke up happened. And here's the thing. When we discover these indiscretions in faith communities, often we don't think what's going to happen to him.

What's going to happen to this man of God don't think what's going to happen to him. What's going to happen to this man of God? We think what's going to happen to me. And really so often the people who speak up that all the blame, all the effort is pointed toward the person who's speaking up, not at the man of the cloth. And so that's really what spurred on my interest to discover why we are so quick to protect abusers in power, especially shepherds, and how we can right our wrongs. Tell us about the research you did. What kind of research have you done? Have you looked at data on tons of churches and looked more at the broad big C church? Or did you kind of look at maybe one church situation? Tell us about it. Yeah, certainly broad, big C, capital C church or did you kind of look at like maybe one church situation or yeah, tell us, tell us about, yeah, certainly broad, broad, big C capital C church. And also looking at psychology

of why we do what we do and human behavior and social behavior and why we default first impressions, um, different hypotheses, uh, lots of, lots of research that really can kind of wrap around not just church history, not just scripture, but also psychology of why we are so quick to blame women and keep men in power. All right. Well, why are we so quick to blame women and keep men in power? Yeah. Well, it's called the just world hypothesis, Preston. And what happens is when we hear something bad that happens, when we hear that Sally was taken advantage of by an elder or by the worship pastor or by somebody at church, we think first, this can't possibly be true because it doesn't fit into this just world that we want to see. It doesn't fit into the ideal world we

want to see. And more than that, if it is true that bad things can happen without your participation, then it could happen to me. Because if Sally didn't deserve this, anybody's up for grabs. We live in this state of stress rather than a state of peace and love. It moves us in our window of tolerance because it's become so much smaller because we're aware that you could do everything right and still be on the receiving end of someone else's poor choices. Now, combine that with what's called the halo effect, researchers named. And it's this quite literal halo, this belief about people, if we have had a positive experience at somebody else's invitation, so whether we've had an amazing experience with the Lord at this pastor's invitation or a sermon or a prayer, maybe he laid hands on you. Maybe he showed up when you lost your job. Maybe he

dedicated your baby. I don't care what it is, right? You had a positive experience with this person. He now has a halo on his head. He can do no wrong. He can do no wrong in your mind. It doesn't matter how much bad information is going to come at you. You will continue to defend the person who you have had a positive experience with. Now you want to couple this. We're going to go to the press. I told you, we're going to couple with this, that 80% of us cannot move past first impressions. And now when, when those who display narcissistic tendencies, I'm not labeling them, you know, the dcm name of a narcissist but they have those tendencies as we talked about that men can so easily arrive at the

more power they have without accountability that's when we see those narcissistic tendencies play out because we can see early days that people you're like no i know he wasn't like this he's a good dude and then you're like he's a good dude who's making bad choices, right? Like, we can see how that plays out. But again, if we, as a human nature, do not want to admit that we were wrong, that our first impression was wrong, because we want to believe what we see. And if you have, if we're working with a master manipulator, because we'd love to think that people who've used power are just obvious about it. It's easy to spot them. They're loud and unruly. I want to name names right now that are more common, but I think of like even James McDonald, right? You know, you, you think

of this like loud, you're like, oh yeah, that's what abusive power looks like. That's what a narcissist looks like. Actually, these men are as smooth as BBNJ. Okay. They are smooth operators. And so it's easy to come into their bit and be so wooed by who they are and how they make you feel and the role that you get to play in their world. And you're, you're so honored. Here's an example. So when I was in ministry leadership, countless times, Preston, my senior leader would say to me, nobody gets it like you do. Nobody gets it like us, sis. They need your in here. They need your voice. Nobody had given me more opportunity and affirmation, but Noah had exploited my loyalty more. He kept me so close with affirmation. And this is often what you see in faith settings is these ride or die parishioners, board members, elders, other pastors, associates who are like, this guy could never.

No, because of how they have benefited from this system, their place in the, in the, in his orbit, their plate, that cog in the wheel. And honestly, I don't think that there's some like bad bent that they don't want to lose all their power, but we are as humans, we don't want to lose our place because we all hunger for belonging. We all hunger for a space at the table. Now, when that is preyed upon, we become yes men. We become people who are quick to like, he didn't mean it like that. He's such a good guy. We're quick to make excuses because of how of our own personal experience or exchange. Now, this isn't limited to your own

personal congregation. This can be a celebrity pastor, somebody you follow on Instagram, somebody's books you've read, somebody who's mentored you at a distance. It could be somebody who's passed. We think of Ravi Zacharias. This man is six feet under and we're finding out all these things and we have to change how we feel about this person that we have found to be such a source of inspiration and conviction and challenge in our relationship with the Lord. It's a hard pill to swallow. Yeah. You covered a lot of ground. You mentioned narcissists a few times. And I've thought, I would say in the last couple of years,

I keep wondering, like, why does it seem like high-level church leadership tends to, and I choose my language carefully, attract narcissists, or maybe they create narcissists? Or I mean, or is there, maybe the percentage of narcissists in the world is the same as percentages of high-level pastors and leaders or people in religious power that also are narcissists? Or is there an over-representation of narcissists in the pulpit or in positions of church power because that position is attracts someone like that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So when you think of our overlapping concentric circles, if you have an entrepreneurship bent,

if you have charisma, if you have the ability to compel people and draw people in. And narcissists are so good at all those things. They're typically amazing teachers. So we're going to have some overlapping circles of narcissistic tendencies, unfortunately. You're going to see those overlapping circles. Now here's where it gets really, really messy

and dare I say dirty is in faith spaces. We have this unto the Lord. I'm your unto the Lord. So we might not put in the same HR brain that we would have in corporate America, or we'd have an education, or we would hold in politics. We're not going to apply that same lens in faith spaces, which makes it so much easier to ascend to power and to take advantage of the people around you because we're not going to put in our checks and balances like we would in some other settings. Our social script demands otherwise, because we're thinking

under the Lord, this is the father of the house. He's the voice of God. So we're going to have a different expectation and we are going to lower our expectation of what we should expect this person to be or what we should, how they might act. So when you add in the, thus sayeth the Lord and, but he's the man of God, don't touch the Lord's anointed. When you start misconstruing and taking out of context, these passages and this invitation to honor our leaders, then that's where it gets sticky. And that's where you see those narcissistic tendencies

be so easily green-lighted. And you just see people just passing off and, and being able to step back because we, again, aren't going with the setting of, no, this is unacceptable. And this is unacceptable. And this is unacceptable. There's things that, that you and I have probably witnessed in faith settings that you'd get fired. You'd get fired if you worked in the hospital system. You'd get fired if you worked, you know, questions we've been asked about our personal lives that are, that this person has no business asking. They're not trauma-informed. They are not a therapist. They do not have the right or way, but because they're our pastor, they have access

to the soul. Wow. And yeah, is it true that narciss narcissists i've not done a study on narcissists it's more just me picking up on things through the years whatever but like you said they they somebody who who let's just say has narcissistic tendencies would be diagnosed and whatever it's in that category yeah they do tend to be a kind of more charismatic they They can gain a following really easily, which in a church means you're going to grow a church or entrepreneurial or go get her there again, typically a really, they can be good preachers from a stage. And so when the church is tripled in size, is this,

is this the whole kind of perfect storm of like, all that's doing is adding layers of protection around and allegiances person so that they start to overlook again, negative, maybe behavioral patterns. And I want to be clear. I want to be clear. I am not saying I'll probably say this a lot in this podcast. I here's what I'm not saying. I am not saying if you are a pastor and you church tripled in size and an amazing preacher, that means you're a narcissist. I'm not at all. Please don't reverse my logic here at all. So I've been in many large churches where the pastors are not,

have zero narcissistic tendencies, you know, so but it does seem to be enough of a problem that obviously this is why you, but, and I want to just full circle what you just said. We will green light what someone can do over what they'll be over their being over their inner man because the external production and what they can

produce and what they can create and what they can accomplish can therefore negate their lack of integrity and i mean we can we, I mean, just to quote, you know, so many times they were like, but he's such a good preacher. We got to have modern stages. We want to, we want to rub shoulders with him, even though it had been well known, widely known of his prideful behavior and the way he put others down. And so this is why, when I say abusive power, Preston, I don't want to limit it just to the, you know, how it plays out in women are harmed because that is, but we have to take those steps back. Like I said, and look at, you know what? I doubt church planners, someone who tripled their attendance and giving us up and they're

breaking ground on their new building. All of these things, these are to be celebrated. However, we have to go back. Is this person now gaining so much freedom because of their accomplishments or are there people in place that are working with them to ensure that there is integrity? I mean, this is an ecclesiological problem. When we structure churches to where those values are elevated, sunday service is booming the preacher is amazing it's growing yeah then our view of like how's his inner character is there profound humility being you know is he does he have circles of accountability where people can actually speak in males and females speaking into males and. I would say his or her life. Typically it is a he that we're talking about.

Yeah. And those things are just not, well, I don't know. We have four services, from two to four services in a year. Look how many people we had for Easter. But that's an ecclesiological problem when we have certain values that aren't bad.

Yeah, when a church doubles, triples, that's like, praise the Lord, right? Right. You can't elevate those values over here. We'll say, look what he's done. Look what he's done. But look at all he's done. So maybe we find out some troubling news, but we're going to, our first thing is, look what he's done for others.

And then we might turn it on us. Look what he's done for me. And so we see how they're so encased, perfectly encased to continue this harm because we can remove an abusive leader from the situation and it will repeat itself to your point, because this is a problem with, this is a structure problem. And so it'll repeat itself. So we'd love to think, oh, we moved this person where, you know what, this is never going to happen again here. This isn't going to happen in this house, but it will if we don't, if we don't burn down the structure and rebuild it, honestly, if we don't truly, truly put it over the refiner's fire and let only the gold remain.

Can you give us some, when we're talking about abuse and that, that can be a pretty general word. And oftentimes people just automatically go to sexual abuse. And that's obviously a significant form of abuse can you give us other examples like when you say abuse of power can you can you give us a range of maybe examples of what an abuse of power in your research i mean you probably have like actual live examples you know they name names or whatever but like what does that look like what are some signs people can see that somebody's abusing their power? Yeah. So abusive power, let's just first define that abusive power is using

your power differentials, your place of power. So that's physical size. That's race. That's class. That's platform. That's education. That's language accent Accent and your first language is huge into power dynamics. So there's all these, your gender, obviously, there's all these different levels that make up your power, right? So now an abuse of power would be using your place of power, the combination, the intersection of all of your place over another with intention, using that and causing them harm. With intention. You're taking with intention. That's and causing them harm. With intention. With intention.

That's a key. Okay. Yeah. Okay. With intention. So now can that happen? Be like, oh, I didn't mean to do that. Oh, I didn't know that that was going to happen.

I'm sure that can. But when we pull back, we are often so conditioned with our place of power, with how much money we make, that this is acceptable. We are so conditioned of what's acceptable. And so I just want to use an example of how fraternity culture, it really goes into corporate America and church life. And this idea that colleges are known to totally cover up abusive power by male students over female students. Under the Obama administration, he declared that if you are doing this, and if you get caught doing this, your public funding will be pulled. He was like, this is unacceptable because the largest, I mean, largest institutions in the nation from Harvard down to a community

college were covering up abusive power because they don't want their name solely. They don't want to be in the news. They don't want enrollment to go down because everyone will lose out. And the rape culture on campuses is rampant. It's rampant. And so covering this up. And so with that, you know,

18, 19, 20, 21, 22 year old boys not being held responsible for their actions, they take that fraternity culture into adult life. And you see how they were, they were, they were totally green lit in a time when they really should have been held accountable. I know their frontal cortex isn't fully developed until 26, but still, right? You got to be held accountable for your choices. But then we can, we have now conditioned our culture and society to be like, this is okay. So of course we think that I didn't mean to do that because we are

so conditioned to believe that it's okay to use our place of power over another. We are not to define ourselves by our advantages and others by their disadvantages. Hold no partiality, the scriptures tell us. So there is an invitation here for self-awareness to pay attention. There's an invitation to repent. And there's an invitation to understand that how 90% of us are contributing to these abuses of power. Because guess what? The majority of us aren't gonna go through this.

The majority of us aren't gonna be prayed on by our pastor. I prayed the Lord above that that's not our story. But the truth is 90% of us are probably gonna co-sign and prop up these imbalances of power and these places where abuses of power happen and we don't even realize it well isn't isn't the term power like um i saw it define really succinctly the other day like the the ability to influence somebody to do something that they wouldn't normally do or something like that no no so so there could be good uses of power, like helping somebody love their neighbor more when they didn't normally want to or stop an addiction. So not all power is bad. But we're talking about

the abuse of power, causing somebody or, again, using something in your life, your status, your gender, your voice, your personality to make somebody or influence somebody to do something they wouldn't normally do that is not a good thing. And to do to them, it's not making them do anything, right? If it's influence, and that's, Dr. King described it as that, by the way, power is influence. Oh, okay. Power is influence. But that power, so if we're going to take that example, if power is influence and the ability to sway somebody, then the abuse of that would be taking advantage of them. What are some subtle forms? I'm trying to think. Let's talk about that. That's my favorite. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, no, I'll let you go because I have some ideas in my mind.

Before we see it on CNN or Christianity Today, wouldn't it be great if we could be like, how did that happen? He's such a, how did that, where did that start? So let's walk that back, shall we? I love to use the example of just like a church foyer. Again, because we're going to stay in the faith space. And my research covers everything from politics, education, business, Hollywood,

but really, really hits home for, um, for faith communities. Also as the invitation, our gospel call, um, to bring good news, uh, is let's say there's an usher named Randy, shall we? And Randy goes up to Susie and Hey, Susie is just all talking about her. He might put his hand on her shoulder, greeting her. He might be lying when he sees her walk in. This is not his wife. This is not his cousin. This is not in a small group. You know, this isn't somebody he knows very well, but he's, he, and he's a little

taller. He's a little taller than Susie. He's taking up Susie's time. Now Susie's darting her eyes left and right. And he's not reading the cues. He is not aware that Susie's uncomfortable. He's not reading these basic, this basic power imbalance. Maybe Susie might take a, take a step back. And so even that small moment, you're thinking, okay, so I can't go talk to a girl in the foyer. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying for those of us who have power, this is men and women, by the way, but for those of us who want to be aware of how we are, how we're perceived in the world and look for others, nonverbal cues. And again, I told you, we're going to make this micro because we don't want to see this on the news anymore, right? We can read somebody's body language. Oh, they're taking

a little step back. They're, they're darting their eyes off tonight. They're looking past me to someone else. I can see that there may be uncomfortable and I'm going to honor that because, you know, he might put his arm around her. He might say something, he might say something inappropriate. He might say something. He might say something inappropriate. He might say something off color. And what we can do, what's called bystander intervention, which is employed in the military in most college campuses is to before again, before it hits the fan, we can go, we can distract. Be like, oh, hey, Susie, did you want to go grab a coffee from the coffee cart together?

Just distract. Just distract. Just distract. We can put ourselves physically between the two and we can change the subject. Oh, hey, Randy, did you hear that they've got a guest worship pastor today? Right? We can distract. We can change the subject. And then we can remove her from the situation.

Who modeled this best? Jesus with the woman caught in adultery. He walks into the situation. Who modeled this best? Jesus with the woman caught in adultery. He walks into the situation. He immediately places himself between her and those who wanted to stone her to trap him, right? He changes the subject.

Who's going to cast the first stone? And then he removes her from the situation. Isn't that beautiful? There's these examples that even Christ offers of bystander intervention. They were after him in the first place, but they were going to use her to get him. We know this, but to be able to walk up to somebody when we can see something's not right. And then what we do, we circle back and we go to Randy and be like, Hey dog, I don't know if you knew, but I can see that Susie was uncomfortable. And then we go to Susie and we say, Hey, was that okay? Cause you know what women do? Preston? We're like, no,

no, I, we don't even believe ourselves. We don't even believe how our body responded in the fear we have and be like, no, I think that was, I think that was okay. And then when someone, I don't think that something was off, you're like, you're right. I felt really uncomfortable. So often women will deny it until someone else can affirm like, yeah, that didn't seem right. That didn't seem right. And so being able to value what she's just gone through and circle back with Randy before it's on CNN, before it's on the nightly news, you know what I'm saying? This is so, this is so helpful. I love how you made a distinction because I could hear, I could hear maybe guys. Cause you, you, you course corrected me.

It said, it doesn't mean you don't go talk to the women in the lobby or whatever. Cause that's what some guys are like getting skittish, especially in's world i i talked to guys who are like you know what i just everybody's doing this doing that getting accused of that violate this whatever and and guys are like i'm just gonna not talk to people yeah and you're like okay grow up you know so that's obviously not the right answer that's very but so you're saying like no just be pick up on cues pick up on when maybe you're saying like, no, just be pick up on cues. Pick up on cues. When maybe you're, can I say the phrase unintentionally abusing your power? You're doing something and you don't realize it's making somebody uncomfortable. You're not trying to, you're not actually putting your arm on her shoulder because you are trying to, you know, woo her in.

You're just like, maybe a touchy feely kind of person, but guess what? Sister in Christ. Sister in Christ. Sister in Christ. Right. Yes. But some people, it's uncomfortable. And so don't pick up on that. This episode is sponsored by Biola University.

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put in the code Preston and get your application fee waived. Some restrictions may apply. Just visit www.biola.edu for more information. Is there more? Is there more we can do to be aware of how we can? The invitation is to acknowledge your power dynamics. Where do you fall under your physical size, your class, your gender, our socioeconomic, our geopolitical standing, our personal experiences,

how we were raised, our family origin. There's so much to take into consideration. And the more we're aware of ourselves and how we show up in the world, the more we can be aware of how we make others feel. That's really good. That's super helpful. I'm curious, because again, you mentioned in passing, it's men and women can do this. What are some typical ways that women might abuse their power? So often you'll see women who feel cornered because let's be real, historically, women don't have access to power unless men offer it.

And men are the gatekeepers of power historically. Now we're talking, again, we are broad stroking history. I understand. But for the sake of what I'm about to say, this is what I'm saying. In many spaces and places, women only have access to power if men offer it. And what will happen is in a performative effort, one woman will have access

to power. One woman, not many, not 50% as it should be. One woman will have access to power in order to keep that power. And okay. And if she's a woman of color, she knows she is so lucky to even be in the room. And so she wants to keep that place because guess what she's got bills to pay and babies to feed she has dreams too she and so in an effort to keep that power in this scarcity mindset because she knows good good and well that if she doesn't perform and show up and make other men feel comfortable and make other men and be palatable to them then she's gonna lose it so she'll you know what, we'll see women who will deny other women a place of power and deny other women and will side with men. Can I tell you, Preston, to be honest, in my research and in my own personal experience, nothing hurt more than

women not standing up for women. Even as I share that, nothing has broken my spirit more than women co-signing for men who've abused their place and the people that they were afforded to shepherd. And in order to stay on the side of power. Is it just when you don't have power, you're just scared to confront power? Is that like, what's the motivation? Well, no, if they're, if they're not going to speak up and they're not going to stand with their, they obviously have some measure of power. They have some measure of place. They have some measure of belonging or they wouldn't, or they wouldn't,

you know, they would have a reason to stand up. And this has nothing to do with personality, extroversion, introversion. This is, this is where, where do I belong? Why would anyone forfeit their place? And here's the thing we victim blame. We are a culture that is so quick to victim blame women, because again, we don't want to believe that that would happen to us, that just world hypothesis. But what happens when we do, when we victim blame is we don't want, she's now an untouchable. This woman is now an untouchable. I don't want to be associated with her. And we have put it on the victim to find healing, restoration, reparation, and justice. And in reality, we are those walking

on the side. We're the priests and the Samaritan walk on the side. It is our responsibility to lift her up and carry her and nurse her back to health and to a place of value and equity and equality and justice and hold those accountable who hurt her. That's super helpful. Going back to the ecclesiological question, So going back to the ecclesiological question, going back to the church, what are some structural things we can do within the church to help prevent the abuse of power from happening? I mean, again, we live in a fallen world. People are going to, you know, it's probably going to happen. It's not, you know, until Jesus comes back. But there's got to be some things we can do to help drastically reduce people being in a position where they end up abusing the power that they have.

Yeah. Okay. First, I want to talk about the way we have to prevent this is know how abuse of power happens in the first place. Every church should know how abuse of power takes place in the first place, which as we've talked about for the last, you know, 40 minutes of how that happened in the first place. Now, next we need reporting systems that don't look like Matthew 28, because what happens is we're thinking, Oh no, something happened. She should go to him. She should go to him and report. Actually, actually that's between those in equal power. That's between brothers and sisters. That's between neighbors. And really we're inviting first Timothy five, 19 through 20. We're inviting them to go to the

elders and report we're inviting them and they're seeking witnesses now here's the thing so often you'll hear in faith spaces when there has been a report of abusive power is oh we need two or more witnesses you're asking for two or more victims you're waiting for this guy to strike again and another woman to get brave enough to come forward for that to happen witnesses are not victims victims are not witnesses wow if one woman has been harmed enough to come forward for that to happen. Witnesses are not victims. Victims are not witnesses. Wow. If one woman has been harmed, there's likely many people that know that in her circle. There's likely many people that watched her fall into depression, fear for her life, not leave her house. There's likely many people who witnessed this fall.

So we first need to rightly understand Matthew 28 and 1 Timothy 5. So that is the first step for all of us, for all churches, for all faith communities, rightly understand. And so that is going to affect reporting structures, isn't it? So we need to have avenues of reporting. I believe they need to be anonymous. The research backs that up because people are scared for their lives. They're trying to pay their bills, especially if you work in these places and you're relying on these places. But also if you're a parishioner, if you're just a normal church member, if you, you know, volunteer, whatever it may be, we need reporting structures and there need, this needs to be

available. Church membership class, they need to know that this is how this works. There are reporting structures in place. If something happens, here's where you can report to. And, you know, of course we're going to, we're going to, the elders are called to, uh, uh, sift through those and find credible accusations. Absolutely. This isn't, you know, he wore tight jeans and I don't want to see that. Like, that's not what I'm talking about. You know, this is credible accusations that we have to sift through, but wouldn't it be worth it? We could ensure that those charged with shepherding were above reproach in ways that didn't only happen after it came to light in such a hellacious fashion. Secondly, we have to have women in power.

Now I know that this gets sticky, you know, based on our, you let it loose, say whatever you want to say based on how we interpret the scriptures. But regardless, research shows the more women are in power, the less likely men are to make risky decisions financially, relationally, company and churchwide. The more they'll make not only less risky decisions, but the more all will benefit, not just men, not just their demographic, all will benefit because women as nurturers that we are, not only are we thinking of ourselves, we're often thinking of children. We're all often thinking of others. And so, you know, so much research shows that after, just this is my favorite example. After the Anita Hill hearings in the nineties from Judge Clarence Thomas, more women, oh, I have chills telling you about a president.

More women ran for office that next year than ever before in American history. It was called the year of the woman. And so many of those women are definitely near retirement age now. But and she definitely passed the baton. But my point to this is the the amount of sexual violence acts and laws that were passed in those following years has changed the American landscape for the better. Wow. Wow. So when women are in power, things get better. Now that goes back to what I first said. It can't be one woman in power. It has to be multiple. When you have one woman in power, you often see these, these same abuses of power. It has to be multiple. Now,

obviously in a perfect world would be half, but multiple is my recommendation. Well, I have a couple thoughts. I might try to match you in your controversy here. I do wonder, you know, even by talking about Christian leadership in the church as having power, having power, what if we revisited the kind of upside down pyramid that Jesus talked about in Matthew 20 and other passages where

the first will be last, those who want to lead should serve all, you know, he just kind of, like in the Roman world, you had this hierarchy of power, right? Everybody's just trying to climb the ladder. It's an honor, shame, culture, and everybody wanted more and more and more and more honor. Jesus took that, turned it upside down and said, this is how we're going to run the ladder. It's an honor, shame, culture, and everybody wanted more and more and more and more honor. Jesus took that, turned it upside down and said, this is how we're going to run the kingdom of God. You want to be a leader? Good. Get out your bowl and start washing some feet. It's interesting. I've done some recent study on this, how Paul almost always avoids typical words that convey authority. He almost always avoids using those words to describe Christian leadership. Words like, you know, the typical Greek word is exousia, you know. I don't

think that's where it's ever connected. There might be one verse where there might be an exception, but he rarely, if ever, uses that term to describe Christian leadership. Usually he uses a word like diakonia, service. You're a servant. He uses, even when he does use leadership terms, it's terms associated with like managing a household, which is a very nurturing, caring type thing. Where even the husband, again, depending on your interpretation of Ephesians 5, however you read headship or whatever it's like the clear thing that text is that this you know man with all his power is giving up his life for those who don't so I just wonder if just the very nature of how we even frame leadership in the church um I don't want to say even if you do all that they're not going to

have some kind of power voice and influence but I just wonder if we should maybe try to deconstruct that and then secondly I'm curious I would love your thoughts on this because I know this is hotly debated by putting women in and I'll say I'll use the term you use you know positions of power you know

does that necessitate a full on egalitarian structure or are there ways that if a church had exegetical conviction over a complementarian reading, they can still, within that reading, do what you're recommending? I'm sure you've talked about that. So I first want to answer that first question and kind of just add to that. Professor Scott McKnight, he talks about even using the word leader in church capacity is unnecessary.

He says they're shepherds, this idea of leader. He's like, and all the connotations that go with that. And he's like, we're not corporate America. And to your point is service. And so let's take that upside down. When you see multiple people sharing that leadership that just by the nature of the game, And you see multiple people sharing that leadership that just by the nature of the game, they're less likely to have that pinnacle of power and develop some of those narcissistic tendencies that you see with those in a sense of power, as I previously shared.

So I think shared power. I hope the future is moving to co-pastoring too. That's just my own. I think that there's a lot of value in that. And I'm not even just meaning husband and wife, but just sharing that co-pastoring too. That's just my own, like, I think that there's a lot of value in that. And I don't, I'm not even just meaning husband and wife, but just sharing that co-pastor. I think that there's some value to that. So there's not one person at the top kind of. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's some value to that. Um, just going back to your upside down, that upside down triangle. Um, and then I also think, uh, as you said, let's say you're in a complementarian

community, and more power to you. That's your conviction. Bless you. Bless you. I do think there's still room. I don't even know where you stand on the topic. I think I do now. Yeah, I think that there I did tell you I was a pastor. So I think that I think that there's room and, and, and, and, but before I say this, cause I am going to answer your question. I, and I, and I missed it earlier. And I, and I, I would kick myself if we leave this conversation. Oh, in pray tell I talk a lot about faux egalitarianism because I grew up in such an egalitarian culture.

I didn't have somebody coming at me saying women couldn't speak. I had the opposite. Women can do anything yet. And that was the, that was the principle on paper, but it was not in practice. It was still the conditioning of society and culture to demean women and step over them and silence them and prop them up only when it advances the senior leader's agenda. I mean, I'm, I'm brown and young and had a sharp tongue and had a lot of opportunity handed to me. And by God's grace, he was so faithful to, to lead me every step of the way. And I'm so grateful for the opportunities. I don't want to say I'm a proud diversity hire, but I'm also honored that I had the opportunities I had. I don't take those for granted, Preston,

but at the same time, it still was performative. So there's that both and, right? Both and. A little bit more nuanced approach to performative nature than I... We are going to forever be talking about this issue if we don't create an additional structure. Don't call them elders. Don't call them directors. Don't call them pastors. If that is not true to your theology.

However, if we know that this will continue to happen and this is a predictable pattern, then it would behoove us to put accountability structures in place of men and women, women that can speak truth to power and they can speak honestly and openly and someone can share their life without hiding these these

sins of the heart and that are going to affect everybody else in the end that's good that's good i mean i anecdotally and it's hard you know i'm a guy so if i say no this commentarian church was awesome they had all you know it's like i i would need to go back and interview a few dozen women to see if it was really that case because i'm obviously you have a blind you know blind to some of this stuff but this is the number one women are leaving the church right now preston this issue that you and i are talking about is the when women are polled why did you leave church this really when you say this the abuse of power by abuse of power to women's expense wow which is sad because i think globally women make up a lot more, more of the church than men. So, and this is the reason they're leaving.

Wow. I got a cool story. I don't know if I would say, Oh, Oh dude, I, I, I, the complementarian question is I'm hearing you say simply having an egalitarian structure on paper, you still need to be very aware. I mean, I don't think narcissism is simply a compliment. I think it is a human issue, you know? And I've heard the same thing because I would say most of the churches I do work with and speak at would be more egalitarian. So I'm in all kinds of different churches that have an egalitarian. And I talked to a lot of the women. They're like, yeah, on paper. Yeah. Yeah. I could get hired as a pastor. There's nothing preventing me.

But look at how many female senior pastors are on our denomination, they'll tell me. It's like, okay. So yeah, it's messier than just saying change the church structure to full-on egalitarian. Yep. Can I add one thing? When we talk about our current view of women, we cannot ignore Paul in the first century and the influence of the philosophers of the day, the influence of culture that infiltrated the church, Aristotle, Tertullian, you know, all of these people that had a massive influence in the church.

Tertullian said that a woman is the devil's gateway, for goodness sake. A woman's body is the devil's gateway. So that teaching infiltrated the early church. So of course, we have a lot to unpack here of the way we view women, the way we view their role in society, the way we view their body, the way we view women.

We have got to pull up some deep roots that were never intended to blossom to be able to rightly see women as Christ invited. Because when you look at the Old Testament and this thread of sexual violence against women throughout the Old Testament, you see this thread again and again. And then you see in the New Testament moving more toward a just world, more toward an equal world. And we can see how Christ modeled engaging women and it's just gorgeous. It's just beautiful and honoring. And so if we can look through that thread and we can see on our way to Jesus, we can continue to carry that. We can continue to walk and care about women in the way that he did

and value women and empower women and embolden women. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And could there be ways without, I mean, just thinking out loud, like, or, or, okay, so here's an example. I was at a,

uh, on a preaching team years ago or a decade ago at a commentarian church. And, but we would do communal church prep kind of, or we would do like the, whoever's preaching that Sunday would do kind of a, you know,

test out his ideas, you know, what he's teaching on outline, get feedback and stuff. And it was all dudes, you know, but they said, okay, we have all male pastors, but like let's nothing in the bible says

we can't invite women into the sermon prep or whatever right that was that was i mean again in my you know 2011 uh 2010 commentary and self back then like that was a step like whoa really and we need to praise the progress. It was revolutionary. It was, we were sharing, I know I'm going to share this, illustrate,

do this. And the woman was going, Oh, please do not like, why, what's wrong with this? You know? And she's like,

okay, here's how a single mom's going to hear that. Here's how somebody has been through abuse. Here's how, right. And we, we, they all were like,

thank you. So like, we're like, I can't imagine ever preparing for a sermon without having a woman's voice into that. I mean, that would be a creative, I know maybe it wouldn't go as far as you would want, but could there be a male only elders that are inviting? Come on. We can be creative. Yes.

We can be creative. Our faith community also has that practice. Um, that you just shared. And so I, I think it's, there's great value because what happens on that stage, what's said on that stage makes such an effect. It makes such an effect on people. I want to flip side that very quickly with a quick story to maybe this is too heavy and dark. I'm so sorry, Preston, but I'm going to go there. My husband and I, I had just left full-time ministry. So I'm just like, you know, already stepped down from my dream job and just hurting and going through PTSD therapy and just wanting to rebuild and kind of find my place again.

And we're attending this church and the pastor talked about how basically, I don't know how, what we're allowed to say on here and theology and the Ross. And I don't know if you need to edit it, but basically. I don't edit. But basically called Mary M a slut. And was like, oh, could you imagine her? I mean, the things people say, Preston. You know, imagine her out on them streets, you know, trying to seduce Jesus. And just saying all of these things. And the crowd is just eating it up.

Just laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing. And I just was looking around thinking, this is how it happens. It's this crowdsourced response thinking, this is laughing, laughing. And I just was looking around thinking, this is how it happens. It's, it's, it's this crowdsourced response thinking, this is okay to say, I'm going to say this for jokes. I'm going to take cheap shots at women for jokes about a story about the, the apostle to the apostles. And it's, it's, it's the little things, but you know, it's the big things that we've really covered in our time together, but it's these little things that we say from the stage to your point that have such an impact. I remember like blinking back tears, pick up my purse and I had diaper bag. I had a newborn at the time and marching to go get him out of Sunday school.

And we left and it was just like, man, I know this guy. I know this guy. He was a buddy of mine. And it was just devastating to be like, you can't, no, no, you can't. We must be so wise in the way we talk about women. And again, going back to what you said, you can't, no, no, you can't. We must be so wise in the way we talk about women. And again, going back to what you said, we don't know what women have gone through with how many women have encountered abuse in their own life, whether that be sexual, emotional, financial, relational, we don't know what women have gone through. So to speak ill of women for jokes or out of a serious intention, we really need to invite other people in and procure that feedback. Tiffany, thank you so much.

Tell us about your book one more time. Yes, Pray Tell, Why We Say We Tell the Truth and How Everyone Can Speak Up, wherever books are sold. When did it come out and how are people reading it, engaging it, getting back to you? Yeah, it's good it's definitely a must read buy it for your pastor buy it for your elder team it's a great one to kind of process through um it came out march 2021. oh a couple years okay cool awesome well this show is part of the converge podcast network