OAKVILLE (CANADA)
Friendly Atheist [United States]
July 4, 2024
By Hemant Mehta
The abuse crisis at The Meeting House church is so bad, they literally cannot meet anymore out of fear of what may happen
You know your church is having problems when you tell your congregation that upcoming services have to be canceled because no insurance providers will work with you because of all the sexual abuse, and that means all in-person interactions have to be put on pause.
That’s the actual I-shit-you-not situation going down at The Meeting House, one of the largest and most influential churches in Ontario, which billed itself as “a church for people who aren’t into church” (the theological equivalent of girls saying they’re not like other girls). It appealed to a lot of people tired of traditional churches, including lots of young people, and rapidly became one of the largest vessels in the province for spreading Christianity.
The church was led by Bruxy Cavey, who took over The Meeting House in 1997 as lead teaching pastor and soon became known as Ontario’s “most influential pastor.”
In 2021, all that came crashing down.
I covered the details here back in January, but in short, Cavey was accused of sexual abuse, leading to his resignation. He was soon thereafter charged with sexual assault by local law enforcement. Police added that “there may be multiple victims.”
The Meeting House soon hired a “victim advocate,” Melodie Bissell, to handle any additional allegations. By August of 2022, the church said it had “substantiated” two claims of sexual abuse and another case of sexual misconduct against Cavey. In one case, they admitted, “the alleged victim was underage.”
Cavey will soon go on trial on three separate charges. (He maintains his innocence.) There are now multiple lawsuits against The Meeting House, each seeking $5 million in damages. Bissell said there were ultimately 38 allegations of sexual misconduct against Cavey and three other pastors he worked with in the time she spent with the church. The incidents included many that occurred long before she stepped into that role, meaning it was only when she was in that position that some alleged victims came forward with their stories.
Despite all this, church leaders kept insisting they had changed their ways and created a new system to handle allegations, Bissell said the church’s new policies were actually making it harder for victims to come forward and she soon stopped working with The Meeting House.
Now things have hit rock bottom.
On Sunday, all of the church’s campuses were closed down. No weekend services. No Sunday school. No home church gatherings. All because no insurers are willing to provide the church with Abuse Liability or Employment Practices Liability coverage.
That’s like a car insurance company saying they can’t work with you because you’re responsible for too many traffic accidents. At some point, even a higher premium won’t offset the charges the company believes it’ll have to pay out on your behalf.
This is the email church leaders sent out to members, with the key points summarized below (highlights are mine):
Please see original article for “Summary of Key Points”
You have to step back and admire just how incredible this kind of statement is.
The Meeting House had to cancel church because there was too much abuse. But it’s not them saying that. Their insurance providers are saying that. There are still companies in Florida that will offer homeowners insurance at a premium despite the threat of climate change but there are no church insurers willing to take on the risk that is Bruxy Cavey’s old haunt.
The email goes on to say that the church totally tried to fix this problem but it still wasn’t enough… which tells you a lot about the inadequacy of their “fixes.”
Despite these positive changes, we are disappointed to learn that our history still causes insurers to view us as a significant go-forward risk. We were recently informed that, effective June 30, our current insurer will not be renewing our Abuse Liability (AL) coverage, or our Employment Practices Liability (EPL) coverage. Our insurer is willing to renew all other types of insurance we require, excluding those two types of coverage.
Since receiving this news, we have been working as quickly and as thoroughly as possible to source replacement insurance coverage. At this point, we are confident that we have engaged all available insurers in Canada – and some internationally – who work with churches.
However, we have learned in the last week that our search has not identified any insurers yet willing to provide The Meeting House with AL or EPL coverage. Our Transition Board and Network Leadership Team, in consultation with experts and advisors, have also explored other alternative forms of risk management, but we did not find these to be feasible or suitable for our situation in the short time frame we have had to explore these options.
…
For the protection of our staff, volunteers, vulnerable people including kids and youth, and our wider church community, our Transition Board and Network Leadership Team believe it is not responsible to continue engaging in ministry work through The Meeting House church entity without full insurance coverage.
Part of me wants to congratulate The Meeting House leaders for finally taking the responsible approach and canceling church altogether rather than risk operating without abuse insurance… but that’s like thanking a serial killer for taking the night off. You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to them.
A more detailed FAQ from the church says this doesn’t mean it’s shutting down for good, and they will absolutely take your money in the interim.
But even Christianity Today spoke with a Christian insurance provider about why companies may not want to work with a place like this, and it doesn’t seem like this is a problem that’ll be resolved anytime soon:
Insurers may decline to provide liability coverage for ministries that don’t have solid policies to handle abuse, according to Charlie Cutler, president of ChurchWest Insurance Services, an agency insuring more than 4,000 ministries in California. To him, it’s a stewardship issue: Other churches’ premiums shouldn’t be spent covering another organization’s repeated mistakes.
“If there’s been a pattern of abuse, a pattern of bad governance in the ministry, you’re going to have a hard time getting coverage,” he said. “Every time there’s a claim, it’s going back to these offering plates at other ministries. They’re wanting everybody else to pay before they’ve proven that the problems have been addressed.”
It’s almost a relief to hear this coming from someone else in the industry. It’s not non-Christians saying the church’s revised sex abuse policies are a deterrent to getting people to speak. These aren’t people with an axe to grind. These are other Christians saying it’s gone too far and the church still isn’t taking the problem seriously enough.
What a fall from grace for a church that went from drawing in about 5,700 people a weekend in 2018 to about 1,500 now.
All of this is also a clear sign that the problem at The Meeting House was never limited to its leader or a few of its pastors. The entire church was—and remains—the problem. The current leaders are not up to the task of doing the job and the people in the pews aren’t putting enough pressure on them. That also means the people who still attend that church, and who grant it legitimacy, and who give it money are making it clear that they don’t give a damn about abuse victims either.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)