Category: Churches

In addition to the stress within our own household the week of Bible Conference, I remembered that I was previously scheduled for Sunday School nursery. Surely, the gossip chain had carried far and fast enough for even the results of a private meeting to be shared amongst the inner circle, right? In our second meeting Tuesday evening, Pastor Andrew Ray removed Matthew Olds and I from all ministries for the unforeseeable future because “the men of the church [had] lost faith in [Matt].”

Would this hold true for serving in nursery as well, once the pastor realized that he shot himself in the foot?  Of course not, but it would be unsubmissive of me to refuse when working nursery was to their benefit, a last-minute exception to the shameful and one-sided punishment! I stood my ground, resulting in not only a greater strain in our marriage, but in giving the inner circle more ground to view my husband as less of a man and even less of a leader in our home.

**Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed for the privacy of individuals and their families**

Treading Thin Ice

Prior to meeting with Douglas Stauffer and Pastor Ray on Tuesday evening, I messaged my pastor’s wife, Lula Ray, about working in nursery the week of conference:

“Crystal Olds (June 9 at 12:27pm):  I am not discussing the situation, but since I am not in nursery tonight supposedly, am I taking someone’s place another night? We won’t be there for the second preacher any night because of Matt’s work.”

As of that point in the timeline of events, I was only aware of Douglas Stauffer asserting that I would not work in the nursery, not our actual pastor. Lula’s response was, “I am not involved in any of this.” Combine that with Pastor Andrew Ray cutting off certain communication between our families, there was no one else to bring the issue to besides Emily Jenkins* the one who organized the nursery schedule.

Even though Emily* and I have had past conflicts about breastfeeding in the church service and despite that our opinions still differed significantly, we had finally come to a form of respect and understanding about the other person’s position because of the effects of postpartum mood disorders. The last thing I wanted to do was strain that relationship more by potentially leaving her without a nursery worker on Sunday morning, especially during a time when her family was preparing for the arrival of their third child. I politely sent her this carefully-worded text message to make sure that she was aware:

Crystal Olds (June 9 at 5:47pm): Hey Emily*, I’ve been assuming that you already know that I won’t be working nursery for the foreseeable future, but I didn’t want you to be caught off guard just in case. If you’d prefer, I can just keep Joshua* upstairs for Sunday school for the month of June and just go down with him myself as necessary since he is the only one. Praying for you and Baby Eliana*. We can’t wait to meet her!

 

 

 

 

 

Response from Pastor’s Family

After messaging Emily*, I received a response back from Lula Ray, my pastor’s wife:

Lula Ray (June 9 at 5:55pm): Crystal, Emily* forwarded me your text about nursery. I had asked my husband earlier today about it, and he said it was fine to keep you on the schedule.

Is this ok with you?

Though the message was likely specifically filtered through her husband to remove the flair of southern charm, the response was still what we expected. Despite Pastor removing Matt and I from all ministries, greeting included, serving in nursery would be the exception to the rule. Was it because of a lack of workers or to keep my nursling out of the service as much as possible? We will never know, but I refused to be used by allowing them to take advantage of my desire to serve the Lord. My husband and I, both initially enraged by the expectation to continue in nursery, discussed how to handle the situation and decided that I would not be working in the nursery until we were clear to serve in ministries again.

Phone Call with Pastor Andrew Ray

According to a phone conversation between Matthew Olds and Pastor Andrew Ray that evening, when Pastor Ray had said on Tuesday night that all Matt could do was be faithful to church, sing the hymns, and say “Amen,” he also meant that he could still do the greeter ministry and I could serve in nursery. Both of these ministries were extremely short-handed as a result of the mass exodus last fall. My husband, blinded by the relief and excitement of being able to serve the Lord again even in the smallest capacity, could not see the psychological abuse of having everything taken away, followed by getting back a minuscule and insignificant portion, wrapped up in the disguise of expressing that they loved our family and wanted to see us restored. Matt and Pastor Ray set up a meeting for the following day to clarify any other confusion in this situation. Matt said he would allow me to decide about nursery, but he told Pastor Ray that he was thankful and ready to serve in the greeter ministry the next day.

Our House Divided Yet More

Because of my experience in a spiritually abusive environment in high school and college, and after seeing how Douglas Stauffer, the pastor’s ascending right-hand man, attempted to control our every move for the past week, I refused. Matt was infuriated because Pastor was gracious enough to allow us to continue to serve and I was potentially going to make the situation worse by standing my ground. For my husband’s sake, I resolved to look at the decision again after the meeting with Pastor on Sunday. Filtered through my husband, I sent the following message back to Lula Ray:

Crystal Olds (June 9 at 7:06pm): Matt and I talked right after getting off of the phone with Pastor a few minutes ago. I will not be working nursery until all of this is clarified in the meeting with Pastor.

Even this decision would look poorly on my husband’s position as leader of our home, as confirmed by Tara Williams* later that evening. Having been a person that everyone went to for advice, she knew first-hand that the inner circle had specifically said that I was not submissive to my husband, and her gut-reaction was to encourage me to work nursery for the sake of my husband’s name and reputation. As we continued to discuss the situation, her stance changed about working nursery, but by this point, I understood why a majority of people left last fall, and I was almost ready to leave Antioch Baptist Church. My readiness quickly turned to resolve after the meeting with Pastor the following day (Sunday), and after Matt informed me of an additional calloused confrontation about my breastfeeding outside of the mother’s room.

In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Our Own Pastor- Friend or Foe?” or click on the link below.

For a list of the complete series, click here.

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“When a man asks a preacher to preach on a particularly controversial subject knowing that it will open that man to criticism from the fringe, the requester is an unscrupulous manipulator abusing friendships and position. #manipulator”– Douglas Stauffer, (June 5, 2018 at 8:25am)

Later in the week, we presume that Douglas Stauffer was feeling the heat for his statements because of the skeletons it brought into the light, and we feel that he turned around and blamed Pastor Andrew Ray for giving him the subject to preach on in the first place. How was Pastor Ray going to handle another man in the ministry, particularly his friend, practically attacking him online for all to see? Will Stauffer need to go around and apologize to everyone for his statement and will he be removed from all ministries?

According to Pastor Andrew Ray, Douglas Stauffer was referring to Steven Anderson, an outspoken Arizona pastor known for his highly controversial views and teachings on the end times. If that were the case, however, why did Pastor Andrew Ray request that Stauffer remove his post, and why did Douglas Stauffer offer to step down from being a Sunday school teacher because of the post?

Because Douglas Stauffer is staunchly and publicly against the teachings of Steven Anderson, I feel that if his post were truly about Anderson, Stauffer would have said it outright. Judge for yourselves, but in light of Stauffer and Ray’s previous actions, I feel this continues to support the ongoing hypocrisy between the leadership at Antioch Baptist Church and the ungodly influence of Douglas Stauffer.

In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Still Expected to Cheer from the Nursery” or click on the link below.

For a list of the complete series, click here.

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A little birdie once told me, “Actions speak louder than words.”

Less than twenty-four hours after Matthew Olds and I met with Douglas Stauffer at Antioch Baptist Church during the Bible Conference, Doug Stauffer shared the unedited YouTube video of his outrageous Sunday morning message on carnality. Though Stauffer’s sermon audio file for “The Hindrances to Building” was edited as we demanded in the meeting the night before, Stauffer “liked” and shared the unedited YouTube video long before proceeding with his agreement to remove his disgraceful comments. It was not until some time AFTER sharing the original unedited video, that he messaged Matt requesting a list of the specific times to edit from his sermon videos. Certainly, this revealed the heart of a man who was repentant of his “ill-advised” actions!

In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Douglas Stauffer’s Twitter Tells All (Part Two)” or click on the link below.

For a list of the complete series, click here.

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**Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed for the privacy of individuals and their families**

Our relief following the meeting with Douglas Stauffer was short-lived because Matthew Olds had previously planned on meeting with Pastor Andrew Ray to discuss the results of the meeting and because Matt further desired to make things right with our pastor. After breaking down in the meeting with Stauffer, I knew there was no way I would make it through a meeting with Pastor. Just in telling Matt that I never meant to hurt the pastor’s family, I would turn into a blubbering mess, hurting because of the pain I had caused them. Another layer of the tears stemmed from Pastor Ray’s stinging messages to my husband when he said that “the writing was on the wall” and that his daughter, Mary*, had lost a great deal of faith in me. I felt the weight of disappointing my pastor, letting him down and potentially damaging a precious teen girl in our youth group, and reviving depths of pain throughout our church. Even though Stauffer was the one who opened up the wounds, I felt that I was reason behind my pastor and his family hurting and there was no way I could get through a meeting with my pastor without getting choked up and crying uncontrollably.

When we went upstairs at the end of the Bible Conference meeting that Tuesday night, Matt met alone with Pastor Andrew Ray in one of the back sections of the church, while I paced in the lobby area awkwardly balancing carrying on small-talk and avoiding everyone’s gazes. Seated in the left section behind the folded wall, Pastor Ray inquired about the conversation with Doug Stauffer, and Matt responded that while it got heated at times, Stauffer and I (Crystal Olds) appeared to have reconciled things. Matt stated he could not conclude if Stauffer and I had actually forgiven each other because he could not get inside of our heads, but he reported that we both apologized and ended the meeting on a good note. To think that we were naïve enough to believe that everything could begin to calm down and that the worst may have been behind us.

Pastor Andrew Ray began, calmly, yet solemnly, to describe a time in his life when he was in a similar situation as Matt, back when he was the assistant pastor at Antioch Baptist Church under Pastor David Reagan. Pastor Ray continued about how he hurt some people and had to step down from all ministry activities for a time, but that he was eventually re-instated because of his faithfulness to church services. He proved himself to be faithful and Matt needed to do the same.

In my husband’s words, he was reduced to being the pastor’s cheerleader. He needed to be faithful to all services, continue to say “Amen,” and sing the hymns, and this would help regain “the confidence of the men of the church.” Matt was told that these were the only things he could do after we had already been pulled from serving in nursery and leading/organizing the greeter meeting. Because of my initial post about Doug Stauffer, Pastor Ray said that the men of the church had lost faith in my husband and that for now, just be faithful to the services, prove that we are not going to run off, and that eventually, he would come to Matt with something.

Pastor further informed Matt that a few men of the church- he later informed us of one, Nathaniel Morris- said they wanted to invest in him. When Matt inquired of Pastor as to where we go from here, Pastor suggested starting with Walter Gibson* considering that he had to go on one of my posts to provide context. Pastor then added that Walter might be able to direct Matt to the next person that he needed to apologize to, and then continue asking who to speak with next until he had made things right with everyone affected.

To say that my husband left that meeting entirely defeated would be an understatement, but he also left it fully believing that we had a loving and gracious pastor who had given out a merciful form of discipline in comparison to what it could have been. Matt swallowed his pride and choked it down, longing to serve the Lord and willing to do whatever was necessary to be able to do so. While Matt and I shared most of these same conclusions, I found pastor’s requirements for making things right- apologize to Walter, ask who he should apologize to next, apologize to that person, ask them who he should apologize to next- absolutely preposterous and unrealistic. It was more degrading and shaming than it was reconciling in any fashion. I further silently noted that encouraging Matt to say “Amen” was likely because the church services had been strangely quiet in that regard since the mass exodus of godly people the previous fall.

As was to be expected, however, Pastor’s requirements about service changed in what we feel was the face of not having enough people to do the work, a number that had already drastically declined with the mass exodus, and was then compounded by removing us from organizing and serving in the greeter ministry, and reducing one of the few available hands left in the nursery.

In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Douglas Stauffer’s Twitter Tells All (Part One)” or click on the link below.

For a list of the complete series, click here.

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**Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed for the privacy of individuals and their families**

As we walked into Pastor Andrew Ray’s office, the room Douglas Stauffer had already overtaken for his video streams, Doug Stauffer sat behind the pastor’s desk with two chairs directly in front of him, set-up like children in the principal’s office. The witness, Grayson Campbell*, stood by the door just behind us to our left.

As we began, Stauffer pulled out a recorder and placed in on the table, instantly setting off the ticking time bomb inside of me, ready to go off at any moment. I demanded that he put the recorder away before we began because he never asked permission to record the meeting. Little did we know that Tennessee only required a one-party consent for recording, and that was likely the reason Pastor Andrew Ray and Douglas Stauffer usually placed a phone on top of the table during a meeting.

For me to say this meeting was a calm, cake-walk would be a blatant lie because the emotions of both parties involved were explosive, firing off at various points through the meeting. Behind the pastor’s desk sat an imperious man, threatened by a woman who dared to speak out, but that woman, though she struggled to never be silenced again, was being pressured heavily on all sides to make the meeting “productive” through passive submission, lest it affect her husband’s service in ministry even more. Tensions between Stauffer and I were strong to the point of Stauffer and I practically yelling at each other. While I was firmly demanding that Stauffer stop interrupting, Stauffer was purporting, “I can do whatever I want!” Shortly after Stauffer’s statement, Matt finally raised his voice for BOTH of us to calm down and stop. Because I felt the burden of my husband’s desire to serve and to attend services, I forced myself to calm down enough to have a tense, yet half-way decent conversation with Stauffer.

Doug Stauffer justified his comments on Sunday, claiming his statements dealt with someone who, over the weekend, had said negative things about the church’s pet project, a new hymn book. Stauffer also revealed that they were about to come down on somebody else. He claimed he was thinking about that person when he made the statement during the message on Sunday, but did not want the person to have a heads up.

As for Doug Stauffer admitting his wrong-doing in the harassment and going explicitly around my husband to continue to harass me, Stauffer temporarily threw us off track from the reality of his actions just long enough by stating it was not a more extreme course of action. He exclaimed, “It was not like I made a pass at your wife!” The fact that there was no sexual intent, nor even accusation of sexual intent, does not negate the severity of his actions. Nor does it negate his lack of respect for our family’s boundaries and well-being.

As Doug Stauffer discussed his interactions with those who left in the fall of 2017, he claimed that he went to great lengths to help-out Dennis* and Celine Martin*, only to be stabbed in the back. He boasted of the thousands of dollars he lent to them, but then made it seem as though they never paid him back. Allow me to set the story straight: The Martins paid him back all of the money he loaned them and then some! Stauffer also attempted to claim that Dennis Martin had a poor work ethic, even though Stauffer was paying him well in an attempt to help Dennis’ family out financially. Yes, he lent them a van in a time of need, and yes, Stauffer hired Dennis likely because Dennis needed the work and the money. Last I checked, however, continually standing over a carpenter’s shoulder for all hours of the day, hounding him about how to do his own job, does not equate to compassion and Christian decency. Also bear in mind that Stauffer’s attempts to reconcile after they left (because of conflict with the pastor’s family), consisted of showing up at their doorstep and demanding his money immediately, even if it meant endangering the Martin’s children by pushing to break laws that established the minimum requirements for car seat safety.

Coming back to Doug Stauffer’s actions within the last few days, Stauffer did actually apologize for what he said on Sunday from the pulpit, agreed to meet our demands to edit the sermon videos, and he even apologized for what he said in his Facebook messages to me. Prior to meeting, however, Stauffer’s apologies merely covered if we considered his comments “ill-advised,” making it no surprise that Stauffer repeatedly backtracked and defended his actions as defending the pastor on multiple occasions within the same meeting.

I feel Doug Stauffer shifted the focus off of his own actions through emotional manipulation by magnifying the burden I supposedly placed on the pastor, a man Matt and I both cared about deeply.  Stauffer claimed that Pastor Ray’s blood pressure was up because of the results of my original Facebook post, and that Pastor Ray had said, “You better deal with this or I will.”

I feel Stauffer may have taken advantage of Pastor Andrew Ray’s statement to deal with the situation as a license to act in the position and power of the pastor. On the other hand, Stauffer appeared especially concerned about any of this situation, particularly lack of reconciliation from the present meeting, coming back and adding more stress on our Pastor. Looking back, we feel bringing Doug Stauffer’s actions to light threatened Stauffer’s reputation and standing with the pastor.

As things eventually calmed down, my husband Matt personally needed to ask Stauffer about his deceitfulness in a meeting two years prior, just before our family’s mission trip to Africa. It turns out, from the beginning, Stauffer doubted the authenticity of my husband’s desire to go to Africa for his missions internship because Matt was doubling as using it as a survey trip to the country we believed God had called us to. There will be more on this later, but it helped to finally hear him admit his hand in the meeting, revealing he was, in fact, purposefully working against us and our efforts to get to the field. He believed that if he would have been able to discourage us then, how would we have handle discouragement in the future. Keep in mind that this is coming from the same man that said a pastor’s job in the United States is more difficult than the job of a missionary on a foreign field, even though, he personally, would never go to Africa.

Unfortunately, for both me and my husband, neither one of us possessed the necessary skills to process the intricacies of a meeting like this until after we were out of the situation and had an opportunity to truly look back and analyze the reality of what was said and done. We left the meeting believing we had all made some progress going forward and made some form of reconciliation. We actually thought we could let some of our defenses down toward Stauffer and I had finally conceded to apologize to him for my initial post on Facebook, again.

One of several blaring red flags should have been when Doug Stauffer said that he believes in going into meetings like this with “a heavy hand.” That is certainly the biblical precedent, correct? Instead, we took things in and kept a tunnel vision towards the goal of reconciliation, believing we could start moving forward.  I even remember calling my father after the meeting to tell him that while we were still in a bit of a daze and fog, that it all went well in that end.

Because we missed how Doug Stauffer shifted any subject away from the consequences of HIS own actions, and blamed any negative effects on my actions, it was not until after Matt met with Pastor Andrew Ray the same evening that we realized the meeting was not truly about reconciliation at all.

In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Reduced to Being the Pastor’s Cheerleader” or click on the link below.

For a list of the complete series, click here.

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