Worship leader resigns from Dallas SBC church over mishandling of sex offender in leadership role

This is an update to my post in June about a registered child sex offender, Chad Hutchins, who has been preaching at a Dallas Southern Baptist Church, Adat Shalom Messianic Congregation. Lead pastor Robin Rose told me in a lengthy phone conversation that SBC leadership is aware and have no issues with this sex offender serving in a preaching and teaching leadership role, as well as on stage with the worship team in weekly services.

Caera Thornton reached out to me to share her experience as worship leader on staff at Adat Shalom. She first learned about Chad Hutchins’ criminal background after I published my blog post. Pastor Rose had not disclosed this information to the entire church staff or congregation. Caera resigned last week.

Caera states that Adat Shalom church leadership voted 10-5 to keep registered sex offender Chad Hutchins on the worship team, with both the youth and children’s ministers voting to keep him on stage in a position of leadership.

This is Caera’s story in her own words.

My name is Caera Thornton and I served as worship leader of Adat Shalom Messianic Congregation from May of 2017 to August of 2021. I have provided my account of events below regarding the situation with Robin Rose and Chad Hutchins. My story is lengthy so I want to preface it with a brief statement assuring the public that up until Ms. Smith’s blog went live, only three of the church leaders had been made aware of Chad’s history, and to this day the majority of church attendees have not learned the truth. Please pardon those of us who had no idea what was transpiring, and also those who still don’t know.

Also be assured that had proper protocols been followed, none of this would have been allowed to happen. Please know that I did my best to resolve the situation properly before I left, and while I’m the only leader who has to date publicly left the leadership and body of Adat Shalom, I was not alone in my sentiments, and maybe someone else will have success where I did not.

While I have my concerns about Chad’s testimony and his present status in the church, he is not the reason I departed. His situation merely revealed to me the corruption of Pastor Rose and the complacency of most of the leaders who are supposed to keep him accountable. My story focuses less on Chad’s crimes and more on Robin’s indiscretion as pastor, and his abuse of me and any others who dared stand up to him.

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I joined Adat in the fall of 2015, and loved that tiny congregation like my own family, and thought they felt the same way. I felt seen as my own person for the first time in my life, not just some “little lady” to be matched off to some man. I believed my voice counted for more than just its singing abilities, and I believed my opinion was valued and included in decision making.

That is, until this past June.

Robin Rose, our pastor, called together an emergency meeting of the core group, or the church leadership. When I arrived that night, Robin glumly informed us that more than a year earlier, when we had first begun livestreaming during the pandemic, someone had contacted him and Karen, his wife, and asked if he was aware that he had a registered sex offender, Chad Hutchins, preaching from his pulpit and playing on the stage during worship. Robin said that he replied to the individual and said he had not known, but he would deal with it, and explained to us his idea of dealing with it was to let only one other hapless member of the core group know what was going on, as well as a man named Caleb at the SBC who was involved with the ethics department. This Caleb allegedly agreed with Robin that removing Chad from teaching on a probationary period, but keeping the situation quiet, was an acceptable course of action.

The only reason we had that meeting, that I ever found out what was going on, despite being a supposed member of the church leadership and responsible for helping make decisions for our congregation, was because the situation did not stay quiet. Whoever contacted Robin in 2020 saw that nothing had been done and reached out to Amy Smith at WatchKeep, and she exposed Robin. I listened with horror to the phone call of Robin aggressively attempting to gaslight her on her blog post and fought back tears as I skimmed through the details on the post.

The first thing I did when Robin asked for our advice was ask why we hadn’t been informed, why we hadn’t been included in the decision making process regarding Chad in the first place. Why did it not occur to him to ask for the diverse opinions of the rest of us, women and abuse survivors like myself, former law enforcement, professional counselors who are by default mandatory reporters. 

It’s been two months and I have still not been given an answer to that question.

The atmosphere in the room was one of forgiveness and compassion: Compassion for Chad who will be dealing with the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life, and for Robin, who to me didn’t seem to understand how foolish he had been. I chalked it up, at that time, to him being from a different generation that me, one who doesn’t grasp that pastoral discretion helped perpetuate the culture of abuse in the church, and that the internet has made such secrets impossible to keep, and thank God for that. I said I would be kind to Chad and that I was there to help the church resolve this situation, and would send an email with my ideas on what needed to be done as soon as possible. 

Given that I had just begun a summer internship on top of my full time job and duties as worship leader, it was a few weeks before I was able to get my thoughts collected, and in the interim I had time to start really thinking about what was happening and review Chad’s case, and knew I was going to have to make a decision about his role on the worship team. It sounds ridiculous to say I doubted his need to be removed, but learning someone you loved like a brother has such a past is a hard pill to swallow, and I also didn’t want to misstep by overreacting. After all, as someone who has dealt with some of the worst men out there in her life, but who also counted Chad as a friend, I couldn’t be remotely objective. I held off for the time being to first pray, then get outside opinions from people I trust and respect, and also to see what rulings came down from the Dallas Baptist Association, Baptist General Convention of Texas, and the Southern Baptist Convention. I knew the SBC had just issued a resolution on the subject so I figured in the time it actually took for me to write my emails and come to my official decision, they’d probably have already required Chad to step down and possibly reprimanded Robin for his foolishness.

If they did ever give Robin orders, I guess I’ll never know, because in the ensuing weeks as I worked on my solution strategy, I could barely get any information from Robin on the situation. I was too busy to press the issue but knew I would kick into high gear between finishing my summer internship and starting fall term. But I was determined to get the ball rolling right away because the longer we sat in silence, the problems would only grow.

My initial email recommended that Chad give his testimony publicly at church, because the congregation needed to know, and we needed to have transparency since we apparently lacked it to critical levels. My other recommendations included issuing a public apology for the mishandling of the situation and explaining Chad was no longer going to teach at Adat, and stating we hoped we could someday regain the trust we had betrayed. I also said we needed to have official policies, if we didn’t already, stating what safety measures were in place. And that policy needed to include background checks on everyone serving in the church. To this day I am shocked that something as basic as background checks was neglected.

In the whole month of July, the only progress made was in the form of a hurriedly planned, barely advertised, off-day and offline service where Chad gave his testimony to about 20 people. I wasn’t there because I was sick, but did call Robin and a couple of other people to find out what happened. While speaking to Robin, I asked when we planned to issue the statement and publish our policies, and asked what the convention administrators had suggested. Robin bypassed the first two questions and said that the DBA had said Chad needed to be off the worship team, but Robin didn’t agree. I said I was still deliberating on my own course of action regarding that. Robin did not say anything about stopping me at that time (up until I made a decision he didn’t like he respected my authority), but he did say he thought the whole thing was going to blow over and die down before too long, and he also said, and has said in my presence twice since, that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong and wouldn’t change anything he did even if he knew what would happen.

I knew at that point that Robin was not just some naïve old man who got in over his head. He was willfully refusing to admit his mistakes, despite the harm it did to our church’s public testimony, survivors in the church, and even Chad himself. I knew then that Chad wasn’t the real threat at Adat Shalom. The real threat was Pastor Robin Rose, and once I knew that, I knew my days in the congregation were numbered.

It wasn’t 24 hours later I made my decision about removing Chad, but at the request of another church leadership member who was hoping to talk him into stepping down for the sake of maintaining peace, I held off a little longer, finished up my internship, and waited to hear the outcome of that conversation. The conversation was unsuccessful and so on August 9 I wrote the public statement I had been pushing for and also drafted a safety policy outline. I included a line about Chad being removed from the worship team as well as teaching in the statement, and mentioned my decision in the email I sent to the leadership team with the documents attached.

That’s when Robin turned on me.

He blew up my phone late into the night but I was already in bed. We finally did have our conversation the next evening and the first thing out of his mouth was a question about why I thought I could make that kind of decision about Chad without consulting the rest of the leadership team. I reminded Robin that for over four years I had been given complete authority over the worship team and had never needed to consult the leadership about my staffing choices, and I also found it rather bold of him to question me for making decisions without their input when his own choice to leave us out of the loop regarding Chad had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

He did not like that, and the conversation devolved from there. I tried to give my reasons for why Chad needed to not be on stage, ranging from “it’s damaging to survivors and the Gospel” to “it’s risky for both Chad and for vulnerable groups like children in our congregation.” I even mentioned that he told me himself the DBA wanted Chad removed, but Robin ignored all my reasons and accused me of wanting to punish Chad even more than he already had been, and said I would crush his spirit if I did this to him. When I mentioned that we wouldn’t have been having the conversation had Chad not lied by omission to the church, throwing his credibility into question, Robin began yelling at me, and I was suddenly reminded of the version of him I had heard on Amy Smith’s phone recording.

So this is the real Robin Rose, I thought. When he realized I wouldn’t budge, he simply shouted, “I’m just not gonna let you do it!”

“Well then, I resign,” I said. Robin was shocked into silence.

His wife, Karen, however, was not, and began shouting at me herself before falling into hysterical sobs. If I hadn’t heard before from others in the church that Karen tended to start crying when she and Robin were losing a fight, I would have buckled at that point, because listening to her sob was one of the worst moments of my life. But I knew full well I was dealing with master manipulators by this point, and I held my ground.

“Robin,” I said. “If you allow the church leadership to actually be involved and we put it to a vote I will abide by their choice. But we’re done leaving people out of major decisions.”

Robin sullenly agreed to set up a leadership meeting, and so I found myself sitting in the same room where I first learned the truth about Chad a week later. Robin behaved himself, now that he was in front of a group of people, keeping his voice quiet and saying nothing about the fact the only reason why the core group had been brought together was because I had threatened to leave otherwise. I began my piece by saying I bore no ill will to Chad and had prayed long and hard before making this decision, which I did not revel in in the slightest. Robin had no responses to my reasons for removing Chad, which at this point included Chad’s own safety and that of the church, and the fact that as soon as YouTube gets a report we’re broadcasting a sex offender from our stage and sometimes pulpit, they’ll shut our channel down and numerous members of our congregation who cannot attend in person will be cut off. He only reiterated that he thought it was too much punishment and that it would crush Chad’s spirit, and also mentioned in passing that he hoped at some point in the future to allow Chad to resume teaching!

Robin had done a good job prepping several members of the church leadership team to turn on me before the meeting; a handful of them attempted to gaslight me with false equivalences (“What if Chad had murdered someone instead of looked at child porn?”), and when they made no headway, Robin simply called me unchristian for the fact I said Chad “is” a sex offender, not “was.”  This man, who never once in this whole ordeal made mention of asking God for wisdom, and who had long since stopped showing any real care for Chad’s wellbeing, let alone anyone else’s, was calling me unchristian for trying to do my job by setting a good example while sharing the gospel.

As I said earlier, I knew my days at Adat were numbered when I realized Robin was the real threat, but I had hoped up to that point to get us through this crisis with some level of resolution and implemented accountability, so I wouldn’t be leaving an unstable church behind me. Even now I care for the innocent people in the church who had nothing to do with this and still have no idea what’s going on. But I decided at that moment that no matter the outcome of the vote, I would be leaving sooner rather than later. I have endured too much abuse in my lifetime and refuse to tolerate another second of it, especially from someone who should know better.

The leadership voted to keep Chad on the worship team 10-5, with both our youth and children’s ministers voting to keep him on stage. I might also add our youth pastor wasn’t even there to hear the reasons for my choice and sent his vote in via text before the meeting even began. 

Once the vote was settled Robin reiterated his intention to not issue a public statement or apology about concealing Chad’s status from the church and the public, and allegedly Caleb from the SBC agreed with him on that decision. The ten who voted to keep Chad on the stage all relaxed and celebrated, as if the whole situation was finally over and would just go away now. I prayed us out again and drove home, making up my mind that I would leave after the big Jewish high holiday season in September, or at the end of August if I didn’t think I could last another month. I no longer felt safe around any of those strangers who had once been like family. 

I didn’t even make it to the next Friday before the mental and emotional strain I had been under for two months, never mind the last couple of weeks, took its toll. I suffered several anxiety attacks, and on the Thursday after the meeting, I had a massive panic attack that caused me to fully black out in my apartment. I came to collapsed on my floor with my sport watch reading a heart rate over 210 beats per minute. I had attended extra therapy sessions over the summer, and had friends checking up on me when my depression had made me want to self-harm over the last weeks of the ordeal, and now my own body was simply shutting down. There a day to fight and a day to flee. I had fought, and now I had to flee. 

I drove the church music sheets over to the nearest leader’s house and left them on her porch. When I got back home I changed my phone number and sent a no-holds-barred resignation letter, calling Robin out for his hubris and the leaders for their complacency, and made sure they knew THEY were why I was leaving, not Chad.  I blocked their email addresses and social media profiles so they could no longer contact me, then sent a farewell email to the worship team.

I am still reeling from the ordeal these past two months have been and how quickly things collapsed once I took action. Robin claimed multiple times he loved me like a daughter, yet he cared nothing about crushing MY spirit or those of the many children and women who have been devalued and abused. In the end even Robin’s love for Chad meant nothing. Chad needs shepherding to true repentance if his current humility is inauthentic, and he needs to be shown where he can serve off the platform, because God can and will use him to His glory if that is Chad’s true desire. Instead, Robin let Chad continue on playing make believe that he can escape accountability, and out of sheer stubbornness Robin refuses to yield even now, when nothing but harm can come to Chad and any other church member as long as they stay under Robin’s influence.

What doesn’t bend will ultimately break, and an unteachable man is unfit to teach. I hope Chad is able to find God’s place for him in this world, and I hope he truly is repentant for the crimes of his past, and will know better than to try and hide them going forward. I also hope that Robin might yet learn, before he takes my beloved church down with him. But I hold out more hope for Chad’s future than Robin’s.