Insights from the Soul Survivor Review
The Independent Review of Soul Survivor (UK) reveals serious accountability issues in youth ministry, emphasising the need for formal oversight and third-party accountability in leadership.
The report from The Independent Review of Soul Survivor (UK) report has been released and is available online. You can view it here.
The report was commissioned in response to the finding by a Church of England review board that Mike Pilavachi, founder and leader of Soul Survivor, had “used his spiritual power to control people”. The executive summary of the report gives a succinct background, the Soul Survivors podcast from Premier Christianity tells the story.
So far I have only read parts 4 & 5, issues and recommendations. There is plenty here that’s relevant for all of us who are working in youth ministry.
Power Dynamics and Accountability in Youth Ministry
It strikes me that there is so much that we hold dear about the ‘character’ of youth ministry that creates an environment where abuses of leadership power can too easily grow. There’s more in the report (and more on my mind) but here’s a few big ones to start with:
We want YM to be relational - so we can easily build a culture where we don’t like, or imagine we don’t need, formal structures (for review, accountability, governance, whistleblowing), afterall, “were different to the rest of the church”!
We spend so much time investing our lives in young people, always needing to recognise the intricacies of asymmetry in power relations, but too often leaving leaders without the necessary training to give them the best chance at gaining the wisdom to navigate those intricacies.
We are in danger of placing successful youth ministry leaders on pedestals that leave them beyond question, and/or not helping young people and young leaders learn the difference between being a youth leader and a celebrity.
We are in danger of wanting our leadership and oversight bodies to be made up of people who ‘get youth ministry’ in a way that excludes needed external perspectives.
Balancing Relational Ministry with Formal Accountability Structures
One immediately practical recommendation from the report relates to one-to-one discipleship. There’s a lot of reason why one-to-one is such a widespread practice- it’s biblical, and it’s proven effective for so many people (though it gets a bit overblown as THE ONLY way to disciple someone, forgetting that Jesus also did a lot of one-to-twelve and one-to-three discipling as well). Where a one-to-one relationship has the potential to become unhealthy, the report suggests always having a third person to check in semi-regularly for oversight and accountability. That seems wise to me.
Learn the Lessons
There’s a lot here that ymf as a new Youth Ministry organisation needs to pay attention to, and plenty that we want to take note of as we work to help train long-term Youth Ministry leaders. The report notes the failure to learn from similar situations in the past - let’s make sure people in the future don’t say the same about us.
