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Saddleback Pastor Andy Wood’s Old Church Defends the Use of NDAs

After Echo Church received sustained criticism and scrutiny over allegations that their former pastor Andy Wood was bullying the staff and acting like a spiritually abusive tyrant before he left to become the new senior pastor at Saddleback Church, an investigation was launched seeking to corroborate these accusations. 

Within weeks the investigation commissioned by Saddleback to put their congregants at ease came up empty and cleared him of any abuse or wrongdoing, along with another independent third-party firm that found similar results. Yet some critics were not assuaged, pointing out the investigation was a farce in light of the use and enforcement of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) utilized by the church necessarily made it so that current and former staff members were not able to speak their minds. 

In a new update posted on their website, the church put out an FAQ regarding their use of NDAs and the accusations of using them to silence critics, explaining:

“No, Echo does not use NDA’s in this manner. In fact, Echo puts a lot of emphasis on staff safety, care, transparency, and professionalism. Our handbook encourages staff members that “if you believe that you are being, or have been, harassed in any way, please report the allegations of the incident or incidents to a Leadership Staff member or Human Resources within a reasonable time, without fear of reprisal.” In such cases, the situation is immediately investigated.

In order to protect everyone whose information is housed in our database system, Echo does use a traditional NDA every time someone is granted access to our database, whether staff or volunteer. This is because the privacy of our church members’ personal information is very important to us.

We also ask employees that transition off our staff to hold other private organizational information in confidence. Again, this is common practice, used simply so that employees do not inappropriately share passwords and private information with those that shouldn’t have them.

Such agreements are not intended to prevent anyone from sharing their experience at Echo, whether positive or negative. It deals specifically with information, not the individual’s personal experience.

Some of our separation or termination agreements in the past asked employees to agree “to not to disparage or slander the reputation of the church, its directors, pastors and staff, or any church members/attendees” and also stated that the church “agrees to abide by this same condition” toward the staff member. The heart of this was to serve as a reminder for the church and the Christian employee to act in a Christ-like manner, avoiding gossip and destructive slandering that causes division, rather than unity.

Though the documents and verbiage mentioned were designed by a third-party HR company and is standard for many churches in America, Echo is currently having all our HR documents reviewed again by another company to ensure that we are operating with the highest standards possible.”

There is currently a petition on Change.org requesting that the church “release all former employees from any non-disclosure agreements, any non-disparagement agreements, and any documents that prevent former employees from telling their stories” that has garnered 1167 signatures, arguing that these practices “can “act as silencers on victims of abuse.”

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Church Evangelical Stuff News Scandal

Even in Death, RZIM seeks to Hide Ravi Zacharias’ Sins

Ravi Zacharias International Ministry has confirmed they have no intention of releasing one of Zacharias’ victims from a non-disclosure/non-disparagement agreement she signed years ago, according to her lawyers, continuing to a long-standing pattern of silencing, victim-blaming, and ignoring her wherever possible.

The world-renown apologist who passed away last year, signed the agreement in 2017, before it was confirmed that he was a long-time sexual molester and deviant. A year before he entered into a friendship/counseling relationship with Lori Anne Thompson, grooming her to the point that he began requesting that she send him nude pictures. Thompson eventually decided to end things and tell her husband, which led Ravi to threaten to kill himself if she revealed his actions. He sued her, filing a RICO lawsuit and they settled out of court, with RZIM pledging to drop the suite and offering her $250,000 if she signed non-disclosure agreement.

Despite the agreement, it didn’t stop Ravi from widely defaming her and spreading malicious lies about her, claiming she was trying to blackmail him and releasing a statement to the rag Christianity Today, saying:

“Subsequently, she began to contact me via the email address I had used to contact her husband after first meeting them. My responses were usually brief. Then, last year, she shockingly sent me extremely inappropriate pictures of herself unsolicited. I clearly instructed her to stop contacting me in any form; I blocked her messages, and I resolved to terminate all contact with her.

That of course is a lie. In the same letter he also wrote this, before news of him groping and propositioning his employees at a spa he owned came to light:

In my 45 years of marriage to Margie, I have never engaged in any inappropriate behavior of any kind. I love my wife with all my heart and have been absolutely faithful to her these more than 16,000 days of marriage, and have exercised extreme caution in my daily life and travels, as everyone who knows me is aware. I have long made it my practice not to be alone with a woman other than Margie and our daughters—not in a car, a restaurant, or anywhere else.“

In a letter sent to Ministry Watch, RZIM likewise reiterated their libelous allegations of false claims, blackmail and harassment.

Since then, Thompson has made many appeals to RZIM to release her of her NDA over the years and they have refused, despite their namesake being a known deceiver. Recently her lawyer Boz Tchivijian again requested that she be released, and again they refused.

What makes this all the more frustrating is that despite RZIM allegedly launching a full investigation into his “spa activities,” they have also confirmed that she is ‘beyond the scope’ of their investigation, setting the stage for a continued cover-up without justice or resolution.

Thompson has reveled to Protestia that none of the investigators have spoken to her, and seemingly have no plans to, despite being the most prominent and visible victim, the catalyst for his exposure, and the one woman they continue to libel.



Ruth Hutchings said it best, writing on Twitter:

RZIM has a special responsibility to Lori Anne because the Board and senior leadership personally choose to slander her and her husband as “greedy extortionists” inside and outside the company. For other situations, they likely can say they didn’t know, they weren’t involved. Perhaps they were deceived, but these are still actions they’re responsible for correcting to the best of their ability. If Margie (his wife) continues to refuse, the least RZIM can do is take her off the Board/staff and make a statement repudiating their earlier remarks.

The fact is that the lawsuit that precipitated the signing of the NDA wasn’t done to prove and assert Ravi’s innocence, but rather to hide and conceal his guilt. RZIM refusing to release her because it “honors his last wishes” needs to be viewed from the perspective of a deeply dishonorable man who wielded the lawsuit as a cudgel to maintain his oppression and silence the victim.

What a wonderful legacy RZIM is hoping to leave.




Categories
Evangelical Stuff Featured News

We Demand Transparency from RZIM: Release Lori Thompson from her NDA

As the world comes crashing around Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) and the myth of the morality of their once-great leader unravels across the world, there is something that the Christian community must demand after decades of promoting his ministry and giving sacrificially to the cause of Christ: give us utter and complete transparency.

We want to know who’s on their board, other than his wife and immediate family, and why have they been repeatedly ignoring these requests and evidence presented for years? While we understand that some of these relations against their beloved leader may be shocking and unexpected, it’s not like they haven’t had the accusations for months now. They received these accusations and proof a long time ago but refused to acknowledge it.

In fact, when we told RZIM about it before everything broke, they said investigating it was “virtually impossible.” Yet given that his accusers are still alive, including his business partner who has made the accusation, and in fact still lives in the same city as RZIM headquarters, it seemed that the ability to investigate is not ‘virtually impossible’ but rather ‘imminently doable.’ RZIM has since changed their tune and is now offering to investigate only after they couldn’t ignore it and were exposed, but this sort of unbiblical behavior is damning to their credibility, and it needs to stop.

Most importantly, however, is that we want RZIM to release Lori Thompson from her Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) which she never should have had to sign in the first place.

We broke the story last week (and so far seem the only people who have written about it) about how RZIM is in the process of laying off 10% of its staff members and forcing all outgoing employees to sign their favored NDAs, which are designed to force the silence under the threat of punitive monetary damages and legal threats of any exiting employees. That was before this story broke wide open.

RZIM has nearly 50 employees and brings in $37,000,000 a year in donations, and we can expect that with the news that Zacharias was molesting and sexually abusing his employees, that they will be cutting more than 10% of their payroll.

As it applied to Thomson specifically, we covered back in May 2020 that she wrote an open letter to RZIM, pleading with the organization to release her from her legally binding non-disclosure agreement that prevents her from sharing her side of the story – an NDA that Ravi Zacharias himself did not hold to when he revealed details to Christianity today back in 2018.

The emotional video by Thompson was live-streamed on Periscope and has been embedded below and the full statement by Thompson can be seen at this link here.

I say this as one who has been stricken and as one whose words have been stolen. Under excruciating circumstances, I signed a non-disclosure agreement that does not permit me to defend myself, leaving me once again defenseless. To take the capacity to speak a person’s word may be the final blow. Freedom of speech is not only the First Amendment Right, it is also part of what it means to be fully human. After extensive trauma-informed care, I am taking this moment to ask the ‘heirs’ of that NDA for a full release from its terms and agreements — as my husband and I now have nothing that we do not wish disclosed.

Yet in a statement from just a few days ago, RZIM has repeatedly rejected calls for Thompson to be released from her NDA. Instead, they have proffered that they have no intentions to do that, despite the clarity and truthfulness this would bring to bear on the situation.

As is widely known, Ravi Zacharias died May 19, 2020. Subsequently, some have called on his family and/or ministry to release the Thompsons from the confidentiality agreement they entered into with Ravi some two-and-a-half years prior to his death. Since RZIM was not a party to the agreement, it is unable to alter it, and his family does not feel it proper to alter it without Ravi’s knowledge or consent. Before he died, however, Ravi addressed allegations that he solicited inappropriate photos from Lori Anne Thompson or otherwise engaged in communications of a sexual nature with her in an 800-word public statement in December 2017. In that statement, he denied any sexually or romantically inappropriate conduct. He stood by that statement until his death. His denial is consistent with the character of the man we knew and worked alongside for years.

Given that Ravi Zacharias has seemingly been for years an expert on “doing things without one’s consent, there ought to be no impetus to honor his request,” particularly since its purpose was to cover and conceal his sin.

While news of Zacharias’ unsaintly behavior brings a measure of a degree of vindication to Lori Thompson, who for years had to endure scurrilous slaps and cruel attacks from RZIM defenders, supporters, and even casual observers calling her a liar and opportunist for dare suggesting that Zacharias is not beyond reproach, her vindication is not complete, only partial.

Though her credibility may have been given a massive boost, it is incumbent upon RZIM to follow the threads where that credibility leads. The late RZIM magistrate is dead. We pray he meets his maker on good terms, but we have no assurance of that. But the living are still among us, and their story deserves to be told. We will not tolerate further coverup or cloak and dagger malfeasance from an organization that so far has obfuscated at every turn.

RZIM:

Let Lori Thompson speak!

Categories
Conspiracy Evangelical Stuff News

RZIM Responds to Ravi Zacharias ‘Illicit Online Relationship’ Scandal

In light of a recent Christian Post article going live about the new supporting evidence Julie Roys uncovered in the Ravi Zacharias sexting scandal, RZIM has released a new statement denying any and all wrong doing while also pledging to never release the woman involved, Lori Thompson, from her Non-Disclosure Agreement (DNA) .

The impetuous stem from emails, phone records, and first-hand testimony brought to light by Jerry and Denise Basel, two Christian counselors who counseled Thompson in 2016 while the incident was happening. Stepping in to help the couple deal with the fallout, they were the ones that were with Thompson when she sent an email to Zacharias telling him she was going to tell her husband about their alleged illicit affair, which prompted Zacharias to famously respond with threatening to commit suicide if she went through with it.

And while RZIM has not responded further to our queries regarding new allegations that have surfaced, including the revelation that Ravi Zacharias co-owned a spa that employed pseudoscientific Ayurveda services, yoga, and that Ravi’s former business partner accused him of sexually assaulting the staff- a claim co-signed by several women who worked there and were the object of his unwanted advances, we are hopeful with enough pressure they may yet.

In the new statement to The Christian Post, RZIM says:

“In April 2017, Ravi Zacharias received a letter from an attorney representing Bradley and Lori Anne Thompson of Ontario, Canada, presenting allegations and threatening litigation by the Thompsons against Mr. Zacharias. The letter threatened that litigation was forthcoming, or, ‘in the alternative of protracted and public litigation, the Thompsons will sign a release of you and your church and ministry in exchange for a certified check in the amount of $5 million dollars made payable to the Bryant Law Center, Lori Anne Thompson and Bradley Thompson within thirty days of today’s date and mailed to the above address.’

“In response to this demand letter, Ravi notified the board of the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries and personally filed a lawsuit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in August 2017. The Thompsons, through their attorneys, then requested to enter into mediation
to resolve the matter without going to trial. In November 2017, Ravi consented to resolve his lawsuit and the matter through mediation—a process that resulted in a resolution agreed to by both parties.

“In addition to these legal proceedings and the investigations underlying them, this matter was independently and rigorously investigated in 2018 at the initiative of the denomination that issued Ravi’s ministerial credentials, the Christian & Missionary Alliance. That investigation included multiple
interviews with the parties and a review of all available documents and records. The denomination concluded, ‘…the available evidence does not provide a basis for formal discipline…’

“As is widely known, Ravi Zacharias died May 19, 2020. Subsequently, some have called on his family and/or ministry to release the Thompsons from the confidentiality agreement they entered into with Ravi some two-and-a-half years prior to his death. Since RZIM was not a party to the agreement, it is unable to alter it, and his family does not feel it proper to alter it without Ravi’s knowledge or consent. Before he died, however, Ravi addressed allegations that he solicited inappropriate photos from Lori Anne Thompson or otherwise engaged in communications of a sexual nature with her in an 800-word public statement in December 2017. In that statement, he denied any sexually or romantically inappropriate conduct. He stood by that statement until his death. His denial is consistent with the character of the man we knew and worked alongside for years.

“Also since his death in May, allegations by Mrs. Thompson against Ravi have resurfaced in the public domain. This prompted calls for RZIM and/or the Zacharias family to conduct further investigation into this matter. In light of these developments, we, the Board of RZIM have reviewed the matter again and conclude the following:

1) Ravi Zacharias was never physically alone with Mrs. Thompson nor did he send her photos of himself.

2) There is no evidence that he solicited photos of her—an allegation Ravi vehemently denied in his public statement in December 2017. Furthermore, no evidence to the contrary has ever been presented.

3) Ravi addressed his communication with Mrs. Thompson in his December 2017 statement and we agree with him that it was wrong to have engaged in ongoing communication of a personal nature with a woman other than his wife.

4) We believe Ravi should have immediately disclosed the fact that Mrs. Thompson sent inappropriate photographs to him.

5) We have long had policies regarding physical safeguards to protect both our team members and leaders as well as those they come in contact with to prevent interactions that could ever prove harmful to either party. In 2018, we implemented electronic communication safeguards and policies for that purpose as well. We regret not having put the electronic communication safeguards in place sooner.

“We respect that there are those who disagree with us about this process and our current disposition. Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to the mission and work of RZIM—to reach and challenge those who shape the ideas of culture with the credibility of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Categories
Conspiracy Featured News

RZIM Reportedly Cutting 10% of Staff and Forcing Employees to sign NDA’s

RZIM is reportedly in the process of cutting 10% of its staff members and forcing all outgoing employees to sign Non-disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) designed to force the silence under the threat of punitive monetary damages and legal threats of any exiting employees.

The move from the company, which has nearly 50 employees and brings in $37,000,000 a year in donations, comes after the passing of ministry figurehead and leader Ravi Zacharias earlier in the year, as well amidst new allegations unearthed by Julie Roys of Ravi’s sexting scandal, (which we covered in 2018 here) and allegations from Ravi’s business partner that he was sexually harassing staff at some spas he owned a decade ago.

RZIM has up to this point denied the allegations but has not elaborated further. When we asked them about the latter allegations, they said in a statement that it was “virtually impossible” to investigate, even though with the accusers and victims being in the same city and willing to talk, it is imminently possible and quite easy- only a phone call or an uber away. Sadly, RZIM has shown a refusal to address any wrongdoing on the part of Zacharias, and as a result, bring reproach to the name of Christ.

Wishing to kneecap the ability of the staff to say any damaging information that may hurt the ministry, or which may reveal the presence of more victims, Protestia has learned that human resource protocols are being revamped to prevent existing and outgoing staff to comment publicly on any inner workings at RZIM or from addressing any information the may know about the brewing scandals. In these cases, ministries will frequently withhold severance due to the employees if they don’t sign or will entice them with large cash payouts if they do sign.

RZIM has infamously utilized NDA’s in the past, most recently when they continue to enforce one against Lori Anne Thompson, the woman at the center of the sexting scandal, who has repeatedly reached out to RZIM publicly and privately to beg them to release her, but to no avail.

While there may be some reason for businesses to have employees sign NDA’s, it is far less common in Christian circles, with NDAs frequently being used as a tool, with Geoff Robson rightly noting that they silence victims, protect perpetrators, and ‘eschew a gospel-shaped response to sin in favor of a secular response to sin‘.

We at are still in the process of investigating RZIM and these allegations, and will update accordingly.