My heart is a bit
heavy and prayerful today. Yesterday, I ran into, at my new church, a
beautiful couple who had stood by me 9 years ago. It brought up all
the memories and resurfaced the recent hurt my New husband and I had
just gone through just 9 months ago when we left a toxic church.
Yesterday, and this morning, before he went off to work, we found
ourselves comparing my experiences from 10 years ago to our
experiences 9 months ago and the similarities between them.
For months I’ve
considered restarting this blog, because after going through
spiritual abuse yet again, I realize how pervasive it is and how
centered it is upon false teaching.
But I’ll back this
train up a bit and go into a bit of background of my life over the
years because it’s been a bit of a roller coaster. There’s loss,
heartbreak, love, victory and a bunch of crazy stuff and yet in the
midst, when I said I would never do ministry again, there was
ministry and healing.
So, In 2009, October
to be specific, I left a very toxic church where the Pastor was not
only spiritually abusing me, but sexually harassing me. After I left,
there were crazy things that happened like phone calls, lunch and
dinner outings with all my friends and them being encouraged by
leadership to cut all ties. Then there was the mysterious cut
underground electrical line that ran to my air conditioner unit. I
didn’t discover it until we went to sell the house as-is to a
couple years later.
My husband (now ex) and I had gone on a cruise
the week after we left the church and had come back to discover a
non-working central heat and air unit to our house. We had someone
come out and they never discovered it and we couldn’t afford to
replace the whole system like they suggested, so we purchased window
units and moved on with our lives. We never realized. We also never
found out who intentionally sabotaged it. It was dug up, then cleanly
and purposefully cut.Then there was the
Private investigator that hung out, parked across the street in our
country, middle of nowhere neighborhood for a week straight. I
recognized him from when my former Pastor hired him to investigate
his own mother’s boyfriend and then passed out the report among
most of the church and literally faxed and mailed it to other pastors
who had booked the man to speak at their church. He effectively
destroyed that man’s entire ministry.There was also the
threatening phone call after I had reported the abuse to higher ups
at Rhema Bible institute and to AFCM International by the Pastor’s
wife where she yelled and screamed at me promising I’d see cursing
upon my life.
I hate to admit it,
but all of that, coupled with other incidents, like having people spy
on me and phone calls to every church I visited, had me fearful to
leave the house for almost a year.
BUT…. It was a
training ground that lead me to recognize other abusive church
tendencies and call attention to and speak out boldly!
After the church in
2009, I went on to enter back into ministry on staff at a church
plant in 2011. I was there for 4 years until I stepped down in an
attempt to save my marriage. I wasn’t able to do so, since my now
ex husband, was having multiple affairs and refused to repent and
seek out counseling. I had also suffered domestic violence at times
and as a dutiful wife I stayed and prayed for too long. In 2015, I
divorced him and was done with his affairs and abuse.
I briefly helped out
a church in the midst of my divorce for a few months until complaints
started circulating that I didn’t sing the hymns old school enough.
The treasurer kept refusing to pay me my wage and so after my
experience with my first staff position, the abuse of power prompted
me to walk. I’m still in good standing with that Pastor today. Poor
guy just had a jerk family who ran the church and wanted their own
personal agenda and I wasn’t going to stand by and have my kids eat
nothing as a single mom, just because someone didn’t care for how I
sang their hymn.
In 2016, I was
recruited by a pastor who I met by accident in the grocery store, and
he’d coincidentally heard about me, to his church. I visited and
checked out his church, and got drug up on stage that same Sunday
with no preparation. That next week he offered me a staff position
and asked me to mentor a young man who had little experience leading
worship but had great potential. I agreed and waited patiently to be
brought on payroll. Little did I know the same offer was brought to
the young man. During the course of the few months I was there I
discovered some real issues and my prior experience with spiritual
abuse was again my red flag indicator! There were some incidents that
happened and I was very cautious as a single woman in that church as
it was full of single men involved in a men’s rehab center. I was
NEVER alone with any man ever and my teenage son acted almost like a
bouncer. I was extremely intentional about protecting my integrity
around these recovering addicts and even the pastor who ran the
program as he was former alcoholic. My past with my former husband,
an alcoholic, made me cautious in my dealings with every man in that
church.
I was asked out on a
date by a guy 10 years my younger and of course I turned him down.
Well that apparently stirred up a whole hornets nest and malicious
gossip began because the young man didn’t like being turned down.
There was also an incident with one of the pastor’s long time
friend who came to visit. He was a pastor from another state and led
me to believe he was a single man and asked me out on a date. I
accepted, but after the date, even though he seemed charming enough,
turned him down for anything further. He was pretty persistent and
he’d gone back to his home state and his persistence and promises
of connecting me to music industry leaders prompted those spiritual
abuse red flags. I googled him and found his beautiful worship leader
wife! I exposed it to not only my pastor, but to the man’s wife and
to district leaders of his church in the Southern Baptist convention,
and with the leaders of the district, brought attention to the
Deacons and Elders of that man’s church. My Pastor actually
defended his friend’s actions and shortly after preached a scalding
sermon about the Jezebel spirit and publicly suggested that the
Jezebel spirit attached itself to attractive, single, women. There
was only one other single woman in that entire church besides me.
Needless to say, I
packed up my equipment, turned in my keys, and walked. Six weeks
later that church shut it’s doors. I never said a word to anyone
why I left, other than to tell the Secretary/Women’s ministry
leader that I was leaving as Sunday’s sermon was divisive and
abusive to the body of Christ and that it was false teaching. I
handed her the keys and didn’t even step into the building when I
did so. I had caught her in the parking lot. I dusted my shoes off
before I stepped into my car.
I didn’t talk to
any one. I didn’t gossip. Just left.
I chuckle now,
because essentially, I just took my toys and went home. I was a
single mom, with no one to protect me or stand up for me. I had left
an abusive marriage, I wasn’t going to be a part again of an
abusive church. I cut everyone from that toxic church off, and
chalked it up to more experience and prayed God would lead me to safe
church for me and my children. It was months before I learned about
the church no longer being in operation. God has a way of doing that
I’ve found. The first abusive church I was apart of went from 175
to just a handful of people and has no influence in the area at all
now.
Well in May of 2017
I came upon a new church that hadn’t been around long and they were
meeting in one of the schools. I immediately felt connected and loved
and protected. I needed a safe place. By that time I was done, done,
done, with dating! I’d completely given it over to God and put safe
guards in place to protect myself and my kids by having any potential
suitor go through my Pastor and my friends first. Any man who tried
to date me had hoops to jump through. Because of me being a worship
leader, many pastors, many false teachers, had tried to date me.
But during that
time, God brought the right one along and my good friend Geoff,
became the love of my life and it really kinda snuck up on me. He
went from just a guy I had met on a dating app a year prior that was
way too baptist for me, to a friend on Facebook, then to my musician,
funny-as-all-get-out buddy, who was also crazy good at the drums, to
my bible study nerd who was just like me. Then suddenly, during a
walk down at the marina, discussing what we wanted in a future
spouse, it hit me, I was describing him!
There’s a lot more
to the love story of course but seven short months later we married.
Just prior to our
wedding is where the next serious story of spiritual abuse began and
God’s provision to lead us out of there!
No comments:
Post a Comment