The call came shortly after I resigned from my seven-year stint as state women’s leader for Oklahoma Baptists. It was summer 2005.

The caller worked for LifeWay. “We’d like you to serve as the onsite coordinator for a Living Proof Live event,” she said. It would be held in Oklahoma City in June 2006, one of six such events scheduled for that year. 

Onsite coordinator was a volunteer position, she said, but LifeWay would pay for me to fly to Nashville for a meeting where all six onsite leaders would be trained. Then, I would return home to spend the next nine months preparing for Beth Moore to come speak to an estimated 14,000 women. And I wouldn’t have to pay the $50 registration fee. I would get in free!

The caller clearly was not prepared for me to hesitate. She was prepared for me to be giddy with disbelief and joy at being chosen for such a task. I know this because I did make that Nashville trip. And the first night, as we sat at dinner, a member of the Lifeway LPL team asked the six of us, “So. How did you feel when you got The Call?”

While I sat there, wondering, Did she really just say that?, the other women told how giddy they had been with disbelief and joy.

When I got the call, I almost said no.

Talking with LifeWay

I asked the caller if I could pray about it and get back with her. She sounded vexed, but reluctantly agreed.

I prayed for days. God knew I was reeling from months of brutal abuse by Southern Baptist leaders. I had no desire to accept another SBC assignment. Even a short-term, volunteer one. 

I expected the Lord to quickly affirm that I could pass on this one. But he didn’t. Instead, when he knew I was ready to hear it, he asked, once again, “Will you follow me?” Once again I said yes.

Then, I began to wonder if God had orchestrated this wildly ironic invitation so that Beth Moore and I could connect. I wondered if she too had seen what I had seen behind the scenes in the SBC – especially the disdain for, and mistreatment of, women, including pitting women against women. I wondered if the two of us could talk about all that.

I called LifeWay, and said yes. At the end of that brief conversation, I told the rep I was looking forward to meeting Beth. 

“Oh. But you won’t meet Beth,” she said. 

That stunned me. What stunned me even more was the sudden change in her tone of voice. It went from cheery to icy in a nanosecond, and clearly conveyed: Why would you even ask that? You’re just in this to touch the hem of Beth’s garment, aren’t you? You’re a crazy groupie fan!

Again, I almost said, “Okay. No. I can’t do this.” But I had told God yes.

Welcome in Nashville

All six of us who gathered at LifeWay headquarters for training received the same demeaning treatment. And the LifeWay LPL team didn’t just demean the six of us. 

They regaled us with stories about previous Living Proof Live events, stories that were supposed to make us laugh or gasp – stories that trained us to believe a lie. 

Their stories focused on crazy groupie fans who attended Beth Moore events and did crazy groupie things, just to try to get Beth’s autograph or shake Beth’s hand. 

Their stories told us: LifeWay has to protect her. And not just from a few obsessed people.

With each telling, the point was made more clear: This is how the women are who come to these events. And though we’ve hand-picked the six of you, you must understand: We can’t trust you either. 

So LifeWay has created a celebrity, I thought. They’ve stoked the fires of obsessive fandom. And now they’re saying about the women who buy Beth’s books and attend her events and lead her onsite teams: “LifeWay must guard her from all of you.”

I seemed to be the only one who noticed it. I was definitely the only one to protest it. 

Each time I tried to speak up, the cute, young, ever-smiling LifeWay ladies let it be known that my questions and concerns were totally out of line. And my fellow onsite leaders quickly agreed.

Hear me now. If I had attended that meeting earlier in my life, I would almost certainly have responded as my five peers did. In the SBC, all of us had been trained not to notice demeaning treatment, nor to protest it or even count it wrong, but rather to honor and even thank those who treated us that way.

But the pain of the previous seven years had finally opened my eyes. I knew: What we were seeing and experiencing was wrong. 

Trained to accept disdain

While brainwashing us to believe we could not be trusted, the smiling LifeWay ladies kept telling us how privileged we were to be asked to lead the only events where Beth would be speaking the entire next year. 

They told us, at length, what to do to prepare for and promote our event. We were each to gather an onsite team to assist us. Our responsibilities included:

• enlisting 50 co-host churches;
• organizing and implementing a prayer strategy;
• enlisting roughly 200 volunteers; and,
• planning a luncheon for co-host church leaders.

“Will we have a budget for expenses?” I asked.

Long pause. Then this, from a smiling LifeWay rep: “No one has needed a budget before. Do you think you would need one?”¹

On cue, all five of my peers anxiously agreed: “No! No, no. We are happy to do this! We will gladly donate whatever it costs.” 

Think about it: More than 14,000 women would attend the OKC event alone. At $50 apiece, that one Living Proof Live event would garner more than $700,000, just in registration fees. That doesn’t count the profits from the large LifeWay Book Store set up in four conspicuous locations around the arena. So we can at least double the registration amount, to arrive at the total income generated by one event. 

Yet the six women that LifeWay had asked to coordinate each of these huge events were not even offered expenses – and were made to feel that to ask for expenses was selfish, ungrateful, wrong. 

Having thus gotten us to agree to this shabby treatment, the LifeWay ladies changed the subject. They told us Beth Moore wanted to know about the women in our states, so she could focus each of her talks to their needs.

The room where we sat had a huge screen on one wall and videoconference capabilities. Would Beth take a few minutes to sit in her home or office in Houston, to see the women who would be working on her behalf, and to hear us speak from our hearts about the women among whom we lived and worked, the women to whom she would speak? 

No, she wouldn’t. 

A woman we had not met entered the room with a small notebook. Then, we talked for an hour about our states and the women who lived there – their lives, their hopes, their needs. The woman with the notebook took a few notes. If the info got back to Beth Moore, it was not evident in the topic she chose or the remarks she made when she came to Oklahoma City.

Finally, the LifeWay ladies described what would happen at the actual Living Proof Live event in each of our states. I knew what they were not telling us, and I spoke up again. 

“So, the day Beth Moore comes to our state, will we get to meet her?” I asked.

“No, you will not,” a smiling woman answered.

“Not even to welcome her, or to say a brief prayer with her?”

A pause. Then, smiling: “You don’t want to distract Beth from bringing God’s word to the women, do you?”

Once again, we were told how privileged we were, etc., etc. Eyeing me uncomfortably, my five peers affirmed how humbled they were to have this privilege, and how much they trusted LifeWay and Beth Moore to do what was best.

Hear me again: Both the LifeWay ladies and the other five onsite leaders were acting as women in the SBC are trained to act. God had just brought me through hell in Oklahoma, to show me that.

My delightful onsite team

I went home from Nashville hurting and exhausted, to mull the fact that I did recognize what I had experienced and seen there. I had come to know it well. 

I went home to pray for grace to do the job I had accepted, and to do it well – for my Lord and for the women in my state. I enlisted an onsite team of four women from three different denominations. Linda Stamps-Dissmore agreed to be my co-chair. Linda was my friend and the women’s leader for the Assemblies of God in Oklahoma. 

For the next nine months, those four women were my joy and delight. We met together several times to plan. We divided up the responsibilities that LifeWay had entrusted to us, and completed them all. 

We held six monthly prayer meetings, each in a church of a different denomination, each attended by an interdenominational group of about 100 women. Each time, we focused on a different request from the Lord’s Prayer. And every time we gathered, the Lord made his presence known.

We stayed on track, even when LifeWay treated us badly.

Each member of our small team gave much time and energy, and used her own funds, as we worked together on the Living Proof Live event. So I asked my contact at LifeWay, “Surely these four women will also get into the event free?” 

She got back with me to tell me LifeWay had agreed to waive the registration fee for Linda, my co-chair. The other three women had to pay to attend. 

Also, LifeWay had said their intent in sponsoring Living Proof Live events was to create “lasting impact in the community.” So, we called them on it. We asked that the LPL event help us launch two interdenominational women’s networks in our state: a prayer network and a women’s ministry leaders network. 

In particular, we asked LifeWay:

• to print response cards to be given to each woman who attended Living Proof Live; and,
• to allow a local person to speak briefly from the podium, inviting the women to participate in these networks. 

Instead, LifeWay allowed us one PowerPoint slide, that appeared briefly on the big screen during their pre-session, automated slide show. They allowed us one small sign-up table at one end of the 18,000-seat arena where the event was held.

Beth Moore in OKC

Then came the day we had all planned and prepared for. As thousands of women gathered to hear her speak, Beth Moore was nowhere in sight.

I knew she had arrived. LifeWay had flown her in on a private jet. And God had so orchestrated things that I passed her as she entered a back hallway, surrounded by LifeWay protectors. 

Turning to face her, I said, “Hello.” A LifeWay person told her I was the onsite coordinator for the event.

I offered Beth a small envelope that held a card I had prepared just in case. In the card, I had written a short prayer for her – maybe two sentences. As I recall it, my prayer was that God would set her free.

When I offered her the card, she hesitated. When she took it, she looked … pained. I have no clue if she read it, or even opened it.

At the last minute, our onsite team was allowed a few minutes with her, to pray for her. Then her LifeWay entourage whisked her away.

When it was time for the event to begin, the five of us were shown to the seats reserved for us. The Living Proof Live worship team started things off. As 14,000 women stood, singing the first worship song, Beth Moore was escorted down the aisle and onto the stage.

Then, she stood and began to speak. What stood out to me as I sat there, praying for grace to sit there, was how very believable she sounded when she spoke of her heart for the women of Oklahoma, when she made it seem like she had been interacting with us and listening to us, when she implied that she had enjoyed getting to know the women who had worked to bring her to our state. 

And then she spoke to us about trust.

When she finished speaking, we stood to sing again. And Beth was escorted down the aisle, out the building and back to her private jet to fly home. 

Aftermath

In the next year, I sent two letters to Beth Moore and LifeWay, appealing on behalf of the women who would attend, and help to organize, her future events. In response, the people I asked to use their power for good, used it instead to cancel me from all things SBC and to continue demeaning women and promoting celebrity culture as “God’s will.”

Two posts show and tell that part of the story:

• Dear Beth Moore and LifeWay: My plea
• Beth Moore and LifeWay: The ploy

These posts tell other parts of the story:

• Behind the façade in the SBC – sets the story of the Living Proof Live event in the context of the seven years that preceded it, and briefly describes the aftermath of this event.
• Exploited in the church, I’m Leah no more – tells what happened when God met me on the day of this Living Proof Live event, after “I poured myself out for Southern Baptists one last time.”

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Image by Leonie Schoppema from Pixabay

Footnotes

1. Ultimately, LifeWay gave us a small budget for the luncheon. We had to fund everything else out of our own pockets ↩︎