When the "threat alarm" goes off in an abusive church system, the response is orchestrated and brutal. But it's church: Appearances must be kept up. People loyal to the system confuse while pretending to clarify, cover-up while pretending to address, attack while seeming to answer, put-down while pretending to help.
Behind the scenes at Living Proof Live, I'd found a celebrity culture - not the "one anothering" of the church of the living God. So with all my heart, I cried out for change.
This is what happened when I served as onsite leader for a Beth Moore Living Proof Live event. It’s a peek into celebrity culture, the exploitation and manipulation of women and abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.
All my life, I had been deceived by Good Christian appearances. Then, when pummeled and guilted to choose loyalty to a church system above all else, I saw.
God saw my stifled spirit. He saw my confused soul. He’s teaching me to act on my spirit's yes even when my soul is screaming no. For then his life can flow.
As I stumbled around, stuck in the fog – confused as to what was good and what was evil, what was true and what was not – my Lord knew I wanted to see. And he kept showing me what I needed to know to be free.
Today, I need to stand in the shadow of something taller than me - something sturdy and living, deep-rooted and lasting, that whispers timeless secrets as the wind passes through.
In the very act of seeing what is brown, murky and decidedly unsafe, there’s movement. There’s life. And the light is breaking through.
Choosing to go with God where my church culture had forbidden, I had no clue how much seeing and grieving lay ahead. And how very much love and life.
