The Church Burned Down

It was June 26, 2023, the evening of my grandmother’s 86th birthday party. I had decided to host it at our house while my husband, Miguel, was away on a business trip to Austin. He had just left the day before. Summer was finally here and the house was full. You could hear the sound of my family’s voices filling our home. My grandma was delighted to be surrounded by her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren. One of those great-grandchildren was due to arrive in the next several weeks, my fifth son. 

 

As the celebration carried on I saw the screen of my phone repeatedly light up in my peripheral vision. Notifications. Lots of them. I took a quick glance. Missed calls. Multiple text messages. A friend said she had received a letter from the church. 

 

No.

 

Not another moment. Not another precious moment stolen away from me due to crisis and harm from the church. 

 

I hid the phone from my view so that I wouldn’t be distracted for the last hour that I was still playing hostess. We took family pictures. We ate birthday cake and laughed at the combination of my grandma’s sweet and candid comments. 

 

Just two days prior, on my good friend’s fortieth birthday, we had received the results of the church investigation. It was an internal investigation that was performed by hand-selected church employees. An investigation based on our findings of misconduct and harm done to multiple church congregants.

 

The investigation had dragged on month after month with no end in sight. The wait was agonizing. We were stuck in constant anticipation for it to be finished while we desperately prayed for ownership, transparency, accountability, and possibly, just possibly, reconciliation. 

 

Our emotions rode a roller coaster up to periods of optimism and hope only to plummet down to discouragement and despair. It had been three months since we had discreetly asked them to seek the truth. Finally, the results came upon by our begging to make the roller coaster stop. With Miguel’s work travel coming down the pike, he asked that we receive the results together before he left me at home, 35 weeks pregnant and needing to care for our other four children.

 

And so the investigation results finally came. The response to our harm came via a letter sent to us electronically. 

 

The conclusion was that they had come to a different conclusion. But there were no specifics about what their interpretation was. No answers to our robust spreadsheet where we outlined each concern using as many specifics as possible. We had spent hours on that document. Weeks even. Attempting to convey the harm that was caused. 

 

And now, just a few days after receiving that letter, my heart was determined to stay light for my grandma’s milestone. The celebration began winding down and pretty soon I found myself waving goodbye to family as they walked back to their cars. As I closed and locked the door for the night I began to feel my body respond to the pending stress. 

 

Heart racing. Heaviness in my chest. My insides, shaking. Sorry, little one, we know this feeling well by now.

 

I grabbed my phone as I prompted the boys upstairs. They wanted to FaceTime Miguel. He had only been gone a day, but they already missed him. I told them to start getting ready for bed as I read through my texts.

 

One of the texts read, ”Our membership was paused.” 

 

Paused? Paused for what?

 

I raced to my inbox, surely we had a letter too. 

 

And that we did. Except our membership had not been paused. Instead, it was a formal excommunication letter, signed by our church elders. Our membership had been revoked, with explicit instructions that we and our children were no longer welcome on their premises or at any event that they sponsored. 

 

“Can we call Daddy now? Where is Daddy? Where’s his hotel? When is he coming home?”

 

I looked up from my phone to see their little faces. 

 

The shock was paralyzing. 

 

“Yes. Let’s…call…Daddy, “ I slowly answered while simultaneously trying to process what I was reading, “Right after you get your jammies on.” 

 

I needed more time.

 

It wasn’t long before I could hear the calling rings of FaceTime coming from my tablet. Miguel’s face lit up the screen. The four boys were beaming at him and he beamed right back. I impulsively took a screenshot of the happiness I was beholding at that moment. The joy was so palpable between them but stood in complete juxtaposition with our new reality.

 

After Miguel finished answering sixty-two questions about where he was and what he could see out his hotel window, I told the boys it was time for bed. They started shuffling up to the attic and I quietly closed our bedroom door in an attempt to muffle our conversation.

 

”So, we were excommunicated, huh?” I stated soberly.

 

”Excommunicated? I haven’t read it yet,” he replied. 

 

I don’t remember at what moment the tears started flowing, but I know that once they did there was no sense in muffling. The call with Miguel had to end and I needed to finish the bedtime routine with the boys, but the tears wouldn’t stop and they couldn’t be hidden. 

 

One by one the younger boys gathered in my door frame. Looking at their very pregnant mother, sobbing on her bed. I cringe that this has become a core memory for some of them. My oldest emerged and they all stood there perplexed with fear. 

 

“Did someone die, mom?”

 

I couldn’t answer so I shook my head, “no”. No one had physically died, but it felt like it. I couldn’t bear to tell them what they had just lost or… who.

 

Perceiving the need for some privacy, my firstborn ushered his siblings back to their beds. He was aware of the stress we were under. He offered me a hug and lingered. I wasn’t strong enough to tell him and I wasn’t sure I ever would be.

 

I needed my husband. I needed support. 

 

Less than 24 hours after we received the excommunication letter the church held an emergency meeting for its members. A gathering where the church leaders would explain reasons for everyone’s need to cut our young family off from the fold. It was just as much of a surprise to the congregation as it was to us. Extreme punishment soiled in confusion. 

 

In the days following this emergency meeting, I received very little correspondence from anyone at church. And as fate would have it, my baby shower had been scheduled for that very same week. This baby shower was hosted by a church friend and had been planned for other congregants to attend. Women that I had formed relationships with over the past ten years had planned to celebrate my baby. However, after the congregational meeting, the majority of RSVPs quietly turned from yes to no without so much as a comment. 

 

I remember thinking, it was as if, in a moment, the church burned down. The church, which tragically also included some of our closest family members, vanished from our lives in one big catastrophic moment. 

 

The church burned down.

 

The phrase echoed in my head.

 

It gave me the most accurate way to describe the pain of losing an entire community within the course of a day, but not only that, it also became a metaphor for understanding the impact that spiritual abuse can have on one’s mind.

 

A new perspective where:

 

• The church is no longer a place I can go.
• I don’t have access to church family.

For the first time in my life, I stopped visiting a church building every Sunday. Sure, having a newborn baby in a church service can be a bit of a juggle, but the challenges stacked against our attendance were much more emotional, spiritual, and mental than physical. There was no brushing this under the rug or powering through.

 

Seven souls were impacted in seven different ways.

 

We needed to slow down. 

 

Could God wait for us? Was He rolling His eyes at our inability to pick ourselves up off the floor? Were there more consequences awaiting us? Was He even there?

 

Perhaps even more pressing was the response of the few Christians that remained in our lives. Would they be patient? Would we be blamed? Would they accept us when our faith had fractured into something unrecognizable? Or when we couldn’t trust the church?

 

In one fell swoop, we were no longer like them.

 

Where did we belong?

 

Prior to this experience, I had self-righteously labeled nonchurch goers as unbelievers or undisciplined Christians. In my mind, you were either one or the other. It’s what I had been taught.

 

However, after being thrust into the outskirts of the church-going tribe, I can more accurately see the people on the outside. Not the unbelievers or the so-called bad Christians, but those who had wandered away hurting and filled with distrust. The ones that wanted the church to so badly represent the Jesus described in the Bible but instead were severely harmed or witnessed someone else’s harm in the church. 

 

Sexual, spiritual, physical, and emotional abuse from the leaders who preach holiness and are said to be held to a higher standard is devastating to one’s spirit. 

 

Extreme moral failures are happening day after day in church leadership across the country, and yet we still offer a judgmental stare to anyone who chooses to sit at home on a Sunday morning or watch their kid play soccer.

 

Do you know why some of them choose to do that? 

 

Because it’s safe.

 

Staying away from church feels safer than going for many people. 

 

And guess what? 

 

They wish that was not the case.

 

In this season of not belonging, I’ve experienced a conversion of sorts, a new perspective. Though it has been grueling and arduous, my eyes have been opened to a world of pain that I refused to take seriously when I had a church to call home. I know now that writing these wounded hearts off as bitter or claiming to have the greatest church in town doesn’t erase what happened to them. These responses don’t provide genuine care and I’m very sorry to those that I myself have responded to with contempt or quick-fix suggestions. 

 

I’m on a new journey.

 

A journey to find out what is healing to a wounded soul.

 

Will you bravely join me?