I wrote the following a year ago after my friend was excommunicated from Cities church. These were the outflowing of my emotions and a need to remember what happened. We have seen similar stories come out time and time again in the last several years and I am praying that the church will continue to open its eyes and change. We must strive for a better environment for women to thrive in the church and use their gifts. We must continue pressing on and teaching that women have equal rights and should have all their gifts used in the church. Otherwise in my opinion women will still be silenced in the church and not treated as if we are co heirs with our brothers. Thank you for taking the time to read this and bearing witness to injustice done to my friend. Church we need to do better. We must do better.
Yesterday I sat and listened as my friend was excommunicated from her church – a church we used to attend as well. A place my husband and I had fled because of how strict they were about women not speaking in their service on Sundays. They wouldn’t even let a woman read scripture in their service. They did not believe that God could speak through a woman.
This was enough of a red flag for me. And after my husband and other close friends were bullied as we discussed our concerns with the head pastor, we left, bruised and battered. This was just another in a long line of churches in my young life that crushed women and put them in their “proper” role in order to follow what they thought was the Word of God.
I lost all of my friends from that church, we went our separate ways – but about a year ago a friend called me. She asked me to come and meet her. She sat me down and apologized, told me that I was so right leaving, that the pastors weren’t to be trusted. She was experiencing the ultimate pain – being abused, betrayed and lied to repeatedly by her porn addicted husband and the pastors were bullying her, gaslighting her and taking her husband’s side – who of course was lying to them too.
Sadly I had seen this before, didn’t even need to hear the details to know exactly what they were doing. They were doing what every other power hungry, misogynistic pastors had done before them- crushing women who dared to speak up, dared to ask for help. Men that don’t handle the Word of the Lord rightly. Wolves in sheep’s clothing.
So there I sat – recording every word on my cell for my friend. Brandon and I had offered to go for my friend, to bear witness to her impending excommunication.
Her crime?
The first one was divorcing a man that betrayed her over and over again, failed to protect her, and failed to provide for her and her young girls
The second was refusing to speak to the pastors.
(These pastors who had kept bullying and spiritually abusing as she tried to do everything they asked until she hit her done point and chose to not let them continue to run rampant over her heart.)
The head pastor stood at the pulpit, in the old church building, light streaming in through the stained glass windows. Members sat eating their lunches in nicely upholstered chairs listening to the sweet southern lilt of their beloved head pastor.
He started the proceedings with a reminder of their member covenant. A string of well appointed words that sounded so biblical – so good, so right, but underneath held the power to push members out if they didn’t behave. He talked of how sensitive the situation was, how her husband was no longer in the room so members could ask questions. Then proceeded to explain the situation from his perspective. How they didn’t believe that the divorce was biblically sound, even twisting the very words of Jesus to claim that what her ex did wasn’t grounds for divorce because it wasn’t actual intercourse with another person. (I.e. a porn addiction wasn’t grounds for divorce)
I sat in disbelief and shock as this pastor put on a show, throwing in his speculations of what my friend had done, how her heart was “hardened”. He used his words to make her seem crazy. He wove a web of lies and even tears as he extended his hand to her previous friends who had promised to stand by her when her husband betrayed and abandoned her.
Spoiler alert – They hadn’t.
Members started asking questions. Brandon and I had tossed around several drafts of what we had wanted to say in my friend’s defense but when we heard from one of my most revered pastor’s lips that to look at a woman with lust in your heart is just sin in your heart and not sin in actuality, (i.e. porn addiction) we knew we had to stay silent and just observe. Our arguments would have fallen on deaf ears. It kills me even now that I stayed silent.
Then it was put to a vote. It was unanimous. In a mere thirty minutes this church excommunicated my friend and no one questioned – no one objected. Even her friends that had seen the truth of her husband’s deceit were silent or didn’t object.
Just like that they silenced her and any other woman in the congregation who may have been struggling in her marriage. No woman could ever divorce her husband except for actual intercourse with another person – the penalty would be losing her community and being abused by the pastors.
My husband and I left quickly. I couldn’t wait to get out of the building that held such a web of lies. In my haste to leave I didn’t realize that my husband had stopped. I turned. He was shuffling his feet – wait he was wiping them. “What are you doing?” I asked? “Wiping the dust of my feet” he replied. He was literally following the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:14
“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
Today a day later as I sit here and type, I am so overwhelmed, angry and sad. I can’t believe how many people sat and just took it. I want to stand up and shout to the rooftops – HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE HIM??????? HOW CAN YOU STILL BE IN THIS CHURCH???? HOW CAN YOU STILL BELIEVE THESE FALSE TEACHERS?
I want justice to be done – I want these pastors to be done with their jobs. And yet I know I would be just shouting to the wind. Lord please open their eyes. Open the eyes of the congregation. Please help them to leave these false teachers. Bring the false teachers to justice. Let their sin find them out. Bring justice upon them, Lord.
A Patchwork Life 