I was nineteen, a college student, volunteering in the youth group at a small church in a beach community. I had given him a ride back to the church parking lot following a youth event when a close friend of the youth pastor raped me in the church parking lot. I vaguely remember the drive back to my dorm.
A few days later my friend noticed that I seemed quiet and “not quite myself”. I shared what had happened and he encouraged me to talk to the Sr. Pastor and Youth Pastor. Bravely I made an appointment and my friend even agreed to go with me.
I sat in the Sr. Pastor’s office with three men and somehow found the words to tell them about the rape. My friend sat quietly nearby while the pastors questioned my story, and then told me that while they believed “something” must have happened it simply couldn’t be what I described. Whatever had happened I had played a part because this was such a good man and he and the youth pastor had been friends for years and he certainly wasn’t capable of such a violent act.
I don’t remember much after those words were spoken. Something inside of me went dead. I held that story in silence for nearly twenty-five years.
My journey of recovering from sexual abuse did not begin until well into my thirties. It involved both one on one therapy and participating in small group settings. As I experienced safe spaces to begin to share my story I also began to discover how my relationship with God had been impacted by my abuse. The process of recovery has been life changing for all my relationships, but most importantly my relationship with God.
Perhaps it is because part of my story involves that scene with the pastoral staff at my college church, perhaps it is because I am a pastor’s wife, perhaps it is because I have sat in small groups with both pastors and church leaders sharing their own stories that I have impassioned hope that the church can become a safe space for stories like mine.
Any church leader has the responsibility to learn how to care well for those in their congregation, both men and women leaders. Doing nothing, remaining silent, is a choice to perpetuate harm and poor responses add to the damage done by abuse. “Shepherds” charged with protection and care become weapons of war against the very people for whom they are responsible.
For over a decade I have been helping church leaders, missionaries and pastors learn how to become safe people and how to provide good care for the wounded. I have sat with them as they have been brave enough to explore their own stories and from there learn how to lead with more compassion, kindness and love.
Looking at what scripture has to say about abuse and considering what it means to begin to preach on issues of abuse is also critical. I’ve yet to hear a pastor preach from 2 Samuel 13, the rape of David’s daughter Tamar which includes incest. Rape and incest are relevant and present in every congregation. Or how about a message on Mark 9:42, “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.” That passage is filled with strong words as it pertains to abuse of children. Stumble in this passage is the Greek word skandalizō and it means cause a person to distrust and desert the one whom he ought to trust and obey. The betrayal of trust that is always present in acts of abuse sow’s seeds of destruction in a victim’s heart leaving them with feelings of mistrust for their parents to God Himself. Jesus is saying it would be better for an abuser to have a millstone hung around his neck and be thrown into the sea.
Is there grace for abusers, certainly, and that grace can only be fully experienced when the weight of sin and the harm caused have been squarely faced. Silence is not spiritual and does not facilitate or nurture an environment of grace, in fact what it does is perpetuate the environment of violence leaving both abusers and their victims with no place to turn and without the healing that is truly available.
I said yes to Belinda Bauman when she asked me to come on board as a supporter and early signer of #SilenceIsNotSpiritual because I believe change is both possible and imperative. I have seen it happen when the men in leadership of a church humble themselves and determine to face their fears and have their hearts broken over the reality of the how many victims and abuse survivors they truly have sitting in their pews.