Can women hold priesthood? The LDS Church doesn’t allow females to hold the priesthood. Is it similar in the Baptist Church? Is confession of sexual sin important to Baptists? How do Baptists handle sexual abuse cases? I put Kyle Beshears on the hot seat so you can see the similarities and differences with the LDS Church. Check out our conversation…
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GT 00:27 Well, I would like to examine your background a little bit more. Last time we talked, it sounded like you went to Baptist Theological Seminary. You did your Book of Mormon thesis, and then your Strangite dissertation. And then you became a pastor in Alabama. But it sounds like there’s more to the story than that.
Kyle 00:49 Yeah. So, that’s kind of like a storyline that’s running in parallel to my professional career, because I’ve also…
GT 00:59 Well, you were an IT guy, I was shocked to hear that. I used to be an IT guy, too.
Kyle 01:02 Yeah, we’ve bonded over that.
GT 01:03 {Chuckling}
Kyle 01:03 I was an IT guy for the Department of Defense. And that job took me over to England. And I worked at some US air bases there on some communication systems. And that gave me the opportunity to live in Cambridge. And so, while in Cambridge is where we, my wife and I, what I mean by we. We were in an Anglican community, when we joined the Anglican Church. And that was a really sweet time, because– we were talking about it a little bit.
GT 01:40 Anglicans sprinkle, right, they don’t baptize properly? Oh, do they?
Kyle 01:45 They do both. So, generally there’s a baby dedication that you can have, if you’re going to forego baptism. So it’s a dedication, the congregation is going to work together to help the parents raise the child in the faith. But they also do infusion, so that the sprinkling. They can do both. And in fact, at our church in Cambridge, we saw both. And we had a couple in our community group that were Baptistick. Yes! But yeah, I’ll be very frank, Anglicanism was not on my radar. And that was not my experience. I was used to Low Church, very programmatic, pragmatic Protestantism, evangelicalism. We struggled to find a church, until I had a really powerful spiritual experience that led us to this Anglican church, and I was shoved into the doors of that old building. I think one of the walls dated back to the ninth century.
GT 02:51 Really? Wow.
Kyle 02:52 The congregation is called the Holy Trinity Church. And if you’re familiar with Anglican missions’ history, Henry Martin was one of the pastors there. He was a famous pastor in their history. And I grew a lot in that church, spiritually. I grew in knowledge of the faith, and not just Anglicanism, but Christianity. And I actually grew a warmness for liturgy, the High Church. They weren’t completely High Church. It wasn’t smells and bells and robes and things like that. But they had a liturgy where every Sunday we were going through this call between the vicar and the congregation, of repentance for sin and assurance of faith.
GT 03:38 I will tell you. The Anglican Church and the Episcopal Church are basically kind of the same thing.
Kyle 03:45 They’re, historically, they were the same thing until the…
GT 03:48 …the Revolution. And I will just tell you, I went with my son. I had a friend who got baptized in the Episcopal Church. And so I went for his baptism. It was Easter Sunday. Actually, it was Easter Saturday because I had attended the priesthood session with my son. So, we went from the Conference Center in Salt Lake. We walked down the street to the Episcopal Church, where my friend got baptized. And I don’t know if I should admit this, but it was really interesting. I remember they had these candles that we would hold during the [worship service.] So when we are talking about liturgy, because for Latter-day Saints who have not attended an Episcopal or an Anglican church, I would assume they would be kind of similar. There’s this script where somebody, either the pastor or maybe a member of the congregation, will read some scriptures and then the audience will respond with some scriptures. And then it’s this real back and forth, very scripted. [It’s] very, very much different than [a] Latter-day Saint service. I’ve told my friend this, so I guess it’s okay. I took my son with me, and he didn’t know my friend at all. And I said, “So what did you think of this Episcopal service?” And he goes, “It was more boring than the LDS service. {Chuckling} It made me laugh. So, that’s more of a High Church experience. Is that right?
Kyle 03:51 Yeah, yeah.
GT 05:31 I know John Hamer[1] loves to give us a hard time that LDS churches are notoriously boring. And I don’t want to say that, because my friend, he’s really happy in his church and good for him. But, I mean, I don’t know if I’m characterizing it the right way. But it can become very rote and very routine. And so that’s what’s called a High Church versus a Low Church. How would you describe the difference between High church and Low church?
Kyle 06:08 Well, technically, every church has a liturgy. If you just walk in with no plan…
GT 06:13 Well, when we think of liturgy, probably the LDS temple ceremonies, because that’s very scripted. And so, we could think of LDS temple ceremonies as High Church and then regular services as Low Church.
Kyle 06:23 The LDS Church is simultaneously High and Low Church, is how I would say it. If you’re in Low Church, so to translate into LDS-ease, Low Church is probably like what you’re doing on Sunday at the meeting house with your ward. And High Churches, what you’re doing in the temple, as far as structure is concerned. I grew up in the Low Church setting, where the emphasis was on worship, a sermon, and announcements. That’s how that went. Anglicanism, at least the church that I went to, was kind of it wasn’t super liturgical, but for me, it was a completely different world, because we’re walking in, there’s like a song. There’s a call to worship that’s scripted. The vicar is leading us through repentance from sin and assurance of faith in Christ for forgiveness. Sometimes we’re doing Old Testament, New Testament gospel readings. Sometimes we’re reciting creeds. These are the types of things that happened in liturgy. And that was not me. And in the early, in the first month or so when we started attending, I was bored. But I knew I had to be there. So, I had a really…
GT 06:23 Why did you have to be there?
Kyle 06:32 I had a very powerful, spiritual experience. And that led me specifically to that church.
GT 06:56 It led you to be bored? {Chuckling}
Kyle 07:22 That’s what I thought. I was like, “God, I’ll do what you tell me, but I am bored.” And I was rebuked of that one Sunday, when– it was probably, like, the week after, when we got to the point of confession of faith together as a congregation. The vicar was leading us through this and “We’ve fallen short of you, please forgive us.” And I felt a very, very pastoral spiritual prompting from God. It said, “You know the last time you asked my forgiveness for your sin, was in liturgy last Sunday.” And it was the first time I was like, oh, I get it. This is an aid for us in our sanctification.
GT 08:26 We should ask for forgiveness more often.
Kyle 08:28 Right. So, that was the first kind of, “Sit down, learn.” And from then, I grew a great appreciation for liturgy. Now I pastor a Low Church. But we also have a service that’s a little bit of a higher liturgy, which is called Vespers, that we run occasionally on Sunday evenings, that goes through a scripted liturgical worship service. And the people that benefit and enjoy that the most are those that come from a high liturgical background, from the Catholic converts that, they miss it. And it can become rote, and it can become like dead religion. But a healthy church is going to remind people what it means and why we’re doing it. And, that’s just a very human thing. Because obviously I’ve never been through the temple and any of those ceremonies, but can that be boring and rote? I’m sure it could. And so maybe you’ve got to remind yourself of why you’re doing it and why you’re there or else it just becomes so routine and familiar that it loses its power for you, personally. I mean, that’s what happens in liturgy for me. And so, I don’t know, I think that speaks more to the human condition than it does the way that God sanctifies people.
GT 08:29 So this Vespers, do you do that because of your liturgical background in the Anglican Church?
Kyle 09:53 There are a lot of reasons. I mean, that’s a personal, selfish reason. I miss it. And we have a worship pastor who appreciates it as well. But we will never be like a high liturgical church. The other reason, too, I think is, I find beauty and wisdom in ancient Christian practices. And I am with C.S. Lewis, who kind of turns our attention to what he called chronological snobbery, just because it’s present and new, doesn’t mean it’s better and good. So, maybe there is wisdom and beauty in the past. And I find some liturgies, that there’s wisdom and beauty in them. Like, if you were a French, Huguenot, and you went to a church service, once a week, at least you’re getting a reading from the Old Testament, or reading from the New Testament or reading from the Gospels, confession of faith, assurance that that confession has been covered by Christ’s blood and secured by his resurrection. And, depending on how the pastor feels, of a low church, on Saturday night, maybe you’re not getting some of that. You know what I mean? Maybe–I’m a pastor, sometimes my sermons are terrible. I get it, I’m human. And so, for a liturgical…
GT 11:12 I don’t know how you could do that every single week. It’s nice in the LDS Church, where we pick on somebody every day. It’s different every week. I can’t imagine doing that every week.
Kyle 11:21 I love it. And so, what’s great about the church where I’m at, I only do it every other week. We have a teaching team. Part of that is because we have abhorred celebrity pastor shift.
GT 11:34 Joel Osteen? {Chuckling}
Kyle 11:38 Our goal, as a pastoral staff is one day to be like, who’s in charge of the church? And their answer is Jesus. And then you’re like, yeah, but who’s really in charge of the church? Like, I don’t really know. But that’s what we’re trying to get at. Because that’s what we see in Acts. There’s a first among equals, Peter. But there’s a distribution of authority and shepherdship across the apostles. But that’s a personal thing. So, what that does for me is it gives me every other week off. So really, I’m taking two weeks to prepare for a sermon. And there’s a great London Baptist pastor named Charles Spurgeon, who has a book called, Lectures to his Students. And it’s really precious to me, and I think it’s in that book where he has this line where he says, “Look, when it comes to preaching, because it’s so exacting…” I’ve been doing it for coming on 10 years this summer. Even, if it’s just every other week, I mean, imagine. And we preach for 45 minutes or so. So it’s like coming up with a research paper for 45 minutes, every two weeks. Yeah, it’s tiring. It’s exhausting. And Spurgeon said, “Look, if you can see yourself doing anything else in life, do it.” Because it takes that kind of commitment and dedication. But I love preaching and teaching, I feel like it’s in my genes. And the New Testament says, that’s a spiritual gift. And I can tell you, I couldn’t do it if it wasn’t gifted to me the same goes for people that are like in hospitality, Paul calls hospitality a spiritual gift. Hospitality, to me, personally, is exhausting. If I had it my way, it would just be me and my wife, and my daughter and we would shut all the doors and close all the windows and just live as a family. It’s taxing to me to have, just because of my personality type. And so now what people are like, week after week, having people in their home and feeding them food. That’s a gift, and I thank God for those people. So, anyway, back to liturgy. I was called into a low church and that’s how we got to Mobile.
Kyle’s Call to Ministry
GT 11:38 And that’s what I want to understand. Because I’m trying to understand how your seminary fit in with your call to pastorship, with your Anglicanism and your IT. How did that all work?
GT 12:23 IT was for money.
Kyle 12:48 I mean, that was just my job.
GT 13:12 That was your job. Because you said that when you were in England, you were a pastor or something?
Kyle 14:04 No, I was–they called it a pastor.
GT 14:07 Okay.
Kyle 14:08 It was probably more, it was far more appropriate to call it a deacon, like a lay leader. And so that, my first introduction to ministry was the vicar of our church and his associate vicar. She and he gave us an opportunity to wet our feet in serving a church. And the way they did it was they allowed us–they first asked us to host a community group, which is like a midweek meeting, and then to lead one and then to oversee multiple ones. So, we were responsible for the spiritual health and development of four or five.
GT 14:48 So you hadn’t had any theological training at this point.
Kyle 14:51 I’m doing theological training from a distance, at this point. So, that was really cool because the downside is you don’t have the professor in front of you, you can’t ask great questions. The plus side is what I’m learning, I’m putting directly into practice, immediately, and not waiting until I graduate and screwing up then.
GT 15:11 {Chuckling}
Kyle 15:14 And so that was a really formative experience for us, because it gave us a tiny introduction to ministry.
GT 15:25 So, did you get a degree in IT or anything?
Kyle 15:28 I was in the Air Force.
GT 15:30 Okay, so you graduated from high school. You joined the Air Force, and then you got your IT training there. You ended up in England.
Kyle 15:37 I got out of the Air Force, got a job, ended up in England.
GT 15:41 Okay, so it was a Defense Department job, not with the Air Force?
Kyle 15:45 No. Well, yes, it was serving the Air Force.
GT 15:48 Yeah, my dad kind of did the same thing. He was in for four years, and then he was in for 30 as a—he worked in logistics.
Kyle 15:56 The contracts they waved in front of you, at least at the time, I was like, of course, I’m getting out. And I didn’t want to do enlisted Air Force IT forever. And so, an opportunity opened up and took us to England.
GT 16:11 So how long were you England?
Kyle 16:12 Three years.
GT 16:13 You were there for three years. And at this time, you were like, “Hey, I’m a spiritual guy. I want to get a master’s in divinity.”
Kyle 16:23 Yes, sensing a call to ministry, and, actually, when I was in the Air Force, my last assignment was in Mississippi, which is close to Mobile. And so, the church that I was attending in Mobile, actually, is the church that I pastor now. The sense of calling of ministry was really dim and low, at the time, but it began right at that transitional state out of the military into…
GT 16:51 Okay, so you go to England, you don’t have a church to go to, that’s why you ended up in the Anglican Church. They gave you an opportunity as a lay pastor, essentially, or a deacon or whatever.
Kyle 17:00 I loved this and then I want to do more.
GT 17:03 Okay. And then you said, “I’m going to do a correspondence course, and I’m going to get my M Div.
Kyle 17:07 And then we get the call. So, we get the call about six months or so, when our time’s up in England. We had a three-year contract. And it’s the church back in Mobile. They were like, we have no clue if you’d ever be interested in this. But we’d love you to come back to Mobile and join us on staff. The church is growing, and the founding pastor’s philosophy at the time, the church has since grown, so it’s a little trickier to do.
GT 17:35 So you’re the IT guy at the church, I’m guessing, too, right?
Kyle 17:37 Oh, yeah, still to this day, which is fine. But the philosophy was, we don’t want to hire a person for a position, we want to hire a person for the person. And then allow God to show us what their giftings and talents are, and then grow that individual that way.
Kyle 17:38 And so when we moved back to Mobile, I’d like to say I was like the pastor of Miscellaneous. Because it was, like, whatever needed done, that’s what I did. The only thing I never did was children’s ministry. So, I was in youth ministry. I was facilities, like cleaning and IT. I was in worship. So, our music was teaching young adults and teaching older adults. And then came the time where I’d like to say we accidentally planted what would become the second campus. Mobile sits on this really big bay. There’s a growing community on the other side of the bay called Fairhope, Daphne. People were driving 45 minutes to an hour just to come to the church. Well, what if we just start an evening Bible study here, because that’s what the founding pastor lived. And we had 40 people show up the first evening. And then, by three months, there’s 80 people. So, that’s officially a church. So that’s the time they’re like, let’s call up Kyle and see if he’d be interested in helping him. So, I started teaching and preaching. And that’s when I discovered, oh, this is it.
GT 17:58 This is what you like to do.
Kyle 19:07 This is it. This is the calling and reading, researching, writing, communication, teaching, all that. And so, the church that I serve is extremely gracious. They gave me the opportunity to be that person. And you also, at the same time, are growing. The harder thing to teach in ministry is not the theology. It’s the people. It’s pastoring and shepherding. It’s teaching somebody to get out of their office and smell their sheep. That’s hard to do, counseling. And so, admittedly, that still is, to this day, my weak spot, but that’s where I’m growing. And my church is very gracious to let me fail from time to time. But, yeah, since then, it’s just been preaching, teaching, counseling, and then doing stuff like this, hanging out with Latter-day Saints.
GT 20:05 Well, you’ve got to be a heretic to be talking to these Mormons all the time.
Kyle 20:08 My church knows me. They’ve accepted it a long time ago.
GT 20:14 Have you converted a lot of Mormons?
GT 20:17 Converted?
GT 20:18 Or whatever? No? Do you blame that on Jesus, anyway?
Kyle 20:23 No, no, no. I’ll say this. I have had Latter-day Saints reach out who were transitioning out of the church. I’ve had a lot of those conversations. And a lot of them have orbited, “I’m leaving, I’ve already made the decision, but my spouse is staying. What do I do?” And so my first–the pastoral instinct is, meet that person in their suffering. Because this is hard. Like any Latter-day Saint that’s been in a mixed marriage, I’ve never been in it. But I’ve counseled a lot of different cases. And I’m not being hyperbolic. That transition of one spouse out of the church and one stays in is some of the toughest, most emotionally taxing counseling I’ve ever done. And for some reason, like…
GT 21:13 These are people who still want to be Christians, they’re not turning to atheism, right?
Kyle 21:17 Yeah. I never get interaction with those, the people that leave faith altogether. But they find me, either people know me or I’m known through a common, we have a mutual friend. Like, oh, they hear Mormonism, and they think Kyle, like you need to talk to Kyle. And that I’ve had a lot of those conversations. Also, I don’t– the missionaries, when they come by, they used to come by a lot. They don’t come by a lot anymore. I don’t know maybe…
GT 21:50 You scare them away.
Kyle 21:52 Well, no, because…
GT 21:53 COVID killed it?
Kyle 21:55 I think so. I think so. Because I remember–we there’s we have a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses, too. I’m not associating you two. But you’re basically, you, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Fundamental Independence Baptists are the only ones that are continuing to knock on my door. So, that’s how I’m associating you three.
GT 22:14 {Chuckling}
Kyle 22:16 In my neighborhood, I have, Jehovah’s Witnesses would–I’d see them coming. I’m like, okay, I’d like to have a conversation with them. And then they would skip our house and move along, because they don’t want a pastor.
GT 22:26 Oh, wow.
Kyle 22:27 But then I one time, I had Latter-day Saints roll up straight to the house, they wanted to engage. They wanted to talk.
GT 22:33 I did, when I was a missionary.
Kyle 22:34 Yeah, it’s just a different feel. And so, when Latter-day Saint missionaries were coming around the house, I’d invite them in, give them pizza, root beer. And they would– I don’t remember any other names, so I can’t get any of them in trouble.
GT 22:49 You gave them root beer? You can’t get that anywhere. That’s a Utah thing.
Kyle 22:52 {Chuckling} Water or root beer, it’s your choice. But they would come in and sit down at the dinner table. And we would talk, and they would start getting into the lesson. I was like, “Guys, let me stop you right there. I know exactly what you’re going to try to do. And you’re probably thinking what I’m going to try to do to you. If we promised not to, you can hang out here with me for an hour and a half, eat lunch, talk about family.”
GT 23:17 Oh, nice.
Kyle 23:17 Some of them took me up on it. And they’re like, “Oh, that sounds super cool.” Twenty minutes later, I’m getting the plan of salvation written down on a piece of paper. But being almost like a chaplain to these people, they’re 19. They miss home. They’ve got a severe case of FOMO [fear of missing out] from their family and their friends. And I was 19 and stationed outside of the United States. I know exactly what that feels like. It’s hard. And so being a pastor to them and hearing their stories and sometimes apologizing for the experiences that they had. I had one kid told me he had a shotgun pulled out on him in rural Alabama. And I told him, like A. not surprised, but B. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that that happened to you. He said, “It’s okay.” I’m like, “No, that’s a traumatizing experience that you had. If you don’t start talking about that with a therapist, you will one day.” And to just give them a breather. Because trust me. There’s probably plenty of other pastors in Mobile that we’re trying to convert them. I don’t have to do that. That’s probably already happened, right?
GT 24:36 {Chuckling}
Kyle 24:36 What Pastor is letting them have a timeout, and just sitting and resting for a second and enjoying fellowship? And I would have those missionaries reach out to me every now and then and [say,] “How are you doing?” Or, “Hey, I met an evangelical when I got back to Utah, he said this. Is that true?” And so, then I became a resource to people. But I don’t know, just the way it’s been for me in my life, I’ve always seemed to be, for Latter-day Saints that are experiencing faith crises or something like that, an unexpected way point. That is how I would describe it.
GT 25:18 It would be unexpected. I can’t remember meeting anybody on my mission like you. I don’t know if you heard it. I talked with Steve Pynakker about this incident.[2] I’d been out on my mission four months. I was training a guy. He had been out, I think a week.
Kyle 25:37 I remember this story.
GT 25:38 Yeah, we met this Baptist pastor, and he wanted us to say the Sinner’s prayer. And I was stubborn and didn’t want to do it. What harm would have done? Then he said, “God bless these damned souls!” And so, it’s so refreshing [to meet someone like you] because those people are annoying to me. Jeff McCullough went to General Conference,[3] and he confronted one of the Street Preachers. He was like, “I don’t think this message is working in the way you intend it to.” Because they just yell at Mormons, “You’re all going to hell.” And nobody wants to hear that. If a Mormon were doing that to an Evangelical, you wouldn’t want to hear that either. And so, I just love what you’re doing. I think it’s great.
GT 25:46 I know we talked about it before, how you said that some of your students were proselytizing, and you’re like, “Hey, stop that.” If we’re going to have these conversations, we’ve got to quit proselytizing to each other, and just sit down and listen. I think Richard Mouw and Robert Millet, and those kinds of people are great examples. I love that you’re doing this as well. It does bring up some of the other [questions.] And these are hot button political, but religious issues as well. And I wanted to ask you about these as well.
Role of Women in Baptist Church
GT 27:14 In the LDS Church a few years ago, Ordain Women was a big deal.[4] It’s technically still there. It’s definitely not as high profile as it was when Kate Kelly started it. I know you’re independent, so you get to do what you want to do. So I guess maybe I’ll ask this in two parts. How do you feel within your independent church and then, maybe, within the Southern Baptist Convention as well, about women being pastors?
Kyle 27:46 Yeah. So maybe actually starting at evangelicalism and working its way down might be helpful, because in evangelicalism, there’s such a wide spectrum, specifically about women’s roles and ministry. So, on one side of the spectrum, there’s a deep suspicion of women in any form of ministry, even to the role of Deacon.
GT 28:12 Women can be a deacon?
Kyle 28:14 No, what I’m saying is suspicion. We’re not going to allow them to be a deacon. There are no serving roles for women, with the exception of maybe other women or children. And so, the issue is, if a woman is in some kind of serving position, they are de facto leaders, and they can’t lead men. So, that would be the strongest position of the right, we could say. Although I don’t like that, but for lack a better framework here… Then on the far left is a complete dissolving of differences between men and women, in the case of ministry. So, women being a pastor or Bishop of a church or things like that, that’s not just permissible or warranted, it’s actually expected of the church. So, Evangelicalism has those extremes in them. And depending on your flavor, or the institutions that you associate with, are going to tell me, pretty quickly, where do you find yourself on that spectrum? So, you have conservative institutions like Southern Seminary in Louisville, where I did my Ph.D., that sees the office of pastor and the function of the pastor as being a preacher or a teacher is reserved for men only.
GT 29:38 Women are to be silent in church, to quote scripture.
Kyle 29:42 Well, to quote scripture, there are there are myriad roles for women to serve in church. It’s just not pastors, not the lead pastor. And that’s actually a pretty debated topic right now because the Saddleback Church in California, you might not know the church, but you probably know the Pastor, Rick Warren.
GT 30:01 Okay.
Kyle 30:01 The Purpose Driven Life. They’re an SBC church. He’s, since, stepped aside, retired as the pastor.
GT 30:09 They have been in the news lately. They were breaking off, right?
Kyle 30:15 Correct. Yeah, over the issue of the fact that the pastor is male, and he is co-pastoring with his wife. So that’s the big hubbub on that side.
GT 30:26 So, the Southern Baptists don’t like women pastors.
Kyle 30:30 No. And there’s a movement right now, in the convention, this is getting into one denomination within evangelicalism in specific, but there’s a movement within the SBC right now, to present motions this summer, to kind of codify the prohibition of women in, at least the lead pastoral position, if I understand, the [resolution.]
GT 30:55 They could be an assistant pastor, perhaps.
Kyle 30:58 Perhaps, but not like Rick Warren, or co-pastor or something like that. Then on the other side of things you’ve got United Methodist Church.
GT 31:13 Not United anymore.
Kyle 31:14 No, they’re not. They’re struggling to maintain that unity there over this issue, or, one of them. I think that’s one of the catalysts for [split.] But the ordination of women in that denomination is fine. Where we land at our church is that we incorporate women into the service, like leadership of our church. We have women on staff, but the eldership, the leaders, we believe is restricted to men. And the reason is our reading of the New Testament epistles. Overwhelmingly, the candidates that we see that are selected by Jesus are the top disciples, who are men, the pastoral examples that were given are Paul. The mentorship that Paul gives to Timothy defaults in his advice for pastoral leadership to men. But the very last thing that we would want at our church is for a woman to assume that she has some kind of intrinsic value that’s less than a man or that she is somehow, in her being, just by being a woman, subservient to men. And so one of the things that we go to very often is the metaphor that we see in Genesis of the creation of man and woman, that we believe the proper value of a man is lacking unless a woman comes, and that’s why God creates women. The way that he creates…
GT 31:32 That’s very pro-marriage I guess you could say.
Kyle 33:04 But not to the detriment of singles. Right? So this may be a difference in our theology compared to Latter-day Saints. You don’t need [to be married.] The gospel is the ideal. Marriage proclaims the gospel to creation, whether people know it or not. That’s Paul’s argument in Ephesians 1, tying it to Genesis 1. And singleness is valued in our church. We believe singleness is a gift and God calls people to singleness.
Kyle 33:41 I can’t remember. I believe it’s in 1st Corinthians. But Paul has this side tangent, where he says, “Hey, I wish that you were like me,” in other words, single, unmarried so that you can minister more. Because when a married couple is ministered, they owe their first allegiance of their service and bind to self and pouring out love to their spouse. The most important person to a married person, ideally, is their spouse. Right? So Paul’s like, “If you’re single like me, you could be doing all this other stuff.” But I get it. Marriage is important too, so we see…
GT 34:19 It’s better to marry than to burn.
Kyle 34:21 Right, right. We see married. We see singleness as being equally valid as marriage.
GT 34:27 I mean, don’t the Catholics use that as a reason for having monks and nuns?
Kyle 34:32 I don’t know. I can’t speak to that.
GT 34:34 That’s my understanding.
Kyle 34:35 But back to the intrinsic value of a woman. There’s a metaphor that you see in Genesis, where Eve is created out of Adam’s rib. It sounds so mythological and stupid and archaic, right? Take off your modernist glasses for a second and just give Genesis some breathing room. What’s it trying to say? It’s trying to say something absolutely radical for ancient people. If Eve was created from something of Adam’s back, her position would be behind him and so he would be in front of her. But God said, no, that’s not [how we’re going to do it.] We take it from his side. And so she is his equal partner, as image bearers of God. That is the foundational basic message that we want to get across when it comes to what are the differences between men and women? Ontologically, nothing. In value, that’s what it means, ontologically in value, nothing. God values, he loves you. Women are made in the image and likeness of God. I know that’s breaking LDS theology and probably what I said about singleness is breaking LDS theology, but we’re talking about evangelical protestant theology.
GT 35:44 So, okay, so I appreciate the overview on evangelicals and female priesthood. Within your church, you don’t have any female pastors. And you don’t see that changing.
Kyle 36:02 So for the way that we structure the church, the local leadership of the church, our elders, so some of us are vocational elders. So we are on staff. We get paid. And others are what we call lay elders. They’re non-vocational. There are always more lay elders than there are paid elders, so there’s not a conflict of interest and the people can pull a handbrake on something if people are getting paid. In that quorum is men only. When it comes to other hearings…
GT 36:34 The lay quorum.
Kyle 36:36 I’m trying to translate it. In any other areas of ministry, women are not only permitted, but they’re welcomed, and we have them. And so I serve alongside three women on staff that are full-time. And then we also have part-time women that serve, as well.
GT 36:56 But they don’t preach on Sunday.
Kyle 36:58 No. They teach…
GT 37:02 Sunday school?
Kyle 37:03 Sunday school, women’s ministry. They teach men in community groups. So, it’s not like women can’t teach men. They partner with…
GT 37:17 These are paid positions?
Kyle 37:19 Yes, yes, paid positions for women. A very recent example is we had one of our lay elders, who’s a man and one of our full-time female ministers co-teach a class together. So, I love that. I love that, because it’s–especially with certain topics, having women’s voices is extremely important. If you’re going to talk about family dynamics, you should probably have a wife and a mother. And if it’s only a father, or a single man, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s going to be overlooked or skewed or slanted. And so we find that very important and very valuable. But what’s the impulse? Why make that rule? We tried to be sola scriptura. We try to be as biblically based and grounded as possible. And I know, like, a thousand people that objected. “What do you mean by biblically based,” and blah blah? I understand. It’s just where we land as a church.
Role of Confession
GT 38:35 I’m trying to decide where I want to go next. So we’ll stick with the women a little bit. I know, one of the big complaints in the LDS Church by some critics, is [that] a woman can never be in charge. And you talked a little bit earlier about confession of sins. I’m sure it’s not like a Catholic confession. I don’t know how, I mean, does somebody need to confess, say a sexual sin or I mean, is premarital sex, is that okay in your church?
Kyle 39:13 No, it’s not.
GT 39:14 Okay. So if somebody were to, let’s say, a woman got pregnant, out of wedlock, would that be something that would need to be confessed? Or I mean, obviously, it’s pretty obvious, right? How does that work?
Kyle 39:28 If a woman is in our church, and she got pregnant out of wedlock.
GT 39:33 Right. Is that a sin that would need to be confessed?
Kyle 39:35 God bless that we have new life in the church. That’s step number one. I want to make that very, very clear, right? Because otherwise, when that child is born, and they’re raised, the stigma is that they are a result of sin.
GT 39:55 Right.
Kyle 39:56 And the truth is, you have been born into a fallen world with the rest of us. So, yeah, I celebrate the fact that there’s a new baby that’s going to be a part of our congregation. And what are you going to do? To even have like the hypothetical of go back in time? And what are you saying to the child? Go back in time? So what? I would never be born here? You have to be really careful with those types of things. So, is premarital sex a sin? Yes. Is the child that’s conceived from that premarital sex somehow unworthy or a mistake, or sin? No, no, not at all. And we’re going to have that baby dedicated in the church, and we’re going to Covenant as a church community to raise them in the faith. So that’s where I would go with that.
GT 41:00 Okay, so is there any sort of confession that needs to happen over any sin?
Kyle 41:06 Yeah, to each other; Not to a pastor or someone.
GT 41:09 You don’t need to go to the bishop and confess to him.
Kyle 41:09 No, so why confess to him? James says, because there’s healing in it. And we strongly encourage, and then practice, ourselves, as elders and ministers and lay leaders, that confession of sin to one another. That’s not like, if there was a particularly public sin that’s committed in the church, we’re not going to like pull them up in front of the congregation and dress them down, and then kick them out. The ideal space for the confession of sin is with a small body of believers within the church, who love you and trust you, and you’ve built trust with them. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. So, to hear the confession of a sin from a man to another man or a woman to another woman, that’s not just permissible, that’s encouraged. We want you to confess sin to people that you trust, not so that you can get it off the chest and you can feel better, but that healing can happen.
Kyle 42:16 Well, what’s healing? Ideally, if I confess a sin to you, you’re going to say, like John says in 1st John, “If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father.” So the point of confession is not to just like vomit your brokenness. It’s to name your brokenness so that the blood of Christ, you can be reminded that the law of Christ has covered it, his resurrection from death has destroyed it, and you are right with God. How can I, as Paul says in Galatians, bear your burdens with you? How can I help you, as my brother and my sister, not fall into that trap again? And then flipside, I’m not perfect. So I’m going to confess my sin to you. And I’m telling you, in a healthy spiritual community, where there’s trust, and the confession of sin is not coerced for the purpose of control, because so often that can happen, and that’s terrible. I don’t know, that’s spiritual abuse. But if you confess sin to somebody that genuinely cares for you, and they’re concerned for your heart, and your soul, and your well-being, and they don’t want to see you walking around a chain, they want to see you walking around in grace, in life, that’s the healing bit of it.
Kyle 43:34 And I’ve noticed, as a Protestant evangelical, my conception of God is that he’s Trinitarian. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, they’ve enjoyed community and relationship forever. He creates us in His image, male and female. We’re meant to have community with each other. The first thing that happens when sin enters the picture is Adam and Eve hide from each other, but they put the fig leaves on, right? And then what do they do? They hide from God. And so, the ideal is that we would live in transparent community. But what sin does is it separates us and pushes us into isolation. In fact, CS Lewis is in The Great Divorce conceptualized hell as an eternal isolation. Somebody, that main character is, like, “Where does Napoleon live?” And he’s like, “Millions of miles away, by himself, in the darkness.” That’s where sin takes you. So the healing part of confession of sin is a reminder of the gospel, so that you can rejoin community and not that you’re any less valuable outside of the community, but that you receive blessing in the community. Because now that you’ve been forgiven of that sin, you’re going to see it in other people. And you’re going to be like, I was there. My favorite people in our church are the ones that have the hardest pasts, because they’re the ones that first see, they see it in other people. And they’ll come to me and they’ll be like, “Hey, Pastor, I see this thing happened in this guy. I was there. It hurt, it doesn’t define me, but it certainly describes me. I’m still recovering from it. I want the best for them. Do you mind if I go over there and mentor him?” Please go over there and mentor him. But that takes trust. That takes trust.
Baptist Model for Dealing with Sexual Abuse
GT 45:13 Well, you know, it brings up another situation that happened in Arizona last year. At least it was a big news story in the LDS Church. A man had been sexually abusing his daughters, one of them as early as six months old, like it’s terrible. And in the LDS Church, confession is a big thing. So, I guess the question that I have for you, there’s a lot of people that wish that the bishop in this case, I guess it was two bishops in this case, had gone to the police. What would be–so if somebody came to you and says, “Hey, I’m sexually abusing my daughters,” would you call the police? I mean, is that a first thing?
Kyle 46:02 Sorry, I’m not familiar with this.
GT 46:03 Oh, you’re not familiar. Yeah, it’s a complicated story. It sounds like the LDS Church has a helpline. The Bishop called the helpline, what should I do? And they said, “Well see if you can work with him.” It never went…
Kyle 46:21 Knowing that the abuse is happening.
GT 46:23 Knowing that–well, there’s a question about how much they knew. But it sounds like, I don’t know, the court records haven’t been unsealed. There was a similar case in West Virginia, I believe it was, where the bishop was told, “Do not call the police.” So in the Arizona case, we think that’s what happened, the bishop was told probably not to call the police. In Arizona, apparently, every state law is different. The idea is, call the helpline, they’ll help you do whatever. Because some states mandate if you’re a pastor, somebody confessions child abuse, you got to call. In Arizona, it’s kind of fuzzy. I know, the Catholic Church and the LDS Church, have been fighting some of these state laws saying, and especially the Catholics, they’re like, if somebody tells us something in confidence, even if it’s against the law, we cannot call the police. It’s a religious tenet. It’s not quite the same in the LDS Church, but you know, confession is a big deal. And so, at any rate, this guy abused for five to seven more years. A new bishop came in. It sounds like the two bishops talked. The second Bishop excommunicated the guy before child abuse–well, it’s complicated. But anyway, he was excommunicated. Well, at this point now, now that he’s excommunicated, nobody has any power to really call the police. He continues to abuse, gets arrested, finally, because somebody had seen the child porn that he was posting on the internet, and called the FBI. The FBI went after him. He committed suicide and died. So, seven years of abuse went on that, if the first bishop had called the police, hopefully, there would have been seven years less of abuse for these young girls.
GT 48:32 So the question is, if this were to happen to you, a member of your congregation, you’re the pastor. Somebody says, “I’ve been abusing children. I want to repent.” Would you call the police? What would you do?
Kyle 48:51 I would say, “Praise God you want to repent. You’re going to jail.”
GT 48:54 Okay.
Kyle 48:54 And I’m going to continue to pastor him and commit to visiting him in the jail. Your sin has consequences. This is assuming [that] I know, for a fact this abuse is happening.
GT 49:05 Right.
Kyle 49:06 And I am going to be the person that visits you in jail, when Jesus says, [the people say,] “We didn’t know you were visiting us in jail, or I was sick in bed.” But what am I, as a pastor, telling the girl that was abused, about her, if I just brush it away? You’re valueless, or you’re a thing that can be used? So, I’m not just thinking about him. I’m thinking about everybody involved. And I think that’s the right answer. So, yeah, again, praise God, you want to repent. I’m so glad. I consider you still brother. If you’re genuine in repentance, God will forgive you. I’m going to see you in the kingdom of God one day, but you’re going to jail. And I’m going to do everything I can to continue to minister you, to be your pastor, in jail.
GT 50:02 Okay.
GT 50:08 I know in the LDS Church, there are some people that say there’s a dynamic between men and women. If a woman commits a sexual sin, she has to confess to a man. It would be nice to confess to a woman. Do you have any comments on that?
Kyle 50:27 As far as a policy for the LDS Church, or, like, how we would do it?
GT 50:32 How you would do it?
Kyle 50:32 Oh, women confess sexual sin to women.
GT 50:35 Okay.
Kyle 50:35 Absolutely. I think the only exception would be if there were marital issues, and the couple wanted counseling. Even then, probably we’re going to have, one of the pastors, and a woman, who they’re comfortable being in the room with, until the tensest part of that confession is over. And then we can do marital counseling if they want to work to…
GT 51:03 So, you would have a male and a female there for the male and the female.
Kyle 51:06 Yeah, yeah, and we have very strict rules, too, about male pastors on counseling women. It’s kind of like, A. you’re not going to do it in a room without a window. If it is in a room without a window, the door had better be cracked. And you tell somebody that’s in the offices that, as a man, you’re counseling a woman. That’s not out of the–people, what is it called? The Billy Graham rule. It was the optics and women are this thing that men just can’t help but be attracted to and abuse. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about preventing– these are like taking advice from counseling therapy. You’ve got to have boundaries set for the protection of the person that’s been counseled. And so, yeah, it better be in a windowed room, if it’s not the door is cracked. And typically, we don’t meet one on one with a woman. I’m trying to think of an instance where I’ve ever done it in 10 years, and I haven’t. I’ve always asked that a woman be present. Or if I have, it’s been at a public place. And then, I’m telling my wife, that, “Hey, I’m meeting with so and so, just so you know. So look. I believe in total depravity. I know that’s not a popular doctrine among Latter-day Saints. But what that means is, every element of the human experience has been affected by fallenness. Your mind, your desires, your heart, your flesh, and the kind of structures that need to be set in place in the most vulnerable moments of confessing sin to a pastor. Why would you mitigate them? That’s when they should be buttressed, so that abuse doesn’t occur.
GT 53:20 Right.
Kyle 53:21 Because that, again, from a theological and spiritual perspective, that’s exactly what the enemy wants. She’s already feeling isolated and alone. And then spiritual abuse comes, that was the last bit of God I was holding on to, and now God is also an abuser? That’s terrible.
GT 53:42 I know, it’s a bad look. I know there was a podcast recently, and we’ve talked a little bit about Kate Kelly, her mother was a victim’s advocate, if I recall. One of the things that she said was a problem in Utah, specifically, was she would talk to bishops. She did kind of what you said. Okay, so this member of my congregation is in jail for sexual abuse or whatever. The bishop would try to help them as much as he could in jail and would write letters to get them out of jail sooner, that sort of thing. She never, ever saw a bishop advocate on behalf of a sexual abuse victim. The implication was we go out of the way for the sinner, not for the one who is abused. In a situation like that, could you be in a situation where you’re helping, let’s say the father, the abuser, in jail, and also, I mean, it would be tough to help the victim as well.
Kyle 54:49 I know exactly you’re going. That’s not an ideal situation for counseling. Because you’re split.
GT 54:55 Right.
Kyle 54:56 And neither side feels like they have an advocate. So, what we do in those types of situations, we’ve never had like an abuse situation, thank God. I pray the day never comes. But if it does, what we would do is assign elders to one or the other. And then we would ask permission from both sides to share notes together, if that’s possible. And for the victim, the victim has always got to be in the driver’s seat, when it comes to counseling therapy. They’re the ones in control. You share as much or as little. I’m here to help you heal. I’m not going to tell you how to heal. But one of the extremely, very strong recommendations that we make is that you seek professional therapy and counseling. And then if you go outside of the church, and then please let me tag team with your therapist or your counselor. And, again, you’re in control, you’re in the driver’s seat. So. if there’s things you want to tell the therapist that you don’t want to tell me, that’s great. But, when you come to the intersection of healing, from your abuse, with your therapist, and that intersects with faith, I’d love to be able to speak into that for a moment. And at that moment, would you please let me talk to the therapist. And I’ve had people take me up on it and say yes, and I’ve experienced the greatest results from that. Because sometimes therapists are like, I’m not a theologian.
GT 56:23 I had an interview with Jennifer Roach.[5] She’s interesting in that she was a sexual abuse victim from a pastor and went on to become an Anglican pastor, and then joined the LDS Church.
Kyle 56:37 Oh, really?
GT 56:40 And one of the things that she said, which really struck me was, a big complaint about LDS bishops are, they don’t get any training. They get no training. But her response was, “Well, you know, we don’t get very much counseling training ourselves.” Which was a surprise to me, because I thought that you would. You study the Bible, and maybe biblical counseling or whatever. But she said that wasn’t really that helpful in situations, especially like this terrible situation we’ve been talking about. Would you agree with that?
Kyle 57:22 Yeah, I would agree with that. Presently, a lot of I mean, there’s a lot of counseling degrees that you can get in evangelical institutions, but they’re separate degrees from the standard, which is a master of divinity, which is three years of theological and biblical education. And there’s practical stuff, too, like preaching and things like that. But counseling is a part of that. So if I’m doing the math correctly, [a person gets] probably nine hours of graduate level counseling. One of them is biblical counseling, and the other was pastoral counseling. Those don’t license you. They don’t credential you for any kind of counseling. So, this is unaccredited counseling education that you’re getting. Having been a pastor for 10 years, now, I’ve come to the opinion that that’s an extreme shortcoming in evangelicalism. I can’t do anything about it for the wider movement, but I can influence the church.
GT 58:14 You wish there were more counseling?
Kyle 58:16 Yes. And this is actually, like, to your listeners, probably you have no idea what’s happening. This is putting me on one side of a very heated debate in evangelicalism. But I don’t care. I’m very pro-counseling and incorporating therapeutic and counseling methods that are good and true and beautiful, with the Bible, not just using the Bible alone to counsel. Because I don’t use the Bible alone to figure out how to get to the moon. I should probably use mathematics, as well, something that’s proven in our world, right? So one of the ways that we’re remedying that in our church is that we are beginning to offer pastoral staff members the opportunity to become credentialed in counseling and therapy. And so, hopefully, our first pastor is going to go through a certificate…
GT 59:18 Oh, nice.
Kyle 59:18 …in the beginning of the fall. And I’d love to see at least three of us, eventually, become licensed, or at least some kind of credential.
GT 59:28 So this is still pretty unusual within the evangelical world to have trained counseling?
Kyle 59:33 The default is–I think one of the problems is this: the conception of sin in evangelicalism. It’s something you did that you shouldn’t have done, or it’s something that you should have done, but you didn’t, sins of commission and sins of omission. That’s what sin is. Now, whether we know it or not, if that’s your theological, working assumption of sin, of course, you’re going to gravitate to the abuser and not the abused, because sin is something you shouldn’t have done. And so you should not have abused that person. And so, Faith is going to speak to the situation. But that’s not what the Bible says about sin. Sin is worse than that. Sin is not just doing things you shouldn’t have done or not doing things you should have done, sins of commission or omission. But sin is also things done to you, violence, oppression, injustice, and sin is done–sin is brokenness and creation around us. The world groans in anticipation for Christ, Paul says. Sin is far more pervasive than that. So, if you understand sin as being far more powerful and nefarious than merely what’s happening to the abuser, you have no choice but to desire to see healing and restoration in the abused. Otherwise, it’s not wrong to want to counsel an abuser. I don’t want anybody to hear that. But, it’s certainly wrong not to want to counsel the abused. That’s sin, ironically. And I think it goes back to a myopic or anemic view of sin. That’s my opinion.
{End of Part 2}
[1] See https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-hamer/
[2] See https://gospeltangents.com/2023/11/rick-steve-get-personal/
[3] See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54intVjXV7s
[4] See https://ordainwomen.org/
[5] See https://gospeltangents.com/2022/08/perspectives-on-lds-womens-ordination-abuse/
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