Part 4: The Altercation

Three weeks later….Now this was about 2 weeks prior to my wedding and you can only imagine how stressed I was. I was finishing sewing my dress and working with the Pastor’s wife to get everything finalized as well as moving into a new house, the one that we’d share, just the weekend before. Plus I was doing some emergency babysitting for a friend with a hospitalized husband. Unfortunately, it was also my week to lead worship and I was extremely ill. Massive vertigo!

Out of desperation, I called the Director and asked him to take over my week as there was no possible way I could do it. And then the drama started. I started getting text messages from my kids and they were beyond upset that the Director had sat one of my team down and told her she didn’t follow the rules of “shadowing on his team” so therefore she wasn’t allowed to sing. I sent her a text and she tried to assure me it was OK and she’d just sit that week out and run the sound instead. Keep in mind, I’d had her scheduled, with the knowledge of the Director and Pastor for three weeks prior. She had been “shadowing” attending every worship practice for 5-6 months and only once had she been allowed to sing on stage. She was a great singer! I had advocated for her to be utilized for 4 months up until that point and the Director refused to schedule her! It became very apparent that any suggestion that I had, the Director would not even consider and do the exact opposite.

So in the end, I texted the Director, asking simply what was happening, that I was getting upset texts from my team members and could he please call me. A few hours later, he responded and his response was jarring! He demanded that when I wanted to act like an adult that I call him. So I did immediately. I was calm and not once did I raise my voice and calmly asked what was happening and why the woman wasn’t being allowed to sing. It was a simple, question and he went off! Immediately, as he began yelling, my son was standing in my bedroom doorway and I signaled to him to sit on my bed and put the phone on speaker. My son sat there with me as I was yelled and screamed at for almost an hour. This Elder even paused his tirade twice because witnesses came upon the scene as he explained how he was walking away from the Pastor’s property. “Hold on a second, the neighbor is walking his dog”, he said. Then a second time he told me to hold on as the Pastor’s son was pulling into the driveway and he gave him a cheery hello.

I was told that he felt sorry for everyone in my life and that I was abusive to everyone around me, and what must it be like to be my children being abused by me. On and on he went, vilifying me. Sneering at me, mocking me and my years of “ministry experience”. He was speaking down to me as if I was a bug beneath his very existence and every word dripped with incredible hatred. He kept mocking my maturity level as a Christian saying that I obviously wasn’t mature enough and He felt God was trying to get me to grow in this area or that area. I simply kept saying his name, very calmly, over and over and over again. I kept redirecting to the issues of team equality, his unbending rules and defending the woman who had been unfairly set down and quoted his own rules back to him and how she’d been more than faithful and he’d known for weeks prior. For almost an hour he shouted about how I’d broken every rule and what a horrible person I was. I kept trying to come to a resolution. In the end he refused to listen and my worship team was decided by him to be what it was and I wasn’t allowed to borrow anyone. I also calmly confronted him on behalf of the other worship leader because he had crippled that worship leader and his team as well, by taking his keyboardist and moving them to his own team. His team was at 15 people. Mine was down to 5 and the other worship leader’s team sat at 6 or 7 people. I stood up for other members of the worship department as well who I know had talked to him about switching teams so they could be used elsewhere and he denied their requests. I defended those who were getting burnt out because he was borrowing them from other teams, yet the rules didn’t apply to him. Only me.

There was absolutely no reasoning with him. At all. Anything I said about helping team members grow, I’d get screamed at. Any and all suggestions, I got screamed at. My son, having witnessed me go through domestic violence was beside himself in anger, punching the bed and almost crying out of frustration. It literally was like talking to a 5 year old who was determined to horde all the toys for himself.

Geoff stopped by at the tail end of the conversation and by that time the screaming had stopped and no resolutions had been made and I got off the phone. I informed Geoff and we decided together that I was done leading worship at that church. I would no longer lead worship under that Elder’s leadership and we both discussed how his outburst clearly made this man unfit for ministry and Eldership. My son, of course, gave witness.

I spelled out the clear spiritual abuse that happened and how this was so very similar to the church I’d left in 2009 and we needed to prayerfully consider leaving the church. In fact, I was pretty resolute, that night, that we needed to leave the church. Wedding or not!