148: Healthy Church Systems: 6 Key Principles Of Trauma-Informed Ministry with Pete Singer

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham, welcome to the Small Church Ministry podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Small Church Ministry Podcast. We cover so many topics on this podcast, really, anything having to do with anything happening in small churches, from children’s ministry, to leadership, to volunteers, women’s ministry, we’ve done a lot of outreach. We have an expert here today who’s going to be sharing with us more about a topic that’s been coming up a lot more in our conferences, in our free community. We’re going to be talking a bit about trauma, church health, church hurt, and abuse within the church structures. And I’m really excited to actually get to meet Pete Singer.

Not too long ago, I came across an email and found out that a lot of people in our community actually have a lot of great stuff to say about Grace, which is Godly Responses to Abuse in the Christian Environment. This is an organization that exists that’s coming alongside churches. Pete Singer, who’s here with us today, is the executive director of Grace. He not only is the director of this organization, but he has decades of experience working with trauma, abuse, and mental health in a lot of different settings, personally, in the church, as well as professionally. This is a therapist who has extensive experience with trauma, which is so important in today’s day, in today’s world. But Pete, welcome to the podcast, and thank you for being with us. And did I miss anything that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, tell them this about me?”

Pete Singer 1:50
Well, thank you very much. It’s really a pleasure to be on. It’s great to be on. So, thank you very much. And I think that was a good introduction.

Laurie Graham 1:59
Okay, great. Thanks. So can you tell us a little bit about, like, how you even landed where you are today as the executive director of Grace?

Pete Singer 2:10
Sure. Well, for me, my journey actually started back when I was in elementary school. When I was in elementary school, I went to a pretty highly abusive church and Christian school, and so I saw firsthand how that abuse was playing out, and it was abusive in every way imaginable. There was physical abuse there, there was sexual abuse there, there was a lot of spiritual abuse there, and it actually ended up resulting in a couple of deaths at the church because of the extent of the abuse and just how it was justified and condoned, and so that just kind of laid the groundwork. I didn’t realize it at first, but just this desire that wrongs can be made right and they need to be made right. And so that is really one of the things that helped me get into therapy and working with faith communities.

Because this is not something that a faith community wants to have happen. This is not something that a church or a ministry wants. And so working, it helps spur me on to working with a lot of churches and other faith communities and identifying perhaps what might be abusive behaviors, but also reaching out to people who had been hurt, being able to help them. So through that work, I started an organization here in Minnesota, and then as a result of that, and some of the relationships that I made along the way, I met a person by the name of Boz Tchividjian, and he’s the person that founded Grace back in 2004. And so when Bas decided that it was time for him to step down as the executive director, he reached out to me and asked me to throw my hat in the ring, and so I did, and the board ended up making the decision for me to be the next executive director, following Boz.

Laurie Graham 4:12
Wow. Wow. You know, you mentioned elementary school and that you grew up in a highly abusive environment. And of course, there is a continuum of how, you know, how far-spread abuse is and how terrible it is. And then there’s abuse that other people would call, “well, that’s abusive, but not terribly abusive,” right? But I just want to ask, like, did you know it was abusive when you were young? Like, when? How did that come to be? Because I’m asking this because I believe a lot of people are often in abusive environments much longer than they imagine, before they realize they’re in an abusive environment.

Pete Singer 4:49
Sure. Well, I think it’s something that we often don’t realize it when we’re right in the middle of it. It’s kind of like you can’t see the forest because of the trees. And all these things seem to be normal. They’re normalized, and you end up being the one that’s told that you’re out of place for thinking that there’s anything wrong. “What’s wrong with you for thinking that something is a problem here?” And so I know when I was young, I didn’t recognize it for sure. I don’t think even my parents, who were great parents, who were loving parents, who were just trying to provide the best care that they could in the best environment they could, my parents didn’t realize it either, and they’re even now still coming to terms with some of the impacts of that church and the impact that it had on both our whole family, really, and lots of other people. So a lot of times when we’re right in the middle of it, when we’re smack dab in the middle of it, we don’t see it. There’s so much going on, and it’s really a time of survival, trying to just get by, where we’re often really vulnerable to the lies that people would tell, or the justifications that people would make for why that behavior is there and where we’re the problem, not the system.

Laurie Graham 6:09
Yeah, you know, I think when I’ve been in unhealthy systems before, unhealthy relationships, I think one of the emotions I can identify, like, looking back, is it just felt confusing. Like, “is this right?” You know, “is this wrong?” Like, “why does this not feel okay?” So, how do we recognize when we’re in a healthy system versus an unhealthy system? And where’s the line of abuse also, and does that even matter where there’s a line of abuse? Like, when I’m saying “healthy” and “unhealthy,” does unhealthy mean abuse?

Pete Singer 6:46
Well, unhealthy isn’t automatically abuse. There are different ways that things can be unhealthy, and abuse is definitely one of those things. I think you mentioned probably the greatest resource that we have as people, and I think it’s a God-given resource, and that is your gut. Something feels off, and if something feels wrong, I think one of the things that we need to do is it doesn’t mean that every time something feels wrong, the sky is falling, but it does mean that if something feels off, if something feels wrong, we should look into it. We should examine it. We shouldn’t just automatically assume that we’re overreacting or that we’re misinterpreting things. And so it’s wise, I think, to look into it when something just feels off. Some of the things that can be an indication of that is really looking at how leadership handles things. Does leadership handle things, or does the—if there’s a primary leader—handle things so that they’re the focus, so that it’s all about them, or is it about people that are in the congregation? Is there real care? Is disagreement allowed? Or is it automatically shut down if you disagree with those in authority? Things like that can be really good key indicators of there possibly being something wrong here, there being something off here.

Laurie Graham 10:52
I love so much of what you’re saying, and I’m also trying to kind of like formulate, like, how do we really know if it’s unhealthy in in our church culture, many of us have been told we’ve had phrases like this, trust your leadership. Let the leadership know they’ll handle it. Don’t cause division in your church. You know things like that. Like, how do we really know if something is emotionally abusive or spiritually abusive, and I think I’m pulling those two out, because physically abusive and sexually abusive to me is kind of a no brainer. But even as I say that, I realize that’s not always true either,

Pete Singer 11:36
Yeah, I think one of the things that we want to look at is, if you have a concern and you bring it to leadership, does leadership just brush you off? Do they give you one of those excuses? Do they just say, “trust your leadership?” It’s, if we look at Scripture, it’s not just “trust your leaders.” It’s, “leaders, be worthy of trust.” So are the leaders doing things that are worthy of trust, or are they just telling you to blindly follow them? Because Scripture doesn’t tell us to blindly follow leaders. And so that’s one of the things to look at, is, is my leadership open to my expressing concerns? Are they open to my having questions? Are they open to a dialogue about this, or are they immediately trying to shut it down? Are they immediately turning it back on me that there’s a problem with me, as opposed to perhaps there being something in the system or something even unintentional that the church just needs to address. So that’s going to be one of the key pieces.

Laurie Graham 12:45
Yeah, I love it. I love that you even just pointed out, you know, “let’s look to Jesus.” You know, “what did He do? How did He treat people? What was, you know, what was kind of, like, the culture around Him that He carried with Him?” You know, “it was protective, it was safe. It lifted up the marginalized. It didn’t push them aside.” You know, I think that’s really beautiful. What does a healthy church system look like? Like, what does that, what does that culture look like? Is there anything specific that, like, when you walk into a church—because I know you do consulting, I know your organization does that—like, “this place is so healthy, I can tell because…”

Pete Singer 13:23
Sure. One of the things that’s going to be just absolutely essential is that the focus isn’t on a particular person, but the focus is on Jesus. And as the church, that’s what we are called to focus on. We’re not called to focus on that amazing pastor. We’re not called to focus on that really qualified elder board. We’re called to focus on Jesus. And so is the church focused on Jesus, or is the church really all about that pastor who can preach just incredibly? Is the church all about an individual or a group of people? So a healthy church is going to have a focus on Jesus rather than on an individual or a group of people.

Pete Singer 14:06
A healthy church is also going to be unafraid of accountability. They’re not going to elevate a person beyond accountability. They’re not going to resist people calling them to task. One of the things that Chris and I went through, as a result of COVID, the church that we were going to ended up closing, didn’t make it through COVID, which was really unfortunate, but then we had to find a new church. And so we went about looking for a new church, and we were listening to a sermon, and it was a sermon on humility, and the whole focus of this sermon was the pastor telling the church that leaders need to be humble, that leaders are accountable to the people in the church. That if leaders aren’t acting in a manner that’s trustworthy, they can approach the leaders about that and that something can be done. It was totally opposite of so often what we see the focus being, the emphasis being, “you need to be humble.” Instead, it was, “we as leaders need to be humble.” And that let us know that, at least for that particular concern, this was a safe church. And so we really need to look at what are the messages? What are the messages about power, what are the messages about humility that are being shared by those in leadership, by those in positions of authority.

Pete Singer 15:45
So, accountability, focus on Jesus, and messages about power and humility. These are all really important. With accountability, one of the things that matters an awful lot is the policies that are in place. Now, a lot of times with a smaller church, the policies aren’t as extensive, and we haven’t put as much time in, because maybe it’s more organic that the church has grown, or the church hasn’t been around for a very long time, and so there aren’t as many formal policies in place. But even so, we can look to see how they prioritize the safety of people. How do they prioritize those who may be on the margins? How do they lift up those who may be pushed down? And we can see, is the church moving towards that? Are they moving towards having a more effective policy? Are they moving towards having more concrete practices that they work on? So, those would be things that we can look at, especially like in a smaller church that maybe just has more recently started or has been around for a while, but still is small.

Laurie Graham 16:53
Would you say that healthy churches are trauma-informed, even if they don’t know that phrase, because we talk so much about trauma these days, trauma-sensitive, trauma-informed, and trauma-responsive. Can you maybe speak to that lingo a little bit?

Pete Singer 17:07
Sure, being trauma-informed is really a buzzword right now. Everybody, it seems, talks about being trauma-informed, trauma-informed, trauma-informed. And what we need to do is we need to realize that there’s actually some definition around that. One of the things that can describe a healthy church is that indeed they are trauma-informed. But what does that even mean? So, as a general definition of being trauma-informed, the way I describe it, and I’ve worked with a lot of organizations in a lot of different disciplines with this particular idea, this concept, being trauma-informed is understanding trauma and the hardships that people might face, and then having that understanding impact how we interact with each other.

Pete Singer 18:05
So with that as the basis, we can look and say, “What does that mean for the church?” Because if it’s just an idea that’s put out by some therapy organization or some government organization, it isn’t necessarily something that the church needs to focus on. So we ask ourselves, “What does Scripture say about it?” And what we find is that Scripture has an awful lot to say. We see one of the organizations that really does a lot of work related to trauma-informed practice is an organization called SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And SAMHSA has put out a series of six key principles that they say relate to trauma-informed practice.

Pete Singer 18:56
And these six key principles, I think, should be evident in every church. These are key principles that indicate the health of a church. There’s a journal Currents in Theology and Mission that earlier this year, I had written an article for that talked about these six key principles, and it’s an open access article, so people can go to the journal, Currents in Theology and Mission, and look up the article, “Towards a More Trauma-Informed Church.” So what are these six principles? These six key principles are safety, physical safety, psychological safety, and spiritual safety. Is it safe to disagree with leadership? Is it safe to question, “What is God doing here?” Is it psychologically safe to have different feelings and different emotions, and then, is it physically safe? Scripture has a lot to say about safety. We’re told to fast for safety. We’re told to pray for safety. Jesus prayed for safety. Safety is key. Safety is essential.

Pete Singer 20:14
The second principle is trustworthiness and transparency. Again, it’s this idea of trustworthiness, not that it’s a strategy to get people to trust me, but that I truly am acting in a way that is worthy of trust and transparency. Transparency does not mean that you share everything with everyone immediately. There are some things that we have to keep in mind with transparency. Confidentiality is one of those things, for example. But are we being trustworthy and transparent? And again, Scripture speaks extensively. There are seven things that God hates. Well, two of those seven things are about telling the truth and not telling lies. We even see in the story of Joseph, what’s recorded is that Joseph’s brothers, after they had thrown him into the pit and sold him into slavery, brought a bloody cloak to their father and laid it at his feet. Scripture does not record a single word by the brothers. Scripture does not record that the brothers said that Joseph was dead. They just kind of put indicators that may have meant that Joseph was dead, let their father make the wrong conclusion and then didn’t correct him. At least in Scripture, it doesn’t show that they did correct him or anything like that. It doesn’t show that they said that he was dead. It just shows that they laid a cloak in front of their father.

Pete Singer 21:51
So are we being trustworthy? Are we being transparent? This is a hallmark of a healthy church. Peer Support is the third principle. Peer Support has a couple of ideas behind it. One is that people can help each other. In other words, you don’t have to rely on me because I’m your only source of help. You can rely on the other people around you, you can rely on the church as a whole. We’re helping people. We’re equipping people to be able to seek help without exhausting it or becoming overly dependent, and we’re equipping the broader community to be a source of help. And then the other piece of Peer Support is just the power of shared experience. Somebody who has experienced abuse is not shut down when it comes to helping a person who’s experiencing abuse. Instead, their wisdom from real-life experience, from shared experience, is sought. And of course, it is up to them whether or not they enter into that situation. It may not be the right time for them to enter into the situation, or it may be the right time for them to enter into the situation, but we’re not disregarding shared experience. Scripture, again, very, very clear. The power of a solid friendship on Peer Support.

Pete Singer 23:16
We see that in the relationship of David and Jonathan. We see that even in just the Old Testament mandate, don’t harvest all of your fields, but leave some of the stuff unharvested, so that those who don’t have enough can come in and get what they need. And we see that power of shared experience, even in just the Incarnation, in Jesus coming to earth, becoming human. Why did He become human? He became human to bear our sins. But we see in the book of Hebrews that Jesus, by being human, actually went through all the trials and temptations that we go through, yet without sin, and because that, He can be an advocate for us with the Father. And it’s essential then that shared experience that Jesus entered into, and it’s a model for us to respect shared experience.

Pete Singer 24:15
The fourth principle is collaboration and mutuality, working together again. It doesn’t have to be just one solid leader, but a leader is open to you getting help from other people. That’s collaboration and mutuality, and that collaboration can occur on many levels: collaboration between leadership and a person who may have been harmed, collaboration between leadership and others in that faith community who are in need of help. So there’s collaboration between leadership and those who have been harmed. There’s collaboration within our own group. Your elders are working together with your pastor, or your deacons are working together with your pastor in order to address an issue, rather than it just being one person who must address it all alone.

Pete Singer 25:11
We see that in Scripture, in the trek of the Israelites from Egypt to Israel, it got to the point where Moses simply could not handle all the people who were coming to him with concerns and asking him to judge between two people, judge between people here, judge between people here, judge between people here. And it was getting to be overwhelming for Moses. So what did he do? He sought the advice of his family and his father-in-law, Jethro, told him, “Moses, what you need to do is you need to appoint some other judges, and they can hear most of these complaints. And when there’s a complaint that goes beyond what they can handle, then they bring that to you.” We see Moses collaborating within his own group, within the Jewish people, within the leaders of the Jewish nation. And then we see collaboration outside of our own group. This would be with, for example, a pastor collaborating with a therapist to provide holistic care for a person, and it’s a leader that’s not afraid to collaborate, not afraid to work together, whether that’s working together with a person who’s been harmed, working together with people within their own group, or working together with people even outside of their group, to provide holistic care for a person.

Pete Singer 26:32
The fifth principle is empowerment, voice, and choice. We recognize that hurt, we recognize that harm. We recognize that abuse is, by its very nature, a disempowering force. It takes power away from a person. People don’t choose to be abused. Their power, their agency, is taken away as somebody abuses them.

Pete Singer 27:00
Empowerment, voice, and choice, recognize that it’s our job as God’s people to walk alongside a person while they take some of that power back, while they take some of their voice back. And that is really, really guided simply by Jesus’ proclamation prior to ascending into heaven, “All power is given to me.” So if Jesus possesses all power, but yet we have some modicum of power, we have some degree of power and agency, the power and agency that we have we really are exercising as a steward. That power belongs to Jesus because He’s the King and we are stewarding that power. If you really want a good book that digs into that and some of the implications of that, I would really recommend the book Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church, by Diane Langberg. It is an absolutely brilliant, brilliant look at what power and authority mean, and how we as Christians should live out being a steward of the King’s power.

Pete Singer 28:18
And then the final principle that SAMHSA talks about, and again, that is very scripturally based, is historical, cultural, and gender factors associated with trauma. These are factors that just simply cannot be ignored, that cannot be taken out of trauma, because they are so often deeply embedded. And we see, again, we see the early church in the book of Acts. What do we see? We see a group of Gentile Christians coming forward and saying, “Hey, you’re showing bias, and how you’re distributing resources, and it’s not right that you’re distributing these goods with bias.” And we see the leadership of the church of that day in the book of Acts, saying, “You’re right. Would you help us solve that problem?” And then they went about having more equitable sharing of resources. Scripture is not afraid to address historical, cultural, and gender variables.

Pete Singer 29:18
It talks about people being the same, whether they’re Jew or Greek, male or female, and we can see that in the very heart of God, that these considerations matter to God. So those are the six key principles of trauma-informed practice in how I conceive of trauma-informed practice, of how SAMHSA conceives of it, and I think they are great indicators that we can point to. Are these things true about the church that I’m in? If they’re not true about the church that I’m in, is that because people are not aware, and so when they become aware, they want to move towards that? Or is it because people are actively resistant to these ideas, actively resistant towards these six principles?

Laurie Graham 30:09
Okay, I think those six principles are huge. And by the way, I know this is the article you shared with me earlier, Pete, we are going to drop the link in the show notes so people can look this up, as well as the book that you mentioned also by Diane. And I just wanted to pop this in as we’re talking about those six principles: safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, voice and choice, and historical, cultural, and gender considerations, because right before that, in the article, it talked about the 4Rs that kind of almost make way for these six things.

Laurie Graham 30:43
And I just wanted to mention those just really quickly, because the very first R that kind of leads to these six things is the church, the institution, realizes the widespread impact of trauma, right, and understands these potential paths for recovery, because I still find many churches are, you know, almost pushing back on this, saying, “Yeah, we don’t really have people here with trauma, or we really don’t have that.” And I think that foundation of realizing, you know, you mentioned, this trauma-informed is a buzzword these days. It’s everywhere, but there’s truth behind it, you know. I mean, there’s also truth, like, it’s not just a trend that is just kind of out there, but that there really is a widespread impact of trauma.

And so a church that is growing in safety, is a healthy culture that does realize there is a widespread impact of trauma, and not only recognizes signs and symptoms, but chooses to respond to it. And I think those four Rs, realize, recognize, respond, and I think the last one was resist re-traumatization. I think it was, but anyway, I just wanted to point that out, like we’ve got to realize this is a real thing, and it’s not only a buzzword because it is a buzzword. Like, we love talking about it because we’re seeing it, though, and I think that’s why, for me, it has become a buzzword, is because it’s like, it’s almost like the lights are coming on. Like, “oh,” like, “this makes sense.” Like, this is a big thing. So I love that you’re speaking about it, that you are working in this area for churches. I believe large and small, Grace probably responds to a lot of them. But can you tell us a little bit about the work that you actually do with Grace? Like, what does Grace do?

Pete Singer 32:38
Sure. Grace really does a lot of different things, and what Grace does can be summed up in before, during, and after. So before trauma may occur, before abuse or misconduct may occur within the church, Grace does an awful lot of prevention work. So with that prevention work, we do extensive training for church leadership and for entire congregations. We do extensive policy review and development for churches who either realize that their policy is inadequate or doesn’t have a policy in place. We do site visits. We do a lot to assess for safety on site. We do a lot of writing and training at conferences and whatnot. So we do a lot of prevention work. So a lot that’s geared toward prevention.

Pete Singer 33:38
The second piece of what we do is right now, kind of during. So when a church first finds out that they have an allegation, when the church first finds out that there’s a minor-on-minor situation, when the church first finds out that they have a known offender within their midst, then they reach out to Grace, and we’ll sit down with the church, and we’ll consult with them on how we can respond. One of the things that’s really key, really important, is that a lot of people that a church may ask, “how should we respond?” are going to approach it from the perspective of, “let’s limit liability as much as we can,” and instead, Grace approaches it from the perspective of, “how do we keep people safe? How do we care for people who have been harmed?” And that’s a very important distinction, because in order to limit liability, if you say less, you’re less liable, but people may be more at risk. So sometimes it’s in saying more, you limit liability by not admitting that you’re wrong, but yet you care for people by admitting when you have been wrong. And so it’s very important for us, as we meet with churches and other ministries, that we are coming from the perspective of care and safety, not from the perspective of risk management or liability management.

Pete Singer 35:04
And then there’s after. And with after, Grace does investigations. Now I want to be very clear that for a situation that requires law enforcement involvement, law enforcement is the organization that should be investigating. For a situation that requires child protection involvement, abuse of a minor, child protection should be the institution that’s investigating those. So I am not saying Grace replaces law enforcement. I am not saying Grace replaces child protection because Grace would never want to replace those.

Those are the systems that are in place, and we’re clearly told in Scripture, submit to the civil authorities, and those are the authorities that are in place. But there are times, for example, if a person was abused as a minor and now they’re an adult, but they don’t want to go to authorities. If a statute of limitations has expired, if the authorities are not going to investigate, if there’s been misconduct that isn’t fully illegal, and so nobody’s going to investigate whether or not something illegal happened, and the authorities aren’t going to investigate misconduct. In situations like those, people can reach out to Grace, and Grace can come in and do an investigation. We come in with a team of highly qualified, usually retired law enforcement and attorneys that have a lot of experience looking into matters like this, and we do an investigation, not just, “are the allegations credible?” but, “what did the church or ministry know, when did they know it and how did they respond?” Because we really want to look deeply into what occurred in that situation.

Pete Singer 36:51
The goal of all of the work that we do, the goal of the prevention work, the goal of the real-time consultation, the goal of an investigation is not just to check a box. The goal is cultural change. The goal is who we are. Because this isn’t something that just is out there. This is something that is central to Scripture. Scripture is full of account after account after account of trauma. The reason that Scripture is so full of those is because we as God’s people are to respond well when that happens, and we have examples in Scripture of how to respond well. We have examples of just incredibly horrific events happening in Scripture.

And we see that because Christianity itself, Scripture itself, is just so full of these trauma narratives, these trauma stories, so that we can respond well, and Scripture gives us direction on how to do that. And so as we do an investigation, we try to help the church move forward, not just looking back at what happened, but looking forward at, “how do we prevent something like this from occurring again? How do we make this a priority? How do we make this really a part of who we are, as part of our Christian values, as part of our faith, as central to the Gospel, not as a side issue, but central to the Gospel?” How do we do that as a church? And that’s something that we really hope is embedded in all of our services, both the prevention and the real-time and the after-the-event investigations and assessments that we can do of the overall church health or ministry health.

Laurie Graham 38:35
Yeah, such good work. You know, on your website, right, like, front and center, I love the statement that’s there, you know, “Grace: Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.” And under it, it says, “empowering Christian communities to recognize, prevent, and respond to abuse.” Like, I just love that statement, as I mentioned to you before we went live. And as far as our audience goes, most people listening right now are not the pastors. They may not be elders. They may not be in positions of power in their church. So for Sunday School teachers who are listening, or a volunteer in women’s ministry, if somebody in our church, like if just a normal, everyday member of a church, feels like something is off, or they’re recognizing, you know, abuse of power, or maybe the lack of transparency, or things where they’re just feeling off in their gut, whether it’s directed at them or they’re watching it kind of happen around them, like, what’s our responsibility? What do we do with that?

Pete Singer 39:40
Sure. Like, one of the things that we do about that is we pray for discernment. We also don’t just silence our gut. Our gut is telling us that something is off, and often that is for a reason. And so we explore that, we look at that. We can be a safe harbor for those who may be impacted by it, so we may see that other people are more impacted by it, and we’re a safe place for them to come and to land. It may be that we’re in a position where we can ask a question. It may be that our church has a committee that works on safeguarding, and we can become a part of that committee. The idea is to explore. The idea is to ask questions. The idea is to not silence those feelings, and we can be a voice. We can lift up those who are oppressed. We can, if there are concerns about safety, we can raise those concerns. And really we’re going to see in the response of leadership, then, what their heart is, what their motivation is, how they view the situation. And that may tell us, “Okay, it is good that I’m speaking up here because people are listening, and some real change might actually come.”

And my goodness, that is such an amazing blessing when that happens. It may also tell us that leadership here is not interested in change. Leadership here is interested in themselves, in which case we have to ask ourselves, “Do I stay here and still try to be a voice for safety, a voice for a healthy church, or is it time for me to move on and find another place for me to worship, another family for me to join?” And so there are really a lot of things that we can do. A lot of times it feels like we’re really disempowered, like we don’t have authority in this situation. And when it comes down to it, we can’t make a leader change who isn’t open to change. We can’t make a system change that isn’t open to change. But we can raise a voice. We can be the one who lets people know that change needs to occur, and then we can choose what we’re going to do ourselves as we see their response.

Laurie Graham 42:08
Yeah, I just think this message is so important, and in today’s culture, as we see more and more people leaving the church, right? More and more people leaving the global church, getting disillusioned, and a lot of this is magnified when churches aren’t taking responsibility, when they are ignoring abuse, when they aren’t transparent. And can you imagine your organization being part of this cultural change, because I’m already seeing a change in churches that are connecting, churches that are starting these conversations, churches that are going there, right? And kind of saying, “Hey, we can take responsibility. That happened on our watch or that did happen. And this is our response.” Like, do you see a different future? What’s your vision of, you know, as churches kind of, I don’t know, maybe accept that this is happening and taking responsibility? Do you see a cultural shift? Can you imagine it a little bit?

Pete Singer 43:15
I can imagine it, and I can see it happening. And that’s even better than imagining it is being able to see it occurring. I think one of the reasons that it is occurring is because so many people who have been harmed in our faith communities, in our churches, people who have been the subject of abuse, whether physical or spiritual or sexual, or in any other way, are raising their voice and are not being silent. They are saying, “This happened in the church, and there needs to be accountability. There needs to be some system that holds these people accountable.” And it’s the voices of those who have experienced this that will not be silenced, that is what’s bringing the change in the church.

And I see that, and I’m so encouraged by… there’s even, just in the four years that I’ve been with Grace, being able to see the change in how many people are coming to us saying, “Can you please help us prove that these investigations are false or that these allegations are false?” and instead are saying, “We want to do the right thing. Can you help us look into this so that we know what happened, and we want to do right by those who may have been harmed? We’ve already taken these steps. Can you help us go further?” There’s been an increase in that, and I think that that’s because of the change that is coming, that is already underway, as people continue to raise their voices and will not be silenced.

Laurie Graham 44:49
Well, Pete, thank you for being one of those voices and for the work that you’re doing in your organization and personally. And I just, I’m really grateful that you took the time to just be on the podcast today and share with our audience, too. Thank you for being with us.

Pete Singer 45:05
Well, thank you very much for having me. It was an honor and a privilege.

Laurie Graham 45:09
Yeah. And wherever you’re listening from, if you’re on a treadmill somewhere, if you’re driving somewhere, I just want to encourage you to be the voice that speaks up for the vulnerable, and to just, you know, let’s, let’s be part of creating these safe havens, these safe places, because I really believe we’re all a part of it. Otherwise I wouldn’t end every podcast episode with our catchphrase, which is, “Be a light.” Because I really believe each individual, every one of us, small church, big church, middle church, whatever size church you’re in, that we are all called to be part of the solution, and this is a huge issue just facing our culture today. So thanks so much. Until we talk again next week, y’all be a light.