Last month, the board of Acts 29 voted to remove Steve Timmis as CEO of the global church planting network, following an investigation into his “abusive leadership.” Timmis then resigned as elder of The Crowded House, Sheffield, where he was also accused of spiritual abuse.

The allegations and subsequent fallout highlight an ongoing debate over the nature and extent of “spiritual abuse” in evangelical churches in the United Kingdom. At issue is how to define the controversial phrase, how to determine its limits and scope, and how to appropriately prevent and address it.

In 2017, more than 1,000 British Christians reported being victims or survivors of spiritual abuse in a study by CCPAS (Churches Child Protection Advisory Service), a UK Christian safeguarding charity now known as ThirtyOne:Eight.

Even so, the co-authors of the report—Lisa Oakley, associate professor at the University of Chester, and Justin Humphreys, CEO at ThirtyOne:Eight—acknowledged “the term ‘spiritual abuse’ is currently contentious.”

“In some areas, the use of this term is generally accepted,” said Humphreys. “In others, it is questioned, and in yet others it has raised anxiety and concerns.”

While there remains no legal definition of spiritual abuse, in 2018 a Church of England vicar was the first to be found guilty of it for his inappropriate actions against a teenage boy in Abingdon. This case, and that of Timmis, have caused consternation over where to draw the line between exhortation and coercion—between a challenging message and a toxic culture of control.

Oakley and Humphreys—who recently publishedEscaping the Maze of Spiritual Abuse: Creating Healthy Christian Cultures—define spiritual abuse as “a form of emotional and psychological abuse … characterized by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behavior in a religious context.”

For the authors, spiritual abuse adds an additional layer to an abusive experience “when it is grounded and justified with a level of spirituality,” said Humphreys.

However, critics of the term argue that there is no need to add “subsections” to the already accepted categories of abuse: sexual, physical, emotional, and neglect. Lee Gatiss, director of the Church Society, wrote that the accuracy of the term is “debatable” and that perhaps it can serve as an umbrella term for other forms of abuse, but it is not its own distinct form of abuse.

To be fair, Oakley said that while she initially argued for spiritual abuse to be a separate category, she has now come to a point where she believes “the evidence suggests it is a form of psychological and emotional abuse being evidenced by a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behavior.”

There is also a fear that such specific terminology “might spiritualize criminal offenses” that are considered inappropriate in every context, not only within the confines of a religious community, said David Hilborn, chair of the Theological Advisory Group of the UK Evangelical Alliance.

In a 2018 report, Hilborn wrote that the term was too ambivalent and that there is nothing “substantively or categorically distinct about ‘spiritual abuse’ when compared to legal understandings of emotional and psychological abuse.”

While emphasizing that the Evangelical Alliance takes all forms of abuse in the church seriously, he said, “we don’t want offenses committed specifically by pastors, or elders to be ghettoized by a language, which can only apply to those who are spiritual, however spiritual is defined.” For Hilborn, this raises the specter of attacks on religious freedom.

Giving spiritual abuse a status as “a criminal offense could specifically target religious people on the basis of their faith,” said Hilborn, “and that is deeply problematic.”

Although Oakley and Humphreys are not wed to the terminology, they both affirmed that “spiritual abuse is an appropriate term” because it identifies the particularities of abuse used “with direct reference to sacred texts or operating on behalf of a divine entity.”

Referencing the specificity of domestic abuse as “a clear example of coercive, controlling, and manipulative behavior in an intimate or family relationship,” Humphreys said that the concept of spiritual abuse “speaks directly to one’s soul and one’s being in a way that we just don’t see in any other context.”

Despite the debate, the term has cultural purchase. On various websites, social media platforms, and online forums, victims and survivors share their stories using the language of “spiritual abuse.”

Individuals like Jodie Stanley, whose father abused multiple members of his church and family, found that the term spoke to her own trauma. She said that the church’s lack of discernment on issues like spiritual abuse, and disdain for acknowledging them, creates a “noxious” environment where suffering like hers can readily occur.

Source: Christianity Today

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Jeff Peabody is a writer and lead pastor of New Day Church in Northeast Tacoma, Washington. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.

Last fall, a friend from church was distraught. She forwarded me a video that has since gone viral and left her confused and alarmed. When I viewed it, I understood why.

In the controversial clip, John MacArthur shares his thoughts about popular speaker and author Beth Moore, declaring she should “go home” and citing the dangers of “women preachers.” His theological differences with her came as no surprise, but the sharp personal disdain—all in the name of sound doctrine—undermined any gospel message that was there.

Perhaps even more unsettling than his tone was the response of his audience, laughing in the background as if they relished his vitriol.

Such unfortunate images of Christian infighting and meanness are all too common, and they cause confusion and hurt. The trope “I love Jesus but hate the church” is contradictory, but the sentiment behind it resonates with many.

It saddened and angered me to see such an unloving attack being made in the name of Christ. At the same time, I confess I felt an unease about the ugliness it stirred up inside me. I found myself judging and assigning all kinds of motives to those people in the video. I had to wonder: Was my reaction to them any better than their reaction to Beth Moore? Of course, I felt my own indignation was warranted and reflected God’s heart. But MacArthur seemed equally confident he was the one on the side of truth.

It’s never been easy for followers of Jesus to embrace that we’re all part of the same big family. And today, Christians who strike us as exhibiting un-Christlike behavior have a constant public platform on social media and elsewhere online. The power of their voices in shaping society’s understanding of the church makes us want to distance ourselves and scream that WE are not THEM.

What do we do when we know we’re called to unity but feel justifiably outraged by our brothers and sisters? How can we keep the peace and our integrity at the same time? And how do we hold the tension of addressing the shortcomings of others while at the same time remembering our own?

The prophet Daniel might seem an unlikely guide in these matters. Yet his famous prayer, in Daniel 9, speaks directly to our times.

Daniel was taken into captivity along with thousands of other Israelites during the Babylonian exile. There he was confronted with the complexities of living out his faith in a foreign culture while working for a pagan king. His prayer comes after decades of service to a foreign nation.

You do not have to read very much of the text to recognize the prayer as a confession. Daniel finds just about every way imaginable to ask for forgiveness. And he fully identifies himself with his people: We have sinned. We have rebelled. We have not listened. We have done wrong. We have been wicked. We have transgressed. We have turned away. We have been unfaithful. We have refused to obey. We have not sought the Lord. We have not turned from our sins. We have not given attention to your truth.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive acknowledgment of guilt, which is a little mystifying because, up until this point, Daniel hasn’t exhibited any obvious moral lapses. He’s been the very model of a faithful servant of God.

There’s a disconnect between his exemplary behavior and his humble confession. It makes you want to protest and say, “Daniel, you don’t have to do that. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s those who were unfaithful who should be apologizing!”

Daniel’s approach is so opposite from my own. When it comes to collective sins—whether those of the church, the clergy, or the nation—I want to distance myself from the offense. I want to point out why “they” are not “me.” And I want to denounce what I see “them” doing.

I’m not alone in this. There’s a long history of line-drawing within the church, going all the way back to Paul and Barnabas parting company over whether John Mark was fit to serve (Acts 15:36–39).

Martin Luther condemned the Anabaptists as heretical for their rejection of infant baptism and called for their execution or banishment. The Puritans went to war with the Church of England over reforms they saw as nonnegotiable. George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers fought bitterly over predestination.

Entire movements and countless church plants trace their origins to a moment when insurmountable differences seemed to call for breaking fellowship. Today, we are at another cultural flashpoint, where divisions within the faith are particularly severe. And God-fearing people of all persuasions are certain they hold the moral high ground.

In her book Disunity in Christ, Christena Cleveland writes, “As much as we’d like to believe that Jesus is the author of our Right Christian and Wrong Christian distinctions, we can’t because it is simply untrue. By pursuing us with great tenacity in spite of our differences with him, he shows us that he doesn’t have need for those distinctions.”

When what we consider sin or error is unashamedly embraced by other Christ followers, what do we do? It’s painful to see people who claim the same Savior showing utter disregard for core tenets of his teaching. How do we maintain the unity of the body of Christ without looking as if we’re endorsing values we find offensive?

I find myself desperately wanting non-Christians to know what I am not. And that seems to be the current trend. We decry the despicable brokenness of other believers and encourage the world to turn away from them and look at us instead for a more palatable, truer depiction of faith.

But adopting a wholesale separatist approach feeds the lie that we are intrinsically different sheep from the rest of the flock. It deludes us into believing that our proper theology, superior morality, or enhanced sense of justice make us the keepers of God’s full perspective. We lean further and further into our own self-righteousness.

We think we need to pull away from others for the sake of holiness, so we adopt the pharisaical approach of building up more and more walls between us and those we deem less acceptable or legitimate. Our circle shrinks ever smaller until we are the only ones remaining within the rigid bounds of correctitude.

This is where Daniel’s prayer is so jarring. Instead of recoiling from the wickedness he sees around him, he places himself squarely in the middle of other people’s sin in addition to his own. There is no daylight between his personal failings and those of the larger community.

It’s a strikingly uncharacteristic posture for a prophet. We’ve come to expect fiery rebuke from those in that role. We sometimes claim to have prophetic insight ourselves when we want to speak a harsh word with authority. Daniel undermines our assumption that pronouncing judgment is the most pressing prophetic responsibility.

Think of his situation: God had warned his people over and over again that if they continued in their relentless rebellion, he would bring terrible judgment on Jerusalem and send the nation into exile for 70 years. Even with that warning, they didn’t listen, so God carried out what he said he would do.

Source: Christianity Today

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Angie Ward, author of the recently published I Am a Leader, has 30 years of leadership experience in diverse roles in ministry. Natalie Lederhouse was excited to talk with Angie about how our calling shifts through the various seasons of life.

Sometimes we think as young women that we have one calling, and that’s it. We just have to find it, and we put so much weight on that one thing. But for most people, it changes how it looks and how it’s lived out based on seasons of life and age. Our calling can also change because we change. Who we are, our gifts, our passions. And that’s okay.

For me, I started out in youth ministry, but then God expanded it. It didn’t shift entirely. It was still vocational/occupational ministry, but it went to more broad ministry—leadership and to leadership development. When I was 22, just out of college, I didn’t have the experience or the wisdom to train other leaders. I was just working with students who were sometimes only four years younger than me. The Holy Spirit moves and flows. Working with kids in children’s ministry at your church may make you aware of the needs of foster kids. It opens a door to a whole new thing.

Cultivate an ear for the Holy Spirit—a heart and a mind that’s receptive, that knows the Shepherd’s voice, and a heart that’s obedient and responsive to whatever it is during that season. A lot of times we get focused on the wrong question: What is it? We focus on trying to figure out the it. Instead, the real focus should be on cultivating our relationship with Jesus and walking with him. We want steps to cling to. If I do A, B, and C, we’ll get D. But there is a mysterious piece to discovering our calling; it’s not just a rigid set of steps.

First, embrace the concept of seasons. We live in an age, in an era, where we’ve lost the agrarian ideas of seasons and rhythms. Any time you hit a wall, right around the time change, we become aware that light and darkness—the seasons of the earth—actually do affect us physically and emotionally. There are times when it’s okay that you lie fallow. This illusion that there has to be constant fruit and constant summer and constant peak production is an erroneous way of thinking.

Second, accept that we have limitations, and that’s by God’s design. That’s not a flaw. I’m a high sleep person. I need eight or nine hours a night. I’ve always been envious of people that can do four or five hours a night, or six. I’m like, “I would do so much more for you God if you would just . . . ” But God’s like, I made you this way. This is by design. Seasons and rhythms and the need for rest and limitations—those are safety valves by God’s design. They’re not flaws.

Some people have the belief that a calling to motherhood automatically replaces any other calling. I don’t think that’s automatically true. It is for some people, but it’s not a blanket judgment you can make on everyone.

Before I was married and before I had kids, I felt the calling to vocational ministry, started out in youth ministry and then broader leadership development. I went to seminary, met and married my husband, and I was in ministry in Minnesota. Then I had our boys—and I felt this tension: I knew God had never said my ministry outside the home was done, but my kids were my primary responsibility. I knew I couldn’t do both jobs full-time and do them well.

Source: Christianity Today

All Content & Images are provided by the acknowledged source