About us

Jeff Crippen is the pastor of Christ Reformation Church in Tillamook, Oregon and has been a pastor since 1983.  For the past three years, Jeff has studied the subject of domestic violence and abuse.  He began this study after he and his church suffered through an incident of sexual abuse by a member of their church.  Jeff and his wife Verla have been married for over 40 years.  From 1971 to 1983 Jeff was a police officer.  After completing graduate studies at Multnomah Biblical Seminary in Portland, Oregon he and his family were sent to their first church in the mountains of western Montana.  They still return there as often as possible to hunt and fish.  Verla is a medical assistant at a physician’s clinic.  Their son is married and lives in Portland, and their daughter is also married, living in British Columbia.
Contact Jeff at  swordtrowel@gmail.com

Barbara Roberts was born again in her early 20s but didn’t get to church for 13 years. During this time in the wilderness she married an unbeliever and they had a daughter. After six years she left because of her husband’s abuse, was successful in gaining child custody, and started attending church.  She refrained from divorce because she thought she didn’t have biblical grounds. Four years later her husband appeared to become a Christian and they reconciled, but a year later she separated again because the abuse recurred. She started supporting other victim-survivors and eventually wrote the book Not Under Bondage and developed a website to address domestic abuse in a Christian context. She knows what it’s like to fight for your child in the family court, to endure post-separation abuse (especially during visitation handover), and to have to seek protection orders and report family violence crimes to the police. She was married again for two years in her fifties, but this marriage also ended because of abuse. She loves writing, supporting survivors, and networking. She lives in Australia and has a cute little black dog who has a lot more empathy than many people do.
Contact Barb at  barbara@notunderbondage.com

We are not “liberal” Christians.  We hold to the solas of the Reformation.  We believe absolutely in the inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture.  We insist, along with God’s Word, that a person must be born again through faith and repentance in Christ if they are to be justified before God.  We say all of this because we have just established this blog, and already we have been hammered by critics who seem to think that anyone calling attention to domestic violence and abuse has to be part of some kind of radical, Christ-hating, liberal, feminism that is conspiring against men.

We also want to emphasize another point – we fully understand that women are sinners too, and that a woman can indeed be an abuser.  We have known several women who certainly were.   However, it is very common in literature on abuse to speak of the abuser as “he” and the victim as “she.”  Why?  Because most abusers are indeed men.  There it is.  Sorry, guys.  But those are the facts.