An Evil Meeting with Two Nice Men

A personal account of subtle spiritual abuse

CW: sexual and spiritual abuse

How does one tell a story of spiritual abuse? I help clients wrestle with that question every week. It’s a difficult question, for so many reasons. One reason is another question, usually asked with doubt and fear: will people understand? This is particularly pressing with more subtle forms of spiritual abuse. When I was asked to tell some of my own story at a recent conference, I decided to focus on a more subtle episode. While I have written about that story before, I’m sharing this fuller version from that conference for those who know the subtle power of spiritual abuse but struggle to name it, and for those walking beside them.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

Three years ago I had a 105-minute meeting with two church elders. I recorded the meeting¹, but never listened to it. For three years I wanted to review and analyze that conversation. But each time I thought of doing that, I put it off. Not now. Not ready.

When I agreed to share my story, I decided it was time. Prayerfully, and with my wife’s support, I listened to and transcribed the recording of that meeting. If you read the transcript yourself, you might wonder why I avoided that episode for so long. Indeed, if you actually listen to the recording, you would say those two men sound nice. Friendly and respectful. No raised voices. No name calling. They gave many explicit expressions of love, care, and friendship.

But this meeting was evil. I felt it then. I feel it now. If you understand the nature of spiritual abuse already, you might draw that conclusion from listening yourself. But to help frame my account of what happened during those 105 minutes, I’m going to start with one of my favorite explanations of abuse.

This comes from Christian therapist Bob Hamp (which I’ve used before to explore John 9²).

“the key dynamic of abuse is the inappropriate assignment of responsibility. This is far more devastating and insidious than it may sound at first. First, the victim is made responsible to carry the anger, control, or sexual impulse of their abuser, so the abuse begins. Second, the victim is then blamed for the “incidents” and made “responsible” for the choices and behavior of the abuser. “I wonder what their part was...?” Implication: they are responsible for what happened. Third, they are made responsible for the reputation of the abuser, as both the abuser and others deceived by the abuser accuse the victim of ruining the person’s reputation, instead of recognizing that the abuser has a problem that needs to be addressed.”

That dynamic, wrongly assigning responsibility, is always present in spiritual abuse, and that will help you understand some of my story. In order to tell that story, I need to start with my wife Kristen.

In June of 2020 Kristen was hired to be the director of women’s and children’s ministries for a Presbyterian church on the coast of South Carolina. Actually, she was recruited from across the country. The senior pastor had been our pastor ten years before in California, and when his children’s ministry director resigned, he wanted to hire Kristen. He didn’t advertise the position or consider other applicants. She was the one. And we were excited. We felt like we were moving to work with family.

I had taught Bible studies and Sunday school at that California church, and shortly after we moved to this SC church the pastor asked me to teach a Sunday school class of young families. I did so gladly, and for the next twenty months I taught this class each Sunday, exploring Scripture together, and working to cultivate deeper community. About two months into that role, I asked another young man, Michael, to help me lead this class, especially the social/community aspects. Our friendship grew as we did this work together, and also met every one to two weeks for coffee and mutual discipleship.

All of that changed when Michael became an elder in Spring of 2021. Shortly after that, another new elder sexually assaulted one of the women in our Sunday school class. That assault set off a chain reaction of toxic events and dynamics that would take too much time to tell here.³ The particular story I want to share is situated in that complex web.

The really short version of that web is that my wife, Kristen, insisted on best practice protocol for abuse allegations, and the church’s senior leaders (a small group of elders within the overall session known as the executive committee) chose to fire Kristen because she wouldn’t back down. The senior pastor, Brian, became repeatedly abusive himself during the 11 months between this woman’s report in July 2021 and Kristen’s firing in May 2022. One particular incident is burned in my memory. Brian, Kristen and I were talking in Kristen’s office. Kristen claimed that Brian made some sort of statement to her the previous week. Brian denied saying whatever she claimed he said, and when she calmly insisted that he said it, he erupted in rage: “I will NOT be accused here! I will NOT be put on trial!”

Because of that and a long list of other offenses and grievances, I complained to my friend and now church elder Michael over the phone in March 2022. I told him Brian and the other elders were mistreating Kristen and acting in an unchristlike manner. After this hour plus conversation, I asked Michael to follow up with me after he’d had time to digest what I had shared.

I knew it was a lot to take in. He agreed to circle back with me. But he didn’t. Two months of radio silence, despite my attempts to connect with him and ask him what was going on. I thought we should have been able to work this out one on one, man to man. I kept trying to connect with him, because I was not ok continuing to teach and lead this class together while there was clearly some kind of conflict between us. Eventually he responded by text message. He said he could talk if I wanted to discuss our Sunday school class, but he wasn’t going to talk with me about Kristen and my complaints about her experience. He claimed that I was “unkind” and “offensive” in that March phone call, but said it was “water under the bridge” and refused to talk about it. In response, I offered willingness to own however I had harmed him—ie, assign proper responsibility—if he would only talk with me. I even quoted our Book of Church Order, which has a non-binding section on conflict resolution: “When personal wrongs are too serious to overlook, the parties are required to seek to resolve them privately through loving confrontation and confession.” I essentially invited him to confront me so I could confess. But he never replied to that text message. It’s the last text in our thread on my phone, April 22, 2022. Because he refused to work with me toward reconciliation, I didn’t show up to teach Sunday school the following Sunday. And that got his attention.

He followed me to the parking lot as I walked to my car after the morning service. He asked me if I was going to teach, and I said I wasn’t. He asked why not, and I told him I wasn’t going to get into it right there, but that we could schedule a time to meet and talk at length, as I had been attempting to do for two months. When he kept insisting on getting an answer, I again declined to talk, turned around, and kept walking to my car. He then yelled at me, “You’re so selfish, Aaron!”

I later found out that his reason for being angry with me was having to teach our class without any notice or preparation. Was I selfish and to blame for that? Was that my responsibility?

I didn’t think so then, and I don’t think so now. But I still took responsibility for attempting to repair our relationship, and emailed him a few days later. I wrote to him,

“It is not my intention to stop teaching our class. If you would meet with me it might be possible for me to help you understand where I’m coming from. I would also like to give you the same courtesy. So I stand by my offer and request to meet to see if we can work through whatever it is that has caused this rift between us. If meeting with me one on one is not agreeable to you, would you be willing to meet with a neutral third party? Not saying we need a mediator or anything, just someone to be a witness to our conversation and help keep us in check biblically if needed. Some guys that come to mind are _________, __________, or _________. If that is not agreeable to you either, then please let me know how you can see us moving forward.”

Those three men were in our Sunday school class, and also church leaders: one elder and two deacons. I got an email six days later that Michael would meet with me, but he proposed a different third party, a man named Terry who was a retired pastor but not in any official leadership position. I was skeptical about this choice, but didn’t see any chance of getting a different person, so I agreed. I also asked Michael what his hopes were for this meeting, and he replied: “My hope for the meeting is that peace can be brought about. Terry can serve as a silent witness, yes; but also as an active mediator if necessary.”

I don’t know how Michael planned to determine the necessity of active mediation, but that was clearly Terry’s position from the start. And he was clearly not a neutral third party. I had never talked with him about any of my complaints, but he knew a lot about what was going on with Kristen, presumably from Michael and possibly other elders.

This meeting lasted an hour and forty-five minutes. Terry talked at least as much as Michael and I, if not more. Of the many negative experiences at that church, this is one of the most painful. Because I was made responsible for what wasn’t actually my responsibility. With the transcription of this meeting, I was able to go back over and analyze what happened. Here are just the highlights.

I bought this beautiful readers Bible with money gifted to me by members of that Sunday school class. I can’t read it now, and yet I can’t bring myself to part with it. It is a “remainder” of a tainted legacy.

First, Michael told me that I wasn’t going to be teaching anymore, and he asked Terry to teach in my place. Then, Terry explained that it wasn’t appropriate for me to teach while I had an unresolved grievance with Brian and the session. His controlling concern was ensuring that the elders kept control of the church. Terry implicitly accused me of sharing my concerns with other adults in our class and getting them on my side against the elders. I was told repeatedly that the Bible calls me to “submit” to my leaders. I was told repeatedly that God “ordained” and “appointed” these leaders, and that they had “God-given authority” to make decisions about how to lead the church, including handling reports of abuse (not that he used that word to name what was done to that woman). He emphasized the need for “loyalty” to leadership, and the need to prevent and stop any “factions” and “division.” Both Michael and Terry mentioned the need for “peace” in the church seventeen times.

While he once stated his concern to “honor both sides” (meaning Kristen and I on one side, and Brian and the session on the other), and while he once stated the concern for “honoring me and Kristen,” he made four explicit statements about the need to honor and respect Brian and the session. He even used the words “session,” “elders,” and “leaders/leadership” eighty-seven times.⁴

I realized half-way through that meeting the reason Michael chose Terry to mediate. Terry didn’t have a position in the middle (despite his claim of “not taking sides in this”). He was there to put me in my place, so Michael didn’t have to.

He was there to take the responsibility for my complaints away from the session, and place that responsibility onto me.

He gave three monologues, around six-eight minutes each, about the session’s God-ordained authority, and my God-mandated responsibility to submit to that authority. The only exception to that submission, which he also repeated time and time again, was if the Brian and the session were “starkly unbiblical.” I don’t know how much he knew, or even how much Michael knew, about that abusive elder’s predatory sin. Terry clearly assumed Brian and the other elders were not “starkly unbiblical,” and wasn’t about to ask if and why I believed they were.

(Which, as a side note, they could hardly have been more starkly unbiblical, for they violated Paul’s clear instructions in 1 Timothy 5. They made that perpetrator an elder, in contradiction to 1 Tim 5:22, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others.” They did this despite Kristen pleading with Brian prior to this man’s appointment as elder that she had reason to believe he was an adulterer. Brian’s response was, “I don’t think so. I know him, he’s a good man.” Oh and by the way, that man chaired the pulpit committee that hired Brian, he was a successful banker, and probably tithed a lot of money to the church. They also violated 1 Tim 5:20, “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.” They did remove the elder from the session, but without telling the church. That decision only became public nine months later at the same time that they fired Kristen, which of course they immediately made known publicly. But back to my meeting with Michael and Terry.)

Terry informed me that he and Michael decided he (Terry) was going to teach our Sunday school class in my stead, and that he would teach through 1 Corinthians. He chose 1 Corinthians because it “addresses both divisions of the church…encouraging unity in the first part, but also addresses the purity of the church.” The concern for unity instead of division referred to the “division” Kristen and I had with Brian and the session. The concern for purity referred to the sexual sin of the elder.

While I won’t go as far as saying Terry meant this intentionally, the implication—and indeed, the appearance for my class—was that I had caused just as much trouble as the abusive elder. That elder—who, I forgot to mention, was also technically a member of my class, but hardly ever attended—committed heinous sexual sin, and so 1 Corinthians, especially ch. 5 about the man who had sex with his father’s wife, was especially appropriate for the class to study. Likewise, I (and Kristen) had caused division in the church, and so 1 Corinthians, with Paul’s appeal “that there be no division among you” (1:10), was especially appropriate for the class to study.

That elder was removed from his position for (in the eyes of the all-male session), having an affair. I was removed from my position for complaining about how my wife was being mistreated because she advocated for that man’s victim. We were made responsible for what was not our responsibility. We were spiritually abused. And because we went through that alone, without the affirming witness of our community, we were traumatized.

But the abuse and trauma might be easy to miss if you were a fly on the wall. There was no physical violence. No raised voices. No cursing. No mean words. Just two men with spiritual power making me responsible for the sins of other spiritual leaders.

Quote from The Dynamic of Spiritual Abuse

Jesus literally says [to the Pharisees,] “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (John 9:41). Jesus turns the Pharisees’ judgment of the healed man (“you were born in utter sin”) back on themselves. He holds them responsible in the presence of the healed man, so he can witness the guilt be transferred back to where it belongs. Jesus rights the wrongful misassignment of responsibility. We reflect Jesus when we do likewise.

1. Without their knowledge, which was legal in that state. I highly recommend looking up your state laws to see if it is permissible to record with only one consenting party (yourself).

2. And I’m grateful that others have reported being similarly helped by Hamp’s framework. See Your friends won’t want to help you by

Joy LaPrade

, as well as Misplaced Assignment of Responsibility in Abuse by

Peter Louie

.

3. For details, see

Emily Belz

’s CT article The Presbyterian Church in America Has an Abuse Crisis Too.

4. For comparison, he mentioned the pastor thirty-three times, and Kristen thirty-nine times.