Tuesday Aug 13, 2024
Abuse of Power: S6E19
I’m so glad you’ve joined me at the intersection of faith and true crime here at The Unlovely Truth. Does your church or ministry struggle with physical, emotional, or spiritual safety issues? I’m your host, church safety advocate Lori Morrison and I’m so glad you’ve joined me today. Our churches need to be the safest places in our communities, so our mission on this podcast is to find actionable steps to improve every aspect of safety in our houses of worship and beyond. We’re going to do that by investigating The Unlovley Truth about real crime news stories happening in real churches. I’ve got new cases to investigate today, so let’s dive right in.
Unlovely Truths from this episode include:
- Church daycare site of alleged physical abuse
- Church shields inappropriate youth pastor and gets sued
- Church pastor preaches one thing, does another
1 Corinthians 10:1-6
For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters,
that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them,
and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them;
their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples
to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
When Paul wrote this letter to the church, there were some issues about idol worship. Paul reminded the people how that worked out for the children of Israel after God delivered them out of slavery in Egypt. He took care of their every need, and they betrayed him. They made something else more important to them than their holiness.
We still do that today, whether it’s with money, or status, or sex. I think in all three of our cases today it was about power. It was disguised as both physical, emotional and spiritual abuse - but each of our perps wanted to exert whatever power they could over someone weaker so they could get what they wanted.
My safety tips for you today apply equally well in your personal life as they do in our churches. Avoid people who are controlling. You don’t need to be in a relationship with controlling people and you certainly should hire them to hold any role associated with your church. It sounds like I’m trying to control you by saying that, but you get what I mean. High-control people and groups aren’t healthy, and you and our churches deserve better!
Let me know what you think of this episode! Send me an email at lori@theunlovelytruth.com or message me on social media. I love it when people are willing to have hard, but impactful conversations that strengthen physical, emotional, and spiritual safety at the intersection of faith and true crime.
Visit my website to access more episodes. If you would like to contact me about booking me as a speaker or ask about my consulting services, please email me at lori@theunlovelytruth.com.
Ways you can support the work of The Unlovely Truth:
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Church Daycare worker allegedly abuses child
Did this church ignore horrible behavior by a staff member?