Healing from Church Scandals: Lee Grady on Abuse, Restoration, and Compassion

0:00 Hello everyone, this is Stephen Strang, and welcome to the Strang Report podcast. Today my guest is J. Lee Grady. You probably know him from the days that he was editor of Charisma Magazine, and he continues to write the column, Fire in My Bones. Today he heads up a ministry called the Mordecai Project, and we're gonna talk about that, but even more importantly, we're gonna talk about some of the scandals that are happening in the church, particularly at Gateway Church in Dallas. You wanna stay tuned to hear my very important and very compassionate conversation with Lee Grady, and if you have been hurt in this way, we pray at the end that you don't wanna miss that very special prayer.

0:46 Stay tuned. ["Fire in My Bones"] ["Fire in My Bones"] Lee Grady, I appreciate you being on my podcast. It's good to see you after all this time. Of course, we've worked together for many years, and the thing that I wanted to talk to you about today, and get your views as a Christian journalist and as a minister in your own right, is the different scandals that seem to be dominating the news, and of course, scandals are not new. By any means, but everyone seems to be talking about Robert Morris. What do you think about that situation?

1:28 Well, first of all, Steve, it's really nice to be with you and to be in this new building. You know, when I worked with you so many years, we were in a different place, so it's been great to visit here. And all those years that you and I worked together, we had to cover some scandals. There was quite a few back in the 90s, in the 2000s. And I hear people today sometimes wondering, why are there so many scandals in the church? But really, that's not anything new. We know that there's been scandals for as long as I can remember, and you go back even further and you remember it.

2:12 But now we are facing this really, really tragic situation in Dallas with Pastor Robert Morris and Gateway Church. And of course, that's just come on the heels of what has happened with International House of Prayer and Mike Bickel. And so, you know, we feel very close to these situations, because I know you know these people more than I, better than I do, and it's sad. And the church right now is reeling over this. And I know people who go to Gateway Church in Dallas, who are hurting bad.

2:55 I mean, this is sad, you know, when you look up to a minister, Robert Morris is a very gifted Bible teacher. People all over the world have been listening to his sermons. And then we found out that, you know, he had this moral failure years ago that he had talked about, and he actually went through a two year period of rehabilitation for. But then we found out that that person, that woman that he was with was actually only 12 years old when that relationship started. So that is a game changer.

3:36 It makes this situation so much worse. And I think we are all, you know, trying to figure out how we're supposed to process this. It's hard, because we don't, you know, Christians, we don't like to deal with these kinds of things. It's difficult, but we're gonna have to face it. And I feel like the Lord's been showing me some of the things that we are gonna have to face as we maybe step back, look at it, and maybe make some policy changes, some heart changes as we go forward. Well, this is awkward and difficult for me because I've known Robert Morris for 20 years fairly well.

4:23 I've been blessed by the ministry of Gateway. I would have never suspected this. I did know that part of his testimony was that he had a period of restoration from some immorality. Of course, he wasn't specific that it was pedophilia. And of course, that's illegal. We don't approve of that at all. Our heart goes out to the victim, even though I obviously don't know who she is. At the same time, I don't want to be judgemental of Robert. It did happen an awful long time ago. I just don't understand sometimes why God uses someone.

5:05 All this happened before Gateway was started. And God knew it, yet somehow he blessed the ministry. It could have come out. And we're not really here to speculate on all those things. But there are an awful lot of good people who live good Christian lives and pass away. I think of Jack Hayford recently. We don't say goody goody, there was no scandal. I mean, we just thank God for their life in ministry. There's really relatively few scandals. It is a big deal when there is one. And in an odd kind of way, that's good, because when something becomes too common, it's not news anymore.

5:49 Sure. You know, at one time, car wrecks were big news. But now, there's so many car wrecks that unless it's extremely bad, it doesn't even make the news. And when scandals are so common that nobody pays any attention, I mean, that's bad in a different kind of way. But I think what we want to talk about today is how the church deals with this. And I know in your role as editor of Charisma and the role I've had over the years, we've had to deal with this. And we've always tried to deal with it in a redemptive kind of way, and help people understand. And also, I think there's a certain aspect of holding up a standard, that we don't want to be accused of sweeping these things under the rug.

6:39 And I'm concerned that as a church, we don't really know how to deal with this. Within the Protestant church, and certainly within Pentecostalism or the Charismatic movement, it's very fragmented. There's not like one organization. I know that like with the Southern Baptists, there's been some scandals that they've had to deal with in recent years. And of course, the Roman Catholic Church. But in our circles, everyone's just kind of fragmented. This ministry, that ministry. I mean, even Gateway is a independent ministry. It's a huge one, but it's independent ministry. So how do you think we deal with the victims and the discipline of those who, of course, in Robert's case, that his church elders asked him to step down, which he did.

7:29 But how do we deal with this as a church? Well, I think we're gonna have to step back, Steve, and look at sexual abuse, look at that issue. And I think we have to realize that a few years ago, even in our circles, we wouldn't say that sexual abuse was right. We know it was a sin. But the way people treated it, even 25 years ago, is different than maybe we view it today. And the situation with Robert Morris, very tragic, that back in the late 80s, he began this relationship with a minor.

8:12 And then when it came out, and I don't know, we don't really know who knew the specifics, because we know that Robert Morris went through a two-year rehabilitation process. But if other leaders were involved in that process, that should have been turned over to the police. That should have been reported, because that is a crime. And it wasn't. So then this victim was left, you know, she was just kind of there, and it looked like the church was rehabilitating Robert, getting him back into the ministry in two years.

8:57 But then what did we do for her? And I think today, what's different is that we realize how serious sexual abuse is. We realize how traumatizing it is to the victim, and that the church has got to wake up and face the fact that this requires major, major healing. It requires attention, it requires prayer, and we have to have compassion for the victim. It's not just about getting the perpetrator restored, it's about the victim. And we tend to forget them in the past.

9:38 I think now there's more of an emphasis on that. And so this situation, even though it's horrible, I think it's helping us wake up to the need that's out there because there are a lot of Christians in our churches who have been abused. Some of them maybe have never had any ministry whatsoever for it. And I think that this is a wake-up call for us. Well, let's talk about that because you have an interesting perspective about abuse. Tell me about it. Yeah, so I've written about this in Charisma in my weekly column a couple of times, and I've been more open about it publicly in the last few years.

10:26 And that was that I have my own abuse story. I wouldn't compare it to anything like what this woman went through because the abuse that I experienced was, I would call it a one-time incident, but I was abused when I was seven years old by an older boy at a Boy Scout camp. And when that happened, of course I was seven, so I mean, I didn't really even know what was going on. I was very naive, I was very innocent. And so my response to abuse is actually very similar to what a lot of abuse victims do.

11:06 I just pushed all of that pain and that confusion and that trauma, I just pushed it down as far as I could. I didn't wanna think about it. I didn't wanna talk about it to anybody. A seven-year-old, how does a seven-year-old process that? So I didn't tell my parents, I didn't tell any religious leader, I didn't tell the family of the guy who did this to me. I just totally put on very thick body armor and pretended like it never happened, which doesn't work. I mean, when you do that, you're gonna feel a lot of insecurity, you're going to feel confusion, you're going to deal with a lot of shame.

11:52 And so, I mean, if I had not later in life dealt with that, I don't know what would have happened to me. But thankfully, when I was 18 years old, right before I went to college, I had a profound experience with the Holy Spirit. I got baptized in the Holy Spirit in sort of the tail end of the Charismatic Movement. And after that, it was like the Holy Spirit was working inside of me, because when the Spirit fills you, he starts changing you, he starts healing your heart. And so, I eventually went to one of my mentors, and I just said, I've got to talk to you about something that happened to me when I was a child, because it's bothering me.

12:42 So I told him, he had nothing but compassion for me. There was no judgment, there was no blaming me, because a victim of abuse usually thinks it was their fault. That's one of the things that goes on in your mind. You think that it was, you caused it. So this man ministered to me, prayed for me, and seriously, it felt like 150 pounds came off of me that day, and my life was changed as a result. So, you know, I went to college, I got married, I had my family, I started my career. Those things were not, I wasn't dragging that around with a ball and chain anymore.

13:28 But that is how it is for a lot of victims. Then- Haven't you been able to help other people who are dealing with some of the same things? Yes, that's what I was going to say is that, thankfully, God can turn your pain into something good. I mean, he can use your worst nightmare, he can use your experiences, bad experiences, to help other people who have the same thing. And so when I came to work for you in 1992, and I started working at Charisma Magazine, and eventually became the editor, and you know, after several years here, God called me into the ministry, and after I wrote my first book, Ten Lies the Church Tells Women, I started going overseas.

14:19 I was primarily there to minister to women who felt called to ministry, and didn't have that opportunity. But when I went in those environments, those countries, developing countries, I found that there's so much abuse that has happened. Women who are physically abused, emotionally abused, and sexually abused. And my message, you know, was really aimed at them. And I was able to have compassion for those women, and I was able to understand their pain and bring healing. So the doors flew wide open. I've been to 39 countries now, taking that message, started a ministry where we do a lot of practical things to help women who are abused.

15:10 And then the door even began to open for me to minister to men who have had this kind of experience. And it's amazing how many men deal with the shame of sexual abuse, but men are much less inclined to be open about it, because there's such a stigma, especially Christian men, because in our culture, it's like, we don't talk about that, it's too embarrassing. Some men just hide their pain. And then I've had the amazing opportunities to just tell my story, and then boom, you start seeing the healing take place.

15:53 One time I was in South Africa, this has been probably eight years ago, and I was gonna be speaking at a men's conference, and the Holy Spirit told me, I want you to share the story of your sexual abuse. And I did not wanna do that. I had never done it publicly before. And I hadn't written about it either by that point. But I knew that the Lord was telling me to do that. So I told the story, and then when we had altar ministry that night, many men came to the altar for prayer, and I went down as one of the prayer counselors, there were many other men helping.

16:35 But every man that I prayed for that night, they said to me, I was sexually abused when I was young or when I was a teenager, and I have never told anybody before until tonight. And so I thought, well, see, my testimony and just being open about that gave them permission to reach out for help. They need to know that it's okay. It's that it's safe to do that. And so I have seen that happen multiple times now since, and of course I wrote about it.

17:17 I'm much more open about it than I ever thought I would be because it doesn't bother me anymore. It does, you know, I don't care about anybody judging me because I'm free from that shame and all that came with it. So, but I'm very burdened, of course, for men or women who were victims of sexual abuse. So now when I hear about someone like this woman in doubt that was with Robert Morris, I have more compassion for that. And, you know, I've heard people even, you know, say very mean things about that woman, like is she trying to cash in on this, or, you know, does she have some bad motive?

18:06 I don't think that should be our first response when we hear about a victim of sexual abuse. I think we need to have compassion. When Jesus looked out over the multitude, it says he saw the people and they were, they were like sheep without a shepherd. And it says that they were distressed. And one of the words in that verse can also mean abused. He saw them that they were abused. And he had, it says he was moved with compassion. And I think that's what God's actually asking us to do now, that the church will start having real compassion for victims of this, that we're not just judging, we're not just trying to protect the person who did it.

18:53 Of course, we want to minister to them as well. I don't wish anything ill on Robert Morris or anybody else who had that experience. But we have to minister to the victims. And of course, out of your own pain and out of your compassion has grown a ministry, the Mordecai Project. And I've had the privilege to have kind of ringside seat because I've known you since the days when you were an editor, a journalist. I remember when that book first came out and saw the doors that began to open in terms of ministry. And one thing led to another, and you started the Mordecai Project.

19:36 Why don't you tell us why you picked that name instead of calling it the J. Lee Grady Ministry. Yeah, and there was somebody who asked me to call it Lee Grady Ministries, and I said, no way, that's just not going to work for me. It is so special, Steve, and I'm so grateful to be here today in this building with you because Charisma gave me the launching pad for that ministry. I was here for years working at Charisma, and then when I wrote the first book and I started traveling and taking that message out, at the beginning it was really primarily about empowering women to step up and discover who they are and to get healed of those things that held them back and also to overcome the religious restrictions that had been put on women.

20:31 And the Mordecai name, that came from the story of Mordecai and Esther because Mordecai, he pushed Esther into her position. He kept encouraging her to respond to the call of God, and even when she was afraid, he was encouraging her to do that. So that's how I view myself in terms of, I've just been a Mordecai in the background pushing these women into their places. But right here in the Charisma building, I wrote that book, Ten Lies the Church Tells Women, and then I started getting the invitations to speak, and you were very gracious to let me go and speak and still work for Charisma.

21:21 So I did both for a while until the ministry part of it just grew so much that I couldn't continue to do both. And now you've got ministries in a number of countries on several continents, in Africa, South America, Asia. We have women's shelters or vocational training centers or women's empowerment centers or girls' homes. We have in 11 countries now. There's 19 projects currently in 11 countries in Africa, Latin America, and Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India. And I don't know where that's going to end up, but it all started here.

22:02 So thank you, Steve, for believing in me. Thank you for letting me have that freedom to do that. And thank you for what you do, because you've ministered to so many people. And I know that some of the people who are watching probably are feeling something right now and maybe want to help. So I would encourage them to Google Mordecai Project or LeeGrady.com. They can go to LeeGrady.com, themordecaiproject.org. It's the same address. I mean, both addresses go to the same place, and they can learn about what we're doing overseas. And over the years, Christian Life Missions, which is our nonprofit, has worked with you a number of years ago, and the Readers of Charisma and other donors helped you build a place in India.

22:49 And if anything comes in through Christian Life Missions, there's some information on our website. Of course, we'll pass that along. But my wife and I have been privileged to be partners and will continue to be. And as we wrap up this short podcast, I want to pray. And I want to pray for the victims of abuse. And somehow, before we started, we prayed that the Lord would somehow use this podcast. I believe there's people that are listening and watching who needed to hear this today. And so I want to give you a last word to say, and then ask that you pray, and I'll join with you in prayer.

23:33 Yeah, I want to mention to all those who are listening that it's very important for us to be open and vulnerable about our pain. James 5 16 is one of my life verses. It says, Confess your sins to one another so that you may be healed. You know, a lot of times we talk about confessing our sin to the Lord. 1 John 1 9 says, Confess your sins to Jesus. He will be faithful and righteous to forgive us. But confessing our sins to each other is not something that a lot of people like to do.

24:14 Many Christians just sort of live in perpetual guilt over stuff that they did years ago. And that's because we haven't practiced this principle. And recently I was in a church in North Carolina doing a men's event. There's about 150 men there. And the Lord gave me a word of knowledge on the first night that there was a man in the room who was responsible for a woman having an abortion. And I said that this person was dealing with a lot of guilt about that.

24:54 I had a sense that it was a long time ago. And I just said, You really need to come up to the altar tonight and confess that. Well, then many men came to the altar to get prayer for a lot of things. So I didn't know at first who was responding to that word. But before the night was over, this older gentleman came up to me. He was in his 70s and he was crying. And he said to me that he was the person I was addressing in that word of knowledge. And he said that more than 50 years ago, he had gotten a girl pregnant when he was 18.

25:36 And that this young woman wanted to have an abortion. And he didn't want that, but that's what she wanted. And so he had lived with guilt for that because abortion can cause a lot of shame. And he had never told anyone ever until that night. So the next morning, what really surprised me was he came back to the morning meeting and he got up in front of everybody and told these men what had happened. He told the testimony.

26:16 He said that he even went home that night before and told his wife because she didn't know. And this man was smiling and it was really literally like hundreds of pounds of weight had come off of him. So what that teaches me is that a lot of believers carry heavy, heavy burdens. And anybody who's listening today who maybe you have a secret like that, whether it's sexual abuse that was done to you, and that's not your sin, that was a sin that was perpetrated on you, but we still need to open up and get, be honest about that and get healed from it.

27:00 Or there may be other things that you're dealing with, but I would like to pray that the Holy Spirit will heal those people. So, Father, we pray right now for anyone who's listening to this podcast today who is dealing with guilt or shame because of something that they did or because of something that was done to them. We specifically pray for those who have been sexually abused or emotionally abused or even physically abused. And Lord, we pray that they will not just suffer in silence, but that they will open up their hearts, that they will come forward, that they will talk to somebody that they trust about this pain.

27:45 And then, Lord, I know that you are going to lift that heavy load off of them. And I pray that chains will break. I pray that strongholds of shame will be shattered in the name of Jesus as we simply bring our pain to you and to someone else who will listen to us and pray for us. And we just thank you for the healing that you are releasing to the people tonight. And Lord, I also pray that we will, all of us, will be carriers of your healing to others. And may you cause the Church of Jesus Christ in this nation to be more concerned about victims of abuse, that we will have the message for them, that we will have the freedom for them, that we will have the healing for them.

28:32 And Lord, we pray that you would use the Church to bring healing to all kinds of victims of abuse, Lord, in Jesus' name. And Lord, I just pray a prayer of agreement. I know that there's power in the prayer of agreement, and I just agree with what Lee has prayed. And thank you, Lord, for Lee and his life and his ministry and the Mordecai Project and the hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people that are being helped. And Lord, I just believe that you are somehow using this podcast. Maybe people will share it with others where they know they need to hear this testimony and need to hear about recovering from abuse or confessing to one another.

29:19 Lord, we pray this in the name of Jesus and give you all the praise and all the glory. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Steve. Thank you for watching to the end. I hope that prayer ministered to you. Now, Lee and I, before we started, we just prayed that this podcast would minister if it's just one person. It's important, and it was worth it. I hope that you share this with others, especially if you know someone who'd be ministered to. I also encourage you to subscribe to the Strang Report podcast if you don't already. I'm thankful that our subscriptions are going up every single day. And hit the little bell so you're notified when we're on live Tuesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

30:07 And also, as I mentioned earlier, support the work of Lee Grady and the Mordecai Project. You can find out about it. We told you that you can go directly to his ministry, which is MordecaiProject.org. Or you can give through Christian Life Missions, which is the nonprofit that Charisma Media has worked with for more than 40 years. Thank you for watching, and until next time, God bless you.