You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender. This week, Dan and I,

Rachel Clinton, continue our conversation about the dynamics and fallout of spiritual abuse.

I share more of my own story as we unpack the betrayal, loss of trust, and deep shame that come when

corrupt leadership as seen as the voice of God in a community.

Well, I have the privilege again to be with Rachel Clinton and as not only the lovely

voice that introduces, but as such a major contributor to our work.

Rachel, let me just sort of begin by asking, what if you know, what have you known of spiritual abuse?

Yeah.

You know, I will say this, I was very fortunate in my primary, early years of Christianity

to be a part of a really incredible church that really fostered my young spirituality. We moved when I was, we moved a couple of

times actually, and really all the way through junior high. We lived in a really small town for a while,

had great youth pastors who really fostered my spiritual growth and journey with us through a lot.

When we moved back to the Oklahoma City metro area when I was in

high school, we joined a local small church that was kind of close to our home. And it was a Baptist

church. And if you know anything about Baptist polity, it's supposed to be, you know, the

autonomy of the local church. So that's always going to be a bit risky when there's no kind of oversight anywhere else,

but also can be a really beautiful thing.

And if you know anything about Baptist, it's really rare for a Baptist church to have an elder,

an elder board, because that's just not how they work.

But our church had four elders who kind of held equal authority.

And it was a very, um,

theologically it was a very like,

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