Finally breathing out

Budimir Šobat held his breath for 24 minutes and 37 seconds, but I’m letting out the breath I’ve been holding for a whole eighteen years and no one’s here to give me a medal.

Half my lifetime. That’s what it’s taken, along with so much more than I ever thought I could bear.

I was 17. Naive and nice. A good Christian girl making her way in the early noughties. As the year turned 2002 I met him, at a friend’s New Year’s Eve party. I never celebrate new years now. It’s only just dawned on me that might be why.

I’m forty in August. He’s forty in June. He was finally sentenced, and it’s likely he will die in prison, as an assessment has found he is “a very high risk of causing sexual harm to both adult women and younger females.”

Incidentally, eighteen years is how old my son is. He is ever so funny, and incredibly kind.

It’s not incidental really. My son’s premature birth was caused by the man who is now likely to die in prison. That man is my ex-husband and my children’s biological father.

I endured four and a half years of his abuse and sexual violence. When his sexual violence led to my second child’s premature birth, when I was 28 weeks pregnant, those circumstances gave me a way to (almost) escape him. Living fifty miles from our home in a neonatal intensive care unit with my toddler daughter meant he was unable to manipulate me back into living with him.

Months after I (almost) escaped, at York Crown Court, this man was found not guilty of raping me. This man’s dangerousness is not just that he raped every woman and girl he possibly could, but that after raping us, we would still do whatever he wanted.

Remarkably, this is the first time, in twenty years, that I have been able to write in the past tense about his rape of women and girls. To do so while he was still alive is something I never in my wildest dreams thought possible.

A few months ago, I did a police Subject Access Request to gain copies of my police statements from that time. I was unsure whether the sentencing assessments for his Scottish rape conviction in late 2023 would have easy access to English police records, and wanted to ensure that mine would be easily accessible.

The not guilty verdict in my case hinged on the fact he had coerced me into sexual activity while on bail for raping me. The stressors in my life at the time, when I was 21-years-old, included:

Husband a convicted sex offender.
Husband’s ongoing abuse of a teenager girl.
Husband raped me.
Baby son in intensive care, hospitalised for five months.
Toddler daughter’s trauma around all this.

It was in this context that my statement about his sexual contact with me while on bail was written: “The sex was with my full consent and I did not feel under any pressure. I did however feel due to the stress I am under, think I was not in a very good frame of mind.”

In good conscience, a police officer accepted this narrative and encouraged me to sign. No further questions were asked about whether I could meaningfully consent. They did not consider the rapist’s motives in coercing his victim into further sexual activity. No one in the case considereed this a breach of the rapist’s bail. To them, his further sexual abuse of me did not make him a more dangerous offender, it just made me a less credible witness.

Years later, I’ve heard various women describe tactics he had practiced on girls at school (starting when he was 13-years-old), perfected on me and then used with ease for two decades. Gaslighting women into believing they had wanted whatever he did to them; that it was them who had corrupted him into being a rapist. How does she know she’s been raped when he shames her for betraying her best friend by sleeping with him?

For eighteen years, I lived with the threat of him wielding the family court as a weapon against me. His last name burned my eyes every time we needed the kids’ passports or dealt with the kids’ bank accounts. I had to be resigned to this, to avoid him ever knowing he had any rights, or most terrifyingly, that he might seek to exercise his rights.

Once I remarried, as a family we sought to avoid some big Eastenders moment of “he’s not really your dad”, by having a regular conversation with the kids. “Who helped me to make you both?” “…And who does the job of being your daddy?” I never liked my husband being described as their step-dad, because the man who helped me make these precious and magnificent tiny humans was not their dad. They were all mine (except for a few vaguely relevant biological facts).

I once sat in a women’s church gathering where the female pastor stated that a child’s personality was related to where they were conceived. In a presentation that fell into the dictionary definition of TMI, she used her own children’s personalities to prove this point. I am sure it was naivety that led her to assume the “Personality Conception” concept (try saying that while drunk!) was a lovely idea and not an absolute trauma horror show for some of us.

Theodicy, how an all-powerful and good God can exist in an evil world, is a paradox that most theologians struggle to explain. But the embodied reality for women like me is that out of the most evil harm an abuser perpetrates can emerge the most pure love we have ever known; between us and our babies. We don’t get to wish the abuse had never been perpetrated because we can’t wish away the greatest gifts we ever got; tiny majestic humans. But such complexity can only be spoken in very hushed whispers, for we want our babies to know only love and goodness.

For the mothers of my babies’ siblings, the sentencing is absolutely life-changing. They are safe from him forever. He cannot wield the family court against them, he cannot control them in anyway. And I weep with relief to know that no woman or girl will ever be put through what we have.

But as I let out the breath I’ve been holding for twenty years, I wasn’t prepared to be weeping in grief. Two decades of feelings I couldn’t allow myself to feel, because the ongoing threat of his dangerousness meant living in survival mode, carried mostly in faith that God would protect my babies and me.

For now, I will fiercely feel love and joy for the women and babies who are free of him, with such relief that he can no longer hurt any other women or girls. In time, I know the grief will subside. And as my lungs recover, I shall learn what it is to breathe unencumbered.

You can read more about my story HERE.

The Man Behind the Curtain

I went to church yesterday.

The worship band played and a room full of people sang and praised God. I felt in awe of this miracle, in 2024, of a gathered community filled with people of different ages, life stages, races, ethnicities and social classes all coming together. In a world with ever increasing polarisations, where people are delighted to find spaces that welcome dogs but not babies, and where loneliness is at epidemic proportions, here, a diverse children and adults gathered to worship God.

After the songs, there’s a chance to chat for a few minutes (a sort of non-liturgical version of the Anglican “peace”). I checked in with the man who last week had been stabbed and his money robbed, who confided to me that he’d got “one of them” back, but was awaiting an opportunity to “get the other one”. I immediately regretted asking if the police could have helped him, realising that he would be immediately judged as not worth their time. The gathered group was beautiful and flawed and complicated.

Arriving at church yesterday morning, I particularly valued feeling part of the community as I reckon with my role agitating for change in light of ongoing allegations of abuse in evangelical Christianity. Almost a fortnight on from the release of Matt and Beth Redman’s “Let There Be Light” film, each day seems to bring with it more evidence of the toxic rot at the centre of evangelicalism.

The deafening silence of Archie Coates and HTB was broken in an outrageous article, published by Premier, which sought to exploit the Redman’s pain to flog tickets to their Leadership Conference (for only £499 you can sit in Band A’s Golden ~~Calf~~ Block). Following closely on, it emerged that rather than offering any moral leadership or deep theological reflection about their enmeshment with serial abuser Mike Pilavachi, HTB’s Youth Alpha would just edit his last name out of their video materials. A curious position to be taken by those audacious enough to hold themselves up as the curators of Christian LeadershipÔ.

Within Let There Be Light, Diane Langberg talks of how an abusive leader is protected, “How can this be true? This is a godly man. Look at all the things he or she has done. Look at the fruit that they’re bearing. How can there be anything bad going on? And I think about Soul Survivor, talking about these patterns where the people in the church almost see the leader as Christlike. They’re the important one. They’re the valued one. They’re the one who will bring us close to God. The one hundreds and hundreds, or thousands of people are coming to church for. And so how can any of that be…And so we want to protect the big person and not the little people, which for the record is totally unlike Jesus Christ.”

In fifteen years working to enable Christians to better understand abuse I would have agreed with this analysis. That is until last year. Upon learning that even Matt Redman and Tim Hughes could not get an actively abusive leader held to account, my hope for change was somewhat dimmed. As tumbleweed bounced its way across Christian culture, I knew that when the truth of who Mike Pilavachi had hurt became known, the silence would be broken; “market logic” dictates that allegiances must change extremely quickly. But the little ones still remain ignored. And still, we weep and weep and weep, with no comfort to offer.

Back at church, the chatting had finished and a video for the upcoming Alpha course was shown. I wanted to take it at face value; a meal each week with time for connection and discussion, with opportunities to build faith and learn about Jesus. I didn’t want the rage to set in at HTB’s ongoing dreadfulness. The video was slickly edited, with the slogan “stay curious” (which seemingly only applies to those who are uncurious about HTB’s silence around abuse). In church, we have seen lives transformed for some who joined previous Alpha courses. I tried to focus on that. But then lots of people described Soul Survivor as life-changing, and now we know that’s not really the whole story.

Next up was our church’s ongoing sermon series on spiritual disciplines, with this week’s theme being “service”. Contrasts were made between humble service and the self-serving actions of someone intent on building themselves up. Perhaps prior to Soul Survivor, I would have heard this sermon and not been uneasy. But story after story of Mike Pilavachi spiritually abusing people by declaring them prideful or ambitious has changed things. I pondered whether I could separate the church’s sermon from the toxic messages at Soul Survivor, but was left wondering how many people present may have been subject to toxic messages which manipulated servant-heartedness for nefarious or abusive purposes.

I am confident the preacher is practicing exactly what he was preaching and, alongside many in the church, he lives committed to serving people, particularly those who are most marginalised. However, I wasn’t able to disconnect from the stories of Soul Survivors and others who have been exploited, abused and traumatised by demands for servant-heartedness. Ironically, I was unable to chat this through with the preacher as he had to rush an injured congregation member to the hospital.

The rest of yesterday day I felt disoriented. After a strong start, feeling part of a counter-cultural community of people who love God and one another, I descended into deep discontent.

How do I hold onto the beauty of this community of believers when I know so much about the systems that the church is intertwined with? The Alpha course; that can’t even do meaningful thinking about their investment in Mike Pilavachi because they’ve been too busy ignoring the situation all year and are so arrogantly contemptuous of those that they are supposed to exist to serve that they think we won’t notice their moral bankruptcy, probably because most people won’t.

A sermon about service, which was intended as an encouragement to be a counter-cultural people unmotivated by selfish personal agendas is instead a reminder of all the traumatised and exploited people who bent over backwards to accommodate abusive leaders: until they totally snapped.

I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz after she sees the man behind the curtain. Except unlike the Wizard of Oz, there’s no quick pivot to the wizard being a “very good man”. There’s no smooth transition to Scarecrow getting an honorary degree in “thinkology”, or Lion getting a medal for courage, or Tin Man getting a heart shaped clock. And we’ve not been on a journey that reveals to us that we had everything that we needed all along. Instead we learn that the man behind the curtain is privately supporting the wicked witch, and he’s stood on a pile of bodies a mile high, and they’re insisting they’re doing it all in Jesus’ Name.

I don’t have any answers, but I’m writing this because I know I won’t be the only one trying to make sense of remaining in a Christian faith community while grappling with the systems of power which infect much of what evangelical faith communities rely upon. And, maybe, knowing that we’re not alone in trying to make sense of it all, maybe that is a step in the right direction.

Guest Post: Overturn The Tables

This guest post has been written by two individuals who reported their experiences with Mike Pilavachi into the Church of England investigation.

Overturn your tables, pour out your coins,

Stop making these temples marketplaces!

Almost 150 people, with varying degrees of power and status in relation to Christian communities, have now stepped forward to share personal experiences of abuse at the hands of Mike Pilavachi and Soul Survivor. The public response from those considered to be ‘leaders’ within these communities has been mixed. Some have chosen to remain silent; others have spoken a little here and there, being careful not to appear overly critical of their friends or those in high places; still others have expressed support for Mike Pilavachi. Those vocal in their support of victims and others impacted by events have been in the minority.

Until the release of Matt and Beth Redmans’ documentary this week.

At the root of this week’s sudden flurry of activity among ‘leaders’, and underlying their response to the public revelation of Mike Pilavachi’s abuse more generally, seems to us to be the market logic that permeates our Christian communities. This logic is geared towards generating capital, as well as sustaining institutions and maintaining the power and status of the individuals within them. It provides both motivation and justification for the pursuit of these things. And under this logic, all bodies – including the bodies of the abused – appear not as temples of the Holy Spirit, but as commodities to be valued or disposed of. The market logic is unable to recognise their humanity and inherent dignity and worth, and cannot register their suffering on its own terms. It simply assesses them according to their marketability and treats them accordingly, weighing up the potential brand-related impact of any response to their pain.

One need only look at Holy Trinity Brompton’s (HTB) public response since news of the Church of England’s investigation was announced in April 2023. Having platformed Mike Pilavachi and maintained a close relationship with Soul Survivor that brought mutual benefit to both ministries, HTB have chosen to remain silent over the past year (see here for a detailed timeline of key events). This is despite many people, including victims, repeatedly asking for a public response, not least during HTB’s 2023 Leadership Conference (see here, for example). Following the release of the Redmans’ documentary this week, however, HTB released an opinion piece on leadership and accountability that referred to Soul Survivor, the Redmans, and the ‘scandals and failings within church leadership,’ while also plugging their 2024 Leadership Conference (see here for a thread about this).

While we recognise that the lure of the market logic is both subtle and powerful, its action in this situation needs to be brought into the light and challenged. Because it is perpetuating the abuse we ourselves experienced through Soul Survivor, where we were not treated with dignity and worth, and where our suffering – which is now being used by others for personal and institutional gain – was not seen as being of equal importance to sustaining Mike’s ‘ministry’.

In John 2:14-16, Jesus drives people out of the temple. Overturning the tables of the money changers and pouring out their coins, his words to those selling doves are: ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’ Jesus later refers to his own body as a temple, so we could take these words as relating both to our churches and Christian communities, and to the people within them.

To those who have used this situation as an opportunity to capitalise on the abuse others have experienced, or who are benefitting from the status quo and therefore continue to choose silence:

Overturn your tables, pour out your coins,

Stop making these temples marketplaces!

Guest Post: Something stirring…

Photo by Gursharndeep Singh on Pexels.com

This post has been written by a woman who reported her experiences with Mike Pilavachi to investigators.

Pain and anger. Two states of being that I seem to be constantly flitting between at the moment.

The intensity of the pain is such that if I let myself go near it my chest hurts and I feel as though I cannot breathe.

I have been abused, neglected, exploited, and let down by those in positions of power within the Church.

God is good, but my experience of the Church has not been.

God is holy, but my experience of the Church has not been.

God is light, but my experience of the Church has not been.

God is love, but my experience of the Church has not been.

God is compassionate, but my experience of the Church has not been.

God is just, but my experience of the Church has not been.

I have kept silent for years. No one has explicitly forced me not to speak, yet I have felt compelled to keep silence.

Because of the power of the patriarchal system on which the Church has been built, with its subtle (and not-so-subtle) messaging about the lesser value of women in relation to men – especially men in leadership – and about how survivors should behave, about how they should forgive without harming the Church’s reputation, and so on and so forth…

Because of the shame that was unjustly put on me by men within this system.

And because of a false sense of loyalty towards those I now know feel no loyalty either towards me as a victim of abuse or towards justice.

But I can feel that compulsion towards keeping silence slowly being eroded and something stirring within me in its place.

Even after all that has been uncovered and shed light on this year – the abuse, the pain, the structures of power that enabled decades of harm – I see a continued drive towards power, dominance, and celebrity status within the Church. So many wanting to make a name for themselves and their organisations; so many voicing support for the system; so many with a vested interest in the status quo. Have we really learned so little this year?

The intensity of the anger within me is such that if I let myself go near it my chest hurts and I feel as though I cannot breathe.

God of all that is good, holy, light, love, compassionate and just… hear my prayer and heal your Church.

Soul Survivor and Those Who Cannot Remember the Past

On 19^th September, New Wine announced^[i] they would be reviewing their relationship with Mike Pilavachi and Soul Survivor after releasing a rather ill-advised statement distancing themselves from the substantiated allegations that Mike Pilavachi abused his power and massaged young male interns in his bedroom.^[ii] Few Christian organisations have been honest or transparent about their relationship with Mike Pilavachi since the allegations first became public. While a few have publicly lauded Mike Pilavachi (namely JJohn and Terry Virgo and some others on Pilavachi’s now deleted Facebook post about avoiding a “trial by media”),^[iii]few have been willing to examine their culpability in the midst of what has emerged at Soul Survivor.

As a result of all this, I thought it would be prudent to examine some the many and varied links between Mike Pilavachi and various key organisations and individuals over the last forty years. Given what is known about the harm Mike Pilavachi caused, I have been cautious to avoid focussing too much on those who were mentored by him, to avoid causing further distress. The familiar meme of Homer Simpson backing away slowly into a bush has come to mind repeatedly as I have watched the silence amongst UK Charismatic Christian leaders.

This blog is written as an attempt to stop more people hiding in that bush by rewriting their past relationship with Mike Pilavachi and Soul Survivor. All that remains to be said before getting into the past is a big thank you to all those who have been in touch to share parts of the story that has been told her.

Let’s start at the very beginning (well in the 1960s)

John Wimber became a Christian in the US in 1963 while he was working as a musician and music manager for the Righteous Brothers. After enrolling in college, he majored in Biblical and although he was ordained as a Quaker minister, he soon left this behind when the Quakers sought to limit his charismatic ministry. In 1974, he began working with Fuller Theological Seminary and by 1977, the house church Wimber had grown in Anaheim (a town about 30 minute’s drive from both Los Angeles and Fuller where he worked) eventually became named Vineyard Christian Fellowship as it joined the Vineyard network which had been founded by Kenn Gulliksen. In the UK, Anglican priest David Watson planted St Michael le Belfrey church in York in 1973 with his wife Anne.^[iv] He held a visiting teaching role at Fuller Seminary where he met John Wimber. In 1980, David Watson was one of the first people to bring John Wimber to the UK.^[v]

After having served as the Anglican bishop for Chile, Bolivia and Peru, Rev David Pytches and his wife Mary, moved back to the UK and David became vicar of St Andrews, Chorleywood (a small town, an hour’s drive west of London). Four years into this role, in 1981, they invited John Wimber to visit the church.^[vi] This visit had a profound impact on the church as did many of John Wimber’s and his team’s visits to churches across the UK. For instance, the following year, 1982, Wimber visited Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) under Sandy Millar’s leadership after an introduction from David Watson, which had a huge impact on the way HTB developed.^[vii]

Just before this, John Mumford was working as a curate in the West Country and along with his wife Eleanor, they experienced God moving in a charismatic way.^[viii] In 1982, John Mumford was in the US at the invitation of David Watson, and after hearing from Watson about Wimber’s ministry, John Mumford uncharacteristically showed up unannounced in Anaheim and experienced the Vineyard church and Wimber for himself; soon after he became part of the Vineyard staff team in Anaheim.^[ix] By 1984, UK New Frontiers founder Terry Virgo had also connected with John Wimber, visiting him in Anaheim after being introduced by a mutual friend Geoff Shearn who worked at Kingsway music.^[x]

Wimber visited St Andrews many times,^[xi] with the church holding regular residential leaders’ gatherings for Christian ministers from across the UK. Another St Andrews member, Barry Kissell led “faith sharing teams” that visited churches across the UK, teaching others how to do charismatic ministry. Kissell went on to also have a leadership role in St Marys, Marylebone. Although by this point David Watson had sadly died, John Wimber and his team began leading large UK charismatic conferences from 1984 onwards, organised by David Pytches. These included events in Westminster Central Hall, Sheffield, Harrogate, Brighton and Wembley (the Brighton events were in partnership with New Frontiers).^[xii] Through these events, John and Eleanor Mumford felt called to leave Anglican ministry and established Europe’s and the UK’s first Vineyard church plant in 1987, in Putney (South West London). It was at this time that David Pytches’ daughter, Debby, began working as an intern at Anaheim Vineyard with John Wright (Debby and her husband John, would go on to take over UK Vineyard leadership from the Mumfords in 2015). In this same year, 1987, an almost thirty-year-old Mike Pilavachi was now leading the youth work at St Andrews with 13-year-old Matt Redman in his youth group.^[xiii]

At the other end of England, around this time, in 1988, a young Andy Hawthorne and his brother Simon organised a large event, Message’88 in Manchester. With 300 events run in advance of the event itself, thousands of young people heard about Jesus. By the following year, this one off event had become a mission to take the Message to Schools, with a group of Christians setting up a band, the World Wide Message Tribe to do this work.

The New Wine Years

Back in the south of England, a vision for a national gathering of Christians emerged out of the conferences John Wimber was leading, with Wimber himself donating £3000 as a “seed gift” to get this endeavour started.^[xiv] In 1989, the first New Wine event was held at the Royal Bath and West Showground with nearly 2,500 participants.^[xv] Mike Pilavachi headed up the youth work for the first and subsequent events.^[xvi] By 1991 he had been joined in leading the youth work by Steve Chalke and David Westlake. During this time, youth sessions included worship from Matt Redman and Cutting Edge, a music project set up by Martin Smith and Tim Jupp for running youth outreach events in West Sussex. Cutting Edge went on to become much more famously known as the band Delirious?^[xvii]

Within a couple of years of New Wine, the vision for a separate youth festival had emerged, with Barry Kissell telling Mike Pilavachi that he had “outgrown” the youth ministry at St Andrews.^[xviii] The first Soul Survivor festival was held in 1993 with the youth team from New Wine and JJohn (now a Canon) providing teaching. There were around 2000 participants. Soon after this, Mike Pilavachi and a team from St Andrews Chorleywood planted Soul Survivor Watford, a church primarily focussed on young people. Soul Survivor festival was formally run under New Wine’s governance until 1999,^[xix] when the limited company, Soul Survivor, was founded with six directors; David Westlake, Joyce Wills, John Price, Peter Maskrey, David Pytches and Graham Cray.^[xx]

While slightly off topic, given that JJohn was the main Bible teacher at Soul Survivor, JJohn was made a Lay Canon in 2003 by Coventry Cathedral, but has never been ordained in the Church of England. His Canon status was bolstered sometime after 2009, when David Carr, long-time leader of the Renewal Christian Centre in Solihull (near Birmingham), established himself as Bishop Abbott of the Order of St Leonard and Bishop of Wroxhall Abbey, after convincing Wroxall Abbey Hotel, which is a “a luxurious and historic 72-bedroom hotel” and wedding venue, to let him.^[xxii] At some point since then, JJohn has been ordained as a Canon Missioner in the Order of St Leonard.^[xxiii]

Another off topic incidental. As mentioned in THIS post, Mark Bailey was removed both from New Wine leadership and ordained ministry in the Church of England due to his behaviour being dishonouring of God. After a brief employment at Hope For Justice (I’ve extensively documented on this blog how their co-founder Ben Cooley was sacked for gross misconduct), Mark Bailey now leads Encounter Vineyard church in Cheltenham. Seems the shared rootedness in John Wimber does not lead Vineyard to avoid employing men sacked by New Wine.

I digress.

Soul Survivor projects

Many projects either emerged from or were connected to the Soul Survivor festivals.

Soul Action (Tearfund)

David Westlake began to work at Tearfund as Youth Director in 1996, ^[xxiv] and from there a strong partnership was built between Tearfund and Soul Survivor, through Soul Action which was incorporated as a company in 1994.^[xxv] Money raised at Soul Survivor festivals would be donated to Tearfund projects, Tearfund employees would deliver seminars on justice at Soul Survivor, and much of Soul Survivor’s commitment to justice was outworked through Tearfund projects and the ability for young people to support these projects with money and volunteering efforts. Some Soul61 young people and those who previously worked at Soul Survivor also went onto be employed by Teafund within David Westlake’s team.

Survivor Records (Kingsway Music/David C Cook)

Given the priority given to worship music at New Wine and then Soul Survivor, Survivor Records was established in 1997 by Les Moir as a subsidiary of Kingsway Music (whose parent company is David C Cook),^[xxvi] to bring the new worship artists at these festivals to a new audience. Artists represented by them included: Matt Redman, Tim Hughes, Vicky Beeching, Brenton Brown, Beth Croft, Phatfish, LZ7, YFriday and others. It was also David C Cook who published a number of projects co-authored by Mike Pilavachi and Andy Croft, including Everyday Supernatural (2014), Lifelines (2018), and Storylines DVD and Small Group Guide (2019).

Soul Survivor Mini Mag

From 1995, the Soul Survivor Magazine was published every other month,^[xxvii] in association with Tearfund, the magazine was published by New Wine and edited by Mike Pilavachi. On occasion David Westlake and Liz Biddulph were Managing Editors on occasions, with both of these individuals and David and Jenny Rosser also acting as Consultants on some magazine issues. Regular contributors to the magazine included Craig Borlase (who was also an occasional editor), Graham Cray and his daughter Catherine, Andy Hawthorne, JJohn, Mary Pytches, Beth and Matt Redman, Dawn Reynolds, David Westlake, and Steve Chalke.

Hope Together (Youth for Christ and The Message Trust)

Roy Crowne began as Director of Youth for Christ in 1998. He built a strong friendship with Mike Pilavachi and Andy Hawthorne at the Message Trust. He sought to work with them both in collaboration, rather than competition, to enable more young people across the UK to come to know Jesus. Roy Crowne explains that, “HOPE Together grew out of the friendship and trust that had grown between we three guys.”^[xxviii] Until 2018, both Mike Pilavachi and Andy Hawthorne were Directors of Hope (alongside Rachel Jordan and Laurence Singlehurst), with Roy Crowne as Executive Director.^[xxix] In the year 2000, the Message partnered with Soul Survivor to run Message 2000, an event across Manchester in which over 5000 young people participated. This was followed up in 2004 with Soul in the City in London and Soul In The City Durban in 2009. After Roy Crowne left Youth for Christ in 2010 to become Executive Director of Hope, Gav Calver (now CEO of the Evangelical Alliance) took over as CEO at Youth for Christ.^[xxx] While we’re talking about the Evangelical Alliance, Steve Clifford (Gav Calver’s predecessor at Evangelical Alliance CEO) was the Soul Survivor leadership team Chair, the Chair of Hope ’08, and the Chair of Soul in the City (according to his LinkedIn).

Incidentally, David Westlake founded the Cinnamon Network with Matt Bird (they’ve recently rebranded as NAYBA) and Matt Bird describes himself as a “strategic adviser” to Soul In The City and Hope.^[xxxi] Another incidental is that Laurence Singlehurst’s daughter, Keira Phyo, previously worked for Tearfund alongside David Westlake and now works for Lambeth Palace. Another link between Soul Survivor and Lambeth Palace is David Saunderson. Saunderson was a Director of the Lambeth Trust from 2012 until July 2023,^[xxxii] and was also a Director of Soul61 from 2013 until 31st March 2023,^[xxxiii] two days before the Church of England and Soul Survivor issued statements about Mike Pilavachi stepping down. The Lambeth Trust supports the work and mission of present and former Archbishops of Canterbury. In 2020, Archbishop Justin Welby awarded Mike Pilavachi the Alphege Award for Evangelism and Witness.

LIV Village

While it is not entirely clear how Mike Pilavachi became involved with Tich and Joan Smith, they are the co-founders of LIV Village,^[xxxiv] a set of projects in various places across South Africa which provide homes, love and faith to orphans and other vulnerable children and young people. The UK branch of the charity exists to support their work. David Westlake was a founding trustee of the charity and Mike Pilavachi resigning as a trustee only after allegations emerged in April 2023.^[xxxv] The LIV Village choir would perform at Soul Survivor festivals and Mike Pilavachi, his interns and others connected to Soul Survivor would visit their projects in South Africa.

Church of England ordinations

Each year Soul Survivor ran seminars to encourage participants to discern whether they were called to ordination in the Church of England. From this, many younger, charismatic people ordained in the church of England discovered their calling, at least in part, due to Soul Survivor.^[xxxvi] This led Nicky Gumbel to state that almost every one of his 25 clergy at HTB testified that Mike Pilavachi was, “the main reason, humanly speaking, that they had been ordained.”^[xxxvii]

Soul Edge Ministries

This is a leadership training resource with gap year locations in Canada and New Zealand and has run since 2007/08ish.^[xxxviii] It was set up by two of Mike Pilavachi’s interns and he supported the project and subsequently platformed the gap year at Soul Survivor festivals. Until very recently, a lot of the publicity for the gap year came from their connection to Soul Survivor and Mike Pilavachi. It is understood than most of their students will have signed up through seeing the stand at Soul Survivor festivals.

Co-authored books

The foreword of Mike Pilavachi’s book Soul Survivor (2004) was written by Nicky Gumbel, who until recently was the leader of HTB (a church deeply infused by John Wimber’s theology).^[xxxix] As an aside, long-time HTB staff member and friend of Nicky Gumbel, Mark Elsdon-Dew has apparently been supporting Mike Pilavachi since the allegations emerged in April. I mean I guess that’s what one would do for one’s friend’s co-author…

Mike has also co-authored books with Craig Borlase (Live the Life, 2006. Afterlife, 2000. My First Trousers, 1999. For the Audience of One, 1999. Weeping Before An Empty Tomb, 2000. Life, Death and Everything In-Between, 2001). Craig has also co-authored a book with Martin Smith of Delirious. Liza Hoeksma is another of Mike Pilavachi’s co-authors (When Necessary Use Words, 2007. Soul Food for Youth Workers, 2009.) Liza has also co-authored two books with Patrick Regan and other books with Ali Martin, and with Tich and Joan Smith. The NIV Soul Survivor Journalling Bible was developed by Ali Martin, Andy Croft, Mike Pilavachi and team.^[xl]

As Soul Survivor festival and church grew, both in influence and numbers, Mike Pilavachi became involved in various projects and initiatives. From 1998 – 2000 he was a trustee of the Evangelical Alliance,^[xli] and was instrumental in the setting up of student organisation Fusion (which had a presence at all subsequent Soul Survivor festivals and ran their student content).^[xlii] Mike Pilavachi was a Trustee for XLP in London (found by Patrick Regan) from 2007 – 2017, with XLP a regular presence at Soul Survivor. In 2018 he joined the Council of Reference for Christ Church London^[xliii] and in 2011 – 2012 trained for Anglican ordination in the HTB affiliated St Mellitus college. Questions are now being raised as to if/how Pilavachi was fast tracked through the ordination process.

Other connections

Alongside sitting on various boards and lending his influence to different projects and initiatives, Mike Pilavachi was a regular contributor to many different events and training programmes. These include:

Spring Harvest (speaker from 1990 onwards).
Imagine Festival, Inverurie (this Scottish festival was eventually taken over by Soul Survivor).
HTB Youth Alpha video series.
New Frontiers (leadership training and conferences).
Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge (annual speaker and friend of the church).
Kingsgate Community Church, Peterborough (speaker at the European Learning Community events, 2013 onwards).
Ichthus Revive (most recently 2022).
St Pauls, Hammersmith.
Hillsong Australia (spoke at their annual conference the same year as Michael Gugliemucci was sharing his made-up testimony).^[xliv]
Church of Ireland (spoke at their youth festival, Summer Madness).
St John’s College, Nottingham (brought teams to lead chapel, worship and preach and was Honourary President).
Worship Central (regular speaker).
UCCF (spoke at their annual training event).
Trinity College, Bristol (lectured for them).
Care for the Family (contributed to their Getting Your Kids Through Church resource).^[xlv]
Open Doors (contributed to their youth content).
YWAM (Soul Survivor started a church in YWAM’s Harpenden base, Holmsted Manor).
Scripture Union (partnered with Soul Survivor for the festival each year.^[xlvi]
Woodlands Church, Bristol (hosted Naturally Supernatural events in 2022 and 2023).^[xlvii]
Living Out (Mike endorsed their work).^[xlviii]
St Peters High School, Gloucester (Spoke at a Friday night chaplaincy evening called Ignite – 2017).
Anaheim Vineyard (speaker, 2015/16).
Croydon Vineyard (pastors Tom and Lesley Thompson were at Soul Survivor Watford and Mike Pilavachi mentored Tom).
Trent Vineyard – Debby and John Wright’s church (preached numerous times at conferences and as a visiting speaker over many years and opened the church’s youth centre).
Causeway Coast Vineyard (speaker at events).
US – National Pastors Convention (2003 – 2005)
US – National Youth Workers Convention (2003 – 2005)
First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu (Speaking at the Hawaiian Islands Ministry (HIM) Conference).
South West Youth Ministries (Mike Pilavachi was their Patron and spoke at many of the conference over the years).

Since Soul Survivor ended in 2019, there are three other significant connections that are worth mentioning. As Mike Pilavachi closed down Soul Survivor, he did so having approached a few different organisations to pass on the “Christian youth festival” baton. These were:

Youthscape, who used the baton (which included a significant donation from Soul Survivor) to set up their Satellites festival.
Vineyard, who used the baton with their Dream The Impossible (DTI) festival (which had previously taken place in May) by moving it to the summer.^[xlix]
Elim’s Limitless festival.^[l]

What now?

It struck me as I’ve been pulling all these threads together that we are sixty years on from when John Wimber became a Christian and God was revealed in fresh and exciting ways to Christians in the US and UK. In tracing where Soul Survivor and Mike Pilavachi came from, I have seen the extraordinary ways God moved, ushering in new worship styles and breathing new life into the UK Church. But I was struck by how the Spirit’s move was no protection from power abuse or misuse within those communities.

Vineyard Anaheim reckons with the damage wreaked by Alan Scott and others. Hillsong clings on, even as the Houston’s stranglehold crushes out the Spirit. Soul Survivor continues to establish just how badly their systems failed. Many other unknown cases of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of Christian leaders rumble on, as those who have been trampled drag themselves onward, their faith only a smouldering wick, for some faith has been totally blown out. As God moved through John Wimber and others, they saw the signs of the times. They understood that God was calling them to a new expression of faithfulness; complete with electric guitars, wacky experiences and a sold-out love for Jesus. They saw the way that other forms of faith had been corrupted or stripped of power and they sought, with great enthusiasm to follow where Jesus was leading.

Right now, we are in a reckoning. God is shining a light on that which has remained in the darkness. Those with the power (some of whom have been mentioned by name in this blog) are so settled in their places, so comfortable in their power, that they fail to see God moving this time round. When John Wimber visited the UK back in the eighties, these people were young and idealistic, still relatively powerless in the grand scheme of things. But now they are the elder statesmen of Christian culture. They tell their stories of the Spirit moving and they convince themselves that this wave of abuse disclosures will disintegrate into nothingness. Surely this generation is simply too fragile? Of course Mike Pilavachi could be a bit difficult, but isn’t that always the way with gifted men? Soon everything will calm down and we can get back to the way we built things to be?

But they’ve forgotten who invited them to the party. The Holy Spirit moved and they found themselves in the flow of what God was doing. They build their big ships to travel on those waters more easily, and now they think their ships are where the Spirit is at. They think their ships are what matter. But as those who landed in Malta all of those years ago discovered, sometimes the ship will be smashed to pieces.^[li]

For the sake of those most wounded I hope those with power, who felt that move of the Spirit all those years ago, will wake up to what that same Spirit is saying to us right now. But regardless of whether they get onboard, I have every confidence that the same Spirit which changed the face of UK Christianity decades ago, will succeed in moving us to where we need to be. Even if some ships have to be smashed in the process.

—————————–

So far, of those identified above as having a relationship with Mike Pilavachi,these organisations have offered transparent and helpful responses:

Youthscape made a statement HERE.
Croydon Vineyard wrote an article HERE.
South West London Vineyard published THIS on Spiritual Abuse and included acknoweldgement of their relationship with Mike Pilavachi in THIS September 2023 sermon (transcription of some of it HERE).

This blog was edited on 25th September 2023 as it had incorrectly stated that JJohn had never been made a Canon in the Church of England, when he is a Lay Canon.

^[i] https://archive.ph/AJFKS

^[ii] https://twitter.com/newwineengland/status/1702004212429992206?s=46

^[iii] https://archive.ph/2023.07.17-212202/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/17/backlash-church-leaders-praise-soul-survivor-mike-pilavachi/

^[iv] https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/14028354.york-church-celebrates-50th-anniversary-of-famous-vicars-arrival/

^[v] https://yournameislikehoney.com/2021/11/12/part-ten-when-wimber-met-htb-part-1-of-2/

^[vi] https://web.archive.org/web/20220116105241/https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/vineyard-vaults/real-not-religious/

^[vii] https://www.vineyardchurches.org.uk/resources/remembering-john-wimber/

^[viii] https://vineyardusa.org/library/the-global-vineyard-meet-john-mumford/

^[ix] https://vineyardusa.org/library/the-global-vineyard-meet-john-mumford/

^[x] http://www.nigelring.org/40-years-on-3-conferences-in-the-80s/

^[xi] https://newwine.medium.com/from-power-house-to-kitchen-to-showground-d8ff1ec2a57d,https://yournameislikehoney.com/2021/11/12/part-ten-when-wimber-met-htb-part-1-of-2/

^[xii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW5nAXCUA_Y

^[xiii] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/13/christian-singer-matt-redman-healing-soul-survivor/

^[xiv] https://newwine.medium.com/from-power-house-to-kitchen-to-showground-d8ff1ec2a57d

^[xv]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wine#:~:text=The%20first%20New%20Wine%20Christian,and%20attracted%20nearly%202%2C500%20people.

^[xvi] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TW5nAXCUA_Y (18:01)

^[xvii]https://www.crossrhythms.co.uk/articles/music/Les_Moir_Survivor_Records_Visionary__And_A_Pretty_Funky_Bass_Player/25891/p1/

^[xviii] https://archive.ph/w1ls0

^[xix] https://x.com/needs_light/status/1702351254012272976?s=20

^[xx] HERE

^[xxi] http://hearthofmopsus.blogspot.com/2018/03/re-emergence.html

^[xxii] https://wahotel.co.uk

^[xxiii] http://www.orderofstleonard.org/team/

^[xxiv] https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-westlake-b5435811/

^[xxv] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02917078/filing-history?page=4

^[xxvi]https://www.crossrhythms.co.uk/articles/music/Les_Moir_Survivor_Records_Visionary__And_A_Pretty_Funky_Bass_Player/25891/p1/

^[xxvii] https://issuu.com/soulsurvivoruk/2

^[xxviii] https://www.revelationtrust.org/relationships-rule/

^[xxix] HERE

^[xxx] https://premierchristian.news/en/news/article/gavin-calver-leaves-yfc-for-ea

^[xxxi] https://www.matt-bird.com

^[xxxii] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07884895/officers

^[xxxiii] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07705162/filing-history?page=2

^[xxxiv] https://www.liv-village.com/our-story/

^[xxxv] https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search?p_p_id=uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet&p_p_lifecycle=2&p_p_state=maximized&p_p_mode=view&p_p_resource_id=%2Faccounts-resource&p_p_cacheability=cacheLevelPage&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_objectiveId=A12261853&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_mvcRenderCommandName=%2Faccounts-and-annual-returns&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_organisationNumber=5009582

^[xxxvi] https://livingchurch.org/2019/09/14/soul-survivor-festival-ends-26-year-run-in-church-of-england/

^[xxxvii] https://x.com/God_loves_women/status/1658531348347342848?s=20

^[xxxviii] https://www.souledge.org/team

^[xxxix] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334841524744

^[xl] https://www.amazon.co.uk/NIV-Soul-Survivor-Journalling-Bible/dp/1473696739

^[xli] https://www.eauk.org

^[xlii] https://www.fusionmovement.org

^[xliii] https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search?p_p_id=uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet&p_p_lifecycle=2&p_p_state=maximized&p_p_mode=view&p_p_resource_id=%2Faccounts-resource&p_p_cacheability=cacheLevelPage&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_fileName=0001111950_AC_20180731_E_C.pdf&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_objectiveId=A9232784&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_mvcRenderCommandName=%2Faccounts-and-annual-returns&_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_priv_r_p_organisationNumber=4019022

^[xliv] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9422751/Aussie-Hillsong-pastor-faked-having-cancer-hide-porn-habit-starts-charity-homeless.html

^[xlv] https://www.eauk.org/great-commission/resources/getting-your-kids-through-church

^[xlvi] https://www.lendrickmuir.org.uk/events/creperie-soul-survivor/

^[xlvii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=h7a0yIbs0XI

^[xlviii] https://twitter.com/mattdrapps/status/1700860993633415381?s=46

^[xlix] https://dreamingtheimpossible.org

^[l] https://www.elim.org.uk/Groups/310950/LIMITLESS.aspx

^[li] Acts 26 – 28.

Previous blogs:

Guest Post: New Frontiers and Mike Pilavachi

For those unfamiliar with New Frontiers (NF), they are a network of evangelical charismatic churches founded in 1979 by Terry Virgo. In 2011, Terry Virgo retired as the “apostolic leader” of New Frontiers, and at this point New Frontiers had 800 churches in 70 nations. As a result of this, New Frontiers reorganised itself into 8 “spheres”, where NF churches with similar theology and mission join together. The names of the spheres are: 1) Advance, 2) Catalyst, 3) ChristCentral, 4) Commission, 5) Confluence, 6) New Ground, 7) Regions Beyond, and 8) Relational Mission. “New Frontiers Together” is the name of organisation that oversees the spheres. New Frontiers is led by a group of male “apostolic leaders”. There isn’t much clarity externally as to what qualifies someone as an apostolic leader but from what I can establish from HERE, the Apostolic Leaders include: eight Sphere Leaders, five New Frontiers Together leaders (four of whom are also Sphere Leaders), three NF church leaders who also run NGOs, and two NF church leaders in specific countries (Ukraine and US).

While New Frontiers themselves would probably be quite uncomfortable with me paralleling their leadership structure with Anglican structures, for those more familiar with an Anglican structure, New Frontiers looks a bit like this:
– Church leader/Lead elder = parish priest and/or archdeacon.
– Church elders = PCC.
– Sphere leader = bishop.
– Apostolic Leader = a) bishop, b) NGO leader, c) national leader.
– New Frontiers Together Leader = archbishop.
– Sphere = non-geographic diocese.

Unlike in the Anglican tradition, the process to become a NF leader or elder is that the process does not take months or years long. As NF has no centralised safeguarding or leadership process, the length of time taken to choose/discern an elder as right for the role is decided locally. The decision is concluded with often a short meeting with the elders and an Apostolic Leader. Feedback from the congregation is often taken at some point in the process but the decision is really in the agreement of the elders, trustees, and apostolic lead. The process of becoming a leader seems to be quite opaque and so it is unclear how exactly men end up in leadership roles. One of New Frontiers’ core distinctives has been their commitment to complementarian theology. While more recently, some of the spheres allow women to preach and lead, all of the spheres only allow men to be elders.

All of this gives some context to the following guest post written by Phil Duncalfe. He was an elder in the Guildford New Frontiers church for 6 years and a member of the church since being a student at the University of Surrey. He is a staff worker for Friends International and Chaplain at the University of Surrey and you can find his story HERE.

New Frontiers and Mike Pilavachi

Who we align ourselves with as Christians is important. The collator of the Psalms thought this was so important he placed it right at the start.

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,and who meditates on his law day and night.” (Psalm 1:1)

We don’t expect churches and church movements to get who they platform right 100% of the time. Obviously they can’t know the hearts of people. However when things go wrong, communication and repentance is important to build trust. More on this point in a moment.

Discernment and New Frontiers’ Platforms

New Frontiers has repeatedly found themselves platforming people who turn out to not be who NF thought they were. Terry Virgo was connected with CJ Mahaney – until he wasn’t. Bill Hybels books were highly recommended – until they weren’t. Mark Driscoll was huge in New Frontiers in the early 2000s and was given the stage at Together on a Mission, their 2008 summer conference and Terry Virgo’s son, Joel, interviewed Driscoll that year, with the interview still on Terry’s website. Some things were said about Driscoll soon after his downfall; most notably by NF leaders Andrew Wilson and Matthew Hosier, with NF church leader Phil Whittall saying more about this after podcast series Rise and Fall of Mars Hill chronicled the history of New Frontiers and Mark Driscoll. Despite Andrew and Matthew being fairly well known leaders when they wrote the articles, I don’t fully recall much being said about it through official NF channels. They may have done. Those were the early days of my involvement with New Frontiers as a university student; no one reads emails as a student do they?

New Frontiers’ response to the Mike Pilavachi allegations

My recollection generally (happy to be proven wrong) is that NF has rarely said anything about their past failings of giving a platform to men who went on to have high profile failings. With the knowledge that at least one sphere of New Frontiers platformed high profile Christian leader Mike Pilavachi a number of times, I decided to hunt down New Frontier responses to Mike Pilavachi’s resignation of the wider investigation into allegations of him being abusive. What I found was that Mike Pilavachi and New Frontiers were far more connected than I initially realised. Despite this deeper friendship at all levels of New Frontiers; there has been total silence bar three social media posts – two by Terry Virgo (one being a clarification/faux-apology for praising Mike in the first) and a third by Andrew Wilson which simply links to a statement by Matt Redman.

New Frontiers’ relationship with Mike Pilavachi

I found that Mike Pilavachi has been to at least two UK New Frontiers Leaders’ conferences (2019 and 2023) and one global New Frontiers Leaders’ conference in Cyprus (2019). These weren’t for all church elders, not even lead elders; but only for Apostolic Leaders. In addition to this, Mike was repeatedly booked by New Frontiers Spheres and Churches for the last 10 years or more. The most notable connections are collated below, but a full list can be found on THIS Twitter thread.

Relational Mission 2012: Early to get Mike Pilavachi involved was the Relational Mission Sphere; particularly Mike Betts, who recently shifted from being the sole Apostolic Lead of that sphere to a team model, with Mike Pilavachi speaking at their 2012 “Elders and Wives” event (each sphere would independently hold one of these annually). Mike Betts seems to be fairly close with Mike Pilavachi given there is a photo on Facebook of them together in 2021 where Mike Pilavachi states he “loved spending today with some of my favourite people”.

Relational Mission 2018: Pilavachi was also at the Relational Mission Sphere’s Sent Event 2018. Either advertising for this event on Twitter didn’t include Mike Pilavachi’s name or has since been deleted.

New Ground 2012: New Ground, led by David Holden (a Sphere Leader and New Frontiers Together leader) also hosted Pilavachi in 2012 for their “Empowered” summer festival. Later in 2016 Pilavachi was part of their leadership training programme (New Ground Academy).

Catalyst Network 2013 and 2019 and 2020: The Catalyst Sphere hosted Mike Pilavachi at their summer festival in 2013 and then booked him again at the renamed festival Multiply in 2019. In 2020, he spoke at a large Catalyst Church as part of their Sounds of Glory conference.

Christ Cental 2020: Mike managed to also be at Christ Central’s Devoted Festival in January 2020 having just been at or going to the Sounds of Glory conference either that day or the day prior.

Commission 2019: I was still an elder in a Commission church in 2019 and at our annual elders and wives retreat, which had been renamed Amplify, Mike was the speaker. He was booked in for the summer festival in 2020 which was delayed due to COVID. He remained booked in for the 2023 festival but was uninvited once the news broke. There was no public message regarding this removal but an internal email was sent to participants:

Commission 2022: In September 2022, Mike Pilavachi spoke at A Time of Refreshing, an event at Guy Miller’s Westminster Chapel. Guy is the Apostolic Leader of the Commission Sphere.

Confluence 2022: Mike spoke to the “Confluence Sphere Team” over 2 days in 2022. Upon Ian Ashby sending this tweet, David Holden (leader of New Ground) made the comment “Tell Mike I said his honorarium for endlessly imputing(sic.) Newfrontiers needs to go up !! [sic.]”.

Only two of the eight New Frontiers’ spheres do not seem to have had Mike Pilavachi speak at their events; Advance Movement and Regions Beyond.

Even as a guest speaker, this is a lot of events! There are times where Mike Pilavachi spoke over multiple days for multiple sessions – which, for my experience of 16 years with New Frontiers, wasn’t the norm. They usually use leaders from within New Frontiers to speak at these events.

However, Mike Pilavachi wasn’t just a guest speaker. While further investigation and detail is needed; in the 2019/20 tax year, under Mike’s direction, £2,487 was paid to New Frontiers (p.29 HERE). Perhaps this was just payment for the trip out to Cyprus, but if it was it is curious that his expenses weren’t paid as part of his speaker honoararium.

Calling New Frontiers to account

In all my searches of each NF Sphere and NF leader’s feed, there is not a single post about the issues surrounding Mike Pilavachi stepping down. There is not a single post about care for victims or those affected by what Mike has done. Mike influenced thousands of young people over Soul Survivor’s decades of festivals and there are a many of us who are deeply impacted and working out what it means for our theology. For many, our very calling which we heard while at Soul Survivor camps, is now being questioned. There isn’t a single message from anyone within NF about how to parse that with Mike Pilavachi being platformed and praised in their churches. All we got was Terry Virgo publicly telling Mike Pilavachi via social media that he was a blessing to New Frontiers and then a second correctiv post admitting he didn’t know much about what was going on or why Pilavachi was standing down.

The Psalmist calls us to be aware of who we stand with. When we get it wrong we should reflect and, if needed, repent. We should recognise those who have been hurt and we should help disciple those who are confused or distressed due to the failings of someone they thought they could trust; particularly if we have been the ones commending them as trustworthy.

Some might say it is wise to remain silent while there is an active investigation. I think it is a misguided position, especially for New Frontiers Spheres that have so regularly platformed Mike Pilavachi, because silence makes it all about Mike Pilavachi. Those who are hurting or confused are left isolated as they waiting for their church/sphere/leaders to say the right thing about Mike Pilavachi. No matter if there is criminal behaviour or not, the allegations suggest Mike Pilavachi’s behaviour towards young people while he was speaking on NF platforms was deeply hurtful to them and that he is likely no longer fit for Christian leadership. We can all read the stories of those hurting people, many who have personally experienced the pain described in the allegations. Church leaders should be prioritising them!

What might it look like if leaders who had been influenced by Mike Pilavachi, loved his teaching, found their calling while under his guidance and encouraged others to learn from him were open and honest with their congregation? As I was keenly searching, and desperately hoping, for public acknowledgement of the hurting by at least one New Frontiers leader who had platformed Mike Pilavachi, I found an excellent example of what a good response looks like. Tom and Lesley who lead Croydon Vineyard, show HERE what it means to lead their congregation through a sensitive issue such as this. Take some time to read their repsonse and see what it looks like when leaders recognise they have platformed someone who they later learn has hurt so many.

I’ll finish with a quote from Tom and Lesley as to why New Frontiers’ leaders, of all Spheres and churches who platformed Mike Pilavachi, should take time for the sake of their congregations to communicate the issues and reflect on who they have platformed, not for the sake of Mike Pilavachi or their reputation, but for the sake of the hurting:

“This situation affects us and if we don’t talk about it we run the risk of suggesting some things are “off the table” of discussion due to their sensitivity or complexity. Jesus has asked us (Tom and Lesley) to lead and pastor you through life, to help you become all Jesus has called you to be. This means we must engage with topics even when they are sensitive, complex or where we have a possible vested interest. If we talk about these situations it should help us together work out how to navigate them with integrity and honour and how to learn lessons from them so we all grow as disciples of Jesus.”

Woe to you, religious leaders!

In a 2013 interview with Terry Virgo, Premier Christianity seems impressed with the international links the founder of Newfrontiers has made as part of his ministry. Favourably mentioning CJ Mahaney and Mark Driscoll, the article interrogates Virgo’s, and by extension, Newfrontiers churches’ complementarian views on women in leadership; that women cannot be leaders or preach, but that women can prophecy and evangelise. A decade later and the names of both CJ Mahaney and Mark Driscoll are associated with abuse. Driscoll was removed from the Acts 29 network he founded for bullying and abusing those in his congregation; and the statute of limitations meant a lawsuit failed against Mahaney for covering up male leaders sexually abusing children within his Sovereign Grace network churches. Not only that, but Newfrontiers failed in 2017 to hold accountable one of their pastors, PJ Smyth, after it emerged he had covered up his father John Smyth’s sadistic abuse of boys and young men in elite Christian summer camps. This only came to light in 2021 after Newfrontiers contracted Christian abuse expert Wade Mullen to investigate the situation. More recent concerns (HERE and HERE) in Newfrontiers churches raise further questions about the church network founded by Terry Virgo.

The Southern Baptist Convention kept a private list of 703 men who were pastors or ministers in their churches and who had abused children, but did nothing with this, stating that the autonomous nature of churches within their network meant that they couldn’t take action. However, this church autonomy was not enough for Rick Warren’s Saddleback congregation to ordain women into leadership positions in the church. The SBC voted to kick them about. It is a curious thing that both the SBC and Newfrontiers churches have greater confidence that God wants to keep women silent and powerless than they do in stopping men sexually or otherwise abusing children and adult members of their congregations.

On 11^th July, Mike Pilavachi took to his personal Facebook page and his private Instagram account to share the news that he was resigning from Soul Survivor. I posted some reflections about his statement HERE, including mention of Terry Virgo’s Instagram comment, “Continuing to pray for you Mike, deeply grateful for the massive blessing you’ve been in countless Newfrontiers settings.” Virgo has since posted a clarification on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. My critique is in red brackets throughout his statement:

I write for clarification. I was saddened when I read Mike Pilavachi’s message regarding his removal from Soul Survivor. Like many people, I have been blessed by his remarkable ministry. Also like most people I have been uninformed of the situation he is facing. I have never been involved in Soul Survivor. I’ve not been following any online conversation that might have been taking place, nor have I studied secular newspaper reports. [Really? Is it wise or discerning for the retired leader of hundreds of churches to make a public comment without being well-informed of the situation? Christian news outlets have covered the situation and surely as Christians we should all seek to be well-informed about situations we comment on, particularly in how they are reported in “secular” media, given that affects our ability to be a good witness to those who are not Christian. Also, this is the biggest earthquake to hit evangelical Christianity in a generation, and Terry Virgo has decided to bury his head in the sand? Really?!]

I understood there was an enquiry which would clarify issues. [I am curious as to how he knew this, given that he has just told us he was “uninformed” about the situation.]

I simply prayed for him out of sympathy for his removal and wrote to tell him of my prayers. I have been shocked and saddened that my prayers have been regarded by some as an unqualified endorsement of whatever he is found to have been doing. I have been ignorant of what that is and I thought everyone was until the enquiry clarifies. [He did not “simply” pray for Mike Pilavachi. He assured Pilavachi of the massive blessings Mike had been in many Newfrontiers settings. That isn’t a prayer, that is an endorsement. Given that there is no context in which Terry Virgo could say to a female preacher or priest that they have been a blessing in numerous Newfrontiers contexts, I think we all know it was more than just a simply prayer.]

I could never endorse the unknown and l’ve always regarded prayer for a brother as a Christian response. I simply prayed for him and told him so. I have been amazed and so saddened to see this regarded online as “evil”, “despicable”, “a disgrace”. [He did endorse the unknown. He endorsed Mike Pilavachi who has had over 100 complaints made against him, including reports of Pilavachi massaging barely clothed young men on his bed and bullying and emotionally abusing young adults and others within Soul Survivor. Perhaps if he had expressed any sort of concern for those who have been hurt by Pilavachi, Virgo would not have been angrily responded to.]

I have been shocked and helped by my friend Matt Redman’s recent comments, which certainly shed light on my ignorance. I still don’t know what the findings will prove, but my sympathies certainly lie with any who have been troubled or traumatised. They should certainly be fully listened to and afforded the dignity they deserve. I await the results of the enquiry. If my prayers for Mike have caused dismay, I’m sorry. [It is good that he assures us his sympathies lie with those who have been troubled or traumatised, but to only apologise for the dismay he may have caused, and not for what he actually did is rather disingenuous.]

Although Virgo’s initial comment celebrated the many blessings Mike Pilavachi had offered to Newfrontiers, this apology distances Newfrontiers and Virgo from Mike Pilavachi. He personally has now merely “been blessed by his remarkable ministry”. No longer is Newfrontiers a site of Mike Pilavachi’s blessing and a reader could be mistaken for thinking Terry Virgo was simply being blessed from afar by a fellow national evangelical leader.

That too is quite disingenuous. Mike Pilavachi has spoken at Newfrontiers conferences, youth events and leaders’ weekends away. He has also been a core member of Terry Virgo’s National Gathering of Leaders that has taken place each January for the last few years.

I know this because each year, someone tweets what a joy it has been to be at this national leaders gathering and I go on a twant (Twitter Rant) about there being no women, making it a National Gathering of Male Leaders. As you’ll notice from this year’s gathering Mike Pilavachi was a key participant. On criticism of it being all male, another of the male gathering, Ian Paul, asserted on Twitter that hard complementarian Terry Virgo had not deliberately made the gathering male only, telling us that “No. These just happen to be all men.”

If Ian Paul’s name seems familiar to you, that’s because he has somehow ended up on the Archbishops’ Council and last week at Synod it emerged that while the two Archbishops had “wanted to wait a bit longer” before taking any action to remove Jas Sanghera and Steve Reeves as Independent Safeguarding Board members, they ended up voting with other council members to sack them. That same Ian Paul is in disagreement with both Archbishops, who think Church of England safeguarding is “in crisis” or “chaotic”. And it is the very same Ian Paul who this week told women priests that they shouldn’t object to misogyny and that neither would he because he’s written a booklet about egalitarian theology. Turns out being complementarian isn’t a prerequisite for being unpleasant to women. Who knew?!

We are now into Week 16 of the situation at Soul Survivor. We are in the midst of a reckoning as those who’ve had unquestioned power are required to account for themselves. We should not be surprised that we find ourselves here. Jesus’ seven woes to the religious leaders of His time ring out loud and clear all these years later. Woe to those religious leaders who shut the door in people’s faces and lead people into greater sin; who neglect the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness and are filled with greed and self-indulgence. They are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Perhaps it is time that we learn, as John Ellis reflected this week, “It’s taken me two decades to learn some of the deeper truths about religious faith, including one that Christian leaders seem to think is anathema: ‘if many people agree with you, you’re probably doing something wrong’. …For me, Jesus’s persistent refusal of anything other than servant-leadership is one of the many reasons why I choose to follow him. My instinct as I get older is that spiritual faith is a gentle, near-invisible way through the world, and that if you need a microphone, something’s gone awry.”

Posts about Soul Survivor:

Trampling on the Little Ones

Photo of a Millstone by Ali Arslan on Pexels.com

The first will be last in the topsy turvy kingdom of the God who relinquished all power, all tiny and helpless, pushed out into the world by that woman of renown. And the comments flowed with “we love you” “you’re important” on the post by The Man who told us he heard from God who it seems is now mainly listening to his lawyer. The Man told us it was “all about Jesus” and that Jesus (it turns out) declared it would be better to be drowned in the depths of the seas than to cause even one of these little ones to stumble.

After years of stumbling over The Man’s foot (that he stuck out to trip them) the little ones have fallen flat on their faces; now dragging themselves across the words of a statement that retells their story with That Man as the victim of their “allegations” and a “trial” by media. And though he asks for forgiveness, it’s news to the little ones, because he’s yet to ask it of them, after he tripped them up over, over and over and over again.

And Jesus wept as He looked on Jerusalem, who killed the prophets and stoned those God sent and now in the comments, Modern Jerusalem tells The Man it’s “only the Telegraph that I’ve lost any trust in” and Terry Virgo tells him what a “blessing” he’s been and J John tells him “God is well-pleased” with him.

And now there’s no need to stone the prophets, just block and delete, block and delete.

We weep and we weep and we weep with the little ones, rage-filled and heartbroken with no comfort to offer. Except of the One who knows; knows of betrayal and gaslighting and abandonment. “Crucify him” they demanded as our Jesus stayed silent and his friends ran and hid except, of course, the women.

And Modern Jerusalem claim they represent Jesus while trampling over his little ones sprawled on the floor, tripped up by The Man being celebrated in the comments. And we wonder why the church keeps on shrinking.

For though they don’t say it, their actions do show it, that blessed are the powerful and the ones with the platforms, and blessed are those in the inner circle. Blessed are those who protect the church’s image, and blessed are those who hunger for status. Blessed are those who avoid introspection and blessed are those who are accused of abuse because (they secretly think) the little ones are lying. Even though God knows the little ones are telling the truth.

And the little ones weep and the little ones drown as the leaders place millstones around the wrong necks, while falsely viewing righteous anger as a new sort of crucifixion. And there’s promises of change that they kick into the long grass and the only hope they offer being for the status quo.

But the woman of renown (out of whom our Lord came) sang the same prayer that we must pray; of the mighty cast down and the little ones lifted up and the hungry filled and the rich sent away. And as sister Teresa long ago taught us, it is with our feet that He walks and with our hands that He blesses and through our eyes He looks with compassion.

May God enlighten each of us with his compassion for the little ones and may God embolden us with a commitment to justice, because the little ones need us and, as it turns out, it is the little ones that Jesus loves the most.

Other blogs about this situation:

We are all implicated subjects

In the mid-nineties, a man called Gordon Collins complained to Martyn Smith about “manipulation, control and dishonesty” perpetrated by Vineyard church leader Alan Scott. Martyn Smith was a senior leader Vineyard leader, who ran “Vineyard Christian Fellowship Manchester”. Martyn Smith reportedly shut the conversation down. Almost thirty years later, with significantly more power and platform, that same Alan Scott has been accused of spiritually abusive and bullying leadership and stealing the first ever Vineyard church from the Vineyard movement. Pete Greig resigned from the Anaheim Vineyard Board over the situation, stating that Alan Scott (and his wife Kathryn) “have served faithfully and fruitfully within Vineyard for decades and are truly people who listen diligently to the Lord and simply seek to obey.”

In 2008, Martyn Smith and his wife Linda handed over the leadership of Manchester Vineyard (as it had become known) to his son Phil Smith and his wife Sarah. This was the same year that Ben Cooley co-found anti-trafficking organisation, Hope for Justice (also based in Manchester).

In 2018, co-founder of anti-trafficking organisation Hope for Justice Ben Cooley and his friends Gareth Russell and Tom (not sure of his last name) launched a podcast “Dear 26 Year Old Me”. Three years later, in 2021 Ben Cooley was fired from Hope for Justice for gross misconduct and left his wife and children to marry Asher Telleen, a woman he’d been having an affair with. At the same time, Phil Smith was removed from leadership at Vinelife Manchester (as it is now known) after having cheating on his wife.

Soon after this, Ben Cooley and Phil Smith sought to launch a funding base for Ben’s new wife’s questionable Ugandan-based charity, Sole Hope. Phil began promoting the charity on social media. The attempted immediate relaunch of both men’s careers didn’t really work, and Ben and Asher Cooley began focussing on their new venture Maxwell and Marie, a business growth and leadership development company.

In his new podcast for Maxwell and Marie, Ben Cooley ponders about how hard it is for men like him who get sacked for misconduct and leave their wives and children for a woman they’ve been having an affair with:

“I feel for leaders…I hadn’t learnt the art of self-care… If I’m really honest I think leadership is broken in our society because we elevate leaders to a point where they can’t be vulnerable. We love shooting our wounded don’t we? We just love it. We love tearing them down, we love the whole scandal of it and all that, but we created that. Because now a leader that gets elevated on social media, or elevated on a platform, gets tens of thousands of people that attend their congregation or church or like their movement or whatever… they can’t talk about their vulnerability. Where do they go? …That bit crumbles, and then it becomes public and then what? We tear them down and we say the 99.999% of things that you did good is now forgotten and we’re just going to focus on the 0.1%. You are officially cancelled. Boom. You’re out of here! I think we should be a kinder society.”

Rather than attending to kindness for society as a whole, I guess Ben Cooley’s wife and children might have been grateful if he could have focussed his attention on being kinder to them. I’m sure Ben Cooley’s colleagues left with the havoc wreaked by his gross misconduct would have been grateful if he could have been kinder and less, you know, gross misconduct-y in his workplace. But then that narrative would require him to step up and take responsiblity, which is something he’s yet to think is important.

Ben Cooley’s fellow podcaster from his previous podcast, Gareth Russell, now runs Jersey Road PR, a Christian public relations company who are currently running crisis comms for Soul Survivor. Earlier this week, Gareth made his company’s crisis communications course for churches freely available.

Justin Humphreys is CEO of the UK’s leading Christian safeguarding charity ThirtyOne:Eight. A day after Gareth posted Jersey Road PR’s free course on Twitter, Justin endorsed it and promoted it on his Twitter account, “This is a great resource for churches. Don’t wait for the crisis. Do all you can to prevent it and be ready to respond well to it if/when it happens…” In the most recent issue of ThirtyOne:Eight’s magazine “Caring Together” (April 2023, p.26-27), Jersey Road PR have written an article advising churches on how to “predict, prevent and prepare” for a comms crisis.

This feels about as appropriate as the CEO of the NSPCC promoting the company that has been brought in to manage the crisis comms at ITV after Phillip’s Phillip Schofield’s “unwise but not illegal” relationship while married, with a man he met “when he was a teenager”. This hasn’t happened. And it never would.

On challenging Justin’s promotion of the for-profit PR company responsible for Soul Survivor’s crisis comms, Justin shared on Twitter with me THIS from Jersey Road PR which assures us that they are committed to safeguarding, complete with links to a guest blog Justin has written for Jersey Road PR about safeguarding. Justin’s follow up tweet assured me, “I apologise if I have caused any upset or confusion in my comments. My intention is always to help.”

There is no world in which for-profit PR companies (no matter how Christian) should be in formal or informal partnerships with safeguarding charities. Their missions, their remits, their roles are completely different, and if they’re both doing their jobs properly, they will at times be in serious conflict. This is indicated in Jersey Road PR’s free resource that Justin is endorsing. Their flow chart on page 43 of THIS workbook categorises negative social media users as “trolls”, “ragers”, “misguided”, or “negative experience”. That may make sense when dealing with someone who’s bought a hoover that doesn’t work, but it’s certainly not appropriate for dealing with precious human beings who have been abused and failed and are now expressing their hurt in the only place they may feel safe, on social media.

I found myself blocked by Justin after I responded to his tweet HERE and HERE by saying, “To help who? Because promoting that resource helps Jersey Road & it helps churches do PR, but it’s doesn’t help victims.It’s not upset or confusion that is the issue. As far as I can see, it seems to be more about poor judgement & a lack of strategic capacity to know what your role is and what it isn’t. But I guess maybe I’d just be considered a “rager” in the Jersey Road.”

The evangelical world is very small, but there is significant power, status and resources available within it for those who hold leadership positions. A shared faith can lead to extremely blurred boundaries. The brief overview above of some of the interconnections between men in leadership who have harmed others is a current and very live demonstration of this. These leaders presume shared intentions and mission (furthering the Gospel), they’re buddies meeting up for coffee or drinks or food, doing life together. They end up in the same events and spaces.

As people become senior leaders in their organisations, they are rarely surrounded by people who robustly challenge them. Certainly, in the middle-class, male-dominated enclaves of most senior leadership spaces, there is a lot of back-patting and keeness to be part of the Inner Ring (as CS Lewis called it). Without realising it, these individuals become surrounded by sycophants who applaud them for all the worthy and important things they do and say. They fail to cultivate systems where they will be challenged. Though if Ben Cooley is to be believed, it’s the poor leaders who are “unable to be vulnerable”. Those with power make active choices to build certain cultures and surround themselves with certain kinds of people, particularly given they do most of the hiring.

These blurred boundaries, coupled with significant power create a culture that is ripe for power misuse. As we are learning from Soul Survivor; for decades it was known that there were issues, Mike Pilavachi having special interns he was taking on glamorous speaking trips; reports of him massaging young men; a culture where everyone was silenced and Mike’s charismatic gifting free to reek untold trauma on so many.

It’s an established fact that abuse is bad. No one disagrees. Even abusers. And the reason they agree that abuse is bad is because they don’t see themselves as an abuser. Instead, they are entitled to do what they do; because that woman was asking for it with her clothes or her eyes or her words; because he’s only practising his massage skills; because his son needed to be punished because he was out of order; because his wife shouldn’t answer him back and she knows when she doesn’t keep the kids quiet it winds him up;. He thinks those men who are wife-beaters should get the death penalty, and those men who rape children should be castrated. But what he did wasn’t rape, because the little girl he raped wanted him to do it. He just knows she did.

Every church agrees abuse is bad. Each charity employee knows bullying is wrong. None of them would ever collude with a bully. Even those who collude with the bullying. Even those who silence the abused. Because when their colleague is bullying, it’s not bullying, the bullied individual is mistaken. It’s just that the boss is so passionate and really the bullied individual does seem rather over-sensitive and if the bullied individual is a woman she’s probably rather emotional.

Abuse is that bad thing that happens over there with those people who have nothing to do with me. Harvey Weinstein goes to prison because, she said and she said and she said and she said and she said and she said and he was no longer young and charming and so we all hated him and cheered when he went to prison. But Johnny Depp is charming and basically a funny pirate and we relate to him in all those films and so even though he said he wanted to set fire to Amber Heard and rape her corpse, Amber Heard is both too emotional and not emotional enough and so we hate her and cheer when he’s suing her for defamation.

The reason we can all agree that abuse is bad is because there’s never any abuse near us. We can put abusers in the Bad Place. But what about when the abuser is my friend, my collague, my church leader, my boss, the leader of that ministry that will lend me credibility, power, status? Well then, I can’t put them in the Bad Place. Instead I minimise their behaviour, I deny it, I blame it on all sorts of meaningful things. He’s gifted, it’s just his way, he’s doesn’t mean it, he’s got mental health problems, it’s probably that the person who’s disclosed this stuff is misunderstanding what’s gone on.

In THIS article about trauma expert Judith Herman’s new book “Truth and Repair”, she makes explicit what most of us who’ve been abused know, that the pain of being failed by our community can be just as unbearable as the abuse we were subjected to. We can put the abuser in the Bad Place. The abuser knew what they were doing. The abuser selfishly placed themselves above us. We can’t put our family members, church family, colleagues, friends or others in the Bad Place because we know that are capable of compassion and care for us. They haven’t destroyed their humanity by abusing us, raping us, bullying us, emotionally decimating us, spiritually controlling us. They’re the people who are regular, ordinary people. They’re not even badly intentioned.

And yet… They disbelieved us. They continue to socialise with the abuser. They diminished our pain. They silenced us. They stood in the way of us being heard. They allow the abuser to continue to ruin other lives. Their betrayal ruins us and means that nowhere and noone is safe. And they do all that without even realising what they are doing.

The article explains, “Herman suggests that “bystander” is too benign a description for such ancillary figures. Instead, she borrows the term “implicated subjects” from the scholar Michael Rothberg, who has argued that almost all of us contribute to or benefit from structural injustice, and so almost none of us is innocent of implication.”

We are all Implicated Subjects. Rather than abuse being something over there, it’s something we are all implicated in and as such, we must remain vigilant to the potential to collude with abusers. As communities our baseline assumption must be that we have abusers among us and that we all have a tendency to towards prioritising the abuser rather than the victim. It’s not an easy thing to consider, given that we all theoretically think Abuse Is Bad. But that is only because we rename and reframe the abuse we come across as Not Abuse. It’s the sleight of hand we don’t even realise we’re doing, the magic trick that relieves us of responsibility or concern. And it ruins the lives of those who are being abused.

If we are all Implicated Subjects and we must regularly ask ourselves, where is power misuse taking place in my life/workplace/church/family at the moment? Where are the places I need to be vigilant to my own tendencies towards turning abuse into Not Abuse? How can I surround myself with people who will tell me when I am wrong?

A dear friend of mine was recently in a work context where she began asking the important and difficult questions. She was fobbed off and dismissed. They saw her as a threat. But she wasn’t a threat. She was a gift to them. She would have made their analysis better, she would have improved the project. If they’d listened to her.

Do we treat as a gift the people who tell us when we are wrong? Or do we see them as a threat and then label them a rager or a troll or an unhappy customer? Of course there are people who are simply angry or whose intentions in challenging us are not good, but if we don’t work out ways to discern between well-intentioned, qualified challenge and challenge that is ill-intentioned, we will miss out on that gift. And we will be poorer for it.

Some people saw my challenge of Justin endorsing Jersey Road and challenged me. They asserted that Justin is a great person, that he shouldn’t be written off. But what is curious is that I never said he was a bad person and I never said he should be written off. I’m sure he’s a wonderful person and know he does great work with ThirtyOne:Eight.

If we are all Implicated Subjects then we all have the potential to mess up. And if, when we mess up (as an implicated subject, not as a perpetrator) we are immediately cancelled and sacked, the culture won’t ever change. In fact, we’ll simply reinforce it. Those who watch someone being sacked for making one mistake don’t see that and think “Oh I’ll do better”. They see it and think, “I’ll stay quieter”. And then they continue on exactly as before.

Messing up is inevitable. But we can build a culture where it is normal and healthy to challenge people when they mess up. When a mistake is made publicly, is challenged robustly in public and the person being challenged recognises they’ve messed up and acknowledges that, it models to everyone what building a healthy culture looks like. It’s not about rubbishing the person who messed up, it’s certainly not about saying that their organisation must never do any work ever again. But it is an opportunity for growth and transformation. THIS book on Radical Candor may be a helpful resource if you want consider challenge can be a Very Good Thing.

For too long, Christian culture has misused theology about going to someone privately to allow those with power to go unchallenged. As the founder of the US Soul Survivor mentioned, after he raised issues about Mike Pilavachi he assumed something had been done but he didn’t know, because all of the challenge is done behind the scenes. Nobody is following it up and, certainly, nobody is demanding that these issues are dealt with visibly and transparently.

We’ve seen some of the videos, like THIS one, coming out of Soul Survivor where Mike Pilavachi behaved unkindly. What would it have looked like for someone to stand up and said, “Look Mike, that’s not okay. You should not speak to people like that, can we take a moment and pause.” What if these issues had been immediately challenged publicly. What kinds of transformation and important models of leadership could have been developed if public challenge had been welcomed and modelled?

The ongoing UCCF investigation is a “perfect” example of a lack of visibility. There is no public knowledge of what the accusations are. Once reports are done they will only be shared with those who have been accused of doing harm, not even with those who have said they have been harmed, and certainly not with the public. It’s all going on behind closed doors, with as little light and air getting to it as possible. Thanks for Tanya Marlow for THIS Twitter thread about the situation.

What would it mean to fling back the doors and be honest about what has been alleged at UCCF? Who would be harmed by that? Certainly, those with the power would not like it very much. But what if doing that enabled change to come? Culture to be examined? Why should these things be done privately when those accused are public figures who, when they do good things, the doors are always flung wide.

As we welcome challenge and as we offer challenge, we model that to others. Those observing, when in their own workplaces, churches or ministry contexts will have a sort of “blueprint” for knowing whether their leaders are trustworthy by whether they model that same welcome of challenge and seeking to do better when they mess up. In doing this well, we can move away from the tendency to presume everyone is either 100% bad or 100% good, when we are all flawed and failed and we all mess up. It also means that when someone is perpetrating significant harm we can see that sooner, stop it sooner and avoid them being colluded with.

We have so far to go. But we’re only going to make any progress if we drastically change our approach. Those of us with platforms, power and profile must not simply reluctantly accept challenge; we must actively welcome it. Each of us must recognise our tendency to be an Implicated Subject and put so very many safeguards in place to vigilantly guard against such harmfulness.

Guest Post: Dear Pete Greig

On 19th May, Pete Greig (founder of 24-7 Prayer) wrote a Facebook post reflecting on the situations of abuse within evangelical Christianity. Rather than focus on those who have been harmed, Greig was keen to defend church leaders and requested his followers comment on the post celebrating faithful leaders they know. This post came not long after he extricated himself from the Anaheim Vineyard situation, with a statement which while likely giving him splinters from sitting on the proverbial fence, managed to insist that Alan Scott (now credibly accused of spiritually abusing a dozen people) and his wife Kathryn are “people who listen diligently to the Lord and simply seek to obey.” Last year, Greig’s organsiation 24-7 Prayer had their own abuse situation (detailed in THIS blog). Greig has yet to make an explicit statement on the Soul Survivor statement.

Within the various comments objecting to Greig’s Facebook post was one from Tony Brooks, which summed up a lot of what was wrong with Greig’s approach. I asked Tony if he could send me a “blog ready” version of his comment for a guest blog and he kindly did. Although Greig has now deleted the post, I feel that the approach Tony has taken is really helpful in enabling others to see what it wrong with posts which focus on leaders, in a crisis of abusive leadership.

Pete,

I read your post yesterday which had been shared by a friend and was rather troubled by it. I understand why people feel like they need to say this stuff but I really don’t think it’s helpful for the people that have been at the sharp end of it all. Especially as many evangelicals and the evangelical church has a habit of minimising the affects and reality of spiritual abuse.

There are lots of lumps underneath a lot of rugs.

Not every rug, of course that’s obvious – I don’t think that needs pointing out. In the same way that every policeman in the Met hasn’t raped a woman, but some have, so lots of church communities and leaders are not toxic. But some are. They really are.

Furthermore can you begin to imagine what it might feel like for someone that has been very seriously spiritually abused, gaslit and victim blamed to read a post like this? How might those lads (some now grown men) feel reading this that were allegedly asked by Pilavachi to strip down to their pants and have a massage on his bed? Would they feel heard by this post or would they feel like it’s minimising their abuse? I think they might think it is minimising, especially as a victim of abuse is more than likely to blame themselves and have others blaming them too.

When it’s someone that is ‘God’s anointed’, (the one that tells you what God is saying) perpetrating the abuse it’s extremely harmful and is what sets this apart from other types of abuse. I would have much more respect for you Pete if you just held your hands up and said there’s a massive problem and we all need to deal with it. That’s what I think the message should be. That’s what victims need to hear. They don’t need to hear ‘we’re not all bad’.

Especially as it’s unlikely that many victims would, if asked, say every element of the church is corrupt and all leaders are abusive. Perhaps a better line would be:

‘At this time across the evangelical church we need to examine ourselves, our theology, systems and our structures. We need to root out everything that creates environments where abuse can happen and we need to be brutal and ruthless with those things so there is no room for this kind of systematic abuse of power.

And we will put the needs and voices of victims at the heart of everything we do until we learn and change our theology, systems, behaviours, structures and communities. I am going to use this platform and the influence I have to share our churches journey to understand and deal with this problem.’

Why are you worried about people being disillusioned and disappointed?

That’s exactly what people should be feeling. They should feel remorse, regret, anger, frustration and be disturbed by it enough that they have the courage to face up to it and deal with it. I totally get why you would post this especially trying to encourage people that are working hard in what they do to care for people and their communities. But right now they are not the priority as they are not the victims. Not to say their roles aren’t difficult, challenging and stressful or that they don’t need support.

I don’t follow you so I don’t know what else you have said about all of this. What I do know is that you have nearly 35,000 people following you on Facebook and this is the only post I have seen anyone share about spiritual abuse. This is the post I am seeing evangelical Christians share.

I’ve not seen any posts from influential leaders being shared being honest about spiritual abuse and saying what they are going to do about it and encouraging others to do the same. You have encouraged your 35,000 followers (and the thousands that will read it from sharing) not to face the challenge of abuse in churches but to celebrate leaders.

At best that feels to me like a missed opportunity. At worst it seems somewhat irresponsible. Of course I appreciate your intent in this post but I think perhaps its a bit misplaced. I hope you can prayerfully reflect on and consider some of these points. Some of these Nomad podcasts may be a good place to start, with some very nuanced and thoughtful consideration of the issues:

Surviving Spiritual Abuses with Joy Brooks and Justin Marsh HERE.
Freedom from Unhealthy Religious Systems with Joy Brooks HERE.
Jemimah, Joy and Jezebel HERE.
Stories of Deconstructing Faith with Olivia Jackson HERE.
And THIS is my friend Olivia’s book, “Un)Certain: A Collective Memoir of Deconstructing Faith”.

I would encourage everyone, especially those that hold a position of power in evangelical spaces to pause, take time and do some research before sharing their thoughts on such a difficult topic on social media or from their pulpits.Please be assured – I have no issues with thanking and supporting people. That’s an important part of life, living and community. I think that celebrating leaders is not the thing to be doing right now. Particularly when there is so little attention being drawn to the reality of spiritual abuse and how churches and people with lots of influence are going to be working to understand it and deal with it.

That’s the piece of work that needs doing now.

This is especially as it seems to me the evangelical church has little (or no) understanding at all about power dynamics. It doesn’t understand how its theology supports and creates environments where abuse can happen, where abusers can thrive and even be defended for their behaviour as ‘the Lord’s anointed’. And Pete, trust me, I am not having a go at you in anyway. I’m just a bit confused about another aspect of your post.

You wrote about people quietly getting on with things but then listed a load of people with enormous platforms. Like, really big ones. Whoppers even! One of these was Tim Keller. I know it’s sad for many that he’s passed away but oh boy does he have a life littered with facilitating spaces that are rife with abuse, as shown HERE. And of course you mention Nicky Gumbel who was very much entwined with Mike and Soul Survivor. THIS video where he praises him on a number of occasions now feels pretty dreadful. I find it hard to believe that Nicky and others around him will not have at some point come across what Mike was doing or at the very least got wind of it. Maybe they didn’t but this is hard to watch now.And then there is THIS account of the culture and ‘values’ at Soul Survivor that is absolutely stomach churning. How does Nicky Gumbel, who you celebrate as a great and humble leader, not know about the toxicity of the culture Pilavachi curated?:

I have also been advised from a friend that the Bishop Stephen Croft, bishop of Oxford and formerly of Sheffield, (along with Sentamu, who has now had his licence revoked, while Croft remains in place) did nothing when Matthew Ineson complained that a vicar had raped him as a child, has a son, Andy Croft – who is senior pastor at Soul Survivor. Please, please take some time to read THIS article.

Again, I cannot see how we should be celebrating leaders at this time. At the very least some consideration of the stories and lives of victims and a cursory glance at the reams of evidence of systemic abuse and cover ups would illustrate that celebrating leaders is not in anyway the priority. Again Pete, I am not having a go, I am just asking for some active evidence-based reflection followed by action.

Yours, in hope,

Tony Brooks

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