Part 7: Home again and Confrontation

When we returned, still there was no attempt to address the issue of the misconduct of the Director. We kept waiting. The kids were having issues and the Pastor’s Son kept hounding my son trying to get him to gossip about it and my son refused. You could tell when we came back that all the inner circle of the church knew something was going on. Finally, I took one lady into my confidence.

Her and I were close, or so I thought. I shared with her what the Director had done and how the Pastor and his wife had responded with no action and complete and total disbelief. I even shared with her the “seed of division”. I told her most of it didn’t matter because we felt called to leave to start our own ministry anyway, but that we had been waiting for over a month for resolution and nothing had happened and we were hoping to still have relationship. I was grieved. She was grieved. But both of us knew that Geoff and I were indeed called to something outside of the church and so the two of us stood in her hallway praying together over us leaving to launch out and praying to hold onto and have restoration in the matter with the Pastor and his wife, and the Director and accountability for all.

The next Sunday came after I had confided in her and we decided to make it known to the Pastor that we’d be leaving to start our own ministry and that’s what we felt strongly we needed to do. The Pastor came over and Geoff and Him had a great conversation about Ministry and the Pastor was excited and talked about us staying on for a transition time and that the Church would fully support us and help us launch. That had always been the vision of the church anyway was to launch other church plants. So Geoff was extremely hopeful. I was a bit more skeptical and cautioned my husband about starting a ministry under the church because we could not according to biblical standard really submit ourselves under the leadership of every Elder in that church. I, too, was hopeful. I think we all do that, just hope things will fall into place and we can keep going without really confronting the bigger issues. In the end, we agreed, to give it a few more weeks to see what God was doing and continue praying. It didn’t take long to get our answer.

The next day was Men’s group and Geoff was busy preparing the lesson and I, and my daughter, were busy cleaning a house when I started getting some strange messages from the Pastor’s wife. Some really vague stuff about not counting me disqualified for ministry because I had sinned and that she counted me as such a good friend that she was glad we could be transparent with one another (although I knew that transparency was a one way street at that point). I thought the conversation odd because I had never mentioned to anyone apart from my husband that I deemed anyone biblically unqualified. I excused myself from the conversation as I was busy cleaning and thought the whole thing odd. It seemed like a fishing expedition, seeking for me to admit to something, or for information and confirmation of what I thought. Little did I know it was part of a big set up.

Later that afternoon, the Pastor asked Geoff to meet him prior to the men’s group and Geoff assumed it was more talk about a future church launch so he was hopeful and excited. He had no idea what was to come.

When he got there it was an ambush. The other Elder had returned from Deployment just the weekend before our wedding so he was in attendance. The Pastor and this Elder immediately started into my husband with pages of printed out scripture saying that I was gossiping and spreading gossip in the church and that Geoff needed to get his wife in line. Scripture after scripture they tried to quote, except every scripture they used had nothing to do with gossip at all but had to do with false teaching and my husband refuted each scripture that they tried to hand out in judgment, as some kind of sentence to my guilt. My husband stopped them up short and rebuked them for taking scripture out of context and asked them to explain what this was about.

So apparently, a woman had made a comment to the newly returned deployed Elder the day before that she had confided in me at some point about an issue she had with the two people in the leadership. Immediately, I got accused of being a gossip because someone confided in me about an issue they were having. She came to me in confidence and I gave her sound advice to pray for them because some personalities are indeed difficult to get along with. I also suggested she go and confront it head on. I can’t tell her story for her as it isn’t my story to tell. What she didn’t say, or even mention to the Elder, was the time frame of when she had reached out to me which had been months before. This discussion where she sought me out for advice was before the altercation with the Director/Elder.

So when the Pastor and Elder accused me of gossip to Geoff, they claimed multiple people had come forward and accused me of gossip but never provided the names of anyone other than the lady who had confided in me months prior. They absolutely refused to allow me to face my accuser as per scripture which Geoff reminded them of. This was an obvious witch hunt and it had started weeks prior with that sermon that was false teaching claiming 2 Timothy 2 was about gossip. The next two Sunday sermons had the same theme as well even though none of the text had anything to do with gossip. In fact even after we left, we were informed by some that the messages for weeks contained the same theme and it was to the extreme that even sharing good news, like a job promotion, of someone other than yourself, was gossip.

So I’d only confided in one person inside the church and that had just been 3 days prior. I’d love to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe she didn’t claim I was a gossip, but I have no way of knowing and honestly that trust is now broken and I’ll never know if she did or not. But throughout their ambush meeting they kept insisting that Geoff put me in line and rebuke me for my sin.

My husband defended me. He asked the Pastor if he’d ever talked to me about the incident with the Director/Elder and confronted him as to why he never dealt with it. He also confronted him on the fact of his word and that the Director was indeed informed the very night we spoke with him, after the Pastor had promised not to tell him. The Pastor claimed that the Director was never told anything to which my husband and I do not believe because his own wife had told us about the emergency meeting that same night I had stepped down and that the Director had apparently cried and said what a wonderful worship leader I was. He had also claimed, according to the Pastor’s wife, that the conversation on the phone didn’t happen that way and that I’d just misunderstood him and his tone. I remember responding to her false assertions with the comment, “well it’s pretty hard to misunderstand the words I feel sorry for everyone around you and that you’re abusive to everyone around you”. She had brushed me off, as if I hadn’t even spoken.

I always found it strange how in the presence of others this Director would put on this act like he was so supportive of others around leadership but speak so negatively and harshly, extremely condescendingly about myself and others to me and to others that he deemed beneath his authority.

But in it all, both Geoff, in the moment, and me later after the recounting of the meeting, we both believed the Pastor’s testimony to be a lie about the Director not being informed.

Geoff also begged and pleaded with the Pastor for him to talk to me and restore relationship. Geoff pleaded with him as if the Pastor was my brother to make restoration, to which the Pastor flatly and adamantly refused claiming he’d never be alone with me as a woman. Geoff kept imploring, saying of course it shouldn’t be alone, and to have him there, have the Pastor’s wife there, have the other Elder and his wife there, anyone, just if he would please talk to me and hear me out. He begged him to hear my side of the altercation incident and to hear my son’s testimony to which the Pastor again refused and made a scoffing remark about my Son not being qualified to act as a credible witness. Geoff asked why, at age 17, was my son not a credible witness, to which the Pastor replied, “really?”, as if my son was a convicted proven criminal and compulsive liar.

After pleading with the Pastor for some type of conversation to happen with all parties involved and the Pastor’s clear refusal Geoff managed to shut down the meeting as men were beginning to come into room to attend the Men’s group. Nothing more was said. We sent our resignation letter a few days later and never went back. In our resignation letter, we asked again for resolution and the return of our equipment. The only response that we got was that they had changed the lock codes on all the doors and we could not pick up our music equipment and to contact them about it and provide a list of equipment.

Side Note: I spoke to the woman they said was proof of my "gossip" and she confirmed the only thing she had said was that she spoke to me. She didn't tell them any information about our conversation. She said she was immediately rebuked for gossip. She was not asked about why she spoke to me, what was said, or when the conversation had taken place. It was an innocent comment on her part and she immediately rebuked because of it.