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How should churches handle domestic abuse charges? Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever, and Deepak Reju discuss how to handle domestic abuse cases in the church. They emphasize the importance of cultivating a culture where victims can speak up and provide ways the church can foster this culture. Tune in to Pastors Talk to learn about how congregationalism and a plurality of elders help make the church a safe space and why church discipline is important in situations of domestic abuse charges.

• How to Have Conversations About Domestic Abuse
  
• Creating a Church Culture That Helps Victims Speak Up
  
• Why Congregationalism and Plurality of Elders Matters
  
• How Church Discipline Makes the Church a Safe Space

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Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Jonathan Leeman:

Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.

Mark Dever:

This is Mark Dever.

Jonathan Leeman:

Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches, learn more at 9marks.org. With us today, we have another pastor, associate pastor of CHBC, Deepak Raju.

Deepak Reju:

Hi, Jonathan.

Jonathan Leeman:

Thanks, brother. You spend a lot of your time in the church doing what?

Deepak Reju:

I spend a lot of my time counseling members and shepherding staff. That’s a good portion of what I do.

Jonathan Leeman:

And the reason we thought you would be helpful in this conversation is we’re going to talk about responding to reports of domestic abuse.

Deepak Reju:

That’s correct.

Jonathan Leeman:

Marriages.

Mark Dever:

Yeah. So what we’re talking about is almost all marriage.

Deepak Reju:

We’re not dealing with children, we’re dealing primarily with marriage.

Jonathan Leeman:

Right here. And the reason we thought this would be worth talking about is that 9Marks talks a lot about authority, right? I’ve just finished a book on the goodness and badness of authority.

Mark Dever:

And the chapters I’ve read are so useful.

Jonathan Leeman:

And as we talk about authority, we have to talk about abuses of authority.

Mark Dever:

Well, Jonathan, just to point this out, because you said this in writing the book when we were talking about authority 10 years ago, you felt you were having to explain authority’s goodness to people who just thought that they individually didn’t need anything like that. Sort of as it were, the intellectual left.

And now it’s more people who have suffered from it themselves or guys who take it wrongly and are abusing it. So there’s a whole new sensitivity you said you’ve come to have in the last 10, 15 years for addressing sort of another side of the authority question, which I think is useful.

How to Have Conversations About Domestic Abuse

Jonathan Leeman:

Oh, that’s exactly right. 20 years ago, 15 years ago, we were celebrating it in certain, say, complementarian circles, especially, but you have to look at the other side. And that’s part of what we want to do.

I’ve been an elder with both of you and much of our time in elders meetings was spent sorting these things out, right? So not always a sister, but often a sister would show up and say, these things are happening in the home. And first glance, it’s not always clear, right?

Sometimes it can feel like he said, she said, and there’s a number of things we can talk about in this conversation, but the one very narrow slice of the conversation I want to have with you brothers is how do we establish a culture that’s not gullible to false accusations, but sympathetic at the same time to the abused, even when it’s unprovable? How do we do both of those things at the same time?

One caveat before we start the conversation, I want to ask you, my sense is, kind of a conversation about the conversation, my sense is that pastors might feel a certain reluctance to even raise this conversation on abuse or domestic violence because there are so many landmines. I can feel that way.

As soon as I raise it, somebody is upset because I didn’t say this or didn’t say that. It’s like, I’m trying. Give me a chance to make mistakes so I can talk about it. What advice do you have for pastors in even having this conversation or these kinds of conversations?

Deepak Reju:

What I’ve observed is when the main teaching pastors, when Bobby and Mark especially are in the pulpit and issues of authority come up, they’re not scared to both call out those who are potentially abusing others and warn them of judgment. And then make pleas to victims that if they’re in a difficult situation, please let us know so we can come alongside and help.

So when the text naturally leads to the application of expressing both warnings for evil and those who are participating in it, and those who are under that evil and need our help, then we bring it up because it’s letting the word inspire what we say on Sunday and not backing away from the hard and difficult topics. That would be the most obvious thing because I’ve watched Mark preach for years and not be scared to make this kind of statement from the pulpit.

That’d be number one. Number two, I appreciated Mark has willingness to address it in our Sunday evening format, which is more of a family format.

Mark Dever:

More informal.

Sharing About Domestic Abuse in Informal Settings

Deepak Reju:

More informal. So it allows for Mark to make statements like things related to abuse that he wants to make clear how not only he, but as the elders think about these topics and it, there’s a more open dialogue that’s available both there and then also in the members meeting.

Mark Dever:

Yeah, we got a few emails from members about abuse recently and you know, what do we do to protect ourselves from doing this wrongly? And so we talked about it in a staff meeting and I just made several comments then Sunday evening in the prayer meeting about that just so people would know how we were thinking about it.

Jonathan Leeman:

Anything you can share that you said to the church?

Mark Dever:

Yeah, I mean, it’s all, it’s all, there’s no rocket science here. It’s all very simple and straightforward stuff. I mean, one of, one of the most basic things we said is just having a sympathetic stance.

I think we’re so aware that there can be false accusations, which of course is true, that particularly when you’re dealing with a weaker party in a marriage and they are being emotionally and or physically just terrorized, the husband is not acting for their good, then the church of all places needs to be a place where they know they should be able to come for a listening ear.

And, you know, it doesn’t mean that only men lie and women never lie, but it does mean that we understand from the very nature of the relationship of the husband and the wife. And there has to be extra care on the part of the husband not to use his authority in any way to the harm of his wife.

Holding a Sympathetic Stance

Jonathan Leeman:

Deepak, what does a sympathetic stance look like? I mean, I’m partial towards women.

Deepak Reju:

No, it’s believing someone when they state that they’ve been under evil rather than a disposition of skepticism and questioning them right away, giving them an opportunity not only to explain the evil but also to show that you believe them by what you do with that at the moment. So let’s take the example that we’ve encountered a few times.

If a wife tells us that her husband is terrorizing her, and especially if I know that her safety is compromised, that means as a shepherd, if I, number one, cross-examine her and I’m skeptical of it, that communicates something right away.

But number two, if I respond in a way that shows her safety is my primary concern, that’ll even evidence itself in me grabbing staff that day and us moving her out of her house and putting her in a safe place where we know we can protect her.

Mark Dever:

Which has happened.

Deepak Reju:

This has happened, which we have done more than once in the some 20-plus years I’ve been around here, let alone all kinds of other variations of that, which we have to show that we will act.

Now, whether the wife accepts our recommendation and our decision is a whole different story because then it gets complicated with children and other kinds of complications that can affect it. But our disposition towards believing and then showing that we believe by how we act matters at that moment.

Mark Dever:

Yeah. I think situations like this cause us to be prayerful. I mean, as elders, we’ve spent so much time in prayer for marriages that are clearly broken and we feel our power is so limited. I mean, you just, you’re really thrown on the power.

Deepak Reju:

And have we made mistakes? I’m sure we have, or I’m sure we have over our history with, which means we need to have a disposition where…

Jonathan Leeman:

I’d be inclined to say you would say not only I’m sure I have, but you’d probably say I have.

Deepak Reju:

Oh yeah. Which means we have a disposition of needing to be humble and learn on this topic. No matter how many years we’ve been in the pastoral ministry.

Mark Dever:

Positively. We’re still growing. We’re getting more aware of things. And I think every pastor grows into that by experience and an understanding of life.

Jonathan Leeman:

This is an area pastors need to study. They need to grow and they need to read books. They need to solicit the counsel of women who have been in tough marriages.

Deepak Reju:

The problem is if you’re responding at the moment, you’re responding ad hoc versus serving the whole elder board and the congregation by taking time to think about it. If you haven’t encountered this yet by reading, praying, having conversations, and especially if you start talking about it in the pulpit, you’ll hear from people who have experienced this.

Creating a Church Culture That Helps Victims Speak Up

Jonathan Leeman:

Now a moment ago you said, you guys try to communicate to the congregation and say, especially to women in tough marriages, hey, please reach out to us if you find yourself. And Mark, I’ve heard you say that.

I think the immediate response among some would be, you don’t know how hard it is to reach out, how many barriers I have to overcome in order to reach out. And going and talking to these male elders can just be really scary. So what do you do to create a culture in the church that it makes it easier to reach out?

Mark Dever:

Acknowledge the difficulty, and encourage them to come with a friend. Hopefully, when you’ve done this well at all, that word gets around too, just like the word gets around when they won’t listen to you. I think the word also gets around when, you know, they will listen to you.

And it also has to do with what you teach the Bible says about all kinds of letters, like divorce. I think the theology of divorce, I think if you think that divorce is only allowed in Scripture, in a case of physical adultery, then there will be more times when you will feel when the people feel like they really can’t speak about what’s going on because they’re just going to be making a situation they have to be in worse. Whereas we take the more traditional sort of John Murray Protestant understanding of marriage and divorce that there are other ways than physical adultery to violate and break that covenant.

Should Wives Stay With Abusive Husbands?

Deepak Reju:

We understand abuse to be potentially one of those ways that it can violate the covenant, which means our theological position allows for them to not only call out evil but to approach the elders and ask for help in understanding that their marriage may have been, the covenant may have already been broken. And so therefore they need help in deciding wisdom factors like, should I stay under this evil?

And we see the, if we see the evil, the example I gave earlier, we’ll pull them out of it. Because we do think the safety of our own members, caring for that sheep is a priority. Another thing to help with this culture would be raising up godly women and letting them be known in the congregation that it’s not just the male elders who are the only point of contact to get help, but we hold out these women as wonderful examples.

Jonathan Leeman:

As in go talk to them?

Deepak Reju:

Yeah, as in feel free to talk to any of these women if you need help in any other way. And we did that. I mean, we interviewed a lot of the ladies that we’ve trained, ladies that help the elders in Sunday evening services because we want to say these are godly women who are here, are members, and are here to help. That’s another way if they’re not ready to approach a man and yet they need help within this church.

Mark Dever:

Yeah, that’s been a big, big help. Deepak spent a lot of time into leading, training women in counseling, and discipling in difficult situations.

Jonathan Leeman:

Okay, so if I’m taking notes and I’m writing down, okay, what do I do to help cultivate a culture where abuse victims can come forward and know that they will be heard? Number one, you’re saying a sympathetic stance posture, right?

Number two, you’re saying the elders’ theology of divorce is crucial. Spend time studying that. Number three, you’re saying hold up women who are good examples and are safe and trustworthy for women to reach out to. Right?

Mark Dever:

Yeah. Another thing would be a friend put it this way to me recently. We were talking about this. As elders, let it be known that you will listen not just to correct, but also to learn. And that’s very practically what it looks like when somebody is coming and saying, listen, I’ve got this hard situation.

It’s not like I thought life was going to be, I don’t know what it means if I talk to you about this. I’ve heard this, I’ve heard that, you know, and the things they’ve heard are not accurate, but their real fears or concerns they have, you know, how can we listen to sort of learn more about what we’re teaching and what we’re the vibe we’re putting out. Use your vibe word from another conversation.

Deepak Reju:

And that’s the humble teachable posture that we were talking about earlier. That’s really important in a topic like this.

Jonathan Leeman:

Congregationalism.

Why Congregationalism and Plurality of Elders Matters

Mark Dever:

Yeah. Two points of polity, I think, help us in this, both the plurality of elders and congregationalism.

Jonathan Leeman:

Okay.

Mark Dever:

So congregationalism in that we labor under no illusion that the elders have the authority to excommunicate. We just don’t see that in the New Testament. We think the only body that has the authority to excommunicate is the congregation.

Jonathan Leeman:

How does it make us a safe space?

Mark Dever:

Well, by itself it doesn’t, but I think it helps to mean that you won’t be merely at the disposition of this group of five men or 15 elders, but those elders, if they’re going to bring a discipline to the congregation for ex-communication, a discipline case, they have to be ready to present it at the members meeting and be questioned and cross-questioned by lots of people who may well be skeptical of this point or that point, or you’ll have friends of both parties there almost certainly. So it just, it acts as a break and not a preventative, but a break is slowing down.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, I think of a few stories out there that, you know, will show up in the media or whatever, where it’s sometimes the abuse victims seem to be the ones who are quickly removed from the church as an act of discipline. Like I can think of two or three off the top of my head in which, that was the case. And I’m thinking that in a congregational context, that’s far less likely to happen.

Mark Dever:

It doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but far less likely.

Deepak Reju:

But just to clarify a congregational context where the congregation is willing to listen to what the elders are saying but ask hard questions to interact with it and to press against it if they have concerns versus if the congregation is just another group of yes people, then they are going to follow the elders kicking out someone who shouldn’t be kicked out.

Jonathan Leeman:

I’m going to come back to that in a second. Mark, you said two things, congregationalism.

Mark Dever:

Plurality of elders. So even in the eldership itself, where most of the investigation and care is going to be done, there is not a culture in our eldership of acting only by unanimity. We are well used to having some decisions taken by a vote where some elders vote one way and some elders vote another, and yet we just assume at the end of that vote all of us go with the majority.

No, we’re not voting on the divinity of Christ. We’re voting on particular applications of pastoral wisdom in this situation and that. And that means I think we have more honest, straightforward, vigorous exchanges in the eldership.

And there’s not so much the sort of, hey, you’re the main preacher, whatever you say goes. So what are we going to do? And everybody looks at me and I just tell them what we’re going to do. And then that’s what we do.

Vulnerability Breeds Vulnerability

Jonathan Leeman:

Okay. Well, part of that, and then bringing it back to your point, Deepak, there seems to be another factor in creating this safe space. Is the culture of spiritual transparency and willingness to contradict leaders true, or false?

Deepak Reju:

Yeah, very true. I mean, if leaders are being honest about their lives, if members are being honest with one another, willing to ask each other hard questions, and willing to press in, it creates a tempo, a pace for the rest of the congregation.

When somebody joins, people are going to ask them about their life and want to be invested. Not everybody wants to be in a church like that, but we’re trying to create a community where people are being honest and transparent with one another as the way it worked within our church.

That allows people when they’re in really bad spots to first share it with a friend because they built that trust. But then that friend is able to come alongside them and say, let’s not do this by ourselves.

Mark Dever:

It’s a kind of difficult culture to build as I’m sure we’ve all experienced, because you will definitely get people who misconstrue things or, you know, mischarge you. And I think you just have to assume it’s not from malice and people are going to disagree over things.

They’re going to misunderstand things and you just, you just keep going. So if you’re going to be a pastor and authority, that’s why I think Paul in 1 Timothy 5 says you’ve got to have two witnesses to bring an accusation because it’s the nature of our work often to be too important to people or to be misunderstood or to be wrongly construed when we’re, especially if we’re in a controversial case between two people.

And therefore I think we have to behave carefully as elders, but we have to not get bent out of shape when we personally disagree with, you know, we have to let people know, listen, I understand how you could look at this another way.

How Church Discipline Makes the Church a Safe Space

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah. Well, the last bullet points that may break in half, are kind of a concern for process. And when I think about that, I mean number one, church discipline, and number two, various policies and procedures that you’re going to have in place for dealing with.

Mark Dever:

Clear teaching on membership and discipline is basic to this and very helpful.

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah. How is church discipline a crucial component in making the church a safe place for abused wives and victims of that sort of thing generally? A safe place to come forward.

Deepak Reju:

Because we will call out evil. We will say to the person who’s committing evil, we can no longer affirm your profession because now based on the investigation, based on the conversations, based on our involvement, we now need to bring it to the congregation, help them understand and be willing to let the congregation examine what the elders are putting forward and have interaction with us over it, push back against it, work through it with us.

Why do we rarely bring it immediately to the congregation, though there are times when we need to? But that two-month layover allows us a kind of interaction that makes this a genuine transaction between the elders and the congregation in talking through it.

So we’ll get dozens of emails after a really hard members meeting where we post something, lots of members coming, talking to the pastors and us. It’s part of the process for us to shepherd the members through this and not be scared about the conversations that need to happen in order for all of us to work in the same direction.

Mark Dever:

And just to be clear, these member’s meetings are not what our member’s meetings are normally like. These are unusual member meetings, but they do happen.

Jonathan Leeman:

And to be clear, church discipline has been and can be and is used poorly, wrongly, right? Like any other form of authority, police authority, parental authority, it can be abused and has been abused, which is why it’s so crucial that we learn what good authority is and we learn to use it well.

And I think in the ideal, what church discipline is doing in cases of abuse is it’s saying to the wife, it’s saying to the children, God is against this. The church is against this. In the ideal, church discipline helps restore faith for the wife, and for the children who have seen evil from, let’s say, a father or a husband.

They’ve seen evil. What’s the church going to say? Does the church care? Yes, the church cares. We’re going to speak out against this. So I would understand in the ideal, church discipline is a faith-building exercise for victims of this kind of thing.

Deepak Reju:

Well, and let’s just take the position of those children for a moment. It’s the church saying what you’ve watched for years, though your father has said he’s a Christian, that’s a lie. He cannot act evil towards your mother or you and profess to be a believer.

And so we’re going to make the line in the sand really clear for you that this is not Christianity and that we’re not going to put up with that kind of testimony. And so therefore we’re going to declare it.

Jonathan Leeman:

This again means pastors learn not to use a heavy hand in discipline, learn to use it wisely with the plurality of elders, and finally with congregational accountability in it. I think this is crucial. And then what about various policies and procedures? That was the other part of it.

Deepak Reju:

Yeah. A part of learning to venture into this area and having humble conversations is beginning to learn how to set up parameters that help to think through how to operate and what to do.

There’s a part of this that’s organic because no situation is exactly the same. So everybody wants the simple 10 steps of policy that’ll navigate through every case, and that just doesn’t exist.

But you do need to put some parameters up and have some sense of how you’re gonna work through these things. So having conversations amongst the elders, thinking through how you wanna handle situations, laying out policies that are appropriate, are fitting, but recognizing there’s no one set of parameters that is going to neatly fit every situation into it.

Jonathan Leeman:

Again, the goal here has been, there are so many things we can talk about. The goal has been this one very narrow slice. How can we establish a culture that’s not gullible to false accusations, but sympathetic to the abused? Brothers, any final comments on that?

Mark Dever:

Thank you for being willing to talk about this on Pastors Talk.

Deepak Reju:

Glad for the conversation. Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Leeman:

Thanks, guys.