Dear Pastor Dan

Dear Pastor Dan,

It's been years.  I hope you're doing well and I pray your family is thriving and healthy.

I'm writing you today because of something you said to me so many years ago and I'm wondering if you understand the long-term and deeply unhealthy effects those words have had on me and my family. 

There were two pastors at the mega-church where we both served who made sweeping changes that impacted and changed the spiritual landscape of my family forever.  Those changes centered around my involvement in the church as Director of Drama Ministries and were based SOLELY on misinformation, judgment, condemnation, and the gossip of a few.

You said to me then, "Liz, you're on a dangerous path.  God has put these men in authority over you and your family.  You need to submit to that authority."

I wonder.  Is that the advice you have given to your own daughters?  "I know your pastor has yielded to gossip and innuendo, but God demands that you submit to that authority."  Or would you counsel a daughter in a bad marriage in this way? "I know your husband has assaulted you physically, mentally and spiritually, but this is the man God chose for you.  You must submit to his authority." (My abusive ex-husband used that tactic.)

Let me be VERY clear.  The Bible and scripture did NOT give those pastors the authority to undermine my involvement and leadership or to throw a child with a learning disability out of church because he was "too hard".  They used scripture as their excuse.  YOU used scripture as their excuse.  It was their sin that caused them to act with such thoughtless short-sidedness.  It was their sin - plain and simple. 

I wanted to serve God and to follow Him fully with all my heart, soul, gifts and talents.  I yielded to the whim and will of the good-old-boy religious hierarchy because I wanted to be a good Christian woman, wife and mother.  I did not want to be on the "wrong" path and I took your words to heart.

But you were wrong!

Scripture does NOT give authority to use, abuse, condemn, or throw out one of God's kids.  Women have been kept down by The Church for too long!  Enough is enough!

If there is reason for confrontation, Jesus laid out the steps that lead to reconciliation and restoration.  Anything short of those steps is wrong.  We must call it what it is - EVIL.

I followed the above mentioned steps and was pushed away over and over again.  I've accepted that there will never be restoration for me and my family.

I forgive you.

I forgive those good-old-boys who chose one another over truth.

I choose to love as Jesus loved, go where Jesus goes, and to tell the truth!  

I choose to call out evil when I see it.  

And to all the Pastor Dans out there, may your eyes be opened and may the scales fall from your eyes.  

Sill searching,

Liz Stoeckel