Thank you for the courage of those who have shared their stories to help churches become safer. We have permission from different people to have their stories on here so that others can learn for them:
The humiliation
The context: After my 4th child was born, we moved away from London to an affluent commuter town. At this point; my husband had ‘checked out’ of family life and the marriage and pretty much stopped pretending to be a believer. He was unfaithful and often not around.
Between 2007-2012 it was becoming very clear to me that I was unhappy. But leaving wasn’t easy. I was totally financially dependent on my ex and had a deep belief that I didn’t want to end my marriage.
Ending my marriage was the most traumatic kind of grief. It nearly overwhelmed me completely.
What happened: My pastor at the time, had called and messaged several times one week, asking to meet up. I didn’t want to meet up and explain why I’d ended my marriage as I was going to court, trying to find work, being a single mum to 4 kids under 10years and I was embarrassed to tell all that I’d been living through.
Eventually; he insisted I meet him. I was summed to his office and he had the church secretary there as a kind of chaperone I suppose. I didn’t know her well. It was extremely intimidating when I was incredibly fragile and vulnerable.
My pastor told me how my ex had been to see him last week. How devastated my ex was that I’d thrown him out. How much he missed the children. That he’d acknowledged he’d been bad husband, but that he’d had a “road to Damascus” moment; where he now fully understood and was repentant. That he believed I was experiencing some kind of post-natal depression and I wasn’t in my right mind. How worried he was for my mental health etc
I then showed my pastor the thousands of threatening texts I’d received, the hundreds of missed calls that day, the messages explaining in detail about the sex he was having just from the last 2 days.
I was completely humiliated and felt completely ashamed and naked. It was extremely traumatic.
How would a trauma informed approach have influences the pastor and what would he have done differently had he been trained to understand trauma?
After 15 years of debt, Peter was diagnosed with depression. The poverty situation had been relentless and their children had been bullied for not having the latest clothes or toys and he felt like a failure.
Sally and Peter were pastors of a contemporary church in a city with many university students. They were part of a movement that had a clear 2020 vision to reach the younger generation.
Starting the church hadn’t been easy, as the couple, with their young babies moved from an area where housing was cheaper, and the city where they were relocating were not welcoming of a new church being started.
The husband worked long hours in business to raise a salary, whilst the wife met the new people who were gathering and pastored the new members of the new church.
Soon the church grew to over 200 people and the movement began to send preachers to visit. The expectation was that there was a large honorarium given to each speaker. The church had regular requests from preachers from many nations wanting to speak and the young pastors felt that they couldn’t say no due to their membership and therefore commitment to the larger international movement.
On one visit, Peter and Sally were taken out for dinner by the visiting preacher who came from overseas, and the topic of dress code was discussed. The high value of ‘looking good’ was discussed and the importance of looking contemporary and relevant was laboured. The couple had no money, were in debt due to the lack of salary required to maintain basic living and yet felt pressured to spend money on clothing. They regularly didn’t have enough money to eat and would only have food when they entertained new church members on the churches budget and they ate the left overs the following day.
After 15 years of debt, Peter was diagnosed with depression. The poverty situation had been relentless and their children had been bullied for not having the latest clothes or toys and he felt like a failure.
How would a trauma informed approach influence the couples experience as pastors? What would you have done?
Julia is a pastor who was being harassed and had a death threat and multiple twitter accounts, websites taken in her name. She was being sent multiple threatening anonymous emails and organizations and individuals were being sent anon letters that lied about her and accused her of many things that were easy to evidence were lies. Julia had lost many of her closest staff members and ‘friends’ in the season due to them being groomed (for 3 years prior to the main death threat) by the harasser with financial gifts. It became clear that the man had sexually harassed student girls, stolen money from others in the church and he had also hidden passports from his wife who had told Julia the week before that she was being domestically abused by him.
Once the main harasser was arrested, Julia emailed 7 of the local church leaders asking for help, prayer and support. She also explained that she was afraid of the impending court case and the reputation of the churches in the city being seen as fighting. She explained in the emails that she was needing to have several people from her church going to testify in support of the traumatic experience she had endured and she knew that the man on bail would have persuaded people who had left the church to defend him. No one replied to the emails.
4 Years later, in a small church leaders meeting, when the pastors were asked why they never supported, replied to the emails asking for help or offered anything- they replied ‘you should have rung – I don’t read emails after the first line.’
How would a trauma informed approach have influences the church and what would they have done differently had they been trained to understand trauma?
A Pastor of a fairly large church, sadly had a stillbirth baby.
Several families came up to the woman who had given birth the week before and said;
‘…we feel very stressed because our children had been praying for your baby to live and now we have had to explain that Jesus doesn’t always answer our prayers. It’s not been an easy week for us’
What should have happened? What would have been a trauma informed strategy for the pastor?
