#Metoo vs. Biblical Counseling, One SBC Church fires back, East Palestine

Welcome, welcome, welcome once again to the conversations that matter podcast. This is an unannounced live stream.

It's going to be a short one because I got a hard break in about 35 minutes, but I wanted to talk about a few things and I first, before I say anything, a number of you have messaged me about this

Asbury revival, at least that's what it's called and I am on it.

So tomorrow evening or late afternoon, there should be an episode up on that.

In fact, that's my hard break. I got to talk to someone who's currently there and someone else who just attended and there's some video we're going to play and we're going to talk about this.

I'll try to bring maybe a little bit of a historical perspective to it because revivals, there is a definition at least to revivals or an understanding we've developed over time observing them and biblically, of course, there's theology to bring to bear on this as well.

So that's what's going on tomorrow. But for today, I wanted to bring to your attention just a few things, if I may.

We will start with this. This is a post from Rachel Denhollander and see if I can blow this up so everyone can see it there.

This is a post from Rachel Denhollander and essentially what it says is that ACBC and the

NANC, so the National Association of Euthetic Counselors, and ACBC, which is the

Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, are wrong. They're not good.

She says it's the fruit of ACBC and NANC, sometimes they call it counseling, that has led to so much abuse.

She's retweeting someone else, but if you click on the story, then you're going to see a long thread here.

In that thread, what you'll notice is that there's a story told about two counselors trained at Grace Community Church, or the

Master's Seminary, I should say. I don't know if I want to read this whole thing, but this person apparently says she had a bad experience.

Now some of the things, though, that she says would not be endorsed by NANC, really any counseling outfit that I can think of.

Let me go to one of them here at the bottom. She says the next counselor, so the second counselor in the situation that she had, was another

Master's University trained counselor, so I guess University Seminary, that had been contacted through the

Grace Community Church network. That's where I was told, in front of my ex -husband, so she's, I guess, since divorced her husband, they were trying to get things right, but she's divorced him.

Well, that's the impression that the thread gives you, but anyway, not getting into all of that. My abuse was ordained by God, according to this counselor, she says, due to my rebellious spirit.

That was his plan for me. I was also told where to be like Christ, and Jesus never fought back or even lifted his head to his abusers, so I needed to be more like him.

There's so much more that I can fit into this tweet thread. She says, tell me how my entire life was designed by God to be a punching bag.

What I wanted to say about this is pretty simple. I just wanted to say that I've been through some of this training.

I never got certified by the National Association of New Thetic Counselors, but I've done some of their training.

I took, at Master's, I took conflict resolution, I took biblical counseling, and conflict resolution was actually probably my favorite class.

I think I said this before, but I've also taken a number of classes from Liberty University. They were more integrated.

I'm trying to remember if I did one at Southeastern. I don't think I did do one at Southeastern, but I've also done two counseling classes on my own, just through local churches.

I'm not an expert, but I'm certainly not ignorant about this.

I can say a hundred percent, and anyone can back me up on this one, that the impression you're given with any of these

New Thetic or biblical counseling models is that whatever has happened, whether it's someone who has sinned against you, or it's your own sin, or a combination, as generally is the case, that you are, if you're a believer, you are fitting into something bigger than yourself.

God has brought those things, as James says, even trials, to test you, to bring about maturity.

In fact, why don't we even just go there? Let me just read for you what James says, the beginning of James. I know this is basic stuff for some of us, but why not remind ourselves of it?

There's many passages like this, but that's the go -to. Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

I should follow it up with the next verse. If any of you lacks wisdom, where do you go? Where do you go for that? Let him ask of God, who gives to all generously.

God gives wisdom. There are so many verses, but this is one of the foundational ones, one of the foundational passages.

In that passage, we find a principle that you'll see throughout Scripture—what men meant for evil,

God intended for good. I would just challenge anyone who thinks that that kind of a perspective of saying that God has a purpose even in this, that He's doing something to mold us and shape us through this—that that kind of a perspective is really the only perspective that gives any hope in this.

Think about the alternative. There's purposeless evil that God has really no control over.

You don't have any control over it either. There's just no actual plan.

There's no telos to this, no point at which you achieve whatever it is that this could be preparing you for, because it's not really preparing you for anything.

That's, I think, one of the most depressing, discouraging things I can possibly think of. So, that's what we don't want.

Now, if a counselor gives you the impression that you're supposed to be a punching bag, as this person said, then obviously that's wrong, and no one would endorse that.

None of these organizations would say that—let's see here,

I'm trying to get the specific verbiage here—that my abuse was ordained by God due to my rebellious spirit.

This was His plan for me, and I was also told where to be like Christ Jesus and never fight back or even—you see, to me, my suspicion is there's probably a partial truth here in that you have someone who's advocating what

I just talked about from James and saying, look, if our Lord endured things, then we can take

His example, and we can also endure things. If someone attacks you, though, obviously, there's self -defense, especially if children are involved, which there were in this situation, yes, obviously, you should defend yourself.

And to attribute a reason for it, due to my rebellious spirit, that doesn't sound like anything

I've ever heard of coming from the biblical counseling world. They might open the possibility of this is something

God wants to shape in you, that God's working on you, that this has been the occasion for Him to help you become more like Christ, but they're not going to say for certain that this sin happened against you because you have a rebellious spirit or because it's justified in some way.

That's the impression I'm getting. It's justified in some way because I really deserved it. No, sin is sin.

It's punishable, and God's still on His throne, though, and that's the point.

And so I read something like this, I do it with a grain of salt, and knowing what I know,

I feel like I need to weigh in because there are many who are—this is a viral tweet thread at this point—who are liking this, who are now

Rachel Denhollander has retweeted this, and I can't conceive of Rachel being ignorant about ACBC and NANC, but it's possible that others who are retweeting this kind of thing are.

And that's what I want to get out ahead of, if possible, and just let you know that, look, that this is either a counseling situation gone wrong, that there were counselors who were not abiding by their training, so they were in violation of their training from biblical counseling, or this is a misrepresentation of what actually took place.

Those are really the only two options in my mind here. And Rachel Denhollander takes this, and she's got a platform.

She's someone who the SBC, the PCA, and a number of Christian organizations all look to to help them navigate abuse.

And she is now on the warpath, I guess, against biblical counseling.

I said this the other day. I said this two or three days ago whenever I recorded really my final say because I don't want to talk about it much more.

There are things that could be said, but I'm going to put a cap on it today, and hopefully we won't talk more about it.

I did mention that this attack on John MacArthur and Grace Community Church currently,

I don't think is really about John MacArthur at the end of the day. It's about theology that MacArthur stands for, and part of that theology is biblical counseling, and behind that is the sufficiency of God's word.

I really do think—now, none of these people who are Christians would say that's what they're doing, but I've seen enough evidence of it, and this is just one more piece of that in my mind.

So, I wanted to let you know about that. Let's see. What else?

Oh, I wanted to put a—yeah, I said I was going to put a cap on this, so let me put a cap on it. This is a comment that someone left on one of my posts, and I decided that it would be good to share it with you because I thought it was the most helpful take on this whole situation currently that's still somewhat raging,

I suppose. It's by someone named Jack David, and it's publicly out there.

So, he says, of the public information currently available on this whole counseling situation at Grace Community Church, etc.,

that Christianity Today went after, he said, the issue seemed not complicated. Now, there are issues that are complicated, but he breaks it down to these three things that I think he's right about.

It appears, prior to the conviction, according to information known at the time, Grace Community Church operated according to biblical standards, number one.

Now, he says it appears. Again, there may be information—and I've said I've been open to this—that it's not.

They didn't operate according to biblical standards, but the problem is that information has yet to be presented.

All the articles—and I've read, I think, all of them now that I know of that are out there—all of them have to make assumptions about what the counselors were thinking, what they knew at what time.

The timeline is very important in this. There's nothing compelling us, at least, to have to adopt the mindset, the view, that they were violating biblical standards with the knowledge that they had at the time.

So that's the first thing. The second thing, he says, is post -conviction, Grace Community Church seems unconvinced by the criminal case.

I made this point that because David Gray, the guy who ended up going to jail on the child molestation charges, started a jail ministry and it was supported by John MacArthur, I made the observation that that probably means that they didn't actually buy the conviction.

Sure enough, other people have said the same thing. Now, is there any evidence for this?

No. But it's the most logical understanding. There's really no other conceivable way for me to think through this.

They obviously think, on some level, that this guy was innocent and the jury was wrong.

I don't see—if the jury was right and this guy, David Gray, is unrepentant—he started a jail ministry, but he's really unrepentant about this whole thing—then it would be very odd indeed.

It would be an anomaly because that's not the kind of thing that people at Grace Community Church and the theology there and the teaching there would advocate.

Now, the counter -narrative is that's exactly what Grace Community Church would advocate. Well, that's just—I don't know.

I have a connection to the church and it's not a weak connection. There's been many cases—we'll just put it that way—throughout time that would prove otherwise, that would show that, no, that's not the case at all.

In my mind, the only thing that makes sense to me is that they seem unconvinced by the criminal case. They may be right, he says.

They may be wrong, honestly or otherwise. True. Thus, prudence dictates at least suspend judgment or believe the best about an otherwise faithful church until something would demonstrate otherwise, and that's exactly where I'm at.

Don't just buy the narrative that you're being told about this. Now, there's supposedly this 20 -page document, but it hasn't been released by the former elder.

It's not out there, and that would be what would need to be opened to see the primary sources to see if there's anything to this or if it's just opinion or what is this, a rehashing or is there actually information that's being left out?

Number three, the Christianity Today article seems to provide no new case information, only a new personality.

He's talking about the elder Han Cho. Cho's office lends weight to his opinion, but multiple other similarly situated elders disagree with him.

The Christianity Today article provides more smoke than it does light, and that's my conclusion. It really hasn't added anything to this, so that's my cap.

There's more that could be said, but I don't think I need to beat the dead horse anymore. The concern from the beginning was not

John MacArthur and Grace Community Church as much as the theology that is being assaulted—biblical counseling, church discipline, complementarianism, patriarchy, if you want to call it that, and even, to some degree, the qualifications for a pastor.

I went into that in the last podcast. Let's move on. Speaking of Me Too stuff, we're going to stay on that.

That's the issue now, isn't it? It's like BLM went away, although I'm going to bring up some BLM -ish hypocrisy here in a moment.

BLM went away. It's all Me Too now. Let's talk about this. This is a story.

I got sent this last night, but Capstone Report actually published it, put it out there.

Someone sent me—it's in text form, this letter, and I want to read for you part of it. Basically, someone from the task force, the sexual abuse task force for the

SBC. We've talked about him once before, Todd Bancart, and he's—I don't know how else to put it.

He's a soft woke. Maybe he's not even soft. He's woke. He's either woke or soft woke, but he's definitely on that side of the equation more in the

SBC. He's on the sexual abuse task force. He's made—I think we prayed a presentation from him from the convention last year where he's in this private gathering,

I guess. He speaks with someone else, a guy named David, as I remember, and they are talking about what you need to do in counseling, how do you approach sexual abuse.

It comes down to the Me Too stuff. It's believing people. You're required to do that.

It's making sure that you're framing things in such a way as not to burden them with their own sin so other people end up to blame for these things.

It's not, in my opinion at all, and I think in the word of God's opinion here, a biblical approach, and we did a whole podcast on it.

If you have been listening to this podcast and the name rings a bell, I think that's where you're probably thinking of it.

He's also the guy who Tom Buck recorded on the phone waffling on where he got this document that Tom Buck's wife,

Jennifer Buck, had written about her own background of abuse, and it got leaked.

Todd Bankart seemed to know who it was but wouldn't share and then fumbled and seemed to leak who it was.

It was a whole mess, but that's who Todd Bankart is. For those, that's the background

I guess you need. That's who he is. He's a pastor, and so he took it upon himself to go on the war path against any church that would platform

Johnny Hunt, an SBC pastor who has, I believe, stepped down now from ministry.

He's not in the pastoral role anymore because of something that happened a long time ago. It was like 15 years ago or more.

It was in the Guidepost Report that the SBC commissioned. What I remember about that case, it was a relationship that was leading toward adultery, but he cut it off before, as I understand it, anything physical or at least too physical took place.

It was kind of like a last moment, not doing this, and apparently at the time, according to him, repented to his wife, and it was a whole thing, and so now he's been invited places to speak at times, and so Todd Bankart on the

Sexual Abuse Task Force doesn't want that to happen. Here's how the story goes.

A Panama City, Florida church taught SBC President Bart Barber's sidekick,

Todd Bankart, over—and this is, I guess, the photo. This is actually publicly out there.

I don't know what to tell you. There's the president of the Southern Baptist Convention kissing Todd Bankart, who's on the Sexual Abuse Task Force.

The irony of this—there's so many captions you could put on this. I don't know what to say, but this is something.

They're posing for it. I mean, Bart Barber put it out there. He has nice boots, by the way.

I just didn't even notice that. I think those are crocodile cowboy boots. All right. Squirrel. So, Panama City, Florida church taught

Todd Bankart a lesson over Bankart's charges that the church hosted a known sex abuser as a speaker, so they had

Johnny Hunt speak. Bankart reported Hill Highland Park Baptist Church to the SBC Credentials Committee, and then here's the kicker.

Why does this not surprise me? He made the report known to The Tennessean, a newspaper in Nashville, so he's telling a secular newspaper, it's a virtue signal.

I don't understand this sometimes, like the willingness to—before you've even really got off the ground—to signal ahead of time to a secular source, by the way, we got a problem with this particular sin in our denomination, when it's not even true, it's not even accurate the way he portrays it, but to do that, how much do you have to hate your

Christian brothers to do that? Is this violating the whole idea of going—I mean, it's not the same,

I guess, but I think there's a principle there. We're supposed to settle our own matters before going to the courts.

We shouldn't have to go to the courts, even the court of public opinion on these things. Now, sometimes you're not dealing with believers, and that's where I think you have—if it's false teachers that you're dealing with,

I do think there's a difference there, and that's why I've advocated for, don't call these guys brothers if they're false teachers.

Withhold from doing that. But anyway, that's not even the way that we typically deal with false teachers, because our concern is the flock of God.

It's not getting brownie points with the world, and I guarantee you, people like Todd Bancart aren't going to these papers to advocate for the sexual standards that the

Southern Baptist Convention believes in as far as monogamous heterosexual marriage, of course. That's not going to happen, but they will for these kinds of things.

All right. It says this. This is the letter. As we continue to discuss this matter with our own counsel in pursuance of all our legal recourses, it would be helpful to all potential parties involved if you would provide clarity in writing of the following question.

Is the Credentials Committee for the Southern Baptist Convention, which is duly elected, which is a

Georgia corporation, formally and officially claiming in writing to an entire SBC affiliated congregation that when we hosted

Pastor Johnny Hunt, we hosted a speaker who has committed sexual abuse? The church also writes, we also feel compelled to share our concerns about our very troubling part of this inquiry process.

It does not seem logical to us that Southern Baptists, when they approved a revised bylaw 8 at the 2019 annual meeting, envisioned or would have knowingly approved a process whereby one activist individual who was also appointed by the current president of the

SBC to the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force could submit a church for inquiry, leak that submission to the secular press, and thereby place that church in secular and denominational headlines before the church can be informed.

I mean, spot on. And it goes, I mean, this, it's a long, it's a long, uh, here, here you can see the whole thing here.

I've read the whole thing. It's, uh, almost, it's like two and a half pages and it is just ripping

Todd Bancart up one side, down the other, and just, I mean, it is so spot on.

And I thought to myself, man, if every SBC church was like this church and fought for the integrity of the convention, for the rules of the convention,

Todd Bancart has no authority there. The credentials committee doesn't have any authority there. And it's, it's not even something that is, is true.

It's based on a lie that it's sexual abuse here. Now you can, I know one person on Twitter was saying how they believe that Johnny Hunt is disqualified, shouldn't be in the pulpit, but it's still not sexual abuse.

And that's one of the, that's the, they're not doing this based on potential adultery from years ago or doing it based on sexual abuse.

And I guess that's what it is now, right? That's the new me too definition. If you have power over someone, if you're a pastor or otherwise, uh, then it's, it's abuse automatically, even if it's adultery.

Well, let's move on to this. That's some good news, by the way. Let me just say, that's some good news.

Um, let's talk a little bit about this situation if we may in Ohio.

And let me read for you a, an article here. Um, the residents, uh, of this, of this, of a city have been drinking and bathing in water that contains enough lead to meet the environmental protections agency definition of toxic waste.

No single person holds the blame for this situation, but thanks to widespread mismanagement, a largely black and Brown community now faces the disproportionate effects of systemic neglect.

Oh wait, hold on a minute. What article am I reading? Yeah, I'm not reading an article on what's happening in Ohio, in East Palestine.

I'm reading an article from 2016 about what happened in Flint, Michigan. And I would like to bring to everyone's attention the fact that this article, which is titled the racist roots of Flint's water crisis ran in the

Huffington post. And not only did this article run in the Huffington post, but articles across the news organizations and blogosphere ran stories about this

Flint water crisis report says systemic racism played a role. CNN, the

AP commission, systemic racism at root of Flint water crisis. Um, I, I remember,

I'm old enough to remember when there was a situation in, um, was it

Irene? I believe it went down in new Orleans when the hurricane came through and whose fault was it?

It was George W. Bush's fault. And it was his fault. It wasn't Irene or was it someone put in the chat section, which one that was,

I'm now blanking on it. Uh, I think it was Irene, but something tells me it might not be okay.

Well, anyway, uh, when a hurricane comes through, if it disproportionately affects people who are of a certain pigmentation, it becomes a racism thing.

And that's what I wanted to point out about this. I spent last night looking at videos, uh, just listening to testimony.

They had a town meeting last night. It's one of the most heartbreaking things I've seen to see these people so neglected and so preyed upon by the railroad company.

Uh, ignore it. I mean, if this was Flint, Michigan, you'd have

Pete Buttigieg would probably be on the ground right now, the transportation secretary. But these people, the almost 5 ,000 who live there are overwhelmingly

Trump supporters. They're white people. They're in farm country. And now they have to deal with toxic chemicals, killing their animals, causing them health problems, seeping into their water supply.

And while the government tells them that it's okay, it's, you know, it's not toxic.

People aren't trusting it. I mean, they're believing their smell. They're believing their own eyes and what their eyes are seeing instead.

People are angry there. And I think rightfully so. Um, there's, there's so much more that can be said about this.

And I want to say more about this. But the, the details are a bit overwhelming and it's the thing that's egregious to me about this whole incident is how avoidable it, it could have been and how terrible the response has been, uh, for at least 20 miles before the train got to this particular area.

There's, there's even a viral video of it. They were sparks under the train. They had apparently an axle problem.

Um, the way that the authorities are trying to say nothing to see here, the way that the news media is failing to cover this, it's, it's right wing outlets that are now starting to cover it.

But even a week when it started, they weren't hardly even covering it. Uh, there was a guy, the reporter from the

Epoch times, I was going to read this article, but maybe I won't just because, um, it's just a lot of background to what happened here.

Um, I'll show you some of the pictures actually, since, uh, for those who are watching by video.

Yeah, here's, here's some of the, the pictures of what happened there.

Um, but the train derailment, the after effects, um, he was saying this, this reporter, uh, that he's like the only one there that he, there weren't anyone else.

There wasn't anyone else until last night. Some more media folks started showing up because they were having this town meeting, but the railroad company didn't even show up for it.

Didn't even show up offering people money, a thousand dollars from what I understand.

And the concern is that they'll use that as a settlement that if you take the money that they're giving you, most of these people are poor in this area, that it will be a settlement.

And so, um, I would, if anyone's within the sound of this podcast, hearing what

I'm saying, I would recommend that you don't do that. One of the things I'm yes, Katrina, thank you. Someone put, why, what, why, why did

I have the wrong hurricane in mind? Katrina, that should be like obvious to me. That was the one where Kanye West went out there and said, George W.

Bush is racist, uh, against black people. And that's why, uh, that's why this is happening anyway.

Katrina. Yeah, I feel silly. But with this whole situation in Ohio, I'm looking into how can we help?

How can we give money? I'm not sure yet. The red cross isn't even there. It's, I don't get it.

I looked online this morning at FEMA or not FEMA, uh, the, um,

PETA, PETA, uh, people for the ethical treatment of animals, right? Because there's estimated thousands of fish that have died.

There's all kinds of animals just dying in this area. And so I was like, well, they surely they must be there.

I mean, they're every time you have like an oil rig that threatens. Like a fish or, uh, or, or ancestral homelands of, uh,

Native Americans and, uh, out West and like the Dakotas or something and sacred animals or that, uh,

I mean, they're out there. They're, they're protesting. They're encouraging the tribes that might be protesting.

They're all over that. Yet with this, which this has to be one of the worst environmental catastrophes of our time, certainly within the last decade that I can think of in the

United States, uh, since the BP oil spill, at least, right. I mean, this is horrendous.

Where's PETA. Isn't this weird. This is weird to anyone else. It's not racism.

Of course, when it's done against Trump voting, white people, it's not important. The animals who die in their community.

Uh, it's not the government's, uh, or the company's responsibility to go there and make things right.

They're slow. When they do react, they give assurance. That's not accurate.

These people are suffering and it just breaks my heart. So I wanted to put that out there.

I'm going to see if, um, we can get someone on. I'm actually messaging with someone right now.

Who's a Christian who lives not far from there. And we're going to see if we can get some more on the ground coverage of this.

But for now, uh, if there is a way that you find out how to help these people, please let me know.

And if any of you who are listening, uh, are in that area and have your eyes on the ground and can see what's going on and tell us how we can help.

I would really appreciate you reaching out to me and, uh, that would be good. So anyway,

I'm going to just, uh, show you this. The standard beer care, uh, leaves a comment here.

In my years as a military, in the military, I spent a lot of time exercising disaster response trains with toxic chemicals are one of the most common plans practice watching this play out.

I wonder who is in charge. Yeah. I think that's what a lot of us are wondering too. Someone says that the blackout, this blackout on what happened in East Palestine should be a story in itself.

It feels very much like anti -white racism among other things. And someone else says that they donated to first church of Christ's helping hands ministry in East Palestine.

So maybe that's a place. I don't know anything about first church of Christ, but, uh, we have one of the viewers saying that's a good place you can go to donate.

So check it out. And, uh, maybe that is a good option. Well, uh, that's it for now.

I hope that was helpful to some of you, a little bit of a me too update, and also a, uh, just my, my thoughts on this

Palestine, East Palestine thing. Tomorrow, like I said, we are going to talk about what's going on with this alleged revival.

We'll just put it that way. I don't know exactly what to think about it, but, uh, I'm going to give you some on the ground opinion from people who

I trust, who are there, who were there, and we're going to just talk about what is revival, what biblically, historically, what we think of as revival.