Part 14B – Leaving Behind The Cookie Cutter Missionary

The list of opinions that I hid from other New Tribers grew substantially when I went to the New Tribes Missionary Training Center (MTC). I learned not to talk about women in leadership, how I choose to parent, the hurt I received at the hand of a staff member at MTC, and my changing outlook about New Tribes in general.

For example, in our course syllabus for our parenting class, we were informed that the

One of our required reads at the NTM MTC

reason for the class was that there was a lot of conflict on the field surrounding parenting; missionaries can’t get along with their co-workers who discipline differently than they do. Instead of teaching a class on giving others the freedom to parent differently than oneself, they lumped everyone together—singles without children and married couples with or without children—to teach us all the “right” way to parent children.  Sitting in class, I heard day in and day out about the importance of spanking my daughter. If you’ve read my older blog posts, you’ll know that I was abused through spanking. I personally can’t use this discipline method because of my past. Timeouts were criticized in our homework assignment one day, and I marveled at the idea of the organization dictating my life down to this minute detail of how I could and couldn’t discipline my child.

Sadly, if I did get the courage to speak up about any of my problems, I was met with one of three answers.

1.    “A ship takes a long time to turn around.” This analogy was often used to excuse inaction. When I or my classmates brought an issue to staff, this was the typical response. I witnessed and experienced it many times. Sure, it takes a while to turn an organization around, but they will never get there if they simply quip this line at people who want to be the voice of change.
2.  “If you think this is bad, consider it as preparation for the field. You’ll have conflicts much worse overseas and you need to learn to submit here and now.” This answer, given by both students and staff, usually meant ducking your head and ignoring problems as well. The correct response to conflict seemed to be to have a “godly attitude” which meant to suffer in silence and be unrealistically positive. I should have seen that conflicts that were much worse on the field meant that I didn’t want to be part of this organization. Sure, there’s no perfect organization, but there are organizations with leadership structures that don’t invite abusers in and protect them, then expect a “godly” response of submission and positivity from their workers.
3.  “If you think this is bad, you should have seen MTC 20 years ago.” I think it’s great that MTC has improved, but again, this is not a reason to stop improving and silence those who want to see more improvements.

Unfortunately for New Tribes, I discovered the Fanda Eagles forums and became irreversibly informed about how patterns like these played out on the mission field. I’ve written before about a report that was released when I first arrived at MTC. When the GRACE report (If you follow that link, please understand that it is full of accounts of graphic child abuse. This is your trigger warning!) was released, I believed NTM leadership really had the desire to come alongside the MKs their organization had physically, sexually, emotionally, and spiritually abused. I braced for change and expected everyone to care long enough to change NTM from the inside out. The devastation for the MKs seemed to die down, though without sufficient action. Someone even said to me, “How sad that this report might bring down our organization,” without any mention of how sad it would have been for a missionary’s child to be molested night after night at boarding school. It broke my heart.

One of the main contributing factors to the callousness was that NTM’s work was seen as vital. New Tribers believe that all people who never hear about Jesus will burn forever in Hell after they die because they didn’t get a chance to believe in him. They believe their organization is especially critical because they insist on teaching chronologically through the Old Testament, while other groups typically start in the Gospels. In that system, some people (not all!) seem to subconsciously land at the conclusion that the abuse of MKs ends up being the lesser of two evils, because NTMers are being specially used by God to rescue lost people from eternal fire. I no longer believe that people who don’t hear about Jesus have no choice but hell, but some who do believe that operate in a way that values both MKs and minority people groups at the same time. I believed NTM would make it right and work to discourage the remaining callousness.  As the school year progressed, less students and staff members at MTC were discussing the Fanda survivors (excepting Andy Kline and the fabulous Child Protection department—which has since been totally relocated and restaffed with new people), and it seemed assumed by the general student body that NTM was on the right path. I continued to follow up and found the opposite. New Tribes did not follow all the recommendations from GRACE. They even kept a statutory rapist on staff.

New Tribers and the churches that support NTM, if you’re reading this, what have you done recently to hold NTM accountable? Do you feel helpless? Is your leadership set up in a way that any abuser in your organization, from anywhere in the world, would be fired for their actions? These are the types of questions you need to be asking. The reputation of your organization is not your primary concern. Do the right thing, continue to push back on this, and your reputation will take care of itself anyway. And in the end, you may even refuse to line yourselves up with an organization that does not prioritize protecting their own children. Wage war on this or your inaction will cause further devastation.

Dale and I at a Soulation retreat

By the time graduation came, it was clear that my husband and I needed to take a break and think things through. The more I lived a normal life (outside of the missionary community for the first time since early childhood), the more I realized I couldn’t go back. At first, it was scary to think what people would say about us and to completely start over with our lives, but the thought of continuing on under an abusive system was far scarier. Then, it was a sweet relief to know that I didn’t have to dedicate my life to a work that I simply wasn’t gifted for. I relished getting out of a community where scoffing at my beliefs was acceptable and started to taste healthy relationships where I was offered the dignity and love of being different from my new friends. One such friendship was with Dale, who eased the pain of leaving fundamentalism with great skill, because he once navigated those waters and lived and healed to tell his tale. Last summer in the Rocky Mountains, Dale brought together a group of us who had all been spiritually abused and named us “glass warriors." Dale told us “If we do not think we are loved, we cannot be open to the truth. We cannot trust. That is why mistrust reigns in abusive communities.” 

Love is why I can share who I am now. 

Our Colorado Soulation Gathering