207 - Sexual Abuse & The Fearless Series

You're listening to the Pure Desire Podcast, your safe place to find hope, healing and freedom from sexual addiction, betrayal and relationship issues. Hello.

Hello.

I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 207 of the Pure Desire Podcast. You're joining me, as always, is my co host, Nick Stumbo.

Another one. And another one.

I mean, here's what comes to mind. Okay. For me, DJ Khaled, but that's not what you're doing.

So I don't know the guy's name, but I think he's a rapper or music artist. That's kind of what he's known for.

Yeah, and another one.

Yeah, yeah, it's DJ Khaled.

Okay.

You think I'm gonna be able to impersonate someone like that? Well, I mean, come on. I'm not.

Yes, but.

Okay, but my context for it, I must be on a insurance commercial kick. I know I did one a couple episodes ago and then even said the wrong insurance company and we'll probably get sued by Liberty, Geico or Liberty or whoever on that. I think this one is a GEICO commercial where the guy's brushing his teeth and he's standing.

CJ Khaled.

That's another one.

Another one. And the guy's like.

And my kids think it's funny because they know who he is. And I had no context for it and I still thought it was funny, but then they explained who the guy is and I was like, oh, okay, that's pretty funny. And there's so many things we do at home now where one of us will go, another one, that's awesome. And I'm not sure if we're quoting the commercial or that artist, but it's all good.

Yeah, either way, it works. Okay, so today we had first time guests. They're friends of ours, we know them fairly well. Dr. James Reeves and his wife Laura were on Today and they were talking about sexual abuse of women and their new video series called the Fearless Series.

Yeah. And this is another one of those topics that just doesn't get discussed enough. It's prevalent, it's common in people's stories, but because it's complicated, it can be messy, it can be painful. And honestly, many churches kind of give the message of that whole, the past is in the past. And, well, Jesus forgave me and the people that did that to me in the past. So we just move on. But people end up trapped in the pain or the trauma or even the isolation of. I know a part of my story, but I'VE never really told anybody else, and if I did, how would they react? And so it just, it gets avoided. And so this is another one of those topics that we want to shine a light on. And more than that, we want to shine the light on a group that's really doing some great work with it because I've seen the Fearless series and I'm super impressed with the content and just the voices that are on there. Like, as I watched it, my thought over and over is this is something everyone needs to see. And I think when you hear James and Laura talk about it, people will understand why.

And if you have not experienced sexual abuse in your past or as a part of your story, or even if you're a man, you need to listen to this episode. You will need to watch the series, but please listen to the full episode. It is a meaningful, powerful, and at some points really heavy conversation about a very needed topic.

But just like we say, everyone needs to understand and be equipped on topics like sexual addiction and pornography. I would say the same about this topic. It's just something everyone needs to be equipped in. And today's podcast I think might take you from a zero to a one. And that's okay, that's okay. But if you can get going to understand this area better, then we're gonna be more equipped to help others heal.

Absolutely. Well, we've got a good episode for you for sure. But real quick, a few things. Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't. We're on all the major platforms. You can follow us on social media. Also, we now have full episodes of these up on YouTube so you can watch them. And then also, Nick, we just want to remind people the summit is coming.

The Pure Desire annual summit, man, And I'll tell you, we're into that Summer weather in Portland that is just like some really good days and you know, September weather in Portland, man, it is a time to come and hang out with us at the base of the Columbia River Gorge. We'll take you hiking. You can go to Multnomah Fall. Yeah, you didn't know? We're going to arrange some group hikes that weekend, apparently. Great. But no, the Friday Saturday event got some great speakers. Pure Desire team, special guests. I mean, if you can come and you've been stir crazy at home because travel's been hard, now is the time to say, by golly, let's go do something fun and come hang out with the Pure Desire team. And if you need to join us from home, do the virtual event that's awesome, too. We just want this to be kind of that annual wind in your sails, high point of like, this is what recovery's about. And whether you're year one or year 20 of recovery, I think it'll energize you for whatever God's doing in your life right now.

Yes. And for this event, we are going below the surface. That's the theme. We're gonna expl the interior world a lot. Jenna Reimersma, Ben Bennett, Keith Jenkins and the PureDesire team go to PureDesire.orgSummit to register for in person or for the virtual ticket as well. All right, here is our time with James and Laura Reeves talking about sexual abuse of women and their new course, the Fearless series. All right, James and Laura, welcome to the Pure Desire podcast. Thanks for being with us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We are excited to have you. And you guys will introduce yourself here in a second. Some of our listeners may be familiar you, James, as you were in the Conquer series, but today we're going to be talking about sexual abuse and this new course that you have called the Fearless series. I have seen some of it. It is excellent. It is very well done and is obviously a topic that we really need to address in the church. So that's why we wanted to have you guys on to talk about this series and how to really start this conversation in our churches. So, James and Laura, for some of our listeners, again, like I said, they'll recognize James from the Conquer series, but why don't you just introduce yourselves a little bit, Tell us about life, ministry, all that.

Okay. As you can see, I married. It was illegal for us to get married when we did. I'm so much older than her.

That is not.

Great start, James. Great start.

We've been married. We've been married for 42 years. We got married in 1979 and been in the ministry. Well, we started on the staff of the church while I was in seminary. A week after we got married as youth pastor. I had been youth pastoring before. So our entire relationship, we've been in ministry together. And 40, about 40 years of that as a senior pastor. And we came here, this church started 37 years ago, city on a hill here. And in 1992, we transitioned from a fairly typical church start to what we call the hospital church model, which ultimately has evolved into all of the very helping ministries that we do, helping people to heal, which the Fearless series is just the most, the latest one of those. And I went to Baylor University, got my undergraduate degree in New Testament, classical Greek. I got my master and doctorate here at Southwestern Seminary. And this is my wife, Laura. She has a much more interesting story than I do.

I realized that James had enough education for the both of us. I am an artist and a creative more, and acting, painting, mosaics, whatever. Cartooning.

Super cool.

Huge fan of the mouse and actually.

The Holy Land down in Walt Disney World.

That's right. I don't know.

Is that okay? And I did some artwork, actually, for the gallery stores there that sold there in the stores. They're a difficult company to do retail with, so I thought.

Very cool. Very cool.

So you guys have kids? Grandkids. Tell us a little about that.

I have two kids. I don't remember their names, but we have five grandkids. They had five kids between them. And I love them more than I love my own children. They're absolutely my life. They're everything to me.

That's absolutely true. They spend the night at our home at least once a week. They have their own room.

That's great.

We have two kids. Zach is our son. Zach is 36. And my daughter, Tiffany, she's married to a pastor, and they are in Colorado Springs. He just took a pastor there just before COVID actually, and she's a pediatric trauma nurse practitioner in a children's hospital. And my son is in real estate. He's retired professional golfer. He was a touring professional for seven years. So we've. Golf has been a big part of our life. And, you know, we're just at the point of our life now where we're really free in a lot of ways to do some things that we've never been before.

Cool.

Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

Yeah. And, you know, Laura, you're on a podcast where we talk about pornography and sex and masturbation. And it's like if someone is offended by Mickey Mouse, they're probably on the wrong podcast.

That's true.

Together here.

Yes.

They're probably not on this.

Yeah. So a lot of freedom here just to share your story and be real before we jump into the Fearless series and hear more about the course itself and the videos and, you know, creation, all that. What drew you guys to this topic of women's sexual abuse and sexual abuse in general? Because it is kind of like pornography and sex in the church. Like, it's one of those things we just don't talk about. So what drew you to it?

You mean to answer that? Well, as we got into this actual where we started, really opening up and allowing people to talk. Tell the Truth of what was really going on inside. And we started these what we call support groups 30 years ago. We call them freedom groups now. We began to hear this over and over as people would get into these safe places in these small groups, they began to talk about those things. And we had a woman and her husband who had come to our church at that time, and she had suffered several experiences of abuse as a young girl. And it had some real traumatic things in her life. And she began to talk about it. She was kind of the first one that opened the door and began to get help. And so we created a group for that. And she got healing and she's now on my staff and has been for the last 10 years in the area of helping women who are survivors of sexual abuse, but also in our post abortion ministry for helping them. So it was just one of those things that just started coming out once we created a safe environment. Women started talking about it and we okay, well, then we need to start doing that. So we've been actually ministering to survivors for about 30 years. And one of the things we've discovered is that the numbers are astronomical of women sitting in the typical church on Sunday morning who have experienced sexual abuse and have never told anyone. And that's kind of how we got there. And it just kind of blossomed over the years. And we have groups going all the time now to help women. Give them a place where they can get the conversation started.

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing when you open the door, I mean, on a lot of these conversations, when it feels like it's not safe to talk about, that doesn't mean people aren't struggling or aren't suffering or aren't being wounded. But there's no place to bring it up. And so it gets dealt with quietly. People go to counselors, and I'm thankful that we have counselors in our world. But if that's the only place someone feels safe, typically they're not going to feel safe in their own community, which is the challenge I think churches face is we've got to open those doors. And so I'm so thankful that you guys are in many areas leaning in and saying the church should be just as you said, the hospital church, it should be the safe place for broken people to find healing and recovery. Because if not here, where else can they go to experience the love and the message of Jesus Christ in their life?

One of the tragedies of, and I like you, I'm thankful for counselors, but one of the tragedies of that, that we've turned the help, hope and healing work of the church over to the professionals is then we never create a lifestyle community for them in the body of Christ or that continual talk and getting together. And so they're kind of, they're doing the Christian life here and they're doing their emotional healing out there and the two never get connected. And that's tragic. That's real tragic.

Well, there's almost seems to be like an aversion from the church toward therapy, toward the clinical work that I think causes that. I mean, I think in some ways you do need to be discerning and wise as to the therapeutic models that someone might use. But if it also helps you put handles on the truth of what you see in scripture and what really reconciliation, restoration, renewal looks like, I think the two, and I mean, I don't think I know the two are married together the way that God's designed our brain. And so I think that there is though that aversion, at least the culture. I grew up in the church where it's just like you go to a counselor, like don't tell anybody, you know, what do you mean? Like my life's changing, things are getting better, why shouldn't I share it? So I think that we run into that and this kind of leads into the next question. You already mentioned the statistics being astronomical, they're just, they're scary. And it's not just women, it is also men and sexual abuse, but the numbers are definitely higher for women. Why doesn't the church tend to talk about this from you guys experience in the church? I mean, I know your church has been talking about this, but as you rub shoulders with other pastors, right, like why are churches not talking about this? Why are they avoiding this topic?

Well, I think that some of it has to do with that there's still this Victorian kind of mindset within the faith and that sex is something that is secret, it's private, and it's not appropriate for the open arena. I think that is one of them, although not as true as it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, but it's still, I think it's a part of the thing. I think another one of the things is that many of the people that would be responsible in leading this work are struggling in areas sexually themselves that they don't want to go there. And you know, I think it was Rick Warren a couple of years ago that did that confidential survey and about what 35% of pastors had viewed pornography within the Last month or something like that. And so when, you know, that's not a topic that that individual who is struggling with that may not be really open about, you know, bringing that out. And I think the third thing is that they don't know what to do with it. You know, they just simply what we talk about, what are we going to do with this thing?

Yeah.

And that's the reason I created the Fearless series, is to give a tool to the church, to give them a pathway of what we can do with it when they begin to talk about it.

Yeah.

I'll tell you also as a woman, I'm 62, so I've been around for a while. The world is better than it was, but it is still a very male dominated world. I found through my life, just personally, and I've heard so many women say the same thing. You go to a male doctor, tell them you're struggling with whatever, and they immediately point to its female issues. If you look medically at research that's done, male issues are dealt with. Women's issues, we're behind. You know, things are changing and we're catching up. But we still, we're still women. And no matter how capable we are, no matter how strong we are, we are still not treated the same. And when you go to a man and say this is an issue I have, I think there's a little bit of a disconnect for most men, not all men. I'm not going to say that because I know men that will listen, but a little disconnect of oh, well, this is okay, well, I hope it gets better.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's a really good point.

I don't know what to say.

Yeah, I'm just thinking about the truth, that even though there's been the rise of the megachurch, most people in America still attend a smaller church. And the average church size in America is still under 100 people, which in that environment, I mean, not universally, but 99% of the time is going to be a male pastor, usually a male elder board or leadership team. And so you think about if you're a woman who wants to face a sexual abuse issue in her life, the only people in leadership are men. And very often, and not to say those men are abusive, but if you have had a male abuser in your life and the person to talk to are all men, it's like that will probably feel like an unsafe environment. Whether or not the person themselves, you know, the pastor could be an entirely safe person. But just that environment in most of Our churches, we haven't created places where a female could engage safely in that conversation with other women. With a female pastor or leader, that could be a soft landing spot. And that's not to say you can't go to your pastor. I mean, I think there's great pastors out there who probably have helped women walk into this issue. But I think what you're bringing up, Laura, is very valid. If a woman is feeling that from her abusive past, it probably doesn't feel safe to go to that male leadership team and try to face this.

The truth of the matter is she was probably abused by a male.

Yeah, yeah.

So she's already got some issues of trust with men. And she may love her pastor and think he's a wonderful guy, but is she going to feel comfortable walking in and talking about some of the most intimate issues in her life if you flip this thing around? Guys, what you guys do with men struggling with pornography, if you had to go to a woman leader in the church to talk about your pornography, would you do that? You'd be much less willing to do that. If you. If that's all that was available to you was a female to get you started, you probably go, nah, I'm not going to talk about masturbation in front of this woman.

Right.

I'm not going to do it. And so you would cower back. And so I think that's a huge issue that. And we can talk about this, I guess, a little bit later on. But the church has got to provide those safe women or women to go to to start this conversation.

You know, it's something I've been thinking a lot about. I'm back in seminary finishing a master's degree, and it's something that just looking at, like, the catalog of classes, there are not classes on how to deal with sexual addiction, sexual abuse. And I'm not saying that every seminary across the world needs to have it, but maybe, yeah, like, maybe we do. I mean, like, if it's something that statistically is proven that it's such this pervit, like if we knew that 90% of people in our churches struggled with cocaine, guaranteed there'd be seminary classes on how to deal with drug addiction inside the church. And so I think, like, and I'm not trying to shift blame at all, but I think from what I have seen generations before me, of pastors tend to lean on the education and experience that they had at these institutions that did not give them the tools to handle this thing, which is, I think, is what causes Those pastors to just be like, well, I know this counselor or I know this place over here, this organization that can help. And there's that outsourcing, which I don't think necessarily is bad because if it's handled really poorly by the pastor in that moment, it could be so much worse then go to this counselor. So I think some of it is just an ignorance maybe to what's going on. Some of it is rightly leaning on their experience and education. But there are gaps in that experience and education that can cause this issue too.

Right. You know, I had seven years in seminary in two degrees and had one pastoral ministry course. And basically they taught us how to baptize someone, how to, how to, you know, officiate supper and how to do weddings. And I mean, that's what the whole thing was about. And that's the mechanics. And those are important things because you're gonna be asked to do that the first day on the job. But there was nothing about what do you do when people are broken? And the truth of the matter is, many of us as we came through seminary were broken and were getting set up for a real train wreck later on. And had they been doing those kinds of things in the upper edge education process, some of us might have started getting some help earlier, before the crash and burn. I think they say that one in 10 pastors will retire in the ministry. Nine out of 10 of us that start in the ministry will not retire in the ministry. And a lot of times that comes because of just not having a framework of understanding of how not only do you help other people, how do you get help yourself?

Totally. Yep.

Well, and I worked in the creative ministries that are church, music, drama, that kind of thing for ever 30 years, I guess. And I learned pretty quickly that if I had a team of 10 people, or really a group of five, one of those men at least if not more, had an addiction to porn. One of the women probably did as well. And several of the women, I would say for the most part, I don't know a whole lot of women that haven't had some sort of abuse, whether they had actual trauma, penetration or whatever. Not that necessarily, but I can remember 30 something times that that was approached upon me. And so if that happened to me like that, that it's. Yeah, the statistics are very low on that. But I know this, that in seminary when they teach music pastors how to do music, they don't ever mention, you need to be open to your people, understanding that they, they probably have some issues to be dealt with that are pretty, pretty difficult. And I didn't have problems with men in my group saying, hey, I'm back at the porn. I'm sorry.

But that was because of the context of our church.

Pointing them back to help and then double checking to make sure they got there.

Yeah.

So.

That'D be. We have. At our church, we have a. Our motto is the hospital gown, and that's our mascot.

Mascot.

And we talk about, put your hospital gown on, untie it, and let it be open in the back.

I've heard this before. I love this.

You know, truth of the matter is, we like to cover it up. We like to lap it over and tie it real tight so nobody can see what's back there. We all know what's back there, all know something's back there. And so we just kind of say, let's just. Let's just be a place where we can all put our gowns on, leave the back untied, and just walk down the hallway and show everybody what we got. And without fear and without shame. And the reason a woman ministry leader that she was doing was able to do that, because we were a church that was safe. But she knew enough to know that she couldn't help that man, so she would get him into that place where he could get help. We haven't done that for women. We have not done that anywhere near as much as we are for men. Now. Women do not have a place in the church. That's why I created the fearless series, to give a tool for women to get the conversation started and get started in the process of healing.

Well, let's jump into that. We're talking around it, but let's talk about the fearless series for women. What is it? Who is it for? How does it help? What will someone get out of it? Just dive in and tell us about the fearless series for women.

Well, it's strange that a man should produce and direct video series on sexual abuse of women. And people ask me that question, how did you get into this? And what happened was when my first book, Refuge, was published, and then when the conquer series came out, I started getting invitations to go to churches and talk about the kind of church that we are, the hospital church, and what's the biblical principles? How does it operate? How do you do that? So I developed a seminar going around to churches over the last 10 or 11 years, helping churches to understand that. And I noticed that a lot of the churches that I was in were doing conquer groups, had pure desire groups, if not in the church, at least in the community. But a lot of them were using the Conquer series and were ministering to men in this area. And I thought, well, that's wonderful. But I never one time in those 11 years came across a single one of those churches that were ministering to women who were survivors of sexual abuse. And it dawned on me that the reason, even in those churches that were willing to do this thing about pornography for men, is they didn't have a tool like the Conquer series. The Conquer series was a tool to get the conversation started. It doesn't solve the issue. That's a long term process, but it gets men together and gets them information and gives them a safe place to start talking about. So I came back and I said to my leadership, I said, we need to do this. And I asked for a big budget and my elders granted it. And I had a young up and coming filmmaker that was right here in my church, very incredibly talented young man. And I tapped him, we hired him. And I knew some women around the country that were professional. Shannon Etheridge, Marnie Faree, some of them. They wanted to be a part of it. So we, we just went around the country doing this thing. And I told Michael, I said, look, I know the subject, I know what needs to be covered. You just make it pop. You know, you filmed it in 4K. The editing was just incredible stuff. And the end result was we have the Conqueror or the early series, women. It took us about three years. Three years of my life. And I say this to people and I don't say it in jest. This is the most important thing I've done in 40 years of ministry. And it is just absolutely the most important thing I've done. In fact, because I believe that so much, I, six weeks ago, gave my senior leadership position to my young protege that I've been raising up to take my place here. And I am no longer the senior pastor. I have no leadership responsibilities. I'm the teaching pastor now. I'm responsible only for Sunday mornings. And then the elders have released me to take the Fiddler series out there and get it out there into churches. And I wouldn't do that if I didn't believe in it. But that's kind of how it happened. A man winds up doing a series on. We cover five topics. You ask, what is it? We cover five topics. Each video is about 25 minutes long. That's followed by one hour small group where the women are able to get together and talk. And that's where the magic happens. Is in the small group. But the five topics. The first one is the prevalence of sexual abuse, and the women that we interviewed talk about that. Then the second one is the problems that can present themselves in a woman's life who has experienced this either as a child, an adolescent, or even an adult woman. The third is why this needs to be a priority of ministry for the church and how the church has in the past failed, but how the church now can step up to the plate, like what we've just been talking about. The fourth one is about prevention. How do we prevent this in our homes? How do we talk to our children? The terminology. Teach them in the community, the schools. And then the last one is, what does a pathway of healing look like? And all 12 of these women are Christian women who are survivors of sexual abuse themselves, have been through the healing experience and now are professionals in the field of helping other survivors. So they speak from a personal experience and also now from a profession. Some of them are therapists, Christian counselors. Some of them are medical doctors. One is a medical doctor. Some of them have just started private ministries to help. But they're all in the helping field. And it's incredible the stories they tell and the things that. They took me to school. I thought I knew a lot about the subject, as much as a man could know. And these women schooled me. We went all over the country filming this stuff. And my young filmmaker, he did his magic and he put this thing together in a format that just. I cry every time I watch some of it. In fact, you know, you and I were at that conference, the Seals Conference, down in San Antonio. Nick. A few weeks ago, I had a man who's a therapist stand in front of my screen there, where I was just showing the trailer, the two and a half minute trailer. And he stood there and wept. And he said, oh, my gosh, there is nothing like this out there.

Yeah, very true.

How much this is needed. I mean, this is a man, but he's a therapist, so he understands the woundedness. And I looked at him and he was. Tears were coming down his cheeks. I thought, thank you, Lord, because that means I haven't wasted the last three years of my life.

Totally. No. Laura, who would you say should watch this video series? Is this just for women who have been abused? Is it for everyone? Like, how would you say that? Who's the audience for this?

Well, you know, the term abused is interesting because I think people have a different connotation of what that is depending on who you are. I was abused, but I was never raped or just. I hope I can use the word penetrated, but I was never actually. But I had an actual medical doctor abuse me. And interesting the way people respond to that. Why didn't you do something? What were you wearing? Well, I was wearing a medical gown. Thanks. But who should watch it? Every single woman. Because I have actually met women who have a clue. When you talk about siblings abusing each other, they're like, oh, my gosh. Well, no, that happens actually all the time. But they don't have a clue. Some people don't. They need to get a clue because their friend, their aunt, their mother, their children may be in the process of being abused. People need to understand what this looks like. It is not just abuse. It is traumatic. And it is inviting so many things into a child's life. I'm an advocate for children. I will stand for a child over anything. And we tell our kids to talk to strangers and all kinds of things that don't make any sense because it's not the strangers that are hurting them. And we need to empower our young girls with bravery, strength, and to be a warrior, not to be pretty.

That is part of the way we designed the Fearless series. I keep saying conquer series. The fearless series for women is that it's for all women. So a woman, when she comes to these groups, she doesn't have to raise her hand and say, oh, yeah, I've been abused. Because it's for all women. And the women in the church who have never personally experienced that, it's a great education process for them to understand the women that have. But it also gives a safe entry point for the women who have to just come and be a part of this thing. And then in the small group experience is where that magic starts happening and they start telling their story. And once that happens, then we have the easy track to move them further into a longer healing experience. And so the Fearless series for women is just this big, safe, open door for all women in the church.

I will tell you though, too, Trevor, I would love for men to watch it.

Yes.

Because for so long, it wasn't that long ago that I sat. Walked onto my campus, at my college campus and was rated by every boy I walked by from on a scale of 1 to 10. That wasn't that long ago. And there is kind of the good old boy. Oh, well, guys, you know, they whistle. They, you know, whatever. Boys will be boys. I mean, I've heard that from a lot of good men that actually protect women and think that women should have way more credit than they're given. And I still was hearing that from men. So I would love for men to watch it. Will they? Probably not like a sitcom like a Roman rom com they won't watch for the most part. Come on, guys, step up to the plate and watch this and get informed about what could be happening to your children or what might have happened to your wife or girlfriend or sister or mother and come alongside.

Yeah, I think we just, some of our staff just went through module one of the PSAP training from itap and one of the things they talked about was sexual abuse. And for me, I don't have that as a part of my story or a part of my background. But I do look at it differently now, getting more of that information and that education on it. And it's something that now I know the signs to look for. Now I understand. You know, like, gosh, I think about so many things, even just modern names that are big in ministry, that this is a part of their story and it's now coming out right. And you can name the names, you know, there's plenty of them. But I think that if we want to have this stop happening, we have to be proactive. We can't just wait for it to happen and then try to react in a positive way, a helpful way. We also have to, like you're saying, and this is why I think the value of any man or any leader, whether abuse is in your story or not to watch this is because how do you better influence the culture around you when it comes to this topic? How do you better identify it when you see it? How do you better help people take that next step into healing? And so, I mean, if you don't hear anything, anybody and everybody should watch the Fearless series because it's so prevalent.

And I will challenge all of you male pastors to care enough to watch it. Don't pass it to your female, you know, take care of the women thing, person, watch it yourself. So you are informed of what we are going through, what we have gone through.

Yeah, you know, I've had an interesting experience. We just kind of debuted the series. Well, when I was in San Antonio with you a few weeks ago at the sales conference was when our website went live nationally. And so, but before that, I had a lot of interest from pastors and people that are women in their church that would ask their pastor if I could send some information to them. Not a single one of those pastors followed up on that.

And what did I tell you?

It died on the desk.

You're talking to the wrong person. They're not gonna listen.

Right.

And she did. And it died on the pastor's desk for several reasons. One, he's a man, so he doesn't get it. I'm going to give him credit for that. But the second reason is he looks at that and he thinks, I don't have a clue what to do with that. And so they don't understand that this has got to be led by women. It's not something the pastor has seen. The women are going to lead it.

So.

I wish and like it's happened in my church, but it took 30 years to get here. Is where the men would kind of lead this thing to say, we have got to deal with this issue. One out of three women sitting in the church on Sunday morning, on average, they tell us one out of three have experienced some kind of overt abuse. Marty Farid talks about that. And the female population is the largest population of the church. If one third of them have experienced and the vast majority have never told anyone, this is a ministry that the church is just dropping the ball on because of the things that happen in a woman's life as a result of this experience.

So we've talked about it already a little bit that what the videos are that time where the magic happens, as you said, they have that conversation, then you talk about coming out of that, what those next steps are for healing. As you have people going through this, what are those next steps? What are things that we're encouraging people once they've watched this series, what are the things that they can start to do around them?

Well, once again, I designed this for a church context and we've learned over the years that our group experience needs to run about 13 weeks because that's how people still think in semesters. So from the fall, you got to get finished before Christmas because around Christmas time people could come into the group. And then early spring you got to get finished before the kids get out of school because everybody goes on vacation. So we've got styled all of our freedom groups that deal with all these different issues to be 13 week time frame. So I did that same thing with the Fearless series. It's five weeks of the videos for all women. There's a study guide that goes with it. And then they have that small group experience. And in that small group is where the magic starts happening. Then out of that, the women who have actually talked in those small groups about the fact that that they have had experience of sexual abuse, then There's a workbook that follows that up where we deal, that I also wrote, that deals with issues of shame, which is incredibly attached to any form of trauma or abuse, deals with all the forgiveness issues, the guilt issues, the lies that we begin to live our lives by because of the traumatic event. And so it gets them into an intensive small group experience with only other survivors. So it, after the series, it's only survivors that go into that safe place.

Right, right, exactly.

With a trained facilitator who is herself typically a survivor. In the beginning, you may not be able to do that if you don't have someone to leave, but that's how we do ours. So it's a 13 week deal. Now that doesn't, someone doesn't get full healing in 13 weeks, but they get started, it gets the movement started. And we're finding, we're on about our fourth or fifth time with it now in our church, that women will go through it again and again because each time you peel another layer of the onion back and you're with other people. But then, you know, so it just, it's a tool to get the thing started, just like the Conquer series did. Then they go into your pure desire groups, which is the longer term healing experience. And, and that, that's necessary. But if women don't have some kind of place to start the conversation, it'll never happen. And so I designed it that way so it could fit within those parameters of people's lives, where they live.

Yeah. One of the great things about what we've seen with the Conqueror series, and I'm sure you have as well, is it does not only create that space for men to get honest about their struggles and pornography use and that sort of thing within the church context, it tends to catalyze change in the conversations and, and in a challenging way. Maybe marriage is blowing up because a guy's being honest at home and truth needed to be faced. But that leads to, okay, now we're looking for help. And I think in a similar way, the Fearless series will create that kind of catalyst in a church of wow, women are finding help and now they're talking and maybe they're starting to bring up things that happen to them. They're starting to share if that happens in a community, James, or in a church. And for you also, Laura, what are ways, if we're a man or a woman listening who, maybe we didn't go through Fearless for ourselves, but we're in a church community where women are now opening up, starting to say things Share stories. What are wrong ways that we can respond to them bringing up sexual abuse? Like, what have you seen that is hurtful and harmful? And then after that, we'll ask some follow up questions about what are the right ways to respond. But let's start there. What should we not do in that situation?

Okay. That's actually fairly simple if you think about it. I think so. One, think about what you're saying before you say it. I know people, people are good. They're not basically bad. They want to be encouraging, they want to be comforting, but they aren't sometimes because they don't think. And I know from my personal experience that I mentioned, like the doctor, when I would tell people one of the things that was said to be my. By men, not my husband, of course, but was, why didn't you do something?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Oftentimes women are shocked.

They don't.

It's like, I don't know, should I have done something like I did once I figured out that I was being hurt?

Yeah.

But I have also talked to, I don't know at this point, probably hundreds of women that have been sexually traumatized. And that was, I heard that over and over, asked, what were you wearing? Why were you out? Why did you go there? What.

So immediately the blame starts getting pointed toward the moment.

It's cynical. It's a cynical lens that they take it in. Right.

Why didn't you tell your mother? Well, she knew and didn't do anything, so.

Or it was my step, or it was my stepdad that was abusing me. You know, how do you tell your mother?

Yeah, and they don't believe me.

One of the women on the Fear series.

So believe them when they tell you.

One of the women on the Fearless series that I asked that question specifically to, she ministers to women. Not. One of the women in my, that I interviewed got their help in the church. They got it outside and now they're bringing it back in. But she said all of the women that she ministers to are women who are in churches. And I say, well, why won't they get help in the church? She says, it's because I'm gonna be shamed, I'm gonna be blamed and I'm not gonna be believed. All of these women, the reason they seek outside help. Cause if I go to the church, I go to my pastor, I go to some, I'm going to be shamed, I'm going to be blamed and I'm not going to be believed. And also they look and they go, well, there's not really any help in the church.

Yeah. If they've been honest and they've been heard and even maybe the words that came back, which are always the right words. I am so sorry that happened to you. Not asking questions about it. Just be sorry that happened to that human being. Okay, so now what do we do?

Yeah.

The power of the listening ear.

Yeah. And I mean, I have this perspective on that that we have such a hard time seeing people in suffering, so we just quickly go to solving the problem. And so it's this selfish perspective that we carry into it. And I'm as guilty as anybody else, probably the worst of it. But I think that that's usually what happens, is I don't know what to do with this. I have not been in this situation before. And so I'm just gonna try to fix it, like. And then. And obviously you don't have the abuser in the room. Who do you have in the room? The one who is abused. So it's like, okay, well, let's focus on you. Right. And I mean, we were talking about this.

There's nothing to send them to.

Right, right.

I mean, they don't have money. Maybe for a counselor, you know, at least that would be something. But so they tell you, and you go, I'm so sorry that happened to you.

Well, I'll pray for you.

Yeah.

That's the end of it.

Yeah.

What do you do? Yeah.

Right, right.

That's why the church has.

The church has to have it.

They have to think strategically about this. And we think strategically about a lot of things. About Bible study, about spiritual gifts, about mission. We think very strategically about those things, but we don't think strategically about this emotional healing element in people's lives who have been hurt and have been wounded. Of course this is about the women. And we just haven't thought strategically about that. And again, the fear of series is to help a church start thinking strategically, to actually think through this is a problem. This is a tool, and this is a track that we can get on to begin to help people who have been. Have experienced this. And. And it does. It absolutely does. We just had stories after stories after stories of women who just say, you know, thank you so much for this. This has been life changing. And that's encouraging to hear that.

Yeah. Well, I like so much what you're saying that this is a group that can be run by women, for women. The pastor doesn't need to lead. And I think some pastors feel that burden of, like, well, man, I. I'VE got to become the expert on everything. If I'm gonna help anyone, it's like, no, you just need to open the door. You just need to allow this to matter and to create community, just like you said. So that when someone does come forward, not only is there grace, but there's competency. There's the grace to be a safe place, but then the competency to follow up. And what we're trying to do, and what I hear you trying to do here is equip the pastor to say, I'm so sorry that happened. We believe you. That's. That's a very, very difficult situation. And we're so glad that we have this fearless series. We'd love for you to go through it with some other women that are walking through some of the same things. And now you've got grace and competency, which leads to life transformation.

Because typically they're not going to go to the pastor expecting him to help them heal. They are going to someone that they view as an individual of respect and who is going to care to just tell the story. We need to tell our story. There's tremendous power in that. And so when he is empowered with a tool and with women in the church that will take this ministry on to say, I'm so sorry this happened to you, let me put you in a place where, with other women, you can enter into this experience of healing. What that's going to mean to a woman is going to be astronomical. Because she doesn't expect the pastor to help her heal. She knows he doesn't know anything about it. She just wants him to hear her. He wants him. She wants to know that he cares. Yeah.

Well, she probably did not go to him to tell him that story. She went to him to say, I. My marriage, My third marriage is falling apart, or I am angry all the time and I cannot figure this out. And he is not equipped enough to know. Again, I'm not a male basher. I don't do that. But except me on occasion. But what he needs to get educated on is that this is so prevalent. And most of what she's saying.

You.

Could take a direct path to the obese. In the past, she probably has no idea because she's never told anyone. And she certainly has never dealt with it because where do you do that?

Yeah.

Where do you go get help for that?

Yeah.

And so she's trying to fix all these things that are broken.

They have a root issue.

Yeah. And they're not going to the root. It's just Watering on top. And it's not doing. It's not doing anything. And for her to be able to go to and to say, these are. I'm broken. I don't get it. For him to be able to say, look at her and say, well, let me ask you, have you had abuse in your past? I don't need details. I want to send you to a group that we have. This is one thing I love about the five week. And then the eight week is five weeks is only five weeks. You can open the door for these women, many who have never told anyone before, and follow it with another group starting up. If you're able to do that, have a facilitator and are committed to it.

Yeah.

Start another one pretty quickly so that once you identify people that are hurting, they don't have to wait and wait and wait to get some help because they may go away.

Right?

Yeah. So good.

So, you know, on the positive side, let's flip that around because you said we, we would talk about what can be done. Sure. And that's very simple.

Usually our guests wait for us to ask the question, but go for it.

Yeah.

But you can't call it go. You said we're going to talk about words fail, but then we're.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So actually you did. You gave me the heads up.

Yeah.

They have to hear. And several of the women on the Ferrari series said this. One of the things that pastors got to do is got to start talking about this from the pulpit. The church needs to hear him say, this is a problem. And not only in our culture, but it's a problem within the body of Christ right here. There are women in our midst that have experienced this trauma. Never told anyone. I've never gotten help. And start just the conversation publicly like that. Second, then have a woman that is the appointed point person for these women to go to. Not him, not any male staff member, but have a woman who is caring, compassionate. It would be best if she has experienced this and had some healing. But he may not even know that. But you know, just a woman that knows how to hold someone else's hand and listen. That women will see a safe point. That person. Let that person's name be known. This is your person, ladies. You can talk to her and then say. And then have a strategy. Get a track, get. Get something to do after this happens. Because the worst thing that could happen is talk about it. Have a point person and then have nowhere for them to go after that other than now. You need to go to Counseling, like Laura said, some might not even be able to afford that. And so those three things. Talk about it. Pastor, appoint a woman and give her visibility, let them know who she is, and then get a strategy and watch what God will do.

So this is, and this question goes along with it, because not all of our listeners are pastors or leaders in churches. They're men and women who maybe have abuse in their past, maybe do not, but they also want to help create this safe place. And so, Laura, I'd ask you, just as a Christian woman who has experienced abuse, what are things that we can do? Just as laypeople, churchgoers? Maybe we volunteer, maybe we are leaders. What can we do to create the church as a safe place to talk about this?

Okay, well, let me say first of all, this was developed and we have seen it work where groups are the. Are the key. Having people together, even if it's one or two other people, shared experience is. Is amazing what God does with that in the healing experience. I also realize, and I've talked to James about that, that I realize from the women I've met, I have met women before that are like, they are not going anywhere near a church. They're not going anywhere near a group. They're not going to tell anybody. So if they hear that there's something like this they can get their hands.

On, maybe it'll help to do it individually.

Do it individually. And that is not how. We're not encouraging that. But I realize, I realize from people I know personally that if they knew that was available, they would be right on it because, like, they've spent thousands of dollars on counseling that has gone maybe nowhere. Not that all counseling is good or bad, but they need to have a safe place, even if it's in their home. Dealing with this and with all the things that have happened in our world over the past year, there needs to be that. But also, I can see very easily. I'm very practical, so I can see very easily just the women I know on my street. I would be so willing to go door to door. And I will go door to door and say, hey, I'm having this thing at my house. We're gonna do it Thursday nights as long as it's convenient for everybody. There'll be four or five of us. It's about sexual trauma and abuse on women. I'd love for you to come and listen, and if it's not for, you don't have to come again, but I would love for you to come be a part and you don't have to have been a beat. Like, I'm not asking them for their story. They can tell me. I had a woman tell me today, unsolicited, but they can tell me or not. I'll give them the freedom not to say anything. But you invite them over to your house and do a group.

Yeah, these are, you know, the shared experience part that she talked about. That's the genius. For 30 years we've been doing that.

Yes.

With these groups. We don't do it individually. We do very little one on one. There are some mentoring experiences that we do one on one. But. But for the most part, we want people in a community experience with eight, eight or ten other individuals. Because the Holy Spirit just does things.

Yeah, yeah.

He reveals things to you about yourself that you didn't even know just by hearing that other person tell their story, vice versa. And then that mutual, oh, I thought I was the only one that goes away, because I'm not the only one. And goodness pastors don't understand. I've talked about this around the country about developing this kind of hospital model, and it sounds to a pastor like that's going to be a whole lot of work for him. And I say, no, pastor, it's going to take work off of you because this is body ministry. The people have to do this work or you don't have enough staff to do these groups and to lead these groups. And so Fearless series is one, just one expression of that. But we have 30 different types of groups in our church. 30 different types of groups they're running year round. We have groups every night of the week, seven days a week here to fit people's schedules. And people come to that because there's that shared experience. It's just powerful.

Yeah, we've seen that so much with groups that it breaks people out of the power of shame and isolation. Because when I can share my whole story and find acceptance and empathy and love and other people doing the same, like, that's what changes us. And so what I hear you saying is if someone could get this series and watch it by themselves, that would be good. If they could get the series and watch it with a group of others, that would be better. Or if they could get it and their church is taking women through it as a community, that's best. But any option, like wherever you're at, start with the option that's available to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The genius of what you guys have done with your pure desire groups is that they're not all located in churches, but you know where all of them are located. So when something comes up in a local church, you guys are able to point them to a particular group in their community. I don't think I told you this story, Nick, but when I was down at the sales conference, a man came up to me to my table where I was showing the Fearless series. And he looked at me and I said, hello, how are you? And he says, you don't remember me, do you? I don't remember if I told you this story or not, but I said, well, no, I don't think I do. And he started kind of talking and I said, you're a physician, aren't you? He said, yes, I am. I said, I remember you. Four years ago, he and his wife. He's a doctor in a community about two and a half miles hours from our church. He got caught pornography. And they started looking for a place where they could get help. They couldn't. He found our church. They drove all the way to city on the Hill on Sunday morning. Came up to me after church and introduced themselves, told me their story. Very quickly I turned them over to my guy on my staff that is head of all of our groups. And we found them a pure desire group that was about 30 minutes from his town, I think Brian called y' all and said, have you got anything within driving distance? He got into that group. It was not in a church. He went through the entire seven pillars a year. He now is leading groups in his community. His wife is a life coach and the reason they came to the SEALs conference is because of her, for her benefit. And he just came with her. And I went, oh my soul, how thankful I am that you came up and reminded me of this. That's awesome.

That's so cool.

That is.

It's an affirmation of what you do, but it's an affirmation of the power of this group experience.

Yep.

100% providing that and the church, you know, more of your groups need to be able to. Church needs to open their door to Yalls groups. They just need to open the door to these community experiences because that's where healing happens. Yeah, but that was. That was a phenomenal story. I meant to tell you that. I forgot to that. Wow. I thought, wow, this is so cool. His marriage has been saved.

Totally.

That's awesome. And he was on the end. I want to kind of throw a different last question in here. Maybe Trevor has another follow up question. But I'm just thinking about our listeners and the number of people that this is honestly not a topic. We've even done a full episode on very much on our podcast, and we're over 200 episodes. And so they're maybe hearing some things that are tapping into, you know, trauma and pain from way back there. And there's a part of them just going, I don't want to revisit it. I really don't want to bring it up. I'd rather they don't know if they want to take next steps. Like, they're maybe just thinking through, should I do this? Do I want to? Maybe they don't feel safe going to a pastor or a church. What kind of encouragement or direction would you give to that person that's having some stuff stirred up and is just trying to think, what do I do with this? What would you say to that person that could be male or female?

I would use the words of one of the women on the Fearless series. She said views sexual abuse as cancer of the soul. It has to be dealt with. If it's not dealt with, it will destroy you. And I like to say to people, if you have not dealt with your past, as painful as that is, and we all know who been through that, it's very painful. It costs you something, as Marnie Fury says. But if you have not dealt with your past, it is not your past, it is your present and it is your future. So for the person who has been wounded to say, I don't want to do that. I just want to put that in the past. It's not going to stay there.

Right?

It's the Night of the Living Dead. It keeps coming back to life. And so the encouragement is as much as you fear it, as much as you dread it, it has to be done. Because it's a cancer of the soul.

And what I would say to you, if this is you that he that Nick is talking about, it's pulling a band aid off or a scab off that just continues to bleed, that never will heal it. It gets harder before it gets better.

You need to know that it always does.

But until you are willing and listen, you are a woman, you are capable, you are strong, you are brave. You can put a freaking child into this world. So listen to me, no matter what you've been told, you are able to walk through this, walk through it to get on the other side.

Amen.

Stop drowning in the middle of it, because it will always drown you. Eventually things will get better for a minute. They will. They'll get better for a minute. And then you'll find yourself there again. End it by starting the process. And it is a process, but it does get better. God heals the. God heals the wounds of the broken heart. And he cares about you, not just other people. He cares about you.

People are going to stop asking me to come and they're going to start asking her.

Yeah, absolutely. So good.

Yeah.

So, I mean, sexual abuse is happening. It's happening in the church, it's happening in our families, and we don't have the luxury to avoid it anymore. And, you know, as you guys have been sharing, one thing that comes to mind. You know, James, you talked about it from the pulpit that if we don't talk about it in the church, there is this shame that's carried that I'm the only one. And that's one of the. That is one of the biggest, I think, most powerful weapons of the enemy is. And I think. I can't remember. It might even have been you, James, on the Conquer series. I can't remember. But inflicting everybody with the same disease and then convincing them that they all are the only one. And we have a responsibility to help drop the shame for people, to help bring the message that this is something that happens and that there is hope. And what's beautiful is that the Fearless series is a great first step to experiencing that hope. And that's exactly what it's for.

It's an entryway. Yeah, exactly.

And so you can get the series and correct me If I'm wrong, it's fs4women.com the number4women.com. And you can get your copy, get the study guide and the workbook and start a healing movement in your community because this is a movement that your community needs. James, Laura, you guys are amazing. Thank you so much for the series. Thank you for your time today. And honestly, I can, like smell the passion from where I sit right in Oregon with you guys in Texas when it comes to this. So thank you so much.

Well, it may be oil that you're smelling. You know, Texas is the great oil state.

And I have to mention what I'm looking at, I'm looking at two young men. Men that care.

Yeah.

That means about the women around them. Thank you for doing that. That will change things.

It will.

Thank you for calling me young.

I was thinking that you're younger than me.

Yes, yes.

People that used to look old look young now.

That's right.

I used to have two eyes, so.

Well, again, thank you guys.

Thank you.

Wherever you're at on your journey, pure desire is here to help create a roadmap for your height healing. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual brokenness, go to PureDesire.org and let's start the healing journey today. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Each week we put out new content to help you on the road to freedom from the effects of sexual brokenness and betrayal trauma. And lastly, never stop being healthy.