Thread by @hlgriffin

This thread by @john__perrine cuts through the Performative Sincerity of leaders like @aarondamiani. Like @StewartRuch who trained & empowered him, he is adept at saying the right things publicly while doing the exact opposite publicly.

Sadly, I suspect they believe themselves.

https://twitter.com/john__perrine/status/1415593037275746308

I also bet that if met @aarondamiani & @StewartRuch in person without knowing about any of this stuff, I would think they were great people. I love my tribe of charismatic Anglicans. I also love that these are people that have been trying to train people and build good things.

Most leaders are not going to fail in the ways that we are hearing about from the survivors because most leaders are not going to try to take the Holy Spirit seriously or invest this much time in training people.

We still can't treat people under our authority in this way.

Nobody wants these guys to be exposed. Everyone wanted them to come into the light a long time ago & gave them plenty of chances. Matthew 18 has more than been satisfied by the survivors.

The leaders didn't listen. They dismissed the people who loved them who were trying to tell them that they were hurting those with less power. They DARVO'd.

They had no idea they were doing that because they were overconfident that they were already in the light.

I get how this happened. I wish it hadn't come to this. It's a waste of people who have good goals and lots of energy and commitment to make good things happen. It's more of a waste when we sacrifice vulnerable people to pretend leaders are healthier than they actually are though

If you are a leader & can also see how this happened & want to have the fear of the Lord about how to avoid hurting people in your care, read @Weejenbug 's thread.

https://twitter.com/Weejenbug/status/1415435602359685124?s=20

Read @john__perrine 's thread

https://twitter.com/john__perrine/status/1415593037275746308?s=20

It is entirely plausible to me that no one who is being spiritually abusive knows that they are being spiritually abusive.

They think they are trying to help people. They are sincere. They have good goals.

I know this because I have been spiritually abusive myself.

I was trying to help people in my community that no one else was trying to help. I was probably the best help they had access to, which is pretty sad because I wasn't that great.

It doesn't mean that we stop trying to help people.

It means we keep asking God to constantly shine more light on our blindspots and to deal with the things inside of us that hurt rather than harm.

It means that when people tell us that we hurt them, we pray and repent and repair as much as possible.

It means that a few years later when we've grown more and can understand our past behavior better, we go back and apologize and repair as much as possible for the harm that we caused that we can see now but couldn't see a few years ago the first time we tried to make it right.

This is the only way to keep short accounts.

If you try to help people that no one else in your community is trying to help, you are going to make mistakes that no one else in your community is going to make.

We still have to repair what we can & listen.

*adept at saying the right things publicly while doing the exact opposite PRIVATELY,* as was made abundantly clear in @Weejenbug 's thread and in her 40-page report that seems to have been pretty much dismissed by most of the people that got a chance to read it and repent.