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Powerful Leaders? || Marcus Honeysett Interviewed by Glen Scrivener || SLP404 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you for downloading episode 404 of the Speak Life podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, Glenn Scrivener has a conversation with Marcus Honeyset about Marcus's new book, Powerful Leaders: When Church Leadership Does Wrong and How to Prevent It.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll get straight into the conversation and then I will catch you at the end with an announcement.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Today on Speak Life, I am with Marcus Honeyset.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: He is the director of Living Leadership and the author of many books, including powerful leaders.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for joining us, Marcus.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's nice to be here, Glenn.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now I mentioned Living Leadership.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's a real passion of yours.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain what that is and why it exists?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: So Living Leadership is a ministry that disciples and trains uh church leaders.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: We are passionate about spiritually healthy leaders for spiritually healthy churches.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_04: We've been going since 2005, originally started with a number of churches being interested together in uh uh discipling leaders uh every stage through church life.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_04: And uh the thing we're probably best known for is a thing called the pastoral refreshment conference, which is soul care for leaders and spouses in local churches, and that seems to have really hit a nerve.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, why do you think that is?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: The pastoral refreshment of pastors.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a conference that that leaders go away to, and it's not simply to gain tools in in their own sort of leadership, but what yeah, what what do they go for to the pastoral refreshment to uh uh yes?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's not about leadership tools or competences at all.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's just about their walks with the Lord and their spouses' walks with the Lord as well.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: If you ask anybody in a local congregation, do you know who feeds the people who feed you?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: you will find the answer very often is no, we have no idea.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_04: And in too many cases, that means that the people who feed other people are the least fed in the church themselves.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: And uh that's obviously a recipe for disaster.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_04: If you're trying to give out of depletion and emptiness, then you can do that for about 15 years, perhaps before it all crumbles, but then it crumbles for an awful lot of people.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: So uh um three of us were once uh at a conference having lunch and uh asking why uh member care or soul care was normal in missions movements, but not in the pastoral movements that we were part of.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: We wrote on the back of a napkin what we most wanted for the care of our own souls, what would keep us uh walking in God's grace, what would encourage us, what uh opportunity we'd love to get prayed for and have pastoral input that was particularly tailored to our needs in ministry.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: And we actually wrote it on the back of a napkin that I wish I'd kept.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_04: And uh then we looked at the napkin, thought that doesn't exist uh where we are at any rate.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_04: So we rang 80 friends in pastoral ministry and said, if we put on something that is just about you and the grace of God, you're not going to learn to put together a child protection policy or exegete Obadiah.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_04: Um, would you come?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: And 80 came.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_04: And the very first night, a retired Baptist guy who uh helped us put it together gave a keynote address on doubt and failure in leadership.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: And we were incredibly naive about what the consequence of that address would be.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_04: It opened the floodgates on our pastoral team and has done ever since.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Doubt and failure were the were the theme.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Doubt and failure.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think they they struck such a nerve?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, because uh it was a place that was safe to say those things.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_04: And the lesson that we've learned now over the years is that uh very often folk in ministry do not have a place that is safe to talk about their own struggles.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: Whether that's a denominational structure where the uh line management structure crosses over with the pastoral structure, so something gets written on your file, so you can't really tell it there.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and uh in an independent local church, you're always worried that if you tell your elders what you're struggling with, that that will have employment consequences as well.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_04: So you end up being the person who uh listens to everybody else, but you don't have any access to it yourself.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_04: And what we had inadvertently done was create somewhere that had no power and therefore was safe.
• 4:28
  unknown: Okay.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_04: And uh that's uh been a real blessing ever since.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_04: So it's been going 15 years now, and uh it's going great guns.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_04: We're delighted with it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a pastor's heart for pastors and and for their pastoral needs, um, but you've also written this book, Powerful Leaders, into a context in which we've seen how often uh pastoral leadership can go wrong.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh set set the scene for what you think is the state of play.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you minister in lots of different places, but let's let's keep it to the UK for now.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: What is the state of play in the UK Evangelical Church as you see it?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I think the UK Evangelical Church has obviously been rocked by a number of high-profile uh um incidents of leaders falling either with uh criminal misconduct or uh sinful bullying.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and it's really exposed uh a roar on the belly, a nerve.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_04: I think that the temptation is uh for one set of folk to underplay the issues, to say, well, I haven't seen anything like that, therefore it doesn't exist.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_04: And for another set of folk perhaps to overstate the issues and to assume that it's absolutely everywhere and every leader is guilty and complicit.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I want to try to set out in the book a rather more nuanced framework about how to look at these issues.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_04: So, my view is that very, very few folk go into Christian leadership expecting to become wolves.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_04: But but some do.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_04: And some do despite themselves and despite their best intentions.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: I think that lots and lots don't.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_04: But the question that I really want to explore is how do we get as savvy as possible to the use of our soft power and our influence?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_04: Because that's where it goes wrong without us spotting.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_04: So while I think that the great majority of evangelical leaders don't go wrong, I think all Christian leaders at least have the potential to go wrong with it.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_04: Because we all have sinful hearts, we are all not particularly savvy to ourselves, we all have uh a vested interest in looking at ourselves through rosy tinted spectacles.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_04: And congregations, generally speaking, don't know where the limits of leaders' authority lie, and leaders are bad at self-limiting.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_04: So, what I want to do is uh is basically just open up the issues and say, let's think this could happen to me.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_04: I am not immune from this.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_04: And if we think in advance what would protect me and other people from the worst version of me, then we might be in a better position to uh yeah, to think healthfully about these things.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: So what does what does the what does it look like for a church and a leader to be on a journey perpetually towards healthiness?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and one of the things that I think is eye-opening is to consider the ways in which we have power already.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: I remember uh hearing Diane Langberg speak at uh ELF.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: When would that have been?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: 2018, 2019?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and she spoke about the the real issue, especially with pastoral leadership, is that none of the pastors think they have power, and yet they have incredible amounts of this thing called power, and it's a new thought to leaders that they in in fact have it and therefore must steward it in a Christ-like way.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that was sort of that was news to me.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, wow.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and I wonder whether that is because it's invisible to us because it is so much the soft power of family.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Church is family, and we're brothers and sisters in Christ, aren't we?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And everything is very informal, not very much is scrutinized.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we we read books like Brothers, we are not professionals, um, which is true, right?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: We are not professionals, and yet therefore that can become a cover for very unprofessional and then unchristian behavior um because of the the nature of the kinds of power that we have.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So can you convince us, Marcus, that in whatever Christian leadership role that we have, A, we have power, and and what kind of power it is that we have?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yeah, that's a great question.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: So we have two kinds of power, I think.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_04: We have formal, legitimated.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, let's just distinguish terms first.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: When I say authority, I mean having the right to act.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: And when I talk about power, I talk uh I mean having the ability to act.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_04: And I believe that we have essentially two kinds.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: We have formal, legitimated authority, which is the authority given us by the organization that we work for to carry out the responsibilities that we have.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_04: And that has the benefit usually, not always, but usually, that it is transparent, it is circumscribed, everybody knows what it is, it is accountable, it's plural, it's in the light.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: And then we have uh soft power, which is much, much harder to think about because it is relational, it is exemplary, it is um, I've been really struck over the last year with just how much the New Testament talks about leaders being imitable.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_04: Now, just imitation gives you a huge amount of power.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_04: I want somebody to be able to imitate me, but if they therefore trust me, that means that the temptation is that people will do what I say just because I say it.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_04: Regardless of whether or not I'm right, and regardless of whether that leads to their maturity or not.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: We have power by dint of um uh long-term trust and credibility.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_04: We have power by dint of the platforms that we have and the fact that people just automatically trust people on platforms, although maybe that's changing at the moment.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_04: We have power by dint of um uh our credibility um that goes with personality and personableness.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_04: Now, nobody wants a non-personable church leader, but it does mean that the people who are attracted into church leadership tend to be very, very good at gaining people's trust.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: And under normal circumstances, when everything's going well, all of this is highly positive.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_04: But the flip side of the positive is that when it's going badly, you know, when when family is going well, brilliant, isn't it?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_04: When family is going badly, uh, the the bad things are magnetic as well.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_04: Very, very, very toxic.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: So these things are um really important, they're they're they're critical.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody in ministry knows that um after a while, after say five years in a ministry, your soft power, all these things that I'm talking about here, dramatically outweighs your formal power.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: You can get things done by influence that you possibly can't get done formally.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_04: And the temptation, therefore, is to use your influence to get things done that you can't get done formally.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: If I just maneuver that person into that position or maneuver that person out, if I just ring that person before the meeting and say, you are going to support me, aren't you?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um, if there's a dodgy vote coming, or you know, whatever it is, all of a sudden you're able to use your soft power to buy hard power, if I can put it that way.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_04: If you have enough of it, it's convertible.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_04: The trouble is this that uh that you use the soft power, you use your influence, you use your personableness and your credibility in the first instance because you think you're getting a good end for Jesus.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: You don't use it selfishly, and therefore it's easy to justify to yourself that I'm doing Jesus' work, maybe not quite Jesus' way, but it's okay because there's a good outcome, and everybody likes the outcome.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_04: And when there's a good outcome, nobody questions it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_04: So it's exactly the point that you can also well, well, two things happen.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_04: Firstly, you can leverage um the outcome to get yourself more formal power.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: And uh secondly, what you've done is you've established a precedent that you can use your soft power to get something illegitimately, and nobody questions it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: So all of a sudden it's become the Buddhist operandi of the church.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_04: This is now what happens?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I I have a lot of sympathy.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_04: So somebody said to me recently, um, I've been parachuted into a small church by the bishop.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's going to fail unless I do some radical things.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I have been given all the authority, all the power, and told to do whatever I think is necessary.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_04: So, how on earth do I not abuse that?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that that's a very, yeah, I'm really glad the person was asking the question because that means they're less inclined to abuse it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_04: But it's not always that somebody is rubbing their hands in glee saying, I can become an abusive leader.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: We step into this kind of territory, uh, we cross the boundary almost unwittingly at first.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which is the sort of the heart of the book is this slippery slope idea that you have, uh where you begin with legitimate and transparent kind of authority, and it ends.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Take us uh obviously it takes a whole book to kind of unpack that.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But where can this sort of stuff end?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: So the five categories I outlined start with um legitimate and legitimated authority that is in the light because it uh has four distinguishable features, namely it is accountable, transparent, plural, and embodied in the church community and the way that it acts.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: So you can you can easily see how that operates.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um, in my view, that the the best churches at this actually signpost their pastoral practice.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_04: On your website, for example, it ought to be possible for folk to look at that and say, here's how pastoral practice and leadership in this church operates.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Just to give one example.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: Um, if I go to an elder and share personal stuff, uh, can I have confidence where that information is going to go or not go?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's uh that seems to me to be just good, healthy practice.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_04: So transparent, plural, accountable, embodied in the church community, in the light.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_04: Then we've got our soft power, which I think is very normally exercised in a very godly way: our pastoring, our one-to-ones, our mentoring, our trust, our credibility.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: And churches can't actually operate without that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um, our exemplary, our moral authority.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_04: The trouble being that it is less accountable and less transparent, and very much harder for people to scrutinize if anything goes wrong.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: The third category is where I think it first goes wrong, which is when you move into what I've already talked about, which is other serving or perceived mission or gospel serving illegitimate use of authority.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_04: And by that I mean doing something that you think gets a kingdom end or a gospel end, but not using gospel means.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_04: So ends justify means.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_04: And as soon as you do that, it doesn't matter how good the end is, it's not of God.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: You've got there using ungodly means that Jesus can't can't own.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: Then there's the fourth category.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_04: So having got to other-serving illegitimate leadership, it's quite easy then, I think, to trip over into self-serving illegitimate leadership.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_04: Particularly if somebody then, if somebody picks you up and says, hang on a minute, you did something there that looked like it got gospel ends, but I'm not sure about the means that you got there.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_04: The temptation at that point is to self-defend.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's not always self-promotion.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: You're not you're not going into self-serving mode just because I want power.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_04: You might want self-protection.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_04: You might want self-protection for all kinds of reasons.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_04: You might have a strong cabal in the church that controls the church meeting that hates you.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_04: You might be in a denominational situation where there is a move away from orthodoxy and you find yourself regularly lambasted from outside, and you just want to protect yourself and your family.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: You might find that you are in a situation where there are just completely unrealistic demands made upon you, and you want to protect yourself.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_04: So you move into self-serving illegitimate leadership.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_04: And at this point, all the mechanisms are to do with you keeping your position and not being overwhelmed and yada yada yada.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: And then I think that there is a fifth category, and I refer to it in the book as the most serious abuses of power, which are deliberate and intentionally uh building yourself up at other people's expense.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_04: It is actively setting out to abuse them.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_04: I think you can end up in category four, the self-serving illegitimate leadership, just about without quite realizing that you're doing it, but you can't end up in the fifth one without realizing that you're you're doing it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_04: Now, in the book, I am I'm more concerned with the start of that slope than I am at the end.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_04: There are other people you've mentioned, Diane Langberg, who are much, much better at talking about um uh criminal sexual abuse, those kinds of issues.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_04: I I am interested in the first abuses more than I am in the worst abuses.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_04: Because I think that everybody stands in danger at most.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think that does?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because as as I read your book, I um I very much appreciated that.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the slippery slope is just a brilliant analysis of how you can find yourself becoming the baddies.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the great Michelin Webb sketch from 2006.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, where a couple of SS guards Yeah.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: A couple of SS guards come to to realize that they are the baddies.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what's uh funny about the sketch, it's funny because it never happens.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: You never actually wake up to the Nazi that you are.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the self-justification just goes very deep in so many of us.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just such a wake-up call, I think, your your book, to have us all to think what are the first signs rather than the worst signs of um abuse.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it's sort of reminded me of um I forget which South American dictator it was that I I heard one of his family members said, I always knew he was going to be a dictator because he cheated at Monopoly.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And a a as a sort of a first step along the slippery slope.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always sort of stuck with me because now whenever I see anybody cheating at Monopoly, I'm sort of hyper-vigilant to you know, you're you're you're a hop, skip, and a jump from being a despot.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um does is there a danger of that making us hyper-vigilant to the small things when like there are worst-case scenarios out there that that should be on our radar screens?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: How do you navigate that?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think we want to ignore either of those things.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's very, very easy to uh extrapolate from the worst case scenarios and assume that it's everybody.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: But like I said before, I think it is at least everybody in principle.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: And the monopoly example is quite an interesting one.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_04: Because what you've demonstrated with the monopoly example is what kind of character you are.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_04: And the critical question about character, somebody said to me recently, churches tend to hire on skills and fire on character, which I think is very interesting and very revealing.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't hire on character sooner or later, you might find yourself firing on character.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_04: But the trouble is that churches do look for skills.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: And uh a couple of very interesting things happen, I think, even at as early as ministry interviews.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_04: So what happens is that somebody comes along, um, the church has put out maybe a job description that the archangel Michael couldn't do.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, but they think, well, I've gotta I've got to say that I can do this, otherwise I'll give the job to somebody else.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_04: So you present a fantasy picture of yourself right from the word go.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_04: And as soon as you got the job, you've got to inhabit it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_04: So the mask comes really, really early.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_04: And the longer you go on having to be unflappably smiling and be the one who floats six foot above everything and not be human, the bigger the gulf between what you're actually like inside and the facade that you present gets.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_04: The very first casualty is that you stop walking in repentance and faith because you can't actually admit to ever getting anything wrong in front of the church.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_04: You can no longer be the chief.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: Repenter.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: And if you're not able to be the chief repenter as the leader at the front, then nobody else knows how to do it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_04: So you create this culture of perceived expectation of perfection and superficiality.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's gilded, it's slick.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_04: The trouble is that folk look at you and think, well, I've got to emulate that, but I can't.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: So I put up the facade as well.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: And then you're then you just sunk.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_04: Then you you you cannot row back until something catastrophic happens.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I was just watching, uh I was watching that movie Deep Water Horizon yesterday.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: Not seen it before.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_04: Great movie.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh the worst oil rig disaster in history.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: But um when the spark finally just ignites the oil rig and everything goes up in flames, it's not that there's no backstory.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_04: There is a backstory of greed, incompetence, systemic failure that had gone unnoticed, um uh checks that hadn't been carried out, and everybody had just let things slide.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_04: I think when you see catastrophic things go on with leaders, it's very, very easy for churches or wider constituencies and tribes to say, oh, it was just a lone bad apple.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_04: There's nothing, there's no backstory here.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_04: Because then you can just get rid of them and carry on as before without taking a long hard look at yourself.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_04: I think we're a way off your question now.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_04: But um, if I were now to go to a new ministry, if I were to go to pastor a new church, the first thing I would do is this.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: I would sit down with the church officers, and then I'd sit down with the church, and I would say, look, the person who is most at risk of abusing power here is me because I've got most of it.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_04: And it's your responsibility to look after me in this regard by keeping me accountable for the way I do it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_04: My responsibility and accountability is to the church.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_04: So if you think I'm going wrong, then my office door's open, and if it's not, then you batter it down and you pin me to the carpet.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_04: But when pastors and elders and church wardens and the like are putting together um risk assessments, for example, do we put ourselves on it?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_04: We should do, because we're the biggest risk factor.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: And if all your policies and your risk assessments are and your church discipline is applicable to everybody apart from the most senior people, they're not worth the paper they're written on.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Is there is there another issue with um the slippery slope in that I uh it's a it is an entirely Christian impulse to think, yes, there are shepherds and there are sheep and there are wolves, and when you look at the wolf for your first impulse to be, there but for the grace of God go I.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that I mean there's something obviously very, very Christian about that.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but but there's also the the sense of with a wolf, my my first um the first thing uh my first duty is to protect the flock from the wolf and that actually yes, it's very it's very much important that I think through how I might become a John Smythe.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, to to to put a name out there.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would say it's even more important for us culturally to think about when a wolf like a John Smythe appears, what do we do?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because the the there's one kind of failure that makes you like a John Smythe, there's another kind of failure where you do not stand up to a John Smythe and where the institution uh allows the abuse to to happen and flourish hidden or in plain sight or or whatever, and that those those institutional things are even more urgent in our current crisis.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_04: Uh let's uh let's talk both about institutional responses and about individual responses.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: Um so if an individual something's going wrong or a leader's going wrong, I think that they can be in uh a terrible bind.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_04: So, firstly, Christians are instinctively hardwired to be forgiving, they're instinctively hardwired to look at our own parts and to take the plank out of our own eyes first, and to assume, therefore, that we must be reading something wrong.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_04: And when somebody is going badly wrong, they have a very strong vested interest in playing to that narrative.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, no, you've misread, you've misunderstood, you don't have all the facts.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's not what you think it is.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_04: Even when you do start to realize it is what you think it is, then you get faced with questions like, well, what's what's a forgiving response?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_04: What is the most help?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_04: What has the most chance of a healthy outcome here?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um is it is it to raise that publicly?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_04: Is it to fight it?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_04: Is it to um yeah, what what is it that I can do that uh is that that has the best chance of positive outcomes and the least chance of leaving a church a smoking ruin.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_04: And if you're dealing with these things on your own and with abusive leaders, you almost always are because they're very good at siloing people, that is a far from easy question to figure out.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_04: And many of us who have been whistleblowers know what it's like in our minds to um to imagine best possible outcomes or best possible rationales for what we see going on, and then sort of reverse engineer in our minds, well, it couldn't possibly be that they're a wolf, could it?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_04: So you you sort of reason backwards, and then you also come to the conclusion, well, hang on a minute, if they are, and I'm the one who has to call them out, the chances are that I'm the one who gets the most badly damaged here.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_04: I might lose my my church, I might lose my job, I might lose my reputation and my friends, my family might be disadvantaged.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_04: So we have very, very strong vested interests for not seeing what's going on right in front of our eyes very often.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_04: It's not exactly willful blindness, um, but unwitting blindness can become.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_04: It's betrayal blindness, that's right.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_04: We're very, very reluctant to think about categories of betrayal.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_04: It's why people stay in domestic abuse situations much longer than they should.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_04: And then we have to recognize that people who are actively manipulative, um, I think that there is a difference between the bullying leader, they're coercive, they they get you in line like this, and the manipulative leader who just does it with winsome smiles and very careful control behind the scenes.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_04: But uh both of them isolate and divide and rule, and both of them always have willing dupes that they have never done anything bad to, that they can always depend on to provide an alibi.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_04: So the whistleblower almost always comes off badly, and they know it before the event, which is why it happens so rarely.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_04: And in church circles, they have far fewer protections than you do in most secular circles, and you're more naturally given to forgive, so you tend to put it off and off and off, thinking, well, if I stay and work with this, maybe things get better.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_04: When somebody's genuinely a wolf, oh, and wolves come dressed not just as sheep, they come dressed as shepherds as well.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, Paul says to the Miletus elders, When I've gone, some from among your own number will arise and distort the truth and try to draw disciples away.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_04: Did he know who it was who he was talking to then?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: Don't know.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe they didn't know.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe all of them were standing there thinking, well, not me.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_04: The fact that it can happen to Miletus elders that Paul is talking to, and the fact that Judas is there in the 12 tells you that these things are not abnormal, but normal.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_04: And we are probably much better protected against them if we were to go, no, these things can and do happen.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_04: There are plenty of scriptural examples.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_04: So let's just build that into our normal expectation.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe we will be better safeguarded.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_04: There are no there are no panaceas.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_04: But what about institutions?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_04: That I think is a really, really interesting question.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: So churches, I think, at the moment, for fear of allegations of abuse, are generally speaking not well fought through on church discipline.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_04: But if a church is not fought through on church discipline, you'll never do it when it's the leader that needs it.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_04: So having just a general understanding of what healthy leadership looks like in difficult circumstances might better prepare you for when the leadership goes unhealthy.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: To give one example, in living leadership, um, last year we looked again at all our policies and we strengthened them as much as we possibly could, with the aim that um with things like uh grievance or complaint, um, all our practice should be in the light.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_04: And the weakest person who is ever connected with us should be able to use that against me without cost to them.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_04: Because otherwise it's just a piece of paper in a filing cabinet.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_04: If the weakest person cannot do that, then it's a pointless exercise.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_04: So institutions I think are protected by policies, but if you haven't got a culture that wants transparency, then well, culture eats a policy for breakfast, doesn't it?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: The institution that has the biggest difficulty, I think, is what you might describe as a wider culture or tribe.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_04: And everybody knows that cultures and tribes are extremely powerful things, but generally speaking, there's nobody within them that is tasked with the question about what tribal healthiness looks like.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_04: Tribes don't have safeguarding officers, denominations do, but tribes, tribes tend not to.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_04: And therefore, uh, you get Emperor's New Clothes scenarios and bubbles and echo chambers very easily, where people will stay in the tribe because of the benefit that it provides to them, and they will justify anything that looks slightly odd as an aberration or an eccentricity or a bad apple, because everybody has a quite strong vested interest in not looking too closely at stuff that might be going wrong, lest it causes unintended consequences.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Your your stuff about tribe is uh absolutely fascinating.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: You you have a very sort of systematic big picture mind, uh, Marcus, and uh it's just fascinating to see how these things develop one to the other to the other.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when you speak about um how sort of tribes develop, you say a cause is identified, a network develops, the narrative becomes the most influential thing.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: A vital part of the narrative is that the culture is us.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: The narrative creates an in-group and an out-group, the price of critiquing the culture grows, dependency on the culture creates willful blindness, and willful blindness becomes genuine blindness.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um just step by step in into a pit, really.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um as you look at the UK um culture, UK evangelical church culture, what do you think is the narrative that we tell ourselves about who we are?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and as that morphs into a a them and us kind of thing, who are we and who are the outsiders?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: What what what are the stories that we're telling ourselves?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm not sure that there is what I would describe as a unifying evangelical narrative uh per se in the UK at the moment.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_04: I think different tribes understand the particular call of God on them differently, whether that's a tribe that unifies around uh um a particular concern for gospel preaching and producing preachers, a tribe that unites around um uh understanding themselves as uh families on a mission, for example.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um, a tribe, yeah, we we could talk about uh um we could talk about different kinds of unifying narratives for for different tribes.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: But the thing that concerns me with any tribe is uh you if you're not very careful, you define your you define yourself by what you're not.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: And as soon as you start to define yourself by what you're not, you essentially uh make yourself immune from external critical friends.
• 35:33
  unknown: Yeah.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_04: Because we tend to apply uh self-congratulatory adjectives to ourselves.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_04: We say, uh, well, we're the strategic ones, we're the missional ones, we're the we're the ones who go to hard places, we're the ones who are um safe pairs of hands, uh, we're we're we're the awesome ones, pick your self-congratulatory adjective of choice.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_04: And of course, that means that the people who are not with us are the not strategic ones, the not awesome ones.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and therefore, why should we listen to them?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_04: So you you you get the bubble and echo chamber, and then um anybody who critiques from inside and risks the stability of the tribe kind of automatically becomes an outsider by doing so.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's all done with plausible deniability, but everybody knows what it's like to all of a sudden go from being an insider to an outsider if you're given to asking hard questions.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_04: You you become um incapable of getting those questions listened to just because you've raised them.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_04: You know, you're no longer supporting the narrative.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_04: But if you have no access to external critical friends either, then there's absolutely nothing to stop the Emperor's New Clothes happening.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh I was really grateful to Caleb Woodbridge for an illustration, uh, the CEO of IVP.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_04: He said that cultures to be healthy should work like cells in the body, which are semi-permeable.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_04: They let in good stuff from outside whilst keeping apotoxins.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_04: That's a good illustration, I think.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_04: Or to use another illustration, um, the immune system in the body goes wrong if it is underactive and lets in loads of bad stuff from outside, or if it is hyperactive and lets in nothing from outside.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_04: So, yeah, how cultures get to the point where they're they have external critical friends and where they are sufficiently um self-evaluative, I think is a really, really interesting question.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, folks from uh one particular uh evangelical tribe that asked me to speak into this recently for them, and I I don't know them very well, uh, so I didn't know how much of what I said was going to land.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: They said the critical thing that you have said to us is that we are very, very highly relational.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_04: And that's a really good thing when it's going well.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_04: And a really, really bad thing when it's going badly.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_04: And it's it's when you're going badly that you want the safeguards.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we've we've all got used to safeguarding in the in the kids and youth work sphere and vulnerable adults.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: But getting used to safeguarding in the leadership sphere, I think, is something that we're still not very good at.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_04: And you don't think you need it when everything's going well.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_04: But the whole point of having safeguarding in the kids and vulnerable adults sphere is that you have it prospectively to need.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_04: You've got to have it in place before you need it, because you'll never put it in place well when the catastrophe happens.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: I think exactly the same thing is true of leadership.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_04: And these folk were saying uh we'd had various catastrophes happen precisely because we only do things relationally, and we thought that our relational uh strength would last us forever and through all kinds of through through through any kind of catastrophe, and it clearly hadn't.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And but they they were semi-permeable enough to invite you in as an outside pair of eyes and and to speak into that situation.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there's this great.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: But the interesting thing about that was that I had to have enough um I had to have enough friendship with them to be to get invited in.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_04: If we don't have friends outside of our own constituencies, then you're never going to go to your enemies.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, Marcus, your book is very intentionally um about leaders and for leaders and trying to get leaders to be self-critical.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but do you have a word also for those who have been harmed by abusive leaders?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And at that point it becomes very hard to trust again, and and that trust is very hard to exercise even in Christ himself and and certainly in church again.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what would you say to those who have been harmed by powerful leaders who've used their power inappropriately?
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_04: So the first thing to say to anybody who's who's watching, for whom that is true, is I'm extremely sorry that that has happened to you.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_04: I do know what that's like from the inside.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_04: And uh betrayal is something that shouldn't even exist in God's good creation.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_04: It rips apart the fabric of creation and it it shreds our lives.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_04: And uh you know what it's like uh from the inside.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it is uh absolutely critical that the first thing that happens is that you get to a place of safety.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh if you're in that kind of situation at the moment, and particularly if you're on the receiving end of something criminal or sexual, then get out.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh go to the police if you need to.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_04: Find external friends, possibly external Christian friends, definitely.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, if you haven't got them in your current situation, go outside.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_04: If you think, well, I haven't got any, then consider a call to uh to a safeguarding agency.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but but but get out.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_04: Do not do not stay in an abusive situation.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_04: Uh unless you get out, it is impossible to get to a place where um you can make sense of what has been done to you.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_04: Um and sense making is the first thing that you need.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_04: Also, you're very, very subjective in the harm that has been done to you.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's very unlikely that you are going to get to a place of sense without counsel and help from others.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um, intervention of care is basically what you need.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_04: And from a place of sense, you may find that you also start to get to a place where healing is possible to start to happen.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_04: Folk who uh then think actually, injustice has been done to me, and I I need justice too.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_04: I think I think you find yourself in in some real difficulties.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_04: It is quite possible for us to want um justice and think, well, if I don't get justice, I cannot heal.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_04: But then we only approach issues of justice through the lens of our own turmoil.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_04: And those who have harmed us might have a very strong vested interest in making sure you never get justice, because that would mean that they have to admit to stuff that they've done and repent with all the things that go with exposure for them.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_04: So it's quite possible to tie ourselves emotionally to the people who have harmed us in such a way as they have no vested interest in our either.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um Matthew 18, I think is very good that there's a process for these kinds of things.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_04: If somebody has harmed you, sinned against you, you go to them.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_04: And if you don't get satisfaction from that, you take two or three with you.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't get satisfaction from that, you take it to the church.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_04: And if you don't get satisfaction from that, you teach, uh you treat them, it says like a tax collector or a pagan.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_04: So Jesus has a sort of uh a process there.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's worth thinking where might I be on that process.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_04: But if you find after all of that, that you're still not in a position where it's possible for you to move on because the person simply won't allow you that.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_04: The Bible does uh introduce a couple of other categories that forgiving type Christians are very reluctant to admit to.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_04: One is enemy, that somebody actually is not somebody who wants to be forgiven, who can be reconciled with.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_04: They are putting themselves in the category of being my enemy.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_04: But Jesus tells us what we do with them.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_04: What they get is mercy and forgiveness and prayer.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: Sorry, mercy rather than forgiveness.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_04: We pray for them, we do good as there is the opportunity to do so.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_04: But forgiveness isn't the category there.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_04: The category, in fact, is uh this is Romans uh 12 is you leave vengeance to the Lord.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: So what we're doing with folk under those circumstances for our healing is not forgiving, it is releasing them from our vengeance.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm leaving that with my just God.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's very common for us to think um, unless I forgive that person who is not repentant, then I cannot heal.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um I kind of think, well, forgiveness is about my heart getting released from a burdensome stone that's on it.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, forgiveness, no, forgiveness is about is about the other person if they're repentant.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_04: If they're not repentant, I think that the category actually for releasing my heart is releasing them from my vengeance to the Lord's perfect justice, is the thing that may start to allow us to move on.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_04: But these things, when you have been badly damaged by leaders, are likely to be lifelong.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_04: I'd really strongly recommend that you get good counsel.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: And there is no quick fix called forgiveness that you wave like a magic wand over things that all of a sudden returns everything to sweetness and light.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_04: And the more you have been abused in the longer term, then the longer term I expect your recovery and moving on to be.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: That that is a very realistic word, and uh there is more in the book um for people to grab hold of.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just very quickly, uh, Marcus, but uh what is your great hope for this book, Powerful Leaders?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_04: My great hope is that it will make leaders and churches congregations more widely think very hard and be as savvy as possible to the use of soft power and influence.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_04: And that the result of that will be that we're all on a journey towards greater spiritual healthiness.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_04: What we want is spiritually healthy leaders for spiritually healthy churches.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_04: What I don't want is for people to be so suspicious of leadership that nobody wants to lead anymore.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we'd love to have you back on again, Marcus, to talk about how culturally we uh address this situation and move uh move forwards positively in the grace of Christ.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: But uh Marcus Honeyset, uh uh is is there some way place that uh people can catch up with you best online?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at Marcus Honeyset.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_04: Uh possibly, Glenn, we could put um in the uh the links uh with this video.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_04: There is um an IVP downloadable resource um that gives a summary of the book.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_04: With um it's uh a multi-page resource that gives the five categories that I've listed, and uh we'll show anybody uh what we flesh out in the book.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_04: You might like to have a little look at that and then see if you want to go in and get the book.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_04: Uh it looks like this bright red cover, powerful leaders.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um that would be awesome.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yes, I do uh endorse the book and uh have very positively uh reviewed it.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: So go out and get a copy of Powerful Leaders.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Marcus Harneset.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining us.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's lovely to have uh to be here.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks, Ben.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there we go.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Speak Live Podcast.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought I'd uh quickly draw your attention to the Premier Unbelievable conference, which is happening on Saturday, the 14th of May, live from the British Library, London.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you can attend in person or online, and you can get tickets at unbelievable.live.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I mention it is uh Speak Life's very own director, Glenn Scrivener, who you obviously heard his voice in uh this episode of the Speak Life podcast.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: He will be one of the speakers at the Unbelievable conference, along with Alistair McGrath, Sharon Direcks, Lisa Fields, Joseph D'Souza, John Wyatt, and many others.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if you would like to come along to that, uh just check out unbelievable.live.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's all from me.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Thomas Thoroughgood, by the way.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I work at Speak Life, and we really appreciate you listening to the Speak Life podcast.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: We will be back with a new episode next week.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: God bless.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Goodbye.