I watched only the first couple minutes of this video and was going to finish watching it when I had more time, but the video is no longer available.

Here are my reflections:

I was so disheartened to listen to even the first few minutes.

I left about 7~ years ago after being college staff and am not in the loop with the latest GP happenings. I was under the impression that things had gotten better and I really wanted to believe that. Currently, I am still a Jesus freak and I have the privilege to know humble, compassionate leaders. I think Pastor Ed's response was just the opposite - superior and dismissive. Let me explain.

Based on the example of godly leaders who are currently in my life, I think if they heard any inklings about how people in their church hurt and angry due to leaders in the church, they would be absolutely broken-hearted and conscience-stricken. They would immediately ask themselves how they could have loved the person or people better or how they could support their staff in that pursuit. Their first thoughts and hearts would go toward the people who are angry and hurt, even if they perceived that the hurt parties were "off" or "malicious" (and in fact, they would not even use those words to describe the other party - they would describe them with much more compassion and understanding). Even if they perceived that 95% of hurt people with grievances were "off" or being "malicious" against their church, the leaders I know would try their best to understand why people felt so hurt and how to prevent this from happening again. They would treat these relationships with sensitivity and would want to meet up in person to make things right if the other party was willing. They absolutely would not feign ignorance or try to defend themselves, they would dig deep and want to change. After a certain point, if there was just a sheer volume of people who were airing grievances, this would be more than enough for them to pause ministry and deeply reflect, no matter how "off" the other parties were. This is how I think humble and compassionate leaders would respond. So, Ed's response came off as dismissive to me. (Also, it makes me wonder, do GP staff really think that so many people have nothing better to do than to be malicious against them?)

I found it so odd and disconnected with reality that Ed started to give advice something along the tune of, "You need to forgive and move on, it's toxic for you to hold onto this". Like ok, that may be true, but why are you putting the onus on the other party change, when the grievance is against you and your staff? I'm sure this was stated before, but if a rape victim is hurt and angry and acts out, yes, absolutely they need to deal with their hurt and move toward healing and forgiveness. But a way bigger issue and the topic at hand is what to do about the perpetrator. It is so completely insensitive to tell the hurt party how to fix themselves. Why are you playing the victim, when you / your staff have been accused of spiritual abuse? By being dismissive and even giving advice to the other party who is no longer under his authority, I think he is acting unnecessarily superior.

And I call B.S. to pastor Ed wanting to hear from people and to please email him. When I left about 7 years ago, I emailed him after I received spiritual abuse from Kelly SMN, his wife. He told me to stop emailing him. I don't think he wants to listen to truly understand or change, he says he wants to listen to either: save face, figure out how "off" the story is, or accumulate talking points later when it's his turn to talk. Also, there's basic etiquette to relationships, like to not break up with people over text and to not email grievances. Please at least offer to meet up in person if you pretend to care and use email as an anonymous last resort.

Based on his posture of what I perceive to be superiority and dismissive-ness, my conclusion is that his general attitude at the moment is, "Darn, we have been trying to sweep these negative comments under the rug (with SEO tactics, etc.) but it's still a PR issue that's growing, so I guess I have to spend time dealing with this, even though this is such a waste of time." - followed by hand-wavy response videos that pretend to deal with this issue. Because if he really wanted to listen, understand, and to grow, there have been enough sound-minded people (whom they did not character assassinate) who pointed out issues with the church over the years. There is more than enough content internally and externally to listen to, you really don't need more personal emails about this.