She/They Want You in the Long House - Jen Wilkin Part 4

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October 17, 2024

The Dumbest Thing Ever Uttered on Gospel Coalition Content - Jen Wilkin - Part 5

00:00: Look, I know you guys think I'm joking, maybe being a little bit hyperbolic, you know, hey, if we could just figure out how to say no to women when they have bad ideas, you know, we could solve 99 % of the world's problems.
00:13: Yeah, maybe I was being a little hyperbolic, but this is a real thing, and if you don't know how to say no to a woman when they have dumb ideas, bad things will happen.
00:26: Maybe you can't solve 99 % of problems, but you can solve a lot of problems. And don't take,
00:32: I mean, I don't expect you to just take my word for it. Let me show you what I'm talking about here.
00:39: Now, this here is a picture of Joel McDermott. It says so right there. Now, this video,
00:45: I'll never forget this video. I was a young, you know, cockeyed, optimistic
00:51: Christian, you know, I thought everything was just hunky dory, you know, and I knew the gospel now.
00:57: I was an adult, but, you know, I was still pretty young in the faith. I knew what the gospel was. I knew why it was awesome.
01:03: You know, I believed in the Lord and all of these things, and I was just learning, you know, I was just gorging at the feast of podcasts and sermons and books.
01:13: You know, I had a long commute to work. You know, I lived in Brooklyn, and I worked in Midtown, and it's like an hour to get to work, and I didn't have to drive, so I'd just be just gorging, you know, on everything
01:24: I could, you know, and I did all the usual stuff, you know, Matt Chandler, you know, what's his face, the other guy,
01:30: Tim Keller, all the normal stuff, and then, you know, eventually, though, you kind of run out. I mean, there's like endless content out there, but, you know,
01:38: YouTube has a way of kind of showing you things and whatever, and I came across this video, Don't Limit the
01:44: Gospel from the American Vision, and I watched it. It's only two minutes long.
01:49: I watched the video, and I'll never forget, I was like, I was like, where can
01:58: I get more of this? And you see this guy here, you know, and this is just, you know, you look at him, and you're like, oh, yeah, this guy gets it, you know, you can't judge a book by its cover, that's what they say, but I believe you can.
02:14: That's what the cover's there for, and this guy, you know, he just presents as a real man's man, you know, and he spoke like that, too, and, you know,
02:24: I started to read more about the American Vision and all of this kind of stuff. I saw that they were on the
02:30: Southern Poverty Law Center, you know, hate map, you know, and all that kind of stuff, so it was pushing all the right buttons for me.
02:36: Even as a young Christian, I knew that if you were on the Southern Poverty Law Center's hate map, that, you know, there's a good chance that you have some good things to say.
02:45: Anyway, so, I mean, I just started gorging myself on this stuff, too, you know, Gary North, Gary DeMar, all of this kind of stuff.
02:52: I just loved it, and I remember seeing Chocolate Knox in a video with Uncle Gary, just a small group of videos, and it was just fantastic, just wonderful stuff, and you might think,
03:05: I mean, the trajectory of Joel McDermott, I mean, if it was a stock, you'd buy because, you know, you're like, wow, this is like GameStop.
03:13: It's going to go right up, but it's not that dissimilar from GameStop when you think about it because it was all
03:22: Fugazi. It was all Fugazi. Joel McDermott didn't know how to say no when women have terrible ideas, and I'm not going to tell the whole story of Joel McDermott, but I have a schizophrenic take that ever since he debated
03:40: J .D. Hall on Theonomy, he was never the same after that. Now, I preface this by saying
03:47: I realize that's a schizo take, but it really does seem that way. I've heard other stories about what may have happened to Joel McDermott.
03:55: Bottom line, though, learn, listen, if you're a young man and you're watching my video, you need to learn how to say no to women when they have, when they're all emotional and they have terrible ideas, because if you don't, within a few short years, you can go from this to this.
04:19: This is what Joel McDermott looks like now, completely long housed.
04:32: Yeah, I'm not kidding. You know, I posted this picture. This is from his Twitter feed, so this is not like a secret thing that I found somehow or whatever.
04:40: He posted this proudly, prominently on his Twitter feed. This is him now.
04:46: This is him, and it's hard to even see him in there anymore. I mean, look at this guy.
04:52: This guy's got that, you know, steely, thousand -yard stare, and this is back when he was in American Vision, not that long ago, and now he's this.
05:03: And, you know, listen, maybe you think, oh, he doesn't look that bad, whatever, but the point is, you gotta learn how to say no to women.
05:13: You know what I mean? He's really into the sex abuse stuff and the woke stuff, and I'll never forget when
05:18: I first got the inkling that he was going woke. He posted this video of this insane black guy, totally insane, and all about critical theory, and Joel was like,
05:28: I want to learn more about critical theory. You know, he was getting all the attaboys and amens from all of his friends, and it's just sad, man.
05:37: This is like, you know, when you go liberal, when you go woke, you know, it really changes you fundamentally to such a degree that it has to come out physically.
05:49: I mean, this is what he's become. I mean, he looks like a budget, you know, Lord Sauron from the
05:55: Rings of Power. I mean, it is just a transformation for the ages, and we've seen so many transformations like this with especially crazy liberal people.
06:03: Like, there's that one troll that was the mayor of Chicago. She looks like Beetlejuice now, and it just comes out of your pores when you embrace this kind of,
06:18: I don't know what it is. It's just an ideology, I guess, but man,
06:23: I mean, if you don't learn to say no to women, you could turn from this to this within a few years.
06:31: I mean, I have to believe as a Christian that you could come back from this, but it is difficult.
06:40: It's not a road you want to walk down, that's for sure. This is such an extreme transformation that most people thought
06:45: I was making this up. Like, I was just, I was just like, found a guy that kind of looked like him, and I posted it up there.
06:52: People didn't believe me that this was really him. This is really him. This guy turned into this guy.
06:58: All it takes is to get progressively more and more long -toused over time.
07:04: Anyway, that's not what this video is about. I really don't care about Joel McDermott. Actually, he's on my list of people that I would not do a video with, even if they requested it, or challenged me to it, or tried to shame me into it.
07:19: I just wouldn't do it, and the reason why I wouldn't do it is because, and this list is a very small list of people, but there are certain people that I simply do not trust myself to stay reasonable with.
07:33: There's just, it's not going to happen. Maybe it could happen, but I don't trust myself, and I want to present myself publicly as reasonable as possible, and I just, like, you know, a lot of people were commending me for my patience with Ruslan in that one video we did together.
07:50: Ruslan, I would gladly do videos with Ruslan. I mean, I don't actually find him particularly annoying or difficult to control yourself with.
07:57: Like, I was totally patient, but there was really no reason for me not to be. I kind of like Ruslan. I mean,
08:04: I do like Ruslan, not kind of, I do like Ruslan. But Joel, I don't think
08:09: I could control myself with him, so I just would never do it, no matter what he tried to say, tried to shame me into it, you know, whatever.
08:17: You know, I'll donate $500 to your charity of choice. I just wouldn't do it. My reputation for reasonableness just means too much to me, so there you go.
08:28: That's that. All right, let's get back into this, and let's learn why you need to say no to women consistently when they have bad ideas.
08:38: So many women operating in a parachurch space. I do think there's a parallel to what happens to youth pastors as well.
08:47: Even if they're a male on a pastoral staff, they're often regarded in the same way of simply not worthy of a lot of attention or investment there.
08:56: I have to, I'm not feigning ignorance here. I truly am ignorant. I don't really understand.
09:01: It's very interesting that he tries to tie it to youth pastors somehow, but if he was going to do that, you know, like, you know, youth ministry doesn't get the,
09:12: I don't know, the respect or the, you know, the attention that it needs. Wouldn't you have to say, well, then we need to have some youth leaders as well.
09:20: Like, we need to have some child leaders also, because, you know, we want to, you know, shouldn't children be in seminary too?
09:26: Like, shouldn't we just have a bunch of kids in seminary also learning at seminary with the men? Because otherwise, how are the men that are training to be pastors learn how to interact with children if they don't have children in seminary with them?
09:39: Michael Kruger, I think you're missing a big argument here. I mean, women are only 50 % of the people.
09:46: I mean, there's a lot more children out there. I mean, maybe that's a good argument for you, Dr. Kruger. I mean, it uses the same logic.
09:53: Let's just have children there. I mean, let's have some babies in seminary classes too. Why not that?
09:59: Why not put the babies in seminary so that way the men that are training to be pastors, you know, they can't possibly learn how to communicate with women if the women aren't in seminary learning to be pastors too.
10:08: Why don't we have the babies there also? That would make sense. You know, and then we have some child—let's have child conferences where there's children.
10:16: We elevate and respect and we sit at the feet of children to learn about all the deep things in theology because obviously, you know, they're in the same position that we are, obviously, so let's have the children's conference.
10:28: Why not that? And then we could have children's leadership. You know what I mean? Everyone needs to have a voice, right?
10:34: We've got to have children's leadership in the elder room as well to make sure that the grievances of children are being addressed as well.
10:42: Why not? You know what I mean? It's the same stupid, ridiculous logic. That's why you've got to say no to women sometimes, you know what
10:49: I mean? Sometimes you've got to say no to women, otherwise you might end up like this. You don't want to end up like that.
10:58: I don't understand how this happens, of why that neglect jumps in, or what the fear is coming from there.
11:06: Mike, let's— There isn't neglect. There isn't neglect. This is all fantasy.
11:12: There are no women leaders, therefore there's neglect of women. That's essentially the argument that these guys are making.
11:19: It's just—and it's just preposterous, you know what I mean? And if the women are being neglected, I got—I mean,
11:25: I don't know, I've got a harebrained scheme that just might work. Talk to the men about how they should be praying and teaching their wives, washing them in the
11:36: Word. I think I heard that somewhere. I don't know. I mean, did I hear that somewhere? I don't know.
11:42: It might have been one of those other books, you know what I mean? I don't know, like washing your wife in the Word. I don't know. I mean, I heard that somewhere along the line, you know what
11:49: I mean? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just crazy. We see especially a major problem in discipline cases in the church and problems where the leadership goes wrong, and that happens a lot.
12:02: And one of the key areas where it goes wrong is between men and women. And if it's a discipline case that rises to a certain level, it's going to be the elders who are handling that, and those are going to be men, but they're all often going to involve women.
12:17: I'm just blown away by the ignorance that I see, the confusion, the just dumb things that I see elders do, and I just I don't understand why wouldn't women be included, consulted, even women on their own staff?
12:37: Why would they proceed to make such dumb decisions? This is another fantasy.
12:45: I mean, it's amazing. It's amazing. I'm consistently impressed with the ability that Gospel Coalition has cultivated to just look at reality and then tell you it isn't so.
12:57: You know what I mean? It is impressive how they could just misread every single thing.
13:04: It's amazing. The problem is that the men are making all the decisions. Why don't the elders consult the women about these church discipline issues?
13:13: That's what we really need. We really need to get Longhouse just a little bit more. That's what we really need.
13:18: We need to start consulting the women to decide how to do the church discipline. That's how we'll know we're doing it correct.
13:27: It's unbelievable. I'll never forget this. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who was going through a divorce, and it was a ridiculous situation, and the wife just went crazy one day.
13:42: And I know about this family. I know the details. I'm not going to get into it, but this is what happened. And the wife just went crazy.
13:49: And the amount of stories that I've heard like this one, they're just endless.
13:56: They happen all the time. And I was talking to my friend, and he was telling me about the pastors and how they handled it, how they handled the divorce and all of this kind of thing.
14:09: And it wasn't like the pastors were easy on him. It wasn't like that. They were hard on him, and they were asking the tough questions to him.
14:19: But they read the situation correctly, and they said, yeah, we're going to go to her.
14:27: We're going to talk with her, and we're going to plead with her. But if this doesn't change, I can't see any way that this doesn't lead to excommunication of her.
14:36: And when I heard that, it was like a cool drink of water on a hot day.
14:42: I was so impressed. And the reason I was so impressed is not because this was a hard situation to decipher and read, but it just doesn't happen that way typically.
14:52: The standard thing is that the women get protected, and the man is always to blame, even in situations when it's obvious that the woman has walked away from the faith.
15:05: I was so impressed because that's not how the story typically goes. The story typically goes is literally no matter what the woman does, she's the one that's in the right.
15:17: The guy is the one that gets church disciplined, no matter what. And I was so impressed when
15:22: I heard this story. And I was just, and I told them, I was like, man, they weren't easy on you, but I mean, they got to ask the right questions.
15:30: But man, you've got a good church. And I remember talking these guys up, like, you know, you're in a good situation.
15:36: And he looked at me, this guy was almost in tears. And he's like, yeah, I know. I know. I know I'm not perfect, but I could not ask for a better elder team.
15:46: I just couldn't. Understandably emotional about it. And I, you know, it was just impressive.
15:53: It was just impressive. But these guys are here telling you, oh yeah, you know, the men, they don't know what they're doing.
15:59: They don't know what they're doing. They got to, you got to get the, you got to get the women, you have advice, advice of the women to decide how to run their church, how to do the church discipline.
16:07: Cause they're just too stupid. They make dumb decisions. It's just, it's just unbelievable.
16:13: It's just, it's just, this is just kicking at the goods of how God has intended this to go.
16:19: This is, this is not what God intends, but they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
16:24: We got to turn into this. This is what we need to, to become. It's just, it's just so impressive how they just consistently get everything opposite.
16:38: Opposite. Do, do, do, do, do male elders make mistakes and sometimes they do dumb things in church discipline issues involving women?
16:47: Yes. Is the solution, is that common? Number one, probably not that common is the solution.
16:53: Oh, you've got to consult the women, the true elders of the church before we, before we act, before we do anything, we must consult the women.
17:02: Is that the solution? Obviously it freaking isn't the solution. Let's see what
17:08: Michael Kirger has to say. We're not even asking a woman for insight of how this might be received where I can just, yeah, go ahead.
17:15: By the way, pastors often talk to their wives about situations. I mean, does that not count?
17:23: I just don't, I just don't even know. I just don't even know. Michael, Dr.
17:29: Kruger, please give us your pearls of wisdom. We, we are desperate for them.
17:35: I mean, it happens in discipline cases happens in shepherding cases.
17:41: It's not just discipline cases, but yeah, I should have families going through a crisis and you've got to shepherd the family through it.
17:47: There does seem to be some real unawareness of the dynamics there that need attention as you have an all male elder board and pastoral staff trying to address these complicated issues.
17:58: So there's probably, probably two layers of it. One layer, I think you can say why these things happen is just, is genuine unawareness.
18:07: I mean, I think there are well intended pastors who are just not attuned to some of these dynamics that, that aren't necessarily nefarious in any fashion, but just dumb is different from malicious.
18:19: I don't mean that it's always malicious. They're just idiots. They're not malicious. They're just stupid.
18:25: They're just too stupid. And the, and the, you know what, you know what they would have helped them though, is if we had the women in the seminary training to be pastors, that would definitely help them.
18:33: Oh, and also a women leadership team that would also probably help, you know, visible women leaders from the pulpit doing everything a pastor does, but they're not pastors, definitely not pastors for sure.
18:44: But you know, we, we should consult them with church discipline issues. And of course, you know, shepherding issues. I mean, how could, how could you go?
18:51: How could, how could you, how could you have a real church unless you have shepherdesses? You have the shepherdess ministry.
18:57: Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't Kevin DeYoung's church have that? Shepherdesses? It's just, they think they're so cute.
19:05: They're, they're, they're egalitarians. They are egalitarians. I'm not suggesting you meant that, but, but I'll mention the second one, which
19:16: I think is not just ignorance, but I think some, some elders operate, some, some pastors, not all operate with a paradigm that has a view of men and women that I think negatively affects their shepherding.
19:28: And so, for example, I see this all the time is they think if you're going to shepherd a family, all you have to do is talk to the husband.
19:33: Right. And if I, if I'm a pastor, I just shepherd the husband, all, everything trickles down the food chain from there and all's well.
19:39: And so women in that context are, are generally not even well -known by the ministry, not even well -known by the pastor, certainly not shepherded in any sort of meaningful way by the pastor.
19:48: And everything is shielded behind other men for these women. So they're way down the pecking order.
19:54: And I hear that philosophy all the time. But Mike, that's even in a case when the man is the problem. Oh, of course, yes.
20:00: This is what I don't understand. They ask the man, you're like, well, wait a second. You're asking half the marriage here. And I mean, let's be honest, men aren't always the most attuned at the sort of even their, the status of their own marriage.
20:11: There's all kinds of interesting statistics where they quiz married couples about how you think your marriage is going. And men are like,
20:16: I think it's about an eight. And the most women are like, I think it's about a three. And you're like, whoa, what explains that difference? And so if you go to a family and say, we're going to shepherd you through a marriage crisis, and you're going to go mainly funneling it through the man, you are missing a tremendous amount of things there.
20:29: So I think there's some, some theological reasons for that, that are misguided for doing it that way.
20:35: And I think that's, that needs to be addressed. Okay. What are the, what are the odds?
20:41: I have not seen this, as I've said, he said, oh, there's some theological issues there that are misguided that need to be addressed.
20:50: What are the odds that they ain't going to be addressed? To say it in my country accent, they're not going to address them.
21:00: What are the odds? What are the odds? I would say that pretty good, that they will not be addressed.
21:06: Let's find out. Jen, have you seen any positive examples of where this works well, where men and women are working with each other, collaborating in those shepherding cases?
21:18: Have you seen any examples of that? Yeah, go ahead. In my early ministry opportunities,
21:24: I was involved in a church discipline case where another staff person was not just racially disrespectful, but also became like sexually disrespectful.
21:36: And it involved him and him bringing in a student in the involvement as well. And I think for years
21:43: I had probably microaggression, disrespect with racial things, and just by pulling them aside and trying to go to my brother and trying to explain.
21:50: And then it continued to escalate and snowball. And so as soon as it turned sexual, the pastor stepped in.
21:58: He knew about the racial experiences, but I don't think he may have, it was a very white conservative context.
22:03: I don't think he felt equipped possibly to know the nuances of that, if you will. But when it went sexual, he stepped in, called the elders, and the guy got disciplined.
22:14: In the process of that though, I think I was, I think as the person that was offended,
22:22: I think I was maybe overly consulted, and I think I wanted to be shipped. I wanted to be protected.
22:28: And I think to your point, they didn't. This is pretty interesting, you know, like, because she's just telling a story of something that happened to her or whatever.
22:35: I mean, I don't know the details. You just have to take her word for what happened, whatever. But what is interesting though, that this is, it's very common with DEI plus or DEI adjacent people, woke, more liberal people.
22:54: You're trapped either way. No matter what you do, it's not going to be the right thing. It's not going to be enough. It's like, everyone's seen the meme, right?
23:01: You got white people moving in, oh, they're gentrifying. You got white people moving out, it's white flight. No matter what you do, you're screwed.
23:07: They've got a system where no matter what you do, it's racist, right? Everybody knows that. And nobody cares about that anymore because we can see the scam for what it is.
23:15: But it's so interesting that she has no problem telling you that, right? She's like, I was, they're all, they're talking about consulting women here.
23:22: And she's like, well, I was, I felt like I was overly consultant. I just want to be shepherded.
23:28: And then what do you want to bet that if she was shepherded, she'd be like, man, why don't you even consult me? Yo, why don't you even consult me?
23:35: That's how it works. It's never enough. It's never enough. You do not look at people like, like, uh,
23:42: Corey here or Jen and find out how to run your church. They will run it into the ground.
23:48: They've got a system that you're screwed. No matter what, it's never going to be enough. No matter what you do, it's never going to be enough.
23:55: They've got a mission. They're trying to long house you. And that's as simple as that. It'll never be enough until you're basically wearing a dress.
24:04: Now, Joel McDermott is not wearing dress. He's not fully longed house. He's just about, it's just so preposterous.
24:13: It's like, it's so ridiculous. This you do. You're crazy. If you listen to these people about how to run your church, you're absolutely insane.
24:21: Nothing you'll do will ever be good enough. And that is part of the program. That is not a bug. That's a feature.
24:26: It's what, no matter what you do, it'll never be enough for Jen Wilkin. So my advice to you is just don't even take one step down that road.
24:35: Ignore her, ignore her and anyone who follows her. And when somebody says, Hey, I need you to read this
24:41: Jen Wilkin book about how to run your church. I'm sure Jen Wilkin has interesting materials and other topics, but when it comes to how to run your church and how to do this and how to set up a women's leadership team and all that kind of stuff, whatever it is, thank her nicely.
24:53: I'm not, no, I'm not going to do that. Just not going to do it. Not going to happen. You want to keep looking like this.
25:00: Otherwise you might end up like this. Pick up an Amy Bird book and in five years, this is what you're looking like.
25:08: Don't do it. Just say no. And you can maintain this. Want to hurt me.
25:15: And so they probably asked too much of my input. Whereas I wanted my elders and my pastors to be my pastors.
25:22: I wanted protection. So it's not, it's just too long. I'll be right back. It's amazing. Consult me, but no, no, no, no, no, no.
25:29: You told me too much. I want to be protected. It does. You want to be protected. You want to be consulted because weren't they just complaining about this?
25:40: Yes. Men are supposed to be protecting women. That's right. That's exactly it. She's right.
25:46: And this is the thing, even though she's got the woke mind virus, she's still a human being.
25:53: She still is made in the image of God. God made her to be a certain way. She's looking for protection.
25:59: She's a woman. That's what, that's what she's supposed to do. She's looking for, this is something that you young guys need to understand.
26:08: A lot of times your women want you to say no. When they have dumb ideas, they want you to say no.
26:15: And I'm not going to say they're necessarily testing you, but I think sometimes they are testing you. A guy, a guy who's just like, oh yeah, sure, honey.
26:24: Read those Amy Bird books. They're not going to respect you. They don't want you to say, they want you to say no.
26:33: And they just got to say, oh, you got to consult women. Otherwise he's too dumb to figure out church discipline cases. Hey Corey, tell us an example about when this was done well.
26:40: And the first example that comes into her head after prefacing it like that, setting it up like that is yeah, they consulted me, but I didn't want to be consulted.
26:48: I wanted to be protected and shepherded. I mean, what else do you need to say?
26:54: What else do you need to see to know? Do not listen to these people. They don't know what they're talking about and their advice is deadly.
27:03: If you listen to it, it's deadly because then she's going to come on a video later and say,
27:10: I just want her to be protected. You just consulted me too much. It's ridiculous. It's absolutely ridiculous.
27:15: Am I even recording? I can't even tell. I feel like you're actually genuinely caring about my heart and my well -being and the way
27:23: I'm processing the gospel at this moment. And so again, you know, the Lord is gracious and that particular person asked for forgiveness the first time.
27:31: And I knew that he was kind of playing the game and I said no. And then he came back and he said, whether you believe me or not, you saying no really made me look within myself and understand that I really was just trying to get out of trouble.
27:43: And I really am repentant now. And I understand the ways in which I've disrespected you and transgressed against you. So I would ask that you would reconsider.
27:50: And I did, you know, and that was allowing for the spirit to work, but in its time. And so I think that case really showed me the inner workings of the church, but also, you know, peer relationships and then how that sets on you and how you then therefore see things.
28:05: So in a, in a disciplined case, the shepherds can become a jury in some ways.
28:11: And that can kind of, that can be very difficult to experience positive examples or other exhortations.
28:19: Yeah. I mean, I, they set it all up, you'll give me a positive example of this powerhouse women's leadership team that comes in and it's consulted and they gave
28:29: Corey the first opportunity and it was a swing and a miss, a swing and a miss. Even Michael Kruger knew he was like,
28:36: Oh, that's very interesting. You know, that's obviously not what we were asking you, but you know, we set it up for you. We gave you a nice softball, but you obviously whiffed.
28:43: Let's see if Jen can knock this one out of the park. I bet you she can. She's going to knock it out of the park and talk about how the true pastors of the church really stepped in and saved the day when the idiot men couldn't figure it out.
28:53: Let's find out. I've seen positive examples. They came as a result of having to own very negative ones.
29:00: That's what I assume. And that's what I would just, when you think about this in the local church,
29:05: I talk to pastors about this occasionally and they'll say, well, I'm sorry, your church went through that. My church doesn't really have a problem with this.
29:12: And I just think you, you don't know that you're, you know, because we know, we know that abuse is everywhere, you know?
29:19: And so what that tells me is the stories are not getting past a certain point in your, in your process.
29:27: And, you know, some. Yeah. Yeah. So that's her paradigm, right? You know, you guys think that there's no abuse at your church.
29:36: That's what you guys think, huh? Yeah. Well, Jen Wilkin, the great all scene, you know, priestess of all this, she's like, yeah, we know that abuse is everywhere, everywhere.
29:51: So obviously you just don't know what's going on in your church. That's what Jen Wilkin has to say to you.
29:56: We know it's everywhere. Yeah. There's abuse everywhere. Does that mean like, oh man, oh man, you know, people, people are messed up.
30:11: I mean, that's something that, you know, I consistently find, you know, true to be true. People are pretty messed up.
30:18: And sometimes you don't find out about how messed up they are for a while. Now, does that mean that you need to have a female elder board at your church to decipher when people are messed up?
30:31: Cause you're too blind to see it. Or does it mean that sometimes people just hide things?
30:41: Freak, man. I just don't even know. This, this worldview is just so twisted.
30:48: It's hard to even wrap your mind around what's being said at any given time. It's just so preposterous.
30:54: It's like, no, it's not possible. It's not possible that you don't have a problem with this. No, it's not. No, Jen Wilkin, the wise knows.
31:00: So what you need to do is you need to set up a female elder team at your church that they're not really elders, but they do everything elders do so that you could be attuned to make sure you're not missing anything.
31:09: You know what I mean? Oh, and by the way, anytime you want to make a decision, you better check with them first, because otherwise you could just do something just so it's colossally stupid.
31:19: I mean, it's just someone's, this is the thing. Someone's in charge always, always somebody's in charge.
31:28: And if you've got a marriage where, you know, the man's not making a lot of decisions, you know, of course the woman's in charge.
31:37: It's as simple as that. Someone's going to be in charge. It's either the pastors or it's going to be this female leadership team.
31:46: It can't be both. They're not going to be working together. This is, this is not how it works. Ships don't have two captains, you know, on the bridge at the same time.
31:56: That's just not how it works, ma 'am. Much of who we share our story with and whether a story is heard or not relies on relational trust.
32:09: And if male leaders in the church have deeper relational trust with the men in their church than they do with the women, which
32:16: I would expect is almost always the case, then it means when the man gives his side of the story, you're more likely to believe him than you are the woman when she gives hers.
32:26: Because you probably know what his favorite sports team is, and you probably know what his hobbies are, and you've probably shared meals together, golf or whatever, and her, you don't know anything about her.
32:37: And so there's a huge credibility gap there. Yeah, you know, why don't you have some coffee with the women of your church, you know, just one -on -one, just a little guy -gal time, you know, and find out what her hobbies are.
32:52: Yeah. Yeah, that way you can be smart enough to know if she's telling the truth when she claims that someone's doing something to her.
32:58: Why not do that? Yeah, that's what we need to do. Or, you know, maybe not that. That seems like a little bit too risky.
33:06: Let's just have a female leadership team. That's what we need to do. We need to have a female leadership team. That way they can talk about knitting or whatever together.
33:17: Man, Jen is sneaky. She's very sneaky. I think a lot of my audience already knows this, but it is amazing to watch her spin her yarns in real time.
33:28: We'll let her continue to spin, but we're just about wrapping up here. So you either need to be a person who's more comfortable developing relationships, warm, appropriate relationships with the women in your church beyond what most people would say is, you know, appropriate for erring on the side of caution, my least favorite term in this conversation.
33:49: Yeah, the best, the wisest advice in the conversation is her least favorite term.
33:55: What a surprise. What a surprise. By the way, it looks like she's about to give the two options that I just created as the most stupidest options possible.
34:03: She's about to give both of them. There you go. Need to have female advocates who are available to help in these times.
34:13: Now, I will say that just having a female advocate doesn't mean that you have a trust level with the female advocate to the same degree that you do with the men who might be speaking into the process.
34:23: So whoever the female advocates are, they need to have your trust and your respect, and they need to be trained.
34:32: They need to understand how to have a trauma -informed response. And so it's complex.
34:41: Well, she didn't quite give the same answer. She didn't say a female leadership team. She said female advocates.
34:47: And she's, I guess, looking for some kind of trained female advocates and stuff like that. Now, listen,
34:53: I'm not, listen, I think women, of course, should talk to each other. Imagine that.
35:00: They should talk to each other. Do I think that females need to be trained to talk to each other?
35:07: No. To put it bluntly, no, I do not. Any more than men need to be trained to talk to each other.
35:15: But yeah, that's how it should work. I mean, if a woman has a problem in the church and all this kind of stuff, she can't ask the pastor out for a cup of coffee.
35:24: I mean, obviously, that's insane. But what she could do is talk to some women at the church, the older women.
35:31: This has nothing to do with teaching them theology and exegesis and having a leadership team.
35:37: No, they should be creating relationships amongst themselves. That's the ideal. Having a church where you create relationships with each other.
35:46: My wife has this. Nobody's trauma -informed trained, or maybe they are, and I just don't know about it.
35:51: Who knows? But if my wife had a problem with me, first of all, she'd address it with me.
35:59: That's the first thing. And if I was being a jerk, I'm sure she would talk to some of the ladies at the church about it and get it figured out.
36:07: I mean, this is what happens. This is what should happen. And maybe you need to make that more explicit in your churches.
36:13: I'm not saying that that's not necessarily a need in some places. You know, one thing I have noticed, though, is that a lot of these problems are problems for bigger churches,
36:24: I think, too. Because I could easily see stuff falling through the cracks at a bigger church where you have no access to the pastor.
36:33: But it's a problem for men and women. Smaller churches, I mean, it's difficult for—I've got 100 people in my church.
36:42: It would be difficult to have someone, a family, isolated that never talks to anybody. That would be weird.
36:48: You know what I mean? I don't know. A lot of this seems to be kind of artificially created problems. In any case,
36:54: I'm going to stop there. I've had enough. I've just had enough, and that's what we're going to do. Remember, guys, you want to be like this, not like this.