RZIM leader Vince Vitale announces resignation in wake of Ravi Zacharias scandal
Vince Vitale of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries has announced his decision to step down from the organization, effective next week, along with his wife, Jo, who also works for the ministry.
In a letter, they said they had undergone a time of repentance following a devastating report last December into alleged sexual misconduct by the ministry's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias.
"Thank you for allowing us a few minutes of your time. We have sought to spend this season lamenting, listening, and learning from others rather than speaking," the Vitales said.
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The couple said that since the publication of the report, they had sought to live with "three very strong convictions."
"One of these convictions was that God was leading us to take seriously what we personally needed to repent of — to spend far more of our prayers, thoughts, and words on our own mistakes and failures than on those of anyone else," they said.
"Another conviction, this our most pressing, was that RZIM's response to the grave abuse that occurred was critically important — most crucially for the survivors, and also for the mission and witness of the wider church in sober recognition of the need to do far better to ensure that the vulnerable are seen and heard and valued and safe."
The couple then said they stayed with the organization until now because they wanted to be able to speak into "significant decisions" about RZIM's future and its response to victims in the months that followed the release of the report.
"The third conviction we have lived with since December has been that once we had done what we could to encourage a victim-centered response, it would be important for us to step into a substantial season of reordering," they said.
"This is why we are resigning now — in order to embrace the time and space needed to allow ourselves to be deeply formed by all that we have been humbled by and wrecked over in the last year."
Looking to the future, the Vitales said they wanted to spend the next season in a period of introspection.
"One challenge we want to wrestle with is to what extent subconscious desires, for example to be thought well of or to preserve relationships, might have contributed to some of the ways we acted and failed to act," they said.
The letter ends by expressing their desire to do better going forward.
"We will always deeply grieve the suffering and the ways in which we contributed to it, but it is our prayer that the grief we carry from this will serve as a lasting reminder of our duty to care for the many whose wounds are far deeper than our own," they said.
Originally published by Christian Today
