Ann Maree:
Hello, and welcome to the Safe to Hope podcast. Safe to Hope: Hope Renewed in Light of Eternity exists to offer women space to tell their stories of suffering and loss with care, dignity, and honesty. Though all suffering is loss, we ground that belief in a God who cares and remains present. This is our hope.

This podcast is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting the dignity of women’s stories and creating a space for truth-telling without pressure or performance. Together, we listen for God’s redemptive thread and look for ways to join Him in His transforming work.

Before we begin, we want to take a moment and care for our listeners. The Safe to Hope podcast typically includes discussions of abuse, and this season will as well. In particular, we’ll be talking about spiritual abuse. However, our conversations may include other forms of abuse. Please listen at your own pace and take breaks as needed. If at any point you need to pause or step away, that’s okay. Your well-being matters.

Julia:
Hi listeners, my name is Julia Filner, and I’m a therapist, advocate, and board chair at Help[H]er, and I’ll be hosting the Safe to Hope podcast today. I’m joined by Leigh, who has graciously chosen to share part of her story with us.

In this conversation, our guest is sharing her story in her own words and at her own pace. Nothing in this episode is intended to pressure forgiveness, reconciliation, or closure. Our aim is to listen with care and honor the dignity of her experience.

Hey everyone, this is Julia, and welcome back to Safe to Hope. Today’s episode is a little different.

The story we’re sharing today, like most real stories, doesn’t fit neatly into categories. When we talk about harm and abuse in church spaces, sometimes the narrative is clear. Something happened and someone left. But that’s not always how it goes.

Sometimes people do stay. Sometimes things change. And sometimes people find themselves living in the space between those things. And we want to make space for that complexity.

Every situation has its own context: the community, the leadership, the history. So today, as you listen, we invite you to hold this story as one story, not a template or a blueprint. There isn’t one right response, and there isn’t one path forward that fits everyone. And maybe as you listen, you’ll find places where your own story overlaps or places where it doesn’t. Both are welcome here.

Today, I have with me as our storyteller, Leigh. Leigh has been married for 32 years and has two adult daughters and her first grandchild on the way. Congrats.

Leigh:
Thank you.

Julia:
She’s been a biblical counselor for 15 years and has received Level Three trauma training at the Allender Center. Today, we’re going to talk about her experience on church staff, where she served for 13 years. Leigh, welcome.

Leigh:
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Julia:
Can you start by telling us a little bit about your background and your personal relationship to the church?

Leigh:
Yeah. I’ve been part of my current church for almost 30 years. We joined when I was 24 years old. So I was newly married, eager, really hopeful. I was the person who knelt by their bed and gave my life to Jesus when I was five. So church has always been home to me.

I was that kid that loved church. I liked children’s church and Wednesday night hymn sings and prayer meetings and the everlasting banana split at VBS.

And even so, I remember being really hesitant before joining my denomination because of its views on women. I had grown up certainly in complementarian circles. I understood the framework. But in college, I think I just did experience a lot of freedom to lead and explore my gifts. And I worried that church in a complementarian setting might feel restricting to me.

Julia:
You described the church as feeling like a home. I know so many can resonate with that experience. And then college gave you this different kind of freedom. What did that freedom look like for you?

Leigh:
I was just involved in everything, in all different organizations, and in many leadership roles in those organizations.

So two that come to mind readily are: I was the chaplain of my sorority, which I enjoyed because I was able to mentor people. And I was the co-chair of a very large service organization. About 60% of our student body volunteered in the community in various ways, and I co-chaired that for a year.

Julia:
And you also mentioned hesitating because of the denomination’s views on women. So what felt hard about that for you?

Leigh:
Well, I knew that women were not in leadership roles in my denomination and that the denomination also held strong views of roles in marriage.

But ultimately, we joined because we found strong teaching, we found warm community, and we found opportunities to serve, which I wanted. And I jumped in with my whole heart.

Julia:
Jumping in with your whole heart. What did that look like?

Leigh:
Well, like many women, I served everywhere. VBS, taking meals, doing weddings, funerals, teaching. If there was a role that was open to me, I served there. I think I even taught children’s choir at one point.

And then after I homeschooled my children for a few years, I joined the church staff part-time as the children’s director. And then I moved into the women’s director role, and I was a biblical counselor. That was part-time. Then later, I took on a more full-time role where they added visitor assimilation, and I helped launch the small group ministry.

And I loved ministry. I loved being on church staff. I loved the people, and I loved walking with women.

Julia:
Well, you’ve done a whole lot of everything. It sounds like you were also really trusted in that space.

At what point did you sense that this sense of trust or stability in your place in the church was beginning to shift?

Leigh:
Well, looking back now, I can see that the church was under strain for many years, but the COVID years intensified everything.

What had been differences in philosophy of ministry turned into conflict over race, gender, politics, worship, really almost everything. And in that environment, I began to feel scrutinized.

Elders and other leaders asked questions of the pastor about whether I could lead small group discussions. Could I teach on a video? Could I send this email? Lots of scrutiny.

Julia:
Yeah. I mean, that sounds like a real shift from being trusted in a lot of different capacities and categories in your church to feeling scrutinized. What was happening there?

Leigh:
So it kind of came to a head when I was in charge of visitor assimilation. And part of that process involved the elders interviewing potential new members and then voting to accept them.

So I would line up the interview, alert the potential member when they had been approved for membership, and then I just created a template email, copied and pasted with new names each time, letting them know that they’d been accepted into membership.

So after three years of doing this, someone accused me of trying to speak for the elders instead of letting them speak.

And that was kind of the breaking point for me after being questioned about a lot of different things and then being questioned about something that I had been doing the same way for years. It just kind of broke something in me. I was exhausted. And I went to the pastor and I told him I needed the elders to decide what they wanted me to do.

Julia:
Wait, so you had been doing this for three years?

Leigh:
Mm-hmm. Same email.

Julia:
So it sounds like this wasn’t really about an email, and you’re left to question yourself. You said that it began to break something in you, and that’s not a small statement.

What was happening for you in that moment?

Leigh:
I think there was the wear and tear of ministry, but there was also the exhaustion of the division and the fighting. I think a staff feels that distinctly.

And then it felt like, in the course of about a year, everything kind of became focused on me and my role. Was I allowed to ask these questions in small groups? Did I have too much influence on the pastor? Why was I helping to teach in this way?

So it felt like it became focused.

Julia:
It focused on you.

Leigh:
Mm-hmm.

Julia:
Yeah. Your role, your position, what you represented became highlighted.

And so you went to the pastor to try to get some clarity?

Leigh:
Yeah. I asked him to ask the elders what they wanted me to do.

And so what this led to was a meeting where they debated my job description line by line, and they ended up approving it as it was written.

But during that process, it became clear to them that there were differing views among the leadership on how women should function in the church. So then, in order to try to gain clarity on women’s roles, they launched a broader conversation amongst themselves about the church’s position on how women should function in the church.

Julia:
The elders were debating your job description line by line. What actually did that process look like?

Leigh:
I don’t know. I wasn’t invited into the meeting. They had a session meeting, I think it was executive session, where they took my job description and debated each task to see if it was biblical.

Julia:
Okay. So your job was being discussed in a room that you weren’t in. And though you weren’t there, did you have a voice in that?

Leigh:
No, I wasn’t invited to the meeting. And I think what’s sad is to look back and realize I didn’t even consider that I would be.

I had already been in a meeting that year with the session where the pastor asked me to come and talk about the small group ministry. I was in charge of it. I was the only guest. I was the only woman in the room.

And as soon as the meeting was called to order, a motion was made for them to go into executive session, in essence, to kick me out of the meeting.

So thankfully, the motion didn’t pass in that meeting, but it did leave me with a feeling of being very unwelcome and not really ready to attempt to push into another meeting.

And so I really didn’t have a voice in the conversation. And I didn’t even have an elder — not one elder came to me outside of that meeting to ask me any questions about my job, my calling, what had happened to precipitate this meeting.

Julia:
You didn’t even expect to be in the room, and then you were asked to leave.

Leigh:
That was not the meeting on my job description. That was a previous meeting. So when the meeting for my job description came up, it kind of taught me, so to speak, not to push in.

Julia:
That’s right. You learned through experience the places that you are welcome and the places that you are not welcome.

Leigh:
Right.

Julia:
So also what I’m hearing is that what started as questions about your role was revealing something else, and the conversation began to expand and evolve.

So how did those conversations within the church community evolve?

Leigh:
The pastor started those meetings asking the men to place their position on women’s roles on a continuum. And I believe he did that because he wanted to show them how many different positions could be held.

But I think it kind of backfired because instead it led the elders to believe that they could find this exact point where they could pinpoint women’s roles and they would be correct biblically.

That launched the discussions. That launched the debates of what women were allowed to do. And those discussions dragged on for about four to five months of meetings.

Some of those were open to church members. Some of those were closed. And very quickly, the meetings grew contentious. I think it showed the deeper resentments and the disunity among the elders and the members of the congregation.

The meetings came to a head when our pastor had to take an emergency sabbatical due to the stress.

Julia:
These meetings were talking about a category of people and their roles and their position in the church without those people being present in the room.

Leigh:
Yeah.

Julia:
And what kinds of arguments, maybe more specifically, kept coming up? And as you look back on those, what did it begin to reveal about how women were being viewed?

Leigh:
Now, they’re debating everywhere on the continuum from, you know, women don’t serve to what’s allowable in our denomination is probably women being deacons, non-ordained deacons, and anything in between.

But what it revealed for our congregation was the inconsistencies in the positions that were held.

So, for example, the argument was being made that women could not teach mixed groups of men and women. But we have a campus minister, a young woman at a college three miles away, teaching men and women in a Bible study, and that was deemed okay.

We were told that women missionaries were permissible because they were skilled and effective teachers and evangelizers, but women teaching under the roof of the church in mixed groups was not allowed.

We were told that women could not lead or read Scripture in a worship service. And yet for years we had had Christmas services or other special services where women read Scripture.

So I think overall what I look back and see was the most dangerous thing is that we were debating this topic from the standpoint of figuring out what this exact point was where something was biblical, and if you did anything other, you were sinful.

So we’re quickly changing the language.

But what it did was it left no margin. It was: this is right, this is wrong. If you do this, you’re okay. If you do this, you’re sinful.

And so it left us fitting in a very small box.

And it got to the point where it was even being defined not just who women could teach and in what settings, but what topics they could teach and not teach.

Julia:
Yeah, it’s hard to hear. And it’s easy, when you’re discussing and debating topics and principles, to feel like you’re doing the right thing while also missing the impact of how that feels for an entire category of people, the entire half of the church.

Were women participating in these conversations?

Leigh:
So most of the meetings were open, but the women were mostly silent because there really wasn’t any space made for us to talk in that environment.

And we began to think if we did, we were stepping out of line, we were in sin.

So I think slowly we began to ask some questions, push back on arguments in the meeting. But at that point, that was not well received. And the posture and the tone of the men in the meeting were harsh.

And I think the women felt very exhausted and very bewildered by what was happening.

Julia:
Well, and similar to what you were saying before, you learned that you wouldn’t be invited into these meetings. And so it didn’t necessarily come into your mind to ask. Or when you were asked to leave, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary.

And women were conditioned or taught to be silent for fear of how they would be perceived.

Leigh:
Yes.

Julia:
What did that feel like?

Leigh:
Well, for me, for a while, it didn’t feel like anything. I was very disconnected from my body in those meetings.

I do have chronic pain issues, and they were really under control for a lot of years. But very slowly, I started to become aware that my body was reacting to the tension.

So after about four months, my pastor did take a sabbatical because he crashed. And then he came back and he wanted to give me a sabbatical.

And so that sabbatical came at a really important time. And as soon as I stopped, my body crashed.

I think, looking back, that my body knew what was happening long before my mind did, as it often does.

And all my inflammatory health issues flared up. I really, really remember not being able to get off the couch for a couple of months. It was a very scary time.

And during that time when I was on sabbatical, the church actually split. And so the more conservative elders left and planted a church.

And when I contemplated coming back, I decided that I couldn’t figure out how to come back into my role and still care for myself.

So I came back for about a month and tied up loose ends and ultimately quit my job.

And that was just a season of intense grief because I wasn’t just grieving a job. I was grieving a calling. I was grieving relationships, friendships, a church I’d loved for decades.

And I was also grieving my reputation because there were many lies, many half-truths being spread around our fairly small town.

And it really felt to me like I was grieving like someone had died. And I was really embarrassed by how much I was grieving and how much it hurt.

Julia:
Well, I just have to say that that sounds so terrifying. And it makes sense that your body reacted that way because you lost so much. And as you said, our bodies start telling the truth and feeling the impact before we can even fully make sense of it, what’s happened and what we’re in.

You said that you felt embarrassed by how much it hurt. Why do you think embarrassment was coming up for you?

Leigh:
Probably for a lot of reasons.

One, I think our American church in general doesn’t know how to make space for grief. So we’re embarrassed when it comes. We don’t know what to do with it.

But I think I also felt embarrassed and confused because I was continually told by our leadership and even our presbytery how valued I was, how much they liked me as a person. And that just didn’t jive with what my experience was, with how much they had hurt me.

So it left me questioning: Was I even allowed to feel hurt? If they liked me so much, why do I feel so hurt? What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so devastated by what’s happened?

Julia:
Yeah, you’re being told that you’re valued and also being hurt and sidelined. And that kind of contradiction can cause so much not only confusion, but pain.

Leigh:
Yeah, it created a dissonance that I don’t know if I’ve even resolved to this day. I can’t make it fit together completely.

But I did learn to welcome my grief. And it kind of came when I heard this quote: “Your grief will be in proportion to how much you invested in something.”

And that just kind of changed everything. It finally was like, of course this is going to hurt. Of course. I’ve given my life to the church, but also this church. I’ve invested myself here. And it makes sense that that grief would be the response.

So even though I was struggling physically, spiritually, emotionally, I tried to keep attending church each Sunday. I wasn’t on staff any longer, but I wanted to be at church.

There were a lot of changes happening, and I realized I couldn’t even do that. I would cry when I hit the doors, and I would cry through every service.

And one Sunday after church, I looked at my husband and I said, “I just can’t do this anymore. I feel like I spend all week tending to this really deep wound, covering it over, and then Sunday comes and the Band-Aid gets ripped off and it opens the wound again. And then I just start over. I just reset and try to heal only to know that Sunday’s coming again.”

So I decided that I just needed to stay home.

So for eight months, I didn’t go to church. Sometimes I would visit other churches. Some Sundays I would just sit in silence with the Lord. Some days I would cry. Some days I would have brunch with friends and just enjoy God’s good gifts.

But it very, very slowly felt like I was beginning to heal.

Julia:
When you stepped away from the church, what did your relationship with God feel like?

Leigh:
I don’t think I could see it at the time, but I think what that season was, was learning to be with God and knowing that He was with me, that He loved me.

I spent a lot of time sitting in my sunroom, in my backyard, breathing. I spent a lot of time crying.

And I do something called process journaling where I just write unedited. I spent a lot of time writing. And I’m not usually a journaler, but that helped a lot.

And I would try to pray, but it just seemed to end in silence. I just kept coming back to a lot of stillness and a lot of silence.

And I can see now how gentle the Lord was with me. I think He was reassuring me, but maybe even teaching me for the first time that He loves me when I’m not doing anything for Him.

Julia:
I love that you gave yourself permission to sit and be silent. It sounds like it can be a little bit of a weird space to be in if you haven’t done that before. But gosh, God does often meet us in those quiet moments.

So it sounds like stepping away from the church for you did not mean and did not equate to stepping away from God.

How do you now understand what you experienced? If we’re kind of looking back more specifically at your church situation, we talked at the beginning of starting this podcast just that as you tell your story, sometimes you start with a kind of a general overview: “This is what happened.”

And the more you go over it, sometimes you, from a different vantage point, begin to see some of the more particularities.

So tell me a little bit more about what you’ve begun to notice as you’ve been sitting with this and reflecting and journaling.

Leigh:
Yeah, I think that when you’re in the middle of it, you can’t really see the brokenness of something. It becomes your normal. Like we say, it becomes the air you breathe, the water you swim in.

And only in the last couple of years have I been able to have language for it.

And the language I have is this word “dehumanization,” which sounds like such a strong word, and I do not use it lightly.

But what I have realized is that dehumanization doesn’t always look overt or cruel. Most of the time it is subtle and quiet and seems to be unintentional.

I think dehumanization at its worst is spiritual abuse. But even at its best, it is the ground where spiritual abuse gets cultivated.

And I think it’s happening across our country in churches. And women have a feeling that something’s not right, but they don’t know what it is.

Julia:
That’s right. And dehumanization is not a word that people arrive at quickly.

And knowing you, you are a very thoughtful and intentional person. Finding language can often take so much time. And there’s almost this putting on, taking off, negotiating, renegotiating. You don’t always have this immediate awakening moment.

So how did you come to this word, “dehumanization”?

Leigh:
I remember even being in the room when these discussions were taking place, thinking, “We are not people to them right now.”

And even though we’re flesh and blood, we’re sitting here, and in some spaces they’re interacting with us, they’re acting like they’re talking about somebody else or something else.

And so I’ve come to believe that dehumanization happens in our churches in four different ways.

Women are talked about, but not with. We are reduced to stereotypes. We’re forced to conform to the male culture. And when our gifts are used, those contributions aren’t being acknowledged.

So the first one, one of the most common ways, and what happened in our church, is that women were being talked about and not with.

Decisions get made that directly affect women — how we serve, what we’re allowed to do, how our gifts are understood — without women being meaningfully included in the conversation.

And it creates this parent-child dynamic where men decide, women comply.

And it doesn’t matter how thoughtful, educated, or spiritually mature the women in the congregation are.

I remember during the discussions, some of the meetings were open. And at first I felt really hopeful about that.

And then we walked into the room, and the elders sat around a large conference table, and then chairs were set up around the edges where women sat — not at the table, around the table.

And then there were handouts given to all the elders, and there were never enough for the women, even when we were coming back month after month. There were only enough for the men at the table.

And I remember looking at the women in the room, knowing that these women had been wrestling with these Scriptures about women’s roles, some of them for decades, because they wanted to honor the Scriptures in their own lives for themselves.

And that some of the men at the table hadn’t even read the material to prepare for the meeting. And yet they were talking and we were not.

Julia:
Okay. What were you feeling when you walked into the room and you saw that?

Leigh:
Yeah, I think my stomach dropped. It’s one of those moments where you suspect something would be that way, but when you see it, you can’t believe it.

And I think the other thing was being dumbfounded that they didn’t see it. That this was their normal.

Julia:
Yes. And that they didn’t think through that it could be any other way.

Hmm. Wow. I mean, that’s just such a powerful visual. And something like how rooms are set up — the display happening before you — can communicate something that words cannot in the moment.

It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis wrote about the idea of the inner ring. And that depiction is alive in what you described, the visual representation of the inner ring.

And Lewis discusses how there’s this desire to be on the inside, and that corrupts people and can quietly shape people to exclude others. And sometimes it’s out of cruelty, but oftentimes it’s out of that person’s desire to belong.

Leigh:
Yeah.

Julia:
Where did you start to see kind of this visual representation of the inner ring and the exclusion begin to show up in leadership decisions?

Leigh:
I think, just to give a broad view of it, we began to value the rules over relationships, the policies over people.

And all these conversations are being framed as biblical fidelity. “We want to be faithful to the Scriptures.” And of course that matters to me. It mattered to the women in the room.

But what we began to notice was how much confidence was being placed in our personal interpretations of the Bible, sometimes treating those interpretations as infallible.

But what I realized is if we really want to be biblically faithful, then we have to care about how we speak to women, how we talk about women.

And so the leadership became so focused on getting it right that they missed loving the people in front of them by giving them a voice and listening to them.

Julia:
And you were mentioning earlier that women have been carrying real and significant responsibilities, but at the same time, you weren’t given voice or authority to match those responsibilities.

Leigh:
Absolutely. I think that’s happening in many, many churches.

And I just believe that your voice should be in proportion to your responsibility.

So women are carrying these huge responsibilities. They’re running ministries, caring for people, holding the community together without having any real authority or influence in decision-making.

So in that period of time, my counselor said to me, “All responsibility and no authority is slavery. All authority and no responsibility is a slave master.”

I just remember feeling it in my whole body when he said that. I kept turning that over and over, and I could just feel the weight and kind of the horror of that statement.

Julia:
Oh, me too. Yeah, me too. You’re naming something about power and authority that’s hard to ignore.

What did that turn into? How were women being talked about or treated?

Leigh:
Well, I think that goes back to the second thing of women being viewed as stereotypes.

Jen Wilkin has this excellent article about the three ghosts of women’s roles: the usurper, the temptress, and the child.

And once she named it, you could just see it everywhere.

Women are seen as usurpers, where we’re always on the verge of threatening male authority, or as a temptress, someone who’s responsible for men’s sexual sin, or as a child who’s less rational, less stable, less capable.

And I think once those assumptions are in place, we just stop relating to each other as brothers and sisters. We begin to relate to one another in fear.

And then the fear causes the further dehumanization because we treat each other as “the other” instead of as part of the body.

And so for me, and I think for other women, it meant that over time we just stopped trusting our instincts. We start shrinking ourselves.

Because for me, dehumanization is when something about our humanity — our voice, our individuality, our lived experience — gets minimized or obscured.

And I think when male leadership is uncertain what to do with us, or they’re viewing us through these stereotypes, it becomes so normalized that even we as women stop recognizing it. We just absorb it.

So you would almost think there’s this big uprising, but in a lot of ways we just continue to absorb.

Julia:
Women have felt this and don’t have language for it. And it doesn’t look obvious, like you’re saying, when you’re inside of it.

So it does make sense that it takes time to see it sometimes.

You’ve also described how women are expected to conform to male culture. Where else did you see that pressure to conform show up?

Leigh:
In just about every meeting that we’re in.

I think the male culture is the dominant culture in the church, and so it’s really subtle how we’re expected to conform.

I think it’s really damaging where we’re allowed to speak, but we have to speak like men. It has to be logical, calm, sequential, no emotion.

I once tried to explain to a pastor how something he said from the pulpit harmed women. And when I started to explain it to him, I started to cry. It was in the midst of all this tension.

And he looked at me and he said, “I’m not going to listen to all this emotion.” And he walked away.

Julia:
Oh, that’s a painful moment. He dismissed your emotion, but his reaction was emotional and carried authority while yours was treated as the problem.

Leigh:
Mm-hmm. And it’s just those small moments that teach you that your full self is not welcome.

You eventually learn, like a friend of mine says, that your place at the table or your favor among men has a shelf life, which means that eventually you have the sense that you’re going to lose your place if you bring your emotion, you bring questions, you bring a female perspective.

And yeah, then I think there’s another way that we conform to male culture. And this one is really hard because I think it has to do with other women.

And that is that conforming to male culture means that we get shut down or shunned by other women.

And I don’t say this with judgment because I’ve been on both sides of this, where I’ve felt that judgment and I have probably conveyed that judgment to other women.

So I say this with a lot of grief and with a lot of regret.

But sometimes women who are trying to have a place at the table and believing that they can contribute or they can change the culture shun and criticize other women when they don’t conform the way that they’re supposed to.

And I think that is such a deeply damaging way we have to conform to male culture.

In some ways, the hurt of what happened felt more acute when it came from women for me than when it came from men.

Julia:
We don’t expect that harm would come from our own sisters. And there’s a very particular and unique grief that comes along with that.

Leigh:
Yeah.

Julia:
You also mentioned that women’s ideas are often used but not credited. What did that actually look like?

Leigh:
Again, it’s confusing because I think women are often heard behind closed doors. I know that I was.

So my husband used to say, “We don’t have a theology problem, we have a geography problem,” because our ideas or our influence — I would write teaching materials, have hard relational conversations — all behind closed doors, but publicly there is just silence.

And I think men are often afraid to give credit to women because it could be seen by others as a woman having authority or having too much influence.

And on the one hand, it left me feeling very valued. But on the other hand, I wasn’t acknowledged publicly for a lot of my contributions, and my voice was completely silenced publicly.

And so I spent all these years in church ministry beating myself up, asking God to forgive me for pride because I thought, “You know, this is pride. I just want acknowledgment.”

But I don’t really believe that anymore.

I don’t really think that my spirit was unsettled because I wanted applause. I think it was unsettled because what was being presented publicly wasn’t true.

And the integrity and the truth mattered to me. And it left me unsettled that it wasn’t there.

Julia:
Yes, you were beginning to trust your own sense of what was true.

And it sounds like you started to realize the problem wasn’t what they were saying it was. And it wasn’t about you reaching for something like authority. It was about something not being right.

Leigh:
Yeah. I mean, I think we could debate this question about authority till Jesus comes back. It’s certainly been debated for many, many years with people far smarter than me.

But in many settings, I think that’s what’s happening, these endless debates about authority.

But what we wouldn’t talk about was power.

And when I asked if we could talk about power during our discussions, I was told that it would be seen as too contentious to tackle that.

Julia:
There’s fear again. And where you see that misuse of power, fear is not far behind.

So naming power specifically felt threatening.

Leigh:
Yes.

And, you know, it’s possible that some men don’t want to see that they have power because it goes against their idea of humility to acknowledge that they have power.

But I would say true humility would be acknowledging the power and using it for good.

I also think if we talk about power, if we tell men what it feels like to be a woman in the church, what our experiences are like, then they become accountable for that information.

They have to really spend time thinking about how to set women at ease in a meeting, how to make sure women feel free to speak what they’re thinking.

And they might have to table some discussions or not finish an agenda or spend more time hearing viewpoints if they do that.

And so I think these discussions about power aren’t efficient, right? They don’t lead to efficient leadership. They’re messy. They’re really messy.

But I kept coming back to this idea that Jesus talks about power. He doesn’t shy away from it. And He specifically tells us that we’re not to be the ones who lord power over others.

And I kept asking this question: If we don’t talk about what lording our power means, if we don’t talk about how power is used, then how do we know if power is being used in loving ways or in harmful ways?

Julia:
And you’ve already seen that silence protects misuse of power.

Leigh:
Yes.

Julia:
Okay, so what have you seen this do to women over time?

Leigh:
Well, I think, you know, we’ve mentioned this word so often: there’s so much confusion. All of this leads to so much confusion.

Confusion over why does the church feel unfulfilling? Or why does it feel unsafe? And then other times, you know, it feels fine.

And I think there’s confusion because we want to be faithful to the Scriptures, but we don’t see things being handled in accordance with Scripture. Or there’s a letter-of-the-law feeling, but not the love.

I think there’s confusion because we want to use our gifts and talents, but they’re only valued in certain times and certain places.

And there’s confusion for a lot of us because we feel like we have this calling in ministry, but our external call doesn’t match the internal call. In other words, we’re not getting confirmation from our church leadership that matches what we think the Holy Spirit is calling us to do in ministry.

And I think there’s also confusion because we deeply love and value these men as individuals.

It was really hard to have these relationships with individual men, even admire their walk with the Lord or their relationships with their wives, and then get in these meetings and see a different side when they become part of group discussions.

So it just felt like there’s confusion all around.

I also think in that confusion, we lose our sense of our identity because we get shrunk down to these roles — and roles that aren’t really clearly defined.

We begin to lose how we express ourselves, our femininity, and just the unique way that God’s called each of us to express His image in the world and in our context.

And then when we lose that sense of who we are in Christ, we miss the beauty of brothers and sisters in Christ.

I don’t think we’re giving a picture to the world of the goodness, the joy, the fun that we can have as men and women who reflect Jesus together.

And then the last thing I would say is that — and I think this is the most destructive one of all — is that we begin to have this really distorted view of who Jesus is.

Just personally, I remember early on in these meetings feeling like the church was not representing Jesus. And me asking Jesus, going to bed every night like, “Who are You? Who are You? What do You believe about me? How do You see me?”

And there was a season where I felt like He was really close and He answered me.

I remember one night I was lying in bed and I remember Him reminding me of this scene where Jesus is with Mary and Martha in Lazarus’s house.

And we focus so much on Mary and Martha and their roles. But what I remembered was that Jesus let Martha question Him.

“Why would You let my sister do this?”

He didn’t bristle. He didn’t put her in her place. He didn’t take authority, so to speak, over her. He let her ask these questions of Him.

She had a relationship with Him where she could go to Him.

And what stood out to me was there’s this relationship where she could go to Him and she could say exactly what was on her mind.

It was such a comfort to me because that’s not what was happening in my circles.

But then there was a season where I lost who Jesus was, and it was like I couldn’t see Him anymore.

And I couldn’t believe that He valued me and valued women and saw us when I consistently was getting this message that we were just a problem to be solved in the church.

Julia:
You’re right. That is the deepest loss that we hear from others who are experiencing similar dynamics, is that it does change who Jesus is to them.

And these are people who are faithful, who usually are very diligent, who have a close relationship with Jesus and want to serve others.

And yet His goodness for you — you continued to wrestle and to seek Him, and He was faithful to reveal more of who He is to you.

That’s probably one of the most beautiful parts of your story.

So you stepped away from the church, and at the same time, some things began to shift inside the church.

So what happened next?

Leigh:
So the church did split. I think, like I said, that split started while I was on sabbatical.

And our leadership was reorganized, meaning about half of our session, half of our elders, left to go with the new church.

And then eventually our head pastor left, and our assistant pastor became the pastor.

And he did a great job creating a safe space for women by taking the elders through a season of: what went wrong and how we handled these discussions — and not just the discussions about women’s roles.

So that was largely it, but also just how they handled the divisions in the church in an incorrect way, how they wanted that to change in the future.

And I really came to believe that there were things that he had to say to those men that only a man could say to men about how they had been guilty of actually harming women.

For one, the women were exhausted, and we didn’t want to be back in those spaces again. And so a man needed to step into that.

And two, I just think there were some things that they needed to be called to account for that needed to be done by the pastor and by another man.

And mainly what he was pushing them to see was how the elders who were left were largely silent in those discussions.

And he showed them their complicity of sitting in a room and not pushing back when hurtful things were being said, not being intentional to engage women in the discussion, not shepherding.

And I think they also spent a lot of time seeing how they took a passive role as leaders by expecting the pastors to shape these discussions and to kind of dictate what care looked like for the staff and for the congregation instead of them taking the burden of caring well for the congregation for themselves.

So most of the overt, explicit damage was done by the leaders who left in the church split.

The ones who were left behind, again, they were reckoning with how they were passive and passively complicit in that, but they began, I think, to care well for me and for other women.

For me personally, they checked on me, they visited me, they let me keep using my office to keep counseling.

And throughout that season of meetings, a few of them came and sought forgiveness over specific ways that they felt responsible or they felt complicit in what happened, even kind of naming specific discussions where they knew they should speak up and they didn’t, or not coming to me and just hearing from me when they were talking about me.

So they began to recognize those things.

And overall, I would say there was a lot of confession just about their passivity and their lack of understanding and seeking understanding of how the meetings became so toxic for me and for other women.

So even after these discussions, in order to come back to church, I think I stepped away for about eight months.

And I just had this feeling that I couldn’t just slide back into the pew and pretend like nothing happened.

I was in regular contact with my pastor. We’d take a walk once a week, and we did through all this season. So I knew the discussions he was having with them. I knew the training that was taking place.

But I also knew that I needed to sit back in the room with them, that there was something that had to get restored for me if I was going to be able to worship with them and come back under their leadership.

So I asked for a meeting with my elders.

And when I look back, I realize that I really just had one thing to say to them. And that was: “I don’t trust you.”

It’s not that I don’t trust you as a person, as an individual, but I don’t trust you as a group. I don’t trust your systems. I don’t trust this hierarchy of leadership in our presbytery and even in our denomination.

And I need you to know that that’s the way I come back in — a little suspicious myself and kind of waiting for you to let me down.

And their response was just so sweet. I don’t remember anyone taking any offense.

I mean, it was just very, very welcoming to my voice in the room, which again was already restoring something that had happened before.

And they just began to ask questions about what that was like for me and how they could change that.

How could I grow to trust them? That if I felt that way, there were certainly other women in the congregation who felt that way.

And so how could they get other women to trust them?

And again, I think it was important for me to leave them in the tension. And I didn’t do this intentionally. It just was what was true.

I just said, “You just need to keep doing what you’re doing. You need to keep talking about this. You need to keep owning this, and the culture here will change.”

And I told them, “It will trickle down.”

And they were like, “How?”

I said, “Because women are watching you, and they will see.”

And I think it showed real humility for them to sit in that tension of not feeling fully restored to me and probably to a lot of other women in the congregation and knowing that we’re watching to see their repentance played out in their actions.

And so the way it played out is that policies began to change.

So women began to be invited into previously closed spaces, into session meetings, into committee meetings. They were given a voice.

Women were more active in our worship service up front. Women’s contributions were being talked about from the pulpit.

And just very slowly, one change after another, I think the relationship between men and women in our church has started to feel like brothers and sisters who enjoy each other, who appreciate each other.

Julia:
You’ve seen repentance that names harm in specificity. You’ve seen that repentance carries with it the fruit of caring for those who were harmed. And there’s actually changed behavior that followed from that.

And even when things change, it doesn’t undo what happened, right? Repentance doesn’t make things simple or clean or undo the impact.

And I love that you were saying that you wanted to trust, but trust was broken. And that is not restored overnight.

Leigh:
Yes.

My counselor told me somewhere in my journey, he said, “You are waiting.”

And I did not put this together when I went into the meeting.

He said, “You are waiting to be able to express your hurt and distrust of men and have a man hold that without offense.”

So fast forward like a year later, and I’m sitting in that meeting, and I walk out of there and I went back to him and I was like, “It happened.”

I told them, and it wasn’t like this intentionally planned conversation. It’s just what was on my heart in that moment.

But then reflecting on that meeting, I realized I told them I don’t trust them, and they held it without offense.

So I think it goes back to our discussion about power, is that they didn’t bristle up in the sense of, “I’m your authority. How dare you not trust me?”

They went low. They humbled themselves and they chose to listen.

And again, that came through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but I do think it was the beginnings of real repentance.

Julia:
You are also trusting yourself enough — even if it’s 50% — you’re trusting yourself enough in your experience, what you need to be true, and what you’re seeking in a church to stand there and to say hard things.

And that is no small thing.

For the woman who’s in this right now and maybe doesn’t have the language for it yet, maybe feels that confusion or that small growing trust arising within her, what would you say to her?

Leigh:
Well, I think it’s very hard to know when it’s time to speak up.

And I would say, if you think the Lord is leading you to speak, don’t wait until you have the perfect words or the perfect amount of courage or the perfect situation.

I think you have to kind of go into it knowing that you’re going to be misunderstood, you might be slandered, and that you might have to put your reputation on the line, on the altar so to speak, and trust God to defend you.

But if He’s calling you to speak, it’s time to speak.

But I also think that it’s important to realize that it might not be time to speak, and you don’t have to feel guilty about that.

One of the things I would think about is: How many times did Jesus walk past the tables that He later overturned?

I don’t think they just appeared on the day that He turned them over, right? They were there. This was a system that was in place and functioning and probably abhorrent to Him maybe from when He was young visiting the temple.

And so I don’t think waiting means ignoring.

I don’t think Jesus was ignoring it like, “It doesn’t matter.”

Waiting doesn’t mean we’re ignoring truth. It may mean that we’re listening for God’s timing for ourselves and for the situation.

Julia:
There is a kind of loneliness that came along with being that fixture in the church that you were that represented so much unhealth and dysfunction that not many women can understand.

And there was a particular loneliness of your journey.

And also you had others around you that were supporting you. It sounds like your counselor, maybe some friends who weren’t in the city that you were in.

Leigh:
Yes. And that helps to give you some perspective on timing also and what you’re seeing.

Definitely.

Two things come to mind.

There were a lot of people who came to me when all the dust settled, hurt because they didn’t know all that was going on.

And I would look at them and be like, “How about a flight out?” I mean, I’m already being watched, and then I’m going to talk to people in our congregation?

So I did have a counselor, and I did have a very small group of trusted friends. Some of them were in the church and some of them were outside the church.

And then I had two mentors.

I even sought out some women in ministry that I did not know because I kept feeling like I was losing perspective.

And so for years, a mentor friend of mine — he’s an older gentleman — kept saying, “You need a woman outside the church.”

And I didn’t develop those relationships. And then in this time of a lot of pressure, it became essential to hear other women’s voices and get perspective on what was happening.

But the loneliness in the midst of it and the loneliness in the aftermath was very hard.

Julia:
Yeah.

Earlier, you were talking a little bit about fidelity and faithfulness to Scripture and faithfulness in the Christian walk.

And this will be my last question for you.

What does it look like to be faithful to God and to yourself right now?

I think there’s also a cost to that.

So what does it cost you to stay, and what makes it worth it?

Leigh:
Hmm. It’s such a big question.

But faithfulness began with me learning to care for myself.

Like I said, I had to get back in touch with my body.

So even asking the elders — even asking to talk to the elders — was something I realized I had to do for me.

Sure, I wanted to see how they reacted, but I wanted to see how my body reacted just being in the room, just having the conversation.

And I knew I couldn’t go back in if I didn’t trust myself to pull back and care for myself where I knew I needed care.

So I think faithfulness was not just expecting the environment to become safe, but — this sounds like a weird thing to say — for me to become safe for me, because I would commit to taking care of myself.

Then when I did take on new responsibilities or jump back into different aspects of ministry, I wasn’t sure how I would handle those emotionally or physically.

So my pastor asked me to help them do some leadership training for the elders, deacons, and women.

Of course, this is what I’m waiting for, is for women to be included in these spaces, but I did not know how I would handle that.

So I was like, “I’m going to commit to one week at a time, and we’ll see each week how I do and if I can handle this.”

And that’s what we did.

And then since then, I’ve participated in leadership training every year.

I’ve also learned — and this has just been so sweet — I’ve learned to become a participant in spaces where I used to lead.

And that’s just been fun. That’s been restful.

It’s not always easy to do, but it’s been really sweet to do, to just sit back and let others be in charge, let others lead the discussion, let others run the meeting. It’s been really nice.

And then faithfulness has also meant speaking into the systems where the Lord gives me opportunities.

I did a breakout session with my pastor at our denomination’s General Assembly.

When I knew I was going to do this podcast, I asked the pastor if our elders wanted to know what I was going to say.

I wasn’t asking permission for what I was going to say, but I wanted to know if they wanted to be informed.

And he asked me to turn it into a training night for the elders.

And it’s funny because every time I’m given these opportunities, my husband will look at me and he’ll be like, “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

And I always say to him, “If I’m going to stay, I have to show up as me. I have to show up with my gifting and my calling. I can’t just sit in the back pew and hide.”

And so I keep trying to show up in ways that feel meaningful or feel like I have a perspective that’s being welcomed in the room.

And I’m really glad.

I don’t know many women who have the story that they stay, but it’s been miraculous in some ways that I can stay with people who I dearly love.

But I also recognize that part of faithfulness for me is holding this more loosely.

I have a 30-year investment here, but I can’t grip it too tightly.

I can only stay here as long as I and other women can show up for who we were made to be.

Julia:
That sounds like a very different kind of faithfulness than what we’re usually taught.

And that’s not going to look the same for everyone.

It didn’t come quickly for you. In your context, there is disruption. There is an ongoing process of repair and a lot of time before things began to change.

And for you, faithfulness in your context meant staying, but it also meant staying that did not require you to give over yourself.

You stayed not at the cost of yourself.

Leigh, thank you so much for entrusting your story with us.

And to our listeners, thank you for listening. We’re really glad you’re here.

Ann Maree:
Safe to Hope is made possible by donors who believe faithfulness means protecting survivors and honoring the dignity of their stories.

Their support allows us to remain independent, trauma-specialized, and committed to truth-telling without pressure or performance.

We are deeply grateful to our donors for their partnership.

If this conversation stirred something for you, please know you do not have to carry it alone.

Support resources are listed in the show notes, and you’re welcome to reach out in the ways that feel safest for you.

Safe to Hope is a production of Help[H]er. Our executive producer is Anne-Marie Goudswaard.