When My Shepherds Went Astray

For starts, I’ve been a “traveling worship leader” the majority of my life. Whether it be in coffee shops, little churches on corners, open mic nights, debuts in small local gatherings and even mega churches. I’ve been to them all and absolutely loved the privilege of worshipping Jesus with believers of all backgrounds. I’ve traveled states and led worship. It’s all been awesome! If I summed up all my years leading, it’s now over 25. But let’s pretend I’m 25, and just say it’s a miracle that I’ve somehow been leading since I was a newborn baby 😂

I’ve been stationed as the worship leader by career in two different churches, and as a volunteer by one additional church. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, I just want to begin with the fact that I know Who I worship despite all the different church theologies, debates, priorities and preferences. So let’s establish this:

The church is not God. God is better.

God loves the church, dearly. I mean, Jesus died on the cross for His church. The church is a gathering of sinful people who have given their lives to Christ and aim to be as He is while loving others as He does. Emphasize the word “try.” God is God. He’s all powerful, all knowing, ever present. He kicks butt guys. Different than the church.

The pastor of your church is not God. God is better.

The pastor of your church is a person called to equip you with God’s Word for the work of the saints, to be sent into the world with the Gospel of good news. Your pastor, like you, struggles with sinful nature. Your pastor is not above you, nor are you above your pastor. God is above your pastor (see my reasons in the prior paragraph).

This manipulative tactic is being used in some church leadership circles:

There is a terminology floating around the therapy world called DARVO. This acronym is a tactic or reaction that many abusers, narcissists and sneaky corporations/small businesses will use to demean and belittle legitimate concerns one might have by shifting the focus and attacking the actual victim. It stands for “Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.”

In other words, if you have an issue with someone, a group, a cult, an organization or business (etc…), they will (1) deny your claims. This can be done by just ignoring it. It can be done by belittling the importance of it. Many of you can fill in the blanks on different outlets. They will (2) Use your claims to attack you and/or your character. For example: This would have never happened if you hadn’t ( ____ ). If you weren’t so ____ we wouldn’t have said this. (3) RV and O kind of go together – Reverse the Victim and Offender. “This is all your fault, the other party is trying to get his/her life right. If you come forward with this, you will ruin their life and God’s glory will not be known in our church.

My unfortunate experiences of pastoral and church abuse:

I was fired from my full time position as a worship leader for three and a half years earlier this year after bringing forward extremely vulnerable and sensitive information to my pastor/boss. This was a drastic loss financially, but the emotional whiplash and reputation smearing that occurred from this may have been harder for me to work through.

For the sake of ambiguity, I will be referring to this church as Church B moving forward.

I applied for this job at Church B in a season of desperation as a newly singled (is that a thing?) mother to a toddler and a baby. I needed consistent, full time and salaried pay. Church B offered me that stability. The church I was working for at the time could not offer the full time position needed to secure my daughter’s meals on the table. As bittersweet as it was, they lovingly sent me out for this new journey at Church B.

I knew I gave up a safe, wonderful, Bible preaching church home and family for Church B. Time would tell if it was worth it or not, but I had hope.

I was received with great love, understanding and celebration. It meant so much to me, as these transitions can be extremely difficult. Especially in the midst of personal life crises – one after another. Which, for me, has been all too typical. But hey, I can blog about it and share it with you all amiright? Church B staff was small and surrounded me immediately. They became family.

I was hired to lead worship at their smaller, newer campus. I was trained to build relationships while building a worship team. The Campus Pastor is a very skilled and charismatic communicator. I’m talking one of these people you meet and never forget. This could be the “daddy issues” part of me speaking (a topic for another day, don’t worry!), but I loved this pastor with all I was and soaked up all the time I could with him to train, dream and learn how to better our little campus. My girls would call him Grandpa, and he and his wife became grandparent-like figures to my precious girls. This was priceless, as my dad started checking out on me and my girls during this rough transition. The job was okay, the pay not so great, but the camaraderie and the family support system was priceless.

There were lots of ups and downs serving and working at my sweet, small campus that I loved. Through God’s favor and faithful hand, we had a team of 18 awesome people on rotation for my team. We are talking about an average of 70-100 person campus, and at minimum, one fifth of those people were on the team I ran. We can conclude that I worked very hard and proudly owned my roll. I still affectionately call those people “my team.” Call it weird, but having developed the nickname “Momma Jacqui” at Starbucks when I was 20 years old, I care for people as my own. So this is an affectionate, caring way to look at the team God blessed me with at that campus.

There were many times the Campus Pastor traveled. Being I was the only other staff member there, I carried that campus as my own. To date, I was the most consistent staff member stationed at this location. Every guest and member was met and greeted by me. Possibly even by my teammates, who I encouraged to go out and love on our community!

There ended up being more to my job than I was led to believe from when I was hired, but the flexibility of schedule and salaried pay made the extra mental, emotional and physical loads worth it for my particular situation.

Earlier this year, someone re-entered the church body that had harassed me on multiple counts years prior. I felt extremely uncomfortable being in close proximity to said person, and had to come forward to my pastor about the things that transpired. I never knew it was as bad as it was until disclosing this information with my husband after the offender’s re-entry. The information I disclosed with my pastor/boss was highly embarrassing, but necessary to be shared for my safety, the safety of my marriage and the safety of Church B.

Side note: Although I hadn’t previously known the severity of the harassment I went through by this party, I knew he would be coming back to the church. I voiced my concerns on two separate occasions with my pastor before he came back. I was assured it would be dealt with.

We were told we did the right thing by coming forward.

In my personal opinion (with great reason), this was not looked into appropriately. A few days later, I found myself in another uncomfortable situation at work due to it not having been addressed yet. It was very disappointing for my husband and I. Afterward, the tone of our meetings with our pastor began to shift. We were now an inconvenience. 

We met several times over the next week in person or over the phone. Things turned from discomfort with the situation I was in with this person, to discomfort with my pastor who could not see the severity of the issues at hand. Jeremiah and I felt like our heads were spinning. This was a very black and white case where there was crystal clear wrong done.

In the end, I was fired. I was fired for “discomfort.” Discomfort, as in I made my pastor uncomfortable with the situation I brought forward, how the meetings unfolded and where to go from here.

Forget the discomfort and rights violated on my end over and over again. Forget the fact that someone endangered me when I was in my most vulnerable season of life. I inconvenienced my pastor by bringing this forward. My husband and I disagreed with his stance, respectfully, and kept reiterating the importance of him seeing how severe this was. I was punished for it.

My termination meeting was no more than five minutes long, and I was told I could not share my information with the elder and HR representative present during “his” meeting, I could do it of my own volition. My “secret information” went down with him. We were sent off without severance or even a thank you.

After that meeting, I heard from nobody on the team. Ghost town, like I never existed. Some of my team assumed I had committed some gross offense due to the abruptness of this decision, and the immediate impact it brought upon the church – more so my campus. Everyone knew my work ethic was incredible. What else would deem me worthy of such harsh punishment? In the absence of information, what else would the church conclude?

The campus pastor my girls called grandfather never reached out to me, my husband, or my girls ever again. Just like that, my “family” was gone. Part of my healing process was to come to terms with the fact that they just wiped the memory of me clean; I had no impact or significance to them. One of my closest friends no longer wanted to talk to me. Not a care over our financial well being, or the stress it piled onto us.

Being someone raised obsessed with presenting the Gospel to others with my reputation, lifestyle, actions, words, etc…this was beyond getting fired. My reputation was completely shattered amongst people I loved, and I have reason to believe the vast majority of them were encouraged not to contact me.

DARVO.

Deny – My pastor belittled my concerns. Gave possible reasons as to why the information I brought forward was not as serious as I was implying it was. 

Attack – I was told that I was misaligned with my pastor, and this is more of a problem than the legitimate concerns I had over the safety of his church body.

Reverse Victim and Offender – I brought discomfort to my boss for not seeing eye to eye with him. Although I was the victim of rights being violated, I am now the recipient of my boss’s wrath for not pushing it under the rug. I am the problem. Not the person who did this to me. Not the pastor who will not protect his sheep properly.

I think my coping mechanisms and healing journey will need to be blogged about in separate entries. This was no easy feat after a lifetime of abuse, victim blaming, neglect, spiritual abuse and beyond. I was healing, and this time I finally had informed backup in my husband who was able to call a spade a spade, and wouldn’t let me dismiss my concerns of abuse. He wouldn’t let me sit by and “take one for the team” for the sake of the church. 

I’ve been through enough to know God is not this pastor. This pastor is not God. This pastor is not a standalone – there are so many “pastors” who are actually CEO’s running an organization rather than shepherds tending to their flock. This pastor, this church, is not the voice of God. In fact, NO church is the voice of God.

In my first marriage, there were significant issues that threatened my safety time and time again. We were members of a tiny church with abusive pastors. (Side note: I was aware, the church came with the territory of my husband at the time)

There were multiple traumatic events that came up, and I was always reminded by my pastor that service is “…in X amount of hours. You’ll be up there leading worship, right?” I was also told in marital counseling that I was the cause of many of these traumatic events in my marriage solely because I did not trust the pastor, therefore I was dragging down my husband. We were also pressured into making up for missed tithes in our absence.

The church I grew up in had a youth group volunteer who grabbed my upper thigh under a dinner table so nobody could see while sitting very close to me. He was in his mid 30’s while I was 16. I had already been sexually harassed by a sixth grader when I was 5, so I had already believed this behavior, despite feeling uncomfortable, was normal. I felt ashamed of myself when I asked him, “What are you doing?” And he responded, “Being a jerk.” He walked away, and I felt bad for letting him down. Perhaps the romper I wore was too tight. Maybe my behavior was asking for him to do that to me.

We see documentary after documentary of church abuse, sexual scandal, harassment after harassment, and PASTORS covering it up. Cutting people off to protect their kingdom, their vision, their establishment. It makes me sick to my stomach.

So what is the purpose of the Church? A Pastor? 

The church is supposed to be a safe gathering of a body of believers to learn God’s Word and worship Him. This can be in homes, buildings, streets, in a box, under a car, with a fox…etc…

The pastor is to equip the saints for the work of the Gospel. He is supposed to be the modern day equivalent of a shepherd, getting his hands dirty alongside his flock (“church”) as he sets the example of Christlikeness. To equip you with the knowledge of God’s Word. Not to suck you in to serve. Not to make you tithe. Not to make you join a team. To equip you, to tend to you, all through the basis of the LITERAL Word of God. The Bible. 

Note that the church is a body of people. The pastor called to oversee that church sets the tone and trajectory of where that church is headed.

It is essential you know about your pastor, the elders and their beliefs. Ask the hard questions, sit underneath their teachings before committing. Remember, even the demons believe there is one God in heaven and even tremble before Him! Quoting Scripture isn’t enough.

How do we spot a healthy pastor and church?

Is your pastor emphasizing Scripture? That’s the first place to start.

Is your pastor/church putting pressure on you to give – whether it be time, resources or finances?

If your answer is yes, I would start asking some questions and pray about finding a new church home. And I must clarify, asking you to serve or tithe isn’t necessarily wrong, but if they will not respect your no and will keep putting pressure on you, or guilt tripping you, to do such things, this is not the heart of Christ. 

Is your church prosperity centered? Upbeat and positive?

If your answer is yes, I would start asking questions and possibly praying about a new church home. Jesus suffered like no other. He took on our iniquity and can relate in our suffering. There is beauty from ashes, growth in pain. Honor in bearing our cross as Jesus did – and not the self inflicted kind because you did something stupid, but the actual cross bearing kind where you carry the pain of the world while journeying – and even wrestling – well with God. 

Is your church opinionated about things not specifically mentioned in Scripture?

That’s not necessarily bad, but when this becomes the center of the messages, this is not equipping the saints for the work of Christ. 

Here is my hope for all of you reading this:

Church deception and abuse is not uncommon. Please, walk with eyes wide open. Know your Bible. Don’t rely on your pastor to spoon feed you – know it for yourself. Supporting the right church entity is so important, because many use extortion for resources and will cut you off quickly once you’re of no use to them. This is an all too common tragedy in many of today’s churches, and it sadly pushes people from the actual Gospel of Jesus.

Please don’t mistake God for the church. The wrong church is made up of sinful men and women – as is even the RIGHT church! Make sure you know who your leaders are. On a personal level, do they follow biblical statutes? How do they treat their spouse? Their family? Their friends? Are they temperamental? Self centered or Biblically centered? Do they teach you to prioritize Christ first, family second, job third (if applicable), ministry fourth? <—zinger right there! You can’t worship if you don’t eat. Can’t eat if you don’t work!

Don’t turn a blind eye to these important issues. Churches can make or break one’s view of who God is. And I can’t blame the person for leaving the concept of God because of the poor display a church can make. 

THE PASTOR IS NOT GOD. The pastor is a teacher, leader and shepherd called to equip you with the Word of God.

THE CHURCH IS NOT GOD. The church is a bunch of people, like you and me.

You want to know who God is, and what He has to say?

Know His Word. No bells or whistles.

Do any of you have any hurtful experiences? This website is a safe place to share. You can email me at [email protected], or comment below. I will do my best to monitor all comments so nobody’s safety and free place to speak is threatened. Please also be respectful in language, and details being shared.

My husband and I will respect your stories, as they are all sacred, and perhaps we can all heal together.

Love you all, truly.