Sheila
Welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com, where we like to talk about healthy, evidence based Biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage. And I am joined today by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.

Rebecca
Hello. I have been once again relegated to the second seat.

Sheila
Yes, because today.

Rebecca
I enjoyed having the first seat.

Sheila
You enjoyed having the power? While, I was.

Rebecca
For two full weeks, I got to sit in the big chair on the right hand side.

Sheila
Yes, yes you did, because I took a vacation.

Rebecca
Air quotes. Really big air quotes.

Sheila
Where I got no sleep because I was looking after the toddlers on toddler duty. Well, your sister, my youngest daughter, had a baby. And on YouTube, we will put a cute picture of me with said baby.

Rebecca
Yes we will.

Sheila
And and very, very cute

Rebecca
We love her so much. She’s so lovely.

Sheila
She is the absolute best baby.

Rebecca
Out of the four of them so far.

Sheila
No. Well yes actually. She’s the easiest.

Rebecca
Yes. This baby is taking the cake in terms of these four babies.

Sheila
And she is the cutest baby. That is currently a baby. Yes, of course, her sister was the cutest baby when her sister was the baby.

Rebecca
And Vivian was the cutest baby.

Sheila
And Vivian and Alex is was the cutest baby. Yes, but they are wonderful. And I’m so glad I’m a grandma. And today we are going to do something, I’m so looking forward to this podcast.

Rebecca
Yeah, this was an idea that we saw on the Threads?

Sheila
I think it is. I think it was. So how do you judge a church by its website? So when you when you are like, I need to find a healthy church, I am so sick of going to an unhealthy church. I want to find something healthy. How do I do it? And so we are going to take you step by step through how to figure out from a church’s website if this is a good church or not.

Rebecca
Yes

Sheila
And it’s going to be super fun

Rebecca
I hope so.

Sheila
I think it is. I have faith and I’ll tell you why this matters, last week on the podcast, and we are going to get to that how to do this in a minute. But here’s the preamble. You and Joanna were talking about our new study that just came out in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. Nicole Gallego was the one who took primary authorship on this one.

Rebecca
She was a rock star.

Sheila
Yeah. And she used our data set from our book She Deserves Better, where we surveyed roughly 7,000 women to find out about their experiences in churches as teens. And she was looking specifically at the effects of internalized modesty teachings. So when you believe stuff like boys are visual in a way that girls will never understand, all boys struggle with lust.

Rebecca
Girls can dress in a way that incites boys to lust.

Sheila
Yeah, when you believe that, what happens to you? And the findings were so stark, like it was, it was quite disturbing. It’s like if she internalizes those messages and goes to a church that teaches that she is 79% more likely to be sexually harassed or abused in church as a teen, 79%, that means that the boys who are internalizing those messages are more likely to become predators.

Rebecca
Because we did, in fact, measure where the harassment and abuse came from.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
We asked if it was from a peer, from a non-leadership adult or from a leadership adult, I believe, were the categories in our question. So we could even break it down based on where the harassment was coming from. And we did, in fact, find that churches where the girls had higher internalized modesty messages also had higher reported rates of peer on peer sexual harassment.

Sheila
Right

Rebecca
And so it does seem that there’s something in the waters in these churches that is grooming young boys to become predators and grooming young girls to become victims.

Sheila
Yup. So I want to read a little bit, an excerpt from that. Okay. And I will put a link to this article. This is kind of neat because this particular journal has open access. So you can actually read the article. The other peer reviewed studies that we’ve published, you can’t you can’t read it unless you have academic.

Rebecca
There’s nothing we can do about that.

Sheila
Yeah. But this one, you can actually read the whole thing. And it’s really interesting. I’m going to put a link in the podcast notes. But here’s part of what she wrote. Okay. “Inferential testing found a significant positive correlation between church attendance and internalized modesty messaging, highlighting that the more female teens went to church, the more likely they would report higher levels of internalized modesty messaging. These churches were also found to engage in other purity culture practices, such as purity pledges, at twice the rate of churches where modesty messaging was not promoted. Religious institutions that promote modesty messaging were also found to be linked to higher rates of unwanted sexual attention. These churches, by promoting sexist ideology, were undermining the positive effects of religious involvement and participation on female adolescents and creating spaces that were psychologically and physically unsafe.” And I want to talk about what that means, because basically going to church is good for you. Having faith is good for you. But as soon as you go to the wrong kinds of churches, all of those benefits disappear, especially for girls.

Rebecca
Yeah, and I will slightly amend that, where it’s not that necessarily the benefits disappear, it’s that the damage outweighs the benefits. It’s more like this. If you make someone a healthy meal with good nutrients and then you douse it in gasoline, if they eat it, they’re still getting the nutrients. But the damage to their system from eating diesel fuel is making it so that the benefits don’t matter. Because a lot of the benefits of religiosity are simply, you have more connections. So if you need a job later in your life, you know people, right? Like they still have those benefits. You have the benefits of having an organized life where you have more of a rhythm that’s just good for your mental health. Like a lot of that stuff but at the same time you’re dousing it in diesel fuel. So what ends up happening is it overshadows, right?

Sheila
Right.

Rebecca
It overshadows, and it ends up a net negative, even if there were positives. And so that when people say, but the church had so many good things like it doesn’t actually matter because you were dousing the wrap in gasoline.

Sheila
Yeah

Rebecca
Right? It doesn’t matter how good the meal was, you dumped fuel on it.

Sheila
Yup. Okay, so let me read the rest of it. Just another excerpt. Okay. “Such messaging negatively impacts the self-esteem of white female adolescents.” And our study was mostly of white adolescents, so we couldn’t make inferences to the other. “And second, that extreme modesty messaging fosters environments conducive to child sexual abuse.”

Rebecca
Yeah. That’s a big one.

Sheila
“Additionally, the study uncovered the dissociation from evangelical beliefs, although not a central focus of the initial hypothesis, emerges as a significant factor, particularly given the high proportion of participants with reported levels of high internalized modesty messaging who now identify as former evangelicals. Historically, the practices surrounding female modesty have been framed as protective measures aimed at safeguarding women and girls from violence and abuse. However, this study suggests that such practices may have the opposite effect, increasing the vulnerability of young girls and placing them in precarious situations.

Rebecca
Yeah.

Sheila
This is why it matters if you find a healthy church or not. Okay, so we want to talk about, all right, so you know your church is unhealthy. Maybe you’re one of the ones who considers yourself a former evangelical or you, you know about all the negative effects of purity culture and you don’t want to replicate that. But how do you know if a church preaches purity culture? They don’t announce it on the website, right? Like they don’t they don’t say, “hi, we are a church that is toxic to women” on their website.

Rebecca
I mean, some of them almost do.

Sheila
Yeah. Some of them almost do.

Rebecca
So we’re going to go through that today.

Sheila
So so how do you figure that out? And so we’re going to walk through now a template of what you should do. Now, you don’t have to take notes, okay? Because we have a download that is a flowchart for you to use of everything that we are saying. And I’m going to link that in the podcast notes too. So you can just go ahead and you can download that and you can use it as you are trying to figure out how to find a good church. Okay? But number one, here’s what we’re going to do, is we’re going to start with vibes, okay? We’re just going to vibes. Vibes are important. So we’re just going to look up the basic stuff that’s on their very first page of their website.

Rebbeca
Yeah.

Sheila
All right. Now, only, here’s the key thing. Only if it’s neutral or green out of all of these things I’m going to say do you go ahead and listen to a podcast or a message from the church or investigate further, like the point of this template is to give you an off ramp, because you know there’s a negative.

Rebecca
Everyone loves to sound so wise and sage and say, well, you just need to take time and like delve into what they’re teaching and you need to wrestle with it. And I’m like, who has the time? If there are easy ways for you to realize, oh, this is a bad situation, why on earth would you like put yourself through that?

Sheila
Yeah. You don’t have to go listen to a bunch of sermons, okay? Because what we’re going to show you is at every point and we’re going to show you the most likely drop off points where you can just say, nope, this church isn’t a good fit. Okay. So we’re going to start with vibes. Vibes don’t necessarily give you red or green flags, but they sort of make you think in one direction or another. Okay, so they’re not going to guarantee anything, but it’s good to have vibes. And so what we’re going to do for this part is you haven’t seen my notes yet. So I’m going to read to you some things that are on the home page of different churches. And you’re going to guess.

Rebecca
Oh, I’ve got to get my buzzer out.

Sheila
Yeah, you got to get you’re, you’re going to guess whether it’s safe or not.

Rebecca
Ok. I downloaded a little buzzer app. So I’m going to, I’m going to be able to buzz in when I think something’s a red flag.

Sheila
Yeah. So we’re going to look at the home page and we’re going to ask things like does this sound like a church that will value your opinion and welcome you or, or does it sound like one that will lecture you? And convince you that they are in authority over you and that you have to listen to them.

Rebecca
And before we get into this we should put our quick caveat, which is we’re going to call some churches out by name that are really big, that we’ve critiqued in the past, but we’re also going to talk about a lot of churches that are smaller or that we got sent in from people. Those ones we won’t be calling out by name. We don’t feel like that’s really necessarily fair, especially if we have exponentially more listeners than they ever could have as congregants. Yeah, that seems very unfair. So we’re not going to be calling them out by name.

Sheila
Yeah. The only ones we’ll call out by name are people that have actually already been called out by name on this podcast.

Rebecca
Yeah, or who are like massive megachurches who are seriously problems.

Sheila
Yeah and I will say some of the websites that I liked, but that doesn’t mean I’m necessarily endorsing the church. I haven’t listened to the sermons or anything, so but you know, these are just sort of green flags. Okay. Other vibe things to ask, you know, does the website have pics of the actual church or was it all stock photos? Now some small churches can’t necessarily have anything other than stock photos, but I think seeing actual people can kind of be important because then you can judge like, is this a diverse church? Does it only have pictures of the pastor? Because a lot of megachurchs only really have pictures of the pastor and stuff like that. All right.

Rebecca
I think, yeah, it’s more of the stock photos is just weird because like having no photos is fine. Having a bunch of stock photos, it makes you seem a lot more inclusive and diverse than you actually are. A little bit more of a red flag.

Sheila
Right. Okay. So let’s start with this one. So this is this, this literally says “who we are”. Okay. And then in quotes “whom have I in heaven but you and there was nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”

Rebecca
Okay. I mean for me personally that seems a bit esoteric and unnecessary, but it’s like a neutral at first.

Sheila
Okay. Then it goes on to say “what we are like”, okay. And it has “every church and every Christian has distinctives”. And they have four specific distinctives. Okay. “Gospel centeredness, meaningful membership, deliberate meetings, and biblical leadership.”

Rebecca
Okay. So there’s a lot of buzzwords there that all sound fine and sound good. But to me, *buzzer* yeah, there we are. It’s, it’s specifically it’s numbers two and four that were that were iffy for me. It’s the biblical leadership. And what was number two exactly? I don’t want to misquote it.

Sheila
Okay. Meaningful membership. And they expand on each of these.

Rebecca
Yeah. Yeah. Because the first the number one and number three are not red flags for me. Gospel centered is like okay, that could be good or it could be bad. Depending on what you mean by gospel. But neutral right. Because I’m like okay so gospel centered could mean Jesus centered if that’s what you mean. Or it could mean we know the gospel and all of y’all are going to hell.

Sheila
Right

Rebecca
Right? And it could be either of those. That’s why this is tricky guys. You’re not crazy for not being able to tell. Okay. The number three, the what was the exact wording there? Sorry I’m not looking at these since she wants me to blind react.

Sheila
Deliberate meetings.

Rebecca
Deliberate meetings. I actually am someone who would be very attracted to something like deliberate meetings, because I want to have very focused community. Like, I like the idea that you don’t just show up, it’s like you’re actually a part of it. That’s fine.

Sheila
You were upset by meaningful membership.

Rebecca
Meaningful membership to me sounds like “One of us. One of us” like, what does that mean? Does it mean that you have to, that to me screams Baptist Mafia families. You know, everyone who’s ever been in one of those churches knows I’m talking about. There’s always those families where, like, they run everything and they’re in charge of everything, and they can never get ousted. And like, there’s people who are in charge and people who are not. Versus it being a true like top, like not not a top down community but an actual even playing field. So that to me was like uh oh, red flag because that to me sounds like some of us are in charge and some of y’all need to get in line.

Sheila
Yeah. And then biblical leadership.

Rebecca
Biblical leadership is okay, so there’s no women, first of all, and also, it seems to me like they have the Word of God behind them. And so how could you possibly question our sweet pastor? Because he’s biblical. He’s God’s design. So those are the red flags for me.

Sheila
Okay. And I want to say something that you said like all of this stuff like, yeah like it depends what they mean by it. This is the thing on the main pages of the churches websites, even of the unhealthy churches. I don’t think I found anything that I absolutely disagreed with necessarily. But the thing is, what are you introducing yourself as? What are the things that you are most emphasizing when you’re meeting someone for the first time? What is it that you want them to know? Is it that you want them to know we have biblical leadership and meaningful membership, or is it something else?

Rebecca
Is it that you are welcome and you are loved?

Sheila
It’s not necessarily that these things aren’t true. It’s like this is how we’re introducing ourselves. This is an issue. You wanna know what church this is?

Rebecca
Which one?

Sheila
This is Grace Fellowship in Toronto by Tim Chalice.

Rebecca
Yeah okay.

Sheila
And we’ve talked about Tim Chalice before quite a few times. He was the one who wrote we talked about it in a podcast a couple weeks ago, a couple months ago maybe, on what if you married the wrong person and how he really had no answer for it. So, very reformed minister in Toronto. I want to read you another Toronto church.

Rebecca
Okay, okay. I just I literally just pulled up my church’s website now because I was like.

Sheila
No, put it away your church’s website.

Rebecca
I’m not going to read it. So I was like, what do we say on ours? I like ours.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. Here’s another church from Toronto. All right. “The City Church exists to move people closer to Jesus. We firmly believe that whether you’ve been a Christian for 20 minutes or 20 years, God has more in store for us. We invite you to join our church family where together we are moving closer to Jesus.”

Rebecca
I love that.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
I love that a lot. That’s really lovely. So yeah, it’s whether you’re here for 20 minutes or 20 years, you have something to bring to the table. There’s no emphasis on here you’ll know who’s in charge and who’s not, here you’ll know your place and be told what it is. And it’s just all about moving closer to Jesus. I love that. It’s not just neutral. That’d be green flag.

Sheila
Yeah, that would be total green flag. And it was green flags for me too. It’s the city church in Mississauga. It’s really interesting if you go on their website how diverse everything is. And that’s a big thing because Mississauga is one of the most diverse cities in the world. And incredibly diverse website, incredibly diverse staff. Just again, I have never been to this church. I have not listened to their sermons. I cannot absolutely say this is a healthy church. But the website looked good.

Rebecca
Yeah. That’s awesome.

Sheila
Okay, here is another one I’m going to read to you. Okay. This is a church from Australia and they said this, “this is a place for us to become more like Jesus together. We are a community of diverse people doing our best to live a life grounded in the love of Jesus and His teachings. We seek to be a positive presence in our workplaces and neighborhoods, and bring the hope of Christ into our real life. We are formed by the cooperation of the Uniting Church and Church of Christ in Greensboro, with the belief that we can do more for Jesus together than we could apart.”

Rebecca
Oh that’s awesome.

Sheila
“Worship helps us to engage with God’s story of love, challenging us to grow as people. Our relationships with one another help us to go deeper and see the love of Jesus as it is formed and has transformed others. Serving helps us to see God’s Spirit at work in the world and join in with the opportunities to love all people as God has loved us.”

Rebecca
Do you notice how, like the first of one we were talking about with red flags was all about hierarchy and where people belong and how these ones are all about how can we serve? And these are all about like, how can we actually make people feel hope and loved and our kindness versus the other ones were like we are biblical. You have documents that you can sign. You know, like it’s just such a different, that’s such a such a different way to approach faith. And again, we don’t actually know what these churches are like necessarily. This is an evidence based risk assessment strategy. A risk assessment strategy is not going to be 100%. But it’s going to help you get along. Get you closer there.

Sheila
Yeah. And that was Living Faith church. It’s in Australia, I think it’s in Greensboro, it must be.

Rebecca
It must be. But the other thing too was I love that they work with other denominations.

Sheila
Yeah. So I think it was two different churches who came together.

Rebecca
It sounds like they’re two different denominations too.

Sheila
Yeah, they came together. And we’ll be talking more about that church in a minute, because they come up in some other things. Okay. Here is a church from Texas. Just a very simple statement. “This church is committed to evangelism, discipleship, equipping and serving in the ministry.”

Rebecca
Oh, that’s neutral flag for me, but bordering on I think I know where this is going, red.

Sheila
Yeah, it is a red flag.

Rebecca
Yeah. See how like the other churches they were also talking about evangelism. The other churches that we said were total green flags were also talking about evangelism but didn’t say we’re focused on evangelism. What they said is we want to be a positive force in our community, where we bring the love of Christ to people in real, tangible ways. That might sound like it’s just silly wording, but the emphasis is on evangelism, when you lead with that, it often feels like you’re trying to conquer and conquest versus the other churches they were kind of talking about how we just want to be a good presence, and if people come to Christ, that’s great, but they haven’t failed their cause if they don’t.

Sheila
Right. Okay. So you can buzz in on that one.

Rebecca
It’s not red yet. That’s why for me it goes neutral to red. Like I think I, I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending.

Sheila
There’s not going to be a lot of red ones because the red ones, they’re not so obvious. It’s just that when you compare it to the green ones.

Rebecca
The one I sent you was a red one, that’s fine.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah, we’re going to do that one in a minute. Okay. Here’s a church from New York. All right. “At this church, we believe that everyone should have a place to belong. We strive to create an environment where everyone feels welcome and accepted. We are dedicated to creating genuine relationships with our community and showing them the love of Jesus.”

Rebecca
Yeah, that’s all lovely. Yeah. And now I hope they actually do that. And so I think the next thing to do would be to look under their beliefs statements and see if they actually do that. But yeah that sounds good.

Sheila
Yeah. The other thing that I have with this one is it does bring Jesus in last at the very end. And I just, I mean, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I sometimes worry that it’s like an airy fairy church because you can be a very, very, very Jesus centered church that is very, very welcoming. And then you can be one that like, we’re really about a club. So I just don’t know.

Rebecca
So I also think that a lot of these churches that are trying to reach people who are typically shunned by churches also have to put their religious life last. So I think there’s a lot of stuff, it’s like we’re not gonna.
Sheila
It’s difficult.

Rebecca
Yeah. But I think for me that sounds great.

Sheila
That one looked like a really, really, really good church. But I’m not going to name it because I had one red flag that I’ll talk about later. So I just don’t want to name which one that was, but it looked like a pretty good church. Okay. Here’s another one. Okay. “We are a church committed to worshiping passionately, loving authentically, and serving generously.”

Rebecca
Okay. Yep yep that’s fine.

Sheila
Yeah. And it was a pretty good church.

Rebecca
Yeah, green flag for me.

Sheila
Okay. Here I’m actually going to name this one because it doesn’t make sense unless I name it first. Okay. So here is like Point Church, Josh Howerton’s church in Rockwall Texas.

Rebecca
Okay, we’re doing that one next.

Sheila
We’re gonna do it, okay. “Lake Point Church was founded through a love for Christ and a goal of serving the community. Today, our church has grown and continues to spread the message of God and make a difference through our multiple locations and partnerships.”

Rebecca
Here at Lake Point Enterprises, we believe that your faith can be purchased for a simple membership of only $69 a month, or adjusted to your 10% tithing amount. Like it’s like, here’s the thing, there’s nothing wrong with having multiple locations, but that sounds like corporate speak, not church speak.

Sheila
Yeah, and you know what I found when I looked on all the megachurch websites?

Rebecca
Is they’re all like this.

Sheila
Incredibly like that. They had so much to say that they didn’t end up talking about Jesus. They ended up saying, okay, we have multiple locations to serve you. We have all these different things that you can do. And it was such a busy home page.

Rebecca
It’s corporate.

Sheila
That, yeah, it was very corporate and it didn’t give like a unifying message. And it was really, really common.

Rebecca
It’s so funny. And like I understand it’s complicated when you’re a big church with multiple locations, but I feel like put that on a separate page. Like, about us. And have your home church for each place be like an actual church page versus it being like if you’re interested in investing in Lake Point Church, you can talk to our investment strategy organizers. I don’t know, it just, it feels corporate, I hate corporate. I hate it.

Sheila
Okay. Here’s another one. Ready? “We exist to love God, love people and make disciples of Jesus Christ. As a church, we are called to carry out the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. And our mission statement was created to capture both of these critical mandates. Our mission drives everything we do from the ministries we provide to the resources we produce. We hope this calling serves as an invitation to actively participate with us in the work of the Lord, rather than remain a passive observer.”

Rebecca
Okay, well, that was judgy and passive aggressive *buzzer*. That was like, you know, that was wow, that’s the thing like, rather than read a passage there are so many ways to say you are welcome to join the movement that aren’t are you being lazy? Are you a good Christian? Because we only want the good Christians here. Yeah, that was so, then that may have genuinely been someone not having a lot of training in writing and not understanding how their words can come across, and trying to show that they’re like a serious church. But gosh, that’s that’s a vibe that I would run away from as someone who is overly involved in church.

Sheila
Yes. Okay. Here is, they have a mission statement for 2030. This is what they want.

Rebecca
The same church?

Sheila
Yes. This is what they want to be able to be said about their church in 2030.

Rebecca
Okay, I’m getting the buzzer ready.

Sheila
Okay. “We are a welcoming home to thousands of people seeking Jesus Christ and growing in the grace of the gospel. We are a diverse community of men and women, young and old, single and married, discovering together our identity, purpose and belonging within God’s good design.

Rebecca
*buzzer* Actually, why is diverse only men and women, young and old, married and unmarried? Is that the only diversity? It’s like we got all flavors of white people here. Like I’m like is that is that what we’re? Anyway, that’s just a little thing. I’m like, that just is a weird. Now I will say, if they are not a diverse church and that’s them telling people like, I mean, kind of props to you making it clear you’re not actually diverse, welcoming, but red flag still. But maybe like a green flag for like people who don’t actually want diversity.

Sheila
Yep. “We impact thousands of kids and students week in and week out. With all of our efforts totally dependent on God, we make disciples across all ages. Every stage of life has a portion in the church. We celebrate 300 baptisms every year. We are a refuge for the broken and suffering to receive hope and care, and a place where God heals and enriches marriages. We demonstrate the ministry of presence as we rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. We send whole hearted leaders and disciples into their homes, into neighborhoods, into our city, and into the nations. We have planted and revitalized 30 churches and have 100 missionaries reaching ten unreached people groups. We have seen more than 50,000 individuals reached by the gospel through our campuses, church plants, revitalization efforts, and missionaries. We have generously resourced millions of people across the globe as we share the gifts that God has entrusted to us every day in all spaces, through each season of life, we are joyfully building beyond ourselves, living the greater story together, and creating a Kingdom legacy for generations to come.”

Rebecca
I mean, there’s just so many numbers. There’s so many numbers and I’m like, if you have done a lot of very impressive things, I understand we also have to figure out how to do numbers when we’re trying to figure out how to like fundraise or, how to, you know, get people on board with projects like, I understand the need to commodify in just the way that the world works, but that’s a front page of a church and to me.

Sheila
Well, to be fair, this is a second page, to click on what you believe. But yeah, but no, I know what you’re saying.

Rebecca
So this is what you believe, this is their mission statement?

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Wait, they haven’t done this yet?

Sheila
No, this is their mission statement for 2030. This is what they want to have done by 2030.

Rebecca
So this is what they want to have done by 2030. Yeah. It’s just numbers?

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
So not like, okay. So like there’s some things that aren’t numbers. Sorry. This is just so bizarre. Like oh that’s so uncomfortable, like it’s one thing to.

Sheila
Well, do you notice what’s not mentioned too?

Rebecca
I mean like Jesus.

Sheila
Well just, there’s nothing about justice. That’s nothing about.

Rebecca
It’s all about conversions, about impact. Also, I hate saying like, we want to impact children. That’s just maybe teach children, create healthy communities for kids.

Sheila
Yeah, create safe. There’s nothing about safety.

Rebecca
It’s just kind of a numbers game. And this to me seems very much like, again, this is a corporation that’s been baptized in Christian language, and my guess is that this is a megachurch chain.

Sheila
Yeah. You want to guess? You probably won’t guess the right one.

Rebecca
Um, I’ll guess a couple. Okay, I think this is Matt Chandler.

Sheila
Oh my gosh! Yeah, it is.

Rebecca
Yes! Yes!

Sheila
The Village Church. Yeah.

Rebecca
When we say this is an evidence based risk assessment. We mean this is evidence based. I can guess which frickin church it is. Sorry. I’m gonna ride that high for the rest of the podcast.

Sheila
Yeah, here’s another one. You ready? Okay. “There’s always room around our table for new friends interested in the conversation and adventure of following Jesus. We’re a church in [city]. Made up of everyday people who are attempting to learn exactly what following Jesus truly means. Some of us are all in and some are still deciding. We confess that we don’t have it all figured out, but we believe that we discover Jesus best together in community and relationship.”

Rebecca
Yeah, Greens flag.

Sheila
Do you know what church?

Rebecca
I do know what church that is.

Sheila
Did you write this?

Rebecca
I didn’t, no. I know, but yeah, that’s a very, very green flag that I’m happy to be raising my kids in that church.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay.

Rebecca
The thing is it’s it’s in my, my thing that I, people get hung up on a lot is the need to always be right. And there are church websites where things are focused on, again in numbers where it’s like these are the number of people that we impact. This is the number of dollars you brought in. This is the number of baptisms that happens, this is the number of this. And some of that is helpful to be a metric. Absolutely. But also when you understand that your role as the church is not to like pump those numbers and kind of gamify religion, but actually sit with people and get to know them and be a safe place for them. You’re a lot more comfortable with not knowing everything and not having all the answers. And that’s something you’ll notice among websites is are they saying, in essence here you’ll know that you’re in the right group? Or are they saying there is no right group? But we’d love to have you. Right? And I think that’s a big question. That’s really when we talk about this vibes. That’s really the vibes. The vibes are are you seen as a commodity or someone to be slotted into a role, or are you seen as a member of the church, whether you’re brand new or you’ve been there for decades and do you have an equal seat at the table, or is there a hierarchy where there’s a good table and then there’s all the other tables who are lucky enough to be in the presence and taught by the good table?

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. So this is what I mean by vibes. Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good church. It’s just you can tell like you can sort of sense things.

Rebecca
There’s ones where I’m like, I’m not going there.

Sheila
Yeah okay. Here is another one okay. All right. “Life is complicated. You want to get it right. We want to help. For more than 25 years, we’ve been helping people just like you discover a practical faith that leads to greater meaning and direction in life. Here’s our strategy, endear our community by ensuring people know we’re here, are happy we’re here, and are better off because we’re here. Inspire our audience by creating experiences that cause people to say, I’m glad I came and can’t wait to come back and equip our core by enlisting and training students and adults to give, lead and invite.”

Rebecca
I just can’t tell if this is a church or a life coaching group. That’s where I’m like, what on earth? Like, you want to do life, right. We can help. And like that is a life coach. It’s so weird, I don’t know like, that’s so bizarre. I think I’d be turned off just because I’m, I’m already like oh so you have all the answers and you’re willing to impart them upon me, the poor stupid congregant who’s come asking you for help. But that might be a little bit harsh, but like, that’s the vibe I’m getting, like this to start your church with you want to get it right, we can help versus you’re welcome. God loves you. You are a welcome member of the community. Like that’s just bizarre to me. It does feel like the script to like one of those pinned videos at the front of a life coaches Instagram page where they talk about their services.

Sheila
Yeah. I’m not going to name it. It’s one of the healthier megachurches.

Rebecca
Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Sheila
But I won’t name it. But it’s not like yeah there’s yeah.

Rebecca
Yeah it’s a megachurch.

Sheila
Okay I’m going to read to this one, okay. “Welcome. We are a community of people who follow Jesus rooted here in [blank]. Our desire is to grow together in faith, share God’s love with others and walk alongside one another in life’s journey. You can discover more about what drives us by reading our why statement and this is it. We recognize we are not perfect. We believe life is better in Christ. We want to show others the love we have received. We want to live life differently together. Our church strives to be a safe space where we work through our doubts, hurts, and challenges. Together, we experience the impact of life in Christ Jesus. We are community of servants. We will practice serving each other inside and outside of the church. We learn and grow together as we serve. We are an apprenticeship of love. We choose to be real, relevant and authentic. Christ is relatable to others because he is relevant to us.”

Rebecca
Yeah, I like that. That’s lovely.

Sheila
Yeah, that is Life Branch Church in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, the church that Tammy goes to.

Rebecca
Oh that’s funny.

Sheila
Yes. So, Tammy is one of our dear teammates at Bare Marriage. And I am going to be doing a simulcast at Life Branch Church on October 3rd.

Rebecca
Very fun.

Sheila
So if your church wants to host me but can’t because I can’t come to the US right now, and I also don’t really want to travel too too much.

Rebecca
Because we have a little baby that’s brand new.

Sheila
And you also don’t want to pay a ton of money. You can get in on the simulcast. So I think on Friday night I’m going to do a sex talk for women. It’s super, super fun. And then on Saturday, Keith and I are going to do a marriage conference. And so your church can get one or both or whatever. And if you want details on that, the link is in the podcast notes. So that’s going to be super fun. And I get to go to Halifax, which is Dartmouth and Halifax are like they’re sister cities. They’re right there. So yes. Yes, very very fun about that. Okay. And here is another one. “We are a Christ centered community committed to helping you take your first step or next step with Jesus. We are passionate about taking the gospel around the world and making disciples of all nations. There is an open door for anyone and everyone to find hope in Christ, and our vision is to be a compelling community grounded in the Bible led in prayer, where members are cared for and work together on mission, developing disciples who impact the nations.”

Rebecca
Yeah, for me that would be a neutral because I, I’ll be really honest. And if this gets cut out that’s fine. I get really skeeved out when churches first thing they want to tell you is that they do missions. Instead of partnering with people who are already in those countries, I do, I do get nervous about that because of how often that’s a mindset of in essence we need to bring U.S. Canadian, our kind of Christianity to like other countries instead of recognizing that at this point every country has Christians and the Christians who are there, if we just gave them a third of the money that we used to send white people over there, they could do more. That was more in line with their culture and also set up more sustainable long term solutions. So I for me personally, that would be a thing that I’d want to talk to the leadership about and see, what do you actually mean by this?

Sheila
Speaking of that. Iran has such a huge growing church and it’s mostly women lead, you know, and like if we were to support them, yeah, it would be amazing. But instead we’re bombing them. So just putting that out. Yeah. Okay. That that particular church, if you look on their website and go on it is a red flag church.

Rebecca
Yeah. That’s, I was going to say, I get really skeeved out every single that it’s.

Sheila
And I haven’t told you why it’s a red flag church. We’re going to come to that in a minute. But this is, this is again this is vibes. Okay. Are you ready?

Rebecca
Yes.

Sheila
We’ll do the next one. “Under the grace of God, our desire is to make [this town] a Christian town through faithful and robust covenant, renewal, worship on the Lord’s Day through proclamation of the gospel.

Rebecca
*buzzer* Sorry, no, I can’t, I can’t. It’s just. Don’t even keep going. I’m sorry. I have never heard more sanctimonious, self-righteous pat myself on the back like that.

Sheila
There’s like, I only read like maybe a quarter.

Rebecca
No. We’re done. I’m sorry. Anyone who is writing like that on a church website is actively trying to make themselves unacceptable to the not holy enough.

Sheila
Okay, can I read you just a few more and you can guess who it is?

Rebecca
Sure. Fine.

Sheila
Or do you want to guess who it is?

Rebecca
Oh, I’m going to be able to guess who it is? Oh fun. Okay, yeah keep going with that.

Sheila
Okay. “Through proclamation of the gospel to unbelievers. While training additional evangelists.”

Rebecca
Those dang unbelievers.

Sheila
“We will continue proclaiming the gospel through teaching men and women how to live together and harmonious Christian marriage”

Rebecca
Oh! Live together in harmonious Christian marriage.

Sheila
“Through establishing a family.”

Rebecca
This is Piper, right? This has got to be Piper.

Sheila
No, no first guess was wrong.

Sheila
“Through establishing a family friendly culture of Christian education, in which well-loved and well-disciplined children will learn to stay the course through outreach that brings people to church, accommodating them where they are, while seeking to bring them into maturity in a structured way”

Rebecca
Oh, it’s MacArthur?

Sheila
Nope.

Rebecca
Okay. Gosh.

Sheila
“For a genuine cultural engagement that provides Christian leadership in the arts, in business and education.”

Rebecca
Well you’d never have to see one of those filthy unbelievers in your whole life. Well dagnabbit, mom, this is great.

Sheila
“and in literature. And through a regular series of church plants, as we have gifted, trained and ordained men, willing congregants, adequate resources and available facilities”

Rebecca
Well thank God the men are trained.

Sheila
“and we seek to do all of this in gladness and simplicity of heart as we pursue love for God and love for our neighbor.”

Rebecca
Okay, so Piper and John MacArthur are definitely my top two, but who one earth, oh gosh, it’s got to be Howerton, right?

Sheila
No. Howerton was Lake Point, we already did that one.

Rebecca
Oh right, we already did Lake Point.

Sheila
Come on, you’ve got to think worse.

Rebecca
Who’s worse than John Piper?

Sheila
Oh, come on.

Rebecca
That’s going to be a reaction.

Sheila
You’re going to kick yourself.

Rebecca
Okay. Who’s worse? This is Old Harvest?

Sheila
No. You’re going to kick yourself so much. I think you don’t even consider it a church. That’s why you’re not thinking of it.

Rebecca
Probably. Oh, God. No, this isn’t Doug Wilson.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
Oh, I don’t consider him a church or Christian. I don’t consider him in the same, like. I’m so sorry. Like, that is so, of course that was Doug Wilson. Oh my word. Yeah. No, he doesn’t even register as like, yeah, he’s on a different plane of existence in terms of religion.

Sheila
But I love that first bit that “we are committed to making our town a Christian town”.

Rebecca
I love that I manage to I love that I buzzed in first sentence for Doug Wilson’s church. I’m just like, yeah, he is a sanctimonious piece of work. Okay.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. Here we go.

Rebecca
Sorry, but just say with the Doug Wilson church thing, did you notice how so much of it was us versus them? All those unbelievers we have to reach through evangelism, and then you can have Christian education in the arts and Christian music and Christian everything and Christian and everything. And then you’ll never have to talk to even bad Christians. You can only talk to our kinds of Christians. And then the children, they’ll never leave. The children can’t leave. Don’t let the children leave. Keep them. And the Christian church in a Christian school, a Christian, and don’t ever meet someone who is not Christian or they might realize that the non-Christians also have kind of good points, that there are Christians who actually believe different things like that slavery was actually bad. And then if they find that out, they might leave and then I can’t get money.

Sheila
And then they might end up on a CNN special as former members of Doug Wilson’s church. And I’m actually going to be moderating a discussion of the women who were on that special in their patron group. So it won’t be it won’t be live for us. But I’m honored to do that and moderate for them as they continue to talk about Doug Wilson stuff.

Rebecca
But guys, any church that’s like come to us so you don’t ever have to be around filthy unbelievers ever again. Don’t go to that church. I’m just I’m so tired, guys. Just don’t do it.

Sheila
Okay. I have a whole bunch more. This podcast is going to go so long, this is so bad. Okay, I’m going to skip a couple of them.

Rebecca
Skip a bunch of them and then let’s record another little bit just for our patrons.

Sheila
Sure, we’ll do that. Okay. Here. Here’s another one. Okay.

Rebecca
Are we doing vibe still?

Sheila
We’re doing vibes.

Rebecca
Are we still doing vibes?

Sheila
Just just a few. Just a few more that I really, really want to do. Okay.

Rebecca
I guess cause once we get into the like the the statements of belief, they all have the same statements, so we go through it once. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sheila
Okay. Just just a few more. This is the big one. Okay. “Our foundation is Jesus Christ. And the four pillars are these: unapologetic preaching, the.

Rebecca
*buzzer* Nope. Next.

Sheila
Yeah. That is that is Harvest Bible Chapel.

Rebecca
Yep. Absolutely unapologetic preaching is code for our pastor is right. Shut up, you stupid person. That is code for that. Yeah. Unapologetic preaching. Absolutely not.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay, here’s another one. All right. “This church exists to help more people meet, love and follow Jesus so that lives and legacies might be transformed as more people know God, live free, and do good.

Rebecca
Okay. Yeah. This could either be the craziest church you’ve ever been to, or the best church you’ve ever been to, depending on what they mean by these things. Right? Cause like, to me, live free as in like express the freedom of Christ and like, not be shackled by, you know, just bad habits and believing you don’t belong or that you aren’t loved or they mean live free like caw caw, badadada. Like, I’m sorry.

Sheila
I think it would be the latter. That is Josh McPherson’s church. We’ve talked about Josh a lot. We’ve done some stitches of him in Wenatchee.

Rebecca
A little bit more of, I don’t owe anything to anyone kind of live free versus say, we live to serve one another.

Sheila
Yeah. Then I’m going to show you another one and see what you think of this one. “Here you will discover a warm group of real people dedicated to following our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are men, women, children, plumbers, electricians, businessmen and women, students, teachers, athletes, artists, young and old. But most of all, we are family. Our vision is for each of us serving together, having unforgettable kingdom impact as we focus our energies and resources on reaching the youngest generation.”

Rebecca
This is a total neutral. It could be, I think, no matter what. This is definitely an evangelical church. And it’s definitely like a solid evangelical church. Not like one of those like fringe evangelical churches. I don’t like the whole like we have plumbers, electricians, artists. I feel like it does belie a subconscious belief that some people are more worthy than others because you felt you had to list them. So that’s already for me, I’m like, I don’t like that. That I might be seen as kind of a checkbox of like, oh yeah, one more type of person that we have. I also always find it weird when people emphasize they have men and women. Makes me think that they think men and women are different. This is giving comp evangelical church vibes.

Sheila
Right. So not necessarily total red flags.

Rebecca
No, if it’s a comp evangelical church it is. But it’s giving the vibes that it might be. It’s like this would be a seek more information.

Sheila
Okay. Second point. And we are rerecording this point. So if you’re watching on YouTube we have changed. We did not mean to wear the same shirt.

Rebecca
No, it just happened.

Sheila
But we forgot to say something. So here we go. We’re going to do this one again, okay. Point two – staff website. This is super important. Now you’ve done the vibes. Now we’re going to check the staff because this this one step alone can answer the question for you. So just go on to the about page. It will often say meet the staff or start here. They’ll be who we are, leadership, etc. go to that page and see what you see. And I’ll tell you of all of the churches that people ask me to check out, that they said this church I was spiritually abused at, but I didn’t know was bad. Can you see any red flags? Or this is the church that had a big scandal, can you see any red flags or this is the church that whatever I’m like, I went on this page, I’m like, yeah, I could have eliminated 95% of the harmful churches from this page alone. And, Becca, tell us why.

Rebecca
Because when you go to the staff, all of the pastors are men. And if there are any women, they are directors, assistant of, coordinator for.

Sheila
Yes.

Rebecca
It’s not pastor. There’s no leadership names for women, only leadership names for men. And most of the time, if they have the elders board on there too, it’s just a sea of men.

Sheila
Yeah. So the church that I was asked most about, like the, the most number of people said, look at this church was Church of the Highlands in Alabama. Go on their staff page. And what do you see? You see elders, trustees, overseers, campus pastors, dozens and dozens of people, all male. So there you go. It’s eliminated right away.

Sheila
Yeah. And some of you may say like, but but, Sheila, why would you eliminate churches with male only leadership?

Rebecca
They’re Bible believing churches, Sheila.

Sheila
Yeah, and you know what? We’ve talked about this so much on the podcast. I don’t want to rehash it, but we do have a starter pack on why complementarianism isn’t good. A starter pack of podcasts you can watch. I will put a link in the description, but basically complementarianism is harmful. There is no way for a woman to be safe in a complimentarian church ultimately,

Rebecca
Yeah, at the end of the day, it is systemic. It’s sexism. That is what it is. And you can dress it up in Bible language. But there are other ways to read the Bible that do not require you to treat women as secondary citizens in their own church. And when a church is choosing to believe an interpretation that leads to harm and misuse of power, that tells you something about that church. And if you’re feeling up in arms about that and you’re feeling mad about that, I highly recommend you listen to the starter kit because you’re probably here because something’s gone wrong. Let’s be real, people are at this podcast because something went wrong, and if you believe in this kind of theology, I would put good money on this is what went wrong.

Sheila
Yeah, because if you’re complementarian, you will also likely believe in hierarchy. That’s when churches are more likely to be spiritually abusive. You’re more likely to have authority problems. You’re more likely to believe purity culture. You’re more likely to believe that women can’t leave marriages, can’t divorce for abuse, like all of these things are way more likely to happen. And we know that even being in a church that is structurally sexist results in worse health outcomes for women. We found that, like we said, we found that in churches that taught purity culture, which complementarian churches are more likely to do, girls are more likely to be assaulted. This is just a dealbreaker and the nice thing is, it’s a really fast deal breaker. You don’t have to look through the entire website. You can just know right away.

Rebecca
Yeah. Now there’s one caveat, obviously, which is small churches.

Sheila
Yeah, right.

Rebecca
We’re not talking about a church where there’s like 140 people. They have one person on staff.

Sheila
Yeah. And it’s a guy.

Rebecca
And it’s a guy

Sheila
Or even like two maybe, maybe the pastor and the youth pastor are male. Maybe the children’s coordinator and nursery coordinator are female and the secretary is female. And you’re like, oh, that looks weird. But in egalitarian churches you can have that too.

Rebecca
Because the issue is when you see these massive megachurches where they’re really big and where all of the elders are men, and even in small churches, if all of the elders and deacons are men, that’s a red flag. In small churches, staff can be a little bit wishy washy, because if you don’t have the budget to actually hire someone who is ordained or to help someone go through school often what’ll happen is you have like one head pastor who’s a man, okay? And then they find someone in the congregation who really wants to do the children’s ministry, and they want to pay her. So they have to give her a position, but they can’t call her a pastor because she’s not ordained. Yeah, right. And so that that is that is not always a red flag in a small church, but it is always a red flag regardless of the size of church when the leadership governance board is entirely male.

Sheila
Yeah. Let’s talk about burning the haystack. Yeah. Okay. So there’s a concept in dating called burn the haystack, which is how do you find the needle in the haystack? Like if you’re looking for this gem and there’s all of this crap out there, how do you find the needle? You burn the haystack. In other words, you are trying to get rid of stuff so that you can find the gem. And I think what often people are doing on these websites is they’re trying to find a reason to believe this church is good.

Rebecca
No, don’t.

Sheila
What you’re looking for is signs that the church is bad. And as soon as you see those signs, you get out and you look for another church. And this is this is just the fastest way to figure it out. And I think a lot of people have been to complementarian churches and they were hurt. Right? And so they want to find a healthy church. And so they go looking at another complementarian church.

Rebecca
It’s almost like it’s it’s almost like a trauma response. Like I can fix this one.

Sheila
Yeah. And you’re thinking, no, I can just find the healthy one. I just want to find the health. And you can’t like, that’s what we did, okay? We were going to a complementarian church where we got really burned. And we left that church and we went to another complementarian church where there were really good people that were more educated, it was a more educated congregation.

Rebecca
Which makes a difference.

Sheila
Yeah. And it was really good for a while. And the pastor, even though he was complementarian, he had women up there giving messages, he had women super involved. He was really great. But then he left.

Rebecca
Well, even before he left, the problem was, even though the pastor was quite lovely, a lot of the congregants were wildly sexist and I had problems with them. Like, there was wild sexism at that church.

Sheila
Yeah. And so, like, this is just it. This should be a deal breaker. This absolutely should be a deal breaker. And speaking of burning the haystack. I want churches to have that same attitude. Because often what happens is churches are like, we just want to, we just want to welcome everybody. And there’s another church in our area that is part of an egalitarian denomination and is a relatively healthy church, it really was. And all of the complementarian churches were kind of breaking down. And so when people got fed up, they would all leave the complementary churches and go to this other church. But this other church didn’t advertise the fact that it was egalitarian. And, you know, so maybe it had like 200 original members who grew up in that denomination. And then you have like 400 people coming in

Rebecca
Who are all like really, really strong, like complimentarian CRCs from our area. That’s a lot of what it is.

Sheila
Yeah. And that can change the nature of a church too. So if you’re an egalitarian church, put it on your website.

Rebecca
And also like, vet the materials that your volunteers are using and stuff, because that that church in particular, so they might be egalitarian, but as someone who attended the church for a decently long time, there was no evidence that there were any women in leadership capacities. They may have been on the board, but it wasn’t open.

Sheila
Yeah. I never knew who the board was.

Rebecca
Yeah. And our family went there for over like years, we counted years right. And their volunteers were doing marriage ministry stuff that was all complimentarian. And they were doing Love and Respect studies. That kind of stuff. And so it’s like, well, are you egalitarian then, or is this just the denomination you happen to be in and this isn’t actually a value for your church. And it’s hard because like, I think that if more churches had the opinion of everyone is welcome, but not everyone is allowed to set the culture. I think that would be really helpful. But that’s not what happens. What ends up happening is whoever’s willing to volunteer, they are handed a microphone. And we need to be better at actual discipleship, especially in egalitarian spaces, so that you aren’t just washed away by the more fervent fundamentalists who join.

Sheila
So burn the haystack people. So look at the website. If it’s all men, you know, you can say no. And if you’re an egalitarian church, make sure you put it out there so that people understand that. And remember, if the reason that you were hurt in church was because of the teachings about marriage, because the teachings about Every Man’s Battle and porn, etc., remember that complementarian churches in leadership will also be comp in marriage. They absolutely will. There are some churches that are comp in marriage but not comp in leadership.

Rebecca
Those are still harmful by the way.

Sheila
Yeah, like a lot of Pentecostal denominations, Assemblies of God, some are egalitarian in both, but some have mixed stuff. So you’ve got to check it out.

Rebecca
You’ve got to be shrewd because a lot of times it’ll sound really crazy. Oh, we have women who lead. And then the messaging about marriage is very different.

Sheila
Is very different. So you’ve just got to be careful. But this should be a deal breaker. And this is a really easy one. Are you going through a website? You’re like, no, no, no, I don’t think you tell the staff website not about gender, but about race.

Rebecca
Yeah, that’s a really big one because often what happens. So I’m going to be a little snarky for a second. Okay. The number of inner city megachurches that we looked at where they said we’re a diverse group of believers and the who are we? Page is 17 white men who are almost in, you can’t tell them apart. Like I’ll be really for real. Okay. If you are looking for a church in a large, diverse city and their leadership team, their board, whatever they have advertised online does not look diverse. I would just question what they mean by diverse then. There’s obviously going to be like towns where it’s just not a very diverse town.

Sheila
Yeah. Where if you’re in a totally white town, then yeah.

Rebecca
That’s one thing. But also it’s just a big red flag when there’s an opportunity for diversity and none of it is taken and it’s just it just makes you question, it should make you question anyway. Like, are there teachings and beliefs present that are really only palatable to white people? Right? And then is there something here where we have implicit bias that’s making whole groups of people not feel welcome? So that is a thing. And obviously that one’s not as easy because of the fact that sometimes you’re in a small town and it’s hard.

Sheila
But if you’re in Mississauga or Brampton in the, in the Canadian context.

Rebecca
If you’re in like a really big city in the states. And this is, there are so many cities in the states where the churches are so segregated. Yeah, because of the way that certain things are handled. And that’s like, find a church that actually values everyone. Not just people who look one way. And when we say these things are green flags, like we’re not looking at every single doctrinal statement, we’re not looking at every single thing they believe we can’t speak to that.

Sheila
I haven’t listened to any service.

Rebecca
We haven’t listened to any sermons. We will talk about the ones that we actually have looked at some statements of beliefs for that we’ll talk through, but for the majority, we just did this two minute chat, okay? Just to kind of show you how to do it. So we’re just looking at the vibes and whether or not they have women and men on leadership. That’s it.

Sheila
Okay. Let’s do let’s do. So let’s say that you got that far. Yeah. And the church is still in the running, okay. So now we’re going to check their statement of beliefs. And here’s what I want people to understand. And please hear me on this. You are going to disagree with some of the things in every church. In fact, I think in some ways we should disagree because if we don’t disagree with anything, I mean, maybe.

Rebecca
Maybe there’s things that you’re kind of wishy washy on. You don’t really care about or.

Sheila
But like, I’ve changed my views on lots of things over the years and I’ve changed back to some. I’ve changed. Like, when you’re growing, you should be changing some things. Right?

Rebecca
You should be in a state of flux. And that’s also why the vibes of the church matter. Because is this a church that allows for questions and doubting and changing? Or is this a church that wants an identity for closure faith where you know you believe, you don’t question it because why would you question that, everything might fall apart, right.

Sheila
So so the issue was not do I agree with everything in their statement of beliefs? It’s which ones are dealbreakers for me okay. And you need to have that clear in your mind.

Rebecca
And it’s, what does this statement of beliefs tell me about what their mission is? Versus, you know, whether that aligns with you.

Sheila
Yeah. Now I want you to listen to something Rebecca said on last week’s podcast. So I’m just going to play like a minute long clip of something that you said last week. Okay.

Rebecca
I also would say my quick, little one that I would say is if you’re in a church that taught you that the rest of the Christian world that doesn’t believe the Bible the same way they do, don’t really believe the Bible and don’t really care about the Bible and don’t really follow Jesus. Don’t measure whether or not another church is a strong Bible believing church by the metric of the church that failed to act like Christ. Okay, so don’t use the measuring stick that was given to you by the damaging church because you’re measuring it by the standards of the church that did a bad job. And that’s not that’s not logical. And you can find very Orthodox churches, and I don’t mean Orthodox that term like Eastern Orthodox like, I mean Orthodox as in like the idea of these are like the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, like the core doctrines of Christian. They take those very seriously in a wide range of denominations. And don’t be afraid to try something new. And just please don’t measure it by the measuring stick that you were given by a church that caused you harm. Because it might be that you’re missing out on a great, beautiful community experience because you were taught to be afraid of them by people who mistreated you.

Sheila
And I think that’s really true. If a church hurt you, but they taught you that this is what Christianity is. And so that’s what you’ve internalized. And you think, okay, this is still what Christianity is. And that church hurt me, but that church hurt me because it was that church, not because of the fact that they taught me these things. Then you could still be looking for these things because you don’t realize they go together. Right? And we see that like in how the church talks about authority and how they talk about what the Bible is, etc.,

Rebecca
And a lot of the fear around having it wrong.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
If you are looking at churches because you’re afraid you’re going to go to one that’s wrong. I’m so sorry because it’s hard to have such an anxious faith and that’s unnecessary. And I, I hope that you’re also able to get to the place where you’re able to look at churches, not from a fear perspective, but as an excitement of the things they are doing, because it’s a fundamentally different way to relate to Christ. One where it actually is like what Paul says, let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence. Right. And I feel like a lot of the questions that we get from people on how to find a good faith community in light of She Deserves Better in light of our research are all from this fear of but if I go to the wrong church and I have the wrong theology, God’s going to punish me forever. And that’s just a really sad way of seeing God. And by the way, you can have all sorts of different theologies on heaven and hell, including one that includes hell that doesn’t require you to tremble in fear that you have something wrong. So I’m not saying that there’s only one way to believe this, but it’s just it’s sad when I see that people are so afraid of interacting with stuff they don’t agree with, because they almost feel like they can be contaminated so badly that God will hate them. And I just, if that’s you, if that’s an anxiety that you’ve picked up because you’re afraid that maybe you’re not good enough, or maybe God will judge you, or maybe you’re falling short, or that you’re being prideful or whatever that fear is that you were taught at those damaging churches. Just get, let go of that and understand that God actually isn’t out there with a hammer ready to smite you. He’s just calling you in to do something greater.

Sheila
Yeah. And I think too, something dad said last week I think was really important, which is, which was basically like he would rather go to a church with people who believed heresy. Like, didn’t even believe that Jesus raised from the dead, for instance.

Rebecca
Yeah, didn’t even believe the Apostles Creed.

Sheila
Not not not the pastor or the church didn’t believe that. Obviously, your pastor in your church has to have proper doctrine, right? But he would rather sit in a pew with someone who believed heresy than sit in a pew with someone who was racist or sexist or just a bad person.

Rebecca
And I know this will get people mad, but I’d actually, if I only had the two choices and had to go to a church, I would go to the heresy church over a racist church. Or a sexist church like that is also a thing where it’s like you don’t have only two choices, friends.

Sheila
You can go to an Orthodox church but, but that where not everybody is Orthodox but the church is trying to do good and the church loves people.

Rebecca
Yeah. And I think that that’s something where if you’re someone for whom the idea that questioning, now I personally before I want to say this, I know this one that’s going to trigger a lot of people. And I want you to know, I personally affirm the entire Apostle’s Creed. Absolutely. Yeah, we all do, here at Bare Marriage. But I’m going to say this really carefully. If you would rather go to a church that believes sexist and racist theology, then to a church that doesn’t know if the virgin birth really happened. That’s something that I would, I would actually sit with because one of these things, you don’t have to agree with their belief on the virgin birth, you don’t have to agree with that. But if you’re a part of a church that is actively promoting harmful discrimination in the world, don’t you think that’s going to matter more, like that’s my thing is like, how do you not realize that matters more? And now remember, you don’t only have two choices friends. You can also just not go at all.

Sheila
Or I am almost sure that in most communities there is a church that believes the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed.

Rebecca
Yes. I was saying in like a theoretical space.

Sheila
Yeah. I’m almost sure that there is, that they do believe the Apostles Creed, you know. But and they’re not, they’re not mean like you can find it.

Rebecca
But a lot of people message just saying there are no good churches in my area. And then they give us the town and I find three. And it’s like, you just have to look outside of evangelicalism in a lot of cases in these small towns, there are a lot of evangelical churches that are doing really good work. They tend to be in bigger cities or they tend to be unicorns. If you’re in a really small town and you want a healthy church, that’s not going to indoctrinate your kids into sexist or racist ideology, you may genuinely have to look at non evangelical churches. And that’s just unfortunately yeah

Sheila
Yeah, and we’ll get to that in a minute. Yeah. Okay. I want to give you a couple of examples from statements of beliefs that I would see as red flags, or just as just something to think about. Okay. So here’s an example of what we believe about the Bible.

Rebecca
Oh all right. I unfortunately saw where the first ones from.

Sheila
“We believe the Bible to be the complete word of God that the 66 books as originally written, comprising the Old and New Testaments, were verbally inspired by the Spirit of God and therefore entirely free from error, that the Bible is the final authority in all matters of faith and practice and the true basis of Christian union.” And, you know, this is a really big belief, biblical inerrancy. But

Rebecca
The verbal, it’s like word for word exactly that. So what does that even mean?

Sheila
The verbally inspired by the spirit.

Rebecca
Like what? Which which English translation then do you think is verbally inspired?

Sheila
Like it just again, does not necessarily mean it’s a bad church. It’s just like, you know, churches that really, really, really stressed the inerrancy of Scripture are almost always complimentarian.

Rebecca
Oh, 100%.

Sheila
And it’s not that egalitarians don’t believe the Bible. It’s that.

Rebecca
It’s that they don’t use it as a weapon against people.

Sheila
We don’t use it as a weapon. And we understand that things were written in context. As they were.

Rebecca
And in fact, to understand it’s context is actually to treat the Bible with more respect and actually see it as more inerrant, because you cannot understand the purpose of a text without understanding its context, and to act like you can understand the purpose of a text divorced from its context is actually disrespectful to the text. I will say, especially like there’s no other area where we would expect to be able to understand something without understanding the context it came from. But suddenly the Bible’s supposed to be different. That feels actually quite rude.

Sheila
Yeah. And that’s actually not in line with most biblical scholars either. Like anyways, it makes us sound like a different religion, which I won’t go into. But anyway, okay, here’s another, another church. And this one was interesting because someone sent it to me saying that this church has recently gotten rid of the word Baptist from its name because they don’t want to affiliate, they don’t want they don’t want to let people know that it’s a Southern Baptist church. And this is really common. I mean, I remember when JD. Greer was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and there were all these articles about how a lot of his congregation didn’t even know they were a Baptist church, because a lot of churches actually hide the fact. Okay. So here on this church, here is what they said about the family, okay? “The husband and wife are of equal worth before God since both are created in God’s image. But the marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, he has the God given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family.” None of which is in Scripture, by the way.

Rebecca
But this whole thing is a buzzer.

Sheila
“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband, even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ”, blah blah blah blah blah.

Rebecca
I mean, like, do I need to do it? But like, *buzzer* It’s just guys, I’m so tired. So stop going to churches like this, it makes me tired.

Sheila
Yeah, yeah. So look at that. All right. Number four really quick. Just look at the denomination.

Rebecca
Yeah. Exactly.

Sheila
And if it is a church that is trying to hide its denomination, what you can do is you can go on a lot of the big denominations websites and you can look it up. You can see is this church affiliated. So in the Southern Baptist Church, for instance, they have a church lookup where you can type in the name of the church or type in your city and see if there’s any churches in your area that are SBC. And then it’ll come up.

Rebecca
And I know there are a lot of people who are still in very, very conservative evangelical churches who are trying to make change from the inside. If you keep, if you start going to their churches, their churches are not going to learn. But the people who are trying to change from the inside you keeping up, bolstering those churches numbers is not actually helping their cause, because they need that church to feel the pressure so that they finally start listening to the people who are trying to do the work on the inside. So please don’t go to a church that’s unhealthy simply because there are some good people there. Maybe you can just be the support for those people as you go to a different church.

Sheila
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But remember how I said that you can be on a church’s staff page and the pastor’s male and the youth pastor’s male, but you don’t really know if they’re complementarian or not. Often you can find a denomination that is egalitarian. There’s lots of egalitarian denominations, Wesleyan, Methodist, a lot of the Canadian Baptist denominations are egalitarian, not the Fellowship Baptist, that one’s like the SBC. And there’s another Baptist, one that is. But like a lot of, especially the Atlantic Baptists, there’s Episcopal, there’s like, there’s a lot of denominations that are egalitarian. So just check the denomination.

Rebecca
And again, that doesn’t necessarily mean the church is a green flag. It just means that we’re one step closer. Because a lot of, we know that there’s a there’s a very strong egalitarian church in our area that does not have women in leadership. Has really never had as well as far as we can tell, has never really had women in leadership, even though they technically think they can.

Sheila
And then call their children’s pastor a director.

Rebecca
Even though I know the church has more than enough money to help them get ordained, but also additionally, they run like Love and Respect Bible studies and all that kind of crap.

Sheila
Yeah, well, that was sort of a, and this this is my plea to egalitarian churches is like.

Rebecca
Be egalitarian.

Sheila
Be openly egalitarian on your website, because what happened to this one local church in our area is that all the complimentarian churches, were just were just falling apart. Okay. There were church splits. There were problems. And so everybody, when they finally got fed up with their commentary in church, they would go to this church. This egalitarian church is a pretty large church where the largest in the area. And so they headed to it. And so this church, which was an egalitarian denomination, probably had like two thirds of their members coming from complementary churches, and they hadn’t deconstructed complementarities and they just didn’t want to go to an unhealthy church anymore. And so because this church wasn’t openly egalitarian, what was happening is that the people who were coming in were changing the church. And so if you want to stay egalitarian, you have to advertise the fact that you’re egalitarian, like, we need to do a burn the haystack method here. Okay. Both ways. So the burn the haystack dating method is if you try to find a needle in a haystack, the best way to do it is to burn the haystack. So get rid of everything that you don’t want. That’s what we’re saying to do with the staff pages. And it’s like, if it’s obviously a red flag, get rid of it. Like just check it right away. You don’t need to look at anything else.

Rebecca
No one. You are not required to listen to five sermons by the guy.

Sheila
No, but if you were an egalitarian church, you also want, like other people to know that about you instead of having them flooded. Okay. Yeah. Number five, we’re going to breeze through the next few. Okay? Look for affiliations.

Rebecca
Yes. If there are scary affiliations, don’t go.

Sheila
Things like nine marks Acts 29, the SBC, PCA.

Rebecca
Fellowship Baptist

Sheila
Fellowship Baptist in Canada. Yeah, etc..

Rebecca
The Gospel Coalition as well. A lot of churches will pull the gospel Coalition stuff. Get get her gone.

Sheila
Yeah. Number six, look into the pastor’s training. Some pastors don’t even have seminary. Matt Chandler doesn’t, Josh Howerton doesn’t. He says he attended seminary, but he never graduated. I think he attended very little of it.

Rebecca
Yeah, because he got nepo baby jobs. Kind of.

Sheila
Yes. Yeah. So look into the pastors training, because sometimes if you can’t tell where they’re from, you can see where they went.

Rebecca
And also, did they go to school at a multi denominational school or at a closed in, like solo denominational school that can sometimes also be a red flag.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. So once you’ve checked like denominations what we believe statement of beliefs. Now let’s start looking at their ministries. And most churches have both men and women’s ministries. So check them out. Is there a difference? Do men get catered breakfasts? While women get like.

Rebecca
Have to do a craft and pay to do the craft.

Sheila
Yeah, exactly. Like like is there a discrepancy there? I want to read you a statement that I found on the women’s ministry page from Wenatchee Grace City Church, which is Josh McPherson’s church. Okay. This is on women. “We want to make clear the role of biblical womanhood.”

Rebecca
Oh, gosh darn. *buzzer*

Sheila
“And make sure the coming generations know the truth.”

Rebecca
Oh, gosh *buzzer* there’s nothing wrong with coming generations knowing the truth. But right after that phrase. Oh, there sure is.

Sheila
“We believe that the role of a woman is a unique and beautiful thing.” We. Yeah, etc., etc.. Right? Very problematic. Okay. Then you see, you can look at men’s and women’s ministries. You can also look at marriage ministries. A lot of churches have marriage ministries. And one of the biggest things I was asked to check out by people was the Reengaged ministry at Watermark Church. Okay, Watermark church is a megachurch. If you look at the actual site for Reengaged ministry, there isn’t actually a lot of red flags.

Rebecca
Because there’s not a lot of information?

Sheila
Yeah, or they just say all the right buzzwords.

Rebecca
Flowery words and no real information.

Sheila
Right. And this is the issue. If you had gone to their leadership page before you even checked their marriage ministry, you would have seen that all their elders were male.

Rebecca
Wow, that’s a lot of men.

Sheila
A lot of white men. Yeah, that’s just a lot of men. So it’s like, I mean, I couldn’t find red flags on the marriage. I just see one sort of red flag. Is that the heads of the marriage ministry, you had the director of Reengage was a man, and the director of women’s for Reengage was a woman. So it’s like the head overall is a man. But that’s not necessarily a red flag. It could just be that. Yeah it’s tricky right. And so this is a case where if you would have just gone to the leadership page, you wouldn’t have needed to go to the marriage page. Right. So sometimes like the negative stuff isn’t clear. Like the church, like the church that I showed you the vibe thing from the church you used to go to as a kid. We know that church taught purity culture.

Rebecca
Oh, it taught it. It bathed us in it. It dipped us in it, it full immersion baptized us in it.

Sheila
No, you can’t find that anywhere on the website.

Rebecca
No, of course not. There aren’t like, here at this church, we believe that every woman belongs to a man in the future. And if you touch a woman, you’re touching someone else’s future wife. And so you have now defrauded another man his property. That is what they taught in the youth group.

Sheila
Yeah, but that’s not on their website.

Rebecca
That’s not on their website.

Sheila
And so it’s like, you’re not you gotta just look for the obvious red flags, which is their staff. Right. Okay. Number eight is membership covenants.

Rebecca
Just run.

Sheila
Any church that requires you to write a membership covenant, run. I’ve talked about this before. I will put a link to Dee Parsons from the Wartburg Watch, where she writes about membership covenants to explain why it’s wrong. But just run. No membership covenants. Okay? Number nine is how they handle counseling.

Rebecca
Yes.

Sheila
Do they have Biblical counseling or do they have.

Rebecca
And do they have like Soul Care? They often call it Soul Care. So if you ever see the word Soul Care. Your job is to run. There is no context in which Soul Care is appropriate. And I know people can get mad at me for that. I don’t freaking care. I’ve read the book. There is no context in which Soul Care is appropriate. Connor, my husband, is currently in grad school for counseling to become a licensed psychotherapist. And I so badly want him once he’s licensed to do with me, I don’t know if he’s going to agree to this, but I wanted to go on the Patreon with me, and I want him to actually read Soul Care and him and Joanna, just to talk about every single ethical violation that is in that book, but how it’s just ethically not. You could never, ever ethically use that book and that, that, that way of doing things. If you are looking at a website and one of the ministries that they have is Soul Care or pastoral care counseling or lay membership counseling or anything like that, just don’t.

Sheila
Yeah. Now, a lot of big churches have lay counseling and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Like for instance, I went to an Anglican church when our son died. To say we had something called Stephen Ministry, where lay people had been trained just to walk with you through something difficult. They didn’t offer counseling, but they just were there to listen and support you.

Rebecca
I was literally just about to give the pastoral care caveat, pastoral care is separate from counseling. The Harvest Bible Chapel one, which we’re going to go over. Again, I don’t mind name dropping which one that one is. Harvest Bible Chapel is just infamously

Sheila
It was by James MacDonald.

Rebecca
It is infamously a terrible denomination that is incredibly problematic. Their whole thing on their counseling page, the phrase sin and suffering appeared so many times how you need to get to the root of your sin.

Sheila
And so here. Yeah. “Hope groups are gospel centered recovery and growth programs that take people to the root of suffering and sin and lead them to embrace the freedom found only in Christ’s redemption.” No talk of safety or trauma or anything.

Rebecca
Or like not. And there isn’t anything on the website how to say we tend to refer out to licensed counselors in these situations, but if for acute or spiritual questions, we have trained lay congregants like they don’t say that, they’re just like, if you’re suffering, you’re probably sinning and you need to find freedom in Christ. And it does not take a master’s degree and a license to understand how that goes wrong.

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. So check their counseling. The other thing is some churches very helpfully put suggested resources on, not always, but sometimes they do. And especially if they have marriage ministries, they’ll often have a link to suggested resources. So church of the Highlands did that. So here for instance Becca, are their marriage books. So we have Marriage on the Rock by Jimmy Evans, we’ve talked about that one. His Needs, Her Needs, we have.

Rebecca
Oh, the Act of Marriage, is that it? Oh, that’s the Art of Marriage.

Sheila
Sheet Music by Kevin Leman. That’s the one that tells you that you need to give him sexual favors during your period because faithfulness is a two person job. And, you know, so, so lots of problematic books there.

Rebecca
And the big thing is there’s no egalitarian books there, right?

Sheila
When we turn to books about parenting, family and parenting, we see the Power of a Praying Parent.

Rebecca
Have a New Kid By Friday.

Sheila
By Kevin Leman. Again, just just problematic books. So when churches have resources.

Rebecca
Oh! Love and Respect in the Family. Yeah, we got Eggerich, Eggerich, we got em, we found our boy.

Sheila
Yeah. So again, so, you know, look at the resources page. Number 11 is look to the upcoming events. Okay. Because sometimes that can tell you what kind of events this place has. Do they have catered stuff for men and nothing catered for women? Do they offer child care for men but no child care for women’s events, you know things like that.

Rebecca
Or vice versa.

Sheila
Or yeah no, I meant it the other way.

Rebecca
No, no, they do it both way. There’s churches that do it both ways and are problematic for both reasons. So either they offer child care for women and not for men, which means they expect the women to have the children, not the men. Or they offer child care for the men and not the women. And so the men get to go to their events and the women don’t. Like it’s so bizarre. I’ve seen both of them. And it always is weird. Like, oh, so you expect the women to have to find babysitters, and you don’t expect the men to have to, like.

Sheila
Yeah. Now, now connected to the upcoming events. This one’s really interesting. And I found this to be a huge green flag because every time I saw this, it was in a green flag church. Okay, look for the community tie ins that are often on upcoming events. Because what I found was the green flag churches often had a lot of involvement in the community.

Rebecca
Yeah, I know a lot of red flag churches also do. Yeah. In our town, the red flag churches are super tied in with a lot of the homeless ministries in the area.

Sheila
Yeah, that is true.

Rebecca
Remarkably tied in. They don’t want the homeless people in the churches. But they give a lot of money to them.

Sheila
That’s true. Okay. But but what I did see was like like does this church actually care about the community? Do they have a food pantry? Do they have recovery groups?

Rebecca
Or are they or are they at least? And then the other thing I’d say, I don’t know if that’s actually a good one. And I’m going to I’m going to argue, okay. And people like when we disagree because a lot of healthy churches are small. And so they’re not going to be able to have any of these things.

Sheila
And actually more the smaller churches that did.

Rebecca
No, but they’re they’re using the ones that are already on the city usually. Yeah, they’re the ones that I have that are already there. And you often will have bigger churches will look like they’re doing a lot more for the community, but it’s because they’re doing all their own stuff that they can control. Whether or not people have to hear the gospel before they are fed, right. And then the smaller churches are simply showing up at the soup kitchen.

Sheila
So it’s good. It’s good to look. It’s good to look. I mean, it’s not necessarily red or green flag, but just what vibe you get when you look at the community events.

Rebecca
I think a lot of it just also comes down to what are your values right, what do you want from a community?

Sheila
Yeah. Okay. Last one okay. Look at random strange documents because sometimes churches put random strange documents, okay. Like they’ll they’ll put their membership covenant. They’ll put their whatever. This one church had their employee policies up, which I thought was weird. And I just want to read to you something that just took my breath away. Okay. This is their bereavement policy.

Rebecca
Oh, no. Okay.

Sheila
All right. So this is for their employees, for the death of an immediate family member of an employee. So a has a spouse or a child. Payment of salary will be made for time taken up to five business days.

Rebecca
Oh, days, not weeks, or months.

Sheila
Right. Days. For the passing of other family members like your mother, father, brother, sister or grandchild or in-laws. Your payment will continue for up to three business days.

Rebecca
Well, that does not sound like a church that I would be interested in going to. So you get five days to grieve your husband dying.

Sheila
Or your child dying.

Rebecca
Three days to grieve your brother dying or your parent dying, and then back to work. That’s wild. And then, as it would be one thing to say that like, you know, you know, we can’t afford to keep paying if the job’s not getting done, like, we’ll, we’ll hire someone in the mid to like, but also like, shouldn’t there be like leave policies like that’s wild.

Sheila
Yeah. And part of this might be that we’re too Canadian for this.

Rebecca
No that’s wild.

Sheila
Okay. Because their maternity leave.

Rebecca
Oh no. I don’t want to know.

Sheila
Is six weeks paid, six weeks unpaid.

Rebecca
Oh my gosh, that’s awful. I mean, I’m just like, here’s the thing.

Sheila
I mean, we get a full year of paid in Canada.

Rebecca
Even if your country doesn’t do this. The church is supposed to be counter-cultural and you’re supposed to do what Jesus would do, and Jesus wouldn’t say, five days is enough to grieve your dead husband. Get back to work. Yeah, like that’s not acceptable. That’s wild.

Sheila
Okay. This isn’t, like I don’t have a specific point for this, but this is just a few other things that I’ve noticed that the could be red flags are not necessarily red flags, but if it’s a family led church.

Rebecca
Oh, that’s a red flag. So that’s a red flag. Like that’s a red flag. Oh no.

Sheila
If one guy founded the church and maybe his wife participated and now their, their son has the church.

Rebecca
Why can’t he find his own church?

Sheila
So that’s, that could be a red flag. The other one is if you see a lot of flags in all the pictures, this is a different combination. It depends on donations like you know.

Rebecca
There’s a difference in having a flag up in the corner because you’re part of like, a national denomination and you’re saying this is an American church or there’s a Canadian church, this is a UK church versus it being like, we believe in the freedom of Christ with a big American flag across the background. That sends a very different message.

Sheila
It’s just it’s just different. Okay. So that’s how to evaluate the website. Again, we’re going to have a template for all of this on the podcast notes that you can download. So the point is, after you’ve gone through all of this, if you still feel good about the church now you can listen to a podcast. Now you can look them up on YouTube and listen to a message.

Rebecca
I also think that’s not even a great use of your time. You know what I like to do? Let’s just call the pastor, like, can we grab coffee?

Sheila
Yeah, cause that’s what you did.

Rebecca
That’s what I did. I did at both of the churches that I’ve gone to recently. I grilled them for two hours, and it was fantastic. And both churches are really great places for us. And I think that this is also something where I.

Sheila
To be clear, that you have two, but not in this town.

Rebecca
Not in this town. And like the my previous church, and then when we moved to Belleville I did this with Wes. Yeah. But a lot of times if you’re at a church that is healthy, they’re going to first of all they’re gonna love questions. Unhealthy churches often also love questions. So it’s not necessarily a green flag, but then you’ll be able to actually know what they think. I know for me, when I went to Ottawa, it was really important to me to find a church that didn’t care about six day creation and that did care about women in ministry. And they were very pro it. And those were big things that I grilled my pastor on when, well, who would become my pastor when I met him when I was 18 years old. And it was it was a really good choice for me to do that. I needed to know that my faith wasn’t going to be met with an asterisk in any area. And I really recommend doing that. If you see a church that you think could really work with your values, with what you want. But the big thing is we’re doing this whole podcast is for the people who are coming out of these really toxic, fundamentalist Christian spaces. Okay. And so we’re just trying to help you see there are so many levels of like fundamentalism or whatever you want to call it. And often it’s really hard to be able to tell when something’s just a Bible believing church neutral versus a Bible believing church toxic.

Sheila
Yeah.

Rebecca
And and so I just hope that this kind of helps you think about it differently. And if something made you have your hair stand on end or made you get nauseous or get nervous, I would really question why. Because you, I will say this, if you’re listeners podcast, you know us, you know that we love Jesus. You know that we are so sold out and take our faith incredibly seriously. In fact, we take our faith seriously enough that we’re willing to stand up to people who have a lot of ability to actually seriously harm us and say what needs to be said because we believe that’s what Jesus wants us to do. And so if you’re hearing us say things that you think sounds like that’s not Christian, you know that we are Christian, you know that we love Jesus. Let our lives be your witness, and maybe start to question why you’re holding so strongly to those beliefs about hierarchy, about leadership, but who’s in or who’s out or what the church is supposed to be doing, or even the way that we approach other cultures or around the world, and the way that we see Christianity’s needs to be spread and those kinds of things. There’s a lot of these, these kinds of beliefs that are often seen as like traditional Christian beliefs that are actually modern evangelical takes on traditional Christian beliefs. And I just, I just do want to say that if there’s something that made you really anxious, allow us to be the witness of what we are saying. You know us at this point. We’ve, I feel like in the end of Hebrews, right, that section where it’s like I think it was Hebrews, I can’t remember. I was never good at the details. There is a Bible passage where the writer is saying, like, we have proven ourselves to you, we have a clear conscience before you. You know that you look at us and you can see the work of Christ in us, and so test our words by who we are. And if we are, if we are from Christ, then judge that as it is. And I just want to say that here too, because I just, I don’t want I don’t feel good and feel happy when people listen to us for years and then tell us that there they tried to find a good church, but they just ended up in the same church with a different font. And I don’t want to have that happen anymore. And so we’re being a little bit more forceful and being a little bit more like, no, you actually do have to look. And there there are actually signs and you might have to go outside of your comfort zone if you want to be healthy, because to say otherwise it would be lying to you.

Sheila
And someone’s got to go first. This is the big thing is that we are in a cultural moment right now where it can be hard to find a good church, especially in some areas, especially in especially in Bible belts, actually, it can be difficult because all the churches are so similar. But the thing is, so many people in each of those churches don’t believe in complementarianism. They don’t believe in hierarchy, they actually believe in something healthy. And somebody has to go first. Because why don’t those people go to that small, tiny Lutheran church or that small, tiny Methodist church, or that, you know, small, tiny, whatever, whatever denomination? Because there’s no children’s programs, because everybody is old. And so there’s nothing for my teenagers. But what would happen if you went there? And now suddenly there are kids. And that’s what I have seen happen so often in small churches, is you just get one family going with kids, and then the next family who shows up with kids is like, oh, there’s kids here, and within six months you’ve got like 6 or 7 families with kids and you’ve got a Sunday school. And the old people are so happy because now they get to run a Sunday school. You know, because they’ve never had that. And somebody’s got to go first. And I know it’s hard because you’re like, but my kids need something. But remember what we showed in our article because our article was specifically about kids, which is when you go to an unhealthy church, that can hurt your children.

Rebecca
And I think that because of the way that fundamentalism talks about this stuff, often we equate belief in and theology on the same level as impact. And it is so much better to go to a church that you don’t fully theologically agree with, but that isn’t teaching your daughters that they are temptation magnets for grown men. Like like, let’s be very clear here. Like, it is so much better to go to a church that you were like, oh, I don’t really like how they see missions.

Sheila
Or I don’t like baptism, I don’t like I don’t like their take on baptism.

Rebecca
Yeah. Or like I don’t think they take this seriously enough or that serious enough, like, okay. But are they systematically teaching your daughter that she needs to know her place? Like, okay, but are they, in essence, doing the work for a groomer like on your kids, like, yeah, okay. But are the children who are in that church with your kid being raised by families that are teaching their boys that girls are consumables? Like these are the questions that I feel like we’re not asking because they’re so focused on but do they have the right theology in every single area I like, but disagreement is not the same thing as harm.

Sheila
Yeah. And that’s and that’s something that we noticed in a lot of the green flag churches, as they did talk about safety. I didn’t see that talked about anywhere in the red flag churches, like in terms of we are a safe place for you. We are. You know, I just didn’t see that. And that’s a specific problem. Okay. I have one more tip and then we really have to go. Okay.

Rebecca
Yes. Okay. So long. Sorry.

Sheila
If you have a church that you’ve gone through the entire website and you haven’t seen any red flags, the next thing you do is you google the church’s name and the word scandal, or you google the church’s name and the words former members. And you see if there’s a website where former members speak out or if they’re scandals, because a bunch of people sent me websites where the pastor was involved in the scandal and you couldn’t tell from the website. And so just going on the website isn’t going to tell you everything. So just do your due diligence. And if you follow all of that formula, you are likely going to have a pretty good idea. If it’s a red flag church, you may not know if it’s a green flag church, but you’re probably going to know if it’s a red flag church. Yeah, and so that’s what we want to help you with. So download our template for how to do this. Check out our article links in the podcast notes. I think I said a bunch of other links that are going to be there, but I hope this helps you. I hope, I hope you felt going through the vibes too, that that was interesting. And yeah, someone’s got to be first. Someone’s got to be first. And once, if you are the first person, then you might create a snowball. And then we might see these healthier churches grow and get more and more people.

Rebecca
I mean, the church that I’m at right now started as six people in one person’s house, six years ago, and now we have over, we have a very large congregation. And so yeah.

Sheila
Yeah. And so yeah, someone’s got to be first. So maybe that to you. All right. Thank you for joining us on the Bare Marriage Podcast. Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you next week. Bye bye.