Tullian Tchividjian and Byron Yawn both engaged in sexual misconduct with parishioners — something experts classify as clergy sexual abuse. Now they plan to talk publicly about it on a new podcast called “MisFit Preachers” whose irreverent trailer advises you to “clutch your pearls” because “you can’t cancel the cancelled.”
“In the history of bad ideas, this might just be the baddest,” the trailer states.
Kate Roberts, co-director of Restored Voices Collective, an advocacy group for survivors, agrees. And she notes the mocking tone is especially concerning, given that men who engage in adult clergy sexual abuse don’t just abuse women. They silence, inappropriately blame, and traumatize them, she said.
“It felt like it was making a mockery of something that has devastated the lives of adult clergy sexual abuse victims,” Roberts said. “It perpetuates a false narrative and it further silences victims who’ve been devastated.”
The podcast is like “bar stool sports for the church” but without the sports and barstools, the trailer says.
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“Some say they are too real,” the trailer says. “Some say they are too raw. They say you can’t cancel the cancelled. So, hide your kids, buckle up, and clutch your pearls.”
Tchividjian, who is Billy Graham’s grandson, resigned in 2015 from Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after admitting to sexual misconduct with a congregant. However, Tchividjian insisted the relationship was consensual, rather than admitting he abused power as a pastor.
Yawn, as a pastor, was accused of sexual misconduct with the wife of a former Chicago Cubs player, according to a lawsuit.
Tchividjian then took a job at Willow Creek in Florida. But the church fired him in 2016, after learning of a second previous “inappropriate relationship” with a woman that elders said Tchividjian failed to disclose to church leadership.
He’s pastoring again, this time at The Sanctuary in Jupiter, Fla. And he’s posting spiritual advice related to adultery.
“The one who looks down on the person who commits adultery is in more danger than the person who commits adultery and feels deep conviction over it,” Tchividjian wrote on X yesterday. “’I thank you, God, that I am not like other people—cheaters, sinners, adulterers. I’m certainly not like that tax collector!’”
Similarly, when Yawn was senior pastor of Community Bible Church (CBC) in Nashville, he engaged in a sexual relationship with a parishioner he was counseling—wife of former Chicago Cubs player Ben Zobrist, according to a lawsuit Zobrist filed in 2021, but later dropped. Yawn exploited private information Zobrist provided Yawn in counseling sessions to pursue Zobrist’s wife, the suit stated. Zobrist’s suit also stated Yawn defrauded Zobrist’s nonprofit.
Yawn, who is no longer pastoring at CBC, posted recently that he’s ready to talk about it, but hasn’t yet clarified if he considers what he did adultery or abuse.
“Been asked to sit for interviews over the past four years,” Yawn posted on X last month. “Right time. Right people. Will be released later this Fall.”
Abuse experts say sexual contact between a pastor and a congregant cannot be considered consensual due to the power imbalance and trust relationship pastors have with congregants. It’s also illegal in 13 states plus the District of Columbia.
“I haven’t met a survivor, who chose to tell her story, who wasn’t further harmed by doing so because of the affair narrative,” Roberts said.
Disgraced pastors who return to pastoring — or broaden their spiritual influence through a podcast — could cause more harm, Roberts said.
“It platforms them and gives them a broader platform that legitimizes them, and then could give them opportunity to exploit that spiritual authority and harm more people,” Roberts said.
According to the podcasters’ email, the first three episodes will feature the stories of Yawn, Tchividjian, and fellow Misfit Preacher Jean Larroux, III. Larroux was a pastor at Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Ala. and executive director at Madison Heights Church PCA in Mississippi. He has never made headlines for sexual misconduct, like Tchividjian and Yawn.
Larroux skirted questions by The Roys Report (TRR) about how, specifically, he fits into the group, saying he’d give TRR an interview after the podcast is published.
“I’m going to make you wait, Sweetie,” Larroux told TRR.
Larroux recently preached a sermon called “Why BAD People make GOOD Missionaries” at Tchividjian’s church. The sermon argued that sinners are experts on God’s redemption.
“Listen, if lawyers know the law and doctors know medicine, then when it comes to the redemption of sinners, then it’s precisely the needy, broken, messy, troubled people who are most qualified to talk about redemption,” Larroux said. “They tasted it personally, not the victorious cleaned-up ones.”
Roberts accused the pastors of “sin-leveling”—claiming abuses of power by a pastor are the same as any other sin. She said this practice makes a “mockery of God’s grace” and leaves out the parts of Scripture that judge abusive spiritual leaders.
“God has very clear standards for what he wants shepherds to do,” Roberts said. “The weightiest words of God’s judgment are on them because they have harmed vulnerable people who are precious to the Lord.”
Many abusive pastors haven’t ever made things right with their victims who’ve lost their communities, need costly counseling to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder, and deal with lifelong scars, she said.
“As part of that repentance would not only be a public acknowledgement of that grief, but of stepping down and never having a position of spiritual authority again,” Roberts said. “It would take a lifetime to play out.”
Larroux told TRR that the podcast’s first episode will drop within the next two months.
Rebecca Hopkins is a journalist based in Colorado.
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20 Responses
Please, please, please, this podcast sounds salacious, don’t engage with it (I wish these pastors would at least attempt vs 11 below):
3 It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should learn to control your own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, 5 not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; 6 and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister.[b] The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. 7 For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life….11 and make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, 12 so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
I Thess 4
To me, it looks like they are trying to profit off of their past sins. Let’s interview their wives, children, victims, and victim’s family and listen to the pain they have endured.
The incredible audacity of these men- centering THEIR experience in their abusing others, still seeking the spotlight, jokingly talking about THEIR abuse- it’s so gross.
We might not be able to cancel the cancelled, but we certainly CAN ignore them, and starve them of the attention they seem so desperate to claw back.
All of this just goes to show that they have not, in fact, repented or grown from their terrible choices that hurt others, and seemed bound and determined to plow ahead in harm.
Gross.
You are not in a position to condemn any sexual sin. If you think you can just pull homosexuality out of the sexual sin basket and leave the rest in there, that isn’t the way it works. You have to ditch all of them by default. If you are going to be internally consistent, and you are going to say that homosexuality is perfectly acceptable now, you also have to say that all things God proclaims are sexual sin are also acceptable now. You can’t draw an imaginary line between them. You get adultery, fornication and pedophilia at no extra cost because you have already removed the foundation for all of them when you accept one of them. So if you want to be consistent, you should stop talking about these fallen pastors since you are endorsing sexual sin in your own beliefs. You don’t have the integrity to speak on this subject as long as you are publicly endorsing things God calls a sin. If your belief system is correct, an adulterous relationship or a sexual relationship outside of marriage should be just as acceptable. Monogamy has nothing to do with any of them because all of them are outside of God’s design and none of them can be purified by marriage or monogamy.
Thanks for your feedback Eddie. We disagree, clearly, and won’t be agreeing anytime soon.
Oh please. It happens that many of the people who scream the loudest against gay people are the same ones who run to excuse the horrific abuse of boundary violating pastors. They are the ones who are inconsistent. You can keep plying your “God sees all sins as equal” canard all you want (even though the Bible never says that). But I’ll stand by my belief that God views a faithful same sex couple who don’t bother anyone very differently than how God views a manipulative, conniving, abusive pastor who wrecks the life of another person (along with the faith of many others) and then has the nerve to return to the pulpit as if nothing of consequence happened. If that belief makes me inconsistent in your view, so be it.
Billy Graham was a great evangelist but his progeny have not done a good job at promoting the gospel.
Wonder why that is….?
And the photo above of Tchividjian sitting in front of a cross is revolting.
One notable exception is (ironically) Tullian Tchividjian’ brother Boz, who is “the Founder and former Executive Director of GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment), an internationally recognized non-profit organization that equips faith-based organizations with the tools they need to correctly respond to allegations of sexual abuse and educates them on how to create safeguards to protect children and other vulnerable people within their communities.”
https://bozlawpa.com/about/
I wonder if Billy Graham is a shining example of what is wrong with white american evangelicalism. He was a charismatic speaker for sure, and could pack stadiums- but based on the “fruit” I don’t know if they were the beginnings of discipleship, or just conversions that quickly withered. He sought a ministry that Jesus actively avoided -engaging crowds only when there wasn’t really another choice, and generally making it harder and harder to believe and follow- naming the true costs. And if Billy Graham’s ministry was truly what God had intended, wouldn’t we be a MORE christian nation a generation later? Even those who claim to have met Christ at one of his crusades, what is the evidence of that in their life? Is it any different than their secular neighbors? What evidence of transformation in individuals? In our churches? in our country?
Not to mention that he was the at the beginning of partnering “christianity” with political power, by sidling up to nixon, because they shared racist ideals and aims.
https://www.npr.org/2018/02/24/587809173/billy-graham-walked-a-line-and-regretted-crossing-over-it-when-it-came-to-politi
Feeling “deep conviction” and actually repenting are two different things. And I’d argue it’s not even deep conviction if you think you can start a podcast and joke about what you did.
It’s too sad to see both of these people have the current influence they do.
I would love ask them who their CSAT’s are and have thy done a full therapeutic disclosure? Did they help the women they betrayed with their PTSD and betrayal trauma therapy?
Never let the same dog bite you twice…..
Why do these guys so often equate forgiveness from God with restoration to the pulpit? Of course they can repent and be forgiven by God for their sexual sins, though there doesn’t seem to be a lot of that here; but a return to any leadership role in the church is out of the question. They are using manipulation tactics on the church.
because being in the pulpit is their one marketable skill, because we’ve professionalized the ministry such that one can have no other trade or training beyond “spiritual leader”.
Sorry, but that doesn’t wash. All but the most notorious disgraced pastors should have very little problems finding work outside the church. The leadership skills that pastor’s must learn (even pastors who lack character) as well as their public speaking and general communications skills are in high demand, and freed from those pesky moral standards, many of them are in a position to excel in the business world. Disgraced pastors go back into the pulpit because we let them do it, and we needn’t worry about how they would fare if we had the courage to tell them that they cannot be in ministry any longer.
It seems that once you make a living in the ministry you become part of the club and that is where you get to work until you retire.
Unless they kick you out of the club, then…your eyes open and you begin to see the absolute hypocrisy of the mega church and it’s current focus.
Please stop. The personal hubris that just can’t step out of the limelight and lead a quiet life of transformation…Why they must continue to platform themselves… I just don’t get.
Very close to the issue. A person just standing behind a pulpit or broadcasting on Christian media is not sufficient qualification to be listened to. Folks need to ask about any clergyman: Has he studied to show himself approved, a workman with no need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth? Otherwise, don’t regard them as trustworthy! No audience, no money is the only thing that will shut these arrogant babblers up.
It’s one thing if, after years of counseling and restoring one’s marriage relationship, the couple as a team have a ministry of speaking to other couples about the dangers of sexual sin, and how a marriage can be put back together with God’s help (as a childhood friend of mine and his wife do, after he lost his ministerial credentials over affairs with women — not minors — in 2 churches where he served as youth pastor). He works a secular job to support his family, and he and his wife speak at marriage conferences from time to time to show there is hope and healing.
But it’s totally a different, and unacceptable, thing to go back into clergy/pastoral leadership, especially when there was no healing of the minister’s own marriage that was destroyed by the sexual sin.