The Confrontation

Chris and I went and cleaned out my office the next day just as we said we would. When we got there at about four o’clock, the Pastor and Associate Pastor were waiting for us and we sat down for a meeting with the two of them. During the meeting I did confront the Pastor about the rumors that he had been spreading that I was mentally unstable and crazy and he admitted to my husband and I that he had indeed been saying those things. I also confronted him about his illegal treatment of me regarding being fired if I were to have gotten pregnant and his response to that confrontation, in his exact words were, “yeah, so? So what?”
After that point there was not much to say. He handed me my last check which only amounted to just over one week’s pay. I confronted him again when I saw the amount on the check about my promised vacation pay, and his response was that my vacation pay was not transferable from year to year. I then asked him where that was in the employee handbook. This is when I really got cheeky…because after that question about the handbook, I then responded, “oh, that’s right…there isn’t an employee handbook.” By that time, I was extremely angry, but I kept myself in check and I was determined not to fly off the handle because honestly, there’s just wasn’t any point in trying to bring correction to someone who doesn’t think they are ever wrong.
There is such a vast difference between making an illegal traffic violation and practicing illegal discrimination. His arrogant and cavalier attitude about being confronted with illegal employment practices and discrimination showed me that I’d be wasting my breath to try and confront him any further.
The meeting, of course, couldn’t have ended without some type of manipulation. The Pastor tried to confront me about the gossip that I had supposedly been spreading throughout the church. He lied and said that all of my friends and teammates had been calling him throughout the day to tell him about all the awful things that I had told them. This of course wasn’t true, but I later found out through a friend who was still willing to talk to me after I left that all of my acquaintances and friends had been called, taken out for breakfast or lunch, and questioned by the Pastors about what they knew about me. They had of course come up empty in their investigations and were trying to bluff their way into making me confess to who knows what.
During the meeting the Pastor also seemed extremely upset and obsessed with the fact that I had my husband come with me to both my resignation meeting and to this final meeting. During the meeting he kept bringing up that I needed my husband at my side for protection and that I was obviously scared of him. He kept referring to my husband, not by his name, but by “your muscle.” At least four different people told me after I had left that my husband’s presence had greatly troubled him and the Pastor was convinced that I was fearful of him. I brought my husband not as protection but as a deterrent for more manipulation. Plus, I wasn’t the only one leaving the church for ethical reasons; we both were.
By the end of the meeting, we all just sat there and stared blankly at one another. All of us were unsure of what to say. What was there to say? Finally, it was the Pastor who broke the silence with his comment that he wished us all the best, but just like in family, relationships can go very wrong. He ended the meeting with this, “you are dead to me and you are asked not to come back to this church.”
At that point Chris and I got up, walked out of his office and into my own. I grabbed what little personal belongings were left and we walked out. We never went back.