CLAIMS about the presence and work of God should be accompanied by a “healthy scepticism”, a new 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, however intense”.
The recommendation features in Resetting the Balance: Listening to testimonies of harm in 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 in the project as both researchers and participants (their experiences with Mr Pilavachi “occurred on different occasions and do not overlap”, the report says).
It is now two years since the 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 control 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 new Durham report is presented as an attempt to centre the voices and perspectives of survivors and victims, which, it says, “have not received sufficient attention thus far”. It draws on interviews with eight people. Their testimonies make up the bulk of the report, which includes analysis 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 for use within Charismatic contexts, making reference to the strengths of this movement and to the ways in which this heritage was “betrayed” at Soul Survivor.
Noting the part played by prophecy and invocations of the Holy Spirit, it advises: “It might be important, 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 how God is in fact at work.
“Our discernments are always fallible, however compelling they seem to us at the time, and they always concern people and situations that are complex mixes of the helpful and the harmful. In that light, we need communities and practices that enable us to keep on paying attention, to keep on looking for the fruit that emerges over time, and always to be ready to pay attention when 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 need to be alert not just to the overt ways in which someone in a position of power can try to enforce compliance and quash dissent, but to the less visible forms that emotional, psychological and spiritual manipulation can take, and the ways in which people and institutions can end up colluding with such manipulation without necessarily seeing what they are doing.”
It observes: “The more intimately people share about themselves in worship and fellowship, the more vulnerable they are, and the more safeguards need to 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 about the apparent lack of repentance shown by former leaders at Soul Survivor. The presence of older leaders had played a part in “legitimising and normalising” Mr Pilavachi’s behaviour, the reports concludes.
“I would just like them to say, I wish I’d done more, like I knew that Mike was hurting people and I tried, 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 “basically pick up pieces, like they would find the people Mike had hurt, love them, encourage them. And, you know, in a way that was like very sweet and genuine, and, like, caring. But what it did was perpetuate the abuse over a long period of time.”