CLAIMS in regards to the presence and work of God must be accompanied by a “healthy scepticism”, a recent report on Soul Survivor suggests. Churches should help people to “dwell with the fallibility and provisionality of their identifications of and feelings about God’s presence, nevertheless intense”.
The suggestion features in Resetting the Balance: Listening to testimonies of harm within the Mike Pilavachi case, a report by researchers at Durham University. Professor Mike Higton worked alongside Dr Jonas Kurlberg and Dr Nina Kurlberg, two theologians who engaged within the project as each researchers and participants (their experiences with Mr Pilavachi “occurred on different occasions and don’t overlap”, the report says).
It is now two years for the reason that Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team concluded that allegations about Mr Pilavachi, the founder and leader of Soul Survivor, were substantiated, reporting that he had “used his spiritual authority to regulate people”, and that his “coercive and controlling behaviour led to inappropriate relationships, the physical wrestling of youths and massaging of young male interns” (News, 7 September 2023).
The recent Durham report is presented as an try to centre the voices and perspectives of survivors and victims, which, it says, “haven’t received sufficient attention so far”. It draws on interviews with eight people. Their testimonies make up the majority of the report, which incorporates evaluation of the theological context operative at Soul Survivor. “Many believed that [Pilavachi] was anointed and, as such, had privileged access to God,” it says.
The report frames its recommendations to be used inside Charismatic contexts, making reference to the strengths of this movement and to the ways during which this heritage was “betrayed” at Soul Survivor.
Noting the part played by prophecy and invocations of the Holy Spirit, it advises: “It could be necessary, without undercutting the expectation that God will work, or the trust that God is now working, to cultivate also a certain provisionality, a certain quality of waiting, in relation to our discernments of where and the way God is in truth at work.
“Our discernments are at all times fallible, nevertheless compelling they appear to us on the time, they usually at all times concern people and situations which are complex mixes of the helpful and the harmful. In that light, we want communities and practices that enable us to maintain on being attentive, to maintain on in search of the fruit that emerges over time, and at all times to be able to listen once we see signs that tell us when something is deeply amiss.”
It also recommends that Church leaders develop “a literacy in power”. The report says: “They should be alert not simply to the overt ways during which someone ready of power can attempt to implement compliance and quash dissent, but to the less visible forms that emotional, psychological and spiritual manipulation can take, and the ways during which people and institutions can find yourself colluding with such manipulation without necessarily seeing what they’re doing.”
It observes: “The more intimately people share about themselves in worship and fellowship, the more vulnerable they’re, and the more safeguards should be in place.” Young adults, who “fall outside the remit of typical safeguarding policies”, are “in a uniquely vulnerable position that comes, amongst other things, from being in a transitional stage of life”.
Those interviewed expressed disappointment in regards to the apparent lack of repentance shown by former leaders at Soul Survivor. The presence of older leaders had played an element in “legitimising and normalising” Mr Pilavachi’s behaviour, the reports concludes.
“I’d identical to them to say, I wish I’d done more, like I knew that Mike was hurting people and I attempted, but I didn’t do enough,” one man said. He recalled how the Revd Bob Yule (now deceased) and his wife had been brought in as pastors, and would “principally pick up pieces, like they might find the people Mike had hurt, love them, encourage them. And, you already know, in a way that was like very sweet and real, and, like, caring. But what it did was perpetuate the abuse over an extended time period.”
