Author Mary DeMuth on Church Sex Abuse Crisis

• Transcript

The church is supposed to be a haven for the weak and the vulnerable. But what happens when it’s not—and the powerful prey on the weak?

On this episode of The Roys Report, Julie discusses the sex abuse crisis in the church with author, speaker, and abuse advocate, Mary DeMuth. Why is sex abuse running rampant in the church? How should churches respond to the problem? And how can abuse survivors begin telling their stories and experiencing healing?

Julie and Mary discuss these questions. Plus, they take a look at some recent cases where the church has failed and explore possible solutions.

Transcript

JULIE ROYS  00:04

The church is supposed to be a haven for the weak and the vulnerable but what happens when it’s not in the powerful prey on the weak? Welcome to The Roys Report, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys, and today I’m going to be speaking about the sex abuse crisis in the church. And joining me is author, speaker and abuse advocate Mary DeMuth. As you probably know, sex abuse is not just a Catholic problem. The Southern Baptist Convention the largest Protestant church in the country is reeling from a massive sex abuse scandal and investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that in the past 20 years, dozens of pastors and deacons have sexually abused people in their care. And shockingly, the victims number more than 700 What’s especially awful about these stories isn’t just the pastors and the church leaders who abuse. That’s bad enough. It’s the pastors and the denominational leaders who protect them as well. Just recently I reported that Bryan Loriits, someone who’s been accused by several eyewitnesses of covering up sex crimes, just got hired by summit church. That’s the church where J.D. Greear pastors. J.D. Greear is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention who pledged to end the pattern of sexual abuse and cover up in the church. And then there’s another story I recently reported concerning Dr. Anthony Moore. Dr. Moore got fired from The Village Church in Fort Worth, Texas for secretly videotaping and male youth pastor in a shower. But Dr. Moore said he’s sorry, cried some tears. And then his good friend, Dr. Thomas White president of Cedarville University hired Moore. And if some bloggers and I hadn’t reported the story, Dr. Moore would probably still be teaching at Cedarville. He’d even be coaching the basketball team. And it makes you wonder how many other leaders are in churches preying on the vulnerable, how many others know about the predators and do nothing and how many sex abuse victims are there who are wounded and alienated from the church because of these wolves in shepherd’s clothing. Well, I’m very much looking forward to exploring this topic with my guest today, Mary DeMuth but before I do, I just want to take a minute to thank the sponsors of this podcast, Judson University and Marquardt of Barrington. If you’re in the market for a car I highly recommend my friends at Marquardt of Barrington, the most honest car dealership I know, owners Dan and Kurt Marquardt are friends of mine and I trust them implicitly. To view their entire showroom online, just go to BuyACar 123.com. Also, I want to let you know that Judson University is planning to resume in person classes this fall for traditional transfer and adult students. And it’s not too late to apply. You can choose from more than 60 majors and learn in a Christian environment known for its spiritual values, leadership opportunities, and strong financial aid. Judson is located just 36 miles outside Chicago on a beautiful 90 acre campus to schedule a visit, just go to JudsonU.edu/visit. Well again, joining me today is Mary DeMuth. Mary is a sex abuse advocate and author. She’s also a sex abuse survivor and knows the deep pain and wounding that sex abuse causes. Her latest book is a devotional called Outrageous Grace Every Day. She also recently wrote We Too: How the Church can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis. So Mary, welcome. I’m so glad you could join me. 

MARY DEMUTH  03:30

Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. 

JULIE ROYS  03:32

Well, Mary, one reason I’m really excited to speak to you about today’s topic is because you haven’t given up on the church. Despite everything, you still believe in the bride of Christ. In fact, in your book, we to you write, “I write this book not as an indictment against the church, but as one who dares to have prophetic imagination for what it can and should be. I love the church.” Mary why after everything we’ve seen, especially in the past, you know, 10-15 years, why do you still love the church? Why do you still believe in the bride of Christ?

MARY DEMUTH  04:06

It’s the hands and feet of Jesus on this earth. It’s how we experience the love of God is through the church. And unfortunately, there’s been wolves in sheep’s clothing who have marred the image of the church by hiding under the radar, so to speak, and looking like a lot of us. And I think that was one of the things that really struck me in the years of ministry that I’ve been in where I’ve run into some of these folks and it’s very bewildering and excruciatingly painful to uncover someone who you thought was one thing and then was another, it can cause you to leave the church and and of course, you know, when you get to the idea of sexual abuse and cover ups and all of that, it’s no wonder people are leaving. I have to say that as a sexual abuse survivor, my abuse did not happen within the walls of a Church, although the boys that molested me were Mormons and very strong Mormons. So I don’t have the same kind of brokenness as maybe someone who has been abused by a pastor or someone in leadership in a church. And so perhaps I have a little bit more of an ability to stay in. But I have great empathy for those who have been molested or harmed through church leaders and cover ups.

JULIE ROYS  05:25

And I know from speaking to a lot of sex abuse survivors in the church, they say, often it’s not even the abuse so much that wounded them. It’s the people that then covered for the abuse over and over again. That’s what was so disillusioning for them. And I’m sure you see that disillusionment when you’re working with sex abuse survivors, don’t you.

MARY DEMUTH  05:46

all the time. It’s rampant in it. All I have to do is think about Jesus and how he would respond to someone who’s broken. You can find how he responds to broken people throughout the gospel. You see it in the narrative of the Good Samaritan, and I liken this to the babysitter that I told when I was five years old, so I was under her care. She was like the institution for me. And I, it’s very rare for a little five year old girl to tell someone that she’s being sexually abused. But I told her, and she chose to look the other way. And she chose not to rescue me. And she continued to push me out into the arms of those perpetrators. And I think that’s where that betrayal comes in. When someone who’s supposed to protect you, instead maligns or keeps letting you be harmed and does not intervene, it’s an excruciating pain that’s extremely difficult to get over. Hmm.

JULIE ROYS  06:40

And there are so many I know even listening right now who are feeling that and I want to get into, you know, how we change that and also how we find healing because I think that’s so crucially important, but I kind of feel like there is an elephant in the room because J.D. Greear wrote the foreword to your book We Too, and We Too, is a great book. In fact, we’re giving away five copies of We Too. And if you want to enter to win a copy of we to just go to JulieRoys.com/giveaway. But again J.D. Greear, who’s the president of the Southern Baptist Convention wrote the foreword to We Too. And Greear is in hot water right now because of something I reported. He hired Bryan Loritts and there are credible witnesses saying that Bryan Loritts participated in a cover up of sex crimes at Fellowship Memphis, the church that Loritts pastored, 10 years ago. And unfortunately, what what we’re seeing from the church, at least from my perspective, is some statements that aren’t necessarily addressing some of the discrepancies, some of the issues and so far they’ve been standing behind Bryan Loritts and saying, Now, you know, he didn’t do anything wrong. We have missing evidence. We have victims saying that he told them, you know, if they speak about this, there’s going to be trouble. Discipline exercised against them. I mean, sounds like some pretty serious allegations. So how do you process that? I mean, J.D. wrote some pretty powerful stuff in your forward. In fact, he wrote, “During abuse, the voices ignored or marginalized or silenced outright, how do we dare turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the vulnerable in our midst?” We have J.D. Greear saying he’s going to change this pattern. And yet he just hired somebody. And the sex abuse survivor community is going what what are you doing? So how do you reconcile that? What do you think of all that?

MARY DEMUTH  08:35

Well, as I think about just in best practices of all churches, it is always better to have an independent investigation. So my encouragement would be to hire someone like G.R.A.C.E. to have them look at it from the outside looking in, because there’s really, when you’re looking internally at a situation like this, it’s hard not to protect the institution. But if you have an external person or people or entity looking at it to give you the actual what this is the play by play, this is what happened, we’ve done this investigation, and then you can appropriately respond to it. And it’s very egregious when churches err on the side of PR, rather than doing what is right. And I’m not gonna say that I know, you know all the facts in this particular case, but having that independent investigation would set everybody’s mind at ease. And then the other thing I would say, and again, I’m not deeply familiar with this yet I need to be but I am not yet deeply familiar with it. I would say that our position as believers is always to err on the side of over-apology, and deep humility. And so instead of carefully crafted statements, it’s really important that we own anything that may have the appearance of evil; and almost over apologize for, you know, any sort of wrongs that we’ve done. So, I know J.D. we’ve met at the Southern Baptist Convention last year. He’s a good guy. He wrote the foreword to my book. I don’t know all of the facts, but my recommendation looking from the outside and would be to have someone independently investigate this.

JULIE ROYS  10:22

Sure. And I appreciate you bringing up the independent investigation. However, I will say in the church, this independent investigation has become a buzzword that in some cases seems somewhat meaningless, because, for example, one of the cases that I just brought up was with Cedarville University where we had Anthony Moore, who had confessed to voyeurism, those types of crimes, and then went to Cedarville. Then when this all came out, and Cedarville said, Okay, we’re going to remove, the trustees removed Thomas White from his position and said, “we’re going to do an independent investigation.” Then they hired a law firm. And so you’re laughing because I’m guessing you know what I know. So why can that be . . . so what’s the problem? 

MARY DEMUTH  11:12

The problem is is the investigation we saw this with, with Willow Creek, you have this kind of connected investigation that’s about protecting reputation, versus truly hiring someone that has no connection to the institution, whether it rises or falls. And so I guess that’s where we have to really start finding those places that are truly independent. Now the press of course, is part of that and we saw that in the willow creek situation as well that it was the press that ended up revealing what was going on. And the kind of side elder investigation never really amounted to anything. Whenever you have institutional protectionism, it can get very dicey because you simply cannot see everything and it takes A great deal of humility to be able to take the blinders off and see the problems within your myths. And that’s why you need someone external. And also not a PR firm or a law firm necessarily to it can be a law firm. I know that G.R.A.C.E. has lawyers in it. So it’s not that that’s only bad for us as a public to trust it. There needs to be some sort of independence that’s not connected to the leadership of the entity that they are serving or serving under.

JULIE ROYS  12:28

Yeah, in law firms, as I understand because I’ve talked to boss division about this as well and the founder of grace, godly response to abuse in Christian environments. And boss says that this fiduciary responsibility between a law firm I mean, law firms have to represent the entity that hires them, whereas grace, if you hire them, an organization like that doesn’t have that same fiduciary responsibility, even if they are paid by the entity. It would be nice if we could work out a way where there’s no You know, money exchanged between the organization being investigated or the person but that’s hard to do. But again, there’s a bit of a difference there. Well, let’s turn to just abuse in the church and kind of why it happens and why churches, which should be the place where abuse is unheard of. Yet, in another way, they’re ripe for abuse. And it’s my understanding, because you have trust because you have power differential and because you have sinful human being so can you explain that a little bit?

MARY DEMUTH  13:34

Yeah, I would love to be one of those naive people that say, okay, it’s only this particular entity’s problem and not ours. I think human nature is such that we would like to point to everybody else doing it poorly. Like I think the Protestants did a pretty good job of pointing to the Catholic Church saying, Oh, it’s so bad. Not realizing that guess what sinners live in every institution, an organization and religious institutions. So I think that was actually what was so bad on the Protestant side of things is that there was this pride. And as I traced it through one of the couple of things I did, and We Too was I traced rape throughout the Bible, but I also traced our response to it throughout church history. And what you find is there were a couple really light instances and like piercing of light throughout the Catholic Church of people that brought up particularly priest abuse of young boys. And there was reform that happened at least twice. But after the reformation, the church had kind of a PR problem. And they kind of closed in on themselves and it was all about protectionism. And the Protestant church absorbed that DNA. And so Catholic and Protestant have been keeping this issue silent for centuries. And so when it came out with a Catholic Church, it was only a matter of time before it came out in ours as well. And like you said, it is a ripe place for predators. Because we, in the church love to trust people, or we think it’s the right thing to do. And of course, it’s good to trust people. But we have a very naive view of predatory people. And because we have that naive view, predatory people are able to walk all over and take advantage of children and the vulnerable and lots of different kinds of people. It’s not just children. It’s not just girls, it’s men, women, boys, girls, everybody. But we have to become as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves to know what these predatory people are like, and then to expose them and want to kick them out, obviously, and send them to the authorities when they have committed a crime, which most of the time they have.

JULIE ROYS  15:45

And I think part of the issue too, is the fact that we can’t wrap our heads around the fact that this man who sounds so good, and brings the Word of God to us, could possibly be a wolf, right? I mean, because he’s maybe a minister to us through the word and I remember, in one of my investigations, I was speaking to someone and he was telling me about the origin of the word hypocrite. And it actually comes from the word that in Greek means actor. And that to me was was kind of like a light bulb went on. It’s like, yeah, they’re actors. But they’re not who they say they are. And I think that’s what’s so difficult a lot of the time is that we want to trust that person who’s up in front, is who He says He is. And when he’s not, it’s, I mean, can it often be like a worldview kind of shift for for people because they’ve always trusted that pastor? And it’s hard, isn’t it? I mean, as you talk to abuse survivors, do you hear them saying this sort of thing?

MARY DEMUTH  16:43

Yeah, I call it the perfect world syndrome. And what that means is we love to have a perfect world. And we understand that in the Big Bad world, things are not as they should be. But we want to be able to close our doors in our home and have a perfect world there. We want to be able to walk into a church and have it be perfect there. If there’s someone that damages that perfect world that we want, we will do everything to fight against it because we just can’t live in a world that’s not perfect. Now, if you read your Bible, you know that we’re living in the now and then not yet. I mean, we’re in this place of the kingdom of God is advancing, awesome things are happening through the Holy Spirit and his church. But there is sin. And I think with gifted leaders in particular, we have to be very cautious about assigning fruit to gifts. So when someone is gifted, we assign the fruit of the Spirit to that person automatically we connect them, and we just assume that they have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control. And so that’s why it’s so hard when one falls, we think, well, they were so gifted and we were thinking actually, they were full of fruit, but giftedness and fruitfulness are two different things. And you can be an exceptionally charismatic person who leads people to Christ and then behind closed doors, be ruining people’s lives.

JULIE ROYS  18:03

I want to talk about grace too, because I think that’s something a word that’s used and abused. And you talked about the history of the church. I thought it was really interesting in your book when you talk about St. Basil, for example, he said that those who seduce young men or boys should be publicly flogged and defrocked and shall quote, never again be allowed to associate with young men. Yep, I heard it. I mean, with take the Anthony Moore situation, Dr. Thomas White. I wanted to show him grace and give him a second chance. So we bring him in and we allow him to coach men right now on the basketball team is it it’s mind boggling to me how we have taken grace to mean that not just that you can be restored to the church, but you can be restored to positions of leadership. Do you feel that if you’ve sexually abused someone, is that a disqualifying sin where you shouldn’t be in pastoral leadership or any kind of leadership role? You have responsibility for the young and the vulnerable?

MARY DEMUTH  19:03

Absolutely. They have been disqualified. They have broken the law. And I think part of the time we just forget that this is a law that has been broken. When you molest someone when you rape someone you have broken the law now whether or not you were convicted or not, it is still you’re still the law breaker. And we as the body of Christ need to exercise discernment and wisdom. And otherwise we will be just guilty of the cheap grace that Bonhoeffer talked about and cost of discipleship, cheap Grace is the grace you just throw everywhere. And you never require any repentance will repentance from a perpetrator, which is exceptionally rare, seldom happens, but if it does, repentance for them would look like not just words, but they would actually say, I struggle with wanting to perpetrate against this particular type of people. Therefore, I’m never going to be in a position of authority over those folks. And I won’t even walk into a church, if that’s going to be a place where I’m going to be tempted to pray, I will watch church online or I will go to a support group, but because I love Jesus and I have repented, and I feel so terrible about what I’ve done, I’m going to remove myself from those positions that tempt me. That’s what repentance looks like. And when someone has done something terrible and broken the law like that, if they demand that they be automatically put back in the pulpit, then they have not repented. I’m sorry, they have not repented. I’ve seen I’m going to get on a roll here, but I’ve seen so many disgraced pastors just jump they give themselves like five months of restoration and they jump heartily back into the very place where they have abused people. And it’s egregious and I just I can’t imagine that that’s a godly thing to do. I understand that that’s the only thing they know how to do but they need to go learn how to be a plumber or something because they have abused people and if they have especially if they’ve you know, spiritually abused people That is no place for them and they should understand their weakness and walk away from it in repentance.

JULIE ROYS  21:04

Amen. Amen. I’m so glad to hear you say that, because I think you’re absolutely dead on. And I think that needs to be said, and I think people need to start practicing it throughout the church, but we’re not. So tell me, let’s just go for how do we change the dynamic that we’re seeing in the church where we are protecting perpetrators instead of protecting victims, and I’m going to throw something out. This may be a little bit dicey. And I’ll just say upfront, I’m not even egaltarian. But at the same time, I wonder sometimes when I see this, if it’s part of this, that there’s a good old boy network and we don’t have some women who are speaking to leadership and a part of leadership in some form, where this dynamic continues to just happen again and again and again.

MARY DEMUTH  21:56

I absolutely believe that that’s true and one of the things that’s happened recently with me is I’m in contact with a church leader, male church leader. And he said, I, I feel like I’m being accused of some things of not being sensitive or whatever. And I feel like I need to learn from you about how I’m responding and to just have an honest conversation with you so I can see where I where my blind spots are. Now, that to me, gives me hope. That’s the way forward is that we stopped siloing ourselves, in groups of men and women, but we begin to have these kinds of conversations, honestly, without viewing each other suspiciously and, you know, seeing each other as friends. I am happy to have these kind of conversations. And I don’t think it’s inappropriate for me to have a phone conversation with someone of the opposite sex to talk about how to be more sensitive to sexual abuse victims. I think more of these kinds of conversations need to happen.

JULIE ROYS  22:56

Amen. You talk in your book about silence. And how abuse victims are so often bullied into silence and we see this dynamic happening where you just wish people would speak up. Yet it’s so hard to speak up when you’re on the receiving and why are perpetrators so successful in getting their victims? To say nothing?

MARY DEMUTH  23:18

That’s a really good question. I wish I had, like all the sociological and theological reasons for that, but I, I think I kind of go back to evil. And you know, they have an ability, an evil ability to persuade because they have created a kingdom for their for themselves with them as the king or queen, and they become very persuasive in having the person be a part of their subject of their kingdom. And if the subjects rebel against the kingdom, you’ve got all sorts of anarchy. And so there’s great amounts of persuasiveness and shame and a lot of threatening things and a lot of Jesus-y language, you know, “you don’t want to bring shame on the church do you?” I mean, this people will. I’ve heard this before, “you’ll cause people to go to hell if you bring this up,” which is a lie from the pit of hell, but it’s all about controlling a narrative at any cost. And I believe that is just from the pit of hell.

JULIE ROYS  24:21

We’ve seen in bolding of victims with the me to movement with now the Church Too movement and it is encouraging because you’re seeing people say, I can speak up and I’m actually going to risk it and believe that people will believe me, but they’re still every time someone speaks, it’s a scary thing to do. And there will be people who will say you are lying. So speak to the person right now who’s maybe currently being abused or has been abused in the past and is never spoken up has never brought this thing to light speakers. That person, what should he or she do?

MARY DEMUTH  25:03

I tell my audiences and write in my books is that an untold story never heals. And it’s desperately important to find a safe person and share that story. My own story did not have that. And so when I finally told somebody when I was 10 years old or so five years old when it happened, I was 15 after I met Christ, and I told someone, they would not believe me, they refused to believe me. And so I retold the story like five different times in five different ways, thinking there must be some sort of formula to tell the story, to get someone to believe me. And finally, the person did believe me. But right around that time, too, I was also being discipled by my young life leaders, and those folks loved me and they listened. And so that was more healing to me than having to tell the story over and over again and not being believed. So my encouragement is go into it knowing that someone might push back and not believe you. Try to choose someone that you know who’s the most empathetic person that you know. But if they don’t believe you, just cross them off your list and go to the next person because you cannot bear that untold story it needs to come out of you. And you will find you’ll begin the road of healing once it’s led out into the fresh, clean air.

JULIE ROYS  26:20

What’s so sad is that often those who have been abused, though, they shrink from the church and with good reason. I mean, if I had been abused by someone who was in the church, I can understand not even wanting to go near the institution. But when you say tell somebody you trust, there’s probably some people listening who say, I don’t know that I have someone that I trust. What do you do when you’re in that situation?

MARY DEMUTH  26:45

In that situation, I would at least grab a journal and write the whole story out so that at least it’s not inside of you but out on the neutral page, and then perhaps begin to pray and ask God to show you someone to show that journal to or write it on a letter form, and sometimes it’s easier to write it and hand it over then to say it out loud. And people have a little bit better ability to absorb it if it’s written than if it’s told to them kind of off the cuff or they’re not expecting it. But if you say, this is something I need to get off my chest, I’m really struggling. I need to know that someone sees me. Here’s this piece of writing that I’ve done. Would you please read it and let me know what you think?

JULIE ROYS  27:28

I know it’s interesting you mentioned that because Ann Lindberg who was someone a sex abuse survivor who had been allegedly abused by Gilbert Bilezikain, who was a co founder of Willow Creek Community Church. And I remember when we sat down to record something, and she had written out I forget how many pages I think it was like 64 pages. And that process of writing out all of that enabled her then to succinctly tell her story and to share her story and she had already done the work inside the process. So I think that’s just a powerful word. I think that’s important, important advice and really, really helpful. We’re running close to the end of our time, and I do want to talk about the way forward as a church. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of starts and stumbles, and we’re not doing this very well. But I sure would love to see us do this well. What are you know, one or two key things that you feel the church can do right now and pastors who are listening can do right now in their local church, that will make a difference and will make their church a safe place a truly safe place for the weak and the vulnerable?

MARY DEMUTH  28:43

I would first say that as a shepherd, you are to shepherd and that means even bringing up uncomfortable things from the pulpit. For decades, I have been sitting in the back of churches never hearing my story. There are people saying Oh, my marriage was, you know, ruined. I was addicted to porn or I was addicted to drugs and Jesus intervened. But I haven’t heard the story of I’ve been molested, I was raped. And this is how Jesus intervened. So here’s my challenge. If you’re a pastor out there, have someone like me, come to your church, and share a story of how Jesus intersects a rape story. Because I’m guaranteeing you if you do that, the floodgates will be open. And I’ve, on the WeToo.org. If you go to WeToo.org/pastors, there’s a whole PDF of all sorts of resources because I know I’m very empathetic toward people who are in church leadership, they’re so busy, they’re so stretched, some of them are facing burnout. You don’t have to bear the weight of every single story of your congregation, but you can certainly pass people you know, listen, and then give them some great resources from your community to be able to help the people you know, work through that. Another resource that I’ve created is called Into the Light. It’s a Bible study for women. And it’s for those who either have a difficult story or those who want to help others that have difficult stories. And that’s something I’ve found that’s been really heartening over the past couple years is hearing from people saying, “I want to help. I don’t understand trauma. I don’t understand sexual abuse. My friend is hurting, I want to help but I don’t want to do the wrong thing,” or, “what how do I . . .” so I wrote that study, just came out. And that can also be a really good resource, but really, really think about having those stories from the front of your church and don’t be afraid, Shepherd your people. Theyu have that story. Lots of them do. So just say it out loud. So people don’t feel so dang alone anymore. I can’t tell you how alone I have felt in church because of that.

JULIE ROYS  30:46

Do you have a success story where you’ve seen a church turn it around and actually make a real change from being a place where people really weren’t safe, but now they do feel safe.

MARY DEMUTH  30:59

I did mention in We Too, and I can’t right now off the top of my head, remember the name of the church, but it involves the the pastor from decades before who is tickling men’s feet. If you remember that story, and the new pastor apologized on behalf of the church, even though that wasn’t even on his watch, and they did hire an independent investigation, and they searched for victims, and they repented of whatever, you know, happened in the past, and that, to me was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And it shows me that this is actually what people want. I don’t know about you, but I’m so tired of cover up. I’m so tired of, well, you know, I’m worried about money, or I’m worried about my people coming and I don’t want to have any disasters. You know what, I would rather go to a church where a pastor stood up and said, you know, 12 years ago, we had a youth pastor, and he did this terrible thing. And we’re going to publicly repent before you and we’re going to help the victims and we’re going to, you know, do this and do that. I would trust that leadership over leadership that said nothing.

JULIE ROYS  32:05

Isn’t that just the gospel? Sometimes I wonder when I see the lengths that churches go to to try and protect their image, have we forgotten the gospel? I mean, it’s just so basic, its own your sin, confess your sin, repent of your sin. I mean, it’s really not complicated. And yet, we have such a difficult time doing it that way.

MARY DEMUTH  32:29

Well, I just crafted a prayer this week for about racism and racial reconciliation. And as I did, I remembered Daniel and Nehemiah and how they repented of the sins of their nation, even though they didn’t have those sins. And that was my take. I’m going to repent on behalf of others who have done this, because that’s a biblical imperative. And so, you know, we’re so afraid about confessing sins, and we don’t want to have them pinned to us, but why not? We’re supposed to be like Daniel and Nehemiah, we’re supposed to own the sins of the past and say, we did it wrong. Yes. Okay, let’s go. The best place to be is that humble place. Jesus says, Take the last seat at the banquet hall so that they can lift you up in the proper time. instead of always trying to take the first seat of the banquet hall, we need to take that last seat.

JULIE ROYS  33:19

So good. Mary, thank you so much for taking the time and thank you for your ministry. I just pray that God will continue to bless it and give you favor and just increase your ability to administer. So thank you.

MARY DEMUTH  33:31

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate all that you’re doing and it’s, I feel humbled and grateful to be on

JULIE ROYS  33:37

Well thanks so much for listening to The RoysRreport, a podcast dedicated to reporting the truth and restoring the church. I’m Julie Roys. And if you’d like to find me online, just go to JulieRoys.com Hope you have a great day and God bless.

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