A clear gap exists between large and small churches in their sexual abuse prevention plans. What can churches of all sizes do to keep people safe?
By Tobin Perry
Tracy Ashworth sat alone, severely depressed, in a dimly lit psychiatric hospital room. The cold, sterile, and silent room mirrored an emptiness that had consumed her for years.
Although she had grown up in and still attended her same hometown church in Madison, Mississippi, Ashworth struggled to connect with God personally. Her faith had become twisted by years of sexual abuse from her childhood youth pastor—a man whom she had once seen as a representative of God Himself.
Lying in that hospital room with nothing but the darkness as her companion, Ashworth felt more alone—physically and spiritually—than ever before. But in those desperate moments, she cried out to Jesus—not expecting but hoping He would respond.
And He did.
“I remember knowing Jesus was with me,” Ashworth said. “I realized He was the only one who would never leave me. And that changed everything.”
“I remember knowing Jesus was with me. I realized He was the only one who would never leave me. And that changed everything.” — Tracy Ashworth Share on XAshworth didn’t give her life to Jesus that night, but she would in the years that followed. A quarter of a century earlier, her abuse had started when she went to her youth minister questioning her salvation. It took 35 years to gain the confidence in God’s love that her abuser had stolen.
In 2023, more than a decade after that night in the hospital room, Ashworth did something she never imagined she would do—publicly break her silence about her abuse to her Broadmoor Baptist Church family.
An evolving understanding of abuse
Ashworth’s tough decision to break her silence marked not only a turning point for her but for Broadmoor as well.
When Ashworth sat down with the church’s then pastor over 35 years ago, he told her there wasn’t much he could do. He never told the rest of the church about what had taken place. So, when Ashworth offered her story in 2023, the church’s leadership had no idea what had happened.
“[This abuse] took place in the 1980s when the church was located in a different community, and most of our staff and faith family now have no context for when this took place,” said Michael Bowen, the church’s media and communications pastor. “Today, we are a church that aims to run to the hurting, and as we investigated the information provided to us, we were heartbroken to realize this survivor had asked for help for 30 years and the church’s leadership never made the faith family aware of it. For that reason and others, we knew it required as much transparency as possible to bring the darkness into the light.”
Broadmoor decided right away they wanted to do whatever it took to make sure abuse like Ashworth suffered never happened again. They also wanted to care for Ashworth, whose family had attended the church for generations and who remained a part of the church family despite the abuse.
In October 2022, the church’s leadership released a public statement in which they acknowledged the allegations and announced plans to hire an independent firm. The firm investigated the claims, assessed the church’s past actions, and reviewed its current culture, policies, and practices.
The 73-page report outlines a six-year pattern of grooming and abuse experienced by Ashworth at the hands of her youth minister during the 1980s. It also highlights the church’s concerning actions when she first reported the abuse to the pastor in the late 1990s, raising questions about how her disclosure was handled at the time.
The firm also highlighted ways the church could improve current policies and procedures to better protect youth and vulnerable adults.
Even before the report came back, Broadmoor’s leadership realized they needed to make changes. Although the church had a form of a child protection policy since the early 2000s, the church needed something more.
“We began with learning by listening to survivors and experts in the field to develop better policies and plans to care for those in our church and in our community,” Bowen said. “We also have developed quarterly training sessions to educate our faith family and community. These are designed to help us all take responsibility for protecting one another.”
More than 35 years after feeling overlooked by church leaders when she first reported the abuse, Ashworth has expressed her gratitude for the support she has received from the church since she shared her story with the congregation in 2022.
“I finally felt heard, important, loved, and believed. My church demonstrated the grace, forgiveness, and acceptance God has for each of us in a very visible and tangible way.” Ashworth said. “Their intentionality and efforts to keep me informed throughout the whole process, and their unwavering support, have given me back my voice to speak freely about my abuse and the way God has used it and is using it.”
A practical tool for small churches
Ashworth’s story highlights the personal and corporate stakes for churches looking to improve their response to sexual abuse. Ashworth spent years in the spiritual wilderness. Though she continued attending the church, she struggled with God personally and saw her abuser as a representative of God in her life.
“I was really confused about who God was and how I was supposed to relate to Him,” Ashworth said. “All this confusion prevented me from having a relationship with God at that point.”
Southern Baptists, including Broadmoor Baptist Church, have been paying closer attention to sexual abuse within their denomination since a troubling report by the Houston Chronicle in February 2019. The investigation uncovered 700 victims of abuse across Southern Baptist churches over 20 years, prompting a growing awareness and calls for action within the denomination.
Between 2021 to 2023, SBC annual meeting messengers appointed task forces in three consecutive years to get a better understanding of the problem and identify how churches could improve their response to sexual abuse.
At the SBC’s annual meeting last June, the last of those three task forces distributed a free curriculum that helps churches both protect themselves from predators and care for survivors.
The five-week video-based Essentials: Sexual Abuse Prevention and Response curriculum walks churches through five key elements of making churches safe from abuse: training, screening (prospective volunteers), protecting, reporting, and caring.
Brad Eubank, a member of the task force that developed the curriculum, says they particularly wanted to help normative-sized churches that didn’t have a large staff.
“We set out to target that pastor—whether a single pastor leading a church or even a bi-vocational pastor who doesn’t have a lot of time,” Eubank said. “We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to help?’ We tried to make it plug-and-play. It’s designed to be something a pastor can use to gather five leaders over five months to go through their five essentials.”
“We asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to help?’ We tried to make it plug-and-play.” — Brad Eubank on "Essentials," the free sex abuse prevention and response curriculum Share on XEubank notes that the essentials curriculum helps churches of any size—large or small. Churches can download the free curriculum at sbcabuseprevention.com.
Southern Baptist’s 2023 Annual Church Profile (ACP) showed a clear gap between large and small churches in the kinds of plans they’ve put in place to protect the church from sexual abuse.
The ACP report revealed nearly 95% of Southern Baptist churches with at least 250 weekly attendees conduct background checks on volunteers and staff. In contrast, smaller churches are far less likely to implement these measures—only 61%of churches with 50 to 99 members and 82%of those with 100 to 249 members do so. The trend is similar in training for handling sexual abuse. While 70% of larger churches (250 or more members) have undergone training on reporting sexual abuse, just 24% of churches with 50 or fewer attendees have received similar training.
Lifeway’s One Source program offers reduced price background checks to address one of these challenges for smaller churches.
Wise counsel for the way forward
As churches develop a plan to protect the vulnerable and care for survivors, Bowen recommends churches get the “why” right first.
“In Scripture, we see a Jesus who led with care, compassion, and transparency. He said who He was from the beginning and ran toward those who needed Him,” Bowen said. “In the same way, church leaders are called to care for those in their congregation, to be transparent with their church, and to be authentic in their responses.”
Then, Bowen adds, get as much wise counsel as you can before taking your next step. Talk to as many survivors and experts in the field of abuse and trauma as you can.
Josh Braddy, Broadmoor’s senior pastor, urges churches not to give in to the temptation “to protect the ‘machine’ of the church and neglect the ‘people’ of the church.”
Churches must not to give in to the temptation “to protect the ‘machine’ of the church and neglect the ‘people’ of the church.” — Josh Braddy, senior pastor of Broadmoor Baptist Church Share on X“Leaders are called first and foremost to give watch-care to the men and women whom the Lord has trusted them with,” Braddy said.
Braddy admits navigating sexual abuse issues in the local church can be a long and difficult season. He encourages leaders of churches in that situation to seek personal counseling, noting that “the healthier the leaders are, the better decisions they will make.”
Braddy adds, churches need to trust God as they work through the situation.
“It is [God’s] church and His people after all,” Braddy said. “He has promised to defend the powerless and marginalized and sustain those who continue to contend for righteousness. Trust Him. He will surely do what He’s promised.”
For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan.
