As scandal after scandal rocks churches and ministries across the world, a newly launched program aims to address the root of the issue: the unspoken secrets of abuse and trauma. Virtually everyone has experienced some form of it. And as they are buried in silence, the inner brokenness continues from generation to generation, even within the church. But, says the creator of REAL TALK, the solution is simple, it is biblical, and it is not scary. It is even fun!
“I don't want your ministry to end up in the headlines,” says Elizabeth Good, Founder and CEO of The Foundation United and the woman behind REAL TALK. “We always say we want to bulletproof your ministry, your legacy and your family, and safeguard you to never have Satan dismantle and take it all away.
“I was talking to one of my friends the other day, we grew up at Willow Creek Community Church, and to go back there now to see that they've removed Bill Hybels’ name. That's a legacy that had tremendous impact for 40-some years, but even all the books he wrote are gone.
“In Dubai, I was at this place where they host different events and they had Bill Hybels, Ravi Zacharias, Brian Houston. They're all gone, and I hate to think about who's next. If we don't start speaking, who is going be the next one that's going to be no longer?”
A background of a decade in corporate business, a decade in church leadership and a decade in anti-human trafficking work has been God’s preparation for her ministry today, says Good. Her passion? Witnessing men, women and children experience how Jesus Christ truly sets them free from the bondage of secrets that kept them in brokenness.
In an exclusive interview with Christian Daily International, Good shares about her personal journey, how she discovered that everyone has secrets, and the simple program she developed that is now used in churches and ministries across the world to bring healing through a culture of open conversation and prayer.
Whether rich or poor: different symptoms but the same root
“I feel like the Lord has done a progressive thing with my resume. Each of my decades has built the credibility for this platform today to be able to speak to it,” Good says, as she reflects on her professional life.
Looking back, she sees strong contrasts how people talk about their personal lives in the secular world versus in the church. “I worked a decade in corporate America in advertising and media, and everybody was just out with everything there. There were no secrets. It was all debauchery all the time. They seemed very comfortable talking about things.”
As she moved into pastoral leadership, however, she noticed that the church culture was very different. “My next decade in my thirties, I was in leadership at Willow Creek Community Church, a mega church in Chicago. And that was a little different because if something was out of order, you couldn't speak about it publicly,” Good says.
In hindsight, she laments about what happened with Willow Creek founder Bill Hybels who was forced to resign due to a sexual misconduct scandal in 2018. “I wish Bill Hybels didn't get removed like that,” she says, and ponders that it could have been different if they had the REAL TALK program in place at that time.
Good went on to get a master’s in clinical psychology while she was serving among a lot of minority populations on the south side of Chicago and encountered some very psychotic situations.
“What I found at that time was that everybody's root level issues started with a secret, and it was usually a secret of abuse. If it was not sexual abuse, then it was physical abuse or some other form. And then it turned into different things,” she recalls.
“But then when I was in the north shore of Chicago, which is one of the wealthiest suburbs, the women and the men that I would meet with that were leaders, CEOs, and heads of organizations, they were presenting with different addictions, different secrets. But literally behind all these beautiful and opulent doors were tons of secrets, and it all started with the same root level abuse.”
She realized that most often, the secrets people carried were going back to when they were three, four or five years old, and growing up, the symptoms then manifested themselves differently.
“And then the Lord moved me to Florida where I ended up creating safe housing for anti-sex trafficking and working with over 5,000 survivors. And of those women who were in the streets, all of them had the very same stories as my wealthy housewives. For them, it perhaps didn't lead to domestic violence or an addiction, but theirs led to trafficking.”
“But it was the same pattern, the same route,” Good says.
Broken generational pattern and orphan spirit, also in the church
What she found is that the experiences of abuse and trauma in early childhood are kept hidden due to fear and shame. “And we keep that a secret and then it manifests in a way that steals our identity. It steals our destiny at a very young age,” Good says.
She emphasizes the spiritual reality that “the enemy is very clear in his tactic and he's very focused in his dismantling of our purpose. I always say he has one purpose, which is to make sure you don't achieve your purpose.”
However, even in the Christian households, this reality is not talked about. What is called generational patterns in the secular world speaks to the same issue that the Bible describes as the sins of the father impacting the third and fourth generation, Good suggests.
Describing it as a “broken generational pattern”, she points to the issue of “two generations ahead of you that have been abused verbally, physically, sexually, emotionally, and we don't know how to end it.”
A key issue is that these experiences are suppressed into silence. Good points to a Columbia University study that found that the average person has 13 secrets at any given time, five of which they have never spoken out loud, because “the shame is so big.”
“But they're typically the same root level, something of perversion or something sexual that happened,” she says.
Earlier this year, Good spoke about the “orphan spirit” at the World Without Orphans global forum in Thailand, highlighting that the issue of orphanhood not only affects those who lost their physical parents but also those who suffer abuse.
“We say that we have 5 million social orphans, which means they're living in care or some sort of housing community. And we have 150 million that have one parent that has passed away. But the statistics today say that there are 1 billion children with an orphan spirit, and that means that they've experienced sexual, emotional, physical or verbal abuse,” she says. “That's one out of two children that grow up to be one out of two adults.”
What Good finds heartbreaking in all this is that the statistics inside the church are the same as the statistics outside the church. “I always say just because you sit in a garage, it doesn't make you a car. And sitting in a church, doesn’t make you a Christian,” Good says, and laments, “I've heard too many stories, and I've heard too many secrets.”
Getting to the roots: creating a culture of speaking
After fighting the “symptoms” of abuse and trafficking for many years, witnessing the awful effects on people’s lives, seeing the same repetitive patterns and despite all efforts achieving no meaningful change, Good says she finally could not bear it any longer.
“We're throwing our money and our energy at symptoms, and everybody cares about abortion, they care about trafficking, they care about domestic violence. But quite honestly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of talking about it in the symptomatic way. I want to get to the root level,” she says. “Why are we as believers matching [the statistics] of the world?”
“But I feel like what the Lord is saying now is: ‘the only system [that can solve this issue] is my Church, and if my Church doesn't start talking about these things that matter, nothing will change.’”
Therefore, the REAL TALK program is aimed at churches, ministries and almost any kind of organization that is willing to take the first step in changing the culture of silence to a culture of speaking.
Good explains that for a successful program, the leadership is most important. “We start with leadership, and we look at everything systemically from top down.”
The leadership must understand the principle and say, “we don't want even one person in our system to have secrets that they're afraid to speak about. Because with one hundred percent certainty, what is going to cause an organization or a church to run into a scandal or have something come out that ruins the reputation of a leader is an unaddressed secret.”
So, starting with the leadership, the program focuses on training the trainers and then creating a new culture by providing a language for people to speak about issues.
Good says that one pastor said about the program, “It's like you're giving handles. We knew all this stuff was there, but we didn't know how to grab it, we didn't know how to address it, and how to speak to it. But the program gave us language and handles.”
Other churches similarly testified saying, “you've changed everything. We don't talk the way we used to talk, and we have language we never had before.”
‘Confession? But I am not Catholic…’
Once the leadership is on board, Good says that the program needs facilitators and intercessors who want to be trained to pray.
One of the program’s key Bible verses is James 5:16, which says: Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
“The Bible is so clear when it says to confess your sins one to another and the prayer of a righteous man has authority to heal,” Good says, but there is a lot of hesitation among evangelicals.
She admits her own initial response was similar. “I had my own secrets, and I remember when someone asked me, ‘have you ever confessed it?’ I'm like, ‘Confession? I'm not Catholic! We don't do confession.’”
Good laments that this important aspect of the Christian life has gone missing in many churches.
“We don't do that a lot in church where we actually speak our deepest secrets to one another and then have the knowledge of how that person then prays with you for that to go away. We would rather just take anxiety medication and keep our secrets and just medicate or numb ourselves.”
“And that's why we're seeing the numbers of pornography and addiction and all the things because we're not using the power of Holy Spirit and God to just get rid of stuff,” she says, and emphasizes that conversation and prayer works. “It does go away!”
At the outset, the greatest obstacle is the atmosphere of shame, and that people are afraid what happens when they start talking about it. So, the first step is to normalize it quickly.
As the small group meets, the facilitator starts out by asking questions. “The first question is as simple as ‘we're going to name every type of abuse that you've either endured or witnessed or know that generationally exists in your family.’ And it's just a tick list of physical, emotional, spiritual, verbal,” Good explains.
Then, as people start naming them, they realize that all ten people in the group have at least one, but most have three. “And then you do realize, okay, we've all been sexually abused, or we've all been physically abused, or we've all witnessed something. We grew up in a house of verbal abuse and a lot of people still have it because it's just normal, that's what they've got used to. But you go and ‘do church’ on Sunday.”
And as they continue on, the atmosphere becomes light, and they wonder why it was never talked about.
“And then we go on to, ‘what was your first memory of grief or loss?’ And it just brings some things that we haven't talked about that Satan might have ownership of. And we say, we're excavating and looking for the gold, because something that might be hidden could be locking something that you don't even know. You need a key, and there's a whole other part of your legacy and your purpose unlocked. And it changes everything,” Good says.
‘If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed’
A second Bible verse that the program refers to is in John 8:36: So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Good compares it to ownership papers that people may still be hiding in their lives.
“If there are parts of you that are in secret, it means you have someone holding your papers and you're not free,” she says.
“Any piece that is held back that you're like, ‘oh, I wouldn't talk about that. That's not a part of my story I speak to.’ That is where you don't have the [ownership] deed fully yours. [The program] is a ‘freedom all the way’ tool. We call it a catalytic Holy Spirit ‘can opener’ that unlocks things you might not have known were locked and gives you freedom.”
Good emphasizes that it is not the same as therapy as it is not about analyzing life stories and going through weekly sessions over years and years. Rather, it is about creating understanding and identifying patterns.
“And it's not scary. It is actually fun. Because you quickly realize, ‘Oh my gosh, you understand?’” she says, and adds, “It helps identify patterns and mindsets because people are always like, ‘Oh, but it's my father.’ But no, no, no. It's never about a person.”
“Satan, the spirit of whatever it may be – whether it's accusation or fear or whatever – it comes through a person who is just unfortunately used. But you got to realize that person is not it. It's going to be a tactic.”
REAL TALK is about revealing those tactics and patterns, so that people can walk with new mindsets and keep them, Good says. It is the biblical route of becoming free indeed by confessing sins and experiencing healing through the Holy Spirit. And the result they see is dramatic breakthroughs in a few short weeks where generational patterns are changed.
Starting with the adults, then the kids
The program always starts with five weeks for the adults and only afterwards moves on to the six-weeks program for children, Good shares.
“What we've found with research is that if you haven't healed or dealt with what your own secrets are, you can't hear a child. And that's why children will say, ‘well, I told my mom…’ But the mom didn't have ears to hear because she never dealt with her own trauma.”
And unless the Church is comfortable to allow the language to come out and to speak about the issues, “we can't guard our children, and our children are desperate for someone to speak to.”
The children’s program is from kindergarten to fifth grade, from sixth to eighth, and then from ninth to twelfth grade, in the U.S. system.
Good says that she heard testimonies from kids who finished their six weeks program in their church and immediately asked when it would be run again. They say things like, “I want to bring my friend because no one's parents talk to them.”
Statistically, it is said that average children spend around six to eight hours daily on social media but only one minute face-to-face with a parent. “They’re losing intimacy and the ability to connect,” Good says.
She is also concerned that research shows “our children are getting their innocence stolen by age seven, eight, nine on social media. They're seeing images that are changing their neuro pathways. They are literally having addiction from age ten, eleven, twelve, but parents are not comfortable talking about things.”
That is why it is so important that there are some adults who are “unprogrammed of the fear of speaking”, so they can then help the children talk as well.
The same situation around the world
While the program has started in the United States, it is already being rolled out in other nations as well. Asked if she notices a difference between what are commonly known as guilt cultures versus shame cultures, Good says that the situation is the same everywhere.
When she held a workshop at the global forum in Thailand, there were 65 different nations, and the response was overwhelmingly positive.
“Everybody was like, ‘We don't do this where I come from, but we're starving for it.’ Every single person that spoke to me said, ‘I want to tell you my story. We're done with this, we're done.’”
Good finds it interesting that there seems to be a misconception about Americans. “They all think, ‘Well, you Americans are so open.’ But I don’t think so. We just have a bigger stage of pretending we're open, but we're not. I haven't seen any difference.”
Since the forum, she has had requests from different countries urging her to start the program because it is so urgent. “They say, we can’t wait.”
“There are churches in India, in Dubai. We have underground churches in China saying, we desperately need this. We can't have this situation continue. I have pastors in Africa saying, ‘this isn't church, we have to start talking.’”
Good says that quite possibly, the countries where Christianity is younger may have it easier to create a culture of openness because they don’t have such a long history of silence in the Church.
“We have a lot of church baggage in Western culture, and we play church well.
We know ‘how it works’, how it's supposed to be outwardly. So I think the rest of the world is actually almost in a better position.”
Good is hopeful that change is coming. She says, the Church has been getting a bad reputation because the secular world is watching and saying, Christians are fake: “We’re saying stuff but we’re not living it.”
“But I feel this is a movement now. I think it's time for the Church to say: ‘We're done. We all are addicted.’ Everybody's addicted to porn. It's women and men, and we are seeing the next generation of men and women that have all these addictions and secrets.
“But the minute you speak about it, it loses its power. It's almost like shackles are falling and mouths are flying open.”
