Welcome to Mortification of Spin, bully pulpit, a casual conversation about things that count with Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt,

and Amy Bird. Mortification of Spin is a weekly podcast from the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

This week, Amy, Todd, and Carl discuss a neglected aspect of pastoral ministry, the abuse some pastors

receive from their congregations. Todd and Carl share

from their ministry experience and help shed light on a rarely discussed topic. At the end of the

podcast, we'll tell you how to download a free MP3 about God's sovereignty over the call of pastors. All right, so me and the guys are on a search right now and we are trying our

darnedest to find what we have heard to be called a safe place.

It seems to be a buzzword now in the evangelical community and we're a little confused on what that is and where we can find one.

Carl, any luck?

Not really, no. I mean, safe place is one of those gibberish terms. Completely ridiculous in many ways. I think

probably had its, it probably had decent enough origins in, say, battered women wanting to find a safe

place to be. But it's since been appropriated by the sort of chatocracy of the politically correct world.

And essentially, you know, I think a safe place is somewhere I can go or be where I'm not

going to have to listen to any opinion that I disagree with.

I'm not going to have to put up with anybody criticizing me.

So it's no wonder it's becoming very popular in kind of reformed evangelicalism

these days. It's very much. Yeah, it's the kind of magical gibberish that the young restless

and reformed will no doubt be heavily into, even as they cruise into middle age. It does actually

raise, though, a serious question. If having trashed the phrase, I can now

use it. Todd, should churches be safe places for pastors? Yeah, that's a good question. Because

statistically, from some studies that have been done as well as just observable

experience there are a lot of churches that are not quote safe places for

...