Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep979: Responding to the SBC’s Sexual Abuse Report: Dr. J.D. Greear

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

J.D. and Preston talk about the recent SBC report on sexual abuse and abuse cover ups in the church. This is part 1 of a two part series on this issue. J.D. Greear is the pastor of The Summit Church, in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina and has served as the president of the SBC from 2018-2021. J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of several books including Just Ask (2021), What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? (2020), Searching for Christmas (2020), Above All (2019), Not God Enough (2018), Gaining by Losing (2015), Gospel (2011), Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart (2013), and Jesus, Continued… (2014). https://jdgreear.com/about/ –––––– PROMOS Save 10% on courses with Kairos Classroom using code TITR at kairosclassroom.com! –––––– Sign up with Faithful Counseling today to save 10% off of your first month at the link:  faithfulcounseling.com/titr or use code TITR at faithfulcounseling.com –––––– Save 30% at SeminaryNow.com by using code TITR –––––– Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review. www.theologyintheraw.com

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm sure many of you know about the recent report released about the significant issue of sexual abuse and sexual abuse cover-ups in the Southern Baptist Convention. And it's been heavy on a lot of our hearts, and my heart just absolutely goes out to the victims who have had to endure abuse. I can only imagine having to endure abuse alone, let alone from the hands of a person who is claiming to be a steward of God's word. Somebody who's placed in pastoral care over you to be a victim of abuse in that kind of situation is unspeakable. And it's something that I've wanted to address on the podcast ever since I've been kind of really following from a distance. I'm not part of the SBC. I don't know

a lot of the details. I just kind of follow it from what I read online and talk to some people that are in the SBC. But I've wanted to address it on the podcast, at least get better informed. And I've really been careful on who I have on the podcast to even talk about it because of the sensitive nature of it. So I am going to have on two guests to talk about the SBC report. My first guest is J.D. Greer, who I'm having on in this podcast. J.D. Greer is the pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, a very large church. J.D. has been a past president of the SBC and president when a lot of these allegations were coming out. And so he's had a front row seat

and trying to navigate from a leadership position how to address this very significant issue. He's a pastor of several books that you can Google around and find out which books he's written. He has a PhD in theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and married to his wife

and they have four children together, three girls and a boy. I together, three girls and a boy. I also have three girls and a boy. I think our kids are around the same age. I want to have JD on to give a leadership perspective on this report. Like from a leadership level in the SBC, how has he processed what's been going on and how are they going to move forward? And so that's our conversation today.

And then in the next podcast episode, I'm going to talk to somebody who is a survivor of abuse in the SBC church. And I'm still trying to arrange that. So I won't release the name yet. You'll find out who it is. But I want to talk to somebody who's not just in leadership, but somebody who has actually been a victim of what's been going on. So I hope this episode spreads some very necessary information. and that ultimately we can drastically, drastically reduce the number of abuse situations that happen in the church. It's just, it's something that all of us who are involved in Christianity, involved in the church,

need to be very concerned about and play whatever role God has placed in us to do to help us move forward in this. So please welcome to the show for the first time, J.D. Greer. Okay. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. This is a, oh man, I don't know how to frame it. I mean, a really important podcast, although I like to think all my podcasts are important on some level, but this one's sober and serious. And yeah, so yeah, I'm really excited to talk to J.D. Greer about this report that was released in the SBC about sexual abuse and correlated, I guess, cover-ups. abuse and correlated, I guess, cover-ups. I'm not part of the SBC, never have been. Not intentionally. JD's like, what do you mean? Yeah. But anyway, so I just, I reached out to JD and said, hey, would you mind helping really to walk me through what's been going on just so I have a good understanding? And he agreed. So thanks, JD, for coming on Theology Neuron. I'm

actually really excited about this conversation. I'm grateful, man. So thanks, J.D., for coming on Theology and Iran. I'm actually really excited about this conversation. I appreciate your work. I listen to your podcast and grateful for a lot of the things that you've, ways you've led out. So I'm honored to be a part of this conversation. That always scares me when people like J.D. Greer say they listen to my podcast. It's like, oh, people are actually listening to this thing. Why don't you, you know, of the same. Why don't you, you know, can you give us a very basic one-on-one history leading up to this report that was released? Like for somebody that maybe has no clue, they're like, I don't even, I just saw some new stuff. I have no clue what's going on. What's, what's led up to this? Is this something that's really recent? Has this been an ongoing conversation in the SBC or?

So, so as far as, I'll obviously bring my own perspective, there are other people who might start the conversation a lot sooner. But when it came on my radar screen was when the days leading up to my election as SBC president in June of 2018. I was talking with Russ Moore and Philip Bethencourt, the RLC, and they said, you know, we're just hearing from some people in Southern Baptist churches that how they've been treated when they came forward with a report of abuse was sometimes it was just careless. You know, you want to, you want to think the people that were hearing it where I had a good intentions, but just know what to do. And then other times it felt more, it felt more malicious. And I don't, when I say malicious, I don't mean,

let me actually keep you in a place where you're being abused, but I mean, malicious, like, you know, we should just sweep this under the rug. Let us handle this. Let us take care of it. We don't want to embarrass the church or embarrass the denomination. So when I say malicious, that's what I mean. I can't name for you anybody right now in this whole deal. That's like, you know, let me figure out how to really protect abusers. I mean, it's just malicious where they're just not thinking about the safety of the victim. And they're only thinking about their idolatrous reputation.

So, you know, so anyway, so my first act as president after being elected was to to call to assemble this team that I just said I wanted it to really take a look from top to bottom. It was not all Southern Baptist on this, in this group. It was, you know, we just said, let's get the best of the best when it comes to legal, when it comes to pastoral, when it comes to professional counseling, and let's just put together a group that can study this top to bottom and recommend, because ultimately we knew it wasn't going to be policy change. It was going to be cultural change. And we talked to all kinds of survivors, me and that team did through this and came up with a thing called the church cares curriculum. And it was a way of getting churches to be able to have best practices, you know, on the local church level. Had a real good response

to it, you know, just early on those first few days we were putting all that together. Well, then in January, February of 2019, that was when this Houston Chronicle report was released. And they cited 700 or so cases that they knew about of mishandled sexual abuse allegations in the SPC. And that kind of put it to a crisis level because not only was it in the national conversation, it just revealed that what we had been hearing was really just the tip of the iceberg. I do think it's important to understand like this was a conversation taking place before the Houston Chronicle article came out and we already had all these pieces there. But that just really came out and sort of sent it into like, hey, this just moved from urgent to, you know, nuclear. Yeah. And so in the providence of God, it was like three weeks after this article came out, maybe two weeks.

In the providence of God, it was like three weeks after this article came out, maybe two weeks, we had our executive committee meeting. And since, you know, you got listeners who are like, what are all these terms mean? The executive committee is a group of people that's between conventions. The Southern Baptist, you know, ultimately the ones who hold the power in the Southern Baptist Convention are the messengers in the churches. You know, it's a bottom up structure. And so they come together once a year to vote, make big decisions, but then they, by means of electing a president who then appoints committees to appoint trustees,

this executive committee, they end up, there are 86 members that run the business. And so I was about to address them and that's when I basically took this article and I said, we are in a critical place. And I just I cited 10 of the churches that were in named in the Houston Chronicle article that were, I mean, fairly prominent churches or had a really pretty egregious violation. And I just said, you know, these churches owe us an explanation. And I just said, you know, these churches owe us an explanation.

We don't assume they're guilty, but they owe us an explanation. Because if we're going to say that we have doctrinal standards for coming together as Baptists, we also, there needs to be understanding of what we require of one another to be in fellowship that we can't show a wanton disregard for the safety of victims. And so, you know, in, in between there and when the convention met in June, man, it just really, I mean, God was working this sex abuse task force that I appointed and really came up with, we had an enthusiastic response on behalf of churches and Southern Baptist entities to do this curriculum and to get up to speed. I really felt like, Preston, I'm not one of those guys that, you know, it feels like every morning God speaks to me in my cheerios

and I'm always hearing voices whisper, but it was one of those times that very clearly the Lord said to me, you need to put aside any concern for your reputation and the reputation of this group of churches you're a part of. And you need to focus entirely on the sheep that I died for. And if you focus on that, if you focus on my children, I'll handle, I'll handle everything else. And so going into the convention, that was basically what I said in 2019 is we're here because of all people, we should have known that there would be, you know, false shepherds who come into the flock who don't care about the sheep that are there to, I mean, Jesus told us that. And he said, you know, it's, it's better for you if, you know, for you to have

a millstone hung around your neck, thrown into the sea, than to allow one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble. And what could make somebody stumble more than somebody in the name of Christ represents a spiritual authority abusing them? So we have plenty of warnings on this, you know, in the Bible. And we just had not heeded them. not heeded them. And we had not, you know, like I said, I don't think for a lot of people it was intentional, but just because of misplaced values and a lack of understanding, we hadn't yielded toward the side of like, what do we got to do to make our churches as safe as possible? So that was 2019. The convention was overwhelmingly supportive and it just really, you know, things happened well. Speed up the, you know, things happen. Well, um, speed up the,

the, you know, the conversation a couple of years, um, at last year's convention in 2021, my last year as president, um, cause you're basically, when you get elected president, you do one term and then you can get a second term if they, you know, don't hate you. And then, um, but I got a bonus year cause of COVID. So I was three years. So 2021, I'm leading. And essentially what happened there is it had begun to be apparent that there was some intentionality within the executive leadership, the executive committee, and some of these full-time Southern Baptist employees, there was some intentionality of cover-up. And there was enough of it that from the floor, the messengers of the SBC said,

we are not satisfied with some of these answers, and we want there to be an independent investigation that's done where, you know, there was going to come in and expose it from top to bottom. So that led to a new task force, not the same as the other one that the new president appointed, Ed Litton appointed. And they're the ones who hired Guidepost Solution. And they're the ones that just released this report that just came out. You're the Southern Matters president. One of the gap I'll fill in is, you know, I'm not a paid person. I don't work full time for the SBC. It's something you do. Like I was a full-time pastor and then I led this way. So this report focused a lot on some of the full-time employees and some past

presidents, like you saw Johnny Hunt's name in there. Maybe, maybe he's a very Southern Baptist president and very prominent. So anyway, that's gotten to where we are now. And that's, that's where the conversation is. So now it's on the convention, which happens in Anaheim, second week of June. It's going to be to them to respond to the recommendations that this task force is making about what the next steps are making our churches safe from abuse and safe for survivors. Well, that's next week at the time of this recording, right? Second week of June. So the SBC is meeting to address the report, basically.

Correct. Well, I mean, we're not meeting just to address that, but that's our annual meeting. And that'll be one of the biggest things that we address. Did the independent report that was just released, did that pretty much confirm everything that the Houston Chronicle published? Or were there some discrepancies? was it more, it was like worse than we thought, or can you maybe sum up what this independent report identified? Yeah. The independent report reflected that there were a disturbing amount of cases where Southern Baptists, both at the local church level and at some of the other levels, had mishandled these abuse claims. I don't want to be on record saying that it confirmed everything

the Houston Chronicle said, because I don't want to take responsibility for it. But yeah, it definitely confirmed that there was a need for this and there was a crisis. I mean, we would all say one case is a crisis, but I don't mean it just in that term. It was, there was a, a lack of understanding. Most pastors got into the ministry. That's one of the things I saw as president is most pastors got into the ministry with their desire to love and to serve God's people. And they were horrified by this.

Some of them just didn't know the right way to process through these things. And it was a learning curve. Some of them, you know, had, yeah, I mean, they just, they had over time developed of the SBC, the full-time employees and on this executive committee, that really had put some not just unhelpful and unnecessary obstacles, but just some, I mean, just, they had, they had severely impeded the process and, and, and, and these survivors had to show courage in the face of opposition from some people who were more focused on protecting the institution than on protecting God's people. And these survivors had to show some courage that they should have never had to show that we should have showed for them. And we should have been there a lot sooner. And, you know, we our churches did not serve that community the way that that the gospel we believe demands that be served. I so appreciate just I don't know, just your tone and humility and all this. It's really impressive.

So those senior leaders, has that been addressed? I could only imagine how challenging that would be in the SBC. Do you feel like the SBC is making good headway in making sure that doesn't happen again. Yeah. So, so first of all, Preston, let's just make clear that there's a time to talk about fixing things and to celebrate and to, I hate to use the word justify, but this is not that time. This is a time for us to lament and to repent. And so I want to say that as clearly as I can. And then I want to answer your question because I just don't want my answer of that question to be like, oh, you know, just the fact that there are people that,

some of them lost their faith and some of them were just very damaged because we weren't there like showing up where we should have been. So that's the spirit we carry into it. But to answer your question specifically, every one of the major leaders that was named in that report as a substantial obstacle before the God Post report came out had either resigned or been removed. And so one of the things that's encouraging in this, if you can even use that terminology, is that this all came from within the SBC. The SBC is an organization that's kind of unlike other denominations. Sometimes people don't get that. There's no authority in the SBC. You know, being elected president doesn't make me pope or bishop or cardinal.

I don't have any authority. Southern Baptist Convention doesn't own any of the churches, and the churches don't, you know, they don't submit to the SPC. It's a voluntary cooperation of churches. So the SPC had a mechanism where we could hold our leaders accountable. Just to be really candid, that couldn't happen in the Roman Catholic Church because it's a top-down organization. And so, you know, it's, we are the people of the Southern Baptist convention said, this is not this, our leaders do not reflect who we want to be as a people. And they have the mechanism to be able to not only call for this study, but to remove and hold accountable those leaders. So those leaders have resigned or been removed. There was obviously some devastating gut

punch level surprises. You know, the Johnny Hunt thing is a great example of that. I don't know what that is. I don't know. I'm sorry. Okay. So Johnny Hunt is one of the most popular Southern Baptists. Yeah. And served as president.

Very influential Baptist. Humongous church down in Woodstock, Georgia. First Baptist Woodstock. Just, you know, has been a beloved leader. And it came out in there that he had, well, you know, has been a beloved leader. And it came out in there that he had. Well, you know, according to him, his version of the story is a consensual thing. According to Guideposts in the report is is that it was it would be in the category of, you know, an abusive relationship or at least, you know, sexual harassment or stuff. And so anyway, it was, you know, he stepped down from leadership immediately when that was coming out and would have been removed had he not stepped down. So anyway, all that to say is all those leaders, yes, they had moved the executive committee that if you get

into the report, you'll see that one of the groups that did the most obfuscation was this executive committee. 86 members. In my time as president, we appointed over half. We're able to replace them either through resignations or whatever. So it's a different executive committee and already we can feel the effects. Like the executive committee that is right now dealing with this is not the executive committee that all the complaints were written about. So that's encouraging. So I do think you're seeing a response by the people as they hold their accountable and make the changes that are necessary. it too, like the allegations would span, as I understand it, all the way from like pastors and leaders who were actually committing abuse to pastors and leaders that might've been hearing about abuse, but kind of covering it up or focusing on the reputation of the church above

the victims all the way, maybe to pastors that were just negligent, like well-intended maybe, like really, oh man, I want to handle this well, but just weren't prepared and maybe didn't handle it as they should. Is that the kind of spectrum of stuff that has come up in the report? Yes. All that you said would have been in there. But what really was probably to most people seemed like the most problematic thing in the report was that there were abusers who were being dismissed from churches. And pastors were not like there was no list that these guys were going on. So they get hired by another church. And there was even cases where pastors who had been in leadership, you know, when they released a staff member, even gave, you know, neutral to positive references for this person, or said that they were dismissed for one thing, when it actually was another thing, maybe it was two or three things together. And so they said, well, we're going to comment on this, but not this over here. And that

enabled somebody, an abuser, to be in a place where they did it again. That's probably the most difficult. Then there was, on the executive committee, you had people who were essentially blaming the victim kind of thing. There was a culture of that. Then there was also, you know, there's one really heartbreaking case where a prominent Southern Baptist female employee had been sexually abused. And the story that was told about her was basically that it was consensual.

And it was official. That was sort of the official communication of Baptist when it was not. And, and even after it was a long time of like fighting to get them to retract it. And even with the, when it finally was retracted, it just, it, it did not speak, you know, kind of repentance and humility. It was just sort of like a safe face and move on kind of posture. So what, why the SBC? Or I guess I got kind of two-pronged question. Do you think, or do you know, or maybe, I don't know, like, is this pretty much common among all denominations or even

non-denominational churches and it just hasn't come out yet? Or is there something intrinsic to the SC why this seems to be the optics of it so prevalent in the SPC in particular? I don't know if that... Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I would say that. And I don't think that's really... I mean, in fact, one of the most dangerous thing you can do is to say that's their theology or that's their culture. It doesn't happen here. A lot of us made that mistake with the Catholics. Well, you know, Catholics can't get married. That's why they abuse people. Right. And that's why we don't have that problem. And like I said,

at the beginning of all people, we should have known that there would be people who shepherds who come in and abuse of law, because Jesus told us that, you know, there are some people who want to say, well, it's because, you know, you're complementarian and you believe that men lead in the home and lead in the church. But, you know, obviously that's not healthy complementarianism. And, you know, somebody brings that up and you, man, the quickest way to be blind to what's happening in your midst is to say something like that. I mean, Bill Hybels, that, you know, he's clearly not a

complementarian and, you know, there was those things. So, um, I think anywhere that you have people in positions of power, the fallen human heart is going to leverage that power for, you know, selfish purposes. And so I think a wise structure, whether you're talking about a denomination or a church has leaders that are accountable. Um, you know, as the pastor of a church now, I, you know, it is very important to me that I'm not in charge of my elder board. I lose votes to my elders. That's very important because while, you know, I mean, I'm telling you, there's nothing that I'm hiding. I need to make sure, you know, I need to make sure that things like David Powelson used to say, things that grow in a secret garden always grow mutant. And when you have unchecked,

unaccountable authority, it will grow mutant. I don't want that at our church. And I don't want that in the convention I'm a part of. Now, again, if you understand, I'm not trying to justify anything. What I'm trying to say is I'm grateful that in this association of churches, it is a bottom-up structure where ultimately the people hold their leaders accountable and not vice versa. Because I think leaders with power go corrupt quicker than large body people do. So that's the accusation that SBC has gotten, that it's your complementarian theology that is a breeding ground for this kind of stuff, which if that's true, I mean, the PCA is complementarian, EV3 is complementarian. There's other, many non-denominational churches are complementarian. And either there's similar stuff going on there or it hasn't come out yet, or maybe

it's not endemic simply to, and we have to distinguish between unbiblical forms of complementarianism that are very much unbiblically hierarchical and devalue women and uphold male unhealthy forms of leadership versus a, I mean, as I read the Bible, and if I read it through a complementarian lens, it's just, I mean, there is no kind of like top-down CEO hierarchical, you know, like. Right. So I do get, I don't know. And I want to think this more. I don't want to speak too strongly, but I don't know. I do want to at least make a distinction between biblical healthy forms of a certain theology versus abuses to that theology. What goes under the label, and this, you could argue this is not a fair label, but it goes under the label patriarchy, where you really have, I mean, you may give a head nod to men and women being equal, but in reality, you know, the man exists

in some kind of unchallenged authority and the woman is really only in a servant role, you know, whether we're talking the home or the organization. Yeah, that's an unbiblical and unhealthy version of patriarchy. What a healthy version of that is and what I would myself believe is that, you know, there is equality in the essence and the image of God. And then in various spheres, God assigns leadership relationships. And just because there's a bad version of that leadership doesn't mean the very concept of leadership is wrong. And as you see with things, and I'm not trying to pick on him or anybody, but as you see with someone like all the stuff that came out with Bill Hybels and others.

Again, I'm not weighing in on the allegations of what's true or not. But what I see is at least the accusations that people in those structures, even with all the, you know, kind of as egalitarian as you could get, you still have people, if they're in unchecked places of power, that will leverage the power they have for, you know, money, sex, whatever it is that do that. And that's just not a healthy system. We should not be, nobody was made to be unaccountable. Yeah. Yeah. And even the, I mean, the me too movement, we can go outside the church and in secular spaces where complementarian isn't a thing, Harvey Weinstein and others, where it's just like, you give people the power, especially, I would say men in particular would be more prone to this for various reasons. And yeah, I think I agree with what you're saying. Again, I want to think through you thought through it more than I have, but that

you put any fallen human in a position of unchecked power and whatever the ecclesiology is, that's just a bad recipe for disaster. Well, right now, you know, you're here, your listeners can hear this, but right now I'm doing the Jedi mind trick on you saying, yes, Preston, you know, you've not been growing up before, so you agree with me. Yeah. Well, there's a parallel in the work that I do with, you know, I've heard it's a common counter argument to like a traditional Christian view of marriage that would say the traditional Christian view of marriage and sexuality is intrinsically homophobic. parents in helping them kick their gay kids out of the home when they come out as gay. It enables parents to force their kids into reparative therapy or whatever. I'm like, well, those might be abuses to the traditional theology, but I don't see anything in Genesis 1 and 2 where I would look at Genesis 1 and 2 and then turn and say, all right,

15-year-old daughter, I'm going to kick you out of the home because you said you're bisexual or something like that. That just doesn't flow directly from the truth in the Bible at the expense of the other truths. So when people say, well, you're taking the Bible too seriously. And that's why complementarians be, I'm like, no, you're not taking the Bible seriously enough because the same thing that talks about the complimentary roles also says that you regard the needs and interests of the other people as more important than your own. And it says that you regard the needs and interests of the other people as more important than your own. And it says that you are laying down your life for them, like Christ laid down

you, that part of the Bible is equally as important as, you know, anything that teaches the complimentary part. So. Right. As you look back, JD, in your tenure as president and just through this whole thing, what would you, can you identify maybe off the top of your head, some things that you feel like you and the executive leaders or just leaders in the SBC have done well through all this. And maybe some things looking back like, oh man, I wish we had done this better. Is there any kind of pro and con that you kind of reflect upon now? Well, I mean, you know, when I look back, I'm very grateful that in the providence of God, he brought this to our attention early.

You know, it wasn't like I was, as I've been a pastor for almost 20 years now. So I was aware this was happening, but because of just some of what our own church has experienced, we've had cases, but it wasn't on my radar as much as it should have been. And I'm grateful that in God's sovereignty, the right voices were there and I'm grateful we listened to them and I'm grateful we started, you know, this, I think the events have just affirmed that that was, it was a, a time whose moment had come.

I don't know how not to say in answer to your question. I mean, the biggest regret is we didn't, we didn't get there sooner. You know, I mean, it's, you know, whether you say, well, you weren't in leadership then. Yeah. But I mean, there were, and these are our people. These are the ones that God has entrusted to us. And if we're going to serve a Savior who laid down his life for the sheep, then you just lament. I mean, you know, when I hear somebody, Preston, start to defend why they, you know, aren't guilty. And by the way, yeah, I understand, like, it's wrong to give false accusation or falsely blame people. But I kind of look at it like, I mean, I have three daughters and one son. If I heard that one of my kids had been abused as their dad, I don't care if like there was no way that I could have known. I'm still going to sit down with my daughter and say, I was the one who

was appointed to protect you at this stage of your life. And I'm sorry, I failed. I'm broken over that. So this is not a time for, oh, I didn't do anything wrong. This is a time for, I should have done more to make sure that you were protected. And I take responsibility for that. It's what it means to be a leader in a church. Just a couple more questions. I know we're on a bit of a time constraint here. Any advice to the leader? I mean, a lot of people listening are maybe not part of the SBC. Maybe they're in a non-denominational church or denominational church. What kind of lessons can the rest of the church learn from what you guys have had to deal with? Yeah. One is we all share the same humanity. And it's one of the most consistent things you

can rely on is the doctrine of total depravity that we, even those of us who have been redeemed are going to trend without the other graces that God keeps in our lives. We're going to trend, you know, toward a wrong direction. You've probably known the name Paul trip. And I mean, it was after one of these, another one of these stories had come out with one of these mega pastors that, you know, just got caught in whatever scandal of the day. And I asked him, I just, we were backstage at an event and I just said, I said, Paul, I mean, like, why, what's, what is it with these mega pastors since, you know, technically I am one and why?

And he said, remember, I never forget. He said, well, there's two things that, that happened. He said, number one is these guys, um, they start to lose peer accountability or any way. He actually said peer community. He said they're, they're extroverts usually. So they have lots of people around them, but people who can really look them in the eye and speak to them as equals. And he says, the ones that do end up having these guys scattered around the country and they do a Zoom call, you know, for three, you know, for an hour, every three months, he's like, you just, there's just no way that, that, that people can see in your life. Like I said, that brings us to the second problem. And that is that he says, they forget that even after you're redeemed, Paul says, Romans 7,

that your flesh is still wretched. And so, yes, I'm redeemed. I'm a new creation in Christ. I'm thankful I'm not who I used to be, but I still got this flesh. And I know that left unchecked, this flesh will lead me into whatever idolatries, same ones I had before I was saved. And so I know I need that pure accountability. I need the constant application of the gospel in my life, lest the very things happen in the organization I lead, whether you're leading 100 people, 10 people, or 10,000 people. That's so good. organization I lead, whether you're leading a hundred people, 10 people, or 10,000 people. That's so good. Well, as you said, to me, that sounds more compelling, like rather than saying it's intrinsic to all forms of complementarianism, I would say, I'm not sure about that, but intrinsic

to certain ecclesiologies that do have an unhealthy protection around some kind of senior leader, especially when that senior leader has power, prestige, celebrityism, like few humans can handle that well on their own. So there is an ecclesiological piece, which again, I would say that's an unhealthy, probably unbiblical ecclesiology that has that kind of very hierarchical, especially, I mean, senior people that do gain some kind of celebrity status platform typically have a charismatic personality. They're typically an Enneagram, maybe eight or just type A and driven. And sometimes that personality, it is harder to be humble, right? And say, hey, if you see anything in my life, tell me and to really truly receive that. if you see anything in my life, tell me and to really truly receive that. Like my wife and I've had to make intentional decisions as our church has gotten bigger and my platform has gotten wider. And we felt like, you know,

we're trying to be faithful to God. And as he expands the platform, you know, it felt like, okay, we're trying to say yes and be willing. But you know, my wife has been a great blessing because she has consistently trumpeted that quality and health are never found on the stage or the size of the platform. They're always found in the small group relationships. I'm sitting right now in my home and I moved into this neighborhood with two other families within walking distance because they know when things between my wife and I aren't going well. They know when they're straining our family. when they're strained in our family. And there is a tendency in all leaders to back away and to get isolated because people don't understand the pressures you're under and you don't like to

be challenged. But we intentionally want to cultivate those things because God made us for, God did not make anybody, I don't care who you are, He did not make us for the stage. He made us for community. That's good. That's really good. One more quick question. All the victims, the survivors, how are they being cared for? And I guess, like, are they, and again, it's probably a wide range of reactions, but are they like, I don't know what right word, like positive about how things are being handled from their perspective? Is there still, is there so much pain and hurt that it's just like, no matter how you guys move forward, it's almost hard to rectify that or yeah. In general, I guess,

how are they being cared for and listened to? And yeah, some of, some of them are going to feel that way. Um, or they're going to feel like it's just, you know, too little, too late. And some of them are, I mean, after you've been through a season of your life like that, I mean, how do you, you know, there's, there's no way. And, and your heart is broken over that. Um, I, I certainly would not want to speak, you know, for the survivor community. They each need to be able to give their own reactions to it. Um, I know some that, um, have been a part of the dialogue process and they're encouraged by where

it's going. I know others that, you know, wish that we were seeing different things. There's going to be, as far as how to take care of them, that's part of what this task force will recommend, both in terms of preventative care. Here's how you actually care on the local level, you know, in a local church with somebody who's been through this there's also you know questions about reparative care you know like when when this caused this in your life what what are the responsibilities of those who who were responsible you know is there a way that they can help assist in that and so a lot of those things are what are being discussed now as we think what is the right right, what are the, you know, what did Jesus say that were John the Baptist,

what are the fruits of repentance and what do they look like in this moment? Yeah. JD, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate your perspective and we'll certainly be praying for this next meeting this next week. And yeah, I just really hope that Christ is magnified and people are healed, you know, as much as that's possible through a really gnarly situation. So yeah. Thanks for your time. Caring enough to ask. Yeah. All right. Take care, man. You too. Thank you.