One of the themes in Bethel’s approach to pastoral care is that you don’t so much respond to someone’s sin because that doesn’t truly reflect their identity. Instead you should seek to honour and name correctly who they are now, their new identity.
This is sometimes referred to as “calling out the gold”. This very phrase is used in the response statement from Bethel to the Shawn Bolz case where they say that people have been “calling out the gold” in them. The leaders say:
We want to especially thank our alumni, by God’s grace, there are 18,000 of them all over the earth, and many right here in our church. Frankly, it was their communication and agitation 18 months ago, and since, that drew our attention back, and subsequently other national voices, to the necessity of finally and appropriately addressing this. They were calling us to live up to what we taught them: calling out the gold in us.[1][2]
On one level, this sounds all well and good. There is something positive and encouraging about speaking to the person we want to be and could be. Further, it is helpful to recognize that we are new creations in Christ. On the flip side, if there is nothing good in us, of our righteousness is Christ’s righteousness, then what is the gold that is called out? So, we are left in an ambiguous and confused situation. We have one of those beautiful phrases but what does it actually mean in practice?
Whilst the phrase itself doesn’t appear in the book “A culture of honour” by Danny Silk, the themes of “culture of honour” and “calling out the gold” have been linked by Bill Johnson.[3] We also see multiple examples of what Silk believes this looks like in practice in the book. Early in the book, he cites an example involving second year students on the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (their in house seminary programme for training leaders). Silk sets the scene:
“To set the stage for this story, I need to mention that every member of our staff shares a great mutual delight in our First Year graduates. We are so proud of their zeal and love for revival. After each summer break, our staff interviews the graduates returning for Second Year, and this always reignites their excitement to spend another year with the amazing people we call our students. These Second Year students are the cream of the crop and are leaders to our fresh batch of First Year students.”[4]
Notice immediately how this is being framed. The second year students are being set up to have an elite status. They are “the cream of the crop” and “leaders” to others. So what happens next?
“One year we had two First Year students, amazing people, who were leaders in worship and other ministry activities. After graduating from First Year, they decided to get married in December while attending Second Year. So they applied for Second Year and were accepted. Of course they were—they are amazing! Shortly after Second Year began, Banning Liebscher, the Second Year pastor, came to me and said, “We have a problem. I have two students who have confessed to me that they had sex over the summer.” I asked him what he was going to do. Banning then said, “Well, if having sex was all that was going on, that wouldn’t be as much of a problem. They stopped about a month before school started and are truly repentant. And I really believed this guy when he told me that.” “What else is going on?” I asked. “I just found out that she is pregnant,” he said.”[5]
Let’s highlight three things here. First, not only are the students part of the cream of the crop but even in their cohort, they are seen as standout. Silk is building up how amazing and special they are, the anointing they have, the blessing they bring. This will be part of a pattern for how Silk reports cases. In another example he shares that:
“I want to tell you a story that encapsulates what heavenly restoration looks like. A friend of mine, a pastor and teacher—one of the most capable, brilliant teachers that I personally know—called me one day and said, “I have a situation. I have a worship leader who just confessed to his wife about an immoral relationship. It’s been going on for four years. It was with his wife’s best friend. He and his wife were actually mentors to this woman and her husband when the couple came into the church and took a staff position working with our youth. He just told his wife, and they leave on vacation tomorrow.
“We don’t know what to do, because this isn’t just your run-of-the-mill worship leader. This guy is amazing. He has been taking our church to new. places in God. Over the last four years, the anointing on our house has increased. We’ve started a school of ministry, and he and his wife run our school of ministry. This is our third year. We’ve almost doubled the enrolment of our school in three years. This couple is leading in creating an amazing environment.”[6]
Now, sadly, these kinds of stories are not unusual. How often have you heard of a church hoping to appoint someone as an elder and then finding out that there was serious sin going on? If you are an elder/pastor yourself, you will have faced that crushing hurt and disappointment when you see someone who you’ve invested in and who seemed to be showing gifting and maturity fall and end up in an absolute mess. The question is whether or not those things are relevant to how you handle the situation. This is what the Bible says:
“You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous.”[7]
The phrase translated “partiality” in the ESV and other modern English translations could literally be rendered as “do not regard (pay attention to/regard) the face.” In other words, justice is meant to be blind towards the status and relationships of the individuals. Once again, the “culture of honour” goes in the opposite direction to Scripture. Just in case we are tempted to see this as an Old Testament, Old Covenant idea, James 2:1-7 says:
“ My brothers,[a] show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. 2 For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, 3 and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” 4 have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonoured the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? 7 Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honourable name by which you were called?
Secondly, I am interested by the way in which the way that Banning Leibscher’s demeanor is presented. He comes to Danny Silk with a problem and the tone is that this is a big embarrassing problem for the ministry that needs resolving. By the way, if I were reviewing the book, I would pick up that consistently throughout, Silk presents himself as the wise guru who through gentle questioning draws people into the right place whilst other flounder around him caught up in a mixture of anger, legalism, frustration, fear and embarrassment. This includes his colleague Leibscher in this case, the pastor of the other church in the second scenario and even his own wife when he shares examples from his own family.
Thirdly, notice that the big problem is that the woman is pregnant. They can’t hide the issue. They can’t deal with it just in the room with the students. If she had not been pregnant, the implication is that following the conversation with Leibscher, nothing further would have happened.
Well, what happens next in both stories is that the couples concerned are brought into a meeting with Silk and he then proceeds to question them as to what the problem is. In summary, he identifies underlying psychological issues that need healing. Then in the case of the students, they are brought in front of the other students to confess and experience forgiveness before continuing with the Bethel programme.
I want to observe a few more things here before we think about implications. First, notice that this is not church discipline. This is taken right out of the context of the church family and treated as a “school” issue. Secondly, keeping them on the programme becomes the priority. Sadly this can become a thing and I’ve seen this with parachurch situations where a way is found for someone to stay on the programme. It’s important to note though that this is not just about the programme. It’s about how leaders and potential leaders are treated. The aim is to restore people back into the same position.
This gets us to the nub of the issue. If you think that your job in such pastoral situations is to “call the gold” out of people, then your actions and words are going to be determined by how you see people in terms of status. Once you have a hierarchy where some as apostles and prophets are more heavenly, then those will be the ones who will have more gold to be called from them. It becomes harder with younger, less mature, or perceived as less gifted Christiasn to do that. That’s the point when you risk becoming focused on restoring fallen leaders at the expense of others, including those who might more properly be described as the victims in the situation.
I raise this implication here because Bethel leaders have acknowledged that this may have been a failing on their part in terms of the Shawn Bolz situation. However, these failings did not happen in a vacuum but reflect an underpinning theology and culture.
[1] An Important Letter from Bill, Kris, and Dann on Behalf of Bethel Leadership | Bethel
[3] It seems to have been coined by Bill Johnson and is apparently used in his book, Raising Giant Killers, This is not a book I’ve read yet but he is cited as using the term and saying ““most people live aware of the things they wish were different in their lives, with a heightened awareness of their own weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. What many usually don’t know is their significance, gifting or value to others.” See Call out the Gold – whispers and fringes
[4] Silk, Danny. Culture of Honor: Sustaining a Supernatural Enviornment: Sustaining a Supernatural Environment (p. 30). Destiny Image. Kindle Edition.
[5] Silk, Danny. Culture of Honor: Sustaining a Supernatural Enviornment: Sustaining a Supernatural Environment (pp. 30-31). Destiny Image. Kindle Edition.
[6] Silk, Danny. Culture of Honor: Sustaining a Supernatural Enviornment: Sustaining a Supernatural Environment (p. 101). Destiny Image. Kindle Edition
[7] Deuteronomy 16:19.
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