November 8, 2026

Today the church is asking whether it actually protects the vulnerable, or just protects itself. The Roys Report has two items running side by side that make the question unavoidable. Compassion International is suing a former analyst who raised child safety concerns, framing her disclosures as reputational harm to the organization. New Life Chapel suspended a leader who knew about Pastor Lonnie Snell's sexual misconduct and said nothing. Two institutions, two different failures, one pattern: the system moved to shield itself first. The Gospel Coalition ran a piece this week arguing that church leaders must defend truth without manufacturing outrage. Right instinct. But the harder version of that call is defending truth when the institution is the one that needs to be confronted.

The Kenyan doomsday case sits in the same frame. Religion News Service reports that cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie was sentenced to 200 years for the deaths of 191 followers, most of whom starved following his instructions. That is an extreme, but it is the logical endpoint of a theology that demands followers absorb harm rather than flee it. We were watching a version of this tension on March 21, when Joy Clarkson's piece on love surfaced the question of what it costs when authority is mistaken for care. The Westminster Confession's chapter on adoption, which Crossway explored this week, describes God's fatherly authority as one that holds rather than exploits. The contrast is not subtle. What separates a shepherd from a predator is not the vocabulary of care, but whether the vulnerable come out intact.