Sexual predators in our midst have gotten a pass for far too long. While part of this is due to victimology, I believe a larger piece of this equation is a misunderstanding of the perpetrator.
How many times will we allow the same scenario to play out, endangering our children, our athletes and adults who should not have to navigate such violations just to live in our society?
Sexual predators know no sacred spaces. Nor are they basically “good people with a problem.” We do not make our society safer by mischaracterizing this evil. There are monsters of all kinds in our midst, and we are never in more danger than when we downplay the nature of the evil they do and the evil they are.
Michael Chancellor
While my faith tells me we are all broken, there are kinds of brokenness that have metastasized into magnitudes of constant violation, cruelty and the soulless theft of a person’s vulnerability and core essence — not just once, but over and over again to one victim or many.
God’s good gifts of intimacy and procreation are stolen to serve an insatiable, warped need to momentarily satisfy the self at the expense of another.
The many names we have given this act — whether rape, incest, child molestation or some other contrived name for the same horror — do not change what happens or how it impacts the one who has been violated. Merely naming the violation does little to heal the wounds of such criminality.
Yet, again and again, perpetrators are allowed to slip away or, worse, continue their damaging perversion somewhere else. They slip away and get a “fresh start,” which is more appropriately called finding another field in which to hunt and destroy innocent lives.
“Anywhere there is a gathering of potential targets, the stalking predator makes his way toward them.”
This ongoing issue is made possible by institutions such as the church, universities, seminaries, the military, law enforcement, children’s sports teams, Scouts and on and on. Anywhere there is a gathering of potential targets, the stalking predator makes his way toward them.
I was appalled when the SBC-commissioned Guidepost report listed not just dangerous predators targeting children but ministry predators who have been able to move from place to place within the Southern Baptist Convention for years without suspicion or accountability.
Since that shattering report was released in May 2022, the SBC has slow-walked an abuse hotline to its unveiling in the summer of 2025.
It is worth noting that people in the pews were outraged at the predators in their midst when the Guidepost report was issued. However, this was somewhat hypocritical, because it often was the leadership elected by those very pew-sitters who looked the other way while “dealing discreetly” with the offending pastor, minister or staff member.
There is always someone else who needs to stand up and address this situation. Sadly, that is the Baptist way: “Never take responsibility when you can push it off and make it someone else’s problem.”
There is a sense in which I have been a lifelong member of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. I grew up in a BGCT neighborhood church, attended a college affiliated with the state convention, attended an SBC seminary, served as pastor of four churches over 33 years in the BGCT, and, upon retiring, attended a BGCT church for the next 11 years. All of this is to say, I have a profound sense of “us” and who “us” is.
When the BGCT started using Ministry Safe, they quit maintaining a list of bad actors within the state convention. Efforts to find out who made this decision, and why, were met only with stonewalling. I was told a “study was done internally.” I could not receive a copy of the report and was basically told to go away.
“The organizations that should know the local churches, pastors and staff best refuse to accept responsibility for the field of churches in their state.”
Now, with the SBC Sexual Abuse Helpline finally in place, the organizations that should know the local churches, pastors and staff best refuse to accept responsibility for the field of churches in their state.
In my mind, not a lot has changed. While children within church programs can be better protected — and supposedly are, by Ministry Safe training — adult leadership, including lead pastors and other ministers, are handled the same old way when they misbehave. More often than not, there is a quiet resignation and an exit; if the issue is sexual misconduct, the offender slips away to set up shop again.
What the Catholic leadership learned about moving sexually offending priests to other parishes should be a cautionary lesson for local churches when a pastor or staff member steps over moral and sexual lines. Statistically, these are rarely the “one-offs” our culture makes them out to be.
Frankly, the helpline now operating in the SBC gives the appearance of doing something, but it is more show than substance. It is a slow-walked resource rolled out half-heartedly, providing few answers to a documented problem.
Michael Chancellor served 33 years as pastor of four Baptist churches in Texas, six years as a mental health manager in a maximum-security Texas prison before becoming a therapist in private practice in Round Rock, Texas. He now lives in Taylor, Texas.