“I just don’t feel like my story could be useful on this stage.”
Those were the words of a Secret Keeper Girl intern who was just about to lead worship at one of our events. The enemy of her soul was lying to her and telling her that her story disqualified her from being used. But Kaycee’s* story did not disqualify her, and I knew that.
Kaycee, you see, was sexually abused as a child and was still fighting the battle to believe it was not her fault. I was fighting it with her, but she needed to hear from God.
“Let’s pray and ask God to show you that your story is useful,” I suggested as we readied ourselves for the event backstage.
“What would that look like?” Kaycee asked. “I’m not even speaking tonight. I’m just singing.”
“I don’t know and it’s a tall order,” I answered honestly. “But God can do anything.”
We paused and I laid hands on Kaycee and asked God specifically to use her story somehow, even though she would not get to tell it.
One hour later, I was walking through the nearly empty lobby during the event. The worship team, including Kaycee, was just finishing another song when I noticed a mom and daughter kneeling in the corner. They were both quietly crying, so I approached them to see if I could help.
“My daughter just this minute told me that she’s been abused,” said the mom through thick tears as she hugged her girl. “I’m so proud of her!”
“I am too,” I said, looking her in the eyes. “What made you tell your mom today?”
“I dunno,” she answered awkwardly. “Just every time we sang a song tonight I felt like something was telling me to tell my mom what happened.”
Yes! God did that! (I still get chills when I tell the story.)
Working with victims of abuse and healing sexual brokenness has always been a fundamental part of our ministry. This is just the beginning of one story of restoration, but we've since heard hundreds of powerful stories about how God has worked through our ministry, and they tend to have a common thread: they don't happen through secrets. Girls have revealed secret wounds to their mothers from the audience of our event, moms have found healing from past traumas they locked away in their hearts years ago. Our ministry has heard story after story of girls and moms who have been freed from harmful secrets through our ministry, and we believe it's time we acknowledge the disconnect between our brand name and our ministry.
At its conception, Secret Keeper Girl was an offshoot of another project, meant to be a junior-ministry based off my book “Secret Keeper” for teenagers. We never expected it to grow into its own thriving brand, be used to bring over 10,000 girls to Christ and to disciple hundreds of thousands. We’ve seen powerful works of freedom and healing happen in lives through this ministry. With the growth of the ministry, we've come to realize our "junior" name may not be the right fit, especially since the name "Secret Keeper Girl" is not at all indicative of the work that we do.
So, with great excitement and anticipation of even greater ministry, we’ve decided to rebrand to the name True Girl in May of 2019. Our ministry in the Dominican Republic will also rebrand to Chica Verdadera! We will still offer all of the same great resources, tools, and tour that you know and love, but just with a brand new shiny name that we think better encapsulates our ministry’s heart. We believe that the name True Girl is a more positive, empowering tone, and believe that adopting a more accurate name will increase our opportunity to reach girls who otherwise might say “Secret Keeper What?”. We feel that the title True Girl is a better representation of our mission; In a culture that lies to girls by telling them they have to grow up too fast or be someone they are not, our goal is to equip moms to protect their daughters and raise a generation of girls who are grounded in Truth, so they will be confident in their faith and in themselves, becoming all that God meant for them to be: a True Girl after God.
We want to be a ministry that takes action to protect victims and goes out of our way to make their healing a priority. And that starts with removing a label that could be misconstrued as harmful. Moving forward, there’s a lot of work to be done. Changing names requires a time-consuming and costly overhaul of all our current assets, but we believe it is a necessary change. But we can’t afford to make this change on our own. If you see this need and want to support us in rebranding our ministry, we need your help now more than ever.
- Please pray. Our team needs wisdom and prayers for energy as we navigate the extra responsibility and projects associated with this rebrand, and make big decisions that will affect the future of True Girl.
- Please consider making a significant one-time donation. New logos, signage, letterhead, team gear, design, and so much more will cost about $130,000 above and beyond our regular annual budget. We also need to pay for the production of the first True Girl tour, which will cost about $70,000. So, we need an additional $200,000 of income before August when the brand change will be complete and we will debut the True Girl Pajama Party Tour. This seems almost inconceivable to us, but we know that if we step out in faith God will see us through. We recently launched a Kickstarter to get the initial push we need to raise these funds, and you can find out how to be involved HERE.
P.s. You can hear more from Dannah about this announcement on her live video HERE.
