April 16, 2024 • 33 mins
Amy Fritz is joined by Melissa J. Hogan for a conversation about how they realized they were connected to an unhealthy organization.
Amy and Melissa met when Melissa's husband at the time, and Nathan, Amy's husband, were working at Ramsey Solutions. In this episode they talk about how the events happening in the Evangelical world in 2018 and 2019, along with different strategic resources, helped to open their eyes to red flags in the organization.
Links:
The Way of the Dragon of the Way of the Lamb
PhD dissertation from Wade Mullen
James MacDonald reporting by Julie Roys
Rachael Denhollander speaks up about abuse at Sovereign Grace
Boz Tchividjian, Abuse Survivor Advocate/Attorney
Diane Langberg: Narcissism and the System it Breeds
Find us here:
Instagram: Amy Fritz Untangled Faith
Website: Untangled Faith
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Longtime listeners may already know that I'm no longer creating new podcast
episodes, but instead of leaving this feed without anything new, I've
decided to replay some of my favorite episodes. Today's
episode that I'm resharing is one that I initially published in June
of 2021. It's part one of two episodes where I
talk with Melissa Hogan about the signs we noticed that helped us
(00:22):
realize we were a part of an unhealthy organization. Thanks
so much for listening to the show.
This is Amy Fritz and youre listening to Untangled
Faith, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves
(00:44):
confused or disillusioned in their faith journey.
If you want to hold on to your faith while untangling it from
all the things that are not good and true, this
is the place you
(01:04):
last week, I mentioned that within less than a two year period, our
family left our church and my husband resigned from his job at Ramsey
Solutions, the organization owned by Dave Ramsey, who is
known for his radio show and resources on personal finance.
It was a job that both of us, in various ways, had heavily invested
in. Obviously, Nathan was more invested than I was, since
(01:27):
that was his job. If you haven't breathed the air of
Ramsay solutions, it's probably hard to understand why a spouse would
feel so invested. Would you believe it if I told
you, though, that I had to go through an interview in order for my husband
to be hired there? The fact that this crossed healthy
boundary lines didn't even occur to me. I happily sat
(01:49):
for a Zoom spousal interview from our basement in Minnesota,
and not long after Nathan was hired, I took over admin duties of the
Lampo Ladies Facebook group. And it was a group of women. Who either worked at
Lampo or whose husbands worked there. And as a part
of your primer and all things Ramsey, I should clarify,
because this is a little bit confusing, is that the legal name of the business
(02:13):
is the Lampo group, and that's why the name of the Facebook
group was Lampo. Ladies, I was all
in. I didn't work for the company, but I spent a good amount of time
helping welcome new women into the community, and I
happily did it. So in today's episode, I am joined
by my good friend Melissa J. Hogan. Not only is
(02:35):
she a dear friend who walked her own parallel journey with Ramsey solutions
with her own personal story, but she's the author of a book about
medical trauma that releases next month called afraid of the doctor.
And she's a lawyer, rare disease awareness advocate, and she consults
on clinical trial design and patient outcome measures.
She is one of the smartest and kindest people I
(02:58):
know. In today's episode, we're going to share with you the different
events happening in the american evangelical world and the voices
and resources God used to open both of our eyes to realize
we were at an organization that was unhealthy.
These are also resources that helped us make sense of all of this
after we were on the other side of our connection to the organization. By
(03:20):
way of a little background that will help set the stage. Melissa and I met
and became friends in early 2016. Both of our
spouses worked for Ramsay solutions at the time. In late
2018. Early 2019, during my
family's most intense questions regarding Ramsay solutions,
Melissa was dealing with significant trauma that was very much tied
(03:42):
to the organization. And to protect her friends, she
ghosted all of us for months. This is the answer to the
question, how did you first realize something was wrong?
It's a story of a slow realization that unfolded over
months and years. It's a story of moving from
intentionally looking away from the truth to being willing to
(04:04):
stare it straight in the face. I know this is a
conversation that will be so valuable to you. In fact, we had so
much to say, we're breaking this into two episodes.
Here's part one of my conversation with
Melissa.
(04:26):
There were definitely a lot of things that God
used. And I go, well, look at that. I would
have never recognized a lot of the patterns if I
hadn't started seeing the patterns beforehand. And even then,
it still took me a while. I would say that our Venn
diagram overlaps a bit, but we had our own
(04:48):
separate paths of figuring that out. I am interested in learning
things. I am interested in church culture. That brought me
to a few resources that were really helpful to
me later. And I was like, oh, my goodness, we just came through
a really spiritually abusive situation. I
wasn't able to identify it at the time, but I can say I knew that.
(05:11):
I think I realized that because of some things I'd seen
before. Melissa and I may jump around a
bit in this timeline, so I want to put this all into context for
you. We're a few years removed now, and you may not know or
remember this, but 2018 through the beginning
of 2019 was a time of huge,
(05:32):
disappointing news in the american evangelical world. Two
high profile pastors were revealed to be grossly disqualified
to be pastors Bill Hybels and James
McDonald. This all happened to coincide with God opening
my eyes and Melissa's to many uncomfortable
overlaps between these pastors and their ministries. With what
(05:54):
we were observing with Dave Ramsey and his business, Ramsay
Solutions, at the very beginning of 2018,
when I was still mostly naive to the coming storm and how it
might impact me personally, I read the way of the dragon
or the Way of the Lamb by Kyle Strobel and Jamon
Gogan. It had a huge impact on me.
(06:17):
One of those things was that book, the way of the dragon or the way
of the lamb, and it's out of print right now because they're. They're editing
it because there was a chapter in there on somebody that I really felt was
a faith hero that they found out was an
abuser. It looks like they told their publisher to pull the book,
which is rare. To have that integrity, to, say,
(06:39):
lose money, possibly lose credibility in some ways,
because you're an author and your book's gone. To do that in order to
honor the victims of that person that you mentioned in your book,
in the book. Said, here is something we're seeing the difference between
how evangelical american church culture is doing
ministry and how it doesn't seem to fit with
(07:01):
the model of what we see of Jesus doing ministry. I think that
book, at least in my timeline, that book was
after I'd already seen these other
christian abuse scandals start to be exposed. That
book was part of putting a framework on what was actually
happening. And Wade Mullen's
(07:21):
dissertation, how many people sit down on a Friday night and punch
three hole, punch a dissertation and start reading it, watching the
Bill Hybel scandal come out? And for people who
are listening to this, who don't know that Bill Hybels was the pastor
of Willow Creek and the leader of this leadership association
that was influential in tons of christian evangelical
(07:44):
churches. And Willow Creek had thousands and thousands of people
attending that church in the Chicago area. So
Melissa read the book after the Hybels debacle. I read it
two months prior to. The situation with hybels,
and it turns. Out he was a sexual
predator. I mean, he was an influential pastor at the same
(08:06):
time that he was sexually abusing women under his
care as a pastor, and that started to be exposed. And
it turns out these women had gone to the
church and were branded as liars
and that they were trying to bring him down and bring the church
down and eventually had to go to
(08:27):
the press because they were not being believed to watch that whole
situation play out than to watch Rachel
Denhollander expose what was happening there and the
backlash that had happened. Most know Denhollander as
the courageous whistleblower whose testimony led to the conviction of
USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. But that
(08:48):
wasn't the only abuse she spoke up about. She also spoke
out against abuse in her own church community. If you were watching
this all play out, and we were, it was eye
opening to see how, with Rachel's church and in the situation
with hybels, the organizations both moved to protect
themselves instead of listening to the victims.
(09:11):
So to watch the dynamics of those two. And then after that, the
harvest Bible chapel, James MacDonald, and just this
very visceral level of control
and re victimization that the
church entity and its leaders did to people.
The book, the way of the dragon or the way the lamb, put a framework
(09:34):
on what was happening and revealed that
to be nothing like Jesus. Yeah. You found that book after
all that had happened? I read it before all those things had
happened. When you saw all that news, Melissa, what were
you thinking? Did you believe those accounts? When your family pays their
bills from income that comes from access to the large platforms of
(09:56):
evangelicalism, seeing platforms crack or leaders
come crashing down, I couldn't help but
notice. I wondered what Melissa thought at the time.
I kind of follow a practice. This is the lawyer coming out in
me. Believe but verify. I read all of
this, and strangely enough, I had started
(10:19):
following Baz TV on Twitter,
who is an abuse advocate, who founded Grace, godly response
to abuse in the christian environment. And I have to believe that God
led me to that, because I can't figure out how I started
following him at some point. Followed Julie Royce, who's a reporter
who exposes a lot of the abuse happening in the church. And
(10:41):
when I saw this, you read it, I take my brain
automatically looks for, well, where's the evidence? Where are the facts?
You know, objective evidence, whether it's documentation, you
know, recordings, you know, where's the evidence? And then also, where are the
patterns? Because if you have one isolated
incident, and then you can look for the evidence, but when you have a
(11:03):
consistent pattern of the same thing happening over and over
again to multiple people, especially people who aren't
connected or who haven't heard each other's stories, the
likelihood of that being false is minuscule. In a lot of
these situations, you had both. You had evidence, actual,
objective things that verified what happened and verified people's
(11:25):
stories, or you had extra witnesses that they had told at the
time, and then you had the patterns. When that stuff exists
and people turn a blind eye, that is just willful
ignorance. That is something, I think, that makes God's heart
grief. Yeah, I could feel this
nervousness inside of me as I watch that
(11:47):
stuff come out. As you know, I was married
to a christian speaker, in a christian speaker
world of Dave Ramsey. And you see
this stuff come out and you want to be objective about it. You don't
want to drag someone through the mud who is being falsely accused. I
had actually written a blog post a couple of
(12:10):
years before that when Jen Hatmaker had
come out as affirming of gay marriage, and there was
this huge hubbub of pulling her books and people talking about it.
And I wrote a blog post that talked about, the problem isn't that
Jen Hatmaker has come out as affirming gay marriage. The problem
is that we care so much as a public what a christian
(12:33):
celebrity is doing and believing. And
so I already struggled with the fact that people
look at certain christian leaders as
idols, frankly. And it was a really strange place to
be because my husband at the time was one of these people, and
people were like that about Dave Ramsey and all the people that worked there. So
(12:55):
I already had a stirring in my spirit that something is not right
with that, this idolization. And someone could say, oh, I don't want to be
idolized. But when you build an entire structure
that creates, affirms, and
monetizes that idolization, you can't say you
don't want to be idolized. We were in that same situation, not as
(13:17):
closely tied to that world, but also at
Ramsey. Nathan's getting his paycheck from a place
that really benefits from that celebrity platforming. By the time
the situation with hybels happened, I had entertained the idea
that there were possible issues. All this information
was sort of informing, and sometimes I'd let it in, and sometimes I wouldn't. Like
(13:39):
2000, 2016 ish. We come out of a hard church situation. I was
really trying to make sense of it. I had decided that the issue was
narcissism. I happened to run across Diane Langberg's YouTube
video, narcissism and the system it breeds. I listened
to it several times. I took notes on it, because,
of course, that's just. I know you did, because by the
(14:01):
time I ran across that video, which was, I think,
early 2019. Yeah. I said, was it like
three years later? Yeah, this video, this explains it all.
And you said, oh, I know. I've watched that video. And I took notes.
But here's the thing. I was thinking about it in relation to our church
situation, and I told Nathan, nathan, you need to
(14:23):
come in here and you need to listen to this, because this explains
how an unhealthy pastor can leave a church, it could
still seem like something's wrong. He. This is going to blow his mind. I bring
him into the bedroom, push play on the video, and I'm sitting there, and I'm
just watching him watch it. And then at a certain point, he turns to
me, and he says, you know, this is Ramsey,
(14:43):
right? I was like, my brain, all of. A sudden,
it was cracking, right? Like, cracking sensation when you
realize, oh, my gosh, a part of my world is about to
fracture. This incident was a crucial moment for
us. I had to decide if I was willing to see the truth or
not. I wasn't ready to fully see it.
(15:05):
But God still used the tiny crack of an opening to shine in some
light and put me in a better place of being able to
see full truth later. My brain was like, nope,
don't look over there. Don't look. You might actually have to do something.
I did not want to see it, but I couldn't unsee it. I
didn't dwell on it all the time, but it was still there. As time
(15:28):
goes by and we're watching things happen with harvest Bible, Hybels was first
and then harvest Bible by the end of 2018, when harvest Bible
was really imploding. And I'm following along
and reading the really big article that Julie Royce had
in World magazine, and I read it, and I got to the end of it,
and I didn't tell Nathan this at the time. I knew that the place that
(15:50):
my husband got his paycheck from was going to be in the news someday.
I was going to wake up, and I was going to see their name there.
There were too many things that aligned with things that have already
been exposed in other places. And you go, that exists here, that exists
here, that exists here. I didn't tell anyone. And strangely, that
coincided with a lot of other parts of the
(16:11):
story that you started to uncover. You started
watching it play out in front of you. I had no idea
that realization would play out so personally for us so soon.
In fact, a week after the World magazine article about
McDonald, unknown to me, Ramsay Solutions was trying to
figure out how to handle a very traumatic family situation with
(16:34):
Melissa. And they were doing all the self protection, image
control things. I had been reading about
your fear and certainty that that's what would happen.
You watched it play out. Within a couple months of that, Nathan and I were
really figuring out something was really wrong, and we were trying to
figure out if it was salvageable or if we just didn't
(16:55):
understand something. All of these resources I
was processing in the middle of, are we going to have to
leave another place that is turning out to be what
we did not want it to be or did not think it would be? I
just was reading what I could find online from
Diane Langberg. We have to pause for a second. Yeah. And
(17:18):
just say what a gift Dianne Langberg
is to the church and to individuals. She is a
prophetic voice right now in the church that we
sorely need, seeking to expose things
that are not of the Lord and to
help refine the church to be what it's supposed to be. I am so
(17:40):
thankful for her. I am so thankful for Boz. I'm so
thankful for Julie Royce, because they are truly doing the work
of Jesus. Holding a mirror to the church. One of the
things that I started to see, and one of the things I started to
see in Ramsey is a lack of
integrity. And when we say integrity, we think of being
(18:03):
honest or, you know, deceitful. And I don't mean it in that way. I always
think of integrity as being the same. You know, it comes from the word
integer, which is whole. I look at it as being the same
person all of the time. Being who you say you are in
private. In public, same thing for an organization. I
sometimes get these red flags or discernment
(18:25):
radars, and you can't really put a finger on it. I've now learned
that it is this subconscious sense that something is
not the same all the time. This person is not the same person
to me as they are to somebody else. They're not the same person in
private as they are in public. This organization is not the
same in private as it is in public. And that lack of
(18:47):
integrity is what I started to see in
Ramsey solutions bucketfuls and see
in individuals that make me so concerned. So
we were processing this separately, partly because I didn't
want to say anything. You're not allowed to say negative things
about the company to someone that cannot fix it. You
(19:09):
certainly aren't allowed to go talk to your friends who are
also connected to the organization and talk about your
concerns. We talked about hybels when he imploded.
And then you were in a real crisis situation,
end of 2018, beginning of
2019, where you were not able to
(19:30):
talk about what you're working through. But we're working through some similar things.
You're having serious, really deep trauma experiences and just
working things out. A lot of it connected with this
organization. We weren't comparing notes at this point, but what were
you reading end of 2018, beginning
of 2019. That God had prompted me in the summer
(19:52):
of 2018 to start reading whole books of the Bible
in one sitting. I ended up going through most of the Bible that
way, but I would sit down, you know, whether it was a short book that
only took me 20 minutes or, you know, the gospel take about
3 hours, I would say. So I was just reading whole books of the Bible
to really understand who Jesus was and is
(20:15):
and understand what God's
plan was, what his calling on my life was. And then as it went into
2019, I was reading the psalms, and then I started reading
a chronological Bible that was given to me. So those were like, the foundation
of what I was reading. And I think obviously the most
important thing of what I was reading, you know, I was also reading books on
(20:37):
trauma. You know, I have a book coming out in July of this year
on medical trauma called Afraid of the Doctor. As I was writing
that with an incredible co author who's a pediatric
psychologist, as I was writing that, I was reading books on trauma and
specifically the book the body keeps the score by Bessel van DER Kolk.
And I'm reading this book and feeling
(20:58):
overwhelmed with grief and
recognition. And that's when I started to
recognize, wait a second, there is something seriously
wrong in my life. All of these things that the book is talking
about are things that I'm feeling and
recognizing. I could only read a little bit at a time. It was. I would
(21:19):
start crying in the middle of reading chapters. I'm now actually reading it for a
second time, and it still is quite difficult. As time
went on in 2019, I started reading a
lot more because you're trying to make sense of these patterns.
There's the evidence and the patterns. There's a point, I think,
before 2018, sadly, I was
(21:42):
naive. And despite the fact that the word talks
about wolves and the word talks about evil, I
really took things a lot of times at face value.
People say they're a believer. I believe them. I believe they
love Jesus. People say that they're a Christian. I believe
they want to walk in integrity and in honesty. And
(22:04):
that's where I take responsibility and
say I suffered at times from spiritual
laziness. I did not apply discernment to
people and just took them at face value. We can
say that's from different experiences in our
life where we learn to ignore red flags,
(22:25):
but, you know, at some level, I have to take responsibility that
I ignored signs that things were not right,
people were not who they said they were, and that's something that I really work
at now to stay in the word and try to have that discernment
of what is God telling me about this situation
or these people or this organization. I remember you spending a lot
(22:48):
of time in the psalms. You know, God just had incredible
things to say about my own situation,
about the path that he led Israel through, you
know, when it was hard and confusing and people couldn't
see where they were going. And at the time, I felt like I could not
see where this was going. But then, yeah, the spring of 2019, getting into
(23:09):
the psalms, especially, like the davidic psalms, too. You know,
David was a complicated guy, but, man, he
loved the Lord, and he was honest
about his feelings and he was honest about where he
struggled and where he grieved and where he
lamented. And those were the parts where, you
(23:31):
know, just reading those psalms over and over and over again. Yeah.
If you're in a state dealing with deep grief
and you just can't find the words, you can't do
any better than praying the psalms. And even the imprecatory
psalms that are like God just level them,
take care of it, because they are, you know, filling their
(23:53):
storehouses and on one hand, and with the other hand, hurting
people. So they name lands after themselves. That is
where I've always talked about getting to that place
where you go. I have no idea how this is going to work out. I
am just sitting here in anticipation to watch
what God is going to do. I know God does things beyond
(24:15):
our wildest imaginations, and I feel like that's what the psalms
do as well. You just sit here and look at the things
that God has said about himself and has said he's going
to do and the things he has done. I'm just going to watch
him play it out. I know I'm going to be blown
away. Even in our first conversation, after not talking
(24:37):
for so long, both of us separately, I'm struggling with the relationship with
Ramsey solutions. I remember saying, I've been reading all
this stuff about high bolts and McDonald, and
I'm afraid this is happening at Ramsey. And I remember
you just stood there, you just nodded. And at that, I just started
asking a few questions. Have you read this? And have you read that? And it
(25:00):
was so interesting for you to say. I don't. I can't really talk about it
right now, but someday I'm going to tell you about how I read
the same thing that you just mentioned when I mentioned Diane Langberg, how I had
been following her and reading some of her work and I had mentioned,
and Wade Mullen. I think those were two really key
people that were talking during that time. I also mentioned, asked if you had
(25:21):
followed any of what Baz Chavidian had been doing.
And this is where I go back to, too, the fact that God led us
to a lot of these resources completely independently. We
were standing, I think, on a flag football field for that
conversation. It was really a testament, I feel like, to
God's assurance that he was revealing things we didn't have
(25:44):
to. And I think backing up, too, I think, you know, some of
the reason for not talking, you know, obviously, the
manipulation and fear engendered by how a gossip
policy can be used to control people is one aspect. But also,
too, I think all of us have. When we want to honor the
Lord, we want to cover over
(26:06):
sin that we expect to be repented of.
And that was always my hope. Yes, sin was being
exposed, but that, you know, that there would be sincere, heartfelt
repentance and restoration. My
practice had always been to not talk about those things.
There was this sense that when repentance and reconciliation
(26:28):
happen and everything has been splayed out on the table,
other people don't see the repentance and reconciliation, and they
just remember all the terrible stuff. I wanted time
for repentance and reconciliation to happen
and hoped that things wouldn't be just thrown
out to the street for everybody to grovel up all the
(26:51):
dirty details. Yeah. And God was really clear
at times about what to say and what not to say. You know,
eventually I would be under a gag order, but at that point, for probably
six months, I wasn't. But God was really clear about what
to talk about and not to talk about. Resting in that and resting in
learning and reading the psalms, I think, were a huge
(27:13):
comfort and insight. Yeah, I think it was a time of learning
and a time of practicing restraint, which I
think God does with all of us. Yeah. That separate path of learning
actually led Nathan and I to
independently, apart from anything that any other friends are going
through, you included, you didn't tell. You weren't telling us the details of your
(27:35):
situation at all. We knew something was wrong. It led us to make our own
decision. It's over for us here. We had come to the end of the
road, and then after that decision was
made, processing all the things, and so
you ended up on the other side,
too. But at that point, I really was like,
(27:57):
all right, tell me what just happened. That's another aspect to
information can be a burden, especially information
that will compel you in many ways,
to act. Yeah. And I knew that I was a
steward of this terrible, terrible information.
I did not want to burden people that I cared about with this
(28:18):
information, because I knew it would be a
burden. Yeah. And I didn't want to tell
anyone. Why would I want to burden you with terrible
information that would, you know, prompt you to have to make some really
hard decisions? And that was a lot of the motivation for me
not telling anyone and not saying anything to
(28:40):
you because I cared about you, cared about your family, you know? So
once, you know, you had made decisions on your own, then I
felt like God had released me to say, okay, here's.
Here's what's going on. Yeah, I think we need our enneagram
whisperer to explain that to us. Because your
instinct is, I don't want to burden someone with this. My
(29:02):
instinct is, I don't know what's going on, but I am
not going to let her stand by herself, whether she
wants me to be there or not. But then we really
started to dig in, because
trying to understand, I wanted. To understand what
had happened, how we got here. I think that's when
(29:24):
I. I was like, okay, I want to read about high
control group, the. The real inflammatory
term, the cult. But there's a spectrum of
control in organizations, and I really wanted to learn about
it. I picked up Steve Hassan's book because he's the cult
expert. He is the guy that you go to and
(29:46):
seeing some overlap and some people's brains shut off when they
hear the word culture. Unfortunate, because I think
any place can be unhealthy and on a spectrum of
being too controlling. And so I learned a ton
of things from that. In that same vein, listening to
podcasts from places and people that had been
(30:08):
connected to high control control groups. So if you are not a reader,
let me tell you, there is a treasure trove of
free resources. If you just want to turn on your
Apple podcasts or Google Podcasts or Spotify
wherever you do, of really interesting stories. And
sometimes our brains can process things better if it's not
(30:30):
about a place that we are so personally connected to. That's not to
be sneaky with anybody. This is just to say it might just be easier for
you to go and listen to podcasts on Nxivm
or Scientology. Something that I had realized
along the way is that organizational
control and interpersonal control
(30:52):
are very, very similar, because, in reality, an organization
is made up of people and systems. Interpersonal abuse is
very similar. The effects of it, what you see,
the signs are very similar to interpersonal abuse.
Having that light bulb moment come on to say, oh, abuse as abuse
is abuse, spiritual abuse, domestic
(31:14):
violence, church hurt, high control groups.
Learning about any one of those things helps you understand all of those
things.
If you forget everything else that Melissa and I talked about today,
I hope you noticed this. God was so patient and kind
to us as he gave us many opportunities to see what was true
(31:36):
and what wasn't. We didn't always get it right, and we're still
asking him to show us our blind spots. God's goodness and
provision have been a constant theme through all of this.
Okay, we shared a lot with you in the last 24 minutes, and unless you've
been taking notes, you may have missed a few resources we
mentioned. I have a comprehensive list of all the books,
(31:59):
podcasts, videos, and authors and speakers in the show
notes. You can find
them@untangledfaithpodcast.com I hope you take
a minute to check them out.
Next week we'll pick up with part two of my conversation with Melissa, where we
talk more specifically and in depth about our favorite and most
(32:19):
recommended resources. Our friend Lauren refers to this
stack of books and resources as the spiritual abuse recovery
starter pack. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Untangled faith. If you enjoyed this episode, I would. Be so grateful
if you would share it with a friend and leave a review on Apple
Podcasts. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook
(32:41):
as untangled faith. For transcripts and show notes, check
out untangledfaithpodcast.com
on the next episode of Untangled Faith.
If you want to understand how abuse can go
under the radar for a very long time, and how people
(33:01):
cannot realize that something is abuse, how
abusers work and how cover ups work
and how things can remain hidden for so long
is really similar in all of those contexts.
God does not want dark things to
(33:22):
remain hidden. I'm new at some
point, I don't want to be one of those people that knows something and never
says anything. I just didn't know what the timing was.
Longtime listeners may already know that I'm no longer creating new podcast
episodes, but instead of leaving this feed without anything new, I've
decided to replay some of my favorite episodes. Today's
episode that I'm resharing is one that I initially published in June
of 2021. It's part one of two episodes where I
talk with Melissa Hogan about the signs we noticed that helped us
(00:22):
realize we were a part of an unhealthy organization. Thanks
so much for listening to the show.
This is Amy Fritz and youre listening to Untangled
Faith, a podcast for anyone who has found themselves
(00:44):
confused or disillusioned in their faith journey.
If you want to hold on to your faith while untangling it from
all the things that are not good and true, this
is the place you
(01:04):
last week, I mentioned that within less than a two year period, our
family left our church and my husband resigned from his job at Ramsey
Solutions, the organization owned by Dave Ramsey, who is
known for his radio show and resources on personal finance.
It was a job that both of us, in various ways, had heavily invested
in. Obviously, Nathan was more invested than I was, since
(01:27):
that was his job. If you haven't breathed the air of
Ramsay solutions, it's probably hard to understand why a spouse would
feel so invested. Would you believe it if I told
you, though, that I had to go through an interview in order for my husband
to be hired there? The fact that this crossed healthy
boundary lines didn't even occur to me. I happily sat
(01:49):
for a Zoom spousal interview from our basement in Minnesota,
and not long after Nathan was hired, I took over admin duties of the
Lampo Ladies Facebook group. And it was a group of women. Who either worked at
Lampo or whose husbands worked there. And as a part
of your primer and all things Ramsey, I should clarify,
because this is a little bit confusing, is that the legal name of the business
(02:13):
is the Lampo group, and that's why the name of the Facebook
group was Lampo. Ladies, I was all
in. I didn't work for the company, but I spent a good amount of time
helping welcome new women into the community, and I
happily did it. So in today's episode, I am joined
by my good friend Melissa J. Hogan. Not only is
(02:35):
she a dear friend who walked her own parallel journey with Ramsey solutions
with her own personal story, but she's the author of a book about
medical trauma that releases next month called afraid of the doctor.
And she's a lawyer, rare disease awareness advocate, and she consults
on clinical trial design and patient outcome measures.
She is one of the smartest and kindest people I
(02:58):
know. In today's episode, we're going to share with you the different
events happening in the american evangelical world and the voices
and resources God used to open both of our eyes to realize
we were at an organization that was unhealthy.
These are also resources that helped us make sense of all of this
after we were on the other side of our connection to the organization. By
(03:20):
way of a little background that will help set the stage. Melissa and I met
and became friends in early 2016. Both of our
spouses worked for Ramsay solutions at the time. In late
2018. Early 2019, during my
family's most intense questions regarding Ramsay solutions,
Melissa was dealing with significant trauma that was very much tied
(03:42):
to the organization. And to protect her friends, she
ghosted all of us for months. This is the answer to the
question, how did you first realize something was wrong?
It's a story of a slow realization that unfolded over
months and years. It's a story of moving from
intentionally looking away from the truth to being willing to
(04:04):
stare it straight in the face. I know this is a
conversation that will be so valuable to you. In fact, we had so
much to say, we're breaking this into two episodes.
Here's part one of my conversation with
Melissa.
(04:26):
There were definitely a lot of things that God
used. And I go, well, look at that. I would
have never recognized a lot of the patterns if I
hadn't started seeing the patterns beforehand. And even then,
it still took me a while. I would say that our Venn
diagram overlaps a bit, but we had our own
(04:48):
separate paths of figuring that out. I am interested in learning
things. I am interested in church culture. That brought me
to a few resources that were really helpful to
me later. And I was like, oh, my goodness, we just came through
a really spiritually abusive situation. I
wasn't able to identify it at the time, but I can say I knew that.
(05:11):
I think I realized that because of some things I'd seen
before. Melissa and I may jump around a
bit in this timeline, so I want to put this all into context for
you. We're a few years removed now, and you may not know or
remember this, but 2018 through the beginning
of 2019 was a time of huge,
(05:32):
disappointing news in the american evangelical world. Two
high profile pastors were revealed to be grossly disqualified
to be pastors Bill Hybels and James
McDonald. This all happened to coincide with God opening
my eyes and Melissa's to many uncomfortable
overlaps between these pastors and their ministries. With what
(05:54):
we were observing with Dave Ramsey and his business, Ramsay
Solutions, at the very beginning of 2018,
when I was still mostly naive to the coming storm and how it
might impact me personally, I read the way of the dragon
or the Way of the Lamb by Kyle Strobel and Jamon
Gogan. It had a huge impact on me.
(06:17):
One of those things was that book, the way of the dragon or the way
of the lamb, and it's out of print right now because they're. They're editing
it because there was a chapter in there on somebody that I really felt was
a faith hero that they found out was an
abuser. It looks like they told their publisher to pull the book,
which is rare. To have that integrity, to, say,
(06:39):
lose money, possibly lose credibility in some ways,
because you're an author and your book's gone. To do that in order to
honor the victims of that person that you mentioned in your book,
in the book. Said, here is something we're seeing the difference between
how evangelical american church culture is doing
ministry and how it doesn't seem to fit with
(07:01):
the model of what we see of Jesus doing ministry. I think that
book, at least in my timeline, that book was
after I'd already seen these other
christian abuse scandals start to be exposed. That
book was part of putting a framework on what was actually
happening. And Wade Mullen's
(07:21):
dissertation, how many people sit down on a Friday night and punch
three hole, punch a dissertation and start reading it, watching the
Bill Hybel scandal come out? And for people who
are listening to this, who don't know that Bill Hybels was the pastor
of Willow Creek and the leader of this leadership association
that was influential in tons of christian evangelical
(07:44):
churches. And Willow Creek had thousands and thousands of people
attending that church in the Chicago area. So
Melissa read the book after the Hybels debacle. I read it
two months prior to. The situation with hybels,
and it turns. Out he was a sexual
predator. I mean, he was an influential pastor at the same
(08:06):
time that he was sexually abusing women under his
care as a pastor, and that started to be exposed. And
it turns out these women had gone to the
church and were branded as liars
and that they were trying to bring him down and bring the church
down and eventually had to go to
(08:27):
the press because they were not being believed to watch that whole
situation play out than to watch Rachel
Denhollander expose what was happening there and the
backlash that had happened. Most know Denhollander as
the courageous whistleblower whose testimony led to the conviction of
USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. But that
(08:48):
wasn't the only abuse she spoke up about. She also spoke
out against abuse in her own church community. If you were watching
this all play out, and we were, it was eye
opening to see how, with Rachel's church and in the situation
with hybels, the organizations both moved to protect
themselves instead of listening to the victims.
(09:11):
So to watch the dynamics of those two. And then after that, the
harvest Bible chapel, James MacDonald, and just this
very visceral level of control
and re victimization that the
church entity and its leaders did to people.
The book, the way of the dragon or the way the lamb, put a framework
(09:34):
on what was happening and revealed that
to be nothing like Jesus. Yeah. You found that book after
all that had happened? I read it before all those things had
happened. When you saw all that news, Melissa, what were
you thinking? Did you believe those accounts? When your family pays their
bills from income that comes from access to the large platforms of
(09:56):
evangelicalism, seeing platforms crack or leaders
come crashing down, I couldn't help but
notice. I wondered what Melissa thought at the time.
I kind of follow a practice. This is the lawyer coming out in
me. Believe but verify. I read all of
this, and strangely enough, I had started
(10:19):
following Baz TV on Twitter,
who is an abuse advocate, who founded Grace, godly response
to abuse in the christian environment. And I have to believe that God
led me to that, because I can't figure out how I started
following him at some point. Followed Julie Royce, who's a reporter
who exposes a lot of the abuse happening in the church. And
(10:41):
when I saw this, you read it, I take my brain
automatically looks for, well, where's the evidence? Where are the facts?
You know, objective evidence, whether it's documentation, you
know, recordings, you know, where's the evidence? And then also, where are the
patterns? Because if you have one isolated
incident, and then you can look for the evidence, but when you have a
(11:03):
consistent pattern of the same thing happening over and over
again to multiple people, especially people who aren't
connected or who haven't heard each other's stories, the
likelihood of that being false is minuscule. In a lot of
these situations, you had both. You had evidence, actual,
objective things that verified what happened and verified people's
(11:25):
stories, or you had extra witnesses that they had told at the
time, and then you had the patterns. When that stuff exists
and people turn a blind eye, that is just willful
ignorance. That is something, I think, that makes God's heart
grief. Yeah, I could feel this
nervousness inside of me as I watch that
(11:47):
stuff come out. As you know, I was married
to a christian speaker, in a christian speaker
world of Dave Ramsey. And you see
this stuff come out and you want to be objective about it. You don't
want to drag someone through the mud who is being falsely accused. I
had actually written a blog post a couple of
(12:10):
years before that when Jen Hatmaker had
come out as affirming of gay marriage, and there was
this huge hubbub of pulling her books and people talking about it.
And I wrote a blog post that talked about, the problem isn't that
Jen Hatmaker has come out as affirming gay marriage. The problem
is that we care so much as a public what a christian
(12:33):
celebrity is doing and believing. And
so I already struggled with the fact that people
look at certain christian leaders as
idols, frankly. And it was a really strange place to
be because my husband at the time was one of these people, and
people were like that about Dave Ramsey and all the people that worked there. So
(12:55):
I already had a stirring in my spirit that something is not right
with that, this idolization. And someone could say, oh, I don't want to be
idolized. But when you build an entire structure
that creates, affirms, and
monetizes that idolization, you can't say you
don't want to be idolized. We were in that same situation, not as
(13:17):
closely tied to that world, but also at
Ramsey. Nathan's getting his paycheck from a place
that really benefits from that celebrity platforming. By the time
the situation with hybels happened, I had entertained the idea
that there were possible issues. All this information
was sort of informing, and sometimes I'd let it in, and sometimes I wouldn't. Like
(13:39):
2000, 2016 ish. We come out of a hard church situation. I was
really trying to make sense of it. I had decided that the issue was
narcissism. I happened to run across Diane Langberg's YouTube
video, narcissism and the system it breeds. I listened
to it several times. I took notes on it, because,
of course, that's just. I know you did, because by the
(14:01):
time I ran across that video, which was, I think,
early 2019. Yeah. I said, was it like
three years later? Yeah, this video, this explains it all.
And you said, oh, I know. I've watched that video. And I took notes.
But here's the thing. I was thinking about it in relation to our church
situation, and I told Nathan, nathan, you need to
(14:23):
come in here and you need to listen to this, because this explains
how an unhealthy pastor can leave a church, it could
still seem like something's wrong. He. This is going to blow his mind. I bring
him into the bedroom, push play on the video, and I'm sitting there, and I'm
just watching him watch it. And then at a certain point, he turns to
me, and he says, you know, this is Ramsey,
(14:43):
right? I was like, my brain, all of. A sudden,
it was cracking, right? Like, cracking sensation when you
realize, oh, my gosh, a part of my world is about to
fracture. This incident was a crucial moment for
us. I had to decide if I was willing to see the truth or
not. I wasn't ready to fully see it.
(15:05):
But God still used the tiny crack of an opening to shine in some
light and put me in a better place of being able to
see full truth later. My brain was like, nope,
don't look over there. Don't look. You might actually have to do something.
I did not want to see it, but I couldn't unsee it. I
didn't dwell on it all the time, but it was still there. As time
(15:28):
goes by and we're watching things happen with harvest Bible, Hybels was first
and then harvest Bible by the end of 2018, when harvest Bible
was really imploding. And I'm following along
and reading the really big article that Julie Royce had
in World magazine, and I read it, and I got to the end of it,
and I didn't tell Nathan this at the time. I knew that the place that
(15:50):
my husband got his paycheck from was going to be in the news someday.
I was going to wake up, and I was going to see their name there.
There were too many things that aligned with things that have already
been exposed in other places. And you go, that exists here, that exists
here, that exists here. I didn't tell anyone. And strangely, that
coincided with a lot of other parts of the
(16:11):
story that you started to uncover. You started
watching it play out in front of you. I had no idea
that realization would play out so personally for us so soon.
In fact, a week after the World magazine article about
McDonald, unknown to me, Ramsay Solutions was trying to
figure out how to handle a very traumatic family situation with
(16:34):
Melissa. And they were doing all the self protection, image
control things. I had been reading about
your fear and certainty that that's what would happen.
You watched it play out. Within a couple months of that, Nathan and I were
really figuring out something was really wrong, and we were trying to
figure out if it was salvageable or if we just didn't
(16:55):
understand something. All of these resources I
was processing in the middle of, are we going to have to
leave another place that is turning out to be what
we did not want it to be or did not think it would be? I
just was reading what I could find online from
Diane Langberg. We have to pause for a second. Yeah. And
(17:18):
just say what a gift Dianne Langberg
is to the church and to individuals. She is a
prophetic voice right now in the church that we
sorely need, seeking to expose things
that are not of the Lord and to
help refine the church to be what it's supposed to be. I am so
(17:40):
thankful for her. I am so thankful for Boz. I'm so
thankful for Julie Royce, because they are truly doing the work
of Jesus. Holding a mirror to the church. One of the
things that I started to see, and one of the things I started to
see in Ramsey is a lack of
integrity. And when we say integrity, we think of being
(18:03):
honest or, you know, deceitful. And I don't mean it in that way. I always
think of integrity as being the same. You know, it comes from the word
integer, which is whole. I look at it as being the same
person all of the time. Being who you say you are in
private. In public, same thing for an organization. I
sometimes get these red flags or discernment
(18:25):
radars, and you can't really put a finger on it. I've now learned
that it is this subconscious sense that something is
not the same all the time. This person is not the same person
to me as they are to somebody else. They're not the same person in
private as they are in public. This organization is not the
same in private as it is in public. And that lack of
(18:47):
integrity is what I started to see in
Ramsey solutions bucketfuls and see
in individuals that make me so concerned. So
we were processing this separately, partly because I didn't
want to say anything. You're not allowed to say negative things
about the company to someone that cannot fix it. You
(19:09):
certainly aren't allowed to go talk to your friends who are
also connected to the organization and talk about your
concerns. We talked about hybels when he imploded.
And then you were in a real crisis situation,
end of 2018, beginning of
2019, where you were not able to
(19:30):
talk about what you're working through. But we're working through some similar things.
You're having serious, really deep trauma experiences and just
working things out. A lot of it connected with this
organization. We weren't comparing notes at this point, but what were
you reading end of 2018, beginning
of 2019. That God had prompted me in the summer
(19:52):
of 2018 to start reading whole books of the Bible
in one sitting. I ended up going through most of the Bible that
way, but I would sit down, you know, whether it was a short book that
only took me 20 minutes or, you know, the gospel take about
3 hours, I would say. So I was just reading whole books of the Bible
to really understand who Jesus was and is
(20:15):
and understand what God's
plan was, what his calling on my life was. And then as it went into
2019, I was reading the psalms, and then I started reading
a chronological Bible that was given to me. So those were like, the foundation
of what I was reading. And I think obviously the most
important thing of what I was reading, you know, I was also reading books on
(20:37):
trauma. You know, I have a book coming out in July of this year
on medical trauma called Afraid of the Doctor. As I was writing
that with an incredible co author who's a pediatric
psychologist, as I was writing that, I was reading books on trauma and
specifically the book the body keeps the score by Bessel van DER Kolk.
And I'm reading this book and feeling
(20:58):
overwhelmed with grief and
recognition. And that's when I started to
recognize, wait a second, there is something seriously
wrong in my life. All of these things that the book is talking
about are things that I'm feeling and
recognizing. I could only read a little bit at a time. It was. I would
(21:19):
start crying in the middle of reading chapters. I'm now actually reading it for a
second time, and it still is quite difficult. As time
went on in 2019, I started reading a
lot more because you're trying to make sense of these patterns.
There's the evidence and the patterns. There's a point, I think,
before 2018, sadly, I was
(21:42):
naive. And despite the fact that the word talks
about wolves and the word talks about evil, I
really took things a lot of times at face value.
People say they're a believer. I believe them. I believe they
love Jesus. People say that they're a Christian. I believe
they want to walk in integrity and in honesty. And
(22:04):
that's where I take responsibility and
say I suffered at times from spiritual
laziness. I did not apply discernment to
people and just took them at face value. We can
say that's from different experiences in our
life where we learn to ignore red flags,
(22:25):
but, you know, at some level, I have to take responsibility that
I ignored signs that things were not right,
people were not who they said they were, and that's something that I really work
at now to stay in the word and try to have that discernment
of what is God telling me about this situation
or these people or this organization. I remember you spending a lot
(22:48):
of time in the psalms. You know, God just had incredible
things to say about my own situation,
about the path that he led Israel through, you
know, when it was hard and confusing and people couldn't
see where they were going. And at the time, I felt like I could not
see where this was going. But then, yeah, the spring of 2019, getting into
(23:09):
the psalms, especially, like the davidic psalms, too. You know,
David was a complicated guy, but, man, he
loved the Lord, and he was honest
about his feelings and he was honest about where he
struggled and where he grieved and where he
lamented. And those were the parts where, you
(23:31):
know, just reading those psalms over and over and over again. Yeah.
If you're in a state dealing with deep grief
and you just can't find the words, you can't do
any better than praying the psalms. And even the imprecatory
psalms that are like God just level them,
take care of it, because they are, you know, filling their
(23:53):
storehouses and on one hand, and with the other hand, hurting
people. So they name lands after themselves. That is
where I've always talked about getting to that place
where you go. I have no idea how this is going to work out. I
am just sitting here in anticipation to watch
what God is going to do. I know God does things beyond
(24:15):
our wildest imaginations, and I feel like that's what the psalms
do as well. You just sit here and look at the things
that God has said about himself and has said he's going
to do and the things he has done. I'm just going to watch
him play it out. I know I'm going to be blown
away. Even in our first conversation, after not talking
(24:37):
for so long, both of us separately, I'm struggling with the relationship with
Ramsey solutions. I remember saying, I've been reading all
this stuff about high bolts and McDonald, and
I'm afraid this is happening at Ramsey. And I remember
you just stood there, you just nodded. And at that, I just started
asking a few questions. Have you read this? And have you read that? And it
(25:00):
was so interesting for you to say. I don't. I can't really talk about it
right now, but someday I'm going to tell you about how I read
the same thing that you just mentioned when I mentioned Diane Langberg, how I had
been following her and reading some of her work and I had mentioned,
and Wade Mullen. I think those were two really key
people that were talking during that time. I also mentioned, asked if you had
(25:21):
followed any of what Baz Chavidian had been doing.
And this is where I go back to, too, the fact that God led us
to a lot of these resources completely independently. We
were standing, I think, on a flag football field for that
conversation. It was really a testament, I feel like, to
God's assurance that he was revealing things we didn't have
(25:44):
to. And I think backing up, too, I think, you know, some of
the reason for not talking, you know, obviously, the
manipulation and fear engendered by how a gossip
policy can be used to control people is one aspect. But also,
too, I think all of us have. When we want to honor the
Lord, we want to cover over
(26:06):
sin that we expect to be repented of.
And that was always my hope. Yes, sin was being
exposed, but that, you know, that there would be sincere, heartfelt
repentance and restoration. My
practice had always been to not talk about those things.
There was this sense that when repentance and reconciliation
(26:28):
happen and everything has been splayed out on the table,
other people don't see the repentance and reconciliation, and they
just remember all the terrible stuff. I wanted time
for repentance and reconciliation to happen
and hoped that things wouldn't be just thrown
out to the street for everybody to grovel up all the
(26:51):
dirty details. Yeah. And God was really clear
at times about what to say and what not to say. You know,
eventually I would be under a gag order, but at that point, for probably
six months, I wasn't. But God was really clear about what
to talk about and not to talk about. Resting in that and resting in
learning and reading the psalms, I think, were a huge
(27:13):
comfort and insight. Yeah, I think it was a time of learning
and a time of practicing restraint, which I
think God does with all of us. Yeah. That separate path of learning
actually led Nathan and I to
independently, apart from anything that any other friends are going
through, you included, you didn't tell. You weren't telling us the details of your
(27:35):
situation at all. We knew something was wrong. It led us to make our own
decision. It's over for us here. We had come to the end of the
road, and then after that decision was
made, processing all the things, and so
you ended up on the other side,
too. But at that point, I really was like,
(27:57):
all right, tell me what just happened. That's another aspect to
information can be a burden, especially information
that will compel you in many ways,
to act. Yeah. And I knew that I was a
steward of this terrible, terrible information.
I did not want to burden people that I cared about with this
(28:18):
information, because I knew it would be a
burden. Yeah. And I didn't want to tell
anyone. Why would I want to burden you with terrible
information that would, you know, prompt you to have to make some really
hard decisions? And that was a lot of the motivation for me
not telling anyone and not saying anything to
(28:40):
you because I cared about you, cared about your family, you know? So
once, you know, you had made decisions on your own, then I
felt like God had released me to say, okay, here's.
Here's what's going on. Yeah, I think we need our enneagram
whisperer to explain that to us. Because your
instinct is, I don't want to burden someone with this. My
(29:02):
instinct is, I don't know what's going on, but I am
not going to let her stand by herself, whether she
wants me to be there or not. But then we really
started to dig in, because
trying to understand, I wanted. To understand what
had happened, how we got here. I think that's when
(29:24):
I. I was like, okay, I want to read about high
control group, the. The real inflammatory
term, the cult. But there's a spectrum of
control in organizations, and I really wanted to learn about
it. I picked up Steve Hassan's book because he's the cult
expert. He is the guy that you go to and
(29:46):
seeing some overlap and some people's brains shut off when they
hear the word culture. Unfortunate, because I think
any place can be unhealthy and on a spectrum of
being too controlling. And so I learned a ton
of things from that. In that same vein, listening to
podcasts from places and people that had been
(30:08):
connected to high control control groups. So if you are not a reader,
let me tell you, there is a treasure trove of
free resources. If you just want to turn on your
Apple podcasts or Google Podcasts or Spotify
wherever you do, of really interesting stories. And
sometimes our brains can process things better if it's not
(30:30):
about a place that we are so personally connected to. That's not to
be sneaky with anybody. This is just to say it might just be easier for
you to go and listen to podcasts on Nxivm
or Scientology. Something that I had realized
along the way is that organizational
control and interpersonal control
(30:52):
are very, very similar, because, in reality, an organization
is made up of people and systems. Interpersonal abuse is
very similar. The effects of it, what you see,
the signs are very similar to interpersonal abuse.
Having that light bulb moment come on to say, oh, abuse as abuse
is abuse, spiritual abuse, domestic
(31:14):
violence, church hurt, high control groups.
Learning about any one of those things helps you understand all of those
things.
If you forget everything else that Melissa and I talked about today,
I hope you noticed this. God was so patient and kind
to us as he gave us many opportunities to see what was true
(31:36):
and what wasn't. We didn't always get it right, and we're still
asking him to show us our blind spots. God's goodness and
provision have been a constant theme through all of this.
Okay, we shared a lot with you in the last 24 minutes, and unless you've
been taking notes, you may have missed a few resources we
mentioned. I have a comprehensive list of all the books,
(31:59):
podcasts, videos, and authors and speakers in the show
notes. You can find
them@untangledfaithpodcast.com I hope you take
a minute to check them out.
Next week we'll pick up with part two of my conversation with Melissa, where we
talk more specifically and in depth about our favorite and most
(32:19):
recommended resources. Our friend Lauren refers to this
stack of books and resources as the spiritual abuse recovery
starter pack. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Untangled faith. If you enjoyed this episode, I would. Be so grateful
if you would share it with a friend and leave a review on Apple
Podcasts. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook
(32:41):
as untangled faith. For transcripts and show notes, check
out untangledfaithpodcast.com
on the next episode of Untangled Faith.
If you want to understand how abuse can go
under the radar for a very long time, and how people
(33:01):
cannot realize that something is abuse, how
abusers work and how cover ups work
and how things can remain hidden for so long
is really similar in all of those contexts.
God does not want dark things to
(33:22):
remain hidden. I'm new at some
point, I don't want to be one of those people that knows something and never
says anything. I just didn't know what the timing was.
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