It was late December. Armed with buckets, brooms, a shop-vac, and assorted supplies, Clay and I began to tackle the job of cleaning a now-empty house. Our older three children took turns carrying trash cans to the curb while one of them walked our toddler around the house, his baby laughter echoing through the rooms.
We had not lived in this house, this parsonage that had once been a home. During the past several years, however, we had spent many hours enjoying fellowship with our pastor and his family, especially during the few months prior to his move. It was a sad time for us and one that caused us to have many questions and doubts, not necessarily about our faith in God but certainly about our faith in men and in church leadership in particular.
During the summer of that year, it became increasingly obvious that this pastor ought to look for another church. His goals for ministry, while they were ones we personally shared, were not what the elders wanted. Steeped in a strong tradition that had its roots in the sawdust trail antics of Billy Sunday, this pastor with a heart for expository preaching was probably not a good choice from the beginning. We had come into the church because of that emphasis and were sorely disappointed at the direction his ministry was being forced to take. In retrospect, we believe there were faults on both sides of the pulpit, but nothing warranted what we saw done to this family.
In what we believe were attempts to force him to resign, this pastor’s pay was frozen, putting him in a position where he was unable to even pay for prescriptions for his children. Our pastor had never told us anything about this need but one of the church members saw that he was unable to pay at the pharmacy and approached my husband about it. When Clay went to one of the elders, the response he got was unbelievable “It’s not our responsibility. He should pray and ask the Lord to provide for him.” Unfortunately, that story was only the tip of the iceberg.
This was probably our first experience of witnessing spiritual abuse up close and personal, though we had no label for it at the time, and it left a profound effect on our whole family. It took many years for us to really understand what had happened and to grasp the impact that experience had on both of our families. For this pastor, it began a 20 year downward spiral that had a very tragic ending.
After leaving this town, his wife developed breast cancer and struggled with it for 2 years until she died, leaving a 2 year old and 4 older children. The pastor remarried a woman who didn’t want to mother his children and it ended in a bitter divorce. The children grew up and faced a multitude of problems with several of them rejecting Christianity. And then, on the 20th anniversary of his experience in our town, this pastor was about to begin a ministry with a new congregation. He couldn’t bear the thought of it and the night before, checked himself into a motel where he took an overdose of medication and died.
Spiritual abuse is a very real problem, though there are many people who deny its existence. Looking back at what our dear friend experienced and what we have since gone through in our own lives, I believe that the Lord has preserved us and protected us from the worst that could have happened. During our own darkest hours, I cannot remember a time that I questioned my faith in God or in His Providence, thought there were times of tremendous grief.
My own experience of spiritual abuse came at the hands of elders who were pressing our conscience to believe things we didn’t agree with and that couldn’t be supported in Scripture. In fact, they never even attempted to do so! We were told that we were never to question any authority, that they were our “parents.” But that wasn’t the worst.
A young woman the elders had asked me to counsel a few months earlier had come to me with this incredible story. She had gone to the elders and asked for some clarification regarding things that were being taught from the pulpit. She was a fairly new believer but knew something wasn’t right when she was told by the pastor “You don’t need to read your Bible. Just trust us and listen to your elders. We will read it for you.” I was stunned and told her adamantly that this was not correct, that through her relationship with Jesus Christ, she now has the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who would lead her into all truth. I pointed out to her that we are all priests and kings (1Peter 2:9) and that we all have an anointing from the Holy Spirit (1John 2:20). I explained how she has access to the throne of grace without going through an earthly priest, that the veil was rent.
So I found myself on the telephone with one of the elders who was insisting that I repent for telling this woman these things. All I can really remember of the conversation was hearing this man tell me that if I didn’t go back to this woman and correct what I had told her, he would have to believe that I wasn’t even a Christian.
A while later one of my friends, who had also experienced similar treatment from these same men, shared with me what had been the true balm to his soul during that time. He encouraged me to read through the Gospels, the book of Acts, and then to read through the Epistles as though I had never read them before. He promised that if I compared what Jesus actually did and said, I would see a sharp contrast to the behavior of the men who were supposed to be shepherding us. It turned out to be a profound experience and one that opened my eyes to many things that are often taught as Gospel truth but, in reality, cannot even be found in Scripture. It brought me to a true understanding of what spiritual leadership ought to look like.
If you have struggled with spiritual abuse at the hands of church leaders or even from well-meaning friends or family members, I would encourage you to go back to the beginning of the New Testament and begin reading with news eyes and new ears for hearing truth. I promise you will begin to heal from your times of sorrow and grief and will fall in love with the Lord and his Truth all over again!
