117. Let Us Prey Review Part 2

Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Seyfried and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. Thank you for being back with us today. We're going through our review of Let Us Pray. And we're just going to start out with just a couple of quick announcements. We've got Israel coming up March of 2025. We've got people that are over there in Israel right now. They're going to tell us that the estimates are that by the time our trip rolls around, it'll be safe to travel in Israel. And we're going to stay on top of that. But we are going back. I cannot wait to go back to Israel. So excited. And man, I'm just chomping at the bit. I still post stuff about it every day because I want to go. And then, of course, we've got new things coming up. We've got new series that we're going to talk about here. We've got a lot of great things planned for the podcast coming up in the next few weeks. I'm really excited about it. Me and James have been working for months on the new schedule for this year. And we're looking forward to it. We've got a lot of good interviews coming up. And I just can't wait to get started. Yeah. I'll say one thing on that, and then we'll get started. John did a lot of the planning and prepping. I just sort of came on and talked. Now that he's left, I'm doing a lot of that. Me and you both are. I didn't realize how much work it took into actually planning out a schedule, lining up interviews. I mean, it's just a lot of work. And so I hope you guys enjoy what we've got coming up in the next couple of weeks. And I know it's going to be good. I'm enjoying it as we're planning it. And so, yeah. I can't wait to have John back as a special guest. Right, right. We've got to get on that. We've got to line him up. We will. We will. So what we're talking about, the format we're using when it comes to this review, as you can see from our last episode, was the good, the bad, and the ugly. The bad was the things that we disagreed with, and we addressed that last episode. The good, or, you know, James came at it from the viewpoint of the good things that we do say are good things that were mentioned. And then I'm hitting it from the good things as in statements that I agreed with. And we're halfway through that. We're going to finish that up. And then this episode, we will get into the ugly. So rolling right into the things that I agreed with was the statement that a lot of IFB churches worship Jack Hiles. That was something that was mentioned. And, you know, while I do want don't want to brush and say every IFB church out there worships Jack Hiles, at the same time, I do want to say there are a lot of Jack Hiles worshiping IFB churches out there that, you know, that put the man up on this pedestal. And I've seen pastors pray to Jack Hiles. There are men that still venerate him and lift him up. And everything that coming out against Jack Hiles was a lie and all this bad stuff. He never did anything wrong. You know, and that's just not the case. And so I did agree with the house worship that that was going on. Did you did you experience any of that house worship while you were in the IFB, James? So in my church growing up, I did not hear the name Jack Hiles until I was a senior in high school. Now, my mom said that Jack Hiles came to my church when I was a kid and she knew about him. But when we changed over leaderships when I was, you know, five, six years old, the style of the church changed. We went more of like uppity country club style Baptist, independent Baptist church, not camp meeting independent Baptist church. So Jack Hiles's name went by the wayside. We were more, I guess you would say, like a Bob Jones temple. You know, a lot of Robertson was part of it. So Jack Hiles was not mentioned until, like I said, my senior year. But then I went to a Hiles Anderson church plant down at Erica Pacey's church, which came out of Jack Hiles. So that was where I got my most experience at Jack Hiles. But then even when I went to my first ministry, it was like, hey, we're not we don't mention names like that. Like we just people wouldn't know who they are. So we didn't. So so for me, it wasn't a big, big thing in my church. OK. Eric made this statement. He said that, you know, the King James version, you know, it's hard to understand. It reads like Shakespeare. And so a lot of IFB pastors use that as an, you know, an opportunity to manipulate the text and manipulate people. And I wholeheartedly agree, Eric, making that statement. I wholeheartedly agree 100 percent with that statement that people use the King James Bible. They use the archaic old language to try to manipulate. They bring things, you know, out of context and try to make the Bible say what they want it to say. And that can lead to abuse because you're going against a lot of times. Pastors will get on there. You know, the man of God will get on this, you know, his his pet peeve. He'll bring a verse out of context. He'll manipulate scripture. Scripture is always going to stand, you know, against abuse. And using the Bible to justify abuse and to justify this power grab that so many pastors have. And that, you know, these pastors that think that they're above, you know, you know, above falling and above, you know, answering to anybody. And, you know, they are the dictator of the church. And all of that is justified through manipulation of the text. And so I 100 percent agree with that statement that Eric made. So another thing that they talked about was infant corporal punishment. I know if you were to listen to the documentary and hear that, how weird and awful that that would sound. But I do have to say that it is a real thing. I heard this growing up. It was preached. And the statement that was told was, you know, break the child's will, not the child's spirit. And I didn't know I'd heard my pastor say that, but I didn't know until I grew up and got to House Anderson. And even afterward that that was like a Bill Gothard teaching. I didn't even know who Gothard was until I was an adult. But as as as awful as that sounds, that is a real thing that I've heard and experienced and heard preached. And so that's all I have, James, as far as stuff that was said that that, you know, I agreed with was, you know, not they're not good things, but there are real things. If and if you wanted to hit, you know, mention or comment on any of those, you can. And then if if so and if not, you can lead us into the ugly portion of our episode. Yeah. So, Brett, at this point, let's go into what is the ugly side of what was done. And this is the stuff that, you know, the documentary, I think, did phenomenal on of just pointing out the abuse and the ugliness of it. Um, I want to start out by saying that the seeing the the pictures of the 12 year olds, 14 year olds, you know, my oldest son is 10. My daughter is going to be 12 and four years. And to think that someone would abuse my daughter like that infuriates me, makes me so mad because this is daughters that have been abused and they're been covered up and no one has been charged for it. And it's just it's disgusting. It's ugly. I abhor it. And again, I want to thank these ladies for coming out and saying what they've said and presenting their case. Um, the the shunning of women, the the one of the moms that, um, was her daughter was abused and she sort of came forward a little bit. And then just this shunning from the pulpit shunning in the church. No one wanted to talk to her. People were going the other way in the store. Uh, just was heartbreaking to see that and to hear that and to think, man, this is, this should never be done. The church is the refuge. The church is the hope and the help of, of the society. And they're being shunned, uh, was just ugly and nasty. Uh, I've got tons more, but Brad, I'm going to. That was, that was Kathy. Um, Kathy was just shunned for, you know, coming out and saying anything. And the fact that she felt like after she said it and she, you know, was sitting down with, with Tammy Goddard and listen to her talk and blame her and her just thinking, why, why did I say something? And then, and then the way that her mom, uh, you know, reacted to that, punishing her and making her paint the barn. And then everybody just, you know, talking, you know, you know, kind of shunning her, even, you know, fellow kids, her age, or just, you know, oh, it's your fault. Our favorite assistant pastor had to leave. Yeah. And so it's just, it was, it was really, really ugly. And my heart goes out to her for having to go through that. Yeah. The, uh, the grooming and the, uh, coverup was ugly. The sexual abuse and the coverup that was done. Um, I just, again, I hate it. The, the, the, uh, the one girl who, uh, who never really had a father figure, can't remember her name. And she said she got her, I think it was Kathy who got in the car and the youth pastor gave her a present. She opened it up and it was the teddy bear that the other friends had that she never had. And she just was like, oh, I finally got something like basically that my dad had gotten me. And then all of a sudden that turned into this sexual favors and there was something else in the bag, some panties. Sick. Just sickening. So disgusting to think this is a pastor. This is someone who handles the word of God. This is someone who gets up and preaches and teaches the word of God and is doing this to a little girl in his vehicle. It's so sick. The group, like grooming it, it, and it, it just, it's like, it's not only disgusting that how would you even think to do that in the same bag? Like this one, like preying on her vulnerability and just, you know, this, the definition of a predator. Yeah. And, uh, it's just, oh, it's so, it's so sickening. Yeah. And infuriating. Yeah. One of the things also I wrote down was the abuse of power. Um, you know, pastors are given a, an extent of power. Like we, we do have a responsibility from God to shepherd the flock. And when that power is abused, the way these people abuse this power is disgusting. It's wrong. It's ugly. Um, and, uh, you know, I just, there is something messed up in a person's mind to do the things that were done. And, um, continue on in that. And I, and I hate it. Um, I hate it for them. Um, the last thing I'll say, and I'll turn it over to you before I have one other thing to say, but I'll let you say some things. Um, is the moving from one church to another and the leadership knows and doesn't tell. I'll give a practical illustration. Um, a couple of years ago in our County, actually the County beside where I was at pastor, uh, embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uh, it was a Southern Baptist church, very large church. Um, he embezzled in a way that, um, he had his own nonprofit and the church was giving to his nonprofit, even though it was his. Um, and then right before he left, he cashed out the church's bank account because he was the signer of the bank into his nonprofit, left the church with like a thousand dollars in the bank, sold the school for a dollar, all the buildings and everything. Signed them over to another organization and then left, left the church like this. Just horrible, horrible. Okay. He goes from North Carolina to Texas because it was a mega church in Texas that wanted him. So what does the church do? They call the former church, the church that he took all this money from and said, Hey, can we get a reference to call the chairman of the deacons? We need a reference in this guy. We see he left your church. What's what's going on there? The chairman of the deacons told the other church, everything that happened. This is what the other church said. Um, we really like him. And so we're going to go and hire him anyways. One, that's total idiotic that they would do that. But two, they knew that he did wrong and they still continued. The problem is, is we don't ever tell those wrong things. And this is what happened here. The leadership knew that it was wrong. John Jenkins knew that it was wrong. Bruce Goddard knew that it was wrong. Jack House knew that they were doing wrong. And yet they continued to move them from one place to another and didn't tell anyone. Didn't tell the leadership, didn't tell the police, didn't tell anyone. And it's wrong on so many levels. Just imagine you're a mother and you go to a pastor like John Jenkins. And listen, I went to House Anderson for two and a half years. So I heard John Jenkins preach a lot. He was right there in Michigan, close to House Anderson. While I was there in college, he was one of my favorite preachers that I would that I would listen to while I was there. So I heard this man preach a lot. And just imagine you go to a pastor like John Jenkins to tell him about this abuse. And then he says the words, I'm not surprised. Oh, man. Because he had already knew about it. And you look at the timeline. Him saying something could have could have prevented this. And we've got to speak up, if anything, just to get these, you know, we've got to hold these pastors accountable so they know that it's not OK to sweep things under the rug like this. Right. You know, there may like we said last episode, they're mandated reporters. They have to speak about this. And, you know, I've recently been on Twitter and I have seen current IFB pastors come out on Twitter like bad sermon clips as as posted a couple of clips. And these preachers are blaming the victims, blaming the survivors and saying, oh, well, she didn't want to go out there. She shouldn't have got on the plane and and flew out there. She was 14 years old. Right. Right. How can you blame a 14 year old for something like that? And then this abuser, especially when they're 14 and that pastor's manipulating for that 14 year old to be on that plane. Right. Exactly. I need her here. My wife's going to labor. She was a great asset while we were there. You know, you feel value. You feel like your daughter's got value and you're going to help this person because this person was impactful in your life. Why wouldn't you help them? And then to know all what's going on. Yeah. And then for Aaron, Aaron Willand, one of the abusers, you know, for him to only get two years and 10 months for one of those offenses is unreal. You know, he should have been placed under the jail. And in the last episode, he did get up to 40 years for a different infraction with the same victim. And so, you know, hopefully he'll spend as much. He'll spend almost 40 years behind bars is kind of what I'm hoping for. It's just awful. The things that the things that he did. But man, one of the things that surprised me so much, and maybe you can comment on this as well, is when when the blind eye movement would have a meeting and you have all these women. They discussed their abuse and they're all from the same church. Yeah. It's just mind boggling how all I mean, because it shows a systemic problem. It shows there's a bad issue when you have all these women and they're in a group and they're all from the same church. It just shows a really, really big problem. Yeah, I agree as well. And again, that does go back to if they portrayed the Jack House circle correctly, it would show that this this circle from this organization, not the necessarily he founded. He was the flagship pastor. And from there, this stemmed this epidemic of abuse, cover up, abuse of power from there. Exactly. The reason why you can trace all of these back to Jack House, because that's where it came from. Yeah. In that sense. You can do that without broad brushing. Yeah. And this is the segues. Perfect. Brett. I'm glad you said that because they interviewed Jamie House, David House daughter, which would have been Jack House's granddaughter. Now, I don't know if they didn't go into her story on purpose. Maybe they're going to go in the next series. If they do a let it pray to let us pray to a second edition of this, maybe they'll go with her story and go deeper. But this is a firsthand account of the granddaughter of Jack House, David House's daughter. And she mentioned the child that was abused and I believe killed. And her story is so powerful. And I don't know if maybe she didn't disclose as much because she didn't feel like she could or maybe they're doing a second part or or maybe there was just some other things they couldn't talk about. But I really wish they would have nailed in deep in her story. And went in and continued her. If you're going to put the narrative around Jack House like this, why would you not use his granddaughter? Like, in my mind, I'm like, this is this is huge. Why are you not going with that? Why are you not letting her tell her story like the way she could and give these details behind the scenes that she knew? And, Brett, I think you've got some some firsthand experience as well with David House because you were there during some of that period. And so share sort of what you experienced. And then I want to share just two things that I felt that sort of fell flat with the documentary. We when I was at House Anderson College, which was ninety nine, two thousand two thousand one, we what we knew, we didn't know much about David House. What we knew is that he was an assistant pastor. We knew that or we were told that he had an affair. He messed up. And that's why he had to go to a different church. But it was all about, you know, forgiveness and restoration. And and he he could do no wrong. And people blamed the the woman who he had an affair with. And I never knew names or whatnot. But David House was venerated that David House was lifted up. There was never an ill will told about him. We were told that, man, he's he's getting back together and he's getting back in a church. And, man, he's he's getting his life right together. And, yeah, he messed up. But, man, he's on the fast track to, you know, to pastor again. And basically that David House could do no wrong. And then the stuff that come out on this documentary documentary about David House and all that he did just completely shook me to my core and shocked me so much. And I've listened to sermons that David House has preached. And I had no idea. And all like I said, just another example of all of these things being swept under the rug and nobody saying anything. And, you know, so, yeah. Yeah. When I was there, he was he was lifted up. He could do no wrong. But, you know, he definitely hopefully one day will be held accountable for all the things that that that he did, all the horrific things that he's being accused of. And I do hope one day he's held accountable for it. One day, whether here or in glory, he'll be held accountable. He'll be held accountable one way or the other. One way or another, he will be. Anything else, Brett, on your part that was sort of the ugly side of it? OK, so I want to share two things. This has nothing to do with the victims. This has nothing to do with the storyline. And just from a watcher's perspective, I want to share two things that I feel like the story could have been told in a better light. The first one is this. And this is just sort of your your narrative's critique. OK, your editor's choice critique from a movie maker perspective. The first one is this. Why were the women degraded to a position that they didn't even have a proper seat to sit in? And Brett, did you notice that? Like every time one of the ladies was talking, they were sitting on a stool. They were on a milk crate in the corner of a building. They were twisted backwards on a on a pew. They were there was there was no proper. I mean, give the ladies. I mean, there was one where the two Rachel and her friend there were sitting on the floor beside two really comfortable chairs. Like give these ladies the most comfortable high back chair possible so they can tell their story and dignity. It's almost like they were. And I don't know if the narrative they just thought, you know, let's let's portray them as these victims in a weird position. But for me, it's every time I saw them, like put them in a chair, like put them in in this nice, comfy spotlighted area. That was just my perspective of the first thing, like treat them with respect. Since you've mentioned that, I did. I do. I do. I do. I did notice that at some point. Yeah. It's just like, you know, they've already been abused enough. Like, let's give them some respect here. Like, let's show them that they are valuable. Let's not portray the the narrative of they have no value. Let's give them the most amazing value possible. Put them in a gold plated chair for all care. I don't care. Like, give them give them respect that they deserve. And then the last thing, I love the statement of the cardboard at Grace Baptist of Will Tomorrow standing outside there. John, I think it was John Jenkins was coming out in his car. I love the statement that they had that the ladies out there. I just felt like it fell flat because they did it. They let their voices be heard, but nothing came of it. You know, like I was wanting from from a viewer point of view, like him to roll his window down and get mad at him, maybe throw like a cup at him or something. And they were showing this as like, he has no respect for them, but he just sort of drove out, waved to him or didn't even wave, didn't even acknowledge him, took a left or right at the stop sign. And then just like, there was nothing to the scene. Like, I'm glad they went and they did that, but I didn't feel like it added anything to the, to the story in my mind. That was one of those things that, you know, I think they did the, the whole, um, the thing at first Baptist at Hammond a couple of weeks ago. And I think that got some great momentum and, and, and push back and they, their voices were heard. People at first Baptist were a part of that. Like they said, we want to stand with these ladies because they have been abused and we saw that. And so I think that was valuable, but I didn't feel like the, from the production side of it, I think it was valuable for those ladies that did that. They were allowed to have their voices heard in front of John Jenkins in a small way. Um, but the production value, I didn't see a lot of value in it, in my mind. Um, so that, that was just two observations from a random watcher, a random pastor that has no skin in the game. I'm just watching it and then, and, and, and that's more of a, more of a, a production producer type critique, not anything on the women and their stories. Absolutely not. When they went through just come up from a production standpoint. But Eric, if you do it again, give the ladies a chair, let them sit in the chair to tell their story. Come on, man. So, well, Brett, man, I have enjoyed this episode. It feels like it's taken us like 15 hours to record it. Uh, we've both had interruptions on both sides and, uh, I just appreciate you coming. I look forward to this new year. Um, Hey, next week, we're going to be talking about our series that we're going to be starting. And so, uh, we'll be taking probably 10 or 12 weeks on this series. Probably take us up to Easter. It's going to be great. And, uh, so be joining in next week to hear where we're going to be going. We're going to be dropping some graphics. It's going to be great. And so Brett, anything else from you? I think we're, I'm just excited to move forward. I'm ready to go. Yeah. Well, until next time guys, to God, not the pastor, be the glory. I found my new name. I found that good grace. I found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning that has no ending. I found that second chance. I found my best friend. I found my forgiveness. I found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast. For Freedom Podcast.

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