Everyone Talks about Fallen Pastors. Nobody Talks Aoub the Wreckage.

This episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, hosted by Todd Rhoades, explores the often overlooked impact of church leadership scandals on congregations, victims, and staff. Emphasizing the deeper wounds left after a leader's moral failure, Rhoades discusses the inadequate responses from churches and advocates for honest lamentation and slow, patient recovery. The episode is part of a series based on Rhoades' book 'When the Church Falls,' which aims to help churches navigate and prevent such crises.• Focus on overlooked impact on congregation and victims after church scandals.• Discusses inadequate church responses and the secondary wounds left behind.• Advocates for honest lamentation and slow recovery instead of quick fixes.• Part of a series linked to the book 'When the Church Falls' by Todd Rhoades.• Encourages reaching out to those silently processing pain and providing support.

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Transcript

The People Left In The Shadows

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When a leader falls, the spotlight rarely lingers on the people left in the shadows, the congregation, the staff, the volunteers, the victims, the family. The ones who still showed up the next Sunday, unsure whether they could even sing or if they'd make it through the service without crying. The ones who didn't show up at all, they're the ones explaining scandals to their kids, defending their faith to skeptical co-workers and carrying a quiet ache, wondering if they were just naive or just forgotten. We're going to talk about them today, right here on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Hi there. My name is Todd Rhodes, and I'm one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffing.com. We are in the middle of a series based on my brand new book called When the Church Falls. We're talking about church scandals, what happens when churches fall, when leaders fall. And today we're going to talk about the wounds that are left behind. And honestly, the wounds that are left behind don't make the headlines. The headlines are always about the leader and the scandalous nature of their fall, whether it was sex or an affair or financial impropriety or a power struggle. But very seldom do we ever hear anything at all about the wounds that remain. And honestly, the secondary wound is often worse than the first. We talk about moral failure like it's some kind of a leadership issue. And it is, don't get me wrong. But moral failure with church leaders and pastors is also at its very core. It's a pastoral care issue. At Willow Creek, for example, after allegations surfaced, the board initially defended the pastor and they questioned the women, the victims. The fallout was widespread. Longtime members quietly left. Some left not so quietly. The survivors, even though sometimes it had been years, were re-traumatized. It was like ripping a band-aid off a really bad wound. The staff morale at Willow Creek imploded. One victim said, I wasn't just hurt by the person who abused me, I was devastated by the church's response. And we saw the same thing at Gateway recently. A lot of the major scandals you hear about the leader and what they did, but we don't talk much about what was left behind, all the wreckage and all the people and all the hurt and the spiritual warfare. And the people that not only is their faith tested and tried, but the people that actually walk away from their faith, that's what makes me so angry, when every one of these scandals happen. So we're like I said, we're talking about that today. And the honest truth is I I sometimes I think it's on purpose, other times I think it's just there's too much going on, right? Churches often mishandle the aftermath. And I think sometimes in particular larger churches, their response is well orchestrated, okay? They have people that have thought out what their response should be and they have a communication plan. Other churches, though, man, they're just trying to get by. They're trying to get by what are we going to do this Sunday? And they're not honestly thinking about the victims. They should be, but they're thinking about how do we handle the leader that just fell, all the financial and vocational things that need to happen. They're thinking, how do we handle the press? How do we communicate with the congregation? But often they don't understand the full depth of what just happened and what's going to be coming their way. What happens after the fall can hurt just as much as what led up to it. Silencing or sidelining the victims, as we've seen in many instances, spinning public statements to manage the optics to save face, uh, shaming those who ask honest questions. We see this, I've seen this as I did this study on all these different falls. We I've seen that over and over. Where if you ask honest questions at a time like this, you will be shamed a lot of times. Other times they rush to do a healing service before anybody's even really named the pain. The reality is you can't crisis proof a church when it's when a church is pretending that nothing's really wrong. That's not how healing really happens. So, my third point that I want to really drill down into, which I think a lot of churches go, and you can tell I'm just kind of speaking from the heart today, a lot of churches go from surprise to anger really fast. And they never get to this what I'm going to talk about now. And it's some spiritual language, but I think it's vitally important if your church is going through a period where there is some kind of moral failure with your pastor or your leadership. And that's the word the word is lament. Lament is the language of spiritual honesty. We hear about it a lot in the Old Testament. Leaders actually tore their clothes in grief. They wept in public, they wrote songs of lament. And today, with technology, a lot of times we pivot to kind of slick statements and videos and healing weekends and services before anybody's really even named the trauma. You don't lead people well until you grieve what's been lost, and you don't rebuild trust until you acknowledge that there's some wreckage, that something went wrong here. And we expect people just to go on the next day or the next week or the next month like nothing ever happened, and we never take time to mourn and lament. But people need more than that. They need more than just moving on when there's a crisis, particularly when there's a spiritual crisis, and particularly when the spiritual crisis involves their spiritual leader, the person that they look up to. They need time, they need truth, they need tears, they need some trauma care, and they need some trust building. Boy, that would make a good sermon. Truth, a time, truth, tears, trauma care, and trust building. You can't rush recovery. You've got to let things bleed, and it's breathe. And they're gonna bleed too, by the way. Uh, but you you can't rush that recovery. You've got to let some things breathe. You have to acknowledge what happened, and you can't try and fix it overnight. You've got to be clear and you've got to be honest. This is gonna take time. You need to be present, you need to be human, uh, and you have to be unpolished. You have to be unpolished, you have to be truthful and transparent. A lot of times you need to bring in a third party to kind of help. Somebody that's not so close to the situation, that doesn't know maybe the leader that fell, that's not intimately involved in that that leadership relationship. A third party can really help. I see churches a lot of times, man, three weeks after they're all right. They either name a new leader or they name a new vision. We're gonna rebuild. We're gonna rebuild this overnight. We're gonna act like we're not gonna mention that person whose name we won't mention anymore, even though he was here for 20 years and built this church. Built this church, was the leader of this church for 20 years. Don't launch a new vision. You're gonna have to rebuild slowly. It's gonna it's gonna take time. It's at least a year. I just throw that out there. It's gonna take at least a year. Don't do anything new for at least a year. You're gonna have to show that compassion, you're gonna have to show that honesty, and you're gonna have to rebuild that trust that was just absolutely shattered. Sometimes people don't need a fix, they don't need a new vision or a new direction, they just need somebody that they can trust, and they need a shepherd, and honestly, their shepherd was just pulled from them. So the bottom line the people left behind matter to Jesus. And by golly, they better matter to us. Sometimes people don't need a fix, they just need a shepherd. So, maybe you're not in the midst of this right now, but this is a good thing to put into practice. I've I've I've got an action step for you here today that I think would serve ever all as well. Find five people this week who might be quietly processing pain, maybe not from a church collapse or a church leadership fall, just somebody that you know that's good through a hard time. And just ask them how they're doing. Just send them a text. Say, how you doing? How can I help? And as pastors and church leaders, we are not immune to this as well. You may have been hurt by a church. I run a staffing company and we talk to candidates every day that are hurt by their current church. Maybe it wasn't a moral failure, but they've been hurt. And know this, a lot of times it's not your fault, and a lot of times you're not alone. This is all part of a series from my new book, When the Church Falls. And if you're a pastor or board member wondering how to build a healthier, safer church, one that puts up guardrails and takes seriously the spiritual mission to stay pure and to lead with integrity, you can start with a free assessment. Prepare this over at WhenThechurchfalls.com slash assessment, when the church dot calls, with get my own URL mixed up, When the Churchfalls.com. You can order the book there. You can order some copies. I think it'd be a great study for your board or your leadership team to help you set up some safeguards. And if you need help navigating any of this, I'm here. Maybe you need that third party to come in during a crisis. I'm happy to uh partner with you and come along and do some consulting and some coaching in those areas. Maybe you're a pastor that this is just a hard time for you, and you just need somebody to talk to. You've not gone off the rails yet, but if things don't change, you're about to. You could reach out to me. The easiest way I've got a brand new website over at todd.church. A weird website URL, but it's todd.church. You can catch me over there. All the podcasts are listed there. And there's also a contact form there. Reach out to me and tell me it's all confidential and uh love to be able to help if I can. All right, that's it. We are going to continue our series again tomorrow, right here on the Healthy Church Deck Podcast. Hope you'll join me.