Responding Well to a Scandal

SPEAKERS
Julie Roys, WADE MULLEN

Julie Roys  00:00
When faced with a scandal, organizations have a choice. They can engage in impression management strategies designed to obscure the truth and save their image. Or they can take the road less traveled. They can humble themselves, they can listen, and they can admit the truth to themselves and to others. 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 a talk from our recent RESTORE conference by researcher, author and advocate, Wade Mullen, on how to manage a crisis. This is a topic Wade knows well. For his doctoral dissertation, Wade studied the responses of 50 evangelical organizations when faced with a crisis. And sadly, what he found is that they all do basically the same thing. They engage in impression management. They strategically omit key information. They make ambiguous statements, tell half-truths, evade questions, and do whatever it takes to control the narrative and control how others think of them. And what’s tragic is that victims get re-victimized, the public is deceived. And if the group gets away with it, they become emboldened and skilled manipulators. I had planned to release Wade’s talk in a couple of months. But in light of what’s happening right now, at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, or IHOP, I thought now was the right time. If you’re not aware, IHOP is facing allegations that its founder, Mike Bickle, sexually abused multiple women over several decades. And just this weekend, IHOP brought in Eric Volz at the David House Agency to manage its crisis. Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on what’s happening in these situations. But I think as you listen to Wade’s talk, some light bulbs will go on. And so, I’m very excited to share this talk with you.

Julie Roys  01:53

But first, I’d like to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University, and Marquardt of Barrington if you’re looking for a top ranked Christian University, providing a caring community and an excellent college experience. Judson University is for you. Judson is located on 90 acres just 40 miles west of Chicago in Elgin, Illinois. The school offers more than 60 majors, great leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Plus, you can take classes online as well as in person. Judson University is shaping lives that shaped the world. For more information, just go to JUDSONU.EDU. Also, if you’re looking for a quality new or used car, I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington. Marquardt is a Buick GMC dealership where you can expect honesty, integrity, and transparency. That’s because the owners there Dan and Curt Marquardt, are men of integrity. To check them out, just go toBUYACAR123.COM. Now, here’s Wade Mullins, speaking at RESTORE 2023 on how to handle a crisis.

WADE MULLEN  03:04

It’s an honor to be here again, and to be a compassionate witness to one another’s stories and to stand in solidarity against abuse. I’m grateful to be here. Throughout college, I worked as a server, a waiter at an upscale restaurant, which, given how accident prone and clumsy I can be, probably wasn’t the best idea. But they hired me. And as a result, I created a number of crises for management to have to respond to. There was the time when I was carrying a tray full of drinks in one hand, which was always a risky kind of circus act for me. And I approached the table in the corner of the restaurant, and a man was sitting at the table with his back towards me. And I approached the table and one of those trays started wobbling, and a glass of cold ice water tipped over. And the way the tray was, it caused the water to go right down the back of his shirt. And to this day, I can picture him going, whew, that’s cold. He didn’t know what happened. So, I had to apologize. Management had to come out and figure out what to do. I believe the man went home to get changed. It was it was bad. Then there was the time I was walking to the dining room with another tray full of dishes and a ramekin just like a small cup of yellow mustard, fell off of the tray and landed on the floor at such an angle that the yellow mustard flung into the air and my eye is going toward what spilling, but I hear a woman say what the? And I look up and she had all that yellow mustard in the back of her hair. And she’s trying to figure out what just happened. But perhaps the worst, and there was many. But perhaps the worst was when I was trying to keep one of those trays full of drinks straight again. You see, I should have learned my lesson, and just avoided that altogether. When I got to the table, and a glass full of coke, dropped off the tray and entirely into a woman’s purse. She gasped. And to this day, I remember her saying, looking in her purse and saying my purse is flooded. So again, I had to apologize, management had to come out, offer to pay what was ruined. comp the meal in all these cases. It wasn’t good.

WADE MULLEN  06:00

A crisis is when the unexpected happens, usually at a speed you can’t keep up with, and results in some kind of undesirable negative impact. And there are often four components of a crisis. The first is an event that’s unexpected, which can make it difficult to prepare for, so nobody brings an extra shirt with them to a restaurant in case the server drops a glass of water on them. Second, there’s a high impact on numerous people, which usually cannot be easily assessed. So, when I spill a drink on someone as a server, there’s the direct impact on the person who got something spilled on them. There’s the impact on those who are trying to share a peaceful meal together. There’s the impact on me the server, perhaps on my trustworthiness as a server. There’s the impact on management and perhaps on the restaurant. Third, there’s a loss of control as events happen too fast to manage. So, there’s initial reactions, which might be shock or confusion. There’s a time in which people are trying to figure out what is happening and how do we respond. So, it can all seem like a blur. And then lastly, fourthly, if not handled well, and I know  many of us have experienced this. When not handled well, the response to the crisis can generate additional losses, additional pain, additional conflict, potential abuses. So, what if after I dropped the Coke into the woman’s purse, I became upset and blamed the woman for having her purse on the table? I did not do that. But had I or if management didn’t offer to pay what was damaged, a wrong response can add insult to injury and create additional crises. And there are different types of crises. So, these are examples of accidents that I’ve provided, but there are crises that are a result of natural disasters or emergencies. There are crises that companies face when technology or product fails like a like a data breach. Then there are crises that are commonly referred to as scandals because they involve typically reports of some kind of leadership failure, misconduct or abuse that undermines public trust. And this is what I want to focus on.

WADE MULLEN  06:02

In 2015, I set out to complete a PhD dissertation on how evangelical organizations use what are called impression management strategies to respond to a crisis. Or to be more precise, a particular type of crisis called an image threatening event. And at this point, I don’t need to convince you that the evangelical landscape is filled with these types of crises. I want to talk about how leadership can respond well in the midst of a crisis of this nature. And I’m going to begin with some common responses to crisis that should be avoided, then give some principles for responding well, and end with an encouragement to engage in healing and restorative work. Every situation is different. Your response to let’s say, a suspected crime, like child abuse, is going to start or should start with a report to authorities who have the responsibility and resources to investigate that. But your response to let’s say, a non-criminal offense, maybe spiritual abuse, is going to be different. So rather than providing guidance for specific scenarios, I’m going to give you principles and tools that I believe can be applied to most any situation. And I’ll start with this observation. And I always hesitate to create two paths, two options, but I think there’s truth to this one, based on my research and experience. When there’s a crisis, decision makers must choose one of two paths; to adopt truth telling and transparency, regardless of the impact on one’s legitimacy, status, or image, and I would say that is in this field, the narrow path, or second, use impression management and public relations strategies intended to portray and protect legitimacy and status and a positive image. And that first thing, legitimacy is often what’s being protected most of all. It’s this fear that people have, leadership has, that if this is going to become known, then that will threaten our appearance of legitimacy. And if we lose that, then we’ll lose following and if we lose following, then we’ll lose power and we’ll lose money and all the things that they might be grasping.

WADE MULLEN  08:33

Now, you may be wondering what’s impression management? In some of my prior talks, I went into detail describing various impression management tactics, but if you’re new to the term, or need a refresher, impression management is the process by which individuals or organizations attempt to control the image others form of them, usually in order to be seen in a positive light, especially when a reputation or legitimacy is threatened. And research studies indicate that impression management is the predominant focus of organizations and their leaders in the wake of a crisis. Strategic omissions, non-disclosures, ambiguous statements, half-truths, preventing discovery, not allowing people to ask questions, not cooperating with an assessment or an investigation, making misrepresentations, and a host of other communication techniques, are often difficult to identify, because they tend to be just shy of outright lies. And because the audience typically doesn’t have access to all of the information to be able to test what’s being said. And over time, these techniques of deception of impression management are learned. And thus, individuals or leadership teams can become very adept at creating false impressions, without placing themselves in the very difficult position of being caught in a lie or having lost control of the narrative. The objective of impression management is to control the behavior of others by defining a situation in the way that leadership wishes others to define it, knowing that it’s easier to control people when you can define reality for them, or keep them confused.

WADE MULLEN  13:00

And when leadership has successfully managed crises in the past, by using impression management tactics, they feel less threatened by future crises, because they know they can draw upon their past arsenal of impression management strategies to respond defensively to any future threats. So, the organization has created what’s called a buffer between its image and any future threats to its image. One of the tools that some evangelical organizations have sadly employed to manage a crisis, are non-disclosure agreements or similar clauses that can appear in all kinds of legal documents that are used to secure silence, to keep someone from being able to share their story. And you can imagine how, when and if that works the first time an organization decides to employ that, how that then can become a standard practice. And numerous crises are discovered to have been partially managed through the use of those kinds of agreements. But these kind of strategies can be used to create this buffer between an image that needs protecting and any future threats to that image. Now, that approach, that image-centered approach, can become a framework, a grid, through which all crises are viewed and through which all decisions are made. And over time, an organization a community, a culture, can become increasingly concerned with covering up abuses, injustices and all kinds of unethical behavior, for the sake of preserving that positive appearance. To be seen as a place free of those kinds of dark secrets. And it’s as if there’s this line, and everything above the line, what the organization wants to present to others and everything below the line is what they want to keep hidden from others. And when a crisis hits, the organization gets to work, managing this split between what has been presented to the public, and what is actually happening behind the  scenes that might threaten the public image if it were to become known. That’s why wherever you have successful cover ups of wrongs, you have two types of dark secrets that that organization now must maintain; the secret of the wrong itself, and then the bigger secret, that such kinds of secrets even exist. And that’s why so often we find that when there’s finally exposure, the exposure, the initial exposure, then might open the door to all kinds of things that have been hidden over time. Over time, they not only learn what strategies to use to maintain the split, but they also tend to become more insular, and fortressed. By only giving power to those with close relational ties, those who will remain loyal, and keep those secrets.

WADE MULLEN  16:15

Another typical response to a crisis is to centralize power so that decision making is done within the higher levels of an organization’s hierarchy. Sometimes that’s necessary in an emergency when decisions need to be made quickly. But it’s a problem if that then isn’t brought back into balance. But it can also be a response designed to protect the more powerful members of the organization. And sometimes a crisis becomes a convenient excuse for leadership to grab more power. And even when the crisis is over, the power remains centralized. So, a crisis tends to strengthen the hierarchical structure of an organization and increase the power differential between leaders and followers. And that’s always hard to assess. But it’s a reality that is so often true in every situation where you have cover ups of wrongs, and you have abuses, and you have traumatized individuals. So, you have this huge gap in power. Followers typically become less powerful, and the leaders become more powerful. Then as power is pulled more and more into the higher levels of the organization, and never shared, then that amplifies the desire leadership has to protect its own image when a crisis hits, because a threat to their legitimacy is a threat to their power. So, an image is threatened, power is concentrated within a single person or a few people who will remain loyal to each other, to protect that shared image, and keep all the secrets below that line. And this continues. So, what I’m trying to emphasize is that this becomes a pattern, it becomes a cycle. And it gets amplified up with each crisis, widening that gap between what is presented to an audience and what is actually true. But managing that gap, what I have found, becomes more and more difficult over time in some sense, because in order to hide what is below the line, people tend to feel as if they must volunteer information about themselves that is the opposite of what they’re hiding. So, showing off becomes a way of hiding secrets. And another common response to a crisis is when the priority is managing an image through self-promotion to boast and make overly optimistic statements and grandiose claims. The late sociologist, Erving Goffman, wrote this  the more there is about the individual that deviates in an undesirable direction from what might have been expected to be true of him, the more he is obliged to volunteer information about himself, even though the cost to him of candor of that honesty may have increased proportionally. So, honesty is not the right synonym here for candor, but that willingness, that volunteering of information becomes a risky thing when there’s that split between what is actually being said, and what’s true.

WADE MULLEN  19:37

So, for instance, an organization a university could claim to be one of the safest campuses in the country while actually failing to meet the demands of safety. This is what hypocrisy is and this is the risk. This is what’s happening in this cycle, in this pattern. Hypocrisy is wanting to be seen as good without meeting the demands of goodness. It’s asking for trust without working to earn trust, it’s wanting to be seen as a healer, without touching any wounds, it’s gathering a following without serving, it’s always taking, never giving. And that gap widens and widens and widens. And then managing that image becomes the predominant goal, when everything above the line is what gets presented to others, and everything below the line is what remains hidden. All of that energy goes into maintaining this divide.

WADE MULLEN  20:35

Another factor that drives leadership toward image management is the reality that for some leaders, their identity and sense of self-worth is intertwined with the success of the organization they lead. And so, a threat to the image of the organization is a threat to the identity of the leader. The organization can’t be seen as a failure, because then that leader will be seen as a failure. And I believe this is a significant problem. And I’m grateful for those who are writing books and helping us understand more and more about the problem of narcissism within the church. But we need to be willing to name the truth and acknowledge our own limitations and failures when faced with a crisis. Even if it means being seen by others as weak or as inadequate. When leadership tries to cling to their image, then they use power in ways that are careless in ways that might be callous in ways that harm people already negatively impacted by the crisis, and in ways that undermine public trust.

WADE MULLEN  21:46

And then lastly, an organization can believe it has become too big to fail. Research suggests organizations that enjoy a higher position in their field have more to lose when that position is threatened. Therefore, they’re more likely to use impression management because they believe the risk to all they’ve built is too great. And I’ve heard leaders who say, well, if we were to get in front of the congregation and make an apology, and admit this, you know, just realize just what that would do to all that we’ve built, or that might work in a small church, but you’re talking doing this in front of thousands of people. That just will cause such a mess, you know. So, their  sense of we’re too big to fail.

WADE MULLEN  22:40

Organizations can quickly get caught up in a cycle of managing images and reputations. And on too many occasions, I’ve heard from groups of people who have experienced the pain of seeing their church community or an organization they love, slowly become a place characterized by fear and confusion brought on by dominating leaders who manipulate for their own gain and for the protection of their own image. Now, why does all this matter? Because the most profound impact become the most easily forgotten when leadership turns their attention away from the needs of victim survivors and toward the work of protecting their own image.

WADE MULLEN  23:28

So, the first principle I want to offer for responding well, other than avoiding all of those things, is to surrender the desire to manage impressions and defend your image. And when you do that, it frees you to center the needs of victim survivors, and it frees you from this prison of deception that we can so easily get ourselves into when we start prioritizing our image and our reputation. An important question to ask and to keep asking, when responding to a crisis is, who is impacted and how? You need to assess the losses people have experienced, and that response must be governed by love for those entrusted to your care. Years ago, I was in the car, and I heard a man on the radio define love in a way that has stuck with me. He said love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another, that does not require being loved in return or that the other person is demanding of that love. That is sacrificial Christian love. And when you think of love in that way, you also might think of Jesus Himself and His death on the cross. I John 4:10 says this is love. Not that we loved God, but he loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation, as a satisfactory payment, for  our sins. Love requires sacrifice. And if you are going to respond well to a crisis, understand it is going to cost you something. One of the saddest statements I hear sometimes from church leaders is, I didn’t sign up for this. Well, that’s exactly what you signed up for, to serve people in the midst of their suffering. And not only is that for their good, but it’s ultimately what is character forming and joy producing in your life. No one who experiences meaningful and faithful service to others looks back on that and says, I’m so glad of the self-serving self-protective role I had. So out of this love for others, you ask who is impacted? And how are they impacted? And you have to keep asking that.

WADE MULLEN  25:53

The next question we must ask is, what do we have to do to alleviate the suffering and promote healing? How do we enter into that suffering in a way that is trauma informed, ethical, and redemptive? But the answer to that question gets disrupted by a self-serving question that goes something like, if we enter into their suffering, what will happen to us? And this isn’t just theoretical. I’ve been in these situations and have heard from leaders who are wrestling with among themselves, there are some who say, this is the right thing to do. And we need to admit this, and we need to get in front of the people we’ve harmed, and we need to confess our sins to them. But then you have those who are in that meeting, who say, Oh, but if we do that, what will happen to us? In Martin Luther King Junior’s last speech titled, I’ve been to the mountaintop, given a day before his tragic assassination, he called people to support black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, who are on strike over poor work conditions and unfair pay, and challenged his audience to develop a “dangerous unselfishness” in their fight for justice through peaceful means. And in that speech, he recounted Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. And he suggested that the priest and the Levite, who chose not to help the wounded man who was robbed and left on the side of the road, that they might have been afraid of what would happen to them if they stopped to cross this dangerous road and help the man. And because he was conducive to  ambushes, Martin Luther King, Jr. speculated that this fear may have gripped them. So, he said, the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, if I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question. If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him? King concluded his speech, that’s the question before you tonight, not if I stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to all the hours that I usually spend in my office every day and every week as a pastor? The question is not if I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? Its if I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them? That’s the question. And I think one of the reasons leaders fail to respond well in crisis is because they say things like, if we stop to address these concerns, we’ll be distracted from our mission. Or if we get involved, and we don’t get it right, then we might get sued. So, leaders might say, what will happen to us if we get involved? What if things go wrong, and then we’re implicated? So, let’s keep our distance and not have our responsibility descend to them. Let’s not enter into it, let’s just hope it goes away. Or when the right thing is to confess and publicly apologize, leadership might ask what will happen to us if we confess? So, they remain silent, or they give a statement that falls just short of accepting responsibility by saying something like well if mistakes were made, or if anyone was hurt. In addition to assessing the impact on individuals, you also have to make sense of what is happening and apply the right definitions to the situation.

WADE MULLEN  29:44

One of the most harmful failures is when a situation is wrongly defined. Sometimes that’s intentional and done deceptively to control the narrative and protect powerful people. So, for example, the pastor verbally abused his staff and It’s called miscommunication. A leader repeatedly acts in spiritually abusive ways toward those under their care, and when it finally comes to the surface, it’s attributed to interpersonal conflict. A pastor commits adult clergy sexual abuse, and it’s called an affair. When you attribute the wrong terms, categories, and descriptions to a situation, you lead people down a path that ends up causing more harm. Sometimes there’s confusion around these definitions, because there has not been adequate attention paid to policies and procedures, or to training or to the fostering of an ongoing learning environment. So then when leadership is faced with a crisis, they’re left unprepared. And that lack of preparation opens the door to confusion. And in worst case scenarios opens the door to the bad actor, the deceptive person, to drive the narrative and the response. So, I want to emphasize the need for robust policies that are kept current and accessible. In many situations where there’s a failure to respond well, I hear leadership acknowledge that they either don’t have policies in place, or that they haven’t been updated in years. Or if they have policies, they don’t know what they are or where they are. Policies and Procedures are critical.

WADE MULLEN  31:29

Now, sometimes when I recommend this, I get pushback, and I hear leadership say, well, we don’t want to policy ourselves to death. And I want to speak to that because I’ve heard it too many times. I’ve only ever heard that view expressed by those who don’t have any. And in my opinion, it’s a potentially dangerous view that puts at risk the safety and fair treatment of those who are most impacted when a crisis hits. I’ve never heard someone say, well, maybe we would have responded better if our policies weren’t so robust. There is a need for there to be clarity and cohesion. But they but they need to be there. Regular trainings and fostering a culture of ongoing learning is also important. Trainings on abuse, prevention, and response on trauma-informed practice, on facing the ethical dilemmas of leadership can all help you to respond well when the need arises. I’m grateful in my work with GRACE that through GRACE, I’m able to sit through training in each of these areas once a year.

WADE MULLEN  32:38

Establishing access to resources and experts is also important so that when you need to get expert external advice, you know where to turn. I also recommend if it’s possible that organizations have an interdisciplinary response team, a diverse team of individuals with backgrounds and relevant fields, perhaps social work, or mental health, that can help with auditing policies, making sure they’re up to date with recommending trainings with assisting when there’s a crisis. These things can help prepare you. And it’s critical that there’s work done in this area of preparation because what you take into a crisis is what you will have with you during that crisis. In too many situations, I’ve seen people try to scramble and try to put something together after they’ve already been faced with something that they need to respond to. But even well-meaning response efforts can be harmful, when they are not supported by policies, education, and resources, because that confusion, that uncertainty about what to do can worsen the crisis.

WADE MULLEN  33:48

Now, perhaps you have clear policies, and you have ongoing training, you have access to resources, there’s still often a need for wisdom. Because there’s sometimes dilemmas, there’s nuances that need to be carefully worked through. There are two behaviors that are important for maintaining wisdom and an ability to make sense of what’s happening when you’re navigating a crisis. The first is what might be referred to as updating. Updating invites, welcomes, and provides safe mechanisms for new information to come to light. And that process is going to look different depending on the situation. Another term for updating might be openness. You remain open to new information and perspectives. You’re willing to hear from people, you’re willing to allow people to ask questions to bring concerns. You’re willing, if needed to,  to submit to an external investigation or assessment in order to understand what’s true.

WADE MULLEN  35:03

A second behavior that goes along with updating is flexibility. You have to be willing to continually test and revise interpretations and conclusions and decisions on the basis of information, and as new information comes to light. So, you hold these things with an open hand. And when both updating or openness and flexibility are working in tandem, wisdom and discernment are more readily practiced. And when you don’t practice wisdom, then you risk falling into one of two extremes. So, imagine a spectrum with wisdom in the middle. You don’t have to imagine it because I put a slide up there. And on the one end of the spectrum is overconfidence, in which leadership shuts down feedback, isn’t open to changing course, because they think they know what they need to know. They don’t acknowledge their limitations; they don’t turn to outside help. And as a result, this kind of response tends to result in dangerous action. This overconfidence can look like minimizing the scope and severity of a situation or making overly optimistic statements that everything is under control, or things will resolve themselves. Again, research has shown that this response is driven often by individual identities that are threatened during a crisis. So, you might have an overconfident individual, let’s say the founder of the organization, that responds in this way out of a threat to that identity. On the other side of the spectrum, are the overcautious. The overcautious are fearful of what feedback will reveal, and they take more of a passive, let’s just ignore it kind of approach. And they tend to take dangerous inaction.

WADE MULLEN  37:04

Both the overconfident and the overcautious shun wisdom. They shun curiosity, they shut down feedback, they shut down information. And as a result, they end up making poor decisions. One of the most common regrets I hear from leaders is that they wish they would have gotten help sooner, or they wish they would have taken time to listen to people. Not only does this application of wisdom benefit victim survivors and others who are most impacted by a crisis, but it also allows for a more sustainable and supportive environment for leaders. I often hear leaders go through a crisis and get to a point where they want to give up. They despair, maybe of the role they find themselves in. And I think part of that might come not just from lacking the capacity or resources to be able to give what’s required to meet the needs at the moment. But that inadequacy, those limitations, they go unacknowledged, perhaps out of a desire to be seen as in control, or perhaps out of a fear of being seen as weak or as a failure. So, they insist on leading. And then when the crisis is abated, maybe things calmed down, that leader in my experience, then takes a sabbatical, they go on vacation, thinking they’ll return then and be a different person. But then there’s another crisis and the pattern repeats itself because the leader hasn’t been honest about his or her limitations and gifts and abilities. So, they still cling to what they know and what they think they can do well, which then worsens the crisis for everyone involved. But when you’re able to say, here are my limitations, here are my weaknesses. When you’re able to move into this area of wisdom, and invite other people into a process, turn to outside experts. You embrace this model and you become a gift to others, and to those impacted by the crisis. I also recommend that when there’s a crisis, there’s often a need to speak truth in love. Sometimes speaking, truth and love means helping people process the crisis. So, it isn’t always the case that leadership needs to confess something, but they might need to provide answers. When giving accounts, explanations and answering questions, you should seek to do so in a way that helps people make sense of what has happened in a way that honors the dignity of those involved.

WADE MULLEN  39:46

When there is a time to confess, so this is another area of speaking the truth and love, is confessing. Then that ought to include this surrendering of defenses. So sometimes in that moment of confessing, that’s when we feel the most desire and the temptation to then protect our image. So, you have to surrender that, you have to take ownership. You have to take responsibility, and you have to demonstrate empathy. Sometimes speaking the truth in love looks like confronting wrongdoing. And when this happens, and of course, this isn’t something where you have external authorities involved who are investigating. But let’s say there are deceptions that you’re hearing in a board meeting regarding the what happened, or regarding the motives of other people. And there’s just a need to confront some of that misrepresentation. How do you do that? Well, this should be done with gentleness, it should be specific about the offense, about the wrong about any consequences, and it should invite that person into a redemptive process of accountability and repair. Then there’s a need to engage often in a work of repair in allowing for an environment of renewal. If needed, there ought to be an offer of generous restitution, and support for those who have experienced losses, those who have been victimized. This is, in my experience, sometimes where organizations stop, and I encourage them and invite them then to continue on this path. And to perhaps if it’s safe, ask people, What is it that you need? And the general principle that I give to leaders, if they find themselves in that position, is to do whatever the other person asks. I’ve never been involved in a situation where that request wasn’t a reasonable one. And sometimes it looks different. It’s not always I could use some help with paying for medical bills or counseling bills. That should be considered. But sometimes it’s, well, we really would like everyone on the leadership team to go through this training. Or we really would like maybe you could build some kind of memorial in honor of those who have been traumatized here and victimized. So there needs to be this restitution. And it ought to be generous, and it ought to be willing. When Zacchaeus made restitution, it was four times the amount, it was generous. But it was also something that Jesus didn’t twist his arm to do. It was something he was willing to do. And when he did that, Jesus said, today, salvation has come to this house. This is a critical step that is often missed.

WADE MULLEN  42:48

There needs to be a time where people are allowed to lament their losses. And I think it’s a beautiful thing when a church moves through a crisis well, and leadership shepherd people well, and after that, together, they hold a service of lament, and they name what has been lost. There ought to be some process in which the organization, leaders involved, submit to some kind of change, and that usually then involves some outside input to. There ought to be an honoring of truth tellers. That is another step that is too often missed. The only reason you’re here and experiencing this reform in many cases is because somebody had the courage to speak up. Are you honoring that? And then value the sources of resilience. And this is what I mean by that, just as a choice to prioritize managing images can quickly become a cycle of cover up and harm, a choice to embrace truth and transparency can become a cycle, it can become a way of living, that strengthens trust, strengthens safety, and creates resiliency. Thank you for the honor of being able to share with you again.

Julie Roys  44:15

Well, again, that’s researcher and author Wade Mullen speaking at RESTORE 2023. And as I’m sure you’re aware, many groups charge for conference talks like these, but we’ve decided to make them available free of charge, because we believe this content is so necessary for the restoration and health of the church, that we really could use your financial help. We need to raise $70,000 before the end of this year to end 2023 in the black. So, if you believe in our mission of reporting the truth and restoring the church, would you please consider giving to this ministry? It would mean a ton to all of us here at The Roys Report and it will help us start 2024 on strong financial footing. To donate just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. And this month if you give a gift of $50 or more, we’ll send you a copy of Tim Alberta’s book, The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory. This is an awesome book exposing the idol of politics in the evangelical church and calling her to more biblical and faithful witness. So again, to donate just go to JULIEROYS.COM/DONATE. Also, just a quick reminder to subscribe to The Roys Report on Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. That way you won’t miss any of these episodes. And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you’d help us spread the word about the podcast by leaving a review. And then please share the podcast on social media so more people can hear about this great content. Again, thanks so much for joining me today. Hope you were blessed and encouraged.