Why we need the #ChurchToo Movement

Providing a safe place for all to participate in the ministries of a church is an important part of who we are as a church. #Churchtoo is important to remind us that we need to be vigilante to create safe spaces for all because abuse happens in churches too.

A couple of important articles for us to read and remember...

When a Trusted Spiritual Leader Turns out to Be a Sexual Predator

MEN OF POWER have always abused that power. Every woman knows it, which is why none of us were surprised when #MeToo came for the church. But we weren’t prepared for Jean Vanier.

The details of Vanier’s story are well known by now, but they bear repeating. Vanier, who died in May 2019 at the age of 90, was the internationally celebrated co-founder of L’Arche, a global network of homes where people with and without intellectual disabilities live together in community. A Roman Catholic layperson who never married, Vanier was regarded by many as a living saint; his New York Times obituary hailed him as “Savior of People on the Margins.” His writings on spirituality and community were best sellers and universally revered as modern classics. Vanier was also a sexual predator...

Three women who accuse David Haas of sexual misconduct speak with NCR

Ali met Catholic composer David Haas when she was 14 years old, attending his Music Ministry Alive camp for three years starting in 2002. She recalled him being a hands-on mentor, remembering names and affirming the talents of the 150-or-so music students who attended the program each summer.

It wasn't until five years later that unwelcome sexual advances tainted the relationship, when Ali and Haas ran into each other at the Religious Education Congress in Los Angeles, Ali told NCR...

Megachurch pastor John Ortberg kept a family member’s attraction to children secret. Then his son blew the whistle

In what Menlo Church’s elders would later call “poor judgment” and a betrayal of trust, the megachurch pastor did not notify the church’s staff of the volunteer’s admitted attraction to minors.

He did not notify the church’s elder board.

He did not suggest the volunteer stop working with children – in fact, the pastor and his family encouraged the volunteer in his work as a coach of an Ultimate Frisbee team for high school students.

Instead, Ortberg, the lead pastor of Menlo, kept what he had learned about the volunteer secret from his congregation.

Especially the volunteer’s name: John “Johnny” Ortberg III, the pastor’s youngest son.

But nothing in a church or in a family stays hidden forever...

Western Massachusetts priest pleads guilty to child pornography possession; diocese reveals abuse allegation

The Rev. Gregory Lisby, a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on Feb. 21, having been charged after FBI agents raided the rectory where he was living in September. The same day, the diocese also revealed that, since Lisby’s arrest, it has “received devastating credible evidence” that Lisby sexually abused a teenager...