Ministry Investigations

Handling Allegations in a Ministry: Responses and Investigations by Theresa Lynn Sidebotham 

Telios Law  

Evangelical Counsel for Abuse 

Ministry Safe

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to the Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director of the Hendricks Center. And we are so glad that you have joined us today as we talk through legal investigations in the ministry world and to help us jump into that world because it's definitely not the one that I live in. We are joined by Theresa Lynn Sidebotham, who is an attorney and the founder of an organization called Telios Law, and she's here to help us better understand this specific kind of part, this specific part of ministry. Thank you so much for being here, Theresa. 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Oh, I'm delighted to be. Thanks. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So if you wouldn't mind, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself and how you ended up founding this practice, how you ended up kind of in ministry law more or less? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Yeah, so the ministry piece goes way back. I actually grew up as a missionary kid in Indonesia. Went to Wheaton College, met my husband there. Then he was in the military for a while and we did some ministry work for a while. So we have four sons. I actually went back to law school as they started to get a little bit older, middle school, high school, graduated from law school in 2005 and I think it was God leads us in these circuitous ways, but it seems like so much of what I've lived through in my life is actually relevant now in the practice. And we work with ministries and businesses to try to help them carry out their kingdom calling from the legal side of things. So it's pretty exciting. 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, that's so cool. I love what you're saying about the circuitous path. I feel like at this point in my life, I'm actually in the process of hopefully just finishing up a PhD and I feel like there's all of these threads all the way through my life that the Lord is just kind of bringing together at this certain time. And it's funny when you look back and you think, oh, all of these things seem so meaningless or just they were what they were, but then it all starts to make a little bit more sense. Well, that's awesome. So what kind of investigations do you all carry out and just how do you go about helping ministries and businesses do their kingdom calling? What does that look like? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

So we do more legal work than just investigations. Some of it's litigation, some of it is helping organizations with policies and prevention, especially for employees, for child safeguarding, we really would love to see people prevent problems. And so on that side we help them legally. We have a training affiliate. It's a online learning management system called Telios Teaches that takes a lot of the HR and child safeguarding training from a scriptural perspective. So that's more the preparation prevention side. But I really think that how ministries or businesses respond when there's a problem sets the tone of their culture, really sets the tone of their testimony. So we're all human, we're all flawed, we're all broken, and we get together in ministries or businesses and things go wrong. Sometimes they go wrong in minor ways. Sometimes you get somebody involved who's really evil, a predator, an offender. 

So in a ministry or a business or actually anywhere that humans are, we have to be prepared for evil or for problems or for how to respond because we're not going to go on forever with everything going well. I mean, you know that from your own life. We live in a fallen world and Christ is in the process of redeeming it and us, but that job isn't finished yet. So we try to help businesses and ministries respond well when there's been an allegation. And that can look like a lot of different things. Sometimes it's just advising. Sometimes it's coming in and doing an independent third party investigation, but that's the point of it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So it sounds like there's some pretty solid beliefs that you have and convictions that you have that really drive you as you jump into these really messy places. Like one of them you're saying is the recognition that we live in a fallen and sinful world, and so things are going to go wrong. And so that's one fundamental guiding principle. What other principles or drivers would you say you have that, again, help propel you into these really tricky, difficult kinds of places, especially once it goes wrong? Like you said, obviously you're doing prevention work as well, and we want to get upstream of any of that as humanly possible. But when it does get rough, what is it that you kind of go back to and you're like, but these are the things that I hold true and so it makes it worth it to jump in here. 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, it can be a dark space and especially if you're dealing with children being harmed, child abuse, sometimes it's sexual harassment, spiritual abuse, almost always people who are feeling harmed, traumatized, sometimes very deeply. So it's a tough area to work in. And of course like a lot of other types of care providers, we're prone to secondary trauma from that. But if we think about how God is calling us as Christians in whatever our space in calling, he's calling us to redemptive work. And I think if there are any Christians who are saying, "No part of my life is hard and I'm not dealing in any way with human sin or brokenness and I'm not actually trying to make the world a better place." Then I would maybe at least question the person's maturity as a Christian, because that's our calling and interacting with a broken world and our broken selves in ways that align with Christ's redemptive work, we're all called to do that in some way. And this is our calling. 

And I love it because really in many ways we can speak redemptively into a situation. We hope that the things that we say and the things we find in the investigation can then be used by our clients to bring healing to the people who've been harmed, to make the organization a better and safer place. I mean, there's some really positive outcomes that we can have if we do this with integrity. 

Kymberli Cook: 

That's so beautiful that you say that. And as you were talking, I was thinking of the theological category of common grace and the idea that God is, even in the midst of the fallen world in which we live, God in His providential care is holding back sin to a degree from going as far as it could. It's not as bad as it could be. And I think law and the law profession is one of those means by which He does it. I think medicine is also how He does it. But in law you are holding back the sin of injustice and these particular predators and even wrongdoing and it doesn't even have to necessarily be as dark where it's just somebody is wronged and no, we're here to try to help. 

So that being said, we are still, even those who practice law are very much in a fallen state and things can go south. So how do you all protect your investigations and your kind of work from becoming what some people have labeled witch hunts or it's not even really something fair that's happening, it's that there's an allegation and then somebody has to pay. How do you work through that as the one who actually carries out those investigations and kind of couch it for those to whom you are delivering your work? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

And you mentioned common grace. Many of our clients are believers, not all of them are. Sometimes it's what you might think of as a garden variety workplace investigation, and that's fine too. There actually are some pretty solid best practices around investigations. And one thing that law really focuses on, especially at its best, is creating fair processes for everyone involved. And you can look at the best practices laid out in the law and then you can look at what scripture says and you can try to devise processes that synchronize with both. So you mentioned the fear that there might be a witch hunt. So right at the beginning of investigation, usually what kicks it off is some kind of an allegation. It could be an allegation of sexual harassment, child abuse, spiritual abuse, bullying in the workplace, racial discrimination, you name it's some kind of wrongdoing that's alleged to have happened. 

Well, at that point, the perspective, the organizations go wrong in a couple of major ways and they intuitively do go wrong. That's an interesting point. One way that they intuitively go wrong is they say, "Oh no, this person who's been accused, they couldn't have done that. We know him well, we've been around him and his family for the last 20 years. That's just not possible." And they sort of dismiss the allegations, tell the person who's maybe saying that she's a victim, and it could be she or he in either case, "No, you're really not. We're not going to listen to this." 

And so that's dismissive towards somebody who may have been harmed. But sometimes you have the other problem on the other extreme where it's like, "Oh my gosh, somebody has said such and such about so-and-so and he must be guilty, and so we're going to fire him. We're going to make a public announcement." Well, that's also unfair, because at that stage it's just an allegation. You have to take very seriously that it might be true, but you also have to take seriously the possibility that it's not true. And so trying at that point to walk into a process where you're going to figure that out and do as little harm to everybody in the process as possible, that's the challenge. 

Kymberli Cook: 

You mentioned just a moment ago that you take the best practices that you learned in law school and those kinds of things, and you also put them alongside scriptures, I'm presuming that seem to correspond with similar ideas and that kind of thing. What are some of those scriptures and scriptural theological concepts that you help apply for the specific kind of work you do? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

I'll just speak about scenes in the scripture, because I'm not amazing at the scriptural citations. 

Kymberli Cook: 

You're all right. Nobody's judging if you don't have the book, chapter, verse. 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Lawyer, not pastor. So there's an enormous amount in the scripture about how employers need to treat employees fairly and create a just work environment, pay them fairly. There's a lot in the scripture about the voice of the poor and the vulnerable crying out and how they're entitled to justice and how deeply it angers God if people who are powerless are not given justice when they cry out. I mean, this is everything from the blood of Abel to Paul talking to Philemon. It's a theme throughout the scripture, the poor, the vulnerable, the children, the strangers, immigrants, the helpless, the women, you name it, God really cares about that stuff. 

But there's also scriptures about testimony and how testimony needs to be corroborated. And there's even scripture about if you bend justice in favor of the poor against the rich, you're also offending God. And so you're not allowed to bend justice either way, not for the powerful, not for the powerless, what you owe both of them is a just process. The poor and the powerless tend not to get that in this life, just the way the world works, so that's why there might need to be a little bit more emphasis on making sure they get it. But you also don't throw people with power under the bus just because they happen to be in power. They deserve a fair process too. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Fascinating. So how do you encourage, especially let's keep thinking about those, the poor and powerless, how do you encourage them when they perhaps feel like the whole thing is corrupt and justice really isn't going to happen? And how do you navigate that as somebody who's on the ground trying to make that happen, but also encountering all of the obstacles I'm sure you face along the way trying to make that happen? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

So this goes back to organizational culture, and if you think each one of us can think of organizations that we've been in, and you can ask yourself the question, let's just say, take sexual harassment, you and I are both women and it happens to women a lot. If I had come forward in this particular organization, would that have been taken seriously? Would that have been well received? Would I have been punished in some way for doing that? Would they have investigated? Would they have taken action? And I think intuitively, most people have a bit of a sense how that is within a given organization. Now for the leaders of the organization, the responsibility is to make that the kind of environment where people would feel safe to come forward. And that even involves, again, it's a little bit being faithful with the little things. 

If leaders take seriously the minor stuff, maybe somebody younger or a woman is treated dismissively, maybe people make slightly off colored jokes or not so nice comments about racial minorities, well, if they're not dealing with the little stuff kind of as it happens, even if it's just as simple as, "James, we don't make comments like that here. I don't want to hear you say stuff like that." That sets the tone and it gives a sense of do the leaders actually care and are they going to respond well? Now, sometimes it's more that it's never been really dealt with in the organizational culture. That happens a lot with ministries, because bless their hearts, they think it's never going to happen or it's not happening. And so they never worried about the culture of people coming forward because they assumed there was never going to be anything to come forward about. 

And so suddenly they realize people are not trusting, people didn't want to come forward, people were afraid and they go, "Well, why would you be afraid? We really care." Well, nobody knew because you never said anything. So at that point, when you have an allegation, the best thing you can do as leaders is take it seriously and go through the process and show people that you really mean it. So however the investigation comes out, whether it's substantiated or not, taking the process seriously and taking the people seriously helps to show everybody else, "Hey, we really do care about this and we will listen to you too if you have something you need to come forward about." 

Kymberli Cook: 

So what is the point that youth, in your opinion, that perhaps people in ministry, like you said, I think there might be two camps at this point. I feel like especially after everything that's happened in the last 10, 15 years with the Me Too movement and everything that happened there and a variety of other allegations that have come out against pastors and within ministries, very public, I think there are still those who are surprised and horrified and caught flat-footed. And then I think there's also this other part of the ministry world that, pardon the colloquialism, but "lawyers up", quote, unquote, "lawyers up" really fast and it gets really legal and really non-disclosure and really all of that very quickly to the point that some people don't even know whether justice is even happening and it all seems very protective of the organization and perhaps not thoughtful toward the individuals. 

Especially any ministry leaders who are listening, but anybody who might end up in a situation like that, what do you think is the way to walk that tightrope of, no, we want to remain optimistic about people and an authentic community here, but there are certain points where this does get very legal and very technical, and there are places for closed doors. How do you walk those lines? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Well, in terms of our expectations, there's always going to be sinners, including the church and some serious sin. So they estimate that up to 10% of American male adults may be sex offenders in one way or another. Well, you're not going to keep that entirely out of the church. And so we shouldn't be, I mean, saddened of course, but we shouldn't be stunned and surprised when stuff comes up within a ministry. And then you mentioned lawyers, and I think this is important for the legal profession to consider, as lawyers, we do look out for our clients' legal interests, but our professional rules allow room for us to be counselors and advisors and guides. And I think sometimes we do a disservice to our clients if we don't think about what is their real overall calling and what are their broader interests, their spiritual, emotional, social, cultural interests? It's not just could this thing create this lawsuit? But it's like, where are we going with this whole thing? 

And if we don't think about that as attorneys advising ministries or businesses, we can get flat-footed. And I know exactly what you mean that, "Don't say a word because any word you say might incriminate you." Well, unfortunately, if people have been harmed, they probably do need some words said. So if we have an allegation, I think one thing we have to think about is at the beginning of the process is, who are the stakeholders who may have been harmed? How can we put in pastoral responses as well as investigative responses with different people? And it's not always the same role. There may need to be more than one role of person talking to different people involved. 

But I can promise you for people who are bringing an allegation and who are saying they've been harmed, for people accused, and for some of the other stakeholders, it's a very painful process. So we want to think about what do people need? Who needs to hear them? What kind of communication do they need? In terms of what we share in public announcements, that is tricky because there's a fine line. On the one hand, you don't want to overshare either about people who've been harmed or people accused especially too soon, because that can put them in a public spotlight, especially we've got minors involved, but even people who are victims who are not minors, they themselves might not realize how damaging long-term exposure could be to them. For persons accused at the beginning of the process, we don't know yet if they did it or not and so we don't want to rush to a kind of exposure that might destroy somebody who might actually happen to have not done it. 

So we have to be careful, but yet there may be people out there who need to have warnings. There may be public safety issues. We may need to see if there's been other victims. It depends partly how public is the scandal or their criminal charges. So we weigh all that very carefully, because if you need to know and you don't know, we might call that a cover-up, but if you don't need know and you're told, we might call that a breach of confidentiality or privacy, and where those lines fall in every situation can really be different. 

And it might be that you as the other people in the ministry who aren't directly involved or you as the general public, you might need to know, you might know there's been allegations, so you might need to know some basics. We're doing a third party neutral investigation, we're responding in this way, but very rarely do I need to know the garbage of a situation that I'm not directly involved with. It's rare that that would benefit me spiritually or that I would have a right to know or that it would be helpful for me to know. So there's that really tough balance of who needs to know what. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So walk me through, and I think because that seems to be what you're talking about, those deliberations seem to be a step in the whole process or I mean, several steps along the way in the process. So walk me through, you started a little bit earlier, what does an investigation, or let's say there's an allegation and then you go and you identify the stakeholders, you've also said that, and then what's the next step? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Well, we probably should back up, just to be clear, for anyone who's dealing with child abuse allegations, there's going to be a mandatory report and that's going to need to happen really fast. And so if we're in that space of child abuse allegations, the process goes in a somewhat different direction, and that's responsibilities that law enforcement and social services have. So I don't want to apply, I want to make sure everyone understands I absolutely support we need to do that and we need to make sure, okay, so that would be first step, making sure everyone's safe. And again, especially if we've got kids involved and whether it's minor on minor or adult on minor, but just thinking who might not be actually safe. And so we've got to get that into place, make sure that nobody would be exposed to further abuse. That could be true in a workplace type setting as well. 

Say it's sexual harassment, say someone's made an allegation about her supervisor. So we're going to need to have an interim safety plan because even though we're not going to make assumptions about is it true or is it not true, we need a safety plan in the meantime, because we're not just going to let bad things keep happening. So that's an important piece. And then we have to look at, okay, what as the business or ministry do we need to investigate? Sometimes you don't actually need to investigate. It's pretty crystal clear what happened. There's not any doubt about the facts so you may just move straight to disciplinary action or whatever it is. Sometimes you do because it isn't clear what happened or it's larger, it's more complex, that kind of thing. 

Sometimes, say you've got a ministry with a number of employees and it's a fairly low level allegation. One employee did or said something, say it was some new and young person who'd only been there six months, may have said or done something that wasn't the greatest. That could probably be handled internally by their supervisors. There might be some discipline, some training, that type of thing. But on the other hand, if you had serious allegations about the senior pastor or the CEO, then you might be looking at, wow, we need an independent third-party investigation here. So there's a lot of decision-making and evaluation at that stage that's important. And if it's okay if I mention it, I wrote a book called Handling Allegations in a Ministry: Responses and Investigations, and it's more like a handbook. So I've actually got it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah, please. 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Here's what it looks like. So this talks about this whole process that we're in sort of step by step. If you're in this stage of the process, what do you need to be thinking about and walks you through it? And I designed it to be the kind of thing that a ministry leader, and it's four ministries, primarily businesses, is quite similar, but not exactly the same. So you would just pick it up and you'd say, "Okay, this is what we've done so far. This is what we haven't done. Where are we? What do we need to do next?" And also warns about some of the mistakes that get made. It is a very complicated process to get right, especially for people who are walking through it for the first time. So I wanted there to be a resource to help people. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, no, I think that that's huge, and we'll definitely include that in the links with our podcast so that if you're listening, you can access that and get access to the book. 

So you were describing at a certain point, you're having to make that third party decision. What are some of the things that go into that decision? You said essentially the rank or powers, probably power status of one or both of the people involved. So that I would presume… Yeah, go ahead and I'm not going to presume anything because this is not my area, but walk us through a little bit more of that decision. Because I think for anybody listening who may ever be in that situation and trying to think through that, at that point, they're still kind of on their own. If you're lucky, they've picked up your book, but they haven't brought in a professional. So how do they know when, I'm in over my head and we are over our head and just to be safe, we really should think about this option? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Yeah, so the power position is a really important piece of it. So if you have an accusation against somebody who's high enough in the organization that they have some power, or possibly if the person bringing the allegation, we're pretty high rank in the organization. So then you've got a double problem. One is, can people within the organization really do an investigation and not be influenced by that person? That person's signing their paychecks, that person hired them, that person's one of their best friends, whatever it is. And even if they could be unbiased, would anybody believe it? So I often say one of the worst things if a pastor or leader is innocent is not to have an external neutral investigation, because who's going to believe it? That's really unfortunate if you're innocent and your best friend tells everybody you really are, well, that's not super helpful. 

And so one of the first things that I'll help walk clients through is persons bringing allegations and persons who are accused, especially persons accused, they need to be recused out of that process. So they might need to be on administrative leave, they might need to be off the board for the time being. They definitely should have no influence on the investigation. And we are more concerned about that with people accused just because they often have so much power within the organization. I mean, I remember one investigation that I didn't do where the accused person, a pastor, wanted to stay on the board and help direct the investigation. I'm like, "No, I won't do it. That's absolutely not best practices, and we're not going to do that." But we do occasionally also see that people bringing allegations, people who are victims may be trying to unduly influence the investigation as well. 

So you really can't let any of those stakeholders say, "Well, we're going to do it this way, or it has to be done that way." Because it needs to be neutral, independent, unbiased, which means I'm not listening to the accused tell me how to run the investigation. I'm also not listening to the people who are saying that they've been harmed tell me how to run the investigation. I don't mean they can't ask for things. I mean, they're welcome to ask, "Hey, I really need a support person at the interview." Or, "Can I have breaks?" Whatever. There's a lot of ways of approaching it, and part of being trauma-informed is being gentle and considerate and considering what people need, but that's different from, "You will do the investigation this way and not that way." 

Kymberli Cook: 

So what other mistakes have you seen ministries making? You talked about just burying your head in the sand and sweeping allegations aside or jumping too quickly to accusation when somebody might truly be innocent, as well as people of power who are part of the investigation, not recusing themselves or stepping outside. What other mistakes have you seen made? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

I think we're still pretty bad at ministering to people and hearing people who've experienced trauma. So I was talking about the approach in the investigative process, which needs to be fair and neutral, but at the same time, a person who's been deeply hurt, they need support. They might need counseling, they might need pastoral support. As ministries, leaders need to make sure that people who've been traumatized are getting support. And just getting that sense of, "Maybe we don't know right now exactly what happened to you, but we hear that you're saying this happened. We're deeply concerned. We're so sorry that you're hurting right now. How can we help you?" And sometimes something needs to be put in place. I think a lot of times we brush off deep trauma or we don't deal with it. 

,And of course it's hard for a ministry. They can feel very defensive about allegations. Similarly, I think we underestimate how painful it is for persons accused to go through this process, which is never as fast as we would like it to be. Maybe they're on administrative leave, maybe they feel like their reputation's been damaged, and maybe it has been. That's quite painful as well. So what I like to say to ministries, especially bigger ones is, "Can you get a pastoral support person for the people who may be victims and for the people who are accused and have it be in a sense independent? Sure people who are part of your ministry, but people who will not be making decisions at the end of this." And have that be their person who walks through it with them and get something in place. 

On these bigger investigations where maybe there's been some serious allegations or a lot of allegations or something happened over a period of time, even the people who work in the ministry can be pretty traumatized. They may need some support. And I think we don't give quite enough attention to that. I don't know if I would go so far as to call it a mistake, but it is something I like to raise to awareness. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. And I think of, yeah, I mean, none of us operates in a vacuum, in a bubble. And so everything that is occurring, and so there's two truths. One, nothing happens without it impacting having ripple effects. But also we are whole beings. We are holistic. If we're in a professional environment, it doesn't mean we're not psychologically and emotionally there. And there is true harm that can happen even from those ripple effects with people. So that's a really interesting observation. With the time that we have left, I would love for you, we've been talking about different types of suggestions and observations on some mistakes that are often happen, but what would you say to anybody in a ministry about what should be happening now, perhaps when it is quiet and there may or may not be things going wrong currently that nobody's just aware of, but where it doesn't seem like they're in the middle of a crisis, there isn't an allegation. What should ministries be thinking about now and putting in place now? You talked about the ethos, the culture of responding to little things. What else? 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

Yeah. Wow, there's a lot. So first, let's talk about child safeguarding. I want to mention a wonderful organization, the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention. I think it's ecap.net. And that's actually a certifying organization that helps ministries work through their child safety standards, make sure they've got all their policies and best practices in place. But even if you don't want to get credited or certified, go on the website and look at the standards, look at the resources. That's a great organization, whether you use… And they provide the standards, they're not directly doing the training and that kind of thing. Make sure you get your child safety training in place. There's a lot of good outfits that do that. We have that as well on Telios Teaches, but really take the policies and prevention and training seriously because so much of what happens could be prevented by getting all of that into place and really creating an environment that is a capable guardian for kids. 

A lot of the child abuse we're seeing now as child on child. And so I would say just make sure that you get the help that every kid involved in the situation needs. There's actually, I think we have an article on ecap.net about child on child stuff. On the adult side of things, again, having good policies and training in place, sexual harassment training, that's actually required in several states now for ministries. But all of the good workplace conduct, I think we tend to dismiss it. That's just legal compliance stuff or that's just woke or we don't really need it. But in our Telios Teaches training, we try to take the scriptural approach. How is God calling men and women to live together? How is God calling us as brothers and sisters of different races to live together? What is God's heart for persons with disabilities? 

And when we start there, we see that an awful lot of sound employment law principles absolutely are what we need to be doing. And that helps enormously too in creating a good culture in our testimony. So get all of that into place. If you go to telioslaw.com or Telios Teaches, you'll see pop-up pages, sign up for our free monthly newsletter because we'll link you with lots of great resources. We're starting to push out a series of self audits for ministries and businesses where you can kind of check and see how you're doing in different areas. So we'd love to share those. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Oh wow. That's really cool. I like the self auditing. So I'm hearing a lot of, and obviously when things are quiet, you want to be building up prevention elements and the ethos of safety for people to feel like they can come forward and it would be a meaningful action for them to come forward. And I'm also hearing you say that just being sure that we, especially if we are in ministries, communicate on a lot of levels what we even started, you and I started talking about, our fundamental core faith commitments and saying, "This is what we believe about God, and this is what God has revealed about Himself and what He thinks about certain kinds of injustices and that kind of thing." And so like you said, we take these things very seriously and I think some HR training and those kinds of things are often the sources, like people tend to make fun of them or take them lightly, that kind of thing, like you said, for legal compliance, and it just helps protect the organization. 

But if you frame it differently and say, "No, this isn't just to protect the organization, this is because we actually love people here and we love people like God loves people, and so that means that this is really important and we're going to take this seriously and we're really going to apply ourselves here." I love that idea of girding it theologically, and sometimes that serves it on a bit of a different platter, and perhaps people will respond a little differently. 

Theresa Lynn Sidebotham: 

So I want to thank you so much, Theresa, for joining us. It's been fascinating hopping into your world and hearing from the side where things do go wrong or trying to keep things from going wrong as much and the Lord's heart for justice and human dignity and all of those beautiful things. Thank you so much for being here and for the work you do. We really appreciate it. 

Well, thank you. I think if the church can get right how it responds to situations that have gone wrong, if it can really care for people who've been harmed and have accountability and have justice, that's a huge testimony. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Absolutely, absolutely. And we want to thank you who are listening for being with us. If you like our show, please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app so that others can find us. We hope that you'll join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.