It’s Thursday the 8th June, 7.00am. We are waking up to the story that 100 people have now come forward to say that Mike Pilavachi abused them. When John told me this, I said, ‘I have no words’

I sat down with a heavy heart and began my quiet time (another discipline that is being quashed by some – but that’s another blog!) but I couldn’t fully concentrate as I knew I had to write. I prayed for Mike, despite the allegations, and other things, did my Bible readings which I love to do and now I am at my Ipad to say this….

If we dismiss the Billy Graham rule which basically says, don’t be alone with a person of the opposite sex who isn’t your partner, (maybe we should add the same sex in today’s society? The Billy Graham rule plus!), I believe we will do so at our peril.

I can almost feel the eye rolls of some, but hear me out.

It doesn’t really matter much now whether all the stories about Mike Pilavachi are true or not. I’m pretty sure some will be but others won’t. If he’d have had strong boundaries in place – however silly they may have looked, and a team who weren’t afraid to call him out, he might not be in the predicament he finds himself in today.

John & I have been in ministry for over 30 years and I’m not even sure why we made the decisions we made, but make them we did and we’ve almost never been in those situations and if we ever were, it was an emergency situation. We never counsel the opposite sex on our own and we don’t get in cars on our own with members of the opposite sex.

If you make it a principle, you’re covered. It’s not personal to the people around you, it’s a protection. Boundaries are there to protect us. Let’s take a scenario. You regularly get in cars or offices with people of the opposite sex, no problem, everything’s great. One day, one or two of these people fall out with you, all they have to say is, ‘they touched me inappropriately’, ‘they bullied me’, ‘they spoke inappropriately to me’ and we don’t have a leg to stand on.

Or what about these scenarios, ‘I wish my partner laughed at my jokes like you do’ ‘I wish my partner got the vision of the church like you’ ‘you look good today pastor’ – ‘my partner never tells me that’ seems innocent? The devil is writing it all down, making a list, checking it twice until an appropriate time to let it out.

At this point, we’ve handed over the pencil of our story to the enemy who doesn’t care one bit if it’s not true. It just takes one.

Whereas if policy is in place, the devil can’t write this story because he has nowhere to go. The enemy has accused John and myself of other things, but he can’t get us on this, why? Because we’ve never given him the pencil.

99 times out of a hundred could be just fine. You feel safe, they feel safe – then, wham. We underestimate the schemes of the devil. He is the accuser and he hates us.

The Chinese Bamboo plant is a great teacher. You plant this in the ground and for 5 years you see no progress whatsoever. No shoot coming through at all. You water it, nothing, you feed it, nothing. Then in year six it sprouts 90 ft in just 6 weeks.

Don’t think for one minute that you’ll get away with it.

The enemy of our souls is very patient. He is also the father of lies.

Genesis 4:7 says this, ‘If you do what is right, will you not be accepted, if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door, it desires to have you, but you must master it.’

The abolishing of the Billy Graham Rule (plus) is creeping in, not sure why, maybe for equality, human rights, it’s old fashioned. Whatever the reason, I end how I started, if we do this, we do so at our peril. And ‘the white envelopes’ which are now emails, informing us a colleague has fallen, will increase.

Let’s wise up and not give the devil a foothold in this area.

Until next time,

D x