The Roys Report

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/T6tDPn5nQ7kThe Church is supposed to be the Bride of Christ and the hope for mankind. But has the church in America become nothing more than a business? On this edition of The Roys Report, Julie speaks with Nathan Apffel, a filmmaker who’s working on a docuseries, called The Religion Business. Nathan, who has more than 15 years of experience in TV and film production, is confronting megachurches and their pastors with their lack of financial accountability. He’s demanding to know their salaries and housing allowances—and he’s not taking no for an answer. Last month, he got arrested when he showed up at Ed Young’s megachurch in Grapevine, Texas, carrying signs asking what Ed’s salary and housing allowance is. Prior to that, Nathan had a run-in with the security team of televangelist Kenneth Copeland on Copeland’s expansive ministry complex, including a mansion and jet runway. Why do megachurches have security teams that protect them from honest questions? Why do so few congregations know what their pastors make? And why do filmmakers get arrested when they demand transparency? Buckle up, because this is a wild interview with someone who’s a bit of a cowboy when it comes to his tactics. But his exposés reveal some alarming practices within the church—and he says he’s on a mission to change them. SUPPORT OUR WORKVisit our Donate page to see our latest year-end financial statement and give to the cause of nonprofit journalism. Guests Nathan Apffel Nathan Apffel, an Emmy-winning filmmaker based in Park City, Utah, aims to spur constructive conversations and action through his films and TV series. As a director and producer, his work has won recognition at numerous film festivals and two Emmy Awards. His upcoming seven-part docuseries, The Religion Business. sheds light on the business of Western Religion, and in particular, Christianity. Learn more about The Religion Business, set to release next year, at the official website.  Show Transcript Coming soon Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/u94-UCMB14kThe fact that abuse occurs at all in churches is horrific. What’s worse—often, the abusers are protected rather than exposed. And the victims bear crushing trauma of both the abuse and the cover-up. But there is a better way. On this edition of The Roys Report, internationally renowned psychologist Diane Langberg joins Julie to discuss her new book, When the Church Harms God’s People. Not only does the book explain why churches are failing miserably in this area, it also explains how to fix the problem. Known around the world for her expertise and care as a Christian leader, Dr. Langberg has counseled many victims of high-profile ministry leaders. She knows the evils of sexual abuse, domestic abuse, and rape committed by church predators—and now confronts this devastating evil. In our discussion based on her latest book, which is available this month to supporters of The Roys Report, Dr. Langberg unveils what she’s learned about how churches cause harm. Why do Christian communities often foster unhealthy leaders who end up hurting rather than protecting God's people? She also offers hope for the future, describing how churches can reflect Christ—not just in what they teach, but also in how they care for themselves and others. This insightful conversation offers a small preview of what we’ll be hearing from Dr. Langberg at Restore Conference coming up in February, as she is one of more than a dozen leading Christian voices who will share. Listen in to hear her heart, with wisdom from walking God’s narrow path for many decades. Guests Dr. Diane Langberg Dr. Diane Langberg is a globally recognized psychologist with 53 years of clinical experience working with trauma patients. She has trained caregivers from six continents in responding to trauma and the abuse of power. For 29 years she directed her own practice in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Now, in partnership with Dr. Phil Monroe, Langberg, Monroe & Associates continues this work which includes more than a dozen therapists. Dr. Langberg has authored numerous books including Redeeming Power and When the Church Harms God's People. Learn more at her website. Show Transcript SPEAKERS JULIE ROYS, DR. DIANE LANGBERG   JULIE ROYS  00:04 Internationally recognized psychologist, Dr Diane Langberg, has encountered the crushing trauma of sexual abuse, domestic abuse and rape and its cover up. Even more tragic, she’s encountered all of this within the church,. But as she explains today, there is a better way.   JULIE ROYS  00:21 Welcome to The Roys report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today Dr Diane Langberg joins me to discuss her new book, When the Church Harms God’s People. The fact that abuse occurs at all in the church is horrific. But as listeners to this podcast know, abuse is happening in the church, and too often, the perpetrators are protected, and the victims bear the brunt of not just the abuse but the cover. In her new book, Dr Langberg confronts this horrific evil, and she unveils what she’s learned about how churches cause harm and why Christian communities often foster unhealthy leaders who end up hurting rather than protecting God’s people. She also offers hope for the future, describing how churches can reflect Christ, not just in what they teach, but in how they care for themselves and for others.   JULIE ROYS  01:12 We’ll get to this insightful interview in just a moment, but first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, The RESTORE Conference, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor or pastor, there are a few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church, but The RESTORE Conference this February 7 & 8 in Phoenix, Arizona is designed to do just that. Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary Demuth and Dr David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Tov, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly and more. For more information, just go to RESTORE2025.COM. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquart, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   JULIE ROYS  01:12 Well again, joining me today is Dr Diane Langberg, an internationally recognized psychologist with more than five decades of clinical experience with trauma victims. She’s also trained caregivers on six continents in responding to trauma and the abuse of power. She’s also written several books, including her latest, When the Church Harms God’s People. So Diane, welcome. It is such a pleasure to have you join me.   DIANE LANGBERG 02:58 Thank you. It’s an honor to be here.   JULIE ROYS  03:00 I’ve said this to you before in person. I don’t know that I’ve ever said it in a podcast, but I do consider you the matriarch of the abuse survivor community and someone who is not just special because of your trauma experience, but I think because of your faith that has endured really trudging through some amazingly toxic stuff. So again, just such an honor and a pleasure to be with you. And I know last year at RESTORE you weren’t able to be with us because you were writing this book. So I am thrilled that you’re done and able to be with us at the RESTORE coming up in Phoenix.   DIANE LANGBERG 03:39 I’m thrilled to be done too.   JULIE ROYS  03:43 I hope you appreciate that we’re going to be in Phoenix instead of Chicago when it’s February. So your book talks about when the church harms God’s people. And obviously the church is supposed to be a place of healing and of comfort, but it ceased to be this in some cases. And I know there’s a myriad of reasons for why this has happened, but if you could kind of put your finger on ‘here’s the main reason that I see contributing to what we’re seeing in the church today’, what would you say that is?   DIANE LANGBERG 04:15 So, rather than the love in those places, we are protecting a system that we think is truth and makes us safe and all those kinds of things. But last I checked, Jesus didn’t die for systems,   JULIE ROYS  04:34 So often it’s the shepherd that is at fault for preying on the sheep. I mean, here we have a shepherd that’s supposed to protect sheep, and instead, we have shepherds who are preying on them, which is just the antithesis of who Jesus is, the antithesis of who they are supposed to be. But sometimes, in fact, probably in 100% of these cases, when there’s a. shepherd who is not really a shepherd, but he’s a wolf parading as one, it’s deception that’s happening. Why is it, how can we tell whether a shepherd who can be incredibly charming, right? and  say all the right words and all those things? How can we tell if this person is actually a shepherd, or if he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing?   DIANE LANGBERG 05:25 Well, I think the way that Jesus put it is by their fruits you will know them. I think that we have fallen into the trap, I suppose, of measuring fruit by success, which, if we measure fruit by success, then Jesus failed.   JULIE ROYS  05:45 So what would you say fruit is?   DIANE LANGBERG 05:47 It’s likeness to him. I mean when we’re taught about the fruit of the Spirit, it means someone who loves. It means someone who treats others with respect and kindness and protects the sheep because of their preciousness, eternally to the shepherd.   JULIE ROYS  06:10 And yet, so often it is true  when I get pushback for the type of reporting that we do, exposing someone who has been a very bad shepherd, that is often what I hear, what about the fruit? And when they say fruit, they mean the numbers, right?   DIANE LANGBERG 06:29 Yeah. Number and money and fame. That’s fruit which is not fruit of Christ.   JULIE ROYS  06:35 One of the questions that I get asked a lot, and I think it varies from person to person. But they ask, were these predator pastors? Did they begin bad, and they just conned people the whole time into their positions? Or are these people who maybe had good intentions to begin with, maybe were good people to begin with, and the pressures of the system began to change who they were. What would you say to those who asked that question?   DIANE LANGBERG 07:14 Well, I think the first honest thing I would say is I don’t know, but I think that there is a spectrum of some are this way. Some are this way. Some start out really intending to do good in things. But part of what runs through, I think a lot of it, is that certainly the Christians in general, and places like seminaries and things do not put a lot of expectation or whatever on who you are. It’s what you know how to do and do well, and how well it is happening and how big it is. But again, if you go back to the Gospels and look at the things that Jesus spoke, you know so much of it is about character. And by their fruit you will know them. And the fruit he’s talking about is not how many members you have in your pews. It’s your character, it’s your heart, it’s the way you speak, it’s the way you treat the least of these, those are all the things that measured him, and they are to measure us. I think we’ve lost our way, and I think that’s a global issue.   JULIE ROYS  08:28 Do you think too the mega church movement, and I’ve been asked this as well, are mega churches just inherently bad? And I’m like, Well, no, I mean, there are some mega churches that do-good work, and there’s people who have been saved through these mega churches, who have been discipled through them. But I think for the pastor, I have seen that it seems like all the pressures in a mega church are in the wrong direction. I’m curious what you would say that you’ve seen with our churches today, and whether they help spiritual formation for these leaders, or whether they seem to work in the opposite direction.   DIANE LANGBERG 09:09 The pressure is terrible, the expectations are extravagant, and everything has God’s name on it. So if you aren’t meeting the pressure, and you aren’t bringing in lots of people, and people aren’t talking about how wonderful you are, you’re not doing a good job. If those are the criteria, then Jesus didn’t do a good job. And so the care of the shepherd,  the personality of the shepherd, the heart that not is just given in words, but indeed. All of those things show us who a shepherd is, and we are measuring by outcome. I mean again, you go back to the cross or to the resurrection, there were not very many people about looking for him. I think that we love the institution, and it  feels safe to us, and it feels like God must be on our side, because we have 3000 members or whatever, when, in fact, he’s called us to love and to patience and to self-control and things like that. That’s how we look like him, how we serve him, and how we woo others to him.   JULIE ROYS  10:38 Well it is centered around a celebrity so often. And this can happen in large churches, mega churches. This can happen in small churches, where the pastor can be the big fish in the small pond, just as much as you know that the celebrity pastor in this this big institution. And I think when we complain  about the pastor or about the institution, we also have to look at ourselves, don’t we? because we’re the consumers of these type of churches. We are the ones that give money to these churches. What  responsibility do we have as lay people to ensure that our churches are better?   DIANE LANGBERG 11:19 I’m not even sure that I would start thinking about it that way, because to ensure our churches are better means to ensure a system is good, and Jesus didn’t die for systems. So the question is number one for me, on my face, asking him where I am not like him to teach me that and to teach me how to become more like Him in those ways. Part of what doing that and living there, not just doing it once or something, but living in that space with God also sharpens our eyes and our ears, and we begin to recognize things that may be painted beautifully but look nothing like Christ. I think, until that happens, the system is evidence of God, which is not whether it’s a church or a political one, or whatever it is, none of that is his fruit. It’s who we are in the places that we live that is to be his fruit.   JULIE ROYS  12:31 Something I’ve really appreciated about you, and I’m hearing it in this interview, but it’s also in your writings. One of my favorite book actually, of yours is that little. It’s just a tiny paperback book on meditations for counselors. And I have found that it’s not just meditations for counselors, it’s meditations really for anybody who’s in work that does take them through some of the grossest evil that’s out there, and how to protect your soul. And I so appreciate that. I know I read it. I said this at the last RESTORE,, because I went through a very difficult time prior to it, and I read  those meditations, I went through that book twice, just because I found that I needed to protect my soul, so carefully, because, again, the pressures are just not in the right direction. And I know my own flesh  when I encounter these systems, makes me so angry, and you can’t, not when you, when you hear the way that people have abused.   DIANE LANGBERG 13:40 Jesus cracked whips and turns tables over. So I don’t think he likes it much either.   JULIE ROYS  13:46 And that’s something that I say regularly, and people are like, You sound angry, and I’ll be like, Why aren’t you angry? Like this should make us angry genuinely. Yet at the same time, Satan will use that as an opportunity in our own hearts. And you talk about in your book about the role that deception plays. This was so good, and let’s start with the predator himself. Right? How deception works with someone who is again preying on the sheep rather than protecting the sheep. Often, I wonder if they even admit to themselves what they’re doing.   DIANE LANGBERG 14:29 Often not. I think that, I mean, obviously we are deceptive creatures. There’s no exceptions. The only exception was Christ, and so we carry that around. And that’s, I mean, it was started in Eden. I didn’t do it. That girl did it.   JULIE ROYS  14:53 Blame it on the Lord.   DIANE LANGBERG 14:54 Right, of course, but it’s been in us since the beginning. And so our go to thing is when somebody points the finger at us about anything, whether it’s true or not, our first thing is to take care of ourselves. That’s our automatic response, and if what they have given us is true, we have to make it untrue. There’s some way we want to make it untrue because it disturbs us. If we make it true, we don’t want them to think about that. It’s going to hurt our job. It’s going to do whatever. So I don’t think we have really understood the depth of that and its claws on us. And I think that that makes us very vulnerable.   JULIE ROYS  15:47 Yeah, I’m still stunned. James McDonald, who I  reported on back. I mean, it started in 2018 but then he was fired from his church in 2019 and most of the elders stepped down. He is out there now today, even after assaulting a 59-year-old woman and breaking her femur, he is still out there proclaiming his innocence, and even with that blaming it on PTSD that he got from me reporting and this 59-year-old woman supposedly triggered, but by the way, just curious of your professional opinion on PTSD being triggered in a situation like that, to actually assault somebody?   DIANE LANGBERG 16:29 It’s a great cover up on their side.   JULIE ROYS  16:33 And what’s shocking is he got a professional counselor  in court to say that.   DIANE LANGBERG 16:40 If someone has been doing terrible things and actually really begins to see it and is hit by what they have done and grieving by what they have done, having them look like they have PTSD would be expected, but it’s at their own hands that it’s there. It’s not you who did this or said this, therefore I feel this which many abusers would do.   JULIE ROYS  17:06 and it is interesting how the blame often goes everywhere, except on the one person who’s caused it. Let’s talk about deception now with the abused and even with systems. I mean, it does always, I find it difficult to wrap my head around although I know it happens and I believe it happens, but the idea that somebody could be sexually abusing you, and yet you think that this is somehow okay spiritually, like you’re a Christian and  you’re able to believe the lies that are told you. Talk about that dynamic and how that plays into it.   DIANE LANGBERG 17:51 Well, I would say first of all that I don’t think we have really very much understanding of how deep deception is in all of us. No exceptions. No exception is Jesus Christ, and we do it quickly and easily. And anybody who’s raised children realizes it takes about two seconds after birth of them to figure it out. But you don’t have to teach them. It’s there. And so the way that we think is flawed, and I don’t think we start with that premise. We know other people where it’s flawed, but  we’re doing the right thinking, and we don’t expose or look at ourselves in those ways. So I think we have very little understanding of the depth of deception in individual humans, often on a daily basis, and then how that shapes and controls systems which only reinforce the deception that we have because we like the system. So it’s here since the beginning. It’s got deep roots.   DIANE LANGBERG 19:20 When I was a young girl, one of my grandmothers lived in the mountains of West Virginia, and I was staying with her for a couple of days, and she said to me, go downstairs to the cellar and bring up the clothes that we were washing. So I do, and we’re talking about a dirt floor cellar and the whole thing. So I go down into the cellar to get the clothes, and I started crying and screaming, and my grandmother came running, and I came running up the stairs. She turned on the lights, and she said, Watch. And then she said to me, if you turn on the lights, the rats will run. And that came back to me some years ago; in terms of deception, in organizations, in myself, in leaders, in whatever, turning on the lights. And that’s what Jesus did and does –  rats run! And then we have to make a choice. Number one, are we going to turn on the light? which most of us are very uncomfortable. I mean, I don’t need him. I get that turn on the light, and they will run.   JULIE ROYS  20:32 So good. I know at RESTORE in 2022 you made the comment that says how to when you were addressing how to recognize a wolf in the church, and you said, Well, one way is to not become one. And I saw  some pushback to that. I thought it was a fantastic point because I think  we all have this, and if we deny that we have it, that’s almost the scariest situation, because if you are not attending to your own heart, that’s when I think you are most likely to fall into this. But some people said, Oh, wait, isn’t this sin leveling? Because it takes a special kind of evil to be a pedophile or to sexually abuse someone, and not all of us are there. Speak to those folks who were saying that, and I think you know, and I understand where they’re coming from. What would you say to them?   DIANE LANGBERG 21:36 Well, I think, first of all, sin in itself is on a continuum. I mean, some sins do hideous damage to people that all the help in the world isn’t going to undo. You know, it’s not going to go away, really, until they see the face of Jesus. There are other things that we do, that we see, and we stop doing, or other people see us stop and we change. And things like, it’s all on a continuum. And the problem is, if you have, let’s say, as an adolescent, you start doing things to cover up things, which is pretty common in adolescence, frankly. Did you do this? No, I didn’t do this. Were you in this place? No, I was not. So forth.   JULIE ROYS  22:35 I’m not sure it’s just adolescents either.   DIANE LANGBERG 22:37 Oh I  know it’s not. The point is that it’s very young, and it happens when you can have a toddler. You ask them, “Did they do something? Did you spill this? No, you know, darn sure they were.   JULIE ROYS  22:51 It reminds me of my grandson who, four-year-old grandson who was asked if he did something. He said, No, my mind made me do that. My mind told me to do that.   DIANE LANGBERG 23:04 Well, that’s a keeper number one and number two, I mean, teach him when he has a different level brain to look at himself. But yes, it’s in all of us. And so when I said that what I’m saying is, don’t live even minorly in the way that perpetrators live. Don’t excuse harm to others. Doesn’t have to be sexual abused, It could be a rude person. Don’t excuse that rudeness. Don’t treat other people  as if they have no value or they can easily be discarded or whatever.   DIANE LANGBERG 23:43 It is the things that grow and control if we keep doing them that we don’t theoretically want to do. And that’s what I mean by that. Look at yourself and  we are very good at saying, Well, I did do this, but I didn’t do that. We do that all the time, and we’re leveling it, and we’re not looking at ourselves in the light when we do that. That’s what we’re called to do.   JULIE ROYS  24:16 I love that you say, put rudeness up there and not honoring people as made in God’s image. I find sometimes it’s hard to remember that even the perpetrator was made in God’s image. And someone who’s taught me a great deal about that is Lori Anne Thompson. I have never heard her dehumanize another human being. Again, for those who don’t know her, she was one of the victims of sexual abuse by Ravi Zacharias. I’ve never heard her do that, and I find being around her makes me a better person, because I always hear her honoring every person. Not that she won’t call them words that they rightly have owned,  but to remember that every single person is made in God’s image and treat them. ,   DIANE LANGBERG 25:09 Yes, you will never meet somebody who is not, even if they’ve got their bodies six feet waiting in hell. They were made in the image of God.   JULIE ROYS  25:23 It reminds me of CS Lewis, who said, “We will never meet a mere mortal.   DIANE LANGBERG 25:28 Right? Yes, which does not mean being easy on it. That’s one of the places many people get confused. If I think this way, then I but actually, if you really think that way and love somebody, I mean they’re dancing in hell, for crying out loud, if they’re abusing children or something like that. The gift to them is the truth and turning on the lights so the rats run .   JULIE ROYS  25:56 Absolutely. And repentance is a gift. And the best thing we can do is call them to repentance, and I try to keep that in the forefront of my work too, that that is always my hope. Do I want them to be removed from spiritual positions? Yes, but ultimately we pray for their soul. Ultimately we pray that they would repent.   JULIE ROYS  26:19 When you talk about the deception that operates in these systems. There’s a lot of, I mean, even psychologically, what’s going on with, I think, the staff, with the people, the lay people, as they hear things. And you talked about something called Truth Default Theory. Would you explain what that is and how that often is in operation when these things begin to get revealed?   DIANE LANGBERG 26:51 The best way to find out what that is to read that section of the book, frankly. And it’s not a short thing to explain, so to speak. But people choose to lie because they think the outcome will be good. If you tell the truth of a big mess, the outcome will be bad, which there’s some truth to that . You’re going to blow something up if you tell the truth. It’ll make a mess, and everything else. And so I think that people want to keep the system okay. And so you’ll see these places or whatever, where the leader has been sexually abusive, maybe for years and years, and they got rid of the leader, but they don’t go any deeper. They don’t go any deeper into it because this is the church, and we want it to be, we want it to thrive, and we’re glad that that stopped and all that kind of stuff. And we make it shallow. It’s not shallow. You can’t do harm like abuse or live with that harm for years or months or whatever, and then just walk away and be fine. It’s not a possibility. And so part of that is understanding the different ways that people hold on to systems. Now, this is my church. I love it. I’m going to protect it. Yes, he did those things, yes, they’re terrible, but we fired him, and that’s all. It’s shallow in terms of really understanding.   JULIE ROYS  28:37 And when we have this vested interest, we do seem to try, and we’ve seen this a lot, we seem to choose who we believe. And so often, I think people are just predisposed to believing the person who has the position of spiritual authority, and usually the victim is someone we’ve never heard of and often, one of the first things that the system does  to protect  their basically, this is their money maker, right? This is their image as a church or as a ministry, is that they will denigrate the person who’s bringing whether it’s a reporter, whether it’s the victims themselves bringing the allegations, and the people seem to be predisposed to just believing the person we want to believe.   DIANE LANGBERG 29:40 Yes, yes, yes. We want it to be okay. We want it just to go back to normal without the bad guy, they figured out. First of all, the understanding of how it seeps into everything, contaminates everything is not understood. So if the bad guy is gone, so to speak, then let’s just be fine. But if a bad guy had run a truck over a half of the denomination and nobody could walk, what would you do? That’s clear there is the harm, and it’s still there, even though the people who drove the trucks got kicked out. But with this kind of thing, I think it’s easier for people to push it away and say, well, the bad is gone. And, this is good, whatever.   JULIE ROYS  30:34 Talk about the larger system. So I often refer to it as the evangelical industrial complex. I think you refer to it a little bit differently, but it’s the same thing. Often it’s not just the particular institution where there’s allegations being raised, but there’s an entire system behind that nation, a denomination, or even a camp like I think we saw that with Mike Bickle and sort of the International Houses of Prayer and their related ministries, and even that seeped into the Messianic ministries that were very much a part of this. Talk to those who maybe are somewhat naive about how these systems work. Because I know before, before I got a job several decades ago at Moody Radio, I didn’t know this existed. I was kind of like, pretty blind to it all. And I just thought, these are all wonderful ministries. And I think a lot of people believe that and  I wish it were all true; some of them are wonderful ministries. But talk about that system and  how it  exists and how it works.   DIANE LANGBERG 31:54 Well, even if you think of it just as a family or a big system like that,  the idea of the family, or the idea of a church, whatever. Those are good ideas. We love the idea. We want to help the idea. We want to make it grow. We want it to get bigger, and all of those things. And then something comes along that shows that there’s cancer  and so sometimes we ignore that. There’s plenty of organizations that do that. Sometimes the response is very superficial, and sometimes people really want to get rid of, say, those who are the source of the cancer, whatever, but they still aren’t doing any treatment for the cancer.   JULIE ROYS  32:42 Some of it’s quite carnal too, isn’t it? Just come down to, I mean, we’re talking dollars and cents with some of these.   DIANE LANGBERG 32:47 Oh my goodness, yes, fame and a whole lot of money.   JULIE ROYS  32:51 It really is amazing, once you get into this, when you realize how much the celebrity pastor supports the entire industry, whether it’s the mega church, whether it’s publishing, whether it’s Christian radio, because we rely on them for our programming and  to bring the big crowds,  or to bring the audience to a station, I mean, all of those things. And I think people don’t realize it is a billions, billions of dollars involved in evangelicalism.   DIANE LANGBERG 33:21 Be we tell ourselves, it’s all God’s work, and his message is getting out there, and people are hearing, and we have to protect that period .   JULIE ROYS  33:30 And despite the fact that these pastors are living in multi-million-dollar homes, sometimes multiple multi-million-dollar homes, and somehow we say they deserve it? like whether they deserve it or not, Christ didn’t live like.   DIANE LANGBERG 33:46  He certainly deserved it, right?   JULIE ROYS  33:50 And yet he, he never, you know, I always go back to Philippians two, being in very nature God did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. But instead, emptied Himself and became a servant and it’s like we’ve forgotten that model. And sometimes I’m just like, wow.   DIANE LANGBERG 34:12 Well, I think in many ways, over, I don’t know how many decades, but that the Christian world has forgotten those things, which I can’t imagine how much grief we have caused our God.   JULIE ROYS  34:25 Despite these harms that you talk about in your book, and you explain, and we’ve talked about on this podcast, you express hope for the church. And I think a lot of folks are looking at the American church and not feeling very hopeful at all. Why do you feel that there’s hope?   DIANE LANGBERG 34:48 Because Jesus Christ exists. It goes back to him. But I have also in this work, met very fine, pastors, leaders, whatever, who have come in to see me, whether struggling with something or whatever, but who long to do right to please God, to love Jesus well, to love their people well. So I have not had a diet of only those who are either victims of terrible harm or doing the harm. I think if that’s all I’d had, I would have a much harder thing to think about in terms of my thoughts about God, and I did. There was a time, I don’t know how long ago it was now, some years where I decided I can’t do this anymore. It’s going to make me rotten  inside. And literally got down on my knees and said to God, okay, I’m done. You’ll have to let me know what other job you want me to do. Obviously, he did not do that, because I’m still there. That was a turning point for me in many ways, many of them wonderful. But you know, how much of that can you sit with and look at and not be made sick by it? If you’re not, something’s wrong with you. But if it does that to you, then, how do you deal with yourself?   JULIE ROYS  36:23 And I think one of the most insidious parts of religious abuse and trauma in the church is that it separates you often from community. And I have found, and I haven’t been in this nearly as long as you, but that community, and I think we need to sometimes redefine it. And I mean, I’m in a house church now, and I’ve talked about this on numerous podcasts, but it’s been a safe place for me. It’s been a wonderfully healing place for me. But it’s just been crucial. And I know not everybody has that opportunity, but somehow I just think we have to, we have to seek that out, even if it’s really difficult for us. And I understand some people need to take a break for a while, and I totally get that. And we had a very compassionate church, or house church, where there were a number of us that were wounded, that people were willing to sit with us in that and not try to make something out of what we were doing more than just loving people, which really is, I mean, that’s the essence of it, all right. Wow. That that you’re right. If all you encounter are toxic people doing toxic things, and I still feel this way to this day, the most beautiful people that I know still are Christians. Some of the most ugly ones that I’ve encountered are professing Christians, whether they know Christ, that’s between them and him. But yeah, I will still say  the most loving, beautiful human beings on this planet that I know are still Christians.   DIANE LANGBERG 38:16 Yes, and I have found that to be true. And I’ve sat with people sometimes for years working through growing up with abuse, churches abusing, I mean, just the idea that anybody can grow and have a life and bear good fruit out of all of that, it’s a miracle. But I watch it, it’s there, and it is a thing of beauty,   JULIE ROYS  38:43 Truly is. I’ve said this before, but you are an inspiration to me. I know you’re an inspiration to so many of the folks that are listening,. I would just love to know from you, and I know you, that there is no secret hill or secret formula. But as you’re looking back over five decades of work and your relationship with Jesus, what would be some things that you would say to us, and remaining true to the end, fighting the good fight, being able to say someday before Christ, or hearing him say to us, well done, good and faithful servant. We want to get there. How can we get there?   DIANE LANGBERG 39:40 Well, I think one of the things I would say is that I did try to quit once. I mean, I told God, I was quitting. I didn’t ask him anything. Probably, there’s something about me, of course, but I couldn’t do it. I was either gonna  react in ways that were harmful for people or just deaden myself. Those seem to be the only options, and that was a huge turning point for me. I obviously did stay with it. So he won, but he responded to me and helped me see things in way of the cross that I had not seen before, in who he is in his heart. So feel like quitting. I think that’s pretty normal, you know, and I think a lot of people do. But I think, yeah, I literally got down on my face on the floor, and said, I quit your turn, I don’t know what to do. But he responded, and I’m so grateful, and I’m so grateful I didn’t. I’ve learned more of him by staying I wouldn’t trade for anything. I’ve also seen changes, not just in individuals, which I have, but in some systems, or at least portions of it was probably right.   JULIE ROYS  41:13 I mean obviously God could do all of the work that we do without us. He doesn’t need us, and yet he chooses to allow us to partner with what he’s doing in the world  and through that, we become different people. We become,  I’ve said it to my husband before, like I feel sometimes like he is making us more  enjoyable companions for him.   DIANE LANGBERG 41:44 Yes, we become more like Him. And you don’t feel it in the middle of it, and it takes a long time, but it’s somewhere along the way you look back and go, Oh, that’s not what I was like before. Has his aroma in it.   JULIE ROYS  42:01 Well, I just want to thank you so much for your work, for your writing, and I’m just absolutely thrilled that you’re coming to RESTORE in February. So looking forward to that. And a new thing thanks to Phil Monroe, your partner there, is having a pre-conference for counselors. Because, again, we need to minister to the counselors, to the caregivers, to the pastors, absolutely. And so I’m thrilled that we’re going to be able to do that, and you’re going to be able to participate in that. And then the conference as well and speaking to a lot of people who’ve been through an awful lot of church hurts. So very much looking forward to that. But thank you so much for taking the time today, and thank you for this new book, even though  we weren’t able to have you toward the last RESTORE, which, for me personally, was  a sacrifice, but definitely worth it in the book. So thank you.   DIANE LANGBERG 42:58 Well, thank you for having me, and I am glad for the work that you do. It touches people, but whose souls have been hurt, gives them a taste of light and love. So blessings on you..   JULIE ROYS  43:19 Thank you.   JULIE ROYS  43:22 Thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and I would love to get you a copy of Diane’s latest book, When the Church Harms God’s People. This is our premium to donors this month. So if you give $40 or more to The Roys Report, we’ll send you a copy of Diane’s book. As many of you know, your gifts to this work is what makes it possible. We can’t do anything that we do, from our podcast to our daily reporting to our investigations, without your support. So please consider helping us out, and when you do, we’ll get you a copy of Diane’s book, When the Church Harms God’s People. To donate and get the book, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Spotify, or YouTube, that way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review, and then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content again. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/g3j3C25thlc Much research has been done to address individual trauma. But what happens when trauma is collective—when an entire congregation, for example, is betrayed by a pastor they trusted? In this edition of The Roys Report, Kayleigh Clark, a pastor and a pastor’s kid, discusses the impact of communal suffering, which church leaders often overlook. Kayleigh, a doctoral student at Kairos University, is completing her dissertation on congregational collective trauma and paths towards healing and restoration. And what she’s learned is ground-breaking for churches that have experienced pastoral abandonment or moral failure and are struggling to recover. As was explained in the popular book, The Body Keeps the Score, unhealed trauma—if unaddressed—will manifest itself as physical and psychological ailments in our bodies. Likewise, unaddressed trauma in the Body of Christ will also manifest as corporate dysfunction and pain. But as Kayleigh explains in this eye-opening podcast, this doesn’t have to be the case. Healing is available. But it requires congregants and spiritual leaders who understand trauma and don’t try to charge forward before the congregation has healed. Given all the unhealed trauma in the church, this is such a relevant and important podcast. It’s also one that discusses dynamics Julie knows all too well, as someone who’s in a church with others who’ve experienced deep church hurt. She discusses her own experience in the podcast, which could be a prime case study. Guests Kayleigh Clark Kayleigh Clark is founder and director of Restor(y), which exists to journey with churches on the hope-filled path of healing and restoration. She completed a Master of Divinity at Northeastern Seminary and is currently a Th.D. Candidate at Kairos University with a focus on the interplay between psychology and theology. Kayleigh and her husband, Nate, love exploring the outdoors with their son near their home in Rochester, New York. Learn more about Restor(y) online. Show Transcript [00:00:00] Julie: Much research has been done to address individual trauma, but what happens when trauma is collective? When an entire congregation, for example, is betrayed by a pastor they trusted. According to my guest today, the impact of communal suffering is often overlooked, but the body of Christ keeps score. [00:00:22] Julie: Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And joining me today is Kaylee Clark, a pastor and a pastor’s kid who’s well acquainted with the beauty, joy, pain, and heartache that exists within the church. Kaylee also is a doctoral student at Kairos University, and her dissertation work focuses on congregational collective trauma and paths towards healing and restoration. [00:00:50] Julie: She also is the director of ReStory, a ministry to help churches heal and embody the hope of Jesus, especially after experiencing a devastating loss or betrayal. I had the pleasure of meeting Kaylee about a week ago, and I was so excited by her insights and the work that she’s doing that I was like, you have to come on my podcast. [00:01:10] Julie: So I am thrilled that she can join me today, and I know you’re going to be blessed by this podcast. I’ll get to my interview with Kaylee in just a minute, but first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, the Restore Conference and Mark Horta Barrington. If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. [00:01:30] Julie: So, Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor, or pastor, there are a few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church. But the Restore Conference, this February 7th and 8th in Phoenix, Arizona, is designed to do just that. Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary DeMuth and Dr. [00:01:50] Julie: David Pooler An expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Toe, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly, and more. For more information, just go to Restore2025. com. That’s Restore2025. com. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. [00:02:17] Julie: Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquardt are men of integrity. To check them out, just go to buyacar123. com. [00:02:37] Julie: Well, again, joining me today is Kaylee Clark, a pastor and doctoral student who’s studying congregational collective trauma and the paths to healing and restoration. She’s also the founder of Restoree and she’s a wife and mother of a beautiful baby boy. So Kaylee, welcome. It’s just such a pleasure to have you. [00:02:56] Kayleigh: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure to be with you today. [00:03:00] Julie: Well, I am just thrilled to have you on our podcast and I mentioned this in the open, but We talked last week and I was just like, Oh my word, everything that you’re doing, your work is so important. And it’s so where I’m living right now. [00:03:15] Julie: And I know a lot of our listeners are living as well. And so I’m thrilled about it. But as you mentioned, your work is, is unique. We’re going to get into that, but I am just curious, this whole idea, collective trauma, you know, ministering. To the church. How did you get interested in this work? [00:03:33] Kayleigh: Sure. Um, so I am fourth generation clergy. [00:03:37] Kayleigh: So great grandpa, grandpa, my dad, and then me. So are all pastors. Uh, and so I’ve just always known the church, uh, pastors have also been kind of my second family. I’ve always felt at home amongst the church and amongst pastors. Um, but when you grow up in the parsonage and other PKs will know this, uh, you are not hidden from. [00:03:58] Kayleigh: The difficult portions of church and the really hard components of church. And so then when you add on to that, becoming a pastor myself, you know, my eyes continued to be open, uh, to some of the ways that church can be a harmful place as much of it as it is a healing place. And I began to kind of ask the question, well, well, why, um, what is going on here? [00:04:21] Kayleigh: Um, particularly because when I served and we’ll get into more of this, I think, but when I was serving in my first lead pastor, it’s. So I’m a really young, I was like 27 when they, or 28 when they entrusted me when I first lead pastorate, which is kind of wild. And so they kind of threw me in and what they do with most young pastors is they kind of throw us into these dying churches. [00:04:44] Kayleigh: And so, right, it’s a small. Church with, you know, it’s dying, it’s dwindled in numbers. And so this is my first kind of lead pastorate. And, you know, I read all the books, I’m a learner, I’m a reader. I, you know, I know how to do all the things. And so I’m reading all of the books on how to revitalize a church and raise a church up from it and all those things and nothing is working. [00:05:06] Kayleigh: Um, and it started to kind of really raise my attention to, well, maybe there’s something else going on here. Um, And, and maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions when we’ve been approaching the church. Uh, and so, uh, again, I’m a learner, so I was like, well, I’m just going to go back to school. If that was the only way I knew how to figure this out. [00:05:25] Kayleigh: So I landed in a THD program that focused on combining the studies of trauma theory with theology. Um, and my undergraduate degree is in psychology, so it felt kind of like a merging of my two worlds. Um, and it was there that I encountered collective trauma and. Really in an interesting way, studying, um, more like childhood development trauma. [00:05:46] Kayleigh: But anytime I looked at it, all I could see was the church, um, and seeing the ways in which there might be a bigger picture. There might be a bigger story going on here. And maybe there’s some collective congregational trauma underneath the, these dying, uh, declining churches that we just aren’t aware of. [00:06:04] Julie: So, so good. And this is the thing that, that just stuns me. When I, I, I do an investigation and the top pastor gets fired, sometimes all the elders step down, but the church, it’s, it’s unbelievably rare for one of those churches to thrive afterwards. And I, and I think so much of it is they think, Oh, we got rid of the bad apple. [00:06:29] Julie: And they have no concept of how that toxicity, one, you know, the toxic, often bullying way of relating and everything was, was taught and learned and trained throughout. But then there is that trauma and, and I just, I think of Willow Creek Community Church, I went to their, it was like a midweek service where they were going to deal with, Supposedly, the women who had been sexually harassed and abused by Bill Heibel’s, the previous pastor, and they didn’t even name it. [00:07:08] Julie: They didn’t name what had happened. They didn’t go into what had happened. They didn’t apologize to the women. The women became like this amorphous something out there, the women, you know? Um, and, and then they talked about, they had a repentance time, like we’re supposed to repent for his sins. It was the most bizarre, unhealing thing I had ever seen. [00:07:27] Julie: And I couldn’t imagine how after something that dysfunctional, a church could go, okay, we’re back, you know, reach the lost, you know, seeker sensitive church. It was just bizarre. Um, so, so much of your work is, is resonating with me. And again, We’ve seen a lot in and it’s really important is dealing with individual trauma and which is super important work. [00:07:53] Julie: Um, and my last podcast with Chuck DeGroat, we talked a lot about that. We talk a lot about that on a lot of podcasts, but we often don’t address again, what’s this collective trauma that, that, you know, that it actually has a social aspect. So talk about why is it important that we begin addressing collective trauma and not just individual trauma, though, you know, obviously we each need to heal as individuals, but collectively as well. [00:08:24] Kayleigh: Yeah. So collective trauma is a newer field, even in psychological studies. So it’s, Not as old as individual trauma studies, and it actually became more popular through the work of Kai Erikson, who’s a sociologist. He’s not even a psychologist, but he studied collective trauma in kind of what he refers to as unnatural disasters. [00:08:43] Kayleigh: And so these disasters that are experienced by communities that have a human, like, blame component. So it was due to somebody’s negligence due to somebody’s poor leadership due to somebody’s abuse, and it’s on a community. And so Kai Erickson notes the, the social, he calls it the social dimension of trauma or collective trauma. [00:09:03] Kayleigh: And what he, he details there is that collective trauma is anything that disrupts and ruptures the, uh, relationships within a community. Distorting and taking apart their, uh, he calls it communality instead of community, but it’s their sense of, like, neighborliness. It’s their sense of being together. It’s their, Their shared identity and their, their shared memories are all now distorted. [00:09:26] Kayleigh: And so I think when we’re speaking specifically about the church, and when we’re looking at religious trauma and congregational trauma, we need to remember that the church is first and foremost, a community. And so sometimes I think that’s missed in our kind of American individualism. You know, a lot of people kind of view spirituality as this individualistic thing, but the church is a community. [00:09:48] Kayleigh: And so when we come together as the body of Christ, you know, when wounding happens, when trauma comes, it breaks down the relationships within that congregation, which really. is what makes it a church. The relationships are what make that a church. And so when trauma comes in and disrupts those and starts causing the divisions and the distrust and the he said, she said, and the choosing of sides and the church splits and all of these things have these ripple effects on the community. [00:10:19] Kayleigh: Um, and they really are, are traumatizing. And so what happens is that if we don’t deal, if we’re only dealing with the individual trauma, In part, that’s usually dealing with people who have left the church, right? And so usually the people who are seeking individual healing from their religious trauma, who are able to name that, who are able to say, I went through this, have often stepped outside of the church. [00:10:42] Kayleigh: Sometimes just for a season, which is completely understandable. They need that time away. They need time to heal. They’re, they don’t, feel safe. But what we’re missing when we neglect the social dimension of religious trauma are often the people who stay are these congregations who can’t name it yet, who can’t articulate that what they’ve gone through is religious trauma, who who maybe are still trying to figure out what that means. [00:11:07] Kayleigh: Often it means that we’re missing, um, you know, these, these the church that I served in, you know, isn’t one of these big name churches that’s going to get, you know, newscasted about. And they can’t necessarily name what happened to them as religious trauma because nobody’s given them the language for it. [00:11:25] Kayleigh: And so we’ve often missed these, these declining churches. We’ve missed because we haven’t remembered that Trauma is communal that trauma is relational. And so we need to, yes, provide as much care and as much resourcing as we can for the healing of individuals, because you can’t heal the community if the individuals don’t know. [00:11:44] Kayleigh: But we really need to remember that the community as a whole. impacted, and that especially when we’re talking about the church, we want to be able to heal and restore those relationships. And to do that means we have to address the social dimensions of the religious trauma. And so [00:12:01] Julie: often the people that, that stay aren’t aware of what’s happened to them. [00:12:08] Julie: Are they not even aware they’re traumatized? [00:12:11] Kayleigh: Right, right. Yeah. [00:12:13] Julie: Yeah. You introduced this, this concept, which is great. I mean, it’s, it’s a riff off of the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which, you know, um, just an incredible book by, uh, Dr. Vander Kolk. But this idea that the body of Christ keeps the score. [00:12:33] Julie: Describe what you mean by that, that the body of Christ keeps the score when there’s this kind of trauma that it’s experiencing. [00:12:40] Kayleigh: Sure. So you kind of alluded to it earlier when you were giving an example of the removing of a toxic pastor, right? And then just the placement of a new pastor. And so often what happens in these situations where there’s spiritual abuse or, um, clergy misconduct or any of those things that’s causing this religious trauma, the answer seems to be, well, let’s just remove the. [00:13:00] Kayleigh: Problem person. And then that will solve everything. Um, well, what happens is we forget that trauma is embodied, right? And so you can remove the physical threat. Um, but if you remove the physical threat or the problem person, but this congregation still has this embodied sense of trauma in which they perceive threat now. [00:13:23] Kayleigh: So they’re reacting to their surroundings out of that traumatized position, because that’s what the collective body has learned to do. And so you see this, um, It’s a silly example, but I use it because I think people see it a lot. So you have a new pastor come in and the new pastor has a great idea, at least he or she thinks it’s a great idea. [00:13:46] Kayleigh: And it probably has to do with removing pews or changing carpet color. Okay. And so they present this, what they think is just a great harmless idea. And the response of the congregation is almost volatile and the pastor can’t figure out why. And often, unfortunately, what pastors have kind of been taught to identify is that they must just idolatry. [00:14:11] Kayleigh: They just have the past as an idol for them and they need to kill this golden cow. Right. And so it becomes this theological problem. Sure, there might be cases where that is the truth, but often I would say that there’s, um, a wonderful. So another great book on trauma. It’s more on racialized trauma, but it deals a lot with historical trauma is, um, rest my Mac mannequins book, um, my grandmother’s hands and in it, he addresses this historical trauma that is embodied and he quotes Dr. [00:14:42] Kayleigh: Noel Larson, who says, if it’s hysterical, it’s probably historical. In other words, if the reaction to the thing happening doesn’t seem to match, like it seems out of proportion, either too energized or not enough energy around it, it’s probably connected to some kind of historical trauma that hasn’t been processed. [00:15:03] Kayleigh: And so we see this a lot in churches who are having a hard time being healthy and flourishing and engaging with the community around them. And. The reason why is often because they have this unhealed trauma that nobody’s given them language for. Nobody’s pointed out, nobody’s addressed for them. Um, and so it’s just kind of lingering under the surface, unhealed, unnamed, and it’s informing how they believe, how they act. [00:15:33] Kayleigh: Um, and so this is really What I mean when I say the body of Christ keeps the score is that the body of Christ has embodied this trauma and it’s coming out in their behaviors, in their actions, in their values, and our pastors are not equipped to address it from a trauma informed perspective. They’ve only been given tools to address it from maybe a theological position, or this kind of revitalization remissioning perspective. [00:16:02] Kayleigh: That often doesn’t work. [00:16:04] Julie: There’s so many things I’m thinking as as you’re talking. I mean one. to come in and do something. And then because people react to, I mean, basically that’s shaming them. It’s guilting them to say, Oh, you have an idol or what’s wrong with you that you can’t get on board. And the truth is they don’t know what’s wrong with them. [00:16:23] Julie: They, they don’t. And, and they’re hurt. And all they know is you just, they’re hurt and now you’ve hurt them. So now they don’t trust you. So way to go. Um, but I’m thinking maybe because we brought this up and I don’t mean to beat up on, on Willow Creek, but I’m thinking about. When the new pastor came in, and I don’t think he’s a bad guy, um, you know, they, they were bleeding money. [00:16:45] Julie: Obviously they, they did not have the resources they did before. So one of the first things they did was they centralized, which meant the campus pastors weren’t going to be preaching anymore. They were going to be pumping in video sermons. Here’s the pastor that people trusted on these campuses. Now, that person’s not going to be preaching, which then of course, all of them left. [00:17:06] Julie: They ended up leaving and the trauma you’d now it’s trauma upon trauma. And it just seems like, especially in so many of these churches, you bring somebody in and they want to move somewhere like, right. They want a thriving church. What they don’t want to do is be at a church and sit in your pain. And yet. [00:17:27] Julie: Unless that’s done, I mean, can these churches, I mean, can they move forward? I mean, what’s going to happen if you come in and you don’t? slow down and say, these people are hurting and I need to, I need to be a shepherd. Then that’s the other thing. It’s so many of these mega churches, and I know this isn’t unique to mega churches that this happens, but I, it’s the world in which I report so often is that these mega churches are very mission vision, five year plan oriented and what they’re not capable of doing. [00:17:59] Julie: I think so many of these, you know, and they always bring in the, the pastor. That’s a good orator, maybe not a shepherd at all. In fact, some of these guys even say, I’m not a shepherd, which that’s another, yeah, I mean, but, but to actually, they need a shepherd at that point. Right. I mean, these, these people need it. [00:18:20] Julie: So, I mean, again, what, what do they need to do? And what happens if they don’t do some of these things? [00:18:28] Kayleigh: So the thing that I have really been drawn to, especially as I study Jesus, and I look at what it means to be trauma informed in the pastorate. So I, I do believe that God is still working through pastors. [00:18:39] Kayleigh: Um, in fact, there’s a really beautiful section of scripture in Jeremiah 23, where God is addressing abusive shepherds and God’s response is, I will raise up new shepherds. So God still wants to work through shepherds. There is still a place for a pastor. The problem is, is I don’t think we’ve taught pastors how to lead out of a posture of compassionate curiosity. [00:19:03] Kayleigh: And so if you follow Jesus and you look at the way that Jesus interacts with hurting people, it is out of this beautiful, humble posture of compassionate curiosity. And so I was always struck by like, he asks the blind man, what do you want me to do for you? And it always seemed like a. That’s a strange question. [00:19:20] Kayleigh: Like, he’s blind, Jesus. What do you think he and often it’s preached on, like, well, we need to be able to tell God what we want. And that’s maybe some of it. But I think it’s also the truth that God knows that it can be re traumatizing to somebody to tell them what they need and what they want. Right? So what we learned when we studied trauma is that it’s not. [00:19:40] Kayleigh: So especially when we’re talking trauma caused by abuse is that abuse is so connected to control. And so what has often happened to these victims of religious abuse of spiritual abuse is that they have had control taken from them entirely. And so when a new pastor comes in and tells them, this is what you need to get healthy again, and never takes the time to approach them from this. [00:20:02] Kayleigh: posture of compassionate curiosity, they can end up re traumatizing them. Um, but our pastors aren’t trained to ask these questions. And so, so often if you read, you know, and they’re well meaning books, you know, they’re, they’re trying to get to what’s going on in the heart of the church. They’re trying to get back to church health, but so many of the books around that have to deal with. [00:20:23] Kayleigh: Asking the church, what are you doing or what are you not doing? And trauma theory teaches us to ask a different question. And that question is what happened to you? And I think if pastors were trained to go into churches and ask the question, what happened to you and just sit with a church and a hold the church and, and listen to the stories of the church, they, they might discover that these people have never been given space to even think about it that way. [00:20:52] Kayleigh: You know, where they’ve just, they’ve had abusive leaders who have just been removed or they’ve had manipulative leaders who have just been removed and they’ve just been given a new pastor and a new pastor and nobody’s given them the space. To articulate what that’s done to them, um, as individuals and as a congregation. [00:21:09] Kayleigh: And so if we can learn to, to follow Jesus in just his curiosity, and he asks the blind man, what do you want me to do for you? He, he says, who touched me when the woman reaches out and touches him. And that’s not a, it’s not a question of condemnation. That’s a question of permission giving. He knows that this woman needs more than physical healing. [00:21:28] Kayleigh: She needs relational healing. She needs to tell her story. And by pausing and saying, who touched me? He provides a space for her to share her story that she’s never been able to share with anyone before. And I think if we were to follow that Jesus, as pastors and as leaders, we would begin to love the Bride of Christ in such a way that would lead to her healing, instead of feeling the need to just rush her through some five year plan to what we think is healing and wholeness, and what actually may not be what they would say is what they need. [00:22:02] Julie: So many things you’re saying are resonating with me. And part of that’s because, uh, like I said, we’re living this. Um, I, I told you last week when we talked that our, our house church was going on a retreat, first retreat we’ve ever had. We’ve been together a little over, well, for me, I came in about two years ago and I think they had been meeting maybe eight or nine months before then. [00:22:29] Julie: Some of the people in our group, Um, don’t come out of trauma. Um, you know, one of our, one of the couples in our church, uh, they’re like young life leaders, really just delightful, delightful, delightful people, but they haven’t lived the religious trauma. One couple is, they’re from the mission field and they had a great missions experience. [00:22:55] Julie: The only trauma they might be experiencing is coming home to the U. S. The truth is they love the mission field, right? Um, and then. The remainder of us come from two, two churches, um, that, that had some sexual abuse that was really, you know, mishandled and the trust with the leaders was, was broken in really grievous ways. [00:23:19] Julie: Um, and then there’s me on top of having that, um, living in this space where, I mean, I just report on this all the time. And so, but one of the beautiful things that happened in this, in this group is that it did have leaders when we came into it and it triggered us. Like, you know, and for us it was like, oh, here’s the inside group and the outside group. [00:23:47] Julie: Like, we’re used to the ins and the outs, right? And, and we’re used to the inside group having power and control, and the rest of us just kind of go along with it. And, and we’re, we’re a tiny little group. Like we’re 20 some people, right? But, but it’s just, and, and we’re wonderful people. Wonderful people. [00:24:02] Julie: And yet we still like, it was like, mm. And um, and so. The beautiful thing is that those leaders recognize, like they didn’t fully understand it, but they said, you know, I think we need to just step down and just not have leaders. And I didn’t even realize till we went on this retreat what an act of service and of love that was for them to just say, were laying down any, any agendas we might’ve had, any even mission or vision that we might’ve had. [00:24:35] Julie: And for one of, you know, one of the guys, it was really hard for him cause he’s just like, Mr. Mr. Energy and initiative. And, and he was like, I better not take initiative because like, it’s, it’s not going to be good for these folks. Um, and on the retreat. So then, I mean, it was, it was really a Holy Spirit. [00:24:54] Julie: experience, I think for all of us, because there definitely was a camp that was like, okay, we’ve had this kind of healing time, but can, can we move forward a little bit? Like, can we, can we have some intentionality? And then there were part of us that were just like, oh my word, if we, if we, if we have leaders, why do we need leaders? [00:25:12] Julie: We’re 20 something people. Like we can just decide everything ourselves. And, and there really was somewhat of an impasse, but it’s interesting. The things that you said for me, And it was funny at one point. They’re like, can’t you just trust? And, you know, kind of like, what, what are you guys afraid of? You know? [00:25:29] Julie: And the first thing that came out of my mouth was control control. Like we’re afraid of control, um, or I’m afraid of control. Um, but what was so, so. Huge for me and I think was one of those again, Holy Spirit moments was when, you know, I was trying to like make a point about power dynamics, like you don’t realize power and like we have to be aware of how power is stewarded in a group like this because everybody has power. [00:25:59] Julie: If you don’t realize as a communicator the power that you have, like I’m aware now that because I can, I can form thoughts pretty quickly. That I can have a lot of influence in a group. I’m aware of that. And so, you know, there was even like a part where I was leading and then I was like, I can’t lead this next thing. [00:26:17] Julie: I’ve been leading too much, you know, and then we, and then we gave, we, somebody had a marker and we gave the marker to, to, um, one of the guys in our group who’s fantastic guy. And, um, And at one point, so, so anyway, I was talking about power and, and one of the guys was like, well, I don’t, I don’t really see power. [00:26:35] Julie: I don’t need. And I’m like, you have it, whether you realize it and you have it. And what was huge is that one of the other guys that sort of a leader was a leader was able to say what she’s talking about is real. Everybody has power. This is really important. And he was quite frankly, somebody with a lot of power in that group because he has a lot of trust, used to be a pastor. [00:26:57] Julie: Um, and for him to acknowledge that for the rest of us was huge. And then this, this other guy, I mean, he said at one point, Oh, well, you know, so and so’s holding the marker right now and he has power, doesn’t he? And I was like, yes, you’re getting it. That’s it. That’s it. Thank you. Because he’s like, you just reframed what we said and I wouldn’t have reframed it that way. [00:27:22] Julie: Like I wouldn’t. And I’m like, yes, exactly. It’s like, and it was like, it was like the light bulbs were going on and people were starting to get it. Um, and then another key, key moment was when one of the women who, you know, wasn’t, you know, from our church where we experienced stuff, who said, can you, can you tell me how that, how that felt for you when we used to have leaders? [00:27:46] Julie: And then for people to be able to express that. And people listened and it was like, and I was able to hear from this guy who felt like he was, he had a straight jacket, you know, because he, he like wants to use his, his initiative. Like he, he. You know, and God’s given that to him. It’s a good thing, you know. [00:28:07] Julie: And all I can say is it was just an incredible experience, an incredible moment, but it would not have happened if, and now I’m going to get kind of, it wouldn’t have happened if people cared more about the mission than the people. And they didn’t realize the people are the mission. This is Jesus work. He doesn’t care about your five year plan. [00:28:41] Julie: He doesn’t care about your ego and the big, you know, plans that you have and things you can do. What he cares is whether you’ll lay your life down for the sheep. That’s what shepherds do. And what I saw in, in our group was the willingness to, for people that have shepherding gifts to lay down their, you know, not literally their lives, but in a way their lives, their, their dreams, their hopes or visions, everything to love another and how that created so much love and trust, you know, in our group. [00:29:22] Julie: And we’re still like trying to figure this out, but yeah, it was, it was hugely, it just so, so important. But I thought how many churches are willing to do that, are willing to, to sit in the pain, are willing to listen. And I’m, I’m curious as you go in now, there’s so much of your work has become with ReStory is, is education and going into these churches. [00:29:52] Julie: You know, normally when this happens, And you told me there’s a, there’s a name for pastors that come in. It’s the afterpastor. Afterpastor. [00:30:00] Kayleigh: Yes. The afterpastor. [00:30:02] Julie: How many times does the afterpastor get it? And does he do that? [00:30:07] Kayleigh: So the problem is, and I can tell you, cause I have an MDiv. I went, I did all the seminary. [00:30:11] Kayleigh: I’m ordained. We don’t get trained in that. Um, so, and there is, um, like you said, so you use this guy as an example who has the clear. Initiative gifts. So they’re what would be called kind of the Apostle, um, evangelist gifts in like the pastoral gift assessment kind of deal. You’ve got the Apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. [00:30:34] Kayleigh: And right now there’s a lot of weight kind of being thrown behind the Apostle evangelist as kind of the charismatic leader who can set the vision. And so most of the books on pastoral You know, church health and church are written kind of geared and directed that way. Um, so we’re really missing the fact that when we’re talking about a traumatized church, what you really need is a prophet shepherd. [00:30:57] Kayleigh: Um, you need somebody who can come in and shepherd the people and care for them well, but also the prophet. The role of the prophet is often to help people make meaning of their suffering. So if you read closely, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, particularly who are two prophets speaking to people in exile, what they’re really doing is helping people make meaning of that suffering. [00:31:17] Kayleigh: They’re helping people tell their story. They’re, they’re lamenting, they’re crying with them. They’re, they’re asking the hard questions. Um, and they’re able to kind of see between the lines. So prophet, Pastors who have kind of that prophetic gifting are able to see below. They’re able to kind of slow down and hear the actual story beyond the behaviors, right? [00:31:35] Kayleigh: So the behaviors aren’t telling the whole story, but we need eyes to see that. And so the problem, I would say, is that a lot of well, meaning pastors simply aren’t taught how to do this. And so they’re not given the resources. They’re not given kind of the, um. this like Christian imagination to be able to look at a church and say, okay, what has happened here and what healings take place here? [00:31:59] Kayleigh: Um, the other problem is, you know, we need to be able to give space. So denominational leaders need to be able to be okay with a church that maybe isn’t going to grow for a few years. And I think that is whether we like it or not. And we can say all day long that we don’t judge a church’s health by its numbers. [00:32:19] Kayleigh: But at the end of the day, pastors feel this pressure to grow the church, right? To have an attendance that’s growing a budget that’s growing and. And so, and part of it is from a good place, right? We want to reach more people from Jesus, but part of it is just this like cultural pressure that defines success by numbers. [00:32:36] Kayleigh: And so can we be okay with a church that’s not going to grow for a little while? You know, can we be okay with a church that’s going to take some like intentional time to just heal? And so when you have an established church, um, which is a little bit different than a house church model, it can be. A really weird sacrifice, even for the people who are there, because often what you have is you have a segment of the church who is very eager to move forward and move on and and to grow and to move into its new future, and they can get frustrated with the rest of the church. [00:33:15] Kayleigh: That kind of seems to need more time. Um, but trauma healing is it’s not linear. And so, you know, you kind of have to constantly Judith Herman identifies like three components of trauma healing. And so it’s safety and naming and remembering and then reconnecting, but they’re not like you finish safety and then you move to this one and then you move to this one. [00:33:36] Kayleigh: Often you’re kind of going, you’re ebbing and flowing between them, right? Because you can achieve safety and then start to feel like, okay, now I can name it. And then something can trigger you and make you feel unsafe again. And so you’re now you’re back here. And so, um, um, Our churches need to realize that this healing process is going to take time, and collective trauma is complicated because you have individuals who are going to move through it. [00:33:57] Kayleigh: So you’re going to have people who are going to feel really safe, and they’re going to feel ready to name, and others who aren’t. And so you have to be able to mitigate that and navigate that. And our pastors just aren’t simply trained in this. And so what I see happening a lot is I’ll do these trainings and I’ll have somebody come up to me afterwards and go, Oh my goodness, I was an after pastor and I had no idea that was a thing. [00:34:18] Kayleigh: And they’re like, you just gave so much language to my experience. And you know, and now I understand why they seem to be attacking me. They weren’t really attacking me. They just don’t trust the office of the pastor. And I represent the office of the pastor. Okay. And so sometimes they take that personally again, it becomes like these theological issues. [00:34:38] Kayleigh: And so helping pastors understand the collective trauma and being able to really just take the time to ask those important questions and to increase not only their own margin for suffering, but to increase a congregations margin for suffering. You know, to go, it’s going to be, we can sit in this pain. [00:34:58] Kayleigh: It’s going to be uncomfortable, but it’s going to be important, you know, learning how to lament, learning how to mourn. All of these things are things that often we’re just not trained well enough in, um, as pastors. And so therefore our congregations aren’t trained in them either. You know, they don’t have margin for suffering either. [00:35:14] Kayleigh: Um, and so we need to be able to equip our pastors to do that. Um, and then equip the congregations to be able to do that as well. [00:35:20] Julie: So good. And I’m so glad you’re doing that. I will say when I first started this work, um, I was not trauma informed. I didn’t know anything about trauma really. And I didn’t even, you know, I was just a reporter reporting on corruption and then it turned into abuse in the church. [00:35:38] Julie: And I started interfacing with a lot of abuse victims. who were traumatized. And I think back, um, and, and really, I’ve said this before, but survivors have been my greatest teachers by far, like just listening to them and learning from them. But really from day one, you know, it’s loving people, right? It really, it like, if you love and if you empathize, which You know, some people think it’s a sin, um, just cannot, um, but if you do that and, and that’s what, you know, even as I’m thinking about, um, within our own, our own house church, there were people who weren’t trained, but they did instinctively the right things because they loved. [00:36:28] Julie: You know, and it just reminds me, I mean, it really does come down to, they will know you are Christians by your love. You know, how do we know love? Like Christ laid down his life for us. He is our model of love and, and somehow, you know, like you said, the, in the church today we’ve, we’ve exalted the, um, what did you say? [00:36:49] Julie: The apostle evangelist? The apostle evangelist. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, we’ve exalted that person, um, you know, And I think we’ve forgotten how to love. And too many of these pastors don’t know how to love. They just don’t know how to love. And it’s, it’s tragic. Because they’re supposed to be I mean, the old school models, they were shepherds, you know, like you said, like we need apostles, we need evangelists. [00:37:16] Julie: But usually the person who was leading the church per se, the apostles and evangelists would often end up in parachurch organizations. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. I think the church needs all of those things. Um, and, uh, But yeah, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve left that behind, sadly. And there’s nothing sexy about being a shepherd. [00:37:37] Kayleigh: Yeah, no, I, all, all of the Apostle, I mean that, well, the whole thing is needed, um, and it’s most beautiful when we just work together, and, and when they can respond to each other. So, I mean, me and you’re an example in your house, you’re a visiting example of this. You can’t, even if just listening, you have some clear Apostle evangelists in your group, right? [00:37:54] Kayleigh: I mean, Um, right? And so you have these people wired for that, and yet they’re able to, to learn and respond to some of the people in the group who have more of those prophet shepherd tendencies. And so I think that that’s really what, and that’s loving, right? So we should go back. It’s just loving one another and learning from one another. [00:38:17] Kayleigh: And knowing when to lean into certain giftings and to learn from others giftings. This is why it’s the body of Christ. And so when a component of the body of Christ is left out, we can’t be who God’s called us to be. And so when we neglect the role of the shepherd and neglect the role of the prophet or minimize them, or see them as secondary, then we’re not going to do called us to be. [00:38:44] Kayleigh: You know, we may need all of it to come together to do what God has called us to do. God is working in this church. He’s worked all through this church. He has established it and called it, and He’s going to use it. But we need to be learning how He has built it and how He framed it. For me to love one another and not elevate one gifting above another. [00:39:07] Julie: And it’s interesting too, you mentioned the office of the pastor. Um, I know as we were discussing some of this, we have one guy who’s very, I mean, actually our entire group, and I think this is probably why we’ve been able to navigate some of this. It’s it’s a really spiritually mature group. A lot of people. [00:39:26] Julie: who have been in leadership, um, which sometimes you get a lot of leaders together and it can be, you know, but this hasn’t been that way because I think people really do love the Lord. Um, and they love each other. Um, but one of the things that was brought up, um, is Is the pastor an office or is it a role and have we made it into an office and, and what we realized in the midst of that and I, you know, I, I’m like, well, that’s really interesting. [00:39:57] Julie: I would like to study that. And I find there, there’s a curiosity when you talk compassionate curiosity, I think there’s also a curiosity in, in people who have been through this kind of trauma. There’s a curiosity in, okay, what, what did we do? that we did because everybody said that’s how we’re supposed to do it. [00:40:18] Kayleigh: Yeah. [00:40:18] Julie: Yeah. Do I really have that conviction? Could I really argue it from scripture? Is this even right? And so I find even in our group, there is a, there is a, um, there’s a curiosity and maybe this is because we’re coming through and we’re in, you know, I think a later stage of healing is that now we’re like really curious about what should we be? [00:40:44] Julie: Yes. Yes. What should we be, like, we, we want to dig into what, what is a church, what should it really be, and what, why, how could we be different? Of course, always realizing that you can have the perfect structure and still have disaster. Um, it really does come down to the character of the people and, and that, but, but yeah, there’s a real, Curiosity of, of sort of, um, digging, digging into that. [00:41:10] Julie: And, and let me just, I can ask you, and, and maybe this will be a rabbit trail, maybe we’ll edit it out. I don’t know. Um, , but, but I am curious what do, what do you think of that idea that the, the pastorate may be a role that we’ve made into an office and maybe that could be part of the problem? [00:41:27] Kayleigh: I think that’s a lot of it. [00:41:28] Kayleigh: Um, because when we turn the, the pastorate into an office, we can lose the priesthood of all believers. So that I think is often what happens is that, um, you create this pastoral role where now all of the ministry falls on to the pastor. And so instead of the pastor’s role being to equip the saints for the ministry, which is what scripture says, the scripture describes a pastor as equipping the saints for the ministry. [00:41:56] Kayleigh: Now the pastor is doing the ministry, right? There’s, there’s just all of this pressure on the pastor. And that’s, that’s where I think we start to see this. The shift from the pastor being the one who is, you know, encouraging and equipping and edifying and, you know, calling up everybody to live into their role as the body of Christ where we’ve seen. [00:42:19] Kayleigh: You know, I have a soft spot for pastors. Again, I’m like, they’re all my relatives are them. I love pastors and I know some really beautiful ones who get into ministry because that’s exactly what they want to do. And so what has often happened though, is that the, the ways of our culture have begun to inform how the church operates. [00:42:40] Kayleigh: And so we saw this, you know, when, when the church started to employ business In kind of the church growth movement. So it’s like, okay, well, who knows how to grow things? Business people know how to grow things. Okay. Well, what are they doing? Right. And so now that the pastor is like the CEO, people choose their churches based on the pastor’s sermon, right? [00:43:00] Kayleigh: Well, I like how this pastor preaches. So I’m going to go to that church. Um, so some of it is. So I would say that not all of it is pastors who have like that egotistical thing within them at the beginning. Some of it is that we know that those patterns exist. But some of these men and women are genuinely just love the Lord’s people and then get into these roles where they’re all of a sudden like, wait, I, Why, why is it about me and others, this pressure to preach better sermons and the person down the road or, you know, run the programs and do all of these things instead of equipping the people to do the work of God. [00:43:38] Kayleigh: And so I think it’s, it’s about, and right, I think it’s happened internally in our churches, but I also think there’s this outward societal pressure that has shifted the pastor from this shepherding role to the CEO office. Um, And finding the, like, middle ground, right? So again, like, we can swing the pendulum one way and not have pastors. [00:44:05] Kayleigh: Or we can swing the pendulum the other way and have pastors at the center of everything. But is there a way of finding, kind of, this middle ground where people who are fairly calm and gifted and anointed by God to do rich shepherding can do it in a way that is Zen sitting that church that is equal famous saint that is calling the body of Christ to be what it is called be. [00:44:27] Kayleigh: And I guess I’m, I’m constantly over optimistic and so I’m convinced that there’s gotta be a way , that we can get to a place where pastors can live out of their giftings and live by their callings and live out of their long dreams in such a way. That leads to the flourishing health of the church and not to its destruction. [00:44:45] Julie: Yes. And, and I think if it’s working properly, that absolutely should be there. They should be a gift to the church. Um, and, and sadly we just, we haven’t seen enough of that, but that is, that is, I think the model. Um, let’s talk specifically, and we have talked, or we might not have named it, um, but some of the results of this collective trauma. [00:45:08] Julie: in a congregation. Um, let’s, let’s name some of the things. These are ways that this can, that this can play itself out. [00:45:17] Kayleigh: Sure. So when we’re talking about congregational collective trauma, one of the main results that we’ve talked about kind of in a roundabout way is this lack of trust that can happen within the congregation. [00:45:27] Kayleigh: And this can be twofold. We can talk about the lack of trust for the leadership, but it all also can be lack of trust. Just, In the congregation itself, um, this often happens, particularly if we’re looking at clergy misconduct that maybe wasn’t as widespread. So I think this is some of what you’ve kind of talked about with Willow Creek a little bit, and I’m, I wasn’t in that situation, but I’ve seen it other places where, you know, in our system, the denominational leadership removes a pastor. [00:45:56] Kayleigh: And so what can happen in a system like that is that denominational leadership becomes aware of abuse. They act on the abuse by removing the pastor. And what you have happening is kind of this, um, Betrayal trauma or this, you know, bias against believing. And so because the idea that their clergy person who they have loved and trusted, you know, shepherd them could possibly do something that atrocious. [00:46:24] Kayleigh: That idea is too devastating for them to internalize. So it feels safer to their bodies to deny it. And so what can happen is you can have a fraction of the church. that thinks it’s, you know, all made up and that there’s no truth to it. And they began to blame the denominational leadership as the bad guys or that bad reporter that, you know, the [00:46:45] Julie: gossip monger out there. [00:46:47] Julie: It’s so bad. [00:46:48] Kayleigh: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you have this split. Now, sometimes it literally splits and people will leave. Um, but sometimes they don’t and they all stay. And so you have these fractions of people who believe different things about what happened. And so now there’s, there’s a lack of shared identity. [00:47:08] Kayleigh: So I would say one of the key components of collective trauma in a congregation is this mistrust, which is often connected to a lack of shared identity. And so they can’t really figure out who they are together. What does it mean for us to be a community to get there? Um, and so trauma begins to write their story. [00:47:27] Kayleigh: And so when we talk about the embodiment of trauma, one of the ways that that works in individuals, and this is like a mini neuroscience lesson that many of your listeners are probably aware of, because I think you have a very trauma informed audience. Audience, but, um, you know, that it, it makes us react out of those fight, flight, or freeze responses. [00:47:46] Kayleigh: And so that happens individually, right? So something triggers us and all of a sudden we’re at our cortisol is raised. We’re acting out of the, uh, you know, those flight flight places that happens communally too. So a community gets triggered by, you know, a pastor again, having what they think is just a creative idea, you know, but maybe it triggers that time that that pastor. [00:48:09] Kayleigh: Had a creative idea that was, you know, and ran with it without talking to anybody and just like wield the control and manipulated people. And now, all of a sudden, this pastor who thinks they just have this innocent, creative idea is now seen as manipulative. And what are they going to try to do behind our backs? [00:48:27] Kayleigh: And what are they going to try? And, and. What are they going to take from us? Right? And so trauma, trauma takes from people. And so now they’re living kind of out of this perpetual perceived fear, perceived threat, that something else is going to be lost. And so when you have a congregation that’s constantly operating out of, you know, this fight, flight, or freeze response. [00:48:52] Kayleigh: Collectively, I mean, how can we expect them to live out the mission that God has given them? Um, you know, they’re not, they’re not there. They’re not able to, um, they’re not able to relate to one another in a healthy way. And so we, we see a lack of kind of intimate relationships in these congregations, right? [00:49:09] Kayleigh: Because so the Deb Dana, who has helped people really understand the polyvagal theory, when we’re talking about, um, trauma talks about your, your, um, Nervous system, your autonomic nervous system is kind of being like a three rung ladder. And so in this three rung ladder, you have the top rung being your ventral bagel state, which is where you can engage with people in safe and healthy ways. [00:49:32] Kayleigh: And then you move down into kind of your sympathetic nervous system. And this is where you’re in that fight flight freeze and then dorsal bagels at the bottom. And in those two middle and bottom, you can’t build these deep relationships. And again, deep relationships are what make a church a church. And so if you have a congregation that’s stuck in these middle to bottom rungs of this ladder, they’re, they’re fight, flight, freeze, or they’re withdrawing from one another. [00:49:54] Kayleigh: You’re, you’re losing the intimacy, the vulnerability, the safety of these congregations to build those kinds of relationships. And so I would say that, that distrust, that lack of shared identity and that inability to build deeper kind of relationships are three kind of key components of what we’re seeing in congregations who are carrying this collective trauma. [00:50:16] Julie: And yet, if you work through that together, like I will say right now, I feel a great deal of affection for, for everyone. Uh, in our house tours because we went through that chaos together, but also it was, it was an opportunity to see love and people lay down their lives for each other. So to, to be able to see, I mean, you begin writing a new story instead of that old story that’s been so dominant, you know, that you have to tell, you have to work through. [00:50:50] Julie: Yeah, you do. And, and, and you have, you do. I love where you say, you know, people need to, to hear that from you. Yeah. I think that’s really, really important for people to have a safe place. But then at the same time, you can’t, you don’t want to live the rest of your life there. You don’t want that to define, define you. [00:51:09] Julie: Um, and that’s, that’s what’s beautiful though, is if you work through it together, now you, you’ve got a new story, right? You’ve got, you’ve got Dodd doing something beautiful. Um, among you and, and that’s what he does. [00:51:23] Kayleigh: That’s why we call our organization Restory. Um, it is a word used in trauma theory and in reconciliation studies to talk about what communities who have experienced a lot of violence have to do is they have to get to a place where they’re able to, it’s exactly what you’re talking about with your house churches doing is you guys have kind of come to a place where you’re able to ask the question, who do we want to be now? [00:51:45] Kayleigh: And this is this process of restorying. And so what trauma does is in many ways, for a while, it tries to write our stories. And for a while, it kind of has, because of the way that it’s embodied, we kind of, it has to, right? Like we have to process like, okay, I’m reacting to this. trigger because of this trauma that’s happened. [00:52:05] Kayleigh: So how do I work through that? You know, how do I name that? How do I begin to tell that story? And so we, and we have to tell the story, right? Because I mean, trauma theory has been the dialectic of traumas, but Judith Herman talks about is it’s very unspeakable because it’s horrific, but it has to be spoken to be healed. [00:52:22] Kayleigh: Right. And so with this trauma, it can be hard to speak initially. But it needs to be spoken to be healed. But once we’ve done that, once we begin to loosen the control that trauma has on us. Once we’re able to speak it out loud, and then we can get to a place individually and communally where we can start to ask ourselves, Who do we want to be? [00:52:45] Kayleigh: And who has God called us to be? And no, things are not going to be the way they were before the trauma happened. I think that’s the other thing that happens in churches is there’s a lot of misconception. That healing means restoring everything to the way it was before. And when that doesn’t happen, there’s this question of, well, well, did we, did we heal? [00:53:06] Kayleigh: And we have to remember that we’re never going back to the way it was before the trauma happened. But we can begin to imagine what it can look like now. Once we begin to integrate the suffering into our story, and we begin to ask those helpful questions, and we take away the trauma’s control, now we can ask, who do we want to be? [00:53:24] Kayleigh: And we can begin to write a new beautiful story that can be healing for many others. [00:53:29] Julie: A friend of mine who has been through unspeakable trauma, I love when she talks about her husband, because they went through this together, and she often says, he’s like an aged fine wine. You know, and I love that because to me, no, you’re not going back to who you were, but in many ways who you were was a little naive, little starry eyed, a little, you know, and, and once you’ve been through these sorts of things, it is kind of like an aged fine wine. [00:54:01] Julie: You have, you’re, you’re aged, but hopefully in a beautiful way. And, you know, I, I think you’re way more compassionate. Once you’ve gone through this, you’re way more able to see another person who’s traumatized and And to, you know, reach out to that person, to love that person, to care for that person. And so it’s a beautiful restoring. [00:54:26] Julie: And we could talk about this for a very long time. And we will continue this discussion at Restore, [00:54:33] Kayleigh: um, because [00:54:34] Julie: you’re going to be at the conference and that was part of our original discussions. So folks, if you wanna talk more to Kaleigh , come to Restore. I, I’m, I’m gonna fit you in somehow because , I’m gonna be there. [00:54:46] Julie: you’re gonna be there. But do you just have a wealth of, uh, I think research and insights that I think will really, really be powerful? And I’m waiting for you to write your book because it needs to be written. Um, but I’m working on it. , thank you for, for taking the time and for, um, just loving the body. [00:55:07] Julie: And in the way that you have, I appreciate it. [00:55:09] Kayleigh: Well, thank you. Because, you know, when I heard about your work and your tagline, you know, reporting the truth, but restoring the church, you know, I was just so drawn in because that’s what we need. The church is worth it. The church is beautiful and she is worth taking the time to restore. [00:55:24] Kayleigh: And I’m so thankful for the work that you’re doing to make sure that that that happens. [00:55:28] Julie: Thank you. Well, thanks so much for listening to the Roy’s Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’ve appreciated this podcast and our investigative journalism, would you please consider donating to the Roy’s report to support our ongoing work? [00:55:47] Julie: As I’ve often said, we don’t have advertisers or many large donors. We mainly have you. The people who care about our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church. So if you’d like to help us out, just go to Julie Roy’s spelled R O Y S dot com slash donate. That’s Julie Roy’s dot com slash donate. [00:56:07] Julie: Also just a quick reminder to subscribe to the Roy’s report on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. [00:56:29] Julie: Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more

Guest Bios Show Transcript https://youtu.be/v_OzUDcA3u0If you’re like a lot of folks, you look put together on the outside. But inside, there’s a constant churn of unprocessed shame, anger, or grief. Little by little, you’re becoming disconnected from who you really are. But professor, author and licensed therapist, Chuck DeGroat, says it doesn’t have to be this way. And on this podcast, he invites listeners to take the journey to true healing. You may know Chuck as the author of his very popular 2020 book, When Narcissism Comes to Church. But in his newest book, Healing What’s Within, Chuck opens up about one of the most traumatic experiences of his life—when he got fired from his job at a church. Chuck did what a lot of us do when we’re experiencing excruciating pain—he pushed it down and soldiered through. After all, he had a family to support and career to salvage. But eventually, that trauma began to manifest in his body. And he found he could no longer ignore the pain—or rely on his means of coping. He had to confront the profound disconnection he felt from himself, from others, and from God.  With the heart of a caring pastor and expertise of a licensed therapist, Chuck shows the way to hope and healing for the deep wounds within your soul. Guests Chuck DeGroat Chuck DeGroat is Professor of Pastoral Care and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, and a faculty member of the Soul Care Institute. He is a therapist, speaker, consultant, pastor, and author of several books including When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. Chuck is married to Sara and has two daughters. Learn more at www.chuckdegroat.net Show Transcript SPEAKERSCHUCK DEGROAT, JULIE ROYS JULIE ROYS  00:04If you’re like a lot of folks, you look really put together on the outside, but on the inside there’s this unprocessed shame, anger, or grief. Little by little, you’re becoming disconnected from who you really are. But my guest today says it doesn’t have to be that way. Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and joining me today is professor, author, and licensed therapist Chuck DeGroat. You may know Chuck is the author of his very popular 2020 book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, but in his newest book, Healing What’s Within, Chuck talks about one of the most traumatic experiences of his life when he got fired from his job at a church. And Chuck did what a lot of us do when we’re experiencing excruciating pain, he pushed it down and soldiered through. After all, he had a family to support and a career to salvage. But eventually that trauma began to manifest in his body, and he found he could no longer ignore the pain or rely on his means of coping. He had to confront the profound disconnection he felt from himself, from others and from God friends. If you’ve been through trauma and today you’re feeling not okay, this episode is for you, and I want you to know there is hope.   JULIE ROYS  01:21 I’m going to get to my interview with Chuck in just a moment. But first, I want to thank the sponsors of this podcast, the RESTORE Conference, and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re someone who’s experienced church hurt or abuse, there are few places you can go to pursue healing. Similarly, if you’re an advocate, counselor or pastor, there are few conferences designed to equip you to minister to people traumatized in the church, but the RESTORE Conference, this February 7th and 8th in Phoenix, Arizona, is designed to do just that. Joining us will be leading abuse survivor advocates like Mary Demuth and Dr David Pooler, an expert in adult clergy sexual abuse. Also joining us will be Scott McKnight, author of A Church Called Tov, Diane Langberg, a psychologist and trauma expert, yours truly, and more. For more information, just go to RESTORE2025.com.   JULIE ROYS  02:15 Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there, Dan and Kurt Marquart, are men of integrity. To check them out just go to BUYACAR123.COM.   JULIE ROYS  02:42 Well, again, joining me today is Chuck DeGroat, a professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He’s also the founding executive director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program there at Western and he’s a licensed therapist, a spiritual director, and a faculty member with the Soul Care Institute, and he’s written several books, including his latest, Healing What’s Within. So Chuck, welcome. I’m just so thrilled you could join us. Thank you. It’s a privilege. Julie, well, and thanks so much for writing this book, which I believe it releases in just a few days. Are you excited?   CHUCK DEGROAT  03:17 I am excited. You know, I think this is my maybe six go around with writing, and so the anxiety and the pressure just isn’t what it used to be in terms of, will this succeed? But this is a book that came from a pretty deep place and is written for the folks who I’ve worked with over the years who have experienced trauma, the kind of trauma that imprints itself after the abuse, the harm. I’m hopeful for that, that it offers some pathway to healing, invitation to healing for folks.   JULIE ROYS  03:58 I think it will. It was a fantastic book. I know for me, I found so much of it relevant, so I really appreciate it, and I know so many people listening are in different states of healing from trauma, and so I really think this discussion is going to be exceptionally helpful for them. And I should mention too that we’re offering your book as a premium for anybody who donates to The Roys Report. So folks, if you want any info on that, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE and we’ll be really eager to get this book in your hands. But Chuck, as you mentioned, this book comes from a really personal place for you, and you reference it throughout the book that you got fired from a church, and that was a very traumatic experience. And you tell some of it in your book, you don’t tell a whole lot of it. Of course, the journalist in me wants to know more. So what can you tell us about that experience and how it impacted you?   CHUCK DEGROAT  04:57 You know, I was 33 at the time in 2003 and I felt like it’s over, I’m done. And I do know that word got out, I’m this pastor attempted to sort of blacklist me. And so I went through a lot of these things that I hear today when I work with pastors, frankly, right? And I think the challenging thing about that is a lot was going on inside of me, and I talk some about this, but I was also a pastor and a therapist, and people looked at me and they said, Oh, you’re handling this so well. We’re so proud of you. When the reality was is that I was a mess, and I really needed someone to say, you must be overwhelmed, exhausted, angry, confused, and I didn’t really have that. So I sort of put my head down and pushed forward and that actually magnified the trauma, because we know that trauma compounds in aloneness when we’re in isolation, which eventually led, as I talk about, to a 2012 hospitalization. But that’s what a lot of us do, and I knew better to some extent. I was a therapist. I had some of the tools, and yet, so many of us who go through situations like that feel isolated. We didn’t have The Roys Report back then, and really very little advocacy, right? And so I’m heartened today that people can tell their stories, that there is advocacy, not for everyone, obviously, right? But I mean, some people still find themselves alone and isolated in these things. But the book, in a sense, is reflection, and I have chosen in the past not to center my own story, but I was encouraged by the publisher, like there are parts of this that I think you need to write  for the readers this time.   JULIE ROYS  06:53 This what is so I think difficult for folks who experience religious trauma is that often accompanying their religious trauma is being cut off from your religious community, from your faith community, and so you are so incredibly alone. Like you get fired from your job, you can retreat to your church, right? You get fired from your church, and you are so so alone.   CHUCK DEGROAT  07:20 You don’t want to go into the grocery store, the local grocery store, if you’re seeing someone, right? ,   JULIE ROYS  07:25 It’s tough. It is so so tough. And I’ve experienced that, and I know probably the majority of people listening to this podcast have experienced it. So this is going to be so incredibly relevant. So in your book, you take us to Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve just sinned, and God comes to them in the garden, and he asks them three questions. And these three questions become sort of the outline for your book. And the first question is, where are you? Can you explain why this question is such an important question for those who are experiencing trauma to consider?   CHUCK DEGROAT  08:02 Just to back up for a minute. It felt to me really important to tell this story in a way that highlighted God’s kindness, God’s presence. Because the story right before that is of this slithering serpent that sort of sidles up to Adam and Eve and asks the question, Did God really say? and really what I’d say is, he targets the hearts of Adam and Eve. He deceives them. He harms them. It’s a story of wounding, harm, deceit, abuse. So some of your listeners, a lot of your listeners’ stories are right there in that story, and with that, with that harm, with that deceit, with those questions, with the confusion, can I can I trust God? Can I trust what God has put in me, worth, belonging, goodness, purpose, all these good things? Do I have to go it on my own? And so that’s where the story begins. And I think that’s where I found myself too. I guess I’m on my own. I’m not sure that I can trust you God. I feel so much shame and self-contempt myself. I guess I’m on my own. And for so many of us who are survivors of abuse, spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and more neglect and other forms of harm, there are profound questions. One of those big questions is, where is God in the midst of it? And oftentimes because our abusers sometimes sound so much like God and come in sort of a spiritual cloak or robe or whatever, we can sort of conflate our abuser with God. And so it’s stunning to me that from the very beginning, God moves toward Adam and Eve, who are clearly in a sympathetic nervous system storm, who are covering up and running away, hiding all the stuff right that I do with a kind where are you? And God is out on his walk, the walk that God would take with Adam and Eve every day, like I miss you, and so there’s this immediate movement of kindness. And I know for every survivor of abuse, that first movement toward them, that first person who’s kind, who believes, who listens and believes right, is so important. So I really do see something, finding my way back to the story has helped me recover my own sense of God’s kindness and mercy in the midst of pain and harm.   JULIE ROYS  10:29 It’s interesting, and this is kind of sad, but I’ve never revisited God with Adam and Eve in the garden and thought of it as  like you’re saying, sort of a curiosity and a sadness, but also an invitation. I think I’ve often thought of it, and maybe this says something as kind of a gotcha moment. And that’s how I felt about it. But I love the way that you say, this is an invitation, yet one that a lot of us don’t take. So talk about that and why we tend to suffer in this isolation, not just because of our situation, but also because of our own choices.   CHUCK DEGROAT  11:16 Yeah, yeah. The reality is, I think it’s a story of disconnection, right? Adam and Eve find themselves East of Eden, and they’re going it on their own, and God is moving toward them. But as is often the case for a lot of us who’ve experienced harm, we’re sort of hunkering down, moving away and for many of us, we live in habitual, what I call habitual disconnection and self-protection for years. I always think I should have known better. I was a trained therapist in a really good orientation, relational orientation toward therapy, where I had some good, vulnerable friendships. I was a pastor who’s now out of ministry, obviously for a season, but I had started teaching in a counseling program during that time, so I had counselors around me, and yet, at the same time, I was living in a kind of habitual disconnection. And what’s scary, Julie, is I could, this is scary to say out loud. I could look the part and dress the part. I could invite people on silent retreats. I could offer them an invitation to relationship, to vulnerability, all the while, like I’m doubling down. That’s the part of it that I think for those of us who, even those of us who think we’re on a good journey, a self-aware journey, to realize how we can hide from ourselves and hide from other people. When I did finally find another job in ministry in San Francisco, the way I went in, like I went in with this kind of fierce determination to do it well. I’m gonna do this so well that there’d never, ever be an opportunity for them to say, well, I’m not entirely sure what I think about Chuck or we’re not sure whether we want him here, and that eventually took its toll on my body. You know, Bessel van der Kolk wrote that best-selling book, The Body Keeps the Score, and my body kept the score, and I end up in a hospital in Mexico while on vacation, thinking that I needed a routine gallbladder surgery. But they go in and they discover that my body is septic, and what the doctor eventually said to me, through a translator, was, we don’t see this in 40-year-olds. We see this in 60–70-year-olds, what’s going on inside of you. So, my body had absorbed and hadn’t metabolized and worked through the trauma, and it sort of pushed it down or repressed it, right? And it became the storm within me.   JULIE ROYS  13:48 Hearing you describe it, I didn’t realize in the book that this event happened in 2003, the hospitalization was 2012; we’re talking nine years of this festering inside of you. And you’re right. I think we’re starting to get a little more aware of how important our bodies are and taking care of our body that this is what God’s given us to incarnate, to live in this world. But we do often do such a bad job of it, but it is our dashboard. And you talk about the idea of our body being a house, and we can either live at home in our house, we can either relax in our house. Or you talk about different states, sympathetic storm, or a dorsal fog. Those were somewhat new terms for me because I don’t live in the mental health world. Talk about that.   CHUCK DEGROAT  14:44 So, this was the really important turn for me. After I wrote this book on narcissism in the church that came out in 2020, and there are a number of folks, Diane Langberg, Wade Mullen, Scott McKnight, Laura Barringer, together. We were all, by the way, really, for one another. And it was a kind of a season where you’ve played a prominent role in bringing these conversation to light in a variety of ways, centering these stories of survivors. These books that talk about these various dynamics, and people at Astoria to write some sort of follow up to it? Or I said, I don’t really have a follow up to that, but I’m mindful that abuse is what happens to you, but trauma is what happens within you. And I had to go on a particular kind of healing journey. So what I wanted to do is write a book that speaks to that healing journey. And the reality is, is that two people could go through the same experience of harm, which is to say, they could serve on a staff with an abusive pastor but process it very differently. The trauma can look very different. One with care and some practices and things like that can come away very resilient. Another might isolate and self-medicate and come out even more traumatized.   CHUCK DEGROAT  16:07 So part of what I’m inviting people to do is to notice number one, when I call the dashboard their feelings. This is the work of folks in the religious trauma arena, paying attention to your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your behaviors. And as you said a little earlier, interpersonal interactions and relationships, you know. So I’m not going to the grocery store anymore because I’m afraid that I’m going to run into some of the leaders in the church. It’s really important to point to, but as I get a sense in my work of what’s happening on this dashboard. So I’m working with someone, and they identify 7 or 10 or 15 things, some of them yellow, some of them red on the dashboard. Like red, meaning a glaring warning light. Those are often indicators of what’s happening beneath the surface in the engine that we call the autonomic nervous system. And the two main areas there that I like to refer to as number one sympathetic the sympathetic nervous system, which I call storm, the sympathetic storm within, where you go into perpetual fight or flight, or even a kind of fawning appeasement that we often see survivors of abuse go into. Like this kind of people pleasing, or what I call fine. So there are four F’s, fight, flight, fawn and fine. Fine being this kind of desperate, clinging to someone, help, help, help. I don’t know what to do. And we can live here. I lived in this kind of sympathetic storm for years. When that gets to be too much, we go into fog, which is to say our bodies are like this is just too much. I can’t do it anymore. I need to shut down. And for some of us, and I did this as well, we start to self-medicate. It’s too much. I feel like too much anxiety in my body, but when I have that glass of wine or two at night or three or five, that seems to make it go away. Or when I lose myself in shows or shopping or pornography or whatever the case may be. When we self-medicate, we get sucked into this dorsal place in our nervous system, this parasympathetic place that I call fog. And frankly, a lot of the folks that I work with who are survivors of abuse of some kind, are on this hamster wheel of sympathetic storm and dorsal fog, and they can’t get off. And so the invitation, as you pointed to, is to come home. God gave us this resource of this kind of home place in our nervous system, where we can feel grounded and connected and alive and aware in ourselves. But so many of us live far from home, as I say, and so the book is an invitation back to home, back to connection with ourselves, with others, with God. I can talk more about that inner resource. But as you know, because you work with so many survivors, and I do too, many of us find ourselves for days, weeks, and even years, on that hamster wheel of storm and fog.   JULIE ROYS  19:01 Oh, we do but I have seen and have witnessed that kind of coming home. I went on a hiking trip this summer with two survivors who have become incredibly dear to me, and it was just so beautiful, because I think all of us had come to this home, and were in such a really good place, not that we’ve arrived. I don’t think this side of heaven we ever arrive, but it’s just so beautiful to witness and to be in. I think when you can be together and share and feel that home together even. I mean, it’s such a beautiful, beautiful gift. But I’ll find at the same time, like the fight the fly, I mean, that stuff, man, I can get triggered on social media and I’m in fight mode. Man, oh my gosh, I’m right there, and I’m just like, Wait, what am I doing? Or I’ll have a friend be like, Julie, what are you doing? And I’ll be like, all right, all right, because it’s there’s certain things that can trigger you and just pull you back.   CHUCK DEGROAT  20:04 Yeah. You’re right, you know? And I think what’s beautiful is that God designed us, not just spiritually, but physiologically, to experience what I call the physiological still waters and green pastures within. You can come to a place of such connection with God, with others, with your own self, because the healing from trauma is about reconnection with yourself. You know, these thoughts, these emotions that we talked about, these body sensations. People who’ve been traumatized will say, I I’ll ask them how they’re feeling, and they’ll say, I don’t know how I’m feeling, I guess I’m just mad. I just want things to change, and we get disconnected from these inner experiences.   CHUCK DEGROAT  20:47 So part of the work that I do in the room is inviting them to pay attention once again. Oh, I’m so much more angry than Oh, but I’m ashamed too that I never did anything or said anything. I was at that church for 10 years, and I knew that the senior pastor was so harmful, and so now there’s shame, and I’m feeling it my body. I’ve had these stomach pains for years, and I thought that I  just needed to change my diet, you know? And I noticed that I came in the back door of the church, not the front door, because I didn’t want to see the senior pastor. Like we could live in this space for years and years, all the while disconnected from what’s really going on within.   JULIE ROYS  21:27 And it’s such a terrible place to live. But the invitation is there. Second question that God asks in the garden is, who told you? What’s the significance of that question?   CHUCK DEGROAT  21:42 This is a question that invites us to go a bit deeper and to look at our own stories. And as I’ve done this work, and I get into some attachment theory in this section, I get into how we begin to pay attention to those emotions and bodily sensations and other things that lead us to the depths of our own stories. But the reality is that, as I do this work, and for me as well, so many of us who found our way into abusive systems, found our way there for some reasons that are related to our family of origin. Like we learn to neglect ourselves in particular ways, disown our needs in particular kinds of ways, to take abuse or harm in ways that we didn’t even realize that it was happening to us. And we learned not to trust our gut instincts that would say, get out of this! This is harmful to you. This is hurtful to you. So we learn to cut ourselves off. This is often the tougher work  when you’re doing this kind of recovery work for survivors in particular, there’s that first place of sort of figure out, like, where am I and what choices do I need to make right now for my own, perhaps even my own safety, and for the first steps of my own healing. But invariably, we have to go to that deeper level to ask, so how did I end up there in the first place, and why? And often this, as you know, because you talk to so many survivors, that comes with so much shame, like I did it. I made this choice. I’m the one. I’m responsible. I should have known better. When the reality is, I’m working with a man this week, and I said, but these are the waters you’ve been swimming in your whole life. Like you’ve only known murky waters and fish that bite, you know? And so, of course, you’re going to find your way to a church where you’re swimming in murky waters and senior pastors who bite.   CHUCK DEGROAT  23:43 So we’re trying to lead people to a place of greater self-compassion and experience of God’s compassion. Because I believe God is so thoroughly for those who’ve been victimized. I think that’s really clear in Scripture. God is for those of you who’ve been hurt, harmed, betrayed, manipulated, abused. But it can be really hard when you learned at a very early age, well, it must have been my fault. I must be responsible for this. And so we get back into our stories. Who told you? is an invitation into our stories.   JULIE ROYS  23:44 And that’s especially true for victims of clergy sexual abuse, especially adult clergy sexual abuse, because they were groomed and manipulated. And it bothers me so much when we publish stories on these and they’re like, well, she was 25 she should have known better, despite the fact he was twice her age and her spiritual authority. It’s so twisted and wicked. And instead of listening to these condemning voices, you encourage people to have this as you say it, and that the art of redemptive remembering. What do you mean by that?   24:59 Yeah. I’ll talk about that in a second. Just one thing that you queued up a thought for me. So many of these women in particular, who’ve experienced clergy sexual abuse are in this fog state, this dorsal state, this parasympathetic nervous system state, because that’s what they learned. And so their bodies, they learned to shut down. They weren’t even aware, and so they weren’t complicit. They weren’t asking for it. Their body simply shut down. I know. I mean, I’ve worked with probably hundreds now, of women who’ve experienced something like this, who forget. I mean, literally, the hippocampus goes offline. There’s no narrative memory, and so there’s no capacity to, in the moment say, this isn’t a good choice. I’m not going to make this. It’s not about that at all. The body shuts down. And so there’s a place of, I think again, tremendous compassion. And then when we come to this place of redemptive remembering, I think this is about finding our way to a better story, a story of a God who cares for us and who whispers worth and belonging and purpose over us. Now, this happens in the work, I mean, I will work with clients who are like, I don’t want to talk about God at all, and we’re not talking about the Bible. Don’t bring up any scripture. It doesn’t feel safe, it doesn’t feel good, and that’s okay.   26:27 So, anyone who’s listening right now, I just want to affirm that if that’s where you are and that kind of language feels scary or unsafe, that’s okay. I do think part of this redemptive remembering, at least the way I tell this story, is there are these whispers of goodness that if you listen well and listen carefully throughout scripture, that I will never leave you nor forsake you. Nothing can separate you from my love. I long for my face to shine upon you, and I long to be gracious to you. You are always with me, and everything I have is yours. Like God’s heart is for those who’ve been targeted, harmed, abused, betrayed, manipulated. Now that may take a while. I remember sitting with a woman who she’s given me permission to tell this story about. I of course, won’t say her name, but four years in, no sense of God, you know. And I live in West Michigan, where you live in Chicago, right? And it can be very bleak in the winter here, the sun doesn’t come out for months at a time, it feels like, and we’re sitting in my office, it’s midday, and she said, I have no sense that God will ever show up again. And on this bleakest of days, a light radiates through my window. The sun comes out, and she feels it. It shines right on her, and she feels the warmth of it, and she begins to cry. She begins to bawl, right? And she’s like, he does see me! So there are moments like that that you can’t strategize or orchestrate. There are just simply moments of times where people who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and where we do rediscover the God who wants us to redemptively remember that,  before anything harmful happened to us, he declared us worthy and good, that we belong, that we’re loved, that there’s a purpose, that that’s first.   JULIE ROYS  28:35 As you’re talking I can’t help but think of the RESTORE Conference that we do which really was born out of just seeing so many casualties of church hurt and abuse. And one of the decisions we had to make was whether to, do we include scripture? Do we include worship? Do we include prayer? I mean, some of these things. And my feeling was, well, how can we not? Yes, these things have been re symbolized in a very awful way. We need to, though, recapture the true symbols of what they mean and, how can we talk about healing and not be connected to the source of our healing? And one of the things that we have always done is end with communion, because we are dismembered in a sense; we’re cut off from ourselves, we’re or cut off from each other or cut off from God.   29:35 Trauma dismembers us. I mean, it fractures us, right? And so the God who is dismembered, so to speak, and who suffered, remembers u in communion, which I love. We’re invited to remember, but oftentimes we think about that as like this, we’re supposed to remember something that happened back then like a cognitive exercise, yeah. I’ve had profound experiences myself and my own remembering, the fractured parts of me. I think in some ways, for me now, there’s no place safer than to be in the presence of the one who was dismembered and remembered the one who suffered and died and was raised. There’s something about that where I can feel whole again in that space. I felt that same way as I was writing this. You know, there are going to be people who may not be able to read this or need to put it down because I’m using this god language. You’re singing songs and praying prayers and offering communion. But I think we both believe that it’s a place where people can be remembered.   JULIE ROYS  30:39 Yeah, absolutely. And I just, I’ve always loved the table, because, to me, that is where all of it comes together. We come together as Christ bodied, and we’re one with him and we celebrate that oneness. And it’s just so crucially important. And probably one of the favorite things that was ever posted on social media was after our last RESTORE Conference, somebody posted their communion cup and said, This is the first time I’ve taken communion in six years, and yes, I’m keeping this cup. And that just that meant so much to me. But to hear that, and to hear that kind of healing, just beautiful.   CHUCK DEGROAT  31:21 Oh, I love that. That’s so beautiful. Yeah.   JULIE ROYS  31:21 Well, let’s talk about the third question, that God comes and says to you, and he says, Have you eaten from the tree?   CHUCK DEGROAT  31:34 So, I’ve been teaching on these questions for years, and that was one that I sort of puzzled on, because God seemed to ask two very open-ended questions, and then we come to this third one, and there’s an obvious answer. Like, Yes, I did eat from this tree. And so a number of years ago, probably 10-12 years ago, I was sitting with it, and I had this sense that God is really curious about where we take our hunger and thirst, I think. And the same God who’s curious about where we take our hunger and thirst, and Jesus came and asked over and over again, what are you hungry for? What are you thirsty for? What do you want? What do you need? And it was like those light bulb moments where it goes off, and it’s like, oh yeah, God is just curious about where we’ve gone with our hunger, because God wants us to come to the table just like we were talking about.   CHUCK DEGROAT  32:24 So for anyone who has gone to pornography or shopping or gambling or an eating disorder or some sort of religious addiction or whatever the case may be, that there’s always something underneath. There’s a hunger and thirst that we’re trying to address., through these choices that we make, through these ways of coping. Part of my job, part of our job as healers, is to get curious about the wounds underneath. Oftentimes there is unaddressed trauma back there. And you know this,  I started working in the late 90s with women who’d been harmed in the church, and which led me into the work with abusive pastors, narcissistic pastors. I started getting into assessment work with church planters and pastors. And so I started doing assessments in the early 2000s and when I first started working with narcissistic pastors, I was like, This is terrible. They are bullies.   CHUCK DEGROAT  32:24 And I think maybe a more popularized version of that question may be, How are you coping? How are you self-medicating? Where are you going to numb? I do think that, oftentimes in Christian subcultures, the approach that question is to target the thing that we’re doing, the way that we’re coping, the place that we took our hunger and to say, there it is! That bad thing that you’re doing! That’s just awful, and you have to stop doing it! Where, God, I think, is actually curious about, like, what’s stirring underneath? I’m curious about where this came from.   JULIE ROYS  34:08 That’s quite the job. I must say, I’m not sure I could do that.   CHUCK DEGROAT  34:12 We could talk about stories, the stories of the narcissistic pastors who would park in like, reserve parking for the President of the seminary that I worked at. They felt so entitled and grandiose the way they walk in. As I begin getting curious about the wound beneath, I realized, Oh, you’re using people, you’re harming, you’re platforming yourself. You’re, doing all these things that you and I have seen in spades because of all these unaddressed wounds underneath. You’re just a little boy who’s scared, wounded. Now, very few of them actually are willing to do the work of exploring the wounds underneath, because there’s just too much to lose. You know, I don’t want to lose my platform and my power and my authority. But when people are able to go there, whether it’s the narcissistic pastor or the person addicted to shopping or the person with the eating disorder, when they’re willing to explore the wounds underneath and then to get to the deeper longings that I think the communion table represents, that’s really beautiful, and I think that’s when we find ourselves remembered and reconnected in the deepest ways.   JULIE ROYS  35:28 I love some of your counseling sessions that you give us a window to. I think I’d really like you as a therapist. I remember one in particular you talk about a woman who was in an adulterous relationship, and you asked her, I don’t know the exact question, but something basically, what were you longing for? And she says, to be loved, to be loved. And your response was something to the effect of, well, of course, who wouldn’t want that? And she was so shocked by that that it really is, I mean, we have legitimate desires and to affirm the desire, to affirm the hunger, and yet, it’s like we go to the broken cisterns that scripture talks about, right? We go to these things where they can’t satisfy. I mean, we should know better, right? We’re Christians, even you said for yourself you knew better. Why do we do this?   CHUCK DEGROAT  36:29 Yea. It’s interesting in that story. I mean, this is a woman who’s also caught up, and I don’t flesh the story out in death, but caught up in systemic and structural misogyny. I would say, in a system  where there’s very little worth as a woman to be able to speak or even lead in a system like this. And she was in a relationship where she wasn’t seen, known, valued in those ways as well, right? So she found in the presence of this other man who she had this affair with, someone who really saw and valued her. And you know, back then, I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. I just knew that every single man that she sat down with, confronted her, and told her that she was an adulteress and that she was all the words I won’t say them, but all I knew was that that’s not the way. And I was a kid. I was 31-32 and I sit down, and I asked her, can you look at me? You know, because she obviously in shame, her eyes were down, and I just said, What did you want? What were you longing for? And she starts to tear up, and she said, I just wanted to be seen and known. I haven’t felt that in years.   CHUCK DEGROAT  37:41 Now in the midst of that, I’m not saying, Well, of course, have as many affairs as you want. That’s fine. That’s not my point at all. It is to get to the deeper story of how she’s been missed. And turns out as we began to do some work together, she grew up in a family, very sort of hierarchical, authoritarian family, women should be seen and not heard. She grew up with those messages. So to be valued, to be seen, felt so good. There was a long journey for her out of that harmful system, right? Into health and healing, but it certainly wasn’t going to come through shame. And so she found a better way, I hope, through that, but I see that in Jesus, what do you long for? What are you hungry for? What are you thirsty for? A God who didn’t shame us, but whose kindness leads us to repentance.   JULIE ROYS  38:44 Exactly. And that’s exactly how he was with the woman at the well, it’s exactly how he was with the woman caught in adultery. He says, Go and sin no more, but in there, there’s that understanding, that being seen, that love, that’s always there. And I have to read a quote from CS Lewis, because as I was reading this section, it just really impacted me. Like this kept coming back to me, and it’s from the Weight of Glory, which is like one of my favorite. A sermon I believe that he gave, and he writes, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.   JULIE ROYS  39:39 So much God offers us, and yet we go to these others, these counterfeits. And I can just say, as someone who’s walked with the Lord now, ooh, 50 some years now, became a believer, very young. But I am just so grateful that even before I faced some of my more recent, traumatic things that I had learned that so much of sin is an escape from legitimate suffering, is an escape, is a means of trying to get something that we legitimately want,  that we go to those counterfeits. And so I’ve experienced the real, but you do have to sit in there, in that healing process. You have to face your addictions. You have to face the ways that you’ve coped that are not helpful. You have to face your shadows. And for you, it was interesting. You didn’t spell this out in that much detail. But for you, there was, as you put it, a religious addiction, a workaholism. I can relate to the workaholism. I might be able to relate to the religious addiction if I understood it better. I might have that too. But can you describe that and how you were able to come out of that?   CHUCK DEGROAT  41:07 I think first that quote by C.S. Lewis,  it flies in the face of purity culture. And these system structures, institutions, mental models that shut down desire, shut down bodies and emotions that keep people in harmful situations, people who are like, I shouldn’t want anymore. I shouldn’t expect any more. This is fine, right? So I think as we find our way back to the depth of our own hearts, like Jesus was not afraid of that question, and it kind of almost feels scandalous, but it wasn’t an invitation to sin, right? It was an invitation back to the depth of our own hearts, but I think  there are these counterfeit places that we go,  these empty cisterns, right? And some of them are religious, you know; some of them look very spiritual. I think I’m thinking of my own story as a pastor,  as someone who led people on spiritual retreats, for instance, right? Or we had a Fellows program, so I worked with a lot of 20 and 30 somethings who were in the city of San Francisco. And we were talking about what it looks like to be faithful followers of Jesus in the city of San Francisco. And I think a lot of people would say Chuck was such a sincere, faithful, devoted, thoughtful pastor. And I think in many ways that was a false self that I was living out of, as I put my head down and I was determined to just kind of make it, just to kind of push through and push the trauma down. Now again, it’s sort of embarrassing to say out loud. And that doesn’t mean that everything that I did was bad. I’ve looked back, I’ve talked to people, I’ve asked, Have I harmed someone? Did I harm someone in that season? Right? One of the questions that I’ve asked more than any other in all my work is, how did you experience me? with the invitation for people to name places where they felt confused or manipulated. But at the same time I think for a lot of us who have experienced this, there is that sense of, Well, I really threw myself into like I wasn’t doing those bad things that the Church describes. I wasn’t looking at pornography and I wasn’t having an affair. I was showing up to work early and putting in my long days as a good pastor and preaching sermons and leading liturgies, and all the while feeling pretty alone and unknown and invulnerable. And all the while, my body keeping the score.   CHUCK DEGROAT  41:12 And in the midst of that, I think it was an extended dark night of the soul, like it really felt like God had gone away. I think I’m sort of ashamed that I didn’t just name that. I talked to a therapist, of course, but I mean, in my desperation just to name like, I don’t know where you are God, but the reality is, is that, and this is the case, this is why I think I can identify with a lot of these pastors who I don’t lose my job. I already know the experience of losing my job. I kind of like the role and the authority that I have, and within this system,  I kind of like being in this role where these 20 and 30 somethings that this church see me  as a wise sage. Well, the hospital blew all that up and showed me just how unhealthy I was. And I think sometimes those are graces. You and I have seen a lot of pastors over the years fall who don’t take that as an opportunity to say, let me step away actually, and let me do my work. Like I’ve got more work to do. There are a lot of us, I think, who are self-aware, but who are still duping ourselves. And that’s what’s scary I think.   JULIE ROYS  45:01 You talk about even the necessity of vulnerability in working through this stuff. Although I have to say it’s scary to be vulnerable in a lot of these systems. I know I have been just raked over the coals for being vulnerable that I just like, now I’m like, boy, I won’t do that again. It’s really hard for a lot of us who have been burned, where you’re just like, to find those safe spaces, but you have to, have to find that safe spaces to be vulnerable to work through this.   JULIE ROYS  45:43 There’s a quote that you quote in your book of Thomas Merton, which is really, really good, and I know that probably a lot of people are facing this right now, because you talk about when you were in the midst of your trauma, you would try to reach out to God, and you didn’t feel like he was there. I think we’ve all had that dark night of the soul where we just feel like you are in this alone. God is not there. And he writes, If we set out into this darkness, we have to meet these inexorable forces. We will have to face fears and doubts. We will have to call into question the whole structure of our spiritual life. We’ll have to make a new evaluation of our motives, for belief, for love, for self-commitment to the invisible God. And when I read that, I thought of all the folks right now, and I will say,  I’m in a house church now, which thank God he gave me a safe place, and  I think we’re all kind of working through, I don’t know if I call it deconstruction, because it’s more like reconstruction. But I guess maybe you have to deconstruct or reconstruct. But we’re all evaluating things that we have accepted as true or as normative, and now we’re going, I don’t know if I’m really by that. Is that a lot of what he’s talking about? Because we see so many people going through this deconstruction process, and it’s often shamed by religious leaders. And yet, how can we not when we’ve been so thoroughly,  disappointed and hurt?   CHUCK DEGROAT  47:25 Yeah, I think oftentimes, when we talk about those processes, whether you want to call them Dark Knights or deconstruction and reconstruction, there are multiple levels right. There are the things that we believe for a long time that we’re wrestling with. I’m not sure that I can believe that anymore. There are spiritual things that we’re wrestling with in the midst of that, the things that used to feel good to us. I remember trying to pick up books that were really sweet to me in one season of life, and them just falling flat, you know? But  I think he’s also talking about psychological forces. They’re buried pain and buried shame and buried anger. A lot of it for me was, I think I buried a lot of that stuff in 2004-2005 because I wanted to find my way back into some sort of role in the church. I was teaching in a seminary, and I thought maybe I’d get a job in a seminary. I was eventually invited back into the church.   CHUCK DEGROAT  48:25 But then the reality was in the in the church that I was at out in San Francisco, I started being invited to speak at church planter conferences because of the psychological assessment work that I was doing. So then I felt like, well, I have to be the one who’s put together because I’m the psychological assessor. I’m the one. And I remember I got to be on stage with like Tim Keller and I thought, well, I don’t want to lose any of this.   CHUCK DEGROAT  48:52 So the reality is, is that I was doing the very same thing that I name in all kinds of other places and that I work with, and all kinds of other pastors now, and I had to reckon with all that, right? So those inexorable forces that he talks about,  there are things that I had to name about my own shame, my own self-doubt, my own anger, my own inadequacy, and my decision was to step away from that place in that platform. We moved to the Midwest. I took a job as a junior professor at a very not well-known seminary, and sort of I felt like part of the repentance for me, I had to certainly step into my own inner work to deal with some of that inside. But it was to some degree, stepping away from that place that has such a tug, because when we have power, we don’t want to lose that power, right? And so we stay in those places. And sometimes I think it’s the way of Jesus to forego power,  to give it away and to leave and to find your way to a place where you can finally deal with all those questions, the intellectual questions, the spiritual questions, the psychological questions that I was avoiding. I’m not talking about everyone else I was avoiding in my own heart.   JULIE ROYS  50:14 And you were able to do that because your ministry was no longer your idol.   CHUCK DEGROAT  50:18 Yeah, that’s a really good summary of it right there. It was such an idol that as idols often go, I was terrified to step away thinking I’ve already lost a ministry role once. Now I don’t only have a ministry role. I’m starting to get, like a national reputation for being someone who works with church planters and does good psychological assessments. I kind of like being the guy who looks and dresses the part of the wise sage who knows how to point out what’s wrong with everyone else. And there it is. There’s the idol. And you know, it’s an idol when you’re terrified to step away from it, because it’ll cost you so much.   JULIE ROYS  51:06 Yeah, although I would say in my work, I would say that idolatry is at the root of so much of the reporting that I have to do, or at the sin going buried for so long because the people who can speak out are afraid if they do, it will impact their ministry in some way, and it’s just no way to live. It really isn’t.   CHUCK DEGROAT  51:30 it’s exhausting. It’s a lonely place. Yeah, you’re living with a lot of lies. But it’s remarkable to me. I’m curious what you think of this. Can I ask you a question?   JULIE ROYS  51:44 Sure, yeah.   CHUCK DEGROAT  51:46 it seems to me that we’ve had this opportunity over the last, let’s just say 4,5,6,7 years – MeToo, and Church Too – and books written the reckonings happening. Your work, exposing, naming, and yet to see the number of pastors who are doubling down, and to see that sort of movement become entrenched. I was so hopeful that it might lead to some humility and a growing self-awareness, but to see that there’s actually sort of a real doubling down happening, not just individually, but systemically. Are you seeing some of that too?   JULIE ROYS  52:26 Oh 100%. I mean, what I found is, by the time the sin of a leader gets to me, they have taken, usually, people take every avenue they possibly can. They’ll go to their elders. They’ll get gas lit; they’ll get shamed. They’ll get kicked out of their church. Whatever it was, but they tried, they usually try to address it through the legitimate ways that they’ve been told this is how you’re supposed to do it. It always kills me when people say, I Timothy 5:20. For the elder who persists in sin, you’re to publicly exposed, so that others may stand in fear. And people obviously say that was really written just to the church. You’re misapplying that. And I’m like, well, the church would do its job, if it were doing I Timothy 5:20 I wouldn’t have to do my job.   JULIE ROYS  53:10 So by the time the sin gets to me, that leader is so hardened in their unrepentance, and they have done it for so long. It reminds me, quite frankly, of Romans, I, where God gives us over to our sin, and they are at that point, that really, really dangerous point. And this is why, I don’t presume to know someone’s eternal, whether or not they’re really saved. But I will say that when I see what’s happening, if I were in their shoes, I would be very fearful  for where I am at with the Lord and what’s going to happen. Because, yeah,  it is sad that there is such hardness of heart. I mean, reminds me of Pharaoh, right?   CHUCK DEGROAT  53:54 Yeah. It’s discouraging, yeah, to see this happening so broadly, especially with all the work, all the work and all the opportunity. I’ve noticed that even with pastors I’ve worked with, you’ve had so much opportunity. People have literally given you so many opportunities to step away and do your work, and you’re still going to resist, double down, recreate your ministry somewhere else. It’s so discouraging.   JULIE ROYS  54:19 It reminds me of Dave and Betsy Corning, who were long time elders. Well, he was a longtime elder. Dave Corning at Harvest Bible chapel with James McDonald. They talked about how  James was offered grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. You know, they got him, I think, Henry Cloud, to be as his psychiatrist or his therapist to kind of work through this stuff. They were constantly trying to help him deal with and again, he didn’t want that. I mean, in the end, that’s not really what he what he chose or what he wanted.   CHUCK DEGROAT  54:53 I’ve had people Julie like come literally fly here with this sort of, this sense of, like, I really want to sit down and talk to you about where I’m at, what’s going on, and I want to learn how to be more self-aware. And by the way, can I take a selfie and hold up your narcissism book and go back? This has happened multiple times now, and now I’m starting to pick up on it. But the first few times I was like, Oh, well,  how beautiful is that? And they really want to grow  and then I would hear from church staff members saying, Oh no, he just came back and doubled down, and now is using this to silence us. The insidious. It’s almost like it’s getting darker in some ways, and more insidious.   JULIE ROYS  55:39 There’s a reason it’s called the narrow path. Few find it, yeah, it is a hard row, but there’s so much at the same time I would say, what does that the verse about the way of the Transgressor is hard and the alternative is so much harder. You and your book talking about our longing to be home, and truly, I mean, in this life, we’re never fully home. We live in the here, but the not yet. Talk about the home we can experience now that so many of us don’t embrace.   CHUCK DEGROAT  56:22 I really do think this is so important for the communities that you and I are engaged in, for survivors, for those of us who are doing the work, to know that this isn’t just a spiritual journey. This is a physiological journey. I think the two go hand in hand, that when God invites us to the still waters and the green pastures, that there is a physiological analogy, so to speak, within us; a place within that God has designed our ventral vagal system, that home part of our nervous system where we can experience grounding and connection and reunion and joy and delight. And I think a lot of people have some kind of experience of this, like, oh, maybe it was a camp in eighth grade, or maybe it was as recent as yesterday. You know, when you’re reading scripture, whatever it is, like those moments where it’s like, Oh, I know. I know those moments I feel really grounded. I feel like my butt is in the chair, and God is near, and I can breathe. I’m actually breathing because a lot of the time I’m holding my breath because I’m reading all these tweets.   CHUCK DEGROAT  57:29 But I’m feeling some sense of joy and connection and vulnerability, and I want to say part of the work that we need to do, particularly for those of us who are what Henry Nouwen called the wounded healers, is to find our way home regularly, to find our way to practices, to find our way to communities that invite us there, that cultivate this lived experience of calm and curiosity and compassion and connection. So that we can do the work in a way that’s sustainable and resilient. This is as you and I were talking about before we started, it’s really wearying work. And when I sit with people and they tell me a story, like, I can go into fight and flight pretty quickly. Let’s do something about, let’s leave right now and take it and just breathe, Chuck, just come back home. I’ve got to do this. And particularly, I think about the work that you do, but you and I are connected to  there’s this vast networks.   CHUCK DEGROAT  58:33 There are a lot of people who are doing this work that have no platform, but they’re doing it quietly and beautifully and under the radar and yet it takes a toll. So it’s this invitation back to this place we call home of grounding, of reconnection. This is where I think Paul’s prayer in Ephesians that we would be rooted and grounded in love, strengthened in the spirit. This is what it’s all about for us to do the work over the long term.   JULIE ROYS  59:05 Well, Chuck, thank you. This has been just a phenomenal conversation. I feel very much like your kindred spirit and have felt that for a while. But this was just really, really wonderful. And I absolutely loved your book, and going to be recommending it to everyone. Thank you so much.   CHUCK DEGROAT  59:25 Thanks Julie. I hope you know this, because I know you get some hate mail every now and then. You are an inspiration, your courage, your compassion, and so, yeah, keep up the good work. Thank you.   JULIE ROYS  59:40 You know what I almost feel like for those listening, could you just offer a prayer or a blessing for them? For all of us?   CHUCK DEGROAT  59:49 Yeah. So, I mean, I love the old, ironic blessing. You know where God there’s this longing for God to make God’s face to shine upon us, because so many of us who are survivors or cut off from any sense of intimacy or vulnerability, so may I pray that prayer, I guess, to end,.   CHUCK DEGROAT  1:00:10 Father, Son, and Spirit, bless and keep and make your face to shine upon every listener right now. Be gracious to them. Let your countenance upon them. All the places, the stormy places, the foggy places within, where they feel disconnected from themselves and from you and from others, where they feel alone and isolated, where they’re just holding on for dear life. Give them your peace in Jesus name, Amen.   JULIE ROYS  1:00:43 Amen. Thank you again, Chuck.   CHUCK DEGROAT  1:00:46 Thank you Julie,   JULIE ROYS  1:00:51 And thanks so much for listening to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and just a quick reminder that Chuck’s book, Healing What’s Within, is our premium for anyone who donates $30 or more to The Roys Report this month. And if you’ve benefited from this podcast, I promise you you’re going to love Chuck’s book. So if you’d like to support our work and get a copy of Healing What’s Within, just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, I really want to encourage you to come to the RESTORE Conference this February in Phoenix. We work really hard to keep costs as low as possible to make this conference available to anyone who needs it. There’s even scholarship money available if even the early bird conference rate is too much. The point is, we really want you to come and take advantage of this incredible healing experience. For more information, go to RESTORE2025.COM. And lastly, please be sure to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Spotify, or YouTube, that way you’ll never miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review, and then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content again. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you are blessed and encouraged. Read more