In His Own Words: Bruce Yocum on Abuse

Before his death, Bruce Yocum of the Servants of the Word gave a talk heavily focused on the 2018 Catholic sexual abuse crisis to the People of God, a covenant community outside Pittsburgh, PA.

If Bruce Yocum could speak about the current public sexual abuse crisis affecting the Servants of the Word, what would he say? Bruce was one of the founding members of the Servants of the Word, based in Chelsea, MI. He was an elder in that community of brothers “living single for the Lord”, a world traveler, and influential early member of the charismatic renewal and Word of God community in Ann Arbor.

In the following talk transcribed below, Bruce ended up discussing thoughts about the 2018 Catholic sexual abuse scandal that started with public revelations about Theodore McCarrick. Could the same principles apply for his own organization?

At one point, Bruce mentions Father Bob Oliver in connection with the Vatican safeguarding of minors. This is Monsignor Robert Oliver, a member of the Brotherhood of Hope starting in 1984. While now located in Massachusetts, the BOH was originally affiliated with People of HOPE, New Jersey.

You can listen to the audio on the People of God’s website at https://www.pogpgh.org/onlineTeachings.html, and it’s also been posted unedited here.

Themes to note:

• God using Assyria (an external tool) to bring change to Israel

• “We should say the abuse is horrible. The revelation of it: Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. God is doing something about this.”

• “The revelations about what was going on with the then-Cardinal McCarrick—it was an act of God. That that got revealed, it was an act of God. It wasn't somebody who was in a position of authority who knew about it taking responsibility. No, it was a surprise to everybody, but it brought all this stuff out into the light. And I honestly believe it was an act of God. God did it. God's concerned. God wants this stuff to stop.”

• Wheat and the weeds - showcases a mindset that may explain why SOW has been so hesitant to bring greater transparency to abuse allegations (and one conviction) about their members and former members

  • “It’s not up to us to pull up the weeds”

  • God is aware of the weeds, but his concern is with the wheat

  • There is a harvest, and the weeds will get dealt with

    • AUTHOR’S NOTE: Maybe you do not have the direct task to pull up the weeds, but you could at minimum notify law enforcement when relevant weeds in the area of sexual abuse exist.

• “I'm happy that I'm not a bishop. I think you should be happy that you're not a bishop too, okay? Because then if you're a bishop, you've got some responsibility to deal with the weeds, but we don't. Okay? We're not in that position. Our responsibility is to bear fruit.”

  • AUTHOR’S NOTE: Presume the above statement is true of Catholics who are not bishops. But bishops have some responsibility to deal with the weeds. Now, given that the Servants of the Word have their own public sex abuse scandal, what responsibilities do the elders or the presiding elder in the SOW have for dealing with their weeds? Would these not be similar to the responsibilities that Bruce cedes to the bishops?

• The Church is the bulwark, not the Sword of the Spirit

---

The Church, God, and the Sword of the Spirit

Talk by Bruce Yocum to the People of God community, Pennsylvania

5/19/2019

Source: https://www.pogpgh.org/onlineTeachings.html

Transcript:

[Beginning 1 minute:16 seconds]

Okay I want to speak about the church, God, and the Sword of the Spirit. And sort of, you'll notice that I have God all in capitals, the church in big letters, and the Sword of the Spirit in smaller letters, trying to indicate a hierarchy there of importance, and what I want to talk about is what we see going on in the world and the church today, and a little bit about our place in it.

[1:46]

Now I want to begin with a story. I got involved in an email chain with a whole bunch of people whose names you would—many of whose names you'd recognize. They’re leaders, theologians, journalists, people like that. So I'm in this email chain, and they're all talking back and forth about what's going on in the church these days. And they weren't in general too happy about what was going on. They were concerned, and so I decided to jump into this conversation and tell them a little story, and I'm gonna tell you that story as well. And it's centered on this passage from scripture, and this is Jesus in Matthew chapter 8. “Behold there arose a great storm on the sea so the boat was being swamped by the waves, and he was asleep and they went and woke him, saying ‘Save us Lord, we're perishing.’ And he said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’ Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.”

[3:02]

Some of you might know that every four or five years in the European region, which I've been a part of for a long long time, and am part of again, we get as many people together as we can for a vacation. Over there in the UK, we call them holidays, not vacation. So this event's called On Holiday, and last time we had about 700 people. So we're all there together in this big forest with huts all around and 700 of us, and I went to visit Jean Barbara there, our president of the Sword of the Spirit, and he was babysitting that whole week. He was. Because his daughter was there, and he wanted her to be able to actually participate, so he was there taking care of the kids. One of whom is Jean Marc. Jean Marc is four years old—was four years old. First of all, he’s trilingual. He speaks English, Arabic, and French. But little kids compartmentalize things. So when I started talking to him, he insisted on talking to me in French, which is fine except I mentioned to him, I said “Jean Marc, we can speak in English as well.” He looked at me very seriously and said, “But I am not in school.” Because for him, he's French with his mother, Arabic with his father, and English in school. So he wasn't in school. But Jean Marc got into this thing—he did this with a lot of the people, not everybody—but I couldn't leave their cabin until I bent down, and he would put his hand on my head and bless me. So that was fine. We had this little routine going where he would bless me.

[4:56]

Well at that time, I was really pretty concerned about things going on in the church as well. You know you're all familiar with it here in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Catholic Church is pretty famous around the world today, but it's not just in the Catholic Church. You've seen the Southern Baptists in the news recently. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury is making a desperate, and I think futile, effort to try to keep the Church of England together over issues of sexual morality. I was pretty concerned. And one of the days as I was leaving, I'd been thinking about all this. I was kind of concerned. As I bent over and Jean Marc blessed me, just out of the blue he said to me, “Bruce, there's lots of waves, but Jesus is in our boat.”

So I thought, I mean, I don't know, maybe they did a scripture thing that morning with them on that passage. I don't know where it came from, but I just took it as a word from the Lord. Why are you afraid? No still back, nope back the other way, yeah, why are you afraid? You of little faith. And there's a principle here that I think is really important.

[6:17]

Mavis Staples. I don't know if any of you know Mavis. She's a gospel singer. It was delightful being with Charles and his guys. I got to sing songs like There's power power wonder working power in the Precious Blood of the Lamb. I hadn't sung those kind of things in a long time, but Mavis Staples is a gospel singer, and one of her songs is called “God Is Not Sleeping.”

God is not sleeping. So we see all this going on in the church. And then in society, all this craziness in society,  and he said God is not sleeping. Why are you afraid, oh you of little faith?

[6:58]

Another passage. This is the weeds and the wheat.

And here I want to get into a little bit of all the abuse crisis, things going on. 

“Another parable he put before them saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also [In my garden, the weeds appear first, but anyway…]. So the weeds appeared also, and the servants of the householder went to him and said, “Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” He said, “An enemy has done this.” They said to him, “Do you want us to go and gather them?” And he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds, you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time, I will tell the reapers: gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

[8:05]

There are a lot of important lessons in that passage, and I'm going to pick out three of them.

First, it's not up to us to pull up the weeds. It's not—yes, there's a lot of stuff going on in the church. Not good, not good. It's not up to us to pull up the weeds. That's somebody else's job. That's God's job, and that's what the householder—the Lord—says to them, no, don't pull them out.

Now this is the second lesson. He's aware of the weeds. He's very aware of them. But his concern is for the wheat. What he says here is, no, don't pull up the weeds lest in pulling them up you also pull up some of the wheat. His concern is for the good seed and the fruit that it's bearing.

Now put these two things together. The first passage and this one. We can leave the problems, the difficulties in the church, in the hands of God. God will deal with that. He'll deal with the weeds. What he's concerned with for us is that we bear fruit. Let the good seed grow up and bear fruit.

The third lesson: there is a harvest. There is a harvest. The weeds will get dealt with. So I think we need to spend time meditating on those things when we see all this stuff going on around us. 

[9:45]

God knows this is going on. God will deal with it. We don't have to root out the weeds. I'm just really really happy—and you should be too—that I'm not a bishop. Well no, let me say that differently. No, I think you misunderstood me. I'm happy that I'm not a bishop. I think you should be happy that you're not a bishop too, okay? Because then if you're a bishop, you've got some responsibility to deal with the weeds, but we don't. Okay? We're not in that position. Our responsibility is to bear fruit.

Now we can go to the next one. This man, who's relatively famous: Ted McCarrick. God will act. God will intervene. Now what's been going on in the Catholic Church—and in many others, by the way—the spotlight's been thrown on the Southern Baptists recently, but United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, the Reformed Church—there's abuse there. Probably just as much or more. In fact, right now, the churches that are getting the spotlight put on them are becoming much safer places.

But it's been going on for a long time. It’s been going on. In the Catholic Church, it's been going on since the 60s. I entered the seminary in 1967. And I saw it firsthand. It's been going on for a long time. 

Not only the abuse, but the cover-up. Or the—at least inaction.

[11:48]

I had a priest come to me years ago. He was a priest coming to our prayer meetings. He wasn't part of the community, but he came to our prayer meetings. He came to me to tell me happily—I hate to share these kinds of stories—but he said happily, “I just got the assignment I've been looking for. I have a small country parish.” I said, “Why are you happy about that?” And he said, “Because then I can bring my boyfriend to the seminary to stay with me.” I said, “Roger, I'm going to have to tell the bishop you told me that.” He just smiled and said, “Go ahead.” And I did.

Nothing happened. Nothing happened.

That was in the 1970s. That's 50 years ago. So this stuff, this stuff goes back a long time. And some of you know Father Bob Oliver, who's now in Rome. He's the secretary for the commission for protection of minors. Prior to that, he was the main guy in the Vatican handling all the sexual abuse cases. Prior to that, he was handling it in Boston. He knows this stuff chapter and verse. He could tell you—he won't—but he could tell you what the story is in Boston, and how far this stuff went back. So it's been there, but it wasn't coming to light. 

[13:24]

And one of the things that brought it to light was this. The revelations about what was going on with the then-Cardinal McCarrick—it was an act of God. That that got revealed, it was an act of God. It wasn't somebody who was in a position of authority who knew about it taking responsibility. No, it was a surprise to everybody, but it brought all this stuff out into the light. And I honestly believe it was an act of God. God did it. God's concerned. God wants this stuff to stop.

[14:03]

There's another passage here—go to the next slide—“Don't let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer or a mischief maker. Yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. But under that name, let him glorify God. For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.” 

So we see a lot of stuff going on in our society that's pretty bad amongst there are many many many things. Like the one that everybody thinks about and it's sort of the most salient one is our society departed from any notion of sexual morality quite some time ago. And our society's under—abortion. Abortion. It's just staggering, the amount of abortion that goes on, and when you see the people who are in favor of abortion, and you see how militantly they're for it, you just have to think “what is going on that people are so militantly committed to this horrible thing?” Well Paul talks about it in his—well I won't go into it—but he says in one place, there's a strong delusion, in the Letter to the Thessalonians, a strong delusion has come upon them. That's the only way honestly that you can explain this stuff. The only way. But a strong delusion has come upon them. And we see that our society is putting itself under judgment. Just think about the abortion issue, just that. What judgment that calls down from God. But there are many many other things. The commercial—the way the society is sold out to having things is, it's it's it's it's really sad, and it's really wrong. It's it's very wrong. So our society—but what Peter tells us is “For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.” God is going to judge all this. He's going to pull up the weeds at the harvest, but judgment begins with the household of God. 

[16:39]

So when we see things happening like the revelation of all this abuse, we should say the abuse is horrible. The revelation of it: Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. God is doing something about this.

Now there are many people out there who are using things like the abuse crisis to attack the church. So the spotlight is on the Catholic Church, then it goes to Southern Baptists. Why? Why there and not some of the other churches? Because the Catholic church and the Southern Baptist Church are both still openly against sexual immorality–at least officially–so they're a target. They got to get them out of the way. And we can get mad about that at times. You should all know—I mean, it really is the case because of the abuse stuff coming into light—in general, the Catholic Church right now, and I'd say the Southern Baptist Church…pretty safe place for kids. Pretty safe place. The rate of abuse in the last number of years is really low. Compare it to a lot of these other churches that are not being talked about. It was never as high as it is in some of those places. Compare it to public schools. What goes on there. I could tell you lots of stories about that because I have people closely related to me who have been through hell and back because of what happened to them in school. But nothing gets done about that, and they can't get anything done about it.

But the focus is on us because we stand for Christian morality, and so we're the enemy. We've got to get dealt with. Yes. And we can get angry about it, but maybe God is actually using CNN and the Washington Post. Maybe God is using us.

[18:56]

Let's go to another passage:
“Assyria the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury. Against a godless nation I sent him, and against the people of my wrath I command him to take spoil and cease plundering, to tread them down like men in the streets.”

Assyria. In the 8th Century BC, Assyria overwhelmed the Middle East including Israel. And Assyria invaded and came right up literally to the walls of Jerusalem–and there's lots of outside-the-Bible historical evidence of exactly what happened–the Assyrian army conquered everything including the fortresses which were Israel's outposts. Came right up to the walls of Jerusalem, and then boom. Left. It's a mystery why they did, but they left, and Jerusalem was not conquered. But when Isaiah–and this is from Isaiah 10–when Isaiah says—when God says through Isaiah—“Assyria the rod of my anger, the staff of my fury”, what's he using them for? To punish Israel. To punish Israel. Now Assyria, they were horrible. When they conquered, they just destroyed people. There's–I've been to a place where you see the stonework, the carvings, that the Assyrians made after they conquered Lachish, which was one of the most important fortresses for the Jews protecting Israel–and they show you graphically flailing people alive, skinning them alive, all the different ways that they tortured and murdered people. They were horrible. But here God's saying to Isaiah, I'm using Assyria to accomplish my purpose—you can go to the next one.

But God says “But he”—that is the king of Assyria—“but he doesn't so intend it”—that is, it's not his plan to punish Israel on God's behalf. No he thinks he's just doing it for himself. It's in his mind to destroy and to cut off nations not a few, for he says, “Are not my commanders all Kings? I am powerful.” So you can't like Assyria in their attack on Israel. But God says, I was using them to bring about the judgment that would bring about a change in my people. 

[21:50]

And perhaps that's what we see in some of these things that can make us angry when people out there in the world attack the church. If they go after us because sexual abuse happens, can you blame them for that? No. No. That does deserve to be exposed and to be judged. But in the end–next slide–but then God at the end will judge Assyria as well. When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, when he's finished all his work in Mount Zion in Jerusalem— that is when he's finished using Assyria to chastise his own people—then he will punish the arrogant boasting of the king of Assyria and his haughty pride. “Shall the ax wield itself over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?”

The king of Assyria is thinking “I'm doing this, I'm doing this.” God is saying, “Uh, no. You're a tool, an instrument in my hand. For me to bring about what I intended.” These are the kinds of lessons we need to keep in mind. God is in control of these things. God is ruling even when at times it seems to us he's not. He is, so let's trust him for it.

[23:26]

Okay now I want to switch a little bit and go to your theme. I didn't know this was your theme for the year by the way. So we can go to the next slide. 

The bulwark.

This is an important passage for us to reflect on whenever we think about the prophetic things we've heard in Sword of the Spirit about being a bulwark. “I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these instructions to you so that if I'm delayed you may know that how you ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the Living God, the pillar and bulwark of the faith.”

Now let's keep that in mind. What's the bulwark? It's the church. It's the church. It's not us. It's the church. We can be a part of it, but the church is the bulwark, and we have testimony to that from some people whom you wouldn't expect to give testimony. This is Richard Dawkins: “There are no Christians as far as I know blowing up buildings. I'm not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I'm not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death. I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity insofar as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”

You better believe it. It's a bulwark against something worse, and it has been since the beginning. Since the beginning. And that's what the image is, that Jesus uses when he talks about the church being salt, and being leaven, and being light in the darkness. Yes, the church is a bulwark. How much evil there would be without the presence of the church. So when we think about the bulwark, we ought to put God and the church in first place and not ourselves. We're just a little tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of the bulwark. I didn't do the numbers, but if you take the number of members in the Sword of the Spirit and see what percentage of the population of the world it is, it’s kind of like really small. You need a lot of zeros after the decimal point before you reach us. We are really small. Even if what percentage of the church are we? Zero zero zero zero—I mean I could, sometime I might do it—look at the numbers, and see what it says. But nevertheless we have a role, and one of the things the Lord said to us in prophecy—go to the next one, whoops go back. I didn't put this one in. I made a mistake. I didn't put it in the slide, sorry. But one of the things God said to us in the bulwark prophecies is that you don't know everything that's going on. You don't see the whole thing. I do. I've given you a part to play, but then I said, I want you to take that part seriously.

[26:48]

Now if you imagine, I've seen lots of forts in my life. I've been all over the world, and I don't like being a tourist that much, but you inevitably end up being a tourist, and just last summer, I was in Portugal and got a tour of about ten different fortresses in Portugal. And most fortresses have different layers and different—there's an outer wall and then there's another wall and then there's inner things and so on, and it's all the bulwark. And if you think about the church as a bulwark, it's all of that, and we as a bulwark are one little part of it. That can be important because if the outside part of the bulwark gets broken down here, that part better function and do its part as a bulwark, so we need to—

I remember years ago. This is not a very important example unless you're a 10 year old boy, which I was at the time. We were playing a game of capture the flag at a summer camp, and I was stationed in this little spot where I was supposed to keep the other guys if they're going to win they had to bring the flag and put it in this spot, and I was stationed there to make sure that they couldn't. I was like the last line of defense, and then everybody went off into the woods and over the hills, and man it got really quiet. And after an hour or so, I was just sitting there thinking, where did they all go? I don't know, this is the most boring game I ever—I want a part of the action. And so I said, I'm gonna find out where they are, and I'm gonna get into the action. I left, and I started hearing some guys. They went chasing them, and then eventually we all heard that the game was over, and I went back with everybody else and there are my guys at the place where the other guys had planted their flag, and they're just looking at me: Where were you? Where were you? Well, it was, I mean, I wanted to, l, and there was—we lost.

Part of the prophecy: I tell you. You are a part. You're not the whole. You are a part. Not the whole. There are many other things I'm doing in the world today, many other ways that I'm at work to raise up my people and strength and in glory. You're a part, not the whole. I want you to take your part seriously and to lay down your lives for it. 

[29:49]

So probably in the long run somebody writes a couple hundred years from now—if there's a couple hundred years still to go—somebody writes the history of the church in the 20th century, they're probably not going to mention the People of God in Pittsburgh. I mean, you could look in the index and see if—but I would doubt it very much. They’re not going to know who we were. Doesn't make any difference. God gave us a part to play. We need to play it, and we need to take it very seriously. God does, or he wouldn't have given us this call.

I'll stop here. One small thing. I haven't been here in a long time really, at a gathering or mingling much with you, and very likely I'm not going to remember all your names. But that's in part because I discovered awhile ago there was a condition, and I've had it since I was small. It's called anomia, and anomia is the condition of people who don't remember people's names. I've got it, but now it's compounded because I'm like really old, and—I am, you heard, I mean, that I was there at the beginning of this. That's a long time ago. We're celebrating 50 year anniversary of the Sword of the Spirit, so this is antediluvian stuff, but anyway—but I just, when I was with Charles recently, he explained to me another condition that I have because I'm so old. And he taught me what he calls the senility prayer.

You all know the serenity prayer:
Lord help me to recognize the things that I can't change and have the courage to change the things that I can, and so on. 

But he taught me the senility prayer:
Lord, help me to forget the people that I don't like. 
Give me grace to remember the people that I do. 
And give me good enough eyesight to be able to tell the difference.

-Bruce Yocum - May 19, 2019