March 27, 2023 Show with Theresa Lynn Sidebotham on “Handling Allegations in a Ministry: Responses & Investigations”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father

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James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth, listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 27th day of March, 2023.

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I'm absolutely thrilled to have a first -time guest today who is possibly going to be providing us with one of the most important interviews that we have ever conducted for the protection and safety of the church outside of the theological realm.

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Her name is Teresa Lynn Seidboffen, and she is founder of Teleos Law, PLLC, who assists organizations in the

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United States and internationally with a special focus on employment law, religious and nonprofit law, child safety.

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And today, we are going to be addressing her new book, Handling Allegations in a

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Ministry, Responses and Investigations. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Teresa Lynn Seidboffen.

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Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Oh, I'm thrilled to have you on the program. And tell us about this firm that you have founded,

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Teleos Law. We're a small law firm located in Colorado, although our religious organization clients are all over the country, and in some cases, all over the world, because we work with mission organizations.

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And religious organizations actually are our largest client group because we have a vision to help them carry out their mission and build the kingdom of God by doing a really good job on the legal side, human resources side, taking care of children, and so on.

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Well, tell us about specifically the most prominent cases that Teleos Law handles.

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So that's a difficult question because, of course, I have to think through attorney -client privilege and what

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I can talk about in terms of specifics, but we've handled some of the religious liberties issues.

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We've handled a lot of child protection. We work closely with the

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Child Safety Protection Network and the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. And then we've been honored to conduct some of the really large historical investigations working with the iHeart investigation of Ethnos 360 and the

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Christian Academy of Japan investigation that was sponsored by that school and a number of mission organizations.

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So quite a bit of work in that space generally. Well, if anybody wants to find out more information about Teleos Law, the website is teleoslaw .com,

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T -E -L -I -O -S, law .com. And God willing, I will remember to repeat that at the end of the program as well.

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Before we go into the topic of your book, Handling Allegations in the

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Ministry, Responses and Investigations, we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, as you know, whenever we have a first -time guest who happens to be an evangelical

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Christian, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, including any kind of religious atmosphere they may have been raised in and any kind of providential circumstances that are a

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Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. And I'd love to hear your story.

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Well, sure. So you may remember that old song, you know, Oh, what a wonderful, wonderful day, day

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I will never forget. That song is actually not my story. And it always made me laugh as a child when we when we sang that song.

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So I was the daughter, first of a pastor.

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I was actually born for free in Brooklyn, New York. My dad was a seminary student.

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And then my parents went to the mission field when I was two years old. And I am informed by reliable witnesses that I gave my life to the

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Lord at age three. I think I invited Jesus to come and sit right next to me on my little rocking horse.

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But of course, I don't remember any of that. I will say, though, that that all through the years,

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I have always known that my life belonged to Jesus and that he was not just my savior, but my

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Lord. I was baptized when I was seven and meant that very sincerely from the bottom of my little seven year old heart.

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And and really, that's been true ever since. You know, I can say with the Psalmist do

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I've I've been young and now I'm at least getting on the old side and I have found the

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Lord faithful all through that. Praise God. Yes, there have been some guests who have said to me, well,

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I don't want to bore you, but I have a testimony that involves me never having any memory of not knowing and loving

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Jesus because I was raised a Christian. And ever since I can remember having conscious thought,

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I knew and loved Jesus. And I say to them, there's nothing boring about God's providence and power in protecting a child from having to go through some of the nightmarish and scandalous rebellion that many of us have gone through, including myself, before coming to Christ.

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So to me, I rejoice when I hear testimonies like that as well, just as much as when

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I hear somebody who has been delivered from obvious, palpable darkness into light.

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So I thank God for a testimony like yours. When when about in your life did you realize that you wanted to become a lawyer?

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Not until much later. So I had to be homeschooled for part of high school.

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Again, as a missionary kid, I had a very, very boring civics class, and that put me off anything to do with the law almost permanently.

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And then we have four sons. We served for a while in the mission field ourselves and came back to the

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United States. And as they were getting older, I started praying about what the Lord would have for me to do next.

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And my brother, as it happens, said, hey, you'd be a great lawyer. Never crossed my mind before that.

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So I said to God, well, if you want me to go into law, you're going to need to give me a full ride tuition free.

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And he did. Well, praise God for that. And so I'm so delighted that you are serving the

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Church of Jesus Christ with your your gifts and talents and experience in this realm.

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And let's go now into your reasons that compelled you to write this book,

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Handling Allegations in a Ministry, Responses and Investigations. It's interesting. There may be other books out there like that, but I have never heard of a book specifically like this other than a book that I addressed in an interview back in October of last year,

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October 26, to be more exact. I interviewed Ed Wild, one of the authors of Legal Issues and Biblical Counseling.

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So it was basically a guideline to what is, in fact, legal and not legal and not advisable when you are involved in the ministry of counseling.

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But this is, I believe, a much more broad book. And tell us about your your reasons for saying, you know, this book has got to be in print.

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Sure. So to back up a little bit to your last question,

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God opening the door for me to go to law school, I found out a number of years later that a friend who

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I didn't know at the time was praying for God to raise up an attorney who could work with mission organizations.

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And that ended up being me. And as we got into this type of work, what we came to realize is right now,

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I think there's two major realms of attack on the church. And the first comes from the secular culture in the form of challenges to religious liberties and other freedoms.

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And it's, you know, I think you could frame it as the theological attack on the church. But the second major area of attack on the church, you know, the adversary is trying to pull us down from within.

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And if we think about the whole realm of sexual abuse, other sexual misconduct, toxic abuse of power, you know, any of these sorts of complaints, whether they're true or whether they're false or whether they're somewhere in between, these are major attacks on the church and on religious organizations that can actually destroy the organization.

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And contrary -wise, if the church responds well as the church with compassion and seeking truth and justice and caring for people, that can be a fantastic testimony of the church.

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So my largest calling from the Lord is in that second area to help all sorts of religious organizations resist these attacks by handling allegations well.

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And that's why I wrote the book. Now, obviously, since you are a

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Bible -believing, born -again Christian, there may be some people listening who, before we even get into the content of the book, just by hearing the title, might wrongly assume that you are helping churches to cover up crimes that have actually committed in their midst.

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And obviously, that is not the case. But obviously, not only are there false accusations made about pastors or members of a church, but there are actual genuine accusations made, and a church needs to know how to respond to those as well, because the acts of one or several people in a congregation does not make the entire body of Christ there in that flock guilty of the crime.

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So to alleviate the anxiety of anybody who might think that you are one of these slick attorneys who is there to help cover up misdeeds, why don't you be detailed about the actual intent of handling allegations?

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So it's certainly a stereotype that corporate attorneys are there to get you out of legal trouble and cover things up and defend all claims and kind of make things right, as it were.

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But when we look at the ethical obligations of an attorney, an attorney is actually completely free to offer moral advice, good counsel.

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I mean, that's one reason the counselor is another word used for attorney. And if you're working with a religious organization, a church, or another ministry, as an attorney, you are completely free to advise the church to do what the mission of the organization is.

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And what is the mission of the church or another ministry? It's to serve God well, it's to serve people well, it's to care for people.

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And so, and I'm completely candid with all my clients, that I am trying to help them carry out the mission that God has given to them to be legally appropriate, to be ethically appropriate.

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But we want to take care of this well. So that means taking care of the children in the ministry.

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That means taking care of the vulnerable people in the ministry. That means following the truth.

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That means providing justice for people who are accused. But we want to have this heart of, you know, what does

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Jesus have for this ministry? What is the Holy Spirit revealing right now for this ministry and the people that it serves?

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And we come into it with that attitude. Well, I don't think that I could improve upon some of the major categories that are actually listed on the back cover of your book, because they are the kinds of issues that I am assuming a lot of people, especially those in leadership in churches, they want to know beforehand how situations should be handled that are of a very grave nature.

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Let's start with any of your comments that you might have on this scenario that you have listed.

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A woman in your ministry files a sexual harassment complaint about a male co -worker, which turns into a confusing he -said, she -said clash.

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How can you determine the truth? So the church leadership, as they're dealing with this, they're going to need to start with the perspective that they need to take it seriously, that it could be true.

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And they also should have the perspective that they need to find out if it's true. So neither assuming that it's false or assuming that it's true, not jumping to conclusions on that.

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And then they're going to need to take some kind of action to figure out what happened. That might mean an investigation of some type.

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It might be simpler than that. You might be able to talk to the people and get a better idea.

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And then there's what happened. Is it annoying behavior, like someone repeatedly asking for a date when they've been turned down?

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Well, that technically can be sexual harassment, but it is also probably a problem that's easier to solve.

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Or is it some kind of really serious issue where you have a married man making inappropriate advances to a woman?

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In that case, you might have a legal issue and also have a moral and spiritual issue on top of it.

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So there's a lot of different values that have to be addressed at the same time. You have to think about keeping people safe, perhaps removing the parties from each other so the situation doesn't continue.

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And it can be a real challenge to respond with both compassion and justice and to make sure that everyone feels that they've gotten a fair hearing.

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Now, in your experience, is this a frequent thing that you have been involved in in the legal process where a member of the church, especially a leader, is being accused?

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And in your experience, have the allegations, if there is a percentage that you can determine right now, have the majority of them been true or false?

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So that's interesting. I would say, and this is completely anecdotal, that maybe 75 percent of allegations end up being true or being partly true.

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And then they can be true to different degrees and in different ways and for different motives.

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So, for example, it might be true that a supervisor has been rude and difficult to work with with subordinates.

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And perhaps there's an allegation of toxic abuse of power. But if true, is it because the person is a narcissist?

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Is it because the person has some sort of communication disorder, such as being high on the spectrum?

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Is it because the person has suffered a great loss in their own life and it's just not themselves?

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So as we seek the truth, there's the what is true and the why is it true?

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And is it a problem that's easily resolvable or possible to resolve at all?

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And, you know, is there a redemptive or a reconciliation component? So so while it is complicated,

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I would say more allegations end up being true than not.

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Wow. And when you say that the the two individuals involved in the accusation, the one hurling the accusation and the one being accused, when you say that they should be separated,

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I'm assuming that you believe that they should cease immediately from being from attending the same congregation.

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Well, usually if you've got some kind of of workplace complaint, you do want the people to be away from each other for the time being.

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So say it's a child sex abuse allegation. Well, in that case, the person who's accused should not have access to that child or any other child pending the investigation because you've got some real issues of danger there.

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If it's a workplace sexual harassment complaint, you know, it might be sufficient to make sure they're in a separate workplace for now.

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If the complaints are fairly mild, you know, maybe they just don't go to the same service for a while. But the more egregious the alleged harm, the more important it's going to be to have some kind of a safety plan in place.

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So that's one of the early things that we like to evaluate to see, OK, what needs to happen here in the meantime so that everyone is kept reasonably safe until we figure things out.

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One of the other scenarios that, in fact, you hinted at it or touched on it briefly in your answer to the other scenario, but parents in your congregation accuse a teenage boy of touching their daughter inappropriately.

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How do you handle that? So in most states, that's going to trigger a mandatory child abuse report.

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So that's going to be one of the first steps that you take. And then in the meantime, figuring out some kind of safety plan so that the person accused doesn't have access to other children in the meantime.

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But it can be really complicated because, you know, what if Child Protective Services or law enforcement drops it?

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You know, they don't have any reason to suppose that it's founded. And unfortunately, they're probably not going to give you that information.

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So you may be in a situation where you have to try to figure things out yourself, which could be with an investigative process.

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It could be with the use of psychological evaluations. But it can be pretty tricky.

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And the whole issue of how you handle talking to children and interviewing children plays into that.

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And there's some really important considerations there. Now, would that percentage that you have experienced as far as at least anecdotal evidence, would you say that about 75 percent of those accusations are true or even higher?

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You know, I don't know that I would change the percentage there either. Because so here you have a situation where you're talking about children and perhaps you're talking to children.

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And actually, one of the principles in talking to children about allegations is you shouldn't do it unless you're a trained child forensic interviewer.

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Because small children are very easily confused and easily led.

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And we know from case history that there have been some really tragic cases where children have actually come to create memories in their head of terrible things that happened that never happened.

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Because of repeated questioning from adults and the adults putting the ideas into their heads.

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So interviewing a child is, in fact, very tricky. It's not that children are trying to tell lies, but memory is so plastic.

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And for a small child especially, it's malleable. So we have to be really careful on that.

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We're going to our first commercial break right now. And if you have a question for Teresa Lynn Sidebotham on the topic for today,

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Handling Allegations in the Ministry, Responses and Investigations, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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And I could readily see a topic like this lending itself to many questions where the questioner does not want to identify himself or herself.

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That's completely understandable, so just let us know. Write in the subject line, anonymous.

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So please, if you're going to be anonymous, put that right in the subject line in the very first sentence of the question.

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And again, the email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with more of Teresa Lynn Sidebotham and handling allegations in a ministry.

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We are now back with our guest today, Teresa Lynn Sidebotham. We were discussing her book, Handling Allegations in the

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Ministry, Responses and Investigations. By the way, Teresa, am I pronouncing your last name correctly?

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You are, Sidebotham. Oh, great. That's a load off my mind. Before I go to a listener question,

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I had something I want you to clarify. One of the scenarios that you touched on was a married pastor making romantic advances to a member of the church, sexually flirting with someone, although that is certainly a crime against God and a crime to any church worth its salt, of such gravity that if it was actually a true allegation, that would call, in my opinion, for the dismissal of that pastor and excommunication until he repented, and with the restoration of him to the membership, but not necessarily the leadership.

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But is that a legal issue? I mean, is that something that is actually in any way criminal if it doesn't involve touching, if it doesn't involve pornography or anything like that?

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So it might or might not involve a legal issue. It wouldn't be an employment issue in your hypothetical because it's a member of the church and not an employee.

38:26

So not technically sexual harassment. Whether there could be any sort of tort claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress or that type of thing,

38:39

I'm not sure. If there were a counseling relationship with the member, then it would be illegal in some states because some states have statutes that make it criminal to have any kind of sexual relationship with someone who's being counseled.

38:58

Often in our work, what we're called in to advise on or investigate, it might not necessarily be legal.

39:05

For instance, spiritual abuse or toxic abuse of power often don't involve strictly legal claims, but they might be issues that the church or ministry wants to figure out just for the health of the ministry.

39:21

Well, you brought something up in the answer to my question that involves a listener question that I will read to you now, and this is a listener that chooses to remain anonymous.

39:32

The anonymous listener says, I know a pastor who was a minister in the area in which

39:40

I live who was exposed for having several adulterous relationships with women in the congregation during counseling sessions.

39:53

What I mean by that is that the relationships began during these counseling sessions, and when the women found out that they were not the only one that had the romantic affection of this married pastor, they all came forward.

40:10

The pastor was excommunicated and moved away, so I'm not really sure what happened to this minister or his church, but I was wondering, is the criminal aspect of this only directed at the guilty party who was the pastor involved in these adulterous relationships that were spawned during counseling sessions, or is the whole church held guilty for such crimes?

40:42

Well, that is a complicated question, and before I talk just a little bit generally about that type of situation,

40:50

I should remind everyone that although I am an attorney, none of you are my clients as far as I know, and if you are, you can call me separately, and anything

41:02

I say here isn't intended to be legal advice. I will treat these situations as hypotheticals and maybe just comment generally on them.

41:15

So there's a difference between criminal liability and civil liability.

41:23

So in order to have criminal liability, someone has to commit a crime, and that's usually an individual.

41:33

It is possible for organizations to commit crimes, but that's more rare.

41:39

So if an individual goes out and sexually assaults someone, that's a crime.

41:45

The individual gets prosecuted. Civil liability is a pretty common concept in the whole employment arena, where we say that the employer or the organization is responsible for acts of sexual harassment committed by an employee, and there's a pretty complicated analysis over whether proper training occurred and what the employer knew and what the position was of the person who did whatever it is.

42:16

So a general question here seems to be to what extent is a church responsible for errors or wicked actions even on the part of the pastor.

42:29

From a criminal side, my guess would be in most situations, it's not liable.

42:34

From a civil side, you start a whole complicated analysis. Here, in our hypothetical, it sounds like the church did actually take some pretty direct action on the moral and spiritual issues, which is a good thing.

42:52

Great. Well, thank you, Anonymous, and guess what? You have won a free copy of Handling Allegations in the

42:59

Ministry, Responses and Investigations by our guest today, Teresa Lynn Sidebotham, and we thank our friends at Illumify Media for providing us with a limited number of these books for our listeners who submit questions.

43:15

And we also want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who sponsored this program, who will be shipping that book out to you and at no charge to you or to us.

43:26

Please make sure that you send us, obviously, your full name and your mailing address, and since you remain anonymous, obviously, we're not going to identify your name on the air.

43:37

So just send that to us through the email, and we'll make sure you get a copy of this very important book.

43:45

We have a listener in Moundville, Alabama, Ted.

43:52

Ted says, You briefly mentioned claims of sexual harassment, and I've noticed something of a divide in much of evangelical

44:01

Christianity in the wake of the Me Too movement, the idea that a charge cannot be adjudicated absent the testimony of two or three witnesses has been the source of considerable controversy despite the fact that state laws generally are not governed by the biblical mandates found in 2

44:24

Corinthians and elsewhere. Given the nature of sexual harassment, only an infinitesimal percentage of offenses are witnessed by anyone, let alone by two or three others.

44:37

For many Christians, that seems to be a deal breaker. Two or three witnesses, or it didn't happen.

44:45

Some will even dismiss accusations of rape simply because it's a he said, she said situation, disregarding the fact that almost no rapes are committed in the presence of any witnesses, let alone two or three.

45:00

Does your ministry have a specific posture on this apparent conflict between biblical justice and the law of the land in places such as the

45:10

United States? And how do you approach this conflict as both an advocate and a Christian? Yeah, that's a really interesting question.

45:22

And I realize in scripture the default standard is two witnesses or more.

45:28

But it is interesting, there's also exceptions in the scripture for sexual assault. So if you remember, and you'll have to go look up the exact reference because I don't remember it.

45:39

But in the Old Testament, if a woman is raped out in the field and it's presumed that she cried out and there was no one to help, her word can be sufficient to convict the man.

45:56

But if she's raped in a city where there's people around and she didn't cry out, then it reverts back to the standard.

46:05

And it talks about the penalties in that passage and what the man can be held accountable for.

46:12

So even the scripture, I think, is not setting an absolute one -size -fits -all on these types of allegations that typically no one is there to witness.

46:25

And then I think we also rely on some of the scriptural standards about the authorities.

46:30

For example, child sexual abuse is a serious crime in our culture.

46:36

We have mandatory reporting laws. And the scripture teaches us that the authorities bear the sword to carry out justice.

46:44

So I think we have the obligation to cooperate with the authorities on that. When we're doing a sexual harassment investigation, a workplace type of thing, the general standard is, do you get preponderance of the evidence?

46:59

And there isn't any exact criterion of how many witnesses you have to have.

47:06

You could potentially get there based on the testimony of one witness if it's a credible person.

47:13

But we also look for corroborating evidence. You know, we talk to other employees, we review emails, other documents.

47:22

And more often than not, to reach a finding, we will have some other corroborating evidence besides the word of the single individual.

47:33

By the way, folks, if you want to look up that text that Teresa Lynn Sidebotham was alluding to, it's

47:40

Deuteronomy chapter 22, verse 25. Oh, you're awesome.

47:46

Thank you so much, Ted. And make sure we have your mailing address because you have also won a free copy of Handling Allegations by our guest today.

47:57

Let's see here. We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, do you have any preventative counsel on how churches can further ensure that these sexual matters do not occur in their congregations before they happen?

48:22

I know that no counsel could be foolproof and no procedures to make a congregation more safe are foolproof 100 % of the time.

48:31

But are there any common things that people may be overlooking to further ensure safety and the prevention of these things happening in their midst in the church?

48:43

Yes, I love that question because there are lots of things and prevention is so much better than response.

48:51

We would much rather have a safe place than be responding and doing investigations. So, on the child abuse side, one great resource is the

49:01

Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention, ECAP, at ecap .net,

49:08

E -C -A -P dot net, that both has child safety standards and a lot of resources and provides an accreditation process for ministries to work through the child safety issues.

49:21

You can have child safety training. Our Telly Us Teaches affiliate offers child safety training.

49:28

There's also a number of other great trainings out there. On the issue of sexual harassment or other types of interactions, training is good for that and it's required in a number of states such as California, for instance, and there's some others.

49:45

I won't say them because I'll probably get them wrong. But training on these issues is extremely helpful and especially if the training takes a scriptural perspective.

49:56

We try to do that in Telly Us Teaches, not just what does the law say about this, but really what is the behavior that scripture is calling us to?

50:06

What kind of interactions between men and women? What kind of purity in our talk? What kind of relationships between races as brothers and sisters in Christ?

50:17

So, yes, if we train people and prepare, we can create an environment that drastically reduces the type of misbehaviors we don't like.

50:29

Great. Well, Arnie, you have also won a copy of Handling Allegations. Make sure we have your full mailing address.

50:36

And we are going to go to or enter into, I should say, our midway break right now.

50:42

I hope that you are all patient with us because the midway break is a little longer than the other breaks in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

50:51

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize

50:59

Iron Sharp and Zion Radio and all of their programming geographically to Lake City, Florida.

51:04

And they do so with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air during this break that relates this program to their geographic area.

51:19

While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

51:27

Please write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can that is provided by our advertisers in their commercials so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers.

51:39

We would hope that that would often mean that you purchase their products, use their services, support their parachurch organizations or visit their churches.

51:51

But when you cannot do any of those things, we ask of you to do something that everybody can do.

51:57

If you really love the show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves and you're grateful that there are individuals and organizations that think so highly of Iron Sharp and Zion Radio that they share with us some of the wealth that God has blessed them with in order to keep us on the air, if you're really grateful about that because you love the show, at the very least, every single person listening can contact our advertisers and say, thank you so much for sponsoring

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Iron Sharp and Zion Radio and add any other content of your appreciation that you care to share with them how this program may have specifically blessed you.

52:38

That would go a long way if you can't use money for any reason that you're responding to our advertisers.

52:46

They'll at least know that their money is being well spent because this program is enriching and blessing the lives of our listeners.

52:54

So, thank our listeners for sponsoring the show and sending your questions to Teresa Lynn Seidbotham on handling allegations in a ministry.

53:04

Our email address again is chrisarnsen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

53:12

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

53:17

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

53:23

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with more of Teresa Lynn Seidbotham and our discussion of her new book

53:30

Handling Allegations in a Ministry. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

53:49

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the

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G3 National Conference. That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

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I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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And there's more great news. Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio can get you a 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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Chris Arnson and I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd for the

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G3 National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on the sovereignty of God. Make sure you stop by the

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio exhibitor booth and say hi to Chris Arnson while you're there.

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Go to g3min .org and enter promo code G3 -I -S -I -R for your 30 % discount off the registration fee.

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If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is by supporting our advertisers.

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One such faithful advertiser who really believes in what Chris Arnson is doing is

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Dan is the president and founder of the Historical Bible Society. Their mission?

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air. O Hail the

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Power of Jesus' Name This is

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Pastor Bill Sousa of Grace Church at Franklin here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

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Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.

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Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org That's gracechurchatfranklin .org

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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Sovereign Lord, God, Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina. And the

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And the NASB is my Bible of choice. I'm Pastor Rodney Brown of Metro Bible Church in South Lake, Texas.

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Hi, this is John Sampson, Pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

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Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

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Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise.

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And yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time. And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

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I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.

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Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshiped and how he shall be represented in the world.

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Baptism and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship, performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

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Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hello, my name is

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And finally, if you're looking to worship in a reformed church that holds to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, New York.

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01:09:16

Before I return to our guest today, Teresa Lynn Seidbotham, attorney at law, and our discussion of her book

01:09:22

Handling Allegations in a Ministry, we just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

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First of all, folks, if you love this show and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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Send me that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. We're just as much in urgent need of your advertising dollars as we are in your donations.

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click support, then click to donate now. I also want to remind the men in ministry leadership in my audience that the next

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastors' luncheon is being held Thursday, April 13th, 11 a .m.

01:11:49

to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, featuring the two speakers,

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Dr. William Webster, who is a pastor in Battleground, Washington, and he's also a Banner of Truth author, and Reverend David T.

01:12:03

King, who is a co -author with Dr. Webster, and he is also a pastor in Katy, Texas.

01:12:10

They are going to be speaking, so you'll be fed spiritually as well as physically absolutely free of charge, and everybody in attendance will be leaving that place with a heavy sack of free, brand -new books donated by publishers all over the

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01:12:33

Handling Allegations in the Ministry. They are providing a copy of that book for every man in ministry leadership that attends the free pastors' luncheon, so I'm so grateful to them for their generosity in providing our men with such an important book.

01:12:48

The three days following the pastors' luncheon at a different church, Grace Bible Fellowship Church, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, those same two men,

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Dr. Webster and Reverend King, will be speaking at a Bible conference. It's absolutely free.

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The theme is The Gospel Removed by Rome, Rescued by the Reformers and Rejected by Modern Evangelicals.

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This is a three -day event that's absolutely free. If you want to register for both of these events or either one of them, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

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and put luncheon and or conference in the subject line. Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful, theologically sound church, no matter where you live on the planet

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Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of doctrinally faithful churches.

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And I've helped many people in our audience in all parts of the world find churches near them, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from their homes.

01:13:44

That could be you too. If you are without a church home that's biblically faithful, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:13:51

and put I Need a Church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Teresa Lynn Sidebotham on handling allegations in the ministry responses and investigations.

01:14:02

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. We have

01:14:07

Cindy in Findlay, Ohio. Good afternoon, Teresa and Chris.

01:14:13

Deuteronomy 19 states that when false accusations against a party are found to be untrue, the false accuser should receive the punishment the accused would have received had they been found guilty.

01:14:27

Is there anywhere in our civil or criminal justice system whereby the same would be true?

01:14:34

Since you had mentioned that 75 % of sexual or other allegations are true, is there any legal threat against the 25 % of allegations which are false?

01:14:47

My personal opinion is that it should be so and this would minimize or lessen the number of false accusations brought against the innocent.

01:14:56

Very good question. Teresa, you have an answer? Yes, that is a good question.

01:15:03

So let me give a two -part response. First, to address briefly the 25 % of the false allegations.

01:15:14

So it's easy to assume, I think we often do, that if an allegation isn't true, that it's maliciously false, that someone is deliberately telling a false accusation to get someone in trouble or bring them down.

01:15:31

And that can indeed be true. There is a percentage of allegations that are like that.

01:15:37

There's also a good percentage of the allegations where there's maybe some issues with the person's memory or experience.

01:15:47

Maybe it's something that happened a long time ago when they were a child. We don't have time to get into it today, but an awful lot of things affect memory, which is a very plastic affair.

01:16:00

So sometimes the person is bringing forward what they believe to be true, but it factually isn't true.

01:16:08

And sometimes also people have been hurt in various ways and they perceive a situation to have unfolded in a certain way and they might have misperceptions about that.

01:16:20

You know, maybe due to facts they don't have, maybe due to something about their own mental or emotional state or that other people have told them.

01:16:30

So that 25 % isn't all people deliberately telling lies.

01:16:35

So that's the first part I want to clarify. The second part is there are, in fact, potential penalties within the law.

01:16:45

So on the criminal side, say you go to a trial and you testify falsely, perjury is a criminal penalty for testifying falsely.

01:16:57

You can be charged with perjury. On the civil side, we have defamation lawsuits.

01:17:03

So if someone has publicly made false statements about another person, the victim of those false statements can file a lawsuit against them for defamation.

01:17:13

In the context that we're talking about in ministry, I would, and in fact do, suggest to ministry leaders that they take on church discipline.

01:17:26

You know, if they determine that someone in their congregation has deliberately brought false witness against someone else, then that also is a matter for church discipline.

01:17:36

And, you know, as Paul says, the church is well -equipped to undertake church discipline and hold people accountable for their behavior.

01:17:44

Yeah, there was a notorious situation very recently where the false accuser did pay a legal price, and that was

01:17:54

Jussie Smollett. And I don't know if, I don't think that that was an automatic thing when it was proven to be false, the allegations, but it may have been to do with the police department filing a lawsuit.

01:18:08

Do you remember, Teresa? I vaguely remember the situation and that the price was paid, but I don't remember the procedural way that they got there.

01:18:17

Okay, thanks, Cindy. Well, make sure we have your mailing address, and you will receive a free copy of Handling Allegations in the

01:18:24

Ministry, Responses and Investigations, compliments of our friends at Lumify Media, and also compliments of our sponsors at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

01:18:36

who will actually be the ones shipping it out to you. And I'd like to give a word of advice or a request to those listeners who are not in ministry winning these books.

01:18:49

After you're through reading them, please give them to your pastor or an elder or a deacon or donate them to your church library or something like that so that they will be available when a crisis such as the kinds we are discussing may erupt unexpectedly and you will have this in, the church will have this book in their arsenal and ready to respond to whatever is happening.

01:19:17

We have another anonymous listener who says, I am at a stalemate with the leaders of the congregation where I live.

01:19:29

I think the person meant to say where I am a member. And the situation is that my complaints are falling on deaf ears.

01:19:41

That whenever any of the elders counsel a woman, they should always have either her husband in the room or another woman in the room.

01:19:53

Often the excuse is given that as long as the female secretary is in the building nearby and the door is open, that should suffice.

01:20:02

I strongly disagree because emotional and romantic attachments can develop, especially when a minister and a woman are in a private area and even though the door is open, that is not the same thing as having a female present.

01:20:21

What are your thoughts on this? So this is primarily a theological matter which a church or a denomination is going to have to decide.

01:20:34

It may be that the denomination of church decides differently from the way an individual would like them to.

01:20:44

That said, I think there are some important considerations here. One is there shouldn't be any appearance of impropriety.

01:20:53

So whether that's a man being alone with a woman or whether that's someone counseling a minor, which is actually an even more grave situation, they need to be really careful that the interactions can be observed.

01:21:07

And a lot of churches do that with glass windows, glass doors, having secretaries sit right outside the door, that type of thing.

01:21:16

As to whether there should always be another person in the room, I think it's a complicated consideration.

01:21:25

For instance, most women who are being counseled, say, around issues of domestic violence or other types of spousal abuse, they would not talk with the spouse in the room.

01:21:37

They would feel that they needed to have a private space and being able to talk to a minister to work through that without the person who may in fact be their abuser sitting right there.

01:21:50

As to whether there could or should be another woman in the room, I think that's a possibility.

01:21:57

I myself would hesitate to go so far as making it a requirement because you can envision circumstances where that might not be the best idea.

01:22:09

But however the church works it out, they need to be concerned and sensitive to make sure that everyone's reputation is protected and that everyone is visibly acting in a way that's above reproach.

01:22:23

Yes, I happen to actually know of a situation that was presented in a sermon and because it was a public sermon,

01:22:34

I'm sure I could give this pastor's name, he's a dear friend of mine for many years, Jim Eliff, E -L -L -I -F -F, and you may even be able to find his sermon on this somewhere available, but the sermon was on the root of bitterness and the power of forgiveness and it had to do with Jim and his siblings holding on to bitterness against their father who was a counselor in a major Southern Baptist congregation,

01:23:07

I think it was like at the time the second largest congregation in the country or somewhere close to that, and his father was counseling a married couple and he was counseling them individually and there began to be an emotional and romantic attachment between Jim's dad and the woman and they wound up leaving their spouses and ran away together and got married and Jim and his siblings were very bitter about this but ironically,

01:23:39

Jim's mother, the primary victim in this, who was cheated on and whose husband left her, she was always challenging them to not hold on to bitterness and it's a very moving story,

01:23:55

I don't want to kill the ending of it if you can find it on the internet, this sermon, but he personally suggested that pastors never counsel women alone and I would especially think that if it was an ongoing thing, not this kind of an emergency situation or something, but like an ongoing weekly thing, that it might be wise for a woman to be in the room there, but that's just my two cents, especially after hearing

01:24:26

Jim Ellis' own story. Another thing that some ministers do is limit the number of sessions that they will talk with a minor or with a woman, so that can be another good approach.

01:24:42

Well thank you Anonymous, and you've also won a free copy of Handling Allegations in a Ministry, compliments of Illumify Media and CVBBS .com,

01:24:52

our sponsors. When it comes to, this is a question from me, when it comes to the biblical qualifications for elders, they are to be above reproach, and I think that many churches are woefully unbiblical in that regard, and they will welcome back into a pastoral role a man who is found guilty of sexual sins, even adultery and all kinds of things, after a period, sometimes after a relatively short period, just because the man has professed repentance.

01:25:42

I personally think that that disqualifies a man forever, not from membership, and not from using his gifts in some other realm in the church, but the pastor is to be above reproach, and that kind of a scandalous sin is going to forever taint that qualification, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many people that I know.

01:26:08

But having said that, does a church invite upon itself more serious legal responsibility if they invite a man who has already committed something that's a crime?

01:26:25

Adultery is not necessarily a crime, other than a crime in God's eyes and in the church, but if the pastor is guilty of something that had legal ramifications against the church, and they invite him back, and there's a repeat action, is the church even more responsible in the court of law over that issue because they invited this man back into a leadership position?

01:26:54

Yeah, that's a really good question, and one that I think we see some pretty clear answers to, just by considering some of the national -level scandals.

01:27:07

So, for example, let's look back to the earlier days when child sex abuse was starting to come out, say, in the 70s, 80s, 90s.

01:27:19

It was not well understood at the time, and even in the secular realm at the time, the standard of care was you run people through some counseling, and then they're fixed, and they can go back to whatever.

01:27:31

And much of the Catholic scandal was fueled by this exact behavior.

01:27:37

They sent the priest to counseling. They thought they were fine. They reassigned them to another parish, and they abused again.

01:27:45

And so these dozens, hundreds, I suppose, maybe thousands of lawsuits that happened, many of those were that exact scenario.

01:27:55

So if you take something like child abuse and you put someone back in a position of power, if you expose other people to harm, yes, you're potentially liable for the harm that happened to other people.

01:28:10

If it's something like adultery, in terms of legal liability, there's going to be questions like we discussed earlier, what are the legal issues?

01:28:20

But the person may go on to do other things that are legally problematic, and then there's going to be the argument, well, you should have known they weren't a person of good character.

01:28:29

Now, whether that sticks or not, I don't know, but potentially it's a problem. We have, let's see here,

01:28:39

Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, is there any specific

01:28:46

Christian denomination and or religion that seems to be more prone to having these types of sexual crimes and other activities where the church is held responsible taking place?

01:29:04

So what I would say here is that any organization that's worked with children over a long period of time has some sex abuse in its history.

01:29:16

It may know about it already, it may not know about it already, but the human nature being what it is, and sin being what it is, it's going to happen.

01:29:27

Wow, you mean even among the leadership that's that frequent? It's going to happen, well,

01:29:36

I don't know if I would always say that it has to be in the leadership, but it's going to happen as part of the church or ministry's activities.

01:29:45

You know, just statistically, if you carry on a ministry with children, for example, that long, studies show that up to 10 % of American men are sexual predators in some way.

01:29:58

You know, that's a scary high percentage. At the height of the Catholic sex abuse scandal, about 4 % of the priests were involved in some kind of abusive activity.

01:30:12

The numbers that you got were because a lot of them were engaged in, you know, multiple wrongful activity.

01:30:19

So it seems you'll have it break for one denomination, then you'll have it break for a different denomination.

01:30:25

Right now in this season, we're in the midst of quite a bit of scandal around the Southern Baptist, but nobody should sit back and preen themselves and say, oh, but it didn't happen in our denomination, because the odds are pretty good that it did.

01:30:41

And it happens in public schools, it happens in other secular institutions. Department of Justice statistics on that are scary high and worse than happening in ministries.

01:30:54

So it's not like ministries have a monopoly on it, but it's not like they're free from it either, which is why the prevention and training and response is so important.

01:31:06

Thank you, Bibi. You've also won a free copy of the book, and CBBBS .com will ship that out to you, and we thank our friends at Illumify Media for providing these free copies for our listeners.

01:31:20

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, does the percentage of men who are guilty of inappropriate sexual activity in a church that requires legal assistance dwarf the percentage of women who are involved in this?

01:31:43

So I think the question generally is whether men are more likely to be involved in predatory sexual activity than women.

01:31:54

And if that's the question, the answer is yes, they are. Sexual abuse of children is much more frequent perpetrated by men.

01:32:06

Sexual harassment, the same kinds of statistics. It's not that there aren't any women perpetrators, but it is vastly skewed towards men, yes.

01:32:17

Yes, a lot of us have been shocked in the media seeing the rising number of female teachers who are having sexual relationships with male students far younger than themselves.

01:32:32

Is this kind of thing reflected, to your knowledge anyway, in Christian schools, or is this primarily, exclusively a public school or government school system situation, you could say?

01:32:48

I have definitely seen cases like that come up in Christian schools. One reason ministries don't deal really well with this type of stuff is they have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that original sin applies to everyone, and all of us are sinners, therefore the sins are going to show up in the ministry context as well.

01:33:18

Perhaps not to as high a level, and of course we hope not to as high a level, but we can't assume that it won't happen.

01:33:25

Now what are your suggestions in counsel for building an investigative team when an accusation has been made?

01:33:37

So building the investigative team, there's going to be several factors that we have to consider, and I'm going to assume here that we've already determined that we do need an investigation of some kind, and maybe

01:33:51

Child Protective Services isn't involved, or that piece is already over. So one of the things we have to consider is who's got the skills to do an investigation?

01:34:02

It's fairly specialized. There might be even more specialized components like child forensic interviewing, or there could be psychological considerations.

01:34:12

So does the ministry have people who have those skills? If they do, an internal investigation might be possible.

01:34:21

Maybe it's a simple HR type of investigation. If they don't, they may need to outsource some or all of it.

01:34:28

Another consideration is what's going to be the perception of a bias or someone being able to handle it internally?

01:34:38

And here, the higher up the leader that's accused, the more difficult it is to have a purely internal investigation and have it really be credible.

01:34:47

So in other words, if the person is found to be innocent, or if the allegations are not substantiated, is anyone going to believe those results, or are they going to feel the investigation was biased?

01:35:03

In ministries and churches, the people trying to find out the facts and the decision makers and the friends of the accused person can all be so mixed up together that you can't really get a clean process.

01:35:18

So that would be a reason for, say, having an external independent investigation. So those are some of the points about setting up an investigation.

01:35:28

We have another anonymous listener who wants to know, do you know, percentage -wise, how successfully pastors have bounced back after false accusations have been made against them, especially if they have become public and scandalous?

01:35:48

You know, I don't know statistics on that. I would say that the statistics we're seeing now about pastors feeling burned out in the ministry are disturbingly high.

01:36:03

And, you know, again, anecdotally, being accused of something is really traumatic.

01:36:09

It's actually traumatic whether it's true or whether it's false. But, you know, here we're saying false allegations.

01:36:16

It's extremely painful and difficult to go through this. And I always encourage ministry clients.

01:36:24

They need to be providing pastoral care to everyone who's involved, to, you know, the person who may have been harmed, to the person who's accused.

01:36:34

And this pastoral care should be independent from any investigation or decision -making.

01:36:40

But people are not going to make it through this kind of ordeal if there's not some care given. Well, we have to go to our final break.

01:36:48

It's going to be a lot more quick than the other breaks. If you do, indeed, have a question in mind that you'd like to send to Teresa Lynn Sidebotham about handling allegations in the ministry, send it in as quickly as possible because we are rapidly running out of time.

01:37:04

Our email address, again, is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com.

01:37:10

Give us your first name, at least, city and state and country of residence. And if you're going to be anonymous, please only remain so if it is a personal and private matter.

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No radio ad will be long enough to sing their praises sufficiently, but I'll give it a shot. Jeffrey Rice of Post -Tenebrous

01:51:44

Lux is a remarkably gifted craftsman and artisan. All his work is done by hand from the cutting to the pleating of corners to the perimeter stitching.

01:51:54

Jeffrey uses the finest and buttery soft imported leathers in a wide variety of gorgeous colors like the turquoise goat skin tanned in Italy used for my

01:52:03

Nestle Allen 28th edition with a navy blue goat skin inside liner and the electric blue goat skin from a

01:52:09

French tannery used to rebind a Reformation study Bible I used as a gift. The silver gilding he added on the page edges has a stunning mirror finish resembling highly polished chrome.

01:52:20

Jeffrey will customize your rebinding to your specifications and even emboss your logo into the leather, making whatever he rebinds a one -of -a -kind work of art.

01:52:31

For more details on Post -Tenebrous Lux Bible Rebinding go to ptlbiblerebinding .com

01:52:38

That's ptlbiblerebinding .com Scott Brown here.

01:52:52

I hope you can join me and Chris Arnson at the Chief End of Man Conference in Ridgecrest, May 4th through 6th.

01:53:00

The Chief End of Man Conference is a national conference of church and family life which exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture.

01:53:09

At this conference you'll hear Paul Washer, Joel Beeky, Scott Anial, Josh Bice, and lots of other great preachers, some of my favorite preachers.

01:53:17

And also we're having a pre -conference. It's a singles conference May 3 and 4 just before our big national conference.

01:53:24

I hope you can come. For more information go to churchandfamilylife .com churchandfamilylife .com

01:53:32

Hope to see you there. And that conference is being held in North Carolina which the pastor

01:53:38

Scott Brown forgot to mention. We have just a couple of more questions that we have time to read.

01:53:47

First of all, we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York who wants to know in addition to background checks which

01:53:56

I believe are required by law today for anyone working with youth, what other steps could a church make to further prevent that the person they are either appointing from within the church or hiring from outside the church in a youth -oriented role will be not putting our children in danger?

01:54:20

Background checks are a great start. And I'd say that they're essential but not sufficient.

01:54:27

So other important steps are doing really careful interviewing, really focus on reference checks, make sure that you talk to people about whether this person would be trustworthy and reliable with children.

01:54:43

And then having done careful interviewing and checking and screening, the next step is training.

01:54:51

Training is important for people working with youth. It's also important in general because we want the church as a whole to become a capable guardian of children.

01:55:03

We want everyone to be on the lookout for red flags. So an excellent training program is an important part of keeping children safe.

01:55:12

Taking this a bit out of order here, but having good policies in place is also important and having an adequate way to report and respond.

01:55:23

And even to minor things, small red flags. If churches respond well to initial red flags, they may actually be able to forestall more serious allegations of abuse.

01:55:35

Well, CJ, you've also won a free copy of the book. Make sure we have your address. And we have an anonymous listener for our final question who says, when the issue at hand is not sexual or criminal, how often do you think churches make a mistake by taking these things to the courts rather than keeping them private and in -house?

01:56:02

Yeah, that's an interesting question. I don't know that it's generally the churches that take things to the courts, with the exception maybe of property disputes, contract disputes.

01:56:15

They may sometimes take those to court. When it comes to misconduct, if it's not sexual misconduct, it might be allegations of spiritual abuse or toxic abuse of power.

01:56:29

I don't think churches usually make the mistake of overreacting and taking it to court. They're more likely to make the mistake of underreacting and not dealing with it at all, which is how sometimes you get really toxic environments within churches, which is certainly not what

01:56:47

God is calling us to. Well, you've won a copy of the book, too, Anonymous.

01:56:53

Make sure that we get your full name and mailing address. Well, I'd like you to wrap up by talking briefly, obviously, a bit about reconciliation and restoration.

01:57:08

So we talked about preventing matters. We talked about finding truth. And what do we do with it once we've found it?

01:57:16

What is God calling us to do? We've also touched on the fact that certain sins may disqualify a person from ministry.

01:57:26

So when I'm talking about reconciliation and restoration, I'm not necessarily talking about restoring someone to the same position of leadership or power they had before.

01:57:39

But the Bible does call us to that. There may be processes of counseling and repentance.

01:57:47

We may be able to get people involved like Christian mediators. We may be able to have healing retreats.

01:57:54

There's a lot of possible approaches, and this is actually a really exciting area to explore.

01:58:00

But God is calling us in the church to facilitate healing for others and to work on healing for ourselves.

01:58:09

I think that's important. Amen. Are you available for public speaking upon request from a church, a school, or any other kind of an organization?

01:58:21

We certainly do some of that, so reach out to us and check. And how would our listeners do that?

01:58:28

So the way to get hold of us, if you go to teleuslaw .com, and there's the main contact on the front page.

01:58:36

You can also get to attorney bios and contacts there. Another point of interest on the

01:58:43

Teleus Law main page, if you scroll down to the Teleus tip, you can easily sign up to get free monthly resources from us, updates on ministries, the topics we've talked about, as well as other topics.

01:58:58

And then the one other place that you may want to go look, teleusteaches .com has those training materials that we talked about before.

01:59:08

Some of those are subscription -based, but some of them are free as well, including a blog called

01:59:14

Stupid Things People Do and What We Can Learn From Them. Great. Well, I urge anybody listening who did not win a book to go to cvbbs .com,

01:59:25

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, and order this book. If they don't have it in stock, they will get it for you.

01:59:30

I want to thank you so much for being an extraordinary guest, Teresa. I look forward to your return to the program.

01:59:36

I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater