Why Matt Chandler's Behavior May Be Even More Disturbing Than We Think
As people continue to chew threw Chandler's rather bizarre "confession" on Sunday, some things just don't make sense. Here are my thoughts on the "missing pieces."
Sunday’s somewhat bizarre confession has been picked and mulled over numerous times and by various sources, both professional and public. There are so many things that don’t make sense about his confession, given the information he revealed. There are, however, certain elements that are very common to churches and non-denominational megachurches that make everything fall into place when you consider those elements.
It has been very well documented (by The Bodies Behind The Bus podcast for one) that in many, if not most, of these Acts 29 churches, there is very much an “inner circle” consisting of pastors, staff and lay leaders and “outer circle.” The closer you get to that inner circle, the more toxic things become. In one of the early episodes of the Thereafter podcast, host Cortland Coffey spoke of the kind of “bait and switch” that happens in churches. He talked about how there are few places on earth you can go and be so immediately welcomed, but it comes at a cost.
He recounted how he had recently attended a church and gotten three invitations to dinner before he left. This, of course, draws you in and makes you feel special, welcomed, a part of a family, just like Josh Patterson reinforced in his preamble to Chandler’s confession. The problem, however, is that churches are selling a product and the ultimate goal is to get you to literally buy in. They start pressuring you to attend more events and “get connected,” the goal of which is to eventually get you to to either give financially to the church and/ or to find a way to essentially become an unpaid part-time employee of the church.
This is the machine that Chandler built. The problem with these “machines” however, is that they are built independently with little to no oversight, and even more problematically, no accountability. It is literally shameful what a dirty word accountability has become in Evangelical churches, particularly those that operate without any sort of larger umbrella organization. This certainly is not to say that accountability is foolproof or that it always works - just look at the Catholic Church - it just means the less accountability there is, the higher the likelihood for abuse. The truth is, while it would not prevent all instances of abuse, church abuse could be significantly reduced simply by implementing some pretty simple measures of accountability.
So what does all of this have to do with Chandler? Well, let’s look at the facts. From Chandler’s own confession, he stated:
… and so they looked into the the conversation between me and this other woman and they had some concerns. Um and those concerns were not that our messaging was romantic or sexual, it was that our conversations were unguarded and unwise.
So, here’s the first problem; if the nature of the communications between Chandler and another party were not sexual or romantic in nature, why even reveal that the other person involved was a woman in the first place? Why not simply say “I sent a number of DM’s to a friend that were crass and inappropriate to a man in my position.” That communicates the exact same truth without throwing just one more woman under the bus. But he couldn’t do that because that would just raise more questions about what kind of messages a pastor could be sending that were that crass as to have to place him on a leave of absence.
The second thing we know now is that while he seems to be implying here that the elders looked into the conversation, what actually happened is that a law firm looked into them. Why exactly do you need a law from to look into “course and foolish joking”? What kind of jokes could you possibly be telling that might have legal implications?
I don’t think the problem was that he was telling jokes, I think the problem is that he was talking shit about members of his church community. In this clip from the Roys Report, Matt Chandler himself relates the kind of issues that he personally deals with in his church.
In short, it would be fair to say that he regularly deals with incredibly sensitive issues and this is where that accountably issue comes in. In the Catholic Church, priests hear confessions but they also take very specific oaths to hold sacred what is spoken in confession. Catholics even have a very elaborate system in place to do their best to help ensure confessions continue to be held sacred. Chandler is literally under no such oath nor does there seem to be any sort of formalized system in place to ensure that any information he becomes privy to is kept in trust.
I believe this is what he was sharing with his friend. As I mentioned earlier, it has actually been very well documented that gossip is a significant problem in A29 churches, and not just gossip between congregants but gossip between pastors, between pastors and members of staff and even between pastors and other church leaders. I myself have experienced this in a megachurch I was a part of around 2012. As I mentioned in my first article, I had one of these same “textual relationships” with a former pastor that went on for about 2 years.
I wrote that I discovered that the pastor was nothing like the image he portrayed but to be even more specific about that, he spent a great deal of time telling me what people in his previous churches were “really” like. This included revealing a number of personal details about them. This wasn’t just something that happened after he left the pastorate, this specific type of gossiping behavior was extremely common among all the pastors and staff at the church and he had a reputation even then for gossiping, which was one of many reasons he was no longer a pastor.
I 100% believe the reason Chandler was not only put on leave but also had his entire DM history looked at by a law firm is because he was sharing sensitive information about congregation members with his friend. It literally makes no difference that that individual was a woman, yet I believe they very specifically revealed that it was a woman for a very specific reason. They needed to at least give the impression that the problems with his conversations were in some way, shape or fashion related to her specifically being a woman as opposed to what the real problem was.
I believe this is why there was so much tap dancing. On the one hand, he can’t have it appear that he was having a sexual or intimate relationship with a woman, yet he needs to somehow cover up what the real problem with his DM’s were - and it almost worked. Even though Chandler made it perfectly clear his DM’s were not romantic or sexual in any way, there is still doubt being cast on the woman and there is still almost this collective insistence that this is somehow the outcome of men and women getting “too close.”
The truth is, if he just had an affair with her, it would have all been so much easier because everyone would blame the woman anyway. As it stands, however, the story he is spinning doesn't make any sense. He says that a woman confronted him about his DM’s being “inappropriate” and he was confused. He was confused because he knew his messages were not sexual. His wife knew about them, the woman’s husband knew about them. Everybody knew about them, what was the problem?
That’s the question isn’t it? If there was nothing sexual or romantic about them, why the leave of absence? What is even more disturbing about this is that if Chandler was in fact revealing personal details about congregation members, the elders are also very well aware of this, which means they are also complicit in covering it up. And are they doing that to protect their congregation? No, they are protecting the church machine! If they wanted to protect the congregation, they would have forced Chandler to be honest about what really happened.
I think those DM’s will never see the light of day if Chandler or the church has anything to do with it because I think they would absolutely blow the church up. What is even worse than a sex scandal? I would guess a scandal involving a pastor spewing personal details about his “flock” to a buddy of his. That buddy happened to be a woman, but it literally does not matter.
In fact, I’m 100% sure he revealed the gender of the person (and literally even referred to her as “that other woman”) in just one more attempt to make it seem as if her gender were the issue all while claiming at the same time that there was nothing “sexual or romantic” about their DM’s. It seems to be working too, because the overwhelming takeaway on social media seems to be that he had some kind of “online affair” even though Chandler himself said his DM’s were not romantic or sexual in nature. Just one more example of a man or group of men throwing a woman under the bus to protect themselves. If this is true, it is despicable.
There is certainly a part of me that hope those DM’s don’t see the light of day because people that trust a pastor with their issues shouldn’t have them dragged out in public. On the other hand, to keep them hidden is to continue to protect Chandler and every other pastor that oh-so-casually reveals sensitive and personal information that their position makes them privy to.
Regardless of whether this turns out to be what actually happened or not, I think there need to be some significant changes made in non-denominational churches in general in regards to how sensitive and personal information is handled. Medical and mental health information is legally protected by HIPAA, legal information is legally protected by attorney-client privilege, but what protections do people have from their pastors gossiping or sharing personal information about them?
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Great article.
Right, and then there are the care groups!