You can read part 1 of this three-part series here.
After Peter and I were married, our church was no longer “geographically desirable.” More like, the church was fine, but our apartment wasn’t; we’d had to move, though, for his job. The drive became untenable after a while and we looked for a new church. We happened upon a small country church. I’d grown up in one of those so this was good to me. I also wanted a smaller church so I could get to know people better. The primary dysfunction in this church was the pastor and his wife. The pastor did no spiritual self-care, and it’s customary for pastors to participate in small support groups with other local pastors. He didn’t even do that. He proclaimed, “My wife is my pastoral support person.” She’s a hospital chaplain to this day, and I’m quite sure after working forty hours a week doing spiritual care, the last thing she wanted to do was come home and do more.
There was so much funky about this situation. The preacher’s wife was pretty controlling. She took her role in the church way too seriously. (In Baptist churches, unless the husband and wife are called to co-pastor, the preacher’s wife just does whatever aligns with her gifts.) She was straight-up bossy and demanding. She tried to tell me what to do on numerous occasions, and I noped her.
At least a couple of times a month, there would be an announcement from the pulpit that someone in the community needed some work done on their home and asking for a crew to gather and go do the work that Sunday afternoon. I was working an unpaid internship forty hours a week (not including when I was on-call) plus a part-time job. Sunday was the one day I was guaranteed off, more likely than not. And here’s my newlywed husband happy to meet a need. That’s his thing, and I love him for it, but our marriage was starting to suffer for it. I told him, “The family was the first institution created by God, not the church.” He stopped volunteering as much.
The preacher felt like our church needed a family life center. It was supposed to attract students from the nearby university and families from the brand-new apartment complex across the street. My question of whether this facility would include showers so we could host unhoused people as part of that area’s Interfaith Hospitality Network was met with an emphatic “no.” After all, what could they contribute (financially) to the church? was the vibe I got. There was a suggestion of building a picnic shelter so we could host fundraising dinners to go towards building that family life center. To this day, that’s as far as they’ve gotten.
There were other indicators that we needed to move on. It just so happened that the conflict resolution person for our local Baptist association went to that church. Since she had knowledge of the local Baptist churches, she was able to recommend one to us. It was a good fit.
But there was toxicity here, too. I’m a cradle Baptist, and I grew up going to Sunday school. I was that one who read their lesson, took their Bible to church so she could follow along, and was thoughtful about my study. By the time we got to this church, I was in seminary. If I haven’t enjoyed Sunday school, it’s not because I didn’t want to, and I’m comfortable with participating in discussions. We weren’t there too long when the preacher told me that “some people” in our class complained to him that I talked too much. I guess the two men who alternated leading the class didn’t like an intelligent woman making them look inept, though that certainly wasn’t my intention at all. It speaks more to their insecurity than my knowledge.
Another time, the preacher and I were talking about our seminary experiences. He’d gone to a Southern Baptist seminary (pretty much the only pure Baptist seminary in our state at that time), and it just so happened that his preaching professor would later show up at my divinity school and become my preaching professor. Preaching isn’t my ministerial gift, nor is it at the heart of my ministry, but I enjoy doing it and can do it well. I just wouldn’t want to on a weekly basis. I was feeling a little proud of myself because I’d managed to squeak an A- out of my second preaching course. Our pastor told me he’d never gotten an A from that professor. I asked him if I could share the manuscript of my sermon with him. He said, “Yes.” Now, imagine my surprise a few Sundays later when I heard my sermon from the pulpit, almost word-for-word save a few illustrations, and with no credit given to the writer. Yep, our preacher plagiarized my sermon. I guess he liked it, huh?
If you’re a woman in business or ministry, when was a particularly painful time that a man stole your ideas or words and claimed them as his own? Post your response in the comments. (Note I’m not saying “if it happened,” because we know it does.)
