I am a victim of spiritual abuse. It’s taken 15 years to realise

A victim of spiritual abuse – but not at the hands of Fletcher or Smyth – shares her firsthand experience:

I am a victim of spiritual abuse. It’s taken 15 years after the events to recognise this – and only then because of recent events.

The pastor’s dear long-suffering wife confided in me that he was, effectively, having an affair with a deacon’s wife, spending each weekly ‘day off’ from pastoral work with this other woman.

We confided in a deacon and his wife who were then and still are close friends. No one else knew what we knew. My husband and I spoke with the two elders. They then asked the pastor if he was having an affair. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. Case closed. It was a small church and there was no one else to whom the pastor was accountable.

What followed was weeks of using the pulpit to preach pointed sermons. He was clever. Manipulative. We endured a series entitled ‘Paul’s defence of unjustified criticism’. We sat through sermons on pruning the church.

One sermon began with a long introduction almost word-for-word thus: ‘There is in this church a member who is a gossip, a slanderer, [and] has caused more damage than anyone or anything else in this church … That person is… your tongue.’ I knew it was to frighten me.

The only way I could continue going to church was to write notes, so as not look at him. But that morning I watched him in disbelief. It was bullying and it was cowardly: he would not speak to me in person.

My friend, the deacon’s wife, said to me that their little boy asked who the pastor had been referring to. Even this young child knew he wasn’t really referring to the tongue.

The stress made me ill. For many weeks, I barely ate and I lost a lot of weight. My hair started to fall out. My mental health deteriorated. I remember one day I couldn’t even operate the washing machine. But I had young children and had to keep going. This situation went on for seven months.

Not once did either elder ask me how I was. One day, one of the elders came to me after a service and asked if I’d changed my view about my pastor. I said: ‘He’s not my pastor. And no, I’ve not changed my mind.’

We knew the situation could not last indefinitely, but we did not think it would take months to come out. And when finally it did – independently of me – he was suspended, and eventually dismissed.

Many years on, the wounds are unhealed. People asked us how we could stay there enduring what we did. We knew it was where the Lord wanted us. We knew the Lord is not mocked. We also knew the Lord is never late.

What has changed at my church? Not much, in fact, there’s even less accountability. We have a pastor, but just one other elder and no one else to whom the office of pastor is accountable.

Spiritual abuse is real and it is devastating. And from my experience, I fear small churches are at greater risk.