abusive pastors – Wild Woman. Wild Minister. Wild Writer.

You can read part 1 of this three-part series here and part 2 here.

We left that church because we moved out of the area. We were disappointed that all the moderate Baptist churches were at least a half-hour away with none in our county at all. I went online when we were ready to visit churches and found two I wanted to visit. One’s website was down so I didn’t know what their worship times were, but the other church’s wasn’t. We decided to go to that church. We’d later join it. In one respect, we should’ve left long before we did. However, had we done so, we’d have missed out on getting to know some truly wonderful people.

The first preacher was toxic af. He was insecure for one, self-centered for another. I heard through people in our small group that his idea of “sermon preparation” was going into a small room near the worship stage (yes, it’s a stage) for the contemporary service and praying. No exposition, no diving into languages or contexts. As a result, his sermons usually had the following structure:

Read the scripture.
Spend fifteen to twenty minutes talking about himself and/or his family.

He and I had had a closed-door session with another minister present. At this time I’d been leading a Sunday school class of older women. Eric asked me what I did to prepare. I told him the study I put in then how I let the Spirit lead from there. He straight-up told me not to follow the Spirit when I teach the Bible. Do fuckin’ what???

I told him what had happened at the former church. Well, a few months later, Hubby and I had had it with the misogyny in our small group. Unbeknownst to me, he’d gotten up at five in the morning and shot out an email to that group addressing it. I didn’t know what in the world was going on until a friend of mine called me moments after my alarm went off to tell me how awesome it was. When we got to our class that morning, everyone was there, including the preacher. It was ugly and made uglier by the fact the preacher disclosed what I’d confided to him as a “gotcha” move.” My friend’s husband eloquently put him in his place. We left the class soon after (really should’ve left the church then), and there is only one couple from that class left at the church. It pretty much blew up.

We did eventually leave the church for a season, determining we’d return when he was gone. We had some good preachers. One we call “The Paul.” He’s still a friend of mine even though we’re both at different churches now. After he left this interim came on. After he’d been there a month of so, I was giving him the benefit of the doubt: He’s new. He’s getting used to us and we’re getting used to him. He’ll get better.” A year later, he wasn’t new anymore, and he wasn’t getting better. Truly a compassionate, kind man, but as a preacher he was either naturally ungifted and lousy or simply lazy.

We were so excited when our pastor search committee found a new preacher for us! That excitement was short-lived. I wonder what the committee members think of their choice now? He doesn’t vibe bad, but his words throw pink and red flags all over the place. He hadn’t been there two months when I felt the Spirit telling me to take my family to a new church. It was kinda a “Say what, sis?” moment. This new church isn’t Baptist. I’d been there once to walk its labyrinth, but that’s it, yet, God was leading. I was a little skeptical but excited, too. What sealed the deal was the preacher not-saying-but-saying something that made me picture myself standing between my older daughter and stones being thrown from the pulpit while others looked on. Except, my daughter was pictured as a rainbow sheep, and the stone-thrower and those giving tacit approval were white sheep. If you’re familiar with the works of David Hayward (@nakedpastor), you’ll know what I’m talking about. (Check him out on Threads, Facebook, and Instagram.)

That church is making a drastic shift to the right and is bleeding members like crazy. I learned today that the youth group that was sixty kids-strong when my older was in it is down to three.

So here we are. We’re at a new church. My younger daughter and I are ready to join. I think Hubby is a bit more reticent because he doesn’t adapt quite as quickly as we do. We all love our new church home, though, and Hubby said he wished our older daughter had had a place like this when she was younger. It’s very close to the church we wanted and had hoped our last church would become. The rector seems marvelously free of ego, and it has a beautiful, diverse body of believers. We’re becoming involved for the first time in twenty years. It’s taken us that long, that many years from the “if you build it, they will come” church to not fear being taken advantage of by volunteering to do things.

Have you ever been taken advantage of by a church? How did you handle that? Reply in the comments.

Church Trauma, pt. 2

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.

anti-plagiarism picture — A male steals a female’s idea to claim as his own. Sadly, way too common.

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.)

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