Transcription
It is good to be with you this morning. Um, it's been a tender morning for us as we've been talking about very important matters and have uh spoken at the 8:00 service and then over at Twin View and then now with you and online community. We're glad you're with us too.
Uh, we're just going to talk about some of our mistakes and failures uh in a situation about Shawn Bolts. And just wanted to let you know about that ahead of time in case this is like a triggering moment for you or you're like, I'm not ready for this. I didn't come to church for this. Just kind of give you a heads up.
Chris and Bill will be speaking in just a a moment. And uh our heart is to end in a time of prayer and and confession and repentance and not you guys. You didn't do anything wrong. We're going to talk about this morning is what we did wrong. And so at that moment, we just ask for you to cover us with grace as we seek the Lord's forgiveness in the face of some grievous mistakes. So we plan on ending a little early if we're able to to give us time to kind of be together and grieve to stay here. we don't have another service uh you know starting too quickly afterwards and so uh we'll be available to you guys to visit with and talk and just process with as well.
So the there's an older senior leadership team and a younger senior leadership team just so you know and we call it the SLT. So the older SLT senior leadership team, very small, it includes me and especially at the time right after Candace and Eric Johnson left and before the 17 new Young Bloodoods joined the team. Um, the truth is we did not properly and fully discipline and bring to closure and bring out the truth of a very important situation regarding a man named Shawn BS who preached and prophesied in this platform and with our team around the world on many occasions up until 2019.
Now, Brian and Jen weren't involved. The Bethl Music staff teams, they they weren't involved in these decisions or the lack of them. And we are blessed by as I mentioned newer leadership uh that's here with us this morning our young younger uh senior leadership team uh who had nothing to do with these decisions and just want to again appreciate them for their support and also to honor them uh for the immense help they have been. as we process these we process our failure.
So we we're clear we're not responsible for Shan's sin. Shawn is. But we're equally clear that we are responsible for our sin, our inaction, our actions after the fact. And the scripture talks about this in kind of a surprising place. It's sobering that one man's sin can impact you in the moment of correction. And I'm going to read it to you out of Galatians chapter 6:es 1-5. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, you who live by the spirit should restore them that person gently. But watch yourselves or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test his own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone without comparing themselves to someone else. For each one of us should carry their own load.
So the the truth is we have hurt and scared people because we did not tell the truth early enough, long enough or loud enough. And this is a completely fair criticism. I am sad and embarrassed about this. We are sad and embarrassed about this. And I just ask you just not to judge too harshly. We have experienced this three times. We'll do it. We'll do it with the one o'clock service and then tonight as well. And so maybe not look for a lot of subtle emotional clues. We we've been up since 3 this morning.
When we uh sin publicly or make a mess publicly as we have, it's important to take responsibility publicly. And that's one of the things we'll be talking about to listen as people share their frustration, their sadness, their fears, and their correction. And we're getting a lot of that on texts and social media. And it's people's sadness, fears, frustration, and correction. And we've earned that. We've been hearing a lot of this and we expect to hear more in the season ahead is it sometimes takes a while for the frustration to land. You kind of want to take care of us in the moment and cover us. But you know in two weeks or two months you're like wait what happened? I just want you to know we're here for you in that moment too and we're not rushing past this.
I want to thank especially our alumni. Some of you are probably in the room right now and um there's about this is always mindboggling to me there's 18,000 alumni running around the planet and reading and around this congregation here. Yeah. So blessed by them. But frankly it was their communication, their agitation, their pestering. They're like, "What about this? What about this?" that began to happen on our alumni pages that at first was a a frustration and then you realized this is necessary. They drew our attention back and sub subsequently other national voices have joined that and as well you might have been seeing some of those things as well as and they called us to finally and appropriately address this and they were our alumni were simply calling us to live up to what we taught them. calling out the the gold in us. That's what we taught them.
And this isn't over today. Uh nor are we putting a bow on this and moving it on moving on. Uh we have had a lot of key conversations this year. We expect to continue to have key conversations and but this is the beginning of making things right as we've moved to an increase in accountability. This morning is about accountability before you guys and hopefully into transformation. And as you all know, it's not our mistakes or our sins that define us, but what our savior does and how we respond to his amazing grace. And that is our great hope this morning. Uh let's not to applause this morning. And this is a somber moment, but I'm just going to ask Chris to come and and share your heart with us. And he asked, you've been asking for prayer. We are praying for you as you share. We love you.
Good morning. Um, I'm incredibly anxious. I've not ever done anything like this before. Well, I've done it twice today already. I feel a little bit uh like my emotional tank is emptying, but um I feel loved by you. Um, so I want to take you on a little journey and tell you about the process with Sean Boltz. And I I want to say I had I've had a heart change in the from on Monday morning. I had an encounter with the Lord and I I see things quite differently and I'll talk about the change in my heart since that encounter um to that.
So in um 2019, it came to our attention uh through some European leaders that that that Shawn Boltz was using Facebook to get some of his uh words of knowledge. And um we got involved, Danny and I, Danny Silk and I, Bill was out with his wife was passing sick and uh we got involved and uh we began to do an investigation. As we we were doing that, somewhere in the midst of that, it might have even started first, sexual allegations about Shawn's uh ministry and specifically around his employees came >> harassment, >> sexual harassment came to light and um Danny uh got in the trenches there and began to investigate the sexual allegations and also the u and Danny got the there was 14 uh Facebook videos that the Europeans had put together in their own investigation and they said, "Can you guys do something about this?"
So Danny, who was uh you know, we we were I'll say we were all friends of Shawn. Sean was here many times in 2014 when I had a nervous breakdown. He ministered to me several times through my nervous breakdown. And so he was a friend of the house at the time. And Danny looked at the videos and flew to LA and showed him the videos and also showed him the sexual uh allegations and he flatly denied it. I didn't do that. I would never do that. Um I don't know why you'd think I'd do that. And it just went nowhere. And so Danny, I I took on the prophetic side. I said, "I'll I'll work on the prophetic thing and you work on the allegations, the sexual allegations."
So Danny did some research, got a hold of some other former employees, and it turned out, I'll share, I'll spare you all the facts, but it turned out that those allegations were not only true, but it was a culture for a long time. Sorry. And so I flew to LA and confronted him and it was a 4-hour meeting. The first two hours was confronting him as Galatians 1 as a friend who had sinned and calling him to repentance and he flatly denied that he had done anything wrong that he would never do that. And it it really got nowhere. The last two hours were a very different meeting, a very passionate meeting. And I was saying to him, if you don't confess your sin, if someone else has to confess your sin, it's going to get ugly. Because if you confess your sin, you're going to get forgiveness and you're going to get repentance and you're going to get whole. But if someone else confesses your sin, your whole ministry is going to burn down. And I was like, "Bro, your ministry is going to burn down if you don't if you don't get in here and do the right thing."
So, he didn't It went on for a long time. We We all felt that we should give him some time. We were texting back and forth and pretty soon it was just like, "No, no, no messages back. I'm not doing anything. This is not happening." And I I just be so we we began to meet. This is like almost a year past and and part of it is uh so part of the I think the timeline is that you know there was co we were in CO Benny was passing um >> what's that? >> Aaron Candace left and one of my very close very close family members began a divorce. and I was completely exhausted. That's not an excuse, but that was where we were.
And so we had a conversation like, "What should we do?" And he's not repentant. Okay. Well, let's take him off of all of our platforms. So, we took him off of all of our platforms. We took all of his books out of our bookstore. took all this messages off off of our uh you know off of our network and we we told a bunch of our close ministry friends that we knew were having him on their platform. Well, here's the challenge that I didn't understand till 4 days ago, 5 days ago. I thought we were helping somebody else with their problem. He was on many many platforms. I don't know 100 or 200 churches. Those European leaders asked us to help. We weren't on his board. We went to his board on a couple of occasions. They did nothing. And I I was I I wasn't thinking of it like I would think of a staff member. Like that happens on our staff. That is not going to go. I was like, this is not our this is not our responsibility. This is someone else's responsibility. We've done what we could. And that was a serious mistake. We put him on a global platform and as soon as we did that other people other people believed in him because we believed in him and consequently when he failed and then failed to repent after giving him time to repent, it was our responsibility to tell the people that we told we trust this man to tell them we don't trust this man. And that didn't happen. And that's on me. I made that decision.
Um, I know that it sounds like we were hiding something. Uh, I I want to point out to everyone who knows me and our global audience too, I confess my own sins. Well, when the Lord talked to me about cussing, I'm like about a week later, I told the whole world. I've never been I I've never been able to live with I do something wrong and I don't confess it. So, it it wasn't in my mind to cover up anything. It was it was a couple of things. One, I struggled with what is our responsibility, which I see completely different. And by the way, it's so sad that somebody has to put out a video that creates a firestorm to get someone who's 70 years old to do something. That's an indictment against my leadership. I should have known better. And if I didn't know better, I should have went and got counsel. And I didn't do that. And I'm very sorry. I take full responsibility for that. I'm very sorry. And being sorry doesn't fix anything because the side effects of that are that people took prophetic words from Shawn. And as news came out, and of course it it will. We live in a social media world. I didn't know what to do. What do I do with this prophetic word by somebody who's been getting mining Facebook to get his words of knowledge? What do I do with these? And instead of stepping in and and helping process like what do you do with these words? And then the the sexual allegations. What do we do?
One of the victims, I'm sorry, one of the victims of the sexual allegations reached out to me and wanted me to help. I did. I reached out to Sean on several occasions and after a while just got stonewalled and it didn't go anywhere. Danny was meeting with him too and uh and he was persistent like he should have been. He's asking a spiritual father's life, can you help me? I'm in a crisis. And unfortunately, his persistence and my not knowing what else to do caused my to me to make a decision out of frustration instead of compassion and I just blocked him. Not it wasn't the first day or anything like that. It went on for a long long time. And I think just my my capacity for stress was at an all-time low as I was trying to help my family member and Benny and COVID and all the issues that were happening all at once. And it was uh sad to look back and realize that someone reached out to me for help and not only did they not get help, they got stonewalled. It's not the way a leader should behave. And I I want to say publicly, I'm so sorry for all the people like everyone in this room. You're carrying the stigma of my inability to do the right thing, which was to post, hey, we put this guy on stage and we trusted him. Hey, we no longer trust him. Everyone should know that. And and I didn't do that. So I especially apologize to the victims this this the victims of the inappropriate sexual culture and and obvious the victims of all the people of Sean's prophetic ministry who struggled with what do I do with this word? Some of the words were amazing. Do I believe this word? Do I put faith in it anymore? How do I process this? And and frankly we had never processed that on that level before. So it was new territory for us. It's again not an excuse. I Sunday night I was not in this this is our this is our responsibility mode. I was still in hey we did more than a hundred platforms he was on. Hey we took our own time to investigate this. We confronted and confronted to no solution and and and it's like and and I I was in this mode of like I don't know why everybody's mad at us like who else did anything not realizing like we're the ones that put them on a global platform. We're the ones who caused it to go from this to this. It was on us.
And honestly to, you know, I say sometimes adversity introduces a man to himself. And I saw in me a man I did not like Monday morning. And I want to thank people who push back and who are dedicated to the body of Christ being a healthy body. We we need it's not fun, but we need that kind of push back. Last Sunday night, I was trying to uh process externally, which I'm sort of famous for doing, like I don't totally have it figured out, but I think I'll just tell everybody about it and maybe it'll maybe it'll be a good message. I I had a sincere heart. I was really trying to share with our body with all of these Facebook, all these, you know, social media swirl. My friends are like, "Say something." And I'm like, oh, you know, what am I going to say? What I'm going to say is, wow, it's really hard to pastor a global body in 21st century with social media. That was really a pretty dumb response, actually, especially since I hadn't worked out how to do it. Like, let's just tell everybody I don't know what I'm doing. And I actually quoted Revelation two where it says, "I know your deeds that you love your love and faith and service and perseverance that your deeds of late are greater than at first." Well, that's good. But I have this against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetus and she teaches and leads my bond servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat sac sacrifice idols. I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Funny. I don't know how you read that verse and emphasize I gave her time to repent instead of you tolerated the prophetus who was perverted. But somehow I didn't get that. Somehow I read right over that and not saw I didn't see that the Lord was actually speaking to us like, "Hey, you're doing these greater works. That's awesome. You're tolerating this prophetic person who's actually perverted his ministry." And I gave him time. And I'm emphasizing in my message. I gave him time when I should have been emphasizing I called him to judgment. That was dumb at best. I didn't see it. I didn't see it till Monday morning. I saw it when I realized this is our this isn't just this isn't our fault, but it is definitely our responsibility. These are the things you know repentance means that you take ownership of your failure.
So number one I need to take ownership of my failure. We failed you as a body. We failed the students failed everyone who trusts us and I sincerely am sorry. But repentance requires bringing forth fruit because sorry doesn't really get it if you just keep doing the same stupid thing over and over. So we needs to be a shift in our cultural values in that we focus on safety and security of our global community. We have to focus like it's it I I used to say it's not our responsibility to keep everybody safe. Well, we can't keep everybody safe, but it is our responsibility to do our best as it it depends on us to keep our people safe and to keep the people who trust us safe. That was a very bad core value on my part. Number three, we must realize that leaders who have graced our podium and being promoted by us are thereby we have to care as much about their character as we do about their gift. When we put somebody on stage, we have to care. If we're going to take responsibility when somebody that gets on our stage falls, we got to care that they have a track record. Now, obviously, you can do all the investigation you want and still make a mistake. That's a mistake. But when you don't even try, that's not a mistake. Number four, we have to take steps to bring greater accountability to our own leadership teams and ensure that we together live out these values. We have to call each other to account. And when we break these core values that we're creating, when we say, "Hey, it is our job to keep people safe, at least as it depends on us. This is our job. This is not their job because he's in some other ministry or he's not on our board. We're not on his board." and and we just slough it off. And then what happens? Comes into our into our network. He comes into our people and in the body of Christ and reres havoc. And we're like, "Well, that's that's not my problem. I'm sorry. From now on, it is our problem. And from now on, we better think of how we're going to solve that problem." And I don't know that's going to be an easy solution, but the Lord will give us wisdom and grace, and we will figure it out, and we will be a better movement in the future. We want to remain a place of restoration for leaders, but not at the expense of protecting the flock. Listen, people come here from all over the world. Some of them, you know, some of them you don't. It happens a lot here. A leader who has fallen comes into our midst and we help restore them. And we've restored so many people. And I'm going to tell you that I a product of that restoration. I met this man when I was 26 years old and I was in the middle of a three and a half year nervous breakdown. And he wrapped his arms around a broken kid with two little kids and a wife who moved to the mountains because I was mentally ill. And he believed in me and I never want to lose that. But in the midst of that core value, we have to protect the flock. We can't let predators and people who are unrepentants have our podiums and be among our people when they are still destructive. And I'm so sorry for that. And we will do better. Will we get it right every time? No. But at least we should try. At least we should build a culture where we could say, "Oh, he got through the cracks." Not like we have an open door. There's a big difference between an open door and he fell through the cracks.
Sunday night's message I thought was good, is inappropriately placed in the wrong context and sent the message that I cared more about the leader than I did the victim. I I just you know I say this for people who don't know me because this is probably going all over the place because my failure has gone all over the place. I grew up in a very violent home till I was 8 years old. I remember my mom being beaten and I left that house with a huge heart for every victim. I've had two nervous breakdowns. One of them mentally mental illness. So, I have a huge compassion for people who have broken. We spent five years with broken kids in a non-Christian youth group. And I I just want to point out like I didn't extend my compassion to people, but I have great compassion for people who are broken. And I'm really sorry. And it troubles me so bad because I can't imagine if one of my kids was on his team or got some great prophetic word and was running their life after it and found out later that that man was incredible. I can't imagine how that would have broke my heart. And for some reason, that idea that that's not our responsibility dictated my actions. And I'm deeply sorry. I'd like to say it'll never happen again, but I hold you to I hold my leadership team to like, please don't ever let me do that again. Um, I just want to say to the victims, super sorry. It's It's not just a scripted message. It's like deeply grieved. From Monday on, haven't slept much. When you have this much experience as a leader and you get something that wrong, you should be troubled. And I've spent a lot of time and our team has spent a lot of time giving feedback. How did we get it wrong? What was the value that was misplaced? How do we change the culture? How do we make sure that we don't just fix this or say we're sorry, but how do we make sure that we build a culture that 20 years from now, this is not this is not okay. No one's going to ever say, "Well, that's not our responsibility ever again." And I promise you from this day forward, no one will ever say that in this house again. That guy we put on a platform, not our responsibility. We'll learn to be more vigilant. We have a lot to learn. This for me, this is the first week of a journey that I've never been here before. And how we navigate a global movement in a 21st century, it's got to be possible. And it's definitely got to be way better than we've done. And prayerfully a lot of other leaders will learn from our mistakes. And prayerfully we don't just get well. Prayerfully, the body of Christ becomes a safe, godly place for our children, for people to get well, for leaders to get well, for victims to get healed without without creating a huge mess. Please forgive me. I understand that your trust for me is broken. I know for some of you that will take time to heal. I'm very sorry. I do give you my word that we will move to maturity in this. Um Bill's going to speak now. God bless you. Thank you so much for listening.
Thanks. Um Chris uh very nobly takes all the responsibility when it really comes back to me. You know, both Chris and Danny were much more willing to pursue uh bringing correction uh not just the initial correction but actually walking through long term um this whole journey and I I was the part of the process that slowed it down. Um, you know, sometimes your strongest trait becomes your weakest trait. And one of the things I do well is I believe in people when they don't deserve it. But it can move into what some have called unsanctified mercy. And that's actually what I what I did. I became so not impressed with the gift. I don't I don't I I don't do gifts over character, but I became so um committed to to seeing Sean protected and come into a place of health and that I I I just was foolish. And how it started is I I believed um I I didn't believe the allegations were true initially. I I think probably all of us wondered, man, this can't be true. We love this guy. We've spent time with him. He spent time here. But but over a period of time, it became obvious it was true. But I came became blind to it because my my loyalty to him as a as a friend, as somebody who had ministered deeply to me, as Chris mentioned to him and so many people authentically, that we became blind to the fact I became blind to the fact that there was a real issue that needed to be addressed. I'm completely blind to it. I mean, I see it now. It's embarrassing to to to see what was right in front of you all all the time. And I I were surrounded by such a an incredible group of leaders and team. Uh phenomenal discernment. I on a number of occasions I've come to Chris. I'll I'll ask him a question. You know, how do you see this situation? I trust your perspective more than mine. And there are just times where you just trust in other people's gift more than your own. But this was an occasion when I didn't do that and should have because I I easily could have seen through their eyes, through their heart, through their discernment something that was really really obvious, as obvious as the nose on your face. And I I didn't say it. I missed it. I missed it because, you know, just not wanting to believe something that that that could be true. And and it was and as a result of my slowing of process down uh just affected more and more people more and more uh injuries took place and through the prophetic and then through his own teams where where people were uh traumatized over some of the uh sexual uh issues. Um just horrible sad sad sad stuff.
And I spent time with one individual that I know and we actually had a real I I felt a really honoring time going both ways. I I he was calling out for help. He was expressing the pain of his own journey and the trauma that he had faced being on on that staff. And uh we had a a really good time of connection and I I was so thankful for it. What followed, however, is I did I was invited to do an interview on TBN, which I agreed to do and found out it was uh to promote Shawn in his book and I went through with it. And so if you can imagine making a heartfelt connection with somebody and uh lending support for their healing and then a week, a month, 3 months, whatever it was, I I don't recall now, let's just say two months later endorsing the very guy that he just brought a report to me on. And uh it was just a slap in the face to this young man. And it was it was just such a horrible misjudgment on my part. Just absolutely foolish. I followed up. We spent more time together a couple hours and to be frank, he he helped me in a kind way to say how foolish my my decision was and the effect that it had on him. And I know if it affected him that way, then there's countless of others that are also affected. And I am so so so so sorry. Some things are inexcusable. I'm just glad they're not unforgivable.
Um I uh several weak parts of my own the way I function. I I do rally to people who are in trouble. I rally to people that that you know I I give favor to people oftentimes far beyond what they deserve. And I I don't apologize for that because I I think it's a it's a proper way to do life. And and so I'm committed to that. But what I did wrong was I did it at the expense of the victims. In other words, I I showed mercy in in one category that seriously affected those who shouldn't have been traumatized any more than they were. And uh it was just uh it was just it was just careless. It was careless on my part. And obviously it's not intentional. You don't think through that stuff, but the fact that I could be that careless and and work to defend somebody who not defend anything that he did that was wrong, just work to see them restored, but in the effort to do that, to do it at the expense of those who had really really suffered. And it's there there's the trauma from the sexual issues and there's the trauma from missed prophetic words and stuff that has been uh promoted throughout our movement. And uh and I am I am so sorry. I actually I contributed to the trauma. I contributed I I wasn't just there to help bring healing as I thought I was, but I actually contributed to the trauma. That's a horrible realization, you know, to to realize that that you're making something worse. And my sometimes it's your action, sometimes it's the lack of action. And I I have this horrible um trait of just not confronting well and and sometimes I'm just afraid of getting it wrong. So I just avoid it altogether. And uh we've got a such an an amazing team that I have purposed to uh to be much more eager to receive input on these issues instead of just delay delay delay which is what I'm I'm known for. And I I just apologize to you for the effect on your lives, your heart, your trust and just the life of this family, this movement uh because of delay and because of avoiding avoiding confrontation, avoiding conflict. And um I I I want to continue to grow in showing appropriate mercy in in situations. But it really comes down to when there's we're pursuing justice, it's got to be the victim first. The priority has to be to serve those who have been traumatized. And and you know what? Sometimes it's just really really painful to be involved with people in trauma. I mean it's it's hard because often times they don't need advice. They need somebody to listen. They need somebody just to be there. And um so I I am repurposing my own heart, my own gift, my own life to give much cleaner attention to the victim as a priority. And then the whole church. And then of course the victimizer. We want to see healing and restoration everywhere. But uh the mandate really is to care for the victim. And so please forgive me for anything and everything I have said or done that would put less value on attending to the hurt and broken people. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. my uh my delay uh has caused so much frustration in family and staff and uh please forgive me. I I I promise to try to learn this one better. I I uh I I I just I don't do that well, but I'm I'm I'm praying with your forgiveness and grace to to be able to attend to these things in a much wiser way. The Lord has gifted us with a brilliant team. And u back when all of this started, it was just a a few of us trying to make decisions and uh all of us were under incredible pressure because of all the stuff going on just in our personal lives and uh now we have such a a brighter broader team to really help to speak into these situations. So I pray that with the wisdom of the whole group, you know the scripture says u we have the mind of Christ. It doesn't say I have the emphasis is is on the corporate that together we have the mind of Christ. And so that is uh that is our pursuit. That is my commitment is that together for us to hear from the Lord what to do appropriately in given situations. And I do ask you the victims of the prophetic, any other sexual tension stuff that could exist in your life, please forgive us as a leadership to to drop the ball as we have and to increase the pressure and the conflict in your own souls. And uh I just ask you to forgive me and I do pray that the Lord would would truly truly bring healing to us as a movement, healing to us as a team, healing to me as an individual. Yeah. Yeah. Please forgive me.
So, we're going to pray together in just a few moments, but I want to let you know of a couple of things that we've done and already been in the process of doing. It probably goes without saying, but just to be very clear at this time, I want to clearly state that the evidence we have seen concerning Shawn Bull's prophetic integrity has produced a broken trust with his ministry. And we believe that Shawn was not truthful in how he received his words. or not words of knowledge or prophetic words. We also acknowledge our belief that he engaged in sexually explicit and harassing behavior towards some members of his staff. We do not condone his actions, endorse his ministry, and we strongly advise you to take our position into account if you choose to interact with his materials.
And moving forward as a team and as a board, we recommmit ourselves to responsibility which was mentioned by both of you guys. Reimagining, re-imbracing that, commit ourselves to truth and accountability. And there has been a lot of that going on in these last week, this last week. But ultimately, transformation in Christ, which is our goal for this house, for our own lives, and for you. As Bill mentioned, our senior leadership team is uh is grown to over 25 people, gifted and talented. Um our board eldership is going to be more active in a role and leading and speaking. And I think it's sometime you've talked about that role of discipline will be sitting with a different place than you and is the expectation. Um also we will be implementing additional training and equipping and the prophetic so we know how to discern words and and to again be able to identify false words. Should someone happen to need um sorry, should something happen that needs to be addressed, we're implementing a a confrontation model, an investigation confrontation model that will include a wider communication when substantiated allegations are brought forth and met with unrepentance. We also have created and will continue to make paths to provide help and support for those who experience something that takes place in our environment that's not healthy, appropriate, or biblical. And you likely know that I think Chris mentioned it, but we put a letter out to our alumni. The feedback was it's not enough and way too late, frankly. But you can see that on our website as well if you are if you would like to. But around that time, we did begin to work on a safe church process. And we had to look at some of our processes and just some of the things like we we kept people's issues so close like we're not a gossiping environment. So, we'd actually hire somebody that people would come to us and go, "Why did you hire them?" Because we're because we are so good at keeping things close. We that's hurting us. We need to open that up. We have opened that up. And one of the ways we've opened that up, one of the ways we've opened that up is by having a the safe church process for our alumni community. Uh they were invited we invited anyone experiencing abuse of any kind in our environment to report via phone or form to a secure third third party team outside the BETHL environment. And this was done to ensure that Bethl itself would be held accountable for the information that was reported. In other words, we couldn't lose the report or change the report. uh then uh the investigation and we will begin the investigation process as as we're able and both of you have both said we need to get outside help from if that if it's beyond our our capability >> a year ago. >> Yeah. And we started this a year ago. It's been in operation with our alumni and we've it has soft launched already. So, you'll be able to find this at safechurch bethl uh sorry somewhere bethlurch.comsafechurch and it's open it's online we're monitoring it when uh while we're committed to doing better in the future I absolutely understand that some of you are right now you're working through pain and confusion can I trust this house can I trust these people working through the consequences of our behavior we contributed to that. Um, if you were directly impacted by a prophetic word from Shawn or within our environment or as a result of sexual misconduct, we invite you to reach out to us so we can offer support, pastoral care or counseling resources. And if this is this is if this defines you, you can email us at safechurchbethl.com.
Um, we are going to move to a time of prayer and um, again, as I mentioned, we don't think you guys have anything to repent for. We want to publicly ask the Lord. The in our Bibles, there's a book of lamentations. There's there's prayers of of sadness over sin, very important to the Old Testament scriptures. And so this would be one of those moments when we are standing before the Lord undone by the gravity of our mistake, the immaturity of our thinking and asking for the Lord's grace in these moments and for your grace. And so I'm just going to start. >> Why don't you stand? Let's pray together. You know, James uh says um he that knows the right thing to do and doesn't do it to him sin. And you know, uh when I was young, I was just trying to figure out what the wrong thing was I was doing. But you know, as uh as we grow, God holds us to a different level of accountability. And in this case, we didn't do the right thing. And so I want to pray want us to pray for the victims and I'm just going to lead us in prayer for those and for our own hearts and also we just need wisdom for what we're building going forward because it's great to have these convictions but we need to we need to have understanding. Feel a little bit like Solomon when he said you've given me these great people but I'm like little child and don't really know what to do. And so father we just pray right now. First of all, we pray for wisdom as we move into this new this new time, this new era. And Lord, you are making the crooked places straight. And you're making the rough places smooth. And you are driving wickedness out of your church and out of the world. And and Lord, you're driving it out of us personally and out of our movement. And we welcome, Lord, your whittling fork that you would get rid of the chaff out of our lives. And father, we pray that that we would be we would be a safe place that you would people could come and they could get healed and leaders could get well without it costing anyone else. God, give us give us understanding and and how do we reach how do we take these things we're learning and apply them to a whole movement? And father, I pray that you would uh give us courage to hold one another accountable when these values are not being emphasized in our own lives. And right now, Lord, I pray for the victims. >> I pray for the victims of the prophetic ministry who people who got prophetic words and planned their life around them only to find out that the person that gave them the word was deeply flawed, even walking in sin. Lord, I pray that you would guide them, that you would direct them, that you would validate what's yours and what isn't. God, I pray for the victims of sexual harassment and all the that realm, God, I pray that you would heal them, God, that you would restore them and that there what the enemy meant for evil, that you would actually turn around for good. God, I pray for my our own lives, for our senior team, for myself, that you would grant us repentance, Lord, and that you would give us grace to grow and to learn. And God, may humility, may humility open the door for being teachable, being correctable, and may we learn and grow today. And uh God, I I I thank you. I pray your protection over this body. pray your protection over our families. And uh I want to say to my own family that I I'm sorry that I disappointed you and and acted without wisdom. And uh I pray for forgiveness from my own family. Thank you, Lord. Yeah. Father, we just we depend on you for forgiveness as a whole movement, but I ask personally >> forgive me for foolishness, for thinking, seeing incorrectly. You You've been so kind to show me more than what I'm living by. And I ask you to forgive me and that you'd heal me, my own family, the things that I've not attended to that have been my responsibility all along. I ask you forgive me and that you'd heal us as a church family but also the broader body of Christ that you give us the privilege to serve and speak into that we would just be better as a result of this particular season that there would be a grace of seeing an understanding and wisdom. I ask this in Jesus name. Restore, restore, restore. And I agree with Chris just on the on the broken the victims that you have bring great great healing for the honor of your name. Amen. Yeah. So God, I thank you for the call on this house and but we do stand before you and regret and recognize and take responsibility for and repent for any pride or arrogance that has taken root in us that would keep us from being able to see what is plain, to see what is right before us. We ask your forgiveness for that. that there be no none of it in me, Lord. None of it in Bill, Chris, but again, just the a communion with you, Holy Spirit. We pray that we would be a leadership team, leaders, that I would be a leader who when we when we hear difficult news, we know how to act to bring healing. We know how to turn the light on. that we never choose oh the ministry over the the individual or the victim uh the brand over the truth. Lord Jesus, we ask that this would be a somber incredibly important thing that we are protecting that this community I just pray this for us that we would not we'd be even more and more our knowledge of one another, our love of one another. We wouldn't merely be a movement. We'd be people people. people people pray Jesus that you would in any place intentionally unintentionally we misunderstood we didn't listen to people's cries for justice and help as Bill mentioned overemphasizing mercy we ask for your forgiveness in that and any place we mislabeled or intentionally unintentionally what was happening so that we failed to act or couldn't act because we didn't rightfully define it, we ask your forgiveness for that as well. And we pray Jesus that just as you taught us that you would forgive us our sin as we forgive those uh who sin against us and that a culture of speaking the truth, offering uh repentance and forgiveness would be really normal for us. We look forward to what you're going to do in the years to come in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Yeah. Yes.
So ministry team, would you come up? And again, if you've come into the house and you don't know Jesus, you're like, what is happening? Uh this is the body of Christ telling the truth to each other, holding each other accountable, it's called repentance, owning our sin. If you are a sinner, you haven't given your life to Jesus Christ. You are one, by the way, and you want to get right with Jesus, you should come over here. There'll be a banner that comes up and says, "Start here." You might need some more clarity from what we just talked about as well, but they will tell you of the wonderful love of God. How he gave his life to pull you close. Hold on a second. He gave his life to pull you close and change everything forever. And so that's your destiny this morning. If you don't know Jesus, come to this team right here. Then ministry team, if you'd come up right now, some of you, we have triggered you. You thought, "No, not Bill, not Dan, not Chris." You've had you've had issues in the past and you're like, "No." And if you trust us and we're able to, we're here to pray with you to just invite the Holy Spirit to minister to that wound that we have again opened potentially. So I'd like you to looks like many much of the team is here. If that's you, if you're like, I this is not sitting well. I know everybody else applauded, but I'm screaming. We invite you to come forward and to to pray with one of these folks and and just seek the Holy Spirit there. And once that group has come, so come now if that's you, by the way. Come now if that's you. And then behind them, if you would, if you've come for a miracle, we want to pray for you as well. Uh, last thing, this isn't the end of the conversation. I expect you'll be talking to me in church about this the next three, four, six months. I think sometimes it takes a while for something like this to land in your heart and for you to figure out I got to talk to somebody. I know Bill will be open, Chris will be open as well, the rest of the team as well. So, feel free to have this be a topic of conversation as we continue to move towards healing. Okay. Okay, everybody. Yeah. Amen. We love you. Bless you guys. Come on and get prayer if you would. We're going to hang out here if you need to find us. Okay. They'll be hang folks hanging out. Bless you guys.