Nearly four years ago, my husband was a ministry leader in our church. Essentially what happened was one pastor took something my husband said very much out of context and drew his own conclusions about my husband's character. He started a witch hunt to get him forced out of the ministry, and he was successful.
About a year after that, when anger and hurt had cooled down enough for my husband to have a self-controlled meeting with the lead pastor, they hashed through this and a few other issues that had occurred during my husband's time of leading the ministry. They worked through everything together and by the end of the meeting reached an agreement that these things had been resolved (largely meaning that this accusation and some other things the witch-hunter had started were unfounded and weren't a reflection of my husband's character). My husband then asked the pastor that, if he were to put him down as a reference, if he felt he could give a good recommendation at this point. The pastor agreed and they shook hands. We thought it was resolved.
A few months ago some of these things suddenly resurfaced. An elder, who was apparently unaware of the meeting my husband had with the pastor, assumed there were still "unresolved issues." The next thing we know we are being asked to have meetings with the elders to work through these issues. We decided we had been through enough with the church, that our hurt and anger was still too deep and the wounds too fresh, and we declined the meeting, saying that we felt it was just unecessary and emotionally and spiritually harmful to us.
Fast forward to this week. My husband applied for a ministry opportunity and his application had been in process for several months. The application and interview process started before the elders decided to dig up the ol' grave, so my husband had already put down the pastor as his reference. By the time they got around to calling his references, all this past stuff had been brought up. And the pastor conveniently forgot that they had resolved the issues. So, he left a shitty recommendation, and consequently my husband was turned down for this ministry opportunity. It was especially painful because it's a ministry I also applied for and was accepted, and we were excited about serving together. Now that's not going to happen.
My husband is absolutely crushed and is spiritually despairing. I emailed the pastor and updated him about what happened. He offered to set up a time to meet with us for "reconciliation." From reading between the lines, we feel that what that means is a good beat down that my husband should take all responsibility for what has happened and that the church has never been wrong. Yeah, we aren't going to subject ourselves to that.
We've been church homeless since shortly after he was ripped out of that ministry. We do not want to be in church again because of what has been modeled to us in leadership. We are deeply hurting, angry, and spiritually sinking. Neither of us want to be in that position. We just want to be able to serve the Lord and to love others, but have found that this church has blocked that from happening (this is not the first time he's been turned away from ministry opportunities in the area. Word travels fast, you know.)
I don't even really know what I'm asking for right now. We need some sort of encouragement. I've been unable to focus on work at all this week as I battle outbursts of bawling my eyes out, imagining conversations where I tell them a thing or two about what I think, and just hoping that maybe none of this is actually happening and that it's not possible for a church to have such an impact on ministry opportunities FOUR YEARS LATER.
We just need some help getting over this. Anything you have to offer would be appreciated.
Submitted January 12, 2017 at 01:52PM by Unknown
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