Thread by @hlgriffin

One of the things that I wish we would teach pastors is that once they gain positions of authority and power, a large portion of the community will stop telling them things.

Those who have had bad experiences with authority often adapt by avoiding that pain again by not risking high stakes disclosures or by protecting the relationship with the leader by not sharing information that might jeopardize the relationship.

If you have a church culture that encourages leaders (even implictly) to have an overinflated confidence in their own judgment, pastors can go their entire careers minimizing the frequency of abuse in the population because very few people trust them with that information.

No matter how many times they repeat their annual online safety training & hear frequency of abuse stats, it may never occur to them to wonder why those numbers seem to be so low in their own congregation.

They assume people would tell them if they needed support.

This is true even if the pastor is kind and warm. It's not just harsh, authoritarian pastors who are not entrusted with abuse stories.

It's kind people who don't seem like they understand how the world works.

Also, people whose trust has been betrayed are often so grateful to be around kind people that they want to enjoy the kindness. As long as you don't tell, parts of you can hold on to the hope that this kind leader would probably respond well.

Looming before any abused person who is considering whether or not to disclose their past trauma to the kind pastor is the awareness that if it went badly, it would be one more reminder how little power kindness has in the world to make people wise & safe with deep pain.

Another thing that we should teach pastors: Once you have authority & power, it will be easy to dismiss people who try to tell you things you don't want to hear.

The longer you stay in authority & the more power you accumulate, the more likely your upper leadership will become full of people who share your blindspots.

If you have areas where you can't handle criticism, carry overwhelming shame, or deprioritize areas of growth because you minimize the seriousness of your deficits, no one who confronts those areas will last for long.

If it seems like your only critics are particularly loud, angry, disrespectful, blunt people, it's because less assertive souls are not going to take the risk of telling you things you don't want to hear & have managed to avoid over decades of ministry.

I also wish that we would tell pastors that the people who they mentor will share their blindspots. If you have deprioritized or avoided areas of importance, your followers (who trust your judgment & character) will usually minimize the importance of these issues & practices too.

It doesn't matter how sincere you are. It doesn't matter how good your intentions and theology are. It doesn't matter how hard you are working and how much you are sacrificing for the Lord.

You can still miss it big time.

Leaders who mishandle abuse disclosures may not be worse leaders than you are.

They may be better.

Someone trusted them enough to risk telling them.

What if you haven't failed at this level because your people sense that you couldn't handle it & just don't tell you?

I wish we would tell pastors that even if they are safe people, their position of authority might make them the last person to find out about certain problems.

People without official leadership roles in the church might be the ones entrusted with abuse disclosures.

Pray that Jesus will show you who those people are so you can vet them and support them if they are safe.

I say "vet" because sometimes the only ones in the community who receive abuse disclosures are predators who groom people into sharing painful abuse histories.

If you never talk about abuse from the pulpit or in the community outside of mandatory online safety trainings, you may unintentionally be signaling that you wouldn't understand someone's experience of abuse.

The person in charge of safety training in my parish wants us all to move to in person safety training. This signals that safety is a priority.

In her experience, it also creates an environment in which people feel safe disclosing their own abuse histories, sometimes for the first time.

This has happened often enough after a training that she plans for it by leaving extra room in the schedule for private conversations.

It also probably helps that she is a woman.

Plenty of people wouldn't share something like that with a male leader, no matter how kind or skilled or well-intentioned he may be.