Thread by @PaulDJohnston

The last few weeks I have not been sleeping much at night. This often leads to not being able to do a full day of work.

Why? The leader of the church my family and I attended for over a decade (we left 10+ yrs ago) has been in the news over allegations.

mrsglw.wordpress.com/2023/04/05/the…

It's not a straightforward situation to explain either.

The post here gives some context via a timeline.

I know people who have given statements to the safeguarding investigation, and I suspect I know many others who have not said anything publicly.

mrsglw.wordpress.com/2023/05/14/the…

The biggest issue is that this isn't confined to the single church.

There were also summer camps run by a separate but closely linked organisation with the same name run by the same leader.

These were attended by tens of thousands of mainly teenagers for decades.

The Soul Survivor festivals were essentially the biggest Christian festivals for teenagers and young people for over two decades.

They were highly influential for Christians in the UK and around the world.

And the leadership and musicians went around the world.

I have many links to people who ran the festivals and people who were at the church.

I was never an intern and never worked with Mike directly and never worked for Soul Survivor.

But I do understand the organisation, it's history and a lot of the context.

This understanding has proved invaluable to people trying to understand this whole situation.

This includes the fact that people who volunteered to lead teams at the festivals had to have "safeguarding training".

I've been trained by experts in safeguarding.

For me, this whole situation has been incredibly difficult.

People I know are hurting.

People I know are very upset about what has happened.

We volunteered at the festivals many times.

I feel like the leadership failed us and our family in many ways and all of the victims.

The fact that there is a slow and constant drip of new stories and people sharing their stories is both demoralising and means that I need to keep processing what happened and what is happening now.

That's exhausting.

And my recently diagnosed ADHD doesn't help.

ADHD tends to mean you have something called "Justice Sensitivity".

In other words, when there is an injustice, people with ADHD often feel it in a much greater way than most.

And ADHD people tend to hyperfocus on things too like ASD people can.

And hyperfocus on this is incredible stressful.

Add to that that people I know are involved.

I haven't necessarily spoken to any of them in years, but many of them are friends on Facebook. I haven't posted on Facebook for years but that's where many conversations are happening.

So I'm not sleeping properly, I'm hyperfocusing on this too much, and I'm so angry for the victims.

And this isn't my job.

Not only that but this isn't the first time I've been involved in supporting other people when the is a safeguarding investigation into a church.

The year before the pandemic, a friend had an experience that meant my wife and I had to step in and challenge a church leadership on their safeguarding.

That was incredibly difficult and meant we lost relationships, and the friend was very badly treated.

It was very hard on us

This much much bigger situation has brought back many of those feelings.

And my wife has found it very difficult.

And because of the relationships we have, there are some very long term family friendships that are affected quite significantly.

For us, this has big consequences

And through all this, I'm very concerned that this isn't about me.

The victims matter.

And I'm certain there are victims here.

The leader of the church created a situation where the was a power imbalance with many people and made it very hard to challenge him.

There are definitely issues that need to be resolved.

What they are exactly? Let the investigation decide.

It should be independent of the Church of England though because of how many people could well be affected outside of the Church of England.

And it's painful to say this.

There was so much good that I saw there.

And so many amazing things that were done in the community.

I remember going and playing football with young people on one of the estates for years. It made a big difference to many kids there.

It wasn't about them becoming Christians (for me at least) but about giving them hope and a different future.

And it did.

One of the kids went and became a football coach, another joined the army... and both had thought they were just worthless beforehand.

Changing lives.

That's just one example.

People turning up week after week and being there made a difference.

The church was separate from the festivals. There were kids groups, loads of dancers and artists, and the Christian stuff you'd expect too.

So the fact that all these allegations have come out is really hard because the focus is on one person.

And the church was much less to do with the leader day to day than many churches.

He was still in charge though.

As a family we're exhausted.

We're constantly learning new things.

We definitely saw things but it's only now, when all the stories are put together that it's possible to see the pattern.

And I've been supporting a few people privately in there work with victims and producing content around this.

I want to do this.

I think it's important.

But it's affecting my sleep and my time.

At the best of times I find it hard to balance my time.

But right now, this whole situation makes it really hard to balance everything.

And ADHD makes it worse.

So if I'm missing things, and postponing calls etc... right now this is why.

There's a lot going on.

We're ok. One of the other issues is I am the only one of myself and my wife who is earning at the moment.

So that's an added pressure.

We didn't need this.

We are also home educating 3 of our 5 kids.

What we need is a break and we're not going to get one.

And again, the victims should be central here.

They don't get a break.

And currently the lack of independence of the investigation means many won't accept the findings.

So many other things I could say.

Another time.