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Hope & Disillusionment: Recovering from Ravi Zacharias Scandal

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What do you do when the man you looked up to as your spiritual hero is exposed as a fraud? How do you recover from the disillusionment and betrayal? And how do you find hope when your world is turned upside down?

On this edition of The Roys Report, you’re about to hear a highlight session from this year’s Restore Conference featuring Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Ravi Zacharias had a huge impact on Carson when he was coming of age. When Carson was hired by Ravi’s ministry, he thought he had found his dream job.

But then in 2020, the dream became a nightmare as more and more evidence showed that Ravi Zacharias was not the man he purported to be. He was not a model Christian leader and sterling apologist, but a serial sexual predator, who lied and manipulated to cover his tracks.

The revelations rocked Carson’s world—and especially his faith. And in this incredibly raw and vulnerable talk, Carson doesn’t sugar-coat anything. He tells of his journey from believing the exposés about Ravi were just Satanic attacks—to realizing that his own leaders, people he looked up to, were lying to him.

He tells of the excruciating betrayal, pain, and depression he experienced. He talks about almost losing his faith and feeling like God had abandoned him. But he also talks about hope and hanging on, even when life seems bleak.

Guests

Carson Weitnauer

Carson Weitnauer is an author, speaker, and the founder of Uncommon Pursuit, a Christian apologetics ministry. He formerly served on-staff at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and resigned to advocate for survivors. He has coauthored multiple books. Learn more at uncommonpursuit.net

Show Transcript

SPEAKERS
CARSON WEITNAUER, JULIE ROYS

JULIE ROYS 00:02
What do you do when the man you looked up to as your spiritual hero is exposed as a fraud? How do you recover from the disillusionment and betrayal? And how do you find hope when your world is turned upside down? Welcome to The Roys Report—a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys.

And what you’re about to hear is the second of 11 talks from this year’s Restore Conference. Speaking is Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And as you’ll hear, Ravi Zacharias had a huge impact on Carson when he coming of age—and internalizing his faith. So, in 2013, when Carson was hired by Ravi’s ministry, he thought he had found his dream job.

But then in 2020, the dream became a nightmare as more and more evidence showed that Ravi was not the man he purported to be. He was not a model Christian leader and sterling apologist, but a serial sexual predator, who lied and manipulated to cover his tracks. The revelations rocked Carson’s world—and especially his faith. And in this incredibly raw and vulnerable talk, Carson doesn’t sugar-coat anything. He tells of his journey from believing the exposés about Ravi were just Satanic attacks—to realizing that his own leaders, people he looked up to—were lying to him.

He tells of the excruciating betrayal, pain, and depression he experienced. He talks about almost losing his faith—and feeling like God had abandoned him. But he also talks about hope and hanging on, even when life seems bleak. If you’ve ever experienced betrayal trauma or church hurt, I think you’re going to resonate deeply with Carson’s journey.  Here’s Carson Weitnauer, a former director with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries—and someone I’ve come to know as a man of integrity and courage.

 

 

JULIE ROYS 04:02

Hi, I’m Julie Roys, founder of The Roys Report and the RESTORE conference, and you’re about to see a video from RESTORE 2023. Though a lot of conferences charge for videos like these, we’ve decided to make them available for free. We’ve done that because we don’t want anybody to miss out on this valuable content for lack of finances. But of course these do cost us money to shoot and to edit. So if you’re able we’d really appreciate it if you consider donating to The Roys Report, so we can continue this important service. To do so just go to JulieRoys.com/donate.  Also, I hope you’ll make plans to join us at the next RESTORE conference which we’ll be announcing soon. As great as these videos are they pale in comparison to being there in person. As one speaker commented, “this year RESTORE is more of a restorative community than it is a conference.” And every year that community just grows deeper and richer. And so I hope you’ll be able to join us at the next RESTORE. Be watching for that. And in the meantime, I hope you’re blessed and encouraged by this video.

 

CARSON WEITNAUER 05:11

Julie Roys is a liar. It was September 21st, 2020, and I felt nauseous and disoriented. As I thought about all of the crazy things she was saying. I was at the beach with my family. We were trying to recover COVID. But it had been a hard year because Ravi Zacharias had died. He had very suddenly and unexpectedly passed away from cancer, and I don’t cry, but in May at his funeral, I had wept that Ravi was no longer with us. And I was angry that God had taken him so soon. The Vice President (Mike Pence) was there. He said, “In Ravi Zacharias, God gave us the greatest Christian apologist of the century. He was the CS Lewis of our day.” And tributes in that spirit poured in from all around the world. Christian media, social media was flooded with praise for Ravi Zacharias. And our ministry was trying to figure out what we would do without our founder our inspiration or leader or guide. But at the beach a few months later, I felt tense and tight. And I was trying to get my bearings because I was scrolling on my phone through these articles Julie had written. Julie claimed to be an investigative journalist. But responsible leaders at RCIM had explained the truth. She was a clickbait journalist. She would dig up dirt on people so she could get her 15 minutes of fame by, you know, scandal mongering. And now she was stooping to a new low in the aftermath of Ravi’s funeral. She was claiming that Ravi Zacharias had taken advantage of Lori Anne Thompson.

 

07:49

And Julie had documented a lot of facts about the situation I had never heard. So I read her articles. And I tried to do a critical reading of them, I tried to ignore all of her negative biased commentary. I just wanted to pay attention to the facts that she had primary documentation for. And every evening, after I got my kids to bed, I would open up my computer and open up a Google spreadsheet, and I would put everything that Ravi and RZIM had told me in one column, and I would put everything that Julie was documenting in another column. And I got 287 rows of discrepancies. And I just kept comparing Julie’s articles with everything I had learned for three years since 2017 and 2018. I’d scoured the internet for information for three years to get information on Lori Anne Thompson. I had talked to many of RZIM’s leaders, I debated what was being claimed with my colleagues. For every good point that was raised, RZIM’s leaders had a good answer.Lori Anne had schemed with some friends to leak emails to embarrass Ravi. And they made it look like Ravi had done something really wrong. But our leaders had the whole context of the entire email chain. And they explained that the whole chain of emails had been selectively and manipulatively distorted and taken out of context to make Ravi look guilty when he wasn’t.

 

09:30

Ravi and a senior leader who were both Easterners explained how they read these emails from an Eastern point of view. And they said if you think Ravi is guilty of something, that’s because you’re reading this as a Westerner. We had earnestly prayed for God to protect our ministry in this time from satanic attacks. And it felt like God had put a veil of protection, a dome of protection over our headquarters, and our ministry and our events. And these satanic attacks had been thwarted by the power of prayer. And it hadn’t been my job to investigate these claims. But there were people of outstanding integrity and leadership, Christian leaders of major organizations. And it was their job to look into this. And so there were two independent external investigations. Ravi’s denomination was a highly respected denomination. And when claims like this came up, they did a proper investigation to ensure that none of their pastors did anything like this. And they had found that Ravi was innocent.

 

10:44

Ravi’s publisher would not publish a book by an author who did this kind of thing. They wanted all of their authors to not only have good teaching but good lives. The publisher had a responsibility to investigate. They investigated, they found that Ravi was innocent. RZIM was a multimillion nearly $40 million a year organization, in the 30s of millions, and our board was comprised of extremely qualified Christian leaders. And when a claim like this came up, the board had a responsibility. They investigated. Our senior leaders were best selling authors and powerful speakers and well educated. They had a responsibility. So our speakers our senior leaders had investigated. So I was looking at four separate investigations by Ravi’s denomination, his publisher, his board, and the senior leaders. And all four investigations concluded that Ravi was innocent, and that Lori Anne and her scheming husband had tried to extort Ravi out of $5 million dollars. It was a blackmail attempt.

 

12:03

So what made more sense? A self promoting journalist, desperate for clicks and attention was passing on lies because she always believed survivors? Or multiple investigations by the most trustworthy people had gotten it wrong? And so I wavered.

 

12:25

I had first met Ravi, when I was in high school. I was struggling with my Christian faith, do I believe this or not? And I’d read Ravi’s book can man live without God, and it really helped me. And so there were some connections, and I got to go to a dinner around Christmas time where Ravi was speaking. And afterwards, it was arranged for me and Ravi to talk with each other. And I could not believe it. Ravi spoke to world leaders. And now he was going to talk to me. And he explained, keep in touch Carson, I’d like to keep in touch with you. So on the way home, I told my mom, I would love to work for Ravi Zacharias one day.

 

13:03

I studied at Rhodes College in Memphis, studying philosophy. And so I asked Ravi, I wrote him a letter and asked him to give me some advice on my future career. I studied abroad at St. Catherine’s college at Oxford. And while I was there, I visited the RZIM offices. It was a chance to meet the people that Ravi had hired and trained and spoke with. I then went into campus ministry for 10 years, seven of those years, I had the joy of serving students at Harvard College. We faced difficult intellectual and cultural questions. And so we often went and said, What is Ravi say about this? What resources does RZIM have to help us navigate this conversation with gentleness with respect, with biblical fidelity with intellectual clarity? So in 2013, when I was hired to work for Ravi Zacharias, it was a dream job. I felt like God had orchestrated all the details of my life and worked it out for me to work for Ravi. During the seven years that I worked there, I got to start with the US speaking team, leading them. And then I transitioned to starting and growing an online community called RZIM Connect. And we had hundreds of thousands of people visit this community and learn how to have good conversations about faith and get answers to their questions. I had respected Ravi and RZIM for over 20 years. I’d worked at RZIM for seven and RZIM was not just a job, it was a joy. It was my identity, my community, my sense of purpose, my faith, my spirituality. So I was a real mess on the beach. And then came to more bombshells.

 

14:58

Both Christianity Today and World Magazine reported that massage therapists who worked at Ravi’s spa alleged that Ravi was guilty of awful, horrendous sexual misconduct. And as I read those articles, my heart sank as I thought about what those women had endured. World Magazine also reported that the tax documents Julie had were accurate and that the Thompson’s had given away nearly $200,000 one year to different Christian charities. And so I just asked myself, “Are the Thompsons greedy extortionists or exceptionally generous Christians?” “Are all of the journalists self promotional hacks, or courageous truth tellers?” And I was reluctantly but totally convinced. And I felt that I had a responsibility to take action. Because for years, I had shut down people who thought Lori Anne Thompson was telling the truth. And I had defended Ravi. And now I needed to speak up for his victims. And I had been helped by RZIM so much, I had to do whatever I could to help the ministry do what was right.

 

16:16

And I just trusted that Ravi Zacharias International Ministries was nothing like Ravi Zacharias. I mean, he was a fraud. He was abusive, a bully a liar. But my friends, my mentors, the people I worked with day in and day out, we’d been on road trips together, we’d done ministry together, these people were solid, they were people of integrity, I could count on them to be truth finders and truth tellers and advocates for the vulnerable. So it was October 1st, 2020. And RZIM’s board had already put out two statements, fake news, these are false. We’ve already looked into it, nothing to this. And they also said truth is the foundation of what we do. And I had to ask myself, is truth, the foundation of what we do? Are you just saying that so people will believe what you’re saying?

 

17:20

And then we had a global town hall meeting because the ministry launched a investigation and they knew staff had questions. And one of the ideas on official motto was no questions off limits. And so I had a few questions. And I wanted to know if we have this investigation going on, but Lori Anne and her family are subjected to a nondisclosure agreement, how can the investigation include them? They can’t disclose. And the family wasn’t willing to release them from that. So would RZIM provide cover to the Thompsons were they to violate this agreement? If there was financial penalties or legal costs, couldn’t we make sure that they could participate? And the response was wonderful. It sounded very gentle and respectful. “We’re totally committed to the truth here. We want them to participate. The NDA won’t be a problem. We’re definitely going to include them in this investigation.” It sounded awesome. And then I thought about it. And they hadn’t made any concrete promises of unwinding the NDA or providing a legal defense for the Thompson. So they were just empty promises. And then the hammer fell. There was a private follow-up conversation with our general counsel. And he explained that I had been out of line and inappropriate and should not have asked those questions. And I still have flashbacks to that conversation. And I will freeze up and just feel feel so helpless. And then I will remember that I don’t have to be afraid of him anymore. And I will take a deep breath and relax my muscles. And I will try and go back into my day. One day out of nowhere, the Chief Financial Officer sent me and my line manager an email. I guess she’d gotten wind of what I was doing, talking to staff about the situation, advocating for the women. And she wrote to me, “while I agree that we should remain transparent with the truth, I don’t think repeating potential lies, or passing on judgment, or qualities we want to embody at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Carson.” She said she value transparency and truth. But her threat was not idle. Staff had been fired for asking questions that fall. I had thought Julie was a liar. And now one of RZIM’s senior leaders was saying that maybe I was a liar too. Throughout the fall of 2020, I heard many heartbreaking stories of my friends being bullied.

 

20:19

At one point, the human resources director sent out an email saying, “We want to make sure there’s someone to receive staff complaints. So we’ve appointed an ombudsperson.” And that sounded awesome! There’s going to be an ombudsperson to advocate for staff. And I was shocked to see the name. The new ombudsperson had a nickname:The Enforcer. She had a track record of bullying staff. So I wrote to the HR director and said, “This person has a track record of bullying staff. You can’t have her be the ombudsperson.” And they ignored my email. The ombudsperson stayed in her role. And I had to ask myself, why did they want a bully to receive complaints of bullying? If they cared about staff mistreatment, why did they appoint the Enforcer to this role?

 

21:09

And as information began to circulate around the ministry, I started to learn about some pretty big lies. Ravi had always said that for that nondisclosure agreement, no money changed hands. But in 2017, our senior leaders had read an email where they had learned that Ravi Zacharias had paid $250,000 for that NDA. And so for years they had known Ravi was lying. And they never corrected the record about a $250,000 payment. And the four investigations I had trusted, they consisted of asking Ravi if he did it, taking him at his word when he said he didn’t, and closing the investigation.

 

21:58

RZIM’s president asked us not to publicly comment on the investigation because they were so committed to the integrity of it and to finding the truth, they didn’t want anyone to comment about it, so it could run its course. But then, at the end of October, there was a major fundraising weekend called Founders. They would raise millions of dollars in one weekend. And all of the people speaking there, they basically said, “Ravi is a hero, and we want you to make a major gift this year in honor of his legacy.” In November, there was a global apologetics conference. Pastors and churches were trusting us to help them with the big questions of the day. And to a global audience, our speakers share their favorite memories of Ravi and how Ravi had mentored them. They encourage participants to imitate Ravi’s example. And I realized that our President’s request for silence wasn’t about the integrity of the investigation. It was about silencing anyone who believed that Ravi had abused women. It was about protecting Ravi’s reputation. And his reputation and our ministry’s reputation.

 

23:03

I had gone to prayer meetings four days a week, and the weekly chapel one day a week, for years. And at the prayer meetings, there were again prayers for God to protect our ministry from the satanic attacks. And I realized now that they were praying against me and what I was doing. And that really complicated my prayer life. By December, I was so discouraged and worn out and wrung out and exhausted. I talked to anyone I could about this issue and been pretty discouraged. When I showed up to our staff Christmas party, I was hoping, look, this is a classic, we laugh, we have fun, the spirit of Christmas. This could be a good moment of connection and recovery. And then came the Christmas Devotional. It came from our chief cultural officer who was a board member. It was Ravi’s widow. There’s a verse in the Bible that says, the apostle Paul says, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” And her Christmas Devotional was, “Everyone here, follow Ravi’s example, the way he followed Christ.” And it was a home run. People liked the message. They thought it was a great Christmas Devotional. And at that point, I knew RZIM was not interested in finding the truth. And they weren’t interested in the victims. They didn’t believe there were victims. It was about loyalty to Ravi over everything else. And I felt that darkness was closing in around me and I ran out of hope.

 

24:42

RZIM said they valued truth, and they kept telling lies. They said they valued respect, but they bullied us. They said they valued integrity, and they acted hypocritically. They use the name of Jesus to get money, and they didn’t use the money to follow Jesus. In September of 2020, I lost my confidence in Ravi. By December of 2020, I lost my confidence in RZIM. And in January of 2021, I resigned. And I had to wonder if I would lose my confidence in God.

 

24:42

I was a wreck. I was unemployed. I didn’t feel good. I found my family finances changed. I was directionless. What do I do with my life now? I was isolated. I lost all my friends from work pretty much. I was disillusioned. My childhood hero was a liar and a bully and a sexual predator. I was recovering. I was trying to find words to explain all the pain I was feeling. I was trying to understand what spiritual abuse was, how to respond to bullying. I didn’t know how to describe what I was experiencing. I was frustrated and angry. I poured my heart into this online community and it had to be shut down and then deleted. All gone. I was ashamed that I’d given seven years of my life to this ministry that would be always associated with scandal.

 

26:26

And I was so confused. Why would God bring me to work for a sexual predator and a corrupt ministry? I felt so rejected. And hopeless. I just felt like my whole body was covered in pain. One of my first attempts to recover didn’t go very well. I went on a retreat by myself. I got an Airbnb in the Great Smoky Mountains. It was beautiful. You know, since childhood my my Bible had been a source of life. But for three months it had been poisoned. And so I didn’t really want to read the Bible. And I’d usually loved praying to God. It just felt like dust in my mouth. I had graduated from seminary, but I had never had any training for this. I finally just opened up this journal I brought. And as I started to write, I wrote these incredibly bloody and raw and angry, just super intense prayers to God. Like some pages were just one word of anger at God. And I felt so troubled by what I had said to God, I threw the journal away.

 

28:01

Slowly, over time, I started to find a few things that helped. After I would drop off my kids at school, I would go to the gym. And instead of feeling weak, I would start to feel strong. And then I would go to the dry sauna. I would just sit in there as long as I could. And it just felt like the heat was taking all the pain out of my body. That’s a really good time. I kept talking with a counselor, and he helped give me language helped me express my emotions and start to understand what had happened. I shared my story with friends at church,. And I told them the same story 100 times and they listened and listened and listened and listened and listened to me. I got to know Lori Anne Thompson. I found she was a source of healing in my life. That she would be my friend and forgive me and give me wisdom and care to help me find my way forward. Ruth Malhotra is here. And she has been a steadfast friend and has helped me navigate so many complex things about this. My mom is here for this talk. And she’s been amazing. I leaned on my wife for support. I could not in any way have made the decisions I had made, except that she decided to be completely there for me. And it’s been years of her, offering me unconditional love and support as I figured things out again.

 

29:40

I had to rethink all of my beliefs. I read books on theology and church history trying to evaluate if this still made sense to me. And I got really, really honest with God. And I stopped having any pious prayers. It was unfiltered, direct expression of how I felt with God, exactly how I felt about him. I told him, what was on my heart. And even though I was yelling at God, I continued to sense that God was with me, and that God loved me. And I started to pray the Psalms, and I would tweak them as needed. And it was amazing to me that the Psalms were so visceral and real. They blame God for a lot of things. And God heard those prayers and said, I’m going to put these in my Bible. So people can pray them for the rest of time. And I realized that Jesus and the prophets had already spoken the words I needed to say to the leaders at RZIM. And to Ravi Zacharias. I had tested Ravi. He was a disappointment. I had tested RZIM. They were a disappointment. And then I tested God with my very worst. And I found that he could handle it.

 

31:16

One thing I didn’t know is that the road to recovery goes up and down a lot. Sometimes you cannot make progress. Sometimes you don’t know if you are making progress. Sometimes you thought you have made progress and you have not–you have regressed. At one point in the spring of 2021 My family went back to the beach for another chance to recover. And I got an email from RZIM saying they wanted to give me severance, which sounded like a real moment of repentance and hope. But I read the separation agreement and my heart sank. It was a nondisclosure agreement. I sent it to four lawyers to make sure I understood this correctly. All four said that’s a nondisclosure agreement.

 

32:05

Boz Tchividjian helped me fight it. And for two months, we were dealing with RZIM’s corporate attorney. I lost sleep. And I felt stressed out. And I could hardly think straight, that an organization with millions of dollars in the bank was trying to take the one thing I had left: my voice.

 

32:28

And if you think that’s an unfair characterization, consider that RZIM has never done anything to help Lori Anne Thompson with her NDA. To this day. It’s embarrassing. And I got hit from other angles that really confused me and threw me for a loop. I reached out to my whole network and people reached out to me. Mentors, respected Christian leaders, people who wrote books and talked about integrity and Christian leadership. And they had heard my heart ache. They had cared for me. They had prayed with me. They had told me they hoped I would get better. They were there for me. And then they endorsed the books of RZIM’s leaders. They did events with RZIM’s leaders. And I couldn’t understand why they would help relaunch the ministry of people who had bullied me. I reached out I said, “Can I update you? They have not done anything to get right with me or a lot of other people. They don’t have the Christian character and integrity you’re always saying is so essential.” They said, “Why haven’t you forgiven them?”

 

33:45

Some of them just refused to talk to me. They just never responded to the message. And again and again, I realized that for many Christian leaders, accountability is for anyone who gets in my way. It’s never for my friend who’s done something wrong.

 

34:09

And I didn’t know that I would have flashbacks. I thought the past was the past. I didn’t know that I would be at my desk trying to do work and be unable to do anything for hours because I couldn’t stop thinking about a conversation I’d had with someone at RZIM. I didn’t know it would keep taking days of my life.

 

34:29

I would log into Facebook. And Facebook would be like, here’s a happy memory of you and Ravi Zacharias. I would hear a new story about RZIM’s corruption. And there are so many stories that are not public. So up and down, up and down, up and down. There were times I was in so much pain, I didn’t know if I would ever get better. I didn’t know if it was possible to get better. I could not see a light at the end of my tunnel. And then I wouldn’t get a little bit better. But something would happen. And I would go back down into that pain again. So then, when I was better, I didn’t know if I would stay better. It felt so fragile. How long does this last for? When will something catch me off guard and knock me back down into the pit.

 

35:34

And if you feel like there is no light at the end of your tunnel, and if you wonder if you will never get better, I just wanted to say, I hear you. And then it’s okay to not be okay. That was one of the main things I just kept saying to myself, it is okay, in light of what I’ve been through, to not be okay.

 

36:03

And over time, I had to accept that Ravi and RZIM had damaged me. And for a long time, I just denied that and resisted that and hated that. It felt so unfair and wrong, that they had changed who I was. And I didn’t like what they had done to me. And the kind of person that they had shaped me to be through their hurt. And I felt so helpless. I mean, how do you change the past? How do you undo all the horrible things they did? You can’t. I didn’t know what to do with that. I didn’t want to face that reality.

 

36:50

But at some point, I gained the strength to choose who I want it to be. I will never justify what happened. I’ll never spiritualize it. All of the lies and bullying and spiritual abuse were totally wrong. But that doesn’t mean I can’t choose a better future for myself.

 

37:13

So I’m now awakened to the pain of survivors. I’m excited about that. That’s a good thing God’s done in me. When I see evangelical corruption, I’m not afraid to challenge it. Sometimes people say to me, Carson, are you worried that if you keep calling out all of these big name leaders for corruption is going to limit your future. And I say if it limits my future, that’s not a future I want to be a part of.

 

37:51

I once thought Julie was a liar. And now I can call her a friend. I hit rock bottom. I might go there again sometime in the future. But I’m here today sharing with you a story of hope. I enrolled in the Doctorate of ministry programs so I can learn how to build a healthy Christian culture. Some Christian leaders decided to investigate what happened. And they published a report holding RZIM’s leaders accountable. It’s sad how many ignore their report. But it’s great that they did that.

 

38:30

My former line manager at RCM reached out to make amends and over and over again, he made really sacrificial choices for my benefit. And that rebuild trust that he kept doing sacrificial things to repair our relationship. I started Uncommon Pursuit. And we’re creating resources to help people grow in their Christian faith. And I read the Bible with more sensitivity to God’s heart for many years, thanks to some good mentors, I had always had known for many years that God cares about the vulnerable. The orphan, the widow, the immigrant and the poor. God hates injustice. God hates racism. God hates sexism. God hates all forms of oppression. But it had shifted from being something that I could do exegetically to something I felt in my gut as I turned the pages of Scripture.

 

39:34

And I have developed a way more honest relationship with God. I don’t pray pious prayers anymore. What I feel that’s what I tell God about. And I know he can handle it. When the truth becomes a lie, when a good reputation is used to lure people in and abuse them, when the minister turns out to be a monster, it’s okay not be okay.

 

40:05

I am not here today with any answers or advice. All I have is the story of how God has been able to handle all of my pain and helped me to start to heal. And how with God’s help, this pain has helped me to choose a better version of myself. I am convinced that if we can maintain the courage to be honest with God, and with each other, about all of our reasonable and righteous disillusionment, that we will also find our way to hope. Thank you guys for the chance to share with you today.

 

JULIE ROYS:  41:02
Well again, that was Carson Weitnauer, speaking at Restore 2023. And what a very special and moving talk that was. And I hope if you’re in a place of disillusionment or discouragement today, that this talk encouraged you. Next week, we’ll be releasing a fitting sequel to Carson’s talk. That’s a talk by Lori Anne Thompson on trauma recovery and empowerment. And this was the most raw and real talk I think I’ve ever heard. My husband cried during this talk. And he’s a math teacher, so he’s not really given to shows of emotion. But wow, Lori’s talk is just so powerful—and helpful for anyone who’s experienced severe trauma. So, you’ll definitely want to be watching for that.

Also, I want to mention that the videos of these talks are all available at my YouTube channel. A lot of conferences charge for their videos. But we’ve decided to make ours available for free because we don’t want anyone to miss out on this valuable content because of lack of finances. But as you can imagine, these videos do cost us to shoot and edit. So, if you appreciate this content and you’re able to pitch in, would you please donate to The Roys Report so we can continue this important service?

To do so, just go to JulieRoys.com/Donate.

 And when you give a gift of $30 or more this month, we’ll send you a copy of Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer’s latest book: Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers that Can Transform Your Church into a Tov Culture. So again, just go to JulieRoys.comDonate.

Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. That way, you’ll never miss an episode! And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then, please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content.

Again, thanks for joining me today! Hope you were blessed and encouraged! 

 

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  1. I just read the podcast transcript, and I am confused. I have followed this story online for a couple of years, since it first came out. As Carson tells it, it sounds like his last interaction with RZIM was when they offered him a NDA sort of disguised as a severance package. But it sounds like they never really came clean of their part in the whole deception of Ravi’s or RZIM’s actions. However in the Wikipedia article about Ravi, and as I had understood it, further investigations had verified that the accusations were true, and that RZIM was changing its name, distancing itself from Ravi. Also that his publishers were removing his materials, his church was defrocking him, basically everyone associated with him were abandoning him. None of this appears to have been mentioned, it sounds like NZIM went on, business as usual, leaving Carson in the cold.

    1. Has RZIM ever come clean?

      I have been looking for signs that it has ever since things finally exploded and sadly I can’t see they have.

      The trouble is that ‘RZIM’ seems basically an in- house business of family and devotees.

      There has been some distancing and rebranding by two daughters and some senior staff.
      However Ravi’s widow and son appear to still fiercely and blindly protect his name.
      Did Margie ever use her discretion after his death to release Lori Anne Thompson from the NDA?
      Was she ever challenged to do so by RZIM?
      (Did Lori Anne simply follow common sense and decide to ignore it?! )

      Below is a link to an article Carson wrote in May 2021.
      Has anyone noticed anything substantially changed since then?

      https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2021/may/from-dna-to-nda.html?utm_medium=widgetsocial

  2. Chris, my take on the podcast is that it’s not about the factual timeline of RZIM’s implosion. It’s more about Carson’s experiences of disillusionment, how betrayal affected him, and how others in similar circumstances can choose to trust God amidst deep pain.

  3. The personal takeaway for me was to admit that my toxic experience in a mega church was admitting “they damaged me”. Just that phrase, saying that phrase, is healing. I found like many victims thsi underlying guilt to still “protect” the abuser and narcissist. Admitting, they damaged me is surprisingly liberating suddenly.

  4. For me, to attend the Julie Roy’s Restore Conference was life-changing. Abuse is widespread and needs The Roys Report to shed light on the abuses. It is my prayer that others will see the need for The Roys Report ministry so the church can be reformed and restored.

  5. ‘’Put not thy trust in princes” – even, perhaps especially, in those who reckon themselves and/or are reckoned by others to be “princes” in the churches. The cult of personality, and the establishment’s deceptive protection of it, have far too long damaged us on both sides of the Big Pond.

  6. I was so shocked to read about him when it happened. He spoke at my daughters colllege graduation and I was so proud!😭

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