*Warning: This podcast involves stories of sexual and spiritual abuse. Please take care when listening.
What’s it called?
Lead Us Not
Where’s the name from?
Christian leaders are called to lead with love. What happens when a leader abuses and exploits the vulnerable?
What about it makes me wanna listen?
As the Church comes to grips with and responds to the reality that many of our spaces that should have been safe were not and that some of our leaders who appeared to be good shepherds were anything but, we have to figure out how abusive leaders have shaped our faith, how that might distort our understanding of God and how to move forward.
Is it Banter and filler or does it get right into the kaupapa?
The podcast has a lot of heavy content with each episode building on the one before to tell a long-form story. However, each episode is a reasonable length of around forty minutes.
Who’s one person that should listen to this?
Every priest or pastor who can’t grasp the depth of their own hypocrisy.
So, of course, no one on that list is going to listen. You’re going to have to listen for them and then make sure to blow the whistle.
Which Bible character would have made this?
Mary. Have you read the Magnificat?
Does it make you wanna ka whawhai tonu?
Part of me feels a little tired and hopeless listening to another story of another Christian leader who was not what everyone thought them to be; another leader who used their position to manipulate and abuse vulnerable people. But there is another part of me that knows the church can be a place of healing instead of a place of wounding and it is this that makes me not want to give up.
Bangin’ quote from the podcast
“…The New York Times called him ‘A Savior of people on the margins’; America Magazine called him, ‘A living Saint,’ and personally, I’d gotten into the habit of calling him ‘a prophet of tenderness.’ Then, in February of 2020, news broke of his abusive behaviour. ”
“All too often charismatic leadership goes unchecked. Churches and organisations can easily become dependent on a charismatic leader both financially and ideologically: ‘If he goes down, we all go down with him, and then we can’t go on carrying out this important work in the world.’”
Check it out
You can listen to the podcast here
B.C.