I was disheartened to read my friend Dee’s post last night on the Wartburg Watch concerning The Village Church’s legal team filing a motion of dismissal on the $1 million dollar lawsuit that was filed against them in July. The grounds on which they are requesting the dismissal are nothing short of atrocious, in my opinion, and are not a reflection of a Christian organization willing to do the right thing by this poor girl who was allegedly assaulted by one of their employees. Of course the family would never have had to file a lawsuit if The Village Church had done the right thing in the first place.
Case in point:
A few years ago I was upstairs in my house and heard a loud crash in my front yard. I ran downstairs, out the front door, and discovered my brick mailbox smashed to pieces. Sitting on my front lawn was a man in a red Dodge Neon, clearly stunned that he had tried to take the corner near my house just a little too fast and ended up in my front yard. After making sure he was ok, I discovered that he was canvasing the neighborhood trying to sell security systems. He gave me his card, and I promptly called the company he worked for and informed them that one of their employees destroyed my mailbox, while on the job, and that they would be paying for a new one. They assured me that they would, I obtained an estimate, and received a check promptly from them. The security company was held liable for their employee’s behavior while on the job. See, secular society gets it!!
Who is Dustin Gaines?
Dee and I spoke about The Village Church’s attorney, who seems to have very little experience, representing a very large church in a very high profile case. What gives? His law firm, Middlebrook & Goodspeed, PLLC reportedly has ties to Gateway Church, Mark Driscoll & the now defunct Teen Mania Ministries. Dee & I both suspect that perhaps he is connected to Ministry Safe, but can’t confirm that as of now. Inquiring minds want to know.
Dustin also legally represents his church, Temple Baptist Church in Flower Mound, TX.
I did, however, find an interview that Dustin and his law partner, Steven Goodspeed did with Tony Morgan Live back in February 2019. The topic was ‘4 Legal Risks to Churches‘ and they spoke extensively about how churches should prepare for and deal with child sexual abuse cases. What really jumped out at me was this quote that they felt was ‘tweetable’:
Some other interesting things that stood out was their advice to churches on how to scale back their policy manuals, because those could be used against them in court:
Dustin is quoted as saying that churches should have general liability policies, which do cover abuse cases. I can’t imagine that TVC didn’t have a general liability policy in place? Also he goes on to say that there are certain parts of the policy that apply specifically to youth pastors and children pastors, camps, etc:
The only possible connection I found with David Middlebrook (formerly a partner at Anthony & Middlebrook) and Ministry Safe was a Georgia Baptist Convention Ministry Safe conference in 2015 where Kimberlee Norris, Greg Love & Middlebrook were featured speakers.
Like so many others have said, it is also my opinion that Ministry Safe is in the business of protecting churches, not victims, so it would not be a surprise to find out the MG Law Team & Ministry Safe were working together on this lawsuit for the best outcome of The Village Church, not the victim who was allegedly assaulted by their employee, Matt Tonne.
And while I’m at it, I’ll just put this out there – I don’t think The Village Church, in particular Matt Chandler, really believes Matt Tonne is guilty. He has never exhibited any true care towards the victim and has cried more for his ‘friend’ Tonne (as evidenced in the SBC ’19 interview) and himself than for the Bragg family. It seems to me that Chandler is more concerned about absolving TVC’s culpability in this case because he personally does not believe the victim. When someone has a personal relationship with a person that has committed a heinous crime, it is difficult for them to accept the truth about that person’s actions, and it clouds their judgment. I believe that is what has happened here with Matt Chandler and Matt Tonne. (for the record, these are my personal opinions)
Now on to the real reason I am posting today…..
Dear TVC Covenant Member - This is How Your Church Cares For You
The Village Church cares for it’s members SO MUCH that it has an entire document titled ‘Care At The Village‘. Nestled inside of this document is a plan of care, that to the unsuspecting eye, seems very loving, thought-out and purposeful. If I had read this document 10 years ago, I would have gobbled it up and asked, ‘where do I sign?’. It’s designed and written in a way that is appealing to the average Christian, who is looking for a church that cares for them, like a good church should.
Not so fast!
"At The Village, our theology drives our philosophy, which drives our practice."
The entire first page of the document is a litany of bible verses that TVC uses to support their prescription for care of their members. If anyone actually took to the time to look up and cross-reference all of the scriptures, they would probably forget what they were looking them up for in the first place! To me, it was just confusing, and I guess from TVC’s perspective it makes what they have to say in the next 20+ pages seem more legitimate.
The Village Church uses a ‘Care Pyramid’ to administer care to the covenant membership. This includes 3 levels of care: General, Pastoral & Professional:
According to their document, “Care at The Village is structured as a pyramid, escalating from general care to pastoral care to professional care as the issues become more complex and require increasing levels of training and competence.”
General Care
General Care is provided by the church community, supervised by elders & deacons which includes corporate worship, community groups, recovery groups, bible studies, etc,.
While recovery groups fall under the ‘General Care’ category, there is more accountability and those who facilitate the groups require more training. According to the ‘Care at the Village’ document:
“Recovery Groups are member-facilitated but must be supervised by professionally trained, licensed and specialized ministers/deacons. Facilitators must receive specialized training prior to leading, and they lead under the oversight of trained subject-matter experts.”
Now this is where some investigation might be warranted, because I have talked to at least two people who said Jason Holleman (who is not licensed by the state of Texas) led some of these recovery groups at the Flower Mound campus, which would be in violation of TVC’s own internal policies.
Pastoral Care
When an issue cannot be adequately addressed at the level of member care, it is escalated to Pastoral Care…now this is where it gets interesting, because when a TVC pastor gets involved, you effectively enter the ‘system’ and get assigned as a ‘case’:
The current Director of Care at The Village Church is Summer Vinson Berger. In my post ‘From Recovery to Abuse: Part II’, Summer was Alison’s therapist while she lived with a couple in Rockwall, who abused her. Read more about Alison’s story here.
Pastoral care is administered and overseen by the Care Department and is limited to counseling the member from a spiritual standpoint, using the Bible, in addition to ongoing general care.
Professional Care
“Members are escalated to professional care when the care needed exceeds the training and expertise of the pastors. Reasons for professional care include, but are not limited to: chronic or extreme anxiety, depression, mental illness, danger to self or others (including abuse of any sort) and trauma (PTSD/ CTSD).”
The Village Church states that they only refer out to counselors that they have a relationship with or that support the work of the local church. It’s important that their members see one of their ‘approved’ counselors, because they want access to the counseling records!
The Village Church is not specific as to who these counselors are that support the work of the local church, however, I do have a suspicion ….North Texas Christian Counseling.
Jason Holleman, who has a reported 16 complaints against him for the mishandling of domestic abuse cases at The Village Church (read my post on that here), is one of the UNLICENSED counselors at North Texas Christian Counseling. I have to wonder if TVC has violated another one of it’s policies by referring members directly to him for counseling, since he is also a TVC employee.
What is frightening to me is that the process of care at TVC creates so many opportunities for abuse. I documented this in Alison’s story. She was put under church discipline for experiencing a manic episode. instead of ‘escalating’ her to appropriate psychiatric care, TVC told her that she had a demon attached to her. Is this the kind of ‘pastoral’ care that is being provided to TVC members?
Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation:
- *Jennifer (covenant member) is a single woman who decides to attend a recovery group
- Jennifer decides to enroll in the STEPS recovery, which is more intense. They require her to fill out an inventory sheet (I referenced in Christina’s story, From Recovery to Abuse: Part I) The Village Church now has a complete family history on Jennifer, including her sexual past.
- Jennifer is having some personal issues that her STEPS mentor thinks she should escalate to pastoral care. Jennifer contacts the Care Department and they open a ‘case’ and assign her to a pastor.
- Jennifer & Pastor X begin meeting and he counsels her according to guidelines. He also gathers personal information about Jennifer.
- Pastor X decides that Jennifer’s issues need to be escalated to Professional Care, so he recommends a ‘TVC-approved’ counselor and suggests that she sign a form giving him access to her counseling records, so that everyone is ‘on the same page’; she complies.
- During one of her counseling sessions, Jennifer confesses to a one-time indiscretion of sleeping with her boyfriend She expresses remorse and promises not to do it again. Later on Pastor X requests her counseling records. He reads about her indiscretion and discusses with the pastoral staff in charge of church discipline.
- Jennifer is informed by Pastor X that she is now under church discipline.
Now that is just ONE possible scenario of someone giving pastoral staff access to their counseling records and how that could create BIG problems for a covenant member. I could sit here all day and come up with all manner of horrible scenarios of how this chain of events could go terribly, terribly wrong. The bottom line is this – The Village Church wants access to your personal information. They preach confession, confession, confession – but if things go wrong and you go against the church, guess what, they have ALL of that information you disclosed to them, and they are under no obligation to keep it private.
The rest of the care document goes on to address how The Village Church responds to domestic violence and child abuse. What they have in print is legitimate on it’s face on these two issues, but we know that in practice, TVC has fallen woefully short.
[…] Village Church itself has a history of problematic church discipline and authoritarianism, encapsulated in the story that made headlines in 2015. A church member annulled her marriage after […]
This is a great post that makes clear how signing one of those church covenants can be the worst thing you do in your life!
Another reason which may prove your point is that NTCC’s “main office” is around the corner from TVC’s main campus.
Thanks for that info! Very interesting indeed.
I found your post via your Twitter account. Reading about the Village Church raises questions for me, specifically about the whole church dynamic. After spending 12 years in a spiritually abusive church, I’ve put up my own posts on what I’ve found out since about how abusive churches operate. A huge red flag in your post is the reference to “covenant members”- abusive churches often use signed contracts to get control over people. Your statement that they want your information is pretty dang telling too. I’d lay odds they preach the spiritual covering doctrine. Sexual abuse is what happens when… Read more »