I ran into a pastor and pastor’s wife I’d once known. The wife asked where I was living, and if I’d attended a certain church. Then she told a sad story. Her daughter had a happy marriage, but suddenly began expressing concerns. Someone (the daughter wouldn’t say who) had told her they felt in their spirit that her husband was cheating on her. There was no evidence of this, and the man denied he’d done such a thing, but she still struggled with what she’d been told.
My former pastor, who’d spent some time with her daughter, had done this sort of thing more than once. Within a year of being thrown out, I’d heard from a couple who’d also attended: they’d left after the pastor had told their son not to let them see their grandchild, even though they attended the same small church. They finally left, humiliated and confused. Their son also left, but still didn’t trust his parents. He moved away with the grandchild, and they were rarely able to see him or speak to him. On top of that, an elderly widower in their tiny church got married, then was told he shouldn’t have married without the young pastor’s permission. He got the marriage annulled.
The control that pastor had over people and the number of people he divided, raising concerns, alluding to ‘sins,’ and saying he’d discerned things that there was no evidence of and that those accused denied was eerie. I’d been thrown out of the church under similar conditions. The pastor was convincing enough that I even believed what he was saying ‘was in my heart,’ even though I couldn’t give one reason or one indication that I’d done or thought anything wrong. Since he was able to convince me I’d sinned in ways I’d never considered, it didn’t surprise me that he might have convinced people that others had done things even if there was no evidence.
I left, others left, but his accusations haunted us. I don’t think any of us believed them after everything that happened, but it was hard not to believe them. We’d been convinced he knew things about us that we didn’t know, that our hearts were deceitful and wicked and only he knew – because God told him – how bad we were. And having believed such things about ourselves, it was no surprise that even close friends and family members, even spouses or kids, believed things he’d said about those closest to them.
When the church divides, part 1
When the church divides, part 2
When the church divides, part 3
When the church divides, part 4
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