On April 17, 2024, the reThink board of directors (governance for the ministry brand known as Orange) released a harmful public statement that overtly minimized and misconstrued a suspected pattern of abuse by their founder, Reggie Joiner. In that statement, they said: 

“Reggie has admitted to past inappropriate adult relationships, which violated our company policy and eroded trust within our organization.”

I am one of multiple survivors of Reggie’s “past inappropriate adult relationships.” I was fifteen years old when Reggie began grooming me for a relationship, which later became sexualized when I was legally an adult. The statement published by the reThink board downplayed the reality of what occurred in my life and in the lives of the other survivors of Reggie’s abuse. 

When I saw the statement released by reThink, I came forward immediately. On April 18th, I spent over an hour presenting my testimony of sexual trauma and abuse to reThink-retained HR counsel, then waited for the board to amend their previous statement. Five days later, I streamed the Orange Conference opening session and wept in my living room as Joel Manby and Virginia Ward said nothing to correct the narrative. At that time, I was still naive enough to believe that perhaps something had been lost in translation between the HR counsel’s report and the board members. “Surely,” I thought, “if they hear my experience directly they will understand what happened.” I contacted the board to request an opportunity to share my experience with them.

On April 24th, I met with two reThink board members in person to present my testimony. The meeting was particularly difficult for me given their requirement that, due to their limited availability, we meet onsite at the Orange Conference – a triggering location for me that I have intentionally avoided for many years. Upon presenting them with my experience of sexual trauma, exploitation, and abuse, the board members present proceeded to tell me: 

• The age difference between myself and Reggie (25 years) was not evidence of an abusive relationship (even though I was naming it as abuse). 

• My experience was not their concern, given that I was simply a contract worker for reThink and not a full-time employee during the incidents described.

• They did not need to revise their statement concerning Reggie because it was already clear about his misconduct.

These experiences between myself and the reThink Board took place one year ago this month, so it begs the question: why am I only now going public with my account? 

Speaking out publicly is intimidating and retraumatizing. I am opening myself up to the possibility of harassment and further harm. And while it is valuable for survivors to tell their stories, they should not have to go first. This is why, for the last 12 months, I have taken every measure possible to advocate for the truth to come forward without me going public. No survivor wants to name their story publicly. No survivor wants their identity to become even more linked to the relationship they had with their abuser. For that reason and many others, I have chosen not to tie my name to this story. I hope those who do know my name will choose to honor my choice and not publicly identify a survivor against her will.

But I have come to realize it is very likely that the only people who are brave, strong, and selfless enough to name the truth for the sake of other survivors are the survivors themselves. 

After one year of continuing to advocate through internal channels, I now know the public will not hear an honest account of Reggie’s abuse from the reThink board (parent company of “ORANGE”), which is mostly comprised of Reggie’s lifelong friends and business partners. Their initial dismissal of my story has played out again and again throughout the course of this year. 

Nor will the public hear an honest account of Reggie’s abuse from the “investigation” conducted by Castañeda + Heidelman LLP (C+H). C+H remains unable to provide a written explanation of the scope of their investigation despite repeated efforts asking for clarity. They have, however, communicated that they are the retained counsel of reThink/Orange, which ensures client privilege to the board of directors but not survivors - meaning they cannot guarantee the anonymity or protection of any survivors who participate in their investigation. They have also communicated that while the board (their client) is open to releasing a statement concerning the findings, there is no plan to release their report to the public (or even to those who participated in the investigation). 

In my own experience, the C+H investigation, to date, has been a sequence of delayed responses, unanswered questions, gaslighting, and victim blaming. Recently, after having volunteered a disclosure of my 20-year-long abuse and trauma to C+H, I was informed by another participant that one of the investigators referred to my experience as “what happened at summer camp,” in the process of dismissing my testimony as irrelevant because I was not a full-time Orange employee. 

Lastly, the public will not hear an honest account of Reggie’s abuse from his former employers, specifically Andy Stanley, who knew of Reggie’s pattern prior to last April. In 2006, I sat across from Andy in his private office at North Point Community Church. I was summoned there as a twenty-one-year-old ministry employee (on contract / not payroll) to give an account for Reggie Joiner’s cell phone record, which showed evidence of stalker-like behavior toward me. Reggie’s phone records had been presented to leadership by a staff member who saw evidence of a problem. During that interview, it was clear to me that those present knew I was a victim of his attention and not an aggressor. Andy advised me to run as far as I could from the Joiner family, but he did not open an investigation or provide me with support that would make such an escape possible. Instead, he allowed Reggie to resign from North Point with honor and a public celebration. Without proper accountability, Reggie continued to abuse me during the time of his exit from North Point. Andy did not follow up then, and he has not followed up since evidence of Reggie’s abuse became public this past year. Instead, he has provided counsel to the reThink board, spoken to the Orange staff, and made no attempt to name what he knows to be true: Reggie is and has been a sexual predator for decades. 

I am no longer the naive person I was last April. I no longer believe that those in power will do the right thing if they only know what happened. They know. They simply lack the courage and integrity to say it. 

So, in spite of what this costs me to share, I want the public to hear the truth. Truth matters because it holds the abuser accountable, and I want Reggie to be accountable for the harm he has perpetuated. Truth matters because survivors need to hear each other’s accounts in order to make sense of what they experienced, and in some cases, to empower them to leave. Truth matters because anyone can be victimized, especially if they don’t know how to spot abusive patterns early. 

I’m not sharing my experience out of a desire for vengeance or retribution. Because Reggie is a pastor, I’m aware of the significant number of people who are protective of his reputation. People don’t want anything to corrupt the good he has done. People want to see grace, forgiveness, and redemption for the man they put on a pedestal. I understand those sentiments. But truth comes before repentance, and repentance comes before forgiveness. And forgiveness comes before redemption. So, here’s one attempt to begin the process with truth. 

Reggie Joiner began using his position in ministry to abuse women at the very beginning of his career, and he continued to do so for over 40 years, being passed from church to church, ministry to ministry. His abuses were, at best, ignored, and at worst, covered up by previous employers. Without adequate accountability and help, there is every reason to believe Reggie will continue to target, manipulate, groom, and abuse young, vulnerable women today. 

I became one of Reggie’s targets in the early 2000s as a student in high school. 

Specifically, Reggie came into my orbit when I was 14. His son and I were both entering 9th grade at a very small private school, and Reggie was on the school’s board of directors. As a founder and executive pastor of North Point Community Church, Reggie was already a public figure. Anyone who attended the school during those years can attest to his disproportionate presence. Reggie was regularly in the hallways. He volunteered to take photos and videos during school events. He attended school trips. During these years, Reggie also repeatedly tried to arrange one-on-one meetings with me, but I refused. He made me feel uncomfortable. Years later, he would often reference a brief conversation he had with me in the hallway of my high school my senior year - a conversation that left no impression on me at the time - as the moment he started falling for me. 

A few weeks after turning 18 and graduating high school, a friend invited me to attend Sunday night youth programming at North Point. It was the first time I set foot in the building. Reggie found out I was there, made a special trip to meet with me alone after the service, and offered me a job on the spot. I had no interest in working at that church, much less with my classmate’s dad who made me uncomfortable. But the job he offered seemed specifically tailored to me and my passions: writing, dancing, kids, and video editing. It sure beat my high school job waiting tables at IHOP. And the pay was better than any college job I could get, especially if you included the cash Reggie would regularly slip me because “I do this for all my kids, and I think of you like my daughter.”

What I didn’t know at the time: Reggie had recently been accused of sexual harassment by a woman on his staff at North Point. When the event was described to me later, I learned that everyone thought the woman was “crazy.” She left her job, and Reggie remained on the executive team. No investigation was done. 

Despite my having zero experience (in life or career) or even a day of higher education, Reggie invited me to every meeting, every meal, every work trip, every family dinner, and vacation. 

Within the first few weeks of my new ambiguous role at North Point, Reggie asked me to meet him in his office. He shut the door. He wanted to talk to me privately about my relationship with God and the church. He asked about my parents’ divorce. He asked about my high school boyfriend. He asked about my experiences with sex. 

What I didn’t know at the time: This is how clergy sexual abuse, which is not illegal in most states, including Georgia, happens. If any other grown man had pulled me into a closed office to ask me about my sexual history, there would have been major red flags. If my boss at IHOP had asked about my sex life, I would not have opened up to him; I would have filed a complaint. But Reggie was a pastor. And having grown up in Purity Culture, I knew if there was anything Christians cared most about, it was the redemption of my deepest, darkest secrets, and the protection of my virginity. So, at the time, the conversation felt to me like I was confessing to a man who cared about me and could cleanse me. This feeling was only reinforced when, a few days later, he gifted me a small, silver “purity ring” from the popular Christian jeweler, James Avery, which I had been thoroughly trained (as a True-Love-Waits Christian raised in the 90s) to see as a symbol of a promise to not have sex until marriage. 

Shortly after introducing the conversation of sex, Reggie learned that I had recently fallen asleep on the couch watching a movie with my dad. He seemed struck by and immediately obsessed with the idea. He told me his three daughters would never take a nap with him. He asked if I would nap with him if I were his daughter. I had just taken a nap with my own dad, so I entertained his alternate reality and said what I could tell he needed me to say: “I guess I would.” At that moment, I felt sad for him, that he craved a close relationship with his daughters, like the one I had with my dad. For the next several months, however, he would regularly tell me “I wish I was taking a nap with you right now.” It felt very intimate, but I brushed it off as a dad wishing to be close to his daughter.

Throughout the summer after graduating high school, Reggie continued wanting me to be everywhere he was. I rode in his car with him and one other ministry leader to a staff retreat in Florida within two weeks of our first conversation. I was at lunch meetings with executives. I went to lunch every Sunday with his family. He called college admission offices posing as my dad. He helped me register for classes. He started introducing me as his fourth daughter. 

What I didn’t know at the time: One of the hallmarks of clergy sexual abuse is the lavishing of attention and gifts (love bombing) on an individual as part of the grooming process. 

During this time I was surrounded by people who observed Reggie’s excess of attention toward me. But it was dismissed due to the habitual nature of Reggie’s pattern of behavior toward women. North Point family ministries staff talked openly about Reggie’s “lack of boundaries,” and told me that I was “one of Reggie’s girls.” It was well-known and acknowledged that Reggie frequently created bogus jobs for young, attractive women. Those closest to him also knew he liked to work remotely, sometimes from hotel rooms “just to get away from everyone.” The general consensus could be summed up as, “that’s just how Reggie is.” In my early twenties, I assumed that if this didn’t seem like a problem to grown adults with real careers, then it must simply be the way things occur in the real world. 

A high school friend of mine raised a flag saying, “The only reason a grown man wants to spend that much time with an 18 year old is because he wants to have sex with her.” I balked. I told Reggie what she’d said, expecting him to also be appalled by the twisted, perverted minds of non-Christians, of people who were “of the world.” To my surprise, he didn’t balk. He confessed he would be lying if he said the thought had never crossed his mind. But, he explained, he was a man. He told me that’s just the way men are wired. He told me men thought about sex with every woman they saw. He wanted to know if I thought any less of him. I told him I didn’t. I repeated back to him the story he had told me. He was just a man. He couldn’t help it. 

Over the next few months, he confessed more and more secrets to me. His secrets. Secrets others had told him. Family secrets. He told me how lonely he was. He couldn’t trust anyone, not even therapists. Everyone was out to get him. He fell apart in front of me, telling me he couldn’t go on. He wanted to quit his job. He wanted to live in a cabin in the woods. He wanted to die. He told me the only way he could go on was if I, the keeper of his secrets, still believed he was good. I was suddenly the caretaker in our relationship. I felt responsible, not only for him, but also, by extension, everyone impacted by his ministry. I became aware that my real job, since my other job had never been clearly defined, was to absolve him of his sins, excuse his behavior, and reassure him that he was good. I believed he had done so much for me; surely, I could do this for him in return.

I was very good at my new job. I didn’t make him feel bad when he continued pushing boundaries over the next year. I protected his ego and didn’t move my leg when he pressed his knee against mine while editing videos at his house late at night. I didn’t recoil when he put his foot on top of mine under the table at Sunday lunch. I told him it was understandable that he wanted to go on long drives with me and hold my hand. I didn’t tell him how gross I thought it was that he liked chewing my already chewed gum. 

I didn’t tell him how shocked and terrified I was when he kissed me the first time. By that point, he’d confessed many of his sexual fantasies to me, but at 19, I truly did not know that was something a father figure could do… until he did. By then, however, the grooming was complete. Reggie had fully conditioned me to silence and compliance. He had spent the year leading up to that kiss consistently isolating me from family and friends and ensuring my complete dependence on him and him alone by inserting himself or his family members in every role: father, friend, sibling, confidant, employer, and pastor. That first kiss felt like being shoved down a dark tunnel slide. I lost whatever agency I thought I had. I disappeared from the world. It took me 8 years to finally get the traction I needed to stop falling deeper, and another decade to climb back up and fully reenter the world. 

During those dark, lonely, suffocating years, I experienced what too many people experience at the hands of an older man who is supposed to care for them like a father. I swung between desperately wanting to escape and needing Reggie’s love and approval to survive.

What I didn’t know at the time: Reggie was in extramarital sexual relationships with multiple women before, during, and after his relationship with me. 

During the entire course of the sexual relationship, Reggie swore he had never done anything like this before. He would say, there was just something about me that made him go crazy. As his caretaker, I tried to help him. I tried to reason him back to a parental role. I told him to try marriage counseling. I told him to work less. I told him to spend more time with his kids. But whenever I said these things, he would show signs of feeling wounded. He would tell me he thought I loved him; he thought I wanted him. He told me if I didn’t need him, if I didn’t believe in him, if I didn’t think he was still good, he would put a gun in his mouth. 

Not wanting to be responsible for an executive pastor’s suicide, I put my head down and continued playing my role. I excused his behavior. I made sure he knew I still loved him. I convinced him, and myself, that it was perfectly normal for him to call me 30+ times in a row if I wasn’t answering, or to receive photos he’d taken of me when I didn’t know he was around, or to wake up and see him watching me sleep in the middle of the night when I thought he was in a different state. (Yes, all real experiences). 

Shortly after I turned 27, I was able to find my footing, to get some traction in that dark tunnel. I finally found the strength to end the sexual relationship. However, around that time, I noticed my own sister, who Reggie recruited to work for him out of college, disappearing. 

Just like everyone else in Reggie’s orbit over the years, I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. Just like everyone else in Reggie’s orbit over the years, I made excuses. Because of my experience, I confronted Reggie about what I saw as an inappropriate relationship with my sister, but he convinced me I was the crazy one. I believed him. 

My sister’s story is hers to tell, but I can say that it follows the same pattern. A pattern many in Reggie’s orbit are familiar with: Reggie finds a vulnerable young woman - his favorite barista, restaurant server, high school cheerleader, young mother. He tells other people a story about how he is “helping her” get a job, get connected to church, leave an abusive situation, pay for college, discover her talent, etc… He creates a job for her, showers her with attention, praise, and adoration. He becomes obsessed. She’s suddenly everywhere he is: on work trips, at the office late at night, grafted into his family (and alienated from her own). Because on the surface, his attention appears to elevate her status, no one stops to wonder if she is actually okay. No one checks in when the outward accolades so cleverly disguise the fading of her previous vivacity, autonomy, and strength. She disappears. She fulfills her role. The light goes out behind her eyes. And eventually, when she can no longer provide what he needs, she is replaced by someone new.  

The reason Reggie initially targeted my sister was likely because he felt me pulling away and needed to ensure my silence and his control of the situation. He regularly grew as close as possible to any unremovable person in the lives of the women he targeted (parents, siblings, husbands, children). And while it worked for many years, it was ultimately this move that freed me. The only reason I was able to find the courage to break my silence was because he targeted someone so close to me, and I had a front row seat to his pattern of abuse playing out in someone else’s life.

Nearly 20 years after I first set foot in North Point Community Church, I finally had enough distance from Reggie to begin processing my experience with others. 

Like many survivors of abuse, I did not realize I was being abused while the abuse was happening. I thought it was love. Like many survivors of clergy sexual abuse, I presented it as a consensual affair at first. But my friends’ and my counselors’ reactions gave me the permission I needed to question Reggie’s framing of the relationship. His had been the only perspective I had been allowed to consider up to that point. I am fortunate that the first people I told all seemed very clear on what it was: abuse. Their ability to see it for what it was helped me begin the long, painful road of discovery and recovery. 

I say “painful” because abuse recovery is excruciating. It’s an un-making unlike anything else I have experienced. No one wants their story to be a story of abuse. It’s much less painful to believe the abuser’s story: that you were loved. But it wasn’t until I started to accept the truth, that I was naive, and that I had been groomed and abused by a serial predator, that I finally broke free from Reggie Joiner, 19 years after the sexual abuse began. 

I have since learned of some of Reggie’s survivors, women before, during, and after his abuse of me. To those women: I see you. I don’t see the “you” Reggie taught me to see. I see you for the remarkable woman you are. I do not presume to know your story, but I hope that by sharing my own, you are better equipped to take whatever the next best step is in your healing journey. You do not need to share your story, but I hope you share some of what you learned so that our sons and daughters know what we know without having to live what we lived.