Yesterday I saw this clip⁠, in which Pia speaks about her experience of abuse. Her account felt so similar to our family’s experience with the administrative leadership at Church in the Valley. The difference is that our experience was not physical. I had seen the possibility, recognized what was happening, and did not believe that anyone would do anything about it if I spoke up.

And I was right.

Maybe Pia is right when she says that religious people are slower. I was.

I understand that spiritual abuse is rarely talked about. Most of us do not even know that it is a thing. For an introductory look at spiritual abuse, check out this information from WomensLaw⁠.

In John 7:24, Jesus advises us to look beneath the surface so that we can judge correctly. To judge is to ascertain what needs to be repaired and restored, and who needs to repair and restore it. There is to be no condemnation.

But within the Adventist community, leadership routinely seems to turn away from its responsibility to teach, model, and support accountability. The problem may be that spiritual abuse, and the lack of accountability for it, have become so entrenched in Adventist culture that leadership fears guiding the community in learning how to judge well. They may fear rupture and division if concerns are openly addressed. Therefore, they remain silent when harm is reported to them.

Inevitably, when accountability is neglected, an issue of abuse is sometimes dragged into the public square. Much buried resentment then explodes with volcanic force onto the individuals accused, creating infernos of condemnation. One accused person becomes a scapegoat for all who have been denied justice within the community.

I have been witnessing this phenomenon continue to wreak havoc recently as a high-profile Adventist family faces public scrutiny over allegations that have been taken before the criminal court. The community’s response has divided into factions committed either to defending or to condemning the individuals involved.

When leadership routinely protects its profit by sweeping injustice under the rug instead of building a culture of accountability and repair, there will be eruptions such as this. These are the language, as Dr. King said, of the unheard.

I recognize this pattern because our family’s concerns were also left unaddressed. The community’s response to allegations of abuse in the public square is connected to its response when harm is reported within the community. That is why I am bringing these experiences together.

And while I hope that this public incident will spark systemic change within Adventism and promote the elevation of Christlike judgment, that hope is deathly faint. In my experience, this organization continues to promote and protect perpetrators of harm and ignore the people whom they have harmed.

I spoke up to let our harm be known and attempted to have all levels of administration engage in the process of accountability. Here is my story.

The administration of Church in the Valley, CIV, invited us, a group of single moms, to use the facility as the venue for the single mom support initiative that we had already begun to build in the community. The administration offered to support the development of our work. I encouraged the group to refuse the offer because I felt that there was some underlying danger. It turned out that I was right.

In one founding mom’s words:

“To whom it may concern,

I am writing about the single moms group that we started as individual single moms, we would use the space at CIV. But we had no religious affiliation with the church as some of us came from different religious backgrounds. I myself am not a Christian. We started this group to support each other during our tough times. Our kids got together and played. I was never a part of the church along with many of the other mothers.”

The CIV administration had a similar idea: to expand its single moms’ oil change service into a single moms’ ministry. They had invited Jennifer Maggio, founder of The Life of A Single Mom, to host a training session for other pastors. They also hosted an event featuring Maggio as the guest of honour and keynote speaker, highlighting what single moms could become as the starting point of their expansion.

The administration seemed to have a leader in mind for its ministry. That person was already part of our core start-up leadership group. If our work became well-established and successful in the community without the church, the administration would not have had access to the person they had in mind to lead their ministry. In hindsight, it seems to me that they saw our potential and viewed our little community group as competition for their large organization.

The invitation to use the facility, accompanied by an offer to support our initiative’s development, seems similar to David’s invitation to Uriah to come to dinner and then go home to his wife to hide what David had done.

And just as David had no right to use Bathsheba, the CIV administration had no right to attempt to use any person to satisfy its ambitions without explicit consent and appropriate compensation. There could have been a successful and productive partnership.

The administration also had no right to surreptitiously present our work as theirs by bringing us into the building and offering enough proximity to mimic partnership or ownership, while neither supporting nor partnering with us as promised. They had no right to use me to continue building the work and then attempt to starve me out of the equation so that their handpicked leader would remain as evidence of the administration’s successful development of a single moms’ ministry.

Instead of supporting our success as joint leaders, they seemed determined to put a wedge between us so that our joint work would not compete with the kingdom they were building.

I remember the very day that the administrator guided an internal team member to limit communication with me and instead unilaterally pursue the person they had previously earmarked to lead. I saw it happen. I saw the discomfort in their internal team member’s eyes. Instead of resisting dishonesty and dishonour, like Joab, they complied.

But our work, our Bathsheba, has not died. The ministry that the administration had in mind never really materialized, just as the child conceived through David’s wrongdoing did not survive. Their kingdom and power were large enough to mask that failure, just as David had used his power to attempt to conceal what he had done to Bathsheba and Uriah.

But we have not died. Our village still lives.

And though we have suffered great loss and grieved betrayal, our work continues. I believe it will become more than we had even asked, dreamt, or imagined.

The single moms’ oil change service also remains. I believe it remains because it was the fruit of the hearts of people who wanted to serve and who sought a leader they hoped would help build a community of service.

The Extreme Home Repair and the Single Moms’ Empowerment and Support group have dried up. Yet the Kindness Hub, a revival of the original work, remains thriving and alive. We, single moms, revived that work and supported our intended replacement to keep that service alive.

I still believe that the work at CIV has the potential to live and thrive again, to become a valley of living beings instead of dry bones. I have been praying for this for them. Even though I am no longer part of that community, I took them a whole plan for reviving their community services work⁠.

I believe in the vision of having that place become a community that hosts a thriving community connection hub. I also believe that the current administration responded to a call to lead that revival. I hope they will lead the congregation to remove the covetousness that David and Achan allowed to bring death and devastation to the community.

I hope that no one’s reputation will be killed, that characters will be strengthened, and that dreams and visions will become a vibrant reality. I hope the community will become like a city set on a hill instead of a valley holding dead men’s bones.

To get there, injustice must be acknowledged. Otherwise, the work being done will be like sounding gongs and tinkling cymbals in a pen of goats who wonder why the community continues to be shuffled around instead of organically growing.

Instead of doing anything about the injustice, people have buried their heads in the sand or ended friendships because I was not being patient enough and waiting more years for accountability conversations to occur.

Two pastors met with me and told me that if I did not stop seeking accountability, I would likely hear from the Adventist church’s legal department. I experienced this as a verbal threat intended to silence me. In that meeting, they tried to pressure me to agree that speaking up was threatening the church.

One pastor said that I could have requested a conversation and waited for answers. He did not tell the other pastor that I had brought the issue to him almost two years earlier. I had sat with him and spoken for an hour in the presence of another person. He had told me that he would do due diligence and then call another meeting to discuss his findings. He did not tell the other pastor that I had been waiting for a response ever since.

His expressed concern in that meeting was, “all pastors have is their reputation.” I understood this to imply that their actions were to remain unchallenged to protect their reputation and preserve the appearance of peace for the congregation.

I kept showing up with a smile and encouragement to love each other more while bleeding internally from spiritual and economic abuse. I watched the people responsible be celebrated and elevated while my family suffered.

We are told that the church is a special place and taught that its leaders are spiritually and morally superior to common folk. Someone might challenge this idea. If you do, I invite you to reflect: how frequently do parishioners or members seek counsel from pastors because they have been taught that pastors are special men and women of God?

But they are not.

They are humans who have responded to a desire to contribute to the wellbeing of society by working in their chosen profession, as we all do.

Let’s pause to engage briefly with the dimensions of wellbeing⁠. Wellness is enough balance in each dimension to create the harmony of wellbeing. Every person who helps fill a need in these spheres is a person of God contributing to wellness and balance for us all.

So, dear reader, pastors are human beings who need correction and guidance just as much as the rest of us do. When we allow their behaviour to go unchecked, they can become more hardened and cause damage that continues to wound and divide the communities they serve for many generations.

Abuse can become the norm: a visible, tragic, and generationally accepted norm. We have many historical examples of the devastation that can cause.

Whom does it become acceptable to abuse, enslave, oppress, and exploit when no one corrects harm and it is allowed to proceed unchecked?

Enslavers have historically given enslaved people just enough to keep them alive, dependent, and singing songs of hope while their work is stolen, openly or surreptitiously, to build the enslavers’ kingdom and increase their profit margin. That was my experience at CIV too.

I finally recognized that while singing kept hurting souls tethered to life, to love, and to God, freedom did not come from singing alone. It also came from action that supported freedom and life, because faith without works is dead.

I have taken all the steps that Jesus asked us to take in Matthew 18:15-17.

And now here I am, speaking plainly with the hope that no other family will experience what our family has experienced. Maybe someone will be freed sooner than we were. Maybe someone will suffer less than we did because this offers enough light, love, and solidarity to give them the witness to leave and seek shelter sooner.

And maybe the community will truly thrive the way I have always hoped it would.