By Bob Allen
A Dallas megachurch has apologized to a wife subjected to church discipline for leaving her husband without permission after learning he is a pedophile.
Elders of The Village Church, a multisite Southern Baptist congregation led by Acts 29 president Matt Chandler, sent a letter to members posted online by blogger Matthew Paul Turner admitting to mishandling of a disciplinary process instituted against former member Karen Hinkley.
Earlier, church leaders said Hinkley violated her membership covenant with Village Church by having her legal marriage to Jordan Root annulled without seeking reconciliation after he confessed to her that he is sexually stimulated by little children and had viewed child pornography throughout their courtship and marriage. Root was not disciplined because he repented and entered counseling, but his access to children was restricted.
Previously Village Church financially supported the couple, who served as missionaries in East Asia with Serving in Mission (SIM) USA until Jordan Root was dismissed for violating the mission organization’s child safety policy. In February Karen Root (who later returned to using her maiden name) notified church leaders she was withdrawing her membership. The elders refused to accept her resignation and put her under church discipline for spurning their attempt at pastoral care.
Hinkley went public May 20 on Watchkeep, a blog written by abuse-survivor advocate Amy Smith, in a statement criticizing the Village Church pastors for “minimization and secrecy” about Root’s offenses and urging them not to assume he has told them the whole truth. Early on church leaders were inclined not to reveal Root’s confession to a number of former employers, churches and families where over the years he had access to children, but informed the church membership after the story was reported on blogs and news sites and was under consideration by the Dallas Morning News.
The incident sparked an Internet debate over the use of church covenants, a practice prevalent among the neo-Calvinist movement popular in evangelical circles including parts of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Village Church covenant includes an agreement “to walk through the steps of marriage reconciliation at The Village Church before pursuing divorce,” ending a marriage, but does not mention annulment, a legal declaration that the marriage wasn’t valid to begin with because it was based on fraud.
The latest communique to “covenant members” at The Village Church defended the membership policy but said in this case the elders “unfortunately allowed our practice to unnecessarily lead us rather than us leading our practice with patience, gentleness and compassion.”
“In receiving more information and considering the way we’ve ministered to Karen specifically, we believe that we owe her an apology,” the letter said. The elders will move forward with releasing her from membership and will continue their commitment to support her financially through August, the letter said.
Hinkley declined further comment in an email May 29, citing a need for “space and time to step back from the craziness and process everything that has unfolded this week.”
“It’s taken a huge toll on me,” she said.
The elder letters said Chandler will “speak generally about member care and church discipline” in his message this weekend but “will not speak directly to the situation at hand.”
Along with Acts 29, a church-planting network founded by Mark Driscoll, former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle who resigned amid controversy in 2014, Chandler is active in the Gospel Coalition, a network of Reformed churches. The Gospel Coalition Council includes prominent Southern Baptist Convention leaders such as Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.; Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Russell Moore, president of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
A former Gospel Coalition Council member, C.J. Mahaney, stepped down amid accusations that he knew about abuse allegations in Sovereign Grace Ministries, another Calvinist church-planting network that he co-founded. A lawsuit naming Mahaney described in media as the biggest evangelical abuse scandal to date was dismissed due to statutes of limitation.
